*** The Official MAGAposting thread ***

[wufwugy]

Should companies then, being private citizens, be able to refuse hiring people based on e.g. their skin color or sexual orientation? Or if they do hire them, should they be allowed to treat them differently, such as pay them less, make them work longer hours, block them from management and executive jobs etc? I suppose government agencies, not being private citizens, should not be allowed to follow these practices? What about partly government owned or overseen private entities?

Private companies should be allowed to do any of that. Government ones should not. Ones with a mix of government and private should not as well.

If you're interested, I can explain why I believe this results in less wrongful discrimination than otherwise.

[CoccoBill]

Private companies should be allowed to do any of that. Government ones should not. Ones with a mix of government and private should not as well.

If you're interested, I can explain why I believe this results in less wrongful discrimination than otherwise.

I think I understand what you deem to be the mechanisms for that, and I'm not denying they have an effect, I just have strong reservations about them being the whole picture. Just as with the Minority Rule, it may be easy to confuse one identified mechanism to be the sole effecting mechanism.

[wufwugy]

I think I understand what you deem to be the mechanisms for that, and I'm not denying they have an effect, I just have strong reservations about them being the whole picture. Just as with the Minority Rule, it may be easy to confuse one identified mechanism to be the sole effecting mechanism.

I would say that when a system of humans has more individual liberty, that system has a more robust trial and error function.

[CoccoBill]

I would say that when a system of humans has more individual liberty, that system has a more robust trial and error function.

Wouldn't it be preferable to skip some of those errors if we've already identified them?

[wufwugy]

Wouldn't it be preferable to skip some of those errors if we've already identified them?

Absolutely, yet there is a catch: unintended consequences. Any system of sustainable error solving has to also solve the unintended consequences, most of which are not known or identified (hence unintended) at the time of implementation. The best functioning system is then not one that solves for errors given current knowledge and the current status, but solves for errors given future/potential knowledge and future/potential status. A system that sustainably solves problems isn't one that applies a known solution to a known problem; instead, it uses a known function to solve unknown problems, roughly speaking.

[CoccoBill]

Absolutely, yet there is a catch: unintended consequences. Any system of sustainable error solving has to also solve the unintended consequences, most of which are not known or identified (hence unintended) at the time of implementation. The best functioning system is then not one that solves for errors given current knowledge and the current status, but solves for errors given future/potential knowledge and future/potential status. A system that sustainably solves problems isn't one that applies a known solution to a known problem; instead, it uses a known function to solve unknown problems, roughly speaking.

Agreed, the system needs to be self-correcting. It's just that I'm unconvinced that the market forces, in effect evolution, is the most efficient solution in all cases. The correcting effect of trial and error is limited, in most cases just to the one making the error and some of those immediately around him, if even that, but certainly not the whole population at once. For every error that "makes it to the news" there are thousands that don't. This means the same errors are made over and over again before they become "known".

Combining the trial and error process with predetermined (but dynamic, that is, the performance of which are regularly measured and adjusted when necessary) rules for known errors would give the best of both worlds. To me it's just not sufficient, that issues that have been around for hundreds of years under the influence of market forces without having been fixed, might be fixed at some point in the future.

I have another response to this.

I don't know what exactly the errors are or exactly how to solve them. The same is true for everybody else. Policy doesn't derive from hard facts and hard science (because those don't exist within the domains of sociology). When somebody says that they know what is best for society, they're arrogant or confused or both.

I say that I don't know what is best for others because, regarding their unique and close circumstances, I have less information (and less skin in the game) than they do. The policy of letting people have liberty over their lives is fundamentally different than the policy of dictating over them, because the former is saying that I don't know what is best for the world while the latter is saying that I do.

It's certainly preposterous to claim to know the right answers to everything, but the same goes for claiming all answers are unknowable. We know perfectly well the answers to many questions, and not using that knowledge to patch the known errors seems folly. I'm all for maximizing liberties, but that does not extend to actions that affect other people's liberties.

Do you think killing and stealing should be legal?

[wufwugy]

Combining the trial and error process with predetermined (but dynamic, that is, the performance of which are regularly measured and adjusted when necessary) rules for known errors would give the best of both worlds.

Do the predetermined rules have unintended consequences?

To me it's just not sufficient, that issues that have been around for hundreds of years under the influence of market forces without having been fixed, might be fixed at some point in the future.

I wouldn't mind discussing a specific issue you have in mind.

[wufwugy]

It's certainly preposterous to claim to know the right answers to everything, but the same goes for claiming all answers are unknowable.

When dealing with the non-experimental, answers are certainly knowable, yet nobody knows how to know them.

We know perfectly well the answers to many questions, and not using that knowledge to patch the known errors seems folly. I'm all for maximizing liberties, but that does not extend to actions that affect other people's liberties.

Do you think killing and stealing should be legal?

Killing/stealing what? Who? When? How? Who gets to decide what the parameters are?

My view is that "wrong" is the initiation of violence or fraud. Ultimately, a society is made up of a collection of persons who determine some mainstream view of how to regulate what is "wrong". My protest is when initiation of violence is used (tax based monopolies) to regulate. Laws are really, really great stuff, but laws that are funded by initiation of violence are not the kind of laws that I think people would choose if they could freely choose.

[wufwugy]

Wouldn't it be preferable to skip some of those errors if we've already identified them?

I have another response to this.

I don't know what exactly the errors are or exactly how to solve them. The same is true for everybody else. Policy doesn't derive from hard facts and hard science (because those don't exist within the domains of sociology). When somebody says that they know what is best for society, they're arrogant or confused or both.

I say that I don't know what is best for others because, regarding their unique and close circumstances, I have less information (and less skin in the game) than they do. The policy of letting people have liberty over their lives is fundamentally different than the policy of dictating over them, because the former is saying that I don't know what is best for the world while the latter is saying that I do.

[MadMojoMonkey]

When somebody says that they know what is best for society, they're arrogant or confused or both.

I agree, but I don't agree.

We both think that a free market is best for society. We both think that maximizing individual freedoms is best for society.
We probably both agree that neither of these is without its flaws and difficulties, but that they are still the best of what's around.

The policy of letting people have liberty over their lives is fundamentally different than the policy of dictating over them, because the former is saying that I don't know what is best for the world while the latter is saying that I do.

Nice.

[oskar]

He didn't create the policy.

Wrong and irrelevant. Not wasting my time on the rest. The policy to separate every single child from their parent is part of Trumps zero tolerance policy. Irrelevant because I'm not a brainwashed cult member who would think that it was ok if Obama did it. You thinking that that would have any influence in how I feel about it speaks volumes about your mindset.