tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post8524094575548795445..comments2024-03-29T00:39:31.629-07:00Comments on CONTRARY BRIN: Bet on it! The "Name an Exception" challenge and other tactics for your crazy uncleDavid Brinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14465315130418506525noreply@blogger.comBlogger90125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-54563010838703069282017-09-02T16:05:29.372-07:002017-09-02T16:05:29.372-07:00Alfred,
The employees of a nationalised drug clin...Alfred,<br /><br />The employees of a nationalised drug clinic don't have to be "homo angelicus". The front-of-counter sales are simple retail sales, nothing special; western governments routinely handle large amounts of over-the-counter cash turnover with only minimal theft issues. The back-of-clinic supply programs are standard addiction supply programs, which are operated in a number of countries; the built-in inconvenience drastically limits the potential for the... sale of indulgences.<br /><br />And the nature of nationalisation itself drastically reduces the value of stealing product for black-market resale. The black-market value will be less than the retail value (otherwise why would the customer bother with the risk?) That sets are very low maximum profit before the theft volume becomes too noticeable to too many people; it also drastically limits the number of people you can bribe before there's no profit in the theft.<br /><br />If you simply end drug criminalisation, you don't suddenly have a healthy market. You still have the legacy of the existing criminal market. Decriminalisation of drugs leaves the supply-side in the hands of people who currently don't obey the laws. Not just recreational drug laws, but purity/safety laws, labelling laws, tax laws, gun laws, and murder laws. While full legalisation potentially brings non-criminals into the supply-side, they will be competing with people who are going to happily use illegal methods to enforce their control. <br /><br />Nationalisation breaks the connection between the drug trade and the criminals.<br /><br />(Aside: David, the nationalisation of the retail sales are the key to what I was suggesting. Controlled supply addiction programs -- as referred to in "<i>A Stage of Memory</i>" -- aren't new or special, and that's not the core of what I'm suggesting, it's just an obvious add-on.)<br /><br />(Aside 2: Alfred, you're also making a common libertarian mistake that the point of drug decrimin-/leg-/nation-alisation is to create an efficient, optimal market. It's not. The current drug market is close to a pure laissez faire, merely limited to the pool of people willing to break drug laws. I want the legal drug market to be inefficient. Awkward, annoying, expensive. As much as the market will bear. Right up to the limit where it's just barely still not quite worth engaging with the black market.)Paul451https://www.blogger.com/profile/12119086761190994938noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-43428803862011599532017-09-02T16:01:35.305-07:002017-09-02T16:01:35.305-07:00New post is up, but I'll drop these two here.
...New post is up, but I'll drop these two here.<br /><br /><br />Re: My drug nationalisation proposal:<br /><br />PaulSB,<br /><i>"No amount of annoying red tape, health posters or lectures will deter addicts from getting their fix."</i><br /><br />The majority of drug users are casual, non-addicts (typically 90% or more). The majority of drugs by volume or value (typically around 50-70%, depending) are consumed by that minority of addicts. The idea is that the latter are directed to the controlled supply-program, destroying the existing profitability of the illegal trade (same as any controlled supply program); while controlling retail casual sales prevents recruitment and replacement of new addicts by the illegal trade and provides funding to the clinic for the addiction side of the clinic.<br /><br />The inefficiency and health-clinic aspect is to deter those casual users, the non-addicts, as far as you can without pushing them to the black-market. Addicts are obviously not going to be deterred, nor was that the intent of my suggestion.