[aklug] Re: !~

On 11/01/2013 12:11 AM, Arthur Corliss wrote:
> On Thu, 31 Oct 2013, Greg Schmitz wrote:
>
>> I don't see it as guilt (your attribution). I see it as pragmatism if
>> one considers, for example, how the courts have used history and how
>> folks might react the BS we are being fed - and I'm not referring to
>> government. I'm not directing my arguments towards you only towards
>> the arguments you have made. Speaking only for myself I'm aware of
>> politik and real politik and how both work. How things work now - and
>> how things will work out are not the same thing.
>
> Pragmatism means being prepared for the misdirected external forces,
> while
> directing your own force in productive pursuits. Understanding
> history is
> important, we both agree on that, but being bound and consumed by it is
> completely different. It's the difference between recognizing the
> circumstances we're born into and committing to make the most of our
> relative resources, or focusing on how to atone for acts that happened
> generations ago. A question of reparations which is, in reality, the
> ultimate in intellectual cowardice because the proponent lacks the
> backbone
> to make the self-sacrifice in the proportion one thinks they've unfairly
> benefited by. Instead, they want it forced upon all society so they
> don't
> actually lose any actual power of benefit, everyone gets dragged down
> with
> them.
>
> Pragmatically speaking, given our government's extensive record on
> financial
> management and corruption, I don't see how you stand by your comments
> that
> you'll take government control over a free market. The private
> enterprise,
> at least, knows how to concentrate their resources into turning a profit.
> The government can try to pick market winners like, say, Solyndra, and
> can't
> even make those numbers work.
>
> As for the courts, I might have agreed with you that history is important
> fifty years ago, but today I'm not so sure. Not with the Supreme Court's
> decision on eminent domain being acceptable purely on the grounds of
> economic development. Not with Obamacare being authorized under the
> premise
> that it isn't a compulsion to buy services but a tax, all while every
> non-judicial proponent claiming the exact opposite. How many more
> examples
> do you want? It's ridiculous, and it flies in the face of established
> precedence and historical fact.
>
> With half of the judicial system considering the Constitution to be an
> "evolving document" it's no wonder that we've created an imbecilic
> organism
> with only the primal urge to consume brains. Your government, brought to
> you by the letter braaaaiiinnnsss....
>
> In the end, all politicking in its current form doesn't work. They're all
> just a dance which ends up with us all tied to different sides of the
> same
> power keg. And the fuse is already lit.
>
> --Arthur Corliss
> Live Free or Die
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Arthur, I know we are on the same page. We fall out on the government
/ private thing. Perhaps because I've had the opportunity to rub
shoulders (party) with government employees who really took their jobs
seriously - some who became whistle blowers (mostly Raygun era
employees) I think that government might do good if given a chance.
Think pallets of cash from the Federal Reserve visible from outer space
in Iraq. I don't think that private enterprise is more efficient than
government; that's where we differ - the privateers are leaches sucking
money from the tax pool in a manner far more inefficient (and often
unaccountable) than what bureaus of our government used to do for half
the price. You qualified your remarks a while back and explicitly
excepted military procurement (responsible for the biggest chunk of our
current debt burden) from your argument because you thought that process
was broken. Since this discussion is about IP two things are worth
noting. In the past drawings for military equipment were property of
the government and could be let for independent bids - now the drawings
(IP) are property of privatlely held corporations (Adm. Rickover must be
spinning in his grave) - that does not work economically or militarily.

----------
Thus, if it be true that death is annihilation, then the man who
believes that he will certainly go straight to heaven when he dies,
provided he have fulfilled certain simple observances in this life,
has a cheap pleasure which will not be followed by the least
disappointment.

                                         Charles Sanders Peirce
                                         "The Fixation of Belief" (1877)

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Received on Fri Nov 1 01:17:48 2013