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Researchers Claim To Be Able To Determine Political Leaning By How Messy You Are
According to a study to be published in The Journal of Political Psychology, you can tell someone's political affiliation by looking at the condition of their offices and bedrooms. Conservatives tend to be neat and liberals love a mess. Researchers found that the bedrooms and offices of liberals tend to be colorful and full of books about travel, ethnicity, feminism and music, along with music CDs covering folk, classic and modern rock, as well as art supplies, movie tickets and travel memorabilia. Their conservative contemporaries, on the other hand, tend to surround themselves with calendars, postage stamps, laundry baskets, irons and sewing materials. Their bedrooms and offices are well lit and decorated with sports paraphernalia and flags — especially American ones. Sam Gosling, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Texas at Austin, says these room cues are "behavioral residue." The findings are just the latest in a series of recent attempts to unearth politics in personality, the brain and DNA. I, for one, support a woman's right to clean.
Got books from Karl Marx, you might be a socialist, if you got book from Nozick or Ayn Rand you might be a liberal.
I should have taken sociology courses instead.
My -1 Troll is actually a +1 funny. And my -1 flame is actually a +1 insightfull.
It seems to make sense to me, conservatives in my view have always been about protecting and preserving the America's physical assets and wealth, where as liberals conversely tend to put ideals above the nation's power and prosperity.
and just for the record in case it matters to anyone. I tend to view myself a somewhat left leaning moderate.
The rest of the world dont use.
Trying to be social determinismts, you must use the most general and stereotypical easy deffinition, that's so broad contradictions don't got something to grab on.
On my course about writing papers, the lecturer warned us about using generalities.
This is beyond stupid.
My -1 Troll is actually a +1 funny. And my -1 flame is actually a +1 insightfull.
Conservatives surround themselves with irons? :looks around:
C'mon, is my web cam on? Nobody I've ever known surrounds themselves with irons.
I've got a messy desk, though I try to keep it organized every few days, I've got music on my drive from Flowing Waters to ragas to Beethoven to Miles Davis to trash pop, all my books are on shelves unless I'm using them, and, yes, I have an alligator head from Louisiana nearby, as well as a Voltron, but my workspace is well-lit and I have some postage stamps in this desk's hutch. No flags or sports memorabilia are in sight.
I suspect that my mess's characteristics don't fit their model because the Liberal/Conservative single-political-dimension model is wildly oversimplistic. Trying to draw any conclusions based on it is just going to give you bad ideas.
In the real world most people would think I'm a conservative, though people who actually know me would think I'm a Classical Liberal. I know, I'm off-axis, for shame.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
What does it mean if they're dimly lit and well decorated with drug paraphernalia?
As opposed to your boy hero who just nationalized the banks.
Those on the right have books about feminism. Those on the left have feminist books.
All sides have dirty hands in that, from the very beginning.
This meltdown has nothing to do with Democrats or Republicans failing us. It has to do with the black-box government as a whole failing us.
Perhaps our representatives could, at some point, get back to the job of representing us.
It would get me exactly backwards! Sounds more like stereotyping than research.
I think someone is trying to polarize voters.
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This sounds like pop psychology to me. Is this journal an "A pub?" Is it even a high B? Funny how the description was spun to make leftists look vital and engaging, while conservatives are portrayed as pedestrian or even boorish.
I'm a staunch small-L Libertarian (which to leftists is indistinguishable from a conservative) and my home is usually quite neat and tidy. But in most other respects the description of a "liberal" abode matches mine. My home is filled with books, music, art, musical instruments, nice furniture, and two cats. I suspect that if one of the people behind this supposed study were to enter my home, they'd assume I was a leftist, at least until they started peering over the titles on my bookshelf.
I will say this however, the leftists where I work do tend to be the most messy, even slovenly in some cases.
