@blatham,
blatham wrote:
Quote:georgeob1 wrote;
Quote:blatham wrote:
This is interesting in two ways. First, you seem to have the notion in your noggin that though I have set to a study of media issues over many years that this study provides me with no greater benefits in understanding the subject than you have acquired with no such level of study.
Some learn a great deal from a little experience: others don't. Some experts in narrow fields are fools in others; others acquire more wisdom from the same effort.
That's simply a cop-out george. Some humans are born albino and some with three nipples but the next person to knock on your front door isn't going to be a three-nippled albino.
You missed my point. I was somewhat gently suggesting that your "study over many years" of political commentary has god you little beyond familiarity with the commentators themselves and the arguments they put forward in advancing their views. It appears to have got you very little in understanding the real economic and moral issues behind the political maneuverings they address at such length. I don't think you are either an albino or a possessor of extra nipples, rather simply less wise and all-knowing than you pretend to be.
Quote: georgeob1 wrote;
Well, I think you're on to something here, but you quickly flew off into hyperbole and absurdity. I think the U.S. Constitution was an act of some very wise men who understood the tumult of human affairs and deliberately created a government with the checks and balances needed to limit most excesses.
Quote: blatham wrote; I suggested the US Constitution as an example of how human society can be improved - that progress can be made in human affairs. Your quote of the French cliche has no utility other than as a generalized dismissal of such progress, where you find it convenient. You aren't being wise. You're being lazy.
Not lazy at all, and again you miss the point. The US constitution was an example of improvement for one human society precisely because it favored limited government; local government over central ones; and contained a collection of checks and balances to preserve individual liberty precisely against government.
blatham wrote: Quote: georgeob1 wrote
I believe that human nature is sufficiently complex and human behavior sufficiently adaptable to confound any system imposed to organize it in detail, and that very few of the designers of such systems , including "safety nets", foresee the side effects of what they create.
You've forwarded this argument before yet seem to have little grasp on how analytically valueless it is. Any human act or any developed policy will have unintended and unforseeable consequences. Likewise,
the absence of any act or policy will also have such consequences.
It is not valueless at all, Even in physical science complexity has an important and often decisive role. Most complex dynamic systems either have no analytical solution that can be represented by any formal or numerical model or, having one in theory, are such that it cannot be accurately computed or measured with any finite effort. That's why free markets work better than planned and managed production and distribution systems, and why weather forecasts are good for only a few days in advance. Unfortunately you appear not to understand these things. Others have paid a high price for such learning including the former Marxists of the Soviet Empire and the unfortunate people of Venezuela today.
