If you read Rod Dreher, and his faithful commentariat, and their observations about culture and society, you see that, in the end, their main concern is not about actual societal outputs, but about the message
You can explain to RD and his team that sexual education in school delays the age of first intercourse, reduces STDs unwanted pregnancies, and, of course, abortions. Those are seen, measurable effects. They will still be against it because implicit in teaching Sex Ed to teenagers is the message that teenagers engage in sex. Of course, they have taught THEIR teenagers about chastity and morality. THEIR teenagers will never engage sexually. They don't need Sex Ed and exposing THEIR teenagers to it will counter their parents' message. Other people's teenagers? Well, if they can't keep their knees closed, it's because they are tarts.
Similarly, RD's problem with SSM is that SSM sends the message that homosexuality is no different than lefthandedness. His opposition to SSM is, in the end, because he needs to convey his moral disapproval of homosexuality. He claims he is against discrimination towards gays in many spheres,and never would want a gay person to go to jail, but he is against Lawrence, because never-enforced sodomy laws sent a societal message of disapproval, a message that the Supreme Court took away from him. Even now he would oppose taking the old sodomy laws from the books, because of their symbolic value.
His most recent Religious Freedom and BenOp writing is essentially the same. Small-o orthodoxs, who disagree about almost anything else (he welcomes Catholics, Protestants, Orthodox Christians, Orthodox Jews, Mormons, devout Muslims, all sharing the condensed symbol of opposing sexual license), should band together To create communities where they and their morality message won't be disrespected, ignored, or laughed at.
In the end, I truly believe that RD would rather be eaten by lions sent by his persecutors rather than he and his message be ignored as a quaint eccentricity, like we would ignore the innocent racism of an 80 year old sweet lady.
Let's call this the Negative Thanksgiving Turkey Paradox:
In the regular Thanksgiving Turkey Paradox, a classical Black Swan event, the turkey life is going great, and there's no reason to believe things will change, until Thanksgiving Day.
In the NTTP, nothing is worth anything, because, for all we know, tomorrow might be Thanksgiving, and all our efforts will be crushed.
So better not to implement SS, and let our seniors rot in poverty, because of unseen risks. With that mentality, we would still be sitting on the treetops, because of the unseen risks that getting down in the savanna might bring.
For good or bad, the current GOP policies are so far away from the interest of urban citizens-rich or poor- that no amount of contortionism will get them from there to here.
But I would suggest that the Democratic platform could become far more urban friendly (as opposed to -for lack of a better word- minorities that happen to live in cities friendly)
The apparently "unseen" reality is that most people in America do live in cities, yet there doesn't seem to be policies commited towards urban needs. Democrats are close enough that a relatively small shift urbanwards would bring them votes in droves.
For example: Public transportation. There is no way people can get to jobs or doctors or schools or to buy vegetables if they don't have transportation. Why can't we have European levels of public transportation? Because we spend uncounted billions in highway exchanges, that's one of the reasons.
This makes no sense. Hillary Clinton has taken full responsibility for her vote. She has said that it was wrong, and that vote is probably the main reason why Candidate Clinton is vying to succeed President Obama, instead of Candicate Obama running to replace President Clinton, H..
Less subtle flavors like rust? That's what my tap water tastes off (I have a filter for drinking water, but my ice cubes come, so to speak, straight from the tap)
More seriously, I can understand what you are saying, but why, o why, do not chose your water as carefully as your whisky? The Perrier ice cubes are a real thing.
But I don't believe everybody agrees with you. I rarely do whisky myself, but I did a driving tour of The Scotish highlands last spring, and every evening included two glasses of whatever local whisky they had, one before, one after dinner. No one ever suggested diluting it, or asked if I wanted anything on it.
Merry and Pippin are actually my favorite characters in LOTR. They are the ambassadors of reality and common sense in a world gone mad with power. They don't need to be there, but they are there because that's what a good man will do. Roll their sleeves up, grab the English common sense, and get people to think and act rationally for a change.
Pippin, being the youngest, brings also innocence with him. He's inexperienced, but not stupid, and life has not yet turned him cynical or greedy. That's why he can actually withstand the Eye.
Because I'm a cynical dude, I like Merry better than his cousin. Go Brandybuck
Frank Herbert reverses Asimov's process. He starts with a different world, and tries to reverse engineer what might be the driver that brought forth this new world.
Most times, this reverse engineering ends empty, and thus Herbert's world lacks coherence and credibility. For instance, through which path can we go from from here and now to the Bene Gesserit. And why oh why were the Fremen ancestors so hated that they had to flee five different planets?
Ringworld has my favorite quote ever, describing background music : "Beethoven...., or the Beatles. Something classic" Everything that we revere as classic was at some point hip and contemporary. Thus, those that despise everything hip and contemporary in favor of hundred-years-dead classic are just barbarians, worse than frozen-tap-water-diluting liquor drinkers.
I remember reading an Asimov article about good and bad SF in which he said that good SF was taking an idea, pushing it to the limits, and describing how the resulting world is different from ours.
And bad science fiction was taking a common story and search-replacing (he didn't actually say search-replace, but he totally would today) existing gizmos with technobabble gizmos, with nothing really changed. His actual example was a western with the horse replaced by an antigravity horse-like robot, fueled from a fuel trough while parked in front of a floating saloon, where the bad guys wore black space helmets and played poker with radioactive cards, while a three-legged Martian pole danced in the background.
If you look closely at Asimov's SF, there is very little said about technical matters. Some stuff is a given (hyperspace jumps, advanced psychohistorical math) in the background, some other stuff is important (positronic brains), but only insofar as it is the idea behind the stuff that changes the world.
