Robert Baratheon

Kacy, I understand your point about "tribal associations," but I think you're extending the concept too far and glossing over some distinctions that are relevant to the discussion. There is a world of difference between the base and vacuous Red Team versus Blue Team dichotomy and discussing a person's core values according to meaningful philosophical concepts. Your dispute with SB seems to be largely semantic in nature because he is saying essentially the same thing as MSK, only in different words and perhaps to a different degree. We've established in this thread that you disagree with what looks to be just about everyone on this forum on the proper scope of government in the economy. There's nothing wrong with disagreement in itself, but the question now becomes "why" we have this disagreement. There must be some underlying difference in how we approach problems; how we feel about them; or what our core values are. The rest of us are all firmly on the laissez faire side of this issue, so what is it about your thinking that places you on the opposite side? SB is suggesting it's because you have liberal values, i.e., you are a liberal. I don't see this as equivalent to the petty insult you are interpreting it as being. As an aside, you might consider asking yourself why SB's behavior bothers you so much. I can assure you he isn't a significantly different person in my conversations with him, but I enjoy those conversations because he exposes me to new ideas and provokes me to self-examine at times. Obviously not every suggestion is useful to me, but it's not all that difficult to pan out the gold and discard the rest, which is my approach to people in general. I know you've convinced yourself that verbally lashing out at people who frustrate you and publicly threatening to ignore them is the correct/adult/appropriate way of handling such situations, but Dale Carnegie pointed out that this can actually be counterproductive to your goals. Besides being a provocation in itself, your behavior is essentially an admission that the target of your anger has power over you. If their words were truly irrelevant, then you wouldn't bother responding at all, much less in a lengthy counterargument. In other words, it's an implicit invitation to continue the debate. I'd also suggest that from a social dynamics perspective, if you make a threat to someone, then you MUST carry it out.

This is a false distinction. Most religious organizations charge for membership or actively solicit financial contributions. They are clearly offering a service, which is a place to come worship with others and guidance in said worship. Religious organizations make many promises and claims they can't prove (salvation, forgiveness, enlightenment, happiness, morality, communication with God, etc.). The logical implication of your position, although you may not realize it, is that churches would be regulated and shut down unless they provide disclaimers to their members. I don't see any principled way of distinguishing the situations.

The difference of opinion is over whether we should place our collective trust in a government administrative body to determine what is "true" and what isn't and charge them with regulating our consensual transactions on that basis. It gets particularly messy when the claims are of a spiritual or religious nature, which many consider politically "off limits" in the United States. You seem to be approaching the issue with the typical utilitarian/progressive/technocratic mindset, which is that every societal problem has a distinct top-down solution that can be dreamed up and administered by an elite sociopolitical class of disinterested, morally and intellectually superior experts (progressives). We're in agreement over the nature of the problem - if you can call it that - but I'm concerned about what happens when this entity you've empowered decides that your political philosophy is a "lie being peddled" (ban Ayn Rand?), that your own chosen leisure activities no redemptive value, or that some of your favorite brands are peddling lies by exaggerating their utility to you? Libertarians generally default to the position that just because something concerns or upsets them doesn't mean that it should be regulated by government. We are inherently skeptical of the effectiveness and unintended consequences of government intervention. I don't personally think your position is shameful or objectively wrong, but I do think that, aside from the liberty/individual responsibility issues involved, it ignores some very troubling slippery slope concerns and the elephant in the room of how your designs would be practicably enforced.

SB - You raise good points, and I'm basically in agreement with you that this is a more fundamental divide between competing values and philosophies (which my metaphor about carpeting the world or putting on shoes intended to illustrate). What I was referencing with my comment - perhaps inarticulately - was Kacy's apparent conclusion that there was something wrong or "sad" with how the group here felt psychics should be handled through government. I don't think Kacy is objectively wrong (although I personally wouldn't want to live in his society), and I didn't mean to suggest that specifically. My point was rather that if he wants to question anyone on this topic, he should be questioning why he alone holds his position in a group organized around a philosophy he claims to share.

