Just for instance, check the relative demographics of the US and UK and then examine the life expectency broken down by race and sex in the US (about page 141 in the file). Combining the 2 and looking only at males, we get a life expectency of 74.8 in the US. Compare the english and scotch combined in the UK (the population percentages add up to more than a 100, but this is just an illustrative example rather than definitively good statistics), of roughly 92%. Using the same life expectancy by racial group, the UK would have a male life expectancy of 75.6. I would love to find a source to compare the life expectancy in the UK broken down by ethnicity and sex for a more direct comparison. It's possible for the life expectancy of each racial group to be better in the US but nonetheless worse overall.
On a related note, if someone wants to look at infant mortality, I reccomend perinatal mortality instead. It partially avoids the issues about defining a live birth, which not all countries do the same way. As an example, the US has a better perinatal mortality rate than the UK, although our infant mortality is worse.
Except that that selfsame constitution explicitly removes the protection of citizenship from anyone who supports the re-election of the president. Article 42.
Oddly, given that you and I disagree on almost all conclusions, I basically agree that there are no natural rights. Especially not a right to own non-man made things. That is, they don't exist a-priori with out people recognizing them. On the other hand, there are rights which seem to naturally flow from: accepting that everyone is equal, that the best way I can get you to behave in a certain way around me is by extending you the same courtesy, and that it's far simpler to assume a random stranger has a broadly similar behavioural expectation than to explicitly negotiate common ground with everyone I meet. For instance, a right not to be killed. Technically, I have no pre-existing right not to be killed and neither do you, but it's far better for both of us to assume the other doesn't intend to kill us. More profitable too, since trade allows us both to gain some value from the other's strong points. Progressing further, since we are both forgoing lethal force, we might recognize a right to not be take items actually produced by the other. You could instead posit an agreement that we both have a full right to take anything from each other, but then we could just take anything back, creating a tug of war, which would eventually devolve into lethal force. Basically, a labor theory of ownership.
I'm pretty sure you and I have had this exact discussion before, but it's not coercion, it's persuasion.
I'll make you better off than you were without me if you do X == persuasion
If you don't do X, I'll do Y to make you worse off than you were with out me== coercion.
It's a clear, simple distinction that anyone should be able to understand.
Your analogy implicitly accepts that governments have property rights to the land they claim jurisdiction on. Otherwise it would be legitimate for me to live in a country, choose not to abide by it's laws, but not be kicked out, imprisoned, or murdered for doing so as long as I don't actually cause anyone harm by doing so. This is my main complaint with "If you don't like it, move" arguments.
Actually, what you're missing is that smaller class size -> less teacher pay. The teachers, want both more pay and smaller classes, but given the trade off they inevitably choose more pay. Some individuals would choose otherwise, but they don't control the union negotiating teams. There is the confounding issue that some buildings have all classrooms utilized, so more students -> larger class size because there isn't anywhere else to put them, but the first dynamic definitely plays a part.
Well, no, it's not the same crowd. Those are disjoint crowds who nonetheless both are members of the broadly defined 'right wing' crowd, although it's arguable that Arnold is pretty damn moderate. Claiming that they are the same would appear to be an exampe of outgroup homogeneity bias.
It depends. They don't have a 'violent crimes per capita' measure, and pinpointing individual crimes is bound to be misleading. The US is also worse on assaults per capita... but germany doesn't have a result for 'assault victims', and although the UK has a much lower per capita assault rate, it's twice the use in terms of percent of the populace which was assaulted. There may be something to the complaints that a specific sub-culture is responsible for most of the US crime statistics.
I disagree. All rights are social or philosophical fictions, but they can certainly be recognized without a government to create them. Two strangers on a deserted island will probably agree on a mutual set of rights without it being a law. It requires the consent of others, which is why every recognized right can only exist as a quid pro quo. I won't try to kill you if you don't try to kill me. If we're absolute strangers, then I will optimistically assume you recognize our mutual rights, but if you attempt to kill me then I don't violate any rights by killing you in self defense.
