Neoliberalism is good (or at least ok).

How should society be organised, if at all?

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henry quirk
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Re: I won't adulterate the UK edition with my primitive American thinkin'...

Post by henry quirk »

"You believe in certain rights to shoot people do't you? That's an interpretation of the guy who is getting shot having seperated himself from his right to live somehow is it not?"

As I say: a man's life, liberty, & property is only forfeit if he deprives another of his life, liberty, or property, so -- it's not interpretation; it's practucal application of principle. And where there is dispute: the court of last resort is invoked.

#

"Well slavery was practiced directly by people who signed the original Bill of Rights was it not?"

And they were wrong.

#

"So my thing has never been tested for that slavery thing, but yours has and it failed."

Actually, no, my thing has never been tried either.

#

"What are you arguing against here? Any society that has any form of government can end that way, but it's not neo-classically-neo-liberalish to have technocrats who would rather enslave the population than lose an election, quite the opposite, I have openly stated that we expect to always lose every election."

What I'm arguin' against is the central plannin', the technocrats, and the idealsm that sez technocrats are of a finer clay.

And: no, not every society/gov can end that way. The minimal night watchman affair I envision would have to die well before the soma production starts.

#

"Well, I'll cover neo-thingy-neo-whotsit tax policy soon .... I can confidently state that you will hate it even more when you know what it is :)"

HA! No doubt.
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gaffo

Post by henry quirk »

"Pot growerS actually being hauled into our future courts for stoned drivers for manslaughter.............dream on."

That's not what I said.

This...

Hold folks who are baked out of their gourds utterly & completely responsible for what they do (same as you would if they were clean & sober).

Hold suppliers utterly & completely responsible for injuries caused by adulterated product (Joe sells paraquat-laced pot, he's liable for injuries caused).


...is what I said.
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Re: "Immigration has been a net gain to the economy."

Post by gaffo »

Immanuel Can wrote: Thu Jul 18, 2019 1:39 pm
Sculptor wrote: Thu Jul 18, 2019 12:32 pm Atheism has nothing to do with anything, except the denial of God.
Precisely correct.

It's a void, a null, a mere negation.
yep

Immanuel Can wrote: Thu Jul 18, 2019 1:39 pm It's Nihilism.
no, i hate Nihilism personally.

Immanuel Can wrote: Thu Jul 18, 2019 1:39 pm It's an ideological gelding: it has no fruitfulness in it. No good thing comes out of it.
agreed.


Immanuel Can wrote: Thu Jul 18, 2019 1:39 pm it insists on imposing itself on people who may want to believe other things.
bullshit, i have no wish to make you lose your faith - i'd don;t play fav, so if you are muslim that is fine too.


Atheism does not impose it emptiness upon others.

the last thing i wish is for anyone to become an Athiest - including my best friend, who after 50 yrs of being a Christian is now losing his faith - we talk about it only last week, i tried to help him - including keeping his faith if they would serve him.

Immanuel Can wrote: Thu Jul 18, 2019 1:39 pm But people cannot live with a void -- no meaning, no purpose, no hope, no future. So they have to add something.
agreed, for me it is Universal Secular Humanism.


Immanuel Can wrote: Thu Jul 18, 2019 1:39 pm And with Atheism, it's some authoritarian political ideology.
Pure biased bullshit from you Sir!

why so hostel toward Atheists?

you show no understanding of us. ;-/.

Atheists have no "political ideology"



Immanuel Can wrote: Thu Jul 18, 2019 1:39 pm Because if there's no God, it's up to us.

yes, and/so?

your point?

Immanuel Can wrote: Thu Jul 18, 2019 1:39 pm But each of us is too small to achieve anything.



yes, and/so?

your point?

Immanuel Can wrote: Thu Jul 18, 2019 1:39 pm So, the logic goes, people must be forced to do what is necessary for that political ideology.


??



Immanuel Can wrote: Thu Jul 18, 2019 1:39 pm What's more, it's not even "wrong" for us to compel each other, because there's no morality in Atheism either.


Bullshit Sir.

