I claimed that the wealth entrepreneurs create benefits no one but themselves. — Kaarlo Tuomi

So you mean the entrepreneur providing a service or a utility doesn't benefit anybody?

How insane is that idea?

Here's a question for people here:

Assume the pandemic will continue as it is now for let's say eleven months.

If Joe Biden wins, will the media forget the pandemic after January 20th 2021?

Just saying while remembering how the "War on Terror" suddenly disappeared as a topic of criticism in the media after Obama came into power (and continued the Bush policies quite actively).

And which of the findings are new?

What the guy is talking about is basically a mixed economy. That's not a new idea.

At least it's a healthy start to admit things like the following:

markets, like gardens, must be tended, that the market is the greatest social technology ever invented for solving human problems, but unconstrained by social norms or democratic regulation, markets inevitably create more problems than they solve.

...and that constraining comes through institutions, democratic regulation, legislation, property rights for all.

Add the fact that not everything can be solved by the market mechanism. Even the most devoted libertarian will somehow admit that defense of a country cannot be organized through the markets. Yet this "exception" is the black swan that simply tells us all swans aren't white.

I'd myself add the importance of income distribution, the fact that prosperity comes when employees, not just the shareholders, do get their share of the income. Hanauer refers to this in the following way:

The new economics must and can insist that the purpose of the corporation is to improve the welfare of all stakeholders: customers, workers, community and shareholders alike.

More important would be to emphasize that workers get their share.

And finally, avoid the utter stupidity and destructiveness of socialism. Growth in the Global economy that has cut povetry down has happened when large countries like India and China have abandoned the most destructive socialist policies.

And of course, assuming every second person is a racist and sexist even if they say they're not. — Judaka

And this is the real issue here.

Before delving into the specific issue of political correctness, to make one important point I would like to broaden the definition of "political correctness" to meaning any kind of talk that is perceived either politically correct or incorrect.

In a totalitarian dictatorship it's totally understandable that public speech is "politically correct" meaning it doesn't question at all the rulers, as otherwise the person declaring criticism about the authorities would quickly vanish from the public domain. And "politically correct" speech is then fervent propaganda of the dictatorship. This is because totalitarian dictatorships are in open war against revolutionary/counter-revolutionary elements in the society, perceived or actual, hence the dramatic response is perfectly understandable. Every dictatorship is a dictatorship because there is this overwhelming perceived threat that has to be countered, at least in the mind of the dictator.

And with even democracies there are people who thanks to their role have a very limited Overton window. A high military ranking officer cannot simply use his "freedom of speach" and assume that he or she can comment certain issues like security policy or relations between countries "as an individual". There are people from other countries who's job it is to respond if the Overton window on some issue is breached in this way. They are called diplomats, ambassadors and spokesmen/-women. Nobody will believe that a general was just speaking his mind, especially if he isn't immediately fired or reprimanded.

If we have the above in mind, we can look just why something like political correctness has become so venomous and caused people to be fired, why the discourse has become so vitriolic and why people seem to hear dog whistles everywhere.

At first there needs to be a small group of people that think this is one of the most important issues in our time and are extremely dedicated to their cause. Something equivalent of just "being rude" wouldn't make it a thing like this. Then as a background there usually are bad racial/ethnic or minority relations and underlying problems that urge people to do virtue signalling. And then we have a globalized media and social media where certain issues are simply copied around the world at lightning speed. The ease that we can show our objection to anything is also notable all thanks to the social media providers.

No, I disagree, I think being courteous doesn't need a synonym, be courteous to be courteous. Even criticise others for being discourteous, that's fair. The problem with PC is that it's extremely political, unlike being courteous.

PC is more than just the concept of PC, it's about how it's implemented, by who, where and for what? — Judaka

You can obviously disagree with Azimuth's opinion about it, but isn't it genuinely the problem that people are offended, make a huge row and accusations when some is assumed to be political incorrect? All the dog whistles etc.

Perhaps the divide ought to be done with a) being politically correct and b) condemning others for not being politically correct.

Nobody has a problem with a), being courteous toward other human beings, as Azimuth put it.

