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The thing is they keep most of it quiet. But all of it, every goddamn thing I see that they put money towards, seems to be towards the end of advancing markets and freedom. I guess there are the two obvious possibilities. They don't believe in it and all this money they spend has hidden end (to make them more money) or They do and it is what it is on the surface. That first one is easy. Then the rhetoric is just empty and hollow. The support inauthentic. That would mean the ideas will get thrown under the bus, when supporting other ideas leads to more money. If this is the case they'll throw something like the Tea Party under the bus if it's advantageous to their business. The second one, that they believes in all these things they fund. That's something else entirely. That makes them like the Libertarian equivalent of Paul. Back and forth between the various groups they support, advising, nudging, and leading in the service of what they believe in. The groups might be inconsistent, but this makes them the glue. This isn't inconsistent with just trying to feel good either. It definitely feels good to try to make the world a better place. Edit: Clinton Global came up. He's at least honest about it. I saw him straight up say something along the lines of: I'm doing this because it makes me feel good in an interview
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Jan 6, 2014 19:43
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This is obviously a case of fusing the need to excuse personal excess and the need to feel that your life is destined. What we need to do is develop a "Photonic disruptor", shoot it at Koch, and reveal that he was a Ferengi all along. Everything he does stinks of 'Rules of Acquisition'.
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Jan 7, 2014 03:22
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Keshik posted:You're making my point for me by buying into their bullshit. Koch ideology does not want a weak state, it wants a strong state. They want a state that puts down unions like in Wisconsin, that strips women of their basic human dignity like in Virginia (and elsewhere), that spends enormous amounts of money by trying to humiliate the impoverished with needless drug testing, that denies human rights to homosexuals, and that responds to any efforts to organize politically with police violence and intimidation, and a criminal and civil justice system that favors corporate interests. I'd simplify this and just define corporate fascism as dogmatically supporting the (big C) Corporation above all else and relegating other societal functions as secondary to supporting the Corporation and its interests, primarily that of concentrating wealth.
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Jan 7, 2014 16:25
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TheRamblingSoul posted:I'd simplify this and just define corporate fascism as dogmatically supporting the (big C) Corporation above all else and relegating other societal functions as secondary to supporting the Corporation and its interests, primarily that of concentrating wealth. This makes the Corporation sound like the Borg.
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Jan 7, 2014 18:47
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FADEtoBLACK posted:This is obviously a case of fusing the need to excuse personal excess and the need to feel that your life is destined. This mechanism has been seen again and again...on religious cult leaders. The are intellectually aware that they are hacks, that their faith healing was bogus and that they wanted cash and fame and nothing else...at first. Eventually, the formation of an echo chamber, the adoration of their followers and the increasing material rewards of doing what they do erases the boundary: They would not be so beloved by the masses if they did not have SOME special power. Maybe it started out as a con, but it's real now. Any opposition is just the work of vile infiltrators and vermin. One could argue that the Kochs were pretty much born in an echo chamber, given their Croesus-like wealth. They may have been exposed to some other values growing up or getting an education, but I doubt there was ever a shortage of people ready to tell them that whatever idea they had was brilliant and a guideline for everyone else to follow.
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Jan 7, 2014 21:12
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BrandorKP posted:And FREEDOM got mentioned. That's the real issue for me. Freedom is so easy to use in discussion that it's effectively meaningless. Define things you feel absolutely entitled to, convince enough people and you get to use this awesome buzzword that Americans and a lot of Europeans love so much. It's somewhat easy to show that it can mean completely different things, depending of the context. It's the underlying assumptions what constitute these inalienable rights can be problematic.
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Jan 7, 2014 22:37
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FADEtoBLACK posted:This is obviously a case of fusing the need to excuse personal excess and the need to feel that your life is destined. What we need to do is develop a "Photonic disruptor", shoot it at Koch, and reveal that he was a Ferengi all along. Everything he does stinks of 'Rules of Acquisition'. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W5J_qn93Nkc I know it's a side notice but, to be honest, Ferengis actually aren't too bad.
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Jan 7, 2014 22:51
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My favorite part is still that they made their fortune in Stalin's Russia.
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Jan 7, 2014 23:44
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quote:Why do producers in free societies create fertile ground for and Sounds like someone doesn't understand what predators actually do for prey populations. rudatron posted:The Austrian school is kind of scary in just how much of a cargo-cult science it is. It abuses the rhetoric of science and engineering, but the rigour is absent. This is what you get when an engineers ignores the philosophy of science completely, you get someone who uses the intellectual authority of the sciences in society to justify their arrogance. An engineer isn't necessarily a scientist, and doesn't need to understand science. They only have to know how to use the equations science gives them; and they don't even need to understand what any of their implications are beyond what is required for designing the systems that they make. That isn't to say that they never do; just that engineering as a profession is like a perfect amplifier of the Dunning-Kruger effect in that it doesn't require understanding, and it piles on rewards that might lead one to believe in one's own competence. You don't often see Koch-like assholes coming out of the sciences, because science punishes their sort of thinking; and except in some cases where someone rises so high as to be beyond criticism offers frequent reminders of how much one doesn't know.
