Greece too

[anthony]

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/10041/greece-crisis

[anthony]

 

Stefan Molyneux in fine form.

[william.scherk]

"The migrant crisis is an immorality crisis."

Rooted in the welfare state.

Welfare is greatest in the self-betraying northern European states. Any cause could have done to trigger such enormous flows of people, since somewhat stilled by agreement between Turkey and the EU?

"It's the honey that brings the bear."

Welfare states, again, the lands of milk and honey (and, perhaps, justice).  

"Close the borders ... buy some time."

There is a time to reflect for Europe. Think on the slippery slope to socialism of the welfare state.

"Restore the family."  Er, doesn't that go against your teachings on De-Fooing? Nevermind, you can't hear me.

"Migrant-attracting dungeons of permanent underclasses in society."  Whoo-hoo.  Do you get out much in Toronto?

"Created a horde."  Muslim invasion Bingo.

"Europe is dead." Carrion are eating its body. Under the C  for Carrion.

"A man's wallet is his castle."  Yes, in the perfect Iibertarian world. Meanwhile, you pay your taxes to several layers of sap-suckers, Stef. Same as the hellhole t'other side of the Atlantic.

 

The welfare state was wrought to satisfy the ladies. The sexual revolution was fine in Sweden but uh-oh, now your children are doomed to a helhole. Why?  Grrrrr. The bad bad ladies.  If their vaginas would just get back to the work of civilization ...

"99.95 of Swedish children grow up in day-care."  Yoiks. Finally we get to the bedrock of the argument -- Swedish ladies (as stand in for European women and Stef's cold hearted mother) make Stefan a bit bitter.  They delivered their children to the devil and now immigrants are eating their corpses likes snakes. Or something.  It is all an incipient or present sucking black hellhole. I think he needs to leave his apartment more.
 

Grade ... C.  Stefan continues to show improvement in ranting in front of a wall. It must be hard work to maintain an audience via Youtube. You have to talk a lot. When was the last time you walked about in the sun,  or listened to someone that wasn't, well, you?

I grant him half a point for the obvious:  at the local level (back home) neighbours may be at the limit of hosting migrant/refugee people.  In a war zone, obviously, welfare state services decline in areas outside state control. And it is true in a translucently obvious sense that a rich country (like Canada, where Stefan has his bunker) will be a 'magnet' for 'migrants,' particularly when a rule of law and Western individual rights are firmly entrenched. Add savage conditions  'back home,' stir, and serve.

But he didn't make those points, so I take the half point back. 

I do recall how much havoc this guy caused when he was operating as family-relations counsellor-leader on the internet, before he became what passes for a public intellectual.

What I hate about his rants is he never shuts up, in the sense of entertaining an obvious retort, challenging himself. It smells like a preacher commanding the pulpit, at least a guru, where no discussion takes place while the Leader is talking. And the Leader is lazy, housebound, and self-dramatizing.  Blech.

Here, I don't' know how to squeeze a discussion out of the 16 minutes of emotionalism I just listened to.

 

-- I note  the topic opener is a cryptic 'Greece too.' Greece too what?  Why should I bother clicking the link to the Gatestone institute ... could it be another Muslim Hordes tirade?  If so, howzabout a helpful summary or excerpt, agree with it or not?

http://random-non-linkto.site.MuslimInvasion.com

[anthony]

I think of Molyneux's "emotionalism" above as the passion of principle. A fitting emotion, like when seeing precious values fade way and their general, gutless, convictionless, self-sacrifice by Europeans - is right and proper - not "emotionalism". I fully agree, and have been ranting similarly against Western skepticism for some time. It is ~they~ who've mostly reduced themselves to emotionalism, on Left and Right in Europe. 

You'll have to do better than innuendo and ad-hom's to tackle SM (on the Welfarist topic anyhow) William..

