John Holbo, a philosophy professor at the University of Singapore, alleged he had predicted A&E would cave, because money. Apparently not worthy of mention was the fact that A&E's ignominious collapse came with unseemly haste, and without even a hint of an apology, or even a nod in the general direction of one.
Were I truly devious, I might hypothesize that the whole episode was engineered as part of a vast liberal media conspiracy to keep the GOP boxed as a regional ethnic party.
Seriously: even NRO went for a HuffPo-style ‘stand with Phil’ slideshow. (You can click it after reading Steyn’s column on “The Age of Intolerance”.) Man, there’s no way GOP outreach proceeds by convincing lots of undecideds this sort of ‘the only intolerance is intolerance of intolerance!’ double-talk is the bright future of freedom.
Up until now, I have largely stayed out of the progressive fever swamps. However, several things caused me to abandon caution: a lot of time in hotels, the conviction that progressives and GLAAD had tried to perpetrate a character assassination, and this:
[#25] Get more misty eyed about how, while you decry the GOP, the firing of the Duck Dynasty Patriarch for saying that he never saw a black person mistreated in Jim Crow Louisiana, and that that black people were “happy” before civil rights–so much so that they were a-singing in the fields as they worked, and they weren’t singing the blues …
To which I responded:
[#27] Oh, for pete’s sake. Here is what he actually said:
I never, with my eyes, saw the mistreatment of any black person. Not once. Where we lived was all farmers. The blacks worked for the farmers. I hoed cotton with them. I’m with the blacks, because we’re white trash. We’re going across the field…. They’re singing and happy. I never heard one of them, one black person, say, ‘I tell you what: These doggone white people’—not a word!… Pre-entitlement, pre-welfare, you say: Were they happy? They were godly; they were happy; no one was singing the blues.
It is obvious to anyone without an axe to grind that he never saw blacks being treated any differently than he was, and that they had a nobility that welfare and entitlements destroyed.
Now you may disagree with his assessment of the Great Society et al; although it is worth keeping in mind he is echoing Patrick Moynihan, among others. But you have absolutely no basis upon which to disagree with the factual elements of what he said; to do so amounts to, on precisely zero evidence, calling him a liar.
Very classy.
Which ignited a 527 comment thread. Did I mention I spend a lot of time in hotels?
Greatly condensed:
My position: Calling someone a racist, or a liar, and especially both without cause is very nasty. He said nothing racist; rather, his point is about welfare, not blacks. Progressives are not in a position to contradict his first hand experience, so calling him a racist (or liar, or idiot) on that account is baseless. Doing so, despite that, is clear evidence of the progressive totalitarian reflex: those who disagree aren't even entitled to their own experiences, and the goal is to first demonize, then delegitimize the speaker. As to charges of homophobia, GLAAD is setting itself up as the arbiter of rightthink and rightreligion, and is demanding Robertson bow to them.
Their position: You are defending someone against being called a racist; therefore, you are a racist. It doesn't matter that he said nothing about Jim Crow, therefore Robertson is okay with it, therefore racist. John Holbo, a philosophy professor and author of the post, decides his inference powers are sufficient to determine Robertson's racist meaning, even if there are no racist words, or evident intent. Anyone who defends him is an idiot. And lynchings. And obviously widespread abuse of blacks, therefore Robertson is a racist, idiot, and liar.
I found several things amazing … no … appalling about the thread. Not the amazingly antagonistic tenor — that's internet 101 — but rather the way that nearly all the commenters proved my argument for me: that progressives are inherently totalitarian, and are immune to anything contradicting their progressiveness.
They immediately insisted that Robertson was lying about seeing black sharecroppers mistreated. Yet when I noted that The Immortal Life of Hentrietta Lacks which included a lengthy description of her life growing up poor in the 1920s south, neglected to mention any mistreatment, then so much the worse for the book. One of the very few to seriously consider my point, Mao Cheng Ji, even went so far as to read histories of black sharecroppers, and noticed the same thing.
So much the worse for those histories, then, because nothing may contradict the progressive narrative.
Nor could the fact that the Robertson family adopted a half black child.
But ignoring reality isn't enough to exhaust the progressive mind, so they invented some by vandalizing (#312, 321) and eliding (#345, like our own Harry Eagar did here) Robertson's words.
By the end of the thing, they had gone the full progressive monty: demanding he not be allowed to preach his false religion, and insisting it is OK to prevent incorrect speech, so as to avoid spreading thoughtcrime. And a philosophy professor to the very end thought his inferences to be the gold standard of reality.
The eeriness of the whole thing is being able to see how when progressives get power, murder is never very far behind.
The irony of the whole thing is delicious. Progressives attacked Robertson because they hate his kind.
281 comments:
«Oldest ‹Older 201 – 281 of 281Thanks, but I don't have any guys, nor do I watch any media. Fox is no better than any other outlets.
[Clovis:] But there is another very important difference between the shuttles and Harry's examples: the last ones represent private enterprises working for their own good, but externalizing all the major consequences of their negligence to the public.
Private enterprises working for their own good. Hmmm. At one level, that is true: the exist to earn money for their employees and shareholders. But that is a very blinkered view.
