Organized Labor

[boost]

Renton, I'm being "snarky" because you've adopted this absurd libertarian position that only works in the fantasy in your head.

The Omni trifecta is necessary for your dream to work. Fisheries will not always have fish. This is evidenced in once bountiful species heading towards extinct. You know what's slowed this down? Regulation. Unless we have the Omni's or we net off the entirety of the ocean (which clearly would actually exacerbate the issue), this is a prime example of a place where an absolute free market does not work.

And no, I will not agree with your claim that the private sector would better handle the national park system. This is one of those aspects of society in which the libertarian pulls the faith argument. I won't allow it here. Show me a business model that both exceeds long term performance of conventional resource gathering, and produces a park which comes even close to the awesomeness which we have today. Otherwise GTFO with "the market will figure it out."

[Renton]

Renton, I'm being "snarky" because you've adopted this absurd libertarian position that only works in the fantasy in your head.

OK I'm gonna shift gears here a little, and then I'm finished because no one is getting anywhere with this.


I was discussing debate with a friend of mine (as in the concept of debate) the other day. I was expressing my dismay that no one ever convinces the other of anything during a debate, and that a debate can easily be won by someone who is wrong, so long as he used superior debate tactics, or at least shouted louder and stepped up his ad hominem game. My friend told me that its useless do debate with someone you strongly disagree with, unless its in a relaxed environment with mutual respect.


So I thought we had a relaxed environment and mutual respect here, otherwise I wouldn't bother. But when you call my position "absurd" and a "fantasy in my head," even as I have clearly delineated examples and logic to back up every claim, it calls that into question. A respect deficit has occurred, without a doubt.


Now, I'm not butt-hurt about it. I actually quite understand. Believe me, I get it that everything I say flies in the face of your entire world view. I am really reluctant to argue such a radical view as privatizing rivers with someone that isn't even with me on the most basic of levels. That's why I didn't want to discuss it in this thread as I thought we were actually getting somewhere with organized labor (maybe we weren't).


Trying to convince you of something like this is an exercise in futility. It's like how atheists debate Ray Comfort over evolution/creation. Forgive the crass analogy, but I think it fits. Your economic belief system (and formerly mine), like creationism, is drilled into nearly every person on the planet from a very young age. I think the indoctrination for statism and even socialism is far far stronger than for christianity for people in the U.S. Especially for someone who grew up near Chicago. It takes major catharsis and often a total identity crisis to shed views like this. I'm just asking you to examine your views logically.

[a500lbgorilla]

I was discussing debate with a friend of mine (as in the concept of debate) the other day. I was expressing my dismay that no one ever convinces the other of anything during a debate, and that a debate can easily be won by someone who is wrong, so long as he used superior debate tactics, or at least shouted louder and stepped up his ad hominem game. My friend told me that its useless do debate with someone you strongly disagree with, unless its in a relaxed environment with mutual respect.

It's like how one man could look at a rare steak and remember a fond date, another could see the craftsmanship of the cook, another the devastation of a sovereign animal, another the nutrition of the flesh. Everyone can look at the world in various ways and see wholly different views. If I am not commited to understanding your view point enough to satisfactorily describe it to you, debate and argument devolve. And when were talking about the underlying nature of human trade and behavior, view points become difficult to express.

This is one of the difficulties I have with economics in general. When you read about old debates and arguments in the history of the sciences, people are still exposed to all of the psychological weaknesses of laymen. In the early days of the study of fine neural structures, they argued over whether neurons formed diffuse networks or if each neuron was essentially free. Even with all the weight of evidence pointing to one conclusion, those that initially imagined a fused neuronal network continually found new interpretations to re-establish their views. But they at least had the evidence. There was a root set of observations that allowed anyone to follow through to their own conclusions. An argument in science is eventually resolved when someone figures out what nature has to say on the matter and the force of all argument means nothing. Nature, it is said, doesn't give a shit what you think. In economics, there doesn't seem to be any root set of observations independent of all the psychology of people because it's the study of trading between people. Because of that, it is difficult for me to embrace much economic thinking. I can follow the logic of free trade, but I hesitate to let the mind go wild with it as I don't see any real way to sanity check the conclusions which may come.

[d0zer]

I was expressing my dismay that no one ever convinces the other of anything during a debate, and that a debate can easily be won by someone who is wrong, so long as he used superior debate tactics, or at least shouted louder and stepped up his ad hominem game. My friend told me that its useless do debate with someone you strongly disagree with, unless its in a relaxed environment with mutual respect.

So true. Boost, even though I often respect your positions, you do come across as far too snarky, and that does nothing but degrade the conversation to the level of most internet discussions about politics or religion: completely useless. I thought we were better than that