patrick.net

I am against utilitarianism, even though at times I may opt for a utilitarian approach. That is, subconsciously.

I believe the debate shows the wide chasm between the new world US of A and the old world Europe.

Generally speaking, those who have made it will tend to distance themselves from "utility," not only to "wash" themselves but also to set an examplary model to dissuade the unwashed from trying to surplant their luck-won positions. This "distancing" was achieved via a cultural, spiritual and legal brainwashing in the old world. But unfortunately in the new world, nobody gives a damn. Hence, the constant popping up of the "new money" and exaltation of "utilitarianism."

Sigh ...

Nobody who posts on this board is rich and secure. Not a single one, myself included.

Life sucks if you don't play sports.

"using phrases like ’society’s limited resources’ also gets you 0/10 in every soc 101 and gov 101 essay, when it is very clear there is an abundance of resources, people just have trouble distributing it."

That is so easy to disprove, I don't know why you bother stating it. Firstly, most American college instructors would be impressed by a mention of society's limited resources from their lower level gov or soc students. Secondly, try to distribute the resources of present day Dafur or provide healthcare to HIV positive Angolans.

Furthermore, don't put words in my mouth. I have never advocated criminalizing stand alone drug use, ever.

Anyways, rather than go about insulting my education, as you have done previous with others in your arguments, howabout you tell me what you learnt in Gov 101 and Soc 101, in a systematic manner. IN A SYSTEMATIC MANNER, not your free form citations as retort to other's direct questions. How can you prevent the pitfalls of too much government control and waste? How do you know your ideas are not half baked?

However, you want to go much further, for government to usurp market players. Furthermore, you want the taxpayers to subsidize certain kinds of behaviors, even though similar past efforts have lead to less than great results.

I know very well how inefficient and conflicted governments are and how slow societies and companies can respond. And what I find is that generally, the lighter the touch, the better the results.

it's not my ideas, it's a comparison of how well a whole lot of countries are doing as a social experiment, and getting the right balance between market and state.

i'm glad you've done an unbiased and fully informed study of how well 'the lighter the touch, the better the result' works across a dozen OECD countries, carefully comparing and contrasting different forms of social welfare.

that's why the US health system comes in 37th in the world, noted particularly for its 'denial of access to healthcare for those who need it' compared with other countries, and its expensive pharmaceuticals and regressive nature. more on this earlier in the thread. hence why michael moore is making his latest film. the light touch.

you haven't given one example of how well the 'light touch' works, and you seem oblivious to the huge amount of regulation that is all around you to try to maintain a safe healthy society. even regardless of the notoriously high level of corruption in US politics.

and note that the 'market players' have been completely allowed in the US system to corrupt congress by individual donations with strings attached, unlike the systems in most other countries. also, elections in the US cost much more and leadups run considerably longer than in other comparable countries, for arguably no better result, which is also 'wasteful of resources'. it's high time america had some political and electoral reform on a huge range of fronts, particularly concerning impartiality and transparency. it's almost a textbook on how not to form a govt.

but all this rhetoric about 'market players' is just so much uninformed balderdash. you're just spouting a confused mish-mash of jargon and fuzzy thinking and sometimes PR and lobbying propaganda from those market players, all unreflexively stirred together.

GC,

Well, that is a consistent Nietsche position.

I live my normal life as a hedonistic, life is more fun is I'm not thinking about the greater good all the time.

DS,

If you don't bother to keep track of something I said a couple hours earlier, in direct response to you and make uninformed assumptions that I believe the exact opposite of what I stated (eg my willingness to let government take over market failures, which I've already repeatedly stated includes healthcare), I don't see any point in continuing a discussion with you...STOP

- hedonistic
+ hedonist

:/

GC,

F.N. wanted Clark Kent's alter ego, though I think he was thinking of someone darker...maybe Lex Luthor.

Adhering to hedonist principles doesn't mean leading the life of the hedonism bot http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedonism_Bot

I actually enjoy reading and spending time with my boring ole boyfriend a lot.

or, to put it another way, and to use an analogy, altho i hate analogies, it’s as though you are deciding to keep your lungs but throw away your heart. you want a functioning, happy, balanced body, but you’ve decided the heart is not needed, and the lungs will do by themselves. then you will have to try to make part of your lungs act like the heart to compensate, although the lung tissue isn’t very good at that. never mind, it will adapt. (= ’self-regulation’ of markets)

so, we don’t need different types of special-ised cells performing different useful functions at all in the body. i want a body that’s all lung. why can’t a body be all lung?

or, if we can’t throw away the heart, then i advocate a small heart. big hearts are inefficient, small hearts are better. big lungs, small heart. i want to make the heart small so i can drown it in the bathtub. if your extremities start dying off because of the lack of blood supply, then bad luck — they weren’t going to make it anyway, clearly they were losers (= ’social darwinism’). ok, we’ve done away with our hands and feet now, good. in fact, the arms and legs have gone too. oh well. didn’t need them. the remaining parts of the body will prosper better.

now, what’s are those lungs up to? oh, they’ve gone cancerous. we did away with the immune system as well, we want a system that’s all lung, cos lungs have been shown to work perfectly, somebody called adam smith said so 200 years ago. didn’t think about the need for immunity, that’s an externality.

etc. analogise ad infinitum…

Peter, are you looking in the PA area ?