Last but not least, Godel admits that his method of proof has a connection with the Liar Paradox which, to me, should set the alarm bells ringing. — TheMadFool

Yet it isn't equivalent to Liar Paradox or perhaps in this case to Russell's paradox. This is something that some writers erroneously think. The self refence doens't fall into a vicious circle (as Russell put it), even if there's a statement / Gödel number referring to a Gödel number.

their voter base has become fundamentalist, so it doesn't matter how crazy they behave. — Punshhh

You mean those who formerly voted labour that didn't get excited about Jeremy Corbyn last time? :snicker:

At least you aren't in the same category of lock-down bunglers as the Americans. (So whopee.)

Likely in the end Americans just want to forget Trump. Because this era will simply be so humiliating. Likely at the time when Ivanka publishes her tell all book about the incest she had to suffer.

So why is it that most people that are interested in philosophy aren't interested in Entrepreneurship? — Gitonga

Is it too simple answer to say that entrepreneurship seems like focusing on income and money, where as philosophy on thinking and knowledge? Yet we shouldn't forget that some philosophers (on the right) think quite highly of entrepreneurs.

I'd say more alarming is this quote from Pompeo.

“Many are worth defending in light of our founding; others aren’t,” Pompeo said at a launch ceremony in Philadelphia. He did not specify which rights he thought were superfluous, but the state department during his tenure has been aggressive in opposing references to reproductive and gender rights in UN and other multilateral documents.

I think this is the crux of the problem of our time. Somehow some rights or freedoms aren't as important and people will easily disregard some if it is in their political interest. Or if they taken up as to be important by the other side, there has to be something fishy about them.

But now resources are declining and demand is increasing. — Janus

But notice it isn't so clear cut: human population may peak in this century and then diminish, which means declining demand. And thanks to technology and the market mechanism, the decline in natural resources isn't so clear cut either as the used resources change too.

if a sovereign government prints money willy-nilly, then traders may lose confidence in the currency leading to its losing value. — Janus

That's the old traditional way of thinking. But not with MMT!

I have no idea what you are talking about anymore, your argument is so far removed from the initial issue that 'political correctness' isn't even mentioned here. — Maw

I'll recap the discussion.

So I gave this example:

I bet you and NOS4A2 will surely differ in your views about just what kind of extremism is really the problem, but does that change the real issue? — ssu

And you answered:

Yes, that undeniably changes the issue because then you can't say "80% of respondents agree that extremism is a problem" or any other aggregate judgements, because that binds myself and NOS4A2 together in an unsound and baseless way, since we don't agree on the actual content of the word 'extremism' given definitions that are detached from one another. — Maw

And the question is why it undeniably changes the issue? Because this is quite the same argumentation as you had against NOS4A2 originally:

As I've pointed out to you before, the study in that article doesn't define political correctness, leaving the term completely open to interpretation per respondent, making the analysis useless. — Maw

The simple fact is that we can talk about extremism as a class combining various types of extremism.

That's why a definition, and other caveats, would have been useful :wink: — Maw

Sorry to repeat this, but I don't really understand what is your problem.

If I remember correctly, you yourself gave the example of an Amazon worker leading a protest and then getting fired. Another example would be someone tweeting "all lives matter" and getting fired. Is there really a difference? Isn't it obvious from both examples of how utterly arbitrary the firing of people can be and how insecure employees are in the US? If all it takes is what a person has said (or tweeted) or has participated in some political activity outside his work his work and the person gets fired, isn't that itself a real problem?

Same really goes for the question "is extremism a problem?". The fact that just what extremism isn't mentioned simply cannot be a counterargument if people agree with the notion of extremism being a problem (or not).

Seems then you will have a lot of terms that aren't useful in the aggregate.

Thanks for creating a new thread.

The Trump thread is and will be quite active even without going on sidepaths (which tells a lot of the World we live in). At least for few months, hopefully.

That's an awful lot of opinion to form from that statistic, eh? — fdrake

You made me to fill a questionnaire which you then explained in quite detail, so... :roll:

Quote the full sentence, maw:

So basically it doesn't say much, but it does say something. — ssu

So what conclusions do you draw from that bit of data? — fdrake

What data exactly? The data that 88% Native Americans oppose PC, was it so?

