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exactly as dilbert highlighted, and exactly as i meant in my original ridicule of jay's high-falutin quoting of adam smith: that era of early capitalism and free-market theorizing was characterized by the very worst in short-term blindness. that is the hallmark of unregulated capitalism: it needs more resources, more generated products, and more labour, ever-increasing or ever-diversifying into new markets, in order to stay profitable. and as ken said, this basic and fundamental mechanic of the capitalist marketplace isn't the analysis of some 'genius' second-rate chicago school ideologue - it's fucking essential karl marx, right there in the earliest formulations of his economic thought. and why is it not genius? because it has been patently fucking obvious since capitalism was in its earliest domestic-market phases.

the key concerns, whether or not you like to acknowledge the 'liberal hippy' agendas, for our contemporary age are probably the environment and our place as human beings within a wider creature ecology. these are certainly the new 'vogue' topics coming up in the humanities side of academic research, anyway: trans-humanism, more than humanism, in fact. not only in the direction of our ongoing development through technology and invention (no doubt driven by capitalism at its most beneficial), but also in the sense of how we need to get over a few hundred years of erroneous thought in thinking that mind is over matter, and humans are completely regnant over animals. we are gutting the planet in the most short-term fashion imaginable; whether or not you cry-wanked to 'an inconvenient truth' is not really the point. it's not as dramatic or fashionable as that, at its simplest and most undeniable level. purely unregulated capitalism is a terrible world-system to adopt in this moment in human history. the free-market will never take care of the pressing concerns that we find as a species.

the developing countries that are now going through a major industrial boom lend the main weight of urgency to this need for 'something else'. if we adopted a global 'free-market' and everyone had laissez faire capitalism, we'd extinguish the earth's resources and put ourselves back in the dark ages within the space of a few generations. 'the american dream' doesn't export well; it's not feasible, fungible, or sustainable. the free-market is essentially rapacious and accumulates capital and influence at the top - you can't review the neo-liberal experiment in any other way than that, really, without being seriously deluded. is this really what we need at this juncture in history? please put down the textbook.

Last edited by Uzique The Lesser (2013-03-20 04:53:23)

jay has already mentioned in passing a libertarian disagreement with the 'dept. of education' and school-boards. god knows what sort of libertarian hokum he has been reading, but having every school set its own curriculum by a group of concerned and discriminating soccer moms is definitely not the way to run a country. it's just this perverse and dogmatic belief in a utopian system, which of course is completely unrealistic.

california should dictate the education system, after all they have pretty good colleges and are the largest state.

AussieReaper wrote:

Jay wrote:

Dilbert_X wrote:

An up to date macro example of the tragedy of the commons would be the UN, an organisation set up to cooperatively manage the world in the interests of everyone but is hopelessly dysfunctional and achieves nothing but endless squabbling.

Whats the alternative? Devolve decisions on global security to each and every local church committee?

Libertarianism doesn't work at any level.

No, it's layered decision making. At no point did I say we do away with a central government, but that as many decisions as possible should be pushed down to the local level. When you push decision-making up the ladder towards the central government, you end up with bad legislation that doesn't meet the needs of the people, but instead becomes a one-size-fits-all approach. Such legislation does not work in a country as large and as diverse as the United States. Do you honestly believe that 500 odd people can effectively manage and legislate for 330,000,000? I surely hope not.

If you go by social issues, you would see racial and sexual inequality in the southern states. And I don't doubt the teaching of evolution would be heavily suppressed.

Please give a real example where states would do a better job of managing something that doesn't just increase discrimination of others.

The argument the social conservatives usually argue at this point is that person who eg can't marry their partner can just simply move to another state. As if it is that simple.

It is that simple. Look, some states are already heading that way, and they're becoming economic backwaters. It's hard to attract intelligent people to work in places where there is overt discrimination or backwards thinking in schools. It's why people still dream of moving to California despite the rampantly stupid politicians in charge, that and the beaches.

Frankly, you're just as pigheaded and closed minded as any social conservative so why should you be allowed to set doctrine at the national level? Hint: you shouldn't, not if you actually believe in liberalism and diversity.

Would you rather have a county design a road or should the federal government do so? I didn't give an example because I didn't think it necessary.

Did you use a tractor to bury all those family pets you tortured and killed?

Last edited by -Whiteroom- (2013-03-20 22:24:03)

Jay wrote:

Would you rather have a county design a road or should the federal government do so? I didn't give an example because I didn't think it necessary.

A road? Seriously?