Asimov's writing style was very straightforward and pedestrian. Stylistically, he never really improved past his origins as pulp fiction writer. But I have not yet found his equal regarding the breadth of his ideas, and the depths that he pushed them into Brave New Worlds (nope, not even him, but BNW is a worthy contestant)
Completely unrelated, but I've never understood the idea of taking a fine and expensive liquor and adding ginormous amounts of frozen tap water to it to "cool" it.
If you really need your drinks cold, put them inside your fridge.
Second best, do as my mum does, use Perrier water ice cubes (truly - she does that - but she was raised in the France between the wars)
I don't think you have the causality right. There never was a government standing up and saying: "Let there be mortgage securitized derivatives, and by the way, let them rate dubious mortgages as AAA"
On paper, mortgage backed securities make sense. In normal conditions they reduce risk and thus increase the capital available for financing. But because MBS were designed to handle non systemic risk (x % of borrowers failing to perform for causes unrelated to each other in origin or geography) they were not able to withstand a bubble environment across the full market.
Bankers' greed notwithstanding (which is a big notwithstanding, like talking about water and saying "the Pacific Ocean notwithstanding..." ), again, bankers' greed notwithstanding, the derivatives instruments did not cause the financial crisis. The housing asset bubble did. Many people from Nobel Prize winners (hello, Mr. Krugman) to hedge fund managers (go watch "The Big Short") to average Joes that sat in the sidelines waiting for prices to drop to get into a new house (me) were fully aware that we had a bubble.
A proper functioning regulator (in other words, not Greenspan) would have identified the bubble, would have taken a look at the percentage of financial assets tied directly or indirectly to mortgages, and would have put all their efforts into a soft landing. MBS would have taken a big hit even then, but would not have put the financial system on its knees.
But that requires two things: a regulator devoting time to thinking about the unseen consequences , and a properly funded and staffed regulatory bureaucracy that devotes time and resources tracking and analyzing what's going on, and hat is likely to happen if something goes wrong
Yet the GWB and the contemporary Congress were anything but conservative, as we learned here, because they did not care at all about thinking about the unseen consequences, or, as they were called at the time, the unknown unknowns.
The government did not create the instruments or the crisis. It was just too ideologically blind at the time to stop it from happening
You are right. The people that value world views over facts do exist. And it is my fault, and my personal bent, that I have little patience with them.
I manage big numbers in my day job (utilities). Utilities are big, with lots and lots of moving parts, that you have to get them to work together, with lots of facts bombarding you left and right. And two kind of people frustrate me at my job
1. Those (mostly recent graduates) that are in love with quantification and do not understand that in the big scheme of things anything between 90-110 is the same as 100, because in the real world variability cancels itself, and trying to chase the last decimal is a worthless effort.
2. Those that want to ignore variability and create a grand unified theory of everything. Because, if it needs more than three bullet points to explain, they can't get to grasp it. Mostly senior(er) management with a Law or Humanities training.
Real life systems are mostly non linear chaotic. They cannot be accurately predicted and yet the system rarely moves beyond a certain area. Most talk about UIC is so far away (gay marriage will destroy family - Obamacare will destroy innovation) that it's completely unreal, and it means that it's likely that the person pushing the argument either (I) knows it's B. S. ; or (II) really believes it, in which case he knows nothing about the subject.
In both cases, it's difficult for me to engage. Lack of empathy on my part, I'm afraid.
The only proposal I ever heard from Rubio that somehow looked like a conservative (of the high in the very top of the Highlands, Gaelic-only speaking, kilt-commando wearing, sheepskin blowing variety) to address a real-in-the-ground issue was the Gang of Eight legislation. A proposal he couldn't denounce more strongly if he had been a 1930s USSR Communist officer self-criticizing himself
A very long winded way to say I don't believe Rubio was in any way a plausible catalyst to turn Republicans (or USA right wingers in general) into conservatives.
ChuckO:
How about if people started talking about BAD regulation and GOOD regulation. Drug regulation stopping snake oil salesman GOOD! Regulatory capture stopping innovative new companies BAD.
But that would require us to focus on the facts on the ground instead of on the grand phylosophical scheme. Once you let facts in, you might end with (gasp) Obamacare.
Reality has been accused of having a liberal bent. That's why true conservatives aim to "create their own reality".
People who talk about unseen consequences are normally trying to avoid addressing the SEEN consequences, or, simply, the facts on the ground.
Seen facts on the ground: millions of uninsured, non-coverage of pre-existing conditions (ignoring for a moment the high delivery costs), etc. Conservative response: none, because of unseen consequences. It's OK for USA conservatives if people die of things that in any other developed country are covered at little or no cost to the patient.
Seen facts on ground: massive pollution in West Virginia, Colorado, etc. drinking water sources due to run offs from mines or ash piles: Conservative response: none, because unseen consequences. It's ok for USA conservatives if Charleston WV people are poisoned with glycol, or West, TX people are blown into the air when a tank (containing products that should not have been there) explodes.
Seen facts on ground: minimum salary, which has not been increased for inflation, does not allow a person, much less a family, to support himself. Conservative response: none, because of unseen consequences. Conservative in USA would be fine if people worked just for food, like in the ancient good old days.
Seen facts on ground: climate change, with the hottest February on record. Conservative response: none, because unseen consequences. Conservatives in USA are OK with the potential massive impact to populations all over the planet, including in the USA, because, in this case, they don't seem to believe in unseen consequences.
Seen facts on ground: Gay families cannot arrange and protect themselves. Conservative answer: none, because of unseen consequences. Conservatives in USA claim that the fact that gays can marry will destroy marriages and families.
It's remarkable that, gay marriage excepted (though the same arguments are used), the things conservative oppose because of unseen consequences are things big business oppose because directly, in the here and now, they impact their profit levels.
I think your FYWGO description of how policies are ordered through history is totally accurate. Burke himself was arguing against a foundational moment and in favor of the FYWGO political structure of Georgian Britain.
