WP support thread for apoliticals or ppl w/unusual views

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Does anyone have something intelligent or interesting to post? I'm getting a bit tired of the back-and-forth "Are not!" "Are too!"

Well, let's talk about our penal system. I have some rather unorthodox views there, whether they are interesting or intelligent could be debated.

My views here are different from the standard views in two broad aspects.

First, I don't believe that there is really much crime against society at large; crime generally has an individual victim and punishment should mainly consist of reparations to the victim(s) or family if the crime happened to be murder. This goes back to the ideas in the Babylonian law codes; punishments should involve restitution rather than simple vengeance. If you have harmed someone, you should be compelled to make it right.

Second, I see no point in purely retaliatory punishments such as prison terms or the death penalty. Sure, you made the criminal feel bad, but no one really derives any benefit from this- indeed, depending on the individual in question, you could be removing a potentially productive individual from the workforce and depleting our stock of human capital. Rather, if a punishment is served through state channels (rather than private arrangements with the victim to provide restitution for any wrongs) than the punishment should be something productive. I fully support the use of prisoners as a cheap labor source- the government could rent out convicts to corporations for whatever work the corporations need, eliminating the cost to the taxpayers of feeding and housing criminals and even potentially bringing in government revenue, thus paying some of their budget and decreasing the need for taxation.

Thoughts?

Your ideas on punishment remind me of Icelandic law as under that law, crimes were more like a civil court matter where settlements could be made outside of court for any crime.

The issue with prison labor is that there are issues if it can pay for itself otherwise there might be incentive to create a slave society. I mostly tend to agree with your ideas for the penal system though.

That is something I have worried about, and I must confess it is the biggest flaw I see in my proposed system- if prisoners actually become profitable for the state and ease taxpayer burdens, we may see more injustice coming through our court system. Perhaps those issues could be resolved by having a completely separate judiciary which is neither a part of the regular government budget constraints nor pays taxes; this way they would have no financial incentives. Of course under that system you might not be as easily able to arrange a trial by jury.

I think that I posted something intelligent and interesting, on page 3, which went strangely unnoticed ; see below:

My point is that being "apolitical"/politically apathetic/passive may have more to do with psych type/cognitive states ( like internal/external locii of control etc), than any political philosophies that one holds as "theories". And that this state in itself is a very significant political condition. One of experiencing no connection between oneself and society.

I think that being apolitical/pol apathetic is particularly relevant to wp. We could, and do, go on about our unusual political philosophies constantly on wp, but talking about political disaffection/alienation as a serious and significant experience almost never happens.

I don't think that you understood. I meant "not worth the time" in a subjective sense.

For example, you're certainly worth your employer's time because you must be doing something productive for him to be paying you to stay on. I assume you're worth your girlfriend's time because she spends time with you that could have been spent out at some club. When you go to the Waffle House for breakfast in the wee hours of the morning, you're worth the waitress's time because you're a paying customer and, hopefully, plan to give a decent tip. I wasn't making a statement about your personal worth. I was just saying that I had stopped giving the kind of responses that you wanted from me because I hadn't been getting the quality of discussion that I wanted. You seemed more interested in attacking my views than discussing my views. You were jumping on me for stupid things like using the word "speech" to refer to the readability, as opposed to the technical correctness, of your sentence structure, even though it was clear in the context that I wasn't referring to verbal utterances. The discussion had gone incredibly downhill for me, I was highly dissatisfied with it, I had more pressing matters to attend to, and the only reason that I had continued to respond was that I have a deep-seeded compulsion to respond to things. I know what that sounds like, but I even have trouble stopping myself from muttering responses to random snippets of conversation that I happen to hear as I'm walking by. Whatever neurotransmitter that is supposed to prevent me from responding to mental stimulus when it's inappropriate or unhelpful to do so just doesn't work. It's one of the reasons for my attention deficiencies because, when my mind gets interested during a random snippet of a lecture, I'm missing out on the rest of the topic because my mind is busy puzzling and toying with a small, miniscule part of it. If it hadn't been for that, I would probably have stopped posting responses here a long time ago. I understand that you may have the same problem, but I don't need everything I'm saying being taken as some kind of attack on your character. I'll give you better responses when I feel that it's worth the mental energy invested in writing them.

