The Terrible Sweal

Oh come on! You can't seriously analyze 'the left' if you're sweeping in the defeat of communism with a resurgence in the likes of Bill Clinton and Tony Blair! What do you think money is, and how is that inconsistent with the concept of power?

If the Bible people want to stand outside citizenship courts and pass out Bibles, that's their right. I don't think it's the business of the state, however, to make any room for anyone's hand-outs within the places or practices of citizenship proceedings.

I don't see how changing the languages change the basic constitutional facts. If you mean: would people in the territory called 'Alberta' try to become a separate country if they were surrounded by French speakers? then it's to me it's still impossible to conceive of 'Alberta' being the same 'Alberta' as we have today, so such conjecture would be purely fanciful ... in the realm of "Yeah, but if they were all robots..."

It becomes free when government withdraws from it. Then define 'government'. I think you'll find that there are plenty of things other than government that prevent a free market from arising. This argument could also be used to abolish the whole criminal justice system. After all, if I kill you, imprisoning me won't bring you back to life. That's based on a negative-welfare outcome. Or we could accept that hurting me is a deterrent to others that might do what I did, and that the threat of hurting me may be enough to stop me doing what I was going to do in the first place. So, why do you prefer the negative-welfare method? I don't understand how government micromanagement comes into all this. I don't know what you mean by 'government micromanagement', or why you use that term here. I am discussing the utility of appropriate regulation, not 'micromanagement'. I think you're having a persistent problem discerning between what your ideology tells you I'm saying and what I'm actually saying. Two things: 1-such purported distinction between 'criminal' and other sorts of law is specious, from an economic perspective; 2-you have already admitted that criminal law is based on a negative-welfare outcome. As such, I ask you: if indeed regulation can produce a positive-welfare option, would you not prefer it? That's not the type of regulation I mean. I'm talking about regulation relating to participant information and transaction costs, whereas that example relates to allocation of negative externalities (i.e. primarily affecting non-participants). Has nothing to do with what I'm talking about.

I don't understand the question, August. I can't see why changing the language makes any difference to the constitutional reality. Alberta can't separate from Canada, so your question is moot.

But that position begs the question. How does the market become free in the first place? Hurting you doesn't help me. Your whole example is based on a negative-welfare outcome. Define "wrongdoing." You defined 'unfair advantage' already, that was fine. What conditions? I have challenged you to provide an example, but you haven't provided any. I think you need to re-read the thread. I'm not trying to be obscure, I'm actually trying to be clear. Consider any basic future contract: You give me Z today, and I'll give you W tomorrow. Whatever my true intentions may be about honoring the contract, the contract will only happen based on (all other things being equal) your belief about my intentions and capabilities. If you can't price the risk of my default, you won't trade. This is an invalid example. You and I are not on a desert island, never will be on a desert island and even if we were on a desert island, would not be concerned with trading fish for coconuts. Cheap evasion, but funny.

Then perhaps you will cite some of this "strong evidence." In the meantime I will give you two examples that prove the contrary. I refer you to my reply to August, above. As to your examples: 1) I am not advocating any and all indescriminate regulation. I am merely pointing out that it is useful under appropriate conditions. Accordingly, using a small list of example, even if they were germane, would not refute my argument very well. 2) Your examples again focus on the macro-economic level, and thus really don't meet the point I'm making. I know you are trying to lead me to say "government" but actually, you will find that the market is quite able to regulate itself in this regard. No, look ... The market is itself composed of the reciprocal packages of rights underpinned by the rule of law( i.e. through the state).

The free market doesn't always work or it sometimes leads to monopoly, perhaps temporary. In these cases, the government in theory could improve things. In practice, it doesn't and the evidence is clear that government regulation makes things worse. Swell, do you have contrary evidence? I've already explained the basis of my argument: -(relatively) 'free markets' exist today where before they did not, ergo something explains how they came to be; -government regulation exists to a greater or lesser extent in all 'free markets', ergo something explains why it does; -economics tells us that prohibitive information costs will impair the formation of a market; -regulation can reduce the information costs for those to whom it is prohibitive. The best regulation reduces the information cost, less perfect regulation will redistribute it, poor regulation increases it. Note that even if some potential market participants (e.g. sellers) have costs redistributed to them, this may nevertheless enable the market to form if the buyers' cost is no longer prohibitive; -any market where a prohibition on wrongdoing cannot be enforced is prohibitively expensive and/or not a 'free market' at all, therefore any 'free market' by definition represents the successful application of a regime of regulation. This is all false. The definition of 'property' is based on complex history You're talking about something different than I am. I am talking about the enforcement of property rights, not the historical definition of it. The state enforces a definition of it, i.e. the state's definition. Whatever the state enforces as property, is property. Whatever the state will not enforce is not property. Where do you go when I simply, ultimately refuse to pay up? Whatever the state enforces as property, is property. Whatever the state will not enforce is not property. Law does not predate lawmakers. If it's just you and me on a desert island and we make a deal: You give me a coconut today and I'll give you a fish tomorrow, and tonight I enjoy the coconut, but I won't give you your fish, where is the contract law then?

