Political Discourse - What's On Your Mind?

Where derailed topics go to ....live?
User avatar
DrDominator9
Emissary
Emissary
Posts: 2454
Joined: 13 years ago
Location: On the Border of the Neutral Zone

Imagineer wrote:
3 years ago
Two mice fell into a bucket of cream.
How DARE you post that sort of political filth on this site. Your opinions, sir, are completely out of touch with reality and your language is abusive. Another post like that and you won't see the light of day here for months. Now good day to you, sir!!
Follow this link to descriptions of my stories and easy links to them:

viewtopic.php?f=70&t=32025
Imagineer
Overlord
Overlord
Posts: 614
Joined: 12 years ago

DrDominator9 wrote:
3 years ago
How DARE you post that sort of political filth on this site. Your opinions, sir, are completely out of touch with reality and your language is abusive. Another post like that and you won't see the light of day here for months. Now good day to you, sir!!
I'm sorry if you were triggered, but I posted it in the political safe space, and there's no direct personal attack against anyone on this forum.
User avatar
DrDominator9
Emissary
Emissary
Posts: 2454
Joined: 13 years ago
Location: On the Border of the Neutral Zone

Imagineer wrote:
3 years ago
DrDominator9 wrote:
3 years ago
How DARE you post that sort of political filth on this site. Your opinions, sir, are completely out of touch with reality and your language is abusive. Another post like that and you won't see the light of day here for months. Now good day to you, sir!!
I'm sorry if you were triggered, but I posted it in the political safe space, and there's no direct personal attack against anyone on this forum.
Dude, I was totally joking. Now I'm not sure if you are or not. Hmmm. This exchange never happened.

:blink:
Follow this link to descriptions of my stories and easy links to them:

viewtopic.php?f=70&t=32025
User avatar
Femina
Millenium Member
Millenium Member
Posts: 1473
Joined: 14 years ago
Contact:

bushwackerbob wrote:
3 years ago
Femina wrote:
3 years ago
bushwackerbob wrote:
3 years ago
I think everybody has the opportunity to be in charge of their own destinies, but some folks sabotage themselves with unwise life choices and therefore inhibit their chances for success. For some folks like me that are not self starter types, they lack ambition and drive, that if there is not an Oz at the end of the yellow brick road, if they can't see that light at the end of the tunnel, then they are unwilling to make that journey towards bettering their lot in life. That is not the fault of Jeff Bezos or the federal government. The paralyzing fear of failure and not being able to rise to the challenge of attaining one's goals is a huge reason in my view some folks don't have the courage or confidence to try and improve their lot with something outside their frame of reference or comfort zone.
I do not discount the truth of individuals who fail to make something of themselves for one reason or another. I expressed that there are people who are lazy, there are people who have social disorders, there are people society has made nihilistic to the point of giving up. Those people definitely exist, but that doesn't mean I could turn around and say 'therefore EVERYONE who fails is responsible for their own failure.' That's what Mr. X is insinuating when he says 'Everyone makes their own success' as used in this topic. It's not the same thing as giving a pep talk to a bunch of bright eyed students who want to hear something uplifting, It's INVALIDATING the people who get screwed over as just dumb ol' losers who couldn't get it together, and WORSE it absolves anyone who feels like making their own success by plowing throw and demolishing another persons avenues. It's a free pass to be a shit heel because it means that no matter how immoral someone behaves, no matter how much they lie, cheat and steal, if anyone else fails in the fallout of the quest its only because they didn't want it as much as the shitheel did.