The way I see it, the way that someone deals with the environment under their control says a lot about them. If someone can't even manage to keep their own space functional, then how can they handle the other aspects of life? People who take responsibility for themselves tend to embrace ideas derived from the concept of personal responsibility. People who avoid taking responsibility for themselves will embrace ideas that downplay or go against the concept of personal responsibility. So it isn't surprising that people who can't manage to take responsibility for their own living and working spaces would be most likely to embrace a philosophy that tells them they shouldn't have to.
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
I wonder if:
1. younger people tend to have messier rooms than older people (age correlates with political identity)
2. military people tend to be neater than non-military people
3. poorer people tend to be messier than richer people (again, correlation)
I'd like to see the actual report when it comes out to see which variables they're controlling for.
I don't believe in time. It's a grand conspiracy designed to sell watches.
You know you will be justified in calling them a fascist
Seriously though these kinds of analysis of political leaning toward behavior seem as silly as the easily startled tend to be more conservative.
Sille as it may seem when presented like this, it is not as stupid as that. In recent years there has been a lot of research into how mental processes relate to brain physiology, body chemistry etc, and in that context it isn't unreasonable to hypothesize about why people lean one way or another, politically.
Also, please note that this a statistical result - there is a apparent correlation between political leaning and the way you keep order. This can be seen as just a special case of the idea that the way you live your life influences your political opinion - IOW nothing surprising there.
What they don't say is that "if you are messy, you are always liberal".
How much of this do you folks in the Slashdot community out there really buy into?
Oh, every word, certainly. This is about critical thinking - it doesn't mean that you have to reject everything with scorn, out of hand, it just means that you don't accept things without first thinking about how they add up. It is surprising how often critical thinking leads you to accept and understand what others tell you.
I guess this means I'm somewhere in the middle since my interests would indicate I'm a liberal but I have a tendency to want things neat and organized.
I have to say, it's quite obnoxious how utterly polarized politics has become in the US. It's basically all or nothing with too many people on both sides, to the point where a potentially sound idea is completely dismissed because it might have hints of being conservative or liberal. Instead of fixing existing systems too many people are intent on completely trashing it and replacing it with whatever conforms to their worldview. I don't even bother trying to discuss politics with some people I know because it results in them becoming openly hostile. They wont even take the time to consider my viewpoint and argue it. Instead I'm dismissed as a shill for one entity or another. The friends I do get into interesting discussions with are the ones who are legitimately moderate.
And this is amongst people who are somewhat informed, although some might draw all their news from one side of the aisle. Unfortunately, I encounter far too many people who don't know what the hell is going on beyond what they hear in sound bites. I find that overseas people seem to be better informed about politics. And their opinions seem to be more balanced. They seem inclined to side with parties based more on specific issues. And there's much less of this notion that one side has to take one stance on issues and the other side has to adopt the opposite stance.
What troubles me is that this is basically using science to reinforce stereotypes. Maybe someday someone will come along and tell us we can be cured of our political affiliations.
This article just blithely assumes personality traits are fixed at birth and then determine political beliefs, and makes essentially arbitrary value judgements on those traits.
Positive personality traits associated with liberalism (self-reliant, resilient, dominating and energetic) and negative ones attributed to conservatism (easily victimized or offended, indecisive, fearful and rigid) appear as young as nursery school-age kids--and correlate with those children's political beliefs in adulthood, according to a 20-year study published in 2006 in the Journal of Research in Personality. More recently, scientists linked the strength of a person's startle response to their political leanings: conservatives tended to scare easier, blinking harder than liberals when they heard a loud noise.
Now that thing about the startle response is interesting, especially because it's a simple enough trait that one can easily imagine it really is just genetics. On the other hand what's the point in describing personality traits as positive or negative here? Why not just say these traits were more common in liberals, and these over here were more common in conservatives? What purpose is served by mixing value judgements in with the attempted science like that? What kind of messed-up person describes 'dominating' as a positive trait in a political context, anyway?
