The Good Post Gallery

[courts]

Ok.

1. I do hate the idiotic lables: "capitalism", "socialism" or whatever. These are not terms that have any meaning in modern economics. They do have a very dusty library smell, believe me. You want to be describing actual historic/contemporary institutions - be my guest. But then describe them - and don't post ridiculous lables.

2. Private property and markets are things I can, sort of, understand. The former means people have the right to use and/or dispose of their assets and the latter that they can actually exchange those assets if they so like. Now, in a modern world all those things come w/ zillions of limitations (technological, legal, political, etc., etc) - some of these justifiable, others not, but that's a completely separate issue. Anyway, at least these are the things I can understand.

3. Growth. Growth of what? If you mean growth of consumption of certain goods, population, etc. - well, ok, I get it. If you mean growth of GDP - that notion in itself is completely dependent on the existence of markets, because unless we have prices, we don't even know what to add up. Estimates of GDP (and its growth) for places like the old USSR or the modern North Korea have a lot of magic in them

4. Why on earth would private property and markets require growth of anything, beats me. Naturally, it is very nice when consumption is growing - societies tend to be happy-looking places in such moments. It is also not very nice, when consumption starts falling - there are a lot of unhappy people around in those cases, of course. Even a market economy cannot make people believe they are living better today than tomorrow if they have less. But, hell, it is a lot more efficient in providing for human welfare than whatever the alternatives known to humanity - except in extraordinary short-term circumstances, such as famine, war, pestilence, etc. Yes, even Churchill and Roosevelt got their ration books during WWII, in order to buy the price-controlled eggs. But, in the end, if you try to impose such emergency measures permanently, societies adapt: there emerge black markets, underground workshops, traders. You can try to kill them off (they shot an ancestor of mine for selling shirts and needles), but, in the end, you yield. In the late 1980s/early 1990s markets in Russia emerged at the time of economic collapse. Today what makes life bearable in North Korea are the illegal and semi-legal markets. It's not as if NK were growing - but the markets did. Shoot them, murder them, declare them scum: if there is scarcity, there will be traders and markets and (illegal, but nevertheless quite real) private property. That's as much of an empirical law as social science can get you.

5. Anyway, the world's economy isn't going to be growing forever. And the reason is obvious: every single estimate of the world's population dynamics is pointing to the population starting to drop within the next century. This is going to create a lot of problems we are all quite cognizant of: hard to sustain pensions and medical care for the elderly, when you do not have a supply of the younger folk entering the workforce. Mercifully, globally it won't happen in our lifetime, and locally it can be resolved through immigration. Then, of course, there are places like Japan that are already there. Japan hasn't much grown in a generation, and the population is already falling. When I was passing through recently, I didn't notice any price controls or socialized factories. Where should I have been looking?

6. I can go on and on. But the fact remains: the original statement was ridiculous, and not even remotely understood by its author, who himself had only a vague notion of what those words meant.

there's of course some portions of this i would raise objections to somewhat but well, yeah. there you go.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Obviously I don't agree with everything in this post, but the bolded part is quite dead and what I'm submitting here.

For those not in the know, the English Defence League are largely a group of football hooligans and working class racists who claim to oppose radical Islam, and demonstrate peacefully against it. However, these demonstrations tend to become violent, much like football hooliganism, and attacking all Muslims, not just radical Muslims.

HI for me, I'm proud of my country, and would also be proud of the UK if I lived there, but groups like the EDL take their love way too far, and turn patriotism into ugly, ethnic/religious nationalism.

putting aside the barely concealed class snobbery there's nothing inherently ugly about "ethnic/religious nationalism." zionism is "ethnic/religious nationalism" for example, do you oppose that? somehow i doubt you do. they certainly don't. oy vey!

to me the sort of 'patriotism' you speak of is ugly. 'patriotism' (by which i mean 'civic nationalism') at its core is totally superficial and basically everything the post-60s left straw mans nationalism as being. it has no basis other than ideology and essentially state worship. it is idolatry towards pieces of cloth and paper. a few arbitrary lines on a map and 'the constitution/charter/whatever' are not enough as the basis for a nation. you need borders, language and culture. the edl has some real cretins in its ranks and ideological issues but it at least understands that. it at least genuinely respects that. so i'd take your average edl symp any day over the 'respectable conservatives.' hell you supported virgil goode, i shouldn't be explaining this to you. have some consistency at least.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Why people still actually engage with Naso is beyond me. What's the point?

