A question for the Americans - Politics, Philosophy, and Religion

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A question for the Americans

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Orwell
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Posted: Thu Jun 26, 2008 10:56 pm Post subject:

n4mwd wrote:

Orwell wrote:

n4mwd wrote:

There is tons of evidence to back up many of these claims.

Really now. I have yet to see any.

Now you are being silly. If you can't see, then maybe you need glasses.

I have glasses, thanks. I'm going to need for you to point out some solid evidence here. Even if you could demonstrate that this building was brought down by explosives, how exactly does that prove Bush is responsible for 9/11? Confused

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n4mwd
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Posted: Fri Jun 27, 2008 8:20 am Post subject:

Orwell wrote:

I have glasses, thanks.

Maybe they need cleaning. Sometimes glasses get all smudgy.

Quote:

I'm going to need for you to point out some solid evidence here. Even if you could demonstrate that this building was brought down by explosives, how exactly does that prove Bush is responsible for 9/11? Confused

I didn't say Bush was solely responsible. He's too stupid for that. I said there were ties to him.

Mainly the fact that his brother was in charge of security at the WTC and fired all the bomb sniffing dogs weeks prior to the attack. They wouldn't have been able to plant explosives if the dogs would just dig them all up.

Whenever something bad like that happens, if you really want to know who was responsible, look to see who had the most to gain.

During the 2000 election, the vote was very close and finally decided by the Supreme court. Many Americans felt that Bush stole the election. Eight years earlier, Bush Sr. was behind Dessert Storm. In that war, Iraq surrendered, but the Bush Sr. let Saddam slip through his fingers. That fact was a major embarrassment to the Bush family.

So the WTC attack was a springboard to justify a war in Iraq and afghanistan when those people really had nothing to do with it. It was because Bush wanted Saddam's head on a platter.

Meanwhile, the WTC buildings were insured. But they were in need of being demolished because they were so old. The attack on the towers was a windfall profit for the owners and also allowed Bush to become a "wartime president".

With the exception of Bush, wartime presidents have historically been popular.

Speckles
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Joined: May 03, 2008
Posts: 448

Posted: Fri Jun 27, 2008 1:08 pm Post subject:

Awesomelyglorious wrote:

Speckles wrote:

Right now. Democracy is essentially a free market for political power. While the amount of voting power an individual has is fixed, they are free to try to convince as many people as they can. The most attractive and most promoted ideas come to the forefront and determine how the country should be run.

How exactly is this different then the free market? Why should the invisible hand of the marketplace all of a sudden stop working, just because the currency has changed?

No it isn't. The free market is the free market for political power. Democracy is demagoguery, and the difference between democracy and the free market has been shown by public choice economics, and studies on biases in political leanings.

The difference is that there is no currency, there is no rational calculation, there is no direct incentives, there is no individual choice. It is NOT a market.

Quote:

Okay, what other actions? What action would you propose that does not ultimately lead to violence or an attempt to make people vote a certain way?

Agorism. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agorism

Okay, it took me awhile to read about it and fully think it over, but I've found something that breaks Agorism IMO.

Assuming agorism succeeds, all infrastructure needs will have to be supplied by private companies. So people would have to pay companies for essentials like sewers, water, and roads. These are things that one can do without in our society.

Now, what exactly is going to stop a rich person from running his water business at a loss, driving all his competitors out of business, then buying their infrastructure and destroying it, and then proceeding to jack up the price of water to a back-breaking price after having eliminated all alternatives for the customers?
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Speckles
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Posts: 448

Posted: Fri Jun 27, 2008 2:43 pm Post subject:

Orwell wrote:

Speckles wrote:

Quote:

I understand your analogy, but I've already pointed out why I think it's a lousy analogy. At this point we're just arguing in circles.

Umm, I just read over your posts, and I have no idea what you are talking about. Please restate your arguments to be clear, just to humor me.

You have yet to demonstrate convincingly that higher voter turnout leads to an optimal result. Therefore, there is no basis for referring to this as a Prisoner's Dilemma.

?? The Prisoner's Dilemma arguement has nothing to do with higher voter turnouts leading to optimal results. And that would have nothing to do with how good an analogy it would be anyway.

Anyways, I will spell out the connection.

Essentially, the requirements of a Prisoner's Dilemma is when a party gets the greatest benefit when they defect and a second party cooperates, a lesser benefit when both they and the other party cooperates at the same time, a lesser punishment when both parties defect, and the worst punishment when they cooperate and the other party defects.

