A question: Why are you here?

[Chris]

I suggest you look up the origin of the word economy and what it means.

Oh, boy, dictonaries!

[Dr. Who]

It is by the actions of many individuals acting in their own RATIONAL self interest that an economy will flourish. Self interest does not mean "me me me". If, as an individual I decide I want to be a meth addict that is not a rational decision. Eventually such a decision will lead to my death in some manner.

And yes, for an economy to flourish there must be rules and some way to enforce those rules. However, under free market capitalism we accept those rules under our own free will and accord.

I have long said we are all "self made men", its just that most of us don't want to take credit for what we have made.

Thank you. I was simply trying to establish whether you were promoting anarchism (in the sense of statelessness) or simply disparaging socialism or communism.

[Dr. Who]

Why do leftist always look for obscure and esoteric meanings of words in order to appear superior to all others?

You may not understand the subtext here - Chris has often espoused anarchism and has a great fondness for Zomia, an anarchist country. He believes the state is unnecessary. However you cannot have an economy unless you have some kind of management of goods and services. It is implicit in the term.

Words have meanings, which is why we can use them as a form of communication. If the meanings were not fixed, they would be useless for the purpose intended. The way we use the term economy is directly derived from the Greek. Nothing esoteric about it.

[blackjack21]

These days I try, gently, to get readers to realize that many of the issues we face are complex and do not necessarily admit to answers summed in 'talking points'.

I like a diversity of backgrounds--life experiences--that inform people's opinions, and I also like learning about how people think more so than just what they think.

Hard question. I used to be online more as I felt you could share information, and books especially, that would help all of us know a bit more. But people are locked in their mental rooms and don't want to come out for fear what the room provides may be not be the real world.

What do you think would get people out of that?

For the reader this book is superb as covers lots of how and why we got here. It is much broader than its title. Also a book on thought control.'The Cult of Trump: A Leading Cult Expert Explains How the President Uses Mind Control' Steven Hassanhttps://www.goodreads.com/book/show/...-cult-of-trump

I would avoid this book, because I don't think I would learn anything new or meaningful to me. It's title is polemical. My reason for voting for Trump was an F-U to the establishment. There are a lot of people who "like" Trump. I think most of them are simply the disaffected that have no other voice in the major parties. For example, the US Congress--Democrat-led--just voted $40B in aid to Ukraine. That's more than Canada's entire defense budget. What happened to the anti-war left? They are not likely to become Trump supporters, but their voices are not heard at all. How much of that is a tribal mindset?

'Brainwashing: The Science of Thought Control' Kathleen Taylorhttps://www.goodreads.com/en/book/sh...6.Brainwashing"People who work with victims of cults, for example, often observe that the new beliefs are associated with extremely emotional states.

This sounds interesting. Basically, humans have three brains--not totally dissimilar from Freud's trinity of Id, Ego, and Superego. We're primitive. We have to eat, drink, pee, poo, breath and hump. That's nature. How we do that is largely social, which is our mid-brain limbic system. We can override our primal drives for awhile, but eventually we give in to them. If you've ever suppressed taking a pee because you were involved in a deeply interesting conversation, you probably know what I mean. The frontal cortex is really what separates humans from other animals. We use it mostly as a language center, but we have some excellent reasoning capabilities that really set us apart from other animals. I come from a different political background from you, but I would say that the Democrat party is much more of a cult than the Republicans--as a former Republican, I choose not to be part of either of them anymore. In my experience, I see a lot of people who simply subscribe to a point of view. They actually don't have one of their own. It's indistinguishable from a group point of view that they receive primarily from television.

Same here, but many, across all political discussion forums, left and right are more interested in a gotcha game, and I have no aversion to playing that game if they so desire.

I actually enjoy the trolls to some extent. Ideology becomes a mental strait jacket, and it's interesting to see how dedicated people are to their ideology.

This ^^ from one that only complains about "dark money" on the right while ignoring "dark money" on the left.

Well, that's what makes the debates interesting. Why would AOC and the "squad" vote for military aid to Ukraine, for example? It's such an interesting twist. I find myself uncomfortably similar to the neoconservatives with respect to Ukraine, while I absolutely loath the likes of Romney, Graham, Cheney, etc. now.

I'm here only to vent at the idiots who elected a failed TV game show host as president. Until the day I die, I'll never get over how people could have been so stupid and I need to get that anger out.

