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Post by robeiae on May 18, 2017 7:54:07 GMT -5
If Pence were to take over, I hope he does so after the mid-terms, that is IF the democrats can get their things in order and actually win them so that at least the Senate flips. I'm not too hopeful about that though. www.rollcall.com/news/politics/nrcc-raises-10-million-fourth-straight-monthRetaking the Senate is something of a pipe dream still, Trump or no Trump. Look: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Senate_elections,_2018 There are only eight Repub-held seats up this cycle. Those eight include Flake, Hatch, and Cruz. So the Dems wold have to take three of the remaining five and not lose any, themselves. But those remaining five include races in Mississippi, Wyoming, and Tennessee that look beyond reach. And there are Dem-held seats that are vulnerable. There's not much the Dems can do in this regard. It's really not up to them, at all. They're certain to pick up a bunch of seats in the House. They may even bring the Senate back to 50/50 (including the I's with the Dems). 51/49 is far more likely, I think. That or a wash.
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Post by robeiae on May 18, 2017 8:12:08 GMT -5
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Post by robeiae on May 18, 2017 8:26:25 GMT -5
On Mueller: I see no reason to object the choice. He's capable, I think.
That said, it seems to me that a great deal hinges on having really capable people analyzing the communications--or lack thereof--between people in the Trump camp and people linked to Russia, people who really know their stuff, when it comes to how things works in the cyberworld, as well. Mueller is not such a person, imo. So he better find the right people, people who also really need to be exceedingly non-partisan.
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Post by Deleted on May 18, 2017 8:40:00 GMT -5
I know Don thinks Pence is Nehemiah Scudder, but I don't think so. I think he'd be just another Reagan. Bad enough, but not apocalyptically bad. Or even Trump-bad. I think folks expecting Trump to step down or be impeached are dreaming, though. I think he will serve out his entire 4-year term. I think the ruling class is, on average, smart enough that Pence wouldn't be able to fully execute his Nehemiah Scudder fantasy, but I'd bet a bunch that's what he gets off to. I'm actually leaning toward a Pence presidency demonstrating government's total inability to impede or reverse social progress, and hand a whole hunk of power back to the individual in the process. I loathe Pence as much as I loathe Trump, for entirely different reasons. Exactly the way I feel. It kills me how some conservatives are so dire about Muslims in government (or in our country at all) because Sharia Law! OMG! but they're totes cool with their own religion being inflicted on everyone else. A parallel can easily be drawn with those who believe in the religion of government. I do have enough faith in our check and balances system overall that my biggest fear is of a loose cannon authoritarian populist like Trump tearing it down and/or eroding faith in it, rather than one side or the other gaining power for a few years. I'm starting to favor Pence over Trump because he'd focus that erosion in the places more socially useful, while calming things in international terms. You talk about eroding faith in government like it's a bad thing. Personally, I'm not a big fan of faith, and I think eroding the faith that government is the first place to look for a solution to any problem in society would lead to faster social progress. Look at how gender rights and marijuana reform are happening... from the bottom up; communities then states then finally the Leviathan Ship of State FedGov. Obviously, the bigger the ship of state that society has to turn, the harder the task. One thing I agree wholeheartedly with Don on -- we've let our President get too powerful over the last couple of administrations. Personally, I think it started with Wilson, although there are reasonable arguments for sooner. Washington and the Whiskey Rebellion, for example. Don would mock us both for this entire exchange. Nah, just the faith-based talk about government. He usually posts between 4:00-5:00 a.m. EST. Not that I notice these things. Sorry I was late today. I'll try to do better in the future. Whereas I think you have a touching faith in human nature that I do not share at all. You think a world without government would be an Ayn Randian-style paradise where the hard-working would prosper and the trains would run on time. Whereas I think it would look like Lord of the Flies or The Road. I believe human beings need to be within a system that protects individual liberties, protects people from the worst instincts of humanity, and that restrains any one individual or group from gaining too much power. I do favor a system that prioritizes individual liberties. But I think the system is essential. Otherwise, certain factions will always be glad to stomp on others for their own gain.
