They didn’t create inflation “for economic stimulus”, they were trying to increase inflation to pull the US out of a deflationary spiral. Central banks would hold inflation at 0% if they could.

Ok I recalled incorrectly. :p

Libertarians can still worry about government mismanagement and complain how they have to trust the government to back the value of their dollars.



It probably goes back to debates between Hamilton and Jefferson over whether or not to have a central bank. Maybe even further back?

Rule of thumb, it’s not the central bank’s job to worry about the economy. The central bank’s job is to manage local currency value. The difference got muddied for a while because some loud idiots in a loud idiot American university ruined the world with loud idiot ideas, so it’s not your fault for connecting the dots the way you did.

I know that I the fed is only responsible for monetary policy. I was trying to talk like a libertarian. (Unless you're talking about the economic stimulus thing. In which case it's a mix of not knowing much about the relation between monetary policy and growth*, and misremembering.)

*aside from the general rule that lower interest rates promote growth

Also, which loud idiot university? Chicago?

Recall that the gold standard ended because it nearly bankrupted the US. USD became undervalued despite being commodity backed, so investors were buying gold from the federal reserve, then selling the gold on the open market for a greater amount of USD. Reverting to the gold standard wouldn’t make any difference at all vis-à-vis a centrally managed fiat currency.

I'm pleased to discover that the Wikipedia article discussing the cultural Marxist conspiracy theory has been much expanded. Thanks to the anonymous author who wrote it.

Monetarists made a lot of bad connections between economic indicators that led to assumptions like “lower interest rates promote growth”. Because, well, for example, lower interest rates cause GDP to grow, which they interpret to mean that the economy has grown, when in reality it inflates the value of fixed capital because those purchases are usually debt financed, so the market can bear higher prices for those assets. Just for example.

It’s all a bunch of wrong-think. Look at the liquidity trap working against QE in the US. If monetarism worked there wouldn’t be such a thing as a liquidity trap because money in => growth out, but it absolutely didn’t work out that way.



Yeppers

Amusing to read this about four years later: https://www.vox.com/2014/6/17/5795000/reasons-the-fed-should-reconsider-taper

AHAHAHAHAHA

Before the inevitable comment, yes it's a satire. What he actually said was "I get countless of messages from students who say professors are lowering their grades & penalizing them for being conservative"

I don't think they get the self-own.

Isn't it uncontroversial that "untrammeled free speech, due process, individual (rather than group) rights" are "Enlightenment principles that formed the bedrock of the American experiment"? I don't know what doubt you're trying to raise here.

I don't think that's what Sullivan is getting at. He's not saying that leftists want to "replace individualism". He's saying that the "campus politics" critique of society (trying to use his language here) is that factors external to choice -- for instance, one's socio-economic background, one's gender, one's race -- play a greater role in determining outcomes than personal choice. The liberal view he's advocating is that anyone who is hardworking and dedicated, and who makes good choices, can transcend the circumstances into which they were born. The "campus politics" critique is that no: you can't actually transcend your circumstances, and that no matter how what choices you make (and, of course, the choices that are available are limited to you because of your background), if you're disadvantaged, you'll never do as well as someone who enjoys social and economics advantages because of their gender, race, socio-economic background, etc.

Therefore, for the "campus politics" advocate, race and gender do more to determine what kind of a life a person can lead than do individual choices. Hence his assertion that " the whole concept of an individual who exists apart from group identity is slipping from the discourse". From the perspective of "campus politics", the "individual who exists apart from group identity" is an empty abstraction that doesn't exist.

There's another element to what he's saying about the "campus politics" critique, which has to do with hierarchy and the relations between those who are higher and those who are lower in the hierarchy. But we can put a pin in that for now. Regardless, given some of the things that you have argued on this thread, I can't help but think the authentic way for you to respond to his critique is: yeah, actually, he's not altogether wrong in how he's describing the "campus politics" position, but the liberal viewpoint that he's advocating seems woefully naive.