Lots of people are not mentally well-equipped to debate politics. I'll certainly concede that point. However, that doesn't mean you should just assume everyone is an idiot. A lot of people voted for Trump not out of some great hope, but out of pure disillusionment with the establishment. We had a father-son presidency with the Bush family, and the establishment was prepared to offer us the choice of Jeb Bush versus Hillary Clinton (an intended husband-wife presidency). Didn't you feel even the slightest bit insulted by that? Are you committed to the existing political establishment? I spoke with a dyed-in-the-wool Democrat (bright guy, retired Federal Reserve economist) with whom I debated the merits and demerits of Trump before the election. I hadn't seen him in awhile as he has been fighting cancer. At lunch last week, he said that while he was no Trump fan, he was watching a clip with Trump at NATO where Trump was ranting on about Nord Stream II and the NATO countries continued dependence on Russian oil and gas. He said Trump was absolutely right--this from a guy who couldn't say anything nice about Trump before the election. That's the sort of thing I find interesting.

He is an amoral moron. You don't put an amoral moron in charge of the most powerful government in the history of earth because you like his policies.If the nominees had been reversed, I'd have voted for the Republican in a heartbeat over a Democrat as profoundly incapable as Trump.

This is why I think you are committed to the establishment more than anything else, but for whatever reason it's difficult to get anything more out of you than a defense of the establishment.

Today some disgruntled or offended person posts a video on social media, accompanied by some expression of outrage, and it inspires a feeding frenzy by the online gossip colony. Suddenly, the fact that people who simply love to express outrage about any little thing, are emoting all over the internet, making an unnewsworthy item, big news, and it works its way through the non mainstream partisan media sources until if finally shows up in the national media.

Why that gets sustained is because the news media is now 24/7, and it has become a business rather than a network-subsidized money loser like it was before cable news. If you look at an old 30-minute news cast, whether national or local--it's amazing how much information they could cram into 30 minutes. Today, they give you a snippet of something, and you get 20 minutes of commentary. Some of that is interesting, but for the most part it isn't more informative. I find that I don't like watching the news--left or right leaning outlets--because I find that it is really just designed to get me pissed off. In other words, it's an appeal to emotion. It's not making an appeal to the frontal cortex.

Actual journalism is becoming extinct. The national media increasingly relies social media to feed its headlines and fill their coffers. An increasingly partisan media exploit these stories to advance their causes. There is often no investigation to speak of and no effort to present both sides of any story.

Indeed. News outlets are obviously taking a lot of money from governments to shill for their opinions too. I've found watching the Ukraine war stuff fascinating, because through all the torrential propaganda, it's local people uploading videos and vloggers who are about 3-days ahead of so-called mainstream media.

In business we are used to having to bite our tongues all day but now you have to worry about calling your neighbor by the wrong pronoun.

I think some of that will change for the better; although, that is a statement of hope. Look at NFLX stock, for example. Down 70%. It will be interesting to see what happens to TWTR stock if Musk decides not to go through with taking it private. The problem with cancel culture in business is that the political objective, if realized, means you lose about 40% of your top line revenue. It's economic suicide. Publicly-traded companies have a fiduciary obligation to maximize shareholder value, so side stepping politics is a much better solution for them.

On top of that, the guy you voted for, is also an empty shell, practically brain dead, old man.

Well, that's kind of what's fascinating about it. While people are frustrated with the effects of his policies, I think people more or less feel sorry for Joe Biden and his obvious mental decline. Yet, the country is in effect being run by unelected bureaucrats at this point, which is what I think people like RichardMZhlubb actually want.

@RichardMZhlubb is here because "orange man bad", not Biden bad or good and not to talk about policy good or bad.

Like the Russian army hanging on to WWII-era military doctrine, RichardMZhlubb is hanging on to a system that has seen better days--the idea of using the media to build up or tear down personalities, and thereby controlling the political system. Trump largely broke that model, so they understandably hate him for it. However, they cannot put Humpty Dumpty back together again. So they are deeply frustrated that people still take an interest in Trump in spite of their efforts to base everything on personality and collateral attacks on a person's character.

Since those early days, though, the Democrat party has taken a hard left turn and the mindset of it is more Marxist than Democratic. I'm not stupid enough to follow a party wherever it goes..........so I stayed the same while the Democrats went left.My hope is that by posting and shedding a light on things some of the smarter Democrats will see where they stand and see what their party is now telling them and notice the difference.

Oddly, I see this happening with a lot of homosexual men, who have a more libertarian ethic but whom the left would scold as owing the left their political allegiance. I'm thinking of people like Dave Rubin, Peter Whittle, Douglas Murray, David Starkey, etc. They are all homosexual men, but all very critical of the current mainstream political zeitgeist.

