How can I get people to read my blog?

[Al B. Sure!]

because your dad managed to make it a through a halfway decent law school.

Actually I received clarification... my father didn't manage to make it through a halfway decent law school... He has a S.J.D. (the highest law degree offered; a Ph.D. essentially) from GW Law. He already had his JD but went further in his education.

[Kuciwalker]

Albert, why do you never wise up and stop digging yourself in deeper?

[curtis290]

Holy ****, you don't even understand the philosophy lessons you claim to value. Utilitarianism is distinctly not moral relativism. The use of utilitarianism is a choice to value people's happiness over your "good and noble" bull****.

And you didn't really pay attention to what I was saying. In regards to moral questions, political scientists choose terms such as "preferences" as opposed to "good," "noble," or "truth." They believe that they, being "disinterested observers," have no claims to make on such issues. Instead, they focus solely on the quantifiable, such as "utility." This makes them moral relativists. I didn't say they had no values, they aren't nihilists, and moral relativism is obviously a value system within itself. All I said was that they only focus on what is easily quantifiable and really don't have anything to say on important moral questions...they believe that these are moral preferences that they can't pass judgements on that must be left to the individuals within the society. This makes them moral relativists; that which they can't quantify and easily understand within their own system is all "relative." Of course this exposes the contradiction of moral relativism and why it is an indequate philosophy...they aren't simply 'disinterested observers' and they do have their own set of values that they don't question...that 'utility' is good and than that they should only concern themselves with 'utility.'

Yeah, I actually went to school to learn.

Some of us don't have to sit in a special room listening to old people talk to learn.

Also, you don't seem to have actually managed your goal.

I didn't say everyone did. You were the one that attacked me for simply stating that I went to a certain college for the education I'd receive as well as the fact that I wanted to learn and went to classes, which was in response to your claim that you never went to classes and that they were a waste of time. I enjoyed my classes and learned a lot. I don't know about you though. All you've shown is that you can't figure out how to copy and paste quote tags.

Standardized tests are a very poor indicator of intelligence. I never took an IQ test, but I didn't do very well on the others. A 2160 on the SAT and a 32 on the ACT. I got 5's on pretty much all of my AP tests though, which I would say are a better indicator of one's scholastic aptitude.

The AP's a ****ing joke. 11 5's, 3 4's (all in subjects for which I never actually took the class).

They aren't that difficult but they do demonstrate a high schooler's basic competencency in a given subject.

And you're obviously full of s**t. There is NO WAY you got those scores. My friend at Swarthmore received 10 5's on his AP tests and like 5 4's and got in Time magazine for it. And if you look at the list of the AP tests, there is no way you could find 15 tests on subjects that you didn't take classes on. First, there are only about 25 subjects covered (around 30 total tests), and most of them are your basic classes in high school combined with a few random ones such as Human Geography. You have your basic subjecs and your foreign languges as well as art and music. There is no way you didn't take any of those classes, especially if you went to Carnegie Mellon. You clearly make s**t up about yourself on the internet win a p*ssing contest, which is pretty pathetic. As far as I'm concerned, nothing you say about yourself has any validity, and I'm not even sure if you went to Carnegie Mellon. At this point, my guess is that it was your dream school that you didn't get into and that you went to a much less competitive school instead, which has left you insecure and feeling the need to make s**t up about yourself to impress random people on the inernet.

Again, do you know of any Nazis that aren't anti-semitic, support Israel, and believe in Christianity?

Holy ****. If those are the only things that separate you from a Nazi, you're freaking scary.

So I don't believe in any of the fundamental tenets of Nazism, yet you think I'm practically a Nazi.

Joining the services is most definitely a character building experience. As for killing an enemy, I hear it is, but I've never done it so I won't make that claim myself.

Holy ****

So you don't think serving your country builds character? Having to work you ass off for something greater than yourself? Being part of a group of people that are willing to sacrifice their lives for you and for their country? Pretty much everyone I know that has served in the military has told me it was a character building experience. Again, this is something that liberals and the professional class will just never understand.

Because I would be better at something else. My talents could be serve people by teaching or being a soldier. And yes, I have worked on a farm AND an assembly line. I've also done some mindless, white-collar work. I didn't find it enjoyable, valuable, or intellectually stimulating.

Now extend this to the millions of people who would be working on farms or in factories in your desired counterfactual...

In other words, society would look more like it always has...lots of people on farms, and relatively recently, a lot of people in factories and some people in offices. I take it you think we (the US, as well as Western Europe) reached our utopia in the past few decades when office work became the norm and everyone moved out of the countryside and less people worked in factories? We should all just be jumping for joy then, we work in offices so our lives must be perfect!

