“ often find Donald's comments more annoying than wj's.”
Interesting. You mostly seem to agree on the war crimes thing, which is most of what I post about when ranting. In fact, that is virtually all of my rants as best I can recall.
“ anyone who agrees, but thinks there are other, more achievable, priorities is at best an utter moral dullard.”
That’s about right. Not supporting genocide is pretty low bar stuff.. You know who we lack here? Palestinian- American posters.
The pie in the sky material is in domestic policy and just keeping Trump from destroying what we have is sort of the best we can hope for.
I like Mamdani for example, but if he wins will be amazed if he can get a fraction of what he wants for nyc.
This has me reminscing, mostly fondly, about Brick Oven Bill and the alien space bats guy. I don't think either of them were banned, I think they both just moved on to greener pastures...
Anyway, if there are any conservative lurkers out there who are pondering participating but are afraid it's just too lefty in here for them, please consider this your invitation to jump in. We will do our best not to jump all over you! At least not right away... :)
What CaseyL said. To me, it's just not worth the bother anymore.
But let's also remember that the good old days were those of the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya.
I'm perfectly happy to haggle with wj on occasion, though :)
Snarki, you must have been away. He was banned straight after 10/7, when he barrelled onto here and accused us (or maybe even specific people) of thinking that the murdered Israelis and their babies had it coming. It was a perfect example of his straw-manning, and his tiresome habit of treating us as if we were the Politburo or the People's Congress, or some other lefty bogeyman. But I must say, when he wasn't doing that kind of thing, his presence often stimulated a lot of interesting conversation over here, as contentious subjects often do, or did. I fear russell may be right, and that these days things are too polarised for that. It's a shame.
Again, Snarki: I completely agree about what causes you incandescent rage - me too.
CaseyL: I did resubscribe to the Atlantic when I cancelled my sub to the WaPo, but I hardly ever read any of it (apart from non-mad David Frum) so may let it go again. I would never have thought that the coiner of "axis of evil" would end up being counted a reasonable voice.
Donald: we are a pretty narrow group ideologically most of the time. Wj is the token conservative and he is more centrist really.
I'd go with moderate conservative on most issues. I think that the "centerist" perception is mostly because the label "conservative" has been (successfully, to the point that liberals believe it) hijacked by the radical right and reactionaries. I am old enough to actually remember the 1950s and early 60s. For me, it was a wonderful, idyllic time. But then, I was a white kid in a small town California setting. There are some bits of that culture that I wish we hadn't lost, but I have no desire to go back to the 1950s culture overall, even that one.
Not that, here in the real world, it's possible to do anything like that. Hmmmm, an argument for rapidly developing virtually reality systems -- so the Steven Millers can sit in their parents' basement, muck up their private world, and leave the rest of us in peace.
russell: I'm sorry to say but I'm not sure it's possible to have the kind of mixture of voices that were once available. Not because anyone has any intention of excluding anybody for their point of view, but because things have become so polarized. Real harm has been, and is being, done, and people's feelings run high.
I think the challenges are twofold. The first is: how do we find those centerist/conservative voices? Does anyone here know how to do recruiting? Second is: if someone like that stumbles across us, can we refrain from assuming that someone who says she's a conservative is some sort of rabid reactionary? I note that a new chum arriving could read some comments here** and feel unwelcome before she ever moved from lurker to commenter. As you say, feelings run high on a variety of issues. I've certainly been moved to rant occasionally. ;-)
So I'd say that increasing our diversity of views is definitely a "nice to have." But I'm not sure how we might get from here to there.
**Donald leaps to mind. Not because he's wrong about how outrageous some things are. It's possible to be pretty damn conservative and agree completely on that. It's more a matter, as far as I can explain it, of tone. And an assumption (again as I perceive it) that anyone who agrees, but thinks there are other, more achievable, priorities is at best an utter moral dullard.
I actually miss most of the commenters who have been banned during my roughly 2 decades here. Does anybody have the full list?
