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Comments: Doug... "I first apologize to Dr. Altemeyer - I desire to stay on topic to authoritarianism, and the general questions are moving away from this standard." You might have tried that from the beginning...at this point it sounds disingenuous. But if you want to get back to Authoritarian Followers fine. Lets discuss the general tendency towards higher levels of punishment, even in light of verifiable evidence that such punishment does not reduce recitivism, and in fact often increases it. Perhaps to those with the pathology punishment is more important than effectiveness. Why is that so important to the Follower? Is it because they feel that the only thing keeping them from the BAD THING is fear? Is it self righteousness for not doing the BAD THING? Why are the followers so punitive? "Non-oppressive theocracy - I would point out the Tibetian Buddhists. Ever hear of a guy called the Dalai Lama? In the New World I would point out the Massachusetts Bay Colony, the Quakers, Mennonites, Amish, and State of Deseret were all functional, not outwardly oppressive theocracies." Interesting... First, the Tibet was not a happy, free theocracy by any stretch of the imagination. Try being a Jew in the MA Bay Colony...or a witch, or a catholic, or a Native. Ever tried to get a loan in Salt Lake if you are not in good standing? The Mennonite, and Amish live socialist collective lives, submitting to capitalism when they need to deal with the rest of the world, many of us Quakers don't follow the Nicene creed and tend toward a social commons. "Libertarians - The libertarian political stance on public services is particularly not sustainable." Sooo...you're saying that SOME socialism is OK...as long as it is administered in a manner you agree with? See, I donate to the Libertarians because they are the ONLY real hands off people out there, the Reps aren't, the TEA party isn't. The Libertarians are serious about it, everyone else just wants to cut programs THEY don't agree with. "Intergenerational Mobility (IGM) - Please understand that Gini also makes IGM easier. IGM is calculated by classes moving from class to class. Let's say we split the income levels into 4 categories, we observe from father to son how many people move from each income level. Let's say that that the levels in Don D's socialist ideal state are: 40K, 50K, 60K and 70K, compared to the US which (estimated) are: 20K, 50K, 90K, and 150K. It is much easier to move from "class" to "class" when the difference between classes is minimal. Gini index allows for ease of class "mobility". You must realize that all states do not have the same "richness" of wealth." Lower Gini makes mobility easier. Simple and verifiable fact...ever since the "great deregulation" the rich have become richer, the poor have become poorer, it has become harder to be middle class, massive pools of capital have been removed from circulation, working class jobs have been sold for CEO bonuses, and large money has placed regulatory barriers to entry for the small business man. OH...and our Gini has also been rising steadily since the "great deregulation" to the point now where 85% of the wealth is controlled by 20% of the population...20% that are absolutely unaccountable to the citizens which they rule. Just a thought...the Forbes 400 have a net worth of around 1.3 T$, enough to cover the total discretionary spending of the US fed in 2011, and no one voted for them.
Comments: RadGuy. It should be a simple thing, to find a successful socialist state. Can we find one that didn't need to turn to capitalism to propel itself from the 18th century into the 21st? Net credit: The US is its own largest creditor. As for our 95% or so net external debt to GDP, China is the largest creditor but the total is likely 4-6% of our total need for credit. Who owns Australia's 100+% net ext. debt/GDP? Healthcare: The US moved to a very sinister form of healthcare insurance. By forcing citizens to purchase a private product from approved private sources we implemented a "statist" economic model. In my mind socialism equals slavery. And I will argue that statism/corporatism is likely more wicked. I prefer to pay for my government separate from my capitalism. Government forcing it's citizens to do business with specific companies is the worst outcome. Forcing a typical family of four to pay > $20,000 (just for the insurance) (not including the excise taxes, etc.) to private corporations under penalty of law is ripe for corruption. In the US we implemented statism.
Comments: "Let's try to stay more on-topic about Dr. Altemeyer' goal - to create oppobrium against the religious in America. " I think that you missed the point. The Doc is pointing out that the religious are often quite narrow minded yet easy to program making them vulnerable to authoritarian dominators. He doesn't want people to drop their religion, he wants them to be more open minded and tolerant of other peoples' cultures. Very noble if you ask me. Thanks Doc! The book was great!
Comments: We have universal health car in Australia - it's called Medicare. You don't, and your party vehemently opposed this. I'm glad you're not as hard core capitalist as you sounded earlier. Here is an easy definition for black and white. If a worthwhile activity makes money for the population, it is a capitalist idea. If it costs money to the population, it is a socialist idea. How would you describe socialist ideas if socialism is such a dirty word for you? For example - government provided health funding is A: a capitalist idea, B: a socialist idea, or C: an acceptable substitute word for B?
