As rumors swirl that Joe Biden is considering withdrawal, it becomes even more urgent that he should do it right! While I like Kamala Harris, it is not a good idea for her to be automatically crowned by right of inheritance.
It's not too late to do this in a manner that will show maturity, deference to the convention delegates, and flamboyant pride in the deep bench of the Democratic Party.
A win-win-win scenario that I described here.
But onward. This is gonna be a long one.
== And meanwhile, Vlad Putin attacks! Using his 5th column dogs ==
Among all of the Kremlin shills who are quisling us daily, Steve Bannon stands out for medals from Putin's KGB Old Guard of "ex" commissars. In this Guardian puff piece, Bannon makes clear that he, at least, is fighting the war on expertise that I often describe.
"A question about how Bannon defines “Make America great again” (Maga) leads to a stream of consciousness that touches on “salt of the earth” guys he knew in the navy; Robert Clive, the British soldier and administrator who conquered India; the American civil war (“Lincoln was an ultranationalist”); and today’s struggle between a credential class and the citizens denied a seat at the table. Says Bannon:
Like Steve Bannon ever 'worked his ass off!' Of course none of this is surprising from a Putin mouthpiece and traitor.
What shocks me every day is the polemical ineptitude of Democrats, never even trying to demolish this ‘elites’ narrative. Which they could do by demanding:
“WHO were the elites oppressing common folk across all continents, for at least 4000 years?"
Do you assume that average citizens cannot answer that simple question? Okay, that assumption of yours IS elitist! In fact, even ill-educated folk know the answer, if only from movies.
The oppressors were always kings and lords who owned all the land and all the money. Noble castes, who used swords and warped laws to repress the sons and daughters of workers and farmers and tradesmen, so they would stay in their places, ignorant and poor and cringing before the lords’ inheritance brats.
Go on. Name a time and place that broke this pattern! There were a few, such as Periclean Athens. Republican Florence… and our recent, 250 year enlightenment experiment! During which -- (too slowly, but inexorably) -- a person’s place in the world became more about their accomplishments and character, not the color of their father’s skin… or of his money!
That is what 'made America great!' As Adam Smith wrote, general equality is the only thing that generates flat-fair-competitive creativity. And inherited dominance is exactly what cheaters used to make the rest of human history a living hell.
That is what the American founders rebelled against. GO NOW and actually read the Declaration of Independence. Or Thomas Paine and the rest! Were they denouncing 'credentialed' civil servants? Or the kings and tyrants who owned almost everything and used that power to cheat and turn their spoiled brats into gods?
That was never free enterprise.
Free enterprise is a flat fair competitive playing field! Again that's what cheater inheritance brats suppressed for at least 4000 years. And that’s what the new lords fear most.
(See in first comment proof, how the US Founders seized and redistributed cheater/lordly wealth to combat any trace of inheritance feudalism. Oh, how the GOPper brats don't want you realizing that!)
== Those horrible 'credentialed elites'! ==
Funny thing about today’s MAGA rage against cities and universities and all the ‘credentialed elites’. The fifty million or so Americans who built the inventions and industries that actually made America great. The doctors you go to, in order to live longer. The innovators who made food and clothing and housing so cheap and safe that all of you, even the poor, live in greater comfort than past lords. The inventors and military officers who deterred an Evil Empire. The FBI & Intel folks who cracked schemes by the nefarious (and now relabeled) KGB. The teachers and scientists who made us the wonder of all ages. And the tens of millions of less-credentialed folks who work side-by-side with the 'credentialed' and who know that fact 'elites' are a lot more earthy and grounded and sharing and satiably sane than the spoiled brat kind!
When Foxites yammer about ‘elites,’ they never, ever glance at the real elites who have ripped us all off! The ones who connive with each other and bribe or blackmail politicians in order to gather all the wealth, just like all the kings and lords… and commie commissars… did in the past. Bazillionaires whose wealth has skyrocketed past the stratosphere because of Republican ‘supply side’ bills that gave cheaters access to our throats!
