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_ Meta Discussion _ Paul Harvey Reads From His Clipping Collection

Posted by: Jon Awbrey


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Yet Another Soapbox White With Foam


Posted by: Milton Roe

QUOTE(Jon Awbrey @ Mon 14th March 2011, 6:42pm) *

All our Founding Fathers and all our Founding Mothers would be revolutionizing in their graves at the very idea that We The People have become so poorly educated that We allow ourselves to forget even for a moment what Universal Free Public Education is all about.

Jon dry.gif

Our founding fathers and mothers (particularly mothers) had never heard about "Universal Free Public Education." It would have been as wierd an idea to them as universal "free" biggrin.gif public retirement benefits and universal free retirement medical care. I don't think Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington had any taxpayer funded schooling at all. Adams went to a common school which had a tuition. Franklin had about two years of school and had to drop out because his family couldn't pay it. And so on.

Women, of course, often didn't go to school at all in the "founding father" days.

Posted by: It's the blimp, Frank

QUOTE
Northern states first experimented with public “district schools,” which were run by the local government and either charged tuition or relied on property taxes. The United States was slow to follow the European model. For the most part, government resisted the temptation to run schools even as it generously supported them financially at the request of its citizens. Throughout the colonial period, all schools, secular or religious, were considered “public” schools because they served the public good. Despite early attempts at a national education system by notable proponents like Benjamin Rush, Thomas Jefferson, and Benjamin Franklin, local communities jealously guarded their schools and their prerogative to found them, recalling the observations of Alexis de Tocqueville in the 1820s that Americans had a talent for local and voluntary initiative.


http://www.frinstitute.org/allschools1.html

Posted by: Jon Awbrey

I know I larned all this stuff in skool sometime or other, but my grade school books are in the Attic, if ya know what I mean, so here's a random pair of “Feelin Lucky Punk” pointers torn from the Front Page of that New Fangled Googly Dogood Go Fetchum Flyer —

Jon huh.gif

Posted by: Jon Awbrey

QUOTE(It's the blimp, Frank @ Mon 14th March 2011, 11:48pm) *

http://www.frinstitute.org/allschools1.html


QUOTE

Faith & Reason Institute
666 Eleventh St. NW, Suite 450
Washington, DC 20001


Written from the point of view of an advocacy group, which is hunky dory except for that little catch about “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof”.

And really — 666 — I think we know where they're coming from.

Jon tongue.gif

Posted by: It's the blimp, Frank

I don't endorse their view that the government should pay for home schoolers, church schoolers, etc. I posted the quote because despite their ideology, they had to concede that there were "early attempts at a national education system by notable proponents like Benjamin Rush, Thomas Jefferson, and Benjamin Franklin." That seemed to debunk what Milton was saying.

Posted by: Jon Awbrey

QUOTE(It's the blimp, Frank @ Tue 15th March 2011, 12:21am) *

I don't endorse their view that the government should pay for home schoolers, church schoolers, etc. I posted the quote because despite their ideology, they had to concede that there were "early attempts at a national education system by notable proponents like Benjamin Rush, Thomas Jefferson, and Benjamin Franklin." That seemed to debunk what Milton was saying.


Sure, I know that, and there was a fair amount of what used to be common knowledge in the article, but they were naturally trying to spin it their way. And the plain fact is that FBO's have pushed for and got a whole lot more laxitude in that Church And State Firewall than we used to have when I was a kid.

Jon winky.gif

Posted by: Milton Roe

QUOTE(It's the blimp, Frank @ Mon 14th March 2011, 8:48pm) *

QUOTE
Northern states first experimented with public “district schools,” which were run by the local government and either charged tuition or relied on property taxes. The United States was slow to follow the European model. For the most part, government resisted the temptation to run schools even as it generously supported them financially at the request of its citizens. Throughout the colonial period, all schools, secular or religious, were considered “public” schools because they served the public good. Despite early attempts at a national education system by notable proponents like Benjamin Rush, Thomas Jefferson, and Benjamin Franklin, local communities jealously guarded their schools and their prerogative to found them, recalling the observations of Alexis de Tocqueville in the 1820s that Americans had a talent for local and voluntary initiative.


http://www.frinstitute.org/allschools1.html

Yes, yes, so? Many founding fathers tried to get publically-FUNDED education, but that doesn't mean they succeeded, or that they had experienced it themselves in their own youth. Generally, neither happened. The "common" schools did charge tuition, and the idea of common schools run on property taxes (our present model) doesn't date from the revolutionary period, but from a generation or two later, at least. So if the founding fathers are going to revolve in their graves, they'd have had to do even more revolving while they were alive (revolution indeed). But I think a fair number of founding fathers, considering the way they fought Hamilton's federalism, would REALLY be revolving today at the idea of the national federal government involved in setting standards for, and paying for, community "common-school" education for kids. Perhaps not the states, but certainly the feds.

I'll bet Jefferson's skull would explode. He was the founder of the University of Virginia (one of the three accomplishments on his gravestone; his presidency is not), but that was a mixed-funded STATE and private secular university, and it should be remembered that it charged tuition, gave LOANS to the poor, and that the whole thing kicked off nearly 50 years after the revolution, just about the time of Jefferson's death. So in very many ways, it's nothing like the feds messing in K-12, ala W. Bush. (Had Jefferson been alive when The Army of Virginia went off to war with the feds in 1860, I think Jefferson would have cheered them on. He was a revolutionary and hater of central authority all his life, and didn't particularly approve of the federal Constitution, either).

