Politics Discussion Thread (Heated Arguing Warning)

[SevenSpirits]

The easiest way to get good information on the internet is to post bad information and wait for someone to correct it.

And the easiest way to summon the police is to commit a crime. That quote isn't supposed to be an instruction manual!

[T-hawk]

I don't know where declining to advocate for lack of data constitutes unreasonability.

I did get turned around and respond to that same formula quote twice. I got interrupted writing that last response just before leaving work yesterday, pasted it out to a notepad window that already had the other quote, and by the time I got back to it this morning forgot what came from where.

[scooter]

I don't need any evidence to establish anything. T-Hawk did the thing he's done a bunch in this thread which is launch a Fox News talking point bomb with 0 evidence and then run, so I linked actual evidence that suggests he's wrong. His statement is provably false (or at minimum absurdly exaggerated) with the above link, full stop.

The easiest way to get good information on the internet is to post bad information and wait for someone to correct it.

CA's population is growing, sure, but that's not what I was talking about.  There is domestic migration in and out of CA, which your link doesn't talk about.  Anecdotally the cases of migration out of CA that I've heard about are conservatives getting out of the liberal madness.  Feel free to disprove that (a few tiny counties of 80k pop doesn't); I merely don't care enough about the point to bother looking up anything.

Right, so we're going to double down that a thing is happening with 0 evidence because it supports your presumptive worldview about a group of people that are different than you. Okay. You're right that "say something wrong on the internet" will get you corrected, but there's a difference between getting a Civ mechanic wrong and broad-brushing an entire state because of some random anecdote. This is part of the problem - smart people turning their brains off and blindly accepting anything that confirms their bias. Rather than, say, considering that California is a big state and therefore will always have a lot of people flowing in and out in a given year. But of course, it's much easier to insist it's definitely happening and it's because The Other Side Is Bad.

SPEAKING OF... On a much lighter note, this was an interesting read:

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/dem...democrats/

Some genuinely funny stuff in here, though overall it may say more about people's inability to estimate than anything else. A highlight:

Blacks made up about a quarter of the Democratic Party, but Republicans estimated the share at 46 percent. Republicans thought 38 percent of Democrats were gay, lesbian or bisexual, while the actual number was about 6 percent. Democrats estimated that 44 percent of Republicans make more than $250,000 a year. The actual share was 2 percent.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

I think that article is mostly just people being statistically illiterate. Republicans know that most blacks vote Democrat, ergo, most Democrats must be black. Democrats believe that most rich people support Republicans, so a lot of Republicans must be rich.

Basic numeracy would get people to mostly correct answers, but that's a skill beyond the reach of many normal folk.

[scooter]

I think that article is mostly just people being statistically illiterate. Republicans know that most blacks vote Democrat, ergo, most Democrats must be black. Democrats believe that most rich people support Republicans, so a lot of Republicans must be rich.

Basic numeracy would get people to mostly correct answers, but that's a skill beyond the reach of many normal folk.

I mostly agree, but have you seen this thread? Politics makes smart people say dumb things.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Thankfully, I have not seen 98% of the thread - my own view is that fighting about politics is idiotic, and if someone wants my opinion on the pressing issues of the day, they will ask for it, otherwise I'm keeping my own counsel.

That said, I saw all the activity and couldn't resist a look to see what all the fuss was about. I concluded that I was not missing much by sticking to the Civ portions of the site. <_<

[T-hawk]

Scooter, you're just entirely making up things I never said. "Broad-brushing an entire state" , "Insist it's definitely happening" - I said no such thing at all, I clearly said what I've seen are anecdotes.

[Nicolae Carpathia]

Scooter, you're just entirely making up things I never said. "Broad-brushing an entire state" , "Insist it's definitely happening" - I said no such thing at all, I clearly said what I've seen are anecdotes.

cool so your points are worthless delete your account

[scooter]

Scooter, you're just entirely making up things I never said.  "Broad-brushing an entire state" , "Insist it's definitely happening" - I said no such thing at all, I clearly said what I've seen are anecdotes.

