Reply To: General thought on old coal mines.

[Brian H]

Rezwan wrote:

Chock full of “straw men” (misrepresented arguments you go on to defeat, leaving the originals untouched).

BTW, equality of outcome is a nonsense goal. A soccer game, e.g., where you must immediately allow the other team to score unopposed whenever you go ahead is a farce, and no one would willingly play it.

You’re projecting again. I never said anything about equality. You have raised the equality thing and marxist drivel all on your own out of nowhere. Misrepresented (non-existent) arguments you go on to…etc.

We’ll have to set up a “Brian Bingo” game.

It’s irredeemably implicit. Co-operation is agreed-on division of labor for a shared outcome. This is NOT something which can be substituted for competition, but can only follow it and somewhat exploit its results, as the latter is the only way to find out what works best. Co-operation requires most of the options to have been excluded up front, and in practice (in political or societal terms) this means filtered and decided by self-anointed experts. Unless they’re selected by an even more enlightened and even smaller set of uber-experts. Who, of course, are self-selected. Who else would be competent to do that?

So in practice, you get to this:
http://spectator.org/archives/2010/07/16/americas-ruling-class-and-the/print

Those you seem to consider are being inspirationally co-operative are being philanthropic only in the most self-righteous and arrogant (and de facto destructive) manner since the days of the Spanish Inquisition. They are the ones the US Founders warned against. “Vain and arrogant men … ”

Co-operation with, e.g., international actors like Chavez, Castro, Ahmadinejad, Putin, Abbas, Kim, Nasrallah, Erdogan, and so on is Chamberlainian wisdom, and will reap the same reciprocity. Right about now, most of those people look at the US and think, “Indeed, a fool and his money (and power) are soon parted!”

Keep your eyes on North Korea. It’s a pure case of those who demand co-operation or else. So far, it has achieved 3 generations or so of citizens stunted, starved, and stultified unto death. Which reminds me. Recently NK claimed its scientists had harnessed fusion, a world first. Why not ask if they’d like to help LPP out? 😆