<br /><br />Hence the controlled supply program for addicts. Free drugs for a bit of red tape and lectures? You will have every single addict signed up. And even if that was the only benefit, that alone would eliminate around 70-80% of property crime and half of armed-rob crimes (according to local police). But I think there's another benefit, once addicts don't have to think about getting their fix every single day, you can trend them towards fixing up parts of their lives harmed by not just the use of drugs but the things done to get the drugs. You change the thinking from short-term to, if not long-term, at least medium-term. That change is the only way, from the research I've read, to get addicts to look at treatment. There's a common belief that addicts need to "hit rock bottom" before they will turn around, but for the vast majority of addicts there isn't a "rock bottom", below them is a bottomless sucking mire of misery; there's always further you can fall, it can always get worse. And the worse things are, the worse you feel, the stronger the urge to use. The turn-around happens when you are capable of saying, "I'm worth more than this."<br /><br />Since people often have to go through several attempts in order to break an addiction; with illegal drugs they leave the program and go back to their dealer and former lifestyle. With a nationalised clinic network, they go back to the clinic, back to the addiction supply program, where their case-manager says all the clucking things that they are meant to say. (Even if its just the assumption inherent in a casual, "Let me know when you feel up to trying again.")<br /><br /><i>"Then you have the huge international illegal network, mad elf of truly ruthless killers who would not hesitate to gun down clinic workers or firebomb their new competitors. You would have to have quite the military presence to defend this system."</i><br /><br />No. That doesn't happen. Outside of a bad '80s action movie plot.<br /><br />See Uruguay, or US states where MJ has been legalised, in spite of the impact on Mexican cartels. Or other countries with any kind of licensed production/sale (rather than just decriminalisation.) Even with harder drugs, many countries have set up addiction supply programs and since addicts make up the majority of retail sales, you are targeting the best customers. Yet it never results in clinic-bombings or staff-shootings, let alone the need for mass deployment of military protection (or minor deployment, or any deployment. Clinics usually even discourage police from being too visible.)<br /><br /><i>"mad elf of truly ruthless killers"</i><br /><br />Indeed.Paul451https://www.blogger.com/profile/12119086761190994938noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-46401008650379428302017-09-02T15:43:06.520-07:002017-09-02T15:43:06.520-07:00onward
onward
onward<br /><br />onward<br />David Brinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14465315130418506525noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-36132054943821886292017-09-02T14:58:32.254-07:002017-09-02T14:58:32.254-07:00Jim Wright was quoted: "Civilization advances...Jim Wright was quoted: "Civilization advances in fits and starts. Three steps forward, two to the side, two back, and forward again.<br /><br />History doesn’t flow smoothly forward, it lurches like a drunkard."<br /><br />Similarly, someone (sorry, forget who) said, "History doesn't repeat so much as it has recurring motifs." Events, styles and systems recur because they are facets of human nature.Zepp Jamiesonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16261339498383415026noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-71644341004935781412017-09-02T13:06:14.156-07:002017-09-02T13:06:14.156-07:00From the stonekettle post linked above:
...
Creat...From the stonekettle post linked above:<br /><i><br />...<br />Creationists don't build starships.<br /><br />And modern conservativism has been eaten alive by the Creationists.<br /><br />But guess what? Liberals don't build starships either.<br /><br />No, instead they spend all their time and effort arguing about the advisability of sending humans to other worlds when we haven't even fixed (insert endless list of causes) and they never actually get around to building the damned ship.<br /><br />You know who builds starships? People who believe, that’s who. Those who believe in the future, those who work every damned day to advance civilization, those who stand steadfast against the fall of night. Once upon a time, those people were <b>Americans</b>.<br />...<br /></i>LarryHartnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-83342042068893600782017-09-02T12:21:12.882-07:002017-09-02T12:21:12.882-07:00Anonymous @ 7:54 AM said...
