Rug Burn Junky on 13/7/2011 at 23:50

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You could always drop your insecure passive aggression, be a man and come out and say exactly to whom you're referring here.

Come on, name names.

Or you could just rely on strawmen, be a pussy, and slink off when someone calls you on your bullshit.

Tocky on 14/7/2011 at 04:45

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Yep. I agree with this except I want to battle a poonanny state. Besides, if it wasn't for school lunches that I could skip I would never have had money enough for a dime bag on Friday.

Also Cameros are just gokarts with a bigger engine so they will slide sideways when pulling onto a road without tipping they are so low.

CCCToad on 14/7/2011 at 19:41

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Paranoid much? I'm sorry, but I refuse to be a a douche and speak for other people

It wasn't passive aggression, I was giving those denizens a chance to state it themselves and they chose to. Still, since you've chosen to jump into an argument that had nothing to do with you...does the boot fit or not?

Rug Burn Junky on 14/7/2011 at 23:38

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You obviously had absolutely no ulterior motives when you chose to use the specific phrase "fucking stupid," going so far as to highlight it by using scare quotes. And obviously, you weren't thinking of me when you wrote it initially, considering how quickly you jumped at the first opportunity to imply that "the boot fits."

Now, you may be so deluded as to believe your rationalization, but the rest of us aren't. Like I said - point to somewhere where someone ACTUALLY made that claim, instead of just weaselwording your way around it. It's too late, you ARE a douche. Creating this ridiculous caricature of a position, and ascribing it to "denizens of TTLG," without backing it up by pointing to ANYTHING that shows even one person on this forum supporting this ridiculous strawman? Douchetastic. You made a very specific, UNSUPPORTABLE claim. When asked to show support for your douchetasticness, you instead hide behind "But it wouldn't be polite to 'speak for other people'" Which is not what I asked, fucknuts. I told you to point to where someone actually said that. That's the exact opposite - point to someone's words which will speak for themselves.

Strawman = douche. Using someone's actual words in context = perfectly acceptable. Got it? Great.

So let's start over, mmmkay? [INDENT] NOBODY FUCKING SAID THIS YOU STUPID FUCKING RETARD.

Prove it otherwise... OR SHUT THE FUCK UP.[/INDENT]

demagogue on 15/7/2011 at 02:30

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haha, delayed fireworks show.

Alright peeps, while I would call myself decidedly classically liberal -- I'm a fan of all the usual suspects, free speech, gov't transparency, the four free-movements across borders (goods, services, capital, labor), general distaste with market distortion, etc. -- I cannot drink the Koolaide for full on libertarianism, and I'll give a few thumbnail reasons why.

- The idea that regulation should be "simple" for that reason alone is absurd, and smacks of being more about dogma than what the regulation is actually doing & its normative justification. Modern industries and markets are ludicrously complex, so responsible regulation needs to be just as complex to manage market failures ... though it need not be more so or market distorting without cause. (Cf. Einstein's quote on the complexity of theories; as simple as necessary but not more so.)
- Governments with the least regulated markets are those of failed states. I can't imagine why Malawi would be anyone's model for the political ideal.
- The normative end in cases of bona fide social harm is maximizing social utility; so if a regulation is cheaper than the cost it's worth it; if the cost is cheaper than the regulation it's not.
- Utility isn't in a vacuum though. There are other concerns, like justice concerns. E.g., it's not fair to build all the toxic waste dumps near to poor black neighborhoods and have them differentially bear the costs all of us should be bearing in comparable measure.
- Market failures are things like predictable externalities, that is, costs that aren't internalized into the market itself (env & health risks, unemployment & social dislocation, etc). So the market can never take care of them, thus there are costs shoved on to people without their consent; the gov't needs to step in on basic social contract grounds.
- Some costs can't get internalized because the market is deficient in some way, e.g., cartels, monopolies, barriers to market entry, and the gov't needs to regulate to keep the market functioning properly.
- Coase's Law, which says that undistorted, negotiating parties will always come to an agreement maximizing social utility is wrong in the real world because of differentials in negotiating power & relative knowledge of the parties. So there needs to be checks to actually make sure markets work towards maximizing utility.
- On the issue of gov't letting consumers make their own choices (just put labels and let them decide)... the issue is that, again, consumers don't have the information or expertise to make the best choice in their own best interest.
- Not only that, the basic lesson of behavioral law & economics (another reason Coase's theorem doesn't work in the real world) is that in fact that humans have predictable cognitive biases that lead them to radically misread their own best interest and make terrible decisions that unwittingly hurt themselves, the key being if they knew their real best interest they wouldn't make that choice (availability bias, loss bias, status quo bias, endowment bias, etc etc).
- A more nuanced argument, the argument in the book Nudge (very good book)... for so much gov't action or regulation, it's sometimes impossible for the gov't to present a completely "hands off" choice for consumers because whichever approach they choose it will bring some agenda in. School lunches were actually the opening example they used. The school has to present the food on the shelves in *some* way, but that will have effects on the student's choice (they predictably choose eye level things at a much higher %). In asking the question, which pattern is appropriate, they can't *not* act in the shadow of knowing what they put at eyelevel is already distorting free market choice -- so if they choose at random, alphabetical, healthy food eyelevel, more "popular" food eyelevel, more expensive food eyelevel, etc, each one inescapably "pushes an agenda" on the students and the very concept of "free choice" necessarily doesn't exist. The argument of the book is that in cases like this, the gov't should feel free to nudge choices to maximize social benefit (e.g., put the healthy foods eyelevel). The gov't let's consumers make choices, but because it realizes humans are imperfect choosers, it nudges the playing field for social benefit to compensate, a soft paternalism.

These are a few technical points. If I were doing this the right way, I'd present more of a self-contained normative argument in political theory that looks at the big picture, but that doesn't lend itself as well to bullet points. Not sure if I can get to it, maybe later, but thought I'd throw some stuff out to think about for now anyway.