blatham wrote:This may be so, I don't have the data to contest it, but I do doubt the absolute flavor or your claim.
Don't think of it as "absolute flavor", think of it as writing for optimal efficiency of reading. Generally, my preference is to state my points in clear and simple language first, then amend them with "if"s and "but"s if necessary. I hate reading posts where the author starts with the qualifications, because experience has taught me that those authors almost never get to the point they are qualifying. This style makes me fall asleep at the monitor when I read it, so the Golden Rule compels me not to write like that. (In all modesty, it seems to work too: my readers may or may not agree with me, but they usually seem to know what I'm saying.)
This is a very interesting little argument. I love "optimal efficiency of reading"! You do write clearly, and your points are well expressed and relevant. Usually, that is (note my avoidance of 'absolute flavor'). Of course, a rhetorical gain accrues from your style, which I suspect you understand, though you don't mention it. Likely for reasons of efficiency.
blatham wrote:I'm going to presume that you, if in a position of power in your own government's Ministry of Trade, you'd wield whatever levers might be available to force/encourage/cajol some trade partner to reduce/eliminate really destructive worker environments or, say, child labor. No?
No. I think ministeries of trade should be closed down wherever they exist, so I'm not interested in seeking a position there in the first place. I would work through organizations like Human Rights Watch or Amnesty International, but not through governments.
Well, place the proposed function under your state department rather than trade, if you prefer a singular interest in trade matters. Are you truly prepared, upon a stance of government minimalism and purity, to leave ALL such matters to NGOs? What of when NGOs are not present or not effective? What of Darfur? What of time periods where the only NGOs on the horizon were the local church and a poorly organized Red Cross? And what does 'work through HRW' mean/entail? Funding? Funding only after checking out their philosophies/practices? And if you are going to fund such organizations that meet some standards you have in mind, how is this different from you, as state department official, messing about in the affairs of another state other than keeping government smaller, or at least, appearing smaller?
blatham wrote:Well, ok, you seem to make your argument here. You've used the moral notion of 'improper' here. Your moral principle seems to be that the less monkeying around within a sovereign state by others is a greater good.
Not "by others" in general, but "by other states". History has taught us many times that one state's terrorist is another state's freedom fighter. Theoretically you can give your government a moral license to monkey around with other souvereign states on the claim that it will use this power to advance human rights. But in practice, this is giving your government a moral blank check. I am against that. America's policy re: Saddam Hussein over the last 30 years is a good case to make the point.
No policy is without its own particular dangers. The contrary case, danger by ommission, is German expansionist designs in the thirties.
Can we be real? Powerful states WILL mess about in the affairs of other states. That's a given. If only as regards resource extraction and maintaining a localized sphere of complicit social/political arrangements which support such resource extraction. Consider the case of the United Fruit Company in Venezuela ugly tale here As you know, the number of nearly identical cases would make a very long list indeed. And it is entirely arguable (likely far more so given that Cheney would release details of the Energy meetings he has so assiduously kept secret) that Iraq is of this category, regardless of the 'human rights' justification that arrived after the others which preceded it. You might argue, I'm not quite certain how you'll deal with this, that private companies have little to do with governance even of the state that contains or supports them (tax breaks, etc...one doesn't have to add in CIA, military, and presidential support as in the case above). But that is surely a morally indefensible position. So messing about is going on anyway. As tough as moral questions are, they aren't avoidable.
blatham wrote:If you restrict the cases to those which are no problem outside the national boundary (though I think you gloss over how that might be determined with certainty, and over time) then you are still left with the potential problems of localized pollutants harming folks in the area, and the potential problems of, say, worldwide shortages in potable ground water through multiple pollution sources.
Local pollutants are the local peole's business, and I think the world-wide water shortage scare is mostly a scam. Who needs groundwater anyway, when seawater can be desalinated at one US dollar per cubic meter these days? (For metrically challenged readers: that's less than three cents per gallon.) You do avoid the point though. Perhaps it is down below...let me check.
blatham wrote:Again, I'll assume you hold to some notion that pollution issues are increasingly a matter of international concern.
Not increasingly, no. But even if this were true, I am unwilling to accept this as a licence for governments to keep competitors out, because that would be one of those de facto blank checks again.