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Jan 8, 2014 03:28
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Let's talk about contractions: http://garyes.stormloader.com/its.html
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Jan 8, 2014 03:49
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I'm not going to glorify this stuff to the level of some kind of 11th dimensional chess, because it really seems simpler than that. Capitalism gets really, really loving hard once you start to win. Your whole idea is based on idolizing this false concept of fair competition on a level playing field. You start winning, and you begin to careen toward monopoly. It's no longer profitable to play fair. Now, what must you do not only to reduce your own cognitive dissonance as you literally buy academic departments to shut down opposing thoughts and simultaneously somehow keep the masses from rising up to slay you? I mean, the only thing Koch is really defending is the right behind might, especially of the economic variety. In a world where the rich are really starting to look like assholes, because we can really see a lot of what they're doing through sousveillance, the Koch ideology is a countermeasure in this arms race. Does it feel like a veiled threat to you? Like what they're really saying is that "We're way better than you at this capitalism thing, and you have two options: get on board with where we're taking the world and be our serfs, or fight us and become our slaves. As a serf, at least you'll have the ability to look down on one set of people and feel a little better because of the invidious distinction. Fight us, and we will gradually, subtly, take away all of your well-being, self-respect, and ability to live as free humans, and we have the power to frame that as your fault." "Meanwhile, we produce and influence all the products you rely on to live in comfort. We got here legally, or at least nobody can take us down, so attack us at your own peril. We will play a slow game until there aren't even thoughts that oppose us." I feel like it's just a really high-stakes protection racket where they own everything except the body of those they're extorting. What am I missing here?
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Jan 8, 2014 04:43
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VideoTapir posted:An engineer isn't necessarily a scientist, and doesn't need to understand science. They only have to know how to use the equations science gives them; and they don't even need to understand what any of their implications are beyond what is required for designing the systems that they make. I think a major reason that scientists don't tend to produce this sort of ideology is that this ideology is really based on "I think this must be right so it must be right." It seems to me that Koch is promoting the "gut feeling" type of logic. It doesn't rely on actual logic, facts, or study, just "I decided this is right and I am wealthy and successful so it must be right." It's why it related to the GOP so much in that they rely on arguments like "take it on faith" or "a bunch of old rich white guys in suits with millions of dollars believe this so it's automatically true." Science's response to this sort of thing is basically "fine, prove it." If you can't prove it science won't accept it. Well, most of the time anyway, but science isn't perfect and neither are scientists. Quidam Viator posted:I feel like it's just a really high-stakes protection racket where they own everything except the body of those they're extorting. What am I missing here? Nothing, that's what it is. The wealth inequality in America has been growing for decades. Now we're at the point where there isn't any more wealth to take, really. The richest 1% own over half of the wealth. 80% is owned by like 20%. There's just crumbs for everybody else while the richest are jealously protecting what they have. There is very little left to take so instead of focusing on taking more wealth they're safeguarding their wealth and going after more power. The end goal is rigging the game so we're back to feudalism and serfdom but based on dollars instead of swords.
