Re: On 'Incomprehesibility'
On Sun, Aug 2, 2009 at 8:05 PM, William T Goodallw...@wtgab.demon.co.uk wrote: William T Goodall Mail : w...@wtgab.demon.co.uk Web : http://www.wtgab.demon.co.uk Blog : http://web.me.com/williamgoodall/blog/ Every Sunday Christians congregate to drink blood in honour of their zombie master. So what's wrong with a little ritualized cannibalism among consenting adults? ;-) -- Mauro Diotallevi The number you have dialed is imaginary. Please rotate your phone 90 degrees and try again. ___ http://mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
Results confirm theory as Kepler tracks extrasolar planet
http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2009/08/results-confirm-theory-as-kepler-tracks-extrasolar-planet.ars ___ http://mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
Brin: Libertarian Morality--Up with good King John, down with Robin Hood.
I wrote a suggestion to my Arizona State legislators about de-funding the state universities in favor of tuition vouchers. Vouchers would be in keeping with Arizona's conservative libertarian bias in favor of a low taxes-low wages-strong small business environment. If I lived in Massachusetts or Minnesota where the culture favors high tax-high wage-strong big business I would never have made this suggestion. Anyhow, I am through with school. As a good libertarian and social Darwinist it is now time to screw the following generations. When I inappropriately sent a selection of my idea as an off topic contribution to the Phoenix Linux email list I was astounded that the comments came not from the left but from the RIGHT! The respondents were self-educated technicians suspicious of higher education in general and wanted NO public funds spent on higher education. It started me thinking about the bases of libertarianism and American conservatism. Previously when I had thought of libertarianism, I had not thought of it as particularly based in a moral principle. I thought it just a political extension of liberal or neo-classical economics that reduced the general welfare to economic efficiency. Of course, I knew there was another strain in libertarianism that was based in morality. This was an ideological commitment to maximize individual freedom. Basically Aleister Crowley's Harm no one and do what thou wilt, with the harm no one clause being optional--particularly when doing business. But there other moral strains mentioned by one of my libertarian Linux respondents. Taking money from some one who earned it to give it to some one who didn't is stealing, government or otherwise. This actually combines two moral axioms common to libertarians and conservatives. The first is that taxes are a form of theft. The second is that it is immoral to give (poor) people money. (Exceptions are made for rich people and corporations because in that case they earn the money through their cleverness and not through class conscious theft). The morality of taxes are theft, in particular, is logically self consistent; therefore, convincing on its face. lemma I used to be a pacifist. I was raised Mennonite. Pacifism is a logically self-consistent principle. Killing is horrific, killing is murder, killing for a cause or for war is still horrific and is still murder. The problem is that war is an inescapable part of the human condition. Even in the best of times the potential is there. Pacifism doesn't allow for the complexities of human reality, it isn't pragmatic. end lemma The moral principle that taxes are theft suffers from a similar limitation. Logically taxes ARE theft. However, one must be expedient and practical. We have a society to run. We need to buy social goods. Social goods have to be paid for and that money has always come from taxes. There is a more fundamental problem with libertarianism and some of David Brin's thought. Libertarianism assumes humans descended from tigers. Unfortunately, humans descended from chimpanzees which are the most intensely social primates. Humans are as social creatures, they have an individual dimension, but human experience cannot be reduced to individualism. Government--or rather governance--is NEVER going to whither away. Governance is part of organizational behavior, and any human society larger than a hunter-gatherer troop has to have some formal organization and that organization has to be governed. Even if we assume that one day soon (no more that 10,000 years) humans will be succeeded by their brain children, those children will soon run into the organizational behavior and governance problem. Managing your relationships in ever increasing troop sizes will not scale in polynomial time. Begin forwarded message: From: Trent Shipley tship...@deru.com Date: August 3, 2009 3:01:01 PM GMT-07:00 To: lg...@azleg.gov, dquell...@azleg.gov, jwei...@azleg.gov Subject: Higher Education Vouchers and Oddments Dear Senator Linda Gray, Representative Doug Quelland, and Representative Jim Weiers, I am a resident of District 10 living a 4750 West Acoma Drive, Glendale (vote in Phoenix), AZ 85306 Suggestions for the Reform of Public Higher Education in Arizona. The following are suggestions to reduce the deficit in the current budget crisis and are in keeping with Arizonans' values of free enterprise and small government. 1 Replace Subsidy with Vouchers Subsidies to community colleges and state universities should be replaced with a one-size-fits-all higher education vouchers. Students and parents have little or no sense of how much public higher education is subsidized so receiving a voucher will seem a huge boon, even if the actual size of the per capita subsidy is reduced. Using vouchers will also contribute to a free market in higher education services, leveling the playing field between the University
Re: Brin: Libertarian Morality--Up with good King John, down with Robin Hood.
