[Emitt Evan Baker]

I am in the lower middle class. Not that it matters much. Hard-ish labor mostly, not exclusively. Family.

Ok. So you work for 10 dollars an hour and find it justified I am assuming. Well, if we get a living wage passed you give back as much as you wish. BTW, ever research who fought for the idea of a minimum wage. I give you a hint. It wasn't an Austrian economist or the newscaster from the video you just posted (who can't find any coherent agenda being voiced from the Left despite the national movement for a living wage).

Kind rich people, wicked poor people and everything in between seem largely irrelevant to whether you accept that idea that someone making 35 times what the single mother watching their children or cleaning their floors is working 35 times harder or smarter or what have you. It also doesn't have anything to do with whether you believe that the market forces can be trusted to spread things fairly or even with a tinge of human decency without outside confrontation. The species has the resources to give everyone a reasonable sense of security and shelter. It is completely doable. You words seem to me to be sustaining the illusion that poverty is some kind of natural outcome that occurs only where folks are lazy or ill-suited for creativity rather than the actively chosen moral stance that it is. People actively choose to allow a treatable suffering to remain present because they lack the political will and vision to address it. As far as I can see the Democratic Socialist party in the US is the most committed to a vision and the necessary institutions that would address those issues. It is a compromise for me because I find certain human-centered and State-centered tenets of their platform a bit awkward but I think they are the obvious choice (here and now) for anyone willing to vote based on a combination of basic decency and historical reality.

No one this even touches on the systemic tilting of the table and the control of that tilt by moneyed interest all leveraged by the capitalism you seem to be defending. Are there plenty of well-off people who aren't about that? Yeah. Does there abstinence make it any harder for the active wealth to accumulate? Doesn't seem so.

The video you posted is propaganda. Maybe its funny to you, like it is funny to me when the Daily Show interviews Republican protesters and they can barely spell or have any idea what the policies they are fighting for will do to their own lives. But I realize this is a comedy show that was selecting the funniest responses for their purposes. I don't treat it as data analysis. I attend many rallies and protests. They can be grab bag of confusion. I don't look at most protests as that big a part of the actual movement. Often times they are ineffectual at best. Resistance is a fledgling-barely-winged-Something right now. But there is a growing movement of sorts cohering around a core sense of injustice. Despite the somewhat disappointing outtakes available from occupy or other spots they are making very clear demands on every front being attacked right now (water rights, autonomy for the First Nations on their land and redress of the past, human oversight over environmental adjustments made for profit, a living wage, single payer health care, equal rights for women, and on and on). On each of these points you can find very articulate and well-researched individuals who can lay out very clear steps forward. There often at these same protests. Your girl could find them if she wanted but of course that isn't what the video is for. It is to feed your mindset and make you concerned for the ten Nazis, Trumpsters, and paid stumps for status quo that will get hit by a bike lock this year. You can then offset those images against the thousands of colored peoples who will be violently accosted in their own neighborhoods, the millions in prison for non-violent offenses, the tens of millions who not have adequate healthcare or access to safe food and shelter, and the hundreds of millions who will be squeezed so that the top few percents can live like French monarchs in an age with no guillotines. The thing is though that when a human rights protester talks about killing the white house it is hypocritical. When a social Darwinist Me-firster talks murder it is not. Which side do you want to be on here? One where murder, accumulation, and toxicity are directly opposed to your orthodoxies or one where they sorta fit in just fine?

Ludwig von Mises? I find most libertarian thought to be like a strange adhesive that will stick ferociously only its own conclusions to its desires and yet strangely to have the ability to let any contrary realities slip off without even a moment of self-criticism. Among the entire spectrum of ideas I find that subset to be the most overwhelmingly certain for the most underwhelming reasons. And I confess to a general suspicion about Economics to begin with. It seems the prerequisite of a degree in Economics is to swallow as much ideological poison as possible and then, with your last bits of consciousness, to try to read your own entrails in order to predict the future. In the most majestic souls I am sure some good stuff comes through but mostly its the poison doing the talking. But maybe that is not fair. So, no, not my go to on the complexities of socialism. But forget socialism. Isn't really just a matter of loving others enough to want them to have life instead of just survival? And loving them enough to not allow bullshit economics or philosophy to smuggle in a defense of wage disparity and parasitism that any child can see is a deep shame on the species.

[Roger Slater]

Originally Posted by William A. Baurle

Roger,

See my responses to Emitt and Jim.