First of all, the simple fact is that political correctness and progressive woke things aren't highly popular.
Just to quote NOS4A2's original article Americans Strongly Dislike PC Culture:

It is obvious that certain elements on the right mock instances in which political correctness goes awry in order to win the license to spew outright racial hatred. And it is understandable that, in the eyes of some progressives, this makes anybody who dares to criticize political correctness a witting tool of—or a useful idiot for—the right. But that’s not fair to the Americans who feel deeply alienated by woke culture. Indeed, while 80 percent of Americans believe that political correctness has become a problem in the country, even more, 82 percent, believe that hate speech is also a problem.

So answering your question: All I can draw that Native Americans are likely to be more conservative than progressives are (or the image of "progressives that uphold PC values"), even if they do vote for democrats btw (and hence the majority of them aren't politically conservative). As I said, your definition (PC = progressive blah) might actually make the point, even if many Native Americans do know the defintion of PC. And many likely know that the NCAI has been against negative stereotypes for a very, very long time.

NCAI campaign against racial stereotypes:


So basically it doesn't say much, but it does say something. And that's my point here. It's not useless, to be thrown aside. Perhaps you could say that the so-called "PC crowd" hasn't gotten the vast majority Americans excited about the utter importance of PC language, including minorities.

(Btw, this topic likely would be better in some other thread than Trump)

I would like to live in a world where people seem as unaware as you are that questions can be leading or loaded, and intentionally or negligently made that way. — fdrake

I'm aware that questionnaires can be made (and often are) to further some agenda and the questions can be leading or loaded.

But then argument is about the conclusions you make from the questionnaire. You can make the argument that the conclusions are wrong. But just to throw away it as useless is a different thing.

I think economic growth is also the driver for population growth. Back in the John Howard days here in Australia, there was a Government TV add campaign urging couples to have three children: one for mum, one for dad and one for the country, because they foresaw that if lifespans increase and reproduction decreased then there would not be enough workers to enable the economic activity needed to support the population. — Janus

Ah, the best example of these kind of policies was Ceaucescu's Romania. The Romanian dictator wanted a larger country by prohibiting abortions and contraception with Decree 770. It failed to reach it's goals, of course.

Fertility rate in Romania:

Also bear in mind that credit is based on the assumption that the future will be bigger and better economically speaking than the present. As long as this illusion is maintained then then the mere existence of so much credit necessitates economic growth, or else there will be defaults. — Janus

Partly,

Yet there's allways the way of inflation to pay credit away, but many do see a systemic collapse in the end of the fiat system based on ever larger amount of debt. But the fact is, if you can spend free money and it doesn't come to bite you back, you will keep spending that free money and increasing your debt.



This has even become an economic theory: that the amount of debt to the public sector doesn't matter, with Modern Monetary Theory (MMT).

? ? ?

Is not seeking consensus equivalent to violent direct action???

For example, if there is some large accident and some political elected official makes a decision on the instant without going the ordinary parliamentary channels he or she usually should go through, is an example of "not seeking consensus" before acting.

Seeking consensus can mean that you simply try to get a bi-partisan ruling, you sit down with the opposition and make decisions with them and not just rely on that the opposition cannot vote your legislation down. Sometimes that kind of decision making works...like when deciding what to do when facing a pandemic.

So what on Earth are you talking about?

You go on interpreting the poorly designed survey in accordance with whatever political worldview you think it confirms then... — fdrake

And now for the strawman.

You're all approving of the vague statistic — fdrake

What I'm saying that many statistics are vague. Yet that vagueness doesn't mean the statistic is useless.

No, yes, yes, no.

I don't know who fdrake is so no, why would you need my employer?

When someone talks about "political correctness", they usually cannot articulate precisely what it is. — fdrake

If someone talks about "great art" or "great food", can they articulate what that precisely is? Will they have different opinions about it? Yes, absolutely. Do we have to cancel the use of these terms as we may differ on what exactly contributes to good art or a fine meal? No, we still can get the idea when talking about great art and great food.