Not increasingly? Why not? Awareness in the scientific community as to the effects of pollutants (to health and climate) has increased. Evidence of the alterations human activity is causing has increased and greatly. Funding by the large corporate interests (as in the energy companies) to denigrate any and all scientific pronouncements which point to these dangers has increased. International concern and activism and cooperation has increased. What's wrong here? How is it you are out of the loop?
Could you express what role if any you think appropriate for international agreements and policing of environmental issues (for example, air pollution arising in China which moves over North America, and North American pollution that lands on you, or others such as global warming?
The Dishonesty Thing
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: September 10, 2004
It's the dishonesty, stupid. The real issue in the National Guard story isn't what George W. Bush did three decades ago. It's the recent pattern of lies: his assertions that he fulfilled his obligations when he obviously didn't, the White House's repeated claims that it had released all of the relevant documents when it hadn't.
It's the same pattern of dishonesty, this time involving personal matters that the public can easily understand, that some of us have long seen on policy issues, from global warming to the war in Iraq. On budget matters, which is where I came in, serious analysts now take administration dishonesty for granted.
It wasn't always that way. Three years ago, those of us who accused the administration of cooking the budget books were ourselves accused, by moderates as well as by Bush loyalists, of being "shrill." These days the coalition of the shrill has widened to include almost every independent budget expert.
For example, back in February the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities accused the Bush administration of, in effect, playing three-card monte with budget forecasts. It pointed out that the administration's deficit forecast was far above those of independent analysts, and suggested that this exaggeration was deliberate.
"Overstating the 2004 deficit," the center wrote, "could allow the president to announce significant 'progress' on the deficit in late October - shortly before Election Day - when the Treasury Department announces the final figures."
Was this a wild accusation from a liberal think tank? No, it's conventional wisdom among experts. Two months ago Stanley Collender, a respected nonpartisan analyst, warned: "At some point over the next few weeks, the Office of Management and Budget will release the administration's midsession budget review and try to convince everyone the federal deficit is falling. Don't believe them."
He went on to echo the center's analysis. The administration's standard procedure, he said, is to initially issue an unrealistically high deficit forecast, which is "politically motivated or just plain bad." Then, when the actual number comes in below the forecast, officials declare that the deficit is falling, even though it's higher than the previous year's deficit.
Goldman Sachs says the same. Last month one of its analysts wrote that "the Office of Management and Budget has perfected the art of underpromising and overperforming in terms of its near-term budget deficit forecasts. This creates the impression that the deficit is narrowing when, in fact, it will be up sharply."
In other words, many reputable analysts think that the Bush administration routinely fakes even its short-term budget forecasts for the purposes of political spin. And the fakery in its long-term forecasts is much worse.
The administration claims to have a plan to cut the deficit in half over the next five years. But even Bruce Bartlett, a longtime tax-cut advocate, points out that "projections showing deficits falling assume that Bush's tax cuts expire on schedule." But Mr. Bush wants those tax cuts made permanent. That is, the administration has a "plan" to reduce the deficit that depends on Congress's not passing its own legislation.
Sounding definitely shrill, Mr. Bartlett says that "anyone who thinks we can overcome our fiscal mess without higher taxes is in denial." Far from backing down on his tax cuts, however, Mr. Bush is proposing to push the budget much deeper into the red with privatization programs that purport to offer something for nothing.
As Newsweek's Allan Sloan writes, "The president didn't exactly burden us with details about paying for all this. It's great marketing: show your audience the goodies but not the price tag. It's like going to the supermarket, picking out your stuff and taking it home without stopping at the checkout line to pay. The bill? That will come later."
Longtime readers will remember that that's exactly what I said, shrilly, about Mr. Bush's proposals during the 2000 campaign. Once again, he's running on the claim that 2 - 1 = 4.
So what's the real plan? Some not usually shrill people think that Mr. Bush will simply refuse to face reality until it comes crashing in: Paul Volcker, the former Federal Reserve chairman, says there's a 75 percent chance of a financial crisis in the next five years.
Nobody knows what Mr. Bush would really do about taxes and spending in a second term. What we do know is that on this, as on many matters, he won't tell the truth.