Griff, your response is a load of bullcrap and one I can see through quite plainly. If the discussion wasn't worth the time, I know you know a dozen different ways to rephrase something. I also know that you have a tendency to be rather insulting. Frankly, my theory is that you acted to sate the latter rather than any former.

Is it a surprise when you jumped in by attacking everyone else's views? What do you expect? A medal? Heck, if you have views you should bring them forward for the acceptance or the critique by others.


And that is because your own efforts to get me to re-write my words were rather pathetic. Trust me, I was not jumping on that for the sake of jumping on that.

Bah, whatever.

As I was saying, I have had distinctly negative experiences with people who call themselves "centrists." I'm not referring to people who have a healthy mix of views, priorities, and beliefs, though. I don't read more into the left vs. right thing than into palm-reading or astrology, and I don't think that most serious voters do. The problem seems to arise distinctly from those who are "centrist" in the sense of validating the "polarization" of American politics into left vs. right, liberal vs. conservative. The sort of people who quibble over this nonsense probably haven't had enough exposure to the concrete issues affecting our quality of life to have an opinion worth hearing in the first place.

You could call me apolitical, but I'm certainly not disinterested in politics. There's no way for me to not be involved in politics because it's simply impossible to avoid interaction with other people indefinitely. I just have a mind and prioritities of my own, and I'm not going to be a thrall to some moonstruck ideological dispute that has come to rival religion as a source of conflict and general nastiness.

My problem is with liberalism, yea I'm calling you out liberalism! The entire American system is designed around liberalism in both it's forms: classical liberalism(republicans) and modern liberalism(democrats) and both are terribly flawed at their very core... The assumptions they make about human nature are not at all accurate and to build a system of government around a flawed view of human nature is asking for disaster, and the problems do show through clearly.

To liberals (classical and modern) humans are by their very nature rational creatures capable of using logic to make decisions. Our rationality encompasses all other factors that affect our decision making abilities. And since we are all rational creatures capable of making the best choices for ourselves, the government can't legitimately interfere with our actions unless they cause harm to other individuals (harm principle)...But the problem is that we aren't rational creatures, we are irrationally guided by our whims and emotions, the only people that use their rationality on a level that Mill thinks human nature is on, are people who have education and an understanding of what logic is it's not built in to human nature! Without any education we are essentially animals not rational creatures...

Modern liberalism came about primarily due to the flaws of classical liberalism. Modern liberals think the government should do more to regulate the economy and such because people noticed hey our economy would fall apart if it was left to human nature, look at the poor working conditions of the industrial revolution and all of the sanctions that were necessary to correct the problems of having a self regulating market: minimum wage, FDA, hour limits per week, etc.

Other than that, I also have gripes with some of the philosophies that liberalism employs. For instance, materialism, liberalism is the ideology of capitalism which couldn't exist without materialism, it's all so based on material goods it drives me crazy it's like they couldn't think of anything else more important than accruing wealth, I personally can think of thousand of things more important... Also, liberalism gives off the obvious vibe of: only the strongest survive. It's a system entirely designed around progress, weak ideas die, weak businesses die, and in saying that there is a natural inequality amongst people in the areas of mental faculties and talent, it's justifying the weaker people getting thrown to bottom of society to make way for progress...It irks me...I mean I know that survival of the fittest is natural but does it make it right? I don't think so

And that's my spiel about liberalism Problem is I admit that the system we have isn't bad I mean it allowed me to type something like this that's saying something, and I don't have any ideas to replace it to make it better I'm just saying it's fundamentally flawed that's all..

I know I'm a socialists, but there are days when I wonder the degree. Ouinon was talking about the political compass test, and I scored in the same range of him, but I don't know if activistic socialism/environmental socialism is my forte.

I have days when I wish that there was no government; complete anarchy . You could do what you want, but live with the consequences of someone slicing your neck. Imagine the possibilities of such..

Then I have days when everyone needs to be controlled to the Nth degree. A super-socialist society where you have everything planned for you, everyone has the same power as you, and you are basically a plebeian. Bedrooms will have cameras in them, even the shithouse , and you can forget about your right to breed.. What about them apples??

