Your "refutations" are, for the most part, self-defeating, so I will allow others to do their own research and come to their own conclusions rather than addressing each one. Suffice it to say that gun-control, in the U.S. at least, starts as an anti-minority measure (not unlike the "war on drugs" and the "war on poverty") and spurs on a "dark economy" (or "underground economy"), not unlike what (eventually) felled the Soviet Union. It's not dissimilar to what's going on in Puerto Rico and, to some extent, the Bay Area (except NorCal doesn't have the feds all over them like Puerto Rico does, so violent crime is high in PR and low in Mendocino).

Is it purely a "coincidence" that Puerto Rico has a higher murder rate than almost anywhere else in the U.S, while citing as many as 50%+ of the people on "public assistance," is an epicenter on the "war on drugs" and has about the strictest gun control laws of anywhere in the U.S.?

But don't worry! Here's some good news!
"They found that a country like Luxembourg, which bans all guns has a murder rate that is 9 times higher than Germany, where there are 30,000 guns per 100,000 people. They also cited a study by the U.S.National Academy of Sciences, which studied 253 journal articles, 99 books, 43 government publications, and it failed to find one gun control initiative that worked. . . . The Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, conceded that the results they found in their report was not what they expected to find."

I guess they didn't account for the fact that outlaws don't really care about laws! The nerve of some people...

That Dershowitz guy is a total rat. He's the one who brought state power down on Norman Finkelstein.
He's a cynical, self serving dishonest psychopath playing at respectable academic.
It does not surprise me at all he's the MAN's choice to try to shout down Greenwald. Harvard's credibility is shot to pieces.

Drachen, I'll help out although I'm pretty sure Payback won't understand. It will be fun to see what comes back...

A study done at Harvard University indicates that this is the biggest cause of bankruptcy, representing 62% of all personal bankruptcies. One of the interesting caveats of this study shows that 78% of filers had some form of health insurance, thus bucking the myth that medical bills affect only the uninsured.

I guess I should clarify; I think that the pace of our advances is being bottlenecked by our current system because we (as nations) continue to exploit via a relentless focus on profit rather than try to actually spread knowledge and tech as best we can.

A free education system for the world would be incredibly easy to achieve with our current technology, but as nations we don't even try to aim for such a thing. As universities and other education institutions (publishing companies, etc), we have no incentive to truly aim for this in the current paradigm because it reverses profit growth (which, honestly, in the case of education, is pretty much all over-inflated anyway). There's no malicious intent, no conspiracy, and noble goals abound, but we're doing it at a snail's pace out of selfishness.

Individual people act much more nobly than large, well-established institutions. You see a rather strong trend of such large groups behaving closer to the "rational" approach from economic game theory, i.e. the one where self-preservation and gain are maximized first and foremost. If we just rely on our institutions to fix the problems at their root or think that the incidental improvements tied to increased tech and knowledge are being nurtured even half as well as they could be, I think we'd be gravely mistaken.

I think we both ultimately hope for the same outcome, but we clearly disagree on the extent to which our current society(/societies) effectively move towards those outcomes. I would personally like to see us double down on those things that help move us forward.

EDIT: Some examples of ways we're bullshitting ourselves and not doing half as much as we could, for your pleasure.

Princeton University's motto is "In the service of the nation and of all nations" (probably slightly off on the phrasing, sorry), and they have BILLIONS of dollars of endowment. If they and their alumni network took this motto seriously, with their knowledge of business, tech, and science, they could easily bring entire nations out of poverty by simply helping local people adapt tech in sustainable ways to provide food for their population more easily, institute strong education access, and more. Harvard, Oxford, all the other big names are in similar situations. They can do SO MUCH, but just do little projects while answering to their boards about making sure to keep the cash flow positive, keep the endowment growing, keep using alumni donations to pay for things where possible. It's bullshit.

Most large organized religions are also lazy about service. There are many who do seriously just aim at food and medical aid, but most are more interested in conversions and extra tithes than eliminating poverty. How many Christian missionaries of various sects are there around the world? Of them, how many devote their missions to actual service of everyone they can to show their religion through their works as opposed to just focusing on bringing people into the fold via preaching? Additionally, the old "teach a man to fish" concept comes into play here; giving food is good, but we need to be helping people help themselves as well so that they can thrive.

I know shit is very complicated and the answers aren't easy, but we can EASILY do better than this.

> "One way that voting does work well: vote for greater states' rights."

Check out the Tenth Amendment Center.