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Jan 8, 2014 16:38
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Gantolandon posted:Freedom is so easy to use in discussion that it's effectively meaningless. Define things you feel absolutely entitled to, convince enough people and you get to use this awesome buzzword that Americans and a lot of Europeans love so much. It's somewhat easy to show that it can mean completely different things, depending of the context. And that's the problem. The idolization of freedom makes freedom meaningless. The combination of the assumption that freedom is an absolute truth, almost a neoplatonic form, is combined with that all this is a construction of Mises. It creates sort of a Whither is Freedom? situation. Maybe I can be more concrete. In another thread I mentioned that I often interact with Russians who are very, very opposed to gay rights. The responses from others ranged from well just don't interact with these people to they should have their skulls cracked when a new government comes. Personally those aren't viable responses to me. It's not viable to disengage from the world (and not personally viable), and it's not viable to advocate cracking skulls. But all the FREEDOM talk coming out of the libertarian and tea part groups based in this Austrian thought has made the alternative route, the argument of "but freedom" (which is also "but MARKETS")a meaningless one. the "but FREEDOM" argument getting used for getting rid of helmets on motorcycles the "but FREEDOM" argument getting used for getting unemployment insurance or food stamps the "but FREEDOM" argument getting used for eliminating regulation. these distortions end up making a non idealized "but freedom" response to the Russian LGBT thing toothless, because appealing freedom has been hollowed out and turn into just something oligarchical corporatists just use to oppress the rest of us. I think this makes libertarianism a massive problem from liberalism, because it hollows out liberalism. On the their father made his fortune in Soviet Russia thing. Apparently what happened is that he came up with a new process for thermally cracking petroleum. Competitors in the US tried to quash it with both regulation and lawsuits in order to protect their businesses. I think this is where a lot of the regulation hate comes from. They would have grown up with the direct repercussions of a regulatory/government capture situation having dramatically affected their fathers life. And when it gets argued that it's just about them making more money. They could be assloads wealthier right now and there isn't anything preventing it other than: We don't want to. KII is huge and private. It would be a crazy amount of money if they went public. It be like Carnegie selling out to Morgan if they went public. They don't need to buy academic departments to be richer. They don't need to take over politics to be richer. They can just be richer anytime they want to be. But going public is apparently an "over my dead body" (those are C. Kochs words) situation. This implies to me that they want the power and control (of academic department and politics) for something other than money (because they very easily could just have more money). They are also openly stating that their goal (screaming it from the roof tops practically) is advancing Liberty and market causes. I just don't see any reason to go : well what they really just want is more money. Edit: The ferengi feminism episodes are some of the most interesting things to have come out of DS9. Edit: Thanks for correcting the title. Bar Ran Dun fucked around with this message at 17:44 on Jan 8, 2014 |
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Jan 8, 2014 17:33
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ToxicSlurpee posted:I think a major reason that scientists don't tend to produce this sort of ideology is that this ideology is really based on "I think this must be right so it must be right." An appropriate strategy in response would be to go through the Koch ideology and clearly distinguish between what aspects are on the right track and grounded in good science, and what aspects are purely self-serving and ideologically driven. The contrast with Wiener's discussion of cybernetics is a great place to start, because it is absolutely true that complex systems tend to develop according to general patterns through a variety of methods of feedback and control. The general picture of systems management at large scales is certainly correct, at least at that level of generality, and the half-century since the heyday of cybernetics at MIT has vindicated its methods and approaches to complexity. Full text of Wiener's The human use of human beings can be found here. quote:We are swimming upstream against a great torrent of disorganization, which tends to reduce everything to the heat death of equilibrium and sameness described in the second law of thermodynamics. What Maxwell, Bolzmann and Gibbs meant by this heat death in physics has a counterpart in the ethic of Kierkegaard, who pointed out that we live in a chaotic moral universe. Wiener's view is also a theory of history and a philosophical anthropology, and as with all scientific theories it is underdetermined by the evidence. Still, I think it's appropriate to defend Wiener and the cyberneticist's views (including especially Herbert Simon) on ideological grounds, especially insofar as the view is still relatively underappreciated in mainstream science today. The sciences of complex systems are radially antireductionist and holistic, and argues for the existence of large scale, law-like patterns that apply at the level of society and history and not merely at the level of fundamental physics. Insofar as this describes Koch's view at this level of abstraction, it is both unorthodox and, I think, correct. Or it at least deserves to be defended as a coherent and systematically unified theory. There really are patterns in the development complex systems that can be documented and systematized in order to predict and control and otherwise put the natural world to our service, at least to some extent. So where does Koch's ideology diverge from the cyberneticists? There's all the lame rhetoric about "liberty" and "freedom" that really have no place in complex systems theory, where objects are defined in terms of their interdependencies and organizational dynamics. Of course, markets are also complex systems, whose nature is characterized by interdependencies and organizational dynamics, and these markets are equated with liberty. So liberty can't merely be understood in terms of independence or individualism, if the market is characteristically interdependent and holistic and yet simultaneously a paradigm of freedom. What's going on here? Of the Austrian school thinkers I know Hayek better than the others, so I'll start there. Hayek, also inspired by the cyberneticists of his day, claims that organization is an emergent property of complex systems. While this is true, Hayek infers from this that organization cannot be planned or managed, for instance by a government. Hayek argues that when a government gets involved with a market, for instance, it underappreciates the delicate complexity of the situation and instead simply imposes its arbitrary will, and this ultimately does more harm than good. The government's attempt at centralized planning represents a lack of liberty because it fails to let the market self-organize and take care of itself. The government's interference leaves that organization weak and unfree; from here Hayek draws all his minarchist libertarian conclusions. So markets are free not because they contain independent individuals, but instead because their interdependencies aren't regulated by any centralized source. Markets become unfree when some central authority interferes with those dynamics and imposes its own order. However, there's no reason whatsoever to draw Hayek's conclusion, that central planning is impossible, from the fact that organization emerges within complex interdependent systems. It's effectively Christian Science for markets, except here we can't know better than the free market (instead of God) what we should do next. It's as sensible as saying that I shouldn't make decisions about the health of my body as an organism, because my cells know better than I do about what's best for my health. That's nonsense. Of course I (as centralized authority of myself as a complex system) can plan out regimes and restrictions for managing my health; the fact that my cells are craving nicotine is not sufficient evidence that smoking is best for my health. Likewise, a doctor can prescribe legitimately useful strategies for dealing with illness and disease. And modern governments are certainly capable of managing economic affairs. In the (too many) cases where they've failed over the last 40 years, it's largely been at the hands of precisely those who claim that such systems cannot be managed. The tragedy is that their repeated failures only justify their view in their eyes, simply because they think that competent management is impossible and they see evidence of this everywhere they look.
