I'm sure this post deserves more than drive-by, but I can't resist:
For one thing, a lot of old people would starve because they believed their government--a valuable object lesson in the problem with relying on government programs, to be sure, but it is perhaps a mite rough to let millions of old people die pour encourager les autres.What is the lesson that these old people should learn, you ask? Well, it appears to be that libertarians would really like to be even BIGGER assholes than they already are:
Yes, we all concede that Social Security and Medicare are bad programs that should, at the very least, be structured very differently than they are. But that doesn't mean we can just try shock therapy.She seems almost disappointed that she can't just make the government bail on its promise to keep the elderly from starving on the streets. In fact she feels the need to mention a second reason to not throw these programs away:
For another, there is no political possibility of enacting a law that causes millions of old people to starve.Because, for most of her fans, the whole people living in poverty thing really isn't persuasive enough.
I know, honey, it's tragic, but it looks like those awful, awful safety nets in place that keep gramma and grampa from living in a shelter are sadly here to stay. The world is so cruel. If only the rubes understood that it's the market that determines whether or not the people who build our economy get to enjoy it once they stop working, not some namby pamby thing like the "government" and it's stupid, inefficient "will of the people" bullshit.
One gets more and more sympathetic towards the cause everyday.
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Jesus. Even the French high aristocracy at the height of Versailles had the notion of noblesse oblige.
Let them eat signed copies of Douthat's failed book!
Why do all these libertarian idiots have no sense of history or social context, let alone something verging of the idea that we should actually care as a society how people live their lives and live them out? And how is it that 'markets' become some sort of stand in for a new version of social Darwinism and/or eugenics? Her stupid little ideology, which betrays itself all the time, is just that and erases how the real world actually works. Would she even have the abilities and/or guts to look at her own situation and reflect on how she got to where she did? Why can't these people be self-reflexive? Was it burned out of them at some secret cocktail party they all attend at Uni in order to be part of the club? It's a fucking house of mirrors and genuflecting in the direction of 'the meat eating Americans' doesn't cut it. She needs a sociology class stat! But, then that would all be twisted through her ideological lens anyway; perhaps that's it: how do we get these idiots to actually see and understand through other lenses and those in particular known as ‘compassion’ and/or ‘care’ and/or even just giving a shit? Oy, rant over. . .I’m spent. . .and laughing at them does help but only so much.
She needs a sociology class stat
No, she needs an empathy transplant with a decent side order of reality check. I, of course, would be willing to settle for her getting poor and possibly sick and then have all her safety nets (read: rich parents) removed. And that goes for her commenters, too.
Because, for most of her fans, the whole people living in poverty thing really isn't persuasive enough.
Which surprises me, because they are generally in favor of that outcome - as long as it happens to other people, and not themselves.
Oh, MEGAN McCardle. I thought you said ANDREA McCardle, who created the title role in the musical Annie, and whom I pitched to in an entertainment league softball game in Central Park in *1976*, bitchez.
No, Megan McCardle, like all libertarian columnists, is a 14-year old high-IQ, highly repressed adolescent writing science fiction stories in his room.
All the snark aside, where do these people learn that this stuff is OK? Is there a class in how to NOT think that teh Megan and her fellow alum take? Where are they brainwashed with this stuff? Or is it inbred through Business Schools or some other method? I am seriously baffled. . .
It's a rare disease. I think it stems from a random mutation. It appears all over, not just in medical schools.
Fortunately, it appears to be relatively uncommon, perhaps affecting 5-10% of the population.
Or is it inbred through Business Schools
Nah, I know way too many poor souls afflicted with this disease who've never even seen the inside of a business school. I'm with NoT, except I think it's genetic. If your parents have a lot of money, you're ten times as likely to get it.
It's not genetic, it's psychological. Some rich folk want to believe they are inherently superior people who deserve the advantages life handed them, and will go to extraordinary lengths to avoid acknowledging anything that challenges this view.
Your local dominatrix makes a lot of money helping to get rid of the resulting cognitive dissonance. Megan is just a shallow, self involved person, like most of humanity, and this is how that weakness of character expresses itself in the well off.
So did that august body hire her just to stir up shit then? Or was it one of those connections? And, she has to know there is another world out there with different contexts and situations but refuses to see this; it is a choice more than anything is it not? I just want to know why these people make these choices and how we might edit these choices out down the line. Or as you say, a psychological flaw then that has nothing to do with intelligence? As you can see I am fascinated with the species known as Megan Terribulis Libertarianus as these beliefs just baffle me.
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