tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644559.post2739490765741670697..comments2024-03-21T03:55:51.565-07:00Comments on Omniorthogonal: Matchmaker, matchmaker, make me a match...mtravenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02356162954308418556noreply@blogger.comBlogger48125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644559.post-39571714159145352142009-09-11T13:06:50.267-07:002009-09-11T13:06:50.267-07:00There is obviously a difference between the nomina...There is obviously a difference between the nominal rates and the effective rates, and either or both can be progressive. Why is it interesting to nitpick on this issue?<br /><br /><i>...the elite that emerges under it does not exhibit the traditional aristocratic virtues, particularly those of honor and stewardship.</i><br /><br />Ah yes, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dnbHGmd8XNE&feature=related" rel="nofollow">The Aristocrats</a>!<br /><br /><i>You might be interested to know how Cass Sunstein, one of Obama's "czar" appointees, proposes to deal with the transplantable organ shortage... those who are injured in auto accidents could well end up falling into the hands of some ghoulish triage procedure that will conclude their best and highest use is as sources of harvestable organs. How do you like them apples?</i><br /><br />Good God, you can't be seriously arguing this Glenn Beck-level horseshit. I thought you were smarter than that. Perhaps this is supposed to be a feeble attempt at humor?mtravenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02356162954308418556noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644559.post-80104099043016008842009-09-10T12:09:59.551-07:002009-09-10T12:09:59.551-07:00Odd that you should now say the reduction of the t...Odd that you should now say the reduction of the top marginal bracket from 50% to 28% resulted in a "moderately more progressive tax" when earlier you denied that progressivity could be viewed from any other standpoint than rate. Indeed it the tax became moderately more progressive in INCIDENCE after the reform, despite the reduction in rate. The elimination of so-called loopholes did not account for the entire amount of increase in revenue. The dynamic effect of the rate change did. <br /><br />It's a mistake to view tax rate changes from a static point of view, because they always bring about a different set of incentives. Reduction of the tax on capital gains, for example, created less disincentive to realize them, and since capital gains can only be taxed after they have been realized, the reduction in rate brought in more revenues from this source. Elasticity is manifested with respect to taxes just as it is with respect to prices.<br /><br />I agree that we could do without many of the present nomenklatura that run things, like Chris Dodd or Charles Rangel. The problem with an egalitarian ideology is that while it cannot prevent the emergence of an elite, the elite that emerges under it does not exhibit the traditional aristocratic virtues, particularly those of honor and stewardship. The elite products of egalitarian ideology are, in other words, Snopeses rather than Sartorises. At present such people co-exist with the remnant of an older and better elite who could more properly be described as "honestiores" in the ancient Roman sense. It is only the latter class I value.<br /><br />As for the 'financial industry,' I hope you won't forget the folks that ran Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, those failed government experiments in rigging the mortage market for purposes of social engineering. They and the management of the Federal Reserve system are primarily responsible for the current economic circumstance.<br /><br />In any event the uselessness of the criminal and welfare-parasite lumpen element from my point of view is probably in yours a useful quality, since they both terrorize and sap the productive parts of society, while at the same time providing reliable votes for left-wing politicians. <br /><br />You might be interested to know how Cass Sunstein, one of Obama's "czar" appointees, proposes to deal with the transplantable organ shortage. At present, when one applies for a driving license, most states provide a box on the form that the applicant may tick if he is willing to be an organ donor. It is, in other words, an opt-in process to which one must give explicit consent. Sunstein would change this to an "implicit consent" procedure. To be fair to him, he would allow people to tick a box whereby they might opt out - if they happened to notice it. But the phrase "implicit consent" is uncomfortably close to the "implied consent" the holder of a driving license gives to blood alcohol testing, from which there is no opting-out. Like so many government programs, what begins as voluntary may soon become compulsory, and those who are injured in auto accidents could well end up falling into the hands of some ghoulish triage procedure that will conclude their best and highest use is as sources of harvestable organs. How do you like them apples?Michaelnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644559.post-53819126623085838482009-09-09T23:50:09.465-07:002009-09-09T23:50:09.465-07:00The 1986 tax was a flatter tax than the one it rep...<i>The 1986 tax was a flatter tax than the one it replaced ... it resulted in the wealthy paying a higher percentage of income-tax revenues than they had before the reform.</i><br /><br />Hm, seems to be a bit of a contradiction there. <br /><br />You have things backwards (big surprise). The 1986 tax code resulted in effective rates that were <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=UFu99Dl40B4C&lpg=PA80&ots=4dzrIQxJfb&&f=false" rel="nofollow">actually mildly more progressive</a> than what it replaced.<br /><br /><i>GDP grew at a rate outpacing inflation during the Reagan terms, hence the effect of the reform was to all appearances that of strengthening the economy as a whole</i><br /><br />Right, because nothing else was going on at the time, such as massive run up of debt.<br /><br />Also, GDP growth during that period was nothing special. I took the trouble of <a href="http://twitpic.com/h5uxy" rel="nofollow">making a graph</a>.<br /><br /><i>... I have no evidence about the existence of people who sell their kidneys for any reason, because under a 1984 law, it is illegal in the United States for a live donor to accept "valuable consideration" in return for an organ.</i><br /><br />The world does not consist of only the United States, there are countries where organ selling is tolerated, and I already cited (repeatedly) articles that describe the results.<br /><br /><i>If not by purchase, how is the present shortage of transplantable organs to be eased?</i><br /><br />Where did the idea come from that any rich asshole who gets sick is entitled to someone else's kidney? <br /><br />Actually there are some proposed solutions to this, such as networks of paired organ donations. What this effectively does is turn kidneys into a nonconvertable currency -- you can buy one, but the price is another kidney (from a spouse or relative typically). <br /><br />Here's another idea (which I just thought of, although I can't believe I'm the first) -- have organ insurance pool. You sign up for this, and the rules are that if you get sick you are entitled to someone else's kidney in your group, assuming a match is available. The donwside of course is that if someone else gets sick they have a right to demand a kidney from you.<br /><br /><i>Perhaps persons applying for the dole ought to be required to volunteer, in return for the support given them by the taxpayer.</i><br /><br />Thinking like that is exactly the reason it's important to create a bright line against organ sales in the first place. <br /><br />Personally, I think that large swathes of the upper classes are fairly useless, if not downright harmful in some cases (ie, 99.9% of the finance "industry"). They consume vast quantities of resources that could support people who are actually creative and productive. I'm sure <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xIo3NMpH-84&feature=related" rel="nofollow">better uses</a> can be found for them.mtravenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02356162954308418556noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644559.post-17829240938346268672009-09-09T13:11:39.585-07:002009-09-09T13:11:39.585-07:00I am referring to the Bradley piece to which you l...I am referring to the Bradley piece to which you link.<br /><br />I wrote that "Bradley... acknowledged... a flatter tax both yields better revenues and strengthens the economy as a whole."<br /><br />Bradley wrote that the 1986 bill "lowered the top tax rate from 50 percent to 28 percent, eliminated $30 billion annually in loopholes and resulted in the wealthy contributing a higher percentage of income-tax revenues than they had before the reform."<br /><br />The 1986 tax was a flatter tax than the one it replaced because it reduced the top bracket from 50% to 28% and eliminated loopholes. What part of that statement of fact do you fail to comprehend? Furthermore, it resulted in the wealthy paying a higher percentage of income-tax revenues than they had before the reform. Indeed, total income tax revenues rose after the reform, as the relevant IRS statistical abstracts will demonstrate. GDP grew at a rate outpacing inflation during the Reagan terms, hence the effect of the reform was to all appearances that of strengthening the economy as a whole<br /><br />It was not only loophole elimination that contributed to the revenue increase, it was the reduction of the top marginal rate. The law of diminishing returns applies to taxation just as it does to the setting of any sort of price. At 50% that rate was well beyond the point of diminishing returns. At 28% it was closer to the revenue-maximizing point.