When translated into voter versus politician it works like this. For the voter, defection means not voting and cooperation means voting. For a politician defection is not advancing an agenda and cooperation is advancing an agenda

If the voter doesn't vote and the politician forwards the voter's agenda anyway, the voter gets the greatest benefit since her view is advanced and she gets the extra free afternoon. The politician takes the worst hit, since he will have wasted his time and money trying to court a vote he didn't get, and will have alienated other voters who disagree with the orginal voter's agenda.

If the voter does vote and the politician forwards the agenda, both parties get a lesser benefit. The voter lost the afternoon, but got her views advanced. The politician spend time and money, and alienated other potential voters, but got the one vote.

If the voter doesn't vote and the politician doesn't forward the agenda, both parties get a lesser punishment. The voter gets the free afternoon, but doesn't get her agenda forwarded. The politician is able to spend resources elsewhere, but doesn't get the vote.

If the voter does vote but the politician doesn't forward the agenda, the voter takes the worst hit since she wasted an afternoon and does not get her views advanced. The politician gets the greatest benefit since they are able to spend resources elsewhere and still get the vote.

Now, this is over-simplified, as there is a few more options. The politician can do a partial defection, spending resources to advance a viewpoint during the election and then work against it once elected, resulting in a worse punishment in case three and a lesser benefit in case four but leading to an increased probability of case four.

The voter can punish the politician more severely by voting for a canididate that doesn't win, decreasing the legitmacy of the politician's win, and even further by voting for a different candidate who does win and deprive the original politician the win all together. They can also spend their own resources to promote or slander the politician, affecting the votes of others and so leading to greater benefit or punishment for the politician. They can also choose to become a politician themselves and become a competitor for resources.

But the analogy still holds. All that's changed is that both sides have more options on how much they will cooperate or defect.

Quote:

Fundamentalist Christians hold a dispropotionate influence, because politician know that they're almost guarenteed to vote in large numbers over issues, because their holy men tell them they have a duty.

Or rather, the leaders of fundamentalist Christians hold disproportionate influence because they have convinced a significantly large voting bloc to vote the way they tell them to.

Well no, it doesn't quite work that way. The leader still has to convince his followers to endorse a certain idea. None of those leaders could suddenly start arguing for abortion and retain their power. They have to keep appeasing their supporters, or lose their power to another leader who will.

I don't understand the relevance of your distinction.

It does pretty much work that way, as these people will often follow their leaders even against their own beliefs up at least to a certain point. Fundies could probably compromise on abortion if their leaders told them to.

Yeah, because they don't have the inclination or time to keep track of how much their viewpoints are being advanced at any given moment. That's why you pay people to do it for you. Leaders are no different then plumbers in that respect. If your friend the plumber told you that it will cost $500 to fix your piping and it will take two weeks, how much time are you going to spend trying to learn about plumbing to see if he isn't lying? If a different plumber whom you had been told was a charlatan and incompetent came by and offered to do it for $450 in ten days, how much time would you spend checking?

Would you really call a person an idiot if they just ignored the second plumber? If they were shown believable proof they the trusted plumber was messing with them, they'd probably switch, but how worth their while is it to spend much time on the issue? But if after two weeks their plumbing has gotten worse, and their friend wants another $500 bucks, then they'd probably consider looking up the other plumber.

That's really how politics works.

Quote:

The distinction is that you are trying to personify a crowd, whereas I am pointing out that the issue is a particular individual in a position where they can exercise some degree of influence. It's not the masses that generally drive social movements, but rather specific powerful and charismatic figures.

What proof do you have that leader are the cause of being social movements, instead of big social movements leading to the rise of leaders or both being caused by something else? Corralation is not causation.

Quote:

I found your counter inneffectual, for reasons outlined earlier on the thread. The issue is that this really is not a Prisoner's Dilemma situation unless you make other assumptions that I have already refuted.

But you just admitted that Fundamentalist Christian hold a disproportionate influence, because they vote in large blocs. You aren't making any sense.

You'll have to point out the contradiction more explicitly for me.

Essentially, Fundamentalist Christians are a group that come together and vote as a block for politicians who support their views in a tit-for-tat manner. Thus, several views that are considered nonsensical by the general population get endorsed by politicians. If they don't support the viewpoints, they risk alienating a large group of people who they know WILL vote. So they advance policies that please the fundamentalist but alienate the general population.