Like the poor sod in the Monty Python sketch, I come here for an argument. Maybe I'm too emotionally inert, but I can't remember ever feeling hurt by a blog comment to or about me. Annoyed, sure, but annoyance tends to inspire me to argue back, rather than depress me.
Arguing with pig-headed opponents can be a bore, but what's a better way to waste time? Watching a horror movie? Listening to a sermon? Tastes differ, of course, and everyone is free to choose their own favorite time-wasting activity. For me, that was Obsidian Wings, once upon a time. I hope it becomes that again, someday.
--TP
I am a woman, and a Boomer.
I used to spend some time seeking out conservatives sites and voices, hoping for rational conversations about policy ends and means, but then they reached the logical end of modern US conservativism and went nuts.
I mean, this isn't me saying "Conservative thought is nuts" just because I'm liberal.
This is me saying "Conservative thought is nuts because it actively celebrates things that conservatives once swore they were opposed to, purely because their media leaders have told them to"... or, I dunno, just because they own the US government now and they can do whatever they want...?
And what they want is neo-feudalism, with concentration camps...?
I still drop in at Volokh Conspiracy once in a while, but the lunacy is in full swing with most of their FPers... and the comment sections are cesspools.
I could re-subscribe to The Atlantic, where some non-rabid conservatives have found a home, but they don't represent any actual political movement - and not enough of an opposition to their Party's current manifestation - so I'm not sure what the value is.
I really do appreciate the "somewhat right-wing" contingent here: (wj, Marty, CharlesWT). In fact, I often find Donald's comments more annoying than wj's. Go figure.
When was it that McTx was banned? I don't remember that? But I do recall the most annoying features of McTx's style of argumentation: claiming authoritative knowledge of everything, and imputing opinions to others, mostly in the context of strawmanning.
If there is ONE thing that drives me to an incandescent rage, it's someone trying to tell me what my opinions/desires/thoughts/experiences are. That's all stuff that one owns more profoundly than any property, being the stuff inside your own brain.
F*** it, I'll just write it again. It'll likely be less ramble-y.
It's true, we used to have a wider variety of voices. Over time, we've kind of sorted ourselves into a liberal-to-left boomer-and-genx niche.
It's actually really hard to be a contrarian voice on a blog (or anywhere). People yell at you a lot, it takes time and work to build credibility. So I understand why conservatives would shy away.
In McK's case, specifically, he had good things to say, but seemed unable to resist the urge to scold us all for being a bunch of lefty goupthink hypocrites. Which was rude and unwelcome and tiresome. So he got bounced. Came back as BigBadBird, same thing, so he got bounced again.
I'd be happy to see more conservative voices here, but things have become so polarized that I'm not sure it'll happen. Real harm has been, and is being, done, and people's feelings run high. It's a different time.
Regarding the 4th, just not feeling it this year. To be honest, I'm feeling like I'm kind of done with the USA. Not that I'm going anywhere, I've just lost faith that we will ever get past the same tired old bullshit that we began with.
The stupid, sadistic cruelty of what's going on now is just a bridge too far. It's pointless, it's cruelty for it's own sake. If that's not evil, I don't know what is, and I cannot align myself with it, at all, ever.
We're gonna pay for this, and I don't look forward to it.
So that's my 4th of July.
Thought I posted a comment, don't know if it's lost in the intertoobz or if I just did Preview and forgot to hit Post before I refreshed the page.
Stupid computers! :)
Anyway, if it's floating around out there and somebody can find it and repost it, great. Otherwise I'll try again later.
ETA: 12:20 comment released from confinement. -Ed.
It's true, there used to be a much greater variety of points of view here back in the day. Von, slarti, bc (who still pops up now and then). Lots of others, some quite good.
Now we're mostly liberal-to-left, mostly (I think) boomer and genx.
It's actually really hard to participate someplace where you are the contrarian voice. It's a lot of work, and is not always particularly rewarding. People yell at you a lot, it takes time and patience to build some credibility. So I can understand why conservatives might not want to hang here.
That said, I'd welcome more conservative voices here. I'd just ask that they not just show up to trumpet their point of view and yell at people. Actual conversation would be good.