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Jan 8, 2014 18:51
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BrandorKP posted:On the their father made his fortune in Soviet Russia thing. Apparently what happened is that he came up with a new process for thermally cracking petroleum. Competitors in the US tried to quash it with both regulation and lawsuits in order to protect their businesses. I think this is where a lot of the regulation hate comes from. They would have grown up with the direct repercussions of a regulatory/government capture situation having dramatically affected their fathers life. Fred Koch's issue had nothing to do with regulation or government capture and everything to do with frivolous patent lawsuits. Koch won ever single lawsuit he engaged in, except one in which the judge was bribed. This isn't an example of bullshit over regulation but an example of capitalism working as intended, with massive cartels doing everything in their power to squash the little guy.
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Jan 8, 2014 20:00
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Quidam Viator posted:I'm not going to glorify this stuff to the level of some kind of 11th dimensional chess, because it really seems simpler than that. Your missing how uneducated you can be and still be rich now. They can talk about how paying the poor or any sort of help or benefits is taking from them but they don't even know or understand how lower income people can still impact the economy. They don't understand that having a smaller part of a faster moving economy that has more people involved leads to having a larger part decades after than if you had that huge piece of a stagnating economy. There are rich people who fully understand and are aware of how hosed up this is, they just happen to be not as crazy or loud.
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Jan 9, 2014 14:04
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Caros posted:Fred Koch's issue had nothing to do with regulation or government capture and everything to do with frivolous patent lawsuits. Koch won ever single lawsuit he engaged in, except one in which the judge was bribed. This isn't an example of bullshit over regulation but an example of capitalism working as intended, with massive cartels doing everything in their power to squash the little guy. I got the impression they also got the government involved in addition to the lawsuits. I thought I had evidence of that but I can't seem to find the link now. So you're probably right and it's just the lawsuits. Regardless he took it as capitalism being abused: John Birch Society posted:"We must suppose that, as a result of the campaign to sue him out of the refining business, Fred Koch must have begun to understand that the modern American business sector was not nearly as free-market as it was cracked up to be" If I hadn't been incorrect about the regulation part I would not have found something else that seems pretty important. Fred Koch was a founding member of the John Birch Society. http://www.jbs.org/fred-koch
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Jan 9, 2014 16:29
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Does Koch ever offer a definition of freedom in any of his books, or defend the axiom that it is the ultimate end?
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Jan 9, 2014 22:46
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BrandorKP posted:I got the impression they also got the government involved in addition to the lawsuits. I thought I had evidence of that but I can't seem to find the link now. So you're probably right and it's just the lawsuits. Regardless he took it as capitalism being abused: At the end of the day I find it really difficult to even discuss the Koch 'ideology'. For me its like discussing the merits of serial killing, there is just nothing in it I find even remotely redeeming, and I'm certain that the vast majority if not the entirety is based around a sociopathic point of view. I could debate against it, but simply discussing it... there isn't anything of worth to take away from it.
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Jan 10, 2014 01:09
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This is a 1993 Adam Curtis documentary about the Soviet Union https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3gwyHNo7MI It indirectly captures the Koch ideology by talking about the link between Stalin's 5 Year Plans and American Engineers (Daddy Koch among them) - a completely technical society. It reminds me of our present obsession with quantification/'making things a game': standardized testing to evaluate education, sales targets, quotas, and 1-5 feedback surveys. The obsession with time and quantification seems like an inherent flaw in modern society; whether driven by profit or another arbitrary metric of efficiency/utility. Eventually the system becomes detached from practical reality and becomes absurd/dehumanizing - then it is just a matter of how much force the system is willing to exert to maintain itself.
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Jan 10, 2014 02:20
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edit wrong thread
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Jan 10, 2014 10:26
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McDowell posted:This is a 1993 Adam Curtis documentary about the Soviet Union Does Curtis mention Taylor? Cus he's the motherfucker who invented this poo poo. He literally saw human beings as machines made of flesh and bone and went from there and, shockingly, it led him to inhuman conclusions. Unfortunately it turns out that when you see humans as resources and treat them as such you can make a lot of money. Not necessarily more money than if you treated them well, interestingly enough, but the benefits of treating employees well are hard to measure and intangible at best, impossible to measure at worst, and if you've created a system based on machines in which everything must be precisely quantifiable and you are completely stuck in that paradigm, you're going to treat your human resources the same way. The way people are treated at work is oftentimes infantilizing, dehumanizing and leads to massive alienation. It's not just limited to work in our society, as we see the same sort of phenomena in how the lower classes are viewed, or say, prisoners, or people of different skin complexion or sexual preference. Dehumanization is arguably the single biggest problem of our time.