However, since the opponents to these policies are stuck in "defect" mode, i.e. probably won't change their votes regardless of what the politician does, it makes the most sense for the politician to chase after the group who he knows behaves in a tit-for-tat manner, the fundies.
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Orwell
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Posted: Fri Jun 27, 2008 3:10 pm Post subject:

I know what the Prisoner's dilemma is. But to claim that voting vs not voting is a PD situation you have to claim that more people voting is preferable to fewer people voting. I don't see how this is the case. _________________ WAR IS PEACE FREEDOM IS SLAVERY IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

skafather84
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Posted: Fri Jun 27, 2008 3:25 pm Post subject:

n4mwd wrote:

Orwell wrote:

I have glasses, thanks.

Maybe they need cleaning. Sometimes glasses get all smudgy.

Quote:

so what you're postulating is that 9/11 was a dual plot for revenge and insurance scam?

Speckles
Velociraptor

Joined: May 03, 2008
Posts: 448

Posted: Fri Jun 27, 2008 5:29 pm Post subject:

Orwell wrote:

I know what the Prisoner's dilemma is. But to claim that voting vs not voting is a PD situation you have to claim that more people voting is preferable to fewer people voting. I don't see how this is the case.

What do you mean? The Fundies vote in a bloc, favoring politicians in a tit-for-tat manner. By doing this their viewpoint gets disproportionate power relative to their numbers. In what way is this not a prisoner's dilemma?
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Orwell
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Joined: Aug 09, 2007
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Posted: Fri Jun 27, 2008 5:35 pm Post subject:

Speckles wrote:

Orwell wrote:

For one thing, they don't vote tit-for-tat. Before 2006 congressional elections, the Republican party controlled all three branches of the federal government and did not act on the pro-life sentiments of the fundies. Yet the fundies continue to vote Republican. And it's not a prisoner's dilemma because PD requires that each person pursuing their own best interest results in an overall worse outcome. That's not the case here. Fundies have a voting bloc, but I don't see where you get from there to PD.
_________________
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FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

Awesomelyglorious
Destroyer of worlds, reaver of souls
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Posted: Fri Jun 27, 2008 7:16 pm Post subject:

Speckles wrote:

Okay, it took me awhile to read about it and fully think it over, but I've found something that breaks Agorism IMO.

There is nothing to break agorism if you are a crazy enough libertarian. Eventually it becomes God in all of his glory and you denounce the heretics as statists as you continue to look for secret signs in newspapers used to coordinate US secret police.

Quote:

Assuming agorism succeeds, all infrastructure needs will have to be supplied by private companies. So people would have to pay companies for essentials like sewers, water, and roads. These are things that one can do without in our society.

Yes.

Quote:

Now, what exactly is going to stop a rich person from running his water business at a loss, driving all his competitors out of business, then buying their infrastructure and destroying it, and then proceeding to jack up the price of water to a back-breaking price after having eliminated all alternatives for the customers?

Well, quite simple, the fact that selling at a loss is bad strategy will lead him not to do that. I mean, in order for that idea to work, our rich man will have to be a *ton* richer than all of his competitors. As not only does he have to run at a loss sustainable for him but not for his foes, he also has to then have enough money to buy off the properties of all of his foes, without being bought out by somebody clever enough to know our rich man will eventually run out of money. Not only that, but the sheer amount of loss taken to enact this strategy is unlikely to be effective in the first place as he has to have a very very strong monopoly for a relatively significant period of time, as frankly, people can still buy their Ozarka, or go drink from the stream, or have some other water supplier somewhere else move in, so competition would likely break this strategy. It is on the level of impossible to deny all alternatives for a given product without coercive force. Really, what selling at a loss is better for doing is for marketing a product, just give people a cheapy for a while and then raise the price.

Last edited by Awesomelyglorious on Fri Jun 27, 2008 8:09 pm; edited 1 time in total

n4mwd
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Posted: Fri Jun 27, 2008 7:54 pm Post subject:

skafather84 wrote:

so what you're postulating is that 9/11 was a dual plot for revenge and insurance scam?

And more. Building 7 housed billions of dollars in gold bullion. Most of it was never recovered.