Besides, political correctness is far better defined as those terms above: using language that avoids offending members of particular groups in society. Now I agree with you that many can understand it in a larger context, for example that in a dictatorship it's not politically correct to criticize the policies of the state. That obviously has a different meaning for political correctness, just as populism is many times misunderstood to mean popular, whereas the term populism has a very distinct definition.

Yet to say

It's usually an "excessive version of (undefined allegedly progressive blah)", and everyone dislikes unspecified undefined allegedly progressive blah when it is excessive. — fdrake

might actually be a great definition about don't like, actually. Even that does tells a lot: progressive blah.

Besides, coming to Maw's argument that the fact that 88% of Native Americans don't like PC doesn't matter because PC wasn't defined, that people can have various understanding of the terms (as you pointed out), is a bit condescending. It reminds me of what one Native American commented. He liked the term "Indian" because it always reminds him how wrong white Europeans where about his people.

Yes, that undeniably changes the issue because then you can't say "80% of respondents agree that extremism is a problem" or any other aggregate judgements, because that binds myself and NOS4A2 together in an unsound and baseless way, since we don't agree on the actual content of the word 'extremism' given definitions that are detached from one another. — Maw

And here above is the illogicality of partisan wokeness clearly displayed.

So you are unsoundly and baselessly bounded together with NOS4A2 if you both agree that "extremism is a problem", because the two of you likely think that the extremism of the other side is a problem. With this same logic I guess to ask if "terrorism is a problem" would be wrong too, because you might be thinking of terrorism of the extreme right and NOS4A2 might be thinking about jihadist terrorism or terrorism on the left.

As if people wouldn't differ just on what "is a problem" or what "extremism" or "an act of terrorism" is. No, at the present you either have to have a unified World view about everything or otherwise it's meaningless.

No wonder that people hate the idea of seeking a consensus.

Many things aren't binary.

But in woke PC culture they are! :grin:

Interesting that you say peak population will be a problem for perpetual growth. It seems to me that real growth is already ended, and that what may appear as growth is an apparition created by the generation of ever more credit. — Janus

Remember that population growth is the natural reason for economic growth.

Just think about it: You start a family and you would get four children who themselves would start a family and get four children. That means thanks to you and your partner, there 20 people who work, who will buy a home who go and buy stuff daily.

This is also one of the reasons why demographic forecasts are actually quite accurate: for a couple of decades into the future the population who can have children already exists, hence the estimations for the next 50 years or so are quite accurate. After that, then they are just estimations as things can change.

That article shows where the real problem will be: Africa. If Nigeria will have nearly 800 million people, you surely want to get the Nigerian economy to mimick the growth of the Chinese or the Indian economy. Otherwise, things are going to be bad.

. Given this, what does it mean when "88% of Native Americans oppose political correctness", do you think each and every Native American surveyed would agree with your meaning, and how do you know that? — Maw

Would they agree with yours?

Maw, let me give another example.

If people would be asked "Do you think extremism is a problem in our country?" without defining the term more, would you think the questionnaire is useless? I bet you and NOS4A2 will surely differ in your views about just what kind of extremism is really the problem, but does that change the real issue?

PC in political discourse isn't wanted. Common decency in everyday life very much is. — Benkei

Which people usually understand.

I don't think we disagree much, and your right that we talk bit of different issues.

These cancellers are not cynical grabbers of power but sincere believers. — DingoJones

Vast majority of people are sincere believers, very few are cynical grabbers of power. But many understand how "the game" works and that makes them to look to be "cynical". Westboro Church and Klu klux clan are extremes, while the average evangelical or religious person or the average person with bigoted views are different.

If people are interested in this subject...in the Lancet new forecast were published of the population peaking at 2064:

The world's population is likely to peak at 9.7 billion in 2064, and then decline to about 8.8 billion by the end of the century, as women get better access to education and contraception, a new study has found.

By 2100, 183 of 195 countries will not have fertility rates required to maintain the current population, with a projected 2.1 births per woman, researchers from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington's School of Medicine said. Some 23 countries -- including Japan, Thailand, Italy, and Spain -- will see populations shrink by more than 50%, researchers said. However, the population of sub-Saharan Africa could triple, allowing for just under half of the world's population to be African by the end of the century.