Ben Franklin would have approved of state taxpayer funded common schooling. But I think even Franklin would have balked at the federal government becoming involved in something so "close to home" as K-12. Universities and colleges have always been something different, precisely because their studients are adults (for all intents and purposes, especially by colonial standards).

==

I should make my own position clear at this point. I too am the product of public school education (not in the English, but the American sense of that word). My K-12 was paid for by the state (real estate taxes and the like), and it was a great one. I had an educational experience so idyllic that if you made it into a TV show it would resemble The Andy Griffith Show, and the school part of it would bore today's audiences right out of their skulls because it was almost pure learning with almost no drama. I then went to a private university on scholarship (which supported by private donations, BTW), which was also aided by the fact that I got a 50% tuition break since my father taught there. Lucky me. So again, nirvana. I then borrowed money at low-low federally-subsidized student loan rates for graduate training at a state university, which was itself partly partly subsidized by state money. Again, nirvana. I worked a little as a wage slave in college, but nowhere near enough to support myself fully. If I'd had to do that, I could not have maintained the scholarship.

I wouldn't change a bit of how I got educated. I'm sorry that everybody doesn't have the same system I had, with the state funding things at the beginning, and the feds assisting in the post grad part. Tax FUNDING of education is a fine idea, but public RUNNING of the educational system only works if the institutions themselves are watched over by at least jaundiced conservatives, who are there to keep them from being controlled by radicals who want to teach Communism instead of chemistry. I'm all for secular education at the college level and above, so long as we count Marxism as yet one more religion, and guard against it being taught pervasively as a correct idea alongside (say) Catholicism. I'm not sure I'm ready to see the K-12 system give vouchers to religious primary and secondary schools, unless they promise not to teach religion there (or perhaps give the students a limited hour a day of it, by choice, a separate building as actually some schools in my own state did, as a compromise-- they called it "release time").

When I was growing up, K-12 kids didn't need vouchers, because there weren't any public K-12 schools that needed to hire guards, or have metal detectors because students had weapons and sold drugs. My conservative western state would not have permitted it. Today, things have gone partly to hell; and one of the problems is that the teachers unions didn't do their job, and at the federal level, the liberals managed to insert more and more leftist values, which (strangely) are generally values that make endless excuses for poor personal performance and criminal activity. Parents need a way to escape that, if their kids are not learning, or live in fear. Vouchers are obvious ways to let this happen.

I wouldn't even object to voucher-mediated needs-based taxpayer support for higher education, aka the G.I. Bill for everybody. If we could get the federal government to stop paying for madness like the Iraq war, we might even have enough money to do it. But people would rather have their war, and so long as that's true, I would rather have them spend their money for war and go without other necessities, than borrow money against their grandkids' future. Unfortunely, that's not happening either. So, I'm angry. Neither of the two major political parties in 2000 offered a way for the feds to get out of my K-12 schools, and neither one supported vouchers. In 2003, neither party stood against the Iraq war. That left voters like me with no viable alternative. The country as a whole was hell-bent on stupidity, and mostly it has gotten what it has richly deserved.

And yes, I voted for Obama in 2008. With the idea that anything (ANYTHING) has to be better than Dubya Bush.

Posted by: Jon Awbrey

I thought the whole point of that Revolution Thang was to create a more perfect system, not to recreate what they themselves had experienced beforehand.

Seriously, Milton, their ideals were clear enough, no matter how long it takes to realize them.

Jon dry.gif

Posted by: Milton Roe

QUOTE(Jon Awbrey @ Tue 15th March 2011, 1:08pm) *

I thought the whole point of that Revolution thang was to create a more perfect system, not to recreate what you yourself had beforehand.

Seriously, Milton, their ideals were clear enough, no matter how long it takes to realize them.

Jon dry.gif

As I said above, it's far from clear what their ideals were. Regarding today's federalist control of just about everything, I think even those arch federalists Hamilton and Madison would be horrified. Jefferson clearly would be. Probably Franklin and Adams, too.

Posted by: Jon Awbrey

Yeah, yeah, the balance of federal and local control, but that is just an implementational detail that is always being negotiated on every issue that comes along. The fundamental principle is that being educated and informed is essential to the due exercise of one's duty as a citizen, so education must be as universal as the franchise. The rest of it comes from the fact that what the People provide the People will naturally maintain quality control over.

Jon dry.gif

Posted by: Milton Roe

QUOTE(Jon Awbrey @ Tue 15th March 2011, 1:25pm) *

Yeah, yeah, the balance of federal and local control, but that is just an implementational detail that is always being negotiated on every issue that comes along. The fundamental principle is that being educated and informed is essential to the due exercise of one's duty as a citizen, so education must be as universal as the franchise. The rest of it comes from the fact that what the People provide the People will naturally maintain quality control over.

Jon dry.gif

The issue of control in ths cybernetic system is not an "incidental," particularly when the system goes to hell and you have to start aguing whether it was a controlled failure, or not. It's a matter where the quantity (of control) degrades to the point that the quality of the system is affected, that's the sorites problem. Which is why your education (not to mention your givernment) is not being "controlled" by the Crown in in the UK, right now. In 1776 we hit a binary wall where we decided that locus of control was just too far away, and too disinterested. The voting and representation thing was really a red herring, as if the colonies had had a few members in parliament, the results would not ultimately have been just the same (otherwise, is a little lie we tell students in K-12).