The Moral Law causes the people to be in complete accord with their ruler,
so that they will follow him regardless of their lives, undismayed by any danger.
The Commander stands for the virtues of wisdom, sincerely, benevolence, courage and strictness.
Well, place the proposed function under your state department rather than trade, if you prefer a singular interest in trade matters. Are you truly prepared, upon a stance of government minimalism and purity, to leave ALL such matters to NGOs?
And what does 'work through HRW' mean/entail? Funding? Funding only after checking out their philosophies/practices? And if you are going to fund is this different from you, as state department official, messing about in the affairs of another state other than keeping government smaller, or at least, appearing smaller?
The contrary case, danger by ommission, is German expansionist designs in the thirties.
Can we be real? Powerful states WILL mess about in the affairs of other states. That's a given.
Consider the case of the United Fruit Company in Venezuela ugly tale here As you know, the number of nearly identical cases would make a very long list indeed.
Could you express what role if any you think appropriate for international agreements and policing of environmental issues (for example, air pollution arising in China which moves over North America, and North American pollution that lands on you, or others such as global warming?
Sun Tsu's Art of War is the most historic and respected treatise on the subject.
http://www.newstrolls.com/news/dev/kilner/sun_tsu/gilesbare/Outer.html
I'll try to read it over the weakend.
Ahhh, there's your business bias again. .. It's amazing what nonsense honest and intelligent people can believe.
. Unlike you, I don't believe in nations, tribes and cultures as agents of collective action. Hu Jintao, Abdul Kalam, and George Bush may be in a power struggle with one another. But I don't care, because I see no meaningful way in which China, India and the USA are. And even if I agreed on that point, my conclusion would be the opposite of yours. Given that, as you say, "political games are much more often win/lose than economic ones", isn't the obvious conclusion that more games ought to be economic and fewer ought to be political?
As it happens, I do believe that much less blood would have been shed in Yugoslavia if Europe had kept its hands off completely from the outset. It was foolish of the German government, and Hans-Dietrich Genscher in particular, to recognize Croatia as early as they did. This is what set Yugoslavia on the slippery slope towards chaos and civil war. But I'm aware that mine is an extreme minority opinion.
I think that non-profit corporations like Amnesty, and for-profit corporations from McDonald's to McKinsey, are doing an admirable job on this by opening franchises all over the Muslim world. Especially since most of the Muslims thus targeted vote with their feet to support these instituions when they can. I would argue that this is a much more effective way for western civilization to compete, and I don't see where America's foreign policy and America's military adds value to the mix.
. I read Machiavelli's Prince. In describing with admirable insight how politics really works, it also describes why I believe in politics and war as a way of creating problems, not of solving them. I confess I have no idea who Sun Tsu is. Do you think he's worth reading?
I agree that the arts of war and politics often create problems as effectively as they solve them. However I don't know how to do without them.
You may well have witnessed my geographical and generational bias showing. 150 miles north of where I live, the Iron Curtain and its supporting dictatorships were brought down by private citizens engaging in peaceful resistance in 1989. If I had predicted this in 1988, I'm sure Blatham would have told me to 'get real', as would anyone. A few years later, 150 miles south-east of where I live, violent resistence and a helter-skelter of military intervention and non-intervention dragged Jugoslavia into a civil war, and for the most part failed to rid the country of the communists. With the exception of Slovenia, Ex-Jugoslavia now is a patchwork of authocracies disguiesed as democracies, and the authocratic class consists mostly of ex-communists.
Ex-Yugoslavia is still fighting over old Orthodox/Catholic issues, the boundary between the Ottoman and Hapsburg Empires, and the ever-indigestable Serbs.
Munich? Am I correct? Wonderful place. Why leave?
Some odd inconsistencies then, as you cared that a professor in an American university had quotes from the Quran on a reading list.
I won't be talking with you again.
OK so answer me . Was McVey a muslim? If not you will have to recant. Many terriosts have existed for hundreds of years. Including the civil war. Thy have existed as long as mankind has. You claim to be educated but dont act like you are.
You do however seem to adhere to the ultraconserative mantra. The chistrian church has had its share of terriosts.
I dont really believe that Christ would declare you part of his church. Your beliefs dont jibe.
However you do seem to resemble the Muslim conserative bunch in your beliefs
