Reply To: General thought on old coal mines.

[Brian H]

emmetb wrote:

Attempting to enforce maximized co-operation is merely to reward manipulators. People will co-operate when they actually believe that supporting other(s)’ goal(s) is also the best way to achieve their own. Demanding altruism is merely sanctimonious twaddle.

I beg to differ, people have a built-in, hard-wired capacity for co-operation, altruism, empathy, love etc. These things are much more than just masqueraded selfish impulses. As a species, as a planet, our survival crucially depends on all these “soft”-values, at least as much as on the “hard”-values. The mere fact that there are these biological traits proves this: otherwise evolution would surely have unburdened us from such excess baggage.

The question about how soft/hard boiled you like your leaders still remains of course. I’m not too cynical in this respect. The higher educated people are, the more they start paying attention also to the “soft”-values. I do believe that the more well-informed, empowered people get. The more they start to appreciate moral leaders. Generally speaking that is.

Such vocabulary begs the question; it has nothing to say about social structure and polity. In practice, it is never something which is left to operate “on its own” but is institutionalized as de facto enforced “sharing”. In the end, the self-contradiction kills the noble gold-egg-laying goose. It is, further, an unfortunate fact of demonstrable human nature that those who are the recipients of the “sharing” quickly, almost instantly, take the proceeds as their due and become passive and demanding of its continuance and expansion. And elect those who claim they’ll make damn sure the greedy fatcats don’t turn off the spigot. Which leads to a steady exodus of fatcats, so in the end you have Chicago or Detroit. Main products: enthusiastically crooked governors and community agitator senators.

Rezwan, your use of the utterly bogus “bombed Iraq and killed 100,000 civilians” BS from the inane and thoroughly discredited politicized Lancet study betrays your real agenda and bias. That number was a ludicrous extrapolation of highly selective interviews onto the whole population, and in effect blamed American action for most of the guerrilla killing of civilians. Not to mention counting any fighter wearing civilian clothes as a non-combatant. Which was all of them (a high war crime under the Hague Conventions called “Perfidy”, by the way — wearing civvies and hiding in the civilian population; the Convention assigns 100% of the responsibility for collateral casualties to the “Perfidious” ones, those disguising themselves, as I’m sure you do not know. See also Hamas, which Obeanzo is funding co-operatively to the tune of hundreds of millions, and growing.)

About the bankrupt city (cities) in CA; their problem is basically that they have turned over the keys to the treasury to the unions, who have stripped the joint. And can’t be cut back, and who keep every pol in sight bought. The payroll/staffing computers apparently are even programmed in such a way that salaries and staff can’t be reduced; the data entry routines don’t permit such blasphemy! The “sanctuary” town Maywood I mentioned is 50% illegal immigrants, who pay no property tax, and who are untouchable even for (e.g.) drunk driving — which reduced policing to a farce and shambles. The town is hoping/assuming it will be absorbed by nearby Bell, only slightly larger and in almost as bad shape. It’s uncertain whether Bell will be smart enough to resist swallowing that decaying horse and thus finishing itself off, too.