> "Otherwise, democracy is just making compromises that please nobody."

The smaller the political unit, the fewer the compromises. What is the optimum size for you? For me, one person. In some cases, a family or group.

Do you know of the book "The Human Scale"? (I think Kirkpatrick, who wrote that book, maybe one of those rare state secessionist progressive/leftist.)

> "Robert Putnam at Harvard found cultural diversity lowers trust and social capital, increasing the selfishness of voters that you describe."

Would you consider yourself Right-wing?

> "I'd support socialists' right to try to turn their states into socialist utopias, as long as they support my right to try to turn other states into meritocratic utopias."

That, for sure, is an improvement over federal rule! What would you consider to be a meritocratic utopia? Is that like what China wants to be?

> "Then we can test which governments yield more improved metrics."

I'm in favor of this. I am no fan of states, whether a federal union or the individual ones, but yes, this is an improvement over the monolithic federal government. But why stop at states? Why not scale it down to counties and municipalities? I would even go smaller than that! (But, sure, any downsizing is welcome.)

I would go down to neighborhoods and households and all the way down to individuals. But again, any downsizing is welcome.

@Trancecoach

One way that voting does work well: vote for greater states' rights.

Otherwise, democracy is just making compromises that please nobody. Robert Putnam at Harvard found living with those who disagree with you lowers trust and social capital, increasing the selfishness of voters that you describe.

I'd support socialists' right to try to turn their states into socialist utopias, as long as they support my right to try to turn other states into meritocratic utopias.

Then we can test which governments yield more improved metrics.

And what you just said was relevant to anything other than your own narrow preconceived notions of what is or is not a worthwhile use of someone's time and property?

What I was doing was taking your initial argument and demonstrating the absurdity at it's core by extrapolating it's logical consequences. This is what one does when one has been taught to argue at a level beyond pre-school debating classes. I haven't just "read some Chomsky" I have spent my entire academic career studying Philosophy and linguistics/rhetoric.

Chomsky and I actually disagree on many things & frankly the fact you would choose him and not say Jacques Fresco, Jean Jacques Rousseau or Slavoj Zizek etc. with whom my beliefs have a much greater affinity suggest that you yourself have a paper thin grounding in the political and philosophical subjects you are trying to pull me up on. (and to be clear I don't fully agree with any of those people either, my political philosophy is based upon my own conclusions built up over years of study and consideration)


So lets be clear, generating $7000 of income is to you a pointless activity? (a point you have consistently refused to acknowledge as it undermines your entire argument). What about trying to entertain people? Are all attempts at comedy fruitless because they didn't make YOU laugh?

"Immature", "funny" and "necessary" are all highly subjective concepts.

Clearly YOU didn't find it funny, others (about 7 fucking million in fact!) did.

Clearly YOU thought the video creator lacked maturity, plenty of people would regard his sense of timing, context and dare I say it low level satire as indicative of a potentially very mature and cognicent individual. (not saying he is but the evidence supports either notion)

But most of all NOTHING in the universe is demonstrably necessary, not even the universe itself. The very concept of necessity or usefulness is entirely subjective in it's nature. We as humans invented it, nature has no such qualms, it simply exists and continues to do so (unless you wan't to bring God into this at which point my eyes will likely glaze over).

This did start as your observation regarding the "pointless" destruction of a phone, an observation I was suggesting had it's basis in little more than your own narrow preconceptions about what is and is not a laudable use of ones time and resources.

The point about other evils in the world was an (unsuccessful) attempt to point out the absurdity of getting your knickers in a twist about something so trivial it's almost funny. What you consider a serious problem on the global level specifically is less important than the simple fact that this dude smashing up a phone is utterly negligible by comparison to virtually anything one might care to mention. The best counter you have here far as I can see is to suggest that everything is pointless/subjective which would naturally be totally self defeating. (or to backtrack and redefine your position as one of mere distaste and aesthetic preference rather than an objective truth as you did)

Maybe your a Randist or an anarcho-capitalist or something. That's fine and while I might disagree with the premise of those positions their proponents would support my core notion just the same. i.e. getting angry and this dude smashing up his phone is by a country mile the most inconsequential and asinine point of contention in this whole discussion.


Also to be clear, I utterly reject the entire notion of the left/right wing paradigm and you're attempt to once again put my argument in a box of your own design (i.e. straw man again) is not going to work.