No,Greece's problems and the article go wider than refugees, and while different in some ways to other countries - i.e. Holland -  is underneath, same-old, same old. You have to be very strong, morally and economically, to accomodate outsiders' troubles and render aid/comfort. Greece is weak on both. And has both Erdogan and Merkel putting the screws on it. Germany began hugely stronger, but is in the process of weakening itself, I think. So much for guilt and the Welfare State.

[william.scherk]

Stefan too ... ten years ago.

Not so fast, Mr Talk.

 

Edited March 19, 2017 by william.scherk
Is Stefan really talking to you? Loup Gourou, loup garou, loop guru.

[anthony]

A classic case of the cynic debating the 'valuer'. And the empiricist who only knows conceptualism as "reductionism". That's P. Joseph's often repeated word..

Molyneux appears to fit the pure free market-economy tradition: no interference in the market and in our lives. Joseph can see only game theory and pragmatic survivalism and employs superior-sounding jargon. He is no laissez-faire Capitalist, imo., and probably a smarmy piece of work (but that's gratuitous of me).

This is all you got, William?

We have a game called Rugby (you will have seen in Canada). You incur a penalty for tackling any player who does not have the ball - unlike American Football where anybody may tackle ("block") anyone. You must play the ball only. Or in objective argument - the idea alone, on its own merit, regardless of who's "carrying" it.

Trying to character assassinate your opponent who says things you don't like against State Welfare is no argument for State Welfare. Foul! Tweeet!

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

23 minutes ago, anthony said:

This is all you got, William?

Tony,

Actually, there is a cottage industry in our subcommunity of bitching about Stefan Molyneux.

In my view, he says many good things, some so-so and a few not so good (he's made some mistakes along the way, but who hasn't?).

I like to focus on the good stuff.

Also, people love to denigrate someone successful who made it on their own. Now that he is being mentioned in higher places within the pro-Trump mainstream culture, it is open season on him.

Agree or disagree with Molyneux, I admire him for what he built.

Michael

[william.scherk]

Tony, I am not a fan of Stefan Molyneux. I gave a listen and took some notes. He talks too much, is too much of  guru for me, and he is not able to profit from debates -- as with the 'nasty piece of work.'

The audio was from ten years ago, I thought it was revealing. 

I don't endorse or reject the arguments made by 'nasty.'  I included them to ensure another side was heard from on the argumentative ploys used by Stefan.  That he mischaracterized and distorted the other guy's argument is no surprise to me.  I have been watching him over the years.

That Stefan's Swedish references were overblown, hastily reasoned and contained appeals to emotion, is just my opinion. I don't think of this guy as a go-to thinker on any given issue, as others may.  The power of social media means a lot of people are stuck to their screens, sucking up this guru's wisdom on multiple matters. I don't have to be one of them.  I don't trust this guy.

-- to the subject of classic laissez-faire, I'd take him more seriously if he moved past a Youtube cult, got out more, ran for office on a plank of disassembling the state. That he acts as a doctor of morality to judge Yurp, to indicate its doom, from his Canadian bunker, is to me ridiculous.

Get out of the social media loop loop, Stefan. Run for mayor.  Write a book. Don't get so en-siloed that you never face challenge.

Anywhere, welfare state.  A large target and a large enemy, an entrenched one. I understand a moral revulsion or philosophical rejection. That is an Objectivish given. You do not represent the welfare state. I do not represent the welfare state. It represents itself. Neither you nor I have taken up bats against it, except at the ballot box, a few marches and letter-writing campaigns, assorted political donations and in-kinds, as well as loads of commentary on social media (eg, OL).

 

[anthony]

Jeez, William: One can have strong thoughts - without having to run for mayor. I rather believed that was the object of making one's own website-blog-tube thingy, expanding your range of audience and maybe persuading some to a saner(?) p.o.v. while inviting contrary opinions which one candidly considers. How does one "trust" anyone, come to think of it? Trust involves only their honesty on the facts, the truth of which eventually must emerge. It has become very hard to lie outright today.  It is their ~evaluating~ of facts, which different folks base on their own varied principles, which is instantly disagreeable or acceptable, to you or me, and that doesn't require trust. One has similar principles to someone, or has not.

