679 thoughts on “The Paw of Oberon 5/4”

1. ‘when people keep going back to irrational as morally wrong.’

   Your generalising from a response to a particular instance. You think that because I refuse to recognise the shooting as a 14 year old girl as a rational act I must think al irrational acts are immoral. But since you have made a further comment that recognises that you are talking about what appears rational to the perpetrator, which is not my idea of rationality and hopefully not yours, we are not in fact disagreeing. You’re just an incredibly imprecise writer and a sloppy thinker.

2. ‘Either way, the employment of the YeahBut tactic (“Yeah, but your side has a person who does x, y and z”) will boomerang so very fast that you will depart this thread in haste.’

   YOU CANNOT BEAT RATSEAL’S KUNG FU.

   ‘Pro tip – you can’t win this one. Best to let it lie.’

   Knock yourself out. Hugo winning authors from the last 5-10 years aren’t on my ‘side.’ Or anyone else’s. It would be interesting to see if you could top an author openly calling someone ‘whore,’ ‘slut’ and ‘donkey-show star,’ amongst other things, though. Let rip.

3. “It would be interesting to see if you could top an author openly calling someone ‘whore,’ ‘slut’ and ‘donkey-show star,’ amongst other things, though. Let rip.”

   First, find a blog willing to host that exhibition.

4. As for “if it works in war it’s rational”:
   – Invading Iraq under the guise of “destroying WMDs” may have worked – to (temporarily) make GW think he had a bigger package to show off than his daddy. It certainly wasn’t rational in that the outcome has been to increase both funding and recruitment for extremist groups, and to provide more of a legitimacy to these same extremist groups to otherwise non-committal Muslims.
   – deliberately targeting bomb runs, during the Allied offensive in WW II to destroy more of the residential areas surrounding truly strategic military targets was successful in ensuring successful destruction of peripheral areas of the military targets. It was not rational in that it both increased the cost of the eventual (and inevitable) reconstruction and diminished the perception of the Allied powers legitimacy and honesty when the information came out.
   – denying the existence, on the part of the various Allied governments, of the death camps constructed by the German government certainly worked to prevent public pressure from being brought to bear to aggressively fight to liberate those camps. It was not rational that it had the effect of alienating both the citizenry, and the military forces, when it was revealed that not only did the governments not work aggressively towards those liberations, but they lied by denying the knowledge of the existence of those camps.
   – It “worked” at the sack of Béziers to kill indiscriminately, in that all the Cathars, Waldesinians and Jews were killed. It was not rational, in that so many “innocent faithful’ were slain as well

   Do we require further examples, or should these be dismissed as “edge cases?”

5. Oh, God. Sorry, Mike. I retract the invitation, deeply regret the quotes from comments you’ve deleted and apologise for bringing it all back up again.

   I still can’t bloody believe he said it.

6. @Kratman

   “Oh, I dunno if it was a train wreck; I was, after all, “way up on points.””

   I think you were getting your scoring from the East German judge then. Rather I recall you being unable to defend your use of the SS beyond “I had to, because I had to”, and then refusing to engage further on the grounds that you’d already answered. Declaring unilateral victory and taking your ball home isn’t actually a win.

   And then, of course, there was the sequel thread in which you returned to defend Caliphate and ground to a halt when faced with an actual historian who could play the cite vs cite game with you. Admittedly that thread ended with your banning, so it’s unclear if you’d have been declaring victory there as well.

   Incidentally, back in those threads you rather clearly voiced your opposition to what you termed the Muslim “subjugation of women, the legalistic murder of homosexuals, restrictions on free speech, child marriages, forced female circumcision, etc.” Tell me, Tom, isn’t that rather SJW of you? You certainly appeared to “give a shit how they treat their women” back then. What changed?

7. @nigel Ugh. I hope what I wrote above wouldn’t indicate that I think it’s OK to argue that way. I wanted to try to understand him (I still do) but things like that make it harder for sure. We’re not at war here, after all. Or I thought we weren’t.

8. ‘We’re not at war here, after all. ‘

   It’s not war, it’s just… unpleasant.