I'm not anti capitalist I'm anti Nepotism and Cronyism. My own ideas about how to fix the world involve both capitalist and socialist principles (along with replacing "democracy" with "meritocracy"). If you had enquired further rather than just generalising my suggestions into a straw man to support your own argument you may have had the opportunity to realise this and engage with the ideas intellectually (rather than as a reactionary).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subjectivity
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objectivity_(philosophy)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fallacies

Learn to think critically instead of dressing up your own prejudices as objective facts (and attacking the arguer instead of the argument itself).

Some might consider an inability to separate subjective preconceptions from objective facts a far greater sign of immaturity. One of the reasons children are considered immature is because they cannot tell or control where their own Ego stops and other peoples begin. (though naturally this is itself a subjective notion and should probably never be defined as an objective truth either)

I don't expect you to respond like a Harvard professor but please at least engage with the content of the argument rather than painting me into a box and trying to assassinate my character. I'm sure you're probably a reasonably intelligent person and I'm always happy to back down or take back arguments if I'm presented with a well thought out reason why I might be wrong etc.

@Trancecoach

I never said people don't have self control, but if it were as simple as "eat less and exercise," no one would be unhealthy or obese. Instead, we're looking at a majority of the population that's overweight.

http://www.nourishinteractive.com/system/assets/general/images/nutrition-facts/portion-control-larger-portions.png

I'm not saying that it's the only reason for weight problems, but as the original article I posted points out "No one eats one and one quarter of an apple." Portion size increases provide correlative data that coincide with weight problems in developed countries. I've yet to see any data that suggests that people in the world, collectively, suddenly have less self control.

I'm no dietician, but I'd say that the low-fat food crazes of the 1980s and 90s played a role as well: http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/low-fat/

Typical low-fat options replace the fat (and protein in some cases) with sugar which is burned quicker by the body.

I could go on and on, but I stand on the position that it's NOT just a simple matter of self control. AND even if it is, people have varying levels of self control that need to be accounted for: http://cess.nyu.edu/caplin/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/Measuring-Self-Control-Problems.pdf

Surely, you don't think everyone has the same level of self control as you?


Edit: One last thing, sometimes people rely on food labels to restrict their diet and come up short because nutrition facts are often unreliable: http://nutritionovereasy.com/2011/04/can-you-trust-the-nutrition-facts/ Self control without good information is a bad mix.

@budzos
@lucky760
@Truckchase

It wasn't a clinical study, I think the point was merely to show that it was possible for a overweight, borderline obese man to eat only MCD menu items, be satiated and maintain the calorific deficit needed to gradually lose weight, provided basic exercise was maintained.

I don't think the point was to stress that changing to MCD made his diet better (in that case adding exercise is obviously cheating), just to show that it is possible to lose weight and eat MCD.

Taking this as a reference for calorie burned:

http://www.health.harvard.edu/newsweek/Calories-burned-in-30-minutes-of-leisure-and-routine-activities.htm

45 mins walking is about 300 calories burned. Considering that teaching is primarily a pretty sedentary job (outside of class), that's only freeing up an extra 15% of your roughly daily intake needs of 2000 calories.

Not huge. I think the main takeaway here is, junk food or not, if your goal is losing weight (ignoring long term health complications), then it's all about portion control.

@JiggaJonson

As above, I think this is the main issue. I usually want half the portion that take away food outlets offer. Pricing structure then distorts the cost of the smallest size to make the larger 'value meal' much more attractive. One reason why I tend to prefer sashimi eat outs.

I would think that if you were really interested in learning anything (be it about private law enforcement or anything else), you'd know how to manage your own discomfort in order to read something fully without being so reactive and defensive, which only serves to confirm your biases.

You say that "most people don't think of taxation as theft," but such a notion is actually irrelevant to the point here. Did you sign a social contract? I certainly didn't. There's no such thing (and to believe in one is to be living in a fantasy world).

Look: No one is forcing you to read anything you don't want to read. It's your right to learn or not learn whatever you want. In fact, you shouldn't read it (as if I stood to gain anything by your reading it). The ignorance here (in my view) is your own and only you stand to benefit by addressing it. Whatever your life circumstances, they're your problem and you certainly don't need anyone else's (particularly my) input on the matter.

Your comments... well.. They speak for themselves. I wish you all the best and know that if you are happy with your situation then I have nothing to contribute to it and if you are not, then you have what you deserve.

People who cling to dogma or sarcasm aren't likely to change their views regardless of the 'evidence.' They have a different agenda. And that's their prerogative. And someone will always exploit it (if it hasn't been exploited already).