for someone who p...Anonymous @ 7:54 AM said...<br /><br /> for someone who professes to believe in linearity you sure do circle around the same old same old again and again and again and again and again and again and (this was to Dr. Brin)<br /><br /><br />I'd like to react to that with a quote from Jim Wright's newest essay at Stonekettle station:<br /><br />http://www.stonekettle.com/2017/09/perspective.html<br /><br />"Civilization advances in fits and starts. Three steps forward, two to the side, two back, and forward again.<br /><br />History doesn’t flow smoothly forward, it lurches like a drunkard."<br /><br />I like this mental image, it avoids the simplicity of both the linear-mabye-even-inevitable-progression and the circle-doomed-to-repeat-eternally.<br /><br />Thinking about it, this analogy could well reconcile both sets of ideas about how history unfolds, for the people that want it.<br /><br />But more important in Jim's essay is the central idea that having a civilisation is having to keep putting effort in it, that there will be no victory-and-rest-afterwards. Even in less harrowing times than now (which Jim essentially denies there ever are). Dr. Brin clearly knows this, and <i>will</i> keep at it, again and again and again as you say, because it's necessary.<br /><br />Read Jim´s piece, Anonymous, and you'll see why I use it to answer you.Twomindsnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-46117687749167151152017-09-02T10:51:34.310-07:002017-09-02T10:51:34.310-07:00Paul 451,
Regarding the Fisher test, you wrote th...Paul 451,<br /><br />Regarding the Fisher test, you wrote that the score you got and what you read elsewhere didn't quite match, and that other purported neuroscience-based tests said different things. You know the Net is packed full grade A effluent. I am willing to trust Fisher because I am familiar enough with her work to know that she is a thorough researcher, not given to cherry picking, falsifying or sloppy reasoning, and she knows better than to try to pontificate against experts in fields she is not an expert in, too, which puts her a few pegs higher than most people who write for general audiences. That said, these kind of tests are never 100%, as I wrote to Larry earlier. If you have scores that are within a few points of each other, you may only have statistical noise and they are effectively equivalent. As far as the one that confused serotonin for dopamine, there's a whole lot of "neurobunk" out there. More and more people are hearing the names of neurotransmitters but not being very critical of their sources. Once again, until we have the entire human genome cracked, these kinds of questionnaire-type tools are what we're stuck with. Her book has been around long enough to be in libraries, if you would like to find out more.<br /><br />Your suggestion for dealing with illegal drugs has a few drawbacks. The face value of the government selling dangerous drugs just doesn't look good, especially at a time when approval of the government is at all-time lows. Then there's the fact that these drugs are truly dangerous, brain-altering substances. Cocaine gets your nucleus accumbens 4x the normal dopamine maximum, and meth goes to 10x. No amount of annoying red tape, health posters or lectures will deter addicts from getting their fix. They truly are the closest thing to zombies in real live. Then you have the huge international illegal network, mad elf of truly ruthless killers who would not hesitate to gun down clinic workers or firebomb their new competitors. You would have to have quite the military presence to defend this system. Still, you're showing more thought than the typical moralizing conservative reactionary with their failed policies of punish victims and shoot to kill. Paul SBnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-73179576882350073212017-09-02T05:25:25.499-07:002017-09-02T05:25:25.499-07:00Steven Hammond:
The only restraints [on medieval ...Steven Hammond:<br /><i><br />The only restraints [on medieval nobles] were preventing rebellion by lesser nobles under them and keeping the peasants alive. (I exaggerate, of course)<br /></i><br /><br />You don't exaggerate by much. At least not according to Charles Dickens (A Tale Of Two Cities) who described French village life in the 1780s as (from memory) "A choice between life on the meanest terms that would support it, or captivity and death in the prison on the crag."<br /><br /><i><br />I suspect my children exceeding my ACT scores accounts for the self-effacing bit.<br /></i><br /><br />Heh. My dad was an optometrist, so he knew a lot of math, but when my brother and I were in high school and getting into matrix algebra, I remember him taking a look at our homework once and lamenting, "It's like a foreign language to me."<br /><br />My own daughter is close to that same age now, and while I can still manage to help her with her homework, she no longer <b>wants</b> me to.