Post by: Headless Thompson Gunner on December 17, 2007, 04:27:36 PM
I was talking with some coworkers at lunch. We all agreed that the company's research engineer has the best job in the company. He gets to play with whatever cool technology he wants, without regards to the practicality. He can spend all day spouting impressive features and test data for his work. Since he's a researcher, not a developer like the rest of us, he never has to show any real world results. His projects are never put into practice, so he never has to make any hard decisions that he'll later be called upon to defend. He never worries about being wrong or seeing his projects fail.
The rest of us will have to defend our decision later. We will be called upon to get real-world results. Some of the things we try to develop will fail, and there could be hell to pay for it. We're expected to deliver, and for the most part we do.
This sometimes produces friction between the researcher and the developers. He gets mad at us because our designs are never perfect. We get mad at him for not understanding that a "good enough" result right now is better than a perfect result that's never going to be realized.
Well, I want to be that research engineer. Wouldn't it be cool to live in his fantasy land and never having to worry about real-world consequences?
It struck me how eerily this parallels the politics here on APS.
The Republicans do the real work of making sure government, which will never be particularly appealing, is at least not as despicable as it otherwise would be without us. And along come the Libertarians and Paulistas and other similar types, constantly telling us how wrong we are and how much better they are. Nevermind that they have human flaws and shortcomings just like us. Nevermind that they won't ever be called upon to defend their real-world results, because they won't ever deliver any real-world results. Their record is squeaky clean and perfectly defensible, because they have no record to defend. They get to believe their *expletive deleted*it doesn't smell, and nobody will ever be able to prove them wrong.
I'm going over to the dark side. I now support Ron Paul.
My candidate has never instituted a policy that was wrong. Never. He never will, either. Bet me...
If he doesn't get elected, it won't be my fault, it'll be yours for not supporting him enough. If you don't support him because you think he can't win, well it's your fault he can't win, because you don't support him.
I'll let those dirty Republicans keep Hillary out of the oval office, while criticizing them at every turn. That should be fun.
No more voting for the lesser of two evils. I don't vote for any sort of evil (and I'll remind you all at every turn how superior I am for doing this). And if a greater evil results, I'll wash my hands of any responsibility. I'll blame it on the system, not on my method of participating in that system.
I don't have to worry about defending the country. First of all, other people will handle that regardless of how I behave. Second, I live in Indiana, which most jihadis can't even pronounce, much less find or attack. And we'll kill 'em all before they get to the beach, which we don't have around here. Third, a few Letters of Marque will provide all the defense we'll ever need. Hey, Letters of Marque have never proven inadequate in the past.
Democrats will erode our liberty faster and faster, and it won't be my job any longer to stop them.
Truly, it's the ultimate mental cop-out. It's self denial, but it'll be fun! It's sort of like joining the environmental movement on the left. You get all the benefits of feeling important, of being a good person, of making a difference. And all you have to do is suspend disbelief. Easy!
Oh yeah, I'll make fun of the rest of you suckers for not dropping out of the two-party system. I have seen through all that, because I'm smarter than all of you.
Post by: Perd Hapley on December 17, 2007, 04:29:45 PM
Post by: Headless Thompson Gunner on December 17, 2007, 04:42:49 PM
Post by: grampster on December 17, 2007, 04:44:16 PM
Post by: Paddy on December 17, 2007, 04:51:19 PM
Izzat yer point?
I think you're in for one helluva shock when the Republicans get their asses handed to them next year. 2006 was only a warning, and the GOP didn't get the message. They seem to think they can foist off some sleazy ahole like Giuliani on us and we'll still vote Republican. Not likely. Too many of us old timer Republicans pissed off beyond all recall. GWB and his cabal of neocons have screwed the pooch. The Republican party will be lucky if it wins another national election in the next 30 years.
Post by: Headless Thompson Gunner on December 17, 2007, 05:23:42 PM
It's darned appealing to consider only the immediate self-satisfaction of your position, not the consequences. And in terms of self-satisfaction, supporting the Libertarians is tough to beat. Consequences had always dissuaded me from that, but no longer.
I'm going the way of Ayn Rand's Leo Kovalensky (politically speaking), and I'm doing it deliberately.
Post by: Len Budney on December 17, 2007, 05:28:24 PM
It's darned appealing to consider only the immediate self-satisfaction of your position, not the consequences.