Not that it matters, but simply by way of acknowledging your comment to me, I don't see anything in your responses to Emitt and/or Jim that remotely addresses the point I was making. But that's okay. We need not waste our breath trying to convert one another, since the odds of that happening are slim.

[William A. Baurle]

Emmit,

Thanks for the response. I appreciate the time you've taken to engage in what is a very important discussion. I also appreciate the fact that you cannot be as candid as I am about your situation, or report whether you're a home owner, or what kind of car you drive. Privacy and the right to property are extremely important. You and I both know that the expression, "Property is theft" is nonsensical. Just a few more points: No, the video I linked to is not propaganda, but very accurate and an excellent breakdown on the problem of the rise of fascist thought on college campuses. The right to free speech is most definitely being threatened, and it would take a complete blanking-out of reality at this point to deny it.

Edited in: you wrote: It also doesn't have anything to do with whether you believe that the market forces can be trusted to spread things fairly or even with a tinge of human decency without outside confrontation. Glad I re-read and caught that doozy.

Where do you get the idea that market forces are supposed to "spread things fairly."? The idea of spreading things fairly is a human invention. It's certainly not natural. Though, I will say, it's a noble idea, and humanitarian. I for one would love to exist in a world where every individual could be happy and have enough to enjoy a life without pain and suffering. But I'm rational and experienced enough to know that this utopia is an impossibility, not because people aren't trying hard enough to make it happen, but because of the simple fact of human nature. As long as human nature is flawed, and more deeply flawed in some individuals than in others, there will never be a workable utopia. The only way to bring about the socialist dream of total equality, is aggressive social engineering, which requires molding thought, bringing about conformity of ideas, and conformity of behavior. George Orwell and Aldous Huxley have written excellent fiction laying it all out in universally understandable terms, exactly WHY this would lead to dystopia and catastrophe, NOT utopia.

Roger,

Sorry for my brief answer to you. I will try and give you a better answer, or not, depending on whether I think it's worth the effort. You are probably correct also that no-one in this discussion is going to change their views. My views are pretty solid, though I will, as you know, admit to being wrong on whatever it was I was wrong about. I do not think I am wrong about what's going on in US universities, nor am I wrong that the right to free speech is being seriously threatened. When someone intelligent enough to be admitted to a major university actually says that "Free speech advocates are themselves suspect, because free speech enables hate speech," then any rational outside observer must conclude that the wrong ideas are being taught and spread in the places of higher learning.

Yes, free speech enables hate speech. Deal with it, youngsters. And you DO NOT have the right to punch someone who has ideas you don't like, nor clobber them over the head with a bicycle lock. Your job, as an intelligent human and citizen of a civilized nation, is to fight back with a better argument, with words, not your silly little, over-indulged fists.

Later gators.

[Emitt Evan Baker]

I rent and drive an old work van. It isn't a privacy concern. Just relevance.

Just a couple things in response.

1) Proudhoun, who you quote without I suspect ever having read him, also said property was liberty. His ideas are rich and complex.
2) Orwell was a socialist and would be unlikely to be a fan of what you are knitting with his yarn.
3) You can claim that your video is accurate all you like. It simply isn't. Having many deep criticisms of movements like Occupy and the types of protests she is panning from close personal involvement I can say for certain she is missing the main thrust and cohesion of the people who are drawn to these attempts to articulate their dissent.



Neither would Huxley support the idea that healthcare and a living wage are a crazy utopia only possible through social engineering. The idea that either 1984 or Brave New World has such humane considerations as their target is nonsense. Really. Read his entire speech at Berkeley, Ultimate Revolution I think its called. The critique is way more fitting of prozac capitalism than any post-Marxist socialism. An Orwell of course fought with the POUM and sympathized with the anarchists in Spain. You can pretend these voices are saying what you wish. But they simply aren't with you here. It is rude to press them into a service they would obviously disdain.

Natural is a weasel word here. We are talking about choices from among a fairly narrow selection of cultural constructs made for reasons often the opposite of the reasons used to advertise them. In nature symbiosis is often as strong a factor as competition but regardless of that why cherry pick this embrace of nature only to defend wage slavery? Strange position.

