The 19th century rocked! Exploration, Inventions, it was the best time ever. I wish I could live in he 19th century.

Provided I never got sick.

And provided you were a white Christian.

and male. and land-owning.

DingleberryJones & Dexter.Morgan +1.
Thanks for sparing me the trouble of pointing out the details.

I think you are missing the point Diplomat that Ivo and Invctus are making fun of you.

and your ilk

Am I in his ilk? What constitutes Diplomat's ilk?

Maybe its the people who think the Internet gives a worse representation of how the world thinks as opposed to their own constituency/town/state :)

This is how you started this thread. Diplomat1824 then joined you ilk :)

I started this thread to find other right-wingers. I have. I am satisfied with the outcome.

Diplomat, welcome to my ilk

I think aggravating the right-left divide by categorizing people is probably bad. Also, a Conservative in my country is different from a Conservative in your country. Personally, I listen to all rational points of view. I don't have a need to acheive some identity by throwing myself in some broad label for recognition like pericles here.

As far as the extreme campus left goes, maybe on some social issues there is a severe left shift. Educated people generally don't take positions that aren't really all that defendable, like literal Creationism. There is a fair divide economically.

Diplomat, finally you have come out on a political issue. I don't actually expect you to respond with substance, but I'd like to point out that not even hardline Libertarians want ZERO government action. The minimum is generally viewed as the government protecting the right to private property, which is essential to a functioning economy.

But if you don't have any consistent principles to compare a particular issue to, how can you discern a rational point of view from an irrational point of view?

You need to be clearer on what you mean by rational Centaurian. Rationalism can reveal how to get society from A to B, but it is less useful when you are trying to construct an idea of what B should be.

You need to read Rationalism in Politics by Michael Oakeshott.

That's an interesting comment Pericles. I'll attempt to answer it, although I may be out of my depth here.
A rational point of view is one that uses consistent reasoning. We may all start with different premises, such as fundamentally different beliefs about the world, and different goals yet employ the same reasoning principles. If so we can have a sensible conversation. The end result of which might mean we have to agree to disagree, but at least we will both understand where the other is coming from.
An irrational point of view is the opposite. The reasoning is inconsistent. Thus making it hard to have a sensible conversation.

I think their is a subtle difference between what you are talking about spyman, which I think is closer to "coherant" than "rational". The one thing that all political ideologies have in common is that they are internally coherant, their conclusions follow logically from their precepts and assumptions.

But this internal coherance doesn't necessarily mean that Marxism, for example, is a satisfactory guide to political action.

I think in politics their are two very different, but overlapping, meanings to the word Rational. The first is synonymous to intelligent, prudent or sensible. This is the meaning I think Centaurian was using. The second meaning could also be stated as "emanating from somebody's intellect".

The best way to highlight this difference is to compare two economic systems, the command economy and the free market economy.

Decisions in a command economy emanate from the intellect of some sort of central decision making body. They can be described as Rational because they emanate from somebody's intellect. These economies typically result in economic collapse, poverty and the misallocation of resources, and so it is hard to describe the command economy as Rational in the "intelligent" sense of the word.

Decisions made in a free market economy are made by dispersed actors with dispersed knowledge, acting in response to signals they recieve through the price mechanism. This spontaneous order of the aggregate decisions of numerous different actors cannot be called Rational because, on the one hand, it hasn't emanated from the intellect of a single source But it is Rational in the sense that it is the most effective and intelligent economic system, bearing better results than the so-called Rational command economy.

For more on this read The Road to Serfdom.

This is a short explanation of why the word "rational" should be used discerningly in political discussion :)

Your criticism of command economies is all very well president pericles, but I think it is you who has missed a subtle point.

Grouping all ideas or issues into either the broad swathe of 'Conservatism' or 'Liberalism' is rather confining.

Your description of of the two was only in strictly twetnieth century economic terms.

The reality is, though I agree with you about everything you said about the goodness of a free market, I am still a self described Liberal, comparitively when it comes to distribution of resources, social freedoms etc. etc.


