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Charles Koch Says His Partisanship Was a Mistake

wsj.com

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Re: Charles Koch Says His Partisanship Was a Mistake

#291

Post by tclancy »

CryptoPunk wrote: post #290
aniro wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. They whipped the mob into a frenzy with lies and bullshit so they could use its power to get what they wanted. Then they lost control of it. It is the loss of control they regret, not whipping it up in the first place.

[flagged]

No, lies and bullshit would require self reflection. Both of those things have always been things the well fed and well off let their children play pretend with while making sure they never have to figure out how to feed themselves.

I am 44. My entire life, speaking as someone who grew up conservative, libertarianism has either been about weed or drugs. And then about what degree of freedom one should have when arrested with either.

Ask a poor person or a minority what it is like to be arrested with either. Stop role playing nonsense and join the real world.

Re: Charles Koch Says His Partisanship Was a Mistake

#292

Post by tclancy »

nostromo wrote: post #261
CameronNemo wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also the Emmet Till accuser admitting she lied, once she was on her death bed.

She was 14. I don't think we can blame her for what happened to Emmet Till. Edit: thanks for the correction, she was 21. However, I still think the blame should fall on Till's murderers.

I think if we try real hard we can figure out how. African American kids under ten can be super predators. A white woman at 21 can probably be responsible.

Re: Charles Koch Says His Partisanship Was a Mistake

#293

Post by tclancy »

ethbr0 wrote: post #252
santoshalper wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that an actual quote from the article? If so, it's just perfect.

I mean, that's basic libertarian epiphany in a nutshell. Maximizing freedom for myself in a society where there are other people requires limiting everyone's freedoms in some ways.

Libertarianism is just about putting off when you admit you messed up.

Re: Charles Koch Says His Partisanship Was a Mistake

#294

Post by [deleted] »

pjc50 wrote: post #251
aazaa wrote: post #191

The article would have been improved by giving some insight into what changed his mind. You don't just go from what he and his brother have done to the US to: > Boy, did we screw up! Without an inkling as to how or why they screwed up, there's no way to gauge what, if any, change to expect.

As I posted last time this came up, the problem to him is that the Tea Party they backed went out of their control. They wanted a nice biddable anti-government party. They got chaos. They've not come to Jesus on global warming, they're upset they lost.

[deleted]

Re: Charles Koch Says His Partisanship Was a Mistake

#295

Post by harimau777 »

CryptoPunk wrote: post #290
aniro wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. They whipped the mob into a frenzy with lies and bullshit so they could use its power to get what they wanted. Then they lost control of it. It is the loss of control they regret, not whipping it up in the first place.

[flagged]

The problem is that the Libertarianism/free-market policies simply don't work. They've failed to address the growing inability to normal people to have financial security and a reasonable quality of life.

At some point, continuing to advocate those policies in the face of their outcomes becomes negligence at best.

Re: Charles Koch Says His Partisanship Was a Mistake

#296

Post by gnramires »

flavor8 wrote: post #6
SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #4

Apologies if this is covered in the article, which I can't get to, but what is he doing to make amends? Or is this just empty, placatory words?

He's 85, his brother died recently, and he's very likely concerned about "legacy". According to Greenpeace, these assholes have poured $145,555,197 into groups that worked counter to climate policy changes being enacted (from 1997 to 2018). _Partisanship_ should be the least of his worries - he'll be remembered as a key figure who spurred inaction at the exact time that we should have been taking drastic action.

It's very sad to see people so attached to their egos and external image. Instead of genuinely caring for what will the lives of others be like in the future, they only care about how they will read his name when he is not there. How petty is that, how meaningless? What meaning carries the pronunciation of a name in isolation?

Humanity will only progress once we deeply realize the reality of other minds, that we are made of the same stuff, that our conscious and identity is only pragmatically separated. You and me are the same stuff; helping myself and helping you are effectively the same thing. Helping my children (or your children) is the same as helping myself. I just can't see through their eyes, but they are all like a part of me, equally alive and thinking, that I just cannot access.

Once (and if) we realize this, then we can hope to go on longer than a few decades.

