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Conservatives VS Science VS Economics

Doug1943, think about tug-of-war. Democracy simply counts how many people are on both sides of the rope. Whichever side has the most people wins. But can this even be considered a contest? The people are just standing there holding the rope. It's a completely different story with markets. Markets solely measure how hard each side pulls. Whichever side pulls the hardest wins. It's definitely a contest.

Democracy is always tyranny of the majority. It's logically impossible for the minority to ever win. This isn't the case with markets. The minority can win, if it pulls harder than the majority. If the minority does pull harder... then it should win.

Every decision made by democracy should instead be made by markets. Let's take slavery for example.

When America was founded… both sides of the slavery debate would have pulled on the rope. How? By giving as much money as they wanted to the government. The government would have let the general public know how much money each side of the debate had spent/donated. Maybe we can reasonably guess that the proponents of slavery would have outspent the opponents. But everybody would have clearly seen and known the true and actual balance of power between both sides.

It’s hard to convey the benefit of seeing the actual balance of power. It really shouldn’t be that difficult though. It’s like the benefit of not having your head buried in the sand. Or the benefit of not seeing a distorted reflection of reality.

When the US was founded the opponents of slavery were few in number but perhaps they were extremely passionate about their cause. They would have been willing to donate a lot of money to the government. But the amount of money that the opponents were willing to donate probably wouldn’t have been more money than the proponents were willing to donate. Still though, nobody would have been able to overlook the fact that the opponents were willing to make such a big sacrifice for their cause. All the people on the sidelines would have thought, “Why do the opponents of slavery feel so strongly about it? What do they know that we do not?”

The neutral people would have decided that it was worth it to learn about the arguments against slavery. As a result, each year there would have been a lot less people on the sidelines. Each year the balance of power would have shifted more in favor of the opponents of slavery.

Way before the Civil War was fought, more money would have been spent by the opponents of slavery. Would there have been any point to fighting a civil war? Nope. All wars are a contest of strength. The entire point of war is to reveal which side is the strongest. This means that there’s absolutely no point in fighting a war when everyone knows exactly how strong each side truly is. How people had divided their money between both sides of the slavery debate would have accurately revealed how power was divided between the two sides. So it would have been entirely pointless to fight a civil war.
 
Soopairik: Absolutely. One of my best and oldest friends is a Presbyterian socialist. I know many atheist or agnostic conservatives. There's a rough correlation between religious beliefs and political beliefs, but only very rough. You won't find many hardcore conservatives among the congregations of Black churches, or among militant Muslims.
However I do know some people personally who are conservative due to their Christian values, they tell me.
 
Yikes ... that's an interpretation of libertarianism that I haven't come across before. I don't quite follow your proposal there, but in any case it's now a moot point. Where slavery still exists -- in Africa and parts of the Muslim world -- they're not interested in how it might be abolished.

Let me return to how I think 'conservatism' ought to be thought of:

Liberalism is a bit more complex, but I think it's easy to identify the psychological roots of the conservative disposition: roughly speaking, it's suspicion of/discomfort with/an aversion to change, especially change driven by ideology. There are obvious biological/evolutionary roots to this: those of your ancestors who were too incautious in checking out a new possible food source, or going into a location that was new to them, had a lower survival rate than their more 'conservative' colleagues. Of course, there is a trivial use of the word 'conservative' also: Thus even people of a liberal political leaning may say they have 'conservative' tastes in music. But it's a cautious-shading-into-negative attitude towards proposals to improve the human condition, especially when achieved through coercive state power, that marks people known as 'conservatives'.

At the formal intellectual level, ideological conservatism (actually a contradiction in terms, but you will know what I mean) comes from a belief (or, more likely in most cases, an intuitive feeling) that we actually don't understand the complex workings of human society very well ... at least not well enough to propose abrupt radical changes in it according to some theory, or some belief in a set of 'rights'. "Make haste slowly" would be a good credo for conservatives.

You want democracy? Then better a slow extension of the franchise, keeping traditional institutions (like the monarchy, if you have one) in place while perhaps gradually restricting their power, than a radical overnight upheaval that suddenly makes millions of illiterate superstition-ridden peasants "citizens" and provokes a bloody civil war. Britain vs France, and, as you no doubt know, the father of conservatism in the sense I'm using the term here was a Briton, Edmund Burke.

Thus I suspect most conservatives would have advised that de-colonizing Africa should have been carried out in a very different way than it was, whereas liberals ... well, I'm not sure if liberals are happy with the outcome in Africa, but since most American liberals and conservatives just avert their eyes from the never-ending bloody shambles there, I don't know.