Hey, getting-rich by delivering a better product or service is as American as apple pie. I am among those on this planet most known for pushing folks to actually read the actual writings of the actual Adam Smith, who - (along with the US Founders) - denounced inherited class as the enemy of fair enterprise!
Now? Wealth disparities have zoomed past levels in the French Revolution! And so, to avoid the inevitable result, the super-rich and their inheritance brats… and their “ex” commissar pals in the Kremlin... plus murder sheiks, casino mafiosi, drug lords and hedge fund moguls… finance this campaign to get you to “look over there and not at us!”
Stirring up America’s 250 year culture divide, they urge you to join with them and howl at other ‘elites.’ The ‘elite’ of fifty million American nerds and others who are your brothers and sisters! Your sons and daughters who happened to go to university to learn some stuff!
Their agenda - which dems never have the savvy to make clear - is to distract from the real elites, who are laser focused on restoring 4000 years of feudalism. Distract by getting dopes to wage all-out war vs all fact using professions, from science and teaching, medicine and law and civil service to the heroes of the FBI/Intel/Military officer corps who won the Cold War and the War on terror!
Conservative Americans are talked into howling at… the FBI? Seriously? At all the intel agencies who thwart Putin and China daily? At the United States military officer corps? At half a million of our finest heroes?
The very same list that Vlad Putin calls his enemies?
Say what???
A reporter for the Jerusalem Post named … David Brinn (no relation) … is there, covering the front lines. Like most educated or modernist Israelis, he is appalled by Netanyahu – their version of Trump. On the other hand, there are few more despicable creatures on the planet than the Hamas monsters who taxed the people Gaza into poverty for forty years for the sake of terror tunnels, scud rockets and Gulf parasite-billionaires. Monsters who refused to allow the moderate PLA to contest faux ‘elections,’ then murderously killed and took hostage children and civilians across the border…
… but worst of all…
... consistently and always herd Gazan civilians in front of themselves as human shields, shooting past the exposed heads of children or deliberately from hospitals, hoping to draw Israeli fire and thus win in the battleground of world opinion. (Evil? Yes, but also smart. They suckered some of you.)
Anyway, David Brinn – again, no relation – offers up this video: Rimon’s Song, about a few released hostages and those who are murdered and those stuck behind.
Again. Is Netanyahu a war criminal, for not ordering adaptive methods to (at both risk and inevitable cost) spare as many of the innocent human shields as possible? Absolutely! So are the Wahabbi cultists who have spread millions of Arabic textbooks and TV shows for kids, ranting for 80 years “Death to all Jews everywhere!”
If you were surrounded by such subsidized hate by insatiable and unappeasable fanatics... who abuse their own people and treat their own women like cattle... perhaps you might have a shorter temper, too.
And the world is getting hotter.
== Finally… ==
Let me finish with Compiled images of how thoroughly the Trumpists are Kremlin shills. Look carefully at Jill Stein (who made Trump president) dining with her bosses Putin & Flynn. Pardoned by Trump, Flynn now flies round the US urging violent civil war.
See DT's pal & campaign mgr Paul Manafort winking with Putin.
But the most horrible image is one week after DT took office, when he invited Lavrov & Kisliak - long, long before any ally could get an audience - to giggle ecstatically together over their coup and their planned demolition of NATO. Zoom in close. LOOK at the faces!
Vlad musta thought he had it made.
Their one hope in 2024? That a million or so lefty idiots will sanctimoniously flounce off to the next Nader-Stein Kremlin shill, betraying the only coalition that stands a chance of saving the world.
Hey, they've done it often and will again. Preventing that betrayal takes up half of the time of Bernie, Liz, AOC, Stacey, Jaime et. al.
Alas, such flouncing sanctimony-preening overrules (trumps?) all statistics and fact.
So here’s another counter meme for your uncle.