I appreciated McK's presence here, but a lot of the time he seemed to just be here to scold us all for being such hypocrites. It was rude and tiresome, which is why he was banned the first time around. And it's why he was banned the second time, having popped up as BigBadBird.
I'm sorry to say but I'm not sure it's possible to have the kind of mixture of voices that were once available. Not because anyone has any intention of excluding anybody for their point of view, but because things have become so polarized. Real harm has been, and is being, done, and people's feelings run high.
But I personally would be willing to give it a shot.
Regarding the 4th of July, suffice it to say that I was just not feeling it this year. Went to my niece's for her daughter's 16th birthday, ate a hot dog and some birthday cake, hung with family, came home, read a bit, went to sleep. That was my exciting 4th.
In many ways, I feel like I'm about done with this country. Not that I plan to go anywhere else, I just am losing my belief that we are ever gonna get past the same toxic bullshit we started out with. It just never seems to end.
The cruelty - pointless, sadistic, nihilistic cruelty - we are capable of is freaking crushing me.
I don't know if any other place is better, I just know what we are right now, and what we have been, and it breaks my freaking heart.
So that's my 4th of July story.
I'm not positive, but I'm thinking that we are a pretty narrow group in terms of age, gender and probably ethnicity.
Age for sure. I don't know about gender, but as to sex I think Janie and I are the only women (maybe Snarki, wonkie, CaseyL?). Ethnicity - hard to tell. this was one of the few places I knew about where there was a wide range of views for a few years
I think there's a real advantage to being exposed to different views and arguments, as long as one doesn't just assume that people who disagree with one's own opinion are immoral monsters, or stupid, or ignorant, as the case may be. in a few cases were banned for being offensive. I remember a couple from the far far left like that.
bob mcmanus was the example of that I remember best. His open misogyny was really something. Funnily enough, I thought of him recently, when BBB in his final comment (clearly trying, as lj said, to foment more trouble) said words to the effect of "the men have decided". bob mcm said that exact thing in reverse, when pre-emptively implying that women (it was sapient, Janie and me who called it out) would force the men here to ban him, as women had on the other blogs where he commented.
I'm not positive, but I'm thinking that we are a pretty narrow group in terms of age, gender and probably ethnicity. So I'm not how we diversify ideology without dealing with those other categories.
This is an interesting video between Ezra Klein and Chris Hayes, but more specific to the observation of lack of diversity is the fact that both Klein and Hayes, after talking about how Mamdani used the TikTok genre to win, confess that they could not do it, or at least it would take a long time to get to the level that Mamdani showed. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3E2KYhDLDQY&t=3s
Just curious, has anyone here made a Tiktok video? If not, does anyone have a Tiktok account?
McKT aside, we are a pretty narrow group ideologically most of the time. Wj is the token conservative and he is more centrist really. Of course things get real heated real fast when there are serious disagreements about important issues. I said this to LJ privately the other day, but the amazing thing about the hilzoy era was how she and whoever else was in charge kept things under control. I didn’t necessarily agree with her on everything, but this was one of the few places I knew about where there was a wide range of views for a few years. Of course people gradually dropped out or in a few cases were banned for being offensive. I remember a couple from the far far left like that.
The culture might also have gotten more polarized, but I am not sure about that. It was pretty polarized with Bush, esp in the early years when he was more popular, I think. Now I can’t remember when I first came here.
It would be difficult being polite with a MAGA type. I don’t think we have had any.
Weirdly,for a couple of years Rod Dreher had a wide range of views in his American Conservative blog comments. For a bit he was repentant about his Iraq War support and would sometimes critique the right. But his anti gay and anti trans mania got more and more evident and his Islamophobia came back if it ever fully left and he got super culture war paranoid and started taking like Franco was justified. I got more and more sarcastic and was eventually banned. Then he wrote his famous root wiener post and got eased out.