Hands up, everyone who wants to do without oil.
Of course, the problem is with the profit motive, because as Harry would hasten to tell us, companies like BP are so focused on the short term that they would be better off cutting corners everywhere, blowouts be damned.
So clearly we would all be far better off if governments did oil exploration, recovery, and distribution. How has that worked out?
As Harry, and it seems, you, neglect to mention, the DWH spill represented a great deal of wasted product, and lost exploration costs, destroyed equipment, loss of life and billions in liability that BP paid. Accidents are almost never simple single factor incidents that the ideologically blinded make them out to be. (The parallels between Challenger and DWH are significant.)
Compare and contrast with, oh, say, the Hanford Site
The weapons production reactors were decommissioned at the end of the Cold War, but the decades of manufacturing left behind 53 million US gallons (200,000 m3) of high-level radioactive waste,[5] an additional 25 million cubic feet (710,000 m3) of solid radioactive waste, 200 square miles (520 km2) of contaminated groundwater beneath the site[6] and occasional discoveries of undocumented contaminations that slow the pace and raise the cost of cleanup.[7]
The Hanford site represents two-thirds of the nation's high-level radioactive waste by volume.[8] Hanford is currently the most contaminated nuclear site in the United States[9][10]
Further, in the shuttle case, error ultimately resulted in death and the people operating it would be, by far, the least interested in avowing negligence. Can you say the same about BP?
Negligence is negligence. NASA didn't pay a dime for the shuttle losses. No one at NASA faced criminal charges.
Both the DWH and shuttle losses were due primarily to human error. Harry thinks the former is an indictment of free markets and the latter is … well, it isn't because the memory hole is the place for events that contradict The Narrative.
[Harry:] [erp, you] continue to demonstrate that you know nothing about the country you live in and have never experienced unfairness.
erp is a woman, and you have the temerity to suggest she has never experienced unfairness. Really?
Skipper, does it never occur to you to wonder why these disasters are as uncommon (I would not say rare) a they are, or less common than they used to be?
There are lots of reasons: advancing knowledge and technique driving further advances in knowledge and technique, the increasing cost of humans and their knowledge, competition, public attitudes, and government regulation acting to reduce or eliminate free-rider problems (which is why I'm not a minarchist or libertarian).
Your full-throated condemnation of "free marketeers" has a remarkable blind spot when it comes to what inevitably happens when there is no competition. Which is why you were happy to trot out DWH, and neglect similar (and in some ways worse) incidents such as the Challenger and Columbia.
Well, well, well. On Saturday the mail brought me (at the cheapest price of any mail system in the world, despite unionization) the catalog of Liberty Fund Books.
Pardon me — does that include postal system losses, or just what the postage cost?
'Top soil destroyed by farmers? Why would they destroy their prosperity? Oh yeah, for short-term gain.'
Exactly. Finally you get something right.
You probably should stop digging, erp, as you just make yourself ridiculous. You obviously do not know that dark-skinned people were not allowed to rent hotel rooms until the lefties intervened to change the 'fairness.'
'companies like BP are so focused on the short term that they would be better off cutting corners everywhere, blowouts be damned.'
Exactly. It's the 'fireproof hotel' phenomenon that I have written about so often at RtO.
In the free market environment, those who cut corners and luck out are rewarded enormously -- far more than those who manage 'competently.' Therefore, there will always be free marketeers who act so, and the cost will be paid by the public.
It follows that more regulation (with real enforcement) is better and less regulation is worse.
Harry, for every capitalist who stupidly risks his own capital and that of his investors for short term gain, there are dozens, if not hundreds, of examples of government waste to wit the recent massive movement of our money into the hands of lefty crony capitalists aka the stimulus.
I noted in a previous comment a notorious such disaster when the money allocated for the levies in New Orleans was diverted to the bottom lines of Louisiana lefties and resulted in death and destruction via Katrina which was neatly packaged to be blamed on Bush's appointment to head FEMA.
You guys really are that good.
The private sector can only make one or two mistakes and it's out of business. The government can make mistake after mistake and stay in business as long as they can have a big enough giveaway to buy themselves votes. Voting used mean something. Alas it is now just another commodity to be manipulated as it has always been in socialist countries.
You still don't understand that if I don't agree with you, it isn't because I don't know the issues, it's because I do know them very well and don't buy your ridiculous party line that I've heard for the last 79 years.
You still haven't explained why during my lifetime when I traveled in the south, I was able to see with my own eyes that coloreds and whites were kept separate. That was a real shame because your hero, as you've said frequently, you are a New Dealer, your hero Frankie could have removed that stain from our body politic. That he didn't do that, for me, demonstrates the hypocrisy and duplicity on the left.
Clovis, you obviously don't understand that Fox is just as bad as the rest of the media. Murdoch supported Hillary Clinton in 2008 and has made a nice profit by being on the surface less single-minded than the other news outlets, but in the end, doesn't really make a difference. Bob Beckel, one of the most vile people I've ever seen or heard, is given air-time. 'Nuf said.
O'Reilly is a closet lefty. I would be very surprised if he didn't vote for Obama whom he allowed to reach an audience he wouldn't normally have reached and let him soft soap the horrible scandals and blame Fox for keeping them alive instead of being forced to answer to We, the People..