I'm a moral animal!

why do you think there are so many Athiests in this world?

i'll tell you!

the concept that folks - friends (Hindu/Muslim i've made over the years who are not Christian, but I affirm as good - under Christian theology - GO TO HELL FOREVER due to not "beleiving in Christ".

If Christians have no problem with that concept, and Athiests like myself do.

which of us have morality?



Immanuel Can wrote: Thu Jul 18, 2019 1:39 pm So Atheism opens up the possibility of coercion, of propaganda, of gulags and reeducation camps, because those things aren't "wrong" for an Atheist either. Historically, that's how it inevitably plays out...to the tune of well over 100,000,000 dead bodies in the last century alone.
more bullshit from you.

Pol Pot was a Buddist, Ruwandan Hutus and Serbians were Christians


Immanuel Can wrote: Thu Jul 18, 2019 1:39 pm There's the "freedom" of Atheism. The "freedom" to know nothing, to be nothing, to have no purpose, to go nowhere, to do anything to each other, and to have no moral recourse for the oppressed. It opens the world to raw power, and no more.
more dissparaging of Athiests as reprobates.

you do not do yourself credit. i "Talked" in that other thread about talking about New Testement and Old Testament works we value - from that thread i know you are better than this.

advise, you got blinders per Athiests (i.e. maybe even bigoted against us/me for being Athiests)

self reflection upon you view of us Athiests would be my advice to you Sir.

- I'm saddened to read your post above, after talking to you in that other thread.

Immanuel Can wrote: Thu Jul 18, 2019 1:39 pm It is not I who saw this first. Nietzsche saw it. He said it, long before I was born. But somehow, Atheists don't seem to take his prophecies seriously. They keep thinking that Atheist regimes will turn out to be good. And they continue to circulate the claim that Atheism brings freedom. It doesn't. It brings bewilderment, emptiness, desperation and then death.
whatever bubba. Athiests are not a horde.

FYI "faith" in general has been dying a slow death for a century, you may not know it but Athiests/Agnostics make up nearly 25 percent in "the west" now, and even in the hearland of Islam - Saudi Arabia!!!!!!!!!! 1/5th of Saudis doubt Allah exists (FACT! - sadly they out of fear - from BELEIVERS (who you think are the only ones with morals! - they remain silent about their Atheism/Agonsticm - valuing their heads remaining attached to their bodies).

you post really dissapoints me, i know you can do so much better.


reflect/re-evaluate your views on Atheists Sir.
gaffo
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Re: gaffo

Post by gaffo »

henry quirk wrote: Sun Jul 21, 2019 2:48 am "Pot growerS actually being hauled into our future courts for stoned drivers for manslaughter.............dream on."

That's not what I said.

This...

Hold folks who are baked out of their gourds utterly & completely responsible for what they do (same as you would if they were clean & sober).

Hold suppliers utterly & completely responsible for injuries caused by adulterated product (Joe sells paraquat-laced pot, he's liable for injuries caused).


...is what I said.
may point is none will be held responsible soon, since $$$ talks and Alcohol makers and pot makers will be corporation$$$$$ so there will be no "street" supplier nor 'lacer" without fatcat loddists to buy the courts.

so driving stoned will be the same as driving drunk - the driver will be prosecuted, not the legal makers of the liquor/weed.

as it should be of course.
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Re: Neoliberalism is good (or at least ok).

Post by gaffo »

Arising_uk wrote: Sat Jul 20, 2019 12:24 pm
FlashDangerpants wrote: Fri Jul 19, 2019 10:13 am
Arising_uk wrote: Fri Jul 19, 2019 3:47 am And I for one truly appreciated the attempt. So much so that you've sold me on the idea of neo classical neo liberalism. As such I wonder if we could start a thread on how to punt it as a political party? Could you start a thread on a political manifesto of such a party for the UK please, you know cover the bases, policies on education, the health service, the economy, defense, etc.
Oooooh, can I call it the UK Energy Party?! Will that summon the wrath of BobTheBaptist?
Well I think we ought to wait for the focus group reports not least because I want to call it the Citizens Party. :)
But I am serious, would you be interested in attempting to knock-ut a rough draft manifesto for a party that wished to punt neo-classical-neo-liberalism as despite what the punsita and academics say about the current state of UK voters I think the centrist ground could still have it with the right message and policies.
Ps
Bob will not be welcome.
we could use a similar party in the US.

branding is important - Citizen's Party is good branding.
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Re: I won't adulterate the UK edition with my primitive American thinkin'...

