Cronyism can exist even with a neutered state. Cronyism can exist in the free market, because there's no such thing. You really don't want to hangout with these people. Freedom of Contract alone is a concept worth discussing. Absent a present state, groups of people will lack equal power. We can't just ignore other spheres of social life. Other institutions don't vanish just because the state gets clipped. Race, sex, religion, country of origin, etc. all create problems with norms of interaction. If the state is making laws about protected classes and who can't be denied an opportunity to exchange, we're not longer talking about Libertarianism any more-- at least not in a productive sense.
True, but think even more anthropologically. Humans have rules, status hierarchies, etc. It doesn't need to be a more or a common law to affect exchange.
Also, I'm not a "statist." As I said, I think it's an untenable system that we have now, but I don't think there is a path through it that is viable. I am hopelessly pessimistic, to the point of nihilism. Humanity is fucked, which is why I won't reproduce and force my kid to live with that fact.
I think you're moving the goalposts a smidge. There's a vast difference between a "government" that has an anti-discrimination statute on the books and the current federal government we have. That is not really debatable. We have tax breaks, loopholes, federal funding of some people and not others, the picking of winners and losers, complicated codes that only wealthy entities can optimize their behavior around, corporate welfare, volumes of regulations that are written with single parties in mind, etc. the list goes on. It seems you probably agree with me that these are problems, but I'm still failing to understand how "more of it" rather than less is the best solution. We're talking virtual corporations and businesses within government that are insulated from competition and funded with involuntarily paid taxes. This is nothing like a simple law that says "don't discriminate."
It isn't moving the goal posts: it's a fundamental flaw in the theory that I've never heard a single Libertarian acknowledge. The free market can't and has never and will never exist. So free exchange is a silly thing to spend all of our time talking about. If the present discussion is whether there is room for simplification, sign me up. But I haven't seen any of that, absent deregulation, which is not a cure-all for the problems you rightly identified. I think you're a communist that's just a little off target; you probably think I'm a libertarian that's the same.
I should also note that while I err on the side of more, it's because I think there is no long term solution being offered and the two short term options are meaningfully different in other respects-- enough so that voting for Stein or Johnson would be, in my own estimation (bold), irresponsible. If we're going to be burnt alive, let's make sure Latino kids aren't crying at school and the highways aren't crumbling in the meantime.
Some of that is fairly comical, like the idea of a chilling effect on campuses. People are exercising the 1st Amendment as expected, just as vociferously as ever. Especially on campuses. Thinking this will have a McCarthyite effect is pretty rich considering the status quo within universities presently. I can tell you that nobody at Columbia is too worried about a chill right now. Maybe that'll change if he really does go after journalists and whatnot, which is my worst nightmare for America. But the anti-science backlash is especially alarming. It's one thing if Trump voters felt belittled or ignored by the Democratic elites, it's quite another to use this election as some referendum on scientific theory and its empirical benefits. I don't think many Trump voters were picking him because they want less science—we know what the main motivations were. Unfortunately, the consequence is nonetheless picking the science skeptic candidate. I just hope D.C. and local governments don't pretend this vote was some anti-science mandate. They probably will Thankfully, many nations are very open to academic immigration and residency. It may set the US back; hope humanity as a whole is fine. Could be similar to post-WW dispersion of European thinkers to the U.S.
I think the anti-science piece is a key part of the coalition. Conservatives of several varieties have an active interest in anti-science policy. Science is what we need to find a way out. Humanities are what we need to help people see why we should want to. Neither will fare well under a Trump Admin.
Oh, I don't doubt that. I just meant the voters who made the difference, the unexpected, unpolled ones who put him over the top. Their motivation was just "take the country back" and have only a passing interest in policy. They voted solely on immigration and classism. Without them, Clinton wins. So I guess I'm just saying there's an argument that Trump's "mandate" is not to be anti-science or anti-academia. No doubt it'll probably end up happening nonetheless but I think it's an area that the opposition should take up rather than submit.
I actually disagree about there being no anti-science mandate. A strong part of his coalition are climate deniers. Believe they'll want some puff Heritage shit to justify lifting all coal restrictions. Similarly, his Roe v Wade overturning constituency is anti-science in that they think a fetus is a guy at the diner. That's two of his strongest constituents.
If anything is "just pandering," it would be this. Not that that excuses it I seriously want to know how long this shit lasts
You know it's a great candidate when that might be in the top 10 of the craziest shit he's said during his campaigns. Maybe.
Would you all guys describe the administration-to-be as conservative? It's feeling more and more to be like the label isn't right, but I can't quite put my finger on why. It sincerely reads more as unfocused retaliation
If ever there was an election where a third party could make some noise, this was it, but to balance out the awfulness of the Dems and GOP Libertarians decided to trot out a horrific candidate of their own. I voted for Johnson, but he did the party no favors by being so ill-prepared anytime he had a chance to speak. Never mind his awkwardness, lack of charisma and camera presence, those are kind of forgivable but not being ready for potential questions was lazy at best. I get that even the best candidate wasn't going to win, but maybe it would open up the conversation going forward instead looking at the same ol', same ol'....
