I compiled The Derponomicon a few years ago based on a dialogue I had with a prog who was by far the most infuriatingly stupid person I have ever known. I gave him a quote or a video and asked him what he thought about it. His responses are in italics. I did not correct his typos. Here are a few:
A response to my favorite Bastiat quote:
“If the natural tendencies of mankind are so bad that it is not safe to permit people to be free, how is it that the tendencies of these organizers are always good? Do not the legislators and their appointed agents also belong to the human race? Or do they believe that they themselves are made of a finer clay than the rest of mankind?”
― Frédéric Bastiat, The Law
I was having that very discussion with my right leaning friend/employee the other day. Yes, humans tend to be selfish dicks that only look out for themselves. When it comes to groups of people, corporations, seeking only to maximize profits, that aspect of humanity is often exacerbated by the facelessness of a big corporation where the people in charge are insulated from the consequences of their decisions, whether it’s laying off 200 people the week before Christmas, or intentionally releasing a product that they KNOW will kill people but they calculate the profits outweighing the settlements and do it anyway. These are facts of life, and large groups of people acting as corporations are willing to take risks like that because they can always pass the blame off on some patsy and get away with their golden parachutes Scott free. So yes, these things need to be regulated, and unfortunately the regulators are also human, and therefor susceptible to the same corruption which is inevitable. Perhaps there needs to be an even higher regulatory power that keeps the regulators in check, like internal affairs in a police department. Or perhaps regulators need to be vetted and tested just like FBI agents and Secret Service hires are. Perhaps these regulatory agencies need to be held to a higher standard and simply hire only those who can be vetted and have a low risk of corruptability. One thing is for sure though, NO oversight or regulation whatsoever never reduced incidents and problems. Even a shifty substitute teacher is better than leaving a roomful of children to their own devices.
So the solution to corrupt government is to have an even more powerful organization oversee it, because what could go wrong then? And adults are like disobedient children who need the supervision of the government in order to behave. And, of course, the possibility of reducing regulation is equated to anarchy. Derptacular.
…………………..
I asked him whether taxes were voluntary. He said:
Not obeying a law is a choice and therfore voluntary. ….you might get away with it, you might have to suffer the consequences. Pretty simple logic.
When I asked him whether a mugging is voluntary, he said:
You could also turn and run. Any choice we make is voluntary.
It’s one thing to deny coercion, but this guy acts like it doesn’t even exist.
……………………
A response to this quote from Keynes:
“If the Treasury were to fill old bottles with banknotes, bury them at suitable depths in disused coalmines which are then filled up to the surface with town rubbish, and leave it to private enterprise on well-tried principles of laissez faire to dig the notes up again . . . there need be no more unemployment. . . . It would indeed be more sensible to build houses and the like; but if there are political and practical difficulties in the way of this, the above would be better than nothing.”
John Maynard Keynes, The General Theory, p. 129.
So I am supposed to discuss the idea of burying bottles of money under garbage and putting people to work digging them up? Was this a serious idea, or just intentional hyberbole. The idea that the unemployment problem can be solved simply by employing people to do whatever menial busy work and whatever wage is kind of silly. It’s not just that people need jobs, people need good paying jobs that will actually allow them to be independent and be able to eat, pay bills, and rent. Simply removing the minimum wage, or manufacturing low level jobs for people to work isn’t solving the problem. Unemployment could be at zero, and it wouldn’t make a luck of difference is the same amount of people still qualified for food stamps and welfare. Removing food stamps and welfare, would just mean that people starve, or turn to crime and violence to provide for their families. The problem today is that no one is invested in America anymore. During WW2 it was a prosperous time, because everyone worked for the war effort (arguably the last legitimate war the US was ever in) building things, recycling scrap, buying war bonds, whatever it took. Every one was invested, everyone took part, everyone reaped the rewards. Nowadays all of that stuff is outsourced to no bid politically connected multi-national corporations that could give two shits about America, or Americans. Of the trillions pissed away on Afghanistan and Iraq, barely any of that money is ever coming back to the US. The US used to be a community, where everyone tried to help each other prosper…until Reagan changed all that. Now it’s every man for himself, fuck the greater good, and make as much profit as possible at whoever’s expense.
Note the lack of awareness for the rationing of most goods during WW2. And again we see the lie that people would turn to crime if not for food stamps and welfare. Finally, we have an obligatory shout-out to the great Satan Ronald Reagan.