9. @Tom – “No, that wouldn’t be it, Max”

   If you are talking about the bit about economics, you are correct- that’s why it was so funny. The process you were describing wasn’t even slightly related to trickle-down theory- it was textbook Keynesian stimulus spending.

   This is what happens when someone lets ideology get in the way of understanding what happens in the real world.

10. @nigel This alas is one of the ways my hope to use Star Trek as a model breaks down when I try to do it…I think they cheated a bit by centering the show on settings where people were duty-bound to be basically polite to each other. So the question of how they do all that messy interpersonal stuff kind of happens off screen most of the time (it got a face with Troi but still not much detail and some exploration with Worf, but he’s also from a society that values military order). Today I was thinking, the point may more be the hope that we can get there eventually. And that’s no small thing either. Anyhow, hopefully I didn’t make it any more unpleasant. Cheers.

11. @Kratman – “You know who won in Vietnam, right?”

    Don’t go there. There are too many names I know too well on that Wall.

12. Morris, I have not insulted people for disagreeing, but only for insulting me. No, in fact I don’t care about the Hugo at all, except for a mild but lingering desire to see the award burned to the ground.

13. Testing, one-two-three…

14. You know an amazing number of things, Anna., that are not so.

    Tell you what: Go ahead and believe that Afghanistan is Ulster or even enough like Ulster for the analogy to hold. Ignore their culture and their history. Pretend that someone is actually going to do something effective against them because of the Taliban’s occasional exercises in domestic terror and that the terror will not work on their actual targets. If all of that, and any other illusions you may need to hold to to maintain the illusion that this was irrational from the Taliban’s point of view, go on.

15. Believe if you like, Mark. “Gegen der dummheit…”

16. Mike, I’d like to go ahead and apologize for my actions in this thread. You previously talked about your desire not to have such things on your site, and I knew that, but I couldn’t resist poking at the bear. It was the wrong course of action, and I apologize.

    Tom, I apologize for saying what I did about your mother. My intention was to provoke, and it was entirely disrespectful of me to say.

17. Craig, if you read thoroughly you would note (if they haven’t disappeared, and they shouldn’t have) that there is a time scale to right and wrong (hence, in this case, rational) and different levels of what is rational in war.

    1) I wrote a column on the accidentally brilliant but in the end deliberately stupid Invasion of Iraq. The upshot, for our purposes here, was that, just because something turned out badly doesn’t mean it had inevitably to turn out badly.

    2) Wishful thinking nonsense. Sorry, but that’s all it is.

    3) I have nevcer perceived this as happening except perhaps among a small fringe. Perhaps it is your fringe, and so looms larger in your mind that it does in life. Or perhaps I am wrong. But I have still never seen it in any large and important sense.

    4) The Beziers reference suggests that you are, still, equating morality with reason. But the last time I met a Cathar was never, so from the point of view of extirpating them it was rational to kill all the populace. It may have been morally wrong (I think it was, actually) but there was no downside to it such as would make it irrational.

18. “And everyone’s a father or a husband or a son…” Yes, I know the song, too. But denying it doesn’t refute that their use of deliberate, specific and genocidal terror* worked for them in Vietnam, though, no, Craig?

    *As opposed to the random terror we engaged in, which rarely works.

19. But where, Max, because it is not clear to me that a) I said what you think I did or b) that you understood the context. I really can’t discus it without knowing what you’re talking about.

20. Mark, so you cannot tell the difference between crapping on someone who is tacitly defending all that, because of his hypocrisy and stupidity, and condemning it oneself? Oh, well; I am unsurprised.

21. The apology is nice, Alex, but my mother is still dead, you have still insulted her memory, and you are still incredibly low and vile in my book. Ask her for forgiveness; it will not be forthcoming from me.

    By the way, just FYI, while I know and knew what a GOMAR is, the term when I was in, for most of that time, was GOLAR. The way you used it – “GOMARed out” suggested but did not prove that you didn’t really understand it, since a GOMAR or GOLAR doesn’t actually get one removed, directly or even necessarily (some, you see, are not for record). So, just out of curiosity, when were you in, what was your MOS and rank, which positions did you hold, in which units, where?