But both liberalism and libertarianism (as well as many other isms) aspire to be more than descriptive. They aim to be prescriptive, and we are supposed to align our society and laws according to its prescriptions, because, in the immortal words of DensityDuck "it will create the maximum utility for everyone".
And that where I find libertarianism (as well as other isms like communism and nazism and juche(ism) and Islamism) to be deficient. It (they) ignores big chunks of reality (each chose to ignore different chunks) because they would mess with the very easy model of shoemakers in forests,or homesteaders, or proletarians and evil bourgeois, or evil (insert evil other race here), or ... You get my drift.
Plain vanilla liberalism tries (and fails a lot, but keep trying) to be reality based. It does not start with (DensityDuck again) "...the priors and preferences that are generally agreed upon...". So liberalism does not ignore that foundational moments are behind the current (real) property distribution, but brings forth the question of how to address the valid complaints of the non-propertied. Bismarck abhorred foundational moments like 1848. Hence he, a Junker, addressed the problem of how to avoid a new such moment. Et voila, the social safety net is created, both securing the FYWGO position for another generation or two, while addressing some fisheee valid claims. Perhaps Obamacare really solves an existing problem the best way possible within the existing USA economical structure. Perhaps it is not mandated broccoli consumption after all.
Real life is complicated, and we try to ignore its complications at our peril. I'm suspicious of easy answers to complex problems. To start a prescriptive political system with a priori answers instead of real life questions has a very poor track record.
P. S. I appreciate your engaging in this conversation. Thanks
If all we are doing when talking about traders in forest is try to make a isolate a microeconomic point, I'm all for it.
The problem is when we move the traders in the forest from the descriptive to the prescriptive realm. The homestead model or the shoemaker model are so simplified that are useless as a basis to draw instructions on how to organize society and law. Because we are not shoemakers a forest.
The model was too basic even in Burke's time, when property and wealth -and liberty- where the privilege of those that had inherited both wealth and freedom from someone that had been a mate of some King sometime ago.
Further, The Capitalist Revolution that came after Burke brought forth a new kind of property and wealth many times larger than the real property wealth that had been the base of all economic systems known to man: the property of rights to future revenue (*)
Unlike real property, this wealth is not theft. No one had the rights of revenue from iPad sales before Apple built the first iPad. But also unlike real property, this wealth can be created, and can be destroyed. Do you want to buy shares on a VHS tape factory?
The fac that most wealth nowadays is just extremely distributed rights to unpredictable revenue makes -in my mind- the homesteader libertarian model even less applicable. The Waltons own only 52% of Walmart, worth 150 billion nowadays. But tomorrow? It might be worth what it was worth 100 years ago: nothing. This 150 billion only exist because the Walton brothers built a business on top of an already existing system -created by a combination of state and private actors- and were able to fulfill some unmet need, need that might be met tomorrow via Star Trek replicators,
So when Obama said "You didn't build this", he has a point. The Waltons are just putting a temporary superstructure on top of an already existing system without which they would still be storekeepers in Arkansas.
(*) of course this kind of property was know for centuries. The Romans had it. But the wealth associated to rights over future revenues had never been significant compared to the wealth associated with land ownership and land based activities.
If blessed King Henry taking Richard's lawful subjects' lawful property is a foundational moment that somehow blesses the Earl of Grantham's ownership of Downton Abbey, and makes everything clean again, why wouldn't Obama (hypothetically) taking over the health industry not be a foundational moment?
Who decides what is a foundational exception? Pope Alexander VI (whose authority even Henry VII recognized) lawfully gave Houston to the King of Castille. Somewhere between 1493 and 2005 something happened and somehow I own land in Houston that should be His Catholic Majesty King Felipe VI's property.
In real life, several foundational moments occurred, including the Mexican independence, the Texas independence, and the Civil War. And in real life we have to accept that foundational moments will occur and cannot be re litigated. But it means that my property rights arise from despoiling someone else's property rights, and thus reparations of some sort are owed, because we all are just a foundational moment away from being stripped of everything. A social/political system that is based on "Fish you, I've got mine." does not recognize obligations to those who lost in the foundational moments lottery. That, I believe, is not only socially unhealthy, but also philosophically unfair. I cannot buy into a libertarianism that includes periodical foundational moments that are outside the system, and that restart the game with the players in different positions.
I do not criticize international commerce - I'm a big fan of it. Call me a Ricardo liberal
My criticism is that libertarianism glosses over what is required to keep the interconnectedness of everything humming around.
My father business was exporting Spanish fruits and vegetables from Soain into France and England in the years before WWII (I'm the very little kid of my family. I have nephews my age)
In Dad's days everything was very libertarian. He sourced from the family and friends' farms. He (actually a younger brother) hired small cargo ships to take it, while Dad sold it directly to Covent Garden market buyers.
Now specialized cargo vessels carry hundreds of reefer containers belonging to scores of different owners in trips that can be longer than a month from mega (state regulated) port to mega port, relaying on (state launched ) satellites to keep abreast until the food arrives into massive central warehouses, where truck fleets distribute the good over hundred of miles of state built roads to just in time deliver a two month old fresh banana to your breakfast. While you read your internet based (thanks Al Gore) news in your Chine made components with Bolivian sourced lithium USA assembled iPad (or your Korean assembled Samsung Tablet, YMMV).
You will argue that all this is just a larger group of independent people agreeing to transact together, and that is trivially right. But it ignores a background of rules, regulations and infrastructure that allows and supports all these people to transact. Containers have to be all the same size. Computer protocols must be coordinated. Farmers must be paid via letters of credit that must clear on the SWIFT System (ask Iran about not having access to SWIFT) with governments agreeing (or not) about the flow and convertibility of funds.
The next time you want to watch a miracle turn on a light switch in your house, and think, really think, about the route the energy took from a power plant hundreds of miles away all the way to a plug feet away from you. The degree of coordination that permits utilities to reach anywhere we look at.
