Have you heard about the great political divide that sets red against blue—the national polarization touted by breathless news stories about an already pretty gasp-y report by the Pew Research Center?...
But...How is this a problem? If people with common preferences and values choose to live near one another, shouldn't that reduce friction?...
Political sorting is actually a solution to deep ideological divides—if that sorting lets people live the way they want. But if people go through all of that trouble of moving away from the opposition, only to find alien rules, laws, and taxes jammed down their throats, you can see why "partisan antipathy" might get a little heated.Here to make it worse as always, Megan McArdle:
If we're going to have a more partisan geography -- and it does seem as if we are -- then what we also need is more federalism. Push as many decisions as possible down to the local level -- not whether Colorado can pollute rivers that run through California, but decisions about taxes, social spending, health care and regulation.Just like the Kansas-Nebraska Act!
I've said before that libertarians are conservatives with social anxieties, but I feel compelled to add that conservatives mainly tolerate them because they're not ashamed (having no shame, nor other human emotions, nor any chance of being elected) to argue that the Civil War was a huge mistake on the part of the North.
If people with common preferences and values choose to live near one another, shouldn't that reduce friction?
ReplyDeleteEthnic ghettoes, sundown towns, redlining, and blockbusting--all great for reducing friction.
Now, I'm not saying Tuccille is a racist, but I am saying that anyone who would ask that question in complete sincerity and not bring up any of the above historical curiosities. is likely a lazy writer and/or an idiot.
Push as many decisions as possible down to the local level -- not
ReplyDeletewhether Colorado can pollute rivers that run through California, but
decisions about taxes, social spending, health care and regulation.
I, for one, hate having alien shit jammed down my throat when I'm in the warm embrace of my homogenous enclave.
ReplyDeletePraise Rand we all have the unlimited means to move freely whenever and wherever we want without any outside pressures, otherwise this political sorting thing might not work as neatly as my Fox News graphic breathlessly assures me it does. "E unibus pluram!"
But if people go through all of that trouble of moving away from the
ReplyDeleteopposition, only to find alien rules, laws, and taxes jammed down their
throats
Uh, Kansas isn't a foreign country, genius. No shit you still have to follow federal law if you move there from California. Isn't that kind of like moving to Arizona and complaining about the heat? Like, this is stuff you're supposed to research beforehand. "No one told me I'd still have to pay taxes here! What a rip-off.
Or, to put it in language that even a libertarian will understand, the red states can call the shots for their own turf when they stop taking all that federal money.
There are these things called other countries if one wishes to escape the iron fist of Uncle Sam, but it's always a large-scale redux of complaining about how New York and California are job-killers and that's why everyone's leaving, even as they continue to draw paychecks from New York-based publishers: the only places that McArdle et al. would consider sophisticated and wi-fi-enabled enough for them to call home are that way in the first place because they didn't let libertarians take control. If you want countries where no one listens to the federal government and local communities are all on their own, I can recommend a few in between the 30th parallels. Bring plenty of bottled water.
having alien shit jammed down my throat
ReplyDeleteSo I take it I should remove you from my erotic Star Trek/alicublog crossovers? (I call them XXXovers. I'm applying for a trademark on that, so don't get any ideas.)
McCardled moved into a neighborhood that is being gentrified right out from under people who are her political opposites. She can choke on her damn calculator and here kitchen appliances.
ReplyDeleteIt really is hard to say. On the one hand, experience says lazy idiot and racist. However, they do want their Galtian Paradise but one with water, electric and Starbucks already laid on.
ReplyDeleteSo this pining for "friction-free" living also reminds me of the Calvin & Hobbes strip where Calvin gets fed up with mom's tyranny and decides to run away. But first he wants her to make him a bunch of food.
Her calculatir and freaky deaky appliances are more edible than her cooking.
ReplyDeleteGeorge Putnam writes in to say "thanks" to these fucks for just this once not distorting his diversity study to support their libertarian pathologies.
ReplyDeleteRoy, you managed to leave behind the most delightful quote from the Tuccile piece:
ReplyDeleteToday, Ron Bailey noted that research finds libertarian-minded people to be exceptionally smart. Which may be why we're able to tolerate the foibles of our annoying liberal and conservative neighbors.
But if people go through all of that trouble of moving away from the opposition
ReplyDeleteWhy does he think this only goes one way?
Take it from someone in job-killing California with shitloads of just-arrived Libertarian neighbors: "common preferences and values" are pretty quickly trumped by decent-paying jobs being available.
ReplyDeleteEthnic ghettos are a feature not a bug in any libertarian paradise. To these people freedom is just another word for whatever your local bully says it means.
ReplyDeletePush as many decisions as possible down to the local level -- not whether Colorado can pollute rivers that run through California, but decisions about taxes, social spending, health care and regulation
ReplyDeleteBecause we don't want outsiders to pollute our water, but it's acceptable if the locals ban black people from drinking that water in public.
Isn't this just a tarted up version of the Seasteaders movement only with states rather than offshore nation states? With all the same problems like who do they think is going to live there to do those unpleasant jobs these toffs wouldn't go near? Come to Mississippi and work for no minimum wage and no health care!
ReplyDeleteThe "help" better not use the front door!
ReplyDeleteRoy/Spock?
ReplyDeleteRoy/Gorn?
Roy/Horta?!?!????