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Jan 10, 2014 10:39
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Caros posted:At the end of the day I find it really difficult to even discuss the Koch 'ideology'. For me its like discussing the merits of serial killing, there is just nothing in it I find even remotely redeeming, and I'm certain that the vast majority if not the entirety is based around a sociopathic point of view. I could debate against it, but simply discussing it... there isn't anything of worth to take away from it. Have you ever seen the movie Elysium. Early in the movie Matt Damon's character breaks his arm but goes into work anyway and works with the injury so he doesn't lose his job. Well essentially that situation that just happened to my father. Worse it was legal (first thing I did was check, it was because of the timing of one company buying another, the state he lives in, and the at-will employment laws). I had been moderately interested before that for other reasons. I had seen a hidden bias that bothered me immensely when I took the GMAT. I had been bothered by why otherwise good people I interact with were saying monstrous things because of right wing politics. I had suspected that this ideology had something to do with prosperity gospel. And then I couldn't figure out why regular people were buying into this libertarianism business and when pressed none of them were willing to tell me. And then I realized that this stuff shared structure (but not content ) with my own (religious and frankly eccentric) ideology, that it was logo-centric (Truth centered) and apologetic. But I started really looking at what created the circumstances that this could happen to my dad. The answer was Mr. Koch. Mr Koch is the behind the scenes voice, the man organizing research to apologize for the ideology that wants "At Will employment". The man funding the think tanks that make arguments and the "grassroots" political groups that convince people to vote for politicians that support this stuff. The man funding ALEC that spreads the idea from state legislature to state legislature. The guy behind a theory of management that facilitates this unethical stuff. Now that's not entirely fair and I know that. It's not really (or at least not only) the Kochs. But it was still useful to look at them specifically as a microcosm. Edit: Hmmm, it might be fair. Looks like the governor of the state my Dad lives in goes to the biannual Koch seminars. That lead to realizing these groups (especially the Kochs and the people around them) have written extensively and publicly about why they believe in all this. It's totally out in the open, public, and easy to get at. They want it read. Because they've done that one can look at it and figure out the answer to this question: What is redeeming about it? I'm not asking that question because I find it appealing. I'm asking that question because to answer it is to figure out why people who aren't sociopaths are willing to participate in this. I mentioned that they attack other ideas in this way: by arguing that idea X fails to fulfill it's explicit and implicit promises. Figuring out the language of this ideology and its characteristics allows for communication. Understanding what is appealing about this Austrian "Liberty" stuff, allows for the identification of what it promises to the people who believe in it. That understanding is needed to effectively argue that its promises are defective and not connected to reality. The repercussions of this ideology affect our lives. Hell for people who live in a state that didn't expand medicare, the repercussions might even be literally life threatening. To go after this ideology in that way necessitates the risk of partial participation, of looking at it honestly and of possibly being affected by it. Paper Mac posted:Does Koch ever offer a definition of freedom in any of his books, or defend the axiom that it is the ultimate end? A free society, markets, personal freedom, etc. It's really kind of nebulous. Definitions end up looking like this: http://www.charleskochinstitute.org/freedom/ They vary depending on which particular writer one is looking at at the moment At the same time they have metrics and indexes to track FREEDOM "scientifically". Most of these are strictly based on personal property rights as the definition of freedom like this one: From: http://www.freetheworld.com/ Frasier Insitute posted:Individuals have economic freedom when property they acquire without the use of force, fraud, or theft is protected from physical invasions by others and they are free to use, exchange, or give their property as long as their actions do not violate the identical rights of others. An index of economic freedom should measure the extent to which rightly acquired property is protected and individuals are engaged in voluntary transactions. While not Mr. Koch directly that free the world site links from the Charles Koch Institute "learn more" about freedom links. I've also seen freedom as "what causes human flourishing" again not from Mr. Koch directly but from other people he references. I think that the formal definitions are just denotations. I think the connotation is along the lines of that Freedom is the Good. To me that's the implied logical consequence of how they talk about freedom, but I have yet to see that explicitly. But I think it's implied by the word praxeology. As far a defending it goes, that's what all of it is, mountains of defense. "Science of human action" is another way to say praxeology the foundational axiom. All of the systematization: "Science of Liberty research topics", the "Science of Success" theory of management, etc these are all defenses of the axiom. The organizations in the real world Cato, FreedomWorks, AFP, etc, these are defenses of the axiom. The defense isn't just a single logical argument, it's mountains of structure