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Post by Don on May 18, 2017 9:33:30 GMT -5
Whereas I think you have a touching faith in human nature that I do not share at all. You think a world without government would be an Ayn Randian-style paradise where the hard-working would prosper and the trains would run on time. Whereas I think it would look like Lord of the Flies or The Road. I believe human beings need to be within a system that protects individual liberties, protects people from the worst instincts of humanity, and that restrains any one individual or group from gaining too much power. I do favor a system that prioritizes individual liberties. But I think the system is essential. Otherwise, certain factions will always be glad to stomp on others for their own gain. Actually, I have less faith in human nature than you, and that's why I strongly oppose the ongoing consolidation of power over ever-wider areas of human interaction by the political class, hardly a group to be held as exemplars for the rest of us. I agree that "human beings need to be within a system that protects individual liberties, protects people from the worst instincts of humanity, and that restrains any one individual or group from gaining too much power." OTOH, I see absolutely no indication that the current system is protecting individual liberties, protecting people from the worst instincts of humanity, or restraining any one individual or group from gaining too much power. Let's go down that list objectively. As for individual liberties, look at the steady erosion of individual liberties in the name of the Wars on Drugs and Terror. Look at the ever-expanding loss of individual control over economic, education and healthcare issues. That's one thumbs down. As for restraining any one individual or group from gaining too much power, look at the steady gains in power of the executive branch over the history of the US, in particular the last few decades. Look at similar gains in power by FedGov, claiming jurisdiction over larger portions of civil society every year, at the same time expanding the surveillance state, the regulatory state, and the police state. That's another thumbs down. As for the third claim, protecting people from the worst instincts of humanity, I'll let Robert Higgs speak to that. "Anarchists did not try to carry out genocide against the Armenians in Turkey; they did not deliberately starve millions of Ukrainians; they did not create a system of death camps to kill Jews, gypsies, and Slavs in Europe; they did not fire-bomb scores of large German and Japanese cities and drop nuclear bombs on two of them; they did not carry out a ‘Great Leap Forward’ that killed scores of millions of Chinese; they did not attempt to kill everybody with any appreciable education in Cambodia; they did not launch one aggressive war after another; they did not implement trade sanctions that killed perhaps 500,000 Iraqi children.
In debates between anarchists and statists, the burden of proof clearly should rest on those who place their trust in the state. Anarchy’s mayhem is wholly conjectural; the state’s mayhem is undeniably, factually horrendous.” I, too, desire "a system that protects individual liberties, protects people from the worst instincts of humanity, and that restrains any one individual or group from gaining too much power." The evidence is plain that the aggregation of power is not the way to achieve those goals. Politics today is nothing but the battle between "certain factions [that] will always be glad to stomp on others for their own gain." I think the evidence speaks for itself.
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Post by Amadan on May 18, 2017 10:44:00 GMT -5
Like most such "Look at the bad things the gummint has done" (the A-bomb! the Holocaust! Imperialism!), Higgs' indictment is spurious.
Those are things people do. Whenever they gather into communities/nations/states/tribes, there are conflicts, and how bad it gets depends on the prevailing ethos of the dominant polity.
Five thousand years ago, people might not have had much "government" in the modern sense, but someone was in charge and a lot of pillaging and genociding happened.
The theory that little anarchic communities would coexist more or less peacefully assumes that no greater power arises to start dominating its neighbors - which contradicts, oh, the entirety of human history.
Also, maybe you'd like to live in small agrarian communities with technological advancement more or less frozen in place - I wouldn't. I want solar and nuclear power, space exploration, cures for cancer, global communication. Maybe if you can convince me that giving up all those things would also mean an end to all war and oppression, I'd go along, but I don't think it would. And you can't get those things with little anarchic communes.
Yes, governments launch wars and impose dictatorships. They also prevent wars and end dictatorships. You think a lack of a federal government would have resulted in European colonists treating the Indians more kindly? You think no local warlord ever got it into his head to kill everyone in sight without a Big Bad Government to legitimize it?
It's not about having "religious faith" in government as some discrete benevolent entity. It's about believing that "government" is just a word for how people at various levels of scale work out how to share space and resources. If all governments collapsed today, and as a bonus, all weapons vanished, do you think we'd be living peaceful pastoral lives around the world tomorrow? Nope. People would fashion new weapons, a few would start controlling the rest, and we'd have more governments, though it might take a long time before we'd have democracies or anything resembling civil rights protections again.
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Post by maxinquaye on May 18, 2017 14:33:02 GMT -5
That is, in essence, the thesis of Robert Nozsick in his "Anarchy, state, and Utopia" - one of the key libertarian academics. Governments are unavoidable, and where one does not exist, it will be created.
All of human history shows that humans form groups. Those groups get organised. Organisation leads to someone being in charge. Someone being in charge leads to group conflicts. The successful groups form dispute resolution systems. And then they enforce the verdict of the dispute resolution mechanism. Or as right-libertarians call it, coercion.
The human control groups, the other great apes, show the exact same mechanisms - but in a rawer form. So, Nozsick was right. It is unavoidable for us to form organised collectives, herds, with social coercion built in. Because it's a biological imperative for humans to do so.
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Post by Don on May 18, 2017 15:23:34 GMT -5
"Government" is NOT just a word for how people at various levels of scale work out how to share space and resources. There are myriad ways that people manage to work out how to share space and resources without forcing a solution on 49% of the people who disagree with the decision, and forcing them to provide resources or alter their behaviors accordingly. Individual action, voluntary organization and free exchange between individuals are all non-coercive ways to work out how to share space and resources. "Government" is the only one of those many ways that claims special rights for those individuals within its employ to take resources or force behaviors on otherwise peaceful individuals.
"Government" is the only one of those myriad ways that claims to grant moral immunity to those individuals in its employ that commit acts that would otherwise be considered immoral if committed by individuals.
"Government" is the only one of those myriad ways that "legalizes" otherwise immoral acts.
"Government" is therefore a net contributor to the immorality in a society.
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Post by robeiae on May 18, 2017 15:35:03 GMT -5
Heh. What do you know Don, a thread full of Aristotelians...
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Post by Amadan on May 18, 2017 15:55:18 GMT -5
"Government" is NOT just a word for how people at various levels of scale work out how to share space and resources. There are myriad ways that people manage to work out how to share space and resources without forcing a solution on 49% of the people who disagree with the decision, and forcing them to provide resources or alter their behaviors accordingly. Not on a large scale, time or population-wise. "Non-coercive" sounds nice until you have two individuals, or groups, who have an irreconcilable difference of opinion and are willing to use force to get their way. Then what?
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Post by Christine on May 18, 2017 19:03:14 GMT -5
On Mueller: I see no reason to object the choice. He's capable, I think. That said, it seems to me that a great deal hinges on having really capable people analyzing the communications--or lack thereof--between people in the Trump camp and people linked to Russia, people who really know their stuff, when it comes to how things works in the cyberworld, as well. Mueller is not such a person, imo. So he better find the right people, people who also really need to be exceedingly non-partisan. Ahem.
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Post by michaelw on May 18, 2017 19:25:58 GMT -5
On Mueller: I see no reason to object the choice. He's capable, I think. That said, it seems to me that a great deal hinges on having really capable people analyzing the communications--or lack thereof--between people in the Trump camp and people linked to Russia, people who really know their stuff, when it comes to how things works in the cyberworld, as well. Mueller is not such a person, imo. So he better find the right people, people who also really need to be exceedingly non-partisan. Is Snowden available?
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Post by Don on May 19, 2017 2:13:20 GMT -5
"Government" is NOT just a word for how people at various levels of scale work out how to share space and resources. There are myriad ways that people manage to work out how to share space and resources without forcing a solution on 49% of the people who disagree with the decision, and forcing them to provide resources or alter their behaviors accordingly. Not on a large scale, time or population-wise. "Non-coercive" sounds nice until you have two individuals, or groups, who have an irreconcilable difference of opinion and are willing to use force to get their way. Then what? You mean the way that happens all over the world today, in an era where "governments" are supposed to prevent that sort of thing? Well, in this example, you would have two individuals, or groups, acting immorally, and the rest of the members of society recognizing their acts as immoral, instead of giving one side or the other a pass because "government." (Or even worse, everybody giving one or the other side a pass because "my country right or wrong." That's how you get the really big wars.) Also, because there's no perceived authority to do so, these two individuals or groups wouldn't have the ability to "legally" bleed those around them dry of resources to support their battles by calling it taxation, or the ability to "legally" force young men to die for their cause by calling it conscription. Nor would innocent young people be as likely to fall for "patriotism" and hustle off to die at the behest of their "leaders." The warriors and supporters of that violence would therefore be limited to those who are actually willing to expend all their resources, including their own lives, in an attempt to force their viewpoint on others. Overall, the "wars" would be greatly reduced in size compared to having impotent old men sending our children to foreign lands to do battle for them, while robbing productive society to support the battles they haven't got the guts or resources to fight themselves. This is another great illustration of Higgs' main theme, though. Thanks for that! "In debates between anarchists and statists, the burden of proof clearly should rest on those who place their trust in the state. Anarchy’s mayhem is wholly conjectural; the state’s mayhem is undeniably, factually horrendous.”
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Post by robeiae on May 19, 2017 5:43:24 GMT -5
On Mueller: I see no reason to object the choice. He's capable, I think. That said, it seems to me that a great deal hinges on having really capable people analyzing the communications--or lack thereof--between people in the Trump camp and people linked to Russia, people who really know their stuff, when it comes to how things works in the cyberworld, as well. Mueller is not such a person, imo. So he better find the right people, people who also really need to be exceedingly non-partisan. Ahem. Again, Mueller is capable, moreso than most. But he, himself, is not Snowden-esque, to use Michael's tongue-in-cheek suggestion. He's not a member of the Shadow Brokers. Those are the kinds of skills that are needed here imo, mostly to put the matter to rest 100%. Well, maybe 85%. Because no matter what, there are going to be chunk of people bitching about the job Mueller does: he'll either have not dug deep enough--if he finds no evidence of collusion--or he'll have ginned up a case where none exists. Sure most people are saying "yeah, Mueller." But give it a few months. Some of his fans will be bitching about him in no time.
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Post by Christine on May 19, 2017 7:11:12 GMT -5
I think it's clear he's knowledgeable and "up to date" enough on the subject to know who and what he'll need, that's all.
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