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rscott posted:It's engineers.txt because engineers always think they know the loving rules, and it's pretty obvious that there is a ton we don't know about human interaction in all of its modern and ever changing complexities. It's also engineers.txt that in when reality doesn't agree with what they think they have a pretty bad habit of putting their fingers in their ears and going, "la-la-la-la". It's pretty crude at best to classify people and their thought processes by profession. But if we accept the classification as useful your particular criticism, ignoring evidence, contradicts what we'd expect. Good engineering requires good evaluation of results.
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Jan 22, 2014 16:26
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rkajdi posted:The issue is the final place Koch is taking things, not the "engineer's mentality" that the world is an ordered place. I don't think it's a materialism. Once one asserts that "the world is an ordered place" one has asserted an essential. When one asserts that some abstract rule or law that is always true, one has asserted an essential. Having a an abstract idea (freedom) as an essential idea that drives history also prevents this from being a materialism too. Durkheim came up. So I had to start reading about Durkheim (because I knew very little about the father of sociology). Any way he had a definition of the sacred that jumped out at me: "simply collective ideals that have fixed themselves on material objects. they are only collective forces hypostasized". That word hypostasis is a religious term. It's the word used to talk about the nature of the union of word and flesh in Christ. It also means and implies that whatever is hypothesized is the "foundation". In earlier post I found the Austrians concretizing the ideal of freedom. Separately I've been calling this stuff idolotry for quite a while. I guess what I'm saying is that how the libertarians treat "freedom" fits Durkheim's definition of the sacred almost exactly. What that means is there is a secular way to say some of the things I've been arguing. It also means that the distinction I've been wrestling with between the idolized, hypothesized freedom of libertarianism ( which causes harm) and normal talk about society being based on freedoms which are just norms (liberalism) can be made in secular language, instead of having to talk about idolized freedom vs freedom. So there is a secular way to make a distinction between: Society having a foundation in talk about freedom (liberalism) and Society having a foundation in talk about sacred freedom (libertarianism) It also means the accelerationist / apocalyptic talk of Quidam Viator, is incorrect when it doesn't make that distinction. An apocalypse of Libertarianism/Objectivism is not an apocalypse of Liberalism. So people in general collectively coming to realize that a hypostasized sacred freedom is not the truth and ceasing to think about the world in that way, doesn't also imply a coming end of liberal governments. But another group of people also thinks what Quidam Viator thinks, the conservatives and libertarians. Seriously listen to the radio, libertarian/conservative talk radio hosts are always going on about the coming end of society which they link to a threatened hypothesized sacred (sacred is always unsaid) freedom. That fear (threat to sacred freedom as threat to society) is one of the tools of the right wing nutjobs. There is an argument for "You don't have to be afraid of that" in both religious and secular terms. Bar Ran Dun fucked around with this message at 16:41 on Jan 28, 2014 |
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Jan 22, 2014 20:55
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asdf32 posted:It's pretty crude at best to classify people and their thought processes by profession. It's a joke about how computer people with low interpersonal skills can be susceptible to social philosophies that are contemptible and selfish 
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Jan 22, 2014 23:58
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Okay I'm gonna hop on the acid trainride to religious libertarianism hell.  I see the Heritage Foundation and libertarianism as replicating the social structure of priesthoods. First, there is the hierarchy of arcane learning. I noticed in the forwarded-email thread that a lot of goons have FB friends who do nothing but post about libertarianism. That smacks of evangelism of the recently converted. And not just any simpleton ideology either, but a complex one with its own peculiar jargon for describing the world - non-aggression principle, overloaded meanings of freedom - which packs enough explanatory power to reductively understand the world and complex enough that they allow the operator of those terms feel like they're tiny little geniuses. It's not just who's right and wrong, but also how much more learned or intelligent they are for being right. They're establishing not just a moral framework but a hierarchy of knowledge whenever they debate someone. Contrast this to conservatism or liberalism - memes about the '47%' or the '99%' are singular ideas, devoid of complexity that allows their proponents to construct hierarchies of knowledge. Consequently, while these slogans get batted around by libertarians, it's not good enough for them - they need to more complex, valid (soundness is unimportant - see a priori apologia) ways to view the world. The drive behind the need for complex explanations is the failure of the existing explanations of the status quo. The great recession has caused