Drunk on the blood of liberals, the ringwraiths now howl at "progressives"

[Scylla]

@Arwin

That’s a very wise question to ask.

Thank you

Good thinking too.

And again.

But a cell and a sperm have this capacity too. To make things worse, we now know that in theory any cell of the human being has that capacity.

Well, no. Or, at least I don’t think so. The cell and the egg don’t have this capacity unless and until you put them together, and, not always then. Some combinations are unviable and will abort. What makes it a human life at the time of conception (according to my current best thinking) is that given nothing but an environment in which it can thrive, it will become a human being. Theoretically, if you took a fertilized egg and gave it an artificial environment that simulated a womb, it would develop into a human being. No single cell would unless you altered it into a fertilized egg or a semblance thereof, at which point it would become a human.

Again, this represents my current thinking and I am open to any holes in it, but I think it’s pretty tight.

I’m not sure - to me it sounds more like a mild rationalisation of what ‘your heart tells you’, rather than building on what you’ve reached in your previous discussion. I think where you stranded was where you defined it as the ability to participate in humanity. It’s in the right direction, but not precise enough to be satisfactory.

Maybe. I’m not above rationalization. The problem I saw with the previous discussion was in defining “human thought.” What made a human thought?

Issues to consider, I think, is the factors that memory and reason, and the development of an identity and self-awareness play. I think this is what you were getting close to when you got to the definition of ‘capable of taking part in humanity’. The mental development of children is very interesting in that respect, for instance there is a fixed point in the development of children where they realise that other people are individuals with their own mental world (forming usually around the 6th year). There’s tonnes more to be said about this that we can get into, but to keep it short for now, including the safety margin you also mentioned I think you got the place of the (relatively arbitrary) line at a fairly decent fase of the pregnancy. I think there are arguments to be found to put it at a later time if you want to be more precise, but in practice this is rarely necessary and just complicates the issue more than necessary. Key is the realisation that human life gains value through investment, not through conception.

Well, but then there are disturbing things as well. Both of my children as newborns did not seem to engage in human thought, yet they were distinct individuals, and human and seemed to me entitled to all the rights and considerations of humanity at birth, and surely at sometime before.

Equally important I think is determining at which point in time you decide that an embryo is no longer a part of the mother, but has a status of its own, and what the consequences to women are if you say that at the moment of inception they have been invaded by an individual and have to share their bodies and life resources with this individual from this point on, by force of law. I am not sure many, obviously especially men, understand the kind of pressure this puts on women even just when dealing with men, and how much more tied down they become and how much freedom is taken away. It’s a sad thing that this discussion that took place 30 years ago has now almost been forgotten again, in a time when you would think history isn’t forgotten as readily as it has wont to be in other eras.

I understand it. I’m not happy about it, either. It’s a tough question. The way I figure it is through analogies, and thought experiments.

Say we take a fertilized embryo, fertilized in a lab and developed in an artificial womb. We bring it to term and birth it. Is that a human being? I’d say yes.

Say we take a newborn who is developed and carried in a womb. At birth we place it in a sensory deprivation environment so that it is isolated from its senses. At the moment that we do this, I’d say it’s a human being. However, in a sensory deprivation environment without stimulation, the baby fails to develop. It’s brain becomes smooth over the years. It never develops its senses or anything, no personality. Eventually it develops past the point where it no longer has the capacity to learn to see or feel, or thing. It is in fact a vegetable. Is this now a human being? I’d say no. I’d say that this human being was killed at the point that the damage became irreversible, when it no longer had the capacity to become a human being.

As for a woman being not in control of her body, and being forced to carry a child she does not want or cannot accept, I offer the following analogy:

Let us say I walk in the woods on a camping trip. I encounter an individual with two broken legs deep in the woods. He will surely die if I do nothing.

Perhaps my camping trip is important to me. Perhaps it will screw up my life if I do not proceed to my destination. Perhaps it will be difficult for me to aid this person and it is really not convenient to do so.

I would say that if I pass this person by, and refuse to aid him, that I have done wrong.

Let us go a step further. Perhaps this person has been injured as a direct result of an action that I have taken. There has been an accident and this stranger was injured as a result of this accident that I had.

Well then, I would think that I would be responsible for this person’s tragedy and it would be me my moral, and should be my legal responsibility to aid him.