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Huh? There haven't been any posts in here for quite awhile in response to Naso.

[Paul Kemp]

Also, to you and other 16-year old kids on the forum/the internet who like politics: please stop acting as if you're 60-year old boring congressmen.

[politicus]

Also, to you and other 16-year old kids on the forum/the internet who like politics: please stop acting as if you're 60-year old boring congressmen.

I think Hash simply missed Jerrys irony.

[Oakvale]

Also, to you and other 16-year old kids on the forum/the internet who like politics: please stop acting as if you're 60-year old boring congressmen.

I think Hash simply missed Jerrys irony.

I would bet real money (not really since I don't have any money but if I did) that Jerry was being entirely sincere in that thread.

[JerryArkansas]

Also, to you and other 16-year old kids on the forum/the internet who like politics: please stop acting as if you're 60-year old boring congressmen.

I think Hash simply missed Jerrys irony.

I would bet real money (not really since I don't have any money but if I did) that Jerry was being entirely sincere in that thread.

 
The Clinton stuff was real, but the Big Announcement was just to make fun of politicians.

[courts]

Obviously I don't agree with everything in this post, but the bolded part is quite dead and what I'm submitting here.

For those not in the know, the English Defence League are largely a group of football hooligans and working class racists who claim to oppose radical Islam, and demonstrate peacefully against it. However, these demonstrations tend to become violent, much like football hooliganism, and attacking all Muslims, not just radical Muslims.

HI for me, I'm proud of my country, and would also be proud of the UK if I lived there, but groups like the EDL take their love way too far, and turn patriotism into ugly, ethnic/religious nationalism.

putting aside the barely concealed class snobbery there's nothing inherently ugly about "ethnic/religious nationalism." zionism is "ethnic/religious nationalism" for example, do you oppose that? somehow i doubt you do. they certainly don't. oy vey!

to me the sort of 'patriotism' you speak of is ugly. 'patriotism' (by which i mean 'civic nationalism') at its core is totally superficial and basically everything the post-60s left straw mans nationalism as being. it has no basis other than ideology and essentially state worship. it is idolatry towards pieces of cloth and paper. a few arbitrary lines on a map and 'the constitution/charter/whatever' are not enough as the basis for a nation. you need borders, language and culture. the edl has some real cretins in its ranks and ideological issues but it at least understands that. it at least genuinely respects that. so i'd take your average edl symp any day over the 'respectable conservatives.' hell you supported virgil goode, i shouldn't be explaining this to you. have some consistency at least.

knowing you i'm kind of surprised you didn't bold the parts in red too. that's something i at least have some respect for a lot of the less mainstream left on. they are at least consistent in their anti-nationalism: nationalism is always bad, therefore zionism is bad. unlike 'respectable conservatives' who are gutless or certain hypocrites on the far-right (e.g. many 'white nationalists'.. god i hate that term). both are very transparent, i'm not sure why they bother trying to play pretend.

[politicus]

Obviously I don't agree with everything in this post, but the bolded part is quite dead and what I'm submitting here.

For those not in the know, the English Defence League are largely a group of football hooligans and working class racists who claim to oppose radical Islam, and demonstrate peacefully against it. However, these demonstrations tend to become violent, much like football hooliganism, and attacking all Muslims, not just radical Muslims.

HI for me, I'm proud of my country, and would also be proud of the UK if I lived there, but groups like the EDL take their love way too far, and turn patriotism into ugly, ethnic/religious nationalism.

putting aside the barely concealed class snobbery there's nothing inherently ugly about "ethnic/religious nationalism." zionism is "ethnic/religious nationalism" for example, do you oppose that? somehow i doubt you do. they certainly don't. oy vey!

to me the sort of 'patriotism' you speak of is ugly. 'patriotism' (by which i mean 'civic nationalism') at its core is totally superficial and basically everything the post-60s left straw mans nationalism as being. it has no basis other than ideology and essentially state worship. it is idolatry towards pieces of cloth and paper. a few arbitrary lines on a map and 'the constitution/charter/whatever' are not enough as the basis for a nation. you need borders, language and culture. the edl has some real cretins in its ranks and ideological issues but it at least understands that. it at least genuinely respects that. so i'd take your average edl symp any day over the 'respectable conservatives.' hell you supported virgil goode, i shouldn't be explaining this to you. have some consistency at least.

knowing you i'm kind of surprised you didn't bold the parts in red too. that's something i at least have some respect for a lot of the less mainstream left on. they are at least consistent in their anti-nationalism (nationalism is always bad, therefore zionism is bad), unlike gutless 'respectable conservatives' or certain hypocrites on the far-right (e.g. many 'white nationalists'.. god i hate that term).