Well, libjpn@gmail address is working and he's not written. I don't want to pile thing up that he has to do, but I'd add that he also needs to admit that he snuck back here to try and set commenters against each other. In the normal cut and thrust, you can suggest that some person agrees with you, but trying to gin up conflict is really not acceptable and there needs to be an acknowledgement of that.
So it's entirely possible for a very wealthy person to prefer a weekend's leisure to another million dollars.
But would they prefer a person in Flint getting potable water from their faucet to another million dollars? That is a bit more opaque.
I understand the ban on McKT under whatever name, but I'd like to see him back. I urge him to apologise to the powers-that-be for having accused them of holding malevolent beliefs which they do not, and I urge those powers then to rescind the ban.
...economics, as I understand it, has no concept of "enough". It assumes that every individual will always act in order to accumulate wealth.
Economists are not necessarily stupid. They use a "utility curve" to describe how much an individual values increasing wealth. The standard assumption is that utility curves are increasing, i.e. people prefer more wealth to less, and concave, i.e. the curve gets flatter as wealth increases.
So it's entirely possible for a very wealthy person to prefer a weekend's leisure to another million dollars.
I hope everyone in the U.S. had a great 4th of July. Especially, I hope everyone who loves them got to see a great fireworks show. Because, going forward you can expect fewer shows and smaller ones.
The thing is, virtually all of the fireworks used in the US are made in China. Which means they will be much more expensive in the future as Trump's follies tariffs kick in. Of course, drone shows are supposed to be the latest big thing. Color me underwhelmed.
Obviously, efficiency is a good thing, but if you think of it as superseding all other things, you may miss a lot.
There is also the difficulty that "efficiency" can mean very different things to different people. And, in my observation, almost none of them are even aware that they are using the word differently.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
On “An open thread on July 4th”
Of the regular commenters, the age range is 52-78.
That would make me the youngest. Strange feeling.
"
“ often find Donald's comments more annoying than wj's.”
Interesting. You mostly seem to agree on the war crimes thing, which is most of what I post about when ranting. In fact, that is virtually all of my rants as best I can recall.
“ anyone who agrees, but thinks there are other, more achievable, priorities is at best an utter moral dullard.”
That’s about right. Not supporting genocide is pretty low bar stuff.. You know who we lack here? Palestinian- American posters.
The pie in the sky material is in domestic policy and just keeping Trump from destroying what we have is sort of the best we can hope for.
I like Mamdani for example, but if he wins will be amazed if he can get a fraction of what he wants for nyc.
"
This has me reminscing, mostly fondly, about Brick Oven Bill and the alien space bats guy. I don't think either of them were banned, I think they both just moved on to greener pastures...
Anyway, if there are any conservative lurkers out there who are pondering participating but are afraid it's just too lefty in here for them, please consider this your invitation to jump in. We will do our best not to jump all over you! At least not right away... :)
"
What CaseyL said. To me, it's just not worth the bother anymore.
But let's also remember that the good old days were those of the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya.
I'm perfectly happy to haggle with wj on occasion, though :)
"
Snarki, you must have been away. He was banned straight after 10/7, when he barrelled onto here and accused us (or maybe even specific people) of thinking that the murdered Israelis and their babies had it coming. It was a perfect example of his straw-manning, and his tiresome habit of treating us as if we were the Politburo or the People's Congress, or some other lefty bogeyman. But I must say, when he wasn't doing that kind of thing, his presence often stimulated a lot of interesting conversation over here, as contentious subjects often do, or did. I fear russell may be right, and that these days things are too polarised for that. It's a shame.
Again, Snarki: I completely agree about what causes you incandescent rage - me too.
CaseyL: I did resubscribe to the Atlantic when I cancelled my sub to the WaPo, but I hardly ever read any of it (apart from non-mad David Frum) so may let it go again. I would never have thought that the coiner of "axis of evil" would end up being counted a reasonable voice.
"
Donald: we are a pretty narrow group ideologically most of the time. Wj is the token conservative and he is more centrist really.