When Brit Hume was fired was the last time I watched any media.
[erp:] Top soil destroyed by farmers? Why would they destroy their prosperity? Oh yeah, for short-term gain.'
[Harry:] Exactly. Finally you get something right.
Here is an interesting nugget from an agricultural blog on the loss of topsoil:
High crop prices, ethanol mandates and flawed government farm and crop insurance programs have led to “all-out production with little regard for what happens to the soil, water and wildlife habitat,” Cox said.
Which really should be shortened by removing the words "High crop prices", since that is an effect of ethanol mandates.
Sounds like your benevolent government has pretty much gooned it up.
[Clovis:] But there is another very important difference between the shuttles and Harry's examples: the last ones represent private enterprises working for their own good, but externalizing all the major consequences of their negligence to the public.
Private enterprises working for their own good. Hmmm. At one level, that is true: they exist to earn money for their employees and shareholders. But that is a very blinkered view.
Hands up, everyone who wants to do without oil.
Of course, the problem is with the profit motive, because as Harry would hasten to tell us, companies like BP are so focused on the short term that they would be better off cutting corners everywhere, blowouts be damned.
So clearly we would all be far better off if governments did oil exploration, recovery, and distribution. How has that worked out?
As Harry, and it seems, you, neglect to mention, the DWH spill represented a great deal of wasted product, lost exploration costs, destroyed equipment, loss of life and billions in liability that BP paid. Accidents are almost never simple single factor incidents that the ideologically blinded make them out to be. (The parallels between Challenger and DWH are significant.)
Compare and contrast with, oh, say, the Hanford Site
The weapons production reactors were decommissioned at the end of the Cold War, but the decades of manufacturing left behind 53 million US gallons (200,000 m3) of high-level radioactive waste,[5] an additional 25 million cubic feet (710,000 m3) of solid radioactive waste, 200 square miles (520 km2) of contaminated groundwater beneath the site[6] and occasional discoveries of undocumented contaminations that slow the pace and raise the cost of cleanup.[7]
The Hanford site represents two-thirds of the nation's high-level radioactive waste by volume.[8] Hanford is currently the most contaminated nuclear site in the United States[9][10]
Further, in the shuttle case, error ultimately resulted in death and the people operating it would be, by far, the least interested in avowing negligence. Can you say the same about BP?
Negligence is negligence. NASA didn't pay a dime for the shuttle losses. No one at NASA faced criminal charges.
Both the DWH and shuttle losses were due primarily to human error. Harry thinks the former is an indictment of free markets and the latter is … well, the memory hole is the place for events that contradict The Narrative.
[Harry:] [erp, you] continue to demonstrate that you know nothing about the country you live in and have never experienced unfairness.
erp is a woman, and you have the temerity to suggest she has never experienced unfairness. Really?
Wow. That has to be nearly the most sexist thing I have read in a long time.
Skipper, does it never occur to you to wonder why these disasters are as uncommon (I would not say rare) a they are, or less common than they used to be?
There are lots of reasons: advancing knowledge and technique driving further advances in knowledge and technique, the increasing cost of humans and their knowledge, competition, public attitudes, and government regulation acting to reduce or eliminate free-rider problems (which is why I'm not a minarchist or libertarian).
Your full-throated condemnation of "free marketeers" has a remarkable blind spot when it comes to what inevitably happens when there is no competition. Which is why you were happy to trot out DWH, and neglect similar (and in some ways worse) incidents such as the Challenger, Columbia and Hanford.
[Hey Skipper:] companies like BP are so focused on the short term that they would be better off cutting corners everywhere, blowouts be damned.'
Exactly. It's the 'fireproof hotel' phenomenon that I have written about so often at RtO.
No, exactly wrong. If you had any appreciation, or willingness to learn, you would have noted an extremely complex accident chain, abetted by a long period without significant drilling accidents. The consequences were utterly different from your hackneyed "fireproof hotel phenomenon". Far closer parallels, although still distant because your hoary device is so far removed in time, is both Challenger and Columbia. The realm within which the shuttles operated was far less extreme, and better understood, than the environment in which DWH occurred.
Yet you continue to blame the free market, and let NASA off the hook. Why?
It follows that more regulation (with real enforcement) is better and less regulation is worse.
So it follows that infinite regulation is perfect, right? Because, after all, there are no costs to excessive regulation. Which means that countries with the most intrusive governments have had the best safety and environmental …
Oh wait. Never mind.
Well, well, well. On Saturday the mail brought me (at the cheapest price of any mail system in the world, despite unionization) the catalog of Liberty Fund Books.
Pardon me — but is that based upon total USPS cost divided by pieces mailed, or something fictitious, like postage absent subsidy?
And that is before the sheer astonishment at learning email isn't mail.
Hmmmm, not so long ago Mr. Eagar was telling us of the many multi-millionaire tenant farmers in Iowa, and now we find out they can't exist because bad farming practices over the last century destroyed their prosperity.
'Sounds like your benevolent government has pretty much gooned it up.'
Not accurate, since farmers now do no-till -- after generations of encouragement from the gummint.