And finally there's my favourite, I'm King of the World , and a fascist (but a nice one). The good ole feudalism, brought back, by popular demand (by me, and a few others). Instead of me being the control freak I used to be, I now share power with 12 others [high-powered autistics who have been put through many turbulant, excessive tribulations to make sure they are up to par, and don't heed for much (so they don't lie, cheat, steal or act like anyone in the American government or congress.)]
The 12 arbitrators will make sure all life is being pertained to by accordance of my law, in every quadrant or vector that they might uphold, and scrutinizing their self-appointed high-powered autistic leaders and law-abiders. (I myself recruit and organize the high-powered autistics to be chosen by the arbitrators in charge, cause c'mon, you can't trust anyone else to do your job, seriously.) And the trees will grow larger toward the sun, birds will swarm, bees will pollenate, and Bill O'Reilly will be my personal pedicurist (and he will have to eat my toenails, and many other bad people will be given "restitution"; like Britney Spears and Simon Cowell, God I hate them).
But anyway, this is my dream, and everyone will be contented, finally. I know this is masturbatory, but I enjoyed it, I could go on and on.......

Interesting, a dislike of liberalism would put you firmly in the camp of unorthodox political beliefs. Also very opposed to the epitome of classical liberalism, libertarianism, another unorthodox political belief. If you don't mind, I would like to criticize your criticisms.

For the first part, I don't think that the capability of logic is really a stretch in terms of assumptions. Every creature uses some form of logic as every creature has to function via some form of cognitive process. The classical liberal assumption is only that individual human cognitive processing is effective. Frankly, the fact that we are guided by whims and emotions really does not go against classical liberal ideas, as psychology would tell us that all human beings are ultimately guided by whims and emotions. Classical liberalism only argues that we pursue these whims and emotions in a semi-rational manner.

As well, I tend to doubt that modern liberalism really came from a recognition that the economy would fall apart. I believe that most economists actually describe the major economic changes we have had as being due to economic growth as the industrial revolution also created much of the middle class that most people are a part of. Really, I don't see a tendency in economics for economists to think that the economy is as unstable as modern liberalism claims it is, and this means that either the experts are wrong or the ideologues are, and in such a case I would side with the experts against the ideologues. I suppose it could be argued that economics is based upon classical liberal assumptions of individualism and rationality, but I would consider these to be at least somewhat philosophically valid.

Finally, I would not call liberalism to necessarily be materialistic, nor would I even describe a market system as necessarily being materialistic. In fact, there has been some research on the effects of competition on churches even, which is in a manner of thinking, non-materialistic capitalism. Frankly, I would argue that societies before liberalism were in many ways more materialistic due to a greater need to focus upon survival, and really, these societies did not have the resources to commit to promoting the spirits of the people involved, unlike modern societies where the resources available to a person seeking betterment are great indeed. Finally, a system designed around progress AKA improvement sounds like a good thing. Bad habits are meant to die too, liberalism provides good encouragement for the bad societal habits to die. Not only that, but does liberalism inherently say that there is a natural inequality or does its implementation *prove* that there is a natural inequality? You are right, natural does not mean moral, but that is only because we cannot derive an ought from an is. Liberalism does not really seek to define a lot of moral questions but rather simply makes the moral statement that we should let individuals find the answers to moral questions.

Interesting post all in all, I am sorry if you find it offensive that I did not post it in its entirety, I did not think you really wanted a more formal argument.

her! Activism me neither, except that I am "sort of" about issues important to me, the ones I can't ignore, like homeschooling for instance, a highly political act, which I had forgotten about.
So maybe an aspie thing? No positions between total control or none at all. I get that. I think it may be the aspie "black and white" thing, no compromise. inability/difficulty dealing with complex layers/interactions of power, heirarchies etc.

Maybe one, important, reason why school ( a mini world) is so bad for aspies; there is no room for anything in the middle of the system. Learn either protest or obedience/compliance/passivity, nothing in between. Learn/reinforce some awful mental/cognitive habits in school.