faith in the current system to diminish greatly, and no one in America wants things to go on as they are today, whether left or right. However people react differently to crises of faith. There's tribal reactions, where context-free memes get bandied around simply as war banners for fights where right vs wrong is the only thing that matters and learnedness may even be a handicap (if 'elitism' is the villain of the month). Then there's more analytical reactions that want to figure out why things have turned out so. Because leftist explanations of the great recession are unpopular with capitalism, the only complex frameworks to be found are those that are palatable to capitalism. That's where the Koch brothers come in, they provide an analytical framework to explain the world that has fallen apart that's not subversive to capitalist interests. Libertarianism isn't easy to completely understand. There's laymen concepts that are very easy to grasp, but as you climb higher and higher up the priesthood chain you must learn more and more concepts, make use of the analytical and abstract thinking capacities that, as everyone who's reading this in D&D will admit, is kinda fun to use as a human being. It's pleasant to those who are studying in higher education and enjoy being challenged on their analytical skills, those who work in an analytics-heavy environment, or those just enjoy learning. So unlike the tribal war banners I described above, when libertarians debate, proving one's learnedness is their immediate goal (settling wrong vs right is still the ultimate goal, of course). Like priests who rise higher in rank and arcane knowledge to get closer to the gods, libertarians will read more and more dreck to achieve two of their ultimate goals: to better reinforce and understand their existing faith in the market, and to become the ultimate internet warrior to defend their faith. Moreover, there are the economic necessities of priesthood. Priests aren't expected to produce vulgar material goods/services to sustain their lives, and in many religions being a priest is a full-time career that precludes any other calling. That means they need a means of sustenance, and that is where patronage comes in. You have libertarians who do nothing but libertarianate - the Heritage Foundation. They aren't monks, they don't practice what they preach. They don't offer themselves up to the whims of the free market. Instead, libertarian think-tanks are funded in a centralized way by the Koch brothers in a very noncapitalist fashion. It's simple patronage, and they have both a monopoly and a monopsony. The Heritage Foundation doesn't need to cater to the market of people who read online publications; they simply follow the will of the one (or few) major backers. Even if no one read Heritage papers, they would still keep on publishing; Heritage wouldn't change its tone if Soros outbid the Kochs either. The goal isn't to make money, the goal is to spread the word - if the Koch brothers are indeed true believers and not simple profitmongers, then their relation to the Heritage Foundation and other libertarian outlets is not the M-C-M' relation of capitalism but the C-M-C' relation of consumption, where the C' in question is commodified ideology. I'm not quite convinced the Koch brothers are this mad, but that conclusion is terrifying - it would mean the recent Freedom Industries chemical spill in West Virginia happened not because of profitmongering, but because the Koch brothers saw a direct link between selling chemicals and the ability to teach people libertarianism, and relaxed the plant's safety measures (to save money so it can be spent on propaganda) to enact that vile link. So I wouldn't characterize it as immanentizing the eschaton - I don't think the Koch brothers expected the recession to happen in the first place. It caught many people off guard, so they are already living past the eschaton (or at least the start of it). Yet there has been no apocalypse - no unveiling, no understanding of what has happened. People don't even know if it's an end times where the good guys win or the bad guys win. The Koch brand of libertarianism provides post-eschatonic apocalypsis, an explanation after the fact. First, the start of the end times happen; next, the unveiling occurs and the good guys and bad guys are established; then, the priesthood grows itself by recruiting the learned and willing-to-learn; finally, a path to the end of the end times is given. The end times isn't just one moment of death or rapture, but a shock followed by a prolonged struggle ending with ultimate victory of good. Same thing going on here - the shock of the financial crisis isn't the end of the world, but the start of an opportunity to fight for the ultimate victory - a constantly growing capitalism with as much freedom as you can swallow. Hence the urgent need for regulatory reforms right now, because the end times are happening and a bunch of goons have been handpicked by Ayn Rand to be the Tribulation Force. They don't exhibit the isolated, toothless wait-for-the-world-to-end behavior of cults that await (or bring themselves closer) to the end; those cults don't think about manipulating the world as a whole. Alternatively, the recession may even be a creation myth. To explain the end times after the fact can be seen as an act of weakness and ignorance, and rather than confessing to such the Koch brothers can (and have) spin up a narrative where it was the government's fault all along, that the libertarian struggle was created as a reaction to the government interfering in the divine ways of the market, which, like the Garden of Eden, was an unspoilt paradise in the mind of Adam Smith and the great 19th century. The priesthood serves to explain the complex reasons as to why mankind willingly abandoned the hitherto-eternal free markets (and boy, do they need a lot of complex bullshit to explain and defend that one), and convince others about the greatness of free markets. They need to convince the masses in a liberal democracy to agree with them, to vote their cronies into office, hence the endless proselytizing. That's it for me. I'm gonna step off the train now and go back to being a materialist. Edit: well no surprise I was a bit incoherent in my rambling on libertarianism and religion, fixed up some grammar and content flatbus fucked around with this message at 02:43 on Jan 23, 2014 |
