Ron Paul wins presidential straw poll at CPAC

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One of the things that a friend said - who is a Ron Paul fan, he admitted that Ron Paul wishes to pull up our bases around the world (or at least many of them?), my friend said that while he agreed with most of Ron Paul's ideas that this was one that he worried about potential secondary and tertiary consequences of. My thought - its quite obvious what those consequences would be.

Yea, I read something about that earlier which is weird since he's part of what inspired the Tea Parties. There are a lot of factions in the tea party movement I guess and some apparently don't like Paul. His son Rand Paul who is the front runner for the senate in Kentucky is one of the tea party favorites too.

While an interesting development it probably doesn't mean anything beyond that Paul has some very devoted followers. It'll be interesting to see what Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Bill O'Reilly, etc.'s reaction to this is. I don't know if the old guard will allow "their" party to be hijacked. Who knows.

I think 2012 would probably be more like 1992 than 1964 if Paul was a legitimate contender.

Umm.... all this really shows is that Ron Paul is still a politician, and not a magical wonder-boy like many of his supporters think. I mean, Master_Pedant, which politician out there lacks s**t that stinks? As it stands, I think almost all of them have some.

Now, the real issue, economic policies, is going to be the biggest area of divergence, where Ron Paul is extreme enough to possibly outright eliminate as a possibility without further consideration. If he overcomes that hurdle, then do you think that anybody is going to give a damn about "rosa parks medals" and "boy scouts and football" if they think a candidate is better on the major issues?

It's never obvious what consequences are going to be. I don't even follow your line of thinking. I mean, one side says that this will be very destabilizing and reduce the US's ability to react to circumstances across the world. Another side will argue that this will create greater ease with diplomatic relations as the US will stop seeming as much of a threat to other nations, as well as reducing size of government.

I mean, I think a lot of people are on the first side, but I personally doubt that the US reducing it's military influence will have major impact. The international order is likely restrained more by trade and mutually assured destruction than US conventional forces, and in the long-run the US will lose it's dominance as a power anyway.

It's fine to propose those reductions but the Pentagon has a death grip on the budget and the outrageous cost plus contracts they give out to various munitions manufacturers are intimately interwoven into politics so that it is extremely unlikely to get through Congress.

That's also likely true. I mean, Ron Paul won't get most of his agenda through. His only value in office is to essentially function as a veto-stamp, but beyond that a good amount of things will work by themselves. I suppose he could mess around with some of the bureaucracy a bit, but even then congress(or the Supreme Court if necessary) will likely keep him in check if he does too much that's funny.

The problem is that Ron Paul is marketed as some sort of exemplar of virtue - a man whose politics are based on some set of perfectly pure a priori moral principles which guides his legislative record consistently - be it on economic policy or social rights issues. But proving his hypocrisy - especially when it comes to consistently voting against efforts to give civil rights activists Medals of Freedom yet seeing the bigoted Boy Scouts as worthy of taxpayer money - destroys these images.

And - believe me - his votes to allow insurance company genetic discrimination practices (hence the ATTACA comment) will certainly unnerve anyone with an undesirable genetic predispostion from voting for him. And he won't overcome economic objections - especially since his lust to eliminate the Federal Reserve, return to a Gold Standard, and dismantle the progressive taxation system are the sure fire way to return to a Gilded Age.

That's only the tip of the iceberg: Orcinus has a whole list of Pauline votes that would be posion to progressives.

Last edited by Master_Pedant on 21 Feb 2010, 4:11 am, edited 1 time in total.

Plus the Pentagon - through its extensive R&D programs - stimulates the economy and serves the "socalized risk" function in the US system of socialized risk and privatized profit. Private industry wouldn't stand an elimination of US Military Kenyesianism without some sort of viable substitute that equally enriched them.

As for the "obvious consequences" - a massive drop in the risk of terror would probably be on of them. You know, because violence sort of provokes more violence.

Ok? But the issue is that all politicians are marketed in this way. Do you think Barack Obama was marketed in this purely realistic manner, or do you think there was some great charisma and invocations of a fuzzily defined notion of "change" involved?

His votes to allow genetic discrimination practices may unnerve these people, depending on whether they find out.

As for economic objections, the real issue isn't "overcoming" but rather brushing them aside. If Ron Paul pushes into ideals and abstractions, and gets a populistic fervor, then a lot of these things can perhaps be ignored. However, the actual results are irrelevant to the political question.

That being said, Ron Paul lacks the ability to eliminate the Federal Reserve, return to a Gold Standard OR dismantle the progressive taxation system, so talking about it as if he could is pointless. In any case, historical ages never come back, this includes the Gilded Age. Anti-trust laws already exist. The economic structure of society is already different than it was during the emerging industrial revolution, and in such a manner in which labor markets are unlikely to change substantively. Frankly, I actually favor dismantling the progressive taxation system if instead of that we could have a flat tax policy, but that's only because compared to the current system a flat tax is a lot simpler(and we can assume I mean one of the more rational proposals, don't invoke some made-up proposal that nobody invokes. If we made it a Friedman negative income tax and abolish the welfare system, then even better). I mean, there shouldn't be entire careers created due to problems in governmental policy, and tax accountants are an entire career created due to problems in governmental policy. I also favor the entire elimination of the corporate tax. Corporations are constructions and taxes on them are either taxes passed through to consumers or taxes on capital, and neither is really beneficial. Additionally corporate taxes tend to favor the accumulation of debt-funding by corporations, which undermines economic stability due to how debt functions.