Comments: "Since there have never been successful economies built on socialism" And who is your countries biggest creditor Doug? They sure aint' capitalists.
Comments: "I am a big supporter of tariffs to increase local output" A level playing field is better, however, I will say that my political party wants to impose protection for our industries that look after their workers and the environment. You can call them tariffs if you like, but it's a little different. Call it sophisticated protectionism. And then say "thank you Aussie greenies!" I must also say that I respect your perseverance Doug. Would you be offended if I called you a dominator rather than a follower?
Comments: RadGuy. Let's try to stay more on-topic about Dr. Altemeyer' goal - to create oppobrium against the religious in America. Socialism is defined as public ownership of the means of production. It is an economic theory. Socialists love it when you confuse successful capitalist countries with high social benefits as socialist. Since there have never been successful economies built on socialism. Downers- I oppose abortion and capital punishment. I choose life. American will help those who cannot help themselves. We have incredible support systems Medicaid e.g.. 30 years ago in the US and probably the current outcome for premature infants was death. We now routinely save infants at 400 grams (14 oz) with great quality of life outcomes. The cost is enormous. Many of these infants cost half a million dollars to save. In my black and white world there is no equation for life. We watch the "compassionate" countries use actuaries to account for their shades of grey. But hey your healthcare costs are lower. Wiki-Remember this is a wikileak employee describing the founder. Be afraid of Blackhawks.
Comments: Gary. If the incarcerated population is authoritarian/conservative and about 2/3rds of the prison population is black and Hispanic. Young black men are 10 times as likely voters for the Democratic party. Young black men are also 10 times as likely to be incarcerated as whites. I guess not all "conservatives" are voting for the Tea Party.
Comments: "so the economy of Sweden is not socialist. This capitalist economy has high social benefits. I pedal on" Backpedal there Doug. Here is your original brainfart: "If you are a socialist, please tell that you want to confiscate all business property. Please show me an example of a successful socialist state. Show me a socialist state that does not control their populaton through totalitarian authoritarian control." "is in theoretical base within Marxist revisionism. Its party program interchangeably calls their ideology democratic socialism, or social democracy" I posted this in my original post. Read it this time Doug. I am showing that you are wrong. Arguing in absolutes is authoritarian follower behaviour. There are shades of grey Doug. Extreme capitalism has no government. Extreme socialism has no business/free enterprise. I have no issues with capitalist ideas. I run a business. But I also am open to good socialist ideas. A mix of ideas is best. I think that your binary personality is having trouble computing this concept. Very briefly - My brother-in-law had extreme learning difficulties growing up, and he is drawn to shiny objects. He is fodder for capitalists without protection. My family has had to step in and bail him out many many times. (Not out of jail of course - he is a top bloke). I am sure that MANY can relate. What support would you offer to Palin's child who has down's syndrome? Now imagine that same condition for an embryo whose parents are less well off than Palin. What support would you offer them? Careful here Doug, the tea party will not endorse abortion. Anything protective that you suggest will be a socialist concept. Capitalism has no answers here, as there is NO MONEY TO BE MADE. "I pay separate checks for entertainers and legislators. Combining one with the other has no entertainment value" You obviously never saw Paul Keating at his finest. Look up his insults, they are inspired! I was also not saying that we need entertainer politicians, just that the tea party has NO ENTERTAINING ADVOCATES! They are all dry and humourless. Any attempt at entertaining I feel will be forced. As for Assange, maybe the person meant "autocrat". The average person will not know the difference between "Authoritarian" in the context of this book, and "autocrat". As a fellow Melburnian, I will stay loyal to him rather than agreeing with a strange tea party supporter. To think people criticise wikileaks for endangering people. They want our countries to stop endangering people. It is a real shame that the average person is so easily convinced otherwise - this is media power that you believe doesn't exist. Happily, wikileaks hasn't backed down. There is so much more to wikileaks than just the war documents. I bet you haven't even visited their site and had a read. And your tariff idea would be extremely unpopular with other countries. Expect no favours from the rest of the world. So you are anti-free trade - not very capitalist of you.
