Betruger wrote:MSimon I have the luxury of being from nowhere in particular, keeping only the parts of other cultures I approve of. Blind tribalism is for suckers.
MSimon wrote:The load is always uncomfortable and if allowed to grow unchecked it strangles the host. In the name of the greatest good for the greatest number.
Ya know, not to pointlessly stir the pot, but you and/or Diogenes plugged into, for a bit, what looks like an echo chamber over in Charles Stross' comments/forum just might make for interesting, or at least entertaining dialog. If only because of that critical mass of shrewdness and experience.
D. and I agree on a great many things. One of them is that socialism doesn't work. There is no point though in entering that forum because from what I can tell it is full of true believers with hardly any counter weight.
So let me see. Both D and I agree that over regulation and over taxation of the economic sphere is disastrous to an economy.
I apply that same thinking to the social sphere. D does not. He is afraid of what social liberty would bring. Just as your socialists are afraid of what economic liberty would bring. Trouble is the one kind of socialism feeds the other. So the guy who said " libertarianism is the communism of capitalism " was simply being incoherent. Or cute.Or maybe he meant taking liberty to the extreme would lead to disaster. But that is not what we find. Minimum government and a country prospers. Maximum government and a country declines.
We can take Israel as a counter example. When they over regulated business the economy stagnated. They cut those regulations and now they have quite a vibrant economy. They were never inclined to over regulate the social sphere. Proof of that if that Raphael Mechoulam is an Israeli. Until recently his kind of work would have been strangled in America. In fact when it comes to human trials it still is.
Just to give you an idea. Recently these Jews contacted me about some things.
http://www.illuminating.us/
Now if you read that you find they are quite liberal socially. And not so liberal fiscally. But I'm heartened that Milton Friedman (a self described libertarian) was a Jew. As was Alisa Zinov'yevna Rosenbaum. Although a libertarian she called it something else.
http://druglibrary.org/special/friedman ... _drugs.htm
http://www.ontheissues.org/celeb/Ayn_Rand_Drugs.htm
Thing is Bush is going to have to contend with the millennials. And they are quite libertarian. Obama care and "free tuition until you graduate" is crushing them. As is Nixon's program. Which was designed to target theyoungthepoorandtheblack. You can already see the Black revolt in DC. The revolt of the youth will be evident in the 2016 or 2020 election.
I suppose what hurts D most is that he no longer recognizes the country he grew up in. For me it is heading in a direction I could only have dreamed of 25 years ago. So for him the current situation is pain all around. For me it is hopeful. I think we will correct the economic strangulation and the social strangulation is already well into the unwinding.
BTW tell me more about Charlie's politics. I couldn't figure it out with some casual searches. The Greek thread you linked seems socialist all the way down.