Comments like this tend to amaze me. They make supporting the wholesale slaughter of innocent Iraqis, for example, sound like mature taking of responsibility, while making the refusal to do so sound like irresponsible selfishness. Slavery is freedom. Ignorance is strength.
--Len.
Post by: GigaBuist on December 17, 2007, 05:29:06 PM
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I guess your point is to ridicule and deride any third parties because none (yet) have been successful at winning a major national election.
Well, not lately. You don't hear much from the Whig party these days.
Post by: The Rabbi on December 17, 2007, 05:29:48 PM
*O.K. Maybe it wasn't Churchill. Maybe it was Edmund Burke. I dunno.
Post by: The Rabbi on December 17, 2007, 05:34:33 PM
It's darned appealing to consider only the immediate self-satisfaction of your position, not the consequences.
Comments like this tend to amaze me. They make supporting the wholesale slaughter of innocent Iraqis, for example, sound like mature taking of responsibility, while making the refusal to do so sound like irresponsible selfishness. Slavery is freedom. Ignorance is strength.
--Len.
We (meaning those who support the war in Iraq) did not support the wholesale slaughter of innocent Iraqis. That's one reason we deposed Saddam Hussein.
But how that is relevant to this discussion is beyond me.
Post by: Headless Thompson Gunner on December 17, 2007, 05:38:03 PM
It's darned appealing to consider only the immediate self-satisfaction of your position, not the consequences.
Comments like this tend to amaze me. They make supporting the wholesale slaughter of innocent Iraqis, for example, sound like mature taking of responsibility, while making the refusal to do so sound like irresponsible selfishness. Slavery is freedom. Ignorance is strength.
--Len.
We (meaning those who support the war in Iraq) did not support the wholesale slaughter of innocent Iraqis. That's one reason we deposed Saddam Hussein.
But how that is relevant to this discussion is beyond me.
My candidate voted against this war. It's an illegal war anyway, because there was never a vote to declare war on those innocent Iraqis, which my candidate voted against.
Post by: The Rabbi on December 17, 2007, 05:40:29 PM
Hmm, channeling Kerry I think.
Post by: Headless Thompson Gunner on December 17, 2007, 05:43:19 PM
Besides, what has this war done for us except kill off innocent Iraqis and use up our national gold. Which isn't really gold any more. Which is bad. My candidate supports the gold standard, which we never should have given up 70 yeas ago.
Hey folks, I made an obscure reference to Ayn Rand in an earlier post. Doesn't that get me bonus points? Hows come nobody noticed?
Post by: The Rabbi on December 17, 2007, 05:46:37 PM
Post by: Len Budney on December 17, 2007, 05:49:01 PM
It's darned appealing to consider only the immediate self-satisfaction of your position, not the consequences.
Comments like this tend to amaze me. They make supporting the wholesale slaughter of innocent Iraqis, for example, sound like mature taking of responsibility, while making the refusal to do so sound like irresponsible selfishness. Slavery is freedom. Ignorance is strength.
Not surprisingly, this is incomprehensible to me. We (meaning those who support the war in Iraq) did not support the wholesale slaughter of innocent Iraqis. That's one reason we deposed Saddam Hussein. But how that is relevant to this discussion is beyond me.
RP's most notable stance is his opposition to the invasion of Iraq, and his intention to withdraw from Iraq (and Germany, and Korea...) promptly. This provides the context of HTG's comments, and therefore it is reasonable for me to focus on that issue in particular. Thus its relevance. HTG since stated his opposition to the invasion, and I'm too tired to tell whether he's being serious or satirical. So I'll confine myself to addressing your remarks here.
What's taken place in Iraq has been the wholesale slaughter of innocent Iraqis. It's possible in theory to support Saddam's overthrow while opposing everything else about the war, such as the accompanying slaughter, the use of torture, etc. If that's your position, I'd expect that you'd find my remarks comprehensible, and express some sort of lament that GWB handled Hussein's overthrow so incompetently that mass slaughter resulted.
As I said, it's possible in theory. It's pretty hard in practice, because the sectarian violence in Iraq, etc., were a foregone conclusion before the invasion. It's easy to find all sorts of references on the Internet, written before the invasion started, that predicted precisely the outcome we got. That being the case, supporting the invasion while condemning the consequences is like supporting the fire while condemning the smoke.
--Len.
Post by: griz on December 17, 2007, 06:11:46 PM
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I'll say it again. That wasn't meant as satire or sarcasm. I mean what I said
Then welcome to the right side. Ironically, there has been a third party canidate win the presidency. It was soon after the republican party was created.