22. @ Tom – It was in one of the most recent of the Carerra books. Maybe Come and Take Them? Can’t give you a page number, I got it from the library. Somewhere in the middle. It was in one of the talking about politics parts, rather than one of the story parts.

    Don’t sweat it, though, we can’t be experts on everything. Your area of expertise is the military, and that’s what I read your books for. This wasn’t even an important part of the book, it just struck me to see you using an example that contradicted the assertion about what Bush called voodoo economics.

23. That doesn’t help much, Max. I wonder, though, did you miss that Carrera’s model isn’t Keynes, but Switzerland, where the banking industry sprang up to deal with the wages garnered by Swiss mercenaries? He spent ten years or so making a bloody fortune the same way, which he mostly didn’t keep, but plowed into the local economy.

    Aha, found it, I think:

    “There followed what was probably the greatest surge in the Balboan economy since the FSC had gone home after their invasion and the government had been able to sell off abandoned real estate to insiders. With massive investment in the economy made possible by the Cristobal Free Zone Tax, drug lords’ tribute, various sources of foreign aid, some of it somewhat reluctantly given, unemployment nationwide dropped to the lowest level in Latin Columbia. Among veterans and volunteers, some ten percent of the population, unemployment was almost precisely nothing. The exceptions were the very few; rich members of the legions, and there were some, and the rather larger number going to school full time. And those last weren’t precisely unemployed. Carrera’s enterprises were also able to increase Balboa’s exports to a healthy degree; lumber, scrap steel, canned food, clothing, footwear, minor electronics, weapons, ammunition, and other goods flowed from Balboa as far north as La Plata and as far south as Secordia. Some also went to Uhuru, Taurania, and the island country of Wellington.

    Although ‘trickle down economics’ garnered much scorn in most of the planet’s progressive circles, it seemed to work well enough in Balboa. In part this was because most of the money spent by Carrera and the Legion went into common people’s pockets where it was reasonably sure to be spent, almost always on something that would help another Balboan stay employed. The rest was because the average resident of Balboa expected, and received, so little of his or her government in the way of social benefits that the policy caused no reduction in government income and no loss to already non-existent income redistribution programs. The government had little in direct tax revenues to redistribute in any event.”

    Now, if you are an economist, what is wrong with that?

24. Tom: The second sentence in the second paragraph in essence says “trickle down economics works because the wealth trickled down”, without giving any realistic or even hypothetical mechanism by which that happens. Its pretty much much the “a wizard did it” of justifications

    Mike – having taken a break, apologies for metaphorically making a mess on your foyer. In future I will limit myself to watching the train wreck instead of actively participating.

25. @Tom – Ah, I didn’t describe it correctly, cheers for finding it.

    The argument isn’t wrong, calling it trickle-down economics is the problem. In your passage, they are taking all of that money from tribute, etc. and investing it in industry and arms, which logically reduced unemployment and raises general prosperity. So far, so good (and Keynesian). This is what classical economics would expect.

    But that isn’t trickle down theory- the idea of trickle down theory is that the government reduces taxes on the rich and industry and that this reduction will spur economic growth. In effect, more money for rich people will mean that prosperity will ‘trickle down’ into the poor. Now, everyone agrees that *some* of it does, but almost every economist will tell you that it is a much smaller amount than one would expect, and certainly not as efficient as following the program you describe above.

26. It seems to me, Snow, that that does describe a mechanism, except that the mechanism is more or less naturally following after “Event A,” rather than forced or tightly managed. The mechanism is that he used the money to create industries and hence jobs. How much more mechanism do you need?

27. “The way you used it – “GOMARed out” suggested but did not prove that you didn’t really understand it, since a GOMAR or GOLAR doesn’t actually get one removed, directly or even necessarily (some, you see, are not for record)”

    You’re right that it doesn’t get you moved directly, but in the military of today, where the drawdown continues, the sequestration happened, and they’re early separating people from their contracts, a GOMAR is pretty much an officer’s death knell, because even with exemplary OERs and the GOMAR moved to the restricted section of your OMPF, the promotion board can still see it.

    ” So, just out of curiosity, when were you in, what was your MOS and rank, which positions did you hold, in which units, where?”

    hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha. That’s not happening. Service isn’t a cudgel to beat people over the head with, a tool to win arguments on the internet, or a vehicle for getting brownie points.

