Losing respect for Rand Paul

[vulcanlogician]

I have to agree. What more could the Dems do, Thump? Compromise is a two-way street.

[shadow]

There are a surprising number of business opportunities that are more sustainable and less expensive than how things are conventionally done. It makes sense - there's nothing inherently inexpensive about waste. Like, having windows that let out heat is not only bad for the environment, but it's a waste of money.

For the consumer..yes, but not the producer.  There are better margins and a larger market for less efficient windows  That's the problem in a nutshell.

Same thing with renewable energy in 2018 - huge profits to be made there.

-and yet...even limiting oneself to just the sustainable alternatives..the cheaper and comparatively less sustainable products are more profitable.

Wrong and wrong. Usually it's a matter of improved technology. Like I said, it's a new way of thinking about things. Another example: using more efficient light bulbs - they aren't more expensive, just different. Re-using grocery bags instead of wasting a new plastic one every time - now virtually no cost incurred by either the consumer or store. Sending mail digitally instead of printing it and shipping it physically - now virtually no cost incurred by consumer or postal service. In these scenarios, it is simply more economically efficient to do things sustainably.

I can pull up evidence for this tomorrow if you like, but intuitively, why do you assume that the cheapest way of doing things is less efficient? It's not a dichotomy - there is actually a profit margin, and in some cases a massive one, in win-win sustainable endeavors. The free market might not solve all of our sustainability problems, but there's a lot of low-hanging fruit in some industries.

[The Grand Nudger]

When the rest of the world lols at our "left" and reminds us that they're conservatives, or right leaning centrists -at best- ......everywhere else...something is awry.

---

For the consumer..yes, but not the producer.  There are better margins and a larger market for less efficient windows  That's the problem in a nutshell.

-and yet...even limiting oneself to just the sustainable alternatives..the cheaper and comparatively less sustainable products are more profitable.

Wrong and wrong. Usually it's a matter of improved technology.

If you say so, meanwhile, cheaper tech is winning over "better tech" in every category.  The world is chock full of poor people, Shadow.

Like I said, it's a new way of thinking about things.

Yeah..and are -you- planning on coming out of pocket, personally..to educate each and every one of them to think the new way?  Roll that into the cost of your product, and gl with that. I have profound difficulty in educating my consumers so that they are willing to pay the --same- price for a better product. I expect that it will be easier for you..when you get around to it...but I hope you at least realize how much money someone else spent to make that situation a reality...when the day comes.

Another example: using more efficient light bulbs - they aren't more expensive, just different. 

I can get an old bulb for pennies.  30 bucks for the good shit. Sure...I know I save money on my buill, you know that..but that doesn't matter to a person with pennies, instead of 30 bucks. This, is the market reality. It's entirely divorced from any shared ideology or even any long term fact shared between us....and it;s -that- reality that you will have to navigate, if you want to implement sustainability practically. Barring some regulation that impacts the old bulbs...they'll always be with us..and people will just get better and better at producing them. New Tech™ isn't a one way street that only benefits you and I.

[Brian37]

Instead of reading Rand in school, I read More and Plato).

 on Plato. What do you think Plato would think of capitalism? .... (We already know how he would feel about Trump.)

Oh do not get me started on Plato.

Two very smart and wise people soured me on Plato. Not all of his works, but he got knocked down a few pegs when I understood the implications of why on one topic Plato really fucked things up.

BACKSTORY..... A few years ago I bought "The Greatest Show On Earth" by Richard Dawkins. To be honest, the nitty gritty was lost on me, but the preface was not. I do understand the  DNA stuff, but the classification stuff I still have a hard time with. 

ANYWHO, one day I began reading that book. And in Dawkins preface, at first, I didn't get why he was slamming Plato. It frustrated me knowing what I had learned in College about his advocating of questioning. His Allegory Of The Cave and His Apology, where Socrates challenged everyone. I loved that promotion of questioning.

BUT Dawkins in his preface kept talking about Plato's idea of "essence", and I didn't quite get it. Perplexed I ran this by my friend Bob, the guy I am going to fly to Australia on Tuesday. Bob, explained to me that Plato's idea was that questioning was simply about thinking, in that if you just simply thought about something long enough you could find the "essence" of that thing, like "essence of rabbit" or "essence of chair" that perfect thing. Dawkins placed blame on that idea as leading for a chase for political and religious utopias. I look back at what Dawkins wrote, and how Bob explained it to me and I agree.

