Well, obviously the sociopaths and psychopaths don't need those excuses internally. I'm talking about the non-sociopaths who tell themselves these things.
But you have to look at the word in its historical context. What were the problems of the day, what was liberalism, as a philosophy fighting for, and against? We don't have kings anymore, we have corporations.
And you have to look at the two contrasting definitions of liberty. There are positive and negative liberties. Freedom to and freedom from. Classical liberalism may have been focused on the 'freedom from' part, but even then it was looking towards 'freedom to.' John Adams expressed this idea in this quote, " I must study politics and war, that our sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. Our sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history and naval architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry and porcelain." This is peaking about the necessity of addressing the 'freedom from' tyranny so that one's descendants may find their 'freedom to' become artists and poets.
Well, here we are centuries later and many citizens do not have those positive freedoms, they are economically enslaved, having the dubious freedom to work for minimum wage or starve.
Liberty is not about the freedom of the powerful to profit from the weak.
And by 'they are driving' I mean, their money and lobbyists control and direct elections and government. By 'the meter is running' I mean, they control the Federal Reserve Bank.
The corporate kleptocracy doesn't care which way we turn as long as they are driving and the meter is running. They get paid no matter where we end up.
Well, it's not like there aren't any good, ethical people even at the highest levels of corporate power. There are good, ethical politicians, too. Heck, I've met some of both.
But in both cases, you have two things working against there being a preponderance of ethical people. First, power tends to attract high functioning sociopaths. Second, and perhaps as a consequence of the first, you have a culture where corruption is seen as normal, a perk of one's position over other people.
People in positions of power are shielded from anything that can touch their comforting illusions about themselves. They believe that they deserve their positions because they are good people. They are good people because they are in those positions of power, sacrificing their superior selves to make the lives of we, the incompetent peons who need them to look after us, better. Of course they deserve a little on the side for such sacrifice!
You see, the terrible burden of such awesome responsibility entitles them to whatever they can take because the rules for little people don't apply to them.
As stated, he was a Lockean liberal. Why the need to qualify the word liberal, if the definition is set in stone and unambiguous? Classical liberalism, Lockean Liberalism, they all have qualifiers, don't they?
I know the point you are trying to make. You want to claim the origins of liberalism for the American Libertarians, and claim that anyone who disagrees with the ideas of lassaiz faire free market liberalism is going against the ideas of the American founding fathers, nay, liberalism itself.
I just don't happen to agree with your interpretation.
I believe the punchline is actually 'Two Wongs can't make a Wright.' As the joke itself is a horribly long shaggy dog story designed to be humorous only to the person inflicting it on others, I won't relay it here. It involves airplanes, I'm sure you can figure it out on your own.
It's called, 'getting caught.' You see, when you get caught, everyone else in business has to pretend they don't do it, and that they are shocked! Shocked and appalled at the bad apples ruining the barrel. By 'bad apples,' they mean, 'people just like me except they got caught' and by 'ruining the barrel,' they mean, 'drawing the attention of the peons to our utter corruption.'
When you link to 'classical liberalism' you should make it clear that you are linking to 'classical liberalism' which we all know is not modern liberalism. Modern American liberals do not favor a smaller central government, modern conservatives do. A better wiki article on liberalism is, well, just called liberalism. You see, the term 'classical liberalism' is used in a certain way by a certain group of people, as the wikipedia article states:
The phrase "classical liberalism" is also used to describe a form of liberalism in which the government does not provide social services or regulate industry and banking, and followers of this brand of classical liberalism today often claim that early liberals shared these beliefs.
Emphasis mine.
If we want to go down that route, maybe we should also add that the neoconservative movement is derived from modern liberalism, not from conservativism. You got your politics in my language! No, you got your language in my politics! Ewww, they taste gross together...
Well, yes, the Republicans only pay lip service to a smaller Federal Government, until the question of home-town pork comes up. Which is one reason why conservatives need to find themselves a new party that better represents them. And the fact that many liberals thought Obama was a liberal shows why they need to get themselves a new party too. We've got the Blue and the Red Plutocrats Parties here in the US, all beholden to corporate interests.