Even "smart" people can be laid low by Dunning-Kruger.
ReplyDeleteGalt's Gulch Tax-Free Enclave
ReplyDeleteRegulations Prohibited.
A Throat-Friendly Community.
Hmm. Better strike 'community'.
Funny thing is, everywhere libertarianism has been tried really has devolved into warlordism. One might think that, given the abundant examples available in the real world, that even the most devoted libertarian might think, "Wow! I guess the state actually does serve a useful function." Instead, they look at Somalia, Nigeria, Central American banana republics, etc. and think "Can't happen here because SHUT UP! is why."
ReplyDeleteHorta Humps a Who?
ReplyDeleteFlying Squid was banned on RawStory.
ReplyDeleteOr, to put it in language that even a libertarian will understand, the
ReplyDeletered states can call the shots for their own turf when they stop taking
all that federal money.
I don't understand. Taking federal money isn't what makes or breaks statehood.
That seems a lot like saying an adult child who still lives with his parents can do whatever he wants in his room, provided he doesn't receive any sort of direct financial assistance from them.
Sounds like they have resiled from Plan A, which was for everyone to move to New Hampshire and jam Libertarian rules, laws, and taxes down the throats of people already living there.
ReplyDeleteIs that the World Cup emblem?
ReplyDeleteBut if people go through all of that trouble of moving away from the opposition, only to find alien rules, laws, and taxes jammed down their throats, you can see why "partisan antipathy" might get a little heated.
ReplyDeleteThis is why, after the first influx of cash, other nations regret allowing American tax-dodging conservatives to buy property in their lands to "retire in luxury."
This also seems to be a definition of "intelligence" that relies solely on the ability to manipulate data without comprehension of context or practical application. Libertarians may or may not possess this sideshow skill referred to as "intelligence," but I've not met any that I'd consider smart.
ReplyDeleteLibertarian ideas are as simplistic (and simple-minded) as any on Earth, and at best can only be used as rhetorical devices in artificially simple systems with few, if any, variables. Libertarian worlds never exist outside of thought experiments and fiction.
Comprehending the complexities of real world socio-economic systems is Wayyyy beyond the simplistic thinking of self-proclaimed libertarians, so while they like to revel in the popular notion that doing sums quickly is "intelligence," I'd argue Einstein's view of insanity applies to the "intelligence" of libertarians who insist their ideology would work "if only…." They keep doing (and believing) the same things, expecting them to work this time.
Anyone with real intelligence might be enamored with the ideas between the ages of about 12 - 17 or so, but they quickly laugh them off as youthful ignorance when the real world comes knocking. Libertarians usefully identify themselves as those who haven't matured, yet, and can't handle the complexities of adult problem-solving.
NO
ReplyDeleteFUCK
I
But how local is local? Why should I throw off the yoke of federal oppression but accept it from the state, or the county, or the city?
ReplyDeleteNo!
We won't achieve True Libertay until we adopt rule by Neighborhood HOA model of government. That way we can ensure we only live with people who share our values, religion and skin color, while still maintaining the essential right control other people regarding such matters as length of grass and whether powder blue is an acceptable color for shutters.
(Insert X Files Episode Here.)
Libertarian worlds never exist outside of thought experiments and fiction.
ReplyDeleteNot quite true. You could make a good case for Colombia being a libertarian nation.
Yes! The only logical conclusion is that every home should be as a nation unto itself, complete with its own rules, laws, and taxes.
ReplyDeleteWhen they need lebensraum, due to household bans on contraception, they can annex the neighboring house/nation, because if the neighbors can't defend their borders, it isn't stealing.
Camera pulls back to reveal smoking rock. As the smoke clears, etched into the rock, we see
ReplyDeleteWRONG HOLE
Just like the Kansas-Nebraska Act!
ReplyDeleteLibertarian views on security are even dumber than their economics. Corporatism is bad, but warlordism is worse.
Camera pulls back to reveal smoking rock. As the smoke clears, etched into the rock, we see
ReplyDeleteYES YES
OH GOD
YES
The phrase "freaky-deaky kitchen appliances" makes me chuckle for some reason.
ReplyDeleteSo if Libertarians are *too smart* to live with libs and conservatives, where are they gonna live? They can't all fit on that island. OR CAN THEY?
ReplyDeleteSurely this was a late-period Zappa lyric.
ReplyDeleteEvery home a nation unto itself... men who abuse their wives and children ought to love that idea.
ReplyDeleteAnd after all, isn't the unofficial slogan of the Libertarian movement "Nobody can tell ME what I can or can't do!"
Get in the bag!
ReplyDeleteYeah, I know. One should only try milking dairy jokes, but there it is.
ReplyDeleteThe thing about Libertarians is they always seem to assume that they are always going to be the ones who are on the upper part of the social hierarchy.
ReplyDeleteIf they got their way, the Civil Rights Act would become a thing of the past, along with voters' protections and anti-discrimination laws. If they achieved all of that, and then became minorities themselves, then they might discover some regrets.
Unless you assume you'll be the warlord.
ReplyDeleteto have the rednecks who used to give them wedgies refer to them as "my smart friend here."I suspect that the rednecks in question reserve that term of endearment for their guns.
ReplyDelete"Free to be. Not YOU, but me."
