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John Quiggin 
@jungney
“Or are you, as I suspect, so defectively unaware of modern history as to be ignorant of ‘Atomic Cafe’?”
I think this raises another problematic way of thinking that Libertarians engage in; the idea is that everything is understandable using one’s own mental capacity, if one is smart enough and all Libertarians know that they are more intelligent than the other people.
Lots of them use the old discredited Mensa IQ tests to confirm to themselves that they have a high IQ and then that is sufficient for them to be able to organise the world in the way that all intelligent normal people would organise it. It all comes from the power of the will or something.
You see that in the way Terje wants to set up an ideal laizzez-fair society but decides to settle for Vermont as a model; the preference is to start from an imaginary ideal – the perfect society peopled by Terje and his fellow libertarians.
And notice that rather than attempt to explain what libertarians think, he tells someone that they should just not have a say about the issue. Why not try and explain?
@TerjeP
Wimping out eh? Good for you. 🙂
terje is right in his observation: gun control has shifted & become just another skein in the thread.
whether people’s political philosophy predisposes them for or against subtle thinking has now entered the fray.
raising “vermont” didn’t help. -a.v.
@alfred venison
Terje takes discussions ‘too personally’ – I think – it would be better if he was really interested in how we diverse, but ordinary people here think and reason and if he could answer questions about his political philosophy without feeling attacked and disregarded, it would also be good if he didn’t respond with threats and whinges like he could have sued but he didn’t.
I thought that the context in which Vermont was raised was useful in that it illustrates one of the ways of thinking that is typical of Libertarians. They begin their political philosophising by starting anew and constructing the ideal perfect society rather than being interested in sorting out the messy reality that exists.
But Dan Kahan, who faustnotes refers to in the vacc thread – has also done some work on the question of whether one’s political philosophy predisposes one to a certain type of thinking; his blog is very interesting, I guess for people who like that sort of thing.
I seem to be taking over the place if I look at the ‘recent comment box’ to my right and I’m not sure if this shift in the emphasis that I have instigated is a bad thing and I should stop.
Having the unfortunate, distasteful and frankly weird experience of listening to the Senate.
Queensland’s national embarrassment Senator Ian McDonald is ranting about how excellent the ISDS provisions of the TPP are. He is calling the Greens “liars” and is explaining to the Senate that Climate Change is a fiction, there has been no warming for over twenty years and he can name 50 scientists who will confirm that.
I don’t think I take it personally but what I find dreadfully boring and frequently frustrating is the way Julie Thomas will join a discussion on absolutely any topic and try and turn into into a session of psychoanalysis. So if you join a discussion about tax policy or Koala reserves she is likely to want to discuss your childhood or the thinking model used by your political peers. As a side issue my childhood and the thinking model of my political peers is no doubt fascinating to some people but it’s used continuously as a means to derail discussions. And if you make the mistake of responding to these distractions you end up down the rabbit hole and never getting anywhere useful.
I’ve expressed a willingness to discuss firearms policy. If people want to discuss my naval instead that’s fine but I’m really not interested in assisting.
This is interesting;
“Tony Abbott, however, is in charge of a regional power, a country that is the twelfth largest economy in the world and the only rich world nation to have survived the 2008-9 financial crisis unscathed.
Yet in less than two years as prime minister, Abbott has proven shockingly incompetent, which is why other leaders within his ruling coalition, following a set of defeats in state elections, may now scheme to unseat him.
They should: Abbott has proven so incapable of clear policy thinking, so unwilling to consult with even his own ministers and advisers, and so poor at communicating that he has to go.”
http://blogs.cfr.org/asia/2015/02/05/tony-abbott-has-to-go/
Is this a dig at Murdoch for picking such a loser?
@TerjeP
I think it’s because Julie Thomas (and others) on hearing the glibertarian position on (for example) gun control think “How could any reasonable, sensible person maintain that position?”
