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shots shots shots posted:We've seen gun-free zones on a city scale and aside from the fact that it doesn't stop crime (which isn't a useful observation), we can see that the government has absolutely no will to enforce a ban by aggressively taking guns off the streets, or by harshly penalizing gun crime. Wait, are you saying Chicago wasn't aggressively going after guns until last year? By what standard? The first google link I skimmed mentioned that the city was seizing an average of over 20 illegal guns a day pre-McDonald. I'm not sure what you expect, 100 a day, 1000? And I'm actually shocked Texas is that low on the chart. Is that possibly due to the sizable immigrant population not owning guns at the high rate I'm assuming most texans do? mastershakeman fucked around with this message at 18:35 on Dec 23, 2012 |
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Dec 23, 2012 18:32
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mastershakeman posted:Wait, are you saying Chicago wasn't aggressively going after guns until last year? By what standard? The first google link I skimmed mentioned that the city was seizing an average of over 20 illegal guns a day pre-McDonald. I'm not sure what you expect, 100 a day, 1000? Texas is a very large state with a very large urban population. It has 35.9% gun ownership; that is still a very healthy number even if they are in the second quintile. Compare with Wyoming: 60% ownership there, but no cosmopolitan urban areas. That Texas has more than half that rate while still having 70% of its population living in the Texas Triangle seems more like Texan gun ownership is pretty strong, rather than a sign of weakness. Put another way: 60% of Wyoming outside its cosmopolitan large urban areas (of which there are none) has guns, but it appears 106% of Texas outside its areas does. Now, sure, there's a lot of empty space in the Texas Triangle, so this is obviously inflated, but it would still appear to me that the rural population of Texas is much more armed than the states in the top quintile.
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Dec 23, 2012 20:16
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The total gun ownership in this country is expected to be somewhere around 35-45% depending on who you ask. So having Texas have 36% ownership would put it in line with national averages, or if not in line then still not far off. As Golbez says, 60% of Wyoming folks have guns, but that means 360,000 people. 36% of Texans having guns means 9,242,885 people with guns and that's not a small number!
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Dec 23, 2012 20:34
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mastershakeman posted:Wait, are you saying Chicago wasn't aggressively going after guns until last year? By what standard? The first google link I skimmed mentioned that the city was seizing an average of over 20 illegal guns a day pre-McDonald. I'm not sure what you expect, 100 a day, 1000? If Chicago is hitting murder numbers higher than Juarez Mexico, they are obviously doing something very very wrong. I would guess that the big problem comes from a lack of followthrough on criminal penalties for gun crime due to budget/political concerns. For example in DC, i've had numerous friends robbed at gunpoint only to give a report to very bored and disinterested police who obviously never catch the guy. shots shots shots fucked around with this message at 07:15 on Dec 24, 2012 |
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Dec 24, 2012 07:13
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Install Gentoo posted:Here I just made this for the gun thread, not exactly "gun free" but: As a Florida resident I was pleasantly surprised to see us Green, I figured we'd be whatever is more than Red.
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Dec 25, 2012 15:54
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shots shots shots posted:If Chicago is hitting murder numbers higher than Juarez Mexico, they are obviously doing something very very wrong. Chicago, like most super urban liberal centers, has some staggering income inequality. They haven't take many steps to fix it, and have even hosed the city out of money to keep tax rates low (see the parking meter fiascos). Chicago can't be fixed until rich, white, educated, liberal yuppies accept they will have to do with less so the poor can have more, and until they put their kids in the public school system so there is an incentive to fix it. DC's core violence problems stem from the same poo poo. It's blue as hell but you're either really well off or really poor. Though DC seems to have decided that driving up the rent and gentrifying all their AA residents into PG county, and shoving all the latinos into VA is a better solution than you know, helping their poor. But that will never happen in either city, because part of being in that social class is having your cake and eating it to. And none of them are going to risk their childs future to un gently caress the cities they live in.
