The money supply grows 7% annually on average. Nobody voted for it. Is the government stealing from you?
Yes
Yet, pretty much all of us still demand dollars and opt into the system. I definitely think it's immoral and unjust, but we're still the ones choosing to transact in it.
We're still at a point where 95% of transactions, definitely all meaningful ones, require dollars.
Hope is not optimism, which expects things to turn out well, but something rooted in the conviction that there is good worth working for. - Seamus Heaney, Irish poet and likely Hoosier basketball fan.
POTFB
You have given examples of what I said. A simple rational law would address a clear societal problem. A judge can easily render decisions even with nuanced cases.
Legislators then try to solve more specific or limited societal problems with arbitrary laws that aren’t based on reason or science but just their “authoritative” (arbitrary) opinion. This moves that area of jurisprudence further from reason, life, common sense and more toward an arbitrary, authoritarian mishmash such as we now have. A simple example is the definition of male and female. A complex example is the thousands of pages codifying Obamacare.
The basic problem is allowing “Authorities” to decide arbitrarily.
Happy to report you’re a lot smarter than that meme.
3 a : based on preference, bias, prejudice, or convenience rather than on reason or fact [an standard] [different provisions for the married and the unmarried were irrational and “K. A. Cohen”]
https://dictionary.findlaw.com/definition/arbitrary.html
The money supply grows 7% annually on average. Nobody voted for it. Is the government stealing from you?
Yes
Yet, pretty much all of us still demand dollars and opt into the system. I definitely think it's immoral and unjust, but we're still the ones choosing to transact in it.
We're still at a point where 95% of transactions, definitely all meaningful ones, require dollars.
”Theoretical dollars”….a lot of transactions occur with “dollars” not currently available to the purchaser. Artificially increases price
Nah, every use of arbitrary contains a connotation of the irrational, the unexamined, a whim.Happy to report you’re a lot smarter than that meme.
3 a : based on preference, bias, prejudice, or convenience rather than on reason or fact [an standard] [different provisions for the married and the unmarried were irrational and “K. A. Cohen”]
Legislators think out exactly why they vote for whatever act. They act for predictable reasons, in fact, that we can all identify.
Now, you're right, that the reasons that motivate them--contra what they tell the public--often have little relationship to the actual underlying legislative issue. But that's not arbitrary. It just means they vote or write laws in such a way that you (and I) don't like because it's not solving the problem. Instead, they're voting and drafting so as to maximize their own chances of reelection, currying favor for an eventual payday, etc. Or they're just not able to think through the contingencies very well, even though they have a bunch of young staffers staying up all night to do so. But those are in no serious sense of the word, "arbitrary."
I think it's important to get the wording of the problem right so that we can think about solutions. This is an incentives problem, not a problem with the legislature acting arbitrarily.
The root of arbitrary comes some authority, the arbiter, making a decision independent of any existing law, custom, reason, logic, or natural law in the physical universe.
The idea I’m addressing, whether or not you like my choice of words, is that there are problems that man addresses either rationally or irrationally to some degree. The further the decision, act, choice, whatever is from rationality the less it has to do with actually addressing the problem. E.g., a lightning rod is more useful than praying to the god of lightning.
Do what you want with it, including nothing, but I submit the more closely one observes human activities, the more one will notice the compounding effect of irrational solutions piled one on another. Can be complex structures of laws jurisprudence or guidelines in government or stupid crap in any area of life. The rational tends to be clean and simple.
I think gender identity is a clear example. The truth is simple. Male/female. This follows natural law. Add in what I’m calling an arbitrary delineation (call it what you want idgaf) such as, “individual gender identity” and no one can define gender to Congress and potential laws get all convoluted and penises compete against vaginas in the Olympics. My observation is that irrational, unexamined, or whimsical (your words) departure from natural law leads further and further from simple or practical solutions. This isn’t rocket science though my communication might be suspect.
An interesting example is an old factory added onto through the years without necessarily redesigning and optimizing essential flow lines.
I think it's important to get the wording of the problem right so that we can think about solutions. This is an incentives problem, not a problem with the legislature acting arbitrarily.The simplest definition of my usage of arbitrary would be appealing to authority rather than natural law. I’ll freely and happily use any term you can think of that fits that notion. A classic example is “I’d rather err with Galen than be right with William Harvey.”
My favorite example in law is the Slovenian healthcare law (~50 pages last I read it) compared to Obamacare (~1000s of pages?).
Slovenian healthcare worked pretty well for me and any deficiencies weren’t getting solved by adding 1000s of pages to the law.
Edit: Incentives problem? Got me. At its core, I’d call it ethics, basic question of right and wrong.
Another lawfare case was closed by the DoJ - the notoriously ridiculous Biden autopen caper.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/trump-administration/doj-shelves-biden-autopen-probe-rcna261810
I missed this case closure because they shelved it quietly. Only mouth breathing morons ever took that one seriously. Unfortunately, there are many of them and the administration wants to keep them fired up about this nonissue, just like they use the stolen election lies and “J6 was a setup” lie to motivate the morons.