built up around the axiom both of systematized ideas and real organizations in the world. Funding the tea party is a defense of the axiom. Funding a researcher to produce a paper in favor of austerity is defense of the axiom. When FreedomWorks tries to do this: "real-time campaigns activate a growing and permanent volunteer grassroots army to show up and demand policy change." that's the defense of the axiom. A specific example of how that type defense works is something like this: http://www.kosmosonline.org/onlinep...m_campaign=OCDS He funds IHS and is on the board. IHS creates a program called KOSMOS to fund academics to study Liberty topics, to find scholars that support Liberty causes, to give money to universities so as to influence their programs towards Liberty ideals. The goal is to create a system to produce people who reach conclusions in line with Liberty, without ever having to argue for Liberty. Or to slowly alter an existing system so that it produces those conclusions. They are defending the axiom by creating theonomies. They want to change the world itself, so that just by being in the world the rest of us just accept Liberty. Bar Ran Dun fucked around with this message at 18:32 on Jan 15, 2014 |
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Jan 10, 2014 20:31
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Oh man, while it's not going to be the end of the Kochs, it does say something about their philosophy when one of their Georgia-Pacific companies and one named after Charles Koch's favorite words has now ended up contaminating the water supply and perhaps the water table of nine West Virginia companies and depriving third of a million folks of clean water.
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Jan 12, 2014 04:06
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Young Freud posted:Oh man, while it's not going to be the end of the Kochs, it does say something about their philosophy when one of their Georgia-Pacific companies and one named after Charles Koch's favorite words has now ended up contaminating the water supply and perhaps the water table of nine West Virginia companies and depriving third of a million folks of clean water. This is perfectly consistent with the Koch ideology. There's no esoterism to it; it's the ideology of the plutocracy: "the rich will do what they want, and the poor will suffer as they must." By this standard, restrictions on lovely behavior committed by the rich against the poor ought to be lifted, while restrictions on lovely behavior committed by the poor against the rich ought to be strengthened or added to as those inhibit freedom -- and we know what freedom is and whom it is for.
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Jan 12, 2014 05:45
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Young Freud posted:Oh man, while it's not going to be the end of the Kochs, it does say something about their philosophy when one of their Georgia-Pacific companies and one named after Charles Koch's favorite words has now ended up contaminating the water supply and perhaps the water table of nine West Virginia companies and depriving third of a million folks of clean water. Wasn't that basically one of the anecdotes in Atlas Shrugged (the one with the train where tons of people horribly suffocated to death and Ayn Rand basically went "FREEDOM")?
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Jan 12, 2014 14:49
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I thought the people in the train suffocated because statism had taken away their ability to reason or protect themselves. e: ahahahahahahahaha she's jilling off quote:As the tunnel came closer, they saw, at the edge of the sky far to the south, in a void of space and rock, a spot of living fire twisting in the wind. They did not know what it was and did not care to learn. woke wedding drone fucked around with this message at 19:25 on Jan 12, 2014 |
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Jan 12, 2014 19:21
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SedanChair posted:I thought the people in the train suffocated because statism had taken away their ability to reason or protect themselves. Yeah when it comes to Ayn Rand I more or less check out. A bunch of people die in a train crash, but its okay because they 'deserved' to die. I guess if they were smarter captains of industry they would have never gotten on the train to begin with since they would have known, or they would have flown through the top of the train like superman or something, I dunno. How the gently caress anyone over the age of fourteen takes this book seriously is loving beyond me. I literally do not understand it, in the same way that I wouldn't understand if I was looking at a 4d cube or C'thulu.
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Jan 12, 2014 22:08
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Caros posted:How the gently caress anyone over the age of fourteen takes this book seriously is loving beyond me. I literally do not understand it, in the same way that I wouldn't understand if I was looking at a 4d cube or C'thulu. We've all got a fourteen-year-old within us (heheh, dickbutt), and some never get past that age at all. Captain_Maclaine fucked around with this message at 01:55 on Jan 14, 2014 |
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Jan 12, 2014 22:13
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Caros posted:Yeah when it comes to Ayn Rand I more or less check out. A bunch of people die in a train crash, but its okay because they 'deserved' to die. I guess if they were smarter captains of industry they would have never gotten on the train to begin with since they would have known, or they would have flown through the top of the train like superman or something, I dunno. To some extent, the whole "makers vs. takers" bullshit resonates with certain people.