Comments
199 responses to “Derponomicon: Part 1”
“Perhaps these regulatory agencies need to be held to a higher standard and simply hire only those who can be vetted and have a low risk of corruptability”
Umm, yeah. I’ve got a corruptibility risk meter for sale.
But who is going to watch the watcher watchers?
Every few months, send anonymous letters to the officials – “all is discovered – flee at once!” and see who runs away.
Jenny Craig?
Rolex?
Nielsen?
It’s watchers all the way down.
It’s perverts outside the windows all the way down.
That big blue guy with the swinging dick?
Hitler?
(Really? No one said Hitler? Sad.)
Suppose we did have a way of knowing. What happens when the market for incorruptible people is saturated? If government keeps growing, where are they going to find more incorruptible people to run it?
Syrian refugees?
The priesthood?
I think my suggestion that police depts only hire people below average on the “need to be respected” scale is less stupid and more likely to happen than that.
Anyone seeking a position of power over other people naturally has a very high risk of corruptibility. That’s why the natural order of humans seems to be that the masses are controlled by one or a few tyrants.
Penultimate:
“1: next to the last – the penultimate chapter of a book
“2: of or relating to the next to the last syllable of a word – a penultimate accent
“penultimately adverb”
Penultidant – the next to last act of a very annoying person.
*patiently waits for more criticisms from Fusionist*
These responses pretty much speak for themselves. I don’t even have some snarky comment to make here. It’s dumb enough on its own.
“During WW2 it was a prosperous time, because everyone worked for the war effort (arguably the last legitimate war the US was ever in)”
Yes, you can certainly defend the decision to fight the National Socialists and their evil expansive empire.
But as for everyone working for the war effort – what about the internet Japanese-American citizens and their jailers? Were *they* working for the war effort, too?
interned not internet
Well, there was no black market in the US of course. Man, that “everyone worked for the war effort” happy republic crap needs to die. Sure, most people did. But the dishonest and incompetent and corrupt didn’t suddenly start singing “I’m a Yankee Doodle Dandy” salute the flag and get on board with everything.
Even the markets located on historically black campuses?
/During WW2 it was a prosperous time/
Except for the 400,00 Americans that were killed and the additional 670,00 who were injured. To say nothing of the 10s of millions of dead in other countries. But yeah, other than that it was extremely prosperous, if by prosperous you mean rationing food, fuel, and steel so that it could it be used to destroy lives and existing capital.
The Zoot Suit Riots suggest not everybody was working for the war effort.
+1 Squirrel Nut Zipper.
Wrong band.
d’oh!
*rips old CPD CDs into this computer*
1941 was an underappreciated movie.
“We have nothing to fear but fear itself. Unless you’re Japanese-American. Then the rest of us “Real Americans” are going to take your stuff and throw you in a prison camp because of your heritage.”
St. FDR, High Priest of the Church of Prog
Lol. There’s a Spiderman pic for everything
One for our host.
See, I have the courtesy to put the picture into the comment, for those of us at work with filters that block all those shiny links.
I’m only a simple woman, Gojira. What did you expect?
You realize I can’t see anything that you link, so I hope everyone else is getting a kick out of it.
Well, I tried.
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/0a/b0/62/0ab062a96f1d2050798ee8de406adb4d.jpg
I hope this works. If not I’ll look like just as big as ass as the last one.
But that link works for me. Go figure.
I don’t know if it’s completely due to modern culture or something that runs even deeper in our genes, but the average person tends to (more or less) trust government to act in “our” best interests while being very, very skeptical of private entities doing the same.
This is a big problem for free marketeers to overcome – realistically too big IMO for any real progress to be made. There are a lot of people who think the burger joint that’s been in business for 30 years would start poisoning you if you laid off the county health inspectors.
I believe (and this is strictly an opinion, mind you) that it’s due to the unbelievable success of the Greatest Lie Ever Told: that as long as you vote, the government represents you, as well as the larger “community”, which validates what it does. “The People” don’t have direct veto power over private businesses, so they’re seen as less responsive, perhaps even rogues. Unless you’re an anarchist (which I am philosophically, if still understanding of the practical limitations that make it highly unlikely to ever come to pass), then moral authority for organization has to come from somewhere, and governments with open elections have done a bang-up job of establishing that authority.