See article: World's population likely to shrink after 50 years

So peak population? That surely will be a problem for perpetual growth.

The actual scientific Lancet article here: Fertility, mortality, migration, and population scenarios for 195 countries and territories from 2017 to 2100: a forecasting analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study

As I've pointed out to you before, the study in that article doesn't define political correctness, leaving the term completely open to interpretation per respondent, making the analysis useless. — Maw

Hahahahaaa!!! :rofl:

That's so funny, maw! Oooohhh, a proper defintion of political correctness is not used!!! Oh, that's a foul, a foul cries referee maw.

That doesnt answer why Im wring about Daryl Davies way being more effective. You are just saying that most people dint do it that way. That doesnt mean its not the best way to do it. — DingoJones

Simple answer: efficiency and humans being social animals and the way they behave in groups.

Daryl Davies met a Klu Klux Clan leader first with the clansman having a bodyguard. Only after a long time dared the clansman come alone to meet Davies and only years had went before Daryl Davies could say that he befriended them and made some leave the clan. Indeed such personal approach might be effective and you can get people to change their views, but notice the effort, not very efficient way.

The other reason is that people in social groups tend to behave differently than individually. It's totally different to have a conversation with a person than have a debate with 100 people. In a large debate the vast majority will actually not participate in the conversation as everybody understands that not everybody can talk in a crowd of 100 and likely there aren't 100 different views on any subject. And many likely don't even want to talk to 99 people. Hence with a 100 people those who talk dominate the discourse and those views that aren't for some reason expressed are simply absent. Hence the urge for activists and political leaders to dominate the public discourse. Controlling the discourse is a power play.

Unfortunately that silencing by "banning, deplatforming, PC culture, cancel culture and all that stuff" does work and is the easiest way of control and a far more efficient way than Davies. Naturally one obvious argument would be simply to show that something is incorrect, doesn't work, makes things worse, and let the people figure it out. But in our complex World that won't happen.

And the last thing is that actual hate speech is banned and should be banned. We don't let the Islamic State to run adds in our national televisions, we don't interview terrorists like Anders Breivik for them to have a chance promote his ideology in order to create copycats. Because true hate speech is genuinely urging people to act a genocide, like the Ruandan radio stations inciting ordinary citizens to take part in the massacres of their Tutsi, and moderate Hutu neighbors.

Yet our present "hate speech" isn't like that. Nope, it's the "hate speech" of J.K. Rowling against transpeople, the "hate speech" of representative Ilhan Omar against Israel or senator Tom Cotton being on the side of US President, I guess. Hence "hate speech", just like "racism" or "white supremacy" or on the other side "maoism" and "cultural marxism", are extensively used in a setting where they have few if anything to do with the original definitions. Yet the outrage, contempt and the disapproval is kept at the same level. The objective is to silence people.

Listening to you Bitter confirms me that a lot of leftists genuinely dislike where "the left" is going. But of course I can understand this well as "the right" has it's shares of morons and moronic behavior too, starting from a certain President of a large important country. I'm just happy that sanity has somehow prevailed in my little country. At least for now.

What I really, really dislike about banning, deplatforming, PC culture, cancel culture, and so on is that it is too crude to be useful. Portraits of "white supremacists" have been drawn with nothing more subtle than paint rollers, where sharp pencils are in order. Who, and what, exactly, is a white supremacist? Or a transphobic? Will the real fascists please state your party platform? — Bitter Crank

Perhaps there is a conspiracy to divide the people, yet make the issues so stupid, so unimportant to the greater audience that it actually doesn't rock the boat. As you said, the true focus should be in income distribution and how we make our society better, not the nonsense of a perpetual culture war.

Or then it's just the cultural and ideological decadence of our time that we are experiencing, as there's likely nobody behind the curtain.

Sure, the point being that without actual evidence making 1 more likely we should award it a very low probability. — Benkei

And that evidence, assuming there would be that, likely isn't coming out from the Chinese authorities.