Sigh, ok:

From what I've read, the California exodus is more conservatives fleeing the liberal madness.

Anecdotally the cases of migration out of CA that I've heard about are conservatives getting out of the liberal madness.

You're characterizing an entire state's attitude as madness for no reason other than you disagree with some unknown policies, and then you invent out of thin air a narrative on how it's so bad people are fleeing. And then you act shocked when people call you on it. What am I supposed to say? You did the same thing with this baby formula stuff.

[Bacchus]

If allowing businesses to lie, cheat, poison, and just generally screw over their customers is the "free market" then is it really any wonder so many are rejecting it?

That, together with THH's comment suggesting that I somehow want to take his benefit away strongly indicates that I need to outline some of the first principles I'm coming from. I really liked your comment, btw, Mr Cairo, and I don't think we disagree on that much at the end of the day, but term clarification is certainly in order. Not least because I was a little imprecise with the language -- you are quite right that that blanket statement was just plain wrong as worded and if talking with people that don't share your definitions of the market. So, here we go.

Free enterprise is the ability for any individual or group to engage in exploration of people's needs, to mobilize resources and build operations to serve those needs. An effective legal system which implements and protects the right of free enterprise among its citizenry at large is what I call a free market or, sometimes, for short-hand, just 'market'. The opposite of free enterprise is coercion, which is the ability for an individual not to serve needs, but to exploit them via various forms of extortion. An effective legal system which implements and protects the right of coercion is thus the opposite of the market, I would call it a system of 'rents', 'rent-seeking' or 'privilege'.

Note that the motive, profit or otherwise, does not feature in my definition at all -- coercion can be just as profit-seeking as enterprise, and they could both be done for 'non-profit' reasons, if profit is to be understood narrowly as monetary profit.

Also note that my definition does not oppose the market to the state, on the contrary, it defines a free market as a product of an effective legal system, which in our reality mostly means a state-enforced system. Whilst I concede the logical possibility of their being a market in anarchy, I don't think there is any significant empirical possibility of such a thing, anarchy tends to breed coercion, not enterprise.

Let's quickly cover why free enterprise is good: it creates a self-motivating system of serving people's needs; it ensures that for as long as any need is underserved and could be practicably served better, there would be a motivation for serving it better; and it provides a self-correcting method for allocation of resources precisely where they are needed. These effects are very powerful and they are very difficult to replicate through other methods, which is why in general an expansion of free enterprise was routinely followed by expansion of prosperity. There are, however, conditions underlying that goodness, the most obvious are: needs can't be served through criminal means; people have to have an effective ability to choose among products and services; potential providers have to have an effective ability to make their product or service available for choice; providers have to have an ability to secure returns.

Where these conditions are unfulfilled, free enterprise loses its value: there is nothing valuable about companies competing in who can offload a larger proportion of its costs on unwilling citizens (say through adopting cheaper, polluting technologies), there is nothing valuable in a privatized monopoly, there is nothing valuable in privatizing a service which still has to be funded by taxpayers because it can't in practice secure returns from its customers. If above I had to draw a distinction with left-wingers, who define 'market' as 'profit-oriented', here I have to draw a distinction with right-wingers, who define market as 'privately-owned'. This is a real problem in the US, most chronically manifested by the veritable Frankenstein's monster of the insurance system. The sector was given over to private enterprise, but not free enterprise, as if putting something in private ownership by magic makes it better.

So, to come back to specific policy points: free enterprise is good, but the state has a role in ensuring that what goes on is actually free enterprise, that is a competitive serving of people's needs through non-criminal means through a provision of effective choice in a system that by its nature rewards the successful provider precisely for his success. Privatizing everything and cutting regulation as much as possible does NOT produce free enterprise in the general case. However, enterprise also does NOT "trend to monopoly", i.e. to being unfree in the general case -- that's a Marxian article of faith that's just false, this trend exists in specific types of industries, especially high-fixed-cost industries, but on generally. Rent-controls are also not a good way to help people with housing. So much has been written about that. (Note that I specifically avoided linking to authors like Walter Block, or the Cato Institute)