Those types are generally positive towards Palestinian nationalism tough, so I wouldnt call them consistent.

[courts]

Those types are generally positive towards Palestinian nationalism tough, so I wouldnt call them consistent.

from what i've seen they're generally for a fully integrated secular palestinian state. which would be a different kettle of fish entirely from israel, which is explicitly based on cultural & ethnic nationalism. of course the practicality let alone likelihood of that is.. well, yeah.

[CatoMinor]

this all implies the parties have 'clear ideologies,' which i and many more 'qualified academics'  would argue is patently false. neither party really has much in an ideology beyond neo-liberalism and a certain kind of genteel 'human rights'  imperialism. and while since the 1980s there are admittedly more 'ideological voters' (i.e. issue based) than in the past, this is clearly false.  most of us here already know this is false without having to look up lachat or whoever. this is arguably one of the most serious problem of modern 'liberal democracy': that extremely diverse and pluralist societies like those found in the modern west have trouble creating the sort of consensus that democracy (which is basically collectivist in nature) implicitly demands. i suspect if they can survive another 30-50 years a lot of countries are going to look to the chinese as a model of government (re: authoritarian, somewhat 'multicultural' yet very clearly not liberal on integration and/or race) increasingly as a result.

The good part bolded.

[Grumpier Than Uncle Joe]

In response to Herr Torie's power-trip senile ramblings........

Why is it ridiculous to think that a new poster here wouldn't know that something is against the rules when it doesn't say anywhere on the site that it is? Should new posters be expected to troll The Atlas board to surmise on their own all the various infractions the moderators have made up to suit their powertrips?

Really this whole sock thing is nonsense, and the only people who seem to have a problem with it are the moderators.

[Torie]

Good point about the senile thing. I mean, I can't even manage to hand out death points much. I am just that far gone.

[Antonio the Sixth]

From what I can tell, Chafee has governed to the left of the Democratic Party. 

It would be hard, for any at least partially sane person, to avoid that.

[memphis]

From what I can tell, Chafee has governed to the left of the Democratic Party. 

It would be hard, for any at least partially sane person, to avoid that.

Although I very much agree with the sentiment, that post doesn't belong here, and this isn't the first time we've had a similar situation. This thread isn't for copying posts that you really, really agree with. It's for posts that are well thought out and particularly insightful

[traininthedistance]

it is when you aggressively recruit them to come to your country, force integration (although in the context of the us, i do think that 'civil rights' legislation was a necessary evil given the likely alternatives...), give them political power, etc. that is all very radical and hasn't really been done before the last 50 years or so. beyond that why shouldn't nations get to pick and choose who enters their boundaries? isn't that the whole point? what makes national borders any different than a community or land owner refusing admittance? to me the principle behind border control isn't really much different than that of private property rights. it's just on a more massive scale. that isn't to say i don't think property rights can't be abrogated or want total isolation. but the burden of proof should be on those demanding change.
***
my position has nothing to do with supremacism. i don't view israeli or japanese or any number of more insular cultures as superior. but i'm not going to say i have a right to immigrate there. that they're wrong to want to preserve their roots. i find that to be arrogant.
***
frankly i would understand your position more if you were denying that. as opposed to what you're doing now. you seem to think people have an obligation to relinquish political power and resources. that they must let in foreigners regardless of the consequences to themselves out of humanism or egalitarianism or.. something. but okay then, let's assume wanting to preserve culture and/or demographics is illegitimate as an immigration restriction. what should be the basis of immigration laws in your view then? purely material things like economic or environmental considerations? or are you for totally open borders?

anyway, think of it this way: would a group like the democratic party be talking nearly as enthusiastically about a 'pathway to citizenship' if it didn't benefit them politically? or would they be in a situation like the republican party now where the corporate donors cheer it on but much of them are leery? i find that doubtful (though again, i couldn't careless if the republicans won at this point. they are largely the problem).

