|
Read the rules in the OP before posting, please.In order to ensure that this thread continues to meet TL standards and follows the proper guidelines, we will be enforcing the rules in the OP more strictly. Be sure to give them a re-read to refresh your memory! The vast majority of you are contributing in a healthy way, keep it up! NOTE: When providing a source, explain why you feel it is relevant and what purpose it adds to the discussion if it's not obvious. Also take note that unsubstantiated tweets/posts meant only to rekindle old arguments can result in a mod action. |
|
|
On November 11 2017 03:09 Wulfey_LA wrote:Show nested quote +On November 11 2017 03:06 Introvert wrote:On November 11 2017 03:00 Wulfey_LA wrote:Anti-left grievance && Culture War == okay to vote for monsters I am going to come back to that piece again when Conservative Principles come up again in this thread. I have repeatedly said that Conservative Principles are really just anti-lib and Kulturkampf. Erick Erickson has kindly agreed with my thesis and laid it out as a justification for voting Republican. You only read the part of the post you wanted to. Keep up the good work. We'll continue to ignore you for the most part. Erick's piece isn't long. The only part I didn't mention was his various whataboutisms and appeals to hypocrisy. His appeals to hypocrisy are laughable because he is using them in a piece to justify the hypocrisy in voting for a molester like Moore.
Let's just assume everything he says is on shaky ground and proceed without troublesome addressing jack shit.
Hey, look, you have zero arguments for anything and rely on dismissal and labeling. You're a credit to your intellectual side of the aisle.
|
The naked doubling down on the culture war argument is a huge mistake for conservatives. It removes the idea that they are just pushing to have their beliefs reflected in society. Now their argument is that they are in direct conflict with other beliefs and must "win" without an end game or goal.
|
On November 11 2017 02:06 mozoku wrote:Show nested quote +On November 11 2017 00:41 KwarK wrote:On November 10 2017 15:25 mozoku wrote:On November 10 2017 13:52 KwarK wrote:On November 10 2017 13:50 mozoku wrote:On November 10 2017 03:34 KwarK wrote:On November 10 2017 03:01 mozoku wrote:On November 10 2017 00:04 KwarK wrote:On November 09 2017 23:35 Danglars wrote:On November 09 2017 23:11 Liquid`Drone wrote:
When the cutoff is at $11 million for a household, clearly you can still accumulate generational wealth. It's not like they take 100% beyond that either. (Tbh, I'd personally be kinda fine with that. :D Or it should probably also depend on how many beneficiaries there are, but I don't see the fairness or benefit from any individual being given more than $5 million for 'being in the same family as someone'. So maybe rather than calculating it based on the value of the estate, have the cutoff be decided by how much each recipient gets. )
I don't see the societal benefit from individuals being billionaires. I get 'they invest and create jobs', but I've never seen any compelling evidence that one individual holding 1 billion creates more, better jobs than 200 individuals holding $5 million does. (Or that there being one company valued at $1 billion is better for the economy than 200 companies worth $5 million). All the bipartisan talk about 'small business being the backbone of american economy' really doesn't seem to match up with policy geared towards benefiting small businesses (which must, naturally, come at the expense of big business). The way I see it, it's impossible to accumulate $1 billion without having massively underpaid workers helping your company thrive, and while I prefer methods like increased worker ownership or limiting CEO pay to X amounts of entry level pay over taxation as a means of redistribution, if you do allow CEOs to make 600 times entry level pay then the redistribution must be done through other means. And if people aren't taxed sufficiently during their life times, then it has to happen at death.
Everybody idealizes the meritocracy. But a meritocracy is incompatible with an aristocracy, the US can't pretend to be the former while enacting policies that benefit the latter. The wealth you've earned and has been taxed that the government allows you to give to your children and grandchildren ... Examining how much property individuals attain in terms of net societal benefit as compared to pay cap ... catching up on presumed inadequate taxation over their lives ... allowing CEOs to make X redistribution must be done. I shudder to think you're probably talking in good faith here. No individuals but only servants of societal benefit, no unjust policies but only the ends justify the means, and so transparently the politics of envy but without attendant shame. I really hate to think this may be what we're headed towards. It's the social contract that binds us together. If a man lived on an island by himself and all his possessions were crafted by his own hand I wouldn't see any reason to tax him. But within a capitalist society every rich man has become rich through the redistribution of labour from others to them. We allow capitalism to redistribute wealth because it's functionally effective for allocating resources within society but there is nothing natural about, say, land ownership. If a field in Texas is discovered to have oil underneath it it does not rationally follow that all Americans should have to collectively make the owner of the field a billionaire in order to make their commute to work. You need to recognize that the wealth capitalism awards you is simply the product of an artificial system that was created by men to help decide whether ipods or zunes were better. The fact that an employer is willing to pay you $100,000 for your labour does not mean that the intrinsic value of your labour is $100,000, it's just a bullshit number that the system produced. If you get rid of society none of this labour has any intrinsic value, it's simply a product of a set of rules we created. You're trying to combine two completely separate concepts, the individual and capitalist society and it doesn't work. You can't have capitalism on an island with one occupant. Taxation is part of the same book of rules that capitalism comes from, and neither makes any sense from an individualist perspective. I don't know how you're defining "intrinsic" value, but if an employer is willing to pay me $100,000, the market value of my labor is $100,000 (assuming efficient/competitive markets). If the market values my labor more than someone else's, it follows that (again, assuming efficient/competitive markets) society's best estimate of my labor's value is more than that other person's. Should not the fruits of society's labor be distributed, in principle, proportionally to those who created it? Especially given that, for most people, the market value of the labor is--to a pretty large degree--under their control during their lifetime? You can argue that heirs to large fortunes didn't really create the value that their fortune's create (their parents did) and I think that's fair (though there are counterarguments in favor of the estate tax as well), or that economic mobility isn't possible (I disagree), but to act like the only basis for how society's wealth should be distributed is the tyranny of the masses (who are writing the "book of rules" you're referencing--at least in a democracy) doesn't have any moral or ethical basis in favor of it. The share of the wealth you get and the share of the wealth you created aren't well correlated. That's pretty much the point of capitalism, the underlying mechanism that makes capitalism work is people attempting to do arbitrage to take advantage of that discrepancy. If you break it down to its very simplest village level bartering, the objective is to find something that you can produce in an hour that you can trade for firewood that took two hours to chop. You perform one hour of labour, and yet you get two hours of stuff. The mechanism relies upon disproportionate rewards to redistribute labour and direct economic activity. Clearly whatever the guy in the village was doing with his hour was the right thing to do, and other villagers may follow him until an equilibrium where 1 hour = 1 hour is restored. Arbitrage to exploit disproportionate rewards between what you contribute and what you get is the engine that drives capitalism. By the time we apply it on a modern global perspective the difference is staggering, a ratio of thousands of manhours to one in many cases. These differences are reinforced by artificial impositions upon the ability of many people to engage in arbitrage, such as denying Mexicans the ability to sell their labour in America, and by exploitation grandfathered in by the capital class. However, the basic engine remains the same, the economic systems offers participants in the economy disproportionate rewards for directing their labour in certain ways. The disproportionate outcome needs to exist for our society to work. We need doctors to get more than grocers to keep kids in school. But it doesn't follow that what the system outputs is what you deserve, or what you earned. It's certainly not what you created, any American can tell that the manhours of labour they consume on any given day greatly exceed the manhours of labour they performed. Deserve and earned are subjective moral concepts that aren't relevant to the mechanism, what you get is what you get. This is literally nonsense. I barely know where to begin. Suppose an hour's worth of labor chopping firewood produces $1 of firewood. The new guy creates $2/hr with whatever he's doing. He's twice as productive. If chooses to work the same amount of time, he gets twice as much stuff. That's literally the definition of proportional. How that's supposed to be disproportionate, I have no idea. The share of the wealth you get and the share of the wealth you created aren't well correlated. ??? I'm pretty sure fast-food workers are creating much less wealth than software engineers, successful investors, etc. I literally can't even imagine how society would exist if this statement were true. Why would capitalism even be efficient if this statement were true? What is your definition of "well correlated"? 