Also, people distrust profit. We hold up pictures of people giving to the poor and acting selflessly, and say these are examples to emulate, but the business owner isn’t martyring himself for his community – he’s making money off of them (in the minds of many, this means taking from people). In the easy case of housing, people are forced to buy/rent it, or build it themselves (which most can’t do). They cannot do without it. So it isn’t seen as being a “fair” trade of resources between individuals, because one is under the gun and has to enter into a transaction, whereas the business owner is essentially holding people hostage to their own needs.
Hopefully it goes without saying that I don’t endorse any of these rationales, but it’s my anecdotal thoughts on why things are as you correctly perceive them to be.
A song – for which I voluntarily exchanged dollars – came up on my iPod the other day talking about how bad capitalism is because people are forced to buy stuff. It seems like every band has to squeeze one of these out at least once in their career. You just have to shake your head and move on.
people distrust corporations making profit anyway. plenty of people at least verbally have no problem with small business. some of the biggest lefties there are are happy to sell you their handmade products on etsy or wherever, and nobody begrudges them a profit. and i sort of understand where people are coming from where corporations are concerned. i’ve contracted for quite a few of them, and it’s not like they’re all benevolent people, there’s plenty of abuse within those systems, but good luck trying to persuade everyone that the gov’t is even more dangerous, since it’s not like apple forces you to buy at gunpoint.
But somehow they’d trust a business that doesn’t turn a profit…
*scratches melon*
If I argued politics with my few remaining friends, I wouldn’t have any friends left.
One has gone off the crazy deep end – he’s a smart guy with a masters in neuroscience – but holy derp! when it comes to politics. – Obama is a saint.
My other good friend is a life-long Democrat but agrees (somewhat) that his party has gone off the deep end. He thinks Trump is the devil.
I have one friend who is self-employed and has serious libertarian, or at least contrarian, politics. He’s big into markets. I invited him to visit here but never heard back.
And women? Yikes – third rail, baby!
The ones I find it safe to at least start a political conversation are – military veterans, other members of the shooting club, neighbors who actually own a business, other men with business or engineering degrees. All others are to be avoided.
From an empirical point of view, that is a pretty good filtering system you have their. I think I’m about the same, but am not sure I could have stated my rules explicitly. Engineers, even if they turn out to be left wing, can at least usually just agree to disagree and we move on with out any body being called a Hitler.
s/their/there/
And that’s a problem?
Kidding. But seriously, most of my best friends are here, helping this site live. The others also all live at a distance from me.
What would Frank say?
Wait, some of these probably are Frank.
Frank was better?!
Saw this and immediately thought of Frank.
The response obviously had absolutely NOTHING to do with the quote.
Fixed it for him.
The belief in government as redemptive of sinful human nature is the worst of all perversions of religion. And that is what they actually believe.
You should have asked him to respond to the rest of the Bastiat quote:
… but he’d probly go off on teh EVUL CORPORASHUNSZ!!! for that as well.
I had a run in with a free enterprise practicioner. The bastard was selling unlicenced snow removal services door to door. The horror.
More seriously, I was broke and I need the exercise so I declined and sent him on his way.
When it comes to groups of people,
corporationsgovernment agencies, seeking only to maximize profits, that aspect of humanity is often exacerbated by the facelessness of a bigcorporationagencies where the people in charge are insulated from the consequences of their decisions, whether it’slaying offcausing 200 people to be laid off the week before Christmas, or intentionally releasing aproductregulatory rule that they KNOW will kill people but they calculate theprofitsintentions outweighing the settlements and do it anyway. These are facts of life, and large groups of people acting ascorporationsgovernment agencies are willing to take risks like that because they can always pass the blame off on some patsy and get away with their golden parachutes and lifetime employment Scott free.Crap. There should be italics in there. Oh well, you get the idea.
Question about the previous article “the origin of poverty”. The article says that poverty is both the natural state and man made. Can you elaborate?
People are poor until and unless they earn something.
But poverty can also be imposed on the otherwise prosperous through taxation, regulation, barriers to entry, etc…
That’s my guess anyway.
Sounds good. I’ll buy it.
It’s on sale today – only $49.95! …plus shipping and handling.*
*$4,950.05 S&H
I have something you can ship and handle.
*unzips*
bacon-bits?
Slab of bacon.
*drops on table*
You call that a slab?
Ugh, too fatty.
It smells like bacon, but it looks like a stack of dimes.
Case in point.
/Perhaps there needs to be an even higher regulatory power that keeps the regulators in check/
It’s regulators all the way down.