Why would you think flames targeted at you would imply you were anti-American? You aren't saying anything new or controversial. States' rights and a limited Fed are a key plank in the Republican platform.
But the thing is, there are a number of reasonable people who disagree with you. They are commonly known as 'Democrats' and are currently in control of two of the three branches of government. How do you feel about desegregation? Never would have happened with stronger states' rights. The government of the southern states knew their constituency very well. They knew they hated black people and wanted 'separate but equal' to continue. Was it wrong or right of the Federal government to override them?
There are some parts of the country, where if it were put to a popular vote, lynching of blacks and beating of homosexuals would be perfectly legal.
You say the two major parties have a stranglehold on politics, but your answer is to enact the platform of one of those parties.
The funny thing is, the Republican dominated states almost always get more federal funding than they pay in taxes. It is the big, wealthy, liberal states that pay for it. For instance, California gets around 80 cents back for every dollar they pay in taxes, while Mississippi gets more than two dollars for ever dollar it pays in Federal taxes. In this defederalized world you crave, many states would be left bankrupt while the liberal states like California and New York would be rolling in money.
You may want to go here and take a look to see if your state is getting more than it pays in taxes. If so, contemplate what your state would look like without all that Federal money propping it up. If the citizens in your state aren't educated enough to compete in the modern marketplace, they mat be in for a very rude shock when they get rid of that Federal pork. They may have to face the fact that it is the rich, liberal, intelligent, successful states that are keeping them out of abject, third world poverty .
On the other hand, if you are from one of the rich, successful states that have been propping up the rest of the country with our tax dollars, downsizing the Federal government could save you billions. Of course, all of the poor, uneducated citizens of the unsuccessful states will then attempt to move to the liberal states, screwing up their economy and leaving states like Mississippi, Alabama, and Kentucky barren, desolated wastelands with no government or infrastructure.
It's actually very easy to convey the idea you are trying to convey, if your name happens to be Mark Twain. You forgot an important caveat in your philosophy, People only do what brings them satisfaction in the moment. They may hate themselves later. They may, in that moment, decide never to do it again. But the person we will be even a minute in the future is not this person right now, present-self can't really speak for that person in the future. Future-self may have reasons for wanting to do what present-self said he will, but they are his reasons. Twain's What is Man? explains this all in about 20 pages.
And now you know why I've recently realized that I'm an anarcho-capitalist: the only way I can see to eliminate pigs feeding at the trough is to eliminate the trough.
Funny, I thought capitalism was the trough, which is why I'm an anarcho-syndicalist who believes in democratic control of the means of production. Well, at least you got the 'anarcho' part right. Down with Archons!:P
Really. Show me on single 'love it or leave it' comment directed at the state's rights types. It seems to me that we had eight years of the right wing claiming any dissent was unpatriotic, and we lefties should 'love it or leave it.' But now that the left is in power, they are whining that we are doing it to them. Even if we were, which we aren't, turnabout is fair play.
Funny thing, when the left criticizes the government, we are unpatriotic commies bent on destroying America. However, when the right criticizes the government, they are being patriotic. Our criticisms are 'knee jerk' while theirs are calm and rational. Do you not see the utter hypocrisy?
Okay, but I have a serious point too: The "Big Content" and other companies are the ones that have a stake in anti-counterfeiting legislation, of course they are going to have primary input. If they were drafting an agreement seeking to protect whiny sensationalist articles on the Internet I'm sure Slashdot would be given advanced versions of the draft.