ReplyDelete1134 Maple Terrace has historically been considered part of 1132 Maple Terrace
ReplyDeleteWhich, actually, is the entire underpinning of every glibertarian's version of what their preferred system would be. None of THEM will end up having to work for someone. Each and every one of them will be kings.
ReplyDeleteAt least until they discover that actually instituting such a thing produces an untenable dichotomy: going back to a 5000 BC lifestyle because nobody works for anybody, or pledging fealty to whatever neighborhood bully has accumulated the most guns and followers.
If you think you're gonna tell me how to live my life in the nation of Bathroomia, you are sadly mistaken, buster. Each room a nation of its own!!!
ReplyDeleteIn a tribute to the longevity of the trope, your Kansas-Nebraska Act wiki-link includes an illustration of "Forcing Slavery Down the Throat of a Freesoiler".
ReplyDeleteAnyone with real intelligence might be enamored with libertarian ideas between the ages of 12 - 17 years or so . . .
ReplyDeleteAnyone with real intelligence might think about libertarian ideas for between 12 and 17 minutes before concluding that those ideas do not work in the real world.
That's exactly it.
ReplyDeleteThe first paragraph of your comment describes the wishful thinking that defines Libertarian thought.
The second paragraph is the logical conclusion of implementing these ideas, but for some reason they never seem to realize it.
None of THEM will end up having to work for someone. Each and every one of them will be kings.
ReplyDeleteThis is also why so many of them are JAQ-offs and love doing "thought experiments." It's because they know none of their JAQing off or experimenting' will negatively impact THEM.
You'll be flush with success!
ReplyDeleteOr the one where he says when he grows up he will live a million miles from everyone. Hobbes asks who will feed him and clean his clothes. Calvin considers, and replies that mom could come by twice a day...
ReplyDeleteToo many Lord Humungouses, not enough Gyro Pilots
ReplyDeleteOne has to wonder who would be "mom" in the libertarian paradise since even the minimalist state libertarians envision would have no enforcement powers to settle disputes between libertarians.
ReplyDelete"Mom! He dammed the water supply and is demanding all our gold and ammo for a single drink!"
Yes, but LOTS of Gyro T. Gearloose types!
ReplyDeleteA fictional 6 year old boy: better solutions than any adult Libertarian
ReplyDelete"Anyone with real intelligence might be enamored with libertarian ideas between the ages of 12 - 17 years or so, but they quickly laugh them off as youthful ignorance when the real world comes knocking. "
ReplyDeleteTo repeat John Rogers' famous statement, "There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs."
The free market will provide all of the necessary buoyancy!
ReplyDeleteOur Little Megan putting her reasoning powers on display yet again.
ReplyDeleteI nominate her as the first inductee to the Self-Refuting Hall of Fame.
Upvoted for Kliban.
ReplyDeleteEven worse, they eventually demand the right to bribe government officials.
ReplyDeleteOne of the many unstated assumptions by these neo confederates is that after they have balkanized the US down to hundreds of little independent fiefdoms is that somehow they would still have the might of the US military to enforce their borders and keep the rest of the world in line. In reality those new countries would look enviously at the military might and international influence of Moldova.
ReplyDeleteMy standard wish for conservatives applies equally as well to libertarians: I hope they get to see every one of their pet policies enacted into law--and then they lose all their money and have to live under those policies.
ReplyDeletePush as many decisions as possible down to the local level -- not whether Colorado can pollute rivers that run through California
ReplyDeleteThe practical effect of this particularly noxious bit of stupidity is companies like Duke Energy can roll the fuck over a bunch of idiots on local boards and commissions, and have them sucking that corporate dick while they dump coal ash in their backyard. A couple of bribes here and there and you've got commissioners saying shit like "Arsenic and Chromium 6 are part of the natural environment. Your brain tumor is from God." It's already happened where I live. Small town grifter trash run for office praying for the day they can get a dollar for just this kind of dirty fucking.
I wish I could believe in karma.
ReplyDeleteIt's been my experience that people sometimes get what they deserve, but it doesn't happen enough to prove that any kind of pattern exists.
There is no mom. You settle disputes by hiring rival private, non-governmental security organizations. Then the God of the Market selects the victor.
ReplyDeleteA fictional 6 year old boy
ReplyDeleteJust for the record, some of the non-fictional 5-6 year olds have experienced this lesson, too.
MDSLET: I'm just leaving. And I'm not going to miss you!
[Stuffs teddy bear, a few art projects(?), and piggy bank into backpack]
MDSLET: ... Can you zip my backpack for me, please?
The bag will get too full, what with all the dogs, cats and snakes we'll need to out in there with them.
ReplyDeleteLOVE the fact that MDSlet packed art projects. Managed to get the whole adult ball o' wax into that back pack:
ReplyDeleteSomeone to love.
Something to occupy the higher centers of the intellect.
And some cash to keep body and soul together.
I dunno, Figure 4 looks a little too ... mutually symmetrical, IYKWIMAITYD.
ReplyDelete"Cause Zero made Zyrggx and Brq'em, not Zyrggx and Brq'on."
What will you do when you want to make grits
ReplyDeleteand your atmosphere boiler's come down with the shits?
Who are the Braun police?
In his room?