I will say this, though: incorporating a business should not shield individuals from criminal conduct (and I’m pretty sure it doesn’t). If he honestly believes some evil corporation is killing people because the lawsuits won’t be too costly (I suspect he got this from watching fight club), that’s an argument for stiffening the penalties and going after individuals on criminal grounds. But that is a property rights/civil law/common law/criminal law approach to “regulation”, not the type of top-down preventative regulation he seems to be embracing as the only way.
And of course, the concept of bottom-up, emergent regulation isn’t even mentioned.
“It’s regulators all the way down”
That is one way to solve unemployment.
Goddammit, I should have scrolled down.
And of course, the concept of bottom-up, emergent regulation isn’t even mentioned.
Because if it wasn’t for government, we wouldn’t know what products are Kosher.
One of the sources of the “corporations kill for profit” comes from the poorly designed Pinto gas tank in the 1971-1976 models. Popular Mechanics summarizes the issue pretty well. http://www.popularmechanics.com/cars/a6700/top-automotive-engineering-failures-ford-pinto-fuel-tanks/
Over 40 years this remains an albatross (though a much smaller albatross) that gets tied around Ford’s neck. The problem is that it gets tied around business necks while the EPA poisoning the Animas River goes down the memory hole.
OT, but also derptastic.
This attitude just hurts my head. The kind of reasoning skills employed in learning mathematics are not useless.
He might get that job at Slate if he kisses their asses enough on Twitter.
I did quite a bit of tutoring when I was in college…mostly chemistry and math. Guess the majors of the people I tutored.
No? Ok.
Journalism
Nursing (scary)
Theater (expected)
Education
I have a bachelor’s degree in pure mathematics, so my views are probably biased.
The students who complained the most in introductory pure math courses were those who were getting degrees in mathematics education. Like, I’m talking about introduction to mathematical proofs. Everyone has seen some proofs, but probably forgot everything they saw because the teacher nearly always led with “you don’t need to know this for the test, but…”
This is particularly frustrating to me because the essence of mathematics is in writing proofs and understanding them, but lower education only teaches calculation courses and people struggle with those. And that’s because their educators don’t really understand the reasons all the math works at more than the most shallow level, and don’t want to know either.
At the college level, the professors obviously have to know a lot more, but by then the students are trained to tune out anything that remotely sounds like exposition.
Ditto. I didn’t really start liking math until Real Analysis.
I think it’s at the point where you take your first real mathematics course that you finally realize you never took any mathematics courses, and at that point you’re in college.
I sincerely believe that kids could actually understand mathematics a lot better if some of the basics of proof writing were taught to them early on. It really opens your eyes when you realize what makes mathematics itself so rigorous, how the philosophy behind math works, and why there are often many ways to prove that something is true. More importantly, it helps you to understand what isn’t a proof. You learn why showing a bunch of examples (anecdotes, essentially) can’t actually prove anything.
I get why it isn’t done. It’s hard to grade proofs. You can’t make up worksheets for them and it takes a lot more effort to get through to someone. It takes dedication and effort, and those are in short supply in math ed departments. And the establishment is going to be against you every step of the way, as are parents who won’t have any ability to help their kids because they were never taught themselves.
In response to ZSG: Have they stopped doing proofs in high school? Admittedly, I went to a Catholic high school, but we did proofs when we did Geometry.
Geometry proofs are a really bad way to teach anything about proofs.
It reinforces the idea that proofs is formulaic, like calculation. What is lost is the great diversity of thought in coming up with multiple proofs for the same thing.
Is zero even or odd?
Someone with basic algebra skills should be able to follow the proofs supplied. Note that there’s a an alternative proof by contradiction at the end of the top response. There are other ways to prove that zero is an even number, some more complicated to understand than others. And those two proofs make it super easy to see how there is absolutely no way to argue that they aren’t correct; which is why they’re proofs to begin with.
That kind of explain some things. I also am of the belief that math skills are good even if you have to hurt your brain a bit to get them. Never understood why basic algebra is so tough on some… Then again I am not sure what algebra 2 consists of
Polynomials, Trig, Exponents, Logarithms, etc., usually.
When I did advanced calculus and differential equations in university high-school math(s optional) just didn’t seem that difficult anymore
I’m biting my tongue because no one wants to hear my Robby and percentages story again.
Oh, please, do tell.