You think the county's could just get together and come up with something like this?



And if you think roads would be oh so much more successful if only the states could handle the design and maintenance, you're forgetting how individual states couldn't even get rail gauges matching each other

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broad_gauge#United_States

Originally, various gauges were used in the United States and Canada. Some railways, primarily in the northeast, used standard gauge; others used gauges ranging from 4 ft (1,219 mm) to 6 ft (1,829 mm). Problems began as soon as lines began to meet and, in much of the north-eastern United States, standard gauge was adopted. Most Southern states used 5 ft (1,524 mm) gauge. Following the American Civil War, trade between the South and North grew and the break of gauge became a major economic nuisance. Competitive pressures had forced all the Canadian railways to convert to standard gauge by 1880, and Illinois Central converted its south line to New Orleans to standard gauge in 1881, putting pressure on the southern railways.

I thought you had an engineering degree. This is pretty obviously something individual states can't manage on their own. Mass transit needs to be co-ordinated at a national level. Unless you're talking about the design of a dirt road to some pig farmers house - which I doubt anyone would seriously be suggesting here, you have no clue what you're talking about and can't provide any logical argument for what states can do better than the national collective can.

not just roads, which are a fairly simple planning process, and a fairly simple figure for how retarded the thought is. take it up a notch of complexity. think about jay's stupid "the department of education sucks" spiel. so he wants education decisions to be devolved down to individual school level. can you even imagine? that's basically just turning schools into a cooperative association of home-schoolers. think about the repercussions of that stupid little experiment, beyond the parochial confines of the local high-school. american universities are largely international institutions (most postgraduates at top american unis are actually foreign, on a study visa). what would happen if every single domestic student applying to a large state-wide or nationally-recognized university had a different standard of education? or, worse yet, were all taught completely different topics and methods, depending on what was deemed 'proper' by the local soccer mom schoolboard - or even worse still, the local religious crackpot demagogue? that work really well, wouldn't it? your already bloated university-degree structure would have to have another year or two tacked on: mandatory 'foundation' degrees, to get everyone over the retardation and regression caused by your stupid libertarian insistence on 'no big government!'.

you just look so absolutely stupid when you act as a blind mouthpiece for these dumb textbook ideas.

Just have faith guys.

Interstate roads are one thing that everyone can agree that should be left to the Federal government. But most economic and development choices should be done at the state and county level. Euros refuse to acknowledge how big we are and how difficult it is to manage all of this from the top down.

Building a road is hard. In terms of how much government and different interest are involved. City zoning, state department of environmental services, federal department of environment. Local communities might not want the extra traffic. International businesses want the extra access. Etc etc

When it comes to social issues, which I would file education under, that should be a federal issue. But mostly everything else should be left to the states.

Roads are a bad example.

No-one said "everything good comes from uber central government".

I don't really see what 'Mericans are complaining about, states seem to have ample autonomy and the gubmint takes care of the big stuff (and employs a lot of people), where is the balance wrong exactly?

Apart from people whining about paying federal taxes to run the government, military etc whats so awful?

Cybargs wrote:

Macbeth wrote:

Euros refuse to acknowledge how big we are and how difficult it is to manage all of this from the top down.

Yet Euro's bitch about ECB decisions about the bailouts. So much for everything good comes from uber central government.

the fuck does that have to do with central government? you are a fucking idiot. that's outright theft and fraud, what the international banks are doing to sovereign states and their tax money. that has nothing to do with euro-level decision making, it's to do with a hijacking of the political process by banks. you'd have a more valid example in "euro's bitching about regulations and human rights decisions from europe", but even then that's a minor and habitual grumbling - brits like to moan, especially - and we are mostly happy with it.

Cybargs wrote:

Uzique The Lesser wrote:

Cybargs wrote:

Yet Euro's bitch about ECB decisions about the bailouts. So much for everything good comes from uber central government.

the fuck does that have to do with central government? you are a fucking idiot. that's outright theft and fraud, what the international banks are doing to sovereign states and their tax money. that has nothing to do with euro-level decision making, it's to do with a hijacking of the political process by banks. you'd have a more valid example in "euro's bitching about regulations and human rights decisions from europe", but even then that's a minor and habitual grumbling - brits like to moan, especially - and we are mostly happy with it.

i bet a lot of greeks aren't too happy with the ECB.

it goes way beyond the greeks. but it's hardly a normal example of 'central government' doing its everyday ruling. the whole 'financial crisis' is one big blowjob for the western banks.