I'd go with moderate conservative on most issues. I think that the "centerist" perception is mostly because the label "conservative" has been (successfully, to the point that liberals believe it) hijacked by the radical right and reactionaries. I am old enough to actually remember the 1950s and early 60s. For me, it was a wonderful, idyllic time. But then, I was a white kid in a small town California setting. There are some bits of that culture that I wish we hadn't lost, but I have no desire to go back to the 1950s culture overall, even that one.
Not that, here in the real world, it's possible to do anything like that. Hmmmm, an argument for rapidly developing virtually reality systems -- so the Steven Millers can sit in their parents' basement, muck up their private world, and leave the rest of us in peace.
russell: I'm sorry to say but I'm not sure it's possible to have the kind of mixture of voices that were once available. Not because anyone has any intention of excluding anybody for their point of view, but because things have become so polarized. Real harm has been, and is being, done, and people's feelings run high.
I think the challenges are twofold. The first is: how do we find those centerist/conservative voices? Does anyone here know how to do recruiting? Second is: if someone like that stumbles across us, can we refrain from assuming that someone who says she's a conservative is some sort of rabid reactionary? I note that a new chum arriving could read some comments here** and feel unwelcome before she ever moved from lurker to commenter. As you say, feelings run high on a variety of issues. I've certainly been moved to rant occasionally. ;-)
So I'd say that increasing our diversity of views is definitely a "nice to have." But I'm not sure how we might get from here to there.
**Donald leaps to mind. Not because he's wrong about how outrageous some things are. It's possible to be pretty damn conservative and agree completely on that. It's more a matter, as far as I can explain it, of tone. And an assumption (again as I perceive it) that anyone who agrees, but thinks there are other, more achievable, priorities is at best an utter moral dullard.
"
I still drop in at Volokh Conspiracy once in a while,
Brett Bellmore is a regular commenter there.
"
I actually miss most of the commenters who have been banned during my roughly 2 decades here. Does anybody have the full list?
Like the poor sod in the Monty Python sketch, I come here for an argument. Maybe I'm too emotionally inert, but I can't remember ever feeling hurt by a blog comment to or about me. Annoyed, sure, but annoyance tends to inspire me to argue back, rather than depress me.
Arguing with pig-headed opponents can be a bore, but what's a better way to waste time? Watching a horror movie? Listening to a sermon? Tastes differ, of course, and everyone is free to choose their own favorite time-wasting activity. For me, that was Obsidian Wings, once upon a time. I hope it becomes that again, someday.
--TP
"
I am a woman, and a Boomer.
I used to spend some time seeking out conservatives sites and voices, hoping for rational conversations about policy ends and means, but then they reached the logical end of modern US conservativism and went nuts.
I mean, this isn't me saying "Conservative thought is nuts" just because I'm liberal.
This is me saying "Conservative thought is nuts because it actively celebrates things that conservatives once swore they were opposed to, purely because their media leaders have told them to"... or, I dunno, just because they own the US government now and they can do whatever they want...?
And what they want is neo-feudalism, with concentration camps...?
I still drop in at Volokh Conspiracy once in a while, but the lunacy is in full swing with most of their FPers... and the comment sections are cesspools.
I could re-subscribe to The Atlantic, where some non-rabid conservatives have found a home, but they don't represent any actual political movement - and not enough of an opposition to their Party's current manifestation - so I'm not sure what the value is.
"
I really do appreciate the "somewhat right-wing" contingent here: (wj, Marty, CharlesWT). In fact, I often find Donald's comments more annoying than wj's. Go figure.
When was it that McTx was banned? I don't remember that? But I do recall the most annoying features of McTx's style of argumentation: claiming authoritative knowledge of everything, and imputing opinions to others, mostly in the context of strawmanning.
If there is ONE thing that drives me to an incandescent rage, it's someone trying to tell me what my opinions/desires/thoughts/experiences are. That's all stuff that one owns more profoundly than any property, being the stuff inside your own brain.
"
F*** it, I'll just write it again. It'll likely be less ramble-y.
It's true, we used to have a wider variety of voices. Over time, we've kind of sorted ourselves into a liberal-to-left boomer-and-genx niche.