Many people read Murphy's work (along with Mises, Higgs, etc.) including Harvard professors and the heads of central banks, and the kings of various political persuasions. How many people read your views on economics, or care about what you think is "worth reading" or not?

I shouldn't give you this outlet here to feel important (as if this debate served any other purpose), but i don't want to be an enabler.

This probably requires some background. The details of the story are not totally clear, and won't be pending an investigation. The facts are that Jonathan Martin left the team after what was described as a "breakdown" in the cafeteria. Apparently the team was pranking him by banding together and refusing to sit with him. This is the sort of behavior you see. Afterwards allegations of physical beating and voice mails were revealed that suggested Richie Incognito (I know, ironic name) was the primary perpetrator of the abuses.

Focus has been on the use of the racial epithet in question. Frankly, I think this is a red herring. I, like many of you, don't really care about the use of that word. That said, I think Shannon is correct in stating there are signs of something deeper here. That is, real actual issues of race relations.

You've heard here that Incognito is thought of as an "honorary black" in that locker room. More background is that Jonathan Martin would have been the third generation in his family to graduate from Harvard, but he decided to go to Stanford instead. It's been suggested that Martin was ostracized more for this reason than anything. He just came from a completely different place than most of the other guys playing. At its root, the allegation is that they made him feel uncomfortable for coming from a wealthy black family.

What I find much more upsetting than any epithet is what I interpreted to be a continuation of the sort of attitude Shannon was talking about. By implying he had used an incorrect word rather than emotionally flubbing its pronunciation the implication, to me, is that his intellect is not being respected. Since this clip is most definitely about race, and that is a common stereotype about black men, I couldn't help but wonder if his skin color biased your judgements. That, to me, is much more troubling than throwing around nigger, fag, or kyke with your friends.

In the end, I think this whole story will blow over. It's just as likely to me that Martin was replaced as a starter, and is now trying to lawyer up (call his parents) to cash out his career. We won't know until they look into it. Still, in this context, I was surprised people here of all places would belittle this sort of commentary, and by extension the commentator. It's disrespectful to the message if nothing else. If you don't find discussions of race relations worth being dignified then I guess I think you're kind of a dick even if you aren't a bigot.

You bet your bippy ... though you neglected to mention my MD from Harvard Medical School!

This is partly because such studies are hard, and rare. The most commonly cited one (which is unusual, as you point out) is the Nurses Study.

An interesting one mentioned by the TV show "Supersizers go..." was studies into the effects of wartime rationing in WWII London (the first episode of the series actually).

Since they have put up all the episodes on yt, I can even link to it: http://youtu.be/cCddAKnf2LI?t=7m



As they point out, although certain details change, the basic advice has stayed the same for the past 50 years... eat less sugar and fat, eat less meat, eat more fruit and vegetables. No matter which trend is in at the moment, eating too much processed food is always discouraged and, with few exceptions, eating more fruit and vegetables is usually encouraged.

Re-watching the end of the episode though, reminds me that it wasn't actually the last few minutes where they mentioned the research, it was earlier. Rats. Somewhere in the episode they did make mention of it, I'm sure of it, but I only found the summary at the end.

In his short and readable book "In defence of food", Michael Pollan also mentions research by Canadian dentist (!) Weston Price, published in 1939 and titled "Nutrition and Physical Degeneration". Price studied the diets of various isolated populations that had not been exposed to modern food, and found that humans are quite adaptable and can thrive on a wide variety of diets... sadly, the Western diet does not appear to be one of them.

In the same volume he also points out that you should avoid foods which make health claims... if you look in the supermarket, the healthiest foods are likely to be lumped together in the fresh fruit and vegetable section making no claims at all. If you want a book which provides references and studies, that one is worth reading. I'm sure he is not 100% correct in every claim he makes, but like I said, the book is short and readable.

Whenever I hear someone quote some Harvard Law prof or someone touting the idea that framers of the constitution did not mean for folks to own guns for anything but a militia, I have to simply laugh. It's obvious what they meant and if you brought back a group of school children from the Revolutionary war period and let them have look at the state of affairs of this little experiment, they'd wonder what has been put into the water supply to render seemingly intelligent people of today, hopelessly confused and gullible.

A well-regulated militia: The 18th-century equivalent to the U.S. Armed Forces perhaps??