You are deeply invested in the bogey of college campus Left fascism . I will leave you to it after a few remarks. It seems to give you some comfort. It doesn't interest me very much at all. It is a fairly minor nuisance in comparison to what unfolds. Is hate speech the necessary bedfellow of free speech? I doubt it. Nazi chatter is illegal in Germany. I wonder if maybe they have a sense of why that might be a good idea. Is Spencer's garbled white supremacy an idea that one can reason with or is it already a violence that can only be repelled where ever it raises its head?

[William A. Baurle]

Originally Posted by Roger Slater

You say we should not expect equality of outcomes, Bill, and to a certain extent I agree completely. But you are overlooking the impact that the way the economy is structured, and the way society and government are structured, can determine what attributes and talents bring about what outcomes. By having the hoop ten feet high instead of five feet high, basketball gives a greater advantage to tall people. By having a law against people acting violently toward one another, we take away the "advantage" that physically strong people have to attack and injure physically weak people. And by the same token, the structures of government, healthcare, the economy, electoral districts, and moral consensus help to select the qualities that will be rewarded in our society.

"By having the hoop ten feet high instead of five feet high, basketball gives a greater advantage to tall people." - Certainly! This is one of the reasons I don't pursue playing basketball. At five foot seven, my chances of playing in the NBA are pretty slim. Not to mention that I'm not terribly athletic in the first place, and the fact that I think basketball is a very simplistic game, much like hockey and football (soccer for us Romans). People run around trying to get hold of a bouncy or slidy object, and make it go into a designated area like a hoop, a big goal, or a little goal. I find American football and baseball far more interesting, though they have their silly aspects as well.

Are you saying that we should make the hoops shorter, so that shorter people can play as well and with as much advantage as tall people? OK. Let's give that a try, but imagine how much easier it will be for Jill, whose five foot eleven, to make a basket, then it will be for Fred, who's four foot ten? Should Jill be encouraged to play less aggressively, to accommodate for Fred? Or should we just tell Fred, "Hey, you're gonna have to be especially good at basketball if you want to make as many baskets as Jill, because Jill is taller. It's not your fault that you're shorter, nor is it Jill's fault that she's tall. Just be aware, it's gonna be much easier for her to sink a basket than it will be for you. If you aren't willing to try really hard to compete with her, and possibly be outperformed by her, then you might want to look into playing a sport where height won't matter, like hockey!"

Now Roger, you go directly from that example, to talking about removing the advantage that more powerful individuals have over others who are weaker, as if this were oranges and oranges, when it is oranges and pineapples. Also, you are smuggling in the implication that I might be against laws that prevent big people from harming little people, when I have made no remarks that would suggest that such is the case. In fact, I've gone out of my way to patently state that I am OPPOSED to acts of aggressive violence by one individual upon another!! Sorry for the extra exclamation point! And for that one.

Originally Posted by Roger Slater

In other words, the outcomes are not determined solely by innate qualities, but are also determined by the rules of the game in which those innate qualities are made to operate. It is just and proper for us not to take the existing rules of the game as written in stone, but to suggest that they ought to be altered in a way that distributes the rewards and disadvantages more equitably. And in that context we can (as I do) argue that there are some things, like healthcare and police protection, that ought not to be rewards for those of greater talent or wealth.

"It is just and proper for us not to take the existing rules of the game as written in stone, but to suggest that they ought to be altered in a way that distributes the rewards and disadvantages more equitably."

^ My argument is that you are quite mistaken. History has shown demonstrably that this is not workable. While I say that, let me repeat, it is certainly noble and humanitarian to try and make society better, to work for ways in which more people will be happy and less people will suffer. There is NOTHING wrong with this intention, and I would also like to stress that this intention is shared by most people, right or left, and that only a marginal number of individuals are literally ALL FOR a world where there exists a massive imbalance of outcomes, where it is perfectly acceptable for millions or billions of people to work hard for nothing while the privileged elite sit on their fat behinds and enjoy the fruits of the labor of others. I acknowledge that such idiots exist. And who knows, the Orange Clown may very definitely BE one of those people. If he is, fuck him and the horse he rode in on. He uses Twitter as if he's a high school soccer coach instead of POTUS, and his language is less than juvenile.

When I post these videos by people who apologize and even support Trump, my aim is not to support Trump but to draw attention to the reality in what is in the content of their speech. Dave Rubin is being demonized as a white supremacist, racist, misogynistic, etc, etc, despite the fact that he identifies as a liberal, is gay, is married to a man, is pro-choice, etc, etc. It's all over Reddit and Youtube, and elsewhere. Misinformation, misinterpretation, deliberate or otherwise, and fake news, by the puppets of the extreme right AND left, have caused a worldwide calamity of miscommunication, and intellectual discourse is being threatened.

