Politics Discussion Thread September 2012

Multiheaded

The last thread didn't fare too badly, I think; let's make it a monthly tradition. (Me, I'm more interested in thinking about real-world policies or philosophies, actual and possible, rather than AI design or physics, and I suspect that many fine, non-mind-killed folks reading LW also are - but might be ashamed to admit it!)

Quoth OrphanWilde:

Top-level comments should introduce arguments; responses should be responses to those arguments.
Upvote and downvote based on whether or not you find an argument convincing in the context in which it was raised. This means if it's a good argument against the argument it is responding to, not whether or not there's a good/obvious counterargument to it; if you have a good counterargument, raise it. If it's a convincing argument, and the counterargument is also convincing, upvote both. If both arguments are unconvincing, downvote both.
A single argument per comment would be ideal; as MixedNuts points out here, it's otherwise hard to distinguish between one good and one bad argument, which makes the upvoting/downvoting difficult to evaluate.
In general try to avoid color politics; try to discuss political issues, rather than political parties, wherever possible.

Let's try to stick to those rules - and maybe make some more if sorely needed.

Oh, and I think that the "Personal is Political" stuff like gender relations, etc also belongs here.

Quoth OrphanWilde:

Top-level comments should introduce arguments; responses should be responses to those arguments.
Upvote and downvote based on whether or not you find an argument convincing in the context in which it was raised. This means if it's a good argument against the argument it is responding to, not whether or not there's a good/obvious counterargument to it; if you have a good counterargument, raise it. If it's a convincing argument, and the counterargument is also convincing, upvote both. If both arguments are unconvincing, downvote both.
A single argument per comment would be ideal; as MixedNuts points out here, it's otherwise hard to distinguish between one good and one bad argument, which makes the upvoting/downvoting difficult to evaluate.
In general try to avoid color politics; try to discuss political issues, rather than political parties, wherever possible.

Let's try to stick to those rules - and maybe make some more if sorely needed.

Oh, and I think that the "Personal is Political" stuff like gender relations, etc also belongs here.

Liberals feel Poor people are too dumb to be trusted with money, but no liberal is allowed to say and/or think this.

Ouch. Careful; LW standards still apply here. I'd like to have this nice thread of mine, but this kind of shit can get it killed.

Everyone, please give the above comment 10 or so downvotes.

8buybuydandavis14y

Doubtless you could find people of all political persuasions who feel this way. I have some sympathy for it myself, but I'd still rather have idiots spend money on themselves than idiot bureaucrats spend the money supposedly for the benefit of other idiots. I saw some video with Milton Friedman where he walked through the various permutations of person A spending person's B money on person C, where to begin with A=B=C - you spend your money on yourself, and he slowly increased the distance of A,B, C in knowledge and caring, The farther you got from A=B=C, the less value C got per dollar spent. But I asked to get liberal opinions in particular because it just doesn't make sense to me, and they may be able to make sense of it without a paternalistic interpretation. Or, they may just endorse paternalism. Either, way, I'd consider it progress in understanding. One of the best posts recently was a liberal just asking libertarians why they favored what they did. What a great idea. It struck me that we rarely ask; we argue against instead. Thought I'd try something new.