Bolitics The New Condem Government

[Jon]

I'm still struggling to think of a decent 'right wing' comedian ...

Not a comedian but a humourist/satirist - PJ O'Rourke.

Don't think i'm aware of his work Snowster. Possibly for good reason .... :winkold: although I'm trying to think more of 'stand-up' type comedians. Macintyre must be, surely!?

[tonyh29]

Was kinda an argument I heard about music being crap in the late nineties

In the 80's you had anger and the left leaning student types joining bands and writing meaningful and angry songs

By the Blair era the left had nothing to moan about life was all to easy and so songs became about girl I love you even though you are shagging my best mate

The original argument was put much better than that but I'm in a hurry to get off the bog and get down the pub ( hold that thought everyone)

[Awol]

"“Those who don't vote for me will be weighed in the balance come Judgment Day. The Archangel Gabriel will say, ‘You didn't vote for Ken Livingstone in 2012. Oh dear, burn forever. Your skin flayed for all eternity"

good old Ken , still at least he didn't call any Jews Nazi's this time around

No, but he came out with a cracker the other day (displaying both the depth of his cultural understanding and the higher cognitive abilities of left wingers)..

Ken Livingstone: Gay bankers who go to Dubai ‘could have penis lopped off’

The mayoral hopeful was criticised for his remarks after saying he was confident bankers would not leave the capital for the Arab financial powerhouse because of intolerance towards gay men.

Asked about his views on bankers leaving, Mr Livingstone told Metro: ‘Our only real competitor is New York.’

When it was suggested they might move to Dubai – which is trying to attract financial firms with low tax rates – he said: ‘Would you want to get your penis chopped off? A gay banker would get his penis cut off in Dubai.’

Geneva? ‘Too boring.’ Shanghai? ‘And risk being overthrown by revolution?’

[peterms]

"“Those who don't vote for me will be weighed in the balance come Judgment Day. The Archangel Gabriel will say, ‘You didn't vote for Ken Livingstone in 2012. Oh dear, burn forever. Your skin flayed for all eternity"

good old Ken , still at least he didn't call any Jews Nazi's this time around

No, but he came out with a cracker the other day (displaying both the depth of his cultural understanding and the higher cognitive abilities of left wingers)..

Ken Livingstone: Gay bankers who go to Dubai ‘could have penis lopped off’

As an approach to bankers in general, it has something to commend it. Could be incorporated into a more balanced system of performance management - do well and you get a bonus, take foolish risks with other people's money and get bailed out by the rest of us, then another form of incentive kicks in...

[A.J.Rimmer]

I'm interested in the idea that right wingers are more stupid than their left wing counterparts.

I have just one question:

Looking back to before the final collapse of communism, let's assume for sake of argument there were some 25/30 overtly capitalist countries and roughly the samer number of communist countries.

Why was it that in ALL the capitalist countries, even the poorest, people were very much better off than the people in even the richest of the communist countries?

Effectively this meant that if one made a list of these 50 countries based upon standards of living; nos 1 to 25 would all be capitalist and nos 26 to 50 would all be communist.

If one sees this in the simple context of flipping a coin for each of the fifty countries, with heads being 'rich' and tails being 'poor', ie calling the toss of the coin correctly on 50 consequtive occasions... the odds would be countless billions to one against achieving such a result (two to the fiftieth in fact).

Could one of these brilliant left wingers please explain away the obvious inference of the mathematics... without trying the old 'well, they weren't really communist countries at all' ploy.

[robojoel]

I'm interested in the idea that right wingers are more stupid than their left wing counterparts.

I have just one question:

Looking back to before the final collapse of communism, let's assume for sake of argument there were some 25/30 overtly capitalist countries and roughly the samer number of communist countries.

Why was it that in ALL the capitalist countries, even the poorest, people were very much better off than the people in even the richest of the communist countries?

Effectively this meant that if one made a list of these 50 countries based upon standards of living; nos 1 to 25 would all be capitalist and nos 26 to 50 would all be communist.

If one sees this in the simple context of flipping a coin for each of the fifty countries, with heads being 'rich' and tails being 'poor', ie calling the toss of the coin correctly on 50 consequtive occasions... the odds would be countless billions to one against achieving such a result (two to the fiftieth in fact).

Could one of these brilliant left wingers please explain away the obvious inference of the mathematics... without trying the old 'well, they weren't really communist countries at all' ploy.

Interesting question which I often think about myself, there are various factors that contribute to this in my opinion:

1) Most of these countries were not really communist (sorry...) they were thinly veiled elitist dictatorships which gave 'Communism' a pretty bad name.