Post by gaffo »

FlashDangerpants wrote: Sun Jul 21, 2019 2:24 am
Well it was always going to be a matter of interpretation. You believe in certain rights to shoot people do't you? That's an interpretation of the guy who is getting shot having seperated himself from his right to live somehow is it not?
the common consenses is Natural Law - which has been in agreement for eons.

you have the right to kill another if the other threatens your life.

if the circumstances are unclear, you go the trial and a judge/jury determines your guilt.

FlashDangerpants wrote: Sun Jul 21, 2019 2:24 am Well slavery was practiced directly by people who signed the original Bill of Rights was it not?


yes it was, in full violation of the 9th.

FlashDangerpants wrote: Sun Jul 21, 2019 2:24 am So my thing has never been tested for that slavery thing, but yours has and it failed.
England had legal slavery for centuries, she only made it illegal in 1838.

27 yrs before America, so big whoop there bubba.

i see no moral ground for you here.
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henry quirk
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gaffo

Post by henry quirk »

"so driving stoned will be the same as driving drunk - the driver will be prosecuted, not the legal makers of the liquor/weed."

Okay. I'm gonna try this one more time.

I wrote...

'Hold folks who are baked out of their gourds utterly & completely responsible for what they do (same as you would if they were clean & sober).'

This means: if Joe is baked and does a bad thing, he's held responsible for that bad thing just as he would be if he had done it sober.

I wrote...

Hold suppliers utterly & completely responsible for injuries caused by adulterated product (Joe sells paraquat-laced pot, he's liable for injuries caused).

This means: if Sam sells Joe pot laced with paraquat (a fact he conceals from Joe) and Joe burns out his nevous system smokin' the the poisoned pot, then Sam is responsible for Joe's injuries not for Joe smokin' & drivin', cuz the smokin' & drivin' is on Joe.
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Re: "Let's legalise drugs"

Post by Arising_uk »

henry quirk wrote: Sun Jul 21, 2019 2:25 am Decriminalize the lot.

Hold folks who are baked out of their gourds utterly & completely responsible for what they do (same as you would if they were clean & sober).

Hold suppliers utterly & completely responsible for injuries caused by adulterated product (Joe sells paraquat-laced pot, he's liable for injuries caused).
All for this the 'war on drugs' is a complete failure I'd have thought we could have learnt from the US prohibition era but I do think there'd have to be very strict age limits as 'pot' nowadays is a very different beast from what it was and is demonstrably not a good thing for the yoof trying to make their way in the world.
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Re: I won't adulterate the UK edition with my primitive American thinkin'...

Post by FlashDangerpants »

gaffo wrote: Sun Jul 21, 2019 4:22 am
FlashDangerpants wrote: Sun Jul 21, 2019 2:24 am
Well it was always going to be a matter of interpretation. You believe in certain rights to shoot people do't you? That's an interpretation of the guy who is getting shot having seperated himself from his right to live somehow is it not?
the common consenses is Natural Law - which has been in agreement for eons.

you have the right to kill another if the other threatens your life.

if the circumstances are unclear, you go the trial and a judge/jury determines your guilt.

FlashDangerpants wrote: Sun Jul 21, 2019 2:24 am Well slavery was practiced directly by people who signed the original Bill of Rights was it not?


yes it was, in full violation of the 9th.

FlashDangerpants wrote: Sun Jul 21, 2019 2:24 am So my thing has never been tested for that slavery thing, but yours has and it failed.
England had legal slavery for centuries, she only made it illegal in 1838.

27 yrs before America, so big whoop there bubba.

i see no moral ground for you here.
I think you missed the context of our discussion.