I'm more than happy to grant others certain rights as the best way to get them to recognize those rights in me, but this approach to describing rights is inherently incompatible with 'Positive rights', as well as the legal system in Saudi Arabia that you described.
The author you cited does not appear to be an anti capitalist, and thus I was at least partially refuted. However, I believe part of the issue is definition of terms. I believe the austrian versions of capitalism are closer to being real than the market equilibrium descriptions. That same author, on page 96 mentions the austrian explanation. Without reading the rest of the book, I can't say how much context affects your link.
Actually, it means congress and state legislatures can't do anything they aren't explicitly allowed to. That doesn't mean a whole lot given the commerce clause, but the the constitution is mostly default-deny regarding government authority, not default-allow as you seem to believe. As far as court decisions expanding authority beyond what is actually allowed (Wickard for instance), remember that just because the court claims something is constitutional doesn't guarantee that it actually is.
Part of it is the conflation between levels of teaching. Despite union claims, the pool of people capable of teaching elementary students basic skills is vastly larger than the pool of people capable of teaching high school algebra. But unions object to any sort of differential pay, and push for licensing requirements to artificially restrict the supply to boost their pay. You end up struggling to pay enough to acquire the competent teachers for difficult subjects and overpaying lower grade instructors, while simultaneously putting higher hurdles on the low grade teachers than is necessary and lower requirements than is a good idea for specialized subjects. One size does not fit all, and while teachers recognize that for student in theory, their union objects to applying the principle to hiring practices. My local district for instance bases all pay on longevity and education, and nothing at all on what the teacher actually does.
One side effect of this is that people can look at highly paid elementary school teachers, note that they are overpaid, and incorrectly generalize that more pay doesn't actually help. With the prevalence of 'Money and self interest is evil' belief systems in higher education, some individuals then convince themselves that any sort of appeal to self interest is a Bad Idea and has been proven not to work.
You read far too much into a quote. I liked the quote, the idea behind it is partially correct, but that doesn't necessarily mean I want to be like him. I'm suspicious of attempts to bring people together for a common cause, because it so often devolves into attempts to control those who don't want to join that cause. Voluntary association is great, involuntary not so much. This brings up the pragmatic reason I'm a libertarian and not an anarchist. People will band together for mutual protection, and those bands will inevitably engage in coercion. It's an unavoidable flaw of human beings. The most I can do is try to limit it as much as I can.
As for your other comments, I have no such desire to take the liberty of others. Nor am I utterly deluded about the consequence. At a guess, you don't recognize the distinction between failure to help and actively causing harm, or the difference between persuasion and coercion. If I'm for instance a farmer, you are starving, and I offer you food for helping work the farm, then we are both better off from the transaction. Offering that deal is not compulsion, you are free to leave it and find some other way to live, but you don't have a right to point a gun at my head to force me to give it to you. Neither of us has the right to compel the labor of the other. Most left wing philosophies (talking point versions at least) I've encountered do not recognize the difference between not giving you the food you need, and taking away the food you already had. They don't recognize a difference between employing someone and enslaving them. This is why I emphasized the word 'take' above. It's often used to describe 'not giving' when examined carefully. I recognize that in a pure free market, there are individuals who will suffer and other who prosper. That doesn't mean the prosperous are at fault for their suffering.
You do have a point about some people who call themselves libertarian. As with any label, some people who claim it are flying false colors. The worst offenders in exploitation invariably believe in some sort of right to compel the behavior of others. Most often the belief that because they have money, and you have food, you have to allow them to buy your food. This is not the case, and even though I may be allied with said individuals in some specific cases, I recognize that they aren't free marketers no matter how much they profess otherwise. I failed to point this out initially, but when exactly have we actually tried laissez faire? It's amazing what some people call a free market while allowing people to hide their liability for their actions via a government created limited liability corporation, eminent domain, using violence to break up peaceful union protests, copyrights, patents, zoning laws, registration costs, and various and other government sponsored preferences.
The brief summary of my beliefs is that there is no right to live, only a right not to be killed, and said right exists only as a quid pro quo. I've considered making that my signature instead, but preferred a fictional quote.