<br /><br />Pointing this out is not, by the way, "whinging" (I assume you mean either whingeing or whining). Neither is my earlier observation that graduated income taxes and affirmative action amount to unequal treatment to attain a less unequal result. I made the latter observation only because you were prating about "equal treatment under law," your asserted belief in which does not seem congruent with either.<br /><br />You wrote: "Maybe you have evidence to indicate the existence of people who sell their kidneys for reasons other than desperation?"<br /><br />As a matter of fact I have no evidence about the existence of people who sell their kidneys for any reason, because under a 1984 law, it is illegal in the United States for a live donor to accept "valuable consideration" in return for an organ. Such transactions do not take place in the United States, or at least there is no documentable source to which we might refer about persons who might have engaged in them. This law has been blamed for the short supply of kidneys available for those that need them. This to one side, any claim about the motivation of putative kidney-sellers is pure speculation on your part.<br /><br />If not by purchase, how is the present shortage of transplantable organs to be eased? Perhaps you like the Chinese solution better, namely executing criminals to provide them. Perhaps persons applying for the dole ought to be required to volunteer, in return for the support given them by the taxpayer. Maybe supplying organs for transplantation is their best and highest use, since so many of them appear to be useless for anything else.Michaelnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644559.post-80305073541476657322009-09-09T00:01:12.083-07:002009-09-09T00:01:12.083-07:00If you can't be bothered to try to understand ...If you can't be bothered to try to understand what I write then I can't be bothered to go back-and-forth on particular points. I'll answer the ones that have some degree of interestingness and pertinentance.<br /><br /><i>Finally, as even the liberal former Democratic senator from New Jersey, Bill Bradley, recently acknowledged in discussing the Reagan-era tax reform of 1986 in an editorial in the New York Times, a flatter tax both yields better revenues and strengthens the economy as a whole. </i><br /><br />I assume you are referring to <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/30/opinion/30bradley.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss" rel="nofollow">this</a>, which does not mention flatness at all. Or is there another piece you are referring to?<br /><br /><i>No one is forcing a would-be kidney seller to undertake such a transaction. No one forces a prostitute to sell her favors, either. There's certainly far less compulsion in either of those transactions than there is, for example, in my purchase of automobile insurance, which my state requires by law of an automobile owner. Does your objection to involuntary transactions extend to such a law? If not, why not?</i><br /><br />Don't be stupid, please. I did not object to "involuntary transactions"; I objected to social and economic relationships that are inherently and obviously exploitative. If you don't like that line of thought, fine, argue with that, not with something you imagine I said.<br /><br /><i>Maybe kidney-selling or prostitution are behaviors some people engage in out of desperation, but many others equally desperate do not.</i><br /><br />Maybe you have some evidence to indicate the existence of people who sell their kidneys for reasons other than desperation? Unless you do, I'll listen to the people who actually know something about it.<br /><br />And I already made a proposal that would ensure that people selling kidneys would not be acting out of desperation. Consider it a thought experiment at least. If someone had access to the basics of life for themselves and their family, would they still be willing to part with a kidney, say for enough money to buy better food or a flat-screen TV? If so, and assuming they were well-informed about the risks and otherwise not defrauded, let them go ahead.<br /><br /><i>No economic transaction is ever completely balanced in the degree of urgency one party may feel to sell or to buy as compared to that felt by the other to buy or to sell. If all unequal transactions were to be prohibited nothing would ever take place. In any event - in the case of a kidney transplant, which party is the more desperate? The seller, who needs the money for whatever purpose he has in mind - or the buyer, who needs it in order not to die? </i><br /><br />The would-be buyer may be desperate, but he is not in danger of being exploited by sellers. At least, not on this planet. <br /><br /><i>So, we come back to the question of self-harm.</i><br /><br />No, we don't.mtravenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02356162954308418556noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644559.post-15331948668268979472009-09-07T14:50:00.827-07:002009-09-07T14:50:00.827-07:00In one passage you write that it ought to be the f...In one passage you write that it ought to be the function of the state to interfere in the distribution of wealth and in another you deny that so doing is a practice of unequal treatment to produce a less-unequal result. The contradiction is obvious. If you style yourself an egalitarian you are one that wishes the state to exert its power in making the unequal more equal, which entails treating them differently.<br /><br />Harvard is of course a private school and has legacy admissions because they are of some value to it in raising funds. If they did not generate advantage for Harvard they'd not exist there. As for state universities, I suppose the quickest way for them to improve their reputations would be to admit selectively on the basis of a strictly objective standard of academic merit. They don't, obviously, the reasons being political rather than as straightforwardly and harmlessly economic as those for a private school's legacy admissions.<br /><br />The arguments against graduated or progressive taxes are more than just those against unequal treatment, needless to say. You haven't said a thing in rebuttal of Reihan Salam's observation that the poor in the egalitarian social democracies have not ended up with any greater percentage of the median income than they do in the U.S. Furthermore, you haven't touched on the question of the unreliability as a revenue source of a tax that is incident upon a very small segment of the population. I should expect that as a Californian you ought to be aware of this problem. Finally, as even the liberal former Democratic senator from New Jersey, Bill Bradley, recently acknowledged in discussing the Reagan-era tax reform of 1986 in an editorial in the New York Times, a flatter tax both yields better revenues and strengthens the economy as a whole. <br /><br />No one is forcing a would-be kidney seller to undertake such a transaction. No one forces a prostitute to sell her favors, either. There's certainly far less compulsion in either of those transactions than there is, for example, in my purchase of automobile insurance, which my state requires by law of an automobile owner. Does your objection to involuntary transactions extend to such a law? If not, why not?<br /><br />Maybe kidney-selling or prostitution are behaviors some people engage in out of desperation, but many others equally desperate do not. No economic transaction is ever completely balanced in the degree of urgency one party may feel to sell or to buy as compared to that felt by the other to buy or to sell. If all unequal transactions were to be prohibited nothing would ever take place. <br /><br />In any event - in the case of a kidney transplant, which party is the more desperate? The seller, who needs the money for whatever purpose he has in mind - or the buyer, who needs it in order not to die? <br /><br />So, we come back to the question of self-harm. We have all sorts of laws against various activities that might result in it. One may not, in many jurisdictions, ride a motorcycle without wearing a helmet. In almost all, one may not ride in a car without buckling one's seat belt. And so on. What I would like to know is what your calculus is in supporting laws prohibiting some potentially self-harming activities and opposing laws that would forbid others. There seems to be a lack of consistent principle.Michaelnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644559.post-57657187970849759682009-09-04T12:09:58.634-07:002009-09-04T12:09:58.634-07:00It should be obvious to anyone with functional sen...<i>It should be obvious to anyone with functional senses and mentation that success runs in families for reasons...for the state to try to prevent it is both futile and counterproductive.</i><br /><br />On the contrary, breaking up stale patterns of dominance in favor of more meritocratic arrangements is exactly what the state should be doing. If the scions of the rich are so genetically superior, they will get into Harvard and do well for themselves even if they have to compete with non-legacy admissions. <br /><br />I can't begin to describe how pathetic I find the whinging of the privileged classes at the thought that they might have to loosen their grip a little bit. If you are so damn superior, deal with reality.