Need a leak? Thoudands of people (coordinated by state agencies) cooperated to put together a sewage system almost everywhere you can be. How fun is not to have cholera outbreaks anymore. Thank the government.
As I said before, managing public power and gas utilities (in the private sector) is my day job. But since my engineering college days I've been in awe that we can really reach anywhere, and when you really understand how we do it, you see that is as far away from the libertarian each man do his own thing as possible.
By not really acknowledging how the current world works, focusing in an obsolete homesteader model, libertarianism reduces its chances of actually succeeding in their pilosophycal objectives, and loses any credibility some of the libertarian ideas might have.
Shorter me: take a look at the real, real world and give ideas about how to change it for the better. But if what you describe doesn't seem like the real world to me, I won't credit your ideas, as good as they might be.
Second shorter me: if first you have the solution and then look for a problem to solve, you are not looking at the real world (I e. Illegal immigration or China or Mexico did not kill high paying blue collar jobs in the USA. Aitomation did. Caterpillar's Peoria spare parts distribution facility automated away 90% of the work force in the early 90s, from about 1,000 to about 100. Man, where those guys proud of it when you visited the facility) (OK this is a long Shorter Me)
Libertarianism appears to me as having the homesteader or the yeoman farmer as its ideal. Homo libertarius is able to grow its food, build its house and exchange was he needs (tools for instance) from similar autonomous individuals.
But the world has become too interconnected to function except through massive coordination efforts than span the globe: for instance, your energy comes from the other side of the world, involving several organizations, each employing hundreds of thousands of people moving and transporting and producing and building and maintaining the infrastructure to allow the electricity or the fuel to get to your property.
Perhaps it's the utility manager in me, but what is the libertarian way to deliver lead free water to Flint? Or, if water utilities, a natural monopoly, is deemed a lawful government activity, what is the libertarian way to fight Ebola, in a world where Nigeria is 11 hours away from in house in suburban Houston, and several hundred people make the trip every day?
So my general concern is that libertarianism gives us answers that might have matched Locke's world, or even Marx's, but not the world of today, not without accepting that so many functions nowadays are so complex and interwoven that cannot be completed without society wide coordination, and even with it, we still face massive problems. But I would bet the problem with Ebola or the zika virus or Flint water is not lack of libertarianism or property rights.
But since this post is concerned with the philosophical underpinnings of libertarianism, let me bring a more basic issue
Property is indeed theft
"What", says the Earl of Grantham, "I inherited this land from my ancestors, the first Earl got it from King Henri VII himself"
Me: "Where did blessed King Henry VII get if from?"
EG :"it was confiscated from the lands of the Duke of X, after Bosworth"
Me: "and so and so until William the Conqueror gave it to the first Norman nob, stealing it from the last Saxon nob, who stole it from a Roman nob, who took if from the Celt nob that cleared the forest"
So, why isn't the land the Celt nob's descendants? Why is not Flint the property of Iroquois?
I understand that we cannot refight the Norman conquest or the War of the Roses, but at the beginning of every property right duly noted in our books there is a bloody fight with a winner and a (possibly dead) loser.
Once I recognize that my patch of land in suburban Houston probably was stolen from some absentee Mexican landlord that got it from the King of Spain, who had no right to it to begin with, I start to think that perhaps the property is not FULLY mine. Me or my ancestors stole this property from someone, and someone else stole my ancestors property.
So, philosophically, I have claims on other people's property, and others have claims on mine. I do not have the right to, metaphorically, take my toys and go, because these are the toys of all, even of descendants of Mexican landlords or Spanish kings living far away, whose property someone stole before I bought it in 2005.
I'm not saying that from here I do derive a fully communistic view point, and I want to go full kibbutz, but, yes, property comes from theft, and there is an obligation on property owners to somehow compensate that theft.
And I do not see the libertarian answer to that question. What do I owe those whose property was stolen so that it could be mine and my heirs?
Thinking about it some more, Flint probably doesn't have a full fledged treatment plant for raw (direct from the source) water. That would be in Detroit, who supplied white water directly into Flint.
That makes the whole concept of pumping water from the Flint River even more surprising. What kind of treatment facilities do they use? Just biological treatment (chlorination et al.) to kill bacteria? Even in MI there must be regulatory minimum treatment requirements.
Of course, health and safety rules and regulations are for wusses. We would have never conquered the West if we had to worry about water pollutants, water reservoirs, salinization, etc.. A real, decisive, manly, man will just throw a bottle of chorine in the water once and again and then go grab a beer.
The short answer to that: it is very easy to know if it would be a problem, if you as EM or city authority were curious about the question. The pipe composition is known, and the river water chemistry can be tested in a matter of hours
The medium length answer is that it should not be a problem at all, if the Flint River is really your best option. You can "easily" install a treatment plant an the source were you collect the river water, and modify the water chemistry as needed. I'm sure they already had a treatment plant, so it was a matter of modifying it to monitor the water conditions (it changes from day to day) and to store, handle, and add the required chemicals.
All of which requires additional time to design and build, and additional money for the construction and the ongoing consumption of chemicals (hence the "easily") AND, more importantly, willingness to think about the boring details of chemistry, planning, and budgeting, with more Excel (tm) spreadsheets involved.
On “Seeing Through the Unseen”
This
If you read Rod Dreher, and his faithful commentariat, and their observations about culture and society, you see that, in the end, their main concern is not about actual societal outputs, but about the message
You can explain to RD and his team that sexual education in school delays the age of first intercourse, reduces STDs unwanted pregnancies, and, of course, abortions. Those are seen, measurable effects. They will still be against it because implicit in teaching Sex Ed to teenagers is the message that teenagers engage in sex. Of course, they have taught THEIR teenagers about chastity and morality. THEIR teenagers will never engage sexually. They don't need Sex Ed and exposing THEIR teenagers to it will counter their parents' message. Other people's teenagers? Well, if they can't keep their knees closed, it's because they are tarts.