I don't mind at all in fact I'm thrilled to finally have found a place that I can talk about stuff like this



I suppose it would have helped to say that I was talking about John Stewart Mill's view of human nature as discussed in On Liberty (great read btw) and not classical liberalism's view of human nature, don't know why I clumped them together... Madison's views are in my eyes more true in the sense that he admits that our emotions will get the best of us and we won't be able to come to agreement about anything, important or trivial, even when faced with perfect logic and information disproving incorrect views. What you say about classical liberalism is entirely true and I agree that all creatures use some sort of cognitive process to survive, it's just I would be a lot less generous at how effectively logic can be implemented by humans in their state of nature.



Modern liberalism came about rather as a patchwork series of corrections to the model of classical liberalism and I was using classical liberalism's view of a self regulating market as an example of how it didn't work when implemented and needed to be corrected by the government as modern liberals would say. I would still argue that a self regulating market doesn't work even if there was rampant economic growth during the industrial revolution. It may have been promoting the welfare of the few at the expense of the welfare of the many, I wouldn't call this a successful economic system. The idea of a free market is partially based on the classical liberal preponderance of the individual. John Locke's arguments for private property which is a major component of classical liberalism, about how if we remove something from it's state of nature it is rightfully ours, he gave the example of a man walking through the woods and picking up an acorn, that acorn is his now because he mixed his labor with the acorn by removing it from it's state of nature and therefore it rightfully belongs to him now. Roughly that's how private property works, anyone can take their fill from "the commons" and sell the surplus for profit. He argued you need to have a free market for the sale of the surplus. This free market will be maintained by the wise decision making of individuals and only the good businesses and products will remain. But this view of private property, whatever you can take from nature is yours because you labored for it, is, well, a terribly destructive view of things, basically nature is there to be exploited.



If you disagree that it is materialistic would you agree that liberalism promotes egotism and greed? Liberalism promoting the individual above all can't help but promote egotism rather than promote humanity as a whole. Greed also goes hand in hand with Locke's view of private property it's like a baby grabbing something and saying "Mine", if your going to design a system around private property and say that in order to thrive in a society like this, you have to go out there and take as much as you can, that's greed at it's heart. I would argue that liberalism rather than proving there is a natural inequality was designed around a system of inequality that was observed by early liberal philosophers. Problem is, the inequality is based around industriousness, those who work and work some more are the ones on top, basing a system on this type of inequality neglects all other forms of human contributions and makes industriousness out to be the top priority of humanity. What about finding inner happiness? Doesn't get you much in a liberal society.




Good point. Have to open up a can of morality to go any further on this and I think I'd go wildly off topic,lol

Oh, ok, I am glad that you don't mind.

I think I have read On Liberty by Mill before. On Liberty is a very classical liberal book, so I don't blame you for the clumping. There just has to be some regard for the heterogeneity of classical liberal views on human nature from the more classical views found in Madison and Mill, even to more modern views from the Chicago school's very effective homo economicus, and the Austrian school's acting man and a few variants between those 2 economic views.

That is somewhat true that progressivism did emerge as a patchwork, however, I still tend to disagree with the notion that the market isn't self-correcting because most of our modern economic theory says that it is self-correcting with most disputes being on how self-correcting it is. I also disagree with your idea of the industrial revolution, as I think that greater growth in production was necessary in order to inevitably promote the successes of the many. Most developing nations actually go through a similar industrial revolution process as the US, and as well, I would argue that greater growth is necessary to create the standard of living that we enjoy, especially given that the rich cannot mass produce products just for themselves nor would they want to. As well, the ultimate goal of private property is to eliminate the commons so that the problem of the commons is gotten rid of. Heck, it is a well known economic idea that if property rights are well defined, that externalities can be efficiently dealt with. Not only that, but really, everything is going to be under the control of some entity, we are better off assigning specific stewards so that way we can promote efficient use rather than not acknowledging issues of control and consumption.


