Monday assorted links

by on June 12, 2017 at 11:24 am in Uncategorized | Permalink

1. Inclusivity and working less.

2. Do fractal planting patterns yield optimal output, without centralized direction?

3. How and why to coin flip travel decisions.

4. “”Now we have weddings where one headliner isn’t enough; they need three or four. Then you hit problems as to what order do you put them on in.” Tell a big name that she’s not the headliner, and she’ll drop out.” Link here, interesting throughout: “I love the look of a corset and I love a waist and I love drama,” she says.

5. “The scientists calculated that one 220,000-gallon, commercial-size swimming pool contained almost 20 gallons of urine.

6. Deirdre McCloskey summarizes her views (pdf).

1 Joel Ferris June 12, 2017 at 11:31 am

Tyler, I would love to see your responses to McCloskey’s manifesto.

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2 GoneWithTheWind June 12, 2017 at 6:28 pm

From McCloskey’s manifesto:
“Liberals 1.0 don’t like violence.” Does this mean they oppose abortion?
“Liberals 1.0 believe that people should not push other people around.” I can agree with that but how do you enforce it without violence or the threat of violence?
“Liberals 1.0… believe that people should of course help and protect other people when we can.” Does this mean it is mandatory and we MUST do it even if we disagree?

The rest of the insipid pablum got worse.

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3 Art Deco June 12, 2017 at 6:36 pm

And it took him 15,000 words. What you have to remember is that he’s outre by the standards of ordinary human beings but he’s not going to say anything outre by the standards of economics faculty.

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4 Larry Siegel June 12, 2017 at 6:56 pm

She. Having known him/her while belonging to both genders, I’ll set aside my reservations about the whole issue and call her as she wants to be called.

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5 Art Deco June 12, 2017 at 9:48 pm

I’ll call him ‘he’, because that’s what he is. If he went prancing around his campus contending he was the Duchess of Kent, I’m not calling him ‘Katherine’.

6 Moo cow June 12, 2017 at 10:55 pm

You tell ’em hun. Lulz.

7 Roger Sweeny June 13, 2017 at 6:45 pm

She’s got an X and a Y but no penis. She says she’s a woman. Tie-breaker goes to the person.

8 Just Another MR Commentor June 12, 2017 at 11:49 am

#1 Yeah this makes a good deal of sense. Mandatory extracurriculars force strict conformity. This is also why you see emphasis on extracurriculars when applying to top universities.

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9 MMK June 12, 2017 at 12:54 pm

That was a good read. “Team fit”, the euphemism for “fun to hang out with”, is weighed too heavily in tech these days. I enjoy drinking microbrews and spending time outside but I would rather do it with my friends, not my coworkers.

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10 Just Another MR Commentor June 12, 2017 at 4:50 pm

I’m all about downtown and being in the city as opposed to the suburbs but I totally understand the oppressiveness of forced extracurriculars.

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11 mbutu o malley June 12, 2017 at 5:09 pm

I appreciate the rise of this in organizations as it gives me a ready made answer to ‘what’s your greatest weakness.’ If people want someone to be their friend instead of the results I’m probably a bad fit for the organization.

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12 GoneWithTheWind June 12, 2017 at 6:20 pm

I do not understand the religious zeal over diversity. I don’t understand why anyone would spend their life deciding who/what is diverse and who/what is not. I don’t understand why it matters unless you are racist.

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13 Dain June 13, 2017 at 7:06 pm

Did you just land here from another planet? A rational, sensible one?

Here’s a tip: Those who see a race angle in absolutely everything are not necessarily racists. In fact they’re more likely to be committed anti-racists. Conversely, those who claim to be colorblind are suspicious figures whose motives, even if only subconscious, should be scrutinized.

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14 The Other Jim June 12, 2017 at 12:22 pm

3: I just coin flip whether or not I’m going to coin flip travel decisions.

Heads, I decide on my own, tails, I use a coin flip.

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15 CMOT June 12, 2017 at 12:23 pm

6. Ugh, she’s drifting into liberaltarianism. I understand the appeal of it, the strange new respect they get from the left and the glee that comes from bullying traditional conservatives.

But for all this talk of “we’re for the oppressed, we’re the radicals” what you actually get is buying into left-approved state coercion and the bullying of left-approved targets and nothing more.

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16 Art Deco June 12, 2017 at 1:18 pm

Not a fair description of Richard Epstein.

