Yeah, Ending Segregation Was So Fucked Up

18 Responses to Yeah, Ending Segregation Was So Fucked Up

1. Jim says:

   6/28/2007 at 11:29 pm

   Hey, I know! Vaccination programs! I wish government had never done that. I LOVE smallpox!

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2. Iroquois says:

   6/29/2007 at 12:37 am

   Oooh, oooh, Water! Everywhere you go in the world you have to carry safe water, but in America you can drink water out of the tap ANYWHERE and you won’t get sick.

   Ooooh! Agricultural inspections. If you eat the wild boar in Katmandu you will probably pay for it with a week or two of high fever, but you can buy meat anywhere in America and enjoy it without needing a round of antibiotics later.

   Oh, yeah, mosquito abatement. When I lived in a certain country, every night I would kill as many mosquitos clinging to the walls as possible before going to sleep–I couldn’t afford screens to keep them out. In America, I sit outside my front step at night without even one bite.

   Roads. The interstate highway system.

   Social security. So far.

   Free universal public education. Yes, I am a product of public schools (except for one year at a Minnesota university) and nobody complains about my spelling.

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3. Christopher Davis Sr. says:

   6/29/2007 at 1:02 am

   I hate to be the voice of reason but during and especially after WW2/Korea/Vietnam we implemented media brainwashing(miltary industrial machine propaganda) via the “war effort” and its been one step away from fascism since then. Goverment/Big business have had their way with the U.S. public. The rich have attained unreal wealth and live like KINGS in fairy tales. We, the working poor are the NEW slaves, no health care, no representation in DC, LOW wages, jail time for the public defender types, and under constant pressure to serve “GOD’S” will in Satans military; to murder those Haliburton requires for bigger profits (for rich shareholders to get richer exponentially). The media is owned and used to serve the ultra-rich and distract the public from seeing and understanding what is really happing in our nation. What ever happened to of the people, by the people, for the people. Not to mention some good old fashioned TRUST BUSTING!!! I guess its now ONE CORPORATION ONE VOTE AND FUCK ALL WORKING AMERICANS!!! I cant believe this is the America I loved as a kid, now I’m waiting for BLOODY REVOLUTION, and waiting, and waiting, and waiting. Revolution will be the only fix to this massive clusterfuck we call the federal goverment. Your “political action commitee” group of more rich evil assholes is not and will never be the answer to what ails the U.S.A.. Sorry to enlighten you to the truth! -C.Davis Sr.

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4. Jim says:

   6/29/2007 at 1:10 am

   And buy my DR.BRONNERSSOAP!ALL ONE!!IN ONE!!!YAHWEEEEEH!!!!

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5. Iroquois says:

   6/29/2007 at 1:31 am

   Absolute cleanliness is Godliness! Who else but God gave man Love that can spark mere dust to life! Poetry, uniting All-One! All brave! All life!

   That’s some damn good soap, especially the peppermint.

   Do you remember when the governmnet experimented with LSD-25 on unsuspecting civilians during the cold war? Wonder whatever happened to those people.

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6. Rich Paul says:

   6/29/2007 at 1:42 am

   Hmmm … some problems Iroquois. I assume you must be using absurd arguments in because you’re actually on the other side, but I will point out their absurdity none the less:

   1) Water. Yes, in some places (like mexico) you have to be very careful as an American to avoid the water. Guess what … in some places (like America), mexicans have to be very careful to avoid the water.

   2) Agricultural inspections. If you eat the wild boar in America, it is just as likely to kill you as if you eat it (is there only one wild boar?) in Katmandu. Now consider this: if government did not require inspection of meat, would you choose to buy inspected or non-inspected meat? According to some beef producers, who pressured the federal government into FORCING a rival to stop voluntarily inspecting it’s meat for mad cow disease, if these people were permitted to have their meat inspected, all their competitors would have to do the same. They are probably right about that. They are, of course, wrong to say that this gives them the right to FORCE their rival not to inspect meat.

   3) Mosquito abatement: DDT is the most cost effective way to reduce mosquitoes. It is also banned internationally, because it can cause some birds to lay eggs with thin shells. The cost in human life just from malaria is staggering. We in America can afford to use more expensive solutions. In much of the rest of the world, the government controls the economy, and people are much too poor to save their own lives, and have nice thick bird eggs. The rich in America have made this value judgment for them, and they die knowing that bird eggs are more important than they.