No-one is stopping you, or anyone for that matter, from owning as many guns as you want. There are a few sensible restrictions (you need to have done an accredited safety course and have no criminal record or history of serious mental illness), and handguns are only to be used for shooting at targets at an accredited range, but what’s wrong with that?
Oh, you want to be allowed to conceal a handgun about your person so you can shoot other folk? That’s where you glibertarians lose sensible people, Terje.
@TerjeP
You say you don’t have a firearm and you don’t intend to get one. I say, if every men and woman would have not only the same expressed attitude toward personal ownership of firearms as you but would also be of same health and wealth and strength of character as you (as far as I know you from this blog site), I would agree with a laissez faire (no legal restriction on ownership) policy. Obviously, under such conditions personal ownership of firearms would be representable by a vector with only zeros in it, one zero for each member of the society.
The justification of personal ownership of firearms for the purpose of self-defence (against other humans rather than, say lions at Martin Place Sydney) presupposes the existence of people who wish to harm you. In this case, a laissez faire policy amounts to the premise that anybody is potentially your enemy who can harm you. I call such a society paranoid; they need an actual or assumed enemy to justify their demand for firearms.
I have never visited the USA because of their gun laws, even though I have personal friends and many acquaintances in the USA. In my view, these people constitute the exception to the norm of assuming everyboy is potentially your enemy. ‘Freedom’, IMO, entails having reasons to trust in people not assuming I am their enemy and I am not assuming they are my enemies. This trust is manifested in not living in a gated community, not having a laissez faire policy on guns, and not having to lock your car door, house doors, and having windows without bars.
The statistics corroborate John Howard’s position on gun laws.
I don’t think your analogy between your attitude toward homosexuals and your attitude toward gun laws holds. How many instances do you know where homosexuality is a deadly weapon toward heterosexuals?
> I’ve expressed a willingness to discuss firearms policy.
We can’t discuss any sort of firearm policy — any sort of policy — in separation from the attitudes and desires that lead to people promoting it and the results [and the reasons!] that the proponents, opponents, and we ourselves believe would come to pass if that policy were adopted.
You — you the flesh-and-blood person — are a part of any conversation you are a part of. “Discussion” requires acknowledging that.
You aren’t willing to do that. You’ve consistently been unwilling to do that, because, bluntly, a lot of people think your ideas are stupid and you’re not comfortable hearing that and you’re not very good at dealing with that.
Your idea of “discussion” doesn’t fit in with what other people are after. You aren’t willing to “discuss” things as the word is usually used.
Which gives you two main options. You can assume that the person holding that view is in fact unreasonable and not sensible and try and diagnose their mental malady, or you assume they are a sensible person of reason and so seek to understand why they have a view different to you. If you assume the first then it’s clear by definition that you are not interested in a discussion in which the two parties reason with each other. My position is simply that I’m willing to have a discussion based on reasoned argument but if your starting point is that I’m insane then there isn’t much to discuss.
I don’t assume you’re insane, Terje, but the reasons you give for your position just don’t stack up against evidence and logical argument.
Terje
I would not have used the word ‘insane’; psychologists do not use that word. It is a null category.
So why did you make this up?
Perhaps if you don’t like my questions; questions that I need to ask to be able to understand why you want freedom for gun lovers, you could start again and answer Ikonclast’s question way back, that you ignored.
Ikon cited you saying:
“commenters on a lefty blog saying some people who like firearms are just possibly normal people…”
and asked you “Who were the people who said this? Which post numbers please? I want to see exactly what they said and whether or not you have miscontrued it.”
Julie, you are on the right path to question Terje’s understanding of normal because it takes him into unfamiliar territory. This prevents him from asking merely rhetorical questions to which, of course, only he has the correct answer because he doesn’t declare where he stands.
Terje, exactly what style or type of libertarian are you? Can you locate yourself, just generally, within the spectrum of libertarianism? I know you’re not up at left end but it would clarify things a little if others knew whether you have, as I suspect, merely misappropriated the name of libertarianism, as the reactionary right has done in the US? Or are you some other sort of libertarian?