ReplyDeleteYesterday, I rode the bus for the first time from the stop near my house, and ended up chatting with a lifelong neighborhood resident who has just moved to Arizona, and was back visiting family. We talked about the vagaries of the city bus system, and then after a pause, he said, "You know, you may have heard us talking about you people, how we don't want you here. A lot of people are saying you all are taking the city from us. Way I feel is, you don't own a city." He paused and looked around the admittedly somewhat seedy street corner. "Besides, look what we did with it. We had it for forty years, and look what we did with it!"
ReplyDeleteI believe Ayn Rand said the same things about Native Americans, as mentioned before. Dagny Taggart had her cigarette salesmen and railroad employees, McArdle has her bus passengers and dinner party liberals.
Those extraterrestrials might be offended at your suggestion!
ReplyDeleteZyrggx might say, "You can't tell the difference? MY talliwhacker has prongs along the X-axis and apertures on the Y-axis, but Brq'em here has HER prongs and apertures the other 'way around!"
Slight differences can mean a lot to a local people.
Which is how my city became a comparatively liberal pocket in a conservative state. People go where the jobs are.
ReplyDeleteI think Charles actually lives in Wichita. David's the one who knows where it's actually fun to be filthy rich.
ReplyDeleteMan: still a rationalizing animal rather than a rational one.
ReplyDeleteYesterday, I rode the bus for the first time from the stop near my house
ReplyDeletePurely for anecdote-mongering purposes, it's understood.
Username never more eponysterical.
ReplyDeleteYOU'RE A DOCTOR
ReplyDeleteNOT A BRICKLAYER
SO LET'S PLAY DOCTOR
DOCTOR
Time to get a coyote line out of Jesusland.
ReplyDeleteFeature, not bug!
ReplyDelete"Subtle, Gene, real subtle..."
ReplyDeleteThe gulch is roomier than it looks.
ReplyDeleteEither that, or John Galt is killing them and taking their stuff.
Federalism? Funny how the prospect of that happening in Iraq (by default, if nothing else) makes the Cheneys soil themselves in the pages of the WSJ, but it's good enough for 'Merica. Of course, if that means that red states no longer get more federal tax dollars than they put in, they may rethink that.
ReplyDeleteThey can't all fit on that island.
ReplyDeleteI dunno. I was planning on transporting them to their new island home by catapult. Or firing them out of a cannon. Whatever. As long as they hit the island. "Fitting" is still a secondary action item.
Too many people already living in New Hampshire recoiled from Plan A.
ReplyDeleteA true libertarian would never give a free ride to that mooching teddy bear
ReplyDeleteFloorpooper!
ReplyDeleteThere was no chatty taxi driver to invoke.
ReplyDelete"Who is John G... **BLAMMO**
ReplyDeletepledging fealty to whatever neighborhood bully has accumulated the most guns and followers
ReplyDeleteWhich is exactly what they do; latch onto a powerful man and bask in borrowed power. They are kept by their lord in luxury so they will continue to do his bidding, while telling themselves that their aristocratic blood is the reason for their success.
They assume they will always have power because they can buy whatever they want.
Garottes All Libertarian Tyros
ReplyDeleteBut did she run into this same person later, at a liberal dinner party?
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately, the very process of sorting seems to make federalism less, not more, likely. Once you've got a good, strong, group consensus on health-care spending or abortion, then allowing those cretins over there to force their horrible views on the people of their benighted states seems completely intolerable. Nothing will suffice but to use federal power to keep their morally obtuse desires from ever being made into law.
ReplyDeleteAnd so, even nominal advocates of localism frequently end up trying to centralize issues, instead of pushing them down to the level where a genuine consensus exists. We may need federalism more than ever, but we're going to get it less.
A Nation Of Me.
No, because liberals are the real racists.
ReplyDeleteMan does not live by pink Himalayan salt alone.
ReplyDeleteAgain the obsession with things being jammed down their throats. They do realize that their Freudian slip is showing, right?
ReplyDeleteThey really do have a problem with that whole "union" thing, don't they?
ReplyDeleteIt's always Courtly Life and never the Crusades.
ReplyDeleteActually, this would work perfectly. Until the Sovereign State of Pantry gets a better deal from the Kitchen-Dining Room Confederation and decides to direct all exports of paper products to the Confederation. That could wipe out Bathroomia.
ReplyDelete"A Nation of Me": Consensus guaranteed.
ReplyDeleteI figured she read the article about the asshole morons who are producing Soylent, the new liquid food substitute, and decided to go for that instead.
ReplyDeleteOr firing them out of a cannon.
ReplyDeleteYou can only do that with people of the proper caliber--and most glibertarians will likely be small-arms types.
Ba-dup CSSSSSSSS!
Bingo!
ReplyDeleteWhich explains the Thermomix.
ReplyDeleteI know just what you're talking about.
ReplyDeleteHere in Georgia, I live in a tiny pocket of Blue surrounded by a sea of Red. It's easy to guess where that patch of Blue is.
not in Germany.
ReplyDeleteI don't know... I'm of two minds on that one.
ReplyDeleteI am guessing that the conservatives in my city greatly enjoy the liberal aspects and would not want a city without public universities, parks, museums, a nascent electric train system, and diversity of shopping, dining, and culture.
ReplyDeleteJust wait until the Basement succeeds, claiming it has its own exit and doesn't need the rest of the house.
ReplyDeleteMy comment exists solely to repeat this phrase:
ReplyDeleteWhat a surprise that they would confuse money with power! In their libertarian paradise, they might well find their causality chain working the other way: Those who have power take the money (and everything else) from everyone else--including their henchmen.
over and over and over in an awestruck voice.