Henry believes in a description of justice that projects from a small number of highly specific grounding principles, namely property rights with the self being one of those properties (very much along the lines of Luwig Von Mises). I represent an opposing view that there are an endless series of trade offs necessary to preserve individual liberty in a functional society (because I am a neo-classical-lickety-split-gosh-darned-liberal). Our comments relate to that tension of principles.

Henry thinks my thing is wishy washy, that it lacks a fundamental grounding and that this makes it liable to top down hijack by the elites. I think his is unstable under load, the simplicity of the principles fails to assist with any complex choice, and the whole thing is like entering a maze and saying you can find your way out by taking every right turn. There is every possibility that we are both right.
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Re: "Let's legalise drugs"

Post by henry quirk »

"All for this the 'war on drugs' is a complete failure I'd have thought we could have learnt from the US prohibition era but I do think there'd have to be very strict age limits as 'pot' nowadays is a very different beast from what it was and is demonstrably not a good thing for the yoof trying to make their way in the world.

The 'war' was doomed to fail: folks are gonna do what they do no matter what the law sez.

In my scheme: folks can get as fucked up as they like, on whatever they like, but if they do wrong while fucked up they'll be held responsible just as if they did wrong while sober.

And: since I favor decriminalizing the lot, the wrong-doer will only be held responsible for the wrong-doing. There's no additional penality for bein' fucked up.

Age of majority: pick one, apply it equally across the board.

Pot: the more powerful strains are the direct result of the 'war' in the same way alcohol prohibiion led to more powerful, concentrated booze.
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Re: I won't adulterate the UK edition with my primitive American thinkin'...

Post by henry quirk »

"Henry thinks my thing is wishy washy, that it lacks a fundamental grounding and that this makes it liable to top down hijack by the elites."

Yeah, but I didn't say your notion wouldn't, couldn't, 'work'. It'll work, it just won't be any better than what any of us have now.

My notion of the ultra-minimal night watchman is a much harder *sell, and would be damned near impossible to enact (simply cuz most folks, in most places, wanna be 'safe' instead of 'free').

In the West: we're half-way, three quarters of the way, to your neo-liberal Tomorrow Land already.

#

"I think his is unstable under load, the simplicity of the principles fails to assist with any complex choice, and the whole thing is like entering a maze and saying you can find your way out by taking every right turn. There is every possibility that we are both right."

The principle (the individual owns himself and has a right to his life, liberty, and property) is a strong, sturdy foundation upon which folks can align themselves as they like, organize themselves as they like. The principle leads to only one prohibition (don't deprive the individual of his life, liberty, or property or you may forfeit your own [mind your own goddamned business, keep your friggin' hands to yourself, or else]). The principle isn't meant to assist with complex choices: it's the admonition against choices that denigrate the individual. Your wishy-washy, but workable, notion would only be better, work better, if -- at its heart -- it incorporated as inviolate self-ownership and the individual right to life, liberty, and property.









*my minarchy doesn't promise a better life, or a safe life: it only asserts a man belongs to himself and won't be monkied around with (without consequence) as he does what he can...also: in my minarchy: you get to shoot bad public servants in the ass with rock salt
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taxes

Post by henry quirk »

1. High income taxes don't make people work less, even eye watering ones. And tax cuts for the rich don't provide greater returns to the treasury. The Laffer Curve was drawn on a napkin to prove a point, it does not represent an empirical finding, and support for it has always been flimsy. We would cut taxes for the rich if that did create jobs, but it doesn't. For the benefit of the absolutely fucking stupid, that means Neo-Classical-Chewy-Centrists DO NOT BELIEVE IN TRICKLE DOWN ECONOMICS AND NEVER FUCKING DID.

As I see it: the only legit reason to tax is to fund the minimal proxyhood (constabulary, courts of last resort, and a border-stationed military (militia -- all of us -- funds itself). And the only legit means of taxing is the simple, fixed sales or consumption tax (I'm not married to it, though...there are other, exotic ways to fund a minarchy [lottery anyone?]).

#

4. All changes to tax policy also change people's incentives. In some cases they can be incentivised to stop doing something like smoking, in others they can be encouraged to move assets offshore, or claim earned income as dividends. Sometimes this stuff is the whole point, other times it is an inefficiency, there is a marked tendency in our discourse to ignore that latter issue, which results in clever people suggesting dumb ideas. Worse,it results in sensible voters never getting to choose good policies.