Anyway, I'd have to have the knowledge of my father, as he is a professor of virology, to make any comment of the probabilities or other issues involved here.

I assumed this was a typo or autocorrect the first time, but do you somehow own an “Indian” person or something? — Pfhorrest

Parents still use the genitive when talking about their children, I guess.

Why am I wrong? — DingoJones

Because people like toxic ideologies and just love to fight them. It gives them a righteous cause to vent their anger. People are not like Daryl Davies who gives respect to a racist even if he disagrees with him. People actually do not want to try to change the views of others. For many it's simply unfathomable to disagree and to give respect at the same time. Just like understanding is acceptance for some, and hence it's better to say you cannot understand at all the other.

And of course, cencorship works. It works especially well if you get people to perform self-cencorship.

I'll give 1 a .9% chance, 2 a 99% chance and the last .1%. — Benkei

More like 1. a 0,999% and 3. a 0,001% as option 3 doesn't make any sense at all.
(If someone argues 1. is of 10%-20% chance, who knows.)

Also, as I stated, it may have been a virus that evolved at the lab (not intentional), and got out. Though that might be harder to prove. — schopenhauer1

I agree. And since no government in the World would be indifferent about the possibility that it really did get out of a laboratory by accident and just reply "Sorry about that!", it will be genuinely hard to prove this (or disprove). We may never know.

The English Civil War is the most forgotten important civil war in Europe. It would be interesting to hear why you reason that the English Civil War sides are present or bear resemblance to the modern USA.

That's been dismissed as a hoax. — Benkei

That's the first knee-jerk response I had too, but as from some of the comments above, I wouldn't put this in the folder of "Pizzagate level conspiracies" yet. Schopenhauer 1 makes a point with the fact that coronavirus was indeed researched at the Wuhan lab, so I wouldn't erase the possibility yet:

One of their research teams, led by Professor Shi Zhengli, has been researching bat coronaviruses since 2004 and focused on the “source tracing of SARS,” the strain behind another virus outbreak nearly two decades ago. “We know that the whole genome of SARS-CoV-2 is only 80 percent similar to that of SARS. It’s an obvious difference,” she said. “So, in Professor Shi’s past research, they didn’t pay attention to such viruses which are less similar to the SARS virus.” - In an interview with Scientific American, Shi said the SARS-CoV-2 genome sequence did not match any of the bat coronaviruses her laboratory had previously collected and studied.

See article Wuhan lab had three live bat coronaviruses, but none matched COVID-19

But naturally it doesn't matter, except that Trump gets a talking point. What is done now is the issue what really matters.

The real issue is that we may have this pandemic going on for far longer than we anticipated. And now with for example California closing up again, it's quite obvious we aren't heading for any kind of economic recovery. And where the US goes, goes the the World Economy. Even if other countries may have tackled the worst of the pandemic for now.

The World Health Organization warned Monday that there could be no return to normality any time soon as too many countries were bungling their response to the coronavirus pandemic. WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that if public health guidelines are not followed, the crisis will get "worse and worse and worse."

Did that already on page 6 — Maw

We noticed.

You think the letter was dumb as hell and pitiful, that part of the signers are against transrights, black Americans and Palestinians and that they failed to mention an Amazon worked being fired for leading a protest. And that you think that "cancel culture" is a fundamental component of liberal democracy (except when it's an Amazon worker leading a protest or something I gather).

So thank's for that valuable contribution, maw.

As far as I see, there is a principal difficulty: we do not know how to articulate the ongoing crisis in the US. — Number2018

It's very difficult to articulate something that is a longer process, something that takes years even decades to happen. To articulate something you basically have to have a narrative of something that is happening. That narrative only emerges from history. From history we get things like that there was a "Cold War between two Superpowers". Of the present that is hard to agree simply because only in hindsight we know what happened.

For most people there is no problem at all. Why? — Number2018

For most the pandemic isn't a problem.

I haven't got it, I haven't lost my job and nobody I know has died of it. So I guess it's not a problem for me, even if the kids stayed at home for the spring and didn't go to school.

So let's assume that this is a "once in a generation event" or even once in 30 years event. You think this time will be seen then with indifference?