Kacy, I don't mean this to be antagonistic, but why is your primary reaction that everyone on this board is wrong and your position is correct? Since you've said that you admire many of the posters here for their capacity for independent thought and reason, given the overwhelming consensus against you in this case, shouldn't your null hypothesis be that you are mistaken? I'm not advocating a popularlity contest of ideas, but I bring this up because I believe it underlies many of our disagreements and is indicative of some philosophical differences between you and SB and me.

Psychic readings may or may not be fraudulent. It depends both on intent of the psychic to deceive and whether the customer is a knowing and willing participant in the activity. Then there are the issues of extent of actual harm, how to prove that fraud occurred, and how to practically enforce the regulations you would like put in place. The progressive wants the entire world carpeted while the libertarian prefers to put on shoes. I'm not saying you're a Progressive in totality, but your position is indistinguishable from the progressive position in this case.

If there is no intent, then there is no fraud in a legal or moral sense. This is a critical distinction to make. So anyone who belongs to a church should logically be required to sign your paperwork as well? Is the popularlity of the belief system the metric? This seems dangerously close to infringing upon people's religious and economic liberties at the whim of an enlightened elite of policymakers who decide what truth is. In this specific scenario, you would be part of their top-down "consensus," but be warned that you would very likely find yourself on the receiving end of their policy stick in others. Paperwork and disclosure requirements are regulation. There are more direct ways of regulating the "profession," but it is regulation. Presumably then we'd need a government bureaucracy to enforce and process these new requirements, otherwise they'd be dead-letter law. While I might defer to you on certain military matters, I would suggest I might be a bit more familiar with how regulatory schemes take on a life of their own and become ends in themselves over time.

Brant - Faith and the supernatural are Kacy's pet issues. He's been talking about them for a long time and will be for a long time to come. For reasons SB and I may never understand, someone working part-time out of their apartment as a "psychic," harming only idiots who want to be harmed, receives the full force of Kacy's ire while the policymakers in Washington perpetrating massive economic frauds (e.g., bank bailouts, Keynesian stimulus) on all of us receive virtually none of his online time and energy.

There are a few separate but related issues here. The first is intent - is there an intent to defraud? Many psychics are so deluded that they actually believe they have supernatural abilities. As a practical matter, it's a frutless endeavor to try to distinguish those who fall into this category from those just trying to make an easy dollar. The second issue is proof - how do we prove that such people do not have supernatural ability? We can't, and that is precisely why a rational person recognizes that such claims are unscientific and shouldn't be trusted in the first place. In contrast, it's a relatively simple matter to prove that an unscrupulous businessman intended to water down his whiskey - just measure the whiskey and water content of the bottle. The third issue is whether it's consensual behavior or not. This is a gray area because, unlike the more common fraud cases, many of those who see psychics either want to be deceived or view the activity as a sort of recreation. Information-sharing (transparency) requirements are perhaps the least invidious type of regulation, but they should still only be enacted when necessary. I don't see a pressing need for regulation of psychics because the vast majority of these transactions seem to be consensual in the broader sense. The remaining cases involve a buyer that is so negligent in his or her own behavior and beliefs that the relatively minor come-uppance of being bilked a few bucks isn't something that requires sweeping state intervention. Besides the obvious First Amendment issues involved in regulating what is essentially a religious practice, any such regulation could be easily skirted simply by relabeling the business as spiritual counseling or moving it under the table.

I've long said that the United States has become a late-stage political kleptocracy, or bureaucratic spoils system if you prefer, but I view the institutionalized behavior as so different from petty criminal theft that it's not helpful to conflate the two activities. For example, I would never steal an item from a retail store (although a surprisingly large percentage of the population does this regularly) because I view it as individually destructive and unnecessary behavior, but I have no serious qualms about "getting mine" from the above-described system I view as fundamentally corrupted because the choice presented to me is "play or be played." One moral standard I do set for myself within this framework is not doing anything to make the existing system worse, and nudging it back in the right direction whenever I can within my limited capacity.

