OT: CalExit

Christ, the flippin' West Virginians are feeling entitled again:

Just so.

It is, at the very least, a "Monica Lewinksy statement".

We await the deniers' response with amusement.

Just so. I got over such fantasies in adolescence; Larry Niven's stories helped, IIRC.

Of course, if they think such places would be better than the US, they could go and live any of the many such places that still exist around the world. That they don't illustrates the hollowness of their words.

That was exactly the reason I asked, but the question was about Jim's personal opinion. Freedom of speech does not imply freedom of implementation of that speech. :-)

Today it probably wouldn't require a war, just disable them electricity during the hottest part of the summer for a week and they'll quickly soften.

Best regards, Piotr

Once you control the resources and start thinging on whom they should be spent, "I" emerges as a somewhat natural choice. :-)

In case of doubt, you are welcome to decide to spend them on the undersigned, too -- you'll both help people and even know which people. ;-P

Best regards, Piotr

They don't. James Arthur has encouraged John Larkin to think that Soviet-Union-style control of the entire economy is the only way of being "left". Scandinavia and Germany look very like every other successful free market economy, but with better social services, health care and education than most, because they spend more on them.

John Larkin understands very little, so what he's actually saying is that they don't share some of his silly ideas. This isn't a particularly devastating criticism.

Good point! I see what you mean.... :-)

Same here. But we have to refer to ourselves as "Libertarians" now because the Lefties have hijacked the Liberal label and given it a

You do keep going on about feudalism for some bizarre reason. I personally have never even mentioned it, much less promoted it!

Ah, that's what he's doing! I was wondering...

And it has only taken you 178 years to notice that?

Indeed you haven't, but repeatedly applied secessions lead to something that looks very like feudal states or Italy/Germany before ~1850.

One big problem is that, in complex nonlinear systems, nobody understands enough to predict causalities. So attempts to control things have unintended, often growing, consequences, generally bad consequences. Leftists push on the wrong nodes, bad stuff happens, then they just want to push harder.

What works is to give a billion people freedom to try things, at random, and find out what does work. A few government functions help, but only a few.

I refer to myself as "engineer" and let other people decide what that means.

He's just projecting the left's future for us.

That would work both ways.

Agreed.

That's exactly what rightists and libertarians do too.

They push /different/ buttons with different consequences, but overall they don't understand any more than the leftists and the consequences are certainly no better.

Not a "social engineer"? :)

The law of unintended consequences.

John

The balance governments try to make is how to push buttons that both (all) sides can live with. The process is called negotiation, and it is the most important part of diplomacy.

Governments resort to war when the diplomats fail (or are not allowed to succeed by being hamstrung by their governments) at their jobs.

We are all social engineers when we try to find out ways to live together. It is called living, and one has to see all the shades of gray if one expects to live a long and potentially happy life.

We are all diplomats. Day to day diplomacy is as simple as buying stuff for your home/family/self. You negotiate with the stores for spending your money for their products. The negotiation can be as simple as not buying something because you don't want to or the price is higher than you are willing to pay, walking out and shopping somewhere else, to bargaining with the seller to get the price both of you can live with.

This is simply people being diplomatic.

The Old Mans War series by John Scalzi is a great example of how diplomacy can (and can't) work.

John

But much less. Rightists, and especially libertarians, generally don't want to have the government regulate everything. Leftists usually do.

But they push their own buttons, many different buttons, and are less likely to want a few giant buttons to control everybody.

It's all about the competition of ideas. Nobody is very good at predicting the future, so the sensible thing is to minimize public policy and global control, and let countries, states, cities, companies, individuals compete with various crazy ideas. See what works.

Most of the great inventions and social movements of the last few hundred years were not predicted by government experts. Or by any experts. That's basically automatic, because experts are too invested in the status quo. Experts are the enemy of progress.

An antisocial engineer.