@aloha-hoosier Trump has ordered/directed investigations not only of Biden but of other political enemies including former president Obama, former Trump administration officials including Chris Krebs and Miles Taylor, Senator Adam Schiff, former CIA Director John Brennan, former FBI Director James Comey, New York AG Letitia James and others.
THAT is LAWFARE.
This is the first time a US president has weaponized the Department of Justice to go after political enemies since Nixon. In fact, as a result of Watergate and Nixon's abuses of power, the Department of Justice established strict post-Watergate norms intended to guarantee prosecutorial independence and shield federal investigations from White House influence. Trump threw those norms out the window by hiring two puppets (Bondi and Blanche) with no integrity who were/are willing to do his personal bidding and facilitate his revenge tour.
@aloha-hoosier how is it a “non issue?” It might not be a case but the guy didn’t know Clooney. He had pudding for brains and was pardoning people by proxy. That’s an issue
that he had pudding for brains is the biggest cover up of my lifetime. But for the legacy media holding hands with the Dem party it would have been treated accordingly
Another lawfare case was closed by the DoJ - the notoriously ridiculous Biden autopen caper.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/trump-administration/doj-shelves-biden-autopen-probe-rcna261810
I missed this case closure because they shelved it quietly. Only mouth breathing morons ever took that one seriously. Unfortunately, there are many of them and the administration wants to keep them fired up about this nonissue, just like they use the stolen election lies and “J6 was a setup” lie to motivate the morons.
If there was even a scintilla of evidence of a crime, there's no doubt this Justice Department would have convened a grand jury. Hell, they indicted Comey over seashells.
@aloha-hoosier how is it a “non issue?” It might not be a case but the guy didn’t know Clooney. He had pudding for brains and was pardoning people by proxy. That’s an issue
Might want to be careful with those accusations as they can be equally thrown Trump's direction.
"During a 2022 deposition for E. Jean Carroll's civil lawsuit, Donald Trump was shown a 1990s black-and-white photograph and mistakenly identified Carroll, his sexual assault accuser, as his ex-wife, Marla Maples. Trump repeatedly pointed to Carroll in the picture and said, 'That’s Marla... yeah, that's my wife'."
@squeakyclean no i don't think so. trump is going to be 80. he's front and center speaking daily. biden was sequestered. shuffled off. hell even that became choreographed. his brain was pudding, his interviews were scripted, then he was shuffled off, and his handlers lied on his behalf until finally they couldn't keep up the charade any longer. trump is an old crazy person. that is nothing like biden who was gone.
dems lost me completely. over the uswnt response. woke bs. attacking cops. on and on. but their posture over covid and their defense of china and attack of anyone who said wtf china coupled with the despicable cover up of biden and anointment of harris lost me as a dem.
trump is dogshit but i'd vote for don jr before any iteration of the last decade of dems. and i hate don jr
@aloha-hoosier how is it a “non issue?” It might not be a case but the guy didn’t know Clooney. He had pudding for brains and was pardoning people by proxy. That’s an issue
Might want to be careful with those accusations as they can be equally thrown Trump's direction.
"During a 2022 deposition for E. Jean Carroll's civil lawsuit, Donald Trump was shown a 1990s black-and-white photograph and mistakenly identified Carroll, his sexual assault accuser, as his ex-wife, Marla Maples. Trump repeatedly pointed to Carroll in the picture and said, 'That’s Marla... yeah, that's my wife'."
He falls asleep now at meetings. And he turns 80 in a couple of weeks. It's only going to get worse.
By the end of his term, it's likely the travel schedule will be sharply curtailed and we'll only see him briefly at carefully staged events.
@squeakyclean no i don't think so. trump is going to be 80. he's front and center speaking daily. biden was sequestered. shuffled off. hell even that became choreographed. his brain was pudding, his interviews were scripted, then he was shuffled off, and his handlers lied on his behalf until finally they couldn't keep up the charade any longer. trump is an old crazy person. that is nothing like biden who was gone.
dems lost me completely. over the uswnt response. woke bs. attacking cops. on and on. but their posture over covid and their defense of china and attack of anyone who said wtf china coupled with the despicable cover up of biden and anointment of harris lost me as a dem.
trump is dogshit but i'd vote for don jr before any iteration of the last decade of dems. and i hate don jr
Biden had good days and bad days (more bad towards the end probably, but the grim reaper is undefeated). Trump is getting there. You can deny it all you want (just like the Biden supporters did, using his stuttering problem as an excuse), but Trump's ......hiccups, are starting to happen more often. He's falling asleep during meetings almost on a weekly basis now.
Bidens handlers tried to limit his exposure. The difference is that everybody expects Trump to either 1) say bat-crap crazy things ("Their eating the dogs!!!") or 2) or spout off his daily litany of lies, to the point where they don't have to "handle" him. They know that Trump can say ANYTHING and they will either bend themselves in knots to justify it or write it off and pretend it didn't happen / matter. It's only when he says / posts something so offensive (Reiner. Obamas as apes, etc.) that they know will bring down their mid-term changes that they actually step in and have his social media director delete the tweet.