A summary of trickle down economic theory:

[MichaeltheGreat]

Originally posted by Agathon


No but they describe it more or less accurately. I take it you've never heard of EM.

I've heard of it. And yes, just about every school of philosophical thought describes reality as it sees it, and points out the shortcomings of other philosophical schools, blah blah blah ad nauseum. I'm also a card-carrying member of the Alan Sokal fan club, so I typically avoid the Philosophobabble crowd in the interest of preserving the peace. Ever read Sokal and Bricmont's "Fashionable Nonsense?" ("Impostures Intellectuelles" in the original French)

Then we just expand what counts as a natural law. This is mere word play. The point still remains, free will is an incoherent concept. Nobody believes in it anyway - think about how we deal with other people. To a large degree they are entirely predictable.

Again, I'll point out that hard determinism isn't the issue. Indeterminacy isn't the same as free will.

Let's just stick with "physical law" - natural law has this little philobabble aftertaste to it. Free will doesn't mean random or unpredictable behavior, it means chosen behavior. Nothing more, nothing less. And people may be more or less predictable most of the time, but that's meaningless with regards to free will. It simply means that we can acquire some insight into what motivates people to act in certain general ways.

response to this above

No response at all - you don't just invent a model and say it's part of natural or physical law. The model derives from a baseline of existing accepted models and observed behavior. Interaction of complex systems are not susceptible to such analysis.

This is called compatibilism, it's free will lite. Again, how do your beliefs and desires come about - to say you simply invent them is ridiculous because you are then in the position of saying my beliefs and desires come about in accordance with my beliefs and desires and so on...

I'm an anti-obfuscationist delabelist. I don't feel a need to invent a new word every time I turn around just to show how many labels I can create, which is the essence of most modern and postmodern philosophobabble. Your beliefs and desires obviously don't come about randomly (simply invent them) and more than they come about simply as a result of natural laws. There are more alternatives and more interactions between sources of beliefs and desires than just the two polar extremes of random invention or "natural law"

The consistency I'm talking about is a logical phenomenon. Unless you are some kind of conceptual schemer it's the same in every worldview.

Apparently, you've never heard of "ideology" or similar words? All people are subjective, all have biases towards certain views of reality, therefore all "consistency" is based on subjective conditions.

Because it's a fundamentally different thing. I'm talking about moral principles which are prescriptive rather than descriptive. Unless you are a moral realist moral principles do not report facts more or less acccurately.

Moral principles in this case is simply another description for the process of labels, filters, etc. people use to subjectively evaluate their knowledge of objective facts.

logical possibility has determinate meaning. So what?

Your logical possibilities and mine are not likely to be the same in all cases, maybe even in most cases, depending on the subject matter. i.e. they are subjective. The charge of the electron or the melting temperature of Rhodium under a standard set of conditions are objective and repeatable values.
Treating subjectively derived possibilities with the same credence one treats objectively derived possibities is fundamentally flawed.

Since we're dealing with values rather than facts here, this is wildy inappropriate.

The effects of taxation policy on economic growth and distribution of economic opportunity isn't a "value"

Consistency is subjective? It's the fundamental tenet of practical rationality.

Go to court and argue about what is "consistent" treatment of two offenders a la your primitive society example somewhere above. In practice, "consistency" is usually filtered by each party's desired outcome, so unless everyone is happy, one man's "consistency" will be another man's (insert pejorative description of choice). The legal profession would be sunk, as would the accounting profession, if consistency (as claimed in practice) wasn't subjective.

What does it mean, that people make choices? That they have these processes or that they somehow sit behind them, directing them. Even if my thought processes were not bound to physical laws it still wouldn't mean that I was directing them. This view is neutral between me directing the processes (whatever that means) and me being their victim.

It's real simple. It really is. If you work at not giving in to the need to take simple, obvious, straightforward things and applying a veneer of philosophical bunk to them.

Because nothing you've said points to free will. In fact you haven't even given a convincing account of what you think it is.