Comments: RadGuy, Low end jobs: I am a big supporter of tariffs to increase local output. There will always be disparity in labor costs, you must protect your local economy. Stealing babies: The church aided by RWAs... Majority rules: A law is a force by majority (or minority). Entertaining politicians: I pay separate checks for entertainers and legislators. Combining one with the other has no entertainment value. Sweden: Believe me I track socialists... Last I checked, you could own many types of businesses in Sweden, so the economy of Sweden is not socialist. This capitalist economy has high social benefits. I pedal on... Obama's tap, tap, tapping: Oppressive Bush: Phones Benevolent Obama: Phones, internet, gps, text messages, email, laptops... http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/12/gps-data/ http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/09/public-privacy/ http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/09/laptop-border-searches/ http://www.startribune.com/nation/103836983.html Wiki this: Wikileaks employee called its founder an "authoritarian". http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=CNG.cd0ab416a2c7901c0abb23f392c5057d.931&show_article=1
Comments: Gary, Unfloundering flounders - My opinion of why high-RWAs are unwilling to change, (I'm low, low RWA when self-tested) is that there are people who are easily duped, incapable/unwilling to educate themselves and resort to violence as a means to solving problems. America is a particularly violent place, and much of this violence is multi-generational. Its pretty easy to "reason" with someone you disagree when all you need to do is punch him in the face. To the winner go the spoils, and if you can benchpress 260lbs you can prove that E = M*C/3 Respect my authoritae (emphasis for Radguy) - Authority is an easy way out. So is following a herd of bearded socialists chanting down with Saddam - err - I mean down with Bush. Who do you fear? Bearded Mennonites or bearded Marxists? At least the Mennonites will give you a days work for a days pay. I'm not a trained psychologist (Chem./Econ./Math) but Dr. Altemeyer's direction doesn't pass "the smell test". I don't think the American conservative religious are a particularly worrisome band of RWAs. I worry more about socialists who want to step-wise destroy your property rights and slow world economic output. Global warming - As a scientist, I don't think you have been dealt a full deck. You don't have all the information to make a decision. The intentional suppression of the facts are astounding and point that many global alarmists are akin to Dr. Altemeyer - answering part of the question with theory, but ignoring the real problems. You really need to understand greenhouse gas warming potentials and the concentration of each greenhouse gas in the atmosphere. In this context, total contribution to warming of the planet caused by the increase of CO2 in the atmosphere in the last century is about 0.3%. Please account for the other 99.7% http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/greenhouse_data.html Watt (James) to do? To me, there is more benefit to humanity from high economic output, and scientific (tech.) expansion than from sloooowing down the economy to accommodate their fear of the unknown. Yes there is an unknown in the future. For the socialist, their pie is the same size, and everyone must get an equal piece. To the capitalist the pie grows and everyone can get more pie to eat every year. I like pie! For the socialist, the world is using too much energy and everyone must get a fair amount of these fossil fuels. To the capitalist, there is an opportunity to create new, exciting markets, solving these problems with technology. RWA socialists want us to devolve and they do much harm to future humanity. They lash out and strike against the unknown. Ever been slapped in the face with a carbon tax? Hmm: Fear of the unknown and aggression... Let's burn a ton of coal. We just made a few tons of CO2. The sky is falling, Chicken Little, and we must stop burning coal. Did your storybook tell you that the carbon still exists. C+O2=CO2. There it is, bound with dirty oxygen. Remember high school chemistry, when your teacher showed you the electrolysis of water? 2H2O=2H2+O2 The electrolysis of CO2 also will yield back your precious carbon and oxygen in their neat elements. OMG: I just solved the world's energy and climate problems in a paragraph. It takes technology and money to make this crap. Otherwise the crap accumulates in the mind of guys like myself. I'm tired of being a "crap-headed" capitalist.
Comments: Miguel, I first apologize to Dr. Altemeyer - I desire to stay on topic to authoritarianism, and the general questions are moving away from this standard. Non-oppressive theocracy - I would point out the Tibetian Buddhists. Ever hear of a guy called the Dalai Lama? In the New World I would point out the Massachusetts Bay Colony, the Quakers, Mennonites, Amish, and State of Deseret were all functional, not outwardly oppressive theocracies. Libertarians - The libertarian political stance on public services is particularly not sustainable. Intergenerational Mobility (IGM) - Please understand that Gini also makes IGM easier. IGM is calculated by classes moving from class to class. Let's say we split the income levels into 4 categories, we observe from father to son how many people move from each income level. Let's say that that the levels in Don D's socialist ideal state are: 40K, 50K, 60K and 70K, compared to the US which (estimated) are: 20K, 50K, 90K, and 150K. It is much easier to move from "class" to "class" when the difference between classes is minimal. Gini index allows for ease of class "mobility". You must realize that all states do not have the same "richness" of wealth.
Comments: And btw, Doug. If you think Sr. Altemeyer's work focuses unfairly on conservatives, here's a paper submitted to the Okla. prison or penal branch of government that should have you whipped into the type of murderous frenzy many have come to expect from the right. ;-) . Change in the Conservative Personality Equals Change in the Offender with a Resultant Reduction in Recidivismby Michael D. Parsons and Jennifer G. Parsons |
| Miguel |
Comments:
Dr. Altermeyer...
| Radguy |
Comments:
Doug-
Like Australia, you have a high cost of living. China should be floating their currency, but plenty of other countries have a low standard of living - in terms of manufacturing, we have to compete with these countries. We have exactly the same problem - jobs going offshore. So both of our countries reap what we sowed by creating a huge disparity between rich and poor across the world.
