[nekokami]

Originally Posted by Ralph Sir Edward

I have tried to get past the generalisations by describing how various differences formed. Not acceptable. I tried limiting my scope. Not acceptable.
To me, it seems like the only option is caputulation of my ehtics base. Sorry - not acceptable.

I don't know about others, but my objection to the first strategy was that I don't think your analysis or conclusions held up. (I'm not sure about the "limiting scope" strategy. Was that when the impact of the European settlers on the native population was dismissed as irrelevant?)

Would it force you to capitulate your ethics base if you were to admit that the US is and always has been culturally diverse, and that the "limited government" experiment was not universally held to be of value even at the founding, and has become rather less so of late? I'm not saying that you, personally, need to reject the idea of limited government, but it seems to me that you don't want to admit that an awful lot of other US citizens are looking for alternatives, nor that there's any merit to the concerns people express about the system you cherish.

I commented that you seemed to stand by your sig line, i.e. "Remember, no matter what they say, people don't want the truth, just their prejudices reinforced. -RSE" I don't really understand how your response below connects with that.

Originally Posted by Ralph Sir Edward

Of course I do. I hadn't been aware I'd been made a God, or even a wise man on a mountaintop. Just another human being. But everbody has prejudices, even you, Nekokami. I'm aware of most of mine, they were self chosen at age 14 after several months of introspection, based on the knowledge I had available then. Nearly 40 years later, I have found little data change them. I described some of mine, and why. (And I stand by my other sig line as well, even though it's a fictional place. You might want to read the book it came from.)

Can you describe your prejudices, and why?

I can, and we can take that offline, if you like. Mine are more fluid than yours seem to be. I am constantly re-evaluating what I think is true, on the basis of new evidence, and I seem to come across relevant new evidence regularly.

Originally Posted by Ralph Sir Edward

Since you haven't described your view of the resource chain, I probably can't. I will note, for example, the work that many years of my technical experience is geared to has been off-shored to lift other people out of poverty, and drop me towards poverty. But, I know, that's the big corporation's fault. But aren't I part of the resource chain? What about ranchers in Texas who can no longer compete and their land is returning to prarie? Are they part of your resource chain? People in the extraction portion of the US who are hamstrung by regulations of people who've never seen a rig, or walked into a mine? (I've done both.) Do they count? Or is just people who are destitute (and they are destitute) who have moved up from starving to destitute due to free trade and open markets? Who need to be move up to poor, no matter what the cost to people here in the resource chain?

You count, and they (those who have moved from starving to destitute, etc) count. There aren't enough resources to go around for the size of population that we have, if everyone wants a lifestyle like the typical American, or even Western European. It's not just that some people in the world don't work hard enough, or don't know how to be efficient. There just aren't enough resources to go around. I live a fairly minimal lifestyle, for a westerner, and if everyone lived like me we'd need 3 1/2 Earths to support all of us.

The thing is, when we look at the historical reasons for poverty around the world, there are very often events in the past and present caused by the same people who benefit from a low-cost labor source (i.e. poverty) now. It looks to me like the system has a built-in dependency on maintaining poverty for a substantial part of the world's population.

I am guessing that you believe that the relative wealth presently enjoyed by citizens of the US is due to historically limited government and free markets. That might be true-- I'm not completely convinced, but let's accept that for the moment. What if the stunning poverty in many places in the rest of the world is also due, at least in part, to the free markets and (comparably) limited government in the US? Can you accept that this might be possible? Does it matter to you if it is?

Originally Posted by Ralph Sir Edward

(By the by, the largest ecological disasters created by technology have occured in areas without free markets and unlimited government.)

I'm going to have to ask for a reference on this one. I'll give you Mainland China, but there are an awful lot of ecological disasters happening in areas with no governance at all.

Originally Posted by Ralph Sir Edward

The seizure of resources by force has occurred on a steady basis since Ugg the Caveman invented the club. If you want to go into the negative side, Ok, but when I brought up the past, you insisted it was irrelevant. Pick your choice, but at least stay consistent.

Actually, I don't think the past is irrelevant. That's not what I meant about Boston. I think the past isn't as uniform as you've been implying. You've described motivations for the founding of the US that were not held by the majority at the time of the Revolution, let alone before that or after. You want to base your analysis of a kind of archetypical "American" on that history. It seems to me that you have romanticized the history, omitting the people who disagreed with the direction things ended up going, including the native peoples. I'm asking for consistency. If you want to look at how history has shaped contemporary culture, look at all of it-- the ones who wrote the history books, the dissenters, the ones who were silenced.

Originally Posted by Ralph Sir Edward

I'll sum it up by asking you the following question.

Where in the world will people who believe in a limited form of government be allowed to live and organize by those beliefs, without any "missionaries" trying to covert them, and without and unlimited form of government viewpoints controlling them because they end up successful?

Inquiring minds want to know...

It's a reasonable question. Before we pick a particular patch of real estate, how much resources do you think such a group should be entitled to at the founding? Whatever they've been able to accumulate under a system that has privileged them? If you are right and all that is necessary to succeed is limited government and a free market, and non-interference, would you accept land and other resources equivalent to the proportional share of the world's resources per capita, multiplied by the number of people in your starting group? And agree to confine your wastes within your own borders? (We'll pretend, for the moment, that the complex issue of sharing water can be solved, and we might also assume that your young people will be allowed to know about the rest of the world and leave if they want to. It would be up to you if you want to accept immigrants. Perhaps they'd come with a "dowry" of additional resources.)

If so, I'd support you all the way, and I'd honestly wish you well. Show us all how it's done. I would personally defend your right to do so, even though this isn't the kind of society I myself would want to live in.