I think it's ignorant and rude for you to suggest that liberals don't work as hard as conservatives, or don't love America as much. How do you know how hard I work? And how can you possibly see into my heart and tell me how much I love America? The fact is, you're simply spouting stereotypes that reflect your political bias.
And as to the spending, Bush had a republican congress for most of his reign, and they managed to get our government and our country into a pretty deep financial hole. Living below your means? What a joke.
And that must be the result of being Libertarian!
I don't want Obama, I have convinced myself he is a socialist, which is fine, but I don't want that.
Errrrr, *gosh*, I don't really want McCain either. He's (R) but not a conservative. I'd trust his foreign policy, but his domestic policy would be some smarmy mish-mash of capitalist and socialist ideas that would get all fubar and result in just as much misery as I think Obama domestic policy would.
I learned much too late that I really, really, liked Ron Paul. *snuffed*
So now I'm thinking, Bob Barr? He seems like a reasonable second to Ron Paul, but I don't know if I care for his VP. I'd honestly rather have Palin in there.
Slashdot and Digg and all the high-tech Web 2.0 destinations are vibrant with Obama supporters, God love 'em. I wonder why these communities are so tilted that way?
To those folks, I'm still seeking an answer to a problem which has been troubling me throughout the campaign: All the nations' leaders who are in an adversarial relationship with us have publicly and openly voiced support for Obama, and continue to wish him well for the election. Is it possible to despise tyrants like Amadinejad and Chavez, but still root for an Obama victory alongside them? I keep asking myself what it is about Obama that makes dictators such as they want to give him their support? If Amadinejad comes to our United States and condemns the life all we Americans have worked so hard for (for generations) in front of the UN, and then proceeds to encourage us to vote for Obama, what exactly is the "change" which he's expecting to get? I am frightened at the prospect that in Obama, people like Mamoud and Hugo see someone whose governing policy is more aligned with theirs, and would push America in the directions which Iran and Venezuela have gone.
I think most of our fine and earnest citizens of Iranian and Venezuelan heritage would say that such an alignment and transformation would be a terrible thing, and would be in keeping with the values and opportunities which motivated them to come here and become fellow Americans (please speak up and don't let me speak for you).
I'm fiscally conservative, and socially libertarian. I don't approve of the actions our gov't has taken with respect to creating this crisis, or the actions now purported to try to solve it. Free markets and deregulation were not to blame, because the market was not free to start with. Subsidy distorted it and disconnected, for the financial segment, the risk-reward relationship of a naturally free, open, and transparent market. Mostly Dems inflated subsidy, and mostly Repubs removed "select" regulations and clouded transparency. Both types of manipulation are contra to a free market. Hopefully the damage will end up being minimal, but we are eerily following in lock-step with the fiscal and social game plans which took a devastating, but short-lived stock market downturn, and transformed it into a crushing depression.
I believe that as an American, you are free to do what you will in your own private life. Whatever lifestyle you choose. Tempered with personal responsibility and respect for your neighbors.
Freedom doesn't mean free-for-all, which is an ironic sort of tyranny in itself. The highest degrees of freedom carry also the highest responsibilities. I want the freedom to act in my own self-interests, and I accept the responsibility to do right by my neighbors when decided when, where, and how to enjoy any particular freedom. But I want it to be my choice.
Our modern popular culture I think realizes the responsibilities necessary to grab hold of, but increasingly does not want to shoulder its burdens. The rationalization is that less true freedom may not feel soo great, but abdicating the burden of responsibility more than makes up for that loss. That kind of carefree "feels" better. Or, so such the culture believes.
My wager, is that such is a fools bargain. Carefree != freedom. Is there a harm in trying it? Yes, I believe there is,
USNG: 14TPU4605
You've seen the current national debt, right?