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Jan 23, 2014 01:37
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flatbus posted:I'm not quite convinced the Koch brothers are this mad, but that conclusion is terrifying - it would mean the recent Freedom Industries chemical spill in West Virginia happened not because of profitmongering, but because the Koch brothers saw a direct link between selling chemicals and the ability to teach people libertarianism, and relaxed the plant's safety measures (to save money so it can be spent on propaganda) to enact that vile link. The official line on compliance with regulation in Koch's MBM is "10,000% compliance". "Compliance Strive for 10,000% compliance with all laws and regulations, which requires 100% of employees fully complying 100% of the time. Stop, think and ask." What I've seen is that they do (oddly enough) take that seriously. So what ends up happening that they don't break the rules, but they've lobbied to create rules that suck. Then something happens because the rules suck and technically they haven't done anything wrong. It's like that storage tank not needing to have been inspected since 1991, that poo poo's crazy. But I think you're missing something. It is not save to save money so it can be spent on propaganda (they do absolutely spend money on propaganda). Your forgetting there is a hypostasis! To use their terms the foundation of all this is the "Action axiom". It is not that selling chemicals then allows them to teach people so as to spread libertarianism. The abstraction (the ideas of libertarianism) and the concrete (the business of selling the chemicals) are one! Maybe I can explain it by analogy. There has been a lot of talk about the Pope recently. This new Pope just goes out and does things, washes feet, hangs out with the homeless. In Christianity there is a hypostatis. The Word is Flesh. So when that pope is out washing feet, that concrete real existing material action is also an abstract platonic form (Love)! Think also of how Catholics treat communion with the whole substance thing. This is like that. They do business and that business is the same as the abstract idea. There are a dozen different words to describe this, deified, reified, concretized, hypostatized, idolized, idealized, etc. You're thinking about it in terms of having to spread an abstract idea that is only an abstract idea. Again analogy with Christianity. Think like moral influence theology. One spreads the love of Christ by just being in the world and loving others as Christ loved others. We then can talk about it too, but the talk is less important than the real action. This Koch/libertarianism stuff is like that. The substance of their business is Freedom and they spread Freedom by doing business.
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Jan 23, 2014 18:31
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BrandorKP posted:The official line on compliance with regulation in Koch's MBM is "10,000% compliance". I really hope you don't take this the wrong way, but I'm actually kind of worried about you. You are thinking way too hard to philosophically try and understand the motives of a couple of very, very rich assholes.
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Jan 23, 2014 19:48
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I think the Kochs and their followers really do care about "freedom," it's just that the only freedom that is particularly present in their minds at any time is the freedom of private companies to run their business however they like. So that's what they talk about and that's what they lobby for. Other people can deal with the other stuff.
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Jan 24, 2014 02:47
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rkajdi posted:I dunno, most of his point seems to be the end point of materialism. If nothing outside physical reality exists, then human minds are extensions of physical reality and are governed by its rules. The issue is a) we don't really understand our physical world that well yet, and b) the Austrian school takes a few of the trappings of science without any of the rigor-- it's just-so junk philosophy in drag. To me it reads exactly like any social theory based around biology. They are all bullshit theories, and they have caused incredible amounts of harm. I read this: quote:As an engineer, I understood that the natural world operated according to fixed laws. Through my studies, I came to realize that there were, like wise, laws that govern human well being.
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Jan 24, 2014 03:03
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asdf32 posted:No the flash into was 10-15 seconds at least. http://www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/ http://www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power_elite/ Here is a boring website with no flash. Knock yourself out.