<br /><br /><i>That graduated income taxes amount to unequal treatment of persons to arrive at a less unequal result is not in any event a Constitutional question, but simply a matter of fact.</i><br /><br />It's not. The function that maps income to tax can be anything: a horizontal line (a head tax), a linear sloping line (a flat tax) or a curve (a progressive tax). There's nothing magically more equitable about a flat tax than any other tax regime. If you measure tax impact in disutilty to the payer, than a progressive tax makes the impact more equitable.<br /><br />The argument against organ selling is not based on harm per se. If people want to voluntarily engage in risky activities like unprotected sex or hang-gliding, it is (mostly) their business. The argument is based on on the existence of social and economic relationships that impose harm on people who would not choose it voluntarily. I've already made this fairly clear if you would bother to read and understand what has already been said.mtravenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02356162954308418556noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644559.post-70085598510091980542009-09-03T12:07:48.809-07:002009-09-03T12:07:48.809-07:00My points about the successful family were in dire...My points about the successful family were in direct response to your quotation beginning "a particular strain of royal succession..." <br /><br />It should be obvious to anyone with functional senses and mentation that success runs in families for reasons both cultural and genetic, just as failure runs in others, and that this is the reason why socioeconomic stratification is observable in all societies since the dawn of civilisation. It is an organic development of civil society, semper, ubique, et ab omnibus, and for the state to try to prevent it is both futile and counterproductive.<br /><br />In Anglo-American law, it is axomatic that whatever is not specifically prohibited is permitted. The Sixteenth Amendment grants Congress unrestricted power to "lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived." It does not need to mention graduated rates in order to permit them. It would have needed to mention them only if there had been an intention to prohibit them. That graduated income taxes amount to unequal treatment of persons to arrive at a less unequal result is not in any event a Constitutional question, but simply a matter of fact. As I previously noted, the left at least used to be quite overt and unapologetic about its motivations for supporting such taxation. Why you seem to want to deny them is puzzling.<br /><br />It is true that prostitution, recreational narcotics use, and organ-selling involve commercial transactions, while sodomy (and fornication and adultery) may not. But all of these acts involve harm or the substantial risk of harm to those who engage in them. Sodomy has, as needless to say, proven a very effective vector for an incurable venereal disease that is commonplace amongst its devotés. You DO live in San Francisco, don't you? How could it have escaped you?<br /><br />If, in any event, the objection to the legal sale of organs is that the seller will suffer harm, and you wish the law to prevent that harm, the same reasoning may as well apply to the other acts - whether they are commercial transactions or not. Indeed, as I've previously pointed out, the sale of one's own organs can possibly result in harm to only one party - the seller. The sexual acts mentioned, all of which have a long history of spreading disease, have much more widespread potential for harm. <br /><br />Therefore, if prohibiting harm to self or to others, even though it should result from consensual acts, is a legitimate function of law, from the utilitarian standpoint there is a stronger case for outlawing these various acts of sexual promiscuity than there is for outlawing organ-selling.Michaelnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644559.post-26810410466510553602009-09-02T21:51:37.314-07:002009-09-02T21:51:37.314-07:00The basic social and economic entity is not the in...<i>The basic social and economic entity is not the individual but the family...</i><br /><br />Even if this were true I fail to see what it has to do with anything.<br /><br />Your comparision of Chinese coolie labor to African slaves is specious. In the latter case, they had to pass through a period of a couple of hundred years of forcible breaking of family ties, a process which did not occur with Chinese immigrants. And again, I fail to see what this has to do with anything.<br /><br />The Mankiw emission that you cite has already been <a href="http://www.ginandtacos.com/2009/09/02/here-is-a-graph-now-lets-do-some-eugenics/" rel="nofollow">amply</a> <a href="http://rortybomb.wordpress.com/2009/09/01/genes-and-income/" rel="nofollow">refuted</a>, it is statistically ignorant and sociologically ignorant. And yet again, irrelevant to the topic under discussion. <br /><br />But of course, you can't resist injecting some racism into the discussion no matter what the topic is.<br /><br /><i>The reason why graduated taxation of incomes passes a Constitutional challenge on any grounds - including equal protection - is that the Sixteenth Amendment authorizes it...</i><br /><br />That amendment says absolutely nothing about graduated rates, so what in the world are you talking about?<br /><br /><i>Your challenge, as it seems to me, is to say why the sale of a transplantable organ, which harms only the donor, should be forbidden - when you have said above you are "not sure" about prostitution, and you have elsewhere held that people have a right to commit sodomy. There's some inconsistency in this, isn't there?</i><br /><br />What does sodomy have to do with anything? It is not a commercial transaction (unless it is also prostitution) and there is nothing wrong with it. The reason organ-selling and prostitution should be outlawed is that they are inherently exploitative transactions. The abuses of prostituton may perhaps be ameliorated by legalization and regulation as it is in Nevada and Amsterdam, but I don't really know that much about the issue. It is hard to see a similar amelioration for organ selling.<br /><br />As to what constitutes exploitation, I'll have to defer to Potter Stewart's definition of pornography -- I know it when I see it. Or if you want something more theoretical, see the paper on "toxic markets" cited above.mtravenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02356162954308418556noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644559.post-2805383624516142392009-09-02T15:00:57.000-07:002009-09-02T15:00:57.000-07:00The basic social and economic entity is not the in...The basic social and economic entity is not the individual but the family. The ability of an individual to participate successfully in a family is as much a socially constructive behavior, and ought to be as economically rewarding, as (say) the obtaining of an academic degree. <br /><br />Let us compare the examples of American citizens of Chinese and of African origin. Much is made of slavery and Jim Crow in explaining the subsequent poorer-than-average economic performance of African-Americans. Similarly, the first people of Chinese extraction to arrive in North America, the coolies who were imported to work on railroad construction, were barely more than slaves, and faced racial discrimination equal in virulence to that faced by blacks. Yet, when we compare the economic status of Americans of Chinese ancestry to that of Americans of African ancestry, there is a vast gap - academically, economically, socially. How can this be explained?<br /><br />A substantial part of the explanation is that Chinese culture traditionally favors strong patriarchal families, and successful families have successful children. By contrast, the dysfunction of the black family has been well known since Moynihan reported on it forty years ago, and it has only gotten worse since that time. Finally, of course, there is the genetic element. As Greg Mankiw observes, "smart parents make more money and pass those good genes on to their offspring." (gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2009/08/least-surprising-correlation-of-all.html). If you want to call Prof. Mankiw a racist, go right ahead. Name-calling is not a substitute for argumentation. <br /><br />The reason why graduated taxation of incomes passes a Constitutional challenge on any grounds - including equal protection - is that the Sixteenth Amendment authorizes it, all other Constitutional provisions notwithstanding. It nonetheless amounts to unequal treatment to arrive at a less unequal result. Leftists at least used to be candid enough to admit this, just as they were about affirmative action. Affirmative action is and will continue to be subject to challenge because, as ought to be obvious, it has no comparable Constitutional standing. <br /><br />Certainly the sale of one's kidney does oneself harm. So do recreational use of narcotics or that common consequence of engaging in prostitution, contracting a venereal disease. I'm not a libertarian, and I have no objection in principle to the state outlawing all these things. Certainly, fewer people would be public charges if the trade in heroin and cocaine could be suppressed. Certainly there would be less genital herpes, syphilis, AIDS, etc., if laws against prostitution, adultery, fornication, and sodomy could be vigorously enforced. The person who sells his kidney hurts no one but himself, while the dope addict not only does that but typically destroys his relationships with everyone near him, not infrequently scarring others permanently; the carrier of venereal disease not only suffers its deleterious effects, but infects others. Thus it could be argued that recreational drug use, prostitution, and other vices are worthier of condemnation on utilitarian grounds than the sale of one's own organs for transplantation.