28. Ah, I wondered if that’s what you meant., Max. However, I invite your attention to the latter sections, in which it is explained that the government already doesn’t do what trickle down theory says it should not do. So is that in opposition to trickle down theory, or is it illustration of how it is supposed to work after said tax rates on the rich are cut?

29. Which is, of course, why you attacked mine, Alex?

    Though why it should not be a tool, other than that you would prefer that it not be…or at least that it not be if _you_ might be on the brunt of it…

30. @snowcrash, @Tom – No, no, it’s that this isn’t trickle down economics – the description he gives is entirely sensible. That might be why he feels that the criticism is unjust, because except for the name, it really does make perfect sense.

    I just found a quote that shows it perfectly, he addresses a complaint that people have on real trickle down economics, that the money goes to the rich and to large corporations, who are less likely to spend it. His stimulus spending program is the opposite:

    “In part this was because most of the money spent by Carrera and the Legion went into common people’s pockets where it was reasonably sure to be spent, almost always on something that would help another Balboan stay employed.”

    Thats exactly what you want to do to kick the economy into gear- poor or working class people are more likely to spend any extra money, and less likely to spend it on luxuries. But again, that’s the exact opposite of trickle-down. This would be more along the ‘a rising tide lifts all boats’ end of things.

31. @Tom- I think my comment at 7:46 answers your question at 7:44, but since neither of us had seen them while typing, let me know if you want more of an answer or you think I used the question.

32. Tom, I respect your service, and I sure as Hell haven’t attacked you for serving. I don’t respect that you try and use it like it gives you a moral high ground. I also am very glad that I never had to serve under you.

    As for why I don’t consider it a tool, I find service to be a thing of honor, and using it to win internet arguments seems a way to sully something I value highly. You obviously don’t feel the same.

33. Steven Schwartz @ 11:46 am- I would rather have Tom Kratman’s style of patriotism over yours any day of the week.

    Mark @ 1:26 pm- From my perspective, Tom Kratman is way up on points.

34. I think it doesn’t answer it, actually. The original charge is that I can write a so so battle scene, but have no understanding of economics. In light of the fact, as demonstrated, that the illustration is of trickle down theory _after_ it is implemented, because there never was a before for this time and place, do you still hold that I don’t understand economics at all?

    Note, however, that the core of the thing is really not trickle down theory as it applies to the industrialized world, but in a very peculiar case of someone who doesn’t care about money for himself, but does care about building a better society that is capable of self government and self defense in a very rough world and universe. Personally, I think Carrera’s choice, which is also his choice for his family, is entirely rational, because money, in the absence of security, is nothing.

35. By the way, I had a lot of fun manipulating and perverting words and memes in the Carrera-verse. Trivia question: who are the revolutionaries, in the mold of Lenin, Mao, and Ho, in the Carreraverse, and who are the old fashioned, privileged conservatives, in a very Toryesque sense? Who overthrows corrupt oligarchies of the moneyed and decadent? Who are the moneyed and decadent? Who sets up a (limited, to be sure) socialist workers paradise but doesn’t call it that, and who claims to social democracy, but uses it only as a cover for nepotistic corruption?

36. Oh, I don’t have any reason to believe you, Alex. And I am even happier that I never had you serving under me,

37. But you know what, Alex? I know three commanders that the troops cried over when they left command. I was one of those. I also know of a case where the wives cried, a case where the troops spontaneously got up a petition to keep their CO in command as his tour was coming to a close, and a case where committees got together to go to higher to request that their old CO be pulled from his current command and given back to them.

    I was all three of the latter, so what is your opinion worth to me?

38. Oh no. Some random asshole doesn’t believe me and wants me to prove to him that I served! Whatever shall I do?!

    Night, Tom.

39. “Steven Schwartz @ 11:46 am- I would rather have Tom Kratman’s style of patriotism over yours any day of the week.”

    You’re welcome to it, given the sorts of results his kind of thinking has brought, and threatens to bring, this country.

    @alexvdl Thank you for your service.