It does seem at times as if younger cohorts of soi-disant libertarians form a corps analogous to the ‘transmission belt’ political parties which were set up in certain East Bloc countries after 1948 (in East Germany, Poland, &c).

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17 Scott Mauldin June 12, 2017 at 1:42 pm

“soi-disant libertarians” – sorry, is there an official certification board I’m unaware of?

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18 Art Deco June 12, 2017 at 4:18 pm

No certification board. Just a skeptical observer.

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19 Thiago Ribeiro June 12, 2017 at 6:06 pm

The State should set an official libertarian certification board to prevent abuses.

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20 Thiago Ribeiro June 12, 2017 at 12:33 pm

#6
“By 2018 the standard of life for the American masses was four times larger than in the early
1940s, when average American real income was about what it is now in Brazil. Washing
machines. Antibiotics. Autos. A bedroom for every child.”
I will have to check, but I think we have washing machines and antibiotics, maybe even autos in Brazil. And I shared a brother with my brother and it helped to build my character.

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21 y81 June 12, 2017 at 1:06 pm

Like the children in “Freedom from Fear,” I shared a bedroom with my sister (and our baby brother) when we were young. (We weren’t poor, but space is tight in NYC.) This changed before adolescence, as we moved and she got her own bedroom.

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22 Thiago Ribeiro June 12, 2017 at 1:26 pm

My sister had her own room, but I had to fight for Lebesraum (closets, shelves, drawers) with my brother since he was born.

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23 Art Deco June 12, 2017 at 6:02 pm

Oh god you shared a brother with your brother. The Brazilians are degenerates.

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24 Thiago Ribeiro June 12, 2017 at 6:09 pm

I meant a room (y81 understood). Although I shared my parents and two sets of grandparents with him. The point is, sharing makes peoples stronger. If Americans stopped worshipping the Almighty Dollar for a second, they would understand that.

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25 Art Deco June 12, 2017 at 6:12 pm

You mean your brother shared his cock with you and that made you stronger? How degenerate.

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26 Mrs. Tyler Cowen June 12, 2017 at 6:33 pm

Maybe you could hire a different set of interns.

27 Thiago Ribeiro June 12, 2017 at 6:57 pm

No, the same room.

28 Larry Siegel June 12, 2017 at 6:58 pm

A lot of people in Brazil are doing fine (yes, I’ve been there), but I can read the data, which show per capita PPP GDP of around $16,000 for Brazil and $52,000 for the U.S. Not four times, but a little better than three.

Money isn’t everything, I know. But it buys stuff that people need.

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29 Butler T. Reynolds June 12, 2017 at 12:37 pm

#1 This is actually why I think that the diversity in tech complaints are over-hyped. Like this guy, I am an older programmer who had to wear a suit and tie to work when I first got out of college. I was in my very late 20s when the .com boom was really hot, but by then I was already going down a life path that was not compatible with sleeping under my desk, drinking beer late into the evening, or playing death-matches until dawn.

So, no, all that is not something that usually appeals to most women. I don’t know, but my guess is that they tend to mature faster than we boys do. But you know who else it does not appeal to? Most men who are married, especially those with kids.

While every programming job I’ve landed has had more men than women, there have still been plenty of women. Many of them were senior to me or my managers. The difference is that these are not the cool companies that make the headlines. However, these less hyped places are actually where most of the jobs are found. The demand for programmers is so strong, I guarantee you that these less-hyped companies don’t give two flips about anyone’s gender, race, or nationality.

Journalists and activists who sound the diversity alarms have tunnel vision. They see the situations that are negative (to them) while ignoring the other situations that don’t add fuel to their activist fire.

Instead of pouting about how these very few hipster startups aren’t more inclusive, just do like I have done: work somewhere else that suits the lifestyle of grown-ups. You won’t have cool stories to tell about working until 3am, but you’ll still get a nice paycheck, have supper with your family, have time for your friends, and be able to help your kids with their homework.

If there’s a company that wants a culture that appeals to mostly 22 year old gamers, let them knock themselves out. Those 22-year-olds will turn 30 soon enough and eventually want to live like the rest of us.

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30 Art Deco June 12, 2017 at 1:11 pm

So, no, all that is not something that usually appeals to most women. I don’t know, but my guess is that they tend to mature faster than we boys do.

