Author Topic: All the President's Goldman men  (Read 4681 times)

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Plane

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Re: All the President's Goldman men
« Reply #15 on: April 24, 2010, 10:36:08 PM »
Quote
<<It is a longstanding beleif in the US that a person can do better for himself than the government can do for him , this beleif begins back in the day that it was obviously ture.>>

Sorry, but I don't think it was ever "obviously true" that people would do better through an every man for himself competitive frenzy than through an organized cooperative group effort.  I think it was always true, and still is, that cooperative effort produces better results for   most people than "rugged individualism."  The "longstanding belief" that you are referring to is a myth.

We had almost three centurys of fronteir settleing.

Going a few years without interaction with government agencys was common enough for frounteirsmen.

This didn't hinder cooperative effort in the least. The Government has never been involved in barn raisin , corn shuckin or quiltin bees.


Michael Tee

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Re: All the President's Goldman men
« Reply #16 on: April 25, 2010, 10:49:23 AM »
<<We had almost three centurys of fronteir settleing.

<<Going a few years without interaction with government agencys was common enough for frounteirsmen.>>

Apparently not, since the Government took a relatively early hand in these things.  << In 1836 Henry Leavitt Ellsworth, a Yale-educated attorney interested in improving agriculture, became Commissioner of Patents, a position within the Department of State. He soon began collecting and distributing new varieties of seeds and plants through members of the Congress and agricultural societies. >>

from a history of the USDA, found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_threshold

<<This didn't hinder cooperative effort in the least. The Government has never been involved in barn raisin , corn shuckin or quiltin bees.>>

Good examples, good point.  So at least you seem to recognize the superiority of collective effort over rugged individualism.  Apparently, you only object to collective effort when it is government-organized?

Amianthus

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Re: All the President's Goldman men
« Reply #17 on: April 25, 2010, 11:42:04 AM »
Good examples, good point.  So at least you seem to recognize the superiority of collective effort over rugged individualism.  Apparently, you only object to collective effort when it is government-organized?

Reading comprehension has finally improved. We (conservatives) have been saying that for years.
Do not anticipate trouble, or worry about what may never happen. Keep in the sunlight. (Benjamin Franklin)

sirs

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Re: All the President's Goldman men
« Reply #18 on: April 25, 2010, 09:47:30 PM »
Touche'      8)
"The worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal." -- Aristotle

Plane

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Re: All the President's Goldman men
« Reply #19 on: April 25, 2010, 10:00:13 PM »
<<This didn't hinder cooperative effort in the least. The Government has never been involved in barn raisin , corn shuckin or quiltin bees.>>

Good examples, good point.  So at least you seem to recognize the superiority of collective effort over rugged individualism.  Apparently, you only object to collective effort when it is government-organized?



In a word , Yes.

How did this bit of light get through your filter?

Michael Tee

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Re: All the President's Goldman men
« Reply #20 on: April 25, 2010, 11:16:09 PM »
<<In a word , Yes. [plane favours cooperative effort just not with government involvement.]

<<How did this bit of light get through your filter?>>

How it got through is not so important.  What's important is that I understand why, if you are not opposed to cooperation in principle, you are opposed to larger-scale cooperative effort orchestrated by your democratically elected government.  You know,5 people acting together good, 100 people acting together better.  Why not?

sirs

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Re: All the President's Goldman men
« Reply #21 on: April 25, 2010, 11:24:10 PM »
Power corrupts.....absolute power corrupts, absolutely.  That's why.  The power of your theoretical "100" just passed legislation that a vast majority of the population DID NOT WANT.  So much for the notion of listening to one's constituents
"The worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal." -- Aristotle

Plane

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Re: All the President's Goldman men
« Reply #22 on: April 26, 2010, 12:06:19 AM »
<<In a word , Yes. [plane favours cooperative effort just not with government involvement.]

<<How did this bit of light get through your filter?>>

How it got through is not so important.  What's important is that I understand why, if you are not opposed to cooperation in principle, you are opposed to larger-scale cooperative effort orchestrated by your democratically elected government.  You know,5 people acting together good, 100 people acting together better.  Why not?

An hundred people acting together is better sometimes and sometimes not.

For a Government bigger is always better and growth is irriversable.

Government is always more or less coercive , when it comes to coercion ,less is better.