I suspect, though I've no way of verifying it, that there are many who read our posts and leave no indication whatever of their reaction.

They do get monitored by political parties, activists, and even government agencies. I live in the SF Bay Area, and I was the only one I know of who would loudly lament that that SF-Oakland Bay Bridge was built in 4 years mostly by people who didn't have college degrees, and today it took us 24 years to replace half the span. Barack Obama more or less commented on my frustration a few weeks later, so I know it gets picked up.

And Biden is any better?

Well that's what makes it interesting for people who make appeals to moral character. Biden has a long history of weird touchy feely behavior. His son is a drug addict, and neither his son nor Biden himself acknowledge Biden's grandson, because the mother was a topless dancer. So there is plenty of tawdriness in the Biden household, but it's interesting that this passes without mention to those who support Biden.

I’m here to make fun of trump and his followers.

The candor is appreciated.

[Chris]

Why do leftist always look for obscure and esoteric meanings of words in order to appear superior to all others?

Because they want to see the state controlling the economy to suit their agenda.

Obscure? Hell, it's not until you reach back to the origins of the word that you see management mentioned, but there in the sense of a family managing their household finances. Everything goes back to family, back then the individual was defined by family.

History and Etymology for economy
Noun

Middle French yconomie, from Medieval Latin oeconomia, from Greek oikonomia, from oikonomos household manager, from oikos house + nemein to manage — more at VICINITY, NIMBLE

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/economy

It does not in any way imploy government.


"The only proper purpose of a government is to protect man’s rights." -- Ayn Rand

"The right to life is the source of all rights—and the right to property is their only implementation. Without property rights, no other rights are possible." -- Ayn Rand

[Dr. Who]

Why that gets sustained is because the news media is now 24/7, and it has become a business rather than a network-subsidized money loser like it was before cable news. If you look at an old 30-minute news cast, whether national or local--it's amazing how much information they could cram into 30 minutes. Today, they give you a snippet of something, and you get 20 minutes of commentary. Some of that is interesting, but for the most part it isn't more informative.

I find that I don't like watching the news--left or right leaning outlets--because I find that it is really just designed to get me pissed off. In other words, it's an appeal to emotion. It's not making an appeal to the frontal cortex. Indeed. News outlets are obviously taking a lot of money from governments to shill for their opinions too. I've found watching the Ukraine war stuff fascinating, because through all the torrential propaganda, it's local people uploading videos and vloggers who are about 3-days ahead of so-called mainstream media.

I tend to prefer BBC World News for its general lack of editorializing or appeal to emotion.

[Chris]

You may not understand the subtext here - Chris has often espoused anarchism and has a great fondness for Zomia, an anarchist country. He believes the state is unnecessary. However you cannot have an economy unless you have some kind of management of goods and services. It is implicit in the term.

Words have meanings, which is why we can use them as a form of communication. If the meanings were not fixed, they would be useless for the purpose intended. The way we use the term economy is directly derived from the Greek. Nothing esoteric about it.

Zomia is an anarchist area covering a broad swath of southeast Asia.



By anarchist is best defined as rules without rulers.

I have in the last year or two arrived at a looser form of anarchy, one modeled on subsidiarity, bottom-up government, as we see in, for example, Rojava.

[Dr. Who]

Zomia is an anarchist area covering a broad swath of southeast Asia.



By anarchist is best defined as rules without rulers.

I have in the last year or two arrived at a looser form of anarchy, one modeled on subsidiarity, bottom-up government, as we see in, for example, Rojava.

The political economy of the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES), FKA Rojava.
MED_WPCS_2019_16.pdf (eui.eu)

[RMNIXON]

I am late to this discussion but I think experience in these types of Forums for over 20 years counts as something.


For the most part I gave up on changing the minds of most people long ago. And God forbid I don't consider myself an "Influencer" like some fool 20 year old with a following on Twitter!

Part of it is to learn something. I often encounter stories and threads about subjects I hear little or nothing about in the news. So you guys are like extra eyes and ears in that respect. I also enjoy debating with people in ways I cannot in real life surrounded by SoCal intolerant lefties who call themselves "Liberals" when most of them clearly are not.

[donttread]

I'm here only to vent at the idiots who elected a failed TV game show host as president. Until the day I die, I'll never get over how people could have been so stupid and I need to get that anger out.

And there, right there is why the discussions many of us seek don't happen often enough.