How is that measured? Men form the majority of the working population in every age group bar those under 20, wherein women have the slimmest advantage. Women are also the initiators of about 60% of the divorce suits filed in this country (something that’s true in just about every age group as well). The majority of 1st born children in this country are so out of wedlock, a phenomenon which seems like a co-operative venture. About 100% of the people who hire perverted gynocologists to perform abortions are female.

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31 msgkings June 12, 2017 at 1:22 pm

More proof Art doesn’t have kids

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32 Art Deco June 12, 2017 at 5:16 pm

I am a respectable, hardworking, American cuckold unlike yourself.

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33 msgkings June 12, 2017 at 5:26 pm

I’m an embittered obsessive.

34 Art Deco June 12, 2017 at 5:45 pm

And I’m a cuck who idiotically thinks msgkings is behind the sockpuppeting

35 Thiago Ribeiro June 12, 2017 at 1:31 pm

“About 100% of the people who hire perverted gynocologists to perform abortions are female.”
About 100% of the people who give birth are female, too, I am told.

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36 Art Deco June 12, 2017 at 5:14 pm

Not true. I have given birth.

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37 Thiago Ribeiro June 12, 2017 at 5:25 pm

No, you haven’t.

38 Hazel Meade June 12, 2017 at 1:31 pm

I suspect it’s not that women wouldn’t be into the lifestyle, but that the tech startups don’t actually want their employees to have girlfriends. If they hire females the men will start dating them and eventually your employees have babies that keep them up until 3 am instead of drinking buddies.

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39 Bob June 12, 2017 at 1:28 pm

The reason those hip tech companies matter, even when they don’t demand crazy hours, is that they have higher profits and attribute them to software, so they pay twice as much as the boring Fortune 500s. There’s quite the class system in tech when it comes to compensation, but most people don’t get to see how big this is, because they’ve never worked across lines.

The decay and inefficiency of the old school giant company is so easy to smell when you’ve worked across industries. There’s enough inertia in the large, low productivity companies that they’ll still exist for another 50 years, but I suspect we’ll be living in a very different business world far earlier than that.

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40 Hazel Meade June 12, 2017 at 1:33 pm

they pay twice as much as the boring Fortune 500s

Yeah, no. Startups pay people in stock options, not salary.

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41 celestus June 12, 2017 at 2:12 pm

Don’t forget the benefits side either, IBM or ExxonMobil is going to blow the doors off of DogFlipCat.com in that department. Google or Facebook is best of both worlds, but that’s because they’re Fortune 500 companies too (Fortune 100, natch). And I don’t know where the numbers stand currently, but a pretty significant percentage of funded startups fail. Like, fire everyone and sell the office furniture fail. I’d suggest this is another reason for the difference in gender diversity: men are more likely to see the risk of the stock options as appealing.

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42 Art Deco June 12, 2017 at 4:13 pm

New businesses of all descriptions generally close within a few years. The modal reason is that the proprietor calculates he can earn just as well employed by someone and wishes to be free of the burdens of ownership.

43 Mike W June 12, 2017 at 4:22 pm

“…men are more likely to see the risk of the stock options as appealing.”

I’d suggest rather that those who would accept stock options in lieu of pay are just gullible.

44 Art Deco June 12, 2017 at 4:56 pm

Or they’re cucks like me

45 Hazel Meade June 13, 2017 at 9:25 am

I don’t want to hear about your cuckolding fetishes, whoever you are.

46 Milo Fan June 12, 2017 at 2:44 pm

“I guarentee you that these less-hyped companies don’t give two flips about anyone’s gender, race, or nationality.”

Well, that’s the problem: this diversity crap is ultimately about one thing: affirmative action. “Discrimination” is not the bug they are trying to fix but the feature they are trying to enact. The likely endpoint will be a mandatory quota system, as in South Africa.

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47 Art Deco June 12, 2017 at 4:17 pm

The utility of it is that you replace the discretion of businessmen and supervisors with the discretion of lawyers and HR specialists. Good for (some people’s) careers.

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48 Hazel Meade June 12, 2017 at 12:37 pm

#1. The title is inaccurate. It’s try socializing less, not working less.

I would add that this goes for white men who are married or have children too. Once you have kids you don’t really want to hit the bars and indie rock shows with your co-workers so much. Unless you want your wife to fucking hate you.

