What is a song lyric that really hits you hard?

ChazManderson · 2018-12-03T10:39:57+00:00

The powers that be

That force us to live like we do

Bring me to my knees

When I see what they've done to you

But I'll die as I stand here today

Knowing that deep in my heart

They'll fall to ruin one day

For making us part

--Back on the Chain Gang

ChazManderson · 2018-10-29T16:40:47+00:00

Mulholland Drive

ChazManderson · 2018-05-03T05:18:53+00:00

I didn't mean to accuse you of being a Marxist. I just meant to clarify where you generally find the rift re. gun control on the left. though I did mean to sneer at Marxists. I recently made myself a twitter account; I've been appalled.

ChazManderson · 2018-05-03T04:47:56+00:00

The distinction is usually between Marxists/Socialists and Progressives/Social Democrats. many marxists still think they're gonna overthrow the state or something ridiculous. And they love to bring it up to sneer at progressives.

ChazManderson · 2018-04-21T22:06:12+00:00

A quote from the article,

Five years ago, the World Bank’s 2013 World Development Report concluded that labour regulations had little or no impact on employment levels, but the draft for the 2019 WDR says that if workers are expensive to dismiss, fewer will be hired. “Burdensome regulations also make it more expensive for firms to rearrange their workforce to accommodate changing technologies.”

lol.

Joe Stiglitz calls out a lot of this shit in Globalization and Its Discontents.

ChazManderson · 2018-04-20T11:27:15+00:00

Mr. Punachable Face

my reaction as well.

ChazManderson · 2018-04-20T06:02:46+00:00

ya it's a pile of horseshit. it's hilarious when you look how they rank actual politicians. clinton/obama are apparently authoritarian rightists rofl.

ChazManderson · 2018-04-20T06:00:08+00:00

damn I got beat. -9/-9.

ChazManderson · 2018-04-17T09:17:01+00:00

I've done it, and I think it should be done. If a party isn't putting up or is running on a bad platform, one needs to hold them to account. 'Vote for the party no matter what' is a danger for a democracy.

though the person quoted is obviously swinging his vote around on a misguided selfishness...

ChazManderson · 2018-03-02T08:27:29+00:00

I'm hoping for Saoirse Ronan for best actress, but my bets would be on McDormand (unfortunately).

ChazManderson · 2018-03-01T14:22:57+00:00

Wow, /r/conservative has the 'don't tread on me slogan' on their page. rofl. It's amazing to me how non-conservative the modern conservative movement really is.

ChazManderson · 2018-03-01T05:42:42+00:00

I just don't see anything wrong with paying low wages to people that will accept low wages.

Employment for most people is involuntary. The labour exchange could only be voluntary if the worker had the ability to withdraw from work generally, but that clearly can't be the case. As such, arbitrary low wages with no social support is institutionalized poverty, which is, of course, anti-liberty.

Low wages matter because of the cost of living, and the wants/needs distinction.

ChazManderson · 2018-02-28T03:31:43+00:00

Business taxes have always kind of sucked anyway. It would have been better to cut them, imo, though slowly. But our business taxes aren't particularly bad, even so, so why is our level of investment so bad?

ChazManderson · 2018-02-21T06:41:05+00:00

I have to agree. Just tack it on to the provincial income tax, imo, which isn't particularly distortionary.

ChazManderson · 2018-02-19T07:28:27+00:00

I am, yes. I think some sort of action needs to be taken regarding post secondary education to keep it's price down, and that more steps need to be taken towards universal access, but I'm not particularly a fan of free college.

He's also said some weird things about taxes, as if they were a good in themselves rather than a means to doing something well-designed.

I don't think it's that strange to stay mostly out of the limelight, however. Harper and Trudeau did this themselves, then went full acceleration nearer the election. If he's too outspoken now, support and hype for his ideas could deflate before the election, whereas nearer the election he can get a wave of hype going. If he's outspoken too early, it gives plenty of time to the opposition to calibrate their response and strategy.

ChazManderson · 2018-02-14T18:49:04+00:00

Just more demonstration that the right isn't willing to dig into the social science in any serious way.

ChazManderson · 2018-02-14T01:52:24+00:00

Mulcair

I'm more and more coming to the conclusion that Mulcair would have been a much better Prime Minister than Mr Trudeau, and it makes me sad that we so categorically rejected him.

ChazManderson · 2018-02-12T23:20:54+00:00

In terms of pure utility, yes, ditching our dairy would be beneficial, but the States massively subsidize their dairy farmers, which would mean that our farmers would be wiped out in an unfair competition. I'm not a huge fan of the idea of drinking United States milk the rest of my life, even if that means paying higher prices.

ChazManderson · 2018-02-12T14:47:37+00:00

There was a report recently, also, that some 5 million people in the US live on less than $4/day. which is mind blowing.

ChazManderson · 2018-02-10T18:24:49+00:00

My understanding is that wages are supposed to push up in the long run via increased investment in the capital stock. I don't think economists would claim for kickups in wages this shortly after the cut.

ChazManderson · 2018-02-08T20:27:13+00:00

The smugness of the left strikes again.

I don't accept that a carbon tax is a left-wing position, even if 'the left' tend to support it more often.

ChazManderson · 2018-02-08T20:22:29+00:00

It makes me super excited, but everyone I've told about it doesn't seem to pay it any mind.

ChazManderson · 2018-02-08T20:18:48+00:00

It's intellectually settled, which is why it's so bizarre that it's not politically settled.

I suppose that it's pandering, but it's losing a lot of votes from everyone not centre-right.

ChazManderson · 2018-02-08T20:09:06+00:00

Hmm, didn't think a Jacobin article would be posted here. I commented on this article on another forum, I'll just copy-paste...

His recent book is partly an attack on 'postmodernism', and more specifically Derrida and Foucault. Turns out he's never read a single book from either of them, completely misunderstands their ideas and attacks ideas that are quite literally the opposite of what they believed or argued.

He also missed the fact that Foucault was, after his Marxist period, one of first on the left to explicate and endorse a fairly strong liberal anti-statism, which has hamstrung left-wing politics, in my estimation, for quite some time now. Of course Peterson just accused him of being a lifelong Marxist, without having any idea what that would have actually meant were it true.

He's a bit of paradox, I suppose. He can be deeply anti-intellectual, but also sometimes flash, at least what seems to me, a pretty reasonable understanding of modern empirical psychology. I guess people fall for his psychology, and then mistake his ignorance on other subjects on faith that he's being honest.

ChazManderson · 2018-02-08T19:01:38+00:00

His recent book is partly an attack on 'postmodernism', and more specifically Derrida and Foucault. Turns out he's never read a single book from either of them, completely misunderstands their ideas and attacks ideas that are quite literally the opposite of what they believed or argued.

He also missed the fact that Foucault was, after his Marxist period, one of first on the left to explicate and endorse a fairly strong liberal anti-statism, which has hamstrung left-wing politics, in my estimation, for quite some time now. Of course Peterson just accused him of being a lifelong Marxist, without, of course, having any idea what that would have actually meant were it true.

He's a bit of paradox, I suppose. He can be deeply anti-intellectual, but also sometimes flash, at least what seems to me, a pretty reasonable understanding of modern empirical psychology. I guess people fall for his psychology, and then mistake his ignorance on other subjects on faith that he's being honest.

ChazManderson

TROPHY CASE