This used to work for us until the poor countries became productive - now they undercut us.
Unemployment insurance? We have Newstart for unemployed. There is no time limit on this, except if you become old enough to claim the aged pension which is more dosh. We don't force people to scavenge and live on the street after 2 years.
NEIS is roughly equivalent to Newstart, however, you can earn a lot of money in a part time job without losing your NEIS funding. This was an ALP initiative, and a good reason as to why I am here. NEIS is not unemployment insurance nor is it a Centrelink payment. It is funded by our Department of Workplace Relations. It is only available to people on Newstart. If your business fails, you go back onto Newstart.
"What he doesn't want to acknowledge is that it isn't just Dr. Altemeyer's experiments and research showing the trend that's illuminated in "The Authoritarians", but rather it's what the majority of researchers studying the topic also keep finding"
Hey Gary, nice one - this sounds like climate change. I bet it would be very easy to get funding if you were a scientist wanting to prove climate change didn't exist.
Back to Dougy - Kevin Rudd - remember the name, you'll be seeing a lot more of this cool dude! He apologised for the stolen generations. And who were the biggest perpetrators of the abuse? The Church! At the same time, many Churches provided very good care to many. It was the Church though that insisted on assimilation to "save" these primative souls.
Sure, we had a white Australia policy for a very long time. Heaps of racists here, I do not deny it.
"I love your proposition that the majority of the enlightened will force their beliefs on the minority"
Force is a strong word. I do not force anything, I offer my opinion to anyone who cares to read it. I leave it up to the reader to make up their own mind. The readers don't seem to be supporting the tea party. Average tp-ers are terrible writers prone to contradiction. And Glenn Beck - what a dickhead.
Tp-ers need to learn a thing or two about how other people think. You haven't mentioned any entertainers who are tp-ers. This is because tp-ers are the least entertaining demographic you can find. Excellent to take the piss out of though, look at Tina Fey! I will give credit to Palin, she demonstrated excellent humour about the SNL thing.
I would also say that the recent gathering in Washington made her feel very uncomfortable. I could tell - I look deeply at people, and I can usually tell a polly under pressure.
"Australia benefits from a government which is pro-mining"
Now this is clearly wrong. The mining industry are gonna get taxed bigtime. Serves them right for running a MASSIVE advertising campaign against our mining tax.
Classic mining tax ad - talk about threatening "You're gonna get whacked" (by the mining tax) was the catch-cry. Sounds like what a hit-man says. This is how conservatives bully in my country.
"Sweden - Another monarchy which has no explicit rights for their citizens. Yes a great example for Australia."
Given that I had to tell you that Swedes have strong socialist values, I don't think that you are qualified to make any comment about them.
"not by a government, but by a creator"
OK - I'll permit this back pedal. I know that your founding fathers created the bill of rights and the declaration of independence. So they weren't a government? Usually, when I see the word "creator" in this context, I expect it as a reference to god.
Oh good, you believe in evolution - this greatly raises my respect for you, although I don't recall evolution providing inalienable rights.
""nature's god" entitled them to be equal. There is no religion in this document, although you wrongly think there is."
Well, what would you call it Doug?
"Phone taps- Yep, now Obama wishes to expand this to all communication - email, internet, text, GPS location data. Governments have an inherent desire to take liberty."
Hmm. I'd like to see a reference here.
Our ALP tried to censor us from wikileaks with a net filter. According to them, the filter was to protect us from kiddie porn and other abhorrent stuff accessible from the net. So why was wikileaks filtered? The answer to this explains why I voted green, why Melbourne installed a green rep - Adam bandt, and why our senate will have a green balance of power from July next year, much to the disgust of our conservatives and their filthy rag "The Australian" which has declared war on the Greens and internet bloggers. And guess who owns "The Australian"?
By the way - Family First which is probably equivalent to your Tea Party, lost their Victorian senator Steve Fielding this time around because he was a complete numbskull.
If this comment below isn't a lie, what is it?
"There is no proof that conservative America has any desire to increase the suppression of freedom, of any people, anywhere in the world."
Poilcy is proof. Wiretaps without court order. That is oppressive, and oppression diminishes freedom. That is fact. You lie.
"The tea party is fighting for limited government. This will not be reported in your state-run media, as they have a vested interest in furthering government into your life."
Yes, this is covered by our state run media and our commercial media. You ought not be so definitive Doug. It weakens your standing with readers.
Our conservatives want small government also. I do not invalidate this argument. Government should be exactly as big as the population wants it.
Thanks all for reading. I'll try and keep my posts shorter.
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