I don't know what you mean by "aggressively recruiting" immigrants. In the case of Britain and France, if they didn't want legions of Mohammedans descending onto their shores, maybe they shouldn't have colonized them centuries ago and permanently entangled their histories and futures with one another. Integration is certainly not being forced and if anything that's part of the problem. These people have essentially been ghettoized in these impoverished suburbs. And if by political power, you mean the fact that the ones who are citizens are allowed to vote, I'm not sure what your alternative is - dark-skinned people can't vote? Non-Christians can't vote? People with non-Anglo-Saxon surnames can't vote? The fact that you describe our civil rights laws as a "necessary evil" suggests you don't really understand why they were necessary and that they were enacted to address the "evil" that was already present - racism, discrimination and marginalization.

Israel and Japan are poor examples. Israel was founded by immigrants and they aggressively court more of them. There's nothing homogenous about that country - how much do a semi-literate Mizrahi Jew from Yemen, an Ashkenazi Jew from America by way of Germany and a Russian Jew have in common? Very little. You can find newspapers in Israel in Hebrew, English, Yiddish, Arabic, Russian. They also have more patents issued per capita than any other country on Earth. I take serious issue with their treatment of the population that was already there when they founded their country, but immigration policy is not a fault of Israel's and it's one of the reasons they've become such an economic success story. As for Japan, are economic stagnation and a falling and rapidly aging population not enough to convince you that shutting your doors in favor of ethnic purity is a bad idea in the long term?

I'm not saying culture isn't important. I'm saying it's not the government's job to enforce a standardized culture because if you do that then it's the government that gets to decide what the "common culture" is going to be, rather than the aggregate decisions individuals make on their own.

The reason immigration reform is benefiting the Democrats is because they're the ones who want to do it. It's not benefiting Republicans because they've hemmed and hawed about it for years. That dividend won't last forever. When Republicans pushed through an end to slavery, they had blacks in their camp for roughly 75 years. It doesn't last forever. But it was obviously the right thing to do in and of itself.

Sure, it's social engineering. But it's typically social engineering that pays off for the vast majority of society, in the case of the latter. Governments should have the right to patrol and define their own borders and choose who they let in. Nations are country clubs, they're not public parks where just anyone can come in. From a left-wing perspective, the idea that we should allow mass immigration into and out of a country is abhorrent in that mass immigration tends to be mass unskilled, low-wage immigration, which ultimately erodes the wage base and undermines the welfare state of the receiving country. Plus there's the problem of undermining the existing sense of social solidarity that already exists in the state and tearing, allowing very right-wing parties to come to power and breeding all sorts of extremism.

***

That's the liberal/libertarian argument, but it's a nonsense argument that even the most liberal/libertarian nations on the Earth (read: the West) don't accept. American citizens want immigrants to integrate themselves with the wider society and assimilate themselves within it. That's why we promote ESL education and why we do so much in the way of making prospective Americans learn our history, take civics courses, and learn English. We understand that in order to have a functioning society, you must have a society that is monocultural. A bicultural or multicultural society produces dictatorship and makes it pretty much impossible for democracy to work.

And I should note that immigrant populations, by and large, do want to assimilate and integrate into mainstream society and don't have a problem with learning English, adopting American social norms, etc. If they didn't, they wouldn't have left their home countries in the first place.

***

Now, I don't favor a return to the 1925 Immigration Act (because it, in and of itself, was racist in limiting immigration to only Northern Europe), but I do favor reducing the amount of unskilled labor coming into the country. If we drastically reduced the number of immigrants we allow into the country every year, as well as reformed our system to promote highly-skilled immigration, we would speed up the integration of recent immigrants from Latin America, boost wages, and allow for unions to make a comeback, which would also make wages go up and everyone's standard of living with it.

Most immigrants are going to want to learn the de facto language of their new home because it will likely be difficult to get a job otherwise. But again, languages have network effects. English isn't the official language of the US; it's just the language most of us speak. We as a country have no inherent reason for speaking English other than the fact that that's what the founders spoke. But there are parts of the country where that isn't the case. Go to some parts of South Texas and Spanish speakers will feel no more obligated to accommodate you as an English speaker than most English speakers feel the need to accommodate speakers of other languages.

People want to assimilate for economic reasons; they want to be able to market their skills and function in their business environment. Beyond that, I see no reason they should be compelled to do so. It behooves immigrants to learn English and have an understanding of how our government works and of American history. I have no patience with people who are offended by the fact that some people choose to be Muslim or Hindu or Buddhist because that's not "American enough" for them. Or with people who complain about people's names being too difficult to pronounce. Or with people who seem inherently annoyed by an abundance of people with different skin tone and bone structure than themselves. That's simply ignorant.

