Relax old boy, if someone's wrong on the internet it's far from the end of the world and certainly nothing to get your blood pressure up over. In as much as Sullivan's advocacy for war has harmed families it seems fair to assume his advocacy against other wars (Iran for instance) have done commesurate good.
James, per the red state model the main thing you get by persuading people to marry young is a whack of kids living through divorces in their teenage years.
In my own meager experience libertarians say that in a society with minimal intervention poverty will be greatly reduced. They usually go on to assert that voluntary contribution supported charity should then be sufficient to cover those who cannot contribute sufficiently to society to get enough to survive by in exchange.
James specifically, when he talked about his idea of a libertarian (minarchist) society, allowed that some kind of wealth redistribution might be necessary to convince the lower ranks of society to go along with such a setup.
But the whole dealie is no one knows exactly what a majority libertarian economy society would look like., it's all theory. The only data points are pre-1900's. The poor died in the streets but on the other hand economies, technologies and morality have come a long way since then.
Jesse, I agree that people in general and home owners in particular are very much NIMBY's by nature but I think that a great deal could be done to minimize the abominable state of zoning in much of the urban areas and there is a pressing need (from a liberal point of view) to change the status quos both for economic, equality and especially environmental reasons.
Zoning laws are generally a matter of the answer being set by default to "No". People wishing to develop or redevelop must fight the inertia of the system. I'm of the opinion that this should be changed. I wouldn't go so far as to say that zoning should be abolished but I do think it could be reformed so that development and increasing building density faces a more positive permissive default posture from the rules and that it's incumbent on those who would object and obstruct such development to put in the energy and effort to prevent it rather putting the onus on the developers.
I've always said, Burt, the only thing that would be more hellish than a world with too many lawyers would indeniably be a world with too few. Happy Turkey day to you.
I don't see how. Your arguement style reminds me strongly of a true believer conservative so I thought pointing it out might provoke some thought. Being a very dry bread agnostic myself there was little meaning intended beyond that.
Big tents are how we'll help roll this kind of damage back. Leave the narrow visions to the conservatives I say. Also, Sullivan is an opinion blogger. If bloggers had to prostrate himself and stop to do good works every time they said something wrong there wouldn't be any bloggers, just a lot of youtube videos of fat guys in pajamas whipping themselves.
Well we'll have to disagree about the racist term. I am a comparative youngster myself but having watched how the term racist has declined precipitously in efficiency even in my own politically conscious lifetime (in the early 90's it stung considerably, by the late 90's it was generally responded to with a shrug and now a days it most often provokes an eye roll) I feel this is considerable evidence that the term is being overused, frequently misapplied and is rapidly turning toothless.
I'm certainly amenable to the idea that they (and Sullivan) are wrong. But racist? I suppose I just have a higher threshold for accusing it than you. I dislike slinging the term about so liberally, I think it weakens it and empowers real racists.
Has the Bell Curve been refuted by scientific study? I'm unaware that Sullivan ever advocated policy changes be enacted to deal with alleged inherent differences in the various races. A book isn't racist for asking things we don't like (and I don't like the things the book asks or suggests) inquiry isn't racist for inquiring so long as it's done in good faith. Your attitude in this smacks of the Catholics when dealing with Galileo and far more dangerously it waters down the meaning of the pejorative "racist" which indirectly enables and strengthens genuine racists and bigots. I'd strongly suggest you reconsider.
As for the Iraq war; Sullivan was undeniably wrong and his rhetoric, in typical Sullivan style, was as overwrought and hysterical as it was wrong. Were he your standard neocon, unapologetic, unrepentant and backing up his assertions to the hilt to this day I'd say an argument could be made in favor of the scumbag pejorative. But Sullivan has publicly and painfully recanted, apologized and become an ardent foe of his former allies on that subject. If being wrong on anything anytime regardless of behavior after that error makes one a scumbag then we are living in a scumbag world and you're hurtling rocks from within a fortress of glass.
I'd suggest again that you really reconsider. With the former assertion it seems to me like you're lowering yourself to the level of a very close minded Catholic and with the second you're reducing yourself beneath that level since even conservative Catholics claim to value forgiveness where you are espousing none.