"Controlling" a process that resides a few city-blocks away from you, by a method in which your money is sent (more or less automatically as paycheck-withholding) to an entity hundreds or thousands of miles away, which then has effects which come back though layers and layers of non-transparent red tape, with strings and time delays, and always in a leaky fashion, does not qualify in my book, as actual "control." It's not even as good as controlling a rover on Mars, where the delay is only 30 mintutes or something, at worst. Instead, we now have a loop where the decission-cycle (control-loop) time is years at best, and decades at worst. It's like the Iraq war, going on now 8 years. Who controls that? Control is a binary word, of course. I've given you many reasons why the K-12 system is now out of control, from overspending to poor performance. You refuse to "see" them. What can I say? Nothing. If you won't see it, I can't make you.

I can turn your argument on its head, though, and simply observe that if you REALLY believe what the people provide, the people always maintain control over, then you really have no fundamental reason to complain about anything in this society. I know of no business which is not controlled by its customers, for example, as they provide the money that the business runs on. At the next level, you're always free to throw out of office politicians who subsidize businesses you don't like. Thus, you're in control right now, in the way you insist that *I* have to use the word. Except that you don't accept it, when the results are not the ones you like. tongue.gif Hypocrite.

Posted by: Jon Awbrey

QUOTE

I know of no business which is not controlled by its customers, for example, as they provide the money that the business runs on. At the next level, you're always free to throw out of office politicians who subsidize businesses you don't like. Thus, you're in control right now, in the way you insist that *I* have to use the word. Except that you don't accept it, when the results are not the ones you like.


You really don't know the difference between Capitalism and Democracy, do you?

Jon dry.gif

P.S. Implementational ≠ Incidental

Posted by: Milton Roe

QUOTE(Jon Awbrey @ Tue 15th March 2011, 2:28pm) *

QUOTE

I know of no business which is not controlled by its customers, for example, as they provide the money that the business runs on. At the next level, you're always free to throw out of office politicians who subsidize businesses you don't like. Thus, you're in control right now, in the way you insist that *I* have to use the word. Except that you don't accept it, when the results are not the ones you like.


You really don't know the difference between Capitalism and Democracy, do you?

Jon dry.gif

P.S. Implementational ≠ Incidental

If you think they can't coexist, you must be confusing "Democracy" with Communism.

Businesses are much more responsive to consumer-demand than governments are to voter demand. The basic reason (at least for joint-stock publicly owned corporations) is that governments don't have to issue quarterly reports.

Posted by: Jon Awbrey

QUOTE(Milton Roe @ Tue 15th March 2011, 5:35pm) *

QUOTE(Jon Awbrey @ Tue 15th March 2011, 2:28pm) *

QUOTE

I know of no business which is not controlled by its customers, for example, as they provide the money that the business runs on. At the next level, you're always free to throw out of office politicians who subsidize businesses you don't like. Thus, you're in control right now, in the way you insist that *I* have to use the word. Except that you don't accept it, when the results are not the ones you like.


You really don't know the difference between Capitalism and Democracy, do you?

Jon dry.gif

P.S. Implementational ≠ Incidental


If you think they can't coexist, you must be confusing "Democracy" with Communism.


Lots of things coexist.

The US and the UK coexist …

But conflate the two systems and —

USUK❢

Jon tongue.gif

Posted by: Herschelkrustofsky

QUOTE(Milton Roe @ Tue 15th March 2011, 2:23pm) *

In 1776 we hit a binary wall where we decided that locus of control was just too far away, and too disinterested.
yecch.gif You left out the part about two antithetical philosophies about the relationship of government to the governed.

Posted by: Jon Awbrey

QUOTE(Herschelkrustofsky @ Wed 16th March 2011, 12:44am) *

QUOTE(Milton Roe @ Tue 15th March 2011, 2:23pm) *

In 1776 we hit a binary wall where we decided that locus of control was just too far away, and too disinterested.


yecch.gif You left out the part about two antithetical philosophies about the relationship of government to the governed.


Now don't be trying to sell us your Red Hairing Theories —

You know it's the one Cardinal Sin we have around here …

Jon tongue.gif

Posted by: Milton Roe

QUOTE(Herschelkrustofsky @ Tue 15th March 2011, 9:44pm) *

QUOTE(Milton Roe @ Tue 15th March 2011, 2:23pm) *

In 1776 we hit a binary wall where we decided that locus of control was just too far away, and too disinterested.
yecch.gif You left out the part about two antithetical philosophies about the relationship of government to the governed.

So I did. And the reason I did, was that this is a "made up after the fact reason" used by Jefferson in the Declaration, to justify the actions of the revolutionaries. Who were mostly merchants who didn't want the English government messing with their businesses and taking their profits. People like to keep what they earn. "That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed" and all that, is a new idea not then widely accepted (yes, it had been proposed by Locke, but everybody didn't get out in the streets and demonstrate for it). And this was not the reason at the hearts of very many people in the Americas. Jefferson is just blathering on, making it up, or adopting useful rhetoric, as he goes along. He would have called on Nature's God to be on his side even more, if Franklin hadn't stopped him from foaming off on that direction. I bet Jefferson would have compared George III with the Nazis, if Jefferson had known about Nazis.

Humans are such wonderful rationalizing animals and Jefferson, being a highly intelligent human, was a highly articulate rationalizer. The Declaration is a legal closing argument to be put before the jury of the world. But if you replaced the first paragraphs of the Declaration with IDONTLIKEIT, you'd get a document a little shorter, and just as true. The rest of it is WHYIDONTLIKEIT.