It's basically objectivism
Interesting take. Would you mind giving me a few examples of folks who get screwed over?
In the purposes of what I'm trying to say here I don't even need to go extreme, cause that's not really my point just yet. Anyone who loses out on a job because somebody else got the job is being screwed over just a little bit. Yeah, the person who got the job COULD have been the better solution. I'm not speaking about race right now, or religion or even economics, remember I've surrendered things for arguments sake to get this one very imperative statement across as cleanly as possible. For someone to gat a position of employment, everyone else who applied for it loses, maybe they weren't 'quite' as qualified, maybe there was an affirmative action employment, none of that matters right now for the sake of argument. I'm not making a moral statement about this in particular, I'm illustrating that regardless of how hard some of these people worked, they LOST OUT on the position they were pushing for. Maybe they'll find a similar job somewhere else in the market, but maybe they'll lose out there as well. There are factors OUTSIDE of them that compete with their own innate desire to 'make their own success' that can and often DO interfere. So, before we get into anything further, before we start looking up examples and posting links to articles from websites and magazines we'll discount for being part of the political slant opposed to ours, I just want my position on this made very clear. We do not ALL make our own success, SOME of us do.
Mr. X wrote:
3 years ago
'therefore EVERYONE who fails is responsible for their own failure.' That's what Mr. X is insinuating
Yes because that's the only logical path. If you blame others you put the power in their hands and you stand still. You always ask "what could I have done", "How could I have avoided this", "what can I do better next time". Sure there are somethings that harm or interfere in your life but like the wind or fate or wild animals, you can't blame them. You act. And the US is not some shit hole country. Plenty of people in all sorts of groups succeed.

You have to blame yourself since that is the only path of power. Any other path gives power to someone else.
See, I feel like you think I'm unnecessarily condemning those who simply accept the facts of life and push on. I'm not necessarily unless you fall on one end of a spectrum. If you get, say, a coveted job that thirty people were applying for, its not your FAULT that you succeeded and took the opportunity away from them. I'm not saying that you should be tossing and turning in a cold sweat in guilt, nor am I saying that they should be tossing and turning in their beds scheming vendetta. I'm merely pointing out that with this, as with everything, there is a spectrum, and on one end of the spectrum is innocent 'this is life' circumstance which we all must deal with as facts of reality, and on the other end is lying, cheating, stealing and general bullshit, and treating both ends of that spectrum as equally fair behavior is problematic. Accepting reality doesn't mean you should absolve a cheat for cheating just because you weren't willing to cheat harder. All that accomplishes is to ENCURAGE cheating, lying, stealing, and fucking over your fellow man. Acknowledging that this sort of behavior is crap and the people who do it are stains on the asshole of society is all on its own a better strategy for pushing individuals to use their gifts to the betterment of everyone, rather than turning them into socially destructive machines for turning everyone in the world into everyone's enemy.

Acknowledgment that bullshit is bullshit is the first step to encouraging less bullshit.
User avatar
Mr. X
Millenium Member
Millenium Member
Posts: 4598
Joined: 11 years ago
Contact:

Femina - fundamentally you keep measuring yourself against others which is the flaw of fairness arguments. That pits people against each other.
ivandobsky
Veteran Member
Veteran Member
Posts: 316
Joined: 10 years ago

uncontroversial take: people are idiots.
User avatar
Femina
Millenium Member
Millenium Member
Posts: 1473
Joined: 14 years ago
Contact:

Mr. X wrote:
3 years ago
Femina - fundamentally you keep measuring yourself against others which is the flaw of fairness arguments. That pits people against each other.
Only if it isn't fair? When one measures themselves against the mean average of society and finds themselves in the middle, they aren't ordinarily driven to conflict. I think the problems in America today is that a larger and larger majority keep finding themselves beneath the 'mean' of what we should expect despite the numerical differential, while those at the extreme end of success are SO successful that they're polluting where the 'mean' actually is. Pretending like there is no measurement to be made isn't historically a healthy philosophy in its own right, since just assuming that the failures of those in your wake can't possibly have had anything to do with yourself or anyone else is its own road to conflict, just ask the French Revolutionaries. It's perfectly healthy for everyone at every level of society to at times, pause, take stock of where they are and how they got there, and respond accordingly. WHO was involved in that process is as valid a statistic as any other.