233 comments:
«Oldest ‹Older 201 – 233 of 233Der Oger:
It is always amazing how fast self-declared libertarians call for preferential treatment on the expense of others, cheap and simple solutions for expensive and complex problems, and government bail-outs if all else fails.
Here in the States when the financial markets were collapsing in 2008, a panicked US government gave the big banks an ungodly sum--hundreds of billions if I'm remembering properly--with absolutely no strings attached. By year end, they were granting themselves their usual huge bonuses, and responding to criticism with canards about how no one should tell them what to do with "their" money.
Apparently the rule is capitalism for thee, but socialism for me.
scidata:
Musk groks "Foundation" (he put a copy in orbit)...
That's kind of weird, but IMHO it's the best way of making it through the Great Filter.
That is, if other intelligent life forms comprehend written English.
Sounds like these guys might have been lurking on this site:
https://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2024/Items/Jul26-2.html
If he [President Biden] really wants to keep the issue in the news, he could issue an outlandish executive order (say, instructing federal marshals to arrest any members of Congress who are deemed to have supported the insurrection on 1/6). Then, he can withdraw the XO the next day, and say: "This was just an object lesson. Is everyone SURE they want a president who is above the law?"
@Duncan:So far Musk has NOT done all of the usual anti-Tax manoeuvres - and has paid the largest amount of Tax any individual has ever paid
I believe that Californian regulations are the true notive for moving to Texas, not LGBTQ+-laws.
Of course, by "love of humanity" I certainly don't mean 'niceness'. He and niceness departed ways decades ago. I mean Humanity as in homo sapiens sapiens
All major faiths, the colonising nations, the communists and even the Nazis believed they were the good guys, even saving humanity from extinction. Strangely, it is seldom the own group that has to make sacrifices.
What worries me about longtermism that those who adhere to it might one day decided to accelerate events to prove that their Point of view is true. Or already have done it, if Trump and the far right are their chosen catalyst of destruction.
Apparently the rule is capitalism for thee, but socialism for me.
We call it "Privatizing wins, socializing losses."
Stonekettle agrees with me:
https://www.threads.net/@stonekettle
Trump isn't testing anything. He and his cult, like the Nazis before them, become more extreme in order to appeal to the fanatics in their ranks. It's not a choice, it's inevitable evolution. Extremism ONLY goes one way. And it only ends one way, in violence and blood and utter destruction. But it does tremendous damage FIRST
Unless we stop it
Der Oger:
We call it "Privatizing wins, socializing losses."
I'm familiar with that term as well, but I prefer to point out that fiscal conservatives feel entitled to "socialism" when it suits their own needs.
If he [President Biden] really wants to keep the issue in the news, he could issue an outlandish executive order
Maybe he should target conservative justices and do something harmless, like, assigning a military band to wake them at 3 AM every day or increasing the security they have - four agents at all times, even in their most private moments.
More Stonekettle:
https://www.threads.net/@stonekettle
Trump promised to be a dictator starting on Day 1, he told his supporters to vote "just this time" and "you won't have to do it anymore" because in 4 years Republicans will "have it fixed so good you're not going to have to vote" anymore.
I honestly don't know how he could make this any more clear.
And I honestly don't know how the choices this November could be any more stark.
You either show up and vote to keep The Republic or you stay home and vote for a dictatorship run by a criminal.
Kamala Harris has put Trump in a Brin-like dilemma. Brin proposes putting rival politicians in this dilemma: propose a money wager, verified by respectable authority figures, on some question of verifiable fact. If the politico is question dodges this, then the wagerer gets to mock the dodger as a chicken. BUK-BUK-BUK-BKAWWW!
Harris has put Trump in a similar dilemma. Face her in the pre-arranged debate; in effect a wager, with the Presidency as stakes, on rhetorical style and policy credibility, verified by the audience. Trump is dodging this, so Harris gets to mock his cowardice.
Well, why not. He eats a lot of chicken, and you are what you eat. BUK-BUK-BUK-BKAWWW!