<br /><br /><i><br /> I wrote a whole other paragraph about my kids but decided to spare you. <br /></i><br /><br />Heh. You seem new here unless you've been lurking, so I'll repeat one of my own stories. About two years ago, my daughter and her friend were struggling with some math problem at our house (it might have been the quadratic forumla--something at that level), and my wife and I both chimed in with helpful suggestions. The friend looked dumbfounded that we knew the subject matter, and remarked "<b>My</b> parents would have just nodded politely." My daughter then replied, "Nerd parents. I'm livin' the dream!"<br />LarryHartnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-11520919205483708742017-09-01T20:33:41.723-07:002017-09-01T20:33:41.723-07:00Jonathan, invite crazy uncle to go with you to a u...Jonathan, invite crazy uncle to go with you to a university and go down the hallways, asking experts. Like the meteorologists who changed the old joke of a 4-hour "weather report" into the ten day miracle that Uncle uses to plan vacations. <br /><br />Ask him if he's willing to go on a field trip and actually have the guts to ask actual questions of folks who actually know what's going on?<br /><br />David Brinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14465315130418506525noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-86212258373128386722017-09-01T19:24:55.162-07:002017-09-01T19:24:55.162-07:00The problem with "name one exception", D...The problem with "name one exception", David, is that the crazy uncle (or, in this case, the questionable sister) is unwilling to concede that <i>any</i> of the knowledge castes is under attack - "just a few crazies who believe in [climate change, danger from Russia, you-name-it]". Any evidence of, for instance, the 97% consensus on climate change is disregarded as "just another lie from the mainstream media."<br /><br />It's hard to place bets on that sort of thing when we can't even agree on the nature of reality. It's like trying to argue a schizophrenic into believing that the voices aren't real.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11903687674146271189noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-88434164504652233602017-09-01T18:14:07.747-07:002017-09-01T18:14:07.747-07:00Corporations and concentrated economic power is no...Corporations and concentrated economic power is not something the founders had experience with and so, as problems arose, this was dealt with by legislation and regulation. There is not a national tradition of opposition to monopoly similar to that of resistance to tyranny. And yet they are very similar. Concentrated economic power in the days of the founders was largely due to the power of extensive landholding. This was foreseen and the very framework of our country was set up to prevent that. Corporations with concentrated economic power not based on landholding was<i> not</i> foreseen and is, in so many respects, the same thing.<br /><br />So, I agree that analogies are always problematic, but there is like some value in the analogy I have proposed of monopoly as corporate feudalism. <br /><br />The big questions are, "Can Unhealthy Monopolies be prevented by legislation or do they need to be knocked down in a perpetual "Whack-a-Mole" game? " Also, "how big is 'Too Big'? "<br /><br />I'm all for competition amongst industry rivals. Like our host, I see completion as essential. My concerns are that concentrated economic power <i>decreases competition</i>.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18162963685411928666noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-29321870387339515332017-09-01T18:13:45.186-07:002017-09-01T18:13:45.186-07:00(continued)
In medieval times the influence on tho...(continued)<br />In medieval times the influence on those above them was the threat of the baron collaborating with other nobles to replace the king or withholding their power from joining with the King in resisting an invading enemy or going forth in a military adventurism.For those below them, they had nearly absolute power in dictating rents and calling up tenants for warfare. The only restraints were preventing rebellion by lesser nobles under them and keeping the peasants alive. (I exaggerate, of course)<br /><br />In modern times, the threat of unhealthy power of monopolies is multifaceted and sometimes subtle. Lobbyists and their influence is an obvious example, but of course, they are merely speaking as "heralds" so to speak of the lords of industry. What is the influence on the government.? Financial contributions for or against politicians is far more important than we might think. Targeted ads, suggestions to cabinet members regarding policy with well paying positions awaiting those people them after their term, donations to think-tanks to churn out articles supporting policies that help the corporation. Opinion pieces and direction in the media that they either own or can influence by their advertisement are all examples. <br /><br />The influence on those beneath them, their suppliers is less subtle and more direct. Here's a quote from the article I linked to earlier:<br /><br />"The effects of monopsony also can be difficult to pin down. But again we have easy illustrations ready to hand, in the surprising recent tribulations of two iconic American