The problem of the meritocracy is a worrisome one, though not I personally think, an intractable one. But it's certainly all the more reason to not continue extending intellectual property indefinitly beyond the life of the creator. For one thing almost all of them inevitably end up in the hands of corporations, they attract specious litigation like a rotting whale attracts blowflies, entrenches winners of the biological lotteries and it stifles economic activity and further creativity.
Perhaps so, and that's a harsh way for you to put it. But I don't think you have considered the unique nature of the "property" in question. The whole point of intellectual property of this nature is its non-zero sum nature. If a song or a technique is copied the original creator technically has not lost any property of their own. A song is not diminished by being repeated, a design does not fade from the original schematic when it is copied. Land and other material property is pretty much by definition zero sum. It's use is limited, you and I cannot eat the same apple, we cannot both employ an acre of land for different uses. Intellectual property needs copyright protections to encourage its discovery but those protections need to be loose enough to allow it to have value and there's very little merit to the endless copyright extensions that seem to be becoming all the more the fashion now a days.
David, a clarification. If my memory of the comment thread is accurate the lottery comparison was not aimed at persons who create and copyright intellectual property but rather at their descendants who continue to collect royalties from their forbears accomplishments. If that is the case the lottery comparison is perfectly apt since the beneficiary of their ancestors accomplishments is in essence the winner of a biological lottery, to wit being born to an accomplished parent.
Oh yes! I believe a lot of online chatters put an equal sign on both sides of the slash like so "=/=" to symbolize an equal sign with a slash through the middle of it.
My own, admissibly limited, understanding of the US presidential political dynamics and the history of the Presidential races of the past leads me to believe that it is, unhappily, an either or position. That true blue liberals have enough clout to get Ron Paul nominated on the GOP ticket seems somewhat of a stretch to me (though goodness knows I'd love it, that kind of cooperation between left liberals and libertarians might create the dialogues and warmth needed to birth a liberaltarian movement).
In the absence of Ron Paul the record appears to be that Presidents challenged in their re-election from their base flank are not replaced but often then lose to their rivals in the actual election. To wit, liberals are not capable of replacing Obama with a more liberal person nor are they capable of making the GOP candidate more liberal. They are, however, capable of electing whoever the GOP chooses as Obama's opponent.
Which leaves us with the original highly distasteful either/or predicament.
Oddly enough I would unhappily say that is technically a true statement. Rooting through garbage and starving is objectively worse off than working over a sewing machine for 12 hours a day for only enough money to buy a few bowls of rice. This is a brutal unhappy fact.
As far as I'm aware most liberals are keenly aware that PPACA was crafted as a naive pre-emptive concession by Obama while he was still hopped up on his unifier bipartisan campaign shtick and that by the time he actually copped to reality and realized that his concessions had netted him exactly zero GOP votes it was too late for him or his liberal supporters to start over. Given the choice between something and nothing (with electoral Armageddon coupled with that) every democrat concerned settled for something.
What’s annoying about all this is that you are obviously bright enough to be well aware of all of this so the disingenuousness is puzzling. Do you honestly believe that when liberals laid their heads down dreaming happily of health care reform under the newly elected Obama that visions of the GOP 1994 proposal was what floated in their heads? Seriously?
Well lets not go overboard Ethan. The stinking fact of the matter is that Obama has only one concrete arguement to make to liberals: "If you can't bring yourself to vote for me then please acquaint yourselves with my potential replacements." Any liberal who doesn't find that miserable arguement dispositive is too far out of touch with reality to be worth seeking the vote from.
... PPACA is the product of the liberal left wing base being in charge and it was their desired policy? Koz, not to pile on with the others but surely you realize what kind of lunacy that is? I mean I wasn't expecting much, but I was expecting more than that.
Not to get too deep into the kool-aid but can you name a couple specific occasions in the last thirty or even sixty years when the liberal base of the Democratic party was in charge and what policy changes they enacted during that time of empowerment?
I'd kvetch but I was actually concerned when he was elected that Obama actually believed his campaign schtick and that he'd be a nieve naif. So the realization that he was actually a relatively average politician with a large streak of pragmatism and a certain penchant for stingyness with his political capital was actually a bit of a relief.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
On ““We Got Sold Out””
Relax old boy, if someone's wrong on the internet it's far from the end of the world and certainly nothing to get your blood pressure up over. In as much as Sullivan's advocacy for war has harmed families it seems fair to assume his advocacy against other wars (Iran for instance) have done commesurate good.