With all the good some claim Plato created, the one thing Plato really had no benefit of back then, was our modern scientific method, our system of control groups. Point being as smart as Plato was, and as much as he liked questioning everything, he did not have the benefit of our modern quality control 

I think Plato would HATE Trump, but at the same time, Plato sold the idea of "essence' which has become that chase for a utopia which Trump panders to.

[vulcanlogician]

 on Plato. What do you think Plato would think of capitalism? .... (We already know how he would feel about Trump.)

Oh do not get me started on Plato.

Two very smart and wise people soured me on Plato. Not all of his works, but he got knocked down a few pegs when I understood the implications of why on one topic Plato really fucked things up.

BACKSTORY..... A few years ago I bought "The Greatest Show On Earth" by Richard Dawkins. To be honest, the nitty gritty was lost on me, but the preface was not. I do understand the  DNA stuff, but the classification stuff I still have a hard time with. 

ANYWHO, one day I began reading that book. And in Dawkins preface, at first, I didn't get why he was slamming Plato. It frustrated me knowing what I had learned in College about his advocating of questioning. His Allegory Of The Cave and His Apology, where Socrates challenged everyone. I loved that promotion of questioning.

BUT Dawkins in his preface kept talking about Plato's idea of "essence", and I didn't quite get it. Perplexed I ran this by my friend Bob, the guy I am going to fly to Australia on Tuesday. Bob, explained to me that Plato's idea was that questioning was simply about thinking, in that if you just simply thought about something long enough you could find the "essence" of that thing, like "essence of rabbit" or "essence of chair" that perfect thing. Dawkins placed blame on that idea as leading for a chase for political and religious utopias. I look back at what Dawkins wrote, and how Bob explained it to me and I agree.

With all the good some claim Plato created, the one thing Plato really had no benefit of back then, was our modern scientific method, our system of control groups. Point being as smart as Plato was, and as much as he liked questioning everything, he did not have the benefit of our modern quality control 

I think Plato would HATE Trump, but at the same time, Plato sold the idea of "essence' which has become that chase for a utopia which Trump panders to.

A lot of interpretations of Plato don't render him as Socratic as he actually is. To read Plato's works carefully suggests that they were more about searching for the truth than finding it. If anyone else throughout history took it otherwise, Plato can hardly be blamed for that. We can learn a lot from figures like Hereclitus, even though he was blindly grasping for knowledge which we take for granted. Hereclitus, and Plato, are best understood as clear thinkers, not reliable sources of knowledge.

[Brian37]

Oh do not get me started on Plato.

Two very smart and wise people soured me on Plato. Not all of his works, but he got knocked down a few pegs when I understood the implications of why on one topic Plato really fucked things up.

BACKSTORY..... A few years ago I bought "The Greatest Show On Earth" by Richard Dawkins. To be honest, the nitty gritty was lost on me, but the preface was not. I do understand the  DNA stuff, but the classification stuff I still have a hard time with. 

ANYWHO, one day I began reading that book. And in Dawkins preface, at first, I didn't get why he was slamming Plato. It frustrated me knowing what I had learned in College about his advocating of questioning. His Allegory Of The Cave and His Apology, where Socrates challenged everyone. I loved that promotion of questioning.

BUT Dawkins in his preface kept talking about Plato's idea of "essence", and I didn't quite get it. Perplexed I ran this by my friend Bob, the guy I am going to fly to Australia on Tuesday. Bob, explained to me that Plato's idea was that questioning was simply about thinking, in that if you just simply thought about something long enough you could find the "essence" of that thing, like "essence of rabbit" or "essence of chair" that perfect thing. Dawkins placed blame on that idea as leading for a chase for political and religious utopias. I look back at what Dawkins wrote, and how Bob explained it to me and I agree.

With all the good some claim Plato created, the one thing Plato really had no benefit of back then, was our modern scientific method, our system of control groups. Point being as smart as Plato was, and as much as he liked questioning everything, he did not have the benefit of our modern quality control 

I think Plato would HATE Trump, but at the same time, Plato sold the idea of "essence' which has become that chase for a utopia which Trump panders to.

A lot of interpretations of Plato don't render him as Socratic as he actually is. To read Plato's works carefully suggests that they were more about searching for the truth than finding it. If anyone else throughout history took it otherwise, Plato can hardly be blamed for that. We can learn a lot from figures like Hereclitus, even though he was blindly grasping for knowledge which we take for granted. Hereclitus, and Plato, are best understood as clear thinkers, not reliable sources of knowledge.

You might be missing my point. It was "essence" that lead them to search for the truth sure, but the lack of quality control of control groups and compare and contrast, undermined that idea 

You cant square in the modern world with what we know now "clear thinkers" and "not reliable".