Actually, not in India and Nepal, where we don't need no stinkin' paper goods.
ReplyDelete"And if you don't like it, you can move."
ReplyDeleteSome percentage of the population apparently thinks the Civil War should not have been fought. That's debatable, but since it was, I just want to break these states'-rights motherfuckers. Break them
Point is, I'm tired of providing food (in the form of my taxes) to goddamn Red states. Let'em fucking secede. Pablo
ReplyDeleteThat's one arms race I don't even want to think about.
ReplyDeleteIn a past life, I had the misfortune to be personally acquainted with one Ronald Bailey. Glib, yes. Smart, no. If he's intelligent, why does Nick Gillespie get paid 200K a year by Reason while Bailey limps along on a lousy 60 grand or so?
ReplyDeleteIt's like past lives. You're never a mud-eating trilobite, always the Queen of Sheba.
ReplyDeleteNo, see Pablo above. An adult child can do whatever they want in a bedroom not attached to his/her parents house with NO parental support (i.e. individual secession)
ReplyDeleteOh, hell no. That's a deep dark secret kept buried next to the wetsuits and dildos.
ReplyDeleteThis is one reason why these people are nuts. The layers and layers of neurosis these folks have built up from keeping so many paradoxical ideas smashed together puts a lot of them well into the clinical territory. They are wrapped waaaaay too tightly; you couldn't pull that stick from their ass with a John Deere.
So it is strictly coincidental they want black things stuck down their throat. Even as far back as 1854, as smut noted above:
Once you've got a good, strong, group consensus on health-care spending
ReplyDeleteor abortion, then allowing those cretins over there to force their
horrible views on the people of their benighted states seems completely
intolerable. Nothing will suffice but to use federal power to keep their
morally obtuse desires from ever being made into law.
On the other hand, anyone who doesn't want to establish a Western-style democracy halfway across the world should be hit in the face by a 2x4. If McMegan is that interested in federalism, maybe she should leave D.C. and its extremely ironic relationship to that model and establish Reason Baghdad.
Bidette Mitt Uns!
ReplyDeleteUbi sunt the $1000 blenders of yesteryear? [wails, rends garment]
ReplyDeleteBadezimmer erwache!
ReplyDeleteNext step: the annexation of the living room.
To the dismay of some on the Left.
ReplyDeleteI'm not EVEN going to mention one of Rush Limbaugh's favorite metaphors. He likes to talk about bending over and grabbing his ankles...
ReplyDeleteOops, too late. I mentioned it.
Rush doesn't have issues.
ReplyDeleteHe has volumes.
When you switch them on, they go Bow Chica Bow Bow.
ReplyDeleteI can't find "eponysterical" in my Webster's New World. Time to get a new one, I guess. Are they still twenty bucks?
ReplyDelete"On a cold and gray Chicago mornin'
ReplyDeleteAnother baby libertarian is born
In the ghetto.
And his momma cries."
I would like to double-date this comment.
ReplyDeleteNo, you were right the first time: The Calculatir was developed by the ancient people of Texas Instruments to allow users to see mathematical solutions over great numbers. However, most were lost over the years, and eventually the all-seeing Eye of Koch commandeered the key Calculatir. Only those of the strongest will may use the Calculatir to derive correct sums. All others swiftly fall under the sway of Koch and see only those numbers Koch commands they see.
ReplyDeleteThey also develop stomach viruses that render business and economics writers innumerate.
When it comes right down to it, are there ANY Libertarians who aren't also sons of privilege?
ReplyDeleteI'm sure I'm not the only one here who has had to work for a boss who swaggered around like some kind of little Caeser, who imagined that his employees did as they were told because they looked up to him as a father figure, and not because they were being paid.
Ever work for somebody like that? Yeah, chances are that guy had Libertarian views.
Only if Picard is Spanish.
ReplyDeleteI keep hearing this argument and I have to say, I don't get it. Leaving aside who the Them is in a Red State, things like maintaining interstates or funding Medicaid and Head Start (or WIC/EBT/SNAP) are good uses of taxes. If the money is going to a state that contains some noisy people who claim they can go Galt from the U.S., so?
ReplyDeleteHowever there are things like war, I think that is bad use of tax dollars. Subsidies for giant corporations that abuse employees and fuck up the environment, ditto. Jackasses like Rick Perry or some teahaddist con man like Phillips shrivel into insignificance in comparison.
On the other hand, anyone who doesn't want to establish a Western-style democracy halfway across the world should be hit in the face by a 2x4.
ReplyDeleteThis made me laugh out loud, and provided some blessed relief from one of the worst doctoral dissertations I've worked on in a long time. My profound thanks, whetstone!
innumerate.
ReplyDeleteI believe the preferred term nowadays is "differently mathed."
I'll just leave this here . . .
ReplyDeleteYeah but unless you're talking Bugs Bunny and Florida, a state that seceded would still benefit in millions of ways from being located within the U.S. Interstate highways will bring goods and tourists to your borders. Your water supply may come from another state.
ReplyDeleteYou can be fairly certain that any food that comes from the U.S. into Randtopia has been subjected to tyrannical food safety requirements. And so on. The flip of that is Randtopia could easily do things that are detrimental to the surrounding foreign country. It could in fact become the live at home kid that blasts music 24/7 and uses up all of the hot water.