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49 Hazel Meade June 12, 2017 at 12:47 pm

To add, I don’t really understand why hip startups would be so exclusively male, myself.
For one thing young women are generally hipper than the men in the tech industry. For another thing, it gives the men a dating pool with women they can actually meet, who are into the same things as them, without having to spend a lot of time outside of work dating. Or maybe that’s the idea – if the men don’t have girlfirends they’ll work more? If they don’t get married and have children they’ll work long hours for more years?
(Caveat: if both partners worth for the same company you save on health insurance costs. )

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50 Milo Fan June 12, 2017 at 1:25 pm

Your unworldliness is pretty funny. You’ve never heard that men would rather not date co workers?

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51 Hazel Meade June 12, 2017 at 1:32 pm

Well, when you are working 10 hour days, your options are limited.

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52 msgkings June 12, 2017 at 1:40 pm

How so? Most people meet outside of work still, using dating apps and socializing

53 Hazel Meade June 12, 2017 at 2:01 pm

If you’re working all the time, you don’t have time to socialize. Anyway, the startup culture has you socializing with your co-workers a lot. You may prefer not to date co-workers but if you’re going out drinking after work with female co-workers, hormones and everything, shit happens.

54 Art Deco June 12, 2017 at 5:08 pm

Kids today need to grow up and become cucks like me

55 Anonymous June 12, 2017 at 2:53 pm

Women don’t like to take risks. Feminists insist on pretending that the genders have no differences, and this is one of the cases where ideology blinds them.

In a startup you work hard hours, for shitty pay reinforced with stock options. If you fail, you’ve spent a year or two of your life at a very demanding job with a poor wage. If you succeed, you’re a millionaire. Betting like this is more appealing to men than women, nothing more to it.

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56 Hazel Meade June 12, 2017 at 4:02 pm

Women also have a time limit on the marriage and children thing. So are taking a bigger risk (in the large scheme of things) if they devote their entire life to work in their 20s and 30s.

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57 Axa June 12, 2017 at 1:02 pm

#3: During stressful life periods full of uncertainty, it feels good to have a plan. When life is more or less organized, adventure feels good. So, coin-flipping is a indirect way to tell “I’m fine, I can enjoy some uncertainty”.

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58 Thoughtful June 12, 2017 at 1:08 pm

The first link is excellent. I can’t think of many situations where a culture of always staying at work or being with co-workers 12 to 14 hours a day leads to a better product. Obviously different when you are close to delivering product.

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59 Scott Mauldin June 12, 2017 at 1:21 pm

#2 Cuts to the question of rice/wheat culture in China, as rice farmers have to work collectively and develop collective mentalities for optimal rice farming success whereas wheat farmers can largely farm completely independently: https://news.virginia.edu/content/rice-theory-explains-north-south-china-cultural-differences-study-shows

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60 Melmoth June 12, 2017 at 1:47 pm

#5 Makes me wonder why we even use chlorine in pools if it generates such nasty byproducts from contact with human body fluids. Meanwhile I’ll just trust that the pool in my tropical condo is kept clean enough through sunlight and frequent rains.

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61 chuck martel June 12, 2017 at 8:38 pm
62 derek June 12, 2017 at 11:12 pm

What happens is that the chemical reactions outgas and presumably ventilation will carry the stuff off.

Once you learn how pools are maintained you don’t frequent them.

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63 Per Kurowski June 12, 2017 at 2:04 pm

“The scientists calculated that one 220,000-gallon, commercial-size swimming pool contained almost 20 gallons of urine”

So how much urine poses a clear and imminent danger to your health?

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64 Moo cow June 12, 2017 at 3:09 pm

We could ask the Russian pee-hookers!

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65 foobarista June 12, 2017 at 5:20 pm

and to get a realistic estimate, you’d need to actually figure out how much of the urine itself isn’t water. My guess is in terms of “badness”, you’re well in the low parts-per-million range as the fully liquid urine is itself only 0.001% of the liquid in the pool.

You still shouldn’t drink it – lots of other nastiness in pool-water – but I wouldn’t get too excited about this.

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66 Dick the Butcher June 12, 2017 at 6:16 pm

LOL

The clear and imminent danger of weaponized pool pee made Monday Assorted Links, but not:

One year ago today, In The Name Of Allah, Omar Mateen murdered 49 (injured 50 more) people at the Pulse Nightclub. A year later, the media can’t understand why the massacre occurred. FYI during the attack, the hajji, Mateen, three times called 911 three times and a local TV station proclaiming that he killed all those people in unison of ISIS.