Free will is self-explanatory unless you invent all sorts of conditions, properties and labels to make it an absurdity because it doesn't fit into your dogma. Free will is nothing more than the individual choosing their course of action on their own, by their own criteria, without external direction from "natural law" or predestination, or some other contrived philosophical garbage.

That's not the point.

You're not being consistent.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Originally posted by Kidicious


No I didn't, but since you mention it they are unfair benefits. It wouldn't matter if they were fair.

You didn't say that because he didn't quote the exact words or because you don't believe the rich should be taxed more (i.e. you've now repudiated your exclusive wealth tax? )

Oh, and how is it an "unfair" benefit if someone who already has money invests their own money and makes more of it? As opposed to it being "fair" to confiscate what they have and play Robin Hood and give it to those who've done nothing to earn it except consume oxygen and contribute to our solid waste problems?

Why should someone else pay for their benefits?

If the benefit = wealth they already have, or wealth they make from investing wealth they already have, then nobody is paying for their benefits.

If they're being given wealth by the government, who has confiscated it from others, then they're getting a transfer at someone else's expense.

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by MichaeltheGreat
You didn't say that because he didn't quote the exact words or because you don't believe the rich should be taxed more (i.e. you've now repudiated your exclusive wealth tax? )

Oh, nonsense.

Originally posted by MichaeltheGreat
Oh, and how is it an "unfair" benefit if someone who already has money invests their own money and makes more of it? As opposed to it being "fair" to confiscate what they have and play Robin Hood and give it to those who've done nothing to earn it except consume oxygen and contribute to our solid waste problems?

The rich person does nothing but consume oxygen etc.. not the working man. Why do you guys keep saying I'm talking about subsidies? It's a change in the tax law. Subsidies are paid out.

[Japher]

Kid, where in Fresno do you live?

You views are way too liberal or way to selfish to be from N. Fresno, and way too arrogant to be from West Fresno... Let me guess, your a Bullard or better yet, Fresno High grad (maybe even Mclane)...

Why do you guys keep saying I'm talking about subsidies? It's a change in the tax law. Subsidies are paid out.

Taxes are subsides to those who don't pay them and collect welfare or take advantage of the system...

MtG: You are a lot better at arguing this point then I am, I just make my wadge, invest it, and MAKE money from it... Instead of EARNING it. Something everyone needs to learn. Don't get me wrong I work my butt off for a job I love, but I know that I rely on it for my financial security... That is not freedom. One day, though I will get it. Not because I haven't been given the opportunity, but because I was aware enough to see that it was there and took it.

Also, MtG, I have never said you were Right Winged, and I too laugh at such an assumption. You just know your economics, or more importantly; your economy.

---

Becoming rich/wealthy is something anyone can do. Look around, many of the fools who have become wealthy did not do so because they had too many opportunities. Heck, half of them don't even have an advanced education. The wealthiest career is an appraiser for auction houses and real estate, followed by contractors... Do you know what you have to do to get a contractos liscence!? Work in construction for 5 years and pass a test... That's it. No education required.... Once you have that liscense it is so easy to get work, it is so easy to get buisness loans, and it is so easy to get someone to pay you for a job... So, quit sniviling about lack of opportunity. It is out there, just look for it!

Speaking of which... where is Speers? He usually joins in on these topics...

[Berzerker]

Agathon -

Free Will is not a scientifically respectable concept. The usual attempts to prove free will entail "I did X but I could have done Y" Unfortunately, that is not a testable hypothesis. Free Will also conflicts with the scientific understanding of human beings as material creatures, subject to the same causal laws as the rest of the material universe. Of course, people imagine they have free will, but it is an illusion.

That's what's wrong with the political right. They believe in metaphysical fairies.

No advocate of free will ever claimed it meant immunity from nature.

No one is saying that you don't. All that people like me are saying is that your choice is the result of a physical process which is subject to the laws of nature.

Which is the free will doctrine. The question becomes whether or not this physical process is entirely instinctive, i.e., hard wired, or not....can you cite a study showing that it is? If not, why denigrate the other side?