It is most certainly not the case that, believing that governments derive from "consent of the governed" that nation-states arrise by drawing their outer boundaries more and more widely, until they finally reach a point that 51% of people inside the boundary want to be part of the new proposed state. If you think that was how the line between the US and Canada, or the US and Mexico were drawn, you're smoking something. That's complete bullshit, and Jefferson is here being a complete bullshitter.

hrmph.gif Milton

Posted by: Jon Awbrey

⚐

Waving the White Flag here. Milton has finally convinced me that there really is something seriously wrong with the educational system in the Late Grate United Stores of Amwayica. Time to hang it up and give it all back to the Divinely Rightful Heirs of Jolly Old George 3.0.

Do you think we can still get our deposits back on the bottles?

Jon dry.gif

Posted by: Herschelkrustofsky

QUOTE(Milton Roe @ Wed 16th March 2011, 12:24pm) *

QUOTE(Herschelkrustofsky @ Tue 15th March 2011, 9:44pm) *

You left out the part about two antithetical philosophies about the relationship of government to the governed.

So I did. And the reason I did, was that this is a "made up after the fact reason" used by Jefferson in the Declaration, to justify the actions of the revolutionaries. Who were mostly merchants who didn't want the English government messing with their businesses and taking their profits. People like to keep what they earn. "That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed" and all that, is a new idea not then widely accepted (yes, it had been proposed by Locke, but everybody didn't get out in the streets and demonstrate for it). And this was not the reason at the hearts of very many people in the Americas.
I don't think I can improve upon what Jon said, but I just can't stop myself from getting all convivial with you, Milt (cue Natalie Cole singing "Inseparable.")


Posted by: Jon Awbrey

QUOTE

… and that government of the Mini-Mart™, by the Mini-Mart™,
for the Mini-Martâ„¢, shall not perish before its expiration date.


— Abraham LinkedIn • The Spaghettisburg Address


Posted by: Milton Roe

QUOTE(Jon Awbrey @ Wed 16th March 2011, 2:40pm) *

QUOTE

… and that government of the Mini-Mart™, by the Mini-Mart™,
for the Mini-Martâ„¢, shall not perish before its expiration date.


— Abraham LinkedIn • The Spaghettisburg Address



Jon, open your eyes and READ the damn thing. What is Lincoln saying? I can't figure it out. Somethng about government for the people by the people and of the people, and clearly the civil war they're fighting is against that, or so he says. Well, was it? Is he right? The confederate rebellion looks to me to be the same kind of basic act that started the separation of the US from King George III "four score and seven years" before. I guess Lincoln was counting on his audience not to notice this.

Your problem is that you want it both ways, but can't have it. Lincoln (for example) didn't free any slaves in the non-rebel states, but not because such slaves didn't exist. They did exist-- there were 800,000 of them in of Maryland, Delaware, Missouri, Kentucky, and West Virginia. But those slaves stayed slaves because it wasn't about slaves. It was about rebellion of a minority (which the above 5 states were not doing) and the use of force to prevent it.

Posted by: Milton Roe

QUOTE(Herschelkrustofsky @ Wed 16th March 2011, 2:04pm) *

[*]The American Revolution was not made on impulse. 150 years of planning went into it.
[*]It was not a tax revolt, despite the insufferable BS from Charles Beard.
[*]Thomas Jefferson was not a leading figure like Franklin or Hamilton.
[*]John Locke, like Adam Smith, was an opponent of the revolution. His slogan was, "Life, Liberty, and Property," not the pursuit of happiness, and the constitution he wrote for the colony of the Carolinas institutionalized the practice of slavery along with a feudal aristocracy.
[/list]

The only thing I agree on is that Jefferson wasn't a major figure, and that Locke was indeed against it. As to the rest, I guess I'm getting into of your favorite 150 year conspiracy theories in which (one would suppose) the English royalty secretly engineered the revolution out of pure evilness. Let me guess-- perhaps to have a place to keep their spare slaves, since they knew they'd have to give up their own in a few generations more? ohmy.gif

Posted by: Jon Awbrey

Lemme see, how can we explain this whole Civil War Thang at Milton's reading level ???

Maybe he could understand it in terms of enforcing contractual obligations or something ???

Yeah, that's the ticket —

QUOTE

We the Prenuptials of the United State, in Order to form a more perfect Union …


Kinda has a Ring to it, dontcha think?

Jon tongue.gif

Posted by: Milton Roe

QUOTE(Jon Awbrey @ Wed 16th March 2011, 3:22pm) *

Lemme see, how can we explain this whole Civil War Thang at Milton's reading level ???

Maybe he could understand it in terms of enforcing contractual obligations or something ???

Yeah, that's the ticket —

QUOTE

We the Prenuptials of the United State, in Order to form a more perfect Union …


Kinda has a Ring to it, dontcha think?

Jon tongue.gif

Human marriages have a natural time limit, and even in colonial times could be dissolved before that. Perpetual contracts and charters were then (and are now) a rare, perhaps nonexistent thing, being regarded as rather unnatural in common law.

So, are you going to argue that the signers of the Constitution knew exactly what they were getting into? And that they, on behalf of all future generations, went into this weird, new, one of a kind, never-before-seen "contact," which does not address that specific issue, with eyes fully and (no doubt perpetually) open?

I think not. I think that nobody seriously considered it as a "you're in forever unless 2/3rds of us agree you're out" sort of thing. Or that any state would want out, and not be allowed out.