2) We live in a world of finite resources, progress in terms of standard in living for the richest capitalist countries is based entirely on the exploitation of poorer countries in order to be able to sustain expansion of economies and in turn ther own standard of living, so although I agree with much of what you have said, I think that BELOW the communist countries in terms of SOL would be a huge amount of exploited third world countries (see sub saharan africa, and much of Asia), without those the Richest capitalist countries would not sustain their development.

3) Again living in a world of finite resources communism is always going to lose against capitalism, the nature of capitalism is growth and of a predatory nature, communism is all about (in theory) internal balance, sybiosis and equal distribution (although this was not entirely the case as most communist states were basically dicatatorships).

As an analogy, imagine you put two species in the same environment, one which constantly devoured resources, hoarding them for themselves and preying on the weaker members of the environment raping and pillaging at will, then imagine a second species who just lived in harmony with their natural suroundings, what woud happen? I know this is a clumsy metaphor, dont bother picking it apart as it is just meant to highlight a point, not be a literal interpretaiton of events.

'Communism' never stood a chance against the nature of capitalism, real communism would stand even less of a chance. The only way it would work would be on a world wide basis run by a benevolant and fair minded dictator, the Dalai Lama for example (although he would not touch the job with a barge pole I would guess!) It would inevitably fail due to mans inherent stupidity, greed and lack of compassion for fellow humans.

This leads me on to another thought, is capitalism the most perfect system for us because it most closely reflects our natural human instincts (quote Hicks 'we are a virus with shoes') or is mans nature like this becasue we are born into this system then moulded by it?

Whatever, back on topic, that David Cameron is a right nob-jockey

[A.J.Rimmer]

Robojoel, A most interesting and well constructed response.

You do make 2 excellent points. Firstly, and this has always worried me when espousing right wing economics, is the issue of finite resources. Capitalism does seem to depend upon endless growth, though perhaps one can find a way around this. The truth is, I do not know.

Your second point is the issue of human nature. I did a lot, and I mean a lot, of business with the commies; so I saw the rotteness and corruption of their system at first hand. The marxist charter would work perfectly in a colony of ants, but on every single level of the system, where humans are concerned, it has no chance whatever. For me this is the entire explanation of the mathematics I refer to above.

Finally, endemic in the communist system is the absolute necessity to punish those who perform well. I only ever saw such people imprisioned, but shooting them did just as well. Stagnation and atrophy are the inevitable results... and that is what happened in EVERY single one of these moronic socioeconomic experiments.

... and we still haven't touched on the abuses of freedom and human rights, that history's greatest mass murderers committed in order to make the world a better place.

I sure hope I never end up at the tender mercy of those brilliant lefties.

[A.J.Rimmer]

3) Again living in a world of finite resources communism is always going to lose against capitalism, the nature of capitalism is growth and of a predatory nature, communism is all about (in theory) internal balance, sybiosis and equal distribution (although this was not entirely the case as most communist states were basically dicatatorships).

As an analogy, imagine you put two species in the same environment, one which constantly devoured resources, hoarding them for themselves and preying on the weaker members of the environment raping and pillaging at will, then imagine a second species who just lived in harmony with their natural suroundings, what woud happen? I know this is a clumsy metaphor, dont bother picking it apart as it is just meant to highlight a point, not be a literal interpretaiton of events.

Once again I broadly agree with what you are saying. I often use the same 'clumsy metaphor' myself... but I always use the rain forest and the function of nature.

Such analogies can never be perfect, but as with nature, capitalism is a process of constant decay and regeneration. I'm much amused by the left calling the current crisis a crisis of capitalism, when it has been bought about by the left's decision to borrow to support the banks rather than let them go to the wall.

My career was spent in international trade and banking, but I was a subsidiary, fringe, derivatives or secondary banker... call it what you will. I advocated most stongly 5 years back that the busted banks should be allowed to collapse. All their bailout has succeeded in doing, is to store up even larger problems for the future. What we needed was thousands of unemployed bankers running around the city bringing down the wage bills.

As for the salaries and bonuses... if I were underwritten by the British taxpayer, I'd award myself bonuses of ten times what these boys are getting... only a fool would not. Is this a failure of capitalism, or a failure of socialism?

It's all too easy for socialists to run around advocating more goodies for everybody. We all want that. The big question is how to get it. In this respect the left have the advantage of language... whereas the right, in which I include myself, must advocate an economic life of constant blood letting... just as nature dictates.

[LondonLax]

Communism has been proven to not actually work in practice.