I could agree perhaps with the idea that it promote egotism, but partially because being so individualistic, it promotes the idea that all actions are egotistical. I don't see how Locke's idea is really that perverse. People HAVE TO have control over their environment, Locke is merely asserting that by taking this control we take stewardship over that which we control. Not only that, but who says that people HAVE TO go out and take as much as they can to thrive? Are you claiming that people in the middle class cannot thrive, or that they must be greedy? After all, thriving really refers to the subjective satisfaction that an individual receives. As well, it would be rather stupid for us to not reward those who work on our behalf, classical liberalism is a good system because it recognizes that if we reward others we get rewarded ourselves, and that is the basis of the promotion of industriousness. What about finding inner happiness? That is meant to be its own reward, so why should society reward you for doing work that only benefits you? Really though, a liberal society is one of the few societies to allow all people to find inner happiness as they please as it does allow diversity in thought, abundance of materials to study to find this happiness, and enough resources so that material concerns don't have to be a worry.


Right, not my intention, only my intention to get you off your moral stand.

That's kind of where I am. Ideally I am for minarchism (borderline anarchism) and unfettered free markets, but I would be willing to accept a true Socialist state. Going in between just seems foolish to me; I think we need to pick one or the other. I think a lot of it is that I like to be abel to cleanly categorize things, and so I like for everything to stay in a neatly defined category. If you're a fascist, communist, socialist, monarchist, anarcho-capitalist, whatever, that's cool. But inconsistency in ideology annoys me.

That's one of the things that socialism was brought about to correct. Unfortunately, socialism also makes a fundamentally flawed assumption: that all people should, by necessity, live under the same conditions. Some people are not interested in setting out to make money, though. Ultimately, personal wealth is not, in most people's minds, the height of human acheivement. My room-mate has always loved working in the blue collar, for example. His idea of self-actualization is dying a working man, with his children set up with the opportunity to pursue any possible dream or ambition they may have, if they're brave enough to seek it out. Most people don't, at the end of the day, say, "How much do I make in a day?" Most people, at the end of the day, say things like, "What do I do all day, and am I happy with it?" and "Do I feel safe in my own home?" and "Will my kids be able to follow their ambitions?" and "Will I be able to take some time off, just once in a while, to take my family to see the sights?" By whatever means necessary, I want these people to have good answers to these questions.

I want my friend and room-mate to be able to say, "I like my job, the work is challenging but sustainable, the hours are reasonable, I'm not too worried about the rent, I can keep enough money tucked behind my ear to survive just in case I'm laid off for a while, I don't feel too uncomfortable with where my kids are going to school, we're insured, my daughter will be able to go to med-school like she wants to if she can keep her grades high (her teacher has been taking extra time to help her in geometry, and she's pulling a B now), and my boss just gave me time off to take my son out backpacking for a week like he's been nagging me to."

As far as I know, normal, mentally healthy people don't count their time spent working as time wasted. In fact, my room-mate was depressed and in poor health during the time he was on disability, and he went back into work in spite of the fact that he is eligible to live on it for the rest of his natural life. He's happier and more energetic than I've ever seen him, since he's had a job to call his own. People actually count their jobs among their possessions. If people are unhappy with their work, it's usually because they wanted to do something else with their lives, in my experience, and they should have opportunities to pursue self-actualization if they're willing to make the sacrifices to do so.

Right now, I'm attending university on subsidized Stafford Loans and federal grants. This gives me enough money to live on-campus and feed myself on a meal plan for two semesters. I spend the Summers in Florida, with my boyfriend, working as a cab driver while I wait for the Fall Semester to start. It helps to supplement his income during the dry season, when his store isn't even bringing in enough money to really sustain itself. I can go anywhere with my life that I want to go, and anyone can do this. People don't know this, but I've been explaining to my room-mate that, if he were to get his G.E.D or some equivalent and earn a transfer degree from a community or technical college, he can do exactly what I'm doing right now. He wouldn't even have to take time off of work. Most colleges these days have good distance learning programs and night-time courses.

Ultimately, the fallacy of socialism is that it makes the same fallacy as classical liberalism: it evaluates people in dollar bills. It just makes different kinds of stupid mistakes based upon this assumption. What we need is a system that addresses practical, meaningful concerns with practical, meaningful solutions. I'm not asking for the moon, here. I'm just asking for a chance to make myself worth the world's while. As long as I have a hope of that, I can keep on rolling. That's what we want people to be able to do. That's where the money is.