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Dec 25, 2012 23:57
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Does anyone have any handy links about the demographics in tv and hollywood and about how minorities are shut out of everything? I seem to recall seeing something like that and how shows with minorities get lower ratings and are cancelled sooner? Am I just crazy on that or is that not a real thing?
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Dec 31, 2012 06:24
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If anyone can provide some context for this, I'd appreciate it. I imagine it will be brought to my attention before long. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...iscal-deal.html quote:Workers making $30,000 will take a bigger hit on their pay than those earning $500,000 under new fiscal deal I don't know much about the Tax Policy Center other than they're associated with the Brookings Institution.
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Jan 4, 2013 16:54
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Zuhzuhzombie!! posted:If anyone can provide some context for this, I'd appreciate it. I imagine it will be brought to my attention before long. It actually is true though misleading. The payroll tax cut expired at the end of the year, and neither side had any interest in extending at. It's not terribly accurate to call that part of the fiscal cliff deal, however, since it wasn't.
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Jan 4, 2013 20:57
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So it was gonna get cut regardless?
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Jan 4, 2013 22:50
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Zuhzuhzombie!! posted:So it was gonna get cut regardless? Not if legislators wanted to. The Bush/Obama tax cuts were set term as well, but they show every sign of(mostly) continuing for quite a few years.
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Jan 4, 2013 23:14
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Zuhzuhzombie!! posted:If anyone can provide some context for this, I'd appreciate it. I imagine it will be brought to my attention before long. If you want context, don't bother reading anything the Daily Mail says and just go off the primary source here: http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxtopics/American-Taxpayer-Relief-Act.cfm Whether "taxes went up" because of the deal is also a semantic issue. A variety of tax cuts expired, and some were reintroduced (permanently) before there was any effect. You might just as easily encounter someone saying the deal was a long term win for the middle class because of the permanent AMT patch, if you're going by current law. But current policy is that the AMT gets patched every year. This is why TPC shows the new measures compared to multiple baseline scenarios. This calculator that they have will let you see in practical consequence what the impact of the deal is for various kinds of earners, or you can roll your own. Their basic numbers for a generic middle class family with two kids has tax liability reduced by $1893 relative to the laws on the books, but increased by $1396 relative to 2012 law with plus an AMT patch.
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Jan 4, 2013 23:52
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Thanks! Here I am with a new one for similar reasons! Point blank: Texas cuts spending and magical money appears, correlation and causation are now exclusive! http://www.elpasotimes.com/newupdated/ci_22325694/texas-comptroller-reports-jump-revenue-96-billion quote:Combs reported Monday that the state collected $8.8 billion more revenue during the current 2012-2013 revenue cycle than she initially forecast, giving lawmakers breathing room in settling a $5.2 billion deficit in the current budget. Obviously its more intricate than "cut spending - people have more money" if anyone could offer insight.
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Jan 7, 2013 23:31
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So this is taking us back a bit, but I just had an acquaintance argue that instead of bailing out the numerous financial institutions in 2008/09, or letting them fail, we should have put them through a managed bankruptcy. Now, I'm familiar with the arguments as to why the auto companies weren't allowed to go the private bankruptcy route - not enough capital was available to prevent them from going straight through and into liquidation. Is this also the situation in the case of the financial giants, or (I know Lehman ended up being allowed to go to BK) was there some other reason for it?
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Jan 8, 2013 17:50
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Ooooo. There's a good article on this that just came out. http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/secret-and-lies-of-the-bailout-20130104
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Jan 8, 2013 18:18
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I remember reading that people who are aware of advertising are more susceptible to it. Does anyone have a link to that research?
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Jan 8, 2013 23:05
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Zeitgueist, is this the one you were looking for? http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/frontal-cortex/2012/06/daniel-kahneman-bias-studies.html I may be super dumb for not being able to find this, but I just spent like an hour scouring the forums for that one really good article about drone attacks in Pakistan and how the locals are driven insane by the constant buzzing and how everybody in this area now takes heavy benzos/opiates just so they can sleep at night. Anyone remember it? I've got some people on my facebook who need to be reminded that the drones are not just pin-point killers.