   4) Roads. Even an organization as stupid as government cannot screw up roads too badly. Of course, they pay about twice what would be required for private roads, and by overbuilding roads make driving more economically attractive than things like trains, but what the hell. We’ve got lots of roads, right?

   5) Social Security. Returns (on average) 0.5% compounded annually. In the future, that return will go negative … you will get back less than you put in. The stock market (which you can use almost risk free through index funds) has never lost money over any long period, and returns (on average) 6.9% compounded annually. If you spend your golden years eating cat food, blame social security. If, of course, this obscene ponzi scheme has not gone broke by then.

   6) Free universal public education. In rich areas, this is only marginally worse than private education. In poor areas, it is disgusting. It all depends on how much political pull the recipients have. Of course, it totally defeats the purpose of having the people tell the government what to do if the government told the people what to think, which is why we have a separation of church and state (and need a separation of school and state) in America. But what’s a little fascism between friends?

   As for Jim, I suspect that we would get vaccinations even if the government did not force us to. Why? Because very few of us want smallpox. So really, the credit goes to private industry, which developed the cure, not to government. Survey sez … wrong answer … but thanks for playing the game.

   And on the original article, segregation was a government program. Yes they should have ended it. Yes, they did end it. We should give them credit for that. Then we should suggest that they end more of their destructive programs.

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7. Jim says:

   6/29/2007 at 2:21 am

   Segregation was not only a government program. Nice how the governments across the world are actually applying differing standards on DDT. Your comment on water is irrelevant, since it just points out that SOMETIMES gov’t is imperfect, etc etc. Wayne Allyn Root said government fails at EVERYTHING!

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8. Iroquois says:

   6/29/2007 at 2:37 am

   Too expensive, just not good enough, too icky, not plush enough. Bitch, bitch, bitch.

   You know very well the water is safe in America EVERYWHERE and not just for Mexicans either. You also know quite well that ALL of these things work and would not exist without government.

   Try mosquito nets for malaria, as per the UN website. The international community could wipe out malaria in Africa using appropriate technology–or maybe I should say lo-tech solutions–if there was the political will.

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9. Rich Paul says:

   6/29/2007 at 3:58 am

   Well, if Root says that government fails at everything, every time, immediately (without waiting for the program to become entrenched), he slightly exaggerated.

   I prefer Harry Brown’s characterization:

   “The only thing that government can deliver reliably is corpses.”

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10. Junga says:

    6/29/2007 at 6:08 am

    Pubic education of children actually has been very successful, so successful that nutty libertarians actually go around now saying that it’s a disaster because not every American child is graduating with a full understanding of physics.

    (It actually turns out that public schools outperform private schools).

    Government delivers a lot more than corpses, Rich Paul. It delivers the mail.

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11. Jim says:

    6/29/2007 at 9:29 am

    Wow, Rich, you’re so right! I mean, I NEVER get my mail! Except on Mondays! And Tuesdays and Wednesdays and Thursdays and Fridays and Saturdays. Stupid fucking government.

    The Internet! Stupid-ass government DARPA research enabled the creating of the internet! Oh, darn. I just hate having the internet around. I wish I could go back to teletype machines.

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12. Rich Paul says:

    6/29/2007 at 1:25 pm

    Yep, another exaggeration. But it makes a much better sound bite than the truth. The truth is closer to this:

    Government force is required only in order to protect individuals from force and fraud (it’s legitimate function), to regulate those areas in which technology has not yet provided a way to measure costs and charge them to those whose actions create them (externalities that cannot be tracked, for example. This is legitimate but unfortunate, and advancing technology will eventually obviate this need), and to force people to act according to values they do not hold (This is illegitimate use of government). In cases where government force is used illegitimately, the results will be better for some and worse for others then what the market (society as a whole) would do itself, but the aggregate effect of society will be on the whole worse than what the market would provide.

    Unfortunately, this truth makes a poor sound bite. It contains sophisticated ideas, requires a knowledge of economics to justify, and is far too involved for most publicly schooled minds to grasp.

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13. Iroquois says:

    6/29/2007 at 2:04 pm

    How do you “know” this is “truth” RP? Are you God?

    And is it “far too involved for most publicly schooled minds to grasp” or is it utter nonsense? Does or does not the emperor have clothes?