There was an episode a generation earlier when prices were high (thanks to exports to the USSR, mostly) and the farmers cut down their shelterbelts. Then grain rices went down and oil prices went up, and they wished they had those shelterbelts, but they were gone.
Farmers are notorious for short-term thinking.
'Hmmmm, not so long ago Mr. Eagar was telling us of the many multi-millionaire tenant farmers in Iowa, and now we find out they can't exist because bad farming practices over the last century destroyed their prosperity.'
Not what I said. I said they mined out half their topsoil in a century. That still left 4 inches of topsoil, better than a lot of places had to start with.
After prodding from gummint for generations, and the development of no-till, a direct outgrowth (via a complicated path) of the work of that lefty Henry Wallace, the loss of topsoil has been at least been somewhat reduced.
You surely know about the erosion if not about the curious way it was controlled.
Not what I said
Really? Let's quote -
[erp:] Top soil destroyed by farmers? Why would they destroy their prosperity? Oh yeah, for short-term gain.'
[Harry:] Exactly. Finally you get something right.
That is, the farmers destroyed their prosperity by letting their top soil erode to get short term gains. That's what you wrote.
Yep, that's one way to become a millionaire.
It is amazing that you think there is a conflict between short-term profits and irrespobnsible risk-taking.
You live close to the mint farmers. Ask them.
Harry, is that peppermint or spearmint?
Mr. Eagar;
So you did write that, despite explicitly denying it. And you believe you can become a millionaire while destroying your own prosperity. Fascinating...
'And you believe you can become a millionaire while destroying your own prosperity. Fascinating...'
How can you doubt it? After what went on in Wall Street recently?
Both peppermint and spearmint, erp?
The mints are notorious soil robbers, so mint farmers rent land. They depend, I suppose, on dumb landowners.
Anyhow, our mint comes from itinerant farmers in Guy's region. It's a fascinating (to me, a student of ag economics, anyway) enterprise. You'd think mint would be so expensive that only the rich could afford it, but thanks ot short-term thinking, we all get to enjoy it.
'The DWH spill represented a great deal of wasted product, and lost exploration costs, destroyed equipment, loss of life and billions in liability that BP paid.'
It sure did. Wouldn't it have been smarter to have followed best practices? I am not following your thinking, unless you are agreeing with me, which I don't think you are.
Mr. Eagar;
So you did write that, despite explicitly denying it.
How can you doubt it?
Easily.
After what went on in Wall Street recently?
For example ...?
Skipper,
---
Hands up, everyone who wants to do without oil. [...] So clearly we would all be far better off if governments did oil exploration, recovery, and distribution. How has that worked out?
---
Gosh. That's way low level for you, Skipper. Really: any criticism of standards followed by some companies is now the same as to attack their own existence? Not only that, it is the same as nationalization! OK...
---
Negligence is negligence. NASA didn't pay a dime for the shuttle losses. No one at NASA faced criminal charges.
---
And do you believe they should?
Erp,
---
Clovis, you obviously don't understand that Fox is just as bad as the rest of the media.
---
Actually, I do.
What I do not understand is why you think that a link for them is an endorsement by my part of anything they are or say.
As for Brit Hume, Erp, you are misinformed: he still works at Fox.
I didn't, I responded to your saying O'Reilly was one of my guys.
Brit Hume is a sometimes guest commentator (I doubt I'm the only one who objected to his ouster), he no longer has his own show.
Well, the guy who sold all those insurance policies on swaps for AIG -- you know, the ones that lost the company something like $100 billion and would have crashed the commercial paper market if
the Treasury hadn't stepped in -- retired to New Jersey with $9 million.
This really isn't complicated; risks and rewards in a free market system -- and no market was ever freer than swaps insurance -- are not rationally distributed. It is built in for plungers to risk millions of other people's livelihoods for individual gain.
Mr. Eagar;
So you did write that and explicitly deny you did so.
Your example fails because that guy didn't destroy his own prosperity, he damaged that of someone else.
But President Obama wasting $800 billion on what he admitted were non-shovel ready jobs, no big. Even more than a free market, government encourages scoundrels to risk millions of other people's livelihoods (and not infrequently their actual lives) for personal benefit. Your problem is you start with "free market bad" and then look only at problems in free markets to "prove" your claim. Even worse done by government just doesn't register for you. That's why you can never understand my point of view.
Here's a prime example - the CBO projects the ACA will cost 2.5 million jobs, putting at least that many livelihoods not at risk, but destroyed and, to top it off, the Obama Administration's spin is that this is good thing.
Yep, spearmint farmers are definitely raping the land.
[Hey Skipper:] The DWH spill represented a great deal of wasted product, and lost exploration costs, destroyed equipment, loss of life and billions in liability that BP paid.'
[Harry:] It sure did. Wouldn't it have been smarter to have followed best practices? I am not following your thinking, unless you are agreeing with me, which I don't think you are.
You made a foolish assertion about free marketeers, using DWH as an example. Unfortunately, there is a wealth of counterexamples of equally bad outcomes in the absence of the market.
So if you were doing any thinking, instead of engaging in a reflexive rant, you would concluded that accidents are often the consequence of many factors, none of them having to do with the market.