What. The. FUCK?! I'm a citizen of a country covered by this treaty, I have a stake in this treaty. "Companies" are just groups of citizens, they are not actually citizens. Companies don't have a stake in this, it is the individuals who have a stake in those companies that do, as this will affect their profits. Does their right to profit trump my rights as a citizen? I think not, but you've got the unmitigated gall to call this a whiny sensationalist article and imply that we, the citizens, don't have a right to complain or even see this bill. What patronizing garbage. Companies shouldn't have rights, and they certainly shouldn't trump the rights of citizens. Companies should not get to dictate treaties to the rest of us. They shouldn't get preferential treatment, and you shouldn't go around kissing the ass of Big Content and telling the rest of us we need to bend over and take what's coming to us, you anti-democratic toady.
I, too, often find myself looking at a screen for extended periods of time without touching the mouse or keyboard, while I, ah... read the articles. Nothing ruins a good article more than having the screen saver start up right as you are about to finish.
If the employees were part of a functional business, why would they be laid off if the business were broken apart and sold off? The new owners would likely keep them on. I'm not talking about destroying factories in revenge, I'm suggesting taking the business away from the people who let it perform criminal actions, and selling it to others. The threat would be to stock owners, who would then put pressure on boards to obey laws lest the company be dissolved and the stock owners compensated at a government determined value somewhat below the market value of the stock.
It's not designed to get the stalkee to buy cars. It's designed to get the friend that set them up to buy cars. The friend is now in collusion with Toyota, they share a dirty little secret, they're friends now...
Corporate death penalty. Revoke their charter, sell off their assets, pay the shareholders something, dissolve the business. In this case, a penalty is fine, but if the company kills a bunch of people, kill the company.
Well put. Perhaps 'moral hazard' isn't the right term, as the day traders are not completely insulated from the risks they create. It's more akin to a diffusion of responsibility. They all know they are collectively creating a bubble they hope to profit from, but each one must feel that they, individually, play too small a part in creating it to feel responsible for it.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, obviously the sociopaths and psychopaths don't need those excuses internally. I'm talking about the non-sociopaths who tell themselves these things.
But you have to look at the word in its historical context. What were the problems of the day, what was liberalism, as a philosophy fighting for, and against? We don't have kings anymore, we have corporations.
And you have to look at the two contrasting definitions of liberty. There are positive and negative liberties. Freedom to and freedom from. Classical liberalism may have been focused on the 'freedom from' part, but even then it was looking towards 'freedom to.' John Adams expressed this idea in this quote, " I must study politics and war, that our sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. Our sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history and naval architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry and porcelain." This is peaking about the necessity of addressing the 'freedom from' tyranny so that one's descendants may find their 'freedom to' become artists and poets.
Well, here we are centuries later and many citizens do not have those positive freedoms, they are economically enslaved, having the dubious freedom to work for minimum wage or starve.
Liberty is not about the freedom of the powerful to profit from the weak.
(assuming the intent is availability of the data...).
Who's intent do you mean, the people promoting this idea, or the people who will gain control of it if it actually goes anywhere?
And by 'they are driving' I mean, their money and lobbyists control and direct elections and government. By 'the meter is running' I mean, they control the Federal Reserve Bank.
*sigh*
The corporate kleptocracy doesn't care which way we turn as long as they are driving and the meter is running. They get paid no matter where we end up.
Well, it's not like there aren't any good, ethical people even at the highest levels of corporate power. There are good, ethical politicians, too. Heck, I've met some of both.
But in both cases, you have two things working against there being a preponderance of ethical people. First, power tends to attract high functioning sociopaths. Second, and perhaps as a consequence of the first, you have a culture where corruption is seen as normal, a perk of one's position over other people.
People in positions of power are shielded from anything that can touch their comforting illusions about themselves. They believe that they deserve their positions because they are good people. They are good people because they are in those positions of power, sacrificing their superior selves to make the lives of we, the incompetent peons who need them to look after us, better. Of course they deserve a little on the side for such sacrifice!
You see, the terrible burden of such awesome responsibility entitles them to whatever they can take because the rules for little people don't apply to them.
As stated, he was a Lockean liberal. Why the need to qualify the word liberal, if the definition is set in stone and unambiguous? Classical liberalism, Lockean Liberalism, they all have qualifiers, don't they?