Nothing too exciting. Just Robby posting a series of pants-shitting articles about a certain phenomenon on college campuses, in which he breathlessly reported that it was present in “over 100” campuses. I noted in the article’s comments that Robby’s “epidemic” represents a little less than 3% of all 2 to 4 year postsecondary institutions (with cite to numbers).
I was then told to shut the hell up and that Robby was a goddamn American hero. He was still riding the coattails of breaking the Rolling Stone story, you see.
There are certain things from algebra that I still just take on faith because I don’t really understand the root of it. Like trig. Calc was easier than trig.
I mean, I can (or could, anyway) do trig functions, but rationalizing the why and how of it never really came.
In my mind trig functions are not algebra just well trigonometry
Trig? I can do trig in my sleep. All you have to do is remember Sally Can Tell and you have the course in the bag.
Man, that jogged the memory of SOHCAHTOA out of the deep recesses of my brain.
You can’t say that anymore. It’s racist.
You can’t say that anymore. It’s racist.
Can I still remember the colors of resistors or is that sexist?
BBROYGBVGW
Or how about the star sequence?
OBAFGKM
BBROYGBVGW =
Bad Boys Rape Other Young Girls But Violet Gives Willingly.
Was what I was taught in HS electronics class.
I learned some other horse caught another horse taking oats away.
I struggle with trig identities because I skipped it.
My 10th grade math teacher recommended that I skip pre-calc/trig and go straight into calculus. Which I did. The one thing it cost me is that I struggle with anything beyond the basic trig identities.
I can’t figure out what was in pre-calc to this day. What were the rest of the junior class learning for a year? I wasn’t missing anything leading into Calc.
Man, it took me months to understand algebra. But one day it just fell into place and then I couldn’t figure out why it had been so hard for me to grasp.
I.. uh… never mind.
No, don’t hold back. I can take it.
It’s only funny to ask if you’re a woman if I know that you are in fact not a woman.
Well, in case you feel the need to do so in the future I am not, currently, a woman.
Really? I honestly thought you were.
I must be in touch with my feminine side.
So, your count of female libertarians goes down by 1.
That’s a devastating 50% loss.
Today is a sad day.
That just means its working.
Full bottle in front of me
Time to roll up my sleeves
and get to work.
And after many glasses of work
I get paid in the brain
I took Alg II and Geometry in the same year just so I could take Calc as a senior. Had to drop choir to do it, but meh.
I’m sure your lack of advanced harmonizing skills did irreparable harm to you post education job prospects.
I made up for it with band classes aplenty–regular band from 4th grade through graduating high school, jazz combo from sophomore year through graduation, and lots of small groups for music festivals. I made it work!
That said, it’s not like I use calc on a daily/weekly/monthly/yearly basis at all, either.
Did you go to band camp?
Lol, no. I didn’t go to any camps. Ew.
What were your instruments and what part did you sing?
Main instrument was the alto sax, but I also occasionally played the tenor when a piece called for it and we couldn’t make it work without it. Hooray for hauling around two saxophones and sucking on all the reeds!
As for choir, they threw me into the first sopranos and gave me a part in the all-female “Euterpes” group, besides being in the general choir, as well. I don’t know that soprano was a good fit, but I can see how it’s easy to put freshman in there since it’s often the easiest part to hear.
I have a Math and Philosophy minor. Square that one.
So you can calculate exactly how much money you wasted?
‘xactly!
I started as a philosophy major, switched to EE as a sophomore, and ended up in CS (to get the hell out of college ASAP).
My last semester of undergrad I took a philosophy 100 course to satisfy an elective. I had a lot of fun with my philosophy teacher, but one day he said “You know I’m gonna turn you into a philosophy major right?” To which I replied (not paraphrasing) “Uh, fuck no you won’t. I actually want to pay off my loans.”
Makes absolute sense. The dominant Anglo-American school of philosophy is analytic philosophy.
My one undergrad philosophy course was Logic and the discussion of Jus Ad Bellum/Jus In Bello.
Otherwise just a light smattering of philosophical constructs. Enough to convince me that the more complex philosophies were just mental masturbation drills.
I geeked out and took multiple philosophy courses as an undergrad. “The philosophy of science” course was one of the jewels of my undergrad years. Great instructor who assigned relevant readings and lucking into a group of engineering and hard science for my classmates.
It’s especially dumb because given his articles Soave didn’t learn anything from his first history class, so I doubt a second will help him.
I was required, as an engineering major, to take 18 hours of social sciences and 18 hours of humanities (quarter system, that would be 12 and 12 under typical semester system).
I had no problem with it. But I have always argues that any decent liberal arts degree should require equivalent in math and science. 18 hours of math and 18 hours of science (12/12). And not physics for poets either. I didnt take ‘ritin for engineers.
I think that requirements like those end up hurting students too.
Maybe you took linear equations, but maybe you didn’t. And if you didn’t, you really missed out. Lots of mathematics engineers use every day can be simplified in systems of linear equations and solved much more rapidly. And then you realize how those “general education” requirements that you were forced to take really robbed you of the opportunity to take more valuable math courses that would have helped you excel in your field.
Yes, linear equations was required.
It and matrix math were in a course dropped into the middle of the calculus series.
Calc 1,2,3,5 used Thomas/Finney. Calc 4 used a different book focusing on that.
They changed around the entire calculus series including book for students starting in 1988 (I started in 87) and then switched to semesters in mid 90s, so I have no idea of the current state of things.
The liberal arts degree as I described would be something that Newton and Leibnitz would recognize.
I had no problem with it.
I didn’t at the time, either, because taking a class or two of humanities was a nice reprieve from number crunching. However, as I got close to graduation, they became yet another obstacle between me and my diploma.
We had 18 hours of required liberal arts electives (semester system) and an additional 7 hours required “remedial English” courses (speech and composition). It was enough to get 2 or 3 minors if you planned it out.
Yeah, I dunno what “Algebra II” is, but it ain’t calculus. In my day, HS math went “algebra”, “geometry”, “pre-calc”, “calculus”.
A reminder of I term i coined @ H&R =
“STEM-Winding” = When a thread devolves into people preening over the fact that their undergraduate degrees involved calculators“
Its not truly there until someone mentions that their calculator was RPN.
So I am taking care of that right now.
My HP15C sits proudly on my desk, making it so that I can’t use a regular calculator without fucking it up.
I converted my phone calc to RPN.
My calculator app is cooler than yours!
I really shouldn’t mention the slide rule my dad gave me as a graduation present. It comes with a glasses tape holder on the case.
Cue 4 Yorkshiremen and their bamboo slide rules
CNN
@CNN
New York’s “Fearless Girl” statue stands her ground against the Wall Street bull, even in the snow ccn.it/2njpfS4
The replies are great.
That f—–g thing better be temporary.
My first political discussion with a very good prog friend began with a ‘gotcha’ question when he asked if I believed the FDIC should exist. You’re expected to give your binary answer, not a reasoned response. So, I go on about the fed, fractional reserve banking, et al. creating a situation that required a government insurance for my deposit. What if the government got completely out of banking…from the reserve down. Something, something, Somalia, roadz type response, folks starving in the street without government guidance. He being a pretty handy guy around the house, I asked him how well UL did certifying things like the electric motor we put in his air conditioner.
I have had political discussion along the lines of “why were there crises in 19th century US if there were no bank regulations” to which I asked: how did the banking system work in 19th century America. And got the answer I don’t know but there were crises. What I find said is that 2 weeks later we had a similar discussion and I asked again how did it work and he still knew nothing of it. I mean I would have thought that after the previous discussion, he would have spent an hour reading about it. But he didn’t. He doesn’t need to read. Just knows
Bright side is that he’s slowly starting to see the light. He owns a small business and paid out the nose when his first kid was born. Meanwhile, he has a prog buddy that times starting his family while he’s ‘back in school,’ pursuing a worthless liberal arts degree, on scholarship at an expensive private school and as such medicaid picks up the tab on his two kids conveniently born while he’s in school. Resenting someone else gaming the social safety net sure does start to convert otherwise hard core big government types.
Everybody reaped the rewards of WW2. It was great. Just ignore the poor saps who were drafted into the war that got killed. Greater good!
/You could also turn and run. Any choice we make is voluntary./
Slavery was voluntary because the slaves could always have run away or just refused not to work!
Derpetologist is friends with Tulpa.
That’s quite a slur to be thrown around so casually.
Derpetologist could have just run away.
And joined the Army.
HA!
*feral grin*
/Recruiter
And that’s different from “The US used to be a community, where everyone tried to help each other prosper…until [Welfare/Press 2 for español/(((They))) got rid of prayer in school/etc.] changed all that” how?
Communitarian bullshit fits well on the keratinised structure that covers the distal phalanx of the 3rd digit of equine species.
