Insights, Snippets, Quotes, Epiphanies & All That Sort of Things

Started by Wakefield, December 30, 2012, 01:55:32 PM

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Wakefield

QuoteFamily tangles, bereavement, and failure send us home, seldom happiness.
-- Paul Theroux, I'm the Meat, You're the Knife
"One of the greatest misfortunes of honest people is that they are cowards. They complain, keep quiet, dine and forget."
-- Voltaire

The new erato

Quote from: Gordon Shumway on September 20, 2013, 08:57:00 PM
These days I'm reading Theory of Moral Sentiments by Adam Smith. A stimulating reading indeed, which leaves few doubts about Mr. Smith's opinion on rich people:

I know, reality is overwhelmingly less poetic, but what a beautiful line: "[...] the beggar, who suns himself by the side of the highway, possesses that security which kings are fighting for."
Certainly a part of Mr Smith's writings that market liberalists seem less eager to quote.

Wakefield

Quote from: The new erato on October 01, 2013, 04:22:03 AM
Certainly a part of Mr Smith's writings that market liberalists seem less eager to quote.
Yes, indeed. They have even invented a theory of "the [supposed] two faces of Adam Smith". 
"One of the greatest misfortunes of honest people is that they are cowards. They complain, keep quiet, dine and forget."
-- Voltaire

Wakefield

Talking about "liberals" (European meaning, of course]:

Quote"A Liberal may be defined approximately as a man who, if he could by waving his hand in a dark room, stop the mouths of all the deceivers of mankind for ever, would not wave his hand."

G.K. Chesterton, Robert Browning
"One of the greatest misfortunes of honest people is that they are cowards. They complain, keep quiet, dine and forget."
-- Voltaire

Wakefield

Sonnet 81: Or I Shall Live Your Epitaph To Make

by William Shakespeare

Or I shall live your epitaph to make,
Or you survive when I in earth am rotten,
From hence your memory death cannot take,
Although in me each part will be forgotten.

Your name from hence immortal life shall have,
Though I, once gone, to all the world must die:
The earth can yield me but a common grave,
When you entombed in men's eyes shall lie.

Your monument shall be my gentle verse,
Which eyes not yet created shall o'er-read;
And tongues to be, your being shall rehearse,
When all the breathers of this world are dead;

You still shall live, such virtue hath my pen,
Where breath most breathes, even in the mouths of men.

Sonnet 81: Translation to modern English
Either I will live to write your epitaph or you will survive my rotting in the grave. Death can't obliterate memory of you, although everything about me will be forgotten. Your name will live forever, whereas I, once I'm gone, will be dead to the world. All I will be able to get will be a simple grave but you will be in tombed in everyone's eyes. Your monument will be my loving poems, which will be read by eyes not yet born, and tongues not yet born will will recite them when everyone now breathing in this world will be dead. You'll live on – my pen has that power – where life is most evident: in the very mouths of men.
"One of the greatest misfortunes of honest people is that they are cowards. They complain, keep quiet, dine and forget."
-- Voltaire

Geo Dude


Parsifal


Geo Dude

Quote from: Scarpia on October 04, 2013, 01:15:07 PM
Based on the insight that life was more pleasant 5,000 years ago than it is now.


That you can derive that from that quote is quite strange to me.  Tha claim was not made.

Parsifal

Quote from: Geo Dude on October 04, 2013, 04:12:34 PM
That you can derive that from that quote is quite strange to me.  Tha claim was not made.

How can 5,000 years of experience tell us we cannot trust government if, during those 5,000 years, human civilization rose from nomads following herds of animals and gathering nuts to the civilization that produced Einstein, Brahms and Tolstoy?  If we had 5,000 years of anarchy we may very will still be following herds of animals and gathering nuts.

Anarchism is a fable because no example of a peaceful anarchist society has ever existed.


kishnevi

Quote from: Scarpia on October 04, 2013, 05:15:57 PM
How can 5,000 years of experience tell us we cannot trust government if, during those 5,000 years, human civilization rose from nomads following herds of animals and gathering nuts to the civilization that produced Einstein, Brahms and Tolstoy?  If we had 5,000 years of anarchy we may very will still be following herds of animals and gathering nuts.

Anarchism is a fable because no example of a peaceful anarchist society has ever existed.

Think a minute how much of that progress was made in spite of government (Mr. Galileo, the Inquisitor has a few questions for you), and how much more was achieved in which government had no role, positive or negative. 

Other than police and courts to keep the rule of law in place,  what do we actually need government for?

ibanezmonster

Quote from: Jeffrey Smith on October 04, 2013, 06:58:38 PM
Other than police and courts to keep the rule of law in place,  what do we actually need government for?
How about stuff that is essential to society that would be unprofitable in the free market?