You accuse libertarians of wanting to be slave owners, when it is the polar opposite. You have demonstrated an utter lack of insight or understanding of libertarianism or free market ideas. You are projecting. Anything other than a free market inherently requires that one person make decisions for another person against their will. This includes every mixed economy which has ever in fact existed.
We don't want to be slave owners, merely not be slaves of any sort, and unlike you we recognize the possibility of a system with neither slaves nor slave owners.
Because if copyright was only 5 years, a lot of purchases wouldn't be made because people would wait 5 years, thus eliminating a great deal of the profit. I'm not saying I support the existence of copyright, or the extreme lengths we have, just that a period of 5 years would produce a lot less than 90% of the profits generated under the current system.
There is a correlation between the two. Which way does the correlation run? Is there a third common cause? If you can't think of how crime could lead to poverty instead of the other way, then you really haven't thought about it much. Short term thinking is a potential common cause, but could also arguably also be triggered by both conditions. That's just three linked effects.
I'm extremely suspicious of any claim to have identified the true root cause of any social issue.
This is partially a rhetorical trick, because you can't prove what would have happened if something had been handled differently. It get's even worse if you try to project it a few years down the road. Even if our economy would be worse off temporarily (which i do not concede), allowing them to continue on life support prevents the elimination of bad banks from the market, virtually guaranteeing poorer performance down the road. You can't realistically project the utter failure of Banking, since some banks were in good shape.
Your only mistake in saying interventions are debateable is excluding any particular intervention.
I don't know... the possibility that the random stranger you go to stab and other people nearby might have a gun and shoot you, and get away with it instead of being locked up longer than you would be for stabbing them, might act as some sort of deterrent.
Slashdot Mirror
I hate it when simpson's paradox is ignored...
Just for instance, check the relative demographics of the US and UK and then examine the life expectency broken down by race and sex in the US (about page 141 in the file). Combining the 2 and looking only at males, we get a life expectency of 74.8 in the US. Compare the english and scotch combined in the UK (the population percentages add up to more than a 100, but this is just an illustrative example rather than definitively good statistics), of roughly 92%. Using the same life expectancy by racial group, the UK would have a male life expectancy of 75.6. I would love to find a source to compare the life expectancy in the UK broken down by ethnicity and sex for a more direct comparison. It's possible for the life expectancy of each racial group to be better in the US but nonetheless worse overall.
On a related note, if someone wants to look at infant mortality, I reccomend perinatal mortality instead. It partially avoids the issues about defining a live birth, which not all countries do the same way. As an example, the US has a better perinatal mortality rate than the UK, although our infant mortality is worse.
Frankly, I prefer "Losing Lawyer pays".
Except that that selfsame constitution explicitly removes the protection of citizenship from anyone who supports the re-election of the president. Article 42.
It's worse than you think. In some cases, negative numbers are still colored red on the court average line.
No, but I still remember noting back in 2004 that there were more bush voters in LA county than the entire population of my state.
Oddly, given that you and I disagree on almost all conclusions, I basically agree that there are no natural rights. Especially not a right to own non-man made things. That is, they don't exist a-priori with out people recognizing them. On the other hand, there are rights which seem to naturally flow from: accepting that everyone is equal, that the best way I can get you to behave in a certain way around me is by extending you the same courtesy, and that it's far simpler to assume a random stranger has a broadly similar behavioural expectation than to explicitly negotiate common ground with everyone I meet. For instance, a right not to be killed. Technically, I have no pre-existing right not to be killed and neither do you, but it's far better for both of us to assume the other doesn't intend to kill us. More profitable too, since trade allows us both to gain some value from the other's strong points. Progressing further, since we are both forgoing lethal force, we might recognize a right to not be take items actually produced by the other. You could instead posit an agreement that we both have a full right to take anything from each other, but then we could just take anything back, creating a tug of war, which would eventually devolve into lethal force. Basically, a labor theory of ownership.
I'm pretty sure you and I have had this exact discussion before, but it's not coercion, it's persuasion.
