sam0345 #fundie

sam0345 #fundie lesswrong.com

[I just think most new ideas are wrong and their proponents overconfident.]

Then presumably you think that the entire progressive agenda must be wrong, seeing as for the last two thousand years it would have been perceived as evil and insane, seeing as pretty much every taken for granted progressive verity was, before it became an article of faith, dismissed by progressives as a slippery slope argument.

For example, until the mid nineteenth century, everyone knew that female sexuality was so powerful, irrational, destructive, and self destructive that women needed their sex lives supervised for their own good, and everyone else's good. Everyone knew that democracy was stupid and evil because the masses would eventually try to vote themselves rich, and end up electing Caesar. Everyone knew that if you tried to tax more than five or ten percent, it would hose the economy, and you would wind up with less tax revenue. Everyone knew ...

I expect you to agree with me that we went of the rails when we emancipated women and gave the vote to every adult male.

33 comments

old comment by Hasan Prishtina

Out of this cornucopia of idiocy, I'll just pick one morsel:

Everyone knew that if you tried to tax more than five or ten percent, it would hose the economy, and you would wind up with less tax revenue.

It's just a shame that:

a) you haven't read the Bible, where rates are rather higher;
b) the country where I live has just been told by the World Bank to put its rates up from 10% because they don't generate enough revenue;
c) there is no evidence whatever for your assertion; and
d) since tax rates have been considerably higher that 5-10% in much of the developed world, not only have their economies not been hosed, but they have enjoyed unprecedented prosperity.

old comment by UHM

"Everyone knew that if you tried to tax more than five or ten percent, it would hose the economy, and you would wind up with less tax revenue."
That's not how the Laffer curve works. While dependent on the local economy, in industrialized countries, the highest tax revenue will probably be archieved somewhere between 30% and 50% (as an average, of course using a progressive taxation). So when you reduce taxes which are at 80% there's going to be more spending and economical growth, but when you cut deeper than 30% what will probably happen is that the state's cutbacks will slow down the economy because the people previously employed by the state will be unemployed and unable to spend money, leading if done in mass to a downturn and more jobs will be lost, before the previously employed can find a new job and start spending again.

For everything else: screw you. Tradition doesn't make right, efficiency and equality make right.

old comment by Swede

No, they weren't dismissed by progressives, but by conservatives, reactionaries.

Nowadays, we know that women, just like men, can supervise their sexuality on their own. According to some study, men think about sex 19 times a day. I definitely don't think about sex that often. If any gender needs its sexuality supervised, it's probably the male gender...

Better to elect a good Caesar, than have any old Caesar decide for himself that he's the bee's knees.

The Swedish government has, for the last seven years or so, tried to copy the American "every man for himself" society, while most Swedes want a "let's help each other out" society. Taxes have been reduced for those who need it the least, and those who need help the most have been left out in the cold.

We went of the rails? Sure, at least we didn't go OFF the rails.

old comment by gimel

Alas, I have to agree with Sam's unknown interlocutor: conservatism (in the original meaning) is and remains a viable position, for our civilization, while depending on progress, has unleashed something of a malevolent genie from the bottle. Most "new" ideas (some of them surprisingly old, XVIII century, mostly) cooked up by quite a few overconfident and overzealous "thinkers" ARE laughably wrong and/or dangerous. If it ain't broken, don't fix it, use your mind to find solutions for existing problems.

That said, to most above comments: you do realize that Sam has just used ad absurdum, right? A bit ineffective, I think, but nothing fundy here, move along...