0.99999999999999999?? It's certainly not what you created, any American can tell that the manhours of labour they consume on any given day greatly exceed the manhours of labour they performed. I'm not sure this is true at all. In fact, I'd lean towards not true if anything. Ever heard of an economy of scale? I work at a mega-scale tech company. I work 40-50 hrs/week, but my work influences thousands of people directly, and affects millions indirectly. Hell, the marginal cost of someone consuming my work is practically zero. Likewise, the marginal cost (in terms of other's time) of most of the stuff I consume is practically zero. That's how automation works, and is why we're fabulously wealthy compared to several hundred years ago. Why is the bartering village using dollars? Remove the dollars, try again. What objective system of valuation are you using to show that you're producing more value than the fast food worker from your day? Remembering of course that you're already justifying the getting more money than them by the fact that you create more value so you cannot complete the circle and use the more money to prove the greater value. Does it matter if they're bartering in gold, wood, virgins, or dollars? It's a trade they both agree to and the principles are the same. But I see the point that you're trying to make is that the efficient man's hour should, in principle, be worth no more than the inefficient man's hour if you don't care about productivity, and that productivity is independent of morality. However, the former statement is inherently incorrect because productivity and time are, by definition, linked, and a person's time has value in excess of that which can be determined monetarily. To simplify, let's assume they're both chopping lumber. The efficient man can simply choose to work 1/2 hour, have the same productivity, and keep the other 1/2 hour to himself. By nature of being more efficient (and his own efficiency is surely not intrinsically amoral), he's advantaged no matter what. Suppose, regardless of compensation, he only wanted to work 1/2 hour, and wanted to spend the other 1/2 hour with his kids. Are you going to argue that society is justified in forcing him to work the full hour? Or that they should discriminate against his good fortune by paying less for his lumber in the name of "equality"? That's certainly not a society I'd want to be a part of. I'm not saying anything of the sort regarding forcing people to work. No part of what I'm doing is advocating for societal change or the gulag. I'm saying that capitalism works as an effective tool for incentivising productive economic activity but that drawing moral conclusions regarding what you earned/own/deserve/created from the outcomes of a capitalist system is erroneous. It's very tempting to say "I'm paid twice as much money, therefore I earned twice as much" but what you earned is a moral judgement that capitalism makes no attempt to answer for you. I understand what you were trying to say. The problem is that productivity and time are directly dependent on each other, so the more efficient man literally owns the extra time his productivity has created (assuming you agree he should be free to use his time as he pleases). Whether or not you redistribute his present time or his past time is irrelevant from a moral perspective. Forcefully redistributing his wealth under any circumstances is equivalent to forced labor (perhaps a very small amount of forced labor, but a nonzero amount). Of course, everyone pretty much (including me) agrees that that if a second of forced labor at the end of a software engineer's workday can save millions of starving children (not realistic but making an extreme example to illustrate my point), it's morally justifiable to make the guy work the extra second. But the fact is it that's it's still a moral tradeoff that's being made. The software engineer has a true moral grievance (in some sense) in claiming that the arrangement is unfair to him--which stands in contrast to what you're asserting.
You are really going down the wrong tracks here with "forced labor" and "moral grievance." Capitalism operates on "forced labor." It uses that "free labor" that is forced by necessity to take the market wage. You should really just abandon this whole line of thought.
|
On November 11 2017 03:14 Danglars wrote:Show nested quote +On November 11 2017 03:09 Wulfey_LA wrote:On November 11 2017 03:06 Introvert wrote:On November 11 2017 03:00 Wulfey_LA wrote:Anti-left grievance && Culture War == okay to vote for monsters I am going to come back to that piece again when Conservative Principles come up again in this thread. I have repeatedly said that Conservative Principles are really just anti-lib and Kulturkampf. Erick Erickson has kindly agreed with my thesis and laid it out as a justification for voting Republican. You only read the part of the post you wanted to. Keep up the good work. We'll continue to ignore you for the most part. Erick's piece isn't long. The only part I didn't mention was his various whataboutisms and appeals to hypocrisy. His appeals to hypocrisy are laughable because he is using them in a piece to justify the hypocrisy in voting for a molester like Moore. Let's just assume everything he says is on shaky ground and proceed without troublesome addressing jack shit. Hey, look, you have zero arguments for anything and rely on dismissal and labeling. You're a credit to your intellectual side of the aisle.
Read Erick's piece. He puts up several justifications for voting for Moore. I have accurately labeled them.
The Left are the real villains opener
+ Show Spoiler +
Well, just this past Sunday a militant atheist shot up a church in Texas, killing about half the congregation. One of those killed was still in the womb, but the baby gets counted as a person to boost the arguments for gun control, otherwise the baby would just be a fetus.
And many on the left on social media attacked the congregants of the church. Some said they got what they deserved. Meanwhile, the media ran with stories of chainsaws attached to machine guns distorting all the basic facts out of willful ignorance.
A week before, a Muslim ran over a bunch of people in New York while Democrats were patting themselves on the back for showing Trump voters running over muslim kids on television.
A few weeks before that, a CBS lawyer lost her job for mocking the dead in Las Vegas that they deserved what they got after a mass shooting, the motive behind which is still unknown.
Anti Left Grievance
+ Show Spoiler +
While all of this is going on, a cake baker is headed to the Supreme Court because he had the audacity to bake a cake for a gay wedding, but he would not do all the decorations the gay couple wanted. So the baker got compared to a Nazi. He will join a florist at the Court who is being put out of business because despite having gay clients, she won’t provide flowers for gay weddings.
People are being harassed for refusing to cheer on men with mental illness who think they are women and the left thinks people in Alabama should have to let men use the ladies’ bathroom. The left is openly counting the days before churches can have their tax exempt status revoked for not embracing gay marriage. Christian private schools will be the first targets. The media on a near weekly basis runs stories that paint culturally conservative voters in a negative light, often distorting basic facts for the sake of narrative.
So you’ll have to excuse Trump voters and Moore voters for thinking the left in this country with a complicit media is out to get them.
Along comes a story about Roy Moore, a happily married man, that involves facts from 30 to 40 years ago and many of the same people who’ve spent a long time covering for people like Harvey Weinstein and are still covering for Hollywood pedophiles are piling on the man. The GOP, who hates cultural conservatives anyway, was quick to pile on.
I don’t blame the Roy Moore voters for thinking people are out to get them because people really are out to get them.
Moore is a fighter for these people. He purports to share their values. And all the people his voters hate happen to hate Roy Moore. They talk about innocence until proven guilty, but they’re ready to run Moore out of town. I don’t blame Moore’s voters, but I do have to blame those who are trying to defend Moore and dismiss the accusations or attack the women coming forward. Conservatism keeps being degraded by a bunch of people who talk Jesus and behave like Satan.
Culture War
+ Show Spoiler +
Y’all, I think the facts of the case as presented by the Washington Post are pretty damning. If I were a voter in Alabama, I would probably have to sit it out. But there are a lot of voters who are really damn tired of the culture war and they just want to be left alone. But the left won’t leave them alone. They’re coming for their churches’ tax exempt status. They are coming to force them to either get on board the secular progressive agenda or go into hiding. They are coming for their kids and their guns as well.
So now you are telling them they are really awful, bad people if they stick with Roy Moore instead of allowing into office a man who will side with the people who are out to get them?
I suspect they’ll take your aspersions and hate. They already think you hate them. And because the other side will accept nothing less than the destruction of their way of life, even if they want to walk away from Roy Moore they can’t. Because the other side is bent on their destruction and they think, rightly, that Roy Moore is the only one standing with them.
So we have the luxury of turning our nose up at it. And we can say character counts. But they believe character and morals count too and while they might find Moore’s actions reprehensible, they know the other side won’t be happy until their kids are brainwashed into thinking boys can be girls, a baby’s brains can be harvested with taxpayer subsides, and guns should be made extinct.
You really want to make them choose? You helped cause an existential crisis where they have every good reason to believe their way of life and their values are at stake and you want them to surrender? I can’t blame them for refusing even if I disagree. If you’re demanding the other side surrender in the culture war, don’t be surprised when they’re willing to stand with people they’d never otherwise consider in the name of protecting themselves and their families.
Left are the real villains (hypocrites) + Ant-left grievance + Culture War = Okay to vote for a molester
These are the true values of conservatism.
http://theresurgent.com/i-dont-blame-roy-moore-voters-for-sticking-with-him/
EDIT: I do think that this is the most honest and straightforward case for Moore. Straight up tribalism and culture war as justifications for voting evil. The other defenses of voting Moore will be be much less honest than Erick is here.
|
The White House is bracing for another staff shakeup upon President Donald Trump’s return from Asia, with senior-level staff moves that could further consolidate chief of staff John Kelly’s power in the West Wing.
Deputy chief of staff Rick Dearborn — a former top aide to Jeff Sessions in the Senate who played a central role during the presidential transition — is expected to be reassigned to the Commerce Department or another federal agency, according to multiple administration officials and outside advisers familiar with plans for the staff change.
Dearborn’s portfolio over the past year has covered high-level assignments, including helping to organize the president’s schedule. But that job has since been passed to another deputy chief of staff, Joe Hagin, while Dearborn has become increasingly marginalized internally since Kelly’s arrival in late July.
Dearborn’s departure would make him the latest in a growing conga line of West Wing aides who started on Inauguration Day but failed to last a full year. It would help Kelly clear the ranks of staffers he inherited from his predecessor Reince Priebus, whose tenure was marked by infighting and competition between loyalists brought in from the Republican National Committee and alumni of Trump’s renegade campaign.
A White House official did not confirm the move. “He is happy and comfortable in the job he's in,” the official said.
Kelly is also preparing to replace his deputy Kirstjen Nielsen, who is awaiting confirmation to fill Kelly’s old job as secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. Nielsen has been working full-time from the White House while preparing for her Senate confirmation hearings, multiple officials said, but is expected to leave after she is confirmed.
Nielsen has rankled West Wing colleagues with her rigid style, and her DHS nomination — a rare elevation of a staffer to a Cabinet-level position — is seen internally as Kelly’s attempt to continue wielding control over the department that oversees critical elements of the president’s agenda, like the travel ban, border wall construction and immigration enforcement.
At the White House, a replacement for Nielsen under discussion is Jim Carroll, a soft-spoken lawyer in the White House counsel’s office who is already in talks to play a new role in the West Wing. “He will be joining the WH staff,” press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders confirmed in an email, noting that his new position would likely involve a larger policy role. Sanders would not confirm what his title would be.
Carroll, a veteran of the Treasury Department and Justice Department, also worked as a lawyer in George W. Bush’s White House.
Kelly has been deeply involved in the search for Nielsen’s replacement, as he continues to organize and professionalize the West Wing, people familiar with the search said. Since taking over the operation last July, Kelly has conducted top-to-bottom reviews of every department and met with all senior officials to understand their long- and short-term goals.
He has tried to root out unofficial channels to Trump — like the cellphone of former bodyguard Keith Schiller — as well as positions that did not have a clear portfolio beneath them, such as Sebastian Gorka, a former deputy assistant to the president with vague duties.
It's unclear if Kelly will replace both Nielsen and Dearborn. One person close to the president suggested that Kelly would prefer having two deputies instead of three, as a way to streamline decision-making.
Kelly is also increasingly relying on White House staff secretary Rob Porter, a former Rhodes scholar and Harvard classmate of Jared Kushner, who has taken on a broader role helping to coordinate policy in the West Wing.
Dearborn is expected to move to the Commerce Department or other agency in a senior role — possibly as deputy secretary, which would require Senate confirmation, or top adviser, a position wouldn’t need lawmakers’ signoff.
Dearborn initially was supposed to focus on Congress, though that task now falls largely to director of legislative affairs Marc Short. POLITICO reported in September that Dearborn had been angling for the director of legislative affairs job, but that title went to Short instead.
Short reports to Dearborn in the White House organization chart, but in practice he has become the more senior official, operating on his own.
Source
|
On November 11 2017 03:18 Plansix wrote:
The naked doubling down on the culture war argument is a huge mistake for conservatives. It removes the idea that they are just pushing to have their beliefs reflected in society. Now their argument is that they are in direct conflict with other beliefs and must "win" without an end game or goal.
Not sure what exactly you're referring to by culture war, but the one war that I think the left is absolutely losing is the racism one. We are losing that one really badly.
|
|
|
On November 11 2017 03:30 Mohdoo wrote:Show nested quote +On November 11 2017 03:18 Plansix wrote:
The naked doubling down on the culture war argument is a huge mistake for conservatives. It removes the idea that they are just pushing to have their beliefs reflected in society. Now their argument is that they are in direct conflict with other beliefs and must "win" without an end game or goal. Not sure what exactly you're referring to by culture war, but the one war that I think the left is absolutely losing is the racism one. We are losing that one really badly.
The entire concept that its a war is the problem. It feeds into the media slotting of all political stances into red vs blue. Racism is a blight for everyone, not just the left. The right isn't going to reap any rewards if they somehow managed to empower enough people pass some Jim Crow 2.0, Fresh and New for 2018. Repressing blacks and other minorities is really going to backfire around 2040 when whites are not the majority of voters anymore. It will be bad for the country, conservative and socialist alike. The same with with Moore. This isn't a left or right thing with him. Roy Moore is just bad for America. He doesn't respect the rule of law or the constitution.
Grievance based politics might drive people to vote, but its not a way to govern. Turning the other side into cartoon villains called Leftist means that nothing will ever get passed. Demonizing goverment means you can't govern. If it goes on for long enough, the dysfunction will spread outside of congress the rest of the nation.
|
On November 11 2017 03:26 Wulfey_LA wrote:Show nested quote +On November 11 2017 03:14 Danglars wrote:On November 11 2017 03:09 Wulfey_LA wrote:On November 11 2017 03:06 Introvert wrote:On November 11 2017 03:00 Wulfey_LA wrote:Anti-left grievance && Culture War == okay to vote for monsters I am going to come back to that piece again when Conservative Principles come up again in this thread. I have repeatedly said that Conservative Principles are really just anti-lib and Kulturkampf. Erick Erickson has kindly agreed with my thesis and laid it out as a justification for voting Republican. You only read the part of the post you wanted to. Keep up the good work. We'll continue to ignore you for the most part. Erick's piece isn't long. The only part I didn't mention was his various whataboutisms and appeals to hypocrisy. His appeals to hypocrisy are laughable because he is using them in a piece to justify the hypocrisy in voting for a molester like Moore. Let's just assume everything he says is on shaky ground and proceed without troublesome addressing jack shit. Hey, look, you have zero arguments for anything and rely on dismissal and labeling. You're a credit to your intellectual side of the aisle. Read Erick's piece. He puts up several justifications for voting for Moore. I have accurately labeled them. The Left are the real villains opener + Show Spoiler +
Well, just this past Sunday a militant atheist shot up a church in Texas, killing about half the congregation. One of those killed was still in the womb, but the baby gets counted as a person to boost the arguments for gun control, otherwise the baby would just be a fetus.
And many on the left on social media attacked the congregants of the church. Some said they got what they deserved. Meanwhile, the media ran with stories of chainsaws attached to machine guns distorting all the basic facts out of willful ignorance.
A week before, a Muslim ran over a bunch of people in New York while Democrats were patting themselves on the back for showing Trump voters running over muslim kids on television.
A few weeks before that, a CBS lawyer lost her job for mocking the dead in Las Vegas that they deserved what they got after a mass shooting, the motive behind which is still unknown.
Anti Left Grievance + Show Spoiler +
While all of this is going on, a cake baker is headed to the Supreme Court because he had the audacity to bake a cake for a gay wedding, but he would not do all the decorations the gay couple wanted. So the baker got compared to a Nazi. He will join a florist at the Court who is being put out of business because despite having gay clients, she won’t provide flowers for gay weddings.
People are being harassed for refusing to cheer on men with mental illness who think they are women and the left thinks people in Alabama should have to let men use the ladies’ bathroom. The left is openly counting the days before churches can have their tax exempt status revoked for not embracing gay marriage. Christian private schools will be the first targets. The media on a near weekly basis runs stories that paint culturally conservative voters in a negative light, often distorting basic facts for the sake of narrative.
So you’ll have to excuse Trump voters and Moore voters for thinking the left in this country with a complicit media is out to get them.
Along comes a story about Roy Moore, a happily married man, that involves facts from 30 to 40 years ago and many of the same people who’ve spent a long time covering for people like Harvey Weinstein and are still covering for Hollywood pedophiles are piling on the man. The GOP, who hates cultural conservatives anyway, was quick to pile on.
I don’t blame the Roy Moore voters for thinking people are out to get them because people really are out to get them.
Moore is a fighter for these people. He purports to share their values. And all the people his voters hate happen to hate Roy Moore. They talk about innocence until proven guilty, but they’re ready to run Moore out of town. I don’t blame Moore’s voters, but I do have to blame those who are trying to defend Moore and dismiss the accusations or attack the women coming forward. Conservatism keeps being degraded by a bunch of people who talk Jesus and behave like Satan.
Culture War + Show Spoiler +
Y’all, I think the facts of the case as presented by the Washington Post are pretty damning. If I were a voter in Alabama, I would probably have to sit it out. But there are a lot of voters who are really damn tired of the culture war and they just want to be left alone. But the left won’t leave them alone. They’re coming for their churches’ tax exempt status. They are coming to force them to either get on board the secular progressive agenda or go into hiding. They are coming for their kids and their guns as well.
So now you are telling them they are really awful, bad people if they stick with Roy Moore instead of allowing into office a man who will side with the people who are out to get them?
I suspect they’ll take your aspersions and hate. They already think you hate them. And because the other side will accept nothing less than the destruction of their way of life, even if they want to walk away from Roy Moore they can’t. Because the other side is bent on their destruction and they think, rightly, that Roy Moore is the only one standing with them.
So we have the luxury of turning our nose up at it. And we can say character counts. But they believe character and morals count too and while they might find Moore’s actions reprehensible, they know the other side won’t be happy until their kids are brainwashed into thinking boys can be girls, a baby’s brains can be harvested with taxpayer subsides, and guns should be made extinct.
You really want to make them choose? You helped cause an existential crisis where they have every good reason to believe their way of life and their values are at stake and you want them to surrender? I can’t blame them for refusing even if I disagree. If you’re demanding the other side surrender in the culture war, don’t be surprised when they’re willing to stand with people they’d never otherwise consider in the name of protecting themselves and their families.
Left are the real villains (hypocrites) + Ant-left grievance + Culture War = Okay to vote for a molester These are the true values of conservatism. http://theresurgent.com/i-dont-blame-roy-moore-voters-for-sticking-with-him/EDIT: I do think that this is the most honest and straightforward case for Moore. Straight up tribalism and culture war as justifications for voting evil. The other defenses of voting Moore will be be much less honest than Erick is here.
There is no "conservative principles" reason to vote for Jones. Taking that tack in the argument won't work. Not voting for either is defensible too.
|
On November 11 2017 03:30 Mohdoo wrote:Show nested quote +On November 11 2017 03:18 Plansix wrote:
The naked doubling down on the culture war argument is a huge mistake for conservatives. It removes the idea that they are just pushing to have their beliefs reflected in society. Now their argument is that they are in direct conflict with other beliefs and must "win" without an end game or goal. Not sure what exactly you're referring to by culture war, but the one war that I think the left is absolutely losing is the racism one. We are losing that one really badly.
I don't believe this is true. Racism is definitely more visible these days, but that doesn't necessarily mean that it is more prevalent in society than it has been in the past. That visibility is a good thing because without it, it's not possible to make progress.
Take cell phone cams and police brutality for example. Does anyone think that police today are more violent with suspects than they have been historically? I doubt it. Instead, we just hear about it more because of new technology and social media.
|
Well, colour me impressed.
|
On November 11 2017 02:58 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On November 11 2017 02:32 ZasZ. wrote:On November 11 2017 02:07 Gorsameth wrote:On November 11 2017 01:29 Introvert wrote:
They know it's wrong, they just feel they have no choice. Real hard to vote for Jones esp given his abortion position.
Of course low-key strat here could be vote Moore, Moore wins, Moore resigns/leaves/forced out/forfeits spot --> gov appoints new Senator. That explains so much. In your mind being pro-choice is literally worse then being a pedophile? No wonder the abortion debate doesn't go anywhere when thats your moral scale. I mean if one truly believes that every abortion is a murder, I could see them justifying voting for an alleged pedophile over someone who advocates for the mass murder of human life. That doesn't seem like much of a leap at all. This. If you genuinely believe abortion is baby killing then it's not a high bar for your candidate to clear. What's always confused me is that people believe abortion is baby killing but believe that their moral duty to stand against baby killing is satisfied by voting against it. I'm glad they don't engage in more direction action against the baby murder centres, but I'm not sure why they don't.
sadly too many do take action 
that said, a fair number of the more reasonable folks do a lot more than just voting against it without going to the dangerous extremes; alot do stuff like active picketing and such.
|
On November 11 2017 03:47 Introvert wrote:Show nested quote +On November 11 2017 03:26 Wulfey_LA wrote:On November 11 2017 03:14 Danglars wrote:On November 11 2017 03:09 Wulfey_LA wrote:On November 11 2017 03:06 Introvert wrote:On November 11 2017 03:00 Wulfey_LA wrote:Anti-left grievance && Culture War == okay to vote for monsters I am going to come back to that piece again when Conservative Principles come up again in this thread. I have repeatedly said that Conservative Principles are really just anti-lib and Kulturkampf. Erick Erickson has kindly agreed with my thesis and laid it out as a justification for voting Republican. You only read the part of the post you wanted to. Keep up the good work. We'll continue to ignore you for the most part. Erick's piece isn't long. The only part I didn't mention was his various whataboutisms and appeals to hypocrisy. His appeals to hypocrisy are laughable because he is using them in a piece to justify the hypocrisy in voting for a molester like Moore. Let's just assume everything he says is on shaky ground and proceed without troublesome addressing jack shit. Hey, look, you have zero arguments for anything and rely on dismissal and labeling. You're a credit to your intellectual side of the aisle. Read Erick's piece. He puts up several justifications for voting for Moore. I have accurately labeled them. The Left are the real villains opener + Show Spoiler +
Well, just this past Sunday a militant atheist shot up a church in Texas, killing about half the congregation. One of those killed was still in the womb, but the baby gets counted as a person to boost the arguments for gun control, otherwise the baby would just be a fetus.
And many on the left on social media attacked the congregants of the church. Some said they got what they deserved. Meanwhile, the media ran with stories of chainsaws attached to machine guns distorting all the basic facts out of willful ignorance.
A week before, a Muslim ran over a bunch of people in New York while Democrats were patting themselves on the back for showing Trump voters running over muslim kids on television.
A few weeks before that, a CBS lawyer lost her job for mocking the dead in Las Vegas that they deserved what they got after a mass shooting, the motive behind which is still unknown.
Anti Left Grievance + Show Spoiler +
While all of this is going on, a cake baker is headed to the Supreme Court because he had the audacity to bake a cake for a gay wedding, but he would not do all the decorations the gay couple wanted. So the baker got compared to a Nazi. He will join a florist at the Court who is being put out of business because despite having gay clients, she won’t provide flowers for gay weddings.
People are being harassed for refusing to cheer on men with mental illness who think they are women and the left thinks people in Alabama should have to let men use the ladies’ bathroom. The left is openly counting the days before churches can have their tax exempt status revoked for not embracing gay marriage. Christian private schools will be the first targets. The media on a near weekly basis runs stories that paint culturally conservative voters in a negative light, often distorting basic facts for the sake of narrative.
So you’ll have to excuse Trump voters and Moore voters for thinking the left in this country with a complicit media is out to get them.
Along comes a story about Roy Moore, a happily married man, that involves facts from 30 to 40 years ago and many of the same people who’ve spent a long time covering for people like Harvey Weinstein and are still covering for Hollywood pedophiles are piling on the man. The GOP, who hates cultural conservatives anyway, was quick to pile on.
I don’t blame the Roy Moore voters for thinking people are out to get them because people really are out to get them.
Moore is a fighter for these people. He purports to share their values. And all the people his voters hate happen to hate Roy Moore. They talk about innocence until proven guilty, but they’re ready to run Moore out of town. I don’t blame Moore’s voters, but I do have to blame those who are trying to defend Moore and dismiss the accusations or attack the women coming forward. Conservatism keeps being degraded by a bunch of people who talk Jesus and behave like Satan.
Culture War + Show Spoiler +
Y’all, I think the facts of the case as presented by the Washington Post are pretty damning. If I were a voter in Alabama, I would probably have to sit it out. But there are a lot of voters who are really damn tired of the culture war and they just want to be left alone. But the left won’t leave them alone. They’re coming for their churches’ tax exempt status. They are coming to force them to either get on board the secular progressive agenda or go into hiding. They are coming for their kids and their guns as well.
So now you are telling them they are really awful, bad people if they stick with Roy Moore instead of allowing into office a man who will side with the people who are out to get them?
I suspect they’ll take your aspersions and hate. They already think you hate them. And because the other side will accept nothing less than the destruction of their way of life, even if they want to walk away from Roy Moore they can’t. Because the other side is bent on their destruction and they think, rightly, that Roy Moore is the only one standing with them.
So we have the luxury of turning our nose up at it. And we can say character counts. But they believe character and morals count too and while they might find Moore’s actions reprehensible, they know the other side won’t be happy until their kids are brainwashed into thinking boys can be girls, a baby’s brains can be harvested with taxpayer subsides, and guns should be made extinct.
You really want to make them choose? You helped cause an existential crisis where they have every good reason to believe their way of life and their values are at stake and you want them to surrender? I can’t blame them for refusing even if I disagree. If you’re demanding the other side surrender in the culture war, don’t be surprised when they’re willing to stand with people they’d never otherwise consider in the name of protecting themselves and their families.
Left are the real villains (hypocrites) + Ant-left grievance + Culture War = Okay to vote for a molester These are the true values of conservatism. http://theresurgent.com/i-dont-blame-roy-moore-voters-for-sticking-with-him/EDIT: I do think that this is the most honest and straightforward case for Moore. Straight up tribalism and culture war as justifications for voting evil. The other defenses of voting Moore will be be much less honest than Erick is here. There is no "conservative principles" reason to vote for Jones. Taking that tack in the argument won't work. Not voting for either is defensible too.
I can understand not voting for either, certainly. But people (not necessarily here) are trying to defend voting for Moore.
|
On November 11 2017 03:52 Gorsameth wrote:Show nested quote +On November 11 2017 03:47 Introvert wrote:On November 11 2017 03:26 Wulfey_LA wrote:On November 11 2017 03:14 Danglars wrote:On November 11 2017 03:09 Wulfey_LA wrote:On November 11 2017 03:06 Introvert wrote:On November 11 2017 03:00 Wulfey_LA wrote:Anti-left grievance && Culture War == okay to vote for monsters I am going to come back to that piece again when Conservative Principles come up again in this thread. I have repeatedly said that Conservative Principles are really just anti-lib and Kulturkampf. Erick Erickson has kindly agreed with my thesis and laid it out as a justification for voting Republican. You only read the part of the post you wanted to. Keep up the good work. We'll continue to ignore you for the most part. Erick's piece isn't long. The only part I didn't mention was his various whataboutisms and appeals to hypocrisy. His appeals to hypocrisy are laughable because he is using them in a piece to justify the hypocrisy in voting for a molester like Moore. Let's just assume everything he says is on shaky ground and proceed without troublesome addressing jack shit. Hey, look, you have zero arguments for anything and rely on dismissal and labeling. You're a credit to your intellectual side of the aisle. Read Erick's piece. He puts up several justifications for voting for Moore. I have accurately labeled them. The Left are the real villains opener + Show Spoiler +
Well, just this past Sunday a militant atheist shot up a church in Texas, killing about half the congregation. One of those killed was still in the womb, but the baby gets counted as a person to boost the arguments for gun control, otherwise the baby would just be a fetus.
And many on the left on social media attacked the congregants of the church. Some said they got what they deserved. Meanwhile, the media ran with stories of chainsaws attached to machine guns distorting all the basic facts out of willful ignorance.
A week before, a Muslim ran over a bunch of people in New York while Democrats were patting themselves on the back for showing Trump voters running over muslim kids on television.
A few weeks before that, a CBS lawyer lost her job for mocking the dead in Las Vegas that they deserved what they got after a mass shooting, the motive behind which is still unknown.
Anti Left Grievance + Show Spoiler +
While all of this is going on, a cake baker is headed to the Supreme Court because he had the audacity to bake a cake for a gay wedding, but he would not do all the decorations the gay couple wanted. So the baker got compared to a Nazi. He will join a florist at the Court who is being put out of business because despite having gay clients, she won’t provide flowers for gay weddings.
People are being harassed for refusing to cheer on men with mental illness who think they are women and the left thinks people in Alabama should have to let men use the ladies’ bathroom. The left is openly counting the days before churches can have their tax exempt status revoked for not embracing gay marriage. Christian private schools will be the first targets. The media on a near weekly basis runs stories that paint culturally conservative voters in a negative light, often distorting basic facts for the sake of narrative.
So you’ll have to excuse Trump voters and Moore voters for thinking the left in this country with a complicit media is out to get them.
Along comes a story about Roy Moore, a happily married man, that involves facts from 30 to 40 years ago and many of the same people who’ve spent a long time covering for people like Harvey Weinstein and are still covering for Hollywood pedophiles are piling on the man. The GOP, who hates cultural conservatives anyway, was quick to pile on.
I don’t blame the Roy Moore voters for thinking people are out to get them because people really are out to get them.
Moore is a fighter for these people. He purports to share their values. And all the people his voters hate happen to hate Roy Moore. They talk about innocence until proven guilty, but they’re ready to run Moore out of town. I don’t blame Moore’s voters, but I do have to blame those who are trying to defend Moore and dismiss the accusations or attack the women coming forward. Conservatism keeps being degraded by a bunch of people who talk Jesus and behave like Satan.
Culture War + Show Spoiler +
Y’all, I think the facts of the case as presented by the Washington Post are pretty damning. If I were a voter in Alabama, I would probably have to sit it out. But there are a lot of voters who are really damn tired of the culture war and they just want to be left alone. But the left won’t leave them alone. They’re coming for their churches’ tax exempt status. They are coming to force them to either get on board the secular progressive agenda or go into hiding. They are coming for their kids and their guns as well.
So now you are telling them they are really awful, bad people if they stick with Roy Moore instead of allowing into office a man who will side with the people who are out to get them?
I suspect they’ll take your aspersions and hate. They already think you hate them. And because the other side will accept nothing less than the destruction of their way of life, even if they want to walk away from Roy Moore they can’t. Because the other side is bent on their destruction and they think, rightly, that Roy Moore is the only one standing with them.
So we have the luxury of turning our nose up at it. And we can say character counts. But they believe character and morals count too and while they might find Moore’s actions reprehensible, they know the other side won’t be happy until their kids are brainwashed into thinking boys can be girls, a baby’s brains can be harvested with taxpayer subsides, and guns should be made extinct.
You really want to make them choose? You helped cause an existential crisis where they have every good reason to believe their way of life and their values are at stake and you want them to surrender? I can’t blame them for refusing even if I disagree. If you’re demanding the other side surrender in the culture war, don’t be surprised when they’re willing to stand with people they’d never otherwise consider in the name of protecting themselves and their families.
Left are the real villains (hypocrites) + Ant-left grievance + Culture War = Okay to vote for a molester These are the true values of conservatism. http://theresurgent.com/i-dont-blame-roy-moore-voters-for-sticking-with-him/EDIT: I do think that this is the most honest and straightforward case for Moore. Straight up tribalism and culture war as justifications for voting evil. The other defenses of voting Moore will be be much less honest than Erick is here. There is no "conservative principles" reason to vote for Jones. Taking that tack in the argument won't work. Not voting for either is defensible too. I can understand not voting for either, certainly. But people (not necessarily here) are trying to defend voting for Moore.
I really don't get how people can vote for him. For fuck sake just run Strange as a write in, he will win it is fucking Alabama.
|
I will say that the left dropped the ball on racism when they convinced themselves we were beyond it in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Even in 2008 I was convinced I would see the end of wide spread of systematic racism in the US. Now I live in the real world where I know that will never truly happen.
|
On November 11 2017 03:26 Wulfey_LA wrote:Show nested quote +On November 11 2017 03:14 Danglars wrote:On November 11 2017 03:09 Wulfey_LA wrote:On November 11 2017 03:06 Introvert wrote:On November 11 2017 03:00 Wulfey_LA wrote:Anti-left grievance && Culture War == okay to vote for monsters I am going to come back to that piece again when Conservative Principles come up again in this thread. I have repeatedly said that Conservative Principles are really just anti-lib and Kulturkampf. Erick Erickson has kindly agreed with my thesis and laid it out as a justification for voting Republican. You only read the part of the post you wanted to. Keep up the good work. We'll continue to ignore you for the most part. Erick's piece isn't long. The only part I didn't mention was his various whataboutisms and appeals to hypocrisy. His appeals to hypocrisy are laughable because he is using them in a piece to justify the hypocrisy in voting for a molester like Moore. Let's just assume everything he says is on shaky ground and proceed without troublesome addressing jack shit. Hey, look, you have zero arguments for anything and rely on dismissal and labeling. You're a credit to your intellectual side of the aisle. Read Erick's piece. He puts up several justifications for voting for Moore. I have accurately labeled them. The Left are the real villains opener + Show Spoiler +
Well, just this past Sunday a militant atheist shot up a church in Texas, killing about half the congregation. One of those killed was still in the womb, but the baby gets counted as a person to boost the arguments for gun control, otherwise the baby would just be a fetus.
And many on the left on social media attacked the congregants of the church. Some said they got what they deserved. Meanwhile, the media ran with stories of chainsaws attached to machine guns distorting all the basic facts out of willful ignorance.
A week before, a Muslim ran over a bunch of people in New York while Democrats were patting themselves on the back for showing Trump voters running over muslim kids on television.
A few weeks before that, a CBS lawyer lost her job for mocking the dead in Las Vegas that they deserved what they got after a mass shooting, the motive behind which is still unknown.
Anti Left Grievance + Show Spoiler +
While all of this is going on, a cake baker is headed to the Supreme Court because he had the audacity to bake a cake for a gay wedding, but he would not do all the decorations the gay couple wanted. So the baker got compared to a Nazi. He will join a florist at the Court who is being put out of business because despite having gay clients, she won’t provide flowers for gay weddings.
People are being harassed for refusing to cheer on men with mental illness who think they are women and the left thinks people in Alabama should have to let men use the ladies’ bathroom. The left is openly counting the days before churches can have their tax exempt status revoked for not embracing gay marriage. Christian private schools will be the first targets. The media on a near weekly basis runs stories that paint culturally conservative voters in a negative light, often distorting basic facts for the sake of narrative.
So you’ll have to excuse Trump voters and Moore voters for thinking the left in this country with a complicit media is out to get them.
Along comes a story about Roy Moore, a happily married man, that involves facts from 30 to 40 years ago and many of the same people who’ve spent a long time covering for people like Harvey Weinstein and are still covering for Hollywood pedophiles are piling on the man. The GOP, who hates cultural conservatives anyway, was quick to pile on.
I don’t blame the Roy Moore voters for thinking people are out to get them because people really are out to get them.
Moore is a fighter for these people. He purports to share their values. And all the people his voters hate happen to hate Roy Moore. They talk about innocence until proven guilty, but they’re ready to run Moore out of town. I don’t blame Moore’s voters, but I do have to blame those who are trying to defend Moore and dismiss the accusations or attack the women coming forward. Conservatism keeps being degraded by a bunch of people who talk Jesus and behave like Satan.
Culture War + Show Spoiler +
Y’all, I think the facts of the case as presented by the Washington Post are pretty damning. If I were a voter in Alabama, I would probably have to sit it out. But there are a lot of voters who are really damn tired of the culture war and they just want to be left alone. But the left won’t leave them alone. They’re coming for their churches’ tax exempt status. They are coming to force them to either get on board the secular progressive agenda or go into hiding. They are coming for their kids and their guns as well.
So now you are telling them they are really awful, bad people if they stick with Roy Moore instead of allowing into office a man who will side with the people who are out to get them?
I suspect they’ll take your aspersions and hate. They already think you hate them. And because the other side will accept nothing less than the destruction of their way of life, even if they want to walk away from Roy Moore they can’t. Because the other side is bent on their destruction and they think, rightly, that Roy Moore is the only one standing with them.
So we have the luxury of turning our nose up at it. And we can say character counts. But they believe character and morals count too and while they might find Moore’s actions reprehensible, they know the other side won’t be happy until their kids are brainwashed into thinking boys can be girls, a baby’s brains can be harvested with taxpayer subsides, and guns should be made extinct.
You really want to make them choose? You helped cause an existential crisis where they have every good reason to believe their way of life and their values are at stake and you want them to surrender? I can’t blame them for refusing even if I disagree. If you’re demanding the other side surrender in the culture war, don’t be surprised when they’re willing to stand with people they’d never otherwise consider in the name of protecting themselves and their families.
Left are the real villains (hypocrites) + Ant-left grievance + Culture War = Okay to vote for a molester These are the true values of conservatism. http://theresurgent.com/i-dont-blame-roy-moore-voters-for-sticking-with-him/EDIT: I do think that this is the most honest and straightforward case for Moore. Straight up tribalism and culture war as justifications for voting evil. The other defenses of voting Moore will be be much less honest than Erick is here.
You're doing better than previously. I congratulate you. You missed that he advocates a resignation upon election, but hey, there was some effort here.
A better thought process would be to look at history and conclude that the left is playing for keeps. Any one loss due to scandal or anything that leads to Dem control will result in them trying to solidify their gains and expand.
You want to operate a business? Too bad! You'll be compelled to close down or violate your religious beliefs. Militant atheists will shoot up your church and the left will take away your guns to defend yourself next time. They'll show a pickup truck running down kids and pat themselves on the back all while Muslims continue to kill Americans with trucks, guns, and bombs. Your churches will lose their tax status and your teenage daughters will be changing along with boys in the high school locker room.
The stakes are high.
He's battling people that hate his voters guts regardless. They'll sit silent on Weinstein and make more victims if it means keeping their moral superiority to comment on other offenders. No universal standard here, you'll basically still get screwed. It's a much tougher choice than the left pretends (disingenuously) the choice to be. The author does a good job saying it does not excuse people defending the act, which was and is ludicrous. Also missed by Wulfey, but mustn't let facts get in the way of narrative.
Basically, they have reason to believe their families, communities, and jobs hang in the balance should a Democrat ascend to the Senate. That's a very important consideration behind voting for a likely child molester. I really can't blame Alabama voters for that vote, though I personally couldn't bring myself to vote for him had he run in California in a competitive race. Wulfey likes universal disarmament of the right and indifference to culture wars ... basically a haughty, malicious person himself. Shitty choices abound.
|
On November 11 2017 03:22 IgnE wrote:Show nested quote +On November 11 2017 02:06 mozoku wrote:On November 11 2017 00:41 KwarK wrote:On November 10 2017 15:25 mozoku wrote:On November 10 2017 13:52 KwarK wrote:On November 10 2017 13:50 mozoku wrote:On November 10 2017 03:34 KwarK wrote:On November 10 2017 03:01 mozoku wrote:On November 10 2017 00:04 KwarK wrote:On November 09 2017 23:35 Danglars wrote:
[quote]
The wealth you've earned and has been taxed that the government allows you to give to your children and grandchildren ...
Examining how much property individuals attain in terms of net societal benefit as compared to pay cap ... catching up on presumed inadequate taxation over their lives ... allowing CEOs to make X redistribution must be done.
I shudder to think you're probably talking in good faith here. No individuals but only servants of societal benefit, no unjust policies but only the ends justify the means, and so transparently the politics of envy but without attendant shame. I really hate to think this may be what we're headed towards. It's the social contract that binds us together. If a man lived on an island by himself and all his possessions were crafted by his own hand I wouldn't see any reason to tax him. But within a capitalist society every rich man has become rich through the redistribution of labour from others to them. We allow capitalism to redistribute wealth because it's functionally effective for allocating resources within society but there is nothing natural about, say, land ownership. If a field in Texas is discovered to have oil underneath it it does not rationally follow that all Americans should have to collectively make the owner of the field a billionaire in order to make their commute to work. You need to recognize that the wealth capitalism awards you is simply the product of an artificial system that was created by men to help decide whether ipods or zunes were better. The fact that an employer is willing to pay you $100,000 for your labour does not mean that the intrinsic value of your labour is $100,000, it's just a bullshit number that the system produced. If you get rid of society none of this labour has any intrinsic value, it's simply a product of a set of rules we created. You're trying to combine two completely separate concepts, the individual and capitalist society and it doesn't work. You can't have capitalism on an island with one occupant. Taxation is part of the same book of rules that capitalism comes from, and neither makes any sense from an individualist perspective. I don't know how you're defining "intrinsic" value, but if an employer is willing to pay me $100,000, the market value of my labor is $100,000 (assuming efficient/competitive markets). If the market values my labor more than someone else's, it follows that (again, assuming efficient/competitive markets) society's best estimate of my labor's value is more than that other person's. Should not the fruits of society's labor be distributed, in principle, proportionally to those who created it? Especially given that, for most people, the market value of the labor is--to a pretty large degree--under their control during their lifetime? You can argue that heirs to large fortunes didn't really create the value that their fortune's create (their parents did) and I think that's fair (though there are counterarguments in favor of the estate tax as well), or that economic mobility isn't possible (I disagree), but to act like the only basis for how society's wealth should be distributed is the tyranny of the masses (who are writing the "book of rules" you're referencing--at least in a democracy) doesn't have any moral or ethical basis in favor of it. The share of the wealth you get and the share of the wealth you created aren't well correlated. That's pretty much the point of capitalism, the underlying mechanism that makes capitalism work is people attempting to do arbitrage to take advantage of that discrepancy. If you break it down to its very simplest village level bartering, the objective is to find something that you can produce in an hour that you can trade for firewood that took two hours to chop. You perform one hour of labour, and yet you get two hours of stuff. The mechanism relies upon disproportionate rewards to redistribute labour and direct economic activity. Clearly whatever the guy in the village was doing with his hour was the right thing to do, and other villagers may