<br /><br />The question in all these cases is whether it is practical to make such behavior unlawful, or whether it causes more problems to do so than not. It is thus we make a distinction between crime, which it is worth the state's effort to prosecute, and vice, which the law is better off neither to outlaw nor to protect, leaving it instead for civil society to discourage through moral suasion. <br /><br />Your challenge, as it seems to me, is to say why the sale of a transplantable organ, which harms only the donor, should be forbidden - when you have said above you are "not sure" about prostitution, and you have elsewhere held that people have a right to commit sodomy. There's some inconsistency in this, isn't there?Michaelnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644559.post-38825110745596901732009-09-02T09:51:56.268-07:002009-09-02T09:51:56.268-07:00The notion that progressive income taxes are some ...The notion that progressive income taxes are some sort of violation of equal protection is ridiculous. Good luck taking that one to the Supreme Court, or anywhere else. I have mixed feeling about affirmative action and am not going to get into yet another complex issue here. But I can't resist <a href="http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/08/30/royalty/index.html" rel="nofollow">posting this, which touches upon the subject</a>, especially this passage: <i>...a particular strain of royal succession: those who inherit their position and and whose achievement is attributable to their mommies and daddies and yet ludicrously purport to be Stern Advocates for (and Beacons of) Meritocracy and become righteous opponents of "unfair" affirmative action on the ground that only merit should determine advancement. </i><br /><br />I most certainly can deny that Reagan's military buildup had much to do with the collapse of the USSR. I know that's a favorite myth of the right but it is <a href="http://74.125.155.132/search?q=cache:0Q6OzSPQdwMJ:econ161.berkeley.edu/Politics/fitzgerald.html&cd=23&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=firefox-a" rel="nofollow">not well supported by history</a>. Oh crap, you've got me talking about yet another entirely unrelated issue. <br /><br />Your willingness to excuse the Republicans from their actions is pathetic. The fact is that they are no more a party of small government than the Democrats. They have zero interest in shrinking the government; their only goal is to direct the treasury into the pockets of their supporters, and ensuring that it intrudes into people's private lives.<br /><br /><i>Further, as to whether human organs are or are not commodities - you have not yet outlined your reasons why they should not be. If you want me to engage you on this point, perhaps you ought to present them. </i><br /><br />There was a good deal of discussion of this earlier in the thread. <br /><br /><i>I'm really not sure whether transplantable human organs are in some abstract or ideal sense commodities</i><br /><br />Seems like the wrong question. Like anything else, they are commodities if there exists sellers, buyers, and an absence of government regulation. That says nothing about whether they <i>should</i> be.<br /><br /><i>... but certainly medical procedures generally are provided in economic transactions like any other product or service, and have a long history as such</i><br /><br />Don't be stupid. An organ sale is not merely a medical procedure, it is a medical HARM to the donor. It is thus a violatiion of the Hippocratic oath, if nothing else.<br /><br /><i>I agree that the selling of one's kidney or some such thing is likely to be an act of desperation, just as selling one's blood, or for that matter prostitution generally are.</i><br /><br />Oh well good, we can agree on something. <br /><br />I am of the opinion that it is in the power of society, in wealthy countries at least, to eliminate economic desperation. I believe I raised the notion of a negative income tax. So, I'll say it again. If we manage to guarantee people the basics necessities of life, and they still feel like they want to sell their organs, then by all means, they should go ahead. In that case, it would be a voluntary (if stupid) economic transaction. <br /><br />I know, I know, if people are poor and desperate it is their own damn fault. They should have had the foresight to be born into wealth.mtravenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02356162954308418556noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644559.post-88836034216503059232009-08-31T15:32:08.282-07:002009-08-31T15:32:08.282-07:00Further, as to whether human organs are or are not...Further, as to whether human organs are or are not commodities - you have not yet outlined your reasons why they should not be. If you want me to engage you on this point, perhaps you ought to present them. <br /><br />You begged off on this some time ago by saying that you "did not have time to develop this arugment [sic] in detail." So we have proceeded to discuss other issues for which you do apparently have time. That's not my fault. Instead it suggests that you don't have a coherent "arugment."<br /><br />I'm really not sure whether transplantable human organs are in some abstract or ideal sense commodities, or are not; but certainly medical procedures generally are provided in economic transactions like any other product or service, and have a long history as such. Organ transplantation is a category of medical treatment, and the transplantable organs involved are ancillary to the treatments in the same way as drugs or prostheses are to other categories of medical treatment. In other words, they are just as much medicine's "stock in trade" as any other aspect of medicine. So let's be candid about what they really are in practice. And thus, once more, we come back to the two paradigms for distributing scarce resources - the auction or the queue. Which ought it to be - and why?<br /><br />I agree that the selling of one's kidney or some such thing is likely to be an act of desperation, just as selling one's blood, or for that matter prostitution generally are. The issue of equality or egalitarianism comes into play in how we view the degraded person who comes to such a pass. Is that person a passive victim of a society somehow "unfair" to him, or is he someone who has made his own bed and now must sleep in it? <br /><br />Even transactions that are in some respect exploitive of parties engaged in them involve volition on their parts. The desperate would-be organ seller, like the derelict who sells his blood to a for-pay blood bank, or the prostitute who rents her body to some sleazy and comparably desperate john, didn't start out where they have ended up. They got there on their own.Michaelnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644559.post-70220633891332220702009-08-31T14:57:38.195-07:002009-08-31T14:57:38.195-07:00You make your hollowness and hypocrisy quite manif...You make your hollowness and hypocrisy quite manifest when you can write straight-facedly that "nothing about human biodiversity suggests that people should not be treated as equals before the law," while in the same discussion defending a graduated or progressive income tax. I suspect you also defend "affirmative action." A flat tax would amount to treating people as equals before the law. Taxing them differently, depending upon their incomes, is not so treating them. Admitting people to public universities, or hiring them as civil servants, on the basis of their scores on a standard examination, would be consistent with treating them as equals before the law. "Affirmative action" is not so treating them. The left doesn't really believe in equal treatment under law, it believes in different treatment to achieve an equal, or at least a less unequal, result. And what, pray tell, does human biodiversity suggest about that?<br /><br />Application of the word "unsustainable" about the current indebtedness of the United States government is hardly an idiosyncrasy on my part. According to the Wall Street Journal, 26 Aug. 2009, p. A14, the CBO predicts that goverment debt held by the public, which was 40.8% of GDP in 2008, will rise to 67.8% by 2019, and keep rising after that. The CBO, which operates under the aegis of the Democrat-controlled Congress, called that "unsustainable." If the CBO ever used such a term to describe government's debt burden under Reagan or Bush, I don't know. It is using it now, and I agree with it.<br /><br />I don't recall that I was ever very favorable to Bush's spending in any comments I've made in this forum. I recall making the points that I voted for Buchanan, not Bush, and that the war in Iraq was a mistake. I was quite critical of TARP, and still am. The major failure of Bush's first six years was that he did not veto a single appropriations bill for fear of offending the Republican congressional leadership. <br /><br />As for Reagan, it should be borne in mind that he had to contend with a Democrat-controlled House of Representatives throughout both his terms, and all appropriations bills must originate in the House. What he could do to control the Democrats' sacred cow, domestic spending, was quite limited. He was lucky to get what he did for the military, which - you cannot deny - kept economic and diplomatic pressure on the Soviet Union that was at least part of what precipitated its fall. No doubt that was the accomplishment you really cannot forgive.