I'm reserving judgment until we have more information. Trump says a lot of things that run counter to other things he has said. I have no idea what is real versus placating to party leaders or parts of the electorate to get elected (for instance, abortion and gay rights). I've heard arguments and I don't think I disagree with the thought that Trump is more of a Theodore Roosevelt Progressive Populist than a conservative.
Really, almost anyone to help open up the conversation...frankly, I'm just disappointed in Johnson even though I like him
Argument can be made the other way for Clinton, her actions rarely spoke to liberal ideals; Warhawk, Wall Street crony, opposed gay marriage (until 3 years ago), Debbie Wasserman Schulz/Sanders scandal, funding from Qatar and the Saudi's, career politician, Benghazi, private email server, uber-rich elitist....etc, I'm sure I'm forgetting a few, but all these things would be attacked ad nauseam by the left if attributed to a non-Democrat candidate. She may as well be a republican...
Clinton campaign really blew it, should have gone with" elect Hillary, both sides win!!!!" or something much catchier....
Wish I had your confidence, I just don't see any way this guy takes office and does 5% of the pro-labor stuff Teddy did.
Automation is also coming for lawyers http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/jun/29/joshua-browder-stanford-students-robot-lawyer-has-/
My firm (one of the largest in the world) already uses all kinds of software like this that make things speedier and more efficient (read: makes associates replaceable).
We're going to be doomed when the robots learn how to innovate, repair, and clone themselves without the need for humans.
That because our argument against statism isn't a consequentialist argument, but a moral argument. Simply take the axiom 'no one has the right to rule anyone else' apply it to everything... and after a short time the smugness will form.
France, do you even liberté? French man sentenced to two years in prison for visiting pro-ISIS websites Spoiler A man in France was sentenced to two years in prison this week for repeatedly visiting pro-ISIS websites, even though there is no indication that he planned to stage a terrorist attack. The 32-year-old, whose name has not been released, was convicted by a court in the department of Ardèche on Tuesday under a new law that has drawn scorn from civil liberties groups. According to French media, police discovered the man’s browsing history after conducting a raid on his house. During the investigation, they found pro-ISIS images and execution videos on his phone, personal computer, and a USB stick. An ISIS flag was on the wallpaper of his computer desktop, and his computer’s password was “13novembrehaha,” a reference to the night gunmen killed 130 people in attacks across Paris. The man had been regularly consulting jihadist websites for two years, police said. In court, the man argued that he visited the sites out of curiosity. “I wanted to tell the difference between real Islam and the false Islam, now I understand," he said, according to FranceBleu. But the man reportedly admitted to not reading other news sites or international press, and family members told the court that his behavior had recently changed. He became irritated when discussing religion, they said, and began sporting a long beard with harem pants. A representative from the Ardèche court confirmed to The Verge that there was no indication that the man had any plans to launch an attack. In addition to the two-year prison sentence, he will have to pay a €30,000 fine. law that criminalizes the “habitual” consultation of websites that promote terrorism. A man in Marseille was convicted under the law in September, as was a 31-year-old man in August. The law, which went into effect in June, makes exceptions for those who visit the sites “in good faith” — for research, to inform the public, or for judicial purposes — but critics say it goes too far. Patrick Baudouin, honorary president of the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), described this week’s conviction as “excessive,” saying it “perfectly illustrates” how judicial standards in France have been relaxed amid heightened security concerns. “The consultation of a site does not define a person as a terrorist,” Baudouin said in an email. The Constitutional Council, France’s highest court, will determine the constitutionality of the website law within the next three months, Reuters reported this week. As of mid-October, 13 cases had been brought under the law, according to Le Parisien, a French newspaper. The man convicted Tuesday was not previously known to security agencies and had committed only petty crimes in the past, according to FranceBleu. Police reportedly came across his name while conducting surveillance on another person in the region, and received authorization from the Ardèche prefecture to raid his home. Security forces are allowed to conduct warrantless raids and surveillance under France’s state of emergency laws, which went into effect after last year’s terrorist attacks and have drawn widespread criticism from human rights groups. The Ardèche prefecture did not respond to a request for comment. Following the 2015 Charlie Hebdo attacks allows the government to block websites that promote terrorism without a court order, and intelligence agencies were granted broad surveillance powers under a law that critics compared to a “French Patriot Act.” The government has also sought to proactively counter ISIS propaganda with its own messaging. This month, Prime Minister Manuel Valls announced an online campaign, known as #toujourslechoix (“always the choice”), that aims to deter young people from joining jihadist movements. Other European countries may soon implement similar censorship regimes, as well. The European Parliament is expected to ratify a new counterterrorism directive next month that, among other things, would allow member states to “block access to web pages publicly inciting others to commit terrorist offenses.” Rights groups say the current proposal is vaguely worded, making it ripe for abuse. “When definitions are vague, it means that implementation becomes arbitrary,” says Joe McNamee, executive director of European Digital Rights (EDRi), a Brussels-based advocacy group. “And arbitrariness is the opposite of law.” http://www.theverge.com/2016/12/1/13805168/france-isis-website-browsing-history-prison-conviction