Once you've got a good, strong, group consensus on health-care spending
ReplyDeleteor abortion, then allowing those cretins over there to force their
horrible views on the people of their benighted states seems completely
intolerable.
Yup, hence the Hyde Amendment, the "partial-birth" abortion ban, the perpetual attempt to pass fetal personhood legislation, and the like. And don't get me started on the push to "allow health insurance to be sold across state lines" with all its anti-state-sovereignty implications. I mean, what's next, opposing state lawsuits against other states' pollution? Funneling out-of-state funds into anti-gay referenda? The mind boggles.
... Market failure?
ReplyDeleteChrome won't show me the comment; please tell me who said and maybe first line.
ReplyDeleteSounds like the setup for a horror story ... a deliberate one this time.
ReplyDeleteA group of strangers awakens to find themselves in an isolated mountain vale. Not knowing whom amongst one another to trust, they inevitably separate to seek escape from the valley. Every one of them left alone soon begins to hear a voice, droning on and on. The victim tries to fight, but the unseen speaker is relentless in his speechifying, and eventually the victim nods off in boredom. Whereupon ... **BLAMMO**. A shadowy figure emerges to plunder the corpse, then disappears back into the concealing darkness of the gulch.
I actually do get it. Roy and Charles Pierce do a great job making fun of Red State politicians, but to a man (or woman, more's the shame), these people have voters who put them in office and constituencies who want them to do little more than throw sand in the gears of a government that is supposed to run the entire country, not just grant special privileges to their little corner of it, and then focus their deranged hatred on Dems in general and Obama in particular when they don't get their way.. And as long as they continue to jam their political agenda down OUR throats, nothing will be accomplished except their plan to prove that government doesn't work by burning it to the ground and then pointing to the ashes and exclaiming proudly "See, we TOLD you so!" The only reason I ever supported a line item veto is so a president (of the appropriate party, dontcha know) could dope slap some of these idiots into a better grasp of reality.
ReplyDelete"proglodyte"
ReplyDeletePablo should correct me if I'm misstating his position, but since Libertarians seem to be so fond of their "thought experiments", the secession argument is one which we can adopt as our own to slap down theirs, and not as an actual prescription for the reorganization of the entire U.S. And the "If you're so fucking unhappy here, why don't you just leave?" argument can trump just about anything they can come up with.
ReplyDeleteYeah sure. The resentful, unpleasant, greedy and dumb shall always be among us. OK. And what about the people who didn't vote for the asshats? Aside from the ridiculous and classist solution that they should just move, I never hear anyone address what they're supposed to do when the federal spigot is turned off.
ReplyDeleteBut whatever, right? People will get their wish that the U.S. cuts funding to asshat states just to Show Them on the same day one of the asshat states actually secedes just to Show Them.
Cause if there's one thing that she don't need
ReplyDeleteit's another little pisser farting greed
in the ghetto.
"Besides, look what we did with it. We had it for forty years, and look what we did with it!"
ReplyDeleteAnd then, Thomas Sowell got off at the next stop.
I think the actual model for the polity is one of those sit com teenager rooms with tape running right down the middle separating little bobby's messy half from Biff's tidy half. The border is festooned with signs saying"you're not the boss of me" " keep out:this means you!"
ReplyDeleteHey... Soylent is just the thing for droids who are so busy cranking out articles for "Reason" that they have no time to eat, let alone think.
ReplyDeleteThey'll have to live with the stupid people. Just like the rest of us.
ReplyDeleteThe way I suspect these things will work in reality is that even the reddest of red states eventually begin demanding that the more quotidinal and utilitarian parts of government be functional. And you don't get functional without some level of taxes. And even the dimmest of the dim bulbs recognize that.
ReplyDeleteSo see this at work even with the Teahadists. They're all about slashing and burning the big government down to size. Except for all those parts that the people back home rely on like Social Security, Medicare, federal road money, lavish defense spending, and so on. Then the big government just ain't quite big enough.
Any libertarians who aren't sons of privilege? Sure: A pilot who used to work at the airline I worked for. He was positive that if only we followed the libertarian creed, he'd most definitely be one of those who comes out on top. Having watched both his tactical and strategic decision-making up close and personal, he should be on his knees every morning thanking God that all those rules and regulations he despised exist. If not for the law, he'd be breakfast every day for all the cunning predators libertarianism would unleash on his sorry ass.
ReplyDeleteI think people should rewatch passport to pimlico. A state or sub state entity could absolutely withdraw behind its own borders, hypothetically, but its local economy eould soon tank if it closed the borders to tourism and business--and once tourism and business are involved then shitting on the values of your guests and clients, or jailing them for sodomy, starts to be problematic. The only reason non muslim westerners go to saudi arabia is for the oil. If it werent for mecca and the pilgrimage you wouldnt catch anyone choosing voluntarjly to go to such a repressive place. Meanwhile lichtenstein and hong kong and singapore (where almost everything but spitting and causing trouble are permitted) are flooded with tourists.
ReplyDeleteEach and every one of them will be kings.
ReplyDeleteBeckett's Endgame x1,000,000.
JoshInca is calling us "proglodytes."
ReplyDelete"No,
Proglodytes that claim to like localism end up trying to centralize their preferences, because they're smugly confident that they know how to run everyone's life better than the poor fools do themselves.