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Jan 9, 2013 01:37
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There's been several articles on this, Greenwald has one.
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Jan 9, 2013 01:39
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Zuhzuhzombie!! posted:Ooooo. There's a good article on this that just came out. Well that made me feel physically ill, thanks!
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Jan 9, 2013 01:45
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Are there any good definitive debunks of the JFK assassination conspiracy? I am well aware that arguing with conspiracy nuts is an exercise in futility, but I'd just like to know some facts for certain. Unless there really was a conspiracy 
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Jan 12, 2013 23:33
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I was an ironic conspiracy buff in high school so I can give you a very basic intro to the Kennedy Assassination. There was unquestionably a government cover up of something by the Warren Commission, but that in no way establishes that elements of the US government were involved in Kennedy's murder (which is typically what conspiracy theorists are alleging). Investigations by the Church Committee in the US Senate and United States House Select Committee on Assassinations in the House of Representatives give reason to believe that the government was involved in covering this evidence up from the public. Its almost impossible to say anything more than that and the subsequent decades have made the question even more obscure. Different government committees over the years have also come to differing conclusions about whether or not Oswald acted alone or as part of a conspiracy (i.e. was there a second shooter?). Circumstantially speaking there were elements within the government that had the motives and means to kill Kennedy, probably working with the mob or with individuals in the Cuban expat community (or both, since there was a lot of crossover in those two groups). Kennedy's relationship with the CIA was chilly after the Bay of Pigs fiasco and the Joint Chiefs of Staff also didn't like Kennedy after he defied them and ignored their advice during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Government documents from the era of the assassination also suggest a mindset in which killing a domestic American political official would be conceivable, though still rather extraordinary. Operation Northwoods, which was authorized by the Joint Chiefs of Staff but rejected by President Kennedy, would have allowed for the bombing of domestic American flights or attack on domestic targets in Miami and Washington as part of a false flag operation to stir up resentment against Cuba as the pretext for overthrowing Castro. That having been said, Fidel Castro had a great motive and plenty of means to kill Kennedy and over the years a handful of Mob bosses have made deathbed confessions that they killed Kennedy. Given that the Kennedy family did have various connections to the mob (and Robert Kennedy did make a name for himself prosecuting mob bosses) its completely plausible that the mob decided to kill him for some reason. There's no question the US government covered something up, but what they covered up is hard to say. Government's are reflexively secretive so the fact the Warren Commission didn't actually try to get to the bottom of what happened isn't surprising and we don't need to assume a government conspiracy was involved to explain why the Commission tried to sweep stuff under the rug. According to one book posthumously authorized by Gerald Ford (who was involved in the Warren Commission) the CIA destroyed documents related to the assassination to cover up sensitive operations the CIA was conducting. Its also worth highlighting how gigantically implausible to think that "the CIA" killed Kennedy. Government's are way too leaky to cover up any kind of broadly based conspiracy. What is completely plausible, however, is that one or more individuals in the CIA who already had connections with assassins in the Cuban expat community / Cuban mafia (the group the CIA had developed a working relationship with trying to kill Castro / invade Cuba) decided to use their influence to remove a President that they believed was an objective threat to America's position in the Cold War. And of course it can't be ruled out that both Lee Harvey Oswald and Jack Ruby were acting alone. The actual evidence for a second shooter on the 'grassy knoll' is extremely contentious and different people have made very different conclusions based on the limited evidence.
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Jan 13, 2013 00:28
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I encountered this quote:quote:I'd attempt to teach them that government assistance is designed to keep them in poverty and to keep them compliant and soft. I'm assuming this dude never had to live on welfare, so I'm not sure whether debating this will do any good, but still. I know lots of rules and institutions exist to gently caress over the poor, but I thought welfare wasn't one of 'm.