Michael Tee

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Re: All the President's Goldman men
« Reply #23 on: April 26, 2010, 08:42:58 AM »
<<An hundred people acting together is better sometimes and sometimes not.>>

OK, but your opposition to government-orchestrated collective solutions is not sometimes on and sometimes off; seems to me you are always 100% "off," i.e. always non-receptive to any government-orchestrated collective solution, which indicates a rigid and inflexible belief that any government is incapable of orchestrating any acceptable form of collective solution.

<<For a Government bigger is always better and growth is irriversable.>>

NO reason at all to believe that - - here in Ontario we had eight years of "belt-tightening" under a Conservative government which resulted in cut-backs and lay-offs in the public sector and a distinctly smaller Provincial government.  (With results that were ultimately disastrous, but that's another story.)    The previous "growth" of the Ontario government was far from "irreversible."  The government is basically whatever size the democratically elected representatives of the people decide it should be.

<<Government is always more or less coercive , when it comes to coercion ,less is better.>>

Says the man who stops at every red light.  Which came first, BTW, the automobile or the traffic signal?  Every form of "coercion" that the government imposes comes in the wake of a need created by a lack of coercion.  First the automobile without the regulation of the traffic signal, then the traffic signal because of the problems of the unregulated traffic.  First the stock market fraud, then the "blue sky" legislation.  First the tax evader, then the need for increased IRS enforcement.

What is this fear of "coercive" government but a flight from modernity and its complexities?   REAL coercion, as in the "need" to keep "suspects" in infinite detention without trial, waterboarding of prisoners and the trials of people who advocate without acting, is NEVER the object of conservative objection.  The growth of a police state, the assassination without trial of American citizens abroad and the spying of government agents upon them at home, THAT kind of coercion is always accepted.  It seems that the only "coercion" that a conservative will oppose is anything which relates to the amelioration of the lives of the poorest and most vulnerable Americans.  Compulsory universal single-payer insurance, for example, or payment of taxes to finance social welfare projects.

Xavier_Onassis

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Re: All the President's Goldman men
« Reply #24 on: April 26, 2010, 10:32:33 AM »
I question the saying that "absolute power corrupts absolutely" It sounds nice, but I question its validity. It does not seem to be applicable to either Turkey under Ataturk, not any of the various governments of Singapore, or even Abu Dhabi , Dubai, or Qatar.
"Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana."

Michael Tee

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Re: All the President's Goldman men
« Reply #25 on: April 26, 2010, 12:16:25 PM »
IIRC, Lord Acton's dictum was that power TENDS to corrupt, absolute power TENDS to corrupt absolutely.   The dictum at least as I've heard it quoted (except of course by conservatives) was not as absolutist as they like to make it. 

BTW, have you ever seen a conservative object to the absolute power of a Pinochet or a Somoza or any other CIA creation?

Amianthus

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Re: All the President's Goldman men
« Reply #26 on: April 26, 2010, 12:25:34 PM »
BTW, have you ever seen a conservative object to the absolute power of a Pinochet or a Somoza or any other CIA creation?

Yes.
Do not anticipate trouble, or worry about what may never happen. Keep in the sunlight. (Benjamin Franklin)

Michael Tee

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Re: All the President's Goldman men
« Reply #27 on: April 26, 2010, 12:54:44 PM »
Outstanding.  Who?

Amianthus

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Re: All the President's Goldman men
« Reply #28 on: April 26, 2010, 01:20:44 PM »
Outstanding.  Who?

Norm Coleman for one. Do your research.
Do not anticipate trouble, or worry about what may never happen. Keep in the sunlight. (Benjamin Franklin)

Christians4LessGvt

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Re: All the President's Goldman men
« Reply #29 on: April 26, 2010, 01:48:28 PM »
Sometimes life is not the choice between good or bad.
Sometimes the choice is between bad and worse.

If you have to deal with skunks,
better to deal with a skunk that faces you
than deal with a skunk with his rear facing you.

Just like in Iran.
The Iranian people didn't like the Shah and they don't like the Mullahs either.
Sure the unelected Shah denied civil rights
But at least the Shah wasn't building nukes to point at Israel/Europe, & eventually the United States.
Now we have unelected Mullahs denying civil rights, that hate democracy, & build nuclear bombs.

"Perfect Angels" are hard to come by, so sometimes the US chooses between the lesser of two evils.

"Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" - Ronald Reagan - June 12, 1987