I admit that it can be difficult to talk about these matters rationally, but I applaude that you recognise the value of that, and ironically, our capacity to look at things rationally is what makes us humans such special animals that we sometimes actually think we are more than that.

Well, I try to be rational about this. I really don’t have a dog in this fight, and my thinking changes.

[Bricker]

@Arwin

Yes, but what you’d be basically saying that things the Swedes buy through tax don’t count for anything. If that makes you happy, fine, but it doesn’t do reality much justice. People with higher incomes in the U.S. generally also buy similar social security and that comes at a hefty price, that appals your average Swede, who already think that the Dutch have to pay an aweful lot for their insurance (we’re sort of halfway between the U.S. and Sweden, in many ways). It’d be equally, if not more, plausible that the Swedes get more value for less money and that the U.S. despite its immense financial wealth (second wealthiest country per capita in the world) doesn’t manage to put this money to very good use in comparison.

To the contrary, I agree that the things provided by the socialist system by way of taxes have value, and I would support a ranking system with assigned a value to them. What I do not support is the UN’s Human Index method, which assigns a value to income and income potential in every country adjusted for the “diminishing utility of higher levels of income to human development.” The standard assumes that people do not need an extremely high income for a “decent standard of living,” and takes a threshold income of the average global real GDP per capita in $PPP as adequate for a reasonable standard of living. Income up to this level is treated at its full value, but income beyond this level is discounted to reflect sharply diminished utility. That methodology is reflective of a very socialist, we’re all happy at a low common denominator way of thinking. Junk that, and replace it with a method that assigns a reasonable value to services provided by the government, and I’m right there with you.

[ElvisL1ves]

Do you see no difference between necessities and luxuries? Food, clothing, and shelter are no more or less important to a person’s well-being than second SUV’s and vacation trips? The increment of income from $1K to $2K has the same effect as the increment from $199K to $200K? Of course not. That’s silly. The standard you decry isn’t “socialist”, it’s simple common sense.

[Bricker]

@ElvisL1ves

Do you see no difference between necessities and luxuries? Food, clothing, and shelter are no more or less important to a person’s well-being than second SUV’s and vacation trips? The increment of income from $1K to $2K has the same effect as the increment from $199K to $200K? Of course not. That’s silly. The standard you decry isn’t “socialist”, it’s simple common sense.

I don’t mind ranking food ahead of the opportunity to drive an SUV. But I don’t “sharply” discount the SUV. Weighting basics higher? Sure. Essentially eliminating extra wealth as an indicator? Nope.

[Orbifold]

@Scylla

Well, no. Or, at least I don’t think so. The cell and the egg don’t have this capacity unless and until you put them together, and, not always then. Some combinations are unviable and will abort. What makes it a human life at the time of conception (according to my current best thinking) is that given nothing but an environment in which it can thrive, it will become a human being.

But not always then, either. Even a fertilized egg implanted in the womb is not always going to come to term. We can increase the chances that this will happen by taking certain actions (ensuring the health of the mother, for example) but by the same token we can increase the chances that a sperm and egg turn into a baby by taking certain actions as well. So why draw the line at conception, specifically?

Which is mostly nitpicking to make a point: I have a sincere difficulting accepting any argument (for or against abortion) that hinges on choosing a specific point where life begins because I have yet to see any such argument that doesn’t eventually boil down to some arbitrary choice. Choosing the point where a fetus gains the potential to become human is particularly problematic, because that point is particularly ill-defined: the point where a fetus gains the potential to become human with assistance is effectively before conception, but the point where a fetus can become human without assistance is effectively after birth! Other milestones are easier to define, but far more arbitrary: why does a heartbeat make us human? Why does brain activity do so?

If we’re looking for an absolute answer to the question of “when is abortion moral”, then what we need to know is: what separates humans from animals that makes killing humans a sin but not killing animals, and when does that quality enter a fetus? And in my view we’re nowhere near close enough to answering that question. Until we do, I don’t think we can answer the question of “when does life begin” absolutely either.

In the meantime, all I can do when confronted with the question of abortion–from a moral standpoint[sup]*[/sup]–is try to deal with it on a case by case basis. Does a week-old fetus deserve the same standing as the hiker with broken legs in your analogy? If it means requiring a mother to carry a baby to term every time a condom breaks or a rape happens, then I have to say no, the week-old fetus in not morally equivalent to a human being.