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Jan 14, 2013 00:04
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Laserjet 4P posted:I encountered this quote: The way America does welfare does have a lot of problems - we tend to do exactly enough to keep people from outright dying and never actually invest enough or invest in the right ways to help them get back to a stable position - but this is more of a "gently caress you, got mine" thing than a "evil conspiracy The Man uses to keep us down" thing. I don't know where they got this "compliant and soft" idea, it's not like the government requires people to prove their patriotism or sign a blood oath to their country in order to get welfare or something like that.
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Jan 14, 2013 04:04
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I'm looking for books/resources on Sayyid Qutb, specifically about the point at which his followers began to consider themselves distinct from "mainstream" Salafis such as those who govern Saudi Arabia. I guess you might say that I'm looking for information about the roots of the the modern takfiri movement within Salafism generally. Could anyone help me out?
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Jan 26, 2013 00:55
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Are there any good responses to/analyses of Walter Block's views that the gender wage gap is due to women being less productive than their male counterparts?
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Jan 27, 2013 06:48
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Judakel posted:Are there any good responses to/analyses of Walter Block's views that the gender wage gap is due to women being less productive than their male counterparts? Wages are not a function of productivity anywhere else in capitalism, why would they be in this case?
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Jan 27, 2013 07:13
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Judakel posted:Are there any good responses to/analyses of Walter Block's views that the gender wage gap is due to women being less productive than their male counterparts? You might also look for cultural causes of that supposed gap in productivity: what things might women have to put up with or compensate for that might negatively influence their productivity? One might be a shithead like Walter Block telling them that their lower wages are proof of their inferiority.
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Jan 27, 2013 07:27
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I've looked high and low but there's just so much chaff out there about free (or freed) markets that it's hard to narrow my searches down so I come to beg for help. What I'm interested in reading about are logical end-points of literal free/d markets, primarily in how they would function and if there's a state involved. I've watched a few lectures by anarcho-capitalists who seem to paint a pretty picture though I haven't found explanations for logical holes (Like 'If you allow different currencies to compete, what happens to the people holding the ones that lose?') so I need more material.
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Jan 28, 2013 05:41
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BlackIronHeart posted:I've looked high and low but there's just so much chaff out there about free (or freed) markets that it's hard to narrow my searches down so I come to beg for help. What I'm interested in reading about are logical end-points of literal free/d markets, primarily in how they would function and if there's a state involved. I've watched a few lectures by anarcho-capitalists who seem to paint a pretty picture though I haven't found explanations for logical holes (Like 'If you allow different currencies to compete, what happens to the people holding the ones that lose?') so I need more material. Not totally sure what you mean, something like this? It takes quotes by Hans-Hermann Hoppe to point out the flaws in Austro-libertarianism http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2011/11/journey-into-a-libertarian-future-part-i-%E2%80%93the-vision.html http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2011/11/journey-into-a-libertarian-future-part-ii-%E2%80%93-the-strategy.html http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2011/12/journey-into-a-libertarian-future-part-iii-%E2%80%93-regulation.html http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2011/12/journey-into-a-libertarian-future-part-iv-%E2%80%93-the-journey-into-a-libertarian-past.html http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2011/12/journey-into-a-libertarian-future-part-v-%E2%80%93-dark-realities.html http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2011/12/journey-into-a-libertarian-future-part-vi-%E2%80%93-certainty.html Enjoy fucked around with this message at 05:59 on Jan 28, 2013 |
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Jan 28, 2013 05:50
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On first glance, it is! Thanks! EDIT: And it described the sort of dystopian nightmare I imagined very nicely. BlackIronHeart fucked around with this message at 07:04 on Jan 28, 2013 |
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Jan 28, 2013 05:54
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A legitimately freed market is literally logically impossible in any long term, at least if it's predicated on any sort of profit motive. Profits are derived mainly from particular forms of inefficiency, especially what marxists term exploitation, that is the tendency to buy labour below its real market value, let alone the actual value created through said labour. A free market is purged of all inefficiencies, meaning that the only profit to be derived would come from rapidly copied innovations and the creation of new markets. Now, the easiest way - in a free, unregulated market - to introduce additional profits would not be a grinding slog towards new technologies, but to introduce global inefficiencies in the market through stuff like, well, marketing and business manouvering - presumably most free-market types are proponents of private property, which would mean that you'd see a very quick squeeze of workers as well, for instance, and the introduction of coercion into hiring processes and wage negotiations (i.e. businesses would band together to crush unions, essentially). The free market is a useful abstraction from which to derive economic conjectures, nothing more. Even utopian communism is easier to imagine and much more realistic.