Because it's not a good idea to run a society like that, not to mention, liberal society is a very new concept historically

Holy non sequitur, Batman!

Let me guess, you think liberalism is universal and has been around forever, right? And the Enlightenment just sort of articulated everything we had always been doing?

So pretty much every society in history (except for a few states in Europe and their former colonies recently) functioned improperly? You're fighting an awful lot of history there.

This is a truly bizarre fallacy. Most reactionaries don't look back hundreds of years in their country for a social system to return to.

First off, that's not true. Second, why should I care if you consider me to be like 'most reactionaries?' Third, I look back to reactionaries from several centuries in the past and they have been very influential in my beliefs. I don't think this is unusual, many people look to thinkers several centuries or even millenia in the past because much of what they have to say still holds true. Fourth, I don't think I always look all that far to the past. IMO the Golden Age of the USA was from 1941-1965ish (before the rebellion of the 1960s).

Dude, quick recap: money is the stuff we use to freely purchase the stuff we want. So when you say "money isn't everything", you are saying "what you want is less important than what I think you should want".

This just shows why you're a typical liberal. The only way in which you can conceive of society is of a market where we buy and sell goods. I am talking about concepts much broader and more important than the market, things that can't be measured by economics or brought by the purchase of consumer goods. Second, your criticism is downright silly. You've basically criticized any type of economic policy. I take it from your signature that you are supportive of Obama, so I'll use him as an example. If he raises taxes for the wealthy to pay for a new health care program, that's the same as him telling the American public "what you want is less important than what I think you should want." He's taking away peoples' money, the stuff we use to [I]freely purchase the stuff we want," and spending it on health care and forcing people to enroll in health care plans, which is what Obama "thinks we should want." States use economic policy and take away peoples' money so that they can provide services to the people it thinks they should want.

What I'm saying is no different, and neither would my economic policies be. The only difference is that my economic policies are based on practicality, long-term sustainability, appeasing the working classes, preserving American culture, and serving national goals. I think our economy should serve our nation and us as a people, not the other way around. Which isn't that radical when you put it into perspective, it's only radical when you compare it to the libertarian economic views espoused by most Americans today.

Yeah, liberalism might only be a couple centuries old. It's like how we've only had electricity for a hundred years and people got along fine without it. True, but life was a lot worse back then, so who gives a ****? The fact that things like liberalism are relatively new just makes it easier to see how much BETTER OFF we are if we're not like Iran.

Are we really? Iran was a liberal state with a successful economy. Its population was relatively secular compared to other nations in the region. And then, contrary to the prevalent logic of the modernization thesis that was taken to be dogma at the time, there was a religious, conservative revolution. Thirty years later, Iran still remains a non-liberal, theocratic state, and it's a democracy. This is the problem with you liberals, you worship your own beliefs so blindly (what you criticize religious conservatives for) that you can't comprehend that other people may reject liberalism as a political/social system. And I'll ask again, if liberalism is so great, and we have more freedoms than ever (even gays can get married now) and more goods/material comforts than ever (everyone has a computer, we all buy tons of stuff, credit is easily available), why aren't we just jumping up and down for joy, unable to contain our happiness? Why is depression and suicide so widespread? Why do people continue to turn to religion? And why do older people disagree with you? My grandparents lived through the depression on almost nothing. The economy was much less developed back then and there were fewer material comforts as well as fewer personal freedoms (politically and socially). But they don't think they missed out on anything, they were completely fine the way they lived and wouldn't have traded it for a childhood today. They notice how psychologically f*cked up kids are today, and that our culture has gone to hell.

[giblets]

Are we really? Iran was a liberal state with a successful economy. Its population was relatively secular compared to other nations in the region. And then, contrary to the prevalent logic of the modernization thesis that was taken to be dogma at the time, there was a religious, conservative revolution. Thirty years later, Iran still remains a non-liberal, theocratic state, and it's a democracy.

Iran is a democracy?

This is the problem with you liberals, you worship your own beliefs so blindly (what you criticize religious conservatives for) that you can't comprehend that other people may reject liberalism as a political/social system.

Where have I claimed that people are incapable of rejecting "liberalism"?

And I'll ask again, if liberalism is so great, and we have more freedoms than ever (even gays can get married now) and more goods/material comforts than ever (everyone has a computer, we all buy tons of stuff, credit is easily available), why aren't we just jumping up and down for joy, unable to contain our happiness? Why is depression and suicide so widespread?