On “Pray That All Their Pain Be Champagne”
James, per the red state model the main thing you get by persuading people to marry young is a whack of kids living through divorces in their teenage years.
"
In my own meager experience libertarians say that in a society with minimal intervention poverty will be greatly reduced. They usually go on to assert that voluntary contribution supported charity should then be sufficient to cover those who cannot contribute sufficiently to society to get enough to survive by in exchange.
James specifically, when he talked about his idea of a libertarian (minarchist) society, allowed that some kind of wealth redistribution might be necessary to convince the lower ranks of society to go along with such a setup.
But the whole dealie is no one knows exactly what a majority libertarian economy society would look like., it's all theory. The only data points are pre-1900's. The poor died in the streets but on the other hand economies, technologies and morality have come a long way since then.
"
Jesse, I agree that people in general and home owners in particular are very much NIMBY's by nature but I think that a great deal could be done to minimize the abominable state of zoning in much of the urban areas and there is a pressing need (from a liberal point of view) to change the status quos both for economic, equality and especially environmental reasons.
Zoning laws are generally a matter of the answer being set by default to "No". People wishing to develop or redevelop must fight the inertia of the system. I'm of the opinion that this should be changed. I wouldn't go so far as to say that zoning should be abolished but I do think it could be reformed so that development and increasing building density faces a more positive permissive default posture from the rules and that it's incumbent on those who would object and obstruct such development to put in the energy and effort to prevent it rather putting the onus on the developers.
On ““We Got Sold Out””
I've always said, Burt, the only thing that would be more hellish than a world with too many lawyers would indeniably be a world with too few. Happy Turkey day to you.
"
I don't see how. Your arguement style reminds me strongly of a true believer conservative so I thought pointing it out might provoke some thought. Being a very dry bread agnostic myself there was little meaning intended beyond that.
"
Big tents are how we'll help roll this kind of damage back. Leave the narrow visions to the conservatives I say. Also, Sullivan is an opinion blogger. If bloggers had to prostrate himself and stop to do good works every time they said something wrong there wouldn't be any bloggers, just a lot of youtube videos of fat guys in pajamas whipping themselves.
"
Well we'll have to disagree about the racist term. I am a comparative youngster myself but having watched how the term racist has declined precipitously in efficiency even in my own politically conscious lifetime (in the early 90's it stung considerably, by the late 90's it was generally responded to with a shrug and now a days it most often provokes an eye roll) I feel this is considerable evidence that the term is being overused, frequently misapplied and is rapidly turning toothless.
"
I already tendered my own perjorative: hyperbolic. One I submit is both meritted and descriptive.
"
I'm certainly amenable to the idea that they (and Sullivan) are wrong. But racist? I suppose I just have a higher threshold for accusing it than you. I dislike slinging the term about so liberally, I think it weakens it and empowers real racists.
"
Has the Bell Curve been refuted by scientific study? I'm unaware that Sullivan ever advocated policy changes be enacted to deal with alleged inherent differences in the various races. A book isn't racist for asking things we don't like (and I don't like the things the book asks or suggests) inquiry isn't racist for inquiring so long as it's done in good faith. Your attitude in this smacks of the Catholics when dealing with Galileo and far more dangerously it waters down the meaning of the pejorative "racist" which indirectly enables and strengthens genuine racists and bigots. I'd strongly suggest you reconsider.
As for the Iraq war; Sullivan was undeniably wrong and his rhetoric, in typical Sullivan style, was as overwrought and hysterical as it was wrong. Were he your standard neocon, unapologetic, unrepentant and backing up his assertions to the hilt to this day I'd say an argument could be made in favor of the scumbag pejorative. But Sullivan has publicly and painfully recanted, apologized and become an ardent foe of his former allies on that subject. If being wrong on anything anytime regardless of behavior after that error makes one a scumbag then we are living in a scumbag world and you're hurtling rocks from within a fortress of glass.
I'd suggest again that you really reconsider. With the former assertion it seems to me like you're lowering yourself to the level of a very close minded Catholic and with the second you're reducing yourself beneath that level since even conservative Catholics claim to value forgiveness where you are espousing none.
On “Everything happens for a reason?”
