Kratoklastes

Hey there AriKatsaris... So we're move back up here now - with Katsaris the Morally-Unimpeachable taking full advantage of the highly-biased comment-response system (which prevents people from responding to Katsaris' gibberish directly unless they have sufficiently fellated the ruling clique here). And "downvoting without comment" - apart from being so babyish that it qualifies for child support - enables something of an attempt to control the dialogue.

Eventually we will get to he nub, which is that Katsaris the Morally-Unimpeachable thinks that the State is necessary (of course without ever having examined what his betters throughout history have thought about the issue - reading the literature is for lesser mortals): in other... (read more)

Yeah, so I'll just leave this here... (since in the best tradition of correct-line-ism, mention of 'correct line' cultism perpetrated the morally-omniscient Aris Katsaris results in... ad hoc penalisation by the aforementioned Islamophonbe and scared "China and Russia will divide and conquer Europe" irrational fearmonger).

Not only are you an economic ignoramus (evidenced by the fact that you had no idea what transitivity of preferences even MEANT until late December 2012) but you're also as dishonest as the numbskull who is the front-man for Scientology.

If you can't read English, then remedial language study is indicated: apart from that you're just some dilettante who thinks that he doesn't have to read the key literature... (read more)

It's you who put it in bold letters. Perhaps you should start not emphasizing sentences which aren't important ones.

A sentence can be important without being the complete rendition of one's views on a topic: you're being dishonest (again).

Seriously, if you spent as much mental effort on bringing yourself up to speed with core concepts as you do on misdirection and trying to be everyone's schoolmarm, the community (for which you obviously purport to speak) would be better off.

I note that you didn't bleat like a retarded sheep and nitpick the idea to which I was responding, namely that morality was about maximising global awesomeness (or some other such straight-line-to-tyranny). No... (read more)

Oh please... what sad, sophomoric nonsense. "Down-votes" are for children: In my entire life on the internet (beginning in 1993) I've never down-voted anything in my whole life - anywhere - because down-votes are for self-indulgent babies who are obsessed with having some miniscule, irrelevant punitive capacity. It's the ultimate expression of weakness.

Key point: if you have never read Coase - a fundamental (arguably the fundamental) contribution to the literature on nuisance-abatement in economics and the law - then you're starting from a handicap so great that you can't even participate sensibly in a discussion of the concept, because (here's the thing...) it starts with Coase. It would be like involving yourself... (read 394 more words →)

It's been some time since I checked the standard style manuals: is there really a stated style for emphasis in comments on the internet? It would not surprise me too much - there are a lot of people with too much time on their hands, who like telling others what to do (and the less important the sphere of endeavour, the more urgent the need to be boss of it). [Oh, and apologies in advance for not using em-dashes...]

As to whether you "d[id] that right", it depends. Reading it back to myself, it would appear not. Try all-caps on the bold bits and see if it makes sense hen you read it... (read more)

Again ArisKatsaris - the "correct-line-ometer" prevents me from responding directly to your comment (way to stifle the ability to respond, site-designers!). So I'ma put it here...

In short your description of what morality entails isn't sufficient, isn't complete

It was a comment - not a thesis, not a manifesto, not a monograph, and certainly not a "description of what morality entails".

To assert otherwise is to be dishonest, or to be sufficiently stupid as to expect a commenter's entire view on an important aspect of moral philosophy to be able to be transmitted in (roughly) 21 words (the bold bit at the end). Or to be a bit of both, I guess - if... (read more)

This one's for you, ArisKatsaris - the "correct-line-ometer" prevents me from responding directly to your response, so I'ma put it here.

I have checked what I wrote, and nowhere did I write that the (well understood) Coase-style arguments about how to ameliorate nuisances, had anything to do with morality. They are something that any half-decent second-year Economics student has to know, on pain of failing an important module in second-year Microeconomics: it would be as near to impossible as makes no odds, to get better than a credit for 2nd year Micro without having read and understood Coase. So if you think I made it up from whole cloth, I suggest you've missed... (read more)

Not generalising in the least: I'm a man of the people who interacts often with the common man - particularly the rustic and bucolic variety (from the Auvergne in Deepest Darkest France to the dusty hinterland of rural Victora and New South Wales).

Everywhere I've ever lived, I've had conversations about animals (most of which I've initiated, I admit - and most of them before I went veggie), with folks ranging from French eleveurs de boeuf to Melbourne barristers and stock analysts: their lack of awareness of the complexity of animal sense organs (and their ignorance of animal awareness research generally) is astounding.

It may well be that you've never met anybody who... (read more)

Do you seriously think that the Pledge of Allegiance (and other similar things) are not designed to indoctrinate? Let's go to the writings of the guy who penned the Pledge of Allegiance:

• "..the training of citizens in the common knowledge and the common duties of citizenship belongs irrevocably to the State." (emphasis mine)

The foundational aim of indoctrination is to get people when their minds are sufficiently plastic as to have few critical filters (i.e., in childhood) and to 're-wire' the plastic brain/mind with the indoctrinator's desired trope at the front. This is done by rote (church liturgies, pledges and so forth).

As elsewhere, you commit a logical fallacy: that the fact that you're unaware... (read more)