Since when did a system have to be a paradise in order for it to be better than something else? I do think life is better now than it was before.

Why do people continue to turn to religion?

I dunno, because they like it? They live in a society where people have religious freedom? You don't want to change that, do you?

And why do older people disagree with you? My grandparents lived through the depression on almost nothing. The economy was much less developed back then and there were fewer material comforts as well as fewer personal freedoms (politically and socially). But they don't think they missed out on anything, they were completely fine the way they lived and wouldn't have traded it for a childhood today. They notice how psychologically f*cked up kids are today, and that our culture has gone to hell.

Great, now we're on to anecdotes.

[Al B. Sure!]

A song for you, Curtis:

[Kuciwalker]

And you didn't really pay attention to what I was saying. In regards to moral questions, political scientists choose terms such as "preferences" as opposed to "good," "noble," or "truth." They believe that they, being "disinterested observers," have no claims to make on such issues. Instead, they focus solely on the quantifiable, such as "utility." This makes them moral relativists.

No.

For someone who's so hung up on moral philosophy, you sure have a poor understanding of it.

Moral relativism is a denial of objective morality.

Utilitarianism (which is the framework the political scientists you describe operate under) is a very explicit objective morality, and universal to boot. The morally prescribed decision rule is identical for all observers and applies equally to all actors.

I didn't say everyone did. You were the one that attacked me for simply stating that I went to a certain college for the education I'd receive as well as the fact that I wanted to learn and went to classes, which was in response to your claim that you never went to classes and that they were a waste of time.

No, I'm attacking you for trying to throw around your (not especially impressive) academic record as "haha I could be making seven figures in a few years if I wanted".

All you've shown is that you can't figure out how to copy and paste quote tags.

Oooooh, burn.

They aren't that difficult but they do demonstrate a high schooler's basic competencency in a given subject.

And you're obviously full of s**t. There is NO WAY you got those scores. My friend at Swarthmore received 10 5's on his AP tests and like 5 4's and got in Time magazine for it.

I was the Virginia AP scholar for 2006. Sorry, kiddo. Let's count out the list:

Calc BC: 5
CS: 5
Bio: 5
Physics C Mechanics: 5
Physics C E&M: 5 (hey, I wasn't the one that decided to double-count these, don't blame me)
US History: 5
US Gov: 5
English Lang: 5
Psychology: 5
Statistics: 5*
Micro: 4*
Macro: 4*
Comparative Gov: 4*

*didn't take these classes

Hm, that's 13, either I've managed to forget one or my earlier count was off. Meh.

And if you look at the list of the AP tests, there is no way you could find 15 tests on subjects that you didn't take classes on.

Erm, only 4 of them were on subjects I didn't take classes on.

As far as I'm concerned, nothing you say about yourself has any validity, and I'm not even sure if you went to Carnegie Mellon. At this point, my guess is that it was your dream school that you didn't get into and that you went to a much less competitive school instead, which has left you insecure and feeling the need to make s**t up about yourself to impress random people on the inernet.

Problem for you: I've met many of the people on here in person, several of them can verify my claims.

Problem for me: you don't believe me. Oh no, I am heartbroken.

So I don't believe in any of the fundamental tenets of Nazism, yet you think I'm practically a Nazi.

No, you just don't go for the Jew-killing, but apparently you're fine with the militarist hypernationalism and "hey let's go conquer the world" idea.

So you don't think serving your country builds character? Having to work you ass off for something greater than yourself? Being part of a group of people that are willing to sacrifice their lives for you and for their country? Pretty much everyone I know that has served in the military has told me it was a character building experience. Again, this is something that liberals and the professional class will just never understand.

Why not go work for something "greater than yourself" that doesn't involve killing people?

In other words, society would look more like it always has...lots of people on farms, and relatively recently, a lot of people in factories and some people in offices.

Even though a lot of those people have talents that are more useful somewhere else, and would prefer to work somewhere else. And yet you want to reorganize society so that they end up as farmers and laborers.

I take it you think we (the US, as well as Western Europe) reached our utopia in the past few decades when office work became the norm and everyone moved out of the countryside and less people worked in factories? We should all just be jumping for joy then, we work in offices so our lives must be perfect!

Unlike you, I'm not an idiot. The present is better than the past, and the future will probably be better than the present.

And no, these aren't axioms. They're observations based on data.

Let me guess, you think liberalism is universal and has been around forever, right? And the Enlightenment just sort of articulated everything we had always been doing?

Oh, man, reading is fundamental.