firms -- Coca-Cola and Kraft. Coca-Cola is the quintessential seller of a product based on a "secret formula." Recently, though, Wal-Mart decided that it did not approve of the artificial sweetener Coca-Cola planned to use in a new line of diet colas. In a response that would have been unthinkable just a few years ago, Coca-Cola yielded to the will of an outside firm and designed a second product to meet Wal-Mart's decree. Kraft, meanwhile, is a producer that only four years ago was celebrated by Forbes for "leading the charge" in a "brutal industry." Yet since 2004, Kraft has announced plans to shut thirty-nine plants, to let go 13,500 workers, and to eliminate a quarter of its products. Most reports blame soaring prices of energy and raw materials, but in a truly free market Kraft could have pushed at least some of these higher costs on to the consumer. This, however, is no longer possible. Even as costs rise, Wal-Mart and other discounters continue to demand that Kraft lower its prices further. Kraft has found itself with no other choice than to swallow the costs, and hence to tear itself to pieces."<br /><br />http://www.alternet.org/story/39251/the_case_for_breaking_up_wal-mart<br /><br /><br />2. The founders of the American Experiment sought to level the playing field. They sought to curtail the advantages of birth, class and heritage which limited opportunities for this without those advantages. They may have had some blind spots regarding race, but they did a pretty good job otherwise. Of course, this was before the industrial revolution. Power in the feudal system is concentrated to landowners. Economic power meant owning land and (essentially) the people that worked it. They sought to limit power and encourage the yeoman farmer--especially in Jefferson's case. Their insight has worked pretty well and our current president is a good trial of how well these safeguards have worked. I would ay they did pretty well.<br /><br />Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18162963685411928666noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-53794838928565634452017-09-01T18:12:57.173-07:002017-09-01T18:12:57.173-07:00Paul SB said to Alfred upthread:
"Steven is ...Paul SB said to Alfred upthread:<br /><br />"Steven is very polite and self-effacing, but he's also very bright. I think his corporate feudalism analogy makes good sense. I might even extend the analogy a tiny bit."<br /><br />I appreciate the complement and I suspect my children exceeding my ACT scores accounts for the self-effacing bit. (I blame exposure to leaded gasoline exhaust in my childhood for that, BTW, not that it elicits any pity from them--wretches! ) I wrote a whole other paragraph about my kids but decided to spare you. They're great kids and I've been blessed, fortunate etc.--so far. All smart. All studying STEM and none of whom I see coming back to our little city in Montana. Doesn't bother me a bit. I'm an Army Brat and my wife moved around a lot as well, so when we get old and decrepit, we'll move to a town one of our daughters lives in. I've heard that sons are crap at elder care. ;)<br /><br />So, I've been pondering whether the corporate feudalism analogy I proposed might have anything more to it than just being a rhetorical tool. It wasn't something I thought about a lot but seemed to work so I went with it. And here's my initial thoughts.<br /><br />1) The dangers of both monopolies/overly powerful corporations and historical feudalism are due to unhealthy concentrations of power. Both could, by fiat, dictate what those below them, whether suppliers or lairds/farmers/serfs would receive for services. The barons, dukes etc of the high nobility also had excessive influence on the King as do the modern corporations (you can include "banks too big to fail" ) on the US government policy. <br /><br />Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18162963685411928666noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-9949561504564428262017-09-01T17:50:11.422-07:002017-09-01T17:50:11.422-07:00Ok, if you actually read that "Washington Exa...Ok, if you actually read that "Washington Examiner" article which is linked to in the Obama-golf tweets, the complaint against Obama is actually that he was on vacation during a <b>later</b> flooding episode in Louisiana in 2016. And they're calling him out for being "just as bad as he said Bush was" during Katrina. <b>They</b> at least don't refer to Obama being on vacation during Katrina.<br /><br />The readers and comment posters who ran with it, OTOH, don't seem to get that fine distinction.<br /><br />The scary part for me is the percentage of people who think Obama was president during Katrina and the even larger percentage who "don't remember". It reminds me of an experiment I read about a while back which intended to show how unreliable eyewitness testimony can be. People were told, and then later "remembered" seeing Bugs Bunny among the characters they met at Disney World, even though Bugs is a Warner Brothers character.