Trent Shipley wrote: I wrote a suggestion to my Arizona State legislators about de-funding the state universities in favor of tuition vouchers. ... Dear Senator Linda Gray, Representative Doug Quelland, and Representative Jim Weiers, ... “Be it resolved that the mission of Arizona's public institutions of higher education is to educate undergraduates and train graduates for essential professions.” Trent-- Hi. It's interesting. I wonder about the last bit, though. How does one tell whether or not a profession is essential? (I can certainly name some that I feel are NOT essential, but let's get beyond our personal biases.) One answer may be a profession is essential as long as people in it manage to find work. Markets certainly don't solve everything, but may be giving information about the relative importance of various kinds of work. : ) ---David ___ http://mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
Re: Brin: Libertarian Morality--Up with good King John, down with Robin Hood.
David Hobby wrote: Trent Shipley wrote: I wrote a suggestion to my Arizona State legislators about de-funding the state universities in favor of tuition vouchers. ... Dear Senator Linda Gray, Representative Doug Quelland, and Representative Jim Weiers, ... “Be it resolved that the mission of Arizona's public institutions of higher education is to educate undergraduates and train graduates for essential professions.” Trent-- Hi. It's interesting. I wonder about the last bit, though. How does one tell whether or not a profession is essential? (I can certainly name some that I feel are NOT essential, but let's get beyond our personal biases.) One answer may be a profession is essential as long as people in it manage to find work. Markets certainly don't solve everything, but may be giving information about the relative importance of various kinds of work. : ) ---David Taxpayers tend to see the Universities exclusive mission as training (not educating) their kids to get a certificate that will let the kid be middle class. In short we pay taxes for undergraduate education NOT research or grad school. I imagined the state department of education defining some professional level degrees like Medicine, Master of Nursing, M.Ed. and D.Ed., Masters of Engineering, MSW as essential for Arizona. Others, like Law, MFA, or a PhD in Astronomy would be elective and unsubsidized. Some, notably the profitable hard sciences, like geology, biology, or chemistry, might qualify for partial subsidy. __ http://mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com ___ http://mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
Re: Brin: Libertarian Morality--Up with good King John, down with Robin Hood.
Trent Shipley wrote: Hi. It's interesting. I wonder about the last bit, though. How does one tell whether or not a profession is essential? (I can certainly name some that I feel are NOT essential, but let's get beyond our personal biases.) One answer may be a profession is essential as long as people in it manage to find work. Markets certainly don't solve everything, but may be giving information about the relative importance of various kinds of work. : ) ---David Taxpayers tend to see the Universities exclusive mission as training (not educating) their kids to get a certificate that will let the kid be middle class. In short we pay taxes for undergraduate education NOT research or grad school. I imagined the state department of education defining some professional level degrees like Medicine, Master of Nursing, M.Ed. and D.Ed., Masters of Engineering, MSW as essential for Arizona. Others, like Law, MFA, or a PhD in Astronomy would be elective and unsubsidized. Some, notably the profitable hard sciences, like geology, biology, or chemistry, might qualify for partial subsidy. Trent-- So you're not big on the wisdom of the market? Your post did mention libertarians a bit, but I was unclear where you stood. Why should profitable hard sciences need a subsidy? I'd hope that the state money would go towards fields that we worthwhile yet underfunded. : ) My daughter is in law school, and is paying for it with a pile of student loans. It's reasonable that she not be subsidized, since she'll (hopefully) wind up making enough to pay back the loans. We're in New York state, which has fairly high barriers to entering K-12 teaching. The teachers who come to my school to get the Master's they need for permanent certification tend to be making enough money that they don't need subsidies. As for subsidizing a Masters in Social Work, why not just pay social workers a bit more? ---David ___ http://mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
Re: [Brin]: Libertarian Morality--Up with good King John, down with Robin Hood.
David Hobby wrote: Trent Shipley wrote: Hi. It's interesting. I wonder about the last bit, though. How does one tell whether or not a profession is essential? (I can certainly name some that I feel are NOT essential, but let's get beyond our personal biases.) One answer may be a profession is essential as long as people in it manage to find work. Markets certainly don't solve everything, but may be giving information about the relative importance of various kinds of work. : ) ---David Taxpayers tend to see the Universities exclusive mission as training (not educating) their kids to get a certificate that will let the kid be middle class. In short we pay taxes for undergraduate education NOT research or grad school. I imagined the state department of education defining some professional level degrees like Medicine, Master of Nursing, M.Ed. and D.Ed., Masters of Engineering, MSW as essential for Arizona. Others, like Law, MFA, or a PhD in Astronomy would be elective and unsubsidized. Some, notably the profitable hard sciences, like geology, biology, or chemistry, might qualify for partial subsidy. Trent-- So you're not big on the wisdom of the market? Your post did mention libertarians a bit, but I was unclear where you stood. Why should profitable hard sciences need a subsidy? I'd hope that the state money would go towards fields that we worthwhile yet underfunded. : ) The post is divided into two parts. The top part is the actual topic of the post. The main text. The part about vouchers and so on is an appendix provided as background. Now a pure market fundamentalist libertarian would be against subsidizing legislation. So even by brooking vouchers we are in the realm of libertarian lite. However, the voucher proposal is a HUGE libertarian increment over the system of funding higher education common in all states. It would make undergraduates true consumers. They could study at a community college, for-profit institution, religious institution, or state university as long as it was approved as a bona fide higher education program by the Department of Education. The student could study English lit or electrical engineering, or for that matter auto mechanics or go to beauty school. Power to the individual, student to customer. How's that for libertarian morality? Restricting grad school is a political sop. Voters really do tend to see the state universities as their to credential their kids into middle classdom. Oh, and tack a medical school on the side. What I would really like to see is a matching funds market in grants and loans so that young undergrads don't do the stupid thing I did and study history, but are expediently philistine and study business. The idea is that if Intel put in 1% for EE, the government matches it 99%. Oh look! No money for fine arts. Maybe you should major in nursing, hospitals put up money so the nursing grants would be funded. My daughter is in law school, and is paying for it with a pile of student loans. It's reasonable that she not be subsidized, since she'll (hopefully) wind up making enough to pay back the loans. We're in New York state, which has fairly high barriers to entering K-12 teaching. The teachers who come to my school to get the Master's they need for permanent certification tend to be making enough money that they don't need subsidies. As for subsidizing a Masters in Social Work, why not just pay social workers a bit more? ---David ___ http://mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com ___ http://mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
Libertarian Morality--Up with good King John, down with Robin Hood.