I’ve got a link for the afternoon links, talking to Americans who fled our new dystopian hellhole for New Zealand after the election. One of the interviewees expresses her love for Kiwis having so much less emphasis on “individualism” and are so much more focused on the good of the hive.
Now I have the image of hybrid White/Insect people feeding on the corpses of sheep and the Maori.
On the upside, my work firewall mysteriously started allowing this site last week.
On the downside, it still blocks practically everything that everybody links : *(
Learn to tunnel or get a VPN
Miners have looser internet policies?
OMWC likes miners.
*prolonged ovation*
I saw that pop up on my NZ news notifications.
The last one there…I see your buddy ‘ol pal approaches the subject from the same perspective of Beloved Former President; the private sector exists to provide employment. Production of wealth has nothing to do with it. That is bone-crushingly stupid. I remember Odumbass lecturing the private sector about their obligation to make the unemployment numbers drop. Jesus, what a self serving turd he is.
To be fair, that’s how a lot of them view public sector employment, too. ‘Whycome the guvmint just open a new bureaucracy to hire the unemployed?’
What was so galling about the former President was that this dude never once in his life operated a business nor showed any interest on how one operated. But yet he had the nerve to say a dumbass comment like, “You didn’t build that.”
He reminds me of the idiots that I have class with which explains why they love him so much.
I tried to list out all of the things like that he said and five minutes in I wanted to kill myself.
There is just something about politics and economics that make intelligent individuals lose capacity of logical thought.
Actual quote from a Bernie Bro:
“I know Bernie’s numbers dont work but the things we want to do are too important for us to be held back by math.”
I stopped considering lefties intelligent years ago. I dont give a damned how proficient they are at any given subject.
They sound lovely.
I am skiing copper today. It’s almost 50 here. Why do i only have powder skis?
The universe is punishing you for your pizza transgressions?
I’ve stopped talking about politics on Facebook and with acquaintances in general because a lot of individuals on the Left have no interest whatsoever in learning about other people political and philosophical beliefs. To them, what they believe is the gospel and if you don’t agree with them at best you’re an idiot and a tool of the 1 percent or at worst, you’re an evil person who wants to enslave the poor.
Yes, thats really true. I always want to go back through their posts and pull quotes that now contradict their current view. Its easy now with the new potus.
Especially with regards to civil liberties. I had a friend who bitched and moaned about Bush’s civil liberties violations but yet stayed quiet when Obama repeated or even expanded those violations.
I called him out on his hypocrisy and he responded that President Obama had to do it because for one thing, the GOP were racist obstructionists but also, he had to do it to keep the nation safe.
After he said that to me, I mentally decided that him and I no longer need to discuss politics because his partisanship wouldn’t allow him to actually see things for what they really are.
I had a friend tell me that the main reason for all of Obama’s executive orders was the Republicans decision to not vote on his last SCOTUS nominee. I mentioned the way that Dems had obstructed Bush’s lower court nominees and she was completely unaware.
I posted a link (on FB) to the NYT bit on how the Dems are considering an attempt to shut the govt down – with the observation that the last time some other Party did this it was the height of recklessness. Nothing gives me greater pleasure than throwing someone’s hypocrisy in their face.
a lot of individuals on the
Leftso cravenly partisan have no interest whatsoever in learning about other people political and philosophical beliefsFIFY. Can’t have a reasoned argument with someone whose entire political/economic/historic education came from memes.The only reason I don’t want to enslave the poor is because I hate being around poor (or most) people in general. Of course if I could find the right boss man, then he could do all the hard work with the slaves while I sit in my plantation and drink mint juleps.
If you scratch a Progressive hard enough, you will see their disgust for the lower classes. Their whole philosophy is to mold those in the lower classes to their image. Why do you think they heavily endorse social engineering policies?
And eugenics. Can’t forget the eugenics.
I don’t talk anything of Facebook so no politics is easy
WW2 was prosperous if you ignore the thousands of men fighting and dying in foreign lands. It wasn’t so prosperous for my grandfather either because he lost the construction business he built up during the Depression because he couldn’t get rationed materials. That’s ok though, because the Army put his skills to work building an internment camp for the Japanese. I’m sure they appreciated his work. Then when he didn’t want to sign off on some bogus invoices for materials that were never delivered, his benevolent superiors transferred him to the East Coast so he could be deployed to fight in Germany. Luckily the war in Europe ended before he got shipped out.
A conversation I had with my Democratic friend (paraphrased from memory).