When you talk about 'left wing' now you are talking about left wing capitalists. Capitalism but with some counterbalances to keep it humane

[robojoel]

I would suggest that the Billions of people living in abject poverty on a planet that has enough resources to not only feed and shelter everyone but also provide a modest standard of living for all, may say that Capitalism has been proven not to work in practice

[blandy]

I'm interested in the idea that right wingers are more stupid than their left wing counterparts.

I have just one question:

Looking back to before the final collapse of communism, let's assume for sake of argument there were some 25/30 overtly capitalist countries and roughly the same number of communist countries.

Why was it that in ALL the capitalist countries, even the poorest, people were very much better off than the people in even the richest of the communist countries?

Effectively this meant that if one made a list of these 50 countries based upon standards of living; nos 1 to 25 would all be capitalist and nos 26 to 50 would all be communist.

If one sees this in the simple context of flipping a coin for each of the fifty countries, with heads being 'rich' and tails being 'poor', ie calling the toss of the coin correctly on 50 consequtive occasions... the odds would be countless billions to one against achieving such a result (two to the fiftieth in fact).

Could one of these brilliant left wingers please explain away the obvious inference of the mathematics... without trying the old 'well, they weren't really communist countries at all' ploy.

I'm not brilliant, but your question on the merits of different systems of Gov't is utterly unrelated to the intelligence of people and their left / right views, which is a tad baffling, in terms of the context in which you pose it.

But anyway, as reported by that well known left wing propaganda sheet The Daily Mail

Right-wingers tend to be less intelligent than left-wingers, and people with low childhood intelligence tend to grow up to have racist and anti-gay views....Conservative politics work almost as a 'gateway' into prejudice against others... childhood intelligence [was compared] with political views in adulthood across more than 15,000 people.....People with low intelligence gravitate towards right-wing views because they make them feel safe.....right-wing ideology forms a 'pathway' for people with low reasoning ability to become prejudiced against groups such as other races and gay people....there is a strong correlation between low intelligence both as a child and an adult, and right-wing politics....conservative politics is part of a complex relationship that leads people to become prejudiced.

Conservative ideology represents a critical pathway through which childhood intelligence predicts racism in adulthood,...In psychological terms, the relation between intelligence and prejudice may stem from the propensity of individuals with lower cognitive ability to endorse more right wing conservative ideologies because such ideologies offer a psychological sense of stability and order....Clearly, however, all socially conservative people are not prejudiced, and all prejudiced persons are not conservative.

The Daily Mail of course, as admitted by its editor, plays on the anxieties of its readers. Which, given the above article tends to suggest that the Daily Mail thinks its readers are thick as peas. I couldn't possibly comment.

Also, I'm not sure that it's true, anyway, to claim all the people in all capitalist countries are all better off than all the people in non capitalist countries.

There are people in India and Brazil and many other places who are every bit as poorly off as people in China or Cuba or wherever.

[snowychap]

Could one of these brilliant left wingers please explain away the obvious inference of the mathematics...

I'd imagine they could but, being a right winger, would you understand it?

A couple of serious comments:

How are you measuring how well off people are/were? You seem to suggest that even the poorest people in one of your top 25 countries was 'very much better off' than those in the other 25 - really? Or are you just saying that the average standard of living in the top 25 was better than the average standard of living in any of your second division? If so then we're in to the same kind of discussion that I had with Michelsen a while back about average standards of living (and further distributions and so on).

At first glance, is the comparison with flipping a coin apt (especially the consecutive calling of them)?

Anyway, my mind is now drifting to the rugby that is on and to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.

[snowychap]

As for the salaries and bonuses... if I were underwritten by the British taxpayer, I'd award myself bonuses of ten times what these boys are getting... only a fool would not.

You say 'fool', others may say someone with a sense of decency.

It's all too easy for socialists to run around advocating more goodies for everybody.

Whereas right wingers will run around (as above) advocating more goodies for themselves alone. :winkold:

[tonyh29]

Right-wingers tend to be less intelligent than left-wingers, and people with low childhood intelligence tend to grow up to have racist and anti-gay views

seeing as right wingers tend to have the money and their child go to public schools and receive better educations , wouldn't that therefore make the future generation of homophobic racists , left wingers ?? or does the study work on the basis that as all teachers are left wing Marxists that will then brainwash these highly educated sons of right wingers into becoming left wingers at some point in their young years ?

Edit: post not entirely serious before anyone asks

[peterms]

Right-wingers tend to be less intelligent than left-wingers, and people with low childhood intelligence tend to grow up to have racist and anti-gay views

seeing as right wingers tend to have the money and their child go to public schools and receive better educations , wouldn't that therefore make the future generation of homophobic racists , left wingers ??