I know the point you are trying to make. You want to claim the origins of liberalism for the American Libertarians, and claim that anyone who disagrees with the ideas of lassaiz faire free market liberalism is going against the ideas of the American founding fathers, nay, liberalism itself.
I just don't happen to agree with your interpretation.
I believe the punchline is actually 'Two Wongs can't make a Wright.' As the joke itself is a horribly long shaggy dog story designed to be humorous only to the person inflicting it on others, I won't relay it here. It involves airplanes, I'm sure you can figure it out on your own.
It's called, 'getting caught.' You see, when you get caught, everyone else in business has to pretend they don't do it, and that they are shocked! Shocked and appalled at the bad apples ruining the barrel. By 'bad apples,' they mean, 'people just like me except they got caught' and by 'ruining the barrel,' they mean, 'drawing the attention of the peons to our utter corruption.'
When you link to 'classical liberalism' you should make it clear that you are linking to 'classical liberalism' which we all know is not modern liberalism. Modern American liberals do not favor a smaller central government, modern conservatives do. A better wiki article on liberalism is, well, just called liberalism. You see, the term 'classical liberalism' is used in a certain way by a certain group of people, as the wikipedia article states:
The phrase "classical liberalism" is also used to describe a form of liberalism in which the government does not provide social services or regulate industry and banking, and followers of this brand of classical liberalism today often claim that early liberals shared these beliefs.
Emphasis mine.
If we want to go down that route, maybe we should also add that the neoconservative movement is derived from modern liberalism, not from conservativism. You got your politics in my language! No, you got your language in my politics! Ewww, they taste gross together...
Well, yes, the Republicans only pay lip service to a smaller Federal Government, until the question of home-town pork comes up. Which is one reason why conservatives need to find themselves a new party that better represents them. And the fact that many liberals thought Obama was a liberal shows why they need to get themselves a new party too. We've got the Blue and the Red Plutocrats Parties here in the US, all beholden to corporate interests.
Why would you think flames targeted at you would imply you were anti-American? You aren't saying anything new or controversial. States' rights and a limited Fed are a key plank in the Republican platform.
But the thing is, there are a number of reasonable people who disagree with you. They are commonly known as 'Democrats' and are currently in control of two of the three branches of government. How do you feel about desegregation? Never would have happened with stronger states' rights. The government of the southern states knew their constituency very well. They knew they hated black people and wanted 'separate but equal' to continue. Was it wrong or right of the Federal government to override them?
There are some parts of the country, where if it were put to a popular vote, lynching of blacks and beating of homosexuals would be perfectly legal.
You say the two major parties have a stranglehold on politics, but your answer is to enact the platform of one of those parties.
The funny thing is, the Republican dominated states almost always get more federal funding than they pay in taxes. It is the big, wealthy, liberal states that pay for it. For instance, California gets around 80 cents back for every dollar they pay in taxes, while Mississippi gets more than two dollars for ever dollar it pays in Federal taxes. In this defederalized world you crave, many states would be left bankrupt while the liberal states like California and New York would be rolling in money.
You may want to go here and take a look to see if your state is getting more than it pays in taxes. If so, contemplate what your state would look like without all that Federal money propping it up. If the citizens in your state aren't educated enough to compete in the modern marketplace, they mat be in for a very rude shock when they get rid of that Federal pork. They may have to face the fact that it is the rich, liberal, intelligent, successful states that are keeping them out of abject, third world poverty .
On the other hand, if you are from one of the rich, successful states that have been propping up the rest of the country with our tax dollars, downsizing the Federal government could save you billions. Of course, all of the poor, uneducated citizens of the unsuccessful states will then attempt to move to the liberal states, screwing up their economy and leaving states like Mississippi, Alabama, and Kentucky barren, desolated wastelands with no government or infrastructure.