Yeah I’d be interested to hear what sort of Libertarian you are Terje.
I read some Libertarian blogs or blogs by people who describe themselves as having a libertarian leaning and one of them wrote this a few weeks ago.
“I don’t have any Australian “libertarian” or “free market” blogs in my feed, as they are generally horrible – conservative at best (rare), corporatist at worst, with posts closer to trolling than informative and comment sections that make the eyes bleed.”
I’m a consequentialist utilitarian. I’m sympathetic to the ideas of “anarcho capitalism” but not convinced it would end up being a liberal place that protected peoples natural rights (property rights, freedom of speech, association etc). I’m not saying it couldn’t I’m just not convinced it would. As such “Minarchist” is probably pretty close to where I stand with a leaning towards the classical liberal side of things (eg some public works like roads and sewers by the government). Whilst I would call myself a “radical” (wanting big changes) I’m also by nature an “incrementalist” that wants to move there in steps.
To sum up I’d call myself a “consequentialist, utilitarian, radical, incrementalist, minarchist libertarian”. But even that’s just an approximation.
Where do you locate yourself on the political spectrum?
Julie – I don’t think there are any libertarian blogs in Australia. There was the ALS blog but it’s moved to Facebook a few years ago and it’s now more of a free range chat group rather than a blog. Catallaxy claims to be libertarian but as best I can tell Sinclair Davidson is the only libertarian writer there and the commenters are mostly centre right conservatives. It was much more libertarian when Jason Soon used to run it years ago. Political blogging seems to be past it’s peak right across the spectrum.
Terje, that list of things that you ‘are’ only confuses me. It would take me forever to research each term, to ascertain if you are using the word in a dictionary meaning or with a more specific emphasis, and then i would have to try and put all those disparate parts of you back together into a whole person who lives in the real world or at least writes comments on this blog.
Thanks for your effort in thinking about yourself and putting *you* into words though.
I don’t know what political spectrum I am on. I have never thought about it. I demonstrated against war when I was a teenager, but never registered to vote because after Gough got in I just assumed that my country would always be leftish and free because it was so obvious that was the only way to go.
Then I heard a Counterpoint program – in the ’90’s ? – on my RN and I nearly fell over with the shock of hearing the nonsense and the attacks on people that I worked with – the disadvantaged; the ones you call leaners etc – attacks that were so clearly irrational and inefficient and the sneering! So ugly.
I vote Green.
You categorise me, I can’t.
The blogger I quoted did recommend Club Troppo.
It is a shame that for you political blogging is past it’s peak. Me? I think it is just beginning to hit it’s peak.
A lie commonly told by liers is that the reduction in gun deaths after laws were tightned in the wake of the Port Arthur mass murder was merely a continuation of an existing trend. This is a lie. There was a definnite increase in the rate of decrease after 1996.
In the decade after Port Arthur total firearm deaths, firearm homicides, and firearm suicides all at least doubled their previous rates of decline:
http://sydney.edu.au/news/84.html?newsstoryid=1502
Anyone on the internet who tries to tell you otherwise is a liar as they are on the internet and so have had the opportunity to check what actually occurred in reality and plenty of time in which to do it.
I’d have thought that somebody who endlessly engages in attempts at analysing the nature of others peoples politics and goes all “meta” when discussing public policy that you would have given it a little thought. Socrates is said to have stated that the unexamined life is not worth living. I would not go that far but I would suggest that people with strong political opinions really ought to spend at least a little time thinking about their own political philosophy.
Ronald – if a person owns a semiautomatic rifle and we replace it with a conventional rifle can you please explain to me how this reduces the risk of firearm suicide? Because whilst firearm suicide did indeed decline after the 1996 reforms it’s relevance is hard for me to appreciate without an answer to that question. If I put a rifle to my temple and pull the trigger I’m struggling to see how the second bullet loading into the chamber automatically versus the bullet loading with a bolt action is of great significance. I’m either dead from the first bullet or so disabled that pulling the trigger a second time seems unlikely with or without pulling the bolt. Statistics is great but I really need somebody to explain to me the biology and the physics.