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Jan 12, 2014 23:05
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SedanChair posted:I thought the people in the train suffocated because statism had taken away their ability to reason or protect themselves. Good loving grief. This is terrible writing. She could have stopped at maybe three passengers and her point would still be made. Did nobody assign this woman an editor? What even is this? None of these people are human beings, it's a train full of concepts hurtling towards a metaphorical (but also literal) hellfire. Is there somebody who says "the will of the masses is the only standard in good and evil?" Is that...is that actually a thing? It just seems like every character is a shallow streotype meant to further an impossibly drawn out and dull metaphor. This is the second most influential book next to the BIBLE!?
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Jan 12, 2014 23:05
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BottledBodhisvata posted:Good loving grief. This is terrible writing. She could have stopped at maybe three passengers and her point would still be made. Did nobody assign this woman an editor? What even is this? None of these people are human beings, it's a train full of concepts hurtling towards a metaphorical (but also literal) hellfire. Is there somebody who says "the will of the masses is the only standard in good and evil?" Is that...is that actually a thing? It just seems like every character is a shallow streotype meant to further an impossibly drawn out and dull metaphor. The entire book is a shallow stereotype meant to further an impossibly drawn out and dull metaphor. If you think just a page or two is impossibly drawn out then, well, I have bad news for you.
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Jan 13, 2014 14:12
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BottledBodhisvata posted:Is there somebody who says "the will of the masses is the only standard in good and evil?" Is that...is that actually a thing? It's a misunderstanding of utilitarianism, "The Greatest Good for the Greatest number is the measure of right and wrong". Utilitarianism is the opposite of Rand's Rugged Individualism. Funny that consequences are such a big deal in utilitarianism, and not so much deontology and individualism (right is always right, wrong is always wrong and drat the consequences!).
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Jan 13, 2014 14:28
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BottledBodhisvata posted:Good loving grief. This is terrible writing. She could have stopped at maybe three passengers and her point would still be made. Did nobody assign this woman an editor? What even is this? None of these people are human beings, it's a train full of concepts hurtling towards a metaphorical (but also literal) hellfire. Is there somebody who says "the will of the masses is the only standard in good and evil?" Is that...is that actually a thing? It just seems like every character is a shallow streotype meant to further an impossibly drawn out and dull metaphor. Just to reiterate, this same book has as its finale, a speech that is sixty pages long. If read aloud the speech takes roughly three hours and is exactly as meandering as you would expect, but no one at any point interupts or argues against Galt. They accept it, the 'producers' leave to form their own society and everything collapses. Ayn Rand is awful.
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Jan 13, 2014 15:10
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I was wondering if Freedom industries had ties to Koch on the way into work this morning. Straight line from FREEDOM to not being able to drink the water.
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Jan 13, 2014 15:26
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This is a bit old but it's the first time I've seen it. Some insights into the biannual Koch seminars. From MotherJones http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2011/09/exclusive-audio-koch-brothers-seminar-tapes and http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2011/09/audio-chris-christie-koch-brothers-seminar Some highlights: On the at the time upcoming 2012 elections: C. Koch posted:But we've been talking about --- we have Saddam Hussein, this is the Mother of All Wars we've got in the next 18 months. For the life or death of this country. So, I'm not going to do this to put any pressure on anyone here, mind you. This is not pressure. But if this makes your heart feel glad and you want to be more forthcoming, then so be it. On the media: C. Koch posted:But, you know, we've talked about our competitive disadvantage, how we're overwhelmed in a number of areas, but we have --- and one of those areas, of course, is the media --- and we're overwhelmed. The media's ninety-plus percent against us. But we have a few bright stars and Judge here is one of 'em. So we thank you so much. [applause] Not only for being with us tonight but what you do every day in defending our free society. Leaked agenda from an earlier seminar http://images2.americanprogressaction.org/ThinkProgress/secretkochmeeting.pdf Unrelated to the above KII has a Kochfacts website: http://www.kochfacts.com/kf/ boy they really dislike Rachel Maddow. Company newsletters are publicly posted archived back to 07. http://www.kochind.com/Newsroom/discovery.aspx Also some links to underlying philosophy of "Economic Freedom" http://www.kochind.com/Newsroom/EconomicFreedom.aspx What have we got there? Some things from there in support of things I've asserted: Frédéric Bastiat Life, liberty, and property do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty, and property existed beforehand... So liberty, souls and property precede government/law in his ontology, check ha, he links to Bastiat's "That Which is Seen, and That Which is Not Seen" "The others unfold in succession - they are not seen: it is well for us, if they are foreseen." So revelatory from human reason, check and the reading builds to finish with: Human action (Mises) and Constitution of Liberty. (Hayek) Holy poo poo he's assembled a canon, an open canon. In that first "Market Based Man" article there was this "He began to read widely and deeply, studying works of history, economics, philosophy, and psychology.", I bet these are the specific books. Bar Ran Dun fucked around with this message at 18:39 on Jan 15, 2014 |
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Jan 15, 2014 18:30