I read a philosophical paper on the topic of two conceptions of social mobility once. I wish I could find it, since it was very good.

The two metaphors were something like this:

Imagine ten prisoners in a prison with ten locked doors. They each have a key to unlock their door, but in doing so will prevent anyone else from being able to unlock their door. Are these people free to leave the cell?

The paper then discussed two ways of answering the question. One answer is yes: each person has the ability to leave the cell. The other is no: since they can't all leave, most have to stay, that in fact, they're not free to leave. Conservatives tend to agree with the former, liberals the latter, and it's an obvious metaphor for how people view social mobility.

Of course, both conceptions are true, they're just different ways of attacking the problem. Fortunately, this sort of wishy-washy, fantasy land philosophical debate can be tested with real data. And this is where I think the conservative side of the argument begins falling apart. Yes, there is socioeconomic mobility. Yes, people do change class. Yes, sometimes individual efforts pay off. No, that's not an effective or reasonable way to create policy for an entire group, nor can you do anything about racial or gendered disparities that way. In other words, it closes the book on trying to achieve any moral goals.

But I brought up data: is America socioeconomically mobile? It certainly is to some extent. However, it's also much poorer than nearly all other developed nations. It's also getting worse, it's getting less mobile.

You see, the kind of analysis presented is one that's treated as though the economic world is in a vacuum. It's not. Maybe the reason people are a bit more skeptical of individualist, work yourself to success philosophy is it's demonstrably less and less possible to do so. But articles like this take the blame and place it all on a few students at universities. Maybe there are much, much deeper causal explanations for why people feel this way than some random shift in universities.

It's like the author sees someone with a cold and tells them: the problem is that you keep spasming your chest muscles to violently exhale air. Stop spasming your muscles and you won't have the problem anymore.



His critique felt very tired and unoriginal, I've heard most of those critiques before. Stuff like this seems more interesting, as it attempts to contextualize and understand college campuses on a deeper level. This actually breeds insight, instead of being a bunch of empty quips repeating the stories he's been reading since 2006 about conservative fears: which they are fears more than they are realities.

Then there are other studies, which found among the liberal arts classes examined, no discernable difference in grades could be ascertained, even in courses in American culture, African-American studies, cultural anthropology, education, nursing, sociology, and women's studies, or that college tends to make liberals softer on conservatives.

However, studies find conservative students fear persecution, despite that there's really no evidence it exists from professors. They fear it, huh, I wonder why?

One interesting thing, though:



In other words, what's really going on is people parse the world around them differently based on their political beliefs. And, since everyone is told universities are liberal hellholes, and since conservatives in general are more fearful people, they walk around super paranoid that they're going to get pummeled by a BLM crowd or that their liberal professor is going to mock them, God's Not Dead style. Even the guy who did the research was surprised at how little evidence there was that any of that was going on.

In other words, conservatives way overreact to perceived threats, it's much more about what they think universities are like than what they actually are like. And that's reinforced by people rehashing the same tired hysterical articles about conservative persecution in universities. The cure is to literally stop saying that, and conservatives will stop seeing the ghosts they think are there.

I don't find this part of the debate very interesting at all. I mean really, who gives a **** about a bunch of teenage conservatives whining about their grades in college? To my mind, what's interesting about the Sullivan article is his contention that the ideas behind "campus politics", and the tactics used in "campus politics", have a rich life outside of the campus. They've gone mainstream, and there's something illberal about them that cuts against the grain of some of the core ways in which the US defines itself as a country.

A lot of liberals/leftists will say about conservatives, "you guys are pathetic! You're adults who complain about kids who are going through a formative period in their lives, and who are engaged in all sorts of political and personal experimentation, that they'll shed when they get older. Why don't you pick on someone your own size? You're engaging in infantilism!" I think liberals/leftists who make that argument are missing that there's a lot more continuity between politics on campus and politics in general than they would acknowledge.