DC v. Heller (2008)
U.S. v. Miller (1939)
U.S. v. Cruikshank (1875)

A few Supreme court rulings above to peruse and lest we forget, in order to change the document, you do so by amendment. the 18th made alcohol illegal and the 22nd made it fine for adults to drink alcohol again....a right and privilege of people since the motherfucking beginning of civilization...HELLO!!???

Yeah, they can take our guns, O' America and the dark hour (if it comes in my lifetime) everyone signs off on it is the day I move to fucking Canada Mexico, Belize, Nicaragua, COSTA RICA??....Fuck, anywhere white people aren't retarded drunk on 21st Century Kool-Aid HIstory with a government years away from buggering them!

May have to tunnel into the earth's crust to find such a place as more insane the world becomes daily.

@jimnms

I'll address by paragraphs:

(1)

The reason I suggested that you are implying that the US is more violent by nature is because statistically it is far more murderous than a country of its socio-economic development should be. Have a look at Nationmaster tables of GDP/capita and compare than to murders/capita in terms of where the US sits.

If we take the view that you are suggesting that we should simply reduce violence globally then that is a laudable goal but it would suggest that the US is abysmally failing at this currently. I happen to believe this reason is gun availability. I see no reason to believe this abysmal failure comes from gross police incompetence or any other plausible factor, rather the gun ownership and availability that sticks out like a sore thumb when you compared to other countries such as those in the G8.

(2)

I think that we would be both agree that there are more gun enthusiasts in rural areas. Many of those would also own collections of guns for recreation rather than merely what self protection would require. The article below cites a study from 2007 by Harvard that says 20% own 65% of the nation's guns.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2012/12/19/tragedy-stresses-multiple-gun-ownership-trend-in-us/1781285/

There is no reason to suspect that these people are any more violent than your non gun-owning folk. The issue is not so much ownership levels, but the availability that feeds a would-be criminal's capacity to carry out a crime.

While actual ownership levels might be lower, guns can no doubt be purchased for cheaper and within a closer proximity in densely populated cities. This availability feeds the likelihood of them being employed as a tool to facilitate a crime.

This is also incidentally a key misunderstanding of the whole gun debate. No one is (or should be at least) implying that recreational gun owners are the problem. It is the necessity for guns to be freely available to gun enthusiasts among others for them to enjoy this hobby that causes the problems.

(3)

Building on my above point above, gun control shouldn't be seen as a punishment. There is no vidictiveness to it, merely a matter of weighing up the results of two courses of action. On the one hand there is diminished enjoyment of legal and responsible gun owners. On the other hand there is the high murder rate I discussed earlier, which really can't be explained away any other way than gun availability.

Let's do a back of the envelope calculation. Australia and the US are culturally relatively similar Anglo-Saxon societies. Let's assume for the sake of argument that my suggestion is true. Referencing wiki here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate

The homicide rate in Australia is 1.0/10K/year and 4.8/10K/year. Let's say that gun availability explains 2/3rds of the difference. So we're talking about a 2.5/10K/year increase. Taking this against the US's 310M population this represents 7,500 more deaths.

Now to me, the issue is clear cut. The lives lost outweight gun enthusiast enjoyment.

And it's not just to me. There is a very clear reason that the vast majority of developed countries have made gun ownership incredibly difficult. I can guarantee, at some point they have done this back of the envelope calculation for their own country.

(4)

You raise the comparison to cars. See my workings above. With cars, they obviously provide a fundamentally invaluable benefit to society. The choice every society has made is to instead heavily regulate them. The reason there is no outcry to impose heavy restrictions on them is because there already are.

- Being required to pass license tests.
- Strict driving rules to follow.
- Speeding cameras everywhere.
- Random police checks for alcohol.

Can you think of any further regulations plausibly worth trying with cars that could reduce the accident death rate? I struggle to think of anything else effective that hasn't already been implemented.

With guns there are dozens of options not yet tried.

- Rigorous background checks.
- No gun show exemption.
- Assault weapon restrictions.
- Restrictions of ammo such as cost tariffs.

The list goes on. Imagine if we lacked the regulations we do on cars and there was a NCA (National Car Association) that was equating requiring to pass a driving test to tyranny.

(5)

I don't think there's much irrationality here. The US is clearly more murderous than other G8/OECD countries. To me, Occam's Razor explains why.

As for the comment on focussing on tragedies than the large issue, see my previous comment. You're missing the point that it's not just the gun sprees that are the problem, it's the steadily high murder rate. Mass shooting are just blips in this.

(6)

I will have a read through this.