Posted by: Jon Awbrey

In case you haven't noticed, Milton, I quit taking you seriously quite a while ago. Your reading of U.S. history is just plain wackier than just about anything I've ever heard before, and that is coming from someone who misspent most of his youth in Texas.

The most charitable interpretation I can put on your “theory” of Post-Redcoat Government — which is beginning to make the Ginger Genetics of Moulton look Absolutely True Blue by comparison — is to chalk it up to the usual degeneration of rationality brought on by over-exposure to Plutocratic Radiation Sources, aggravated by unhealthy doses of Wiki-Wyler's-Wallbangers.

If I wasn't so busy inveighing against the overthrow of my dear adopted Peninsula Amoena by yet another Korporate Kochsucker Kult, I'd take the time to sort your off-topic unctions to a more deserving suppository, er, depository.

But later …

Jon tongue.gif

Posted by: Milton Roe

QUOTE(Jon Awbrey @ Wed 16th March 2011, 5:06pm) *

In case you haven't noticed, Milton, I quit taking you seriously quite a while ago. Your reading of U.S. history is just plain wackier than just about anything I've ever heard before, and that is coming from someone who spent most of his youth in Texas.

The most charitable interpretation I can put on your “theory” of Post-Redcoat Government — which is beginning to make the Ginger Genetics of Moulton look Absolutely True Blue by comparison — is to chalk it up to the usual degeneration of rationality brought on by over-exposure to Plutocratic Radiation Sources, aggravated by unhealthy doses of Wiki-Wyler's-Wallbangers.

If I wasn't so busy inveighing against the overthrow of my dear adopted Peninsula Amoena by yet another Korporate Kochsucker Kult, I'd take the time to sort your off-topic unctions to a more deserving suppository, er, depository.

But later …

Jon tongue.gif

Well, since you seem to have imbibed the liberal opiate of the tenured pervessers somehow, somewhere, even if you're not one yourself, I will leave you to it. Must be lonely not having anybody to talk to outside the academic socalist bubble. But so long as the State keeps pumping oxygen into wherever it is you post from, it doesn't really matter, right?

How you would have loved Cuba, and they, you. wub.gif Perhaps you've seen it? They do know the difference between capitalism and democracy, and they have democracy at all levels, but hold the capitalism. Sure-- they did starve to death some in the 90's, so now they'll let off-shore corporations invest a little, so long as they own no land and don't have any control. This allows the people to retain all control, and thus it is a socialist place, as written directly and unchangably into the constitution. Which has been upheld with > 90% of the vote. As all are elected offices in Cuba (> 80% of the vote). Only one party is legal (the Communists, of course) but you don't have to belong to it, and half of the elected ministers actually aren't Communist party members. ohmy.gif

Of course the other parties are illegal, but it doesn't matter, because elections aren't on party lines anyway, but on the character of the representative, who runs as an independent if they don't happen to be Communist party member. Cuba's political system resembles nothing so much as Wikipedia, except that it's more democratic and uses real names. Comandante en Jefe Castro is like Comandante Jimbo-- first among equals. But he was elected every time, so long as he chose to serve (now his brother is president, so you see, there is political change). However, the constitution is permanently socialist, just like a marriage with a ring you can't get out of your noseoff. Happy, happy.

Anyway, it's democratic all the way, so I wish you could have seen it. Before it completely crumbles and falls into dust, which it actually is slowly doing (save for a few tourist resorts, which seem to be strangely growing). But the people are nice. There is universal free education and health care! Just to prove how bad capitalism is for those things, elsewhere. happy.gif However, there is no housing, so if you get divorced you may have to stay in the same apartment with your former wife for the next decade, so again there's that ring thing. And that looooong feedback loop. wink.gif

Posted by: Herschelkrustofsky

Of course. If you don't acknowledge the infallibility of the other Milton...
Image
...then you, sir, are a commie.

Posted by: Milton Roe

QUOTE(Herschelkrustofsky @ Wed 16th March 2011, 9:30pm) *

Of course. If you don't acknowledge the infallibility of the other Milton...
Image
...then you, sir, are a commie.

One of my favorite Miltons, for sure. I met him once. Only long enough to shake hands and tell him I wuved him. wub.gif

But isn't you own guru an old Commie?

They don't love infrastructure much in Cuba, however. Infrastructure is too-- Western. They were more into the agrarian Pol Pot thing, make money off selling sugar to the Soviets, or (in Cambodia's case) rice to China. It didn't work and everybody starved, but what the hell. The point of socialism is not to make people's lives better, but to make them feel good because nobody is rich. You don't care if you're poorer than ever, if all the rich people have been driven out or killed. And if your own leaders, your Castros or your Daniel Ortegas are getting a little bit-- how do you say-- yacht-club-- then hey, che. How can you criticize a socialist hero, eh?

Of course, opinions differ on whether or not Milton Friedmanhttp://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703411304575093572032665414.html or http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2010/mar/03/chile-earthquake from its monster quake (similar in power to the one that wiped out Haiti). The socialist reply at the Wall Street Journal figures it was Chile's state copper mine "pumping money into the economy" that saved Chile. Wikipedia has weighed in with Miracle of Chile.

Personally, I'm agnositic. Chile chose the free market under a dictator, THEN later democracy, and now has the best of both worlds. I've never been to Chile but hope to.

Cuba, however, has a very democratic government. If there is a totally pure socialist democracy on this planet, Cuba would be it. And it mostly sucks.