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Jan 24, 2014 03:12
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No that says "who rules America," that's reductive, I refuse to look at it. Explain to me why I should look at it 
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Jan 24, 2014 03:20
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This is a hell of a lot more complicated, I might redo it later. Pohl fucked around with this message at 03:57 on Jan 24, 2014 |
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Jan 24, 2014 03:44
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Materialism or physicalism do not necessitate any view that justifies their beliefs in total. Physicalism is the claim that any metaphysically based laws or facts exist as a part of physics. An example would be the claim that mental states are in some way identical to physical brain states or realized by the physical state. The identification of things with a physical state need not necessitate but it may help other claims. In particular, there claims of freedom and things like that are left open in relation to actual physical systems and many books of theirs tend to move towards things that openly break with basic physics. Things like work and energy are kinda ignored for instance. This especially true in how they don't really see the existence of waste. Waste becomes a term of inefficiency if anything to them.
Ogodei_Khan fucked around with this message at 04:10 on Jan 24, 2014 |
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Jan 24, 2014 04:02
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flatbus posted:Okay I'm gonna hop on the acid trainride to religious libertarianism hell. This makes me want to see some crazy Japanese anime that remixes the business apocalypse with giant fighting robots and crypto-Randianism.
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Jan 24, 2014 19:26
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kaynorr posted:This makes me want to see some crazy Japanese anime that remixes the business apocalypse with giant fighting robots and crypto-Randianism. The armored core series is pretty close to what you just described.
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Jan 24, 2014 20:51
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Is the ideology of Nwabudike Morgan that of Objectivism (Randist-Kochism)?
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Jan 24, 2014 22:06
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So this is a new libertarian public awareness campaign (from the creators of the Keynes vs. Hayek rap, I think) that might or might not have Koch funding, and I'm fairly certain it's somewhat informed by members of the GMU Austrian clique. They've even created a fake backstory supporting it. On the surface there appear to be internal inconsistencies. While they chide mega multinationals for having their hands in several industries worldwide, including lucrative government contracts, they also parody the American skilled laborer for being xenophobic against foreign labor, and, uh, for getting hurt on the job. You kind of get this narrative of contradiction after reading so much Mises and GMU faculty-produced material. In their pursuit of free trade they hate large multinationals and complex banking while opposing any form of protectionism or assistance for small or domestic industry, yet they fail to realize that a lifting of all barriers and regulation would invariably empower the former. There's an almost early republic-era Jeffersonian naivete when it comes to capitalism and banking.
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Jan 26, 2014 06:31
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MothraAttack posted:So this is a new libertarian public awareness campaign (from the creators of the Keynes vs. Hayek rap, I think) that might or might not have Koch funding, and I'm fairly certain it's somewhat informed by members of the GMU Austrian clique. They've even created a backstory supporting it. On the surface there appear to be internal inconsistencies. While they chide mega multinationals for having their hands in several industries worldwide, including lucrative government contracts, they also make fun of the American skilled laborer for being xenophobic against foreign labor, and, uh, for getting hurt on the job. Yeah this is bizarre. It seems more "purist Libertarian" than the more dominant type you tend to see in American society, which wouldn't be attacking the military or bankers (or the corn industry). Apart from "Parts and Labour" and the insistence that "Entrepreneurs" are heroes (since they're the villains to the Kronies), this could be the cheesy propaganda of a much broader political base than just Libertarians, in fact. The idea that removing legislative barriers and biases wouldn't fix inequality overnight isn't something that libertarians/objectivists like to acknowledge, anyway. It's the same with their attitude on social issues. They are strangely ignorant of social and cultural causes of poverty and bigotry. Weldon Pemberton fucked around with this message at 17:57 on Jan 26, 2014 |
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Jan 26, 2014 17:54
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Weldon Pemberton posted:The idea that removing legislative barriers and biases wouldn't fix inequality overnight isn't something that libertarians/objectivists like to acknowledge, anyway. It's the same with their attitude on social issues. They are strangely ignorant of social and cultural causes of poverty and bigotry. Probably because they don't give a poo poo, tbh.
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Jan 27, 2014 04:18
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Mineaiki posted:Probably because they don't give a poo poo, tbh. That or they believe heavily in the just world fallacy. I've found that both are fairly common, as well as "I am an ubermensch being held back by those lesser than me. I do not care about a social safety net as I will never need it."
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Jan 27, 2014 06:46
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Every libertarian I've spoken to refuses to believe that lifting regulations would cause monopolies and oligopolies to form. They just repeat over and over that someone would just form a new company and we'd have competition again, ignoring the complete imbalance between a startup and a monopoly. The Free Market will fix everything okay!