Post by: Headless Thompson Gunner on December 17, 2007, 06:24:48 PM
Now, if we can only get Ron Paul to run on a third party ticket...
Post by: GigaBuist on December 17, 2007, 06:26:58 PM
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This sometimes produces friction between the researcher and the developers. He gets mad at us because our designs are never perfect. We get mad at him for not understanding that a "good enough" result right now is better than a perfect result that's never going to be realized.
Can you come up with a metric for picking presidential candidates that have a shot at becoming the pary's nominee?What I'm looking for, and you certainly don't have to provide it, is a list of conditions that every single nominee of a party that gathered more than 20% of the popular vote meet. That could very well just be the Republican and Democratic parties -- I'm honestly not sure how far back the primary system goes.
Maybe as a group we can come up with one? Personally, I'd wager that the best indicator would be the the first 5 or 6 primaries. However, maybe it's possible to do it with polling data before the primaries even started. I'm certain we can toss fundraising ability right out the window -- Dean proved that in 2004 IIRC.
Post by: Paddy on December 17, 2007, 06:29:42 PM
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Now, if we can only get Ron Paul to run on a third party ticket...
Horrors, no! That would split the Republican vote and we could get President Hillary.
Post by: Headless Thompson Gunner on December 17, 2007, 06:31:04 PM
So popularity and leadership are prime qualifiers for being able to win a primary (or any election). The ability to not offend people ranks pretty high too. Making smart deals and doing favors with/for influential people is another hot ability.
Post by: Len Budney on December 17, 2007, 06:31:31 PM
Horrors, no! That would split the Republican vote and we could get President Hillary.
Hillary's presidency is practically guaranteed. I'm hoping against hope for Ron Paul, but it's almost certainly gonna be "Heil, Hillary!" I'm already practicing my goose step.
--Len.
Post by: Headless Thompson Gunner on December 17, 2007, 06:32:27 PM
Quote
Now, if we can only get Ron Paul to run on a third party ticket...
Horrors, no! That would split the Republican vote and we could get President Hillary.
The system is broken, man. Can't work within it, can't work outside it. But I have the utmost faith in Ron Paul's ability to save us.
Post by: Headless Thompson Gunner on December 17, 2007, 06:34:32 PM
Horrors, no! That would split the Republican vote and we could get President Hillary.
Hillary's presidency is practically guaranteed. I'm hoping against hope for Ron Paul, but it's almost certainly gonna be "Heil, Hillary!" I'm already practicing my goose step.
--Len.
But I'm done with the Republican Party. All they ever give us is more government and more gun control. Even when they don't give us more government and more gun control. Which is never.
Maybe they'll finally take notice of us if we throw enough votes to a third party candidate and split the ticket and give the win to Hillary. If we get Hillary elected they'll have to take us seriously.
Post by: Len Budney on December 17, 2007, 06:41:27 PM
Have you seen the polling that shows any Republican would beat Hillary? Well, not any Republican, they only polled on the top 4 or 5 Rep candidates, and thus didn't bother to ask how Dr. Paul would do.
I'm no prophet, but I think such polls are premature. Unless Chicago is nuked between now and the election, I think almost any Democrat can beat any of the leading republican candidates. Huckabee's skeletons are just starting to come out of the closet. Giuliani's corruption runs so deep my mother could beat him. McCain stands no chance of being nominated. And Romney is simply pathetic, not to mention Mormon.
--Len.
Post by: Headless Thompson Gunner on December 17, 2007, 06:42:51 PM
And Romney is simply pathetic, not to mention Mormon.
--Len.
I thought we didn't generalize about such things? It's not the religion, it's the man...? --Len.
Obviously I have a lot to learn about being a Paulista.
Post by: Len Budney on December 17, 2007, 06:44:09 PM
It's not the religion, it's the man. I thought we didn't generalize about such things...?
It's got nothing to do with Ron Paul or my personal opinions. I think the electorate is as reluctant to put a Mormon in the White House as they were to put a Catholic there before JFK.
--Len.
Quote
It's got nothing to do with Ron Paul or my personal opinions. I think the electorate is as reluctant to put a Mormon in the White House as they were to put a Catholic there before JFK.
--Len.
Post by: Headless Thompson Gunner on December 17, 2007, 06:45:46 PM
Post by: GigaBuist on December 17, 2007, 07:18:17 PM
Quote
Have you seen the polling that shows any Republican would beat Hillary? Well, not any Republican, they only polled on the top 4 or 5 Rep candidates, and thus didn't bother to ask how Dr. Paul would do.