Today we have the methodology that can, when applied neutrally and ethically, that acts as a good filter that weeds out personal bias. Plato was only "clear" in the idea of challenging social norms. But he still did not have modern ideas of control groups or peer review. If you chase an "essence" you are only chasing your own idea of what you think should be, not a neutral observation.

[Thumpalumpacus]

I agree that sometimes compromise is bad. But the absolute refusal to search for and find common ground, instead preferring a scorched-earth approach, is deadly.

Compromise is not the same as bending over. Done well, it's more like a nice 69.

Profound rightward drift says that scorched earth politics are a single party platform.  I can't see how fellating the hard right any further will yield anything but misery..we're already at point break.  Compromise is not a virtue in a vacuum.

I'm not personally interested in 69ing, or being 69ed..by those very fine people.  I'm waiting for them to die, and I wont have to wait long.

"Profound rightward drift"?

We have living, breathing examples here on this forum of profound leftward drift ... and they're hardly the loudest voices on the left, no? I mean, who the hell pays attention to lil ole AF?

We suffer from an evacuated middle. Finger-pointing is more a symptom than a cure.

[The Grand Nudger]

I wasn't aware that anyone here was a member of congress. There's no evacuated middle..that shits crowded as hell, that's where the dems live..and the middle keeps moving right trying to poach voters that will never vote for them.

The Leftist Kenyan Who Came to Destroy America with his soviet style communism was only barely left of center, and that..only in the peculiar beast of -american- politics..... and only when he wasn't busy being a full blown right wing nutjob in an attempt to "compromise". The drone warlord and deporter in chief who massively extended the surveillance state while privatizing profits and socializing losses. That's as left as we get it, here in the US of A....

Who did we have before that, from the dem side? Clinton..the man who literally made his nut by coopting right wing party planks. Meanwhile, two consecutive republican presidents lose the popular vote, and a republican minority engineers control of vast swathes of dem majority districts through superb gamesmanship. Tell me more about leftward drift, lol. At some point a person has to conceded that they cannot reason with the unreasonable, or compromise with people who are not interested in compromise. We passed that point a long time ago, but people keep trying to convince themselves and others that we need to keep trying, and so we keep drifting, and the lunatic fringe is laughing all the way to the bank.

[Minimalist]

Profound rightward drift says that scorched earth politics are a single party platform.  I can't see how fellating the hard right any further will yield anything but misery..we're already at point break.  Compromise is not a virtue in a vacuum.

I'm not personally interested in 69ing, or being 69ed..by those very fine people.  I'm waiting for them to die, and I wont have to wait long.

"Profound rightward drift"?

We have living, breathing examples here on this forum of profound leftward drift ... and they're hardly the loudest voices on the left, no? I mean, who the hell pays attention to lil ole AF?

We suffer from an evacuated middle. Finger-pointing is more a symptom than a cure.

There is a profound difference between the population and the asswipes who get elected.

A recent survey found 64% in favor of legalizing pot.
62% favor gay marriage.
90% support background checks for gun purchases.
59% support abortion in all or most cases.
91% support criminal justice reform.
69% favor the Paris Climate Agreement.

None of these things can get a sniff in Congress but a further study indicated that

13% of democrats and 36% of republicunts favored "fracking" .... and guess what we have all over the fucking place.

[Thumpalumpacus]

"Profound rightward drift"?

We have living, breathing examples here on this forum of profound leftward drift ... and they're hardly the loudest voices on the left, no? I mean, who the hell pays attention to lil ole AF?

We suffer from an evacuated middle. Finger-pointing is more a symptom than a cure.

There is a profound difference between the population and the asswipes who get elected.

A recent survey found 64% in favor of legalizing pot.
62% favor gay marriage.
90% support background checks for gun purchases.
59% support abortion in all or most cases.
91% support criminal justice reform.
69% favor the Paris Climate Agreement.

None of these things can get a sniff in Congress but a further study indicated that

13% of democrats and 36% of republicunts favored "fracking" .... and guess what we have all over the fucking place.

Well, of course there's a disconnect between the populace and the politicians. The politicians are paid-for and very loyal to their benefactors.

My point is that the thing that's doing us in is unrepentant fractiousness. Not just in the government, not just between the politicians, but between the people as well.

I'm under no illusions about who owns the government. But I think it's fair to point out that it is the citizens who permit that state of affairs. And so long as they are split about irrelevant shit, the political class gets to serve their masters unnoticed.