The problem of the meritocracy is a worrisome one, though not I personally think, an intractable one. But it's certainly all the more reason to not continue extending intellectual property indefinitly beyond the life of the creator. For one thing almost all of them inevitably end up in the hands of corporations, they attract specious litigation like a rotting whale attracts blowflies, entrenches winners of the biological lotteries and it stifles economic activity and further creativity.
"
Perhaps so, and that's a harsh way for you to put it. But I don't think you have considered the unique nature of the "property" in question. The whole point of intellectual property of this nature is its non-zero sum nature. If a song or a technique is copied the original creator technically has not lost any property of their own. A song is not diminished by being repeated, a design does not fade from the original schematic when it is copied. Land and other material property is pretty much by definition zero sum. It's use is limited, you and I cannot eat the same apple, we cannot both employ an acre of land for different uses. Intellectual property needs copyright protections to encourage its discovery but those protections need to be loose enough to allow it to have value and there's very little merit to the endless copyright extensions that seem to be becoming all the more the fashion now a days.
"
David, a clarification. If my memory of the comment thread is accurate the lottery comparison was not aimed at persons who create and copyright intellectual property but rather at their descendants who continue to collect royalties from their forbears accomplishments. If that is the case the lottery comparison is perfectly apt since the beneficiary of their ancestors accomplishments is in essence the winner of a biological lottery, to wit being born to an accomplished parent.
On ““We Got Sold Out””
Agreed +1
"
Oh yes! I believe a lot of online chatters put an equal sign on both sides of the slash like so "=/=" to symbolize an equal sign with a slash through the middle of it.
"
My own, admissibly limited, understanding of the US presidential political dynamics and the history of the Presidential races of the past leads me to believe that it is, unhappily, an either or position. That true blue liberals have enough clout to get Ron Paul nominated on the GOP ticket seems somewhat of a stretch to me (though goodness knows I'd love it, that kind of cooperation between left liberals and libertarians might create the dialogues and warmth needed to birth a liberaltarian movement).
In the absence of Ron Paul the record appears to be that Presidents challenged in their re-election from their base flank are not replaced but often then lose to their rivals in the actual election. To wit, liberals are not capable of replacing Obama with a more liberal person nor are they capable of making the GOP candidate more liberal. They are, however, capable of electing whoever the GOP chooses as Obama's opponent.
Which leaves us with the original highly distasteful either/or predicament.
"
Best wishes for the holiday to ya Kozster. May all yer turkeys be red and dead.
"
Oddly enough I would unhappily say that is technically a true statement. Rooting through garbage and starving is objectively worse off than working over a sewing machine for 12 hours a day for only enough money to buy a few bowls of rice. This is a brutal unhappy fact.
"
Well that's Koz for ya.
"
As far as I'm aware most liberals are keenly aware that PPACA was crafted as a naive pre-emptive concession by Obama while he was still hopped up on his unifier bipartisan campaign shtick and that by the time he actually copped to reality and realized that his concessions had netted him exactly zero GOP votes it was too late for him or his liberal supporters to start over. Given the choice between something and nothing (with electoral Armageddon coupled with that) every democrat concerned settled for something.
What’s annoying about all this is that you are obviously bright enough to be well aware of all of this so the disingenuousness is puzzling. Do you honestly believe that when liberals laid their heads down dreaming happily of health care reform under the newly elected Obama that visions of the GOP 1994 proposal was what floated in their heads? Seriously?
"
Well lets not go overboard Ethan. The stinking fact of the matter is that Obama has only one concrete arguement to make to liberals: "If you can't bring yourself to vote for me then please acquaint yourselves with my potential replacements." Any liberal who doesn't find that miserable arguement dispositive is too far out of touch with reality to be worth seeking the vote from.
"
... PPACA is the product of the liberal left wing base being in charge and it was their desired policy? Koz, not to pile on with the others but surely you realize what kind of lunacy that is? I mean I wasn't expecting much, but I was expecting more than that.
"
Not to get too deep into the kool-aid but can you name a couple specific occasions in the last thirty or even sixty years when the liberal base of the Democratic party was in charge and what policy changes they enacted during that time of empowerment?
"
I'd kvetch but I was actually concerned when he was elected that Obama actually believed his campaign schtick and that he'd be a nieve naif. So the realization that he was actually a relatively average politician with a large streak of pragmatism and a certain penchant for stingyness with his political capital was actually a bit of a relief.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.