No, Ramussen did a Clinton v. Paul poll. Results: Hillary with 48% and Paul with 38%.
Post by: Bogie on December 17, 2007, 08:53:53 PM
And if she gets elected, all the crap that is gonna happen will also keep the news folks busy.
And I'll likely sell a lot of bumper stickers.
http://www.creativeaccuracy.com/stickers.html
Post by: Perd Hapley on December 18, 2007, 02:14:44 AM
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I guess your point is to ridicule and deride any third parties because none (yet) have been successful at winning a major national election.
Well, not lately. You don't hear much from the Whig party these days.How were the Whigs a third party? In their day, they were one of two major parties. As I remember it.
BTW, that's true of both the British and American Whigs.
Post by: Len Budney on December 18, 2007, 02:34:00 AM
Oh, I get it now. We don't generalize, but we believe that all the rest of the country does!
Dunno what you're talking about. Lots of generalizations are possible. For example, "Lots of people like hip-hop."
Post by: The Rabbi on December 18, 2007, 04:07:16 AM
Quote
The Republicans do the real work of making sure government, which will never be particularly appealing, is at least not as despicable as it otherwise would be without us. And along come the Libertarians and Paulistas and other similar types, constantly telling us how wrong we are and how much better they are. Nevermind that they have human flaws and shortcomings just like us. Nevermind that they won't ever be called upon to defend their real-world results, because they won't ever deliver any real-world results. Their record is squeaky clean and perfectly defensible, because they have no record to defend. They get to believe their *expletive deleted*it doesn't smell, and nobody will ever be able to prove them wrong.
This reminds me of Ronald Reagan's description of gov't: He compared it (and I would add Libertarianism) to a baby: all appetite at one end and no responsibility at the other.
Post by: pistolchamp on December 18, 2007, 08:05:40 AM
8233 metric tons to be exact, that's 197 billion dollars, or a tiny percentage of the money that's out there. We SHOULD be on a gold standard, but, we are not and neither are any other countries.... nor are they on any standard. Money is fiat, worthless, just printed paper or bits in the binary system of computers. Without any standard to make money valuable, its just paper and its only worth what we are convinced by the various governments that it is worth. The credit of many countries is shakey at best, so their money is really worthless, like the Tanzanian Shilling... it takes 1,135 of them to make one tiny little US Dollar, practically worthless.
The currencies vary in value as we perceive the credit of the country. Canada is doing well, New Zealand and Australia are okay, the US Dollar and the Euro are not so good. Watch out for the Chinese Yuan and the Japanese Yen, both, are set to fly.
Gold is sitting around $800/troy ounce and bouncing about 3% up and down each day and the gold traders make about 90% per month and never risk a thing. The US government could do the same and reinvest the funds into gold to stabilize our economy and guarantee our currency, but, I guarantee there are no politicians who will ever allow this to happen.
The US Dollar is in such disregard that it is possible we will no longer trade oil, gold or diamonds in our currency, but, in Chinese Yuans or Euros, with the world dropping us like hot rocks.
I'm certain that your little recognzied "dark side" will be morally satisfying to you, but, you should just as well vote for Ross Perot for all the good it will do... by letting Obambam or the Hildebeast into office... remember Ross, he made it possible for the Comrade Clinton to take office and we had to put up with that incredible embarrassment for eight years... wanna do it again? I hope you see the light.
Post by: Len Budney on December 18, 2007, 08:23:50 AM
The "gold standard"? Not bloody likely as we don't have any gold. Or at least not much.
By itself that's not a problem: the important thing a gold standard does is prevent government from inflating dollars, because people react by switching from dollars to gold, punishing the inflators. This doesn't depend on the exchange rate, as long as a rate is defined. We could define a dollar to be one milligram of gold, and that would be fine. At today's rate, a dollar would be about 35 milligrams of gold. That's pitiful, but it's perfectly workable.
Quote
8233 metric tons to be exact, that's 197 billion dollars...
At the original rate of $20/oz, that's about $5 billion. At 35 milligrams per dollar, it's about $235 billion, so your estimate is in the ballpark. That does pose logistical problems if we decided to pin the dollar to a gold exchange rate today. But there's another way: issue a new currency, at whatever rate we want, and allow the exchange rate between dollars and newbux to float. People will naturally transition from dollars to newbux, and dollars will fall--but they're going to fall anyway. Without a gold standard it's hard to measure how badly the dollar has been debased, so the collapse happens in fits and starts, but eventually it happens all the same.