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
Either way this upcoming election should mean the final retirement of the corrupt Nixon cronies that came with Bush. so you might see a return to the traditional party line instead of this stupid "child molesters for the family" type of hypocritical representation with one financial/sexual/security scandal after another. You need representatives that don't have hands out for bribes and don't have their hands in the pants of "pages" while telling everybody how Christian they are. Take a look at some overseas press to see how these "patriots" are actuallly ruining the declining reputation of the USA.
>>>... and if you got no books at all, you might just be Republican :)
You know I'm sick of these prejudices (yes that is the correct word). I'm a Republican, I read lots of texts, and my room is about as messy & colorful as any liberal room.
Furthermore, I'm sick of the label "conservative". The idea that man should rule himself (not be ruled by politicians) is about as liberal as can be. I support legalization of marijuana (inside your own home) and same-sex marriages (it's your bedroom; do whatever you want). I'm as liberal as any Democrat, I just don't think having my government act like my daddy is the answer.
FOX NEWS.com should be BANNED from television and internet. Have the Congress take it over and give us Truespeak.
I agree with you 100%, although I prefer to call myself a Libertarian rather than a Republican. It seems that the one group it's OK to be prejudiced against is the Republicans, and I'm sick of it too. Oh well, who is John Galt, anyway?
I'm sick of you people misappropriating the word 'liberal'.
Like many other research, this is just an example of someone who has a belief and only uses examples that support that belief to justify that belief, while ignoring everything else.
Here's the problem, sir: you're using the old definition of Republican. The party doesn't stand for that anymore.
Hey, look! It's Bono's brother.
Not if it's peppered with darts.
Hey, look! It's Bono's brother.
It seems to me that you would need larger samples in more life/professional areas to draw reasonable conclusions. Could the tendency to be more or less organized also be attributable to one's profession or current life circumstance?
My room is full of trinkets and mementos, three guitars, a set of congas, clutter, and colorful trinkets from friends in other countries, and colorful gifts from friends who have traveled where I have not had the opportunity to go. You'll find evidence of my hobby of dabbling in foreign languages. You won't find a single American flag, sport poster, or banner, yet the majority of my political views are squarely conservative. While it is an interesting topic of study, the sample will need to be much larger, and the demographic divisors much more granular, before onclusions may be extended to the general population.
I use irony whenever I can, but my shirts are still wrinkled...
Do you see a conservative-led government? I don't.
The Republican party hasn't stood for your values in decades. The size of government balloons under Republican administrations, they spend money like there's no tomorrow, they push through draconian legislation like the PATRIOT Act, and they don't support legalization of marijuana or same-sex marriages. Why do you continue to identify yourself as a Republican when it's obvious that they don't stand for anything you believe in?
Why would I switch to Democrat when *they* don't stand for anything I believe either?
They talk about freedom, and yet they want to add even more taxes to my paycheck. I'm already losing 40% of my pay in automatic deductions. We don't need more taxes.
FOX NEWS.com should be BANNED from television and internet. Have the Congress take it over and give us Truespeak.
The fact that the national debt is so large proves the point that the Republican party has veered so far away from true conservative values that they are more like Democrat Lite than the republicans of old. A more traditional conservative approach is to reduce the size of government. Maybe not to the level that Libertarians would but in the past 30 years, we've seen a decided move of Republicans to much more liberal tendencies. Remember, Republican and Democrat are not the same as conservative and liberal.
THIS SPACE FOR RENT
Guess what? You probably shouldn't be a Republican.
Just about the only thing that Republicans will do that you approve of, is cut taxes. They've shown they won't cut spending to match either so it's inevitable that that bill has to come due and taxes will rise even higher than they were before they were cut. You just might want to vote differently.
And to answer the follow up, people aren't prejudiced against Republicans. They're upset with the behaviour of Republican Politicians, Republican Pundits, the Republican Party and the voters who seem to excuse any amount of insanity as long as it comes with tax cuts.