Originally Posted by Roger Slater

We can certainly have a fairer healthcare system and tax code, with less income inequality, and still leave plenty of room for those with greater talents to reap appropriately greater rewards.

I agree.

[William A. Baurle]

Emmit,

Once again you go about your argument by making assumptions. I know that Orwell was a socialist. As many astute people have pointed out, however, his fictional work demonstrated contradictions and conflicts in his philosophical thought. Huxley's work, as well as his amazing non fiction, does the same thing. Both great men - and they were no doubt very great thinkers, and put me to absolute shame - put their lives into their thought, and came up with bodies of work that are rife with complexity, and contradiction and conflict. As is the case with just about everyone.

Which is why I identify as a centrist. I am committed to the belief that the truth is neither on the left nor the right, but somewhere in the middle.

I will make this concession: I am far more sympathetic to ideas of social democracy than I am to any far right ideas of total social imbalance. Thus, my heart and mind are with you and Roger, and the others, FAR more than they are with people like Trump and Bannon, though it will appear that such is not the case.

I said before that the healthiest thing is a balance of ideas. Since I'm thus far the only person in this thread who isn't admittedly left, I will try and defend the right to the best of my ability, to the degree that voices on that side are reasonable and not overtly offensive.

Edited in:

I used this Orwell quote on Facebook a few days ago. It's taken from his strong critique of Rudyard Kipling:

"All left-wing parties in the highly industrialized countries are at bottom a sham, because they make it their business to fight against something which they do not really wish to destroy." - George Orwell

**Edited again: I can't help but note, as you will, that the same thing could be said about anarchists and libertarians.

[John Whitworth]

William, I hate to see you battling on your own. I think I can say that nobody takes me for a leftist. So let me join you and George Orwell. Socialism is dead but it won't lie down, so let's jump on it a little.

[Roger Slater]

Does that mean only you get to have national health insurance but we in the US should give up on it? Because I'd hate for millions of people to be without healthcare just because you need something to jump on.

[John Riley]

Anyone who thinks the idea that governments should take an interest in the well being of the citizens it governs is dead is in for a surprise sooner than later. That how society operates should be dictated by institutions other than the only institution selected by the governed is a destructive idea. That's why those who benefit from it, who want a society in which they are free to profit with no concern for the public good, have to resort to more and more desperate ways to maintain this status quo. If Trump is proof of one thing it is of how desperate the political party in the U.S. most charged with diverting people's attention from the general welfare so a few can have more of the benefits the nation accrues has become. That Trump is the level of sick buffoonery they have had to sink to in order to continue is the best evidence possible that this phase of their duplicity is about to come to an end. Trump and the other racist right leaders emerging around the world are proof it isn't socialism that is about to die.

[William A. Baurle]

Originally Posted by John Whitworth

William, I hate to see you battling on your own. I think I can say that nobody takes me for a leftist. So let me join you and George Orwell. Socialism is dead but it won't lie down, so let's jump on it a little.

Thanks John! How Jolly! To use your expression. But don't forget: George Orwell WAS a socialist. He was committed to the utopian dream, but in his fiction, he managed to paint a really ugly picture of the possible futures of extremism from the right AND the left. So, he sort of shot himself in the foot. BUT, I wish I had one one-hundredth of his stamina and intellectual power. He will always be one of my heroes. Socialist/great novelist, I don't care which. He ROCKS.

So where the hell are all those in the center and on the right from those gloriously long threads from 2002-2009 or thereabouts? I love to read those old threads, to see differing views, a battling of ideas. But at present there are but you and I, John.

Bill Carpenter, pretty much a conservative, may come by; and Jennifer Reeser is no lefty; and of course there's Tim Murphy, firmly on the conservative side. And there's David Anthony. But none of these people join in these discussions anymore, except for a one-liner here and there.

I am at my wit's end. Or is that wits' end? I stink at grammar.

So, I am going to post another video, from a man I never heard of until about a half hour ago. This will certainly ruffle the feathers of anyone committed to the far left (and I can already hear the choruses of "Oh, that guy? No one who's serious would pay any attention to him, since he's a bigoted-white-supremacist-patriarchal-misogynistic-anti-gay-hate-speaking-fascist-Nazi oppressor!") :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MPojltjv4M0&t=607s - Jordan Peterson