What Centurian was saying was that it makes a whole lot more sense to evaluate an idea on its own merits, rather than group it in with a wider ideaological banner that it may or may not be logically linked with.

Whether you call this localized rationality or coherency or whatever is fine by me, but I hope you understand the basic critique we are making of your stance on politics.

Pericles, I might not have explained myself properly, but I think you get my drift. Wikipedia puts it better than me:

All that is required for an action to be rational is that if one believes action X (which can be done) implies Y, and that Y is desirable, he or she does X. The action would likewise be avoided were Y undesirable.

The definition that you are using for rational as in "emanating from the intellect" is more akin the philosophical school of rationalism. In that reason should be considered the best way to acquire knowledge. This can be contrasted with empiricism, which tends to favour experience.

I am not familiar with the political definition of rational, but I think it was clear that Centurian meant it in the sense that I tried to convey, as you said "sensible".

I have heard of the Road to Serfdom and I must confess that the type of ideas expressed by the author compelling. Although I don't feel committed to any ideology my own belief system is closer to classical liberalism than socialism.

Interesting that you should contrast a command economy as example of a rational system, with the free market as a non-rational system. One of the criticisms of faith in the invisible hand of the free market is that it assumes that people are rational, whereas often in practice they are not.

Oh, and just for clarity sake.

To my knowledge, when argumentation itself is discussed;

A Rational argument is one that is internally coherent and not reliant on inexplicable and undescribable assumptions.

I understand your criticism, I just don't think it holds any merit.

The point I'm trying to make, to refute your "on its merits", empirical approach to politics is that you cannot evaluate an idea on its merits without some sort of mental tool, or ideology, to evaluate it with. Just as a scientist cannot evaluate physical phenomenon without an understanding of scientific method or without hypothesis.

You cannot say that one solution to a problem is better than another without having some sort of preconception of what "better" means. Better might mean 'in keeping with a society's traditions' for the conservative, it might mean 'maximising individual liberty' for the classical liberal, it might mean 'maximising human happiness' for the utilitarian. The point is everybody, whether they like it or not, whether they realise it or not, uses preconceptions in politics. The act of evaluation itself will be guided by a person's pre-existing views. Thus, this dreaded "lumping" of oneself into a political category is completely unavoidable.

You cannot judge an idea on its merits without some preconception of what "merit" is or is not. This preconception may be completely idiosyncratic, or it may be in keeping with an established tradition of political thought. The point is that it must exist for assessment to be possible.

We all sort of seemed to go at once there didn't we.

Its important to remember Spyman that the command economy is rational in the sense that it is planned, but irrational in the sense that it doesn't work. While the free market is non-rational in the sense that it is unplanned (or to be more exact results from the aggregate of innumerable plans), but rational in the sense that it works.

Planned ecomony is not rational - it is based on a flawed premise conflicting with human nature. Having something planned or controlled does not make it rational.

Market economy is rational because it is based on the same principles as nature - competition.

Well planned economy worked for awhile with the Russians. Ultimately I believe that Laissez-faire ideals is the best for growth and devolopment combined with an strong investing population.

"Well planned economy worked for awhile with the Russians"

No, it never did work. It just took a lot of time before it became visible.

"You cannot judge an idea on its merits without some preconception of what "merit" is or is not. This preconception may be completely idiosyncratic, or it may be in keeping with an established tradition of political thought. The point is that it must exist for assessment to be possible."

Point well taken, but evalutation of merit is not the same thing as political tendencies.

Personally I think you're muddling Politcal and Philosophical definitions of words.
For example, though a conservative may indeed feel that tradition is most important to society, it isn't simply because they believe that traditional in and of itself is intrinsically good. They reality is more subtle- tradition is good because something that exists for a long time is more likley to work better, is better suited to society etc etc.