I thought your scheme was not to direct folks?

#

The first decison therefore is how much money the state should be spending and thus how much it needs to raise via taxation. Here's a list of what share of GDP is spent by the state in various nations.

Under my scheme: public servants will make do with what they get (and they'll be grateful for it).
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Immanuel Can
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Re: "Immigration has been a net gain to the economy."

Post by Immanuel Can »

gaffo wrote: Sun Jul 21, 2019 3:09 am
Immanuel Can wrote: Thu Jul 18, 2019 1:39 pm
Sculptor wrote: Thu Jul 18, 2019 12:32 pm Atheism has nothing to do with anything, except the denial of God.
Precisely correct. It's a void, a null, a mere negation.
yep
Immanuel Can wrote: Thu Jul 18, 2019 1:39 pm It's Nihilism.
no, i hate Nihilism personally.
I wasn't talking about what you like or don't like, gaffo. I was only talking about what Atheism, as a one-precept, negative ideology, makes it rational for a person to think.

That's an important distinction. One can make certain statements about Atheism that one cannot ever make about Atheists. And this is because Atheism, if it were really believed by anyone and lived out consistently, with all its rational implications, would simply issue in Nihilism.

In contrast, all Atheists I have ever encountered, including people like Marx, Freud and Nietzsche, do not live out a consistent Atheism. Instead, they take back into their belief system something that Atheism itself does not rationalize -- like historicism (Marx), morality (Freud) and hierarchy of values (Nietzsche).

In other words, then, there's no such thing as an Atheist who lives Atheism. There are only those who talk about Atheism, but live out some hybrid belief that incorporates Atheism's negation of God, and perhaps its implied denial of moral authority and ultimate meaning, but usually little more than those things. For the rest, they look to some other ideological package -- often Socialism of some kind, but not always. They always need a secondary ideology to supply what pure Atheism does not rationalize for them.

Lived Atheism is total Nihilism. And that's the implication of what we agree on below:

Immanuel Can: It's an ideological gelding: it has no fruitfulness in it. No good thing comes out of it.

gaffo: agreed.

Immanuel Can wrote: Thu Jul 18, 2019 1:39 pm it insists on imposing itself on people who may want to believe other things.
bullshit,
Do you mean you suppose Atheists are happy to leave all other people believing in God?

Dawkins certainly isn't. But do you think that when people say "I'm an Atheist" they only want us to understand they hold a private disbelief? Or do you suppose they are trying to say, "I don't believe, and you shouldn't either?"

Which way would it be?
the last thing i wish is for anyone to become an Athiest
I think that perhaps that makes you unusual among Atheists. Or perhaps you're the kind of regretful Atheist that Thomas Hardy the great novelist was. He decided that he disbelieved in God, but was miserable that he did.
Immanuel Can wrote: Thu Jul 18, 2019 1:39 pm But people cannot live with a void -- no meaning, no purpose, no hope, no future. So they have to add something.
agreed, for me it is Universal Secular Humanism.
Yes, see...this is a perfect example of what I was saying earlier. Plain Atheism is unliveable, so you had to add something positive -- Humanism -- to make it liveable.
why so hostel toward Atheists?
Hostile? Not at all.

I feel no personal animus against them. It's not hard to see that their one-precept creed is not only empty, but is irrational as well, so it's really unthreatening to me. I do feel a certain amount of sympathy for the emptiness they sometimes evince. But they don't make me at all anxious, as you can tell from the way I'm "speaking." I'm feeling very calm, actually.

And, as for misunderstanding them, as they assure me, there isn't much to understand about Atheism: it's a one-statement (dis-)belief claim, they all say. If that's untrue, please tell me.

Now, I should also say that I have friends and colleagues who are Atheists, and many whom I like and respect. But I do not agree with them about Atheism. For me, there's a huge difference between disagreeing with a person's beliefs and disliking the person. I make no connection between the two, in fact.
Atheists have no "political ideology"
This is also true.