As a card carrying criminologist, I assure you that everyone steals. We justify or excuse it in different ways; and those of us who engage socially appropriate language get away with it. As for your more cogent point, yes, we have discussion here on OL about the fact that these studies are centered on university undegraduates in psychology who truly do not represent humanity. That said, though, read the original paper as cited in number 21 above. It deals not with humanity, but with Americans queried about political issues. Since none of "we" here on OL come from those other places - the highlands of Peru, New Guinea ... - the "we" is close enough to you and me. I suspect your definition of "stealing" is so broad that it covers many activities your average reasonable person wouldn't really consider "theft," such as taking a paper clip from work or failing to inform the cashier when a bottle of soda registers a lower price than it should. I think the pertinent meaning of the metaphor was sufficiently clear. In any case, my argument doesn't hinge on these particular studies being wrong - although they very well could be. My central point is that they aren't applicable to this particular speech, which is quite politically charged and not in any way "neutral."

I'm not going to defend Breitbart.com or this article, and I agree with most of Kacy's points in this instance. I do want to point out that Andrew Breitbart died in 2012 and is not synonymous with Breitbart.com or its current staff of columnists. I have heard some here defending Andrew Breitbart, the person, or such alternative media as Breitbart.com generally (and with many qualifiers), but I have not personally witnessed anyone engaging in a blanket defense of every columnist on Breitbart.com.

I don't know who this "we" is. Individuals all have their biases, but you have no solid basis upon which to claim that all of humanity acts uniformly on those biases. I think this is more an example of how a thief thinks everyone steals. Is this the text of the video that the OP was about??? This is what the kerfluffel was about??? Obama's statement isn't even close to being "neutral," as Michael implied it was. The purpose was to persuade, not to inform. The tone was argumentative, not objective. The central theme is politically controversial. I shouldn't have to point out that holding one's position out as "neutral" or "moderate" and labelling opponents as radical/fringe is a favored political exercise in social conditioning and goalpost shifting. See, for example, the Rally to Restore Sanity, where 95% of the crowd just happened to be liberals/Progressives, the conservative/libertarian Tea Party was almost exclusively targeted, and "moderation" was used in connection with such Progressive agenda elements as universal health care. So the clear implication is if you disagree with Jon Stewart, et al, you are not "sane." My question to attendees was, if universal healthcare - which Stewart regularly advocates on television - is a "moderate" position, then what would be the radical leftist position? I never did receive a coherent response to that question. There are recognizable Progressive talking points and ideas peppered throughout Obama's speech. If we are truly synonymous with our government, as he claims we are, then why would we need something like a Constitution of negative rights or separation of powers? It's also clear that he's characterizing attempts to scale back government as a malicious sabotage campaign (gumming up the works) rather than a legitimate difference of political and legal opinion. None of this is a "neutral" position and attempts to characterize it as such are not neutral either.

And just as importantly, prune them.

Well, not quite. No president held more than two terms for the first 150 years of its history. FDR, one of Obama's personal heroes, was the one who ended that century-and-a-half era of self-restraint, and it's no coincidence FDR presided over the largest expansion of federal power in history. The Bush wars were terrible mistakes, but I don't see them as a significant threat to the future of the United States per se. Globalism has essentially moved us past the age of conventional warfare between nation states. What exists now is a coalition of nations against scattered forces of international terrorism and rogue nations that pose our mainland no real danger. Restructuring the economy toward central planning and racking up gargantuan debt levels to fund social programs, on the other hand, is something that has a very real chance of wrecking our economy and culture for the very long-term future. We're much more likely to destroy ourselves economically than be militarily destroyed by another nation at this point.

A good argument for incremental scaleback. Keep shrinking government until we empirically determine the level at which it can't be shrunk any more. Unfortunately, the government organism, like any biological organism, is only practically capable of growing itself and reproducing.

In my birth state, there has been a concerted effort by Progressives to "ban the box" on employment forms, prohibiting employers from asking if you've ever been convicted of a crime. My main objection to this (besides the liberty interest of employers, which they don't recognize) is that doing so would deprive employers of highly relevant information. Even though the individual may have paid their legal penalty, the fact that they committed a crime still tells the employer something about that person. Remembering or considering something that somebody did isn't the same as "holding on" to it in an emotional sense. If somebody didn't return a dollar to you, that is highly relevant information that tells you something about that person. Forgiving usually has to do with emotional acceptance by the forgiver.