It's actually really hard to be a contrarian voice on a blog (or anywhere). People yell at you a lot, it takes time and work to build credibility. So I understand why conservatives would shy away.
In McK's case, specifically, he had good things to say, but seemed unable to resist the urge to scold us all for being a bunch of lefty goupthink hypocrites. Which was rude and unwelcome and tiresome. So he got bounced. Came back as BigBadBird, same thing, so he got bounced again.
I'd be happy to see more conservative voices here, but things have become so polarized that I'm not sure it'll happen. Real harm has been, and is being, done, and people's feelings run high. It's a different time.
Regarding the 4th, just not feeling it this year. To be honest, I'm feeling like I'm kind of done with the USA. Not that I'm going anywhere, I've just lost faith that we will ever get past the same tired old bullshit that we began with.
The stupid, sadistic cruelty of what's going on now is just a bridge too far. It's pointless, it's cruelty for it's own sake. If that's not evil, I don't know what is, and I cannot align myself with it, at all, ever.
We're gonna pay for this, and I don't look forward to it.
So that's my 4th of July.
"
Thought I posted a comment, don't know if it's lost in the intertoobz or if I just did Preview and forgot to hit Post before I refreshed the page.
Stupid computers! :)
Anyway, if it's floating around out there and somebody can find it and repost it, great. Otherwise I'll try again later.
ETA: 12:20 comment released from confinement. -Ed.
"
Of the regular commenters, the age range is 52-78.
"
It's true, there used to be a much greater variety of points of view here back in the day. Von, slarti, bc (who still pops up now and then). Lots of others, some quite good.
Now we're mostly liberal-to-left, mostly (I think) boomer and genx.
It's actually really hard to participate someplace where you are the contrarian voice. It's a lot of work, and is not always particularly rewarding. People yell at you a lot, it takes time and patience to build some credibility. So I can understand why conservatives might not want to hang here.
That said, I'd welcome more conservative voices here. I'd just ask that they not just show up to trumpet their point of view and yell at people. Actual conversation would be good.
I appreciated McK's presence here, but a lot of the time he seemed to just be here to scold us all for being such hypocrites. It was rude and tiresome, which is why he was banned the first time around. And it's why he was banned the second time, having popped up as BigBadBird.
I'm sorry to say but I'm not sure it's possible to have the kind of mixture of voices that were once available. Not because anyone has any intention of excluding anybody for their point of view, but because things have become so polarized. Real harm has been, and is being, done, and people's feelings run high.
But I personally would be willing to give it a shot.
Regarding the 4th of July, suffice it to say that I was just not feeling it this year. Went to my niece's for her daughter's 16th birthday, ate a hot dog and some birthday cake, hung with family, came home, read a bit, went to sleep. That was my exciting 4th.
In many ways, I feel like I'm about done with this country. Not that I plan to go anywhere else, I just am losing my belief that we are ever gonna get past the same toxic bullshit we started out with. It just never seems to end.
The cruelty - pointless, sadistic, nihilistic cruelty - we are capable of is freaking crushing me.
I don't know if any other place is better, I just know what we are right now, and what we have been, and it breaks my freaking heart.
So that's my 4th of July story.
"
I'm not positive, but I'm thinking that we are a pretty narrow group in terms of age, gender and probably ethnicity.
Age for sure. I don't know about gender, but as to sex I think Janie and I are the only women (maybe Snarki, wonkie, CaseyL?). Ethnicity - hard to tell.
this was one of the few places I knew about where there was a wide range of views for a few years
I think there's a real advantage to being exposed to different views and arguments, as long as one doesn't just assume that people who disagree with one's own opinion are immoral monsters, or stupid, or ignorant, as the case may be.
in a few cases were banned for being offensive. I remember a couple from the far far left like that.
bob mcmanus was the example of that I remember best. His open misogyny was really something. Funnily enough, I thought of him recently, when BBB in his final comment (clearly trying, as lj said, to foment more trouble) said words to the effect of "the men have decided". bob mcm said that exact thing in reverse, when pre-emptively implying that women (it was sapient, Janie and me who called it out) would force the men here to ban him, as women had on the other blogs where he commented.