You describe a milieu of general uncertainty. Accordingly, I submit that the best technique for operating within this milieu are those that best allow for the possibility of uncertainty. I take it that you purpose the 'rubric' to be based on this: No. A purposive rubric would establish the objectives, purpose, raison-d'etre by which we could tell whether a choice has been effective or ineffective. Let's say we settle on the purposive rubric our earliest ancestors may have had: Today, no-one dies; everyone eats. I'll change my term: instead of science, read: systematic rational technology. You're going for the metaphysical again. A faith is not required, merely an agreement. You say the sea is green, I say it is purple. We can still sail together, right?

Damned people! Who do they think they are?

The whole pattern is complex and depends on a lot of references threaded together, ... Another way of saying that is 'It's not really there.' Let's look then ... Well, to my reading those passages simply restate the bare bones that Adam sinned and Christ died for it, adding little about the underpinning of such a rubric. So, could you possibly elucidate how those passages are supposed to shed any light on where you get your elaborate legalistic superstitions about "federation" and such?

What a fascinating paragraph. I believe both questions were put, but whatever ... Please don't be so specious. The question was about source of God's authority TO APPOINT ADAM. Your complaint is baseless, and your quote still deficient in reply. Who says creating something grants authority over it? This is the support for the claim of the authenticity of the gospels??? That they were a popular form of literature. I guess that makes mystery novels the next religion, does it? "However the gospel may be defended, it cannot be defended by concessions which deprive it of its essence or which detract from our Saviour's title to be called The Word of God." -F.F. Bruce You have blundered there, my friend. The demand is that you provide some positive evidence to support your belief is reasonable. In the post your reference, your point at #8 begins: "The fundamental evidence is Jesus Christ. But we have to start with the Bible. ..." From there you expatiated at some length on contents of the Bible. Unfortunately, none of this is evidence of anything but your discoursive deficiencies. Fix this in your mind: argument from authority is not valid, particluarly argument from one's own authority.

You describe the perspective of what I'll call 'futile relativism', i.e. a pessimism about the hope for any meaning so deep as to amount to philosophical nihilism. This is both res ipsa loquitur and irrefutable (but not undeniable) at the level of metaphysics. My interest is at the level of pragmatics, however. At the pragmatic level, we can usefully compare the plausibility of assumptions between, for example, chemistry and theoretical physics, or modern economics and libertarian idealism, or skepticism and belief. Still at the pragmatic level, we could also compare utility and effectiveness of these systems to eachother if we define a purposive rubric with which to test them.

Now that was efficiency. Today, patronage is all bogged down in with red tape and corporate middlemen.

The theory was proven wrong in 1974 when the advent of stagflation proved Keynesian economics wrong, completely refuting his central claim that high unemployment and high inflation could never occur at the same time. Keynsian macroeconomics is not the theory I'm talking about at all. I'm talking about market microeconomics, particularly relating to transaction costs and information. In this area there is strong evidence in favor of the utility of (appropriate) regulation to improve efficiency. No, it does not. Any policy that directly violates the rights of the competitor is unfair. In the race, that would be tripping him. In business, it would be theft of his capital. Any policy that directly affects only you is fair. In the race, that would be sprinting harder. In business, it would be lowering your prices. So you acknowledge the necessity of at least that standard. Now, who promulgates and enforces these rules? What on earth ever makes you think that utter nonsense? I don't believe anything of the sort! My position stands firmly on the same understanding of unfair as yours: "unfair advantage is only gained when one party violates the fundamental rights of another party - the right to life, the right to property, the right to free speech etc."