1) Learn the definition of non sequitur, kid. You went to a fancy liberal arts college, you should know a little Latin.

2) You were arguing against the idea of "leave people alone and let them do what they want" on the basis "liberal society is a very new concept historically", with no justification for how that's relevant to its moral value as an organizing principle for society.

How you got from there to "oh, he must think liberalism has been around forever" is beyond me.

Second, why should I care if you consider me to be like 'most reactionaries?' Third, I look back to reactionaries from several centuries in the past and they have been very influential in my beliefs. I don't think this is unusual, many people look to thinkers several centuries or even millenia in the past because much of what they have to say still holds true. Fourth, I don't think I always look all that far to the past. IMO the Golden Age of the USA was from 1941-1965ish (before the rebellion of the 1960s).

And the best part of it was when we got to kill a lot of people with our tanks and artillery

This just shows why you're a typical liberal. The only way in which you can conceive of society is of a market where we buy and sell goods.

No, but we actually live in such a society, and there's a massive weight of evidence that societies organized around other principles suck.

I am talking about concepts much broader and more important than the market, things that can't be measured by economics or brought by the purchase of consumer goods.

In particular, satisfying your hard-on for killing people.

Second, your criticism is downright silly. You've basically criticized any type of economic policy.

Nope. I disagree with economic policy designed to make society look more like the adolescent fantasy of someone who just read Starship Troopers. I support economic policy designed to improve human welfare.

I take it from your signature that you are supportive of Obama

what? No, that's making fun of GePap for some massive self-pwnage a while back.

If he raises taxes for the wealthy to pay for a new health care program, that's the same as him telling the American public "what you want is less important than what I think you should want." He's taking away peoples' money, the stuff we use to [I]freely purchase the stuff we want," and spending it on health care and forcing people to enroll in health care plans, which is what Obama "thinks we should want."

This has equal elements of truth and untruth.

By taxing the rich to provide services to the poor, he's telling the rich people "what you want, at the margin, is less important than what poor people want". (To some degree this is genuinely true, of course, because of diminishing returns to happiness on additional consumption.)

By providing the poor with subsidies that can only be spent on health insurance, he is telling them "what you want is less important than what I think you should want". This is, of course, bad.

Additional complications arise in that it may actually be the case that people do want health insurance, but would be unable to acquire it if the election were optional, because of antiselection. Etc. But basically yes, you have correctly reasoned that in-kind government redistribution is generally paternalistic and bad!

States use economic policy and take away peoples' money so that they can provide services to the people it thinks they should want.

Typically, the idealized purpose of government spending is to provide take people's money and spend it on things that they genuinely do want but would be unable to efficiently acquire through a normal market mechanism (see: public goods). National defense is, of course, a textbook example. It also goes without saying that our government is not ideal.

(The other idealized purpose of government spending is redistribution, on the basic observation that some redistribution can massively increase total welfare.)

What I'm saying is no different, and neither would my economic policies be. The only difference is that my economic policies are based on practicality, long-term sustainability, appeasing the working classes, preserving American culture, and serving national goals.

No, the difference is that your policies involve a whole lot of people doing what they'd prefer not to do in order for us to be able to kill even more people, and also that everyone should want for us to be able to kill lots of people. Getting happiness from unpatriotic activities like video games and sex instead of national greatness is just an example of moral corruption and "living wrongly".

I think our economy should serve our nation and us as a people, not the other way around.

I think our nation should serve our people, not the other way around.

Are we really? Iran was a liberal state with a successful economy. Its population was relatively secular compared to other nations in the region. And then, contrary to the prevalent logic of the modernization thesis that was taken to be dogma at the time, there was a religious, conservative revolution. Thirty years later, Iran still remains a non-liberal, theocratic state, and it's a democracy.

[Accepting your premise arguendo]

Wait, Iran was a liberal democracy, then it stopped being a liberal democracy, and it also happens to be a pretty crappy place to live compared to places that still are liberal democracies?

What part of this is supposed to be an indictment of liberalism?

This is the problem with you liberals, you worship your own beliefs so blindly (what you criticize religious conservatives for) that you can't comprehend that other people may reject liberalism as a political/social system.

Oh, I understand it just fine - I'm talking to you, aren't I? I just think they're wrong.

And I'll ask again, if liberalism is so great, and we have more freedoms than ever (even gays can get married now) and more goods/material comforts than ever (everyone has a computer, we all buy tons of stuff, credit is easily available), why aren't we just jumping up and down for joy, unable to contain our happiness?

You were a political science major and you've never heard of the ****ing hedonic treadmill?