Similarly, RD's problem with SSM is that SSM sends the message that homosexuality is no different than lefthandedness. His opposition to SSM is, in the end, because he needs to convey his moral disapproval of homosexuality. He claims he is against discrimination towards gays in many spheres,and never would want a gay person to go to jail, but he is against Lawrence, because never-enforced sodomy laws sent a societal message of disapproval, a message that the Supreme Court took away from him. Even now he would oppose taking the old sodomy laws from the books, because of their symbolic value.
His most recent Religious Freedom and BenOp writing is essentially the same. Small-o orthodoxs, who disagree about almost anything else (he welcomes Catholics, Protestants, Orthodox Christians, Orthodox Jews, Mormons, devout Muslims, all sharing the condensed symbol of opposing sexual license), should band together To create communities where they and their morality message won't be disrespected, ignored, or laughed at.
In the end, I truly believe that RD would rather be eaten by lions sent by his persecutors rather than he and his message be ignored as a quaint eccentricity, like we would ignore the innocent racism of an 80 year old sweet lady.
"
Let's call this the Negative Thanksgiving Turkey Paradox:
In the regular Thanksgiving Turkey Paradox, a classical Black Swan event, the turkey life is going great, and there's no reason to believe things will change, until Thanksgiving Day.
In the NTTP, nothing is worth anything, because, for all we know, tomorrow might be Thanksgiving, and all our efforts will be crushed.
So better not to implement SS, and let our seniors rot in poverty, because of unseen risks. With that mentality, we would still be sitting on the treetops, because of the unseen risks that getting down in the savanna might bring.
On “The GOP, Reform, and the Urban Vote”
For good or bad, the current GOP policies are so far away from the interest of urban citizens-rich or poor- that no amount of contortionism will get them from there to here.
But I would suggest that the Democratic platform could become far more urban friendly (as opposed to -for lack of a better word- minorities that happen to live in cities friendly)
The apparently "unseen" reality is that most people in America do live in cities, yet there doesn't seem to be policies commited towards urban needs. Democrats are close enough that a relatively small shift urbanwards would bring them votes in droves.
For example: Public transportation. There is no way people can get to jobs or doctors or schools or to buy vegetables if they don't have transportation. Why can't we have European levels of public transportation? Because we spend uncounted billions in highway exchanges, that's one of the reasons.
On “Conservatives, Donald Trump, and the Unseen”
This makes no sense. Hillary Clinton has taken full responsibility for her vote. She has said that it was wrong, and that vote is probably the main reason why Candidate Clinton is vying to succeed President Obama, instead of Candicate Obama running to replace President Clinton, H..
On “Batman v Superman v Marvel v Trolls v Art v Culture”
Less subtle flavors like rust? That's what my tap water tastes off (I have a filter for drinking water, but my ice cubes come, so to speak, straight from the tap)
More seriously, I can understand what you are saying, but why, o why, do not chose your water as carefully as your whisky? The Perrier ice cubes are a real thing.
But I don't believe everybody agrees with you. I rarely do whisky myself, but I did a driving tour of The Scotish highlands last spring, and every evening included two glasses of whatever local whisky they had, one before, one after dinner. No one ever suggested diluting it, or asked if I wanted anything on it.
"
Merry and Pippin are actually my favorite characters in LOTR. They are the ambassadors of reality and common sense in a world gone mad with power. They don't need to be there, but they are there because that's what a good man will do. Roll their sleeves up, grab the English common sense, and get people to think and act rationally for a change.
Pippin, being the youngest, brings also innocence with him. He's inexperienced, but not stupid, and life has not yet turned him cynical or greedy. That's why he can actually withstand the Eye.
Because I'm a cynical dude, I like Merry better than his cousin. Go Brandybuck
"
Frank Herbert reverses Asimov's process. He starts with a different world, and tries to reverse engineer what might be the driver that brought forth this new world.
Most times, this reverse engineering ends empty, and thus Herbert's world lacks coherence and credibility. For instance, through which path can we go from from here and now to the Bene Gesserit. And why oh why were the Fremen ancestors so hated that they had to flee five different planets?
Ringworld has my favorite quote ever, describing background music : "Beethoven...., or the Beatles. Something classic" Everything that we revere as classic was at some point hip and contemporary. Thus, those that despise everything hip and contemporary in favor of hundred-years-dead classic are just barbarians, worse than frozen-tap-water-diluting liquor drinkers.
"
I remember reading an Asimov article about good and bad SF in which he said that good SF was taking an idea, pushing it to the limits, and describing how the resulting world is different from ours.
And bad science fiction was taking a common story and search-replacing (he didn't actually say search-replace, but he totally would today) existing gizmos with technobabble gizmos, with nothing really changed. His actual example was a western with the horse replaced by an antigravity horse-like robot, fueled from a fuel trough while parked in front of a floating saloon, where the bad guys wore black space helmets and played poker with radioactive cards, while a three-legged Martian pole danced in the background.
If you look closely at Asimov's SF, there is very little said about technical matters. Some stuff is a given (hyperspace jumps, advanced psychohistorical math) in the background, some other stuff is important (positronic brains), but only insofar as it is the idea behind the stuff that changes the world.
Asimov's writing style was very straightforward and pedestrian. Stylistically, he never really improved past his origins as pulp fiction writer. But I have not yet found his equal regarding the breadth of his ideas, and the depths that he pushed them into Brave New Worlds (nope, not even him, but BNW is a worthy contestant)
"
Completely unrelated, but I've never understood the idea of taking a fine and expensive liquor and adding ginormous amounts of frozen tap water to it to "cool" it.
If you really need your drinks cold, put them inside your fridge.