I'd like to believe that I measure humanity by the behavior under which it has presented itself since the dawn of civilization. I merely do not hold out so naïve a hope that we can suddenly and so completely alter our natures as to be capable of living peacefully without some form of civil requirements. How you choose to interpret that is irrelevant, but my fundamental beliefs are my own, and your continued assumptions into how I measure myself or how 'Hobbessian' my views appear to you are irrelevant and dishonest. For example, lets say that I assume that you definitively ARE an Objectivist. You'd argue that you are libertarian, but to me since I've decided you are an objectivist it won't matter, I assume you are dishonest or ignorant of what you actually are because everything you say reads to me like objectivist propaganda and I hope that my pointing it out will discredit you. In actuality It doesn't MATTER what philosophies we ascribe to in this forum. Suffice it to say, that 'fundamentally,' the fact that you and I cannot see the world in the same light is essentially all the proof necessary in the pudding that there is no path currently in an individualist society leading to anything but different forms of conflict. In order for Individualism to be fair, we must all individually behave and believe in exactly the same thing, and the thing we all believe in has to be the social good... since if everyone believes and behaves individually, then nobody works together for anything but selfish gain, and will inevitably stab each other in the back or be stabbed in the back. In order for us both to be treated with a semblance of fairness, society as a whole has to decide what is fair for all of us.

I understand the desires of individualism and accept that we all deserve a measure of autonomy and privacy, I admire the individual who chooses to make the world a better place for everyone without needing to be asked, but as a species of individuals, we DON'T reliably do that. So hoping for everybody to just get along 'because' so completely as to cut out the safeguards to guide them is, in my opinion, a recipe for chaos, confusion, and yet more violence. We can't treat everyone fairly, as a species, individually because each individual has their own conscious and subconscious biases and preferences that bump with another's biases and preferences. If you want to take that as me measuring my own ideas of how I operate and applying it to the rest of the world, go ahead, you do that. Then realize that you need to do that with every single other human being in the world, because even if you don't realize it yet, we are ALL as incapable of knowing what is in their heads as you are at judging what is in mine.

Leaving the state of argument here, I'd like to believe that at the very least neither of us believe ABSOLUTELY in what we discuss here. I don't believe in absolute governance, I'd HOPE that you don't believe in absolute individualism, and that our discourse amounts to little more than the tug of war that hopes to move the center of the rope into the right balance... but I can only hope this is so, because I AM an individual.
ivandobsky wrote:
3 years ago
uncontroversial take: people are idiots.
Indeed.
User avatar
Mr. X
Millenium Member
Millenium Member
Posts: 4598
Joined: 11 years ago
Contact:

Femina - Me running faster than you has no bearing on your life. Its called diversity. People are different. The only thing you should be concerned with is if someone is using force to gain an advantage such as cronyism or deception. And those are legitimate concerns. Then you can complain.

There is no need to measure against others. As for the french revolutionaries, that period had a split in liberalism. One school saw the expansion of liberty as merely removing the force obstacles from a person's path. Whether they walked the path was irrelevant. So for example removing the gov upheld restriction one must be part of the brick layers guild to build brick walls. Now whether someone does go out and builds brick walls is irrelevant. Their view was the government was the mechanism for creating this crony force. That is called classic liberalism.

The other school believed there was "enough" liberty and that a person didn't need MORE than a certain amount. So the poor needed more liberty but the rich didn't need 4 summer homes. Their view was government was the mechanism to use force to take liberty from one to give to another to reach that base threshold of liberty. They measured fairness and equality and believed in empowering the government to create fairness. That was neo-liberalism.

Now there was some legitimacy to the neo liberal view given this is an era just after lords and dukes and a Europe in which the aristocracy stole wealth from the citizens who they viewed as serfs. Even today that argument is legitimate that the Netherlands super rich have their basic wealth resting on the looting of the serfs from hundreds of years ago. But its not relevant today. And all this shows is force is bad and its not solved with more force.

Somewhere in the 1960s liberalism shifted from classic liberalism to neo liberalism.

How people do better is irrelevant to you. There will always be people who do better or are better. That does not mean they get more rights, it just means humans are diverse and not carbon copies. Fairness only has meaning if force or deception (which is a form of force) is used. Otherwise how you walk your path has no relevance to how I walk mine.
User avatar
Femina
Millenium Member
Millenium Member
Posts: 1473
Joined: 14 years ago
Contact:

Mr. X wrote:
3 years ago
Femina - Me running faster than you has no bearing on your life. Its called diversity. People are different. The only thing you should be concerned with is if someone is using force to gain an advantage such as cronyism or deception. And those are legitimate concerns. Then you can complain.
This is easily certifiably false. If you can run faster than me, and we're being chased by a hungry T-Rex, I'm fucked. Of course, that's not your FAULT, but it has bearing. Everything we've been talking about is the concept of the potential for people to gain advantage via deception and illicit tactic. I wouldn't number that as 'force' necessarily, but if it helps you to see where I'm coming from, then sure. I've never been trying to say that because Jim can run faster than Bill, Bill should rue the day Jim won the race. I've been saying that if Jim has been winning the race every year because he's been using his success to rig the contest to favor him, then something needs to be done.
User avatar
Mr. X
Millenium Member
Millenium Member
Posts: 4598
Joined: 11 years ago
Contact:

If you can run faster than me, and we're being chased by a hungry T-Rex, I'm fucked.
Yes that's life. It has no bearing.
Everything we've been talking about is the concept of the potential for people to gain advantage via deception and illicit tactic.
That's initiation of force which I have stated time and time again I object to. But not all advancement and advantage is due to skullduggery.

And yes there can be bad outcomes to voluntary interaction but those are far far less than the outcomes of initiation of force or forced outcomes.
I've been saying that if Jim has been winning the race every year because he's been using his success to rig the contest to favor him, then something needs to be done.
Rig how? Through force? Yes if its through force you can use self defense. Through voluntary association? Yes then use voluntary association not to do business with Jim. And this happens a lot more under forced systems than voluntary ones. Even Palestinians and Jews do business with each. Funny thing about money is green is the universally accepted currency. By all means boycott, socially ostracize Jim but make sure that he WAS cheating in some way. Don't assume success must be cheating or you fall into the Patriots argument.
User avatar
Femina
Millenium Member
Millenium Member
Posts: 1473
Joined: 14 years ago
Contact:

Mr. X wrote:
3 years ago
If you can run faster than me, and we're being chased by a hungry T-Rex, I'm fucked.
Yes that's life. It has no bearing.
Agree to disagree. I imagine we're in agreement on WHAT TO DO about this, it IS life, and thus there's very little that can be done about this particular example, but in my opinion, walking through life completely ignoring the harm you may indirectly cause out of some philosophic belief that nothing I do can possibly affect anyone else in any way whatsoever and anything that incidentally DOES occur can't have had anything to do with me, is a bad practice that leads to nothing good.
Everything we've been talking about is the concept of the potential for people to gain advantage via deception and illicit tactic.
That's initiation of force which I have stated time and time again I object to. But not all advancement and advantage is due to skullduggery.

And yes there can be bad outcomes to voluntary interaction but those are far far less than the outcomes of initiation of force or forced outcomes.
Then wtf are you arguing with me for? That's literally ALL we've been talking about (save silly outliar examples like 'running away from a T-Rex which are just fucking metaphor problems) since I first put finger to keyboard on this topic. So we're in agreement then! Rich assholes who got there trough skullduggery are BAD. Cool. We agree on something. Now I suppose you're going to tell me that nothing should be DONE about it, that we should never investigate it? How are we to KNOW when we've been fucked over if we just assume that nothing anybody else ever does can affect us? Cause let me tell you, blindly walking through life assuming so serenely that nobody is attempting to fuck you over is just going to make it EASIER for you to get fucked! Oh, and by the by, if you can be cheated out of success via force, then guess what? You could have your success ripped away, by force. Hence, taking away your ability to 'Make your own success'

That's what I've been talking about all along, and if there's one way to steal someone's chances of success away, there are a hundred ways.
I've been saying that if Jim has been winning the race every year because he's been using his success to rig the contest to favor him, then something needs to be done.
Rig how? Through force? Yes if its through force you can use self defense. Through voluntary association? Yes then use voluntary association not to do business with Jim. And this happens a lot more under forced systems than voluntary ones. Even Palestinians and Jews do business with each. Funny thing about money is green is the universally accepted currency. By all means boycott, socially ostracize Jim but make sure that he WAS cheating in some way. Don't assume success must be cheating or you fall into the Patriots argument.
Jim doesn't own the race in this example, he's a third party whose become wealthy and famous in the race. Let's say there's a cash reward, paid for by Pepsi. If Jim loses, Pepsi takes a huge hit in its profits and the government has to bail them out, so as Pepsi is too big to fail, Jim can't lose. So Pepsi affords Jim advantages they don't inform other racers that they are giving him. Maybe a strong enough investigation into the race will reveal the deception and allow up and coming racers to 'vote with their wallets' and abstain from joining the race at all, but as of now, nobody knows Jim is a cheater, they all adore him as a grand example of human athletic achievement.