Edit: post not entirely serious before anyone asks

For those who haven't read the Mail article, it says the study addresses intelligence, not educational level (or cost).

Crucially, people's educational level is not what determines whether they are racist or not - it's innate intelligence, according to the academics.

[peterms]

The Daily Mail of course, as admitted by its editor, plays on the anxieties of its readers. Which, given the above article tends to suggest that the Daily Mail thinks its readers are thick as peas. I couldn't possibly comment.

This touches on things which were the subjects of previous studies but aren't really explained by the article, which doesn't refer to previous connected work. Which is a bit odd, since the Mail also ran a piece on this closely connected work at the time. Looks like they just summarised the recent research without thinking about it, or trying to find out anything more, or else a few seconds research would have linked their own previous article.

The previous study found that people with a larger than average amygdala tended to be more sensitive to fear and perceived threats, and emotion, and that there was a correlation between this and more conservative views. Which is of course why so many of the Mail's stories are precisely about trying to stir up fear and hatred of people like immigrants, black people, poor people and so on. Prejudice is usually emotional rather than cognitive in origin, so someone whose brain responds more to emotion and fear of others is more likely to be prejudiced.

People with more liberal views were more likely to have a larger anterior cingulate cortex, which is a part of the brain involved with decision-making and dealing with uncertainty.

This piece suggests that it's not so much that dim people are conservative, but that there is a correlation between low intelligence and racism, and that socially conservative views which stress order, hierarchy and authority are more palatable to such people. Which doesn't mean that all conservatives are fools, rather that many people who aren't very bright may find a conservative world view more amenable to their general outlook.

As suspected, low intelligence in childhood corresponded with racism in adulthood. But the factor that explained the relationship between these two variables was political: When researchers included social conservatism in the analysis, those ideologies accounted for much of the link between brains and bias.

I'm not clear about whether studies have shown the link between order vs ambiguity and intelligence, but from my own experience I find that people who aren't very bright often tend to want simple stories, and can often by a bit stressed by the lack of clear instructions or being expected to deal with ambiguity.

From that point of view I can easily see why someone who is predisposed to being a bit fearful of perceived threats, and uncomfortable with ambiguity, may feel more at home with social views which play on order, structure, hierarchy, and suspicion of others.

[tonyh29]

Perceived threat ... There was a study where a few month old child was introduced to snakes , spiders and a few other scary threats ...The kid didn't bat an eyelid ... The kid was then shown the same items simultaneously with a loud noise that scared the child ... After a while the noise was removed and the child reintroduced to the objects again ... The child was scared shitless

The same principal could be argued as a proof against innate intelligence ... Doesnt innate intelligence tell us how to react when confronted by a dangerous situation ( certain responses in our body to keep us alive.)... And yet the child study suggests the fear could be more programmed than innate ??

[peterms]

...and on a slight tangent, looking at tolerance of uncertainty and ambiguity, it seems that traders don't like it. Strange, as markets which are volatile offer most scope for profit. But then since trading behaviour is reportedly sheeplike, with them all wanting to do what everyone else is doing, maybe it's not too strange.

If that is linked with the stuff about relative sizes of amygdala and anterior cingulate cortex mentioned above, that might suggest that many traders will tend towards socially conservative views, and irrational prejudice against others. Hmmm.

[peterms]

Perceived threat ... There was a study where a few month old child was introduced to snakes , spiders and a few other scary threats ...The kid didn't bat an eyelid ... The kid was then shown the same items simultaneously with a loud noise that scared the child ... After a while the noise was removed and the child reintroduced to the objects again ... The child was scared shitless

The same principal could be argued as a proof against innate intelligence ... Doesnt innate intelligence tell us how to react when confronted by a dangerous situation ( certain responses in our body to keep us alive.)... And yet the child study suggests the fear could be more programmed than innate ??

This suggests that there's a continuum of innate and learned fears, and that some can be triggered very easily while others are very hard to induce.

[blandy]

Perceived threat ... There was a study where a few month old child was introduced to snakes , spiders and a few other scary threats ...The kid didn't bat an eyelid ... The kid was then shown the same items simultaneously with a loud noise that scared the child ... After a while the noise was removed and the child reintroduced to the objects again ... The child was scared shitless

The same principal could be argued as a proof against innate intelligence ... Doesnt innate intelligence tell us how to react when confronted by a dangerous situation ( certain responses in our body to keep us alive.)... And yet the child study suggests the fear could be more programmed than innate ??

Pavlov's Dog, that. Intelligence is innate, the ability to learn from experience. Different experiences will teach different lessons, surely. There's a difference between instinct and intelligence.