I don't dispute any of the substance of the paraphrased text. I still don't see the purpose in having lots of pictures of yourself and family around your home - you won't find any in mine, and I do consider that behavior to be a bit narcissistic, now that we mention it. I use the camera function on my phone quite a bit, but it's usually for utilitarian purposes. Like today I took a picture of a plant in my garden and asked the gardener if it's dying (it isn't - just seasonal). I have some photos on my Facebook page, but those are meant for others, not for me. I don't think any of the above is an indication of narcissism. None of it advances a position holding myself as more important than others. It could indicate a lack of open-mindedness or emotional intelligence - maybe - but that's not the same as being narcissistic If you're really straining to make a connection, I suppose failure to consider differences of opinion in general could be a sign of narcissism, but that argument requires a lot of backfilling.

Kacy, I hope you don't view this post as an an insult because I mean it as a word of explanation. As I clarified earlier, it wasn't quite fair for me to call your discussion group an echo chamber. You are correct that you don't literally surround yourself with liberal/progressive voices. I do, however, fully believe you prefer debating people who aren't as intellectually capable as you are to try to win the debate, as opposed to earnestly seeking truth. You have many fine qualities, but complacency is one quality I've found frustrating over the years. I don't perceive the same hunger for understanding and progression in you that I see in myself and in SB. I think this is why somebody in another thread called you a "troll" - I know you aren't and would defend you on that basis, but I can see why he might think that. As in chess, my belief is you need to be really challenged by others to gain understanding and move forward. For example, I wouldn't waste my time engaging many of the theists you used to regularly debate on the ICC because it wouldn't have been a challenge for me (it certainly wasn't for you). Most of my Facebook "friends" are liberals and I never bother commenting on the material they post because it's vacuous Obama cult-of-personality propaganda - what's the point in pointing out the obvious? I enjoy being exposed to new ideas and being challenged by others. That's my entertainment. I had a friend from law school visit this past weekend, and our two mutual friends spent the entire weekend with us, debating this and that, challenging each other. It was fun. They'd lampoon me at times, and I them. We call it the "free speech zone." Nobody's feelings were hurt. When I challenge you on a position or an inconsistency I perceive in your behavior, it's because I'm genuinely interested in hearing what you have to say about it. You've been blasting and insulting me since I arrived here, so can you really blame me for responding similarly? My offer to participate in your discussion group without reference to personal history or characteristics was in good faith.

Yes, but you don't count my opinion.

Kacy - I tried to look up your old whispersessions blog to find one of those pictures of you screaming at Isolani and holding a "F*** YOU" sign up for the camera. I know those photos were probably taken in jest, but I thought it would be funny to post it in response to your comment here. Your blog has since been deleted, so I wasn't able to find them. Such is the nature of things. However, in the course of that search, I did come across your old livejournal blog. After reading through a couple dozen of our old conversations, I just want to share something with you: even if you don't remember or deny it now, we had a lot of really good discussions back then. The level of discourse was high. Most of it wasn't acrimonious at all. The few threads I found that could be considered real arguments seemed to be under a mutual understanding that it was all in sport. Based on what I read today, I don't think I've significantly changed. My comments from back then read mostly the same as they do now, although some of my positions have evolved. I'm just wondering why you approach these discussions so differently now, with less patience, and what specifically it was that "set you off" with me.