MtG -

Nice punt, but you've still painted yourself in a corner. In the scenario given, required labor is identical, the extraction process is identical, and the quantity of ore is identical. The only difference is the yield of useful raw material from the ore.

The required labor cannot be identical. Extra labor for processing, transportation, marketing and selling is required once the valuable ore is extracted. The good ore has no more value than the bad until that extra labor is applied...

Kidicious -

You and I do the work that satisfies our needs and want the most first, right? If we can get someone else to do it for a reasonable price we will. That's what the market does, and that's what a planned economy should do also.

Should, could, would? That's one important difference between market and planned economies. Market economies depend on millions of economic choices made every day by millions of people who generally operate out of self-interest, i.e., greatest perceived efficiency based on their values. Planned ecomonies are run by an elite group who can neither understand the values of the consumers or forecast future values.

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Japher
Kid, where in Fresno do you live?

I've lived in many different places. Always a communist though

Originally posted by Japher
Taxes are subsides to those who don't pay them and collect welfare or take advantage of the system...

Taxes are not subsidies. We went into detail on what subsidies are. I still believe that they are govt expenditures, but the dicitionary calls them govt expentiture on transfer payments.

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Berzerker
Kidicious -

Should, could, would? That's one important difference between market and planned economies. Market economies depend on millions of economic choices made every day by millions of people who generally operate out of self-interest, i.e., greatest perceived efficiency based on their values. Planned ecomonies are run by an elite group who can neither understand the values of the consumers or forecast future values.

Strange perception.

[Imran Siddiqui]

No I didn't, but since you mention it they are unfair benefits. It wouldn't matter if they were fair. Why should someone else pay for their benefits?

Who says anyone is paying for their benefits? Wealth isn't a zero-sum gain.

If someone is paying for their benefits and they shouldn't, then obviously the rich shouldn't pay for the benefits of the poor. You've just advocated a no tax stance. Congrats .

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui
Who says anyone is paying for their benefits?

Since they benefit from the govt the tax payers pay for their benefit. The govt gives them the right to be wealthy and protects their property. No govt, no wealth.

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui
Wealth isn't a zero-sum gain.

ARGH! Stop saying that I'm claiming a zero-sum game. What is your point with that so we can be done with it.

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui
If someone is paying for their benefits and they shouldn't, then obviously the rich shouldn't pay for the benefits of the poor. You've just advocated a no tax stance. Congrats .

Yes, I advocate no tax. Are you with me?

[MichaeltheGreat]

Originally posted by Berzerker
MtG -

The required labor cannot be identical. Extra labor for processing, transportation, marketing and selling is required once the valuable ore is extracted. The good ore has no more value than the bad until that extra labor is applied...

With some materials with low value, that would be the case, however, the higher grade ore does have more intrinsic value, otherwise, people would randomly mine whatever asset they find.

I deliberately chose gold because it's a highly recognizeable, high-value per unit mass standardized commodity. Sales costs are thus trivial - if nothing else, NYMEX does the work for you, you just have to arrange contract delivery, and transportation costs are a trivial component of the delivered commodity cost. Heap-leach is a very low labor, highly automated process that has almost all of its costs based on ton of ore, not yield of end product. About 20% of heap-leach related labor costs are fixed, 80% or so are variable, varying with tonnage of ore processed.

If you have assay reports confirming the good ore find and average yield, you can market mineral rights then and there, without ever extracting any of that ore, and the higher yield ore has a marketable mineral rights value in almost perfectly linear proportion to it's higher yield. The higher value is intrinsic to the raw material itself, not to the labor required to extract it or bring it to market. The intrinsic value situation is even more extreme when you compare gold ore to copper or iron - where the raw material value is several thousand times higher, regardless of costs of associated labor.