Due to a long period without a significant mishap [BP | NASA] became complacent, and made decisions involving risk they didn't recognize. Had they actually recognized the risk [BP | NASA] would have made entirely different decisions. It is the perception of habituated risk that is the problem, not the market.
[Clovis:] But there is another very important difference between the shuttles and Harry's examples: the last ones represent private enterprises working for their own good, but externalizing all the major consequences of their negligence to the public.
[Hey Skipper:] Hands up, everyone who wants to do without oil. [...] So clearly we would all be far better off if governments did oil exploration, recovery, and distribution. How has that worked out?
[Clovis:] Gosh. That's way low level for you, Skipper. Really: any criticism of standards followed by some companies is now the same as to attack their own existence? Not only that, it is the same as nationalization! OK...
I was criticizing your first comment on several levels. The product of those private enterprises is essential to civilization, so it is extremely simplistic to view them as "working for their own good". Second, it is impossible to recover the energy resources required for civilization without risk; by definition, risk entails accidents. Which would you rather go without, energy, or accidents involved in recovering it? It is a binary decision. And finally, BP paid in the tens of billions to compensate for the spill, and is subject to criminal prosecutions.
NASA didn't pay a dime, and no one was put in the dock, despite the degree of negligence being the same, and the failed system far easier to understand.
Managing complex systems safely is extremely difficult. Companies subject to market forces do it better than entities immune to competition.
I'm not criticizing standards, as invoking nationalization should make clear. If free marketeers were the problem, then nationalization would be the solution. Except it never is.
aog said: ... top it off, the Obama Administration's spin is that this is good thing.
It is a good thing for lefties. It puts millions more in custodial care and assures their votes in perpetuity.
Skipper,
---
I was criticizing your first comment on several levels. The product of those private enterprises is essential to civilization, so it is extremely simplistic to view them as "working for their own good".
---
No, it is not. It is how capitalism works. People establish enterprises for their own good - that what they sell has big chances of being "essential" is just trivial, for to the contrary they wouldn't sell so easily.
To deny so is to argue the contrary: that they are benevolently working for Humanity. That indeed sounds ludicrous. If you disagree, I can promptly indicate to you a few good beneficent institutions where you can donate a good portion of your salary. Deal?
---
Second, it is impossible to recover the energy resources required for civilization without risk; by definition, risk entails accidents. Which would you rather go without, energy, or accidents involved in recovering it? It is a binary decision.
---
It is, and it has nothing to do with our present discussion. To discount negligence on the fact that risks and inherent to the process is just one more diversion you are throwing in the air.
---
And finally, BP paid in the tens of billions to compensate for the spill, and is subject to criminal prosecutions.
---
And you cite those facts to point out that...?
---
NASA didn't pay a dime, and no one was put in the dock, despite the degree of negligence being the same, and the failed system far easier to understand.
---
I completely disagree that Shuttles would be a simpler system than submarine oil drilling. And compare the costs of the driller and the Shuttle before you answer me.
And you still did not answer my question: should NASA people be criminally indicted in your opinion?
[Clovis:] No, it is not. It is how capitalism works. People establish enterprises for their own good - that what they sell has big chances of being "essential" is just trivial, for to the contrary they wouldn't sell so easily.
All you are doing is reiterating Adam Smith's "Wealth of Nations". The thesis of which is that the best way to achieve the collectively best outcome is for everyone to pursue their own self interest. Bakers do not provide you quality bread at a reasonable price out of charity.
Because collectivists cannot imagine the individual as anything other than a subservient part of the whole, they simply cannot take this on board. My company consists of people pursuing their own self interest, and yields an enterprise that could choose to maximize its profit for a quarter or two.
And be dead a couple years from now.
In the market's stead, you would place yourself as the arbiter of what is "essential" or "trivial".
In another word: God.
The free market creates emergent phenomena. Or, almost equivalently, free markets are self organized complexity.
Progressives pretend to have enough knowledge to play God. They don't. No one does.
[Clovis:] It is, and it has nothing to do with our present discussion. To discount negligence on the fact that risks and inherent to the process is just one more diversion you are throwing in the air.
I'm not discounting negligence; indeed, I have (and I say this seriously) a far deeper insight into negligence as a human condition than you do. It is the central fact of my professional life, and against which there is nothing but endless battle. It is anti-human to pretend that somehow negligence can be wished away, or blamed upon an economic system.
It can't, and it is almost beyond comprehension that someone could do so.
Here is a there I was story: A few days ago I was taking off from Charles de Gaulle. Departure control assigned us a different departure from our existing clearance. As the monitoring pilot, I went to re-program the flight management system. For some reason, the prompt to select a departure was missing. The Captain, who was the pilot flying, then — negligently — went to his flight management computer to change the departure.
At this point, two things happened.
For reasons unknown, the FMS dumped everything. We were, in essence, flying blind.
Second, NO ONE WAS FLYING THE FRICKING AIRPLANE.
Despite being two highly trained pilots, we were about two links in the chain from being a billion dollar smoking hole.