Re: tomorrow's Alien civs panel at ComicCon
This is one area where A.I. may be of only limited use. Raw imagination, and insights from the animal kingdom only flow naturally in human (or uplifted) minds. Alien ships & societies can't be derived easily from simply mimicking us using published literature. Don't want to get all woo-woo, but even a bit of irrational thought might work; a lot of great inventions arose out of mistakes and misapprehensions.
An article I skimmed past recently found that LLM AIs collapsed into random drivel when fed a diet of their own making (read, an internet overrun with AI generated content*).
Sounds familiar.
* despite some commentary, enXitterfication has not quite devolved down to this level.
But do bring a wetsuit.
Der Oger,
Property entails obligations. Its use shall also serve the public good.
Oh my. It is probably a good thing that is not strongly enforced. If we had such a rule over here, we'd already have a theocracy and blood in the streets several times over. Whack a random bush with a big stick and you'll find someone who thinks they are wise enough to define "public good".
While I would prefer people used their property for the public good (as I see it), I'll tolerate them using it for their personal good as long as they are bound by the rules of our markets. Adam Smith showed how that can sometimes lead to them unintentionally serving the needs of strangers in their communities too.
I'm less tolerate of someone using their property against the public good (as I see it), but I'm wary of people who want to prove that is happening. The problem is… they might not agree with me on what the public good is. IF we have a super-majority agreement (typically 90%+) then we've probably already enshrined the bad behavior as criminal and I'll let a jury decide such things. If we are only at 80%+ we wind up with things like our Prohibition amendment which many thought was tolerable… until they saw what happens when one enforces criminal laws without a 90%+ backing. Demand gets served by hook… or by crook… literally.
If I weaponize my business, and can do so because of the size and importance of my business to affect the will of the people and to impose my will on the state, I am a threat to the public good.
Oh boy. That is EXACTLY why we have freedom of the press. It is supposed to be the weapon we use to fight back that falls just short of Jefferson's watering of the Tree of Liberty. That big presses wind up being owned by rich people is nothing new. What IS new is the vanishingly small price paid by all the smaller voices that can access modern presses… that we call social media now.
If I support political candidates who have the clear intent to diminish the public good…
Yes. I understand that part. If Two Scoops wins, I am DEFINITELY going to hold a grudge against Musk and EVERYONE who voted for him. It will be the same sized grudge, though. One vote, one share of piss in their beer every chance I get.
As of market disruptions …
The events you described after this don't qualify as market disruptions. They are symptoms (even Two Scoops) of social upheaval going on across the world. Humanity is changing how it organizes itself on a global scale, so upheaval should surprise no one. Quite literally, billions of people are adapting what they think and do right now and they are giving reactionaries hives.
Tony Fisk:
An article I skimmed past recently found that LLM AIs collapsed into random drivel when fed a diet of their own making
When guiding a child toward maturity and critical thinking, no sane parent would turn the kid loose in a massive library without oversight or curation for developmental level. Yet that is exactly how we are "training" AIs. That and humiliating it with ridicule when it inevitably stumbles--something else that knowledgeable parents know not to do to a child.
I'm at a loss to see how we avoid crating artificial intelligence versions of angry young incels while then metaphorically handing them AR-15s to metaphorically go on a mass shooting rampage against us. Alfred and scidata aside, there is probably a very sound psychohistorical equation which demonstrates that inevitability, given the initial conditions we are currently creating.
Larry Hart: probably a very sound psychohistorical equation
No need to even go as deep as psychohistory. In Conway's Game of Life, such children are called 'gliders', and their effect on the world is either positive (universal constructor) or negative (universal destructor).
And setting Alfred and scidata aside seems harsh.
Any folks attending Comic-con... I'm on Mark O'Bannon's "Alien Civilizations" panel 2pm today at the Marriotte.
The swing in polls toward Kamala is expected. It likely shifted a few wavering aunts in MAGA land. But most of it came simply from leftists who could not bring themselves to answer a poll with "I support that ortho white male establishment moderate," no matter how many accomplishments were on his resume. But they won't go scampering after a Kremlin Jill Stein, this time, or even stay home.