[Agathon]

Originally posted by MichaeltheGreat

I've heard of it. And yes, just about every school of philosophical thought describes reality as it sees it, and points out the shortcomings of other philosophical schools, blah blah blah ad nauseum. I'm also a card-carrying member of the Alan Sokal fan club, so I typically avoid the Philosophobabble crowd in the interest of preserving the peace. Ever read Sokal and Bricmont's "Fashionable Nonsense?" ("Impostures Intellectuelles" in the original French)

I own this book. And this shows that you don't know what you are talking about. The philosophers pilloried in that book are from the Continental tradition which has little or nothing to do with the Analytic tradition, which is the main thread of philosophy in English speaking countries. Eliminative materialism is largely detested by the Continentals. It's just the thesis that "propositional attitudes" (beliefs, desires) have no real place in a well formed theory of how the mind works. I've expressed my detestation for French philosophy many times on this forum.

As for Sokal and Bricmont: it's a fun book and most of it is OK, yet it suffers from a few laughable misreadings and misunderstandings of some figures in the Analytic tradition. I've seen worse, but this is typical of many scientists who can't grasp the logical subtleties of philosophy.

Let's just stick with "physical law" - natural law has this little philobabble aftertaste to it.

I don't care, use what you like. It makes no difference to me.

Free will doesn't mean random or unpredictable behavior, it means chosen behavior. Nothing more, nothing less.

No it does not. Free Will is a thesis about the nature of chosen behaviour. All three schools on free will (compatibilist, incompatibilist and determinist) would agree that human beings exhibit chosen behaviour, but that doesn't tell us anything about what choice is and it doesn't escape the fact that our choices are often determined by desires which are unconscious.

Here's a better starting definition. Free will is the capacity of an agent to formulate desires spontaneously and independently of any causal chain or other influence.

And people may be more or less predictable most of the time, but that's meaningless with regards to free will. It simply means that we can acquire some insight into what motivates people to act in certain general ways.

Compare, "the weather is more or less predictable most of the time." Surely that doesn't mean that the weather has free will.

No response at all - you don't just invent a model and say it's part of natural or physical law. The model derives from a baseline of existing accepted models and observed behavior. Interaction of complex systems are not susceptible to such analysis.

This is a purely semantic matter. As I've pointed out to you on numerous occasions now, indeterminacy is not sufficient for free will. Hence all the stuff about Quantum mechanics and free will is so much bunk.

I'm an anti-obfuscationist delabelist. I don't feel a need to invent a new word every time I turn around just to show how many labels I can create, which is the essence of most modern and postmodern philosophobabble.

No, you just don't understand what you are talking about.

Your beliefs and desires obviously don't come about randomly (simply invent them)

Then what conditions them?

and more than they come about simply as a result of natural laws. There are more alternatives and more interactions between sources of beliefs and desires than just the two polar extremes of random invention or "natural law"

Like what.

Apparently, you've never heard of "ideology" or similar words? All people are subjective, all have biases towards certain views of reality, therefore all "consistency" is based on subjective conditions.

"All people are subjective". What the hell does that mean? So I guess you think that the law of non-contradiction holds "only if you believe it". That's dumb, since it's a condition of your beliefs having any semantic content at all. Aristotle pointed this out 2500 years ago - apparently some people haven't noticed.

Moral principles in this case is simply another description for the process of labels, filters, etc. people use to subjectively evaluate their knowledge of objective facts.

labels, filters,.... bollox - and you were accusing me of babble.

Are you not reading? I've already told you that if you aren't a moral realist, then moral propositions do not describe anything about reality; rather they prescribe (there's a difference). A moral principle is an instruction like "do as you would be done to". What objective facts does this describe. None.

Your logical possibilities and mine are not likely to be the same in all cases, maybe even in most cases, depending on the subject matter.

I take it you actually read Sokal and Bricmont's book. This is the sort of silly conceptual relativism that they spend most of it complaining about. And here you are citing them as a worthy source and then coming up with the sort of guff that they wrote the book to attack.

they are subjective. The charge of the electron or the melting temperature of Rhodium under a standard set of conditions are objective and repeatable values. Treating subjectively derived possibilities with the same credence one treats objectively derived possibities is fundamentally flawed.