Not really. For the same price, I rather get something nicer in Sunnyvale.

However, there are quite a few (older) condo/townhouses under 800K in PA.

Actually, I’m a full fledged utilitarian and I advocate it for social policies.

Really? I do not know many full-fledged utilitarian other than my wife and myself. :)

softestlanding Says:

THIS WEBSITE OFFICIALLY SUCKS ASS

...I WILL CHECK BACK IN 1 WEEK.

_______

Softestpounding:

Umm, I take it by your post that you're probably a gen-x'er.
I'm not sure if you read my previous post, but I think probably
you should just quit complaining and "ass-ume the position."

Best of luck!

my willingness to let government take over market failures, which I’ve already repeatedly stated includes healthcare

right, that just becomes a circular definition, and a rather useless one. how much should it take over then? it's completely open. the market should do everything, except when the govt does it. the govt should do everything, except when the market does it. who decides when there is a market failure? clearly that decision has not been made in the US yet for healthcare or affordable housing. what process will trigger the flip?

of course, historically, that is exactly what has happened -- govts took on more and more functions over time. once again, this is just a pointless platitude, and 1) is contestable in its sentiment and 2) just reflects existing structures of anglo-american welfare. there is too much to unpack here... the underlying and unstated assumption, of course, is that a 'market approach' will inevitably deliver a more 'efficient' outcome than a govt approach, due to tougher HRM practices, a need to be lean and mean to be competitive, responds better to the organic nature of customer demand, etc. but you have not said any of that in any of your posts, just keep dropping in a shibboleth about 'markets should come first'. further, those outcomes are not universal, and not guaranteed. you can't tell me that david letterman making $30M a year for his crap non-comedy and general waste of time is a terribly 'useful' social function or that his level of reward is appropriate, and that paying him that much is 'efficient' -- no politicians or govt workers are (directly) paid $30M a year, altho people like Cheney have arranged things for themselves that way thru other means. so i would dispute that markets are really 'efficient', it's just a convenient pretence.

however, it IS an utterance that margaret thatcher would have been proud of. if you equate being margaret thatcher with being a progressive, well then...

Peter P Says:

> Is Noe Valley as prime as Marina? What makes it prime?
> I am very ignorant about SF, so please forgive me.

Then SF Woman wrote:

> Noe Valley is one of the trendier neighborhoods in the city.
> I believe it became very popular mainly because of its
> proximity to the freeway (easy to get down to Silicon Valley)
> and its weather. I just call it ‘prime’ in honor of Marina Prime.

When I was a kid Noe Valley was a working class neighborhood with a lot of Irish cops and fireman. As I got older is became the “Subaru Driving Lesbian Mom” neighborhood since the homes were cheap, the weather was great and it was close to the Castro (where the baby daddy lived with his boyfriend). In the last few years lots of people that would have lived in the north part of the city are moving there since the homes are about half as expensive as the Marina and Pacific Heights and Presidio Heights (you can get a decent house for $2mm that would cost $4mm in 94123, 94115 or 94118)…

astrid Says:

> I don’t know about whites, but I know the Chinese
> families are pretty obsessed with getting their kids
> into the right school districts and getting them off
> on the school/career hamster wheel.

The Chinese in America are as a whole the smartest and hardest working people I have ever met and Chinese parents (second only to Jewish parents) do a great job at teaching their kids the value of a good education.

> I think if the parents were truly interested in the best
> possible education for their kids, then a move out of
> state is probably the best solution. The best public/
> private schools are not in California anyways.

I went to California public schools for most of my life (everything except high school and grad school where I went to a couple good private schools). I am very happy with the Californial schools I went to and if I could live anywhere in the world and send my kids to any schools in the world I would send them to the same great schools I attended...

FAB,

But you have an extremely restrictive definition of a good California school, which are now located in places with $2M+ properties. For that amount, I bet I can find you a wonderful public school district in Westchester or Northern Virginia or Chicago.

Ditto private schools. SFWoman has described some great SF private schools. But they charge such a high tuition that I could just send my (highly hypothetical) kids to national boarding schools in the northeast.

For all but the wealthiest families, a move out CA is the fastest way to improve their living standard and their kids' education.