Personally, I want my government to be based on reason and best practices, not faith and war and that's why I can't vote for the current Republican party. And if you're an objectivist, you just might want to think a little more closely about what steps are actually a good idea to get better government (even if better for you is only less) and which are not. "Starving the Beast" isn't working.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
First of all, who said anything about switching to Democrats? Secondly, Republicans would eventually be forced to raise taxes because they run up massive deficits and their spending sprees can't continue indefinitely without someone footing the bill. As pathetic as this is... Democrat administrations typically cut the budget and begin reducing the massive deficits created by Republican spending sprees.
Personally, I wouldn't vote for either of them, but if I was forced to pick one it would definitely be the Democrats. Republican fiscal policy in the last few decades has been terribly irresponsible.
That's easy. Poorly designed electoral systems which lead to a 2 party duopoly. The U.S. needs massive electoral reform and the rise of some additional parties to diversify the real choices offered to voters. Having only 2 parties to choose from leads to voters having to choose the least corrupt party every time they vote, but the 2 party system makes it easy to subvert a large portion of voters by constantly campaigning against "the other guys". It's really just a big mess.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
It seems that the one group it's OK to be prejudiced against is the Republicans, and I'm sick of it too
Ah yes, because it's Republicans who get called traitors and asked questions like why you hate America. *rolls eyes*
This conservative persecution complex is really laughable.
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
Nobody's forced to pick either, but you'd think they were. There are plenty of third party candidates, but as long as "third party" = "wasted vote" in the majority of people's minds, nothing with ever change. We keep voting for the lesser of two evils, and every election, both choices get just a bit worse. It's never enough to inspire revolt, but it's been going on so long that government no longer has interest in anything but maintaining power.
FTA: "It's pleasurable for liberals to think more. They gravitate toward art, to things that are not as concrete," says Carney. "Conservatives have a need for order, for there not to be ambiguity. There you see that expressed by being more orderly, having more cleaning supplies, needing to have everything lined up and organized so that one feels one's environment is predictable and therefore safe."
Who wants to bet that the person who made that comment is a messy liberal? "Liberals like thinking"? Even if there is a strong correlation here, how does having more books mean you like thinking more. Maybe "liberals like reading" would have made more sense. Then they go on to make being neat sound bad -- like it's some obsessive need based on insecurity. As for myself, I'm a very messy conservative who reads a lot and likes art.
Prov 9:8 Do not rebuke mockers or they will hate you; rebuke the wise and they will love you.
"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." - Albert Einstein
As long as you vote Republican they have no incentive to do anything differently.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
Libertarianism virtually doesn't exist outside of the United States. 'Left anarchism' isn't libertarianism as it's most widely understood and defined. Just because a cat wears a label that says it's a dog, doesn't make it a dog.
I also find it hilarious how people conflate libertarianism and Objectivism. Ayn Rand hated libertarians, primarily because she made the same mistake that everybody and their dog makes about libertarianism: she failed to realize that it's not a philosophy. Libertarianism is and should be a simple system of government that only deals with matters of harm (physical or financial) between persons. It doesn't make value judgments about actions outside of that spectrum, because it's not the role of a libertarian government to say whether it is better or worse for an individual to devote their lives to curing cancer or jerking off to porn. Because libertarianism wouldn't take any kind of stand on what man should do (only what man shouldn't do), Ayn Rand thought it was a weak and spineless philosophy, consequently missing the point that it wasn't a philosophy in the first place.
As highly as I think of Ayn Rand, she basically doomed Objectivism when she said that anybody who didn't believe exactly as she did couldn't call themselves an Objectivist. (This is not hypocrisy in the context of my first paragraph. There are reasonable and unreasonable degrees of interpretive difference. Lutherans and Baptists have interpretive differences but they're both Christian. A muslim couldn't reasonably call himself a Christian even if he argued about the role Christ has in the Quran. It's a subjective matter of symantics to some extent.) Particularly ironic and inconsistent considering that she herself wrote about the value of evolving philosophies and the fallacy of the pursuit much less the attainment of perfection. This has resulted in stagnancy by design.