I'm not too sure he mischaracterized Joseph, btw. A few quibbles about reductionism (let's say, over-simplification) which Joseph objected to in rebuttal, does not make Joseph right. This is the type of glancing collision which happens when two debaters have a completely different epistemology and sets of principles. It's usually fruitless. We would have to break down both arguments to their value-premises and reasoning to find out who was 'right'..

To add, Molyneux doesn't at all seem the ivory-tower type to me. There is quite a bit of hands-on experience I detect, but I haven't seen that much of his videos.

[william.scherk]

 

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

On 3/19/2017 at 5:28 PM, anthony said:

To add, Molyneux doesn't at all seem the ivory-tower type to me. There is quite a bit of hands-on experience I detect, but I haven't seen that much of his videos.

Tony,

I don't know what Molyneux will think of the the following (and since I don't know him, I don't know why I even say that  ), but this is how I see him within the context of modern culture.

It is very easy to publish stuff these days due to the Internet. That means video, too. 

And that means people can work through ideas in public instead of going through a more difficult process of satisfying gatekeepers of public discourse. In the past, if you didn't satisfy the gatekeepers, you didn't get a public voice. Period.

Nowadays, anyone can publish, so people have become unshackled from gatekeeper thought control. But on the downside of this new reality, they also have become unshackled from the standards gatekeepers imposed and some of those standards were good.

That means a person who hasn't yet fully formed thinking on an issue is free to publish his or her incomplete thinking and adopt a guru tone of presentation. So instead of openly stating that ideas are being worked through (like I try to keep evident on OL), a person is free to preach--as fact and in a tone of certainty--what he is still learning and thinking about. This, to me, is what Molyneux has done a lot.

And since nothing disappears from the Internet, this gives a field day to folks who value gotcha as their major form of intellectual interaction and discourse. A person working through ideas will change over time and earlier statements will contradict later ones. A person like Molyneux is prolific, so just his work alone has given a lifetime of jollies for the gotcha folks.  

Since my approach is different (my general default is to value the wise insight in messages, not the gotcha), I see a plethora of things Molyneux says that are good. I can see him working through ideas, so it's easy for me to discard his misfires, especially his early ones, as not very important. And I can see him within the context of the broader culture: he is one of the persuasive agents helping to move the Overton Window toward freedom on a host of issues that intellectual gatekeepers would prefer to eliminate from public discourse.

That doesn't mean I consider Molyneux a deep thinker. He's not. But he's not shallow, either. He works hard and studies hard. He's a good public communicator of complex ideas. And he's a public simplifier of complex issues (and current affairs) using a manner that leans toward getting the facts right before applying ideology. I resonate with that method (identify correctly, then judge). That's probably why I am not fooled by his guru tone as bearer of The Truth, but instead see his underbelly as seeker of understanding with ideas still in formation.

(Oddly enough, I see this same quality with some lefties, too. For instance, The Young Turks folks are good at defending freedom of speech and pushing aside cultural and ideological gatekeepers by developing a public voice base on getting the facts right first, even though I disagree with most of their ideology and evaluations of those facts. That's why I post their videos sometimes.)

I have watched a spattering of Molyneux videos and, in my opinion, as time goes on, his understanding of issues has gotten deeper (how could it not?), but his overbearing snarky tone has gotten worse. So it's always a chore for me to see him. It's like fingernails scratching across a blackboard that has some information I value on it and a few things I dismiss. 

But one thing nobody can deny is that Molyneux's form of presentation works for getting and keeping a large audience. He definitely does something communicative and valuable for a lot of people. I like that in him.

Also, he tends to piss off the right people. I like that, too.

 

Michael

[william.scherk]

... the words squeezed out of the video ...

 

 

[anthony]

"...it just frustrates me that if people had listened to Iran regarding the welfare state or to militant Friedman..."

Haha! William, wow, what a wonky software transliteration. 

Of course Molyneux actually said: "...if people had listened to Ayn Rand...or to Milton Friedman..."

;) "Iran", huh?!