New thread: CME Housing Futures: disappointment or impatience?

I must admit that Astrid is very masculine, intellectually speaking, more so than a lot of men we see today.

just to clarify, i know where astrid is coming from -- i'm not suggesting that the govt should start taking on milk rounds or running 7/11s, because it would be quite bad at that...

and there are definite dysfunctions of govt also, even in the most well-meaning bureaucracies -- i've seen many of them first hand...

but there are many facets to the situation, because the govt dept i worked with used a purchaser-provider model of funding services run by the 'private' sector, including the churches and NGOs. other things it did were provide direct nursing home bed place subsidies. still other things it does is pay the doctors on a fee for service basis, and fund the public hospitals on a massive grants basis. and run medical insurance. so it was really just writing cheques as its main function...

and also fund the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme, which happens to provide about the cheapest pharmaceuticals to the public in the Western world -- the exact opposite of the situation in the US where a bribed Congress refuses to stop rewarding big pharma from YOUR pocket, which was where Hilary Clinton got rolled with healthcare reform...

the bilateral FTA was one place where a bribed US Congress tried to roll Australia, absolutely. Labor voted the loophole pharma clauses down as non-negotiable when passing the FTA, leaving big pharma to go off and lick its wounds and try to think of another way of screwing the country for IP returns and the ability to evergreen patents, etc... they bitterly hate the pricing controls the PBS has put on drugs, and are constantly trying to find ways around it...

Anyways, rather than go about insulting my education, as you have done previous with others in your arguments, howabout you tell me what you learnt in Gov 101 and Soc 101, in a systematic manner.

well, i haven't insulted your education or others, for that matter... i've pointed out you don't seem to have covered certain areas, nor do you seem to have work experience in those areas, so perhaps you are less qualified to comment. i once pointed out what i HAD studied to FAB, when he suggested in an open comment that all 'liberals' only did junior HS science.

but apparently you want to me to paste in a semester's worth, or two or three years worth, of notes and years of thinking and engagement and experience into this forum now, in a SYSTEMATIC fashion, rather than attempting to head a few concepts off at the pass. i'll just start with the course notes and textbooks... i'll become the first free internet provider of college education, copyrights notwithstanding... sounds feasible...

(when university attendance was pretty well free, one effect was that there were perpetual students who just stayed enrolled for years, doing one course after another for nix... philosophy, history, you name it... ;) )

DS,

Seriously, I'm sure you're a nice guy, esp. in person. But everytime I follow a lengthy discussion with you, it's like going in circles -- I don't seem to get anywhere and I get dizzier and dizzier as the discussion continues. Can we just stop it before driving more people out of this blog? I promise to play nice and not refer to you as a postmodernist, if you promise to quit this line of baiting me as a false or stupid progressive. I don't necessarily mind being proven wrong or learning new things, but talking to you is just really really frustrating.

(Here's my response, but please don't reply to it here, please email me any on point replies you wish to give. Those points have already been raised elsewhere, and you didn't seem to pay them any mind. That's one of the main reasons why talking to you is really frustrating.

Systematic does not mean listing every nitty gritty facts. But it does require organizing thoughts and beliefs into a core or a system. Preferably while you acknowledge the existence of a greater world.

Most sciences, both hard science and social sciences, have categorizable approaches. Based on your earlier discussion, including the one we just had, you appear to have no such core beliefs. Nor do you do much linear discussions. Instead, you toss out a lot of random stuff, which becomes increasing frustrating for the other side to digest and follow. A jumble of approaches is not really knowledge, when you make no effort to make sense of them (that includes for other people, by contextualizing the information and making judgments based on them). If you cannot give a couple important takeaways from your basic level classes, then you've merely memorized facts without learning the lessons from them.

Furthermore, you've taken to criticize me as a "false progressive" when I've been open about my approach to knowledge and social policies. I've noted that my brand of progressivism and liberal ideals are far from the "orthodox." I characterize myself as a progressive and a classical liberal (not a "neo-liberal", whatever that means - I have not encountered the term from my casual readings), you can agree or disagree about my suitability to those points, but I've never seen any evidence that a progressive or a liberal need to be diametrically opposed to market based solutions, if those solutions are more effective.