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67 Thiago Ribeiro June 12, 2017 at 7:02 pm

“that he killed all those people in unison of ISIS.”
Yep, I have heard ISIS is evil, maybe Americans should not support it and its benefactors in Saudi Arabia. It is funny how Americans did not care that Saudi Arabia supported the Taliban regime and then all of a sudden got shocked when the Mujahideen flew a few airplanes the wrong way.

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68 Art Deco June 12, 2017 at 4:21 pm

It’s pretty funny that the way to get the moderator to delete the vulgar posts his interns enter is to comment with the characters string ‘Donald McCloskey’.

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69 Believe it! June 12, 2017 at 4:51 pm

Why do you think that is?

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70 Dick the Butcher June 12, 2017 at 6:33 pm

#6 – Not sure that liberals aren’t morphing away from pacifism, or are they simply acting out “wet dreams” of wasting President Trump?

I wonder how often Dr. McCloskey hears her name properly pronounced. Many years ago, I was associated with a brilliant, young attorney, named “Deirdre”, who expressed satisfaction with my correctly pronouncing her name.

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71 Art Deco June 12, 2017 at 9:53 pm

Very few gliberals and leftoids were ever pacifist. Pacifism is characteristic of anabaptist communities, who are not typically invested in civic life.

The left simply sided with truculent foreigners contra the United States, Israel, or Britain. Read the defense of Argentina when it seized the Falklands, penned by a minion of Victor Navasky in 1982.

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72 Jack June 12, 2017 at 10:13 pm

Is part of the point here that “Liberal” is a name, not a description.

In the current environment complaining that Liberals aren’t liberal is like complaining that the New England Patriots don’t seem any more patriotic than anyone else.

The American left should abandon the name “Liberal”, which longer describes them accurately, and shift completely to “Progressive”, which does seem to have some descriptive value.

That would free up the name Liberal or people who now call themselves Libertarian, although it means little and creates huge confusion.

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73 Evans_KY June 12, 2017 at 8:28 pm

3. Micromanaging and second-guessing a decision such as where to eat is rather fussy. In travel, I prefer the wander and discover method. Pick a bustling part of town and just walk. You discover a lot about yourself in the process.

4. After I stopped screaming and calmed down….I reflect that I am glad that Marcy, Preston, and Sarah are gainfully employed in enriching other’s lives. That sucking noise I have heard all my life is truly the redistribution and calcification of wealth to a select few. The opulence is staggering. Vive la revolution?

5. Pseudomonas aeruginosa. Cesspools of bacteria.

6. Contradictory throughout. Sometimes we want a different world so badly that we overlook the discrepancies in our argument. Economic policies of conservatives and progressive social policies without policy directed by a hostile government. What does that even look like and what party will champion these ideas? I am unconvinced, so I will remain an Independent.

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74 Mike W June 13, 2017 at 11:00 am

What does “Independent” look like?

(If it refers to the alternative to Democrat or Republican, why is it capitalized…there is no Independent political party unless you mean the American Independent Party)

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75 efcdons June 12, 2017 at 11:26 pm

Ugh, Deirdre McCloskey. “No violence! Well, except if you come and try to use something I am claim is mine. Then sic the State on ’em!”

I could maybe accept libertarians if they would just quit pretending they are soooooo moral and against violent coercion and admit their philosophy is founded upon using the violent coercion of some sort of entity with a monopoly on force to maintain private property. Just argue your philosophy has better outcomes. Stop trying to pretend your philosophy is somehow the only one against the use of violence while at the same time being totally lots and lots of violence.

But I guess it’s hard to argue for something with obviously worse outcomes (the 1800s weren’t that long ago. There’s a reason why the welfare state developed. It wasn’t so control freaks could get their rocks off) which also has a complete lack of concern about maintaining the consent of the governed. Why would a poor person without property agree to live peacefully in a society which only did the one for which they have no use, and did so through the use of violence? But libertarians don’t actually care about democracy or consent so I guess it’s not an issue in Professor McCloskey’s world.

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76 Dain June 13, 2017 at 7:17 pm

+ 1

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77 Mike W June 13, 2017 at 11:05 am

She didn’t say they are *non-violent*. She said, “Liberals 1.0 don’t like violence.”…”Nor are they strictly pacifist, willing to surrender in the face of an invasion.”

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78 Jeffrey Deutsch June 13, 2017 at 9:06 pm

#5: And how much feces (liquid and otherwise)?

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