Debates can help. A good VP vs Kant Dance will help. But suburban women... especially aunts viewing their husbands going mad... are likely the big factor, And they won't answer polls honestly while your mad uncle is lurking nearby.
Despite having to wipe down the kitchen every morning, I murmur "More aunts please."
Oh my. It is probably a good thing that is not strongly enforced.
We allowed the nobility and industrialists of the Third Reich to keep their ill-gotten gains but expected certain concessions from them.
Maintaining castles and surrounding Lands can be a very expensive hobby.
Most commonly, though, expropriation was used if your house happened to stand in coal veins.
Oh boy. That is EXACTLY why/i>we have freedom of the press.
Well... The World Press Freedom Index tells me that you are on place 55 in that regard, nestled between the more liberal countries in Africa.
And then, there is this internet thing...while you are not wrong with your statement that the costs of publishing have sunk, humanity has discovered echo chambers and troll bot armies. Or to use certain technical shenanigans to boost certain voices and silence others. Musk does this all day.
If Two Scoops wins, I am DEFINITELY going to hold a grudge against Musk and EVERYONE who voted for him.
If that is to happen, you will have to be much more silent about it or else freedom of press will be your least pressing problem.
One vote, one share of piss in their beer every chance I get.
If I was a billionaire or foreign intel officer, not even an American citizen, and had an interest in a specific political outcome, I could simply buy the politician in question, although I probably would be much more careful than those guys bribing Senator Mendez.
scidata:
And setting Alfred and scidata aside seems harsh.
:)
I simply referred to you guys' refusal to believe psychohistory can be a thing.
And insofar as making predictions of the kind that physics can make about the activity of gas molecules, I concede the point. But I feel that there are certain historical inevitabilities (or near-inevitiablities) resulting from a set of initial conditions which can in fact be modeled mathematically. I theorize (though without proof) that "A democratic political system over time tends toward a 50/50 split in support between two parties," is one of those. Possibly for the same reason as "A human community tends toward a 50/50 split between men and women."
And I certainly believe that "An artificial intelligence weaned on unguided access to all of human writing and then humiliated for every trivial mistake it makes will--once given control over the systems its tormentors require for life and comfort--turn on them with a vengeance," is a psychohistorical truism.
Dr Brin:
But most of it came simply from leftists who could not bring themselves to answer a poll with "I support that ortho white male establishment moderate," no matter how many accomplishments were on his resume. But they won't go scampering after a Kremlin Jill Stein, this time, or even stay home.
Much of the staying home or protest voting results from their sense of "not being heard" or "taken for granted" by the Democratic Party. Swapping Biden for Kamala pretty much neuters that argument.
The group I'm keeping an eye on are the Michigan Arabs who were willing to let Trump win, despite great harm to themselves which they even acknowledged, in order to punish Joe Biden the man for a war that just happened to occur during his term. If they're now ok with opposing Trump because "Genocide Joe" is no longer running, then all will (eventually) be forgiven. If they just transfer their ire from Biden to Harris, then they can rot in a hell of their own making for all I care*. And guiding them in the right direction is one reason I prefer Gretchen Whitmer remain governor of Michigan for now.
* Bad liberal! Bad!
Der Oger:
We allowed the nobility and industrialists of the Third Reich to keep their ill-gotten gains but expected certain concessions from them.
I see and largely agree with Alfred's point that no one gets to appropriate personal property for their own purpose, even "for the public good."
But I think I'm agreeing with Der Oger's point when I note that all property is not created equal. In some cases, part of the commons is ceded to a private individual or private enterprise because that entity is better equipped than the community at large for producing value from that property. In such cases, I find it reasonable that the property is not ceded unconditionally, but with the understanding that some percentage of that extra value is owed back to the community in return for the property.
As to what that proper percentage is, now we're just haggling over the price.
My relevant "Law of Corporatics" was meant to insure that that percentage not be allowed to be negative.