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Jan 27, 2014 19:25
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So I've been trying to see if David Koch has as much online as Charles. There is basically nothing compared to the other brother. About the only thing I could find not behind a pay-wall (or behind a pay-wall and on Newsmax *shudder), was this times article: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/05/us/05koch.html?_r=0 He seems a bit less ideologically rigid than Charles. Mostly what he donates to seems to be the only real source of information on the way he thinks. Anyway more Charles and this right here is quality: http://www.thenation.com/article/163672/charles-koch-friedrich-hayek-use-social-security One can find scanned images of the actual letter online. Not going to download and put up on Imgur. Just google image search for it. Mr. Koch tried to get F. Hayek to use SS and medicare! IHS, G Pearson posted:social security was passed at the University of Chicago while you [Hayek] were there in 1951. You had an option of being in the program. If you so elected at that time, you may be entitled to coverage now.” C. Koch posted:“You may be interested in the information that we uncovered on the insurance and other benefits that would be available to you in this country. Since you have paid into the United States Social Security Program for a full forty quarters, you are entitled to Social Security payments while living anywhere in the Free World. Also, at any time you are in the United States, you are automatically entitled to hospital coverage.” "I'm sending you an pamphlet on social security" While the irony is molasses thick and hilarious there, again things implied are far more interesting to me. Charles isn't just reading the Austrians. This is correspondence with Hayek directly in a personal letter (and are there more?) To bring him (Hayek) to the US to be at the Institute for Humane studies. Also found an interactive map of the universities the brothers give to on one of the philanthropy sites. http://www.kochfamilyfoundations.org/locations.html Unrelated to the rest of the post. Charles and David tied for fourth on on Forbes 2013 richest 400 list. Each at 36 Billion dollars. If one looks at them in aggregate (not totally inappropriate because they so often act together and because their wealth is linked) they have as much wealth as Bill Gates. Maybe I can say that in another way. KII has generated as much wealth for Charles and David Koch as Microsoft has for Bill Gates. This makes me go back to this: asdf32 posted:Good engineering requires good evaluation of results. What are the results of Mr. Koch's systematic, his system of management (MBM), and by what metric would he asses those results? Bar Ran Dun fucked around with this message at 20:12 on Jan 27, 2014 |
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Jan 27, 2014 20:10
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Kit Walker posted:Every libertarian I've spoken to refuses to believe that lifting regulations would cause monopolies and oligopolies to form. They just repeat over and over that someone would just form a new company and we'd have competition again, ignoring the complete imbalance between a startup and a monopoly. The Free Market will fix everything okay! A group of local libertarians just gave a staggering defense of eliminating net neutrality since people would totally just start up new ISP's. Because natural monopolies totally aren't a thing and there isn't such thing as a multi-billion dollar barrier to entry that would be required to keep your customers immune to the abuses that would take place without net neutrality.
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Jan 27, 2014 21:06
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um market entry costs don't exist in my textbook so i don't know what you're talking about
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Jan 27, 2014 22:20
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My micro professor worked for GWB's econ team for a few years and even he thinks that markets fail regularly and barriers to entry are prevalent in a variety of industries. The disconnect between the right wing 'columnists' on these content farm/journalism hybrid sites like BI/Forbes, and real actual conservative economists, is light years apart.
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Jan 27, 2014 22:39
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Weldon Pemberton posted:The idea that removing legislative barriers and biases wouldn't fix inequality overnight isn't something that libertarians/objectivists like to acknowledge, anyway. It's the same with their attitude on social issues. They are strangely ignorant of social and cultural causes of poverty and bigotry. That is because most libertarians are only libertarian until they begin to understand that kind of thing, then they abandon it. Ignorance, willful or otherwise, of sociocultural forces is almost a prerequisite of being a libertarian.