Re: Charles Koch Says His Partisanship Was a Mistake

#297

Post by CryptoPunk »

harimau777 wrote: post #295
CryptoPunk wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

The problem is that the Libertarianism/free-market policies simply don't work. They've failed to address the growing inability to normal people to have financial security and a reasonable quality of life. At some point, continuing to advocate those policies in the face of their outcomes becomes negligence at best.

The statistical evidence shows that the US has become dramatically more social democratic since the 1960s, so any problems that have emerged can be attributed to social democracy, not libertarianism.

See the effect of public sector unions and collective bargaining on public education:

https://academic.oup.com/qje/article-abstract/111/3/671/1839...

(copy-pasting)

Every Western nation has massively increased social welfare spending over the last 50 years. Some more than others. Look at the US for example:

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/what-is-driving-growth-...

Annual spending growth (inflation adjusted) on various components of social welfare spending (1972 - 2011):

>Pensions and retirement: 4.4%

>Healthcare: 5.7%

>Welfare: 4.1%

Annual economic growth over the time frame:

>2.7%

I have to reiterate that this is annual growth. Many people have turned around and said "4% over 40 years is nothing", missing the fact that it's not 4% over 40 years. It's 4.8% every year, over a span of 40 years.

This represents a massive shift to social democracy.

And the shift has been associated with plummeting labour productivity growth, plummeting wage growth, a slowdown in life expectancy gains, and an explosion in single parenthood:

http://web.archive.org/web/20170529115412/https://pinetreewa...

More generally, there's a negative correlation between government spending levels as a percentage of GDP, and economic growth rates. Your implication, that society is better off with high levels of taxation, is not supported by the science on the matter.

The evidence strongly suggests economic development is most rapidly achieved through adoption of pro-market policies.

The last 30 years has seen the largest most rapid reduction in the global poverty rate in human history, and almost all the decline in poverty was due to economic development, which economists have concluded was massively facilitated by the spread of market institutions like property rights:

1. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/07/the-pol...

2. https://www.csmonitor.com/World/2016/0207/Progress-in-the-gl...

3. https://www.economist.com/leaders/2013/06/01/towards-the-end...

There is no reason to assume that this relationship between pro-market policies and high rates of economic growth stops existing for advanced economies.

We see indications of it manifesting across the developed world, like the superior performance of Hong Kong and Singapore relative to other developed economies, or Iceland relative to other Nordic countries, or in cross-European studies correlating low tax rates with high economic growth rates.

Economic growth is the primary source of all improvements in quality of life, so we should have policies that maximize it. It is how an advanced economy comes to be that way.

Re: Charles Koch Says His Partisanship Was a Mistake

#298

Post by KaoruAoiShiho »

mrgordon wrote: post #259
ethbr0 wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, that's basic libertarian epiphany in a nutshell. Maximizing freedom for myself in a society where there are other people requires limiting everyone's freedoms in some ways.

Yep some philosophers described it as “freedom to” and “freedom from”. Without freedom from others doing some things that effect you, you might be dead or otherwise severely restricted

Yes people not understanding positive and negative freedom is the major educational failure behind the libertarian meme.

Re: Charles Koch Says His Partisanship Was a Mistake

#299

Post by plaidfuji »

civilized wrote: post #218

> Relentlessly putting my self-interest above any other consideration turned out to be not in my self-interest, and I regret it for this reason alone

Huh. So essentially, “I’m choosing to continue to act purely out of self-interest, but with a more well-resolved model of how the long-term societal effects of my actions could negatively affect me.”

Re: Charles Koch Says His Partisanship Was a Mistake

#300

Post by sangnoir »

pjscott wrote: post #266

I looked a bit at what Charles Koch has been saying recently, and this doesn't look like a change of opinion; it looks like a change of tactics. He's de-emphasizing the partisan tug-o-war stuff, which looks less promising now than it did during (for example) the early days of the Tea Party, and focusing on the less fought-over parts. It's a reasonable approach if he wants to get things done, but not the about-face th…

I'm not sure if I'm being overly cynical - but isn't this just a tactic to consolidate the gains he managed to win by discouraging the other side from using his methods? Similar to how challengers decry bureaucracy, but once they become incumbents, wield it as a cudