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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 March 15 2014 02:00 Wolfstan wrote:Show nested quote +On March 14 2014 21:23 BallinWitStalin wrote:On March 14 2014 07:06 Roe wrote:On March 13 2014 12:09 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On March 13 2014 02:27 Roe wrote:
When has american culture ever valued hard work? It's always been about innovating and creating new technology that reduces the amount of work we have to do...The business culture has always been about squeezing every penny and making things more efficient - not just doing your job and calling it a day. If you really value hard work you'd put a freeze on all technological and commercial progress. Automation (or whatever) and valuing hard work are not mutually exclusive things. I won't speak for the country as a whole, but a protestant / puritan work ethic was part of new england culture back before the US was the US. Automation is done because humans don't want to do hard work. This is blatantly false. I agree with Jonny there. Automation is done because it's profitable. If companies can pay a shitpile of poor people next to nothing to do the same task a series of expensive machines will do, the company isn't going to say "oh, shit, well these incredibly poor people don't want to work hard, so we'll waste money on these huge expensive machines instead". Just look at the export of manufacturing to the third world. It's not like those companies wanted to save Americans from working hard :/ I probably come at the issue from an entirely different angle than Jonny, though. "The value of hard work" is kind of a silly concept to begin with, I think it's a fucked up society that eschews the moral "value" of hard work but then allows the people with the most difficult, hard, and menial jobs to make wages (e.g. real value) barely enough to live off of so that they have to work twice as hard at two difficult, shitty jobs. Note that the people working these shit jobs are typically not the ones ranting about "American values of hard work", those people are usually wealthy people who, while undoubtedly working hard themselves (most of the time), don't have to work in the ridiculously depressing conditions described above. I view it as an ideology used to justify the privileged position the wealthy maintain at the expense of the poor. Those shit jobs will always exist, someone has to do them. People just construct ideological systems that don't require them to pay those people well, because the people working those shit jobs typically have less market power (low skill level resulting in a high labour supply). People who really value hard work would value minimum wage laws, so that all types of "hard work" are rewarded at monetary values adequate to maintain a decent standard of living. If you work 40 hours a week, you should be able to feed your family healthy food and house them in a decent shelter. And don't give me this shit about minimum wages destroying jobs, it's pretty much been demonstrated that's a falsehood under most conditions. Why do people advocate raising the minimum wage laws when the high cash positions on corporate balance sheets are showing investing in more jobs is a money losing proposition? Executives are finding there are better returns in buybacks, dividends, marketable securities and inflation eating cash positions then investing in production and employees. The minimum wage employee needs to find a way to be more useful to society than demanding that they get higher wages and social handouts. Minimum wage jobs are not meant for those seeking living wages. "Would you like fries with that?" should be asked by students, housewives, and seniors, not those from 25-60 in prime working years. Technology is great, it allows you to do more with less hours and people.
The minimum wage is a form of transfer payments, the purpose of which is to put free money in the pockets of those who would otherwise not have much or not have any. The reason for this is not charity, it is that when you distribute income more equitably the economy as a whole benefits. Its much better for poor people to have some money, even at the expense of higher taxes, that they can pump back into the economy than for them to be destitute and have that money sit in the bank account of a wealthy individual.
When there are better returns in financial instruments than in real output that is mostly just indicative of an unhealthy economy, or financial instruments that are being propped up by zero interest rates
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On March 15 2014 02:00 Wolfstan wrote:Show nested quote +On March 14 2014 21:23 BallinWitStalin wrote:On March 14 2014 07:06 Roe wrote:On March 13 2014 12:09 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On March 13 2014 02:27 Roe wrote:
When has american culture ever valued hard work? It's always been about innovating and creating new technology that reduces the amount of work we have to do...The business culture has always been about squeezing every penny and making things more efficient - not just doing your job and calling it a day. If you really value hard work you'd put a freeze on all technological and commercial progress. Automation (or whatever) and valuing hard work are not mutually exclusive things. I won't speak for the country as a whole, but a protestant / puritan work ethic was part of new england culture back before the US was the US. Automation is done because humans don't want to do hard work. This is blatantly false. I agree with Jonny there. Automation is done because it's profitable. If companies can pay a shitpile of poor people next to nothing to do the same task a series of expensive machines will do, the company isn't going to say "oh, shit, well these incredibly poor people don't want to work hard, so we'll waste money on these huge expensive machines instead". Just look at the export of manufacturing to the third world. It's not like those companies wanted to save Americans from working hard :/ I probably come at the issue from an entirely different angle than Jonny, though. "The value of hard work" is kind of a silly concept to begin with, I think it's a fucked up society that eschews the moral "value" of hard work but then allows the people with the most difficult, hard, and menial jobs to make wages (e.g. real value) barely enough to live off of so that they have to work twice as hard at two difficult, shitty jobs. Note that the people working these shit jobs are typically not the ones ranting about "American values of hard work", those people are usually wealthy people who, while undoubtedly working hard themselves (most of the time), don't have to work in the ridiculously depressing conditions described above. I view it as an ideology used to justify the privileged position the wealthy maintain at the expense of the poor. Those shit jobs will always exist, someone has to do them. People just construct ideological systems that don't require them to pay those people well, because the people working those shit jobs typically have less market power (low skill level resulting in a high labour supply). People who really value hard work would value minimum wage laws, so that all types of "hard work" are rewarded at monetary values adequate to maintain a decent standard of living. If you work 40 hours a week, you should be able to feed your family healthy food and house them in a decent shelter. And don't give me this shit about minimum wages destroying jobs, it's pretty much been demonstrated that's a falsehood under most conditions. Why do people advocate raising the minimum wage laws when the high cash positions on corporate balance sheets are showing investing in more jobs is a money losing proposition? Executives are finding there are better returns in buybacks, dividends, marketable securities and inflation eating cash positions then investing in production and employees. The minimum wage employee needs to find a way to be more useful to society than demanding that they get higher wages and social handouts. Minimum wage jobs are not meant for those seeking living wages. "Would you like fries with that?" should be asked by students, housewives, and seniors, not those from 25-60 in prime working years. Technology is great, it allows you to do more with less hours and people.
That's because there is no demand for more production. Increasing corporate profitability in the recent term has not coincided with reinvestment in production and trade, especially in the US, as capital is otherwise experiencing a profit squeeze with respect to traditional commodities -- people are either unwilling to pay more for more goods or it's impossible to cut the cost of making goods any further. So your solution is to keep funneling more money into high finance.
But the question is: where do you think those profits are coming from? They aren't coming from increased material prosperity. They are coming from borrowing against future profits, both from debt-financed consumerism in the increasingly strapped populations of the US and some European countries, and from the debt-financing of capitalists such as developers who fed the housing boom in the aughts, built unused towns in China, etc. Germany complains about the spendthrift policies and attitudes of its European neighbors, but like China, relies on exports to sustain its economy. When demand falls elsewhere in the world, those countries aren't going to be able to offload all their exports onto other populations anymore. Your kind of thinking makes sense if you can only see 5 yards in front of you, and admittedly, that's why corporations are increasingly investing in securities and the like. There are a number of large corporations in America that make more money off of their massive investment portfolio than their traditional commodities business that everyone associates them with. But the troubling thing is that you think these financial instruments just create value out of thin air.
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COLUMBIA, S.C.. – March 13, 2014. Today, the South Carolina senate sent a bill over to the state house which would authorize the growing and production of industrial hemp within the state, effectively nullifying the unconstitutional federal ban on the same.
Introduced by Sen. Kevin Bryant along with cosponsors Sen. Lee Bright and Sen. Tom Davis, S.0839 passed by a 42-0 unanimous vote this week.
The bill reads, in part, “It is lawful for an individual to cultivate, produce, or otherwise grow industrial hemp in this State to be used for any lawful purpose, including, but not limited to, the manufacture of industrial hemp products, and scientific, agricultural, or other research related to other lawful applications for industrial hemp.”
Experts suggest that the U.S. market for hemp is around $500 million per year.
But, since the enactment of the unconstitutional federal controlled-substances act in 1970, the Drug Enforcement Agency has prevented the production of hemp within the United States. Many hemp supporters feel that the DEA has been used as an “attack dog” of sorts to prevent competition with major industries where American-grown hemp products would create serious market competition: Cotton, Paper/Lumber, Oil, and others.
Experts count as many as 25,000 uses for industrial hemp, including food, cosmetics, plastics and bio-fuel. The U.S. is currently the world’s #1 importer of hemp fiber for various products, with China and Canada acting as the top two exporters in the world.
This month, President Barack Obama signed a new farm bill into law, which included a provision allowing a handful of states to begin limited research programs growing hemp. The new “hemp amendment”
Source
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United States43197 Posts
On March 15 2014 04:15 Danglars wrote:Show nested quote +On March 15 2014 00:52 Roe wrote:On March 14 2014 22:16 aksfjh wrote:On March 14 2014 21:55 Roe wrote:
Why is profitability attractive? I feel a fundamental philosophical discussion brewing... Stop it  On March 14 2014 15:44 Danglars wrote:John Kerry: Russia has until Monday to reverse course in UkraineSecretary of State John Kerry warned of serious repercussions for Russia on Monday if last-ditch talks over the weekend to resolve the crisis in Ukraine failed to persuade Moscow to soften its stance.
Kerry will travel to London for a Friday meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov ahead of a Sunday referendum vote in the Crimea region to secede from Ukraine and join the Russian Federation.
U.S. and European officials argue that Moscow is orchestrating the referendum and waging an intimidation campaign with thousands of Russian troops controlling the region. If Russian-backed lawmakers in Crimea go through with the Sunday referendum, Kerry said the U.S. and its European allies will not recognize it as legitimate under international law.
The U.S. and Europe on Monday would then unite to impose sanctions on Russia, Kerry told a Senate Appropriations subcommittee Thursday during a hearing on the State Department's budget.
“There will be a response of some kind to the referendum itself,” Kerry said. “If there is no sign [from Russia] of any capacity to respond to this issue ... there will be a very serious series of steps on Monday.” source The real joke in this is the piecemeal response that we'll get against Russia. The most the west will do is sanctions, but EU doesn't want to lose some of its affordable natural gas. Also, the UK is likely going to exempt London (the only city in their entire country worth doing business with internationally). At best the US will show a strong arm, but Russia gets almost nothing from us anyways. This is an interesting point, and it's one that was brought up earlier. To make it quick: Are we having actually meaningful and important discussions, or is this just a political LR thread? From people like farva, kwark, and even IgnE, I've learned more reasons on a variety of issues why the left believes what they believe and rejects what they reject. That's a useful discussion for me to have, since even in local discussions (SoCal is pretty far left), some of these things don't come up that someone from the east coast or Europe considers the strongest case for their argument. The prior thread to this, the 2012 election thread, really was a pleasure to read and contribute.
It's funny to hear someone think of me as being on the left while the sad news about Tony Benn reminds me how far right I am.
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On March 15 2014 01:31 aksfjh wrote:Show nested quote +On March 15 2014 00:52 Roe wrote:On March 14 2014 22:16 aksfjh wrote:On March 14 2014 21:55 Roe wrote:
Why is profitability attractive? I feel a fundamental philosophical discussion brewing... Stop it On March 14 2014 15:44 Danglars wrote:John Kerry: Russia has until Monday to reverse course in UkraineSecretary of State John Kerry warned of serious repercussions for Russia on Monday if last-ditch talks over the weekend to resolve the crisis in Ukraine failed to persuade Moscow to soften its stance.
Kerry will travel to London for a Friday meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov ahead of a Sunday referendum vote in the Crimea region to secede from Ukraine and join the Russian Federation.
U.S. and European officials argue that Moscow is orchestrating the referendum and waging an intimidation campaign with thousands of Russian troops controlling the region. If Russian-backed lawmakers in Crimea go through with the Sunday referendum, Kerry said the U.S. and its European allies will not recognize it as legitimate under international law.
The U.S. and Europe on Monday would then unite to impose sanctions on Russia, Kerry told a Senate Appropriations subcommittee Thursday during a hearing on the State Department's budget.
“There will be a response of some kind to the referendum itself,” Kerry said. “If there is no sign [from Russia] of any capacity to respond to this issue ... there will be a very serious series of steps on Monday.” source The real joke in this is the piecemeal response that we'll get against Russia. The most the west will do is sanctions, but EU doesn't want to lose some of its affordable natural gas. Also, the UK is likely going to exempt London (the only city in their entire country worth doing business with internationally). At best the US will show a strong arm, but Russia gets almost nothing from us anyways. This is an interesting point, and it's one that was brought up earlier. To make it quick: Are we having actually meaningful and important discussions, or is this just a political LR thread? Going a bit meta here: + Show Spoiler +
Discussions pertaining to current policy seem apt for this topic. Discussions that break down all the way to fundamental philosophy seem a bit of a stretch, especially when that philosophy is outside the US cultural mainstream.
There are discussions that take place with political philosophy differences between major US parties. For example, the laissez-faire economic approach of the (far) right, and the regulative/interventionist economic policies of the (far) left. There's not really a basis for discussing the intricacies of Marxism or Anarchism in a US politics thread. In the same breath, there's little reason to discuss the semantic differences between each of our definitions of "profitability" and its implications. Since the discussion is really a proxy for Communism vs Capitalism, it makes little sense in a political discussion that doesn't even take the former side seriously.
Of course, this is just my personal opinion on the subject. I find it annoying.
On the Russia thing, anybody have an idea of what it would take to remove them from their permanent UN Security Council seat?
Most average people on either side don't really have the time or ability to think about these things super in-depth, either. Yet, everyone gets to vote. Therefore, discussion seems valuable. So if a somewhat deeper political discourse is still useful and important in the "real world," then I see no reason that it should not be done here, among many members of the general (US citizens) public.
I'd love to discuss Locke, Montesquieu, Tocqueville, etc. just as much as I would love to read more about some of the left's intellectuals and their ideas from people in this thread (a topic area I don't have as much experience in). But it is what it is, and you take topics as they come up.
It's less annoying if you just accept that, despite all the learning that may or may not take place, you are not going to actually change many (if any) minds here. Just try to have fun with it.
One of the primary purposes of this thread for me is to add links that people post to my favorites, whether I agree with them or not. Always good to have resources. And I just like arguing.
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The director of the U.S. government office that monitors scientific misconduct in biomedical research has resigned after 2 years out of frustration with the “remarkably dysfunctional” federal bureaucracy. David Wright, director of the Office of Research Integrity (ORI), writes in a scathing resignation letter obtained by ScienceInsider that the huge amount of time he spent trying to get things done made much of his time at ORI “the very worst job I have ever had.”
http://news.sciencemag.org/people-events/2014/03/top-u.s.-scientific-misconduct-official-quits-frustration-bureaucracy
Just a fun bit on bureaucracy. 
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They're lucky I'm not president or there'd be a whole lot of people fired.
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In his letter, David Wright writes that working with ORI’s “remarkable scientist-investigators” was “the best job I’ve ever had.” But that was only 35% of his job; the rest of the time he spent “navigating the remarkably dysfunctional HHS bureaucracy” to run ORI. Tasks that took a couple of days as a university administrator required weeks or months, he says. He writes that ORI’s budget was micromanaged by more senior officials, and that Koh’s office had a “seriously flawed” culture, calling it “secretive, autocratic and unaccountable.” For example, he told Wanda Jones, Koh’s deputy, that he urgently needed to appoint a director for ORI’s division of education. Jones told him the position was somewhere on a secret priority list of appointments. The position has not been filled 16 months later, David Wright notes.
OASH itself suffers from the tendency of bureaucracies to “focus … on perpetuating themselves,” David Wright writes. Officials spent “exorbitant amounts of time” in meetings and generating data and reports to make their divisions look productive, he writes. He asks whether OASH is the proper home for a regulatory office such as ORI, noting that Koh himself has described his office as an “intensely political environment.” Sounds like a fun job. I thought you had to be some wacko with a tinfoil hat to allege the bureaucracy was self-serving, hopelessly unfocused, and politicized.
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On March 15 2014 05:18 IgnE wrote:Show nested quote +On March 15 2014 02:00 Wolfstan wrote:On March 14 2014 21:23 BallinWitStalin wrote:On March 14 2014 07:06 Roe wrote:On March 13 2014 12:09 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On March 13 2014 02:27 Roe wrote:
When has american culture ever valued hard work? It's always been about innovating and creating new technology that reduces the amount of work we have to do...The business culture has always been about squeezing every penny and making things more efficient - not just doing your job and calling it a day. If you really value hard work you'd put a freeze on all technological and commercial progress. Automation (or whatever) and valuing hard work are not mutually exclusive things. I won't speak for the country as a whole, but a protestant / puritan work ethic was part of new england culture back before the US was the US. Automation is done because humans don't want to do hard work. This is blatantly false. I agree with Jonny there. Automation is done because it's profitable. If companies can pay a shitpile of poor people next to nothing to do the same task a series of expensive machines will do, the company isn't going to say "oh, shit, well these incredibly poor people don't want to work hard, so we'll waste money on these huge expensive machines instead". Just look at the export of manufacturing to the third world. It's not like those companies wanted to save Americans from working hard :/ I probably come at the issue from an entirely different angle than Jonny, though. "The value of hard work" is kind of a silly concept to begin with, I think it's a fucked up society that eschews the moral "value" of hard work but then allows the people with the most difficult, hard, and menial jobs to make wages (e.g. real value) barely enough to live off of so that they have to work twice as hard at two difficult, shitty jobs. Note that the people working these shit jobs are typically not the ones ranting about "American values of hard work", those people are usually wealthy people who, while undoubtedly working hard themselves (most of the time), don't have to work in the ridiculously depressing conditions described above. I view it as an ideology used to justify the privileged position the wealthy maintain at the expense of the poor. Those shit jobs will always exist, someone has to do them. People just construct ideological systems that don't require them to pay those people well, because the people working those shit jobs typically have less market power (low skill level resulting in a high labour supply). People who really value hard work would value minimum wage laws, so that all types of "hard work" are rewarded at monetary values adequate to maintain a decent standard of living. If you work 40 hours a week, you should be able to feed your family healthy food and house them in a decent shelter. And don't give me this shit about minimum wages destroying jobs, it's pretty much been demonstrated that's a falsehood under most conditions. Why do people advocate raising the minimum wage laws when the high cash positions on corporate balance sheets are showing investing in more jobs is a money losing proposition? Executives are finding there are better returns in buybacks, dividends, marketable securities and inflation eating cash positions then investing in production and employees. The minimum wage employee needs to find a way to be more useful to society than demanding that they get higher wages and social handouts. Minimum wage jobs are not meant for those seeking living wages. "Would you like fries with that?" should be asked by students, housewives, and seniors, not those from 25-60 in prime working years. Technology is great, it allows you to do more with less hours and people. That's because there is no demand for more production. Increasing corporate profitability in the recent term has not coincided with reinvestment in production and trade, especially in the US, as capital is otherwise experiencing a profit squeeze with respect to traditional commodities -- people are either unwilling to pay more for more goods or it's impossible to cut the cost of making goods any further. So your solution is to keep funneling more money into high finance. But the question is: where do you think those profits are coming from? They aren't coming from increased material prosperity. They are coming from borrowing against future profits, both from debt-financed consumerism in the increasingly strapped populations of the US and some European countries, and from the debt-financing of capitalists such as developers who fed the housing boom in the aughts, built unused towns in China, etc. Germany complains about the spendthrift policies and attitudes of its European neighbors, but like China, relies on exports to sustain its economy. When demand falls elsewhere in the world, those countries aren't going to be able to offload all their exports onto other populations anymore. Your kind of thinking makes sense if you can only see 5 yards in front of you, and admittedly, that's why corporations are increasingly investing in securities and the like. There are a number of large corporations in America that make more money off of their massive investment portfolio than their traditional commodities business that everyone associates them with. But the troubling thing is that you think these financial instruments just create value out of thin air.
Profits also come from reducing the middle line through layoffs and other expense reductions. Whether the financial instruments are going to create value or not it is profitable and that's all that matters. But increasing min. wage and making employers pay extra health coverage makes hiring even less attractive when compared to trading, capital expenditures to increase efficiency or outsourcing to the dude in Indonesia for a buck a day.
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On March 15 2014 07:46 Danglars wrote:Show nested quote +In his letter, David Wright writes that working with ORI’s “remarkable scientist-investigators” was “the best job I’ve ever had.” But that was only 35% of his job; the rest of the time he spent “navigating the remarkably dysfunctional HHS bureaucracy” to run ORI. Tasks that took a couple of days as a university administrator required weeks or months, he says. He writes that ORI’s budget was micromanaged by more senior officials, and that Koh’s office had a “seriously flawed” culture, calling it “secretive, autocratic and unaccountable.” For example, he told Wanda Jones, Koh’s deputy, that he urgently needed to appoint a director for ORI’s division of education. Jones told him the position was somewhere on a secret priority list of appointments. The position has not been filled 16 months later, David Wright notes.
OASH itself suffers from the tendency of bureaucracies to “focus … on perpetuating themselves,” David Wright writes. Officials spent “exorbitant amounts of time” in meetings and generating data and reports to make their divisions look productive, he writes. He asks whether OASH is the proper home for a regulatory office such as ORI, noting that Koh himself has described his office as an “intensely political environment.” Sounds like a fun job. I thought you had to be some wacko with a tinfoil hat to allege the bureaucracy was self-serving, hopelessly unfocused, and politicized.
You do realize that Max Weber already denounced the flaws of bureaucracies about a century ago, right? It doesn't change the fact that they are needed for modern states (and organizations) to exist.
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On March 14 2014 21:23 BallinWitStalin wrote:Show nested quote +On March 14 2014 07:06 Roe wrote:On March 13 2014 12:09 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On March 13 2014 02:27 Roe wrote:
When has american culture ever valued hard work? It's always been about innovating and creating new technology that reduces the amount of work we have to do...The business culture has always been about squeezing every penny and making things more efficient - not just doing your job and calling it a day. If you really value hard work you'd put a freeze on all technological and commercial progress. Automation (or whatever) and valuing hard work are not mutually exclusive things. I won't speak for the country as a whole, but a protestant / puritan work ethic was part of new england culture back before the US was the US. Automation is done because humans don't want to do hard work. This is blatantly false. I agree with Jonny there. Automation is done because it's profitable. If companies can pay a shitpile of poor people next to nothing to do the same task a series of expensive machines will do, the company isn't going to say "oh, shit, well these incredibly poor people don't want to work hard, so we'll waste money on these huge expensive machines instead". Just look at the export of manufacturing to the third world. It's not like those companies wanted to save Americans from working hard :/ I probably come at the issue from an entirely different angle than Jonny, though. "The value of hard work" is kind of a silly concept to begin with, I think it's a fucked up society that eschews the moral "value" of hard work but then allows the people with the most difficult, hard, and menial jobs to make wages (e.g. real value) barely enough to live off of so that they have to work twice as hard at two difficult, shitty jobs. Note that the people working these shit jobs are typically not the ones ranting about "American values of hard work", those people are usually wealthy people who, while undoubtedly working hard themselves (most of the time), don't have to work in the ridiculously depressing conditions described above. I view it as an ideology used to justify the privileged position the wealthy maintain at the expense of the poor. Those shit jobs will always exist, someone has to do them. People just construct ideological systems that don't require them to pay those people well, because the people working those shit jobs typically have less market power (low skill level resulting in a high labour supply). People who really value hard work would value minimum wage laws, so that all types of "hard work" are rewarded at monetary values adequate to maintain a decent standard of living. If you work 40 hours a week, you should be able to feed your family healthy food and house them in a decent shelter. And don't give me this shit about minimum wages destroying jobs, it's pretty much been demonstrated that's a falsehood under most conditions.
Automation may not be so profitable if we think about how paying your employees more may increase the demand. This is why during the first half of the XXth Ford was paying really well its employees.
The problem is that now with our open economies if companies pay more their core workers, it may not increase the demand for their own product but for a variety including products of other companies.
It's extremely criticized but countries like France, have a huge number of people working in public sector and frankly doing nothing much. But it's putting money into the economy and firing a good number of them would only result in the collapse of the economy.
Automation has always been used to have less expanses but if the people don't find jobs after that and can't buy your products then it might not be so profitable, and may be useless in some cases. I'm just saying because it would be impossible to compare two companies that are using one these two methods and not the other.
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On March 15 2014 06:39 Introvert wrote:Show nested quote +On March 15 2014 01:31 aksfjh wrote:On March 15 2014 00:52 Roe wrote:On March 14 2014 22:16 aksfjh wrote:On March 14 2014 21:55 Roe wrote:
Why is profitability attractive? I feel a fundamental philosophical discussion brewing... Stop it On March 14 2014 15:44 Danglars wrote:John Kerry: Russia has until Monday to reverse course in UkraineSecretary of State John Kerry warned of serious repercussions for Russia on Monday if last-ditch talks over the weekend to resolve the crisis in Ukraine failed to persuade Moscow to soften its stance.
Kerry will travel to London for a Friday meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov ahead of a Sunday referendum vote in the Crimea region to secede from Ukraine and join the Russian Federation.
U.S. and European officials argue that Moscow is orchestrating the referendum and waging an intimidation campaign with thousands of Russian troops controlling the region. If Russian-backed lawmakers in Crimea go through with the Sunday referendum, Kerry said the U.S. and its European allies will not recognize it as legitimate under international law.
The U.S. and Europe on Monday would then unite to impose sanctions on Russia, Kerry told a Senate Appropriations subcommittee Thursday during a hearing on the State Department's budget.
“There will be a response of some kind to the referendum itself,” Kerry said. “If there is no sign [from Russia] of any capacity to respond to this issue ... there will be a very serious series of steps on Monday.” source The real joke in this is the piecemeal response that we'll get against Russia. The most the west will do is sanctions, but EU doesn't want to lose some of its affordable natural gas. Also, the UK is likely going to exempt London (the only city in their entire country worth doing business with internationally). At best the US will show a strong arm, but Russia gets almost nothing from us anyways. This is an interesting point, and it's one that was brought up earlier. To make it quick: Are we having actually meaningful and important discussions, or is this just a political LR thread? Going a bit meta here: + Show Spoiler +
Discussions pertaining to current policy seem apt for this topic. Discussions that break down all the way to fundamental philosophy seem a bit of a stretch, especially when that philosophy is outside the US cultural mainstream.
There are discussions that take place with political philosophy differences between major US parties. For example, the laissez-faire economic approach of the (far) right, and the regulative/interventionist economic policies of the (far) left. There's not really a basis for discussing the intricacies of Marxism or Anarchism in a US politics thread. In the same breath, there's little reason to discuss the semantic differences between each of our definitions of "profitability" and its implications. Since the discussion is really a proxy for Communism vs Capitalism, it makes little sense in a political discussion that doesn't even take the former side seriously.
Of course, this is just my personal opinion on the subject. I find it annoying.
On the Russia thing, anybody have an idea of what it would take to remove them from their permanent UN Security Council seat? I'd love to discuss Locke, Montesquieu, Tocqueville, etc. just as much as I would love to read more about some of the left's intellectuals and their ideas from people in this thread (a topic area I don't have as much experience in). But it is what it is, and you take topics as they come up.
What's funny is Locke and Tocqueville (not sure about Montesquieu) were leftists of their time
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On March 15 2014 09:11 Roe wrote:Show nested quote +On March 15 2014 06:39 Introvert wrote:On March 15 2014 01:31 aksfjh wrote:On March 15 2014 00:52 Roe wrote:On March 14 2014 22:16 aksfjh wrote:On March 14 2014 21:55 Roe wrote:
Why is profitability attractive? I feel a fundamental philosophical discussion brewing... Stop it On March 14 2014 15:44 Danglars wrote:John Kerry: Russia has until Monday to reverse course in UkraineSecretary of State John Kerry warned of serious repercussions for Russia on Monday if last-ditch talks over the weekend to resolve the crisis in Ukraine failed to persuade Moscow to soften its stance.
Kerry will travel to London for a Friday meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov ahead of a Sunday referendum vote in the Crimea region to secede from Ukraine and join the Russian Federation.
U.S. and European officials argue that Moscow is orchestrating the referendum and waging an intimidation campaign with thousands of Russian troops controlling the region. If Russian-backed lawmakers in Crimea go through with the Sunday referendum, Kerry said the U.S. and its European allies will not recognize it as legitimate under international law.
The U.S. and Europe on Monday would then unite to impose sanctions on Russia, Kerry told a Senate Appropriations subcommittee Thursday during a hearing on the State Department's budget.
“There will be a response of some kind to the referendum itself,” Kerry said. “If there is no sign [from Russia] of any capacity to respond to this issue ... there will be a very serious series of steps on Monday.” source The real joke in this is the piecemeal response that we'll get against Russia. The most the west will do is sanctions, but EU doesn't want to lose some of its affordable natural gas. Also, the UK is likely going to exempt London (the only city in their entire country worth doing business with internationally). At best the US will show a strong arm, but Russia gets almost nothing from us anyways. This is an interesting point, and it's one that was brought up earlier. To make it quick: Are we having actually meaningful and important discussions, or is this just a political LR thread? Going a bit meta here: + Show Spoiler +
Discussions pertaining to current policy seem apt for this topic. Discussions that break down all the way to fundamental philosophy seem a bit of a stretch, especially when that philosophy is outside the US cultural mainstream.
There are discussions that take place with political philosophy differences between major US parties. For example, the laissez-faire economic approach of the (far) right, and the regulative/interventionist economic policies of the (far) left. There's not really a basis for discussing the intricacies of Marxism or Anarchism in a US politics thread. In the same breath, there's little reason to discuss the semantic differences between each of our definitions of "profitability" and its implications. Since the discussion is really a proxy for Communism vs Capitalism, it makes little sense in a political discussion that doesn't even take the former side seriously.
Of course, this is just my personal opinion on the subject. I find it annoying.
On the Russia thing, anybody have an idea of what it would take to remove them from their permanent UN Security Council seat? I'd love to discuss Locke, Montesquieu, Tocqueville, etc. just as much as I would love to read more about some of the left's intellectuals and their ideas from people in this thread (a topic area I don't have as much experience in). But it is what it is, and you take topics as they come up. What's funny is Locke and Tocqueville (not sure about Montesquieu) were leftists of their time
Are you playing word games again? They would not be the modern leftist, at least not as the term is used in this thread. By and large, using the term "leftists" with no other modifier would be misleading.
I'm still going to stick to the modern, American meaning of the terms.
Edit: Of their time? I'm not sure why you pointed that out.
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On March 15 2014 09:48 Introvert wrote:Show nested quote +On March 15 2014 09:11 Roe wrote:On March 15 2014 06:39 Introvert wrote:On March 15 2014 01:31 aksfjh wrote:On March 15 2014 00:52 Roe wrote:On March 14 2014 22:16 aksfjh wrote:On March 14 2014 21:55 Roe wrote:
Why is profitability attractive? I feel a fundamental philosophical discussion brewing... Stop it On March 14 2014 15:44 Danglars wrote:John Kerry: Russia has until Monday to reverse course in UkraineSecretary of State John Kerry warned of serious repercussions for Russia on Monday if last-ditch talks over the weekend to resolve the crisis in Ukraine failed to persuade Moscow to soften its stance.
Kerry will travel to London for a Friday meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov ahead of a Sunday referendum vote in the Crimea region to secede from Ukraine and join the Russian Federation.
U.S. and European officials argue that Moscow is orchestrating the referendum and waging an intimidation campaign with thousands of Russian troops controlling the region. If Russian-backed lawmakers in Crimea go through with the Sunday referendum, Kerry said the U.S. and its European allies will not recognize it as legitimate under international law.
The U.S. and Europe on Monday would then unite to impose sanctions on Russia, Kerry told a Senate Appropriations subcommittee Thursday during a hearing on the State Department's budget.
“There will be a response of some kind to the referendum itself,” Kerry said. “If there is no sign [from Russia] of any capacity to respond to this issue ... there will be a very serious series of steps on Monday.” source The real joke in this is the piecemeal response that we'll get against Russia. The most the west will do is sanctions, but EU doesn't want to lose some of its affordable natural gas. Also, the UK is likely going to exempt London (the only city in their entire country worth doing business with internationally). At best the US will show a strong arm, but Russia gets almost nothing from us anyways. This is an interesting point, and it's one that was brought up earlier. To make it quick: Are we having actually meaningful and important discussions, or is this just a political LR thread? Going a bit meta here: + Show Spoiler +
Discussions pertaining to current policy seem apt for this topic. Discussions that break down all the way to fundamental philosophy seem a bit of a stretch, especially when that philosophy is outside the US cultural mainstream.
There are discussions that take place with political philosophy differences between major US parties. For example, the laissez-faire economic approach of the (far) right, and the regulative/interventionist economic policies of the (far) left. There's not really a basis for discussing the intricacies of Marxism or Anarchism in a US politics thread. In the same breath, there's little reason to discuss the semantic differences between each of our definitions of "profitability" and its implications. Since the discussion is really a proxy for Communism vs Capitalism, it makes little sense in a political discussion that doesn't even take the former side seriously.
Of course, this is just my personal opinion on the subject. I find it annoying.
On the Russia thing, anybody have an idea of what it would take to remove them from their permanent UN Security Council seat? I'd love to discuss Locke, Montesquieu, Tocqueville, etc. just as much as I would love to read more about some of the left's intellectuals and their ideas from people in this thread (a topic area I don't have as much experience in). But it is what it is, and you take topics as they come up. What's funny is Locke and Tocqueville (not sure about Montesquieu) were leftists of their time Are you playing word games again? They would not be the modern leftist, at least not as the term is used in this thread. By and large, using the term "leftists" with no other modifier would be misleading. I'm still going to stick to the modern, American meaning of the terms. Edit: Of their time? I'm not sure why you pointed that out.
No I was just finding it funny that they were leftists in their time, but considered right wing now. It's weird how ideologies flip around by name over time.
"word games" lol >.> words words words...
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On March 15 2014 09:52 Roe wrote:Show nested quote +On March 15 2014 09:48 Introvert wrote:On March 15 2014 09:11 Roe wrote:On March 15 2014 06:39 Introvert wrote:On March 15 2014 01:31 aksfjh wrote:On March 15 2014 00:52 Roe wrote:On March 14 2014 22:16 aksfjh wrote:On March 14 2014 21:55 Roe wrote:
Why is profitability attractive? I feel a fundamental philosophical discussion brewing... Stop it On March 14 2014 15:44 Danglars wrote:John Kerry: Russia has until Monday to reverse course in UkraineSecretary of State John Kerry warned of serious repercussions for Russia on Monday if last-ditch talks over the weekend to resolve the crisis in Ukraine failed to persuade Moscow to soften its stance.
Kerry will travel to London for a Friday meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov ahead of a Sunday referendum vote in the Crimea region to secede from Ukraine and join the Russian Federation.
U.S. and European officials argue that Moscow is orchestrating the referendum and waging an intimidation campaign with thousands of Russian troops controlling the region. If Russian-backed lawmakers in Crimea go through with the Sunday referendum, Kerry said the U.S. and its European allies will not recognize it as legitimate under international law.
The U.S. and Europe on Monday would then unite to impose sanctions on Russia, Kerry told a Senate Appropriations subcommittee Thursday during a hearing on the State Department's budget.
“There will be a response of some kind to the referendum itself,” Kerry said. “If there is no sign [from Russia] of any capacity to respond to this issue ... there will be a very serious series of steps on Monday.” source The real joke in this is the piecemeal response that we'll get against Russia. The most the west will do is sanctions, but EU doesn't want to lose some of its affordable natural gas. Also, the UK is likely going to exempt London (the only city in their entire country worth doing business with internationally). At best the US will show a strong arm, but Russia gets almost nothing from us anyways. This is an interesting point, and it's one that was brought up earlier. To make it quick: Are we having actually meaningful and important discussions, or is this just a political LR thread? Going a bit meta here: + Show Spoiler +
Discussions pertaining to current policy seem apt for this topic. Discussions that break down all the way to fundamental philosophy seem a bit of a stretch, especially when that philosophy is outside the US cultural mainstream.
There are discussions that take place with political philosophy differences between major US parties. For example, the laissez-faire economic approach of the (far) right, and the regulative/interventionist economic policies of the (far) left. There's not really a basis for discussing the intricacies of Marxism or Anarchism in a US politics thread. In the same breath, there's little reason to discuss the semantic differences between each of our definitions of "profitability" and its implications. Since the discussion is really a proxy for Communism vs Capitalism, it makes little sense in a political discussion that doesn't even take the former side seriously.
Of course, this is just my personal opinion on the subject. I find it annoying.
On the Russia thing, anybody have an idea of what it would take to remove them from their permanent UN Security Council seat? I'd love to discuss Locke, Montesquieu, Tocqueville, etc. just as much as I would love to read more about some of the left's intellectuals and their ideas from people in this thread (a topic area I don't have as much experience in). But it is what it is, and you take topics as they come up. What's funny is Locke and Tocqueville (not sure about Montesquieu) were leftists of their time Are you playing word games again? They would not be the modern leftist, at least not as the term is used in this thread. By and large, using the term "leftists" with no other modifier would be misleading. I'm still going to stick to the modern, American meaning of the terms. Edit: Of their time? I'm not sure why you pointed that out. No I was just finding it funny that they were leftists in their time, but considered right wing now. It's weird how ideologies flip around by name over time. "word games" lol >.> words words words...
What I'm more concerned with is the principles and ideas. The modern right wing is closer to them than is the modern left wing (in American terms). I like words, but we have to adopt a common set with common meanings and appropriate delineations before we can get anywhere.
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his words seemed very clear to me. He specifically mentioned relative to their time, which is the appropriate standard to use.
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On March 15 2014 09:58 zlefin wrote:
his words seemed very clear to me. He specifically mentioned relative to their time, which is the appropriate standard to use.
And I'm wondering why he pointed that out. He's tried to get me to use the 200 year old definition of "conservative" before.
Anyway, that's my question.
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On March 15 2014 08:19 kwizach wrote:Show nested quote +On March 15 2014 07:46 Danglars wrote:On March 15 2014 06:47 Introvert wrote:The director of the U.S. government office that monitors scientific misconduct in biomedical research has resigned after 2 years out of frustration with the “remarkably dysfunctional” federal bureaucracy. David Wright, director of the Office of Research Integrity (ORI), writes in a scathing resignation letter obtained by ScienceInsider that the huge amount of time he spent trying to get things done made much of his time at ORI “the very worst job I have ever had.” http://news.sciencemag.org/people-events/2014/03/top-u.s.-scientific-misconduct-official-quits-frustration-bureaucracyJust a fun bit on bureaucracy. In his letter, David Wright writes that working with ORI’s “remarkable scientist-investigators” was “the best job I’ve ever had.” But that was only 35% of his job; the rest of the time he spent “navigating the remarkably dysfunctional HHS bureaucracy” to run ORI. Tasks that took a couple of days as a university administrator required weeks or months, he says. He writes that ORI’s budget was micromanaged by more senior officials, and that Koh’s office had a “seriously flawed” culture, calling it “secretive, autocratic and unaccountable.” For example, he told Wanda Jones, Koh’s deputy, that he urgently needed to appoint a director for ORI’s division of education. Jones told him the position was somewhere on a secret priority list of appointments. The position has not been filled 16 months later, David Wright notes.
OASH itself suffers from the tendency of bureaucracies to “focus … on perpetuating themselves,” David Wright writes. Officials spent “exorbitant amounts of time” in meetings and generating data and reports to make their divisions look productive, he writes. He asks whether OASH is the proper home for a regulatory office such as ORI, noting that Koh himself has described his office as an “intensely political environment.” Sounds like a fun job. I thought you had to be some wacko with a tinfoil hat to allege the bureaucracy was self-serving, hopelessly unfocused, and politicized. You do realize that Max Weber already denounced the flaws of bureaucracies about a century ago, right? It doesn't change the fact that they are needed for modern states (and organizations) to exist. Bureaucracies may indeed be, the bureaucratic state is not. Just because I'm for a limited government does not mean I want to do away with all agencies. I'd like some trimming, some shortening of implicit powers, and some re-evaluation of their purposes. One of my heroes Thomas Sowell was cured of marxism after taking a job in the government and seeing exactly how it functioned.
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@Danglars:
And what is your answer to all the stuff we probably need some kind of coordination for? Climate change, income disparity, energy transition? If you want more limitations, how is that all going to happen?
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Nyxisto, I doubt any combination of agencies can even make useful headway in the first two youmention. I have yet to hear an argument for the necessity of the sheer size of some of these to the forwarding of their agenda. Let's see some solid steps towards pruning back the scope and mission of the NSA and the leviathan that is the EPA and its fervor with new regulations.
I say we can accomplish useful goals like the furthering of the keystone pipeline and other energy measures with a 4th branch a tenth the size of the current one. Your argument really is one that manpower and funding somehow must surely reap increased results. From the War on Poverty to today, they have very little to show for their efforts. So I ask: How much harm can some removal of red tape cause that is not dwarfed by the injury already made by the EPA, NSA, IRS, HHS, CFPB, NLRB, DoA, DoE, NHTSA? As to your top-3, will 1,000 extra members of the state department make China and India cut their greenhouse gas production? I'm sure the IRS can reduce us all to poverty, causing widespread celebration to the reduction of income disparity, so I'll hand you that. The energy transition is hardly a matter of magnitude, since the market already drives the right kind of activity, particularly if some of the more onerous burdens were removed.
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EPT