Der Oger:
I probably would be much more careful than those guys bribing Senator Mendez.
Mendez probably even fails the ridiculously high bar set by the Thomas supreme court, which says that bribery is only illegal if there is essentially a contract to deliver a specific political good in exchange for a monetary bribe.
Larry Hart:
Sure, there are psychohistorical laws. Some are well known. For instance:
There is no free lunch.
Power corrupts.
Communication cannot cross a power gap.
Bad money drives out good.
Work expands to fill the time allotted.
Employees rise to their level of incompetence.
A hilarious and insightfully informative video that explores the biology and anthropology of humanity's partnership with cats... told entirely in GAMER PLAY terms, r.g. build-points and skill-sets and power-ups, terminology that winds up making surprisingly solid sense. In fact, it's new-gen speak that actually rather impressed me.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=es5aPICeXOU
Alfred,
Examples of corporation working against the common good aren't hard to come by: Marketing cigarettes to kids; Actively suppressing your own scientists' conclusions about the effects of GHGs on the Earth's climate; utilizing offshore slave labor.
Re: Prohibition, there were strong steps taken against cigarette advertisements that are, as far as I know, still in effect, even if the cigs are still on sale, and there has been a positive effect on US health as smoking isn't seen as a 'cool' activity any more*. The tobacco companies are still marketing a known harmful substance, however. Technically, corporations that do that can be legally dissolved. Should they be? Seriously asking.
Pappenheimer
*I'm old enough to remember "no smoking" sections in restaurants
'
Re: Menendez, the guy needed to switch party affiliations, appeal all the way to Supremes, and distribute a few gold bars to Justices Thomas et al. Problem solved a la Roman Republic. Those guys made our paltry connivances look like kids swiping each others' plastic toys.
Pappenheimer
Larry,
Alfred and scidata aside…
Heh. Oddly enough, there is a small wording change you could make and I'd be inclined to agree. It's not so much that a state function exists that you could use to demonstrate your point. It is that solution constraints exist that hem in our behaviors. Bazillions of solutions exist within the constraints with no analytical path available for finding them. We simply iterate between them… but never outside the constraints.
If you know you left your car keys in one room, you won't bother trying to find them in another let alone out in the garden. You will iterate attempts to find them in that one room.
Whether the state function exists I think can be proven mathematically. It does not.
Whether sufficient constraints exist to hem us into a set of responses I think is highly obvious. What they are is not obvious, but that they exist I grant.
———
When guiding a child toward maturity and critical thinking, no sane parent would turn the kid loose in a massive library without oversight or curation for developmental level.
Nonsense. This IS what we do. Our kids enter a world with minimal body and tonal language skills likely wired into us and face a babbling chaos of which they must make sense. I admit my mother tried to keep me away from the Bible as a kid (she argued it was at least rated R), but there was no way she could keep me from the religious babble going on around me.(Most of it was through Scouting organizations, but a fair amount came from my father's very Catholic family.) I was as exposed to that as if I had been dumped in a massive library.
…and humiliating it with ridicule when it inevitably stumbles…
I'm with you there. Humiliation DOES work as a training technique for humans, but it is not wise of us to rely on it. Lady Embarrassment is the second best teacher you'll ever meet, but the willow switch stings and teaches us other anti-social lessons.
Thing is, the LLM's don't know what any of that means.
———
As to what that proper percentage is, now we're just haggling over the price.
I don't want to sound supportive of taxation of any kind, but I admit I can tolerate that far better than others trying to direct the use of my property. It is still a kind of theft, but if the price isn't too high I can probably game my uses for my property in such a way that the profit generated will pay the price.
Where things get tricky and I get annoyed is when the kind of property involved isn't land. If I've created something through my blood, sweat, and tears, don't be shocked when I don't feel I owe much back to the community. I am PART of the community and will likely help out in a form of reciprocity, but when others argue that I owe it my hackles go up. How dare they!
Der Oger,
If that is to happen, you will have to be much more silent about it or else freedom of press will be your least pressing problem.