Not sure I see where Trent is coming from, associating me with such nonsense. I am a libertarian in a sense that is not shared by many other libertarians... in that I believe that harnessing interhuman competition is the core element that enabled the Enlightenment to escape the brutal traps of nearly every other human civilization. Our markets, democracy, science and law courts are all complex machines designed to foster and harness competitive efforts by groups that are self-organizing and internally cooperative, but eager to win in rivalry viz other groups. Harnessing this was not easy, since most winners immediately try to cheat and prevent further competition. This is the way of oligarchy. It is also the reason that most modern American libertarians are complete whackos. They ignore 5,000 years of human history, in their shrill claims that ONLY government bureaucrats represent any threat to freedom or markets etc. Bureaucrats CAN endanger freedom, true, and a healthy impulse should always be to encourage citizens to do more and see if govt can do less. But to ignore the fact that oligarchy was, is, and always will be the main enemy... well, that is simply mass stupidity. And that is ALL I will say about this now. I have explained at length elsewhere. About looking past political totems: http://www.reformthelp.org/theory/generalizing/foe.php and... http://www.reformthelp.org/theory/positioning/models.php and...http://www.davidbrin.com/libertarian1.html I do dream the LP will someday take its rightful place as a reasonable, pro-freedom and markets party to replace the undead GOP. But till that miracle happens, I'll just say I am delighted that at least adults are back in charge... even uneven and flawed ones. Please remove Re: Brin from this thread. And thrive all. db From: Trent Shipley tship...@deru.com To: brin-l@mccmedia.com Sent: Thursday, August 6, 2009 7:42:49 PM Subject: Brin: Libertarian Morality--Up with good King John, down with Robin Hood. I wrote a suggestion to my Arizona State legislators about de-funding the state universities in favor of tuition vouchers. Vouchers would be in keeping with Arizona's conservative libertarian bias in favor of a low taxes-low wages-strong small business environment. If I lived in Massachusetts or Minnesota where the culture favors high tax-high wage-strong big business I would never have made this suggestion. Anyhow, I am through with school. As a good libertarian and social Darwinist it is now time to screw the following generations. When I inappropriately sent a selection of my idea as an off topic contribution to the Phoenix Linux email list I was astounded that the comments came not from the left but from the RIGHT! The respondents were self-educated technicians suspicious of higher education in general and wanted NO public funds spent on higher education. It started me thinking about the bases of libertarianism and American conservatism. Previously when I had thought of libertarianism, I had not thought of it as particularly based in a moral principle. I thought it just a political extension of liberal or neo-classical economics that reduced the general welfare to economic efficiency. Of course, I knew there was another strain in libertarianism that was based in morality. This was an ideological commitment to maximize individual freedom. Basically Aleister Crowley's Harm no one and do what thou wilt, with the harm no one clause being optional--particularly when doing business. But there other moral strains mentioned by one of my libertarian Linux respondents. Taking money from some one who earned it to give it to some one who didn't is stealing, government or otherwise. This actually combines two moral axioms common to libertarians and conservatives. The first is that taxes are a form of theft. The second is that it is immoral to give (poor) people money. (Exceptions are made for rich people and corporations because in that case they earn the money through their cleverness and not through class conscious theft). The morality of taxes are theft, in particular, is logically self consistent; therefore, convincing on its face. lemma I used to be a pacifist. I was raised Mennonite. Pacifism is a logically self-consistent principle. Killing is horrific, killing is murder, killing for a cause or for war is still horrific and is still murder. The problem is that war is an inescapable part of the human condition. Even in the best of times the potential is there. Pacifism doesn't allow for the complexities of human reality, it isn't pragmatic. end lemma The moral principle that taxes are theft suffers from a similar limitation. Logically taxes ARE theft. However, one must be expedient and practical. We have a society to run. We need to buy social goods. Social goods have to be paid for and that money has always come from taxes. There is a more fundamental