<br /><br />In general the problem with Republicans when they come to power in government is that the effect is largely like that of changing the crew of a locomotive. The new engineer may choke up on the throttle a little, and the new fireman may shovel coal into the firebox less vigorously, but the train is still headed down the roadbed laid under FDR and Lyndon Johnson, to the destination identified by Friedrich von Hayek, lo these many years ago. This is why "conservative" and Republican electoral politics has the rather hopeless character it does. As a reactionary, my recommendation is to tear up the tracks. Government should not have a destination. It ought to be about means rather than ends. That is what our founders believed, and I agree with them.Michaelnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644559.post-7872106389597297032009-08-30T23:50:16.703-07:002009-08-30T23:50:16.703-07:00Yes, I used "egalitarian", and missed it...Yes, I used "egalitarian", and missed it because I was searching for "equal". My apologies. Of course the point of that passage was not to advocate for equality but to point out contrasting approaches of two ideologies to solving an actual problem, a point that seems to have gone entirely past you despite the fact that it was a direct answer to your invocation of animal dominance hierarchies.<br /><br />I don't know what argument you think we are having that does not involve "personalization". I thought your whole purpose here was to show up my hollowness and hypocrisy, or something like that. You certainly aren't interested in having an actual argument, which would involve sticking to the point and responding to what I say. There was an actual debatable proposition early on in this thread ("Markets in human organs are a bad thing and should be banned") but as usual you've diverted it into your personal obsessions, about which there is not a hope of having a productive discussion. <br /><br />Your kvetching about national debt would be more convincing if I believed you were doing the same during the huge run-ups of debt during the <a href="http://zfacts.com/p/318.html" rel="nofollow">Reagan and Bush administrations</a>. Whatever the wisdom of Obama's stimulus, it is at least justified by a reasonable purpose, whereas the Republican accumulation of debt was for the sole purpose of convincing people that they could continue to have a huge military without paying for it.<br /><br /><i>The U.S. income tax may be characterized as "moderately progressive" only from the standpoint of rates...</i><br /><br />If there's another sensible way to characterize the progressiveness of a tax regime, I'm unaware of it. The argument (which I think you've used before) that the amount paid by the top 1% is significant is simply ridiculous, because it just reflects a monumentally unequal distribution of income.<br /><br />Re healthcare, presumably you know that a government-run healthcare system like that of the UK is not even on the table here. You may not know that <a href="http://www.slate.com/id/2114554/" rel="nofollow">studies have found that government run hospitals</a> can have strikingly superior performance over private ones. And presumably you know that the US spends twice as much as other industrialized countries, all of whom have some form of universal socialized healthcare, for worse results? Is the US government somehow uniquely incompetent?<br /><br />Argh, now you've got me debating health care, as if this thread was not divergent enough. How about we agree to disagree on that as on so many other things and stick to the subject at hand?mtravenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02356162954308418556noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644559.post-27859990027461664882009-08-30T12:39:59.264-07:002009-08-30T12:39:59.264-07:00First para. of my next to last comment, penultimat...First para. of my next to last comment, penultimate sentence, should have read: "... an egalitarian in politics being one who believes it is a proper objective of government to bring about social and economic equality," rather than "...quality."Michaelnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644559.post-46364814726706570632009-08-29T18:16:35.260-07:002009-08-29T18:16:35.260-07:00(continued, due to limits on the lengths of single...(continued, due to limits on the lengths of single posts):<br /><br />The U.S. income tax may be characterized as "moderately progressive" only from the standpoint of rates, and even then is so only if one does not consider state and local income taxes in addition to it. When they are added in, the total rate burden surpasses that of many countries overseas. And the incidence of these income taxes is not at all moderately progressive, when we consider that 50% of the population pays essentially no federal income tax, while the top 1% pays something like 37%. The income taxes of some states have an even more skewed incidence; California, for example, collects 50% of its income tax revenue from fewer than 150,000 taxpayers.<br /><br />Quite apart from the purported fairness or unfairness of a tax that is incident upon such a small number of payers, 'soaking the rich' is not a particularly stable or reliable source of revenue. Right now, states and localities that depend on such revenues (like California) are the ones experiencing the worst revenue shortfalls, while those that do not (e.g., Texas) have not had to contend with such crises. The main reason is that top-bracket taxpayers experience much more fluctuation in their incomes, which are connected to the profitability of business and the prices of investment securities, than do middle-class folk whose incomes consist mainly of salaries. It is also an easy matter for a high-income taxpayer to change his residence to a less exorbitant tax jurisdiction. The results of recent months should give pause to anyone who believes that using income taxation for purposes of egalitarian social engineering will not have unintended and adverse consequences.<br /><br />The relatively greater wealth disparity in the United States as compared to the social democracies of Europe is not a consequence of the greater poverty of our poor, but of the greater wealth of our rich. To a post of yours dated April 28th of this year, I appended the following comment, which was then without response from you:<br /><br />'Here's an interesting quotation from Reihan Salam, writing in The Spectator (London), 8 Nov. 2008:<br /><br />' "In the United States, those in the poorest 10 per cent earn 39 per cent of the median income. In Finland and Sweden, the poorest 10 per cent earn 38 percent of the median income of the United States. That is, the American poor are earning about as much as the poor in two of Europe's most egalitarian societies. American inequality is an artefact of the extreme fortunes made by people at the top rather than the extreme poverty of those at the bottom. Of course, Finns and Swedes benefit from excellent public services. But those public services are financed by regressive consumption taxes, mainly VAT. So poor Finns and Swedes are paying for what they get."<br /><br />'In other words, the relatively high taxes on incomes in those socialistic countries have served only to destroy high incomes, without raising the share of income earned by the poor at all - while social welfare benefits are delivered at the cost of high ad valorem taxes levied on the staples of life, which fall hardest on those with the lowest incomes.'<br /><br />At least when Marx proposed a graduated income tax in 'The Communist Manifesto' he did so with the overt and honest intention of destroying or at least hampering private capital, which is indeed (as the European social democracies show) what it accomplishes, without obvious benefit to anyone else except their governing bureaucracies. You, on the other hand, dissemble about this intention.<br /> <br />Finally your trust in government to provide a better system of health care than that provided currently through private insurance ought to be measured against the standard of health care that government already provides. In four words - Walter Reed Army hospital. It does not inspire such confidence in me. Government health care is likely to turn out like Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, the public educational system in Washington, D.C. - you know, all those triumphs of Federal policy.Michaelnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644559.post-30932016261642820472009-08-29T17:40:16.797-07:002009-08-29T17:40:16.797-07:00You say that the word "equality" did not...You say that the word "equality" did not appear in your penultimate comment, but you did write the words "the more egalitarian and nurturant left." Between "egalitarian" and "equality" there is a fairly obvious connection, an egalitarian in politics being one who believes it a proper objective of government to bring about social and economic quality. Your attempt to parse so finely suggests weakness on this point.