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Jan 27, 2014 22:40
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Caros posted:A group of local libertarians just gave a staggering defense of eliminating net neutrality since people would totally just start up new ISP's. Because natural monopolies totally aren't a thing and there isn't such thing as a multi-billion dollar barrier to entry that would be required to keep your customers immune to the abuses that would take place without net neutrality. The best response to this are the news stories where rural towns (or just small towns isolated from urban centers that ISPs focus on) try to start their own local ISP to get proper internet access to their citizens and whatever ISP corporation manages the area sues them. an example found after some basic googling. e: here's a blog on the subject, including what wound up happening to the town in the above link. They were able to complete the project, but now the ISP is hugely dropping their prices in that area and aggressively advertising in an attempt to force the municipal ISP out of business. President Ark fucked around with this message at 16:34 on Jan 28, 2014 |
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Jan 28, 2014 16:25
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Not Kochs directly but relevant. Lot of references to Koch fund institutes (CATO pops up) though. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/26/us/politics/rand-pauls-mixed-inheritance.html?_r=0 Fair bit on the Mises institute and the Pauls. NYT Article posted:Mr. Paul says he abhors racism, has never visited the institute and should not have to answer for the more extreme views of all of those in the libertarian orbit. But he's still rocking Praxeology isn't he. Edit: Updated OP to include everything linked by all posters in the thread. Will do that sporadically. Edit2: NYT's editorial on Koch money in Politics http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/26/opinion/sunday/the-koch-party.html?_r=0 Edit3: Relevant to thread but don't think it's interesting enough to make a new post for: http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/wed-february-5-2014/koch-blocked Bar Ran Dun fucked around with this message at 20:18 on Feb 7, 2014 |
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Jan 28, 2014 16:35
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I posted this in another thread but think it needs to go here too: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/allen-frances/wolfish-radicals-in-conse_b_4868203.html Wolfish Radicals in Conservative Sheep's Clothing Part I thought was important: "Fifty years ago, when Fred C. Koch helped found the John Birch Society, it was rightly considered to be a radically right, somewhat wacko group. His sons David and Charles, creators of its direct descendant, the Tea Party, can now pursue the very same policies masquerading under a 'conservative' label that has been generously bestowed by a submissive press. "
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Feb 28, 2014 15:59
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Over a Facebook conversation with one of my Economics professors yesterday, it was disclosed that the Koch brothers have had a secret, but major, role in developing the department. They paid for this prof (a die-hard Libertarian) and economist Vernon Smith to be sent to GMU for research positions, before coming to my school. After coming here, Vernon changed the intro macro and micro textbooks to those written by GMU Mercatus Center professors, hired professors that share an Adam Smith-ian/Hayek-ian viewpoint of regulation and free markets, and set up an experimental econ program that the Koch bros used as an excuse to secretly finance the department as a whole through $40,000 cheques being made out "regularly" by KII subsidiary Flint Hills Resources (a company which has ironically been fined several times by the EPA for violations in our state). The department is very vocal and proud about having Vernon as the first chair and setting up the program, and while they don't talk about the reasons for using the textbooks, they do promote the blog the two authors have. Obviously, no one has ever mentioned publicly that the Koch's paid for Vernon's (and this prof's) move to GMU before coming up, or that they fund the department. Is this something worth passing on to a local media outlet, or do I have to just eat it and be depressed about it? site fucked around with this message at 21:22 on Mar 20, 2014 |
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Mar 20, 2014 21:09
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I would ask for your tuition back. Which school?
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Mar 20, 2014 22:32
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LtoAvSlWxNE A video by Jonathan Meades about Stalinism - mentioning Stalin's use of Folksy Atheism and reaction; something the Kochs now wield in the USA (homophobic euphoric fedora-wearers, for example).
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Mar 20, 2014 22:38
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Caros posted:The problem with discussing Mr. Koch's 'second form' of science is that it has by and large been rejected completely over the last several centuries. Its like alternative medicine which by definition has either been proven not to work, or has not been proven to work. Do you know what they call alternative medicine that has been proven to work? They call it medicine. I'm just catching up on this thread and I think it is important to point out that the way libertarians use praxeology is similar to the way others use pseudo-science. Based on what I've observed, it seems that whenever a particular conclusion or ideology is trying to be pushed, then some other alternative kind of "science" or way to apply science has to be invented to give it legitimacy. Ken Hamm's "historical science" vs "observational science" is the really obvious comparison. He argues that a different kind of science must be used when studying fossils, rocks, and ice cores and because we weren't there to directly observe, then one must choose a framework to interpret the historical data. For him, that is the Bible. Ken Hamm's "historical science" is very much like praxeology in that there is essentially a framework that guides the "research" to get the desired conclusions. Ultimately, for this kind of world view to work, it requires a great deal of compartmentalization as well as science denalism. Hamm denies parts of evolution, biology, geology, and others that don't fit his framework whereas libertarians will deny psychology, sociology, biology, and other economic schools that use empiricism. Ideologies that use praxeology at their roots such as objectivism, right-libertarianism, anarcho-caps are like the creationists of economics.