I support the Slashcott and will not be reading or commenting from 2/10/14 to 2/17/14. Beta is steaming pile of dog shit
> I support [...] same-sex marriages (it's your bedroom; do whatever you want).
No, marriage has nothing to do with who you screw. It is a public, not a private, function. In fact, it relates to the regulation of reproduction and responsibility for produced or adopted children.
As such, ideally, one should be able to file taxes as Married *only* if one has also had deductions for Dependents in that or previous years, or have a certificate from a doctor that the woman is currently pregnant. Good luck getting *that* through, though.
.
BTW, I am a Republican, what I consider reasonably conservative, both economic and social, and my office and bedrooms are notoriously messy. Friends refer to my looking for old documents as "conducting an archeology expedition."
In short, I call BS on the article.
Outside the US, Libertarianism is a common term for Anarchism in general. When someone outside the US uses the term 'Libertarian' they mean something very different from what someone in the US means. Most anarchists outside the US are not of the capitalist/free market/individualist anarchist variety, they are left anarchists.
All anarchists, social and individualist, believe that government should be a simple system that only deals with harm. That is not the cause of the schism, that is the root of all anarchism. The schism is over two issues, first, what is property, and second, what is harm? Individualist anarchists advocate strong individual property rights and lax definitions of harm. By lax I mean, me using economic force to subjugate you is not harming you, it is helping you in individualist anarchist's eyes. If I weren't there to subjugate you financially, what would you eat? Social anarchists believe in democratic control of the means of production, and strict definitions of harm. We believe that people have a right to be free from financial subjugation, and that the only fair way to control the world's resources is through democratic control. One person or group asserting ownership of a natural resource amounts to stealing it from the rest of us.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
It is also hilarious how conservatives claim to be the majority, and a persecuted minority at the same time. It is as if all concepts exist as discrete, disconnected entities in conservative minds. In this way of thinking, the fact that one is in the majority simply has no bearing on the fact that one is a minority. Both can be true. Beliefs are held because they are convenient, not because they are supported by and support other beliefs.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
We used an interesting system here in London to pick our mayor: Your ballot has two columns - your first choice and your second choice. You can't vote for the same person in both.
The idea is that the votes from everyone's first column are totalled up. If nobody gets more than 50% of the vote, they eliminate all but the top two candidates. They then add to each candidate's total all of the votes for that candidate in the second column. The winner is the one with the highest total from both columns combined.
In practice what this means is that you vote in column 1 for the candidate you'd really prefer, even if he has no chance of winning. You vote in the column 2 for a candidate who has a realistic chance of winning and whom you don't mind too much.
Applied to the national elections in America, it would mean that the greens could all vote for Nader safe in the knowledge that it wouldn't result in a "lost vote" for the Democrats. And libertarians could vote for Paul.
The beauty of such a system is that the final result would be a better reflection of the electorate's will (Gore would have won, for instance), and the true extent of minority candidates' support would also be more obvious, so those candidates would have a bigger influence on the election - for instance, they might not fall foul of the 15% "viability" standard required to participate in the debates. And in the long run, it's just possible that a third party might break the stranglehold of the Dems and Reps.
Am I crazy, or is this idea worth exploring in America?
-- Note to Mods: There is a good reason there's no "-1 Disagree" option. --
They talk about freedom, and yet they want to add even more taxes to my paycheck. I'm already losing 40% of my pay in automatic deductions. We don't need more taxes.
Why do you believe that "freedom" must mean "less taxes".
Me (libertarian), and my family (all Republicans), keep very very very messy living spaces. Our rooms are, in general, decorated with dirty laundry, dirty dishes, computers, beds, dressers and occasionally curtains (sometimes windows accompanying these). We have racks and racks of books about various mechanical devices, several complete sets of various encyclopedias and religious books (along with various other fictional works). (In my own home, .. I have a kindle.)