Unnecessary interjection: Twice now you've spelled "illiberal" without the second "i", Eversor, and after the second time I was suspicious enough that you weren't saying what I thought you were that I had to google to make sure that wasn't some other word.

BTW the United States was not founded on liberal principles, not to the extent you seem to think.

I'm not sure what your point is, here. Sure there's some continuity between campus politics and mainstream politics. So what?

If we're going to announce terms we don't find helpful: none of this "American essentialism/American exceptionalism" jargon is useful in understanding why America is what it is, or how history developed.

Oh, that time Jordan Peterson had a super intellectual discussion about Charles Murray pseudoscience.

Thankfully we have Youtube comments to point out the errors with these men:



Woooo guess what you're bolstering JP. There's a limit to how much you can entertain ****ty ideas and not be treated skeptically.

Why is it always the same with conservative public figures: let them speak long enough, and eventually the racism will be made apparent?

Speaking of lead poisoning:

https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/36569/

In other words, The Bell Curve is an unwitting study into the massive damage done to the American public by lead poisoning.

That actually makes a lot of sense.

In my arguments with scientific racists, the first thing I always point out about low average IQ in Africa and the Midddle East is malnutrition during and after pregnancy in the mother and child.

The effects are devestating and make a lot more sense than genetic variation.

That said, IQ in Singapore and Japan are higher then for Americans of European descent, so perhaps migration patterns / brain drain have to be taken into account as well (as well as less pronounced differences due to generics).

Probably because they are used to saying things in a way in private that rustles the feathers of people who are up tight about this kind of thing.

That, and they haven't gotten around to vetting assumptions that they are comfortable making that you find morally abhorrent.

Enlighten me?*



It speaks for itself!



Sure, I'll agree to that (although I didn't bring up American exceptionalism and don't think it's entirely relevant here). I agree that there's no one vision of America that has an uncontested claim to being the normative one. And I'd go further and acknowledge that nativism and racism are enduring and recurring features of American society that are undoubtedly in tension with liberal ideas. At the same time, the US is a country where the dominant ethos is one where national identity is based on loyalty -- not to blood and soil national tribe -- but to foundational documents that guarantee the rights of individuals, the principle of limited government and the rule of law, which is really what's at the heart of liberalism.

I have more to say about that but I'm exhausted. Will get back to it later.

*pun intended.

lol I think I've been making that mistake for the past 7189 posts

Just checked, my barrel is very ill

I'm really glad that today I stumbled upon this video. Eversor, you should watch this:



I knew many bits of this, but I never knew how closely "Cultural Marxism" is tied to American antisemitism.

https://www.amazon.com/Culture-Critique-Evolutionary-Twentieth-Century-Intellectual/dp/0759672229

For instance: here we have one of the key texts in building the "Cultural Marxist" narrative. It's basically The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, with Jewish intellectuals (aka Marcuse, Adorno) taking the high seat as the conspirators trying to destroy Western society.

And look at the reviews! Exactly what you'd expect from a 4chan-pushed /pol/ conspiracy text:

https://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-economics/21736561-one-study-suggests-insiders-profited-even-global-financial-crisis-another?frsc=dg%7Ce

So TL;DR unless you can afford the top hedge funds, you're being ripped off.

https://twitter.com/jeremycorbyn/status/962792608912166912

Hope he wins PM, watching Tory butthurt has been fantastic.

So on those concessions the Democrats won on DACA: Pelosi and the spineless democrats backed down. They don't really care.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/feb/10/resistance-now-immigrant-groups-accuse-democrats-of-betraying-dreamers?subid=1235389&CMP=ema_resistance

WRT free speech: free speech is not "bedrock" for America, it was passed as an amendment. John Adams pushed it in the antifederalist papers, and was part of intense debate and scrutiny. It was ratified in the Bill of Rights after the Constitution was put into force. It was a battle that was won, a decision made after the fact. To say it was "bedrock" seems more to say that all of the founding fathers wanted to establish America on a principle of open speech for all, which is absolutely not the case. Moreover, our understanding of the first amendment is far more liberal than what was probably intended. Knowing exactly what was originally intended is hard to say, but moreover the point is we've adapted and changed our conception of freedom of speech, and came to understand it more as history went on. It's an evolving doctrine, not a foundational one.

