I’ve said no such thing. Please stop putting words in my mouth. Did you read the article, SA? Even “elites” suffer from the same problem.
Stubborn political partisans have the same cognitive defects as hardcore sports fans.
I’m starting to wonder about that. I become an adult around 1980. Looking back at my life since then, would I have done anything different, would my life had changed at all, if different people had been in high office during that time? I suspect not.
This is particularly prominent in the research community. It starts with a professor that believes A causes D so he sets out to prove it. He builds a research department, gets some grad students, write a lot of papers, and becomes known for his ground breaking work in A causes D.
Eventually one of his grad students starts to question the original work and asks, “why if instead B causes D?”
Well, B can’t cause D because that would mean everything the professor has worked on for the past 30 years has been wrong. His life’s work pointless. How is he supposed to continue to get grants and go to conferences if A doesn’t cause D.
So the professor has to dig in his heals, and justify his existence. At this point it has nothing to with A or B, it has to do with him and his ego. Now there are two competing theories, A causes D and B causes D. Nothing either group does will disprove the other.
What’s funny is that people on the outside love to use this as a wedge. You’ll see it with global warming, evolution, and Keynesian economics.
Also, consider this from the point of view of a religious conservative. They’ve built their life around the belief that the Earth is flat and the sun goes around it. That a magical figure in the sky created everything. That pi equals 3. Along comes some punk that tries to prove it otherwise. To accept that calls into question everything you believed to be true. At this point you can either pack up and quit, or set about discrediting/killing the heretics. It also helps to call them heretics.
I don’t find the article anywhere near as depressing as this thread.
And have corporations taking over more and more of our rights, our income, our health care and general welfare, and how much money we get. Eventually we’ll find our individual freedoms subsumed to those dictated by corporations whose functionaries care not one iota for the average man, what is best for him and/or what he should receive and how he should live.
Your way presupposes the same future, just with overlords we can’t vote out of office.
Case in point.
Sure you can. Just get as many people as you can, to buy up as many shares as you can, then vote at the next share holders meeting.
I saw an article on CNBC about a fund that would do this with companies they thought were good but had shitty CEOs and as a result a low stock price. They’d buy as many shares as they could. Then go around talking to other major share holders. Eventually they’d vote the loser out on his ass, and rake in the profits. Brilliant.
Thanks! Seems that makes one. 
Anyway, I think it’s a useful description: it helps keep in mind that even if your opponent isn’t swayed by all the facts and reason you can muster, he may not be an idiot (a lesson I sometimes find myself needing to be reminded of…); and if you think that, you’re maybe just working with the wrong categories.
This is why I distrust and largely despise think tanks. They operate under the guise of scientific neutrality, but they all have their own agendas. For example, the Cato Institute:
They may claim to be “independent” and “nonpartisan,” but they’re still conducting their research through the lens of promoting “individual liberty, limited government, (and) free markets.” This colors anything they do because they’re seeking a particular result that supports the conclusion that they’ve started with.
Some people just can’t accept that private actors and organizations can be more oppressive or inefficient than government actors.
It is near impossible to change someones mind when they think their livelihood is in jeopardy. People working for oil companies will not accept their industry is dirty and must be cleaned up, if they think it might cost them their job. That is regardless of whether you understand cleaning it up is beneficial to the country as a whole.
…
Well, let’s start with small steps, and the see what happens. No need to use an extreme position as a starting point.
Here’s my proposal: all adults take an IQ test. Only those scoring in the top 25% get to vote or run for office. Easy, cheap, and you still get to continue playing at democracy - just with smarter people. What do you think, friends?
Why reinvent the wheel. Here’s the 1965 Alabama voter literacy test. How about both **Deeg **and Commissar, take the test (no cheating!) and tell us your scores. Then we’ll decide whether you’re qualified to vote, much less be our dictator.
Cool. I’ll come up with test questions and have us take it. Good luck!
I’m familiar with the study mentioned in the OP, and like Blaron, I was pretty depressed about it. Still, there are some thing s we can do about it, and the authors of the study offer one suggestion:
Sure, they can be, but they usually aren’t. And when they are, they don’t tend to last long. When’s the last time you heard of an oppressive or inefficient government department or agency going down the tubes?
This is one of the big reasons why letting government have too much control is dangerous: once established, it’s pretty much there for keeps. And from there, it invariably grows larger. In fact, one could say, without much fear of contradiction, that the government’s primary role is to expand itself, as it has virtually nonstop over the last hundred, and most especially the last fifty, years. And once some new government agency or department has been established, the likelihood of it’s ever going away (or even staying at its original size) is so small as to be virtually nonexistent.
We have much, much, more to fear in terms of oppressiveness and inefficiency from government agencies and departments which we can never get rid of than we do from any business, which ultimately depends upon serving its customer base at an at least satisfactory rate while simultaneously adapting itself to cope with new technological advancements and efforts by its competitors to provide a better service or product, more easily, and at a better price. It isn’t easy to be in business and it’s even harder to remain there.
Govenment has no such concerns. It only has to make sure it spends all its current budget in order to get more and grow further next year, and neither the marketplace nor technological advancements threaten it in the slightest. Life is easy when you don’t have to worry about making a profit in order to survive, and easier still when you have no competition.
Government is a 500,000,000 lb. gorilla that, once it finds a place to sit and make itself comfortable, ain’t goin’ nowhere. It’s a constant amazement to me that so many people want not only to see it grow further but to entrust their fate into its capricious and unanswerable hands.
And no amount of facts will ever change your mind on that.
“Here’s my proposal: all adults take an IQ test. Only those scoring in the top 25% get to vote or run for office. Easy, cheap, and you still get to continue playing at democracy - just with smarter people. What do you think, friends?”
Exactly how do you propose to convince the other 75% of the population to agree with implementing this? And thats assuming all of the top 25% is entirely bereft of morals as well.
Otara
Wow, this was posted yesterday before this news story hit. Seems we have in this country a new bomb-maker who’s written a manifesto.