<br /><br />The write-up of the experiment made it sound as if people were stupid to believe such a thing, but what I took away is that most of them didn't know or care who the individual characters were, let alone whether Disney owned them or not. What they remembered was "I saw some cartoon characters." They couldn't care less about which ones. You tell them one was Bugs Bunny? Ok, it must have been Bugs Bunny. Later, they'll relate that they met Bugs Bunny, when what they really mean is, "I met someone in a costume who I've been told is Bugs Bunny."<br /><br />I can pretty well guarantee that no one's implanted memory went like this: "I walked into Disney World, and there was Bugs Bunny greeting me. I was startled to see a Warner Brothers character at a Disney park, but there he was right in front of me."<br /><br />Likewise, before today, I'd have said that no one would think back on Hurricane Katrina and think of anyone other then George W Bush as being president at the time, just as I'd not expect anyone to misremember who was president during the Monica Lewinsky scandal, or who resigned from the presidency over Watergate. Apparently, I put too much faith in my fellow Americans.<br />LarryHartnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-67377077270757565792017-09-01T17:39:31.800-07:002017-09-01T17:39:31.800-07:00@Duncan | Yah. I was just listening on the radio a...@Duncan | Yah. I was just listening on the radio about an archeological find suggesting wine storage in Sicily dated 6,000 years ago. Looks like we've been working on our tolerance for the poison for much longer than we knew. Some of us anyway. 8)Alfred Differhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01170159981105973192noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-3776336839708780222017-09-01T17:37:13.559-07:002017-09-01T17:37:13.559-07:00@George | I don't think an investment in super...@George | I don't think an investment in super-fast broadband infrastructure will have the smallest towns. It takes a lot more than access. Look at it from an employer's perspective and you might see it. If I start a company, I'll hire the best talent I can afford. They might come from small-town America or the big-city America. Who knows? I am going to remain tempted to centralize them, though, even if they have fast access from elsewhere. Face-to-face human interactions are the high bandwidth exchanges I need for a creative team. Absent fully immersive experiences (virtual worlds on steroids), I'm not going to get that when my talent is remote. <br /><br />To make matters worse, my start-up interacts with other companies and their talent pools. If mine is in one place and a partner is in another, I have the same problem. Even suppliers count. Big cities aren't just about communications. They are about reductions of transactions costs. All of them. Power utilities, emergency services, transportation infrastructure, and all the others count. Big cities are the future and the only small towns that will survive are the ones right next-door that will be gobbled up.<br /><br />Humans at high density are simply different than they are at low density and this really, really matters when it comes to creativity.Alfred Differhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01170159981105973192noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-5383833732345149552017-09-01T17:14:56.910-07:002017-09-01T17:14:56.910-07:00"Some drugs wipe out our ability to function ... "Some drugs wipe out our ability to function as viable adults".<br /><br />Like alcoholduncan cairncrosshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14153725128216947145noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-28908999641598523182017-09-01T17:13:59.422-07:002017-09-01T17:13:59.422-07:00Are the people who say Obama was golfing tweeting ...Are the people who say Obama was golfing tweeting from behind anonymous accounts? I wouldn't expect shame to play a role, if so.<br /><br />As I understand the bet strategy, the shame is supposed to come from not having the courage to take a risk. If I offer what appears to be a high odds (to you) bet and your risk is small, failing to take the chance to take my money is cowardly. Yah. Some of the people we talk to might be cowardly, but the bet is supposed to lure away their courageous people.Alfred Differhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01170159981105973192noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-4987764339273868152017-09-01T17:08:01.457-07:002017-09-01T17:08:01.457-07:00@matthew | Okay. I'll retreat from 'most&#...@matthew | Okay. I'll retreat from 'most' dangerous and say 'really dangerous instead. That way we can both keep pointing out dangers and not spend time colliding over what's worse. Both are bad and we can do our jobs as t-cells. 8)<br /><br />The old school liberal within me is greatly concerned with all concentrations of power. Those who want to cheat us (whether they think it is cheating or not) will be drawn to those concentrations. The best plans of the angels among us will be undone by them and maybe even corrupted. Take Paul451's idea for government run clinics having a legal monopoly on illegal drugs. He means well, but he needs the staff to be members of homo angelicus. It won't happen because many of us know such creatures don't exist. We can choose only from homo sapiens for now, so I'd argue it is safer not to concentrate such power. Instead, I would decriminalize a lot of the drugs and argue instead for judicially stripping addicts of certain adulthood rights until they get clean. Some drugs wipe out our ability to function as viable adults.Alfred Differhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01170159981105973192noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-7989749562279845432017-09-01T15:22:46.236-07:002017-09-01T15:22:46.236-07:00David,