<br /><br />Further, your attempt to personalize the argument by suggesting that I personally feel I have an insecure hold on my socially and economically superior status, rather than addressing my propositions, introduces an ad hominem element into the discussion which is a further sign of weakness on the part of your argument. <br /><br />I doubt that Mr Obama, for all his left-wing dogmatism, will employ Zimbabwean style violence in depriving me of my life, property, or even social status. The fact is, though, that even if one is travelling first class on the Titanic, it is still the Titanic. To the extent that I have personal interests in the matter under discussion, that is their nature. This is my country. I have no place to which to flee - my family, on both sides, have been American citizens since the Revolution. If it goes under, I go with it.<br /><br />I find it highly indicative of your attitudes that you could make reference to Weimar in another post on this blog without devoting any consideration to the main reason behind the tumults that characterized politics in the Weimar republic, which was also the reason it was unable to withstand them - namely, the hyperinflation and subsequent collapse of its currency, brought on by the monetization of its unsustainable debt. That debt, of course, was imposed on it by the victorious allies under the Treaty of Versailles. This country's unsustainable debt has been imposed on it by its own government.<br /><br />The principal source of bankruptcies, home foreclosures, and other comparable distress in the United States is not the vagaries of privately-provided health insurance, but rather the economic instability that has been brought on by the policies of the U.S. government. Central banking has not, for example, been driven by its proper objective of maintaining a stable currency, but by the desire to prevent even mild downturns in the business cycle by easing the money supply. Then when it is belately recognized that the hand on the tiller has over-steered, an equally extreme correction is made in the opposite direction. Swings of 350 to 400 basis points in the discount rate do not suggest that sober hands are on the wheel. In the mean time, Congress has created - again, for egalitarian ends, so that everyone who wanted one could buy a house, with little or no down-payment - quangoes like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which came to control a substantial majority of the secondary mortage market, and set the standard that private mortgage lenders had to meet or beat. The result, between this and the fluctuation of monetary policy, has been the ballooning, then the burst, of the housing bubble. Now, in order to deal with these consequences, Mr Obama and his Congress have incurred more government debt than has been incurred under all previous administrations combined. Does this give rise to feelings of insecurity? You bet!Michaelnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644559.post-90382435079143175422009-08-28T13:57:18.409-07:002009-08-28T13:57:18.409-07:00My belief is, as J.A. Froude observed, that "...<i>My belief is, as J.A. Froude observed, that "men are made by nature unequal. It is vain, therefore, to treat them as if they were equal." </i><br /><br />Equal how?<br /><br />Obviously people have differing levels of abilities and other characteristics. If you mean it is vain to treat everyone as if they have (ie) the same ability to do mathematics, then yes. However, nothing about human biodiversity suggests that people should not be treated as equals before the law. "Equality" means nothing by itself. The word did not appear in my last comment so you are (as usual) arguing with the shadows in your own head. Reading back in this thread it is clear that it is you who is obsessed with equality, not me. <br /><br /><i>I believe persons of talent should be encouraged to achieve their best, regardless of race or other non-behavioral characteristics, rather than being punitively taxed and otherwise 'cut down to size' by Procrustean measures designed to equalize them with their inferiors. </i><br /><br />There seems to be a buried supposition in here that "talent" and "wealth" and "superiority" are all the same thing, which is laughably not the case.<br /><br />The US has an extraordinarily high wealth inequality compared to all other industrialized countries. There is no proposal anywhere on the table that would cut the rich down to size.<br /><br />My god, I'm getting bored with refuting the same stupid talking points repeated endlessly. Maybe you could take the trouble to respond to what I actually wrote rather than parroting the same stale bullshit over and over and over.<br /><br /><i>Whatever may have been the reasons for them in the past, in today's highly productive and wealthy American society, poverty and degradation are mainly behavioral in origin.</i><br /><br />More bullshit of course, without the slightest evidence to support it. For instance, millions of people are driven to bankruptcy by unexpected health care costs. I suppose getting sick or being shafted by an insurance company is a sign of their lack of virtue, in the conservative worldview.<br /><br /><i>If we wish to have a stable and prosperous society we should worry less about elevating people who lack character or intelligence, and do not deserve to be lifted up. for they will never be other than what they are; and more about rewarding those who exhibit acumen and virtue, for they are the ones who will depart this life leaving the world better than they came into it.</i><br /><br />If the people with acumen and virtue can't manage to handle a moderately progressive income tax maybe they aren't all that sharp and virtuous to begin with.<br /><br />I can only conclude from your obsessions that you feel that you have a very insecure hold on your superior station in life.mtravenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02356162954308418556noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644559.post-91218243432949785492009-08-26T11:23:25.979-07:002009-08-26T11:23:25.979-07:00My belief is, as J.A. Froude observed, that "...My belief is, as J.A. Froude observed, that "men are made by nature unequal. It is vain, therefore, to treat them as if they were equal." <br /><br />I look at this inequality primarily on an individual level, not a 'racial' one as that word is commonly understood - though I believe (as has everyone who has studied it, from Galton to Terman to Murray) that it has a strong genetic component. <br /><br />I believe persons of talent should be encouraged to achieve their best, regardless of race or other non-behavioral characteristics, rather than being punitively taxed and otherwise 'cut down to size' by Procrustean measures designed to equalize them with their inferiors. <br /><br />It is the left in this case which is authoritarian. not the right. Of course Obamaism is a mild form of the affliction, as compared (for example) to Jacobinism or Bolshevism, but the difference is only one of degree, and not of kind. The objective of them all is that the nail that sticks up should be pounded down, and the tall stalk mowed level with the surrounding field.<br /><br />Whatever may have been the reasons for them in the past, in today's highly productive and wealthy American society, poverty and degradation are mainly behavioral in origin. The left's program is to uplift people whose unsatisfactory behavior has condemned them to low status, at the expense of persons who have achieved or maintained higher status through more productive hehavior. It is a policy both of moral inversion and revolt against the order of nature. <br /><br />If we wish to have a stable and prosperous society we should worry less about elevating people who lack character or intelligence, and do not deserve to be lifted up. for they will never be other than what they are; and more about rewarding those who exhibit acumen and virtue, for they are the ones who will depart this life leaving the world better than they came into it.Michaelnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644559.post-73675449873811171002009-08-25T18:27:48.190-07:002009-08-25T18:27:48.190-07:00I label you a racist because every damn conversati...I label you a racist because every damn conversation you are in eventually comes back to the issue of supposedly favored and disfavored peoples, no matter what topic it starts with. You are obsessed. <br /><br />One needs to be careful applying notions from animal dominance hierarchies to human politics. Dominance hierarches are more about preventing aggression than determing who gets to breed, although being dominant usually does increase an animal's inclusive fitness. But such pecking orders are dynamic and constantly shifting around as dominant individuals get challenged. Franz de Waal's book <i>Chimpanzee Politics</i> is a good depiction of the complex interactions that some of our animal relatives are capable of.<br /><br />It's certainly the case that human politics is grounded in this kind of animal behavior, much as human language is grounded in animal communication but obviously is qualitatively different. And human politics has its turbulence and revolutions just as animal politics does. <br /><br />So you cannot argue from the existence of animal dominance that human dominance should take any particular form. Aside from the problematic nature of trying to derive ought from is. You (and Moldbug) seem to dream of a stable hierarchy where everybody knows his place, and everyone is peaceful thereby. Neither animal nor human societies work that way.