Monday, July 14, 2008

An unwanted look into Megan's mind

Boundary cases:

There are lots of issues where I am pretty sure that I am right, but recognize that the people on the other side have valid value judgements that they are calling differently from me. I'm not talking about technocratic disputes over adverse selection or regulatory capture--I mean core arguments about deeply held values.
And so you already see why Nutella got so pissed off.
1) Abortion. I'm pro-choice, but I think that it's a really, really difficult call between the rights of women to control their bodies, and the rights of fetuses to get born.
"Their bodies". Does Megan even self-identify as a woman? Do I really want to ask that? Anyhow, that's a fucking stupid way to put it. Rights are legal constructions, and so until fetuses are given legal status, which might be all too soon, that's not a difficult call to make.
Nutella covered gay marriage at number two, but let me just chime in with agreement as to how incredibly fucking stupid it is to give any credence to this bullshit. Marriage was not invented by Christianity and does not belong to religion. I'm not even going to do you the disservice of linking to the old post Megan provides to explain her thinking on the issue, since the basic argument has been dealt with here already. Shockingly, she's basically a self-hating homophobe.
3) Immigration. Again, I'm pro--but while I think the anti-immigration side makes often ridiculously ahistorical arguments about how current immigration differs from past waves, I think that more-open-borders folks like me don't give enough respect to the real cultural frictions that immigration causes.
Xenophobic racists get all hot and bothered by the idea that someone, somewhere, is not exactly like them, and Megan is worried about their feelings. Fuck you, Megan.
4) Affirmative action. I think it's a bad idea, for multiple reasons. But I also understand those who think that we need to do something about the racial mess that slavery has left us in, and think that this is the best something we're probably going to get.
As a fellow product of affirmative action programs for the offspring of wealthy white people, I can honestly say that Megan has no idea of the various ironies in her statement. Rich white conservatives say shit like that all the time in real life, too, not just on blogs and in the WSJ Editorial section.
5) Taxes.
...know what? Don't care. Next.
6) Intergenerational equity. I don't mean social security, which I think is largely a stupid program. I mean questions about how we should privilege the interests of people who exist now over those who will exist in the future. The environment is the most obvious, but not the only, area where these questions come up. To me, health care is another one; the core issue is that we can probably help some people by moving to a single payer system today, but only by destroying the innovation machine that will help many many more people down the road.
Sure, we could give everyone access to the benefits of modern medicine without worrying about whether they can afford to have their fucking lives saved, but that would damage the profit models of Big Pharma, without whom we won't have several thousand more expensive heart disease pills of questionable benefit and impotency treatments for rich fat guys who haven't seen their useless little penises in 30 years. Are you willing to make that trade-off?
7) Humanitarian intervention.
Yeah, that can be hard. Pass.
And finally
8) What value to put on art? Nature? These are intangibles. Yellowstone would not exist without substantial government intervention. Am I libertarian enough to think that's a bad thing? Ask me an easy one . . .
How do you know whether a work of art is good unless you know how much it costs? And the value of nature, the source of all fucking life on Earth and upon which we still depend for every element of our existence, is intangible?
This woman is not very bright.

3 comments:

spencer said...

To me, health care is another one; the core issue is that we can probably help some people by moving to a single payer system today, but only by destroying the innovation machine that will help many many more people down the road.

Is there any evidence to support this, I wonder? I'm pretty sure that the US is not the only source of pharmaceutical innovation these days; are there any countries that a) use a single-payer type system, and b) have respectable records of pharmaceutical innovation (by which I mean, new drugs that are actually medically necessary, and not lifestyle drugs and boner pills)?

I'd do the research myself, but I'm feeling almost McArdle-esque in my laziness this morning.

Adam Eli Clem said...

"Yellowstone would not exist without substantial government intervention."

I was under the impression that Yellowstone would not exist without a substantial magma intrusion, but perhaps that was a value judgment.

Anonymous said...

Good call, Clem. Megan, I think what you meant was Yellowstone might possibly be a housing development or theme park today if it weren't for government interference. It would still exist.

And I can definitely see why Nutella got so angry. "Here are the things with which you are allowed to disagree with me and not be wrong, even though I think you are wrong." Thanks for the permission to have my own opinions, Megan. And for being benevolent enough to let me continue to have them even though you think I am wrong. You are so generous.

"What value to put on art?"

Huh? Why bring up a numbered list of things she definitively believes, only to be totally vague and say "I can't answer that." Fuck the dollar signs, I'll give you my value to put on art: it is every ounce of my soul. If some spoiled woman like Megan ever tries to take that away from me with her ignorant value judgements, she's going to have the fight of her life on her hands.