Second best, do as my mum does, use Perrier water ice cubes (truly - she does that - but she was raised in the France between the wars)
Am I coming out as too elitist? Tell me the truth
On “Conservatives, Donald Trump, and the Unseen”
I don't think you have the causality right. There never was a government standing up and saying: "Let there be mortgage securitized derivatives, and by the way, let them rate dubious mortgages as AAA"
On paper, mortgage backed securities make sense. In normal conditions they reduce risk and thus increase the capital available for financing. But because MBS were designed to handle non systemic risk (x % of borrowers failing to perform for causes unrelated to each other in origin or geography) they were not able to withstand a bubble environment across the full market.
Bankers' greed notwithstanding (which is a big notwithstanding, like talking about water and saying "the Pacific Ocean notwithstanding..." ), again, bankers' greed notwithstanding, the derivatives instruments did not cause the financial crisis. The housing asset bubble did. Many people from Nobel Prize winners (hello, Mr. Krugman) to hedge fund managers (go watch "The Big Short") to average Joes that sat in the sidelines waiting for prices to drop to get into a new house (me) were fully aware that we had a bubble.
A proper functioning regulator (in other words, not Greenspan) would have identified the bubble, would have taken a look at the percentage of financial assets tied directly or indirectly to mortgages, and would have put all their efforts into a soft landing. MBS would have taken a big hit even then, but would not have put the financial system on its knees.
But that requires two things: a regulator devoting time to thinking about the unseen consequences , and a properly funded and staffed regulatory bureaucracy that devotes time and resources tracking and analyzing what's going on, and hat is likely to happen if something goes wrong
Yet the GWB and the contemporary Congress were anything but conservative, as we learned here, because they did not care at all about thinking about the unseen consequences, or, as they were called at the time, the unknown unknowns.
The government did not create the instruments or the crisis. It was just too ideologically blind at the time to stop it from happening
"
You are right. The people that value world views over facts do exist. And it is my fault, and my personal bent, that I have little patience with them.
I manage big numbers in my day job (utilities). Utilities are big, with lots and lots of moving parts, that you have to get them to work together, with lots of facts bombarding you left and right. And two kind of people frustrate me at my job
1. Those (mostly recent graduates) that are in love with quantification and do not understand that in the big scheme of things anything between 90-110 is the same as 100, because in the real world variability cancels itself, and trying to chase the last decimal is a worthless effort.
2. Those that want to ignore variability and create a grand unified theory of everything. Because, if it needs more than three bullet points to explain, they can't get to grasp it. Mostly senior(er) management with a Law or Humanities training.
Real life systems are mostly non linear chaotic. They cannot be accurately predicted and yet the system rarely moves beyond a certain area. Most talk about UIC is so far away (gay marriage will destroy family - Obamacare will destroy innovation) that it's completely unreal, and it means that it's likely that the person pushing the argument either (I) knows it's B. S. ; or (II) really believes it, in which case he knows nothing about the subject.
In both cases, it's difficult for me to engage. Lack of empathy on my part, I'm afraid.
"
The only proposal I ever heard from Rubio that somehow looked like a conservative (of the high in the very top of the Highlands, Gaelic-only speaking, kilt-commando wearing, sheepskin blowing variety) to address a real-in-the-ground issue was the Gang of Eight legislation. A proposal he couldn't denounce more strongly if he had been a 1930s USSR Communist officer self-criticizing himself
A very long winded way to say I don't believe Rubio was in any way a plausible catalyst to turn Republicans (or USA right wingers in general) into conservatives.
"
But that would require us to focus on the facts on the ground instead of on the grand phylosophical scheme. Once you let facts in, you might end with (gasp) Obamacare.
Reality has been accused of having a liberal bent. That's why true conservatives aim to "create their own reality".
"
People who talk about unseen consequences are normally trying to avoid addressing the SEEN consequences, or, simply, the facts on the ground.
Seen facts on the ground: millions of uninsured, non-coverage of pre-existing conditions (ignoring for a moment the high delivery costs), etc. Conservative response: none, because of unseen consequences. It's OK for USA conservatives if people die of things that in any other developed country are covered at little or no cost to the patient.
Seen facts on ground: massive pollution in West Virginia, Colorado, etc. drinking water sources due to run offs from mines or ash piles: Conservative response: none, because unseen consequences. It's ok for USA conservatives if Charleston WV people are poisoned with glycol, or West, TX people are blown into the air when a tank (containing products that should not have been there) explodes.
Seen facts on ground: minimum salary, which has not been increased for inflation, does not allow a person, much less a family, to support himself. Conservative response: none, because of unseen consequences. Conservative in USA would be fine if people worked just for food, like in the ancient good old days.
Seen facts on ground: climate change, with the hottest February on record. Conservative response: none, because unseen consequences. Conservatives in USA are OK with the potential massive impact to populations all over the planet, including in the USA, because, in this case, they don't seem to believe in unseen consequences.
Seen facts on ground: Gay families cannot arrange and protect themselves. Conservative answer: none, because of unseen consequences. Conservatives in USA claim that the fact that gays can marry will destroy marriages and families.
It's remarkable that, gay marriage excepted (though the same arguments are used), the things conservative oppose because of unseen consequences are things big business oppose because directly, in the here and now, they impact their profit levels.
On “It’s Time for Mitt Romney to Save the Day”
Kasich is running for what used to be a very coveted position: the "next in line" first runner up. (Bush '80, Dole '88, McCain '00, Romney '08)
And in a normal year in which Jeb! would have been crowned, it was not a bad strategy.
And it's still good. Let Trump or Cruz crash in the general and you are ready to sweep the 2020 primaries. After all, it's your turn.
On “The Libertarian Praxis Problem: Part 1”
I think your FYWGO description of how policies are ordered through history is totally accurate. Burke himself was arguing against a foundational moment and in favor of the FYWGO political structure of Georgian Britain.