Take out suicide and look at total homicide and there is no break in the trend.
@TerjeP
I do a lot of self-examination about where I am on the spectrum of real life things and despite my lack of interest in your politics, -did you know that the person is political? – I seem to have been effective in the political discussions I have been having lately, with my neighbours, particularly the young lefty libertarians who have a commitment to the social good rather than the individual good and want to achieve through cooperation rather than competition.
Why would you want to take out suicide? Is it not homicide when someone kills themself? Is that the same sort of reasoning that goes someone can sell themselves into slavery and that is okay?
A decline in suicide should definitely be considered a positive outcome. But to say that the policy caused this benefit we need not just a demonstration of correlation in the data but also some viable means of causation. Replacing a semi-automatic firearm with a conventional firearm can’t possibly change a persons ability to shoot themselves dead. If there is some mechanism by which this is possible I have never heard it explained. Without some causal mechanism we can cheer the decline in suicide but we can’t attribute it to the policy change.
If instead the policy had been to ban all firearms then I could see a causal mechanism but that isn’t what was done. And even if that had be done we’d have to look at suicide by non firearm means to see if there was merely a change of method in which case the policy can’t be seen as generating a benefit (dead is dead whether by bullet or noose).
This is desperate stuff, Terje. We all know that if the obvious reading of the evidence supported your predetermined policy view, you’d be citing it. And that’s true of every position you take, from climate change to economic policy. There’s no evidence that will shift you, and therefore no point in arguing with you.
@TerjeP
TerjeP. I’m minded by your reply of the days when the left of Australia was described as a very small carpet with a big fringe. From what you have written it appears to me that you are indeed an ideologue, a man infatuated with how to fit himself around the contours of his favourite ideology, with little regard for the consequences. Therein the irony of your self description as a ‘consequentialist libertarian’.
If you had acquaintance with history rather than ideology you’d be more careful about associating with any utopian experiment. The history of libertarianism is broader and longer and far more sophisticated than you are aware. You appear to me to be unaware of the way that political philosophy relates to lived experience. Should you choose to look at the real history of libertarianism you would see a world of wonders created by those who genuinely believed in the project of human freedom.
Your version of libertarianism, the ‘nightwatchman state’ of Hayek, is utterly discredited because of its failure to account for human sociality. Wherein lies our greatest creative capacity. But which people like you, put tab a into slot c, cannot comprehend because you have been improperly socialised.
Its nigh on the eve of Valentine’s Day and what better way to sanctify one’s relationships than taking the beloved spouse to listen to the sublime music of Ludovico Einaudi at Melbourne’s Hamer Hall. Claire and I will probably have the place all to ourselves as every one else will be lining up to
pervwatch a glossy version of a Mills & Boon bodice-ripper like Fifty Shades of Grey at the local multiplex.Isn’t it great in this age of female emancipation that we consenting adults can celebrate feminine empowerment by watching the heroine be tied up, whipped and ravished by a billionaire? Such a penetrating insight, one might say, into the psyche of the post-modern female.
You go, grrrl.
I was actually a supporter of the Howard gun policy reforms for more than a decade until I took it apon myself to examine the evidence and the arguments and not just accept the conventional wisdom. I found it wanting and I try to explain why whenever I discuss it. The only apriori principle that I’m locked into on the basis of ideology is that the burden of evidence is with those that would curtail freedom. At this point in time I am persuaded by some gun control regulations. Specifically I support background checks and firearm licences. Vermont is more libertarian than me in that regard but contrary to what people may like to assert I am not utopian.
You make an assumption about what I am aware of. I’m aware that the meaning of the word libertarian has changed over time. So ha she meaning of the words liberal and conservative and progressive. At one time and place I might have called myself a Whig, at others a liberal or a progressive. When I use the word libertarian to describe myself I’m using the contemporary meaning of the word.