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Jan 28, 2013 08:54
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Judakel posted:Are there any good responses to/analyses of Walter Block's views that the gender wage gap is due to women being less productive than their male counterparts? This may be true if "productivity" is measured only in wage labour. Housework and child-rearing, which women still disproportionately bear the burden of, are not waged labour and are not measured in productivity measures like GDP, but will have an impact on women's ability to do waged labour. Block knows this and says it openly, but does not consider it a problem, instead claiming that employers are within their rights to assess potential employees based on their gender because women will marry and lose status/working time. He doesn't go completely down the route of saying that women have inherent inferiority in some aspect like intelligence or that within a job they will be less productive, more that a woman's typical social role leads her to eventually forfeit waged productivity for non-waged productivity (and indeed, that she will WANT to do this), and this means women will, as a group, be out-competed by men. Bafflingly, his supporters don't see this as a sexist problem: quote:The opportunity cost of being an Olympic athlete is all of the other opportunities foregone, just as the opportunity cost of the joys of motherhood are, for most women, workplace wages foregone. They only regard 'sexism' as individual male animosity towards women rather than a structural societal issue (likely because of their libertarian individualist way of thinking), and claim that this is not widespread. Through this, they can then go on to base the argument entirely on economics, demand curves etc, after combatting the most utterly facile, strawman-like distorted 'arguments' of socialism, feminism etc. He also goes into biotruths about how women MUST perform this social role, because women are a "precious commodity" (nice language) compared to men - disregarding the fact that we no longer live in a life-or-death society where we must protect women and force them to perform safe childcare roles etc while men do the 'real work'. In addition, while individually it may pay the 'job creators' to select male workers, on a wider social scale it's clearly disadvantageous to generalise half the population as less employable, and to give those who will raise the next generation and are "precious commodities" (in his assumptions) less financial advantages than the ones who are supposedly disposable, and we should enforce equality EVEN IF women were typically less productive in waged labour. If the person you want to argue with doesn't see "women do housework, therefore it's valid to pay them less" as a sexist problem, or economic/social problem, or any sort of problem, I don't see how they will be convinced (because they're an idiot). No sources here because even very basic economics textbooks discuss problems with measures of productivity, and his ideas of feminism and socialism are so dumb and wrong that I can't think where you'd find proper texts discussing them.
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Jan 28, 2013 11:53
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V. Illych L. posted:
I even disagree with this. The logistics of private property and contract law, as well as things like limited liability, immigration and administration of justice mean that 'free market' is a completely meaningless term. There are always economic regulations involved in trade and heading toward some imaginary ideal doesn't tell us much, if anything, about where we are now.
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Jan 28, 2013 13:09
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The "free market", in practice, generally means "less regulated than now, but more regulated than anarcho-capitalism". It's one of those terms that's completely subjective based on the person saying it. Generally when it comes up in discussion you need to immediately point out that they're full of poo poo about wanting a free market, or just walk away because you're arguing reality versus a shifting goalpost of an ideal, and you can't win that. e: removed quoted text to avoid confusion. Zeitgueist fucked around with this message at 18:50 on Jan 28, 2013 |
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Jan 28, 2013 18:32
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I think Cahal knows that, with all due respect; but he's just adding his 2c to the complete decimation of the concept of the 'free' market in the last few posts, by showing how the very nature of the state in capitalism as it has always existed excludes the 'free' qualifier as a rule. e: I guess the only superfluous post here is mine  vvv SSJ2 Goku Wilders fucked around with this message at 19:02 on Jan 28, 2013 |
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Jan 28, 2013 18:45
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SSJ2 Goku Wilders posted:I think Cahal knows that, with all due respect; but he's just adding his 2c to the complete decimation of the concept of the 'free' market in the last few posts, by showing how the very nature of the state in capitalism as it has always existed excludes the 'free' qualifier as a rule. I know he knows that, and I should probably just remove his quote. The comment was in general aimed at the thread, which is about helping people debate and discuss.