A couple of points to qualify the above: you can argue that conservatives feel this way because they're just protecting their power and privileges. I'm sure there is some truth to that, whether or not you think said power and privileges are illegitimate. If you want to discuss individual motivations, though, that's a different argument. The psychological origins of both good ideas and bad ideas can always apparently be traced to motivations, if you want to perform that exercise. You can do the same for liberals. Whether or not your linkage can be tested though, is another matter. (I've noticed that most libertarians tend to be well-educated, intelligent young white males, well placed to compete in the modern American economy without state help. That is, their ideology just happens to be one which will, if it worked, enhance their personal income. But so what? The ideas must still be engaged with.)

So we still have to decide whether the ideas of conservatism are good or bad, in themselves. Also: conservatives seem to more susceptible to nationalist/patriotic sentiment than liberals or libertarians, for whatever reason. Perhaps this stems from their not believing as much in the 'kindness of strangers' as liberals seem wont to do, while being more 'tribal' in their basic emotions than either liberals or libertarians. (I think this has both good and bad sides, by the way. It would be wonderful if we could dispense with national states and armies etc altogether ... but we can't, not yet. People cannot jump over their own heads.)

Now what are the ideas of conservative people, their 'ideal society'? I don't think they're that much different from anyone else's in a modern society. If anyone is interested in pursuing this in depth, examine the writings of Jonathan Haidt, who has looked closely at the core values of both conservatives and liberals. But at the end of the day, we all want everyone to be able to sit under his own vine and fig tree, with none to make him afraid. And if we can figure out how to get better vines and more figs without more effort, so much the better.

Libertarianism next.
 
Doug1943, which part of my argument did you not follow? Do you need me to put my argument in Biblical terms so that you can follow it?

"For God so loved the world, that he voted for it."

Is that how the Bible verse goes? No it doesn't. Because if it did, nobody would be a Christian. It would not at all be significant or meaningful or noteworthy that God simply voted for the world. This is simply because voting doesn't have a cost. What does have a cost is sacrifice....

"For God so loved the world, that he sacrificed his only son for it."

This sacrifice was extremely costly. This is what makes it significant and meaningful and noteworthy. This is why so many people are Christians. God was willing to exchange his son for the world...

World > Son

Do you follow all of this? Do you appreciate the big and obvious difference between voting and spending?
 
SirGareth: While there is obvious truth in noting that 'government work', which doesn't have to face the test of market competition (they never go broke, they just raise our taxes), has some serious limitations ... I think you are overreaching when you condemn all government-employed, or government-grant-receiving scientists as just 'bureaucrats'. And this will weaken your argument.

Let me give some counter-examples: NASA, and its work. Not the result of private enterprise, but a government project. Now I'm overjoyed to see private enterprise entering the 'space race'. But ... it's just not factually true to say that all the research and development done by government prior to the founding of these companies was just useless. In fact, if private enterprise had had to develop liquid-fueled rockets from scratch, I doubt very much we'd be where we are today.

But let me give you a stronger example. I can name eight great scientists, all of whose work was done while they were government employees.

Here they are:

Nikolai Basov
Pavel Cherenkov
Ilya Frank
Pyotr Kapitsa
Lev Landau
Aleksander Prokhorov
Nikolai Semyonov
Igor Tamm

Now we can certainly make the observation that the old Soviet Union, with all of its great scientists and mathematicians, could turn very little of their discoveries into new products. Genuine socialism, where the state owns everything, has shown itself to be a disaster at producing things, where you need a market to send price signals. But ... it's simply false-to-fact to assert that scientists working for the state -- even the most overbearing, totalitarian state you can imagine -- will never discover anything of value.
 
In the Environment subforum, there're a handful of devote and self worth vested deniers of various sort. Blog spam, self journal educated, flat-out CT vs the scientific and academic community... they got it all and you're a sucker.

ummmm.....

I am now aware of your highly educated scientifically incisive input in that section much.
 
I am not smart/scientifically-educated enough to form my own opinion about 'global warming', but when I want to read an intelligent 'denier' side, I look at this website.
 
ummmm.....

I am now aware of your highly educated scientifically incisive input in that section much.

MSc International Environmental Science. But, hey, one could always go with someone claiming to read journal articles, while lacking the education to understand them, and rejecting/reinventing conclusions. Or the blog spam.
 
MSc International Environmental Science. But, hey, one could always go with someone claiming to read journal articles, while lacking the education to understand them, and rejecting/reinventing conclusions. Or the blog spam.

You will have to excuse my skepticism but lots of people claim to have lots of qualifications on the internet and it turns out that they don't have such things as a degree in atmospheric physics.

So just to provide some evicence can you tell my why the jet stream moves as quickly as it does, what causes it? Thanks.
 
I am more than a little confused by this thread. But, if the gist is "what has government (taxes and politicians) ever done for you?" I can just point to the road you are about to drive on as proof that it does a lot.