I’m a consequentialist first and foremost. Libertarianism is just the destination that I arrived at having applied a consequentialist mindset to a large number of issues. Libertarianism is merely a useful tag for saying that I share similar conclusions to other people that also apply this tag to themselves.
The Howard reforms did not just replace semiautomatic firearms with a conventional firearms both of which are equally effective for suicide. It also introduced mandatory registration of long arms. We can likewise ask if there was any benefit from that. But it’s hard to see how registration of a firearm would reduce suicide unless it caused less people to own firearms (the evidence seems to be that firearm ownership has increased). Canada just abolished their long arms register and required that the data in it be destroyed. As such they provide an opportunity to study what happens when this particular aspect of gun control is abolished.
I’ll have another bite at the cherry, Terje, about my own political trajectory. Raised as the only child of an itinerant journalist, who left home at fourteen to work at the Barrier Daily Truth, and a woman who was the child of a butcher, a man who worked most of his life as an employee of a worker’s co-op on the lower Hunter coalfields, I grew up around the cockroach ridden suburbs of a port city, in streets where all of the houses were silvered, rather than painted, weatherboard.
At age fourteen I watched US forces spraying defoliant over Vietnam. The first ever naked female I saw was Phan Th? Kim Phúc. Thanks to an astonishingly brilliant and resilient public education system, by the time I left, I had read Jean Genet, Sartre, Sophocles, Aristophanes and another half a library of educated humans. As a result of this long acquaintance with the violence of authority (Nixon, the Pentagon papers, the Bay of Pigs, the Gulf of Tonkin crisis, the critique of petrochemical industrialism [Rachel Carson and Barry Commoner] towards common humanity, I took a path of resistance to all of authority and all hypocrisy.
There’s a lot in between then and now so, for the sake of brevity, I’ll simply say that these days I am a resolute defender and promoter of radically inclusive communitarian democracy.
The state, as we now know it, has a role, as per the great Swedish social democrat Ernst Wigforss, who convincingly argued that one of the roles of statecraft was for the state to construct social institutions which would encourage citizens to be fully sovereign selves, autonomous beings, as citizens within a demos.
Which is not to say that I am a fan of Sweden then or now but that I am an advocate of the state’s role in the empowerment of the individual via the creation of relations of reciprocity and respect between agents of the state and citizens.
I’m sure your eyes are watering by now so I’ll leave off with the rejoinder that I’ve met ideologues like you before, on the fringes of the far left. But now you erupt on the fringes of the far right, promoting an utopia that has been long discredited.
There really is no point Jungney, he just does not have it in him to see anything except his own ‘specialness’.
Terje will be bewildered that nobody is impressed that he has at been able to see this flaw in the gun laws – well it is a flaw if you get rid of some inconvenient data points – and OMG this has for sure inhibited somebody’s freedom.
And of course he is pining for the glory days of the Oz libertarian movement. What happened to the libertarian blogs?
I suppose Terje wouldn’t be interested in libertarian communism.
https://libcom.org/library/libertarian-communism-introduction
Do those social institutions have to be state run institutions? Or can the role of statecraft be fulfilled by crafting institutions that are at arms length from the state.
TerjeP says;
“The only apriori principle that I’m locked into on the basis of ideology is that the burden of evidence is with those that would curtail freedom.”
Such statements are made by persons who think that an overall or generally applicable definition of “freedom” is simple and self-evident when all they have in mind is their own particular view of freedom to the exclusion of all other peoples’ views. Without getting too philosophical about it I can say as below.
When I walk about in our society in standard suburban and urban places, one of the main reasons I feel largely free of fear is that I know to a high degree of certainty that no ordinary member of the public around me is carrying a gun. If I knew everyone or even some large percentage (say 25%) of the people around me were carrying concealed handguns I would not be largely free of fear. In fact, I would be terrified almost out my wits.