<br /><br />Now, perhaps it would be desirable for them to do so. After all, turbulence and revolution cause genuine suffering, often more than whatever ills they are in response to. So if we could structure societies to achieve greater stability, what would we do?<br /><br />There seem to be two approaches to acheiving this goal. Yours and Moldbug's is to make the dominance of the upper classes so total and crushing that the underlings can't even dream of rebellion. Moldbug's idea of an all-powerful alien overlord, or a human overlord with the technology to disable all weaponry, is sort of the reductio ad absurdum of this view. The other approach is to lessen the differential between classes, so that the lower classes are more content with their lot, or can dream about their children ascending into the upper ranks. This s roughly the distinction between the authoritarian right and the more egalitarian and nurturant left.mtravenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02356162954308418556noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644559.post-22309146931556690232009-08-20T12:33:56.216-07:002009-08-20T12:33:56.216-07:00Tedious racist obsessions? A real 'racist'...Tedious racist obsessions? A real 'racist' is one who hates other people because of the color of their skin. I find this a crude and unuseful approach to life. Unfortunately, the word racist has come to be used so broadly that it means only someone who says things that are offensive to left-wingers, and that is the sense in which you use it of me.<br /><br />Darwin's use of the word race, as in "favoured races," was of course not the common one. It refers to the fittest, who survive and succeed in the struggle for life. We can observe hierarchy and order amongst all creatures. Birds, for example, set up 'pecking orders,' and this is an aspect of the way in which the dominant assure the survival of their genes at the expense of the weak, who do not. This principle operates in human populations as well - the persons you refer to as "privileged" are so because they are successful and dominant, and are playing out the destiny of their genes - as also are those who are weak and unsuccessful. As you profess to be an evolutionist it is hard to understand why you object to this particular natural process amongst humans.<br /><br />I am not a conservative - a conservative is merely yesterday's liberal. I am a reactionary. As for free markets, from a reactionary point of view I believe it is less important that markets be completely free than that property be private, and that the protection of private property be (as Madison believed it should be) the foremost duty of the state. Markets are a consequence of private property, and they can only function on a basis of moral principles of honesty and fidelity. It is an unfortunate aspect of markets that they do not by themselves reward honesty and fidelity, at least in the short term. Those virtues must be supplied from without. <br /><br />This is the reason why, as Andrei Navrozov observed about Russia, eighty years of bolshevism did not create 'new socialist man' but rather a nation of proficient thieves. Having successfully destroyed the moral framework necessary to the successful functioning of markets, when bolshevism finally collapsed, it left a vacuum into which, when a market economy was reintroduced, the society quickly degenerated into a kleptocracy. <br /><br />Philosophy "did not invent logic"? Logic is a branch of philosophy, and has been from the start. The same is true of epistemology. Persons calling themselves philosophers have taken off on many absurd digressions, but "abusus non tollit usum" and you cannot deny that the deductive and inductive reasoning which makes the sciences you so prize possible is philosophical in origin. <br /><br />Of course all cultures make tools but few develop sciences. I pointed this out with respect to Western civilisation some posts ago. And why did tool-making proceed to science in Western civilisation but not in the Congo, the Amazon basin, or aboriginal Australia? Did it not have something to do with the flourishing of philosophy in ancient Greece - something not parallelled in the Congo, etc.?Michaelnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644559.post-77858542112803370112009-08-19T21:13:31.185-07:002009-08-19T21:13:31.185-07:00I notice you didn't respond to any of the poin...I notice you didn't respond to any of the points I made that might actually form the basis for an interesting discussion (the nature of teleology under materialism; the undercurrent of platonism in 19th century biology) and instead are picking nits and diving off into your own tedious racist obsessions. Oh well. <br /><br />I don't mean to dismiss philosophy entirely, but statments like this: <i>it is only by the use of philosophy that any questions whatsoever can be asked, and answers systematically obtained?</i> get my goat. Philosophy has no system, it did not invent logic and inference, let alone questions, and does not own the patent on them. Philosophy can at times be illuminating, but since it has no method and no quality checks it is relatively rare. <br /><br /><i>The reason there appears to be progress in the natural sciences is that man is a tool-making creature...It is in the character of tools to become more sophisticated and capable as time passes, and they are refined by the experience of their users.</i><br /><br />That's part of the story to be sure, but hardly the whole thing. All cultures make tools, but few of them develop science (a point you ought to appreciate given your ethnocentric cheerleading).<br /><br /><i>I note in passing that much modern and purportedly scientific cosmology is so far removed from the technical roots of useful science that it is just as speculative as any of the pre-Socratics. Consider, for example, 'string theory.' </i><br /><br />Useful has nothing to do with it. String theory is considered dubious within the scientific community because it does not make testable predictions, so it cannot be verified or falsified. But there is plenty of cosmology that can be and is.<br /><br />Your knowledge of socialism seems about on par with your knowledge of science. <br /><br /><i>You may not admit to being a Marxist, but you are a socialist of some sort.</i><br /><br />Of some sort, I suppose, but then so is every single person who wants some services provided by the government. And since few people are prepared to do without government provision of defense, policing, fire protection, transport, and education, that makes almost every person in the country a socialist.<br /><br />Me, I'm in favor of a stronger government role in research, regulation of markets, and provision of basic needs including health care. I'm not in general in favor of government owning the means of production. If that makes me a socialist, whatever. I think you will find that that word is becoming less and less scary as people realize it applies to things that they favor, such as Social Security and Medicare. <br /><br />As for your attempt to get back to the subject of markets for human organ transplants, you should note that your little analysis of market vs. bureaucratic allocation had nothing specific in it about organs. If organs were a commodity like any other, your analysis might apply, but the point is, they aren't. The market does a really good job of allocating certain kinds of resources. It has done a truly phenomenal job, for instance, in bringing the prices of disk drives down and their performance way up. But human organs (and health care more generally) are not the same sort of commodities. I don't have time to get into a detailed argument for why this is so, but see the earlier comments. I will note that I find my position on this to be a conservative one, where I find myself upholding somewhat old-fashioned values against the onslaughts of modern science and economics. <a href="http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/secondhandsmoke/2009/04/02/pushing-an-organ-commodities-market/" rel="nofollow">Here, for example</a>, is a conservative bioethicist who I have argued with in the past, but who agrees with me on this issue. What does that prove? Not much, but it points out how ridiculous it is for "conservative" and "free market" to cohabit the same political party -- the market is the antithesis of a conservative force. Of course, what really binds these two seemingly-incompatible value systems together is that they both favor the privileged over the non-privileged.mtravenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02356162954308418556noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644559.post-66605881562781539762009-08-18T11:36:54.255-07:002009-08-18T11:36:54.255-07:00"Evidence-based reasoning" must follow a..."Evidence-based reasoning" must follow a logical pattern, and logic derives not from evidence but from à priori postulates. Logic is a branch of philosophy. How can philosophy have been "asking the wrong questions for thousands of years" when it is only by the use of philosophy that any questions whatsoever can be asked, and answers systematically obtained?