Posted by: lilburne

Just imagine what might have happened had Cuba not been under an economic embargo for the last 60 years.


Posted by: Cock-up-over-conspiracy

QUOTE(lilburne @ Thu 17th March 2011, 3:06pm) *
Just imagine what might have happened had Cuba not
been under an economic embargo for the last 60 years.

Thank you. Cuba would be doing wonderfully if it had not been gripped by Uncle Sam's vice and prised at by the levers of robber-baron merchantry.

"Will Wikipedia Replace Your Kid's Teacher?"
Wikipedia debase Your Kid and Your Kid's Teacher?
Private education succeeds because the money element acts to filter out all the kid's that go to school without being fed and are generally malnourished, suffering much high levels of abuse, sharing bedrooms with older sexually active siblings, who live in houses that have no books, who live in no house, who's parents are drug addicts, prostitutes, career criminal, recipients of benefits etc.

It would be an interesting experiment to take the teachers from private schools and swop them with teachers from public schools and see how the two groups got on. Methinks the private schools would not suffer and the publics school would not improve.

Something like ... except in rare cases, it takes several generations of selective breeding supported by financial security to raise educational levels in any given community.

Wikipedia has no breeding and it almost entirely non-selective, it is headed downwards.

Posted by: Milton Roe

QUOTE(lilburne @ Thu 17th March 2011, 8:06am) *

Just imagine what might have happened had Cuba not been under an economic embargo for the last 60 years.

Assholes tend to be avoided and isolated. It's true of nations also.

The economic embargo by the US started when Cuba simply stole all of the US oil refining capacity and property (kicked off when US refineries refused to refine Soviet oil for the Cubans). It went downhill from there. As the US supported an invasion of Cuba, Castro was urging the USSR to nuke the US. What's a little global nuke war between narcissists? Castro's empire was threatened, so let's burn down the world.

A lot of other South American countries embargoed Cuba for a while because Cuba not only stole their property, but tried to foment revolution in them, just as the US had done to Cuba. It's the usual "one set of rules for you, another set for us." Many South American countries didn't appreciate it.

The US is the last holdout in not regularizing trade and regular tourism with Cuba now (though we have sent some humanitarian stuff). But Cuba's free to develop in the same way trading with everybody else, that every country is. The problem is, nobody will invest in Cuba to any great extent, because Cuba doesn't understand the idea of anybody else owning anything, or having property. The Castro family (not the Cuban people) owned controlling interest in the "hotel" (converted rich man's villa) I stayed at (so they understood the idea of stuff belonging to THEM), but they wouldn't let (say) their socialist comrades the Venezuelans come in and buy such an interest. Meanwhile, the Cuban citizens do without.

Whose fault is this?

Posted by: lilburne

QUOTE(Milton Roe @ Thu 17th March 2011, 5:48pm) *


Whose fault is this?


Yours?
QUOTE(Milton Roe @ Thu 17th March 2011, 5:48pm) *


Many South American countries didn't appreciate it.


Duvalier, Somoza, Barrientos, Arellano, Fuentes, ...

Posted by: Cock-up-over-conspiracy

Milton, in some corners you are funny, very well informed and communicate well, in others you are an idiot clown.

To summarise down the past century or so of American military-industrial Imperial expansion (which in this case I am limiting to friction between competing Russian and American ambitions) to "Assholes tend to be avoided and iolated. It's true of nations also.", you have to missing some braincells, or books in your library.

Oh, I forgot. Wikipedians don't have books or go to libraries because they own the sum of all human knowledge already.

Funny enough, when checking with Google for the correct terms to use, I discovered that according to the top result Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, "Détente" is actually an American thrash metal band.

It is a widely know fact that a large proportion of Americans, due to poor selective inbreeding between selfish, greedy and aggressive psychopaths, suffer from a genetic disposition that disallows from being able to comprehend anything relating to common or collective ownership in anyway whatsoever. The mere mention of the 'S' or 'C' words sends their brain synapses into paralytic paroxysms that overwhelm rational reasoning. Then they go and edit on the Wikipedia.

I am not defending the anything remotely related to so-called socialism or Cuba at all but let's allow space for a little bit of intelligence. Yes, I appreciate human greed and selfishness are hard to overcome but who knows what the Soviet experiment (and list 10 or 20 other nations) might have ended up as had it not been for the dirty ambitions and Yankee paranoia.

Posted by: Milton Roe

QUOTE(Cock-up-over-conspiracy @ Thu 17th March 2011, 4:03pm) *

I am not defending the anything remotely related to so-called socialism or Cuba at all but let's allow space for a little bit of intelligence. Yes, I appreciate human greed and selfishness are hard to overcome but who knows what the Soviet experiment (and list 10 or 20 other nations) might have ended up as had it not been for the dirty ambitions and Yankee paranoia.

There are always dirty ambitions, don't you know. People with power are always corrupted by it if they have it for too long; this is basic human nature. Saying that democratic full-socialism would work great except for these little details is to admit that would work great with some other species, but it's not so good for human beings. In which case you can make the case for Communism to the Martians, but I'm not interested in it.

We did experients about as carefully as one could do in this world. In two cases (Germany and Korea) the countries were split right down the middle, fairly arbitrarily, and then subjected to the socialist experiment in one half, and Westernization in the other. It didn't work for the non Western part. And in each case, the true believers either blamed the West or else blamed evil ambitions which supposedly could be purified out somewhere else. You'll never learn. So, I don't try to teach you. At least the Chinese are slowly figuring it out.
QUOTE(Cock-up-over-conspiracy @ Thu 17th March 2011, 4:03pm) *

Milton, in some corners you are funny, very well informed and communicate well, in others you are an idiot clown.