As others here can reluctantly tell you, I could go on beyond ad nauseum about this, but I'll spare you. Negligence, as opposed to advertent disregard, is an ineradicable part of being human. NASA, and BP, and the Captain were each negligent. In the former instances, very bad things happened. In the latter, you didn't read about us because I monitored the pilot flying enough to realize he wasn't flying, and directed him to step away from the FMS and get back on the controls.
There are reams of human factors issues I'm glossing over in pursuit of the point that saying DWH > free market > Bad! is simplistic nonsense that would insult the intelligence of my not particularly bright, even by dog standards, my Golden Retriever.
What you think of as my diversion is rather my insistence that progressives are inherently anti-human.
I completely disagree that Shuttles would be a simpler system than submarine oil drilling. And compare the costs of the driller and the Shuttle before you answer me.
By all means go to wikipedia on the DWH mishap reports. The SRM joint seals were a study in trivial pursuit compared to the DWH drilling environment.
(Cost is an irrelevant metric, BTW.)
And you still did not answer my question: should NASA people be criminally indicted in your opinion?
No, absolutely not. Ever. That is the sort of thing brain dead bureaucrats do.
The only way to safety is through full disclosure without fear of retribution.
Which is why criminally pursuing BP personnel is stupid nearly beyond comprehension.
'(Cost is an irrelevant metric, BTW.)'
Wow. And here I thought it was the only one.
Skipper,
---
In the market's stead, you would place yourself as the arbiter of what is "essential" or "trivial".
---
No, I would not, and you'll be hard pressed to prove the contrary by quoting anything I said up to now. Even my use of the word "trivial" was misplaced by you on this quote.
---
I have (and I say this seriously) a far deeper insight into negligence as a human condition than you do.
---
I believe you have. Except it has little to do with our present discussion here - you look to use the inevitability of errors as an all emcompassing excuse to their acceptance independent of context.
---
Despite being two highly trained pilots, we were about two links in the chain from being a billion dollar smoking hole.
---
Well, thanks for the story, it is indeed an interesting one.
Yet, none of that characterized wilful negligence. None of that has similarities with DWH.
---
There are reams of human factors issues I'm glossing over in pursuit of the point that saying DWH > free market > Bad! is simplistic nonsense that would insult the intelligence of my not particularly bright, even by dog standards, my Golden Retriever.
---
So I guess it is good for my intelligence that I am not making that argument.
I am making the wilful negligence > DWH > Bad! argument. If your dog could be so kind to explain why I am in error here, I may have a bone for him.
Clovis, congratulations, you are right on this one: To deny so is to argue the contrary: that they are benevolently working for Humanity.
Nobody is arguing that capitalism is benevolently working for < capital 'H'> Humanity.
In fact, only nanny-state, know-it-all collectivists argue that's what they do and they are very very far off base on their ideas of humanity's needs never mind our wants.
You want cradle to crave security and are willing to give up everything for it. Most grown ups are quite adamantly opposed to it.
In capitalism, one risks one's own or investors' capital with the educated hope that it will be profitable venture. Another way of looking at it is benign self interest. In Harry's zero-sum world, capitalism only succeeds by taking from others. In reality the exact opposite happens. It creates perhaps labor-savings devices like my favorite, the automatic garage door opener, plus jobs, wealth, prosperity, etc. for all involved. If it doesn't, they lose their investment.
Simple. Feeling better about themselves because they're so caring doesn't play any part in it all.
See? Capitalists make a positive difference a lot of the time. Collectivists never do. They only make dependents.
Not zero-sum. More like King-of-the-Mountain-to-the-death.
My daughter's blog has a screamingly funny report on Data Privacy Day. Did you know that was a thing? That was held in 2013?
http://www.itbusinessedge.com/blogs/governance-and-risk/its-priorities-on-data-privacy-day.html
Sorry Harry, I'm not a gamer and I doubt anything you think is funny would appeal to me.
Come on, erp, you don't think giving crooks access to a hundred million private accounts at a business called Target is funny?
Harry, what are you talking about? It's your side that's hoovering up all the data they can and given their mania for money, I wouldn't be at all surprised if they gave their cronies access for a little off the top for themselves. By they I mean the whole leftwing, excuse me, collectivist, establishment from the very top right down to the clerks in the stores.
This has nothing at all to do with conservative.
Your origins of fascism isn't as I remember it, but even if some of what you say might be true, it has nothing to do with today's fascists who are modern day socialists aka crony capitalists who take from us taxpayers and give to their friends who then kickback some back.
It's a real nice scam.
[Harry:] (Cost is an irrelevant metric, BTW.)'
Wow. And here I thought it was the only one.
With respect to complexity. The SRBs joints were very expensive, but relatively simple. The drilling environment of DWH was both very expensive and extremely complex. (But don't take my word for it, go to wikipedia and find out for yourself).
[Hey Skipper:] In the market's stead, you would place yourself as the arbiter of what is "essential" or "trivial".
---
[Clovis:] No, I would not, and you'll be hard pressed to prove the contrary by quoting anything I said up to now. Even my use of the word "trivial" was misplaced by you on this quote.
You are right, I did mess that up. That is why referring to quotes themselves, rather than relying on my interpretation, works far better.
[Hey Skipper:}I have (and I say this seriously) a far deeper insight into negligence as a human condition than you do.