"
What is this "TikTok" you speak of?
"
I'm not positive, but I'm thinking that we are a pretty narrow group in terms of age, gender and probably ethnicity. So I'm not how we diversify ideology without dealing with those other categories.
This is an interesting video between Ezra Klein and Chris Hayes, but more specific to the observation of lack of diversity is the fact that both Klein and Hayes, after talking about how Mamdani used the TikTok genre to win, confess that they could not do it, or at least it would take a long time to get to the level that Mamdani showed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3E2KYhDLDQY&t=3s
Just curious, has anyone here made a Tiktok video? If not, does anyone have a Tiktok account?
"
McKT aside, we are a pretty narrow group ideologically most of the time. Wj is the token conservative and he is more centrist really. Of course things get real heated real fast when there are serious disagreements about important issues. I said this to LJ privately the other day, but the amazing thing about the hilzoy era was how she and whoever else was in charge kept things under control. I didn’t necessarily agree with her on everything, but this was one of the few places I knew about where there was a wide range of views for a few years. Of course people gradually dropped out or in a few cases were banned for being offensive. I remember a couple from the far far left like that.
The culture might also have gotten more polarized, but I am not sure about that. It was pretty polarized with Bush, esp in the early years when he was more popular, I think. Now I can’t remember when I first came here.
It would be difficult being polite with a MAGA type. I don’t think we have had any.
Weirdly,for a couple of years Rod Dreher had a wide range of views in his American Conservative blog comments. For a bit he was repentant about his Iraq War support and would sometimes critique the right. But his anti gay and anti trans mania got more and more evident and his Islamophobia came back if it ever fully left and he got super culture war paranoid and started taking like Franco was justified. I got more and more sarcastic and was eventually banned. Then he wrote his famous root wiener post and got eased out.
"
And I should add, that's just me talking, we would have to discuss it between Russell, wj, Janie and me and that might be a pretty fraught discussion.
"
Well, libjpn@gmail address is working and he's not written. I don't want to pile thing up that he has to do, but I'd add that he also needs to admit that he snuck back here to try and set commenters against each other. In the normal cut and thrust, you can suggest that some person agrees with you, but trying to gin up conflict is really not acceptable and there needs to be an acknowledgement of that.
On “From the Chinatalk substack”
So it's entirely possible for a very wealthy person to prefer a weekend's leisure to another million dollars.
But would they prefer a person in Flint getting potable water from their faucet to another million dollars? That is a bit more opaque.
On “An open thread on July 4th”
I understand the ban on McKT under whatever name, but I'd like to see him back. I urge him to apologise to the powers-that-be for having accused them of holding malevolent beliefs which they do not, and I urge those powers then to rescind the ban.
On “From the Chinatalk substack”
...economics, as I understand it, has no concept of "enough". It assumes that every individual will always act in order to accumulate wealth.
Economists are not necessarily stupid. They use a "utility curve" to describe how much an individual values increasing wealth. The standard assumption is that utility curves are increasing, i.e. people prefer more wealth to less, and concave, i.e. the curve gets flatter as wealth increases.
So it's entirely possible for a very wealthy person to prefer a weekend's leisure to another million dollars.
On “An open thread on July 4th”
I hope everyone in the U.S. had a great 4th of July. Especially, I hope everyone who loves them got to see a great fireworks show. Because, going forward you can expect fewer shows and smaller ones.
The thing is, virtually all of the fireworks used in the US are made in China. Which means they will be much more expensive in the future as Trump's
folliestariffs kick in. Of course, drone shows are supposed to be the latest big thing. Color me underwhelmed.On “From the Chinatalk substack”
Obviously, efficiency is a good thing, but if you think of it as superseding all other things, you may miss a lot.
There is also the difficulty that "efficiency" can mean very different things to different people. And, in my observation, almost none of them are even aware that they are using the word differently.
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