The rest of us just want to be left alone."
Ive slways assumed the guy was a realtor who was trolling the bus looking for clients to sell properties to.
ReplyDelete"sure, I call people names insulting their intelligence and implying their inferiority, but it's only because they're so smug."
ReplyDeleteSays a man I'd wager is anti-choice and anti-gay marriage.
ReplyDeleteThe resentful, unpleasant, greedy and dumb are not only among us, they often make up the majority in congressional districts or even states, and at that point, the people who didn't vote for the asshats are shit outta luck. See: Medicaid expansion under the ACA... in states where the asshats got control, THEY refused to accept the federal funding to expand Medicaid thanks to an enabling decision by the Supreme Court just to show the Gummint that THEY won't have greater access to health care jammed down their throats.
ReplyDelete"Push as many decisions as possible down to the local level -- not whether Colorado can pollute rivers that run through California, but decisions about taxes, social spending, health care and regulation."
ReplyDeleteNinny. 'Cuz why:
1. Decisions about taxes, social spending, health care and regulation are going to determine whether or not Colorado can pollute rivers which run through California, and besides
2. In the future (starting immediately) Colorado's rivers will only run through California if we're lucky. (Whether they're polluted or not.) At present they show a disturbing tendency to dry up in the desert midway, and there's no reason to believe the trend won't continue. That's the point we've reached right now, thanks in part to the Deregulatory Brat Pack cheered on by Megan and her pals. (Darn it.)
Credit where credit is due, and with blame, the same.
I'm old enough to think telling some Brave Patriot "America, love it or leave it!" would be sort of funny, but really threats of secession are less serious than "Let's go seasteading!" or "We're going to build a Fortress of Derpitude," out in Idaho (or wherever).
ReplyDeleteAttempting to counter it, even if I wanted to, would cut into precious pointing and laughing time.
But really, I think Liberpublicans claiming they can too secede from the U.S. or the state or whatever is excellent. Few things capture the essence of lunacy in the party and you have to be kind of deaf to miss the hilarious saber rattling in those statements.
Well, in that metaphor, the fact that he still lives with his parents pretty much qualify as 'direct financial assistance'. Even if they act more like landlords and he pays rent every month, buys his own food, etc. it still applies, because you can't just tear shit up as you please with a real rented apartment either. When people bring up the money that red states take in, it's usually about cutting down their claims to total financial independence more than self-determination.
ReplyDeleteFor the record, I'm not of the 'cut 'em loose and watch 'em suffer' philosophy, which I think is both unworkable and cruel. The point of my comment was to drive home how impossible it would actually be. And teabaggers know this; for all the talk about secession, they never actually go through with it. Even talk about red counties seceding from blue states never goes anywhere, because they all know deep down that the Independent Republic of Eastern Oregon would be toast within a few months.
New Hampshire, despite being a fairly insignificant state, does have a native population with a great deal of experience with both (a) direct democracy, and (b) out-of-staters moving in and attempting to tell the yokels how to do things. Remember that unpleasant surprise Mitt Romney got when he decided to chat up a veteran in a diner, and the gentleman happened to be gay? NH has a lot more people like that than you'd guess at first glance.
ReplyDeleteI've always wondered where she got 40 years in her Chocolate City Confidential (yes, I'm casting asparagus on her version of events).
ReplyDeleteBut it is interesting she makes the seedy corner over near Union Station (I think she's over there) representative of the whole city when discussing what "They" did to the city. Apparently things like D.C.'s thriving cultural scene and the Smithsonians are figments of our imagination.
Or "Sir." As in "Thank you sir, for giving me 30 minutes off to attend the funeral of my daughter who was killed - sorry, sir - who voluntarily terminated her employment with your company when the factory she was working in demonstrated that buildings made of sand and glue aren't cost effective."
ReplyDeleteHe just wishes he could grab his ankles.
ReplyDeleteAtlas Mugged
ReplyDeleteHe wishes he could *see* his ankles.
ReplyDeleteInca, huh? Don't sound 'Merican to me.
ReplyDeleteBut ... isn't this what you want? No federal money is going to the people who were against Medicaid expansion.
ReplyDeleteAlright, I must be wearing orthopedic shoes because I stand corrected.
ReplyDeleteI guess this kind of delusional thinking can afflict different kinds of people, regardless of their social standing.
"What color are they now?"
ReplyDeleteDon't do it?! Hell, put it on pay-per-view.
ReplyDeleteA pilot? If not for regulations, he'd be a smear on the Tarmac somewhere.
ReplyDelete(In a continuation of the ancient ritual, one of the Calculatirs was gifted to McMegan Kochsdottir, who used it to Thermomix pink Himalayan salt to enhance the Counting Powers.)
ReplyDeleteThe point of my comment was to drive home how impossible it would actually be. And teabaggers know this; for all the talk about secession, they never actually go through with it.
ReplyDeleteWell of course not. It's another scam that gets the rubes and the reporters all damp in the pants. But if you look at Right Wing rhetoric since a man who just happens to be black was elected, it fits well with the belligerent tone and posturing.
By flinging around a word that has a very specific meaning in the U.S., the marks imagine Their Guy leading them to war against Obama's army of sooty-skinned Black Panther Rainbow Muslim Brigades. Good thing they've bought a shit load of guns & ammo just like the NRA told them to. And the seed bank and gold just like Beck told them to. And then better donate some more money to Joe Ripemoff's senatorial campaign just like he told them to...
