Miscellaneous And Off Topic Subjects

[hack]

Dunno. There's a long tradition of groups within the country trying to enforce their particular morality on the whole. I've got a big problem with any sort of religious imperatives informing policy, and reality as seen by some believers is no more sensible to me than the trans reality is to many others. In fact thanks to science, demonstrably so. We're not talking about just value judgements here in an area yet to be scrutinized for what can be actually proved or proved wrong. But that happens and will continue to. So we live in a country in which there is more than one reality, and the way things work in the system people are not prevented from trying to make policy according to their version instead of others. Is how it is.

[iam416]

I don't share your equivalency.

There is one reality. Folks can make policy on what they think is real, but that doesn't change the reality. If folks want to teach creationism that's their prerogative, but it makes it no more real. You can claim to be a helicopter, but it doesn't make it so.

And one day maybe people legislate against all forms of discrimination based on gender identity. But, as it stands, the 4th Circuit's decision that Title IX includes gender identity is indefensible as a matter of legal reasoning. I find the result awful, but I understand others may disagree.

[Hannibal]

[youtube]rcUJgbWrM64[/youtube]

[iam416]

That's fantastic.

[Wild Hoss]

I am still struggling with the notion that I am not allowed to consider myself a helicopter.

[Mike]

I thought you more of a tractor man/person/being/thing.

[Wild Hoss]

Just as long as ninja is still on the table, I can cope. Otherwise I have wasted a lot of money on throwing stars.

[hack]

Understood, but, to work within your structure, policy is not then always formed according to reality. Various forms of unrealistic thinking are applied. If some peoples' forms are applied you can expect that people with different forms will try for same. Is how it is.

[Ghengis Jon]

Trans stuff is a big deal to people on both sides. Apparently delineating restroom privileges by sex is anti-LGBT, hence the multitude of progressives boycotting NC.

Personally, I don't want my son or daughter sharing restrooms with the opposite sex. Period. End of story...

If I see a tranny hitting the head just before one of my children enter the restroom, I will exercise my right to open carry my Springfield M-14 as an escort. In order not to offend anyone's delicate feelings, I will also wear a rainbow t-shirt.

[Prime2]

America just got a little safer.

Hack, you are welcome.

[Da Geezer]

There are many, many people who, for some reason, "identify" as the opposite sex. It is a legitimate mental illness called gender dysphoria. So I don't think that the main driving force behind this is perverted sightseeing. However, just because you "identify" as something doesn't mean that anyone else but you should be forced to "identify" you that way too. Anorexics "identify" themselves as being too fat. We don't indulge them by prescribing them diet pills. We put them into hospitals, force them to eat, and treat them as if they are mentally ill. Your feelings are not other people's reality.

I'd never thought of it that way. Good post.

In 1992-3, Justice Kennedy wrote an opinion in which he said that it is a basic human right to define our individual reality. I remember thinking that the opinion will come back to bite us in the ass, and it did in Obergfell.

This made me think of the "gender" issues we dealt with in my (450 students) high school. The guys would catch a blue racer, 4 foot or longer, and send it under the door into the girl's bathroom. Chaos would ensue, as would some alarming use of the Kings English. Eventually, some farm girl would catch the snake and either throw it out the window or cut off its head with her jackknife.

[Wild Hoss]

Bollocks.

[ame="https://twitter.com/TMZ/status/723192305587490819"]https://twitter.com/TMZ/status/723192305587490819[/ame]

[iam416]

Why do you hate America, Hoss?

[Wild Hoss]

Because it hasn't carved out the foul, cancerous lesion known as Ohio.

[Da Geezer]

Hack said:

I still don't understand what you mean by subletting power. I recall this argument you've made, and you've made it well, but I'm not sure how it's a core solution to any problem of centralized power or the power-corrupts problem. I think the bottom line is to keep it simple, avoid graft opportunities, rule out things rather than embrace complexity and assume the civil servants can handle that (Canadian banks are a fine, fine example), and keep everything out in the sunshine so that bad behavior can be exposed and heads can roll as much as possible.

Agreed, except I call "civil servants" bureaucrats. And I view bureaucrats as more corrupt than other parts of the system because they are not restricted in any way by the market. You've seen civil servants do good things in developing countries, and I spend much of my time dealing with bullshit regulation by bureaucrats.

As for sub-letting power I'll try to be more clear. I'll just use rice as an example.

1. Government has the right to tax for its operation. That's legitimate.
2. Using lobbyists, rice producers in the US have several tax breaks, all of which reduce their cost of production, and thus encourage excessive supply some of which is purchased by the US government (a second subsidy).
3. The excess supply is, for example, given to very poor countries as food for people. Since local farmers in the third world can't compete with a price of "free", they stop competing in the rice market, and if the US ceases to send "relief", there is no indigenous agriculture to take up the slack.

I view item 2 as sub-letting the power to tax, which is also "rent seeking". To think that the rice producers do not in some way "pay off" the political class is IMO unrealistic.

The first definition of rent seeking I came to on google was

People are said to seek rents when they try to obtain benefits for themselves through the political arena. They typically do so by getting a subsidy for a good they produce or for being in a particular class of people, by getting a tariff on a good they produce, or by getting a special regulation that hampers their competitors.

To me, it is conceptually the same if an entity gets a tax deduction or a direct payment, but I think it far more likely that the public would object to the giving of a cash grant than some unintelligible tax benefit. You and I agree that the more transparent the relationship of government with citizens, the better. I think a check is more transparent.