Thought for the Day

[Nick Danger]

To put it simply, people who don't give a shit about the environment, etc impose costs on the rest. That's like your neighbour throwing trash over the fence into your yard. They also get to free-ride because they get some of the benefit from the people who do care without paying any of the costs. That's called market failure. Leaving it to the market to fix market failure is a non sequitur.

As I was saying previously, if people just put their money where their mouth is, we wouldn't have these problems.

Let's look at this problem of the environment. Now I'm going to say that about half the people on the planet don't give a flying fuck about the environment. They all have their reasons, be it simple lack of knowledge about the issue, active unconcern for the fate of future generations, disbelief that we are the cause of the problem, or disbelief that there even is a problem.

The other half of the people are concerned, and outwardly, this half certainly give the appearance (i.e., "signal the virtue") that they are willing to take measures to correct the problem.

So that being the case, I can tell you, right now and right here in this post, how we can IMMEDIATELY cut environmental pollution in half, planet-wide. Have you already figured it out, Flighty? WRONG, it's not "Kill all the Republicans."

[broncofan]

The conservative solution to your garbage analogy there would be that the individual who was getting dumped on address the problem with the neighbor himself.

Is that what happened to Rand Paul? What about public drinking water that gets polluted? Or when a business operates for 20 years dispersing carcinogenic material in the air? How does the market solve that problem if the business owner is out of business by the time people develop cancer?

How about banks? They get insurance on deposits they collect. Should we stop doing that because it operates as a subsidy to the bank? I can tell you that I would not accept the paltry interest rate I get on my checking account if there was a chance the bank could lose my money. So shouldn't they have some restrictions on the investments they make as a trade-off for the subsidy they get?

And insurance companies? Should we not regulate them? They get to charge premiums, invest those premiums in all sorts of illiquid and risky investments and then when people make a claim they can just declare bankruptcy? Maybe it will be their way of paring debt

Read the externality link. It provides food for thought. It's only the beginning of you expanding your horizons;

[Nick Danger]

Is that what happened to Rand Paul? What about public drinking water that gets polluted? Or when a business operates for 20 years dispersing carcinogenic material in the air? How does the market solve that problem if the business owner is out of business by the time people develop cancer?

How about banks? They get insurance on deposits they collect. Should we stop doing that because it operates as a subsidy to the bank? I can tell you that I would not accept the paltry interest rate I get on my checking account if there was a chance the bank could lose my money. So shouldn't they have some restrictions on the investments they make as a trade-off for the subsidy they get?

And insurance companies? Should we not regulate them? They get to charge premiums, invest those premiums in all sorts of illiquid and risky investments and then when people make a claim they can just declare bankruptcy? Maybe it will be their way of paring debt

Read the externality link. It provides food for thought. It's only the beginning of you expanding your horizons;

I did read the link, Bronco, I just want Flighty to be an adult and make his own argument.

Of course there are some problems that have to be addressed by the government. If I didn't believe that I'd be a Libertarian. Human weakness is a real thing. You can't rely on people to be altruistic with their money or their vote. What you can rely on is people hypocritically whining about problems that they themselves are helping to create.

But I said "minimum possible government regulation of business" and that's what I believe in.

Look at this problem of the Keystone pipeline project. It's canceled now because special interests got the attention of the American public via the liberal-owned media, and spun a picture of the situation that simply isn't true. There are problems with oil pipelines, true enough. But not nearly as many problems as the next best method of moving that oil, which is rail. Big environmental victory - the consensus is that a spill is now going to be 4.5 times more likely. It also cost the American economy 8000 jobs and $900 million in GDP, and that's aside from the 10,400 jobs that completing the project would have created. Not to mention the nearly incalculable cost of simply scrapping the pipeline that's already been laid.

That's liberal economics. Stupid. Counterproductive. Virtue-Signaling.

[Nick Danger]

My Thought For The Day: Hypocrite much, Democrats?

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/26/u...khashoggi.html

OH! There's a COST to holding Mohammed bin Salman accountable for Jamal Khashoggi's death! Biden must not have realized that when he was campaigning behind doing it.

[filghy2]

For all my talk about Trump being above the law, he actually isn't. He'll never be able to pass a piece of legislation stating that all Americans must worship him as a god.

Looks like it's going to be compulsory in the Republican party though. They've made a golden statue just like in the Bible. Time for you to invest in a pair of knee pads.
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-polit...an-gold-statue

[filghy2]

As I was saying previously, if people just put their money where their mouth is, we wouldn't have these problems.

Let's look at this problem of the environment. Now I'm going to say that about half the people on the planet don't give a flying fuck about the environment. They all have their reasons, be it simple lack of knowledge about the issue, active unconcern for the fate of future generations, disbelief that we are the cause of the problem, or disbelief that there even is a problem.

The other half of the people are concerned, and outwardly, this half certainly give the appearance (i.e., "signal the virtue") that they are willing to take measures to correct the problem.

So that being the case, I can tell you, right now and right here in this post, how we can IMMEDIATELY cut environmental pollution in half, planet-wide. Have you already figured it out, Flighty? WRONG, it's not "Kill all the Republicans."

There are plenty of people who already do put their money where their mouth is: ie they choose more environmentally-friendly options even though they may be more expensive. The problem is that it doesn't go far enough for the reasons already explained. Leaving it to individuals to fix the environment is not an effective or efficient solution.

There is no puzzle about how to reduce environmental pollution - some mix of environmental taxes and regulation - so it's just a question of political will. Cleaner energy sources and technologies exist and their cost is falling. If fossil fuels are cheaper it is only because there is a hidden cost in pollution that the user does not currently pay.