Thus, I want to assert my right to be free of the fear of large numbers of concealed handguns in suburban and urban settings. Those who want to legalise concealed handguns for everyone would be impinging on my freedom and thus the burden on proof is on those who want to curtail my freedom in that way. My right to be free of the fear of mass handguns is prima facie no less a right than the supposed right of someone else to carry a handgun.
Given that guns are designed to wound and kill and have no other real or legitimate purpose, my fear of guns (in the wrong hands or in too many hands) is entirely rational and supportable. This is especially so when we consider the statistically significant relationship worldwide between high gun onwership and high gun death rates notwithstanding some outlier exceptions. I assert my right to be free of the fear of high gun ownership and the carrying of concealed handguns by ordinary civilians in my community. As an Australian citizen, I will oppose in every legal way possible, social and political, to the last breath of my body and the last movement in my typing fingers, any loosening of gun laws in Australia.
I won’t let to gun nuts take away my F R E E D O M !
Ikonoclast – your irrational personal fears should not dictate public policy. Just as somebodies elses irrational fear of homosexuals or muslims or clowns shouldn’t either. But if you genuinely suffer from hoplophobia then you have my sympathy. Maybe you should seek professional help.
p.s. Do police freak you out?
> Ikonoclast – your irrational personal fears should not dictate public policy.
Plain fact is, we don’t want people with bad risk-assessment skills carrying tools that are designed to kill people.
@Terje
I repeat, I will not let gun advocates like you impact on my freedom and turn AUS into the USA… at least not if I can help it.
My fear of lots of guns in the hands of anyone and everyone is entirely rational. I don’t suffer from “hoplophobia”, a stupid and recent neologism designed in a weak attempt to stigmatise people with rational objections to mass gun ownership and gun carrying.
No, police do not freak me out but certain issues about modern policing do concern me.
But from your comments I understand that you really do not understand the issues and that it is useless debating with you. You are clearly intelligent but somehow a childlike credulity for simplistic and solipsistic ideology pervades your thinking. You complain that some people on this blog try to pop-psychoanalyse you. I can understand why they feel the temptation.
@Terje
Sometimes, yes. It depends what they’re doing.
About ten years ago when walking through Hyde Park in Sydney one Sunday morning I noticed a lot of posters pasted to street poles promoting a protest – pretty sure it was an anti-Iraq-war protest, from memory.
The protest was scheduled for that day and I observed a bunch of about 10 nsw police in that sort of quasi-military/SWAT type gear (as opposed to proper uniforms) enthusiastically going about the park tearing down the posters. There was a disturbing edginess to how they were doing it. A lot of laughing, swagger and smiles.
I took out my camera and started to take a few shots from about 50m away.
One of them noticed this and didn’t seem too happy. He yelled to the largest and most enthusiastic poster-remover “Hey Laurie! Smile, someone wants to take your picture!” indicating in my direction.
They did that indescribable thing that consists of a momentary pause and a group look in my direction which I took as an invitation to take the opportunity to leave. So I did (not too fast, just at what I judged to be the right speed).
That freaked me out.
“…if a person owns a semiautomatic rifle and we replace it with a conventional rifle can you please explain to me how this reduces the risk of firearm suicide?”
Terje, do you seriously think that the post Port Arthur gun control measures consisted of replacing semi-automatic rifles with “conventional” rifles? If so you are delusional. Or possibly you are fully aware of what actually happened and you are dishonestly suggesting that is what happened. That is, lying.
This page has some information on what actually transpired: http://www.loc.gov/law/help/firearms-control/australia.php
@alfred venison
I agree a.v., and “raising arizona” is far better entertainment. Picking Vermont as an exemplar of enlightened weapons control law is strained when compared to the other 49 states. (I’m a resident of NJ, and our gun laws are strict, but appropriate for the state – as are Vermont’s). Federal law rests on the second amendment which simply says the people have a right to carry (affirmed a few years ago by the Supreme Court). The 50 states implement the “right to carry” in their own ways, each appropriate to the state’s societal needs. This illustrates one of the virtues of a federation (if you are unhappy with your state’s laws you can move).
Open carry for paint-bombs. No? Why ever not? Open carry for custard pies (when near senior politicians on campus, Hawkey knows what I mean)? Wot, not on yer life? Goodness. Crossbows, they look pretty cool; nup, can’t wander about with one of those hangin’ off ya belt. Howabout grenades, I should be able to carry grenades responsibly, you know, as a responsible citizen and all that. I’m perfectly at ease with other adults open-carrying their favourite grenade style, pineapples, traditional USA, Russian modern, RPG-ready, DYI; it is all good. What could possibly go wrong?
Cloonk. WTF? Did the pin come out—which one was it…frommm—*
Ronald – the ban on semiautomatic rifles and rifle registration were the two changes that were most objectionable. Licensing was introduced in Tasmania but I don’t see any real objection to licensing from anybody and the rest of Australia already had licensing. I’m happy to go through any other measures that you think are significant.
In terms of compulsory registration of long arms. I don’t see how this would impact suicide by firearm unless it lead to a decline in firearm ownership. So to suggest a causal link you would need to show a decline in firearm ownership or some other method that would cause suicide by firearm to be impacted. The evidence I’ve seen suggests the opposite happened, more people than ever are now into firearms. But I’m happy to entertain any argument you have that registration creates a causal explanation.
In terms of registration of long arms we currently have a natural experiment occurring in Canada. They recently abolished their long arms register and destroyed the data it contained. We should be able to track the impact on firearm suicide. Whilst there is still no evidence of any causal linkage between suicide and firearms being registered it is, unlike Australia’s 1996 reforms, a policy change unbundled from other policy changes.
Donald the problem with your scenario is that it is not individuals like Terje who would do these silly things; libertarian individuals just always make the right choice and the pin just wouldn’t come out and they def wouldn’t leave a gun in their purse so the toddler could find it.
It is the non-rational people who are the problem but the ‘libertarians’ like Terje offer no way that we can all become the magnificent individuals that they think they are.
The problem with the scenario Donald paints is that it’s just a narrative free of evidence. It reminds me of the carry on that people made about homosexuality being legal. There would be fornication and rape in the streets. If a person with the intent to kill wants to walk around today with a concealed weapon then they generally do. As for open carry of hand grenades the law reforms in 1996 didn’t change anything in this regard so bringing it up is just mischief.
Terje there are tests available that can assess an individual’s social intelligence, their creativity – or lack of – and their ability to understand the world from another perspective – or lack of.
Understanding where you fit along this spectrum of ability, might provide you with some realistic information upon which you can base your self-regard and to see that it is not “just mischief” to make up analogies that highlight the flaws in your argument.
Do you have an explanation as to why an individual would choose to be mischievous in response to your earnest arguments about how lacking in freedom we are in this country because gun laws?
@Julie Thomas
Evidence ?????
Where ????
@Terje
The social institutions that Wigforss chose were the usual: socialised health care, sound public education, welfare safety nets, a redistributive tax system. The purpose was to allow the people of Sweden to be from from ‘the deforming effects of poverty’ which limit the public participation of all by creating fear and anxiety in the population. He was a Keynesian before Keynes.
@Ivor
Personal anecdata – I have known many libertartians from way back when once some of them were hippies. A branch of the family call themselves libertarians and adopted the dysfunctional aspects of the theory without reservation.
Me, as someone who was interested in pomo, became the enemy and I endured many talks about how wrong I was and how awesome Ayn Rand and Objectivism were and how stupid I must be if I could not see that ‘they’ had the ‘the’ philosophy that would save the world.
One or two joined mensa and were quite proud and unabashed about quoting their ‘scores’. I did have a ‘saved’ conversation from one Objectivist who claimed to have an IQ of 220.
At the time I did know something about the psych tests that are used in psychology and how and why they are used and which ones have been shown to be a bit silly and also the limitations in terms of validity and reliability of the newer tests and the idea that IQ is intelligence, but all my ‘academic’ knowledge was of no interest.
What sort of evidence were you wanting?