That's me. tongue.gif You know, if I'd caught Dr. "Che" Guevara skulking around in the jungle of my country trying to start a revolution, I wouldn't have shot him. I'd merely have put him in a nice cell, and told him he could have an asthma inhaler just as soon as I could find one that had been purely invented by communists. A real wheezer of an argument. And more subtle than bullets (not that Che himself wasn't fond of using the firing squad to http://www.therealcuba.com/MurderedbyChe.htm).

Posted by: EricBarbour

Say what you will about Milton, or about Awbrey: neither one of them is a raving, mechanical,
manipulative sociopath. You can actually talk to them, and get a coherent and reasoned response.

Not like SlimVirgin, or that FT2 dude. Go ahead, try to have a conversation about WP's faulty structure.
With either of them. Or any number of admins, for that matter.

Posted by: It's the blimp, Frank

QUOTE(Milton Roe @ Fri 18th March 2011, 12:27am) *

We did experients about as carefully as one could do in this world. In two cases (Germany and Korea) the countries were split right down the middle, fairly arbitrarily, and then subjected to the socialist experiment in one half, and Westernization in the other. It didn't work for the non Western part.


I think those are interesting examples, but remember that neither West Germany nor South Korea used the extreme deregulated market-economy that you seem to advocate -- far from it.

Posted by: Milton Roe

QUOTE(It's the blimp, Frank @ Thu 17th March 2011, 8:48pm) *

QUOTE(Milton Roe @ Fri 18th March 2011, 12:27am) *

We did experients about as carefully as one could do in this world. In two cases (Germany and Korea) the countries were split right down the middle, fairly arbitrarily, and then subjected to the socialist experiment in one half, and Westernization in the other. It didn't work for the non Western part.


I think those are interesting examples, but remember that neither West Germany nor South Korea used the extreme deregulated market-economy that you seem to advocate -- far from it.

Oh, I'm not for broad business de-regulation. Some I'd regulate more, some less. In general I'd like to see business treated more like citizens. That means a thinner corporate veil and more CEOs and boards of directors doing time for the same crimes they certainly WOULD do time for, if they did them as individuals. I know this goes against a lot of legal precident, but it's also a lot more fair. And it shortens that feedback loop a LOT.

By the same extension, however, I'd give private business many of the same freedoms you enjoy as a citizen-owner also. For example, if you want all those ADA laws to apply retrospectively to your local businesses (as opposed to requiring them only for building codes of NEW structures), you should prepare to have them applied retroactively to your home. Fair is fair. Get ready to put an elevator up the side of your Victorian house, you liberal weenie, and see how YOU like it.

Just because you don't own a small business doesn't mean you should be able to screw over the business owners all you like. On the other hand, just because you're a corporation, doesn't mean you should be able to get away with robbery.

I'm really a moderate. Neither the left nor the right like most of my ideas.

Posted by: Gruntled

QUOTE(Milton Roe @ Fri 18th March 2011, 12:27am) *

We did experients about as carefully as one could do in this world. In two cases (Germany and Korea) the countries were split right down the middle, fairly arbitrarily, and then subjected to the socialist experiment in one half, and Westernization in the other. It didn't work for the non Western part.

And of course there's Vietnam. Although the split there was north-south not east-west, the southern bit was Westernised and the northern bit was a "socialist experiment".

Posted by: Milton Roe

QUOTE(Gruntled @ Fri 18th March 2011, 8:17am) *

QUOTE(Milton Roe @ Fri 18th March 2011, 12:27am) *

We did experients about as carefully as one could do in this world. In two cases (Germany and Korea) the countries were split right down the middle, fairly arbitrarily, and then subjected to the socialist experiment in one half, and Westernization in the other. It didn't work for the non Western part.

And of course there's Vietnam. Although the split there was north-south not east-west, the southern bit was Westernised and the northern bit was a "socialist experiment".

A little difficult, as there was a civil war going on through the entire time of this.

In the last 10 years Vietnam has embraced quite a bit of capitalism. Would you say they're doing better now, or worse?

Posted by: Milton Roe

QUOTE(Jon Awbrey @ Sun 22nd August 2010, 8:48am) *


offtopic.gif

Yet Another Soapbox White With Foam



BTW, starting a new thread so that your own very much off-topic and ad hominem post gets the last word in the previous one, and my own reply in similar vein now starts a thread which you get to title in a deprecating way to me, comes very close to mod abuse.

I see what you did here. hrmph.gif

Posted by: Herschelkrustofsky

QUOTE(Gruntled @ Fri 18th March 2011, 8:44am) *

QUOTE(Jon Awbrey @ Wed 16th March 2011, 5:00am) *

You know it's the one Cardinal Sin we have around here …

Cardinal Sin was a great man. Let's not be making fun of him please.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/20/AR2005062001362.html
Please. This is typical Orwellian stuff from the WaPo -- the removal of Marcos was an early example of "Regime Change" by the US, with Secretary of State George Shultz and his deputy Paul Wolfowitz at the helm. They didn't like Marcos because he was uncooperative with the IMF, and that's why he had to go. "People's power" was a US-financed cover story for a coup by Gen. Fidel Ramos. Cardinal Sin earned his moniker as a front man for Ramos.