Tell me, if everyone assumes that nothing Jim does affects their chances of winning the race, how the fuck does anybody ever learn that Jim and the system are a cheaters? You HAVE to measure yourself against Jim. "Jesus in the Coca Cola race in Indiana I only lost out to Jim by about five minutes! I've trained to shave off those five minutes in this race but somehow here Jim beat me by FIFTEEN minutes over the same distance!? How the hell did he do that?"

You HAVE to measure the factors of why you DON'T succeed when you fail if you ever hope to 'Make your own succeeds' and HUMAN BEINGS are as much a factor in that as ANYTHING else, and are easily the most chaotic factor of all which to me, means you need to pay EXTRA attention to how they factor.
User avatar
Mr. X
Millenium Member
Millenium Member
Posts: 4598
Joined: 11 years ago
Contact:

Femina wrote:
3 years ago
This is easily certifiably false. If you can run faster than me, and we're being chased by a hungry T-Rex, I'm fucked. Of course, that's not your FAULT, but it has bearing.
It does? So if I magically disappeared do you run faster? No. Can I give you speed? No. Is the T-Rex STILL chasing you? Yes. All I could do is sacrifice myself for you and why would I do that since you won't sacrifice yourself for me... or you wouldn't be running.

NOTHING I do short of tripping you affects you.

I'm going to end this here since this kind of discussion can result in bad outcomes.
User avatar
Femina
Millenium Member
Millenium Member
Posts: 1473
Joined: 14 years ago
Contact:

Mr. X wrote:
3 years ago
NOTHING I do short of tripping you affects you.

I'm going to end this here since this kind of discussion can result in bad outcomes.
But you COULD. Meaning it COULD happen. Murphey's law and all? Not saying you WOULD, it's just a dumb metaphor anyway, obviously T-Rex's extinct, a better example might be an angry Grizzly Bear protecting her cub but I digress. If you COULD Trip me in the situation, it means I could trip YOU. The slower person might trip the faster to survive? The faster might toss obstacles to slow up the first. Somehow I don't imagine that if I tripped you and left you to be mauled by a Grizzly bear you would be all that chill about my making my success?

You call it 'force' COOL, it's force. I certainly never insinuated that it wouldn't or couldn't require force? My point was never that Jeff Bezos might be hurting people passively 'by existing'. It was ALWAYS that he was harming people by nature of his activity with the economy. There was always the insinuation that he was where he is today, most probably, by applying some 'force' to anything that might threaten his bottom line, just you know, people included.
Last edited by Femina 3 years ago, edited 1 time in total.
bushwackerbob
Legendary Member
Legendary Member
Posts: 781
Joined: 10 years ago
Location: Boston, MA

Femina wrote:
3 years ago
Mr. X wrote:
3 years ago
NOTHING I do short of tripping you affects you.

I'm going to end this here since this kind of discussion can result in bad outcomes.
But you COULD. Meaning it COULD happen. Murphey's law and all? Not saying you WOULD, it's just a dumb metaphor anyway, obviously T-Rex's extinct, a better example might be an angry Grizzly Bear protecting her cub but I digress. If you COULD Trip me in the situation, it means I could trip YOU. The slower person might trip the faster to survive? The faster might toss obstacles to slow up the first. Somehow I don't imagine that if I tripped you and left you to be mauled by a Grizzly Bear you'd feel pretty damned wronged?

You call it 'force' COOL, it's force. I certainly never insinuated that it wouldn't or couldn't require force? My point was never that Jeff Bezos might be hurting people passively 'by existing'. It was ALWAYS that he was harming people by nature of his activity with the economy. There was always the insinuation that he was where he is today, most probably, by applying some 'force' to anything that might threaten his bottom line, just you know, people included.
I remember seeing a Frontline episode some time back where they made the case for unfair business practices in terms of how Amazon hamfistedly pressured publishing companies in terms of how they were compensated for the privilege of having their books on their site. Amazon definitely played hardball in that case.
Post Reply