I freely admit it’s not a rational decision, but the opposite conclusion requires me to take a position of moral authority over the mother that I don’t think I have the right to take. By contrast, if you ask me if a eight-and-a-half month old fetus deserves the same moral standing as a human being then my answer will be very different. This is also not a rational conclusion, but I can do no better. I do not have the tools to make this decision rationally; no one does.

[sup]*[/sup]My answer to the question of abortion from a legal standpoint, or rather from the standpoint of what I think the law should be, is another matter.

[Voodoochile]

@BrainGlutton

That sounds very encouragine. What about the shape of society in Sweden? The social classes, the gap between rich and poor? Are all Swedes born with roughly equal chances in life, as Americans are not? Do the rich wield political power out of proportion to their numbers, as they do here? No doubt they have an “institutional elite” as every modern society does, but are most of the politicians, top-level business executives, foundation chairpersons, university professors and administrators, senior military officer, etc., drawn mostly from the upper class, or more or less equally from all classes?
…And how does Sweden differ, in these respects, from other European countries?

Well, this isnt anything you can get from charts and graphs, all I can give is my opinion, since your question in many ways begs a subjective answer. I could only compare it to Britain and France, the other two euro countries Ive been to, and the US. But since Ive only visited Britain and France, didnt live there for a few months like I have Sweden, I cant really say how it is there either.

There is less of a financial gap betwene rich and poor in Sweden, but there is far more social stratification than in the US. You are far more likely to be judged based on things such as what school you went to, what region youre from, what accent you have etc than in the ~western~ US.

Sweden reminded me far more of the attitudes I encountered when I lived in Connecticut - for a blue collar (at the time) person from California, very alien. No, Im sorry, but in Sweden in general you have less of a chance of working your way out of poverty based purely on your effort and ability than in the US in general. Think of what we call the Union attitude - “What, you think youre better than you are?” - often said towards a blue collar worker by his fellow workers if he actually makes an effort to learn/educate/improve himself. I encountered this quite often in Ct and Northern Sweden (more so in Sweden), which is the bastion of the Social Democrats. Though it definately is changing in Sweden, these type of attitudes take quite a while to go away.

Swedes can be very, very snobby and socially snub each other for far slighter things than you would commonly see in the US. I would say the level of snobbiness in Sweden is far greater than in most of the US, excepting places like here in the Bay Area or Hollywood. You are faaaar more likely to be judged based on superficial things like how you dress. Im a typical Cal programmer, I dress how I want; when I worked there, the younger Swedes would pretend it didnt matter to them (and Im sure to many it didnt) but programmers/IT people around my own age wouldnt listen to half of what I was saying; after all, I couldnt be very good if I dressed like ~that~!

You ask

are most of the politicians, top-level business executives, foundation chairpersons, university professors and administrators, senior military officer, etc., drawn mostly from the upper class, or more or less equally from all classes?

Well, only around 20-30% of Swedes get degrees, and more so than here in my opinion those 20-30% come from the upper classes (financial aid is given based on test scores etc - not income…govt educational assisitance is far more easier for low income people to get here than in Sweden, regardless of test scores). While here in the US it is pretty much recognized that educational achievement is largely part of environment, in my experience this is laughed at in private by many Swedes; I heard statements along the lines (more than I have ever heard such a thing here) that “Well, so and so probably shouldnt study that, after all his father was just a mechanic”. I ran into the attitude that it is cruel to give (some) poor people the illusion that they might be able to succeed in an area they have no chance of succeeding in; better that they be trained in something they could handle, so they wont be devastated when they inevitably fail, which would be bad for their self esteem and mental health.

The Swedes I ran into that I consider ‘progressive’, as in progressing beyond traditional Swedish social attitutudes and bigotries, were for the most part very libertarian; let individuals try for themselves and compete, success should be based on merit and not ones social graces, it doesnt matter about ones accent or dressing habits, people want to drink moonshine or do drugs, let em, etc. The hard core socialists I dealt with seemed in my admittedly subjective opininion to have more of the attitude “Yes, there is a nobility and yes there are those who are born inferior to the nobility, but unlike the old days we recognize it is the moral responsibility of the nobility to use their superior blood lines to take care of those who were unlucky enough to be born inferior”. Every hardcore Swede socialist I met was a patronizing asshole. And I didnt really meet that many ‘Socialists’.