Parsifal

Quote from: Jeffrey Smith on October 04, 2013, 06:58:38 PM
Think a minute how much of that progress was made in spite of government (Mr. Galileo, the Inquisitor has a few questions for you), and how much more was achieved in which government had no role, positive or negative. 

Galileo's research was supported by the Catholic authorities until he fell afoul of a political intrigue, his history runs counter to your claim.

Quote
Other than police and courts to keep the rule of law in place,  what do we actually need government for?

You really want to maintain that the US would be better off if government entities had not built roads, established public education, established public universities, established institutions to verify the safety of food, drugs, etc?

Florestan

Quote from: Scarpia on October 04, 2013, 05:15:57 PM
How can 5,000 years of experience tell us we cannot trust government if, during those 5,000 years, human civilization rose from nomads following herds of animals and gathering nuts to the civilization that produced Einstein, Brahms and Tolstoy?  If we had 5,000 years of anarchy we may very will still be following herds of animals and gathering nuts.

You do have a point, but.. Tolstoy himself was an anarchist.  :D

Quote
Anarchism is a fable because no example of a peaceful anarchist society has ever existed.

There, fixed it a little.  :D

One can paraphrase Pascal and say: two excesses: to exclude government, to admit nothing but government.
Every kind of music is good, except the boring kind. — Rossini

ibanezmonster

Quote from: Scarpia on October 04, 2013, 08:20:26 PM
You really want to maintain that the US would be better off if government entities had not built roads, established public education, established public universities, established institutions to verify the safety of food, drugs, etc?
Not to mention that the very thing we are using to communicate (the Internet) was funded largely by the US government.

This one ultra-conservative customer I used to have a while back used to say that the only thing government should do is protect the homeland (I'm assuming military). He drives two hours to work every day, so I would like to propose to him a model of private roads, which would come to around $50 a day in tolls. I think that might be more than what he currently pays in taxes for roads, but if you really like less government that much, then you should be fine with it.

Another position which is kind of bizarre to me is the fear that Universal Health Care would be a success because then people would "rely on government more." So if you are uninsured you'd rather either just die or go into massive, unpayable debt if you get sick rather than get government aid? I'm not saying I definitely support Obamacare or know that it is even a good idea now, but most of these conservative arguments against it are downright retarded. The only valid argument against if I've heard so far is the negative impact towards businesses, hiring, hours, etc.

Florestan

Quote from: Jeffrey Smith on October 04, 2013, 06:58:38 PM
Other than police and courts to keep the rule of law in place,  what do we actually need government for?

Have you relapsed into libertarianism as of late, Jeffrey? :)  ;D

The irony of it all is that governmental action can be inferred from the very libertarian mantra "protect life, liberty & property".

Life in the abstract has no meaning; life is always contextual. The right to life means nothing to a concrete person if that person's health is precarious, if that person has no shelter and no food. Hence, it is the very duty of a government pretending to defend the right to life of its citizens to ensure that each and every citizen, regardless of social status, has access to basic shelter, food and medical care. Universal, compulsory, government-managed, single-payer health insurance (which is the unquestionable norm in European countries) strikes me as the most logical and relatively efficient solution when it comes to health care: it does not, and should not, exclude supplementary private health care insurance for those who can afford it, while at the same time not excluding those who cannot afford it from being treated properly. The libertarian argument that health is not a public issue but a private one is absurd: let the most vocal advocates of libertarianism live for just one week in a neighborhood where the majority is suffering of tuberculosis...

Liberty in the abstract also has no meaning at all. Should we congratulate a convicted mass murderer, who has just managed to escape, for regaining his liberty? Besides, what is most curious and telling is that liberty, which is the Latin equivalent to the Germanic freedom, has not produced in English any noun equivalent to free; one can say free to or free from, but can one say liber to or liber from? Be it as it may, if we consider freedom as a thing that the government is duty bound to protect, then we might ask: is an uneducated man free? is he not the slave of his own passions and instincts? who is freer, a man who has read, or at least has been taught to read, Aristotle, Dante and Dostoyevsky, or a man who has never ever heard of them? a man who has listened to, or at least has been taught to listen to, Palestrina, Mozart and Mahler, or a man who has never heard of them? Hence, it is the very duty of a government pretending to defend the right to liberty, i.e. freedom, of its citizens, to ensure that each and every citizen, regardless of social status, has access to basic education.