But Atheists are also often political people. The Communists certainly are. Marx said that "the critique of religion is the first of all critiques" (his words), then provided the rationale that killed over 100,000,000 people in the last century alone. This is a good illustration of what happens when Atheism gets paired up with political beliefs.

And since Atheism is a political void, what can a politically-minded Atheist do but take on some supplementary political dogma to supply the direction that his Atheism itself will simply not provide?
Immanuel Can wrote: Thu Jul 18, 2019 1:39 pm Because if there's no God, it's up to us. But each of us is too small to achieve anything.

yes, and/so?

your point?
My point is simply that if it's up to "us" and we have insufficient power, then the next logical step for the Atheist is to create or adopt some existing political ideology to mobilize the collective. If he doesn't, then he is going to have to accept his own personal powerlessness -- political Nihilism -- and give up.
Immanuel Can wrote: Thu Jul 18, 2019 1:39 pm So, the logic goes, people must be forced to do what is necessary for that political ideology.


??
As above.
Immanuel Can wrote: Thu Jul 18, 2019 1:39 pm What's more, it's not even "wrong" for us to compel each other, because there's no morality in Atheism either.

I'm a moral animal!
Again, let's go back to that basic distinction: Atheism is one thing, and Atheists do another.

I have no reason to suspect you're not a conventionally moral person. But if you are, then I can guarantee you're living by a code Atheism itself does not supply you.

As you yourself agreed above, Atheism is a void, a null. It has no moral content.
why do you think there are so many Athiests in this world?
Latest figures put the numbers of genuine Atheists at about 4%. They've been there for some time now. However, even were Atheists 99% of the world's population, it would not suggest Atheism was true; just as when 100% of the people on earth believed the world was flat, it did not make that true.

That would be what's called "bandwagon fallacy," if we believed it did.
the concept that folks - friends (Hindu/Muslim i've made over the years who are not Christian, but I affirm as good - under Christian theology - GO TO HELL FOREVER due to not "beleiving in Christ".

If Christians have no problem with that concept, and Athiests like myself do.
That's not a fair representation, and I would prefer to challenge it; but let me pretend for a moment that you've got the Christian view right. Let me ask you, then:

Do Atheists (your own kind, not all Atheists) believe in justice? Do you believe in the affirming of good and the retribution against genuine evil? Or do Atheist believe, in concert with Atheism, that there is no good and no evil, no justice or injustice?

Because if your belief were the latter, you could not possibly raise your objection against the Christian idea of Hell. It could then not possibly be "unfair" for Hell to exist, since as per Atheism, there is no such thing as "fair." Nobody "deserves" anything, and nothing is to be expected either way.

And that's the very interesting thing about that challenge against God: if you believe it would be "unjust" for God to send people to Hell, you must believe there is an objective thing called "injustice." For how else can you launch the accusation in the first place? But if there is such a thing as objective "injustice," (and you want God to answer for it) then there must be objective morality.

But objective morality requires the existence of God, as many prominent Atheists have said. (Nietzsche, for example.) In fact, it's the reason so many Atheists tell us that objective morality cannot exist....there's no objective God to create or sustain it...morality's all subjective, all temporal, all human, and all negotiable, they say.

So how can God be "unjust" to do anything, as per Atheism? And how can the Atheist demand from God a standard of justice the Atheist himself admits has no objective reality? :shock:

But if that's the case, then not-liking-the-idea-of-Hell cannot be any rationally-consistent Atheist's reason for disbelief in God.
Immanuel Can wrote: Thu Jul 18, 2019 1:39 pm There's the "freedom" of Atheism. The "freedom" to know nothing, to be nothing, to have no purpose, to go nowhere, to do anything to each other, and to have no moral recourse for the oppressed. It opens the world to raw power, and no more.
more dissparaging of Athiests as reprobates.
No, again.

Let me reinforce what I said earlier, so you'll understand. There's a great and important difference between Atheism and what people who call themselves "Atheists" do. I am not calling Atheists "reprobates": but what I am pointing out is that Atheism, the belief, drives some of them in bad directions. You may not be among those -- and I have no reason to think you are.
- I'm saddened to read your post above, after talking to you in that other thread.
I hope not. You're mistaking my intent.