    Oh, and baseball. I know that’s municipal and not federal government, but just the same you wouldn’t have people wasting all that time with baseball without governments to build those stadiums.

    And the county hospital. If you just let market forces take over, some of those poor people might die and stop infringing on everybody else’s liberty with their incessant diseases.

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14. Rich Paul says:

    6/29/2007 at 2:30 pm

    Education, as case in point:
    I don’t know what measure you use to say that government schools outperform private schools. I suppose they do, if your criterion is their efficiency in delivering unthinking sheep to be docile and dependent factory workers. That is, of course, what our government school system was designed to do, and it does it reasonably well. Although the fact that the government school system turns out students ignorant of physics does bother Libertarians, but less important than the fact that it frequently turns out students who cannot read and write, cannot speak well, do not understand the Constitution or the nature of our political and economic system, are incapable of basic arithmetic, and are indoctrinated with the idea that government can solve all problems and that merit is less important than political correctness.

    The bottom line on education is that education — real education — has value. Since it does have value, and since nearly all parents do care about their children, they will, indeed, strive to provide those children with an education that will benefit them in life. Since people differ in their values, no one size fits all school system can be all things to all people. The market, however, can, since it does not demand that all people get the same type and quantity of education. It lacks the power to force parents to keep their children in failing schools, and thus in order for a school to survive, it must provide something of value to it’s customers. It does not labor under the limitations of government. For example, the requirement that curricula of all schools are politically palatable to those who do not partake of their services cannot be imposed on the market. This would in some cases bother liberals (they would not be able to impose sex education on those whose parents do not wish them to have it), but in some cases it would be much better from a liberal perspective (conservatives would not be able to impose “abstinence only sex education” on those whose parents wished them to actually have sex education). Rather than the constant political fights between left and right over history (should America be portrayed as an incorruptible and infallible force for pure good, as the Right would have it, as an evil empire, as the left would have it, or as a country which has done much good and much evil as rational observers would have it?).

    Of course, this arrangement would be unacceptable to doctrinaire members of the left or the right, neither of whom can tolerate the thought that somebody, somewhere, might escape indoctrination with their ideas of the truth. But society would benefit because diversity of thought is a good in and of itself.

    Another increase of efficiency would be because people would be free to take as much education as would benefit them, and to return to school if and when they decided they wanted more. No more dropouts who regret dropping out five years later, but are unable to return because government has arbitrarily decreed that education is something that happens between 5 and 18. The market would happily provide education for anybody willing to pay, regardless of their age. In cases where financing was a problem, there would, of course, be loans or other options available.

    Mail as a case in point:

    It is a commonly overlooked fact that it is against the law for a private company to deliver “first class mail” in America. It is a monopoly which government has awarded to itself. Why is this? If the government was more efficient in delivering such mail then private companies would be, then there would be no need for a law. Private companies might try, from time to time, to deliver mail, but they would fail to attract customers due to their own inefficiency, and go bankrupt. The law is required in order to force people to accept the inefficiency of the government system, which is much more expensive and slower than private companies would be. Whether the government delivers mail reliably can only be answered relative to something else. The government has conceded the answer by passing the law.

    The Internet as case in point:

    The internet was developed by a government agency in the 60′s. Eventually, in the 90′s, private industry took it over and started to promote it. This is when most people believe that the internet came into existence. They are wrong. What private company would develop revolutionary technology and then sit on it, allowing only universities and large corporations to benefit, for 30 years? None. They want to make money, and the only way for a private company in a free market to make money is by providing value to all comers. So why did private industry not develop an internet to compete with DARPA? They did, to some extent, look into organizations like Compuserve, AOL, Fidonet, and other private networking systems. They never built their infrastructure to the point of the internet because we in the computer industry expected the internet to become generally available in much less than 30 years, and the money spent building a competitive system would have been wasted, as soon as the infrastructure built with stolen money was unveiled. Had we known it would take 30 years, we might have acted sooner, but sometimes people underestimate the irrationality of government.

    My point on water:

    My point on water was that water is potable or not potable based on whether the flora in the water match the intestinal flora and immunities of the drinker, not based on whether it was delivered by government or by industry. Government water is still a failure, since it costs far more for government to deliver water then it would cost private industry, and since the costs are allocated based on political and not economic criteria, which requires that governments ration water.