40. No, Alex, this – “Tom, I respect your service” – is the part I don’t believe. As for you, you may or may not have served; the evidence is mixed.

41. @Tom – Well, I don’t think I said ‘so-so’, I was going more for ‘knows what he is talking about’ and ‘[his] area of expertise’.

    And I’ve tried to be clear that your description of economics is correct, except for calling it ‘trickle down’. Admittedly, that was only after you asked for support of my statement, my apologies.

    The problem, is that trickle-down theory isn’t from economics, it’s from politics. What you are describing is exactly what classical economics would expect to happen, down to the criticism you gave for real trickle down economics. In your passage, money isn’t going primarily to rich people because of tax cuts and then magically trickling down, it is being used to invest in and expand industry and start new businesses. This is the type of activity where most of the money goes to employees, not owners. This is the exact opposite of trickling down.

    Seriously, I am not being sarcastic when I say that what you describe is exactly what economists say is expected to happen – the same economists who think that concentrating wealth at the top is not good for the economy.

    Now, if you had written something where there was no massive influx of government spending, where the government lowered taxes on rich people, and you then wrote an explanation of how those people have more money made everyone else more prosperous… That would be trickle down economics working as intended. This isn’t.

42. Oh, and I might be a “random asshole,” Alex, as charged, but I don’t insult people’s dead mothers. What word would you use to describe yourself, after that, Alex? It ought to be a real stinker.

43. So as an end state it doesn’t resemble what trickle down theory says it should resemble? I think we have a semantic problem. It _may_ be _my_ semantic problem.

44. [email protected]

    Is “Carrera” in this case a government or a private entity? If it’s a government, that the excerpt describes more of a welfare/ public works programme (depending on what the expectation of returns are). If it’s a private entity, then maybe the whole trickle down thing may still be applicable.

    Based on the excerpt, it seems more of the former, as Carrerra appears to be an entity with government levels of power, but I don’t have enough to tell.

45. In any case, do you still think that this:

    “When he tries to get into economics, the books get hilarious- In one of the more recent ones he spends a few paragraphs explaining how a government spending program for arms helped stimulate the economy, just as Keynes would have expected… Then he claims that this is proof that trickle-down economics is real!”

    is accurate?

46. @ Tom – I re-read your post and realized that a quote from you makes my point more eloquently than I:

    “Note, however, that the core of the thing is really not trickle down theory as it applies to the industrialized world”

    Yes! That’s what I meant. I don’t have any problem with Carerra’s reasoning, (or yours) in this bit, I’m just saying that what you call ‘trickle-down economics’ is not what the rest of the world means when we use that phrase.

    Am I correct in thinking that you mean the money is trickling down from Carerra to the general economy?

    If so, then A) he is acting more in the part of a government than a rich private individual, and B) even if that wasn’t true, I think we can all agree that Carerra is a very unusual man.

47. So not so hilarious as all that, then?

48. He doesn’t clearly fit either category, Snow, having feet in both sectors. You might say he is eventually part of the government, since he serves a government largely of his own creation. But he listens as much as he wants to and nobody can make him do anything else, because he, personally, has a near monopoly on the means of violence. He is also somewhat a privatus, for some time, since he is making a fortune renting his auxilliaries out, but has to put the profits into something for safekeeping.

    One of the pecuiarites is that his nation building is dependent on self selection. He does not generally believe there is much mutability in man, via anything, nature or nurture, and so uses his legions to identify those upon whom a job and training for it is less likely to be a waste. He spends investment money on his discharged troops or, if they’re dead or disabled, their families, and very little else. From those economic enterprises what one might call stimulus flows outward.

49. I think I addressed that (8:40) in my comment to Snow, Max. If that isn’t enough let me know.

50. @Tom- In any case, do you still think that this: (snip) is accurate?

    Hmmm. Semi- accurate, but more unkind and without offering any benefit of the doubt? (Re-reads) Hmm, no, less accurate than I thought:

    Please allow me to retract most of that statement, the economics are sound, where economics blur into politics (trickle-down) is the only part where I remember disagreeing with any of the books. I shouldn’t have claimed that all of it was in error over one sentence. Please accept my apology.

Comments are closed.