IMO looking at the response of the "Ob...David,<br />IMO looking at the response of the "Obama was golfing during Katrina" tweeters, even when corrected, shows that the bet-strategy can't work. There's no shame there any more.Paul451https://www.blogger.com/profile/12119086761190994938noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-22339248846669365852017-09-01T14:29:09.921-07:002017-09-01T14:29:09.921-07:00"I’m the one who has pointed out how the city..."I’m the one who has pointed out how the city (Mordor) steals Red America’s children, every June. I am well aware of that psychic shock and I wish more Blue Americans knew about it, even though almost nothing can be done about it. Except invest in more universities and colleges in red areas. And they will simply become more Austins."<br /><br />I had a discussion on the <a href="https://boffyblog.blogspot.co.uk/2017/08/ignorocracy.html" rel="nofollow">blog of British Marxist Arthur Bough</a> last month about the issue of anti-intellectualism driven by youth flight to big cities (suggesting that it could have been a factor in the vote for Brexit – which Mr Bough fervently opposes), and after he said that every settlement ought to pay its way (which immediately made me think of the US "<a href="https://www.strongtowns.org/" rel="nofollow">Strong Towns</a>" movement) he in turn suggested that sufficient investment in super-fast broadband infrastructure should make big dense cities obsolete anyway!<br /><br />I was a bit surprised given the popular UK/US stereotype of Marxists as favouring high-density cities and hating suburban and rural life, but he reminded me that the Communist Manifesto itself advocated "abolishing the distinction between town and country" (which sounds to me like a prediction of suburban sprawl). I was also sceptical that working from home could replace most physical commuting, as it would obviously only be possible for information workers, and many such businesses are only viable if they enjoy a degree of monopoly power.<br /><br />What are your thoughts? (Please read the discussion on the linked blog post...)George Cartyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12170378024031141482noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-20478568554290904922017-09-01T14:25:24.982-07:002017-09-01T14:25:24.982-07:00According to Public Policy Polling (a "Democr...According to Public Policy Polling (a "Democratic-oriented" pollster), back in 2013 29 percent of Louisiana Republicans thought Obama was to blame for the Katrina response, and another 44 percent weren't sure if it was Obama or Bush.<br /><br />http://www.snopes.com/barack-obama-katrina/A.F. Reynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-1099504888978976482017-09-01T13:34:35.269-07:002017-09-01T13:34:35.269-07:00Dr Brin:
LH I believe that story is in The River ...Dr Brin:<br /><i><br />LH I believe that story is in The River of Time... maybe Otherness.<br /></i><br /><br />I've got both!<br /><br />On evidence for betting...<br />From what I'm hearing on this list, the FOXites don't even agree with us on a fact like "Katrina happened during George W Bush's presidency," which I have to admit, I find incredible, even knowing about the bubble effect. I mean, do even Alex Jones or Rush Limbaugh actually deny that Katrina happened in 2005 and that President Obama was elected in 2008 and took office in 2009? That doesn't matter, huh?<br />LarryHartnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-56769530922107766092017-09-01T13:16:46.814-07:002017-09-01T13:16:46.814-07:00Hmm. In my family I'm the crazy uncle...
They...Hmm. In my family <i>I'm</i> the crazy uncle...<br /><br />They closed Charlotte School of Law recently. Turned out to be one of these privately owned institutions that was only in it for the student loans they harvested. They were lying about their stats.Jumperhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11794110173836133321noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-78430156526533170582017-09-01T12:33:35.886-07:002017-09-01T12:33:35.886-07:00Jonathan that's why I went to "name one e...Jonathan that's why I went to "name one exception." I do not expect your weaseling crazy uncle to be cornered easily. But when he cannot name a fact-profession that's not a deep state enemy, it has some effect.<br /><br />LH I believe that story is in The River of Time... maybe Otherness.<br /><br />David Brinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14465315130418506525noreply@blogger.com