follow him until an equilibrium where 1 hour = 1 hour is restored. Arbitrage to exploit disproportionate rewards between what you contribute and what you get is the engine that drives capitalism. By the time we apply it on a modern global perspective the difference is staggering, a ratio of thousands of manhours to one in many cases. These differences are reinforced by artificial impositions upon the ability of many people to engage in arbitrage, such as denying Mexicans the ability to sell their labour in America, and by exploitation grandfathered in by the capital class. However, the basic engine remains the same, the economic systems offers participants in the economy disproportionate rewards for directing their labour in certain ways. The disproportionate outcome needs to exist for our society to work. We need doctors to get more than grocers to keep kids in school. But it doesn't follow that what the system outputs is what you deserve, or what you earned. It's certainly not what you created, any American can tell that the manhours of labour they consume on any given day greatly exceed the manhours of labour they performed. Deserve and earned are subjective moral concepts that aren't relevant to the mechanism, what you get is what you get. This is literally nonsense. I barely know where to begin. Suppose an hour's worth of labor chopping firewood produces $1 of firewood. The new guy creates $2/hr with whatever he's doing. He's twice as productive. If chooses to work the same amount of time, he gets twice as much stuff. That's literally the definition of proportional. How that's supposed to be disproportionate, I have no idea. The share of the wealth you get and the share of the wealth you created aren't well correlated. ??? I'm pretty sure fast-food workers are creating much less wealth than software engineers, successful investors, etc. I literally can't even imagine how society would exist if this statement were true. Why would capitalism even be efficient if this statement were true? What is your definition of "well correlated"? 0.99999999999999999?? It's certainly not what you created, any American can tell that the manhours of labour they consume on any given day greatly exceed the manhours of labour they performed. I'm not sure this is true at all. In fact, I'd lean towards not true if anything. Ever heard of an economy of scale? I work at a mega-scale tech company. I work 40-50 hrs/week, but my work influences thousands of people directly, and affects millions indirectly. Hell, the marginal cost of someone consuming my work is practically zero. Likewise, the marginal cost (in terms of other's time) of most of the stuff I consume is practically zero. That's how automation works, and is why we're fabulously wealthy compared to several hundred years ago. Why is the bartering village using dollars? Remove the dollars, try again. What objective system of valuation are you using to show that you're producing more value than the fast food worker from your day? Remembering of course that you're already justifying the getting more money than them by the fact that you create more value so you cannot complete the circle and use the more money to prove the greater value. Does it matter if they're bartering in gold, wood, virgins, or dollars? It's a trade they both agree to and the principles are the same. But I see the point that you're trying to make is that the efficient man's hour should, in principle, be worth no more than the inefficient man's hour if you don't care about productivity, and that productivity is independent of morality. However, the former statement is inherently incorrect because productivity and time are, by definition, linked, and a person's time has value in excess of that which can be determined monetarily. To simplify, let's assume they're both chopping lumber. The efficient man can simply choose to work 1/2 hour, have the same productivity, and keep the other 1/2 hour to himself. By nature of being more efficient (and his own efficiency is surely not intrinsically amoral), he's advantaged no matter what. Suppose, regardless of compensation, he only wanted to work 1/2 hour, and wanted to spend the other 1/2 hour with his kids. Are you going to argue that society is justified in forcing him to work the full hour? Or that they should discriminate against his good fortune by paying less for his lumber in the name of "equality"? That's certainly not a society I'd want to be a part of. I'm not saying anything of the sort regarding forcing people to work. No part of what I'm doing is advocating for societal change or the gulag. I'm saying that capitalism works as an effective tool for incentivising productive economic activity but that drawing moral conclusions regarding what you earned/own/deserve/created from the outcomes of a capitalist system is erroneous. It's very tempting to say "I'm paid twice as much money, therefore I earned twice as much" but what you earned is a moral judgement that capitalism makes no attempt to answer for you. I understand what you were trying to say. The problem is that productivity and time are directly dependent on each other, so the more efficient man literally owns the extra time his productivity has created (assuming you agree he should be free to use his time as he pleases). Whether or not you redistribute his present time or his past time is irrelevant from a moral perspective. Forcefully redistributing his wealth under any circumstances is equivalent to forced labor (perhaps a very small amount of forced labor, but a nonzero amount). Of course, everyone pretty much (including me) agrees that that if a second of forced labor at the end of a software engineer's workday can save millions of starving children (not realistic but making an extreme example to illustrate my point), it's morally justifiable to make the guy work the extra second. But the fact is it that's it's still a moral tradeoff that's being made. The software engineer has a true moral grievance (in some sense) in claiming that the arrangement is unfair to him--which stands in contrast to what you're asserting. You are really going down the wrong tracks here with "forced labor" and "moral grievance." Capitalism operates on "forced labor." It uses that "free labor" that is forced by necessity to take the market wage. You should really just abandon this whole line of thought.
This is independent of my point. Life doesn't exist without "forced labor." We'd starve to death. You can complain to Mother Nature it it makes you feel better.
Pure capitalism is a system that, at the very least, doesn't result in forced labor beyond what Mother Nature requires of us. You can choose simply choose not to trade (i.e. be a self-reliant hermit).
Granted, that's not a very convincing argument when any sort of reasonable utility/freedom conversion rate of introduced, but nobody really argues for pure capitalism either. As I've argued since the beginning, the morality of taxation is about tradeoffs. You and KwarK are the ones arguing raising taxes is essentially infinitely justifiable if efficiency isn't a concern.
|
Advocating for resignation upon election is so spineless I’m dumbstruck.
|
accusers and Republicans who said the U.S. Senate candidate should back out of the special election in an interview Thursday evening with The Times.
Henry, R-Hartselle, who represents a portion of Cullman County, said he suspects the timing of the stories told by five women about Moore’s alleged sexual advancements 40 years ago, as told to The Washington Post, are politically motivated as the Dec. 12 special election nears. Moore will face Democrat Doug Jones, a former U.S. attorney.
“The idea that accusations like this would stop his campaign is ludicrous. If this was a habit, like you’ve read with Bill Cosby and millions of dollars paid to settle cases and years of witnesses, that would be one thing,” Henry said. “You cannot tell me there hasn’t been an opportunity through the years to make these accusations with as many times as he’s (Moore) run (for office) and been in the news.
Henry said he believes legal action should be considered against Moore’s accusers, finding their story unbelievable.
“If they believe this man is predatory, they are guilty of allowing him to exist for 40 years. I think someone should prosecute and go after them. You can’t be a victim 40 years later, in my opinion,” Henry said.
The Alabama lawmaker said Moore is a threat to “establishment” lawmakers on the national level, including in the Republican Party.
“(Senate Majority Leader Mitch) McConnell and (Arizona Sen.) John McCain, what they said about Moore ending his campaign just really gets to me. They are two of the biggest goobers we have in Washington D.C.,” Henry said. “Even (U.S. Sen. Richard) Shelby was a coward with his comments. He’s not going to like Roy Moore because Shelby was a Democrat for a long time. Everyone close to the establishment is going to love this.”
Henry said he believes Moore’s accusers have been stoked by the Democratic Party and may be paid money eventually for their actions.
“I’m not buying it,” Henry said. “It’s too easy for someone to make these accusations. It’s foolish to go down that road, it’s like what if a frog had wings, he wouldn’t bump his ass every time he jumps.” www.cullmantimes.com
Women who accused Moore should be jailed, apparently.
|
|
|
|
|
|
EPT