Well, I voted that 'justice was served', but that's only part of the story. I think Svend was treated appropriatedly, but repudiate the manner in which the judiciary often holds two standards of justice. Svend and other dignitarians who get themselves into trouble obtain a special status called, in law, 'punished enough'. (Ah, the Punished Enough! To be among this elite category, you must commit an greivous wrong, such that in a lesser person would result in a sentence to hard time. But you must do so from a position of such grace and influence that to lose it is deemed (by your fellows who still have it) to be so terrible that no more harm must be permitted to come to you.) No, the problem wasn't that Svend was given community service and a conditional discharge, the problem is that someone of lesser stature might well have been punished too harshly in similar circumstances.

My time begins with Trudeau as PM. He certainly beats everyone since then, no problem at all. But hey, maybe Paul Martin will surprise me after all. As for premiers, it's harder to say -- Davis presided over some pretty good times for Ontario, but was it his doing? Campbell in PEI did a lot of good. Likewise McKenna and Lord both in NB, lately. Levesque is right up there too. It's easier to pick the worst premier(s). Duplessis. Then Harris and anyone from BC or NS.

A proposition often expressed among vocal theists is that morality comes from and/or depends upon religion. I would say that this proposition is wrong on two levels, but correct on a third. It is incorrect when it is meant in the sense that religion or religious belief is required in order to define and inculcate what is 'good' and abhor what is 'evil'. It is also incorrect if it is intended to suggest that religion can claim to have a comprehensive or valid grasp of the concepts of 'good' and 'evil'. However, if 'morality' is defined, generically, as simply such representations as to 'good' and 'evil' as religion may dispose itself to provide, then , ipso facto, morality comes from and is dependent on religion. This, of course, leaves any rubric of 'morality' completely subject to the same criticism as the religion(s) themselves -- irrationality, inutility, and invalidity, the True Trinity of Belief. In contrast to such vapid 'morality', stands the concept of ethics -- a philosophy or science of right and wrong.

Isn't that what the Pope said to Martin Luther? Or was it the other way around? Well ... there's only one solution: massive killing on all sides.

I don't see how. You will have to explain how you see that in more detail. I am saying that your own formulation includes the recognition that one participant may take unfair advantage of another, but your conclusion ignores the need to address that problem. ...The theory of which you speak, like the theory of a non-heliocentric solar system, does not fit the empirical facts and has never been proven true. In fact, it has been repeatedly proven wrong. Therefore, the theory is wrong. The theory has been proven right. Persisently.

Ah. So what you are saying is that anti-trust law is based not upon incorrect empirical evidence but upon a flawed theory. No, what I am saying is that the theory is correct: government/state intervention may sometimes be useful in improving market efficiency. That is what explains its existence.

But look, here is the very nub ... The contingency I emphasized in quoting you is not taken into account in your conclusion.

"Cockburn, ranked first in the world ... " came second. Hurrah! We're closing in on Georgia and Slovakia now! Tied with Zimbabwe!

16 = 13 NDP math?

What do you mean by "rule of law"? I would define it as "property rights" and "contract law". The former is typically enforced by the State (with varying degree of success) and the latter is largely non-State. What do you mean by equality before the law? Got me there. Most contract arbitration is conducted in private courts according to mutually acceptable rules. In our modern society all law is premised on the state's promulgation and enforcement. Property exists because the state enforces it. Contracts take their forms because the courts will enforce them that way. 'Private' arbitrations apply the laws as they exist and are enforceable thru the courts because statutes provide for it. The 407 is evidence of a modern private road of which there were many in the past. Your example of traffic regulations is more convention: think of left/right hand drives. It is in the interest of everyone to follow the rules. The 407 is a very poor example of non-state action, and I don't think I need to delve into why. Regarding traffic rules, your position overlooks a couple of important things: determining a convention may be a long and costly process which government action can abbreviate (e.g. traffic laws); and the significance of enforcement the state provides to maintain the coherence of the convention. No, it's different. On the contrary, government regulation has given people a false sense of confidence. This has encouraged reckless behaviour because many feel Big Brother will step in and bail us out with other people's money. In Canada, we had Confederation Life. In the US, the Savings and Loan. Why do you say it's a 'false' sense of security? I would say it has given real security which has increased market participation, despite the occasional Confed. Life, confidence overall remains.