What do you do when you find "far more wasteful spending" than you anticipated? Hide it! Hide it quick! Pentagon buries evidence of $125 billion in bureaucratic waste https://www.washingtonpost.com/inve...b0774c1eaa5_story.html?utm_term=.d990a3b7c738 Spoiler The Pentagon has buried an internal study that exposed $125 billion in administrative waste in its business operations amid fears Congress would use the findings as an excuse to slash the defense budget, according to interviews and confidential memos obtained by The Washington Post. Pentagon leaders had requested the study to help make their enormous back-office bureaucracy more efficient and reinvest any savings in combat power. But after the project documented far more wasteful spending than expected, senior defense officials moved swiftly to kill it by discrediting and suppressing the results. The report, issued in January 2015, identified “a clear path” for the Defense Department to save $125 billion over five years. The plan would not have required layoffs of civil servants or reductions in military personnel. Instead, it would have streamlined the bureaucracy through attrition and early retirements, curtailed high-priced contractors and made better use of information technology. The study was produced last year by the Defense Business Board, a federal advisory panel of corporate executives, and consultants from McKinsey and Company. Based on reams of personnel and cost data, their report revealed for the first time that the Pentagon was spending almost a quarter of its $580 billion budget on overhead and core business operations such as accounting, human resources, logistics and property management. [The Defense Business Board’s 2015 study on how the Pentagon could save $125 billion] The data showed that the Defense Department was paying a staggering number of people — 1,014,000 contractors, civilians and uniformed personnel — to fill back-office jobs far from the front lines. That workforce supports 1.3 million troops on active duty, the fewest since 1940. The cost-cutting study could find a receptive audience with President-elect Donald Trump. He has promised a major military buildup and said he would pay for it by “eliminating government waste and budget gimmicks.” “They’re all complaining that they don’t have any money. We proposed a way to save a ton of money,” said Robert “Bobby” L. Stein, a private-equity investor from Jacksonville, Fla., who served as chairman of the Defense Business Board. Stein, a campaign bundler for President Obama, said the study’s data were “indisputable” and that it was “a travesty” for the Pentagon to suppress the results. “We’re going to be in peril because we’re spending dollars like it doesn’t matter,” he added. The missed opportunity to streamline the military bureaucracy could soon have large ramifications. Under the 2011 Budget Control Act, the Pentagon will be forced to stomach $113 billion in automatic cuts over four years unless Congress and Trump can agree on a long-term spending deal by October. Playing a key role in negotiations will likely be Trump’s choice for defense secretary, retired Marine general James Mattis. The Defense Business Board was ordered to conduct the study by Deputy Defense Secretary Robert O. Work, the Pentagon’s second-highest-ranking official. At first, Work publicly touted the efficiency drive as a top priority and boasted about his idea to recruit corporate experts to lead the way. After the board finished its analysis, however, Work changed his position. In an interview with The Post, he did not dispute the board’s findings about the size or scope of the bureaucracy. But he dismissed the $125 billion savings proposal as “unrealistic” and said the business executives had failed to grasp basic obstacles to restructuring the public sector. “There is this meme that we’re some bloated, giant organization,” he said. “Although there is a little bit of truth in that . . . I think it vastly overstates what’s really going on.” Work said the board fundamentally misunderstood how difficult it is to eliminate federal civil service jobs — members of Congress, he added, love having them in their districts — or to renegotiate defense contracts. He said the Pentagon is adopting some of the study’s recommendations on a smaller scale and estimated it will save $30 billion by 2020. Many of the programs he cited, however, have been on the drawing board for years or were unrelated to the Defense Business Board’s research. Work acknowledged that the push to improve business operations lost steam after then-Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel was replaced by Ashton B. Carter in February 2015. Carter has emphasized other goals, such as strengthening the Pentagon’s partnerships with high-tech firms. “We will never be as efficient as a commercial organization,” Work said. “We’re the largest bureaucracy in the world. There’s going to be some inherent inefficiencies in that.” ‘Dark matter’ Work, a retired Marine officer, became deputy defense secretary in May 2014. With the military budget under the most pressure since the end of the Cold War, he sought help from the Defense Business Board, an advisory panel known for producing management studies that usually gathered dust. Work told the board that the outcome of this assignment would be different. In a memo, he