Property in the abstract --- it is THE road to serfdom. Pray tell, what is the time zero AFTER the property rights are to be accounted for? In the same time, one can rob someone at the point of a gun and one can earn his money by hard work; both of them pass their fortune to their inheritors. And now I ask you: from a libertarian point of view, are the sons of a pirate to be treated in the same way as the sons of an honest shoemaker? The former inherit the fruit of plunder and crime, the latter inherit the fruit of hard work; is it the same thing altogether, in the name of abstract "property rights"? Hence, it is the very duty of a government pretending to defend the right to property of its citizens, to ensure that each and every citizen, regardless of social status, has his property upheld and, moreover, that each and every citizen, regardless of his social status, can acquire, by honest work, property.

Case in point: Romania, my country. Until 1859 it was not even a country: two distinct principalities, both of them under the Ottoman Empire's nominal suzerainty; both of them under the effective rule of the local aristocratic class, whose main concern was exactly that: to have police and courts of law keeping the "rule of law" in place, and otherwise to let things run their course. As a result, there were no universities, no schools, no hospitals, no printing presses, no railroads no etc, except for those who could afford them: exactly the same aristocratic class members or their clients. Then came 1859: the two principalities united under the rule of the same elected Prince: a bourgeois army Colonel, elected by the ascending low and high bourgeoisie and the civic-minded fraction of the aristocracy. After 7 years of his rule, in which all kinds of government-inspired-and-enacted reforms were implemented, he was replaced in 1866 by a Prince (Charles I of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen) who, after the Independence War of 1877-78, was proclaimed full king in 1881 and reigned until 1914, the longest reign (1866-1914) in the whole history of Romania. Now, Romania in 1914 was quite different from Romania in 1866, let alone 1859: a modern country, where educational and cultural institutions were open to all, where banks, railroads, printing presses, ports, industry and commerce were open to all --- and where all those institutions without which a country cannot be counted as belonging to civilizations were either established, or supported, or promoted, by the government. Modern Romania is exactly that case to which John Stuart Mill referred to when he wrote that: In the particular circumstances of a given age or nation, there is scarcely anything really important to the general interest, which it may not be desirable, or even necessary, that the government should take upon itself, not because private individuals cannot effectually perform it, but because they will not. At some times and places, there will be no roads, docks, harbours, canals, works of irrigation, hospitals, schools, colleges, printing-presses, unless the government establishes them; the public being either too poor to command the necessary resources, or too little advanced in intelligence to appreciate the ends, or not sufficiently practised in joint action to be capable of the means.

;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D


Every kind of music is good, except the boring kind. — Rossini

Parsifal

Quote from: Greg on October 05, 2013, 05:29:03 AM
Not to mention that the very thing we are using to communicate (the Internet) was funded largely by the US government.

...and almost every member of this board would probably be dead by now if not for biomedical research funded by the governments of the US and other advanced nations.

Florestan

Quote from: Scarpia on October 05, 2013, 10:17:49 AM
...and almost every member of this board would probably be dead by now if not for biomedical research funded by the governments of the US and other advanced nations.

Well, let's not exaggerate: most of us are alive because more than a century ago the physicians finally decided to follow Semmelweis' advice: wash your hands before helping a pregnant woman deliver a baby!...



Every kind of music is good, except the boring kind. — Rossini

ibanezmonster

Quote from: Florestan on October 05, 2013, 09:35:39 AM
The irony of it all is that governmental action can be inferred from the very libertarian mantra "protect life, liberty & property".
...
This post makes sense. The libertarian mindset really does aim for some good stuff, such as personal responsibility and freedom, but it completely overlooks how to get there, which unfortunately does often involve... the government.

I'm luckily not drowning in debt already after being halfway through school, because of... the government. I can go to school in the first place because it's there and there is a minimum wage law which means I actually have time to go to school because of... the government. If I got fired, I won't starve because of... the government. Going to school means a chance to be happy in my life; I get to go to school because of the government... so, there's still some good points about the government.


What would happen to Life, Liberty, and Property under an extreme Libertarian scenario of no minimum wage + no government assistance?

Government is one of those things... when it's good, it's really good. When it's bad, it's really bad.

Florestan

Quote from: Greg on October 05, 2013, 11:26:32 AM
Government is one of those things... when it's good, it's really good. When it's bad, it's really bad.

That's like saying: a human being is one of those things... when it's good, it's really good. When it's bad, it's really bad.

Government is just as good, or just as bad, as the people who are in charge of it.  ;D
Every kind of music is good, except the boring kind. — Rossini

ibanezmonster

Quote from: Florestan on October 05, 2013, 11:57:31 AM
That's like saying: a human being is one of those things... when it's good, it's really good. When it's bad, it's really bad.

Government is just as good, or just as bad, as the people who are in charge of it.  ;D
Yep, and I suppose that's why there are Constitutions... helps to keep bad leaders accountable to a set of rules.