We saw what happened in Alabama when they more or less got all the illegals to self-deport. Crops rotted in the fields because there was no one to pick them. Do that on a nationwide basis and see what happens. Who is going to cook our food and mow our lawns and build our buildings? You talk about raising wages as if that solves everyone's problems. People's living standards don't increase unless labor and capital become more productive. If you simply mandate union wages for everyone, you're raising the prices of the things those people by and it ends up being a wash or worse. How does me having to employ a white guy to maintain my yard for $25 an hour instead of the guy who previously did it for half that raise my living standards? How does everyone having to pay more every time they go eat at a restaurant or stay at a hotel raise their living standards?

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

It's astonishing how much Republicans loathe any reform that might make it easier for people to vote. It's as if they believe their own "voter fraud" bullsh**t.

They don't (well, not most of them).  The Republican machine is a fascist organization at its heart.  Sure, they can't ACTUALLY go through with something like that, but power/greed/money is all they know and all they can understand.  Statistics show that Democrats benefit from high turnout and those who don't vote would vote overwhelmingly Democratic.  They understand this, and it is in their best interests (and the best interests of their puppet masters) to quash efforts to ease the burden on voting. 

Anyone who calls themselves a Republican ought to be ashamed at this particular aspect of their party.  The GOP literally tries to make it harder to vote/prevent measures to make it easier everywhere and anywhere they can.  Their evidence is usually a single isolated incident almost always involving a minority. 

[CatoMinor]

Its laughable that some of you think Crist is in any way a moderate. To be a moderate would require him to stake out what his positions are, and he is the least likely to do that of anyone. If he was elected as a Democrat and thought he could better win reelection as a Republican there is no doubt he would switch back without a second thought. Crist's policies will be populist BS that will be liked because they sound good, no matter how terrible they actually are in practice.

[Grumpier Than Uncle Joe]

Not sure why, but this post just struck me as good, perhaps because I've never heard the phrase "rumpy-rumpy" before.

Downing Street sex scandal!

Ever since the Profumo-affair British sex scandals have generally been boring stuff blown out of proportion by a sensationalist press. This seems to be some middle aged rumpy-pumpy among greyfaced bureaucrats. You guys are way behind the Americans in this area.

[Mechaman]

We can't estimate how long term Dubya's damage is going to be. Certainly no sane person is going to believe Obama taking over magically erased this.

Obama's tenure has made some of the Bush-era damage more permanent; he's certainly no shyer than Bush about pushing the limits of executive power. Of course, the fact that our Congress is essentially non-functional deserves some share of the blame for this.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Mental illness is very, very common (you will all know large numbers of people who have - or do, or sometimes do - suffer from some kind of depression, for instance) and the stigma around it is very, very unhelpful to all concerned. Most mental illness is not 'serious' in the sense in which that word is used (though can be debilitating and sometimes fatal), and those conditions that are 'serious' ought to be treated as the things that they are: extremely serious medical conditions. Oh the people that suffer from it, by the way, are people too.

Using accusations of mental illness (actually using it, that is: generic terms of abuse such as 'crazy' don't count because they are now just generic terms of abuse) as a stick to beat people you (small 'p') politically disagree with is an example of entrenching said stigma.

Moreover, labeling all forms of 'deviant' (from your perspective) behavior, views, beliefs or whatever as examples of 'mental illness' ought to be a massive no-no for all kinds of reasons that ought to be pretty obvious.

Etc, etc, etc.

[Grumpier Than Uncle Joe]

Monosexuality is so weird.

But seriously, I just can't understand the mindset of someone who wouldn't even kiss someone of a gender they aren't attracted to if a person they really liked wanted them to. Seriously-we're not talking about having sex here, just kissing. Why is that even an issue? I guess because of homophobic masculinity complexes, which are all too common even among men who fully support political equality for gay people.

Are you serious?  I have no problem with kissing a 'male' (that is a ladyboy) privately and purely of my own volition, but I would have a problem with doing it because someone asked me too for some kind of weird or controlling thrill.  My objection has nothing to do with homophobia and everything to do with a desire to be in relationships where mutual respect is observed and one isn't treated as a plaything.

[Lief 🗽]

And people say opebo doesn't have healthy attitudes towards sex and relationships.

[Grumpier Than Uncle Joe]

And people say opebo doesn't have healthy attitudes towards sex and relationships.

Yeah, that's why I posted it.  A rare glimpse inside the rascal's brain.