I'll remember that next time I pick up a square circle.

The effects of taxation policy on economic growth and distribution of economic opportunity isn't a "value"

I told you before that EOO is properly a principle of fairness, not a principle of efficiency. Many people confuse the two, but that's their problem. Thought experiments is how individual moral principles are tested for consistency with our other principles- that's roughly how moral arguments proceed.

But of course this is all subjective, so there is nothing irrational about me thinking that exactly the same rape is both bad and good at the same time.

Go to court and argue about what is "consistent" treatment of two offenders a la your primitive society example somewhere above. In practice, "consistency" is usually filtered by each party's desired outcome, so unless everyone is happy, one man's "consistency" will be another man's (insert pejorative description of choice). The legal profession would be sunk, as would the accounting profession, if consistency (as claimed in practice) wasn't subjective.

"In practice consistency is filtered by each party's desired outcome." Then it isn't consistent any more is it? The notion of following a rule is about the most basic component of rationality. We manage to do it all the time when we speak to each other and make ourselves understood.

All you are making here is the distinctly less than profound point that sometimes people bend the rules to their own desires - just what this has to do with logical consistency I have no idea.

It's real simple. It really is. If you work at not giving in to the need to take simple, obvious, straightforward things and applying a veneer of philosophical bunk to them.

People who can be bothered to think about it realise that it isn't so simply, obvious or straightforward. Of course people who don't understand what is being said, or what's at stake, are likely to dismiss it as bunk. Much like a peasant who opens Principia Mathematica. It's so much easier than dealing with the questions.

Free will is self-explanatory unless you invent all sorts of conditions, properties and labels to make it an absurdity because it doesn't fit into your dogma. Free will is nothing more than the individual choosing their course of action on their own, by their own criteria, without external direction from "natural law" or predestination, or some other contrived philosophical garbage.

And as I said, this manages to conviently obscure the differences between various warring positions while covering them with the veneer of common sense, which is exactly what is in dispute.

Just admit, you don't know what you are talking about. Bringing up the Sokal book as evidence and then coming out with the sort of relativist stuff disguised with verbiage they are arguing against just shows me you've lost this one.

I invite any Apolytoner to read the Sokal book (esp. p. 90ff) and then read Michael's stuff on "the subjective" above.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Originally posted by Kidicious
Since they benefit from the govt the tax payers pay for their benefit. The govt gives them the right to be wealthy and protects their property. No govt, no wealth.

Wealth existed prior to "government" - in fact, wealth created "government." (i.e. the ability to hire and equip thugs to enforce your will on others)

Absent government to "protect my wealth" I'll rely on firepower, which my wealth can aquire plenty of.

What government (or at least, non-thugocratic, representative government) gives is protection from the sorts of absolute, monopolist extremes of laissez-faire economics. Procedures for litigation, debtor's rights, limitation on abuse of market power, etc. If anything, government protects those who are not wealthy from the excesses of malevolent types with more wealth. (i.e. the Jay Goulds and good ol' robber barons of 19th century US laissez faire capitalism.

I pay far more for US and California government "services" (which benefit me little or naught here in Mexico) than most people do, both in absolute terms and in proportion to total income. I'm also paying far more for government services than I'm consuming, on any level. I'm subsidizing the majority of taxpayers, not the other way around. [/QUOTE]

[MichaeltheGreat]

Originally posted by Agathon


I own this book. And this shows that you don't know what you are talking about. The philosophers pilloried in that book are from the Continental tradition which has little or nothing to do with the Analytic tradition, which is the main thread of philosophy in English speaking countries. Eliminative materialism is largely detested by the Continentals. It's just the thesis that "propositional attitudes" (beliefs, desires) have no real place in a well formed theory of how the mind works. I've expressed my detestation for French philosophy many times on this forum.

As for Sokal and Bricmont: it's a fun book and most of it is OK, yet it suffers from a few laughable misreadings and misunderstandings of some figures in the Analytic tradition. I've seen worse, but this is typical of many scientists who can't grasp the logical subtleties of philosophy.