Having said all that, it is changing. I was in Stockholm a bit, but mostly in Lulea and Pitea (the headquarters of the Social Democrats). The North itself is more rural and conservative (conservative in this context meaning inflexible Social Democrat doctrine) than the south, so someone in Skane for example would have a different view, Im sure. Its very similar to the difference between the midwest and coasts here.

One other thing is that about 40% of all the IT people I worked with planned on moving either to other areas of the EU or the US as soon as they could get the hell out. Most flipped when they found out what they could get paid in the US for doing what they do there.

Im sorry but if you think Sweden is less of a stratified or snobby society than most of the US, at least compared ot the west coast anyway thats rediclous.

[Arwin]

I seem to have had a completely different experience from you the year I lived there and since I took the trouble of learning the language and reading two different newspapers, each for half a year, I feel I got a decent grasp on the Swedish society, though I have to add that this was in 1996-7. Now although I can point out any number of things that I didn’t like too much about Swedish culture or where I think they could do better government-wise, the simple fact is that any and I mean literally any student who gets the grades can go to university and get a student loan. That’s the simple truth.

That the Swedes are conservative socialists (comparatively) is true, unions have been too strong in the country and in 1991 it should have listened to its prime-minister and frozen its wages, as we have in the Netherlands, neglect of which was in large part resposible for a period of relatively high unemployment (peaking at 10% I believe). They have learnt their lesson a little since. Also I didn’t like the way they deal with alcohol. It’s a long history, but fact is that today selling it is controlled by the state and prices of alcohol are very expensive. The upside of this is that it has some great wineshops where you can get nearly everything, but the downside is that it’s too expensive. Ironically most politicians have enough money to prefer the benefits over the downsides; and together with a year of total anarchy when a previous ban was lifted in 1966 which traumatised the nation’s attitude to alcohol for a good while, the policy has been allowed to live long past its expiry date. That things are nevertheless changing now is in no small part due to EU trade agreements. And while we’re talking about the EU, the reluctance to accept the euro is another sign of Swedish conservatism.

Sweden is exhibiting the same signals of most countries that have stood out in the past, which is clinging on to its once leading but increasingly outdated values in changing times.

Obviously your social background is going to have an influence on whether or not you are going to, and it will in Sweden just as well as in the U.S. But the system isn’t holding you back in Sweden, you will never not study because you can’t afford to. Having been with a girl (whom I am still friends with) I met while studying who was from a working class family, I have seen this in practice - although ironically her parents were Finnish immigrants.

But you’re way overstepping the merits of your arguments. When you’re saying “less of a financial gap betwene rich and poor in Sweden” your making an enormous understatement. The financial gap between rich and poor in Sweden is one of the smallest in the world (some for the Netherlands incidentally). It has one of the lowest percentages of poverty in the world (again, ditto for the Netherlands). The U.S., being the second most wealthy nation in the world, has more than double the percentages of poverty and even more so among children.

And listening to why some people disliked John Kerry, I don’t find your claim that the distinction between educated and non-educated is viewed very differently in the U.S.

[elucidator]

About all I know about Sweden is that for the last forty years or so, American conservatives have been predicting its utter collapse any second now.

[Arwin]

@elucidator

About all I know about Sweden is that for the last forty years or so, American conservatives have been predicting its utter collapse any second now.

The irony is that here in the Netherlands, a recent poll showed that while 80% were happy with how things were going, 67% feared that the world economy would force the Netherlands to lower its standard of living to that of … the U.S.

[Rune]

@BrainGlutton

Really? That picture is not supported by the Wikipedia articles on Sweden (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweden#Demographics) and on the Demographics of Sweden (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Sweden) – but then, it isn’t flatly contradicted either. There’s just not enough information.

Does anybody know of a web site or other source that analyzes and compares the class structures of different countries, and levels of social mobility within them?

CEO of a conservative (liberal) think institute and dr. ekon. Fredrik Bergström and Robert Gidehag, chief of economics in The Trade Institute (HUI) wrote a book titled Sweden versus USA. It can be bough here: http://www.timbro.se/bokhandel/books.asp?isbn=9175665379
It only cost $20 but unfortunately only in Swedish. Also download here: http://www.timbro.se/bokhandel/pdf/75665379.pdf