I'll make you better off than you were without me if you do X == persuasion
If you don't do X, I'll do Y to make you worse off than you were with out me== coercion.
It's a clear, simple distinction that anyone should be able to understand.
Your analogy implicitly accepts that governments have property rights to the land they claim jurisdiction on. Otherwise it would be legitimate for me to live in a country, choose not to abide by it's laws, but not be kicked out, imprisoned, or murdered for doing so as long as I don't actually cause anyone harm by doing so. This is my main complaint with "If you don't like it, move" arguments.
Actually, what you're missing is that smaller class size -> less teacher pay. The teachers, want both more pay and smaller classes, but given the trade off they inevitably choose more pay. Some individuals would choose otherwise, but they don't control the union negotiating teams. There is the confounding issue that some buildings have all classrooms utilized, so more students -> larger class size because there isn't anywhere else to put them, but the first dynamic definitely plays a part.
Well, no, it's not the same crowd. Those are disjoint crowds who nonetheless both are members of the broadly defined 'right wing' crowd, although it's arguable that Arnold is pretty damn moderate. Claiming that they are the same would appear to be an exampe of outgroup homogeneity bias.
Best joke on this thread so far
No, because it's an expletive with no actual descriptive value...
It depends. They don't have a 'violent crimes per capita' measure, and pinpointing individual crimes is bound to be misleading. The US is also worse on assaults per capita... but germany doesn't have a result for 'assault victims', and although the UK has a much lower per capita assault rate, it's twice the use in terms of percent of the populace which was assaulted. There may be something to the complaints that a specific sub-culture is responsible for most of the US crime statistics.
I disagree. All rights are social or philosophical fictions, but they can certainly be recognized without a government to create them. Two strangers on a deserted island will probably agree on a mutual set of rights without it being a law. It requires the consent of others, which is why every recognized right can only exist as a quid pro quo. I won't try to kill you if you don't try to kill me. If we're absolute strangers, then I will optimistically assume you recognize our mutual rights, but if you attempt to kill me then I don't violate any rights by killing you in self defense.
I'm more than happy to grant others certain rights as the best way to get them to recognize those rights in me, but this approach to describing rights is inherently incompatible with 'Positive rights', as well as the legal system in Saudi Arabia that you described.
The author you cited does not appear to be an anti capitalist, and thus I was at least partially refuted. However, I believe part of the issue is definition of terms. I believe the austrian versions of capitalism are closer to being real than the market equilibrium descriptions. That same author, on page 96 mentions the austrian explanation. Without reading the rest of the book, I can't say how much context affects your link.
Actually, it means congress and state legislatures can't do anything they aren't explicitly allowed to. That doesn't mean a whole lot given the commerce clause, but the the constitution is mostly default-deny regarding government authority, not default-allow as you seem to believe. As far as court decisions expanding authority beyond what is actually allowed (Wickard for instance), remember that just because the court claims something is constitutional doesn't guarantee that it actually is.
"Real Capitalism is IMPOSSIBLE. it needs : perfect information to all players." No, it doesn't, although this often claimed by anti-capitalists.
Part of it is the conflation between levels of teaching. Despite union claims, the pool of people capable of teaching elementary students basic skills is vastly larger than the pool of people capable of teaching high school algebra. But unions object to any sort of differential pay, and push for licensing requirements to artificially restrict the supply to boost their pay. You end up struggling to pay enough to acquire the competent teachers for difficult subjects and overpaying lower grade instructors, while simultaneously putting higher hurdles on the low grade teachers than is necessary and lower requirements than is a good idea for specialized subjects. One size does not fit all, and while teachers recognize that for student in theory, their union objects to applying the principle to hiring practices. My local district for instance bases all pay on longevity and education, and nothing at all on what the teacher actually does.
One side effect of this is that people can look at highly paid elementary school teachers, note that they are overpaid, and incorrectly generalize that more pay doesn't actually help. With the prevalence of 'Money and self interest is evil' belief systems in higher education, some individuals then convince themselves that any sort of appeal to self interest is a Bad Idea and has been proven not to work.