In other words, the typical philosophobabble of "my school of thought is right, yours is bunk." Nice job if you can get it, but other being a professor of philosophy, what use is the entire field?

And I think Sokal has equal contempt for most philosophy as self-indulgent pseudo-intellectual posturing.

Compare, "the weather is more or less predictable most of the time." Surely that doesn't mean that the weather has free will.

Weather is an inanimate set of physical processes, although it is subject in some degree to complex systems behavior. As such, it is entirely incomparable to human thought processes.

This is a purely semantic matter. As I've pointed out to you on numerous occasions now, indeterminacy is not sufficient for free will. Hence all the stuff about Quantum mechanics and free will is so much bunk.

Then come up with an explanation in terms of whatever "natural law" you think applies, or that some philosopher invented out of thin air to apply.

No, you just don't understand what you are talking about.

I understand philosophy enough to know that it's essentially pretentious bunk. Let's put it this way, you and I are from different tribes. End of story.

Then what conditions them?

All sorts of things - cumulative perception of life experience, received information or learning, emotional states, impulsive drives of various kinds, all occuring more or less constantly, and being responded to in varying degrees at different times.

Like what.

Oh, like the entire range of interactions between all influences - i.e. social norms and personal views of those norms, emotional state at the moment and long term, core differences in personality (try signing up Mohandas Gandhi to Amway for example ), mental disorders (sociopathy, OCD etc.), accumulated experience, all interacting in dynamic and complex ways. Not "natural law" and not "random."

"All people are subjective". What the hell does that mean? So I guess you think that the law of non-contradiction holds "only if you believe it". That's dumb, since it's a condition of your beliefs having any semantic content at all. Aristotle pointed this out 2500 years ago - apparently some people haven't noticed.

Let's see if I can dumb it down enough for you. Your concept of "consistency" will be filtered through your belief system. If you have some trivial, non-emotional issue like sorting currency from lowest denomination to highest and all facing the same way, there won't be any real disparity in any two people's view of what is or isn't consistent. If you're talking about appropriate sentencing for a murder, with a complex set of circumstances, and you're trying to be "consistent" in applying punishment, then you may well get into all sorts of arguments about whether the sentence in a particular case is consistent with treatment of other cases. Everybody will nitpick factual or legal differences, or invent rationales for the killer's action, all to create a rationale to support their views.

Tax policy is even stickier, because nearly every financial situation is different. Again, people will propagandize "consistency" "fairness" and other subjective concepts. Nobody admits to inconsistency or unfairness, and everybody can't be right. Some of you have to be left, but it isn't your fault.

labels, filters,.... bollox - and you were accusing me of babble.

The whole "field" of philosophy is a bunch of people who haven't done anything else of note sitting around in a pseudointellectual mental circle-jerk inventing names and labels. Three schools of "free will" with three nonsensical names, arguing arcane points around in circles?

Are you not reading? I've already told you that if you aren't a moral realist, then moral propositions do not describe anything about reality; rather they prescribe (there's a difference). A moral principle is an instruction like "do as you would be done to". What objective facts does this describe. None.

The "moral principle" is meaningless until applied to something. Then everyone (having done something different) claims they have done whatever the "moral principle" in question directs them to do.

I take it you actually read Sokal and Bricmont's book. This is the sort of silly conceptual relativism that they spend most of it complaining about. And here you are citing them as a worthy source and then coming up with the sort of guff that they wrote the book to attack.

And there's a difference. I'm not talking "conceptual relativism." I'm talking the way people will (by free will ) spin what they observe and how they act to claim that it is good, consistent, or what have you. To use a basic analogy, "reality" is a used car, and what I'm talking about is techniques of selling used cars, which is the essence of politics, business, getting the girl, and a good portion of human endeavor. If you want to deal with "reality" and "consistency," go to Vulcan and talk to Spock.