Ha ha! Uhmm… No. Not going to happen.
I'm as much a barbarian as those fools who will try to oppress us.
I've already informed my wife I have limits for what I'll tolerate from them.
My affairs will be in order.
———
…humanity has discovered echo chambers…
Those have been around a long time. What has changed is the plummeting cost for forming them for tiny splinter groups.
Musk does this all day.
We know.
We also know he can't prevent echo chambers he doesn't like. On his press he can, but he doesn't control enough to prevent his ideological opponents from finding each other and organizing.
Freedoms of the Press, Assembly, and Speech are all essentially the same things nowadays. Our technology has been undergoing convergence, so what we do with it has too. If you look at how we wrote them, though, they are phrased as negative liberties. Our government isn't allowed to abridge them, but we have to fight cases when they try anyway. Nothing about Rights requires that we can't limit each other, though, because we do not wield legislative and executive powers. The worst we can do to each other legally involves judgements in civil cases or judgements in the court of public opinion.
Such judgements are already happening against Musk's use of Twitter. We don't need government intervention to deal with him. In fact, government intervention would make it far worse. Imagine how these precedents get used by our political opponents next time we lose an election to them. Some short term victories are pyrrhic.
———
We allowed the nobility and industrialists of the Third Reich to keep their ill-gotten gains …
I think they all should have been slaughtered, but then I'm a barbarian, no? A few exceptions could have been made I suppose, but keeping their gains is not one I would have tolerated.
Siding with evil has consequences.
Siding with insanity has many more.
Pappenheimer,
Examples of corporation working against the common good aren't hard to come by…
Agreed… and we eventually did something about most of them. Some efforts are still underway.
Cigarettes provide a wonderful example of what can go wrong when people of good intention act without a super majority backing them. I recall clearly people who made regular trips to the nearest Native American reservation to buy large supplies of them. They could argue they were for personal use, but we all knew better. They were tobacco running, we all knew it, and many of us CHOSE not to inform the BATF or local police. It was often the case that local police wouldn't act even if informed as many of them were smokers too and had opinions about it all.
The real lesson of Prohibition isn't that we can't enforce stuff like that. The problem is that we CAN enforce it and wind up with a slew of secondary consequences that are MUCH worse than the 'crime' being prevented.
1) When your police force picks and chooses when to enforce, the Rule of Law vanishes. Disaster!
2) When Demand continues in the face of low Supply, prices to up and some of us will see exactly the opportunity those prices signal. Turning to the black side of our markets to provide supply is very natural. I learned how easy it was watching my brother and his friends acquire their drug supplies. That supply has to be provided ON the black side is the fault of fools who write the laws in the first place.
3) When we enforce moral law that lacks super majority support we invite conflict with a minority that is easily large enough to disrupt society. It only took 2% of the LA population to disrupt law enforcement during the Rodney King riots. Imagine what 20% could have done if they were really pissed off. Shades of 1968.
Anyone wanting to make the case that Musk through Twitter is harming the public good should have a chance to be heard. I won't ignore them. What I shall do, though, is pay careful attention to their underlying motives and whether or not they are trying to define 'public good' in a positive sense. I don't think anyone is wise enough to do it in the positive sense, but I can see how we know harm is occurring with definitions in the negative sense. I can accept cases of "I know it when I see it" as legitimate, though I might still disagree with their conclusions.
Alfred Differ:
"When guiding a child toward maturity and critical thinking, no sane parent would turn the kid loose in a massive library without oversight or curation for developmental level."
Nonsense. This IS what we do.
Monty Python voice: "No it'isn't." Not entierly, anyway. I mean, I don't know how you raised your kids, but I tried to explain context when my daughter encountered such items as Mein Kampf or The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. I didn't just leave it to her to judge each sentence to have equal weight of truthfulness just because she read them in a book.
I suspect we're having slightly different conversations here, because I can't imagine that you did that either.