You read far too much into a quote. I liked the quote, the idea behind it is partially correct, but that doesn't necessarily mean I want to be like him. I'm suspicious of attempts to bring people together for a common cause, because it so often devolves into attempts to control those who don't want to join that cause. Voluntary association is great, involuntary not so much. This brings up the pragmatic reason I'm a libertarian and not an anarchist. People will band together for mutual protection, and those bands will inevitably engage in coercion. It's an unavoidable flaw of human beings. The most I can do is try to limit it as much as I can.
As for your other comments, I have no such desire to take the liberty of others. Nor am I utterly deluded about the consequence. At a guess, you don't recognize the distinction between failure to help and actively causing harm, or the difference between persuasion and coercion. If I'm for instance a farmer, you are starving, and I offer you food for helping work the farm, then we are both better off from the transaction. Offering that deal is not compulsion, you are free to leave it and find some other way to live, but you don't have a right to point a gun at my head to force me to give it to you. Neither of us has the right to compel the labor of the other. Most left wing philosophies (talking point versions at least) I've encountered do not recognize the difference between not giving you the food you need, and taking away the food you already had. They don't recognize a difference between employing someone and enslaving them. This is why I emphasized the word 'take' above. It's often used to describe 'not giving' when examined carefully. I recognize that in a pure free market, there are individuals who will suffer and other who prosper. That doesn't mean the prosperous are at fault for their suffering.
You do have a point about some people who call themselves libertarian. As with any label, some people who claim it are flying false colors. The worst offenders in exploitation invariably believe in some sort of right to compel the behavior of others. Most often the belief that because they have money, and you have food, you have to allow them to buy your food. This is not the case, and even though I may be allied with said individuals in some specific cases, I recognize that they aren't free marketers no matter how much they profess otherwise. I failed to point this out initially, but when exactly have we actually tried laissez faire? It's amazing what some people call a free market while allowing people to hide their liability for their actions via a government created limited liability corporation, eminent domain, using violence to break up peaceful union protests, copyrights, patents, zoning laws, registration costs, and various and other government sponsored preferences.
The brief summary of my beliefs is that there is no right to live, only a right not to be killed, and said right exists only as a quid pro quo. I've considered making that my signature instead, but preferred a fictional quote.
You accuse libertarians of wanting to be slave owners, when it is the polar opposite. You have demonstrated an utter lack of insight or understanding of libertarianism or free market ideas. You are projecting. Anything other than a free market inherently requires that one person make decisions for another person against their will. This includes every mixed economy which has ever in fact existed.
We don't want to be slave owners, merely not be slaves of any sort, and unlike you we recognize the possibility of a system with neither slaves nor slave owners.
Because if copyright was only 5 years, a lot of purchases wouldn't be made because people would wait 5 years, thus eliminating a great deal of the profit. I'm not saying I support the existence of copyright, or the extreme lengths we have, just that a period of 5 years would produce a lot less than 90% of the profits generated under the current system.
There is a correlation between the two. Which way does the correlation run? Is there a third common cause? If you can't think of how crime could lead to poverty instead of the other way, then you really haven't thought about it much. Short term thinking is a potential common cause, but could also arguably also be triggered by both conditions. That's just three linked effects.
I'm extremely suspicious of any claim to have identified the true root cause of any social issue.
Prove it.
This is partially a rhetorical trick, because you can't prove what would have happened if something had been handled differently. It get's even worse if you try to project it a few years down the road. Even if our economy would be worse off temporarily (which i do not concede), allowing them to continue on life support prevents the elimination of bad banks from the market, virtually guaranteeing poorer performance down the road. You can't realistically project the utter failure of Banking, since some banks were in good shape.
Your only mistake in saying interventions are debateable is excluding any particular intervention.
They aren't claiming 96% of all notebooks. They are claiming 96% of netbooks sold in a given time period.
I don't know... the possibility that the random stranger you go to stab and other people nearby might have a gun and shoot you, and get away with it instead of being locked up longer than you would be for stabbing them, might act as some sort of deterrent.