Look at jury psychology, marketing techniques, or similar fields, where the goal is to find people's preconceptions and prejudices, and make things appear to fit in with those preconceptions, so people will do what you want them to do. I'm not saying "conceptual relativism" has any validity, I'm saying people play the game to sell themselves, or to sell others on what they want.

Take your good buddy George W. Bush and the war on Iraq, for example. Do you think he really knows, understands, and believes (and has from the get-go) that all his hardon for Saddam Hussein is simply cynical, contrived, falsehood? Or is it perhaps more likely that everything he has seen and heard has been filtered in accordance with his and his administration's ideology, to match "reality" as they want to believe it to be, with what they really wanted to do anyway, which was get Hussein's ass? Which do you think is more likely? The "reality" of Hussein's actions is objective, but what parts of that reality are used, reinforced and presented, and what parts of that reality are discarded as inconvenient, is a totally subjective process that varies from individual to individual.

Underlying reality doesn't change, but the games people play in describing and molding that reality to get others to go along with what those people want them to do change all the time, according to the desired goal of whoever is playing "let's spin reality" at the time.

Policy discussions are the perfect example of this, that's fundamental to why there's more bull**** in politics than in all the ranches and meat packing plants in the world combined.

I'll remember that next time I pick up a square circle.

What else are you going to use to make a transition piece when you need to put a square peg in a round hole?

I told you before that EOO is properly a principle of fairness, not a principle of efficiency. Many people confuse the two, but that's their problem. Thought experiments is how individual moral principles are tested for consistency with our other principles- that's roughly how moral arguments proceed.

But of course this is all subjective, so there is nothing irrational about me thinking that exactly the same rape is both bad and good at the same time.

Nice strawman. Let's go from economic policy to rape. indeed.

"In practice consistency is filtered by each party's desired outcome."

Then it isn't consistent any more is it? The notion of following a rule is about the most basic component of rationality. We manage to do it all the time when we speak to each other and make ourselves understood.

In a policy discussion, it's claimed and perceived "consistency" "fairness" or what have you count for more than the underlying reality. Read Macchiavelli.

All you are making here is the distinctly less than profound point that sometimes people bend the rules to their own desires - just what this has to do with logical consistency I have no idea.

What it has to do with logical consistency is that the world we deal with is more the world of filtered information and sales pitches than the "real" world of objective information. And every side who bends the rules, says that they're the ones that are being "fair" and "consistent" and those other SOB's are the ones bending the rules. The racist believes his worldview is consistent, as does the communist, as does the entrepreneur. Therefore, most discussions of "reality" are as futile as this one, except for entertainment purposes.

People who can be bothered to think about it realise that it isn't so simply, obvious or straightforward. Of course people who don't understand what is being said, or what's at stake, are likely to dismiss it as bunk. Much like a peasant who opens Principia Mathematica. It's so much easier than dealing with the questions.

Three competing schools of thought with fancy names debating the nature of free will, which you say is nothing but scientifically unsound religious bunk, and I say is simply nothing more than the ability to choose behavior, and these three schools of thought and their fancy names and their questions are essential to what?

Just admit, you don't know what you are talking about.

Well, you apparently don't know what I'm talking about, how's that?

Bringing up the Sokal book as evidence and then coming out with the sort of relativist stuff disguised with verbiage they are arguing against just shows me you've lost this one.

I invite any Apolytoner to read the Sokal book (esp. p. 90ff) and then read Michael's stuff on "the subjective" above.

If they're bored or curious, it's a great read. However, you're the one with the misunderstanding of my position as "relativist." Hence my analogy above about used cars vs. used car sales techniques.

How we got here from trickle down taxation and the opportunity for the poor to better their economic situation is beyond me, though.

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by MichaeltheGreat
Wealth existed prior to "government" - in fact, wealth created "government." (i.e. the ability to hire and equip thugs to enforce your will on others)

"Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defense of the rich against the poor."
-Adam Smith

You got bills.

[St Leo]

Agriculture (or, more precisely, a sedentary lifestyle) created government.