--Len.
Post by: Headless Thompson Gunner on December 18, 2007, 08:58:51 AM
The "gold standard"? Not bloody likely as we don't have any gold. Or at least not much.
8233 metric tons to be exact, that's 197 billion dollars, or a tiny percentage of the money that's out there. We SHOULD be on a gold standard, but, we are not and neither are any other countries.... nor are they on any standard. Money is fiat, worthless, just printed paper or bits in the binary system of computers. Without any standard to make money valuable, its just paper and its only worth what we are convinced by the various governments that it is worth. The credit of many countries is shakey at best, so their money is really worthless, like the Tanzanian Shilling... it takes 1,135 of them to make one tiny little US Dollar, practically worthless.
The currencies vary in value as we perceive the credit of the country. Canada is doing well, New Zealand and Australia are okay, the US Dollar and the Euro are not so good. Watch out for the Chinese Yuan and the Japanese Yen, both, are set to fly.
Gold is sitting around $800/troy ounce and bouncing about 3% up and down each day and the gold traders make about 90% per month and never risk a thing. The US government could do the same and reinvest the funds into gold to stabilize our economy and guarantee our currency, but, I guarantee there are no politicians who will ever allow this to happen.
The US Dollar is in such disregard that it is possible we will no longer trade oil, gold or diamonds in our currency, but, in Chinese Yuans or Euros, with the world dropping us like hot rocks.
I'm certain that your little recognzied "dark side" will be morally satisfying to you, but, you should just as well vote for Ross Perot for all the good it will do... by letting Obambam or the Hildebeast into office... remember Ross, he made it possible for the Comrade Clinton to take office and we had to put up with that incredible embarrassment for eight years... wanna do it again? I hope you see the light.
Interesting, very interesting... I think I've made an insight.8233 metric tons to be exact, that's 197 billion dollars, or a tiny percentage of the money that's out there. We SHOULD be on a gold standard, but, we are not and neither are any other countries.... nor are they on any standard. Money is fiat, worthless, just printed paper or bits in the binary system of computers. Without any standard to make money valuable, its just paper and its only worth what we are convinced by the various governments that it is worth. The credit of many countries is shakey at best, so their money is really worthless, like the Tanzanian Shilling... it takes 1,135 of them to make one tiny little US Dollar, practically worthless.
The currencies vary in value as we perceive the credit of the country. Canada is doing well, New Zealand and Australia are okay, the US Dollar and the Euro are not so good. Watch out for the Chinese Yuan and the Japanese Yen, both, are set to fly.
Gold is sitting around $800/troy ounce and bouncing about 3% up and down each day and the gold traders make about 90% per month and never risk a thing. The US government could do the same and reinvest the funds into gold to stabilize our economy and guarantee our currency, but, I guarantee there are no politicians who will ever allow this to happen.
The US Dollar is in such disregard that it is possible we will no longer trade oil, gold or diamonds in our currency, but, in Chinese Yuans or Euros, with the world dropping us like hot rocks.
I'm certain that your little recognzied "dark side" will be morally satisfying to you, but, you should just as well vote for Ross Perot for all the good it will do... by letting Obambam or the Hildebeast into office... remember Ross, he made it possible for the Comrade Clinton to take office and we had to put up with that incredible embarrassment for eight years... wanna do it again? I hope you see the light.
Fiat currency is valuable because it's the only medium the government allows taxes to be paid in. So long as there's a government, and so long as there is an economic population that has to pay its taxes, fiat currency will be in demand and thus have value. That's why the US Dollar has been the world's currency of choice. The US Government has the singular ability to levy taxes on the American economy, thus placing the Dollar ahead of all the world's currencies in terms of ability to retain demand/value.
So here's the insight: Libertarians favor the gold standard because under their system of no taxes and no obligation to the state from the business world or the private individual, the currency loses its value. No taxes mean no reason to hold or use the currency, and the fiat falls apart. So that's why we need to switch to the gold standard so badly.
We use our gold to trade with other poor saps in other nations that are still subject to the anachronism of taxation. Them poor Japs and Chinamen still need to pay taxes, so they'll still need their Yen and Yuan. But we won't, so we're free to trade in whatever pretty lumps of metal we like.
Freedom is awesomeness. And coolness. Both at the same time!
Post by: mtnbkr on December 18, 2007, 09:04:56 AM
Chris