I'm not here to abuse any Atheists. I'm trying to point out the dangers of believing Atheism, and particularly the danger of adding to Atheism a secondary political creed that turns it from nihilistic despair to homicide.

And I think we could agree on that, no? After all, don't people criticize it when someone who calls himself a "Christian" does something bad? Sure they do; and I would even argue they should. :shock: Christians take upon themselves a higher standard than that. So fair enough.

But why should Atheism, as a creed, be given an exemption from critique that it would deny to any other creed? Why shouldn't Atheism be required to answer for what it has caused and what its followers have done, if we hold Christians, Jews and others to such a standard?

It only seems fair.
Athiests are not a horde.
True. And I've repeatedly said so above. In fact, as I said above, I've never met a consistent Atheist...a "real" one. All I've ever found is ones who hold to some package of Atheismplus (TM), some combination of Atheism-plus-Marxism, or Atheism-plus-Buddhism, or Atheism-plus-Humanism.

Atheism alone is, as we have already agreed, nothing but a gelding, a nothing, a void, a negation. It always needs a supplement to be liveable.
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Re: I won't adulterate the UK edition with my primitive American thinkin'...

Post by FlashDangerpants »

henry quirk wrote: Sun Jul 21, 2019 3:32 pm "I think his is unstable under load, the simplicity of the principles fails to assist with any complex choice, and the whole thing is like entering a maze and saying you can find your way out by taking every right turn. There is every possibility that we are both right."

The principle (the individual owns himself and has a right to his life, liberty, and property) is a strong, sturdy foundation upon which folks can align themselves as they like, organize themselves as they like. The principle leads to only one prohibition (don't deprive the individual of his life, liberty, or property or you may forfeit your own [mind your own goddamned business, keep your friggin' hands to yourself, or else]). The principle isn't meant to assist with complex choices: it's the admonition against choices that denigrate the individual. Your wishy-washy, but workable, notion would only be better, work better, if -- at its heart -- it incorporated as inviolate self-ownership and the individual right to life, liberty, and property.
But via some as yet unannounced logic you are willing to abandon those principles to punish companies for moving jobs abroad, even though those companies are property of persons and you shouldn't be interfering. So whatever that other reasoning is, I'm going to guess it must be some conflicting rights of somebody else's property and person?
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Sculptor
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Re: I won't adulterate the UK edition with my primitive American thinkin'...

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FlashDangerpants wrote: Sun Jul 21, 2019 7:52 pm
henry quirk wrote: Sun Jul 21, 2019 3:32 pm "I think his is unstable under load, the simplicity of the principles fails to assist with any complex choice, and the whole thing is like entering a maze and saying you can find your way out by taking every right turn. There is every possibility that we are both right."

The principle (the individual owns himself and has a right to his life, liberty, and property) is a strong, sturdy foundation upon which folks can align themselves as they like, organize themselves as they like. The principle leads to only one prohibition (don't deprive the individual of his life, liberty, or property or you may forfeit your own [mind your own goddamned business, keep your friggin' hands to yourself, or else]). The principle isn't meant to assist with complex choices: it's the admonition against choices that denigrate the individual. Your wishy-washy, but workable, notion would only be better, work better, if -- at its heart -- it incorporated as inviolate self-ownership and the individual right to life, liberty, and property.
But via some as yet unannounced logic you are willing to abandon those principles to punish companies for moving jobs abroad, even though those companies are property of persons and you shouldn't be interfering. So whatever that other reasoning is, I'm going to guess it must be some conflicting rights of somebody else's property and person?
Since a company is a collection of persons, and is built upon the labour of those persons, it is the right, no even the duty of the state to keep the economic power of that company in the country that nurtured it, and provided the market and the infrastructure that made the company possible in the first place.
Company owners need to be prevented from using whatever country they like as a milk cow only to be abandoned to abuse another set of workers in another place.
Such parasitism can only lead to eventual implosion of the economy with growing inequality and exploitation.
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