    This is done by outlawing washing machines that actually get clothes clean, shower heads that allow you to get clean in a reasonable period of time, watering your lawn or washing your car (in some areas). The coming “water shortage” will not be a shortage of water. The amount of water on earth is very close to constant. It will be a function of government’s inability to deliver water in an economically efficient manner.

    Anyway, I hope I’ve rattled your cages. I’m going to surf onward now. I may check in to see your responses, but probably will not be responding. Thanks for the debate, and I hope that you think about the things I have written, rather than just feeling about them.

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15. Jim says:

    6/29/2007 at 3:23 pm

    Um, on mail, it’s called “first class mail” if the US Postal Service delivers it, because it’s one of the classes designated by the US Postal Service. Der. If a similar service were actually set up by a private service, it would be other than “first class mail” in the sense of a US Postal Service class. So that’s definitionally true. But no company is forbidden from setting up a nationwide service of daily letter deliveries. It just hasn’t. What I believe YOU mean is, “the US Postal Service doesn’t itself work through private contractors,” or “the US Postal Service doesn’t let private businesses use its infrastraucture” — idea whichs clearly disturb you but don’t diminish the excellent record of the US Postal Service — you put a letter in the mail, you believe it will be delivered, because the chances are very, very, very, very, very good it actually will. The last delivery I had going on via FedEx got fucked up by the nongovernmental FedEx. So much about business being the solution. By the way, there ARE some instances of private contracting of US Postal services, so you’re even wrong on my more generous interpretation of what you mean.

    The Internet backbone was built sturdily on the back of public universities, government funded universities. Your excuses for why business didn’t manage to get its act together are mealy-mouthed.

    And on education, there’s an empirical study which shows that private schools don’t do any better a job in educating than public schools. That study is out there while you’re absorbed in your theories which must be true, because, what, someone you intellectually worship like Ayn Rand said something once? Step out of your own internally consistent but empirically detached doctrine for a moment and admit that the government can deliver more than corpses. Governments can do a great deal of damage, just as private businesses and individuals have done a buttload of damage. But that doesn’t mean that they’re incapable of positive achievements — unless you’re living in bubble land.

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16. Alan Augustson says:

    6/29/2007 at 8:24 pm

    My family was incredibly poor. I would have had no education if there were no public schools. Anyone who wants to tell me I had no right to an education, is a jackass who needs to stop poisoning the vote with his ignorance.

    And frankly, if some of my classmates didn’t turn out as well, it was 99% their own damn fault. Too concerned about smoking pot and getting laid; not sufficiently interested in their own futures. I had the same textbooks as they did, I just read mine.

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17. Iroquois says:

    6/30/2007 at 12:08 am

    About water: in some developing nations the story about developing immunity to local water (and food) may be true. Food may be grown with human manure as fertilizer (illegal in the U.S.), which is qutie unhealthy but done all the time in poor nations, in which case you’ll never get the disease spoors out of the soil. Water may contain any number of microorganisms with interesting intestinal effects, giardia is my personal favorite. The common Arab saying is that after 40 days of living with a people you become one of them; the reality is it takes about six weeks to develop a new immunity after you move. When you move to the next village (or visit), you need to develop a new immunity. The U.S. of course has water purity standards, so you don’t have to develop a new immunity every time you move or travel since the water does not carry diseases.

    The stuff about the washing machines (along with the rest of RP’s wild talk) is just too weird–have you noticed how these libertarians like to make a bunch of outlandish assertions without any links, then toddle off?

    A, sounds like the libertarians might like the setup like in Latin America where they had to pay for high school, but the universities were free. And guess who could get into the universities? Yup, only the ones who could afford to go to private secondary school. Talk about the poor subsidizing the rich.

    Historically South America has not had a middle class. 98 per cent of the wealth is in the hands of 2 percent of the people. The few people with money have to live like they’re in a fortified camp with broken glass embedded in the top of their walls and people trying to kidnap their children for ransom.

    And now some say the U.S. is losing its middle class.

    It’s the American promise, a level playing field, and that anyone, no matter the background or wealth, can make it here based on capability.

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18. Mitsleplik says:

    6/30/2007 at 7:00 pm

    I can’t believe how much some of you like to bitch and moan and want to live in a fairy tale world that never existed and never will. The world is what YOU make of it not what some one gives you. As Dear Abby said, “you have no complaint.” Get involved or get out and see how you’re treated in the rest of the world.

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