Poor squiddy!
ReplyDeleteHey, if you look at this plat from 1853 you can see that 1132 and 1134 were both originally parts of The Spooky Old House on the Corner. (30 minutes later Velma unmasks the unpleasant real estate developer and Wayne La Pierre.)
ReplyDeleteAs someone else who lives in that patch of Georgia Blue--thirding this.
ReplyDeleteIt is not so much a question of "Where are the snows of yesterday?", more "How expensive are they?"
ReplyDeleteIf this was a free market blog I'd buy 100 upvotes for this comment.
ReplyDeleteAfraid so. Some folks have a hard time dealing with shades of gray, and so will latch on to this simple, impossible world. It's a horrid little virus-meme with twists that would make Escher proud, The common theme is, as Dr. Noisewater noted above, They Will Be On The Winning Side. It all starts there and works backwards.
ReplyDeleteYou don't have to be rich to be a Legend In Your Own Mind. (but it sure helps)
Well... "America, Love It Or Leave It" was originally designed to be the all purpose put down of the dirty hippies by a bunch of chest thumping clowns who had no larger point to make other than drowning out dissent with sheer volume. "If you don't like the United States, secede, and then tell us how you plan to survive on your own" is more complex than "America, Love It Or Leave It" because it turns the argument back on them and forces Libertarians to confront ALL the implications of their ideas, which, I suspect, they have up to now willfully ignored.
ReplyDeleteunless you're talking Bugs Bunny and Florida
ReplyDelete"South America, take it away!"
(the last line of Neptune's Daughter. Spoken by Keenan Wynn to Ricardo Montalban in re Esther Williams. rowr)
Hi, neighbor!
ReplyDeleteand once tourism and business are involved then shitting on the values of your guests and clients, or jailing them for sodomy, starts to be problematic. The only reason non muslim westerners go to saudi arabia is for the oil.
ReplyDeleteI get your point, but the example of Saudi Arabia is a bit problematic. I friend of mine was doing a report on Saudi Arabia's burgeoning fleet of business jets, and managed to wangle a free trip to Riyadh aboard a U.S. corporation's jet. While waiting in customs at Riyadh, Saudi police came in and cuffed everyone from the airplane. Seems they found some of those little liquor bottles on board the airplane, so everyone went downtown to be questioned (more like lectured) about smuggling.
So, yeah, shitting on the values of your clients might be problematic. Or not, depending on how badly your clients want what you have.
Jinkies!
ReplyDeleteForget it, Shake--it's the same level of reasoning that leads to shutting down the government, and then being outraged--OUT-FUCKING-RAGED, I tell you!--to discover that national parks and all those monuments and memorials on the National Mall are all run by the government.
ReplyDeleteFor these people, there is no future: Only the endless tyranny of the ever-present now.
Actually, per my comments below, what I want is for the libertarians who continually yammer on about the freedom that local governance allegedly brings to confront the essential absurdity of their positions. If it takes whacking them over the head with the 2X4 of secession, so be it.
ReplyDeleteIf I can't whack them over the head with the 2X4 of secession, can I give them the "kick-in-the-nuts of comprehension"?
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately that led to the Furnace allying with the K-DR Confederation, leading to the siege now remembered as 'The Long Cold'. When Furnace was restored, internecine warfare broke out among Basement factions. Lawn mower against power tool, wedge clippers vs. wrenches, even garden tools against nutdrivers. The battle spilled all over Basement, until finally the Power Tools declared supremacy, and in a final act of vengeance, threw the lawn mowers into Furnace's returned flame.
ReplyDeleteMany Mowers and Clippers knew what it was to be roasted in the depths of the Furnace that day I can tell you.
Be my guest, sir.
ReplyDeleteThat...is special. Ah, sweet Reason.
ReplyDeleteI know what America love it or leave it meant and to whom it was directed, that's why I think it would be funny to use on the people who probably said it sincerely when I was a kid. Also, get off of my lawn.
ReplyDeleteBut when you talk about forcing libertarians to confront all of the implications of their ideas, you're very charitably, but incorrectly assuming an intellectual honesty that just isn't there. They know its bullshit. They delight in bullshitting because that's what they do, it is who they are. For some it is all they have. For others it is the latest in a long line of scams.
So to say "All right, smart guy, go ahead and secede and see what happens," is to make their day because it gives them more opportunities to bullshit.
But you will live to a ripe old age and die and be buried and turn to dust before any of these knuckleheads will pause in the act of outlining their super-duper secession plans and say "Gosh, I never realized that my plan is completely impractical!"
I had a cat who would get so excited when chasing her tail that she'd give it a really good CHOMP. Then she'd snarl, hiss and sometimes run away from herself.
ReplyDeleteIt was soo adorable when she did it.
With human beings, not so much.
For most libertarians, the fantasies they construct about how their world would work make the stuff in Penthouse Forum read like peer-reviewed papers.
ReplyDeleteDidn't we see this in Florida a few years ago? Some city councilor was pushing some homophobic regulation, but the city relies on tourism and a lot of the tourists to that particular city are gay. So after many gay groups were like "Guess we'll take our queercash elsewhere," the businesses were like "Whoa," and the proposed regulation went bye-bye.
ReplyDelete