Abstracts
Sweden lost the pace economically wise, in 1975, and has not since been able to grow at the same pace as the USA, mostly because the welfare (so-called) state robs the people of their wealth. In that period Sweden has dropped from fourth to seventeenth richest nation. The book describes the blacks in America as the economically worst off ethnic group, that they in 2000 had an average median household income of SEK 278.000, whereas Sweden had one of SEK 283.000. And goes on to show how there’s a much higher social mobility in the US, both socially and economically. And where the poor in the US were a bit worse off than the poor in Europe. The poor in America owned more stuff, such as TV’s refrigerators, cars etc. whereas the European poor had “free” healthcare.
Here’s a small article from The Politiken, a respectable Danish newspaper (or as respectable as newspapers come). The net is full of articles on the book, I choose this merely because it was in Danish and it was the first on google:
http://www.uriasposten.dk/kopier/Pol-030404-KurrildKlit-Folkehjemmet.htm

Sweden vers. America

In 1970 Swedes and Americans (US) averaged about the same. Thirty years later Swedes made an average 50% less than Americans ($24.000 vers. $33.000). According to the OECD, Sweden has dumped from the worlds 4. richest country to the 17. measured as BNP / person – having been overtaken by such countries as Italy, Austria and Ireland and now finds itself on par with Spain. While the USA consistently has been found among the three richest. Had Sweden’s economy continued to grow by 3.2% as it did 1950-69 instead of the measly 1.7% as was the case, Swedish BNP / person would have been SEK 350.000 rather than SEK 240.000. That is a difference of nearly 50%, or an amount about the size of that removes Sweden from a string of poor countries.

The typical Scandinavian answer to such facts is either doubting or waving away. One supposes, that when Americans have such superior BNP, then it’s merely because there are some extremely rich Americans, whom up the average. However the Swedish economics show this is not held up by statistics. When Americans are richer than Swedes, then it’s because Americans generally are richer than Swedes. If one instead looks at the average median household income, a typical Swedish is SEK 280.000 (adjusted for purchasing parity), while a typical American is SEK 400.000 (adjusted). If Sweden in 2000 had been a US state it would have had a standard of life as no. 48, comparable to Arkansas and Alabama. On the other hand, the average for the whole of the US was higher than the absolute richest Swedish region (Stockholm).

[…], the weak Swedish economy performance mainly has the enormous expansion of the welfare system since the 60’ties to blame. In 1970 the taxes swallowed around 40% of BNP while it in 1999 stole 53%. Meanwhile the USA in the same period has had a mostly unchanged taxation level of 27-28

Here’s another study based on the same numbers for the whole of the EU. About us

@BrainGlutton

And what, in your opinion, would help us attain a classless society?

I’m not so concerned about “classless society” as about the chance for the poor to move up and the actual conditions of the poor rather than their conditions in relation to the rich, but apparently some dirt poor hunter/gather societies were remarkable classless. You can easily reach the classless society, it’s mainly a question of gunning for the lowest denominator. You can make the richest poorer. Not that it’ll make the poor any richer.

[alaricthegoth]

@BrainGlutton

Now wait a minute, it’s not that simple. The terms “progressive” and “liberal”, as used in American political discourse from the Roosevelt period to the present, mean a lot of different things, not all of them in accord with what you’re describing as “our values.”

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberalism_in_the_United_States:

"an overly free-spirited, unaccountable, and compromised character (a libertine)

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressivism:

That works for me–

Welcome to the organizational meeting of the Libertine Caucus.

Our Platform:

Public funding for:
Sex
Drugs
Rock n Roll.

Our campaign bumpersticker:

“If a little is good, more is better…”

[elucidator]

I find your political philosophy persuasive, and would like to get your newsletter.

[alaricthegoth]

@elucidator

About all I know about Sweden is that for the last forty years or so, American conservatives have been predicting its utter collapse any second now.

all you need to know about Sweden.

from that Satrap of Stand-Up, the Wit of Waziristan, Omar’s own Oscar Wilde,
'Sama (“don’t call me ozzie”) Bin Laden:

“If we hated freedom, we would have bombed Sweden”

(ed note:a real zinger, even if the guy was wearing a bathrobe and schmata on his head, which is tough wardrobe in this town…)

[alaricthegoth]

@elucidator

I find your political philosophy persuasive, and would like to get your newsletter.

We got us a convoy!!

[WeRSauron]

Ringwraiths?!

Please, do not involve Our Ringwraiths in this debate. They are loyal only to Our immaculate edicts, outside of which they say not a word. Besides, they are too busy catching Hobbitses to care about conservatism, liberalism, progressiveism, or Sweden.

WRS/Thû - now, back to your debate.