But both liberalism and libertarianism (as well as many other isms) aspire to be more than descriptive. They aim to be prescriptive, and we are supposed to align our society and laws according to its prescriptions, because, in the immortal words of DensityDuck "it will create the maximum utility for everyone".
And that where I find libertarianism (as well as other isms like communism and nazism and juche(ism) and Islamism) to be deficient. It (they) ignores big chunks of reality (each chose to ignore different chunks) because they would mess with the very easy model of shoemakers in forests,or homesteaders, or proletarians and evil bourgeois, or evil (insert evil other race here), or ... You get my drift.
Plain vanilla liberalism tries (and fails a lot, but keep trying) to be reality based. It does not start with (DensityDuck again) "...the priors and preferences that are generally agreed upon...". So liberalism does not ignore that foundational moments are behind the current (real) property distribution, but brings forth the question of how to address the valid complaints of the non-propertied. Bismarck abhorred foundational moments like 1848. Hence he, a Junker, addressed the problem of how to avoid a new such moment. Et voila, the social safety net is created, both securing the FYWGO position for another generation or two, while addressing some fisheee valid claims. Perhaps Obamacare really solves an existing problem the best way possible within the existing USA economical structure. Perhaps it is not mandated broccoli consumption after all.
Real life is complicated, and we try to ignore its complications at our peril. I'm suspicious of easy answers to complex problems. To start a prescriptive political system with a priori answers instead of real life questions has a very poor track record.
P. S. I appreciate your engaging in this conversation. Thanks
"
J_A,
If all we are doing when talking about traders in forest is try to make a isolate a microeconomic point, I'm all for it.
The problem is when we move the traders in the forest from the descriptive to the prescriptive realm. The homestead model or the shoemaker model are so simplified that are useless as a basis to draw instructions on how to organize society and law. Because we are not shoemakers a forest.
The model was too basic even in Burke's time, when property and wealth -and liberty- where the privilege of those that had inherited both wealth and freedom from someone that had been a mate of some King sometime ago.
Further, The Capitalist Revolution that came after Burke brought forth a new kind of property and wealth many times larger than the real property wealth that had been the base of all economic systems known to man: the property of rights to future revenue (*)
Unlike real property, this wealth is not theft. No one had the rights of revenue from iPad sales before Apple built the first iPad. But also unlike real property, this wealth can be created, and can be destroyed. Do you want to buy shares on a VHS tape factory?
The fac that most wealth nowadays is just extremely distributed rights to unpredictable revenue makes -in my mind- the homesteader libertarian model even less applicable. The Waltons own only 52% of Walmart, worth 150 billion nowadays. But tomorrow? It might be worth what it was worth 100 years ago: nothing. This 150 billion only exist because the Walton brothers built a business on top of an already existing system -created by a combination of state and private actors- and were able to fulfill some unmet need, need that might be met tomorrow via Star Trek replicators,
So when Obama said "You didn't build this", he has a point. The Waltons are just putting a temporary superstructure on top of an already existing system without which they would still be storekeepers in Arkansas.
(*) of course this kind of property was know for centuries. The Romans had it. But the wealth associated to rights over future revenues had never been significant compared to the wealth associated with land ownership and land based activities.
"
If blessed King Henry taking Richard's lawful subjects' lawful property is a foundational moment that somehow blesses the Earl of Grantham's ownership of Downton Abbey, and makes everything clean again, why wouldn't Obama (hypothetically) taking over the health industry not be a foundational moment?
Who decides what is a foundational exception? Pope Alexander VI (whose authority even Henry VII recognized) lawfully gave Houston to the King of Castille. Somewhere between 1493 and 2005 something happened and somehow I own land in Houston that should be His Catholic Majesty King Felipe VI's property.
In real life, several foundational moments occurred, including the Mexican independence, the Texas independence, and the Civil War. And in real life we have to accept that foundational moments will occur and cannot be re litigated. But it means that my property rights arise from despoiling someone else's property rights, and thus reparations of some sort are owed, because we all are just a foundational moment away from being stripped of everything. A social/political system that is based on "Fish you, I've got mine." does not recognize obligations to those who lost in the foundational moments lottery. That, I believe, is not only socially unhealthy, but also philosophically unfair. I cannot buy into a libertarianism that includes periodical foundational moments that are outside the system, and that restart the game with the players in different positions.
"
"It's all my wife's doing, Your Honor. If you only met Lucy, you'd understand"
"All charges dismissed. Defendant is free to go, with the sympathy of the Court"
"
@ Brian Murphy
This is such an insightful comment. I am now fully convinced of the rightness of your point.....
..... Which was ??????
"
I do not criticize international commerce - I'm a big fan of it. Call me a Ricardo liberal
My criticism is that libertarianism glosses over what is required to keep the interconnectedness of everything humming around.
My father business was exporting Spanish fruits and vegetables from Soain into France and England in the years before WWII (I'm the very little kid of my family. I have nephews my age)
In Dad's days everything was very libertarian. He sourced from the family and friends' farms. He (actually a younger brother) hired small cargo ships to take it, while Dad sold it directly to Covent Garden market buyers.
Now specialized cargo vessels carry hundreds of reefer containers belonging to scores of different owners in trips that can be longer than a month from mega (state regulated) port to mega port, relaying on (state launched ) satellites to keep abreast until the food arrives into massive central warehouses, where truck fleets distribute the good over hundred of miles of state built roads to just in time deliver a two month old fresh banana to your breakfast. While you read your internet based (thanks Al Gore) news in your Chine made components with Bolivian sourced lithium USA assembled iPad (or your Korean assembled Samsung Tablet, YMMV).