It's actually very easy to convey the idea you are trying to convey, if your name happens to be Mark Twain. You forgot an important caveat in your philosophy, People only do what brings them satisfaction in the moment. They may hate themselves later. They may, in that moment, decide never to do it again. But the person we will be even a minute in the future is not this person right now, present-self can't really speak for that person in the future. Future-self may have reasons for wanting to do what present-self said he will, but they are his reasons. Twain's What is Man? explains this all in about 20 pages.
now that the left is in power
...left? In America?
Well, you see, here in America we have three right wings. And as we all know, three rights make a left.
And now you know why I've recently realized that I'm an anarcho-capitalist: the only way I can see to eliminate pigs feeding at the trough is to eliminate the trough.
Funny, I thought capitalism was the trough, which is why I'm an anarcho-syndicalist who believes in democratic control of the means of production. Well, at least you got the 'anarcho' part right. Down with Archons! :P
Really. Show me on single 'love it or leave it' comment directed at the state's rights types. It seems to me that we had eight years of the right wing claiming any dissent was unpatriotic, and we lefties should 'love it or leave it.' But now that the left is in power, they are whining that we are doing it to them. Even if we were, which we aren't, turnabout is fair play.
Funny thing, when the left criticizes the government, we are unpatriotic commies bent on destroying America. However, when the right criticizes the government, they are being patriotic. Our criticisms are 'knee jerk' while theirs are calm and rational. Do you not see the utter hypocrisy?
I'm going to stop here and get ready for the onslaught of all of the knee-jerk, anti-American flames aimed squarely at me.
So what you are saying is that any criticism of your ideas must not be well thought out, and must be anti-American. Wow.
Okay, but I have a serious point too: The "Big Content" and other companies are the ones that have a stake in anti-counterfeiting legislation, of course they are going to have primary input. If they were drafting an agreement seeking to protect whiny sensationalist articles on the Internet I'm sure Slashdot would be given advanced versions of the draft.
What. The. FUCK?! I'm a citizen of a country covered by this treaty, I have a stake in this treaty. "Companies" are just groups of citizens, they are not actually citizens. Companies don't have a stake in this, it is the individuals who have a stake in those companies that do, as this will affect their profits. Does their right to profit trump my rights as a citizen? I think not, but you've got the unmitigated gall to call this a whiny sensationalist article and imply that we, the citizens, don't have a right to complain or even see this bill. What patronizing garbage. Companies shouldn't have rights, and they certainly shouldn't trump the rights of citizens. Companies should not get to dictate treaties to the rest of us. They shouldn't get preferential treatment, and you shouldn't go around kissing the ass of Big Content and telling the rest of us we need to bend over and take what's coming to us, you anti-democratic toady.
My God. There's porn on the Internet now?
This sounds like a great idea. Much more fleshed out and realistic than mine. I nominate you to run things. ;)
I, too, often find myself looking at a screen for extended periods of time without touching the mouse or keyboard, while I, ah... read the articles. Nothing ruins a good article more than having the screen saver start up right as you are about to finish.
If the employees were part of a functional business, why would they be laid off if the business were broken apart and sold off? The new owners would likely keep them on. I'm not talking about destroying factories in revenge, I'm suggesting taking the business away from the people who let it perform criminal actions, and selling it to others. The threat would be to stock owners, who would then put pressure on boards to obey laws lest the company be dissolved and the stock owners compensated at a government determined value somewhat below the market value of the stock.
It's not designed to get the stalkee to buy cars. It's designed to get the friend that set them up to buy cars. The friend is now in collusion with Toyota, they share a dirty little secret, they're friends now...
Corporate death penalty. Revoke their charter, sell off their assets, pay the shareholders something, dissolve the business. In this case, a penalty is fine, but if the company kills a bunch of people, kill the company.
Well put. Perhaps 'moral hazard' isn't the right term, as the day traders are not completely insulated from the risks they create. It's more akin to a diffusion of responsibility. They all know they are collectively creating a bubble they hope to profit from, but each one must feel that they, individually, play too small a part in creating it to feel responsible for it.