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Jan 28, 2013 18:50
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Enjoy posted:Not totally sure what you mean, something like this? It takes quotes by Hans-Hermann Hoppe to point out the flaws in Austro-libertarianism As a recovering anarcho-capitalist, I can vouch for these arguments, they sound pretty much like what I would say. I foresaw most functions of the state being replaced by gigantic "insurance companies" (for things like police protection) and "chambers of commerce" (for things like roads and infrastructure), much in the way of medieval Iceland. And yes, every libertarian worth their salt knows the story of medieval Iceland. Whether or not it was a success (It seems to me to have been but I've only learned of it through Lew Rockwell's eyes), it served as a useful illustration of consensual government. One thing that comes to mind from page 1 (all that I've read so far), though: "CNC: In a libertarian society, sanctity of contract is absolutely fundamental." This is a societal shift, not a government one. If you ever going to have contract or property law without a government, you absolutely 100% need the society in on it. For everyone's default response to look at a contract violator with shame, rather than sympathy. And this is why libertarianism cannot be voted in. It might "get the message out" to run a libertarian for president, but ultimately it's useless. A libertarian will never be president until the entire congress is libertarian. Yet the LP appears to deliberately avoid downticket races, for reasons I don't understand, while spending its precious and scarce money on a national presidential race. Edit: Though I feel like I should point out that not all of us thought Hoppe was right, far from it. Golbez fucked around with this message at 23:43 on Jan 28, 2013 |
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Jan 28, 2013 23:32
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David Graeber is doing a reddit IAMA, and had a decent response to the question:quote:Q: Do you believe in a completely unregulated free-market? Graeber posted:"Believe in" in the sense of believe in ghosts (i.e, does it really exist)? No, I don't believe it exists. Or ever has. Or ever could. Do I believe it would be a good thing if it did? Well, that's a little like asking me if I believe it would be a good thing if there really were ghosts. I don't know. I'm not sure what the point would be in speculating about such questions other than perhaps for entertainment purposes.
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Jan 28, 2013 23:45
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Golbez posted:Whether or not it was a success (It seems to me to have been but I've only learned of it through Lew Rockwell's eyes), it served as a useful illustration of consensual government. It wasn't consensual for the thralls (although HHH is ok with enslaving those automata whose conception of time preference he disagrees with, so maybe they didn't count as people)
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Jan 29, 2013 00:16
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I look at HHH as a useful way to point out that very different ideas can still be fundamentally compatible with libertarianism. We already know it's possible for libertarians to be either pro choice or pro life, but he helps us realize that they can also be anti-immigration and many other things! Of course, this can be done with any political philosophy - "conservatives" can tell you both that it's right to regulate sex (because of God) and that it's wrong to regulate sex (because of freedom). But it hurts more when it's libertarianism because it gnaws at that practicality vs morality issue: What is more important, that people be free in general, or that I be free in specific? If we could cut oppression by 90% if I surrendered 1% of my wealth to the government, is that worth it? I say yes; most libertarians would say yes; but the hardcore ones, the anarcho-capitalists, would say no. For example, the difference between having my money taken to pay for other people's health care, and the cheaper and better health care that I would receive in return. I have a friend who says he would rather pay more money for private health care than any public option because it's morally wrong to force him to pay for someone else. They aren't his concern. (I'd bring up the whole 'but you're paying for them now' etc., but he would say he chooses to, and really it's a clusterfuck because he became libertarian in part because of me and now I'm abandoning things so every time we talk it turns into an emotional mess.  )
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Jan 29, 2013 15:34
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