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SedanChair posted:I thought the people in the train suffocated because statism had taken away their ability to reason or protect themselves. Can one of the people on here who used to be Libertarian/Objectivist explain what they thought was coherent about this, please. I'm not attacking you, I sincerely want to know. She criticizes people who accept humans are social animals and should support each other in some way. She criticizes a mother who disregards everyone except her family (a lot of right-wing people would advocate supporting their family, if not the rest of society, even some hardcore libertarians). She criticizes businessmen who exploit others (in the form of subsidies and government corruption) for their own gain. Which I suppose is her setting the stage for the Libertarian argument that "big business is only corrupt when it uses the state to help it survive". But then she criticizes a lawyer whose philosophy is literally "gently caress you, got mine" and adapts to any situation without the help of others, focusing on his own self-interest. Would the lawyer be acceptable if he was also politically engaged and advocated Objectivism? Is his flaw the fact that he doesn't want to change the world to enable more people, who aren't as good at navigating a "broken" system as him, to acquire the wealth they deserve? If so, how is this not a form of "supporting the incompetent"- why are people who could succeed in Rand's ideal world, but not the current world, defined as "competent"? Does Rand accept the idea of "helping" others, only through indoctrinating them with her weird ideas rather than emotional or material support? Ultimately, after I read that passage, all I could think was "of loving course everyone on the train had one of those perspectives on life, since you went through a million diverse political viewpoints including some that are near-identical to your own!" I suppose this leads back to the Koch brothers and their ideology. Having accepted that they genuinely believe they are helping the world through their ideology (helping bring about idealized "freedom"), like Rand, what is the difference? Aside from the rhetoric and tone being much different. Is it that they believe "freedom" would be beneficial for all classes, while Rand realizes the poor (undeserving in her opinion) will suffer? Is it that they are prepared to spend their money on scholarships and grants for disadvantaged kids? Do they believe it would actually help to "raise up" the disadvantaged, but strictly want to do it through private charity? Or is all that stuff just purely strategic, a PR move that also secures the person/institution that was given the money as a stronghold of Koch support? Ed: thinking about the possible dichotomy here between support in the sense of "learning, being told the objective truth and taught to fend for yourself" vs. "material support" it's possible they just have different views on the whole "give a man a fish, teach a man to fish" adage. You need food every day, so you can't actually teach a starving man to fish without also giving him food in the process. Koch brothers perhaps realize this and are willing to support young people financially for that reason. They just have a much higher standard of who is the "deserving poor" than normal people, repudiate the state's involvement in any way, and would not advocate support for anyone who screwed up again later in life and returned to poverty. I don't remember Rand's view on this, as I've read very little of her works first-hand. Weldon Pemberton fucked around with this message at 22:52 on Jan 15, 2014 |
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Jan 15, 2014 22:25
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Weldon Pemberton posted:Can one of the people on here who used to be Libertarian/Objectivist explain what they thought was coherent about this, please. I'm not attacking you, I sincerely want to know. It's not coherent and doesn't stand up to serious thought. However, it can sound pretty great to a completely self-centered teenager who just KNOWS they can do anything on their own and totally would if it weren't for those takers holding them back. Some people never get past that stage.
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Jan 16, 2014 00:49
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You could probably write 1000 words of comically evil poo poo about the koches and seven tenths of it would be true. And this philsopohy of the koches poo poo belongs in TCC, if anywhere.
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Jan 16, 2014 01:03
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Nuclearmonkee posted:It's not coherent and doesn't stand up to serious thought. However, it can sound pretty great to a completely self-centered teenager who just KNOWS they can do anything on their own and totally would if it weren't for those takers holding them back. Some people never get past that stage. It also sounds very, very good to a person born to a high social class, gets their college paid for by parents, and a business started with a loan from dad. Or, alternately, people that just inherited a poo poo load of wealth that they used to create more wealth but still wanted to believe they had no help from anybody. Alternately it sounds really good to somebody who is, in fact, very poor but wants to believe they'd get stupid rich if it wasn't for those pesky government regulations getting in the way. There are a lot of reasons people get suckered into it but a lot of it centers around "I believe I am exceptional." Oddly enough the people I've seen harp on Randism the most are generally middle managers that don't actually make anything while micromanaging the poo poo out of their employees that do the actual work. It's peak irony. I'm not going to defend Rand but one major thing that Randists tend to forget is that she was an advocate of "enlightened self-interest." The whole point was that everybody should act in their own best interests so long as they weren't harming others. Exploiting others or rigging the game for your own benefit was wrong and she viewed any sorts of regulation as game rigging. The big issue here is that, in the ideology of folks like Koch and Randists, they only argue against regulations that inconvenience them. ToxicSlurpee fucked around with this message at 02:16 on Jan 16, 2014 |
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Jan 16, 2014 02:03
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