Talking about my move to the suburbs:
Him: I live in the city because I think I would stand out in one of those small towns. Those hillbillies would come and get me for being different.
Me: C’mon. I go to (small town) all the time and never had any trouble. Anyways the bar there has great food.
Him: *ignores me* and down south. There’s nothing but rednecks down there.
Me: I’ve been to South Carolina several times and everyone is really nice. I see black and white people hanging out together at the beaches and the stores.
Him: that’s because you were in the tourist areas.
Me: Okeyyyyy *changes topic*
*not meant as a reply*
Forgot how the saying goes – something about white people pretend to like black people in the north and and pretend not to like them in the south.
OT: Dan LeBatard has the best sports show on radio but man is he an intellectual fly weight. My wife and I were listening to him earlier make a complete utter mess (by creating all sorts of clumsy degrees of how one can use the word) of this Iguodola and the nigger word debate. In a nutshell, he basically said he’d be more okay with it if the commissioner was black because nigger is a word used differently among blacks (of which no other slur is used in the same manner – which is bull shit because I know among Italians we always call each other ‘wop’ to denote an Italo-hick. But hey, it’s ‘not the same!’) and that white people should just shut up and eat the double standard he admitted to accepting. My wife, who is as strong a critical thinker as they come, listened on horrified. ‘Does he not see or understand what he just said? Does he not grasp if he reversed what he said, say a black man making decisions for whites, renders his argument invalid?
I said nope. It’s the soft tyranny of progressive tyranny that softened up his mind.
It was frustrating to listen to that nonsense.
How about this? How about either EVERYONE HAS FREE SPEECH – regardless of the baggage assigned to a lousy word – and you apply it equally? All this ‘what if it was a gay man who said faggot’ musing is counter productive if we just respected FREE SPEECH FULL STOP.
make that ‘soft tyranny of progressive thinking’.
How bout ‘soft thinking of progressive tyranny’?
I like that one
I always thought LeBatard had a bit of a libertarian streak to him.
Maybe its just the way he refuses to play by the rules of the PTI games.
He does but not where free speech is concerned I think.
I guess I’m ‘HE’S THAT GUY!’
You bastard. My ears are ringing, and my head has developed a severe knock.
It’s not just that people need jobs, people need good paying jobs that will actually allow them to be independent and be able to eat, pay bills, and rent.
Note the utter disinterest in whether those “good paying” jobs create value sufficient to justify the cost. The sole purpose of “employers” is to hand out paychecks on Friday.
During WW2 it was a prosperous time, because everyone worked for the war effort (arguably the last legitimate war the US was ever in) building things, recycling scrap, buying war bonds, whatever it took.
Someone more musical that I should record America the Beautiful using notes produced from the sound of glass shattering at the required frequency. Kind of like the Monty Python “mouse xylophone” skit.
As I’ve often said, people cannot be trusted, because they’re people. Corporations also cannot be trusted because they’re people. However, government can always be trusted because government is not people. This is the wisdom of the left.
However, government can always be trusted because government is not people.
The people in government are inherently better and more just than the general population. That’s what attracts them to it.
Anyway. About this guy quoted above.
I know. It’s infuriating but it’s how they think.
My prog anecdote is the one where my friend found not taxing estates to be immoral because the money belongs to the collective and would be put to better use instead of “lazy” inheritors. I reminded him there are a lot of people with humble backgrounds who want to leave things for their kids. That his position would not hurt the ‘rich’ but the idea of a middle class person can amass a fortune to leave behind. No one wins with this kind of envious thinking.
The people raking off the vig win.
They just don’t care if the family of a farmer is forced to sell just to pay the tax man.
Of course they care. Thats why they are endorsing it.
This.
My grandparents were a teacher and a factory worker. They were depression babies and saved like crazy. Due to poor tax planning and mental issues that accompany old age, they got hit with the estate tax. We had no idea of their net worth until it was too late.
Let me repeat that for any Prog onlookers – your precious Rockefeller Tax fucked over the family of 2 life-long union members who had modest incomes and worked in occupations that you put on a pedestal. Meanwhile, last I checked the Rockefeller family has an army of accountants and financial planners to ensure the tax-man keeps his hands off their trust funds.
I have not read the comments above, so perhaps it’s already been pointed out, but isn’t his first response basically the Guardians from Plato’s Republic? So, maybe he didn’t finish the book; it was not the easiest thing to read.