Links

[chris_gerrib]

1) A very interesting article: why you should stop believing in evolution. TL;DR version = one believes in religion and comprehends science.

2) Yet another Republican-led House panel finds no misconduct or attempt to misled in Benghazi affair.

A twofer from Gin and Tacos:

3) a lack of constraint. Constraint is used in the technical sense to mean people should believe things that make sense together. In other words, if balancing the budget is important, raising taxes should be okay.

4) We Americans have little faith in special knowledge, and only with the greatest difficulty is the idea being forced upon us that not every man is capable of doing every job. But Mr. Ford belongs to the traditions of self-made men, to that primitive Americanism which has held the theory that a successful manufacturer could turn his hand with equal success to every other occupation.

This quote above shows one of the (many, many) failures of libertarianism. There really is "special knowledge" and we ignore that at our peril. ETA This is more a critique of people who are self-described libertarians vs. the philosophy as a whole. See, for example, how we can't trust climate scientists because reasons.

Comments

[baron-waste.livejournal.com]

The last paragraph of this post makes no sense whatever - unless you have a “special definition” of libertarianism, the which I've occasionally suspected.

[chris-gerrib.livejournal.com]

“special definition” of libertarianism, more accurately, of individual libertarians. I see many self-described people of that persuasion arguing that, for example, we can't trust climate scientists because, well, reasons.

[baron-waste.livejournal.com]

Well, some of them, you can't!  Likewise some of their critics, and for the same reason:  Ideological axes.  It's unfortunate that the issue has become so political, because it's something that should be discerned by clear observation and cautious deduction.  I don't recall where you stand on the issue, but that global warming is happening is pretty unmistakable, and to me it seems obvious that you can't dump a million years' worth of petrocarbon deposits into the atmosphere in a century and expect no effect!

With that said, one should beware the neoLuddites of the Anti-Industrial Left, who are determined to impose their religion of power and permanent poverty upon as much of mankind as they can reach. If 98% of the human race vanished tomorrow, this would still take some fifty years or more to play out. As is, we've got to do something ourselves, and banning what isn't regulated by a French-style bureaucracy, or regulating what isn't banned, isn't a good answer!

[daveon.livejournal.com]

Yes, but here you're making the same error that many on the right accuse the 'left' of that there is a monolithic thing that is the 'left'.

There are actually very few people demanding we deindustrialize but it's a useful strawman to hit people who are worried about climate change with.

I think a shift to a nuclear/electric with renewables future, with a better blend of rail and air travel would be a net economic boon myself.