---
[Clovis:] I believe you have. Except it has little to do with our present discussion here - you look to use the inevitability of errors as an all encompassing excuse to their acceptance independent of context.
I disagree. Harry made the (IMHO) foolish charge of citing a couple disasters and saying, in effect: see, free marketeers bad.
In order for that to be anything other than laughably simplistic, then there really shouldn't be any similar disasters where the free market doesn't exist. Except there are.
But aside from that, what Harry really is insisting upon is not negligence, but malevolence, pure and simple. People acting with knowledge and forethought, willfully ignored proper practices and rolled the dice.
Which is why I told my little story. Had we crashed, Harry would have said: see free marketeers bad. Yet it should be blindingly obvious that, despite the best training and intentions, sometimes disaster isn't very far off.
The error you and Harry are making is assuming a conclusion absent evidence — that there was willful negligence, and you unconsciously grease the skids by using the elliptical term "willful negligence" than what is by far the more descriptive and accurate term: malevolence. I have enough professional experience with this sort of thing to know that is almost never the right answer. And it isn't with DWH, either.
Come on, erp, you don't think giving crooks access to a hundred million private accounts at a business called Target is funny?
How do manage to say that without gagging, considering the security nightmare that is Obamacare?
Skipper;
It just doesn't count if it's done by government, especially a tranzi / Democratic Party government. I mean, just because someone hacked in to private records in 4 minutes is in no way negligence, because we wont' be seeing any stories like the Target one because, unlike Target, the federal healthcare website is not required to report any such successful attacks. Get your personal information stolen from the feds? You don't need to know. Who are you to even ask?
As usual, when you look at this kind of thing, you find "free market bad, government even worse, and the regulators simply do not care".
After all, it's not a government effort would simply fake progress reports on something so critical, right? That would be playing games with people's very health.
Skipper,
---
The error you and Harry are making is assuming a conclusion absent evidence — that there was willful negligence, and you unconsciously grease the skids by using the elliptical term "willful negligence" than what is by far the more descriptive and accurate term: malevolence.
---
This thread is too big for us to being a detailed discussion of DWH, so I will drop it.
I only remark that your implication that I mean "malevolence" when I say "wilful negligence" is unwarranted. I do not mean it and do not think they are equivalent things.
How are they different?
Skipper,
Why don't you ask Mr. Dictionary?
WILLFUL NEGLIGENCE
Intentional performance of an unreasonable act in disregard of a known risk, making it highly probable that harm will be caused. Willful negligence usually involves a conscious indifference to the consequences. There is no clear distinction between willful negligence and gross negligence.
Malevolence
noun
the quality, state, or feeling of being malevolent; ill will; malice; hatred.
malevolent
— adj
1. wishing or appearing to wish evil to others; malicious
Still thinking they are the same?
Curious. If we accept Guy's and Skipper's views of management, we find that they are the same in public and private sector. So why are private managers paid so much more?
The issue, for me, is not that one is incapable of harming while the other is. Both are. But with one I get a vote, I can lobby and submit testimony. Lotsa luck asking BP what it's up to.
Guy's and Skipper's views of management, we find that they are the same in public and private sector.
No.
The issue, for me, is that with one I get a choice, or can choose to not play. The other, men with guns will force me to do whatever some self-important lobbyist persuaded a group of ignorant fools sounded good at the time.
Essentially, I value being able to do what I want, Eagar values making other people do what he wants.
Bingo!
Well, I'm sure that if you tell BP you are not going go buy their gasoline, it will be sure to take better care of the water around you.
Bret has also said he does not feel obliged to obey laws he does not approve of.
I guess you guys are dedicated anticollectivists all right. My con law prof used to quote from memory the lines from 'The Lion in Winter' about disregarding laws one does not approve of, and wondering what one does, then, 'after the laws are down'?
I cannot quote the whole speech the way he could, but the lesson was learned.
Curious. If we accept Guy's and Skipper's views of management, we find that they are the same in public and private sector. So why are private managers paid so much more?
Because they are almost always better.
I'm much more likely to have that effect on BP than on the federal government.
You should try it, Guy. You might like it. The trajectory of American government has been for more and more people to have more and more say in their own governance.
erp, of course, loathes the idea, but I don't see why you should.
The trajectory of American government has been for more and more people to have more and more say in their own governance.
Really? The federal bureaucracy has turned into an unaccountable monster -- the EPA and IRS are the worst of a bad lot.
Many congressional districts, and all of them designed to get minorities elected, have become uncontested fiefs.
Everyone who chooses to may vote. That is wonderful. But to say we have more say in our own governance is a statement only a collectivist could make with a straight face.
How about treating the commerce clause and federalism as if they mean something?
That would really give people more and more say in their own governance. So of course progressives can't stand the idea.
Mr. Eagar;
I have and do try it. Hence I say that from direct experience, not theory.
Skipper;
You mean things like this? I am sure Eagar counts that as part of his trajectory of "self" governance. Note that his statement only makes sense if by "self" you mean society as a whole, not any individual. That is, a trajectory of increasing governance of what other people do, not increased governance of an individual self.