What you've characterized as my "truisms" and "feel good" babble, I have in fact developed over years of reevaluation. I believe in them and approach situations with those ideas in mind, that doesn't mean I don't add nuances of specific situations as needed.)

bloody cial-is filter

a neoliberal is used in the rest of the world to mean someone who has rediscovered the writings of adam smith, not ‘liberal’ in the sense of a democrat…

my writing dosen’t go round and round in circles, i just find the truisms a little frustrating — trust me, educated people who work in govt and have liberal arts and soc sci backgrounds have a coherent world view, and it doesn’t contain truisms about markets and simple mantras about what’s best for everyone (it’s usually a deep distrust). but there is a lot to read and learn. like any special-isation, you can’t accuse people of being circular because you haven’t had the chance to get a solid structured grounding — it’s not their fault you haven’t done the theory… it’s like saying the French are speaking gibberish because they are talking too fast to understand, or the physics PhD is talking gobbledygook…

I’ve never seen any evidence that a progressive or a liberal need to be diametrically opposed to market based solutions, if those solutions are more effective.

that's fair enough. 'New Labour' in England got in by taking the 'middle way', i.e. not nationalising but often outsourcing in fact -- they argued that some functions and services could be outsourced to the private sector rather than just abolishing them like thatcher would've. that approach can work reasonably well. whereas british leyland etc always went into the doldrums when nationalised. i've seen both sides of the coin, and i currently work for a british multinational that takes on outsourced contracts of any kind whatsoever, and does it well... there simply isn't the space on a forum like this to cover all the ins and outs of governmentality with all their pros and cons... there is a whole body of theory of sorts around how to manage outsourced contracts, etc... and this is only one dimension of thinking in governmentality, there are any other number concernign the responsibilities of govt...

SQT Says:

July 11th, 2006 at 7:19 am
SQT,

Looks like the post has been removed. Care to summarize? I really could use a laugh.

Wow, that was fast! I was able to go back and bring the post up. Here it is.

SELLERS be Proactive not Reactive

——————————————————————————–
Reply to: hous-180660718@craigslist.org
Date: 2006-07-11, 3:19AM PDT

Many sellers are reacting to the softening of the market and are inadvertently making it harder for themselves, and are allowing buyers to come in and almost steal their homes from them at ridiculous prices. The result is that a softening of the market is being created even further.

If anyone has studied the history of real estate, you know that this market WILL eventually rebound. Ask any person who owned real state in the past who decided to sell because the market was bad AT THE MOMENT and you’ll find many statements of regret. In many cases you’d be better off holding out, refinaincing, if possible, renting out your place and just holding tight.

If you’ve got to sell, price your house fairly and offer some incentives, such as assistance with closing cost, buying down the buyer’s interest rate, home warranties, paying association or assessment fees for a given period. But please, don’t give your house away. Be willing to adjust other things, but avoid lowering the price of your house. Each seller that lowers the price on their house only eventually lowers the values of every other property in their neighborhood. Don’t be reactive, be proactive.

Most sciences, both hard science and social sciences, have categorizable approaches. Based on your earlier discussion, including the one we just had, you appear to have no such core beliefs. Nor do you do much linear discussions. Instead, you toss out a lot of random stuff, which becomes increasing frustrating for the other side to digest and follow. A jumble of approaches is not really knowledge, when you make no effort to make sense of them (that includes for other people, by contextualizing the information and making judgments based on them). If you cannot give a couple important takeaways from your basic level classes, then you’ve merely memorized facts without learning the lessons from them.

this stuff is just foolish and irritating. i've given more than a couple of 'takeaways' throughout my writing, i think most normal people would have got it by now. there seems to be a certain rigidity of thinking going on here -- i mean, like a straitjacket. (the very concept of a 'takeaway', although i suppose it is there in my writing, demonstrates the failed modernist project and a dependent craving for structuration in itself)

while most 'sciences' may have a 'categorisable approach' -- which is a questionable assertion, really, in the light of how knowledge is discovered and constructed -- and once again shows exactly the dead while male thinking you were earlier criticising -- and is the failed project of logical positivism -- our sociology professors very deliberately did not take a 'structured, scientific' approach to teaching us, because they were demonstrating how flawed that project really is -- they just taught ideas, which were at least self-consistent. this 'scientising need' is exactly the sort of trap that people like marx got into that you were also critiquing earlier. then you accuse me of being 'circular' when in fact your own arguments and worldview are inherently self-contradictory and tend to be circular and ill-considered.

you can make those remarks in spleen, but it really isn't valid. my approach has been consistent, self-consistent and grounded throughout, it's just that the average american joe doesn't get exposed to 'continental philosophy' too much. that's not my fault... however, that ignorance and lack of reflection and self-scrutiny is one of the main things that is going to bring down the US in the very near future...

DS,

You either don't read my responses at all or don't respect my queries at all. You're not interested in a dialogue with other people, you just want a chance to hear yourself type. If you really can't figure out why this habit of yours infuriates otherwise open minded people, I can't say I'm surprised.

SQT,

It's okay. I should know better by now. It's not even the threadjacking that bothers me the most (I don't bother reading his stuff unless he's questioning my position). What bothers me is that he pays no attention to the other participants' points and treats them like he's talking down to five year olds. That's not even a good strategy to get 5 year olds to listen to you.