<br /><br />The reason there appears to be progress in the natural sciences is that man is a tool-making creature, and science is historically an outgrowth of technology (rather than the other way around - only very recently has scientific theory preceded technical practice, perhaps from the time of Clerk Maxwell). It is in the character of tools to become more sophisticated and capable as time passes, and they are refined by the experience of their users. <br /><br />I note in passing that much modern and purportedly scientific cosmology is so far removed from the technical roots of useful science that it is just as speculative as any of the pre-Socratics. Consider, for example, 'string theory.' <br /><br />It is true that most aspects of human nature have not "progressed" - nor is there any reason to expect that they can. That is why ethical questions can still be addressed in the same way that, for example, Aristotle did. It is a mistake to suppose that the model of technical progress applies to other aspects of human endeavor.<br /><br />There does seem to be such a thing as cultural evolution. How else did it come about that the natural sciences that you so prize, as well as the greatest achievements of art, architecture, music, and literature, are mainly the work product of "DWEMs" (dead white European males) and were not that of, say, inhabitants of the Congo, the Amazon basin, or the aboriginal Australians?<br /><br />There, amongst those primitive peoples, the primitive equality that you admire was the norm. They accomplished nothing significant or lasting. It was in Europe, where the intelligent and driven were rewarded with wealth and rank (hence social inequality) that modern civilisation - Western civilisation - originated and flourished. The direction of cultural evolution in fact points towards inequality and hierarchical order. <br /><br />Despite the lip-service modern Euro-American society pays to egalitarianism, it is mostly a window-dressing behind which there is a widening gulf between the competent who make up its elite and the bungled-and-botched of its underclass. As members of the university-educated elites tend to marry amongst themselves, and since (as has been acknowledged since the time of Terman), IQ is largely a product of heredity, that gulf will grow wider as time passes. "Favoured races" will be preserved, both among nations and within them, whether or not ideology wishes to acknowledge the fact.<br /><br />You may not admit to being a Marxist, but you are a socialist of some sort. Pre-Marxist socialism, such as that of Comte, is purely historical, and post-Marxist socialisms are all derivatives of Marxism. You do differ from the old-fashioned commies, it seems to me, by being less interested in the 'means of production' than in the 'means of reproduction" (or at least preventing it) - but I suppose this approach, characteristic of the Frankfurt school at least since Marcuse's "Eros and Civilisation," is a matter of the left's efforts "à reculer pour mieux sauter." <br /><br />To come back to the subject of procuring organs for transplantation, there are two paradigms for the allocation of such scarce resources. One is that of market economies (the auction) and the other, that of command economies (the queue, for ordinary folk; the politically-favored, of course, jump to its front). You obviously don't like the market solution, so that leaves the alternative - either waiting your turn (perhaps dying before you get it), or dancing attendance upon some bureaucrat in order to beg his assistance.Michaelnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644559.post-47076163099418334882009-08-17T15:58:06.001-07:002009-08-17T15:58:06.001-07:00If you can say that you and I are teleological res...<i>If you can say that you and I are teleological results, then you don't believe in the theory of evolution as it is at present received, any more than I do.</i><br /><br />You don't know what you are talking about and I would advise you to shut up about scientific matters before you embarass yourself further.<br /><br />It is obvious to all that organisms can have purpose in some sense (ie, the wolf intends to catch the deer, the deer intends to escape). No materialist denies that purpose exists, they just deny that it was put there by some higher, prior, supernatural purpose. Evolution (and cybernetics) showed how purposive systems could arise from non-purposive antecedents; that is a large part of the reason they are interesting. <br /><br /><i>If man has an innate moral sense, how did it get there? </i><br /><br />The same way anything else innate got there.<br /><br /><i>Sir Karl Popper made the point that almost no concept of modern cosmology is without its antecedent in the philosophy of the pre-Socratics.</i><br /><br />While I generally admire the pre-Socratics, they did not have modern mathematics or quantum physics so they are "antecedents" to modern cosmology in only a very vague and uninteresting sense. Or, let's put it this way -- philosophy has been in the business of asking the wrong questions for thousands of years, which is why the presocratics can still seem fresh today -- the same questions arise, and there are still no answers. We still can't step in the same river twice. Science, in contrast, is in the business of asking questions that can be answered, and are amenable to evidence-based reasoning. Science makes progress over time; philosophy does not seem to, on the whole.<br /><br />I am not a Marxist and I agree that Marxism in practice has many similarities to religion. I am temperamentally not a joiner or true believer of any kind. <a href="http://omniorthogonal.blogspot.com/2009/06/wingnut-of-week-spengler.html" rel="nofollow">I mentioned recently</a> that as a teen I belonged to a socialist-zionist youth group. They were fairly hardcore Marxists (affiliated with one of the more left-wing of Israel's political parties), but it didn't take. That post is mostly about the blogger known as Spengler, who was also part of this group, but went on from there to spend ten years with Lyndon Larouche and is now some sort of Orthodox Jewish fanatic. Now, that guy is a true believer, someone who really really really wants and needs a rigid ideological framework to deal with the world. But that's not me.<br /><br />Scientific materialism (naturalism is a better term) owes almost nothing to Marx. The few scientists who are Marxists and try to integrate Marx with their science (like Leowontin and Gould) are way out of the mainstream and have little influence. Leowontin's theories have some interesting overlap with other anti-reductionist approaches to biology, like Haeckle and d'Arcy Thompson, and they have a common ancestry in German idealism and Platonism. I admit to a slight fondness for such stuff, but it has been largely a scientific failure, completely rolled in biology by the reductionistic and mechanistic approaches. The young subfield of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionary_developmental_biology" rel="nofollow">evo-devo</a> may succeed in reintegrating these divergent approaches.mtravenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02356162954308418556noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15644559.post-21988337125219244582009-08-16T14:32:12.672-07:002009-08-16T14:32:12.672-07:00I am not a follower of Epicureanism and therefore ...I am not a follower of Epicureanism and therefore do not accept that life is a result of completely random and purposeless occurrences, which is the foundation of the theory of evolution as it is at present expounded by its advocates. I am quite familiar enough with the theory to explain its features (especially when you are apparently unaware of them) without believing in it. If you can say that you and I are teleological results, then you don't believe in the theory of evolution as it is at present received, any more than I do.<br /><br />You may believe that present forms of life developed gradually without denying that their development is teleological in character - i.e., acknowledging that there is purpose in the process. However, that puts you at odds with Darwin himself and with his latter-day exegetes. You are closer then to Teilhard de Chardin, or perhaps that of the Corpus Hermeticum, tract V:26-7 - "... no man says that a statue or an image is made without a carver of a painter, and was this workmanship made without a workman? O great blindness, o great impiety, o great ignorance. Never... canst thou deprive the wotkmanship of the workman...."<br /><br />If man has an innate moral sense, how did it get there? Is it the product of a sequence of random and purposeless events, or of something else? Do not deprive the workmanship of its workman. <br /><br />Sir Karl Popper made the point that almost no concept of modern cosmology is without its antecedent in the philosophy of the pre-Socratics. Moreover, philosophy certainly underlies science to the extent that logic and epistemology are branches of philosophy. And without logic and epistemology, what is left of science? A rag-bag of miscellaneous and unconnected facts- indeed, absent them, unconnectable facts - comparable to the mediæval books of secrets falsely ascribed to St. Albertus Magnus. <br /><br />Marxism (and I have read enough of your writing to believe you are, like so many religiously deracinated Jews, some kind of Marxist) is a substitute for traditional religion, complete with theology and metaphysics (dialectical materialism), and, in the old Soviet Union, its college of cardinals (the Politburo), its theologians and periti (e.g., Moshe Litvakov), its pope (the general secretary of the Communist party), etc. Of course every religion needs its creation-myth, and that is what evolution became in the hands of Marxists like Steven Jay Gould - stripping it of the content that was obvious to Darwin and his contemporaries (like his cousin Sir Francis Galton) that it was all about 'the preservation of favored races in the struggle for life.'Michaelnoreply@blogger.com