Why is depression and suicide so widespread?

Are you going to make a serious argument that depression and suicide are positively and causally related to liberalism? If so, you're welcome to, but provide actual data please.

Why do people continue to turn to religion?

This is just a bizarre question. People continue to turn away from religion, too.

And why do older people disagree with you? My grandparents lived through the depression on almost nothing. The economy was much less developed back then and there were fewer material comforts as well as fewer personal freedoms (politically and socially). But they don't think they missed out on anything, they were completely fine the way they lived and wouldn't have traded it for a childhood today. They notice how psychologically f*cked up kids are today, and that our culture has gone to hell.

You're honestly using "old people think the past was better" as a serious argument?

Observation: the word 'nostalgia' is even older than the social systems you want to return to.

[Solomwi]

I take it from your signature that you are supportive of Obama, so I'll use him as an example. If he raises taxes for the wealthy to pay for a new health care program, that's the same as him telling the American public "what you want is less important than what I think you should want." He's taking away peoples' money, the stuff we use to [I]freely purchase the stuff we want," and spending it on health care and forcing people to enroll in health care plans, which is what Obama "thinks we should want." States use economic policy and take away peoples' money so that they can provide services to the people it thinks they should want.

Kuci, this is why his posts are worth at least a scan here and there.

x-post. I see you caught it, too.

[KrazyHorse]

I only read his posts after Kuci dissects them. Without the leavening agent of Kuci's scorn, reading that unoriginal trite feels like I'm rubbing my brain with lard.

[Solomwi]

Why do you think I'm encouraging Kuci to read them? His scorn is like lox on a bagel, giving flavor to what is otherwise dry and dull.

[Kuciwalker]

And you didn't really pay attention to what I was saying. In regards to moral questions, political scientists choose terms such as "preferences" as opposed to "good," "noble," or "truth." They believe that they, being "disinterested observers," have no claims to make on such issues. Instead, they focus solely on the quantifiable, such as "utility." This makes them moral relativists.

A further comment on this: apparently the only justification he's ever seen for the "live and let live" principle is the (deservedly mocked) normative form of moral relativism. I find it distressing that a political science major from what's supposed to be a highly-ranked liberal arts school has never read JS Mill.

[Dinner]

Let's be honest. He's probably in his first quarter at school.

[KrazyHorse]

I suppose even a monopoly which abuses it's position is never the less still involved in voluntary exchanges and it is increasing shareholder value by abusing said monopoly.

a) I have no idea what you mean by "abuses its power"
b) The number of true monopolies in the US can be pretty much limited to IP companies and government services
c) Want to provide an example, or do you just want to continue to speculate about the existence of a vast conspiratorial network of monopolies which somehow manage to preclude new market entrants, without the aid of government?

In the end it's still extracting unearned rents due to a lack of a properly function market (no competition)

I have no idea what "unearned" rents are supposed to mean in this context. And it's the lack of a market in this hypothetical world of yours that's the problem, not the transactions (it's better to have one person offering a service than nobody offering that service)

so this would be another example of where money changing hands isn't exactly giving people what they wanted. It's more of a default action due to having no other choice because the market is not functioning as it should.

????

Please reorganize these thoughts and come back with a coherent explanation.

[KrazyHorse]

There are occasionally examples of local, short-lived monopolies (properly, people earning rents). One interesting example that people (and policymakers) react to incredibly stupidly is food/fuel/etc during a natural disaster.

At a given moment during the crisis there are often few enough supplies close to the scene that their price spikes above the price clearing the market just a few hundred miles away. What happens in this case? Anybody with common sense can see: people outside the affected zone see the rents being earned, and do their damnedest to supply the area in the hope of grabbing some of those rents. Before long, the rents are competed away. What happens when governments get involved (which is often the knee-jerk desire of most of the affected people)? Well, they apply anti-"gouging" laws. They make the rent-extraction illegal. What's the result? Shortages (due to increased demand). Shortages (due to decreased supply). Poor allocation of the available supply (due to the quickest consumers taking more than they need).

Rents aren't a problem. What's a problem is when nobody can compete away the rents. And as far as I can see, there are very few cases where this is an important factor when governments haven't caused it to be.

[KrazyHorse]

The anti-trust campaigns of many countries may be some of the biggest wastes of effort based on the flimsiest motivations around.

Anti-gouging laws affect relatively fewer people less often (thankfully) but cause enormous pain and suffering when they do impact somebody's life.

[Tuberski]

Multiquoting requires more intelligence.

Fixed.

crap.

ACK!