The principled conservative approach would be to impose environmental taxes that reflect these costs and leave it to the market to find the most efficient way to reduce pollution. If you won't believe me, perhaps you should take notice of these people who have worked for Republican administrations.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/08/o...te-action.html
https://edition.cnn.com/2017/02/07/p...nge/index.html

[filghy2]

Like Steve Martin once said, "Some people have a way with words, and other people just not have way."

My Thought For The Day: Hypocrite much, Democrats?

It seems that some people have a way of using nouns for verbs (eg "learn to economy"). Did you learn to English at school?

[Stavros]

Some thoughts on the CPAC in Florida, some of which I have watched.

1) A panel discussion on 'voter fraud' -I can't recall who took part, but what struck me about it was that, even when one panellist claimed there is aways voter fraud to some degree, and he suggested it was both deliberate and accidental, the primary discussion suggested in 2020 a) there was widespread voter fraud, and b) it was Democrats using fraudulent means to guarantee a victory by Joe Biden. But why? Why is voter fraud apparently exclusive to Democrats, or is it that they are better at fraud than the Republicans? It is an argument that has no substance and no logic. And if the Republicans are so bad at fixing elections, are they going to use fraudulent means in 2020?

2) I watched the speech by Senator Rafael Cruz, though part of it was blacked out for some reason. On the petty side, he needs a haircut, he needs to shave off the beard, and to lose weight. Whoever told him to hold the mike and walk around isn't aware that for public speakers, this suggests a man who walks from a to b because he is unsure of himself, or worse, is angry about something.

On the substance, insofar as there was any, he claimed 'the radical left and Socialists now control the Presidency, the Senate and the House' or words to that effect, and that their aim is to 'change the country'. He used that terrifying image to describe the proposed changes that would transform Americans into obedient robots who all think the same, claiming without a shred of ridiculous laughter in his voice for that reason the Republican Party is the party of diversity! On the protection of individual liberty, to protect it, the Republicans are going to 'fight' which has ominous echoes of January 6th.

3) On the matter of individual liberty and change, this I think is where the so-called Conservatives have run aground. The origins of the American Revolution are Liberal in politics. To be a Conservative in 1776 was to support British America as a colony of the Crown, King George its head of state. The politics that rebelled against Monarchy, which created a Republic, was Liberal in the sense that existed at the time, where a Liberal state is one that establishes Government and the Rule of Law as the framework of the state and allows the individual the right to be free from government, on the understanding that they will respect the rule of law and not harm others, and that the government will be of their choosing and not imposed upon them.

One can sense the way in which, as the United States evolved, 'to conserve' has meant to conserve the Constitution and its principles and values, thus placing the American Conservative in the paradoxical position of conserving a Liberal Constitution. This is where change comes in.

For change it seems, has meant that Liberal politics as it is now understood in the US, requires the very extension of Government into people's lives the 'Founding Fathers' opposed. It began with taxation, and has continued with various mechanisms, temporary or permanent -the draft in times of war is a temporary example, requiring individuals to have a social security no. is a more permanent one.

If a polarisation began with the New Deal Administration of FDR which, for exampe, sanctioned Federal expenditure on the Arts, and was extended by LB Johnson's Great Society Programme and the War on Poverty, particularly with extensions to welfare, then one can understand Conservatism as opposing this expansion of Government services funded by the tax payer, on the basis that if the USA is to be a country of laws and free markets, then individuals must look after themselves within the law, and not expect taxes and taxpayers to reward failure. Welfare at a basic level can exist to prevent hunger and destitution, as can happen if people lose their job, or through tornado, hurricane or fire, their home- thus welfare becomes a temporary bridge from crisis to restoration.

But as the USA changes organically -immigrants arrive, have children, who have children -the question of change can become a weapon on the basis it is not change Conservatives want. Immigrants A are fine, but Immigrants B are not -select a winner, or loser. But does this mean that in policy terms, Conservatives should oppose immigration, and not just illegal immigration, where, as Rafael Cruz claimed yesterday immigrants are sending their children unaccompanied across the southern border?

And shoud these Conservatives not be focused on the expansion of the State and thus be opposed to all welfare other than a most basic form of subsistence? Because neither in the last four years, nor so far at CPAC have I heard an extensive critique of welfare, but there has been a lot of waffle about voter fraud, 'cancel culture' and the threats to liberty posed by America's 'radical left' and 'Socialists'.

This incoherence I have noticed for some time (we have it in the UK too), made worse by the fact that Donald Trump is not a Conservative, and isn't a Liberal either. He and his family have lived on a form of welfare for the rich that is how bankruptcy law operates at the corporate level, just as the family apartment blocks and condos were built usng other people's money, and through State and Federal loans, including other tax-payer's money -where is the Conservative policy to end Government funding of such investments, to demand that entrepeneurs use their own money to take a risk in the market?

And that is without touching on the gerrymandered boundaries of Electoral Districts, the purging of Electoral Rolls, Voter ID and other forms of suppression which suggest the politics of the USSR and East Germany rather than a free country.

Conservative? Meaning what?

[broncofan]

My thought of the day is a bit on the self-indulgent side. Lauren Boebert, the insurrection promoting congresswoman, looks a lot like a girl I knew and wanted to have sex with. The likeness is especially strong in her mugshot. What's worse is the girl was also kind of mean and kind of stupid. So in the interests of fairness I will recuse myself when she comes up. I know Nick Danger feels the same way about Nancy Pelosi so it wouldn't be a bad idea if he did the same there.

[filghy2]

The conservative solution to your garbage analogy there would be that the individual who was getting dumped on address the problem with the neighbor himself. But yeah, fixing your own problems is hard.

Let's consider a concrete example. Suppose a big factory sets up near your house. There's no regulation so it's noisy and smelly and they can operate 24/7. How would you propose to go about fixing the problem yourself?