It was a group of people with a common interest. Get rich and revenge at the same time.

skafather84
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Posted: Fri Jun 27, 2008 9:43 pm Post subject:

n4mwd wrote:

skafather84 wrote:

so what you're postulating is that 9/11 was a dual plot for revenge and insurance scam?

And more. Building 7 housed billions of dollars in gold bullion. Most of it was never recovered.

It was a group of people with a common interest. Get rich and revenge at the same time.

so who are the key players in this and to what capacity?

Speckles
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Posts: 448

Posted: Sat Jun 28, 2008 11:26 am Post subject:

Orwell wrote:

Speckles wrote:

Orwell wrote:

Yeah, but many politician have been trying; and stuff like stem cell research keeps being blocked and bills that make it harder to have an abortion keep being brought up, so they are in fact having some success. There's also the support for less seperation between the church and state, the resistance to gay marriage, the support for Isreal, and the crusadist support for war in the Middle East. And, most telling, the fact that it is almost impossible for a non-Christian to get nominated as a presidential candidate.

The fundies are clearly getting an advantage, as a far number of people poll in opposition to these policies. The fact that they haven't totally acheived all their goals only goes to show that they are in competition with other groups of voters for political attention (which was my whole point to begin with). The pro-lifers are faced with an equally ferverant pro-choice group, who will vote to support their view. Any politician who supports pro-life too strongly is going to have some or all the advantage given by cooperating with the fundies counter-acted by all the opposing votes of the pro-choicers.

Plus, Republican doesn't always equal pro-life. If a district has enough pro-choice voters that a pro-life platform will be defeated, or in other words result in more punishment then benefit, then pro-life politician won't get elected. However, if they are neutral on the issue, but against say gay marriage, then the fundies still gain by voting. That's really the next level of complexity, in that a politician can cooperate and defect at the same time on different issues. Game theory models get more complex as they approach reality, though the core logic still holds.
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Speckles
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Posted: Sat Jun 28, 2008 11:28 am Post subject:

Awesomelyglorious wrote:

Speckles wrote:

That is ... a surprisingly poor argument coming from you. You've fallen for my trap, and completely ignored several large aspects of water infrastructure. Are you sure that you don't want to rethink before I start the attack?
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I have seen the truth and it makes no sense.

Awesomelyglorious
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Posted: Sat Jun 28, 2008 11:57 am Post subject:

Speckles wrote:

Awesomelyglorious wrote:

Speckles wrote:

Your trap? No.

Let's see, my arguments are the following:

1) The strategy you've outlined is bad and would not work because the costs of implementation are gigantically high. As you gain more market your losses increase, and they already have to be higher per sale than your competition. Because of that, the notion that a company will out-lose it's competitors and then be able to purchase them seems flawed, and perhaps a bad interpretation of John Rockefeller's strategy(which did include buying out the competition but with prices that were lower due to good business practices).

2) Even if implemented, the losses would still likely be too high to justify the strategy because you have to take tremendous losses before the strategy pays out, and when it does you can only exert moderate market power in order to prevent any efforts to replace you.

3) Controlling an *entire* market for water is difficult as even if you can do it locally, there are non-local competitors and there can even be local competitors with lakes or wells or various other things. Unless we argue that the sum of the world's water is controlled by a single industry, we will still have to allow for Ozarka, or whatever other bottled water company or other water company coming in and trying to take advantage of the situation, or heck, even *another* really rich guy who wants to make money if we are assuming that this idea is so profitable.

I think the problem in your case is that you are extrapolating a case from an underdeveloped 3rd world to all markets and mankind. The 3rd world has the obvious problem of the 1st world, combined with it's existing infrastructure problems. Not only that, but few 3rd world countries have privatized everything so totally that Coase's theorem would apply to these situations as it would under a market anarchist situation.

Now, if you want to argue against me, go right ahead. I have thought this through to a reasonable extent. The issue is that you are probably assuming that the 1st business strategy is historical even though there are economists who argue that the logic is sketchy, and you also are going to probably that #3 is not as hard as I say it is.

Orwell
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Posted: Sat Jun 28, 2008 2:08 pm Post subject:

Speckles, I understand the point you are making about voting blocs, but it is still not a PD situation. You can make an argument from voting blocs, but trying to connect it to PD just distracts from the validity of your argument by including inaccurate claims in it. _________________ WAR IS PEACE FREEDOM IS SLAVERY IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

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