The problem is that Paul has a pretty concrete, regressive record and anyone with sense could see that the purist would veto bills that funded any form of family planning or tried to make abortions accessible in more circumstances.

I also doubt that a uniform tax rate could really pay off the debts even the most minimal of governments in large, post-industrial states obtain without burdening the poor and middle classes.

I have to admit, the problem with Paul's cult of personality is that so many would-be cynics believe it. I mean, many members of the pessimistic left were cynical of "hope, unity, change" from day one as were many conservatives. With Paul, even the most outside, dettached, and disillusioned of politicos seem illusioned and mystified by this guy's cult of personality. If anyone in the twenty-first century managed to approach Robespierre's success at creating such a "pure, principled" image it would be Ron Paul.

Last edited by Master_Pedant on 21 Feb 2010, 4:22 am, edited 1 time in total.

Umm.... all this means is that private industry would want more scientific subsidies in general, or some other kind of arrangement. As it stands though, we both know that not all military budget issues are R&D and frankly, the ones that isolationists are more opposed to would likely be conventional forces more than R&D.

Additionally, R&D programs probably don't count as "Keynesianism". Keynesianism refers to a macroeconomic policy in which busts are offset by government spending, or a theory in which it is held that busts can be offset by government spending. The subsidization of R&D isn't Keynesianism but rather just a subsidy, and attaching it to growth is more Romerian as Paul Romer established technology as incredibly important for the growth in the economy, or if it is assumed that R&D has positive externalities in whatever model, then R&D subsidies are Pigovian. But in either case, we don't see standard macro but rather the macroeconomics of growth or microeconomics of supply.

Ok? This is one of the issues that some might find important, but honestly I think a lot of people are generally uncomfortable with abortion as a topic as well, and the groups that support abortion seem significantly more passionate on that one issue than their opponents. I mean, if the economic issue doesn't get Ron Paul, then I don't think people are going to value abortion above things like Ron Paul's cynicism towards actions like the Patriot act and his dislike of military action.


Honestly, the amount of improvement we would have by eliminating the problems with the progressive tax would be more than worth it. I already pointed out that there is an entire profession based upon the deadweight loss created through the current taxation system. This is a massive elimination of waste to get rid of it, other waste would be reduced in that tax shelters would lose a lot of their incentives. To go even further, I think a lot of the government is a waste of money. The biggest part of government spending is an unsustainable transfer program (Social security) that is going to start to break down once the population growth rate declines and as average life-expectancy increases. Another large chunk is military spending, which I think is mostly a waste and another area of deadweight loss. Additionally, a lot of stuff done is just pointless or inefficient, so really, I do think that the size of government can be shrunk significantly, as the US government was not put together on rational lines, and so it really is a significant waste in many ways.

Ok? Thank goodness that I am too cynical even for God to mystify me.

I'd say its even less about U.S. military control and more about control of trade routes. The countries who own the oceans in a sense really have it.

The only worry about trade routes that I can really think of is Somalia. Most countries aren't like Somalia though, and even if the US withdrew significantly, I doubt that nobody would fill the void.

What I really mean by that is this - the country who technically ownes, sort of guards, the international shipping routes has two things a) a burdon which smaller countries are somewhat relieved not to need to finance on their own but also b) kind of the upper hand in exchange for that regarding the fact that their hand is higher on the pendulum, they have more control of the rules, the shipping charges, the shipping tariffs, etc.. I guess I'm not so much talking about pirates all of a sudden taking over the high seas and plundering ships (it could happen if another country tried it though and wasn't up to the task, a bit unlikely though as a takeover that big would be years in the planning) as much as another country or more realistically a consortium of countries (like the EU) having more control over lets say the Atlantic and something like that would mean greater economic prosperity to them, likely directly at the expense of the U.S. (then again it could be argued backwards that the US has the advantage at the expense of any other country that currently doesn't have it - means different things from different angles I guess). The perk of it being the U.S., we've been doing it long enough to have experience and also have piracy in most places not even be a question of 'is it doable?', if it were a new superpower they'd likely be somewhat green, get challenged a lot, you'd also have to hope that super power is democratic/capitalist otherwise you've got a serious problem, if its a consortium of democratic countries controlling it - you have the problem of delegation, likely many of these member countries haggling about jurisdictions and obligations to where the thing would be a huge nashing mess and the fighting would cost the world billions upon billions, let alone squabbles between countries over who's jurisdiction a pirate was in, or certain squabbles where one member nation of the consortium may want to stick their thumb in the eye of another member of the consortium for...say... levying a tariff on their corn, grain, or wheat export, and when that kind of pettiness happens in a needed coalition it happens at the expense of the integrity of what the consortium is there for to begin with.