On 1/16/2011 10:22 AM, Darren New wrote:
> andrel wrote:
>> Part of your problem might be that there is no real debate
>
> Sure. I'm really just trying to get a feel for whether many europeans
> think of it as "us against them" when it comes to the government, or
> whether they think their government is succeeding, or at least failing
> due to something other than malice (like it being a fundamentally
> difficult task).
>
>> sorry, can't parse that.
>
> Basically, I was saying "it seems the goverment is much more toxic in
> the USA than I remember from when I was younger. Is it really more toxic
> than other civilized western governments, or am I just remembering poorly?"
>
I think, in the US, we have seen a marriage, on the left, between a 
sense of social justice that allows for change, and woo. This is bad, 
since woo isn't based on fact, so you get what I like to call "chaos 
theory social engineering". Try things, even if someone is telling you 
it won't work, and why, just to see if they *can* work. On the right we 
have a marriage between capitalism, a distorted version of Ann Rand, and 
the view, "I have mine, screw you!". Rand's "heroes", as someone pointed 
out, honored contracts, paid decent wages, etc., as a social contract to 
those around them, they didn't just try to maximize profit. They are the 
capitalist equivalent of the socialist worker, who gives everything, for 
the good of the whole. Neither exist. She probably would have been 
appalled at what Wall Street has turned into, and done, but she might 
not have really grasped why it derived *directly* from her own philosophy.

In the cases of both Ann Rand capitalism, and pure socialism, you start 
with the baseline assumptions of either, in the first case, perfect 
knowledge, and no one willing to shoot themselves in the foot, by 
cheating, and in the later, basically unlimited resources, and perfect 
means to distribute them. Both are pure, absolute, fictions.

What you end up with, in Ann's model, is people cheating, lying, and 
underpaying their workers, while believing they are doing the best they 
can for society, after all *they* are doing just fine, and then adding 
to that the argument, "And so, I also don't need to give some government 
money to help people who, in my imaginary world, are just too lazy to 
work, and don't really need the help."

Or, as someone recently blogged it, "Examining the reason why 
conservatives in general don't like programs, it always seems, when you 
boil away the rhetoric, to be, 'I don't like it/need it, so I shouldn't 
have to pay for/allow it.'"

-- 
void main () {
   If Schrödingers_cat is alive or version > 98 {
     if version = "Vista" {
       call slow_by_half();
       call DRM_everything();
     }
     call functional_code();
   }
   else
     call crash_windows();
}

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