directed the board to collect sensitive cost data from the military services and defense agencies that would reveal how much they spent on business operations. Pentagon officials knew their back-office bureaucracy was overstaffed and overfunded. But nobody had ever gathered and analyzed such a comprehensive set of data before. Some Defense Business Board members warned that exposing the extent of the problem could have unforeseen consequences. “You are about to turn on the light in a very dark room,” Kenneth Klepper, the former chief executive of Medco Health Solutions, told Work in the summer of 2014, according to two people familiar with the exchange. “All the crap is going to float to the surface and stink the place up.” “Do it,” Work replied. To turn on the light, the Pentagon needed more outside expertise. A team of consultants from McKinsey was hired. In a confidential August 2014 memo, McKinsey noted that while the Defense Department was “the world’s largest corporate enterprise,” it had never “rigorously measured” the “cost-effectiveness, speed, agility or quality” of its business operations. Nor did the Pentagon have even a remotely accurate idea of what it was paying for those operations, which McKinsey divided into five categories: human resources; health-care management; supply chain and logistics; acquisition and procurement; and financial-flow management. McKinsey hazarded a guess: anywhere between $75 billion and $100 billion a year, or between 15 and 20 percent of the Pentagon’s annual expenses. “No one REALLY knows,” the memo added. The mission would be to analyze, for the first time, dozens of databases that tracked civilian and military personnel, and labor costs for defense contractors. The problem was that the databases were in the grip of the armed forces and a multitude of defense agencies. Many had fought to hide the data from outsiders and bureaucratic rivals, according to documents and interviews. Information on contractor labor, in particular, was so cloaked in mystery that McKinsey described it as “dark matter.” Prying it loose would require direct orders from Work. Even then, McKinsey consultants predicted the bureaucracy would resist. “This is a sensitive exercise conducted with audiences both ‘weary’ and ‘wary’ of efficiency, cost, sequestration and budget drills,” the confidential memo stated. “Elements of the culture are masterful at ‘waiting out studies and sponsors,’ with a ‘this too shall pass’ mindset.” Overstaffed chow hall From the outset, access to the data was limited to a handful of people. A $2.9 million consulting contract signed by the Pentagon stipulated that none of the data or analysis could be released to the news media or the public. Moreover, the contract required McKinsey to report to David Tillotson III, the Pentagon’s acting deputy chief management officer. Anytime the Defense Business Board wanted the consultants to carry out a task, Tillotson would have to approve. His office — not the board — would maintain custody of the data. “Good news!” Work emailed Tillotson once the contract was signed. “Time to cook.” In an Oct. 15, 2014, memo, Work ordered the board to move quickly, giving it three months to produce “specific and actionable recommendations.” In a speech the next month, Work lauded the board for its private-sector expertise. He said he had turned it into “an operational arm” of the Pentagon leadership and predicted the study would deliver transformational results. In an aside, he revealed that early findings had determined the average administrative job at the Pentagon was costing taxpayers more than $200,000, including salary and benefits. “And you say, hmmm, we could probably do better than that,” he said. The initial results did not come as a surprise. Former defense secretaries William S. Cohen, Robert M. Gates and Chuck Hagel had launched similar efficiency drives in 1997, 2010 and 2013, respectively. But each of the leaders left the Pentagon before their revisions could take root. “Because we turn over our secretaries and deputy secretaries so often, the bureaucracy just waits things out,” said Dov Zakheim, who served as Pentagon comptroller under President George W. Bush. “You can’t do it at the tail end of an administration. It’s not going to work. Either you leave the starting block with a very clear program, or you’re not going to get it done.” Arnold Punaro, a retired Marine general and former staff director for the Senate Armed Services Committee, said lawmakers block even modest attempts to downsize the Pentagon’s workforce because they do not want to lose jobs in their districts. Without backing from Congress, “you can’t even get rid of the guy serving butter in the chow hall in a local district, much less tens of thousands of jobs,” he said. Mabus did not back down. In an emailed retort to Kendall, he referred to the ill-fated Defense Business Board study. “I did not say anything yesterday that I have not said both publicly . . . and privately inside this building,” he said. “There have been numerous studies, which I am sure you are aware of, pointing out excessive overhead.” That prompted a stern intervention from Work. “Ray, please refrain from taking any more public pot shots,” Work said in an email. “I do not want this spilling over into further public discourse.”
This is from an AP story I read today: "The North Carolina rally comes a day after Trump chose retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson to be secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, raising fresh concerns about the lack of experience some of Trump's Cabinet picks have with agencies they're now being chosen to lead. Carson, who opposed Trump in the Republican primaries, has no background in government or running a large bureaucracy." I can appreciate that referring to government agencies as a large bureaucracy has seeped in to the AP and got past the editor.