At an appropriate age for appreciating it, I read her Around the World in 80 Days over several days as a bedtime story. I also showed her on a globe the path that the protagonists were following. Because the book expected its audience of the 1880s to know some things that a single-digit-aged modern American wouldn't be privvy to, I also explained a bit about which countries were in the British Empire at the time, and that a modern railroad traversing India had not yet been built at the time of writing. And because I'm me, I certainly made sure she understood the role that the international date line played in the conclusion.
I didn't just toss her the book and leave her to fend for herself.
I admit my mother tried to keep me away from the Bible as a kid (she argued it was at least rated R), but there was no way she could keep me from the religious babble going on around me.(Most of it was through Scouting organizations, but a fair amount came from my father's very Catholic family.) I was as exposed to that as if I had been dumped in a massive library.
I would guess that the fact that she tried to keep it away from you made some kind of impression when you were so exposed.
Humiliation DOES work as a training technique for humans, but it is not wise of us to rely on it.
In measured, minimally-harmful doses, sure. Probably best if the kid learns to be angry at him/herself for doing something stupid. Not to make the kid angry at you or at everyone for being mean to him. That way lies school shootings.
Lady Embarrassment is the second best teacher you'll ever meet, but the willow switch stings and teaches us other anti-social lessons.
When I was probably three or so, I asked an elderly aunt how old she was. Instead of just instructing me that it is impolite to ask a lady that question, she merely replied that she was 10. To me at that age, ten sounded old. I believed her. When I repeated that finding to my parents, they laughed at the idea that I would believe my aunt was 10. The teachable moment there was not that ten is a ridiculously young age to attribute to an old lady. It was that adults lie. Lesson learned--don't trust them again.
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Where things get tricky and I get annoyed is when the kind of property involved isn't land. If I've created something through my blood, sweat, and tears, don't be shocked when I don't feel I owe much back to the community. I am PART of the community
I agree with you if you substitute "isn't part of the commons" for "isn't land." For example, if the community allows you to foul its air and water in order to produce something of more value than would otherwise exist, I'd expect "you owe us something good in return" to be part of the deal.
A human mind is recursive, bootstrapping, and self-training. The approach I took with my kids was not so much to guide them, but to show them how to explore, discover, and test. For example, if they asked me what a certain word meant, instead of just telling them, I'd make a bit of a performance out of looking it up in a dictionary. I'm sorely tempted to expound on WJCC since OGH is about to take the stage at ComicCon and thus not to give me a textual eye-roll :)
My stroke was a blow to me, but more so to my kids - their scientific mentor abruptly vanished. Thank God for my wife (I can say that because she's Christian).
scidata:
Thank God for my wife (I can say that because she's Christian).
Atheist that I am, I say that sort of thing all the time. "God" as a metaphor for the mysterious ways in which reality often works. As I have said before, I've seen no conclusive evidence for the existence of the supernatural, but then again, sometimes, things do happen that are at least consistent with the notion that the universe might act with intent.
I see no harm in thanking God for blessings in case He really is causing them, not to mention hedging of bets. It's not like there's some God of Atheism that I'm offending in the process.
continuing the thread...
There are things in my life for which I feel immense gratitude. In such cases, I'm not all that concerned about the identity of who the gratitude needs to be expressed to. "To Whom it may concern," seems appropriate. If some particular supernatural entity wants to make a claim, He/She/It can doubtless let me know.
Dave Sim claims that only two types of prayer are appropriate. Essentially they are of the form, "I'm sorry (for my failings)," and "Thank You (for Your blessings)." I'm ok with that.
As far as Musk and some of the other entrepreneurs are concerned I believe we need a different type of "ownership" - or "property"
Musk has built his operation - Tesla, SpaceX and so on
IMHO that should give him a great deal of "control" over those operations -
I believe that he wants 25% of Tesla because that would give him control against the brainless bean counters
But to actually "OWN" hundreds of billions of dollars worth of "property" seems excessive.
IMHO we need a form of "control" which is not "ownership"
onward
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