I saw that interview as well. I agree with "quality" pioneer W. Edwards Deming (and I suppose with Matt Damon as well) that most people have an intrinsic motivation to perform valuable work, help others, and be recognized for doing so. It is undeniably true that people do things for reasons other than money. The most important aspects of having a job are the societal buy-in, socialization, and validation of the individual as having worth. But we also have to recognize that there are people out there who just want to putz around all day on the public dime, and they will do so if presented with the means and opportunity. Many individuals could turn either way, depending on the incentives-system with which they are confronted every day. So we need public incentives that encourage honest, value-adding behavior and discourage laziness and deceit. Some small-government types are surprised to learn that I want Stasi-like surveillance and control over people on public assistance by the state. Weekly job counseling, monitoring of their financial statements, auditing of their assets, controlling their thermostats if they receive heat assistance, forcing them to take classes on nutrition and financial planning, etc. I want this not because I harbor any malice towards such individuals, but because I want the incentives to properly align in the direction of getting people off of public assistance as soon as possible, as well as maintaining the integrity of the system. The most important public policy consideration, in my view, should be fostering a culture of public trust. A moral culture is vital to limited government because culture is the only way to get people to do the right thing when nobody else is watching (most of the time). If the public trust goes, everything goes to excrement. This is where I disagree with the progressive "technocrats" MSK mentions, who view everything as controllable, knowable, and quantifiable. Bribery by public officials, to take one example, does very little damage in terms of direct economic impacts. But the social costs are astronomical. As soon as people start seeing "the system" as corrupt, unfair, or illegitimate, they will immediately feel justified in carrying out all manner of abuses in their own lives. So where the progressive sees some sad sack scamming SSDI and says, "Eh, what's the harm, really? He's just one person and he's suffered enough. Let's turn a blind eye," I think that sort of fraud needs to be mercilessly stamped out, immediately, because it can have a snowballing effect on eroding public trust.

Thanks, Selene! This looks like a great place for discussion, and everybody except Kacy has been very friendly. I live in Arlington, on the border with Alexandria.

I wish I had the video in question. I have a feeling his presentation was not quite as hamfisted as you portray here. For one, I am sure "iron-age" is your own characterization. In any case, what I DO know is that neither RB or I chimed in with a mindless, "Yeah!", "You tell 'em, Pat", "Way to go!". Instead, as we usually do, we provided a nuanced explication of what we found to be valid in his presentation. You decided not to engage us, offering instead a response meant to shame and shut us down. Here is the video: <iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/sPX1wu0GFTI" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> Every individual point Robertson makes is reasonable (don't be quick to blame; it takes two to kindle romance; both should try to look nice for the other; ask what you might be doing wrong). What Robertson is guilty of in the video is presenting his points in a gruff, politically incorrect manner. He brings up the culturally forbidden topic of female appearance, suggests women should stay fit for their husbands, and so on, which is presumably what Kacy is referring to as an "iron-age ethic of patriarchy" (hardly). It's important to note that Robertson does not say that these principles do not hold equally true for men; he uses women in his discussion because that is the example he was presented with by the person who wrote in. Simply ask: if the roles in the anecdotes were reversed, and it were a fat, disheveled man asking for advice with getting his wife's attention, would there be any cultural taboo with addressing his appearance? Of course not, it would be totally fair game, and Kacy would be in full agreement with that. Unemployment is a next to meaningless metric for the reasons discussed earlier, so we can throw that out right at the outset. Nice for the politicians because it inevitably falls over a prolonged recession, but it doesn't really mean much in terms of economic health. What I would like to see presented in the news media is the number of people currently working over the total number of working-age individuals, expressed as a percentage figure and tracked over time. This would account for most of the problems with unemployment I list above. To my knowledge, nobody in the media follows or attempts to study figures like that.

Kacy, I don't dispute that the economy may be improving, which can itself mean different things to different people. However, here are some things you may wish to consider before using such numbers as an indication of economic growth: Individuals only receive unemployment benefits (jobless claims) for a fixed period of time (1-2 years) before they are kicked off of unemployment.Individuals who go on SSI/SSDI or other welfare programs are not counted in jobless claims numbers. The number of SSI/SSDI recipients has skyrocketed under the Obama administration, now over 5% of the working-age population, an all-time high.Individuals who find part-time work but wish to work full-time, are not counted in jobless claims numbers.Individuals who simply give up looking for work are not included in jobless claims numbers.Over any prolonged recession (e.g., 5 years), even if the economy simply remains stagnant, the jobless claims rate is destined to fall because of the way it is calculated. One particularly telling example is that Rhode Island's unemployment rate has decreased dramatically over the past 5 years from over 12% to around 9%. This has occurred while the number of working Rhode Islanders has significantly dropped. By any meaningful measure, the Rhode Island economy has actually gotten worse.