You will argue that all this is just a larger group of independent people agreeing to transact together, and that is trivially right. But it ignores a background of rules, regulations and infrastructure that allows and supports all these people to transact. Containers have to be all the same size. Computer protocols must be coordinated. Farmers must be paid via letters of credit that must clear on the SWIFT System (ask Iran about not having access to SWIFT) with governments agreeing (or not) about the flow and convertibility of funds.
The next time you want to watch a miracle turn on a light switch in your house, and think, really think, about the route the energy took from a power plant hundreds of miles away all the way to a plug feet away from you. The degree of coordination that permits utilities to reach anywhere we look at.
Need a leak? Thoudands of people (coordinated by state agencies) cooperated to put together a sewage system almost everywhere you can be. How fun is not to have cholera outbreaks anymore. Thank the government.
As I said before, managing public power and gas utilities (in the private sector) is my day job. But since my engineering college days I've been in awe that we can really reach anywhere, and when you really understand how we do it, you see that is as far away from the libertarian each man do his own thing as possible.
By not really acknowledging how the current world works, focusing in an obsolete homesteader model, libertarianism reduces its chances of actually succeeding in their pilosophycal objectives, and loses any credibility some of the libertarian ideas might have.
Shorter me: take a look at the real, real world and give ideas about how to change it for the better. But if what you describe doesn't seem like the real world to me, I won't credit your ideas, as good as they might be.
Second shorter me: if first you have the solution and then look for a problem to solve, you are not looking at the real world (I e. Illegal immigration or China or Mexico did not kill high paying blue collar jobs in the USA. Aitomation did. Caterpillar's Peoria spare parts distribution facility automated away 90% of the work force in the early 90s, from about 1,000 to about 100. Man, where those guys proud of it when you visited the facility) (OK this is a long Shorter Me)
"
Libertarianism appears to me as having the homesteader or the yeoman farmer as its ideal. Homo libertarius is able to grow its food, build its house and exchange was he needs (tools for instance) from similar autonomous individuals.
But the world has become too interconnected to function except through massive coordination efforts than span the globe: for instance, your energy comes from the other side of the world, involving several organizations, each employing hundreds of thousands of people moving and transporting and producing and building and maintaining the infrastructure to allow the electricity or the fuel to get to your property.
Perhaps it's the utility manager in me, but what is the libertarian way to deliver lead free water to Flint? Or, if water utilities, a natural monopoly, is deemed a lawful government activity, what is the libertarian way to fight Ebola, in a world where Nigeria is 11 hours away from in house in suburban Houston, and several hundred people make the trip every day?
So my general concern is that libertarianism gives us answers that might have matched Locke's world, or even Marx's, but not the world of today, not without accepting that so many functions nowadays are so complex and interwoven that cannot be completed without society wide coordination, and even with it, we still face massive problems. But I would bet the problem with Ebola or the zika virus or Flint water is not lack of libertarianism or property rights.
But since this post is concerned with the philosophical underpinnings of libertarianism, let me bring a more basic issue
Property is indeed theft
"What", says the Earl of Grantham, "I inherited this land from my ancestors, the first Earl got it from King Henri VII himself"
Me: "Where did blessed King Henry VII get if from?"
EG :"it was confiscated from the lands of the Duke of X, after Bosworth"
Me: "and so and so until William the Conqueror gave it to the first Norman nob, stealing it from the last Saxon nob, who stole it from a Roman nob, who took if from the Celt nob that cleared the forest"
So, why isn't the land the Celt nob's descendants? Why is not Flint the property of Iroquois?
I understand that we cannot refight the Norman conquest or the War of the Roses, but at the beginning of every property right duly noted in our books there is a bloody fight with a winner and a (possibly dead) loser.
Once I recognize that my patch of land in suburban Houston probably was stolen from some absentee Mexican landlord that got it from the King of Spain, who had no right to it to begin with, I start to think that perhaps the property is not FULLY mine. Me or my ancestors stole this property from someone, and someone else stole my ancestors property.
So, philosophically, I have claims on other people's property, and others have claims on mine. I do not have the right to, metaphorically, take my toys and go, because these are the toys of all, even of descendants of Mexican landlords or Spanish kings living far away, whose property someone stole before I bought it in 2005.
I'm not saying that from here I do derive a fully communistic view point, and I want to go full kibbutz, but, yes, property comes from theft, and there is an obligation on property owners to somehow compensate that theft.
And I do not see the libertarian answer to that question. What do I owe those whose property was stolen so that it could be mine and my heirs?
(Apologies for the long dissertation)
On “A Tragedy with Many Fathers”
Thinking about it some more, Flint probably doesn't have a full fledged treatment plant for raw (direct from the source) water. That would be in Detroit, who supplied white water directly into Flint.
That makes the whole concept of pumping water from the Flint River even more surprising. What kind of treatment facilities do they use? Just biological treatment (chlorination et al.) to kill bacteria? Even in MI there must be regulatory minimum treatment requirements.
Of course, health and safety rules and regulations are for wusses. We would have never conquered the West if we had to worry about water pollutants, water reservoirs, salinization, etc.. A real, decisive, manly, man will just throw a bottle of chorine in the water once and again and then go grab a beer.
"
The short answer to that: it is very easy to know if it would be a problem, if you as EM or city authority were curious about the question. The pipe composition is known, and the river water chemistry can be tested in a matter of hours
The medium length answer is that it should not be a problem at all, if the Flint River is really your best option. You can "easily" install a treatment plant an the source were you collect the river water, and modify the water chemistry as needed. I'm sure they already had a treatment plant, so it was a matter of modifying it to monitor the water conditions (it changes from day to day) and to store, handle, and add the required chemicals.
All of which requires additional time to design and build, and additional money for the construction and the ongoing consumption of chemicals (hence the "easily") AND, more importantly, willingness to think about the boring details of chemistry, planning, and budgeting, with more Excel (tm) spreadsheets involved.
"
Thank you gentlemen
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.