So uh, no. I don't think this is even a little true, at least not in my experience. My only liberal relative keeps the cleanest house in the (hundreds strong) family.
If ownership of natural resources is predicated on adding value through labor, by what right does one add labor in the first place? Without adding the labor, one does not own the resource, therefore, one is stealing by adding one's labor to a resource one doesn't own.
Fair exchange? Is it fair exchange to hire a hit man to kill you? Is it fair exchange to hire a thief to steal your things? If I buy a bicycle from someone who stole it from you, to whom does the bike rightfully belong? Why is it fair exchange to purchase stolen land?
So, what moral excuse did Jack use to appropriate the land in the first place?
What happens when one individual wields more power through financial gamesmanship than any group can defend against?
No individual has any inherent rights. In fact, the concept of rights only exists in a social context. Without that context, one should more properly speak of power.
Rights derive from agreements between individuals. Specifically, rights come from an agreement to uphold and defend the right, and an agreement to punish those who would infringe the right. You can bleat on and on about your property rights, or your right to be free from attack, but without a group willing to back you up, or the power to defend yourself, your rights are meaningless to those who would take them from you.
What I'm hearing from you in regard to Nozick is, "I don't understand these ideas well enough to put them in my own words. I believe them because I like the consequences of believing them, not because I understand them." If you can't make the case yourself, you don't understand the concept, and I'm not going to go read someone you claim understands it better.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
This to me is plenty of evidence that everybody's irrational, particularly when it comes to people they don't identify or agree with, and belies motives other than seeking the truth and solving real problems.
Love, Squeedle
Internal consistency (between moral concepts) is something Conservatives are *not* good at. If you try to argue with a Conservative and convince them your argument is right they'll simply switch arguments. The best way to argue with a Conservative is to ask questions (as though you are simply curious) about their point of view. Continue to ask questions and compare their answers to their previous answers for consistency, and then ask questions about that. Do not try to argue your point of view.
I like how you can be so dismissive about my capacity because I can't fully regurgitate several chapters of complex concepts that somebody could give lectures on for weeks into a few digested paragraphs in a matter of minutes between all the other crap I have to work on all day. That's extremely condescending and disingenuous. It's one thing to counter the points within and understand limitations that should be assumed in good faith, and under other circumstances I might have found some time to offer a more coherent rebuttal when more pressing matters were out of the way, but your attitude gives no benefit of the doubt and no good faith. Probably stems directly from your low opinion of the value of individuals. In any case, I'm glad that such an early showing of your true colors has given me sufficient demonstration of your relative value that I can avoid any later significant effort in more detailed argument.
I support the Slashcott and will not be reading or commenting from 2/10/14 to 2/17/14. Beta is steaming pile of dog shit
Because a free man who works gets paid and gets to decide what to do with that money.
A slave who works gets room and food, but isn't free to choose to get money in his pocket to do what he wants for instead.
Taxation is money that you've earned but don't have the freedom to decide how they will be spent.
So the less taxes you are forced to pay, the more freedom you have over the resources you've earned and freedom over the resources you've earned is one imortent aspect of freedom.
Plus, the less taxes you pay, the less money the government has to do stupid things with, like sending troops to kill people in foreign countries or overcrowding prisons with people for victimless crimes, so it actually gives you more freedom in two ways.
Do you work for someone making more than $250k? Yes? Then your pay / benefits will be lowered caused by their increase in taxes. Do you work in an industry that caters to people working for people making more than $250k? Yes? Then your pay / benefits will be lowered caused by their increase in taxes. Do you work in an industry that caters to people making more than $250k? Yes? Then your pay / benefits will be lowered caused by their increase in taxes. Do you work in an industry that caters to people who work in industries that cater to people making more than $250k? Yes? Then your pay / benefits will be lowered caused by their increase in taxes.
This will all, of course be offset by the fact that, if you're not making $250k/year, YOU will pay less in taxes. Fuck the rich, they have it well enough already.