Moreover it's a good one that's served our country very well. America has historically been more open than other societies. That's really good, it's one of the best things about America frankly. But we shouldn't pretend this was always intent, we can't forget the force of the debates and battles fought over speech and who died on what hills for it.

Moreover, for the point about America being a liberal society, 18th century American doctrine was liberal.. by 18th century standards. Since then, America has had lots of political struggles over civil rights - most post-10 amendments concern civil rights. We've adapted and modified America to favor civil rights more. To act as though this was always the intent, that since 1789, America has always been this way - ignores and downplays the importance of the political struggles many past Americans went through.

More to the point about college campuses, the thing I'm perpetually frustrated by is the neverending attention paid to evil college censorship and not the abhorrent views and ideological genealogy of the people expressing the view. If Charles Murray gets yelled at by students, he deserves it. His research for The Bell Curve was funded by the Pioneer Fund, which if you don't know what that is, is the same fund that funded phrenology and other scientific racism ventures throughout the 20th century. He has, or had at one point, probable Klan ties. His book is a very misleading attack on racial minorities in America that literally advocates we cut off welfare to stop "poor, dumb" people from breeding too much. IIRC cites research on r-K selection from Rushton, another racist pseudoscientist funded by the Pioneer Fund, who literally cited pornographic magazines as evidence of his claim that black men have bigger dicks and are dumb-dumb sex obsessed thugs.

Any publication about anything involving Charles Murray should tell this story in its full extent. His name should never be mentioned, ever, without reminding people that he's the living legacy of centuries of racist bull**** science, and that his work is racist bull****. But nearly all of the publications about the story focus on the students and hardly give a blip to how completely ****ing awful that man is. And people underestimate how much of an impact his book has had in shaping racism today in America. People still frequently cite his work, I linked a video with Jordan Peterson where Jordan Peterson does just that.

That's why I get angry by this ****. I don't think students should shut down debates, but the way this **** is reported blasts over the dark, very real history for cheap attacks on dumbass students, and the way this attention is focused feeds into reactionary rage. So stop feeding into it.



Saying there are ideas like that "bedrock" to America is exactly American exceptionalism. You don't give it exactly that name and rhetoric, but by claiming there's something essentially American that sets us apart, some key principle that made us unique, is American exceptionalism. I do think America has some good ideas in it's founding documents, some superb ones, but they're not essentially ours.

Honestly though, it's probably half just a decay of journalistic standards and open journalistic practices. Journalism ****ing sucks today. Really bad. We need a more open, democratic press, so that we don't have to suffer through the awful writings and banal crap of everybody at NYT, WaPo, or Vox, who give way too much edge to reactionary bull**** or toxic neoliberal multicultural inequality.

Also, the Pioneer Fund, which funded Charles Murray's work, was founded by a guy who's ideas about race were taken in by the actual, literal Nazis and used as a basis for the Nuremburg Laws.

Like, this isn't just some minorly racist, haha wow you told a bad joke racism. The Pioneer Fund and people involved are an extremely devious, pernicious group of dedicated racists with a legacy as dark as it gets.

The fact that Charles Murray has been interviewed by Sam Harris, his ideas used by Jordan Peterson and frequently cited by alt-right figures, and has gained more legitimacy, should be concerning.

Read the WaPo article:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2017/09/06/some-harvard-students-protest-charles-murray-speech/?utm_term=.20da31c4588b



No, any person with their head screwed on right, who can cite sources and read (putting them leagues beyond ****ty WaPo reporting), knows he is racist. I mean, maybe they just didn't say it out of fear of a libel suit, but Christ, why should the focus be what the students think without calling out who that man really is? Instead of "believes", say "is".