It's paved, it gets repaired, salted and has lines painted on it. It also has traffic lights, signs, speed limits and cops to ensure everyone reasonably obeys all of the above, so you arrive to work in one piece.
 
I am more than a little confused by this thread. But, if the gist is "what has government (taxes and politicians) ever done for you?" I can just point to the road you are about to drive on as proof that it does a lot.

It's paved, it gets repaired, salted and has lines painted on it. It also has traffic lights, signs, speed limits and cops to ensure everyone reasonably obeys all of the above, so you arrive to work in one piece.

Just big article in NYTimes about how NYC pays 5 times world price per mile for digging tunnels. Soviet govt can do many things but at such high prices that it impoverishes the population. Now you know why USSR had 20% of our standard of living?
 
I am more than a little confused by this thread. But, if the gist is "what has government (taxes and politicians) ever done for you?" I can just point to the road you are about to drive on as proof that it does a lot.

It's paved, it gets repaired, salted and has lines painted on it. It also has traffic lights, signs, speed limits and cops to ensure everyone reasonably obeys all of the above, so you arrive to work in one piece.

Water is very useful, unless you're literally drowning in it. The issue isn't supplying the roads, it's optimally supplying the roads. Do you truly believe that the Visible Hand can optimally supply roads?
 
Water is very useful, unless you're literally drowning in it. The issue isn't supplying the roads, it's optimally supplying the roads. Do you truly believe that the Visible Hand can optimally supply roads?

Well, we can make all roads private and charge tolls. I guess we can demand all users show their credit cards before getting on one. Why not add the credit card requirement to getting an ambulance or fire truck sent to the house? Cops too. No credit card, no service.
 
Well, we can make all roads private and charge tolls. I guess we can demand all users show their credit cards before getting on one. Why not add the credit card requirement to getting an ambulance or fire truck sent to the house? Cops too. No credit card, no service.

The issue really isn't one of private versus public. It's simply a matter of who determines how the money is distributed. Should the money be distributed by A. the people who actually earned it or by B. elected representatives? My best guess is that taxpayers should have the opportunity to decide for themselves how their tax dollars are used.
 
The issue really isn't one of private versus public. It's simply a matter of who determines how the money is distributed. Should the money be distributed by A. the people who actually earned it or by B. elected representatives? My best guess is that taxpayers should have the opportunity to decide for themselves how their tax dollars are used.

We do--by electing representatives. I'm not sure 350 Million people would fit inside a meeting room.
 
We do--by electing representatives. I'm not sure 350 Million people would fit inside a meeting room.

Who told you that voting is the best way to determine?
 
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didn't Hitler Stalin Mao Castro FDR Obama, the statists, already test this for us?

They did, but for some reason we still have the Visible Hand in the public sector.
 
lol...you prefer what--a ruling elite chosen by birth, cronyism, a lottery?

Imagine a dog show. Think about the dogs being physically arranged according to usefulness…

Expert Hand: the dogs are arranged by expert judges.

Democratic Hand: the dogs are arranged by voters.

Invisible Hand: the dogs are arranged by spenders.

There's obviously more than one system that can be used to arrange the dogs. But can there be more than one best system?
 
They did, but for some reason we still have the Visible Hand in the public sector.

I think the reason is we have millions of liberals who don't have the IQ to use reason. Sad
 
Imagine a dog show. Think about the dogs being physically arranged according to usefulness…

Expert Hand: the dogs are arranged by expert judges.

Democratic Hand: the dogs are arranged by voters.

Invisible Hand: the dogs are arranged by spenders.

There's obviously more than one system that can be used to arrange the dogs. But can there be more than one best system?

Best dogs are mutts. They are healthy, friendly and live forever but usually cost nothing, receive no votes and are rejected by "experts." OTOH, the worst dogs are pure breds. They are sick so often that they are a veterinarian's wet dream, cranky and dead by age-10. But yet, spenders spend on them, experts adore them and voters can't resist voting for them.

Point being...what are you looking for?
 
The reality is that we currently allow a small group of people (politicians) to spend a huge chunk of everybody’s money (taxes). This is the Visible Hand. Except, where’s the scientific support for the Visible Hand? There is none.

Ummm.....yeah actually it's right here....

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nash_equilibrium

https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/quality-of-life-rankings

The Nash Equilibrium demonstrates that individuals making choices in their own best interest rarely achieve optimal results.

Studying the various economic systems of nations around the world shows us that countries with better social safety nets tend to have an overall better quality of life.
 
The Nash Equilibrium demonstrates that individuals making choices in their own best interest rarely achieve optimal results.

.

so freedom does not work after all and we need libNazi elites making our decisions for us?
 
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