'But to say we have more say in our own governance is a statement only a collectivist could make with a straight face.'
Or a black person.
Harry, if you mean the kind of democracy practiced in North Korea and Cuba where everybody is required to vote and the despicable tyrants win every election by 97.6%, then you're right I do despise it.
Skipper is right. We no longer have honest voting. I happened to just read that the NAACP meeting to discuss eliminating ID's for voting required attendees to show ID's at the door.
It is no longer possible to parody what your side has done to our country.
No, I mean the kind of democracy we have here. The participatory kind.
You have made your contempt for it clear a hundred times.
Harry, Participatory democracy in your lexicon is where the half of the population who won't/don't work votes for income redistribution from the half that does. The latter is dwindling in numbers very quickly. Neither of us will be around when rock bottom is hit, but it won't be pretty.
'Because they are almost always better.'
http://wonkette.com/541640/freedom-industries-too-busy-and-too-evil-to-talk-to-congress-about-wv-chemical-spill
Heh
Well, lessee. Employment is 93+%, and even if you reduce that by a similar amount to unemployment to, say, 87%, you still have close to 9 out of 10 employable people working.
So who are these half of workers who won't work? Just another figment of your imagination .
I don't know where you get that number. 49% of able-bodied working age people aren't working according the numbers I've seen.
Does Eagar honestly believe that an official unemployment rate of 7% means 93% of those employable people working?
I would be interested in hearing Eagar's definition of "employable" other than "people counted by official unemployment data".
Well, lessee who's right. Take Hawaii. A liberal state with a high rate of unionization. Warm, with mangoes and bananas you can pick right off a tree.
Surely, if there is a slacker heaven, this is it.
1.4 million people. Subtract 300,000 children and 200,000 oldsters over 65. About 100,000 college students (some of whom are working).
Civilian workers: 625,000.
That's around 80%.
Once again, erp demonstrates she knows exactly nothing about the country she lives in.
I am sure she is telling the truth about 'hearing' that the rate is 50%, but that's because she listens to professional liars. They do not have your best interests at heart erp. Find somebody else
You mean like the Federal Department of Labor, that kind of liar? You heard him erp, don't listen to any of those "gubmint" statistics.
I don't know which is more likely to be wrong: citing Wonkette for anything, or Harry's confabulated employment "statistics".
Hmmm... I vote for both.
Thanks for the tip guys. I'll cross Harry off my list of reliable sources for labor statistics.
63 = 50.
Yeah, right.
Once again, erp demonstrates she knows exactly nothing about the country she lives in.
Hawaii's latest labor force participation rate is 62%.
Which means erp was 30% closer to right than you were.
I guess that means you don't know anything about the state (never mind the country) you live in.
Tip: if you are going to insult someone's knowledge, it is prudent to not be quite so ignorant.
Skipper, I wonder just how close to the rest of the country Hawaii's statistics are?
Alaska's is nearly 69%.
Florida, 60%.
Utah, 66%.
(The link allows view by state, then drag the slider adjacent to the tabular data to the bottom to see latest year.)
I think Mr. Eagar should try reading newspapers so he's not so out of touch with reality.
I wonder just how bad the real numbers really are when the house organs print stories like this that are so damaging to their stated policy positions.
However bad they are, they're not as bad as erp thinks.
Harry, so you agree the numbers coming from our government and reported in their media aren't true, but you want to quibble that they aren't lying as badly as I think they are.
Hoooooookay.
Atually, erp, I lowballed the participation rate, because the 625000 jobs I listed were civilian. I did not count the 100000 or so in the military as employed.
Add that in and you get a labor participation rate that is more than 50% of the entire population including infants.
So much for your hatred of working people.
So, 87% of "employable" people in the USA having jobs is a lowball estimate? That's your claim?
Harry, as enjoyable as it's been living in your head, please, it's time to turn me out. You need all the room in there to house your fantasies.
[Harry:] Atually, erp, I lowballed the participation rate, because the 625000 jobs I listed were civilian. I did not count the 100000 or so in the military as employed.
Thereby displaying your ignorance of how employment rates are calculated.
Employment figures count only civilians.
So much for your hatred of facts.
'Thereby displaying your ignorance of how employment rates are calculated.'
I understand that, which is why I left them out in my first calculation.
I am waiting for the challenge: which of my figures is incorrect?
Population: 1.4 mil
Children: 300K
Oldster: 200K
Workers: 625,000
Other than disappearing 300K people?
1400K - (300K - 200K - 625K) = 275K unaccounted for.
100k college students
100k armed forces
numbers are rounded.
Armed forces 47410.
So I guess rounded is the new wildly exaggerated.
As far as I could tell from the data, armed forces aren't counted in the population data in the first place.
The suggestion this is a rounding error is even more innumerate than usual.
I think that, as as business reporter, discovering why the BLS data is so divergent from Eagar's data would be an excellent thing to investigate.
AOG — that is correct. I thought that anybody making statistical employment claims would know that. Or know the actual number of military in Hawaii.
Or, for that matter, know that Hawaii is one of only 9 states with fewer than 70,000 students.
Have you heard of this thing called Google? It's almost, or for all I know, it is magic.
I'm surprised more people don't use it.
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