Posted by: Milton Roe

QUOTE(Herschelkrustofsky @ Fri 18th March 2011, 1:43pm) *

QUOTE(Gruntled @ Fri 18th March 2011, 8:44am) *

QUOTE(Jon Awbrey @ Wed 16th March 2011, 5:00am) *

You know it's the one Cardinal Sin we have around here …

Cardinal Sin was a great man. Let's not be making fun of him please.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/20/AR2005062001362.html
Please. This is typical Orwellian stuff from the WaPo -- the removal of Marcos was an early example of "Regime Change" by the US, with Secretary of State George Shultz and his deputy Paul Wolfowitz at the helm. They didn't like Marcos because he was uncooperative with the IMF, and that's why he had to go. "People's power" was a US-financed cover story for a coup by Gen. Fidel Ramos. Cardinal Sin earned his moniker as a front man for Ramos.

Ramos would have needed a hell of a front man, since he was merely a vice chief of staff and head of the constabulary (something like the national police). How did this guy get the whole Philippine army to defect, complete with most senior officers, which most of them did? Too bad Wolfowitz didn't run that kind of mental magic on Saddam's Iraq. Ramos was never Marcos' major military guy before the revolution-- he was a middle level functionary. How does the vice chief of staff run a coup around the chief of staff, without shooting him?? This is sort of like General Peter W. Chiarelli taking over the U.S. armed forces in a coup, and ousting Barack Obama. Who, you say? That's the point.

Ramos and the chief-of-staff Ver (who were cousins) got their jobs in the army because they were also related to Marcos. Ver was tied to Marcos, and Ramos less so (which is why Corazon Aquino asked him to head the military), but the rest of the military didn't have to pay any attention to either of them. They did because of Cardinal Sin and the previous murder of Aquino's husband (I suppose Washington engineered that, too?) and the incredible corruption of the Marcoses, which naturally you will hold had nothing to do with anything. Maybe Wolfowitiz sent Imelda shoes every week?

Ramos later served as president of the Philippines and was knighted by the Brits. No wonder LaRouche thinks he's in on the world conspiracy. hrmph.gif

Posted by: Milton Roe

QUOTE(Jon Awbrey @ Sat 19th March 2011, 9:06am) *

QUOTE(Zoloft @ Sat 19th March 2011, 3:15am) *

To answer the question asked by the topic title:

“Will Wikipedia Replace Your Kid's Teacher?”

No. Wikipedia does not contain any mechanism for teaching anything.

Thank you verra much.


Zoloft and All,

The title introduces the subject by way of a notorious and timely example, but the question is obviously much bigger than that.

I think that subsequent discussion, despite its divers digressions, has demonstrated the fundamental importance of that larger question.

So let's keep our eyes on the prize, and pry a bit deeper thereinto.

Jon Image



Ahem. The tone and scope of this thread was set by the first two posters, and here they are:

QUOTE

QUOTE(Jon Awbrey @ Mon 7th March 2011, 10:52pm) *

QUOTE(Herschelkrustofsky @ Tue 8th March 2011, 12:35am) *

Obama has been hanging out with Bill and Melinda Gates cthulhu.gif , and other http://blogs.abcnews.com/george/2009/10/jeb-bush-on-obama-the-guy-is-on-the-right-track.html. Their consensus seems to be that all those people who said that a high student-to-teacher ratio was harmful were wrong, and that we can really think about getting rid of a lot of those teachers and replacing them with on-line instruction. With increasing emphasis on drill-and-grill and other regressive educational techniques, does this not put Wikipedia in more significant role as an educational [ahem] resource?

I think this is just one more component of the Corporate Totalitarian Agenda, replacing everything that we have been accustomed to regard as the Public Sector with the Non-Representative Government of Privateerism.
I think a lot of people are being suckered into it out of sheer naivete, but the corporate con artists know perfectly well what they want and how they plan to get it.
Jon Awbrey


After which, the only people actually giving quantitative information about the "Public Sector with the Non-Representative Government of Privateerism" (Greg Kohs and myself) got split off into a parody religious thread, so you can have this one to yourself, with no figures at all. And behold, you're now the main contributor to this thread, with 25 of 46 posts, but none of them containing a single hard fact.

So, that's the last time I get caught up on one of your meta threads where the evidient meta-object is for you to meta play with yourself. I think you can enjoy THAT all by your lonesome, without having to count a single stroke. pinch.gif

QUOTE(Jon Awbrey @ Fri 18th March 2011, 11:22pm) *

Moderator Note —Jon Image

And somewhat non-tangentially: as a meta-moderator, you meta-suck.

Posted by: Jon Awbrey

Milton,

I'm being as polite as I know how to be with you, partly because I'm beginning to suspect that you may in real life be my own dear Goobernator, Richard the Nerd, in addition to being a Sockateur of HK, but frankly and ernestly I'm done with your Rushoid Ripofflichem Rants.

Now, I'm really busy in real life, to coin a phrase, so I'll give the matter a few days of sleeping on it, but my current thinking is to move those other tangents back into the Political Religion Forum where you wonky wanker Boys' Staters can circle jerk yourselves into the Usual States of Blissfully Ignorant Nirvana. When and if that happens you humorless twits can negotiate with the Kinder Gentler Mods for titulary designations more bespitting your glorious self-image.

One final word on the subject of statistics. I know the use of statistics in science, and I know the use of statistics in junior high school debating clubs, and I know which one I'm looking at when you haul out your old shoebox of newspaper clippings.

Hint. It's that second thing.

Jon Awbrey