Also, utilitarianism (or any other value system) isn't necessarily limited to one particular political interpretation or another. I could use utilitarianism to justify Facist domination of a majority, or I could use it to justify an extremely Liberal society where happiness of all persons is secured.

The distinction is when you decide HOW happiness, or equality, or freedom, is best achieved.

Personally, I have a hard time beliving that Liberals and Conservatives have such different justifications like you described, but then again I'm not American. :P



Oh, and in defense of the planned economy. It did work, despite horrible inefficiencies even then, fairly well during the war years.

If you want to maximize military production, a planned economy is much better than a free market in the short term. Hell, even Britain adopted an essentially planned economy during WW1.


As soon as your war ends though, or as soon as you start wanting to provide for people and encourage economic growth... well, thats where a planned economy fails horribly.

I'd say the main reason the Soviet economy failed was that it tended to ignore economics. :P

I didn't say ZERO government action as a blanket term. I just think the government has no right to interfere with the economy (assuming the government is a parlimentary democracy, republic, federalist, representative democracy, etc., etc.

Well I'm talking about soviet Russia in the 20s,30s,40s
20s-30s The first "five year plan" manage to drag back the USSR economy which share of World Manufacturing jumped from 5% to 11.5%.
40s Because even of huge econmic loses dealt by the Germans coal production down to 57%, pig iron 68%, etc. it outproduced the germans by +4,000 more aircraft in 1941 +10,000 in 1942 and in 1944 the Russians produced 29,000 of the excellent T-34s and other tanks to Germany's 17,800. True this had been only been prossible by American support. True also that the Germans were man to man superior to the Russians. But, this was an impressive feat.
50s My praise of the Russians stop here.

A fuct fact is in 1980 to Produce $1,00 of GDP in kilos of coal
Russia 1,490(!)
Britian 820
West Germany 565
France 502

And another Fun Fact...
meat costing the Russian state $4 a pound to produce sells for $.80 a pound.

Pericles is somewhat correct. Politics is often about tradeoffs and how you value the tradeoffs is based on a belief system.

This is my interpretation of Pericles' argument: Conservatives and Liberals see different issues differently and thus might come to different rational conclusions. For example, the Liberal views the impoverished man as a victim perhaps of corporatate greed or society and should be helped. However, the Conservative might point to the impoverished man's substance abuse problem and his choice to drop out of high school. The Conservative would push for equal opportunity for all, but won't punish the rest of society to clean up individual mistakes. These two belief systems would create different policies.

My problem with it is this: it is too black and white. The thesis and antithesis needs to make a synthesis. Perhaps the man dropped out of high school because he needed to provide for his siblings and thus didn't get equal opportunity which led him down the bad path. Combining both view points might lead a policy to treat younger people as victims so as to achieve equal opportunity for all.

There is a reason why so many people believe in something you might think is wrong. because it has some merit. People need to take other peoples opinions seriously, so long as they're presented (heres my key word here) "rationally". An us vs them attitude isn't conducive to evolving change, just conflict, and people need to be able to change their minds in the face of logic without "compromising their beliefs".

George Bush said "I'm a free market guy" BUT then went on to say that the free market isn't working here. Then why is he still a free market guy? A more appropriate statement would have been "I used to be a free market guy until I was proved wrong".

An economist invoking the dialectic. How quirky.

"I didn't say ZERO government action as a blanket term. I just think the government has no right to interfere with the economy (assuming the government is a parlimentary democracy, republic, federalist, representative democracy, etc., etc."

Diplomat, that's a little silly. I'm against a lot of government interference with the economy, but some things just have to be done by the government.

Would you rather have the banks print money, or the government? The Federal Reserve (which is kind of controlled by the government, a little) set interest rates for borrowing, would you rather all that was totally let loose? The government has to intervene at least some, if only to keep confidence high. Someone once said that absent confidence there is no economy, and it's legitimate for the government to intervene to help market confidence. Not bailing out failing businesses or adding tier after tier of bureaucracy to increase power and get votes, but limited and reasoned watchfulness. Something like monetarism, I guess.