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Mar 20, 2014 23:03
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Bastard Tetris posted:I would ask for your tuition back. Which school? University of Alaska Anchorage
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Mar 20, 2014 23:58
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site posted:Over a Facebook conversation with one of my Economics professors yesterday, it was disclosed that the Koch brothers have had a secret, but major, role in developing the department. No, this is definitely interesting. Everyone knows about Koch influence at GMU and Florida State but I'm not getting anything for your school. Do you have a reliable source that would go on the record? Although a few open-record requests would probably reveal a lot. edit: ProPublica recently did a story on the complex web of Koch financing that's worth reading. MothraAttack fucked around with this message at 07:02 on Mar 21, 2014 |
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Mar 21, 2014 06:50
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I find it incredibly ironic that for all the bitching about the GOP D&D does, the only person willing to take this up is someone who lives outside the US. But mention Obama and Marxism in the same sentence and suddenly there are 12 pages worth of replies in the US politics thread. Unless there's an excuse to measure your dick, I guess real-world happenings don't matter...hypocrites. Anyways, gonna reply to your PM after this. site fucked around with this message at 09:26 on Mar 21, 2014 |
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Mar 21, 2014 09:24
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site posted:I find it incredibly ironic that for all the bitching about the GOP D&D does, the only person willing to take this up is someone who lives outside the US. But mention Obama and Marxism in the same sentence and suddenly there are 12 pages worth of replies in the US politics thread. Unless there's an excuse to measure your dick, I guess real-world happenings don't matter...hypocrites. Well, couple things. First, the politics thread is seen by hundreds of goon eyes in any particular hour, while this thread has seen eight posts since February three of which are yours. People like myself who actively posted in this thread aren't seeing it until 2:45 in the morning so forgive us if we don't immediately jump on this. Secondly, Your story, if true (which I'd believe but... you know, trust but verify) is actually pretty interesting but not especially surprising. We already know they are doing it in Florida it is hardly a shock that they'd be doing it elsewhere. What exactly do you want people to discuss about this lovely fact of life?  Third, that all said, if you can get proof then sing it to the rooftops. It'd probably be a tough sell to get it on national news all things considered, but you'd certainly have a lot of success with shows like the Majority Report, Young turks or Democracy Now.
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Mar 21, 2014 09:42
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Well considering I posted my question almost exactly 12 hours ago, if you're telling me most goons in the US politics threads actually live outside the US that's actually more ironic than people just not giving a poo poo. Second, this conversation happened on a public Facebook thread for everyone on both our friends lists to see and I screenshot the whole thing for posterity, so thanks for not trusting me...because I would've posted a whole bunch of bullshit out of nowhere for no reason :P Third, maybe if you bothered to make it to the end of my first post you would've seen that all I wanted was a consensus on whether it was a newsworthy story or not... EDIT: And I did say LOCAL media outlet. Obviously, I would never expect this to be national news. site fucked around with this message at 10:21 on Mar 21, 2014 |
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Mar 21, 2014 10:01
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The idea that Adam Smith advocated for an unregulated free market is taken as an article of faith by conservatives, including Libertarians, but it's simply false, an attempt to seize validity for their views by falsely imputing them to an authority.
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Mar 21, 2014 10:06
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Even Mises supported temporary subsidies to impoverished Mexican farmers, so 20th century paragons of libertarian thought aren't immune to this co-opting. Hell, Hayek and Keynes were always on friendly terms. A lot of blame goes to Rothbard, LeFevre and others in the '70s boosting anti-statist ideals among the laissez faire crowd. Mises and Hayek's works are mostly understandable from the context of their times, as reactions against interwar hyperinflation and the apogee of state power in Europe leading to WWII. Most free-trade economics advocacy done since the 50s, especially in the US, is in part a reaction to the civil rights movement more than anything else. MothraAttack fucked around with this message at 10:50 on Mar 21, 2014 |
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Mar 21, 2014 10:43
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| # ? Jun 11, 2024 00:38 |
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site posted:University of Alaska Anchorage At first I was like "whaaaat?" (UAF grad here, not economics though I did have a few classes) But nope, makes perfect sense to target Alaska. The oil industry's legislative lock on the state isn't as hard as it used to be AFAIK, and it's always been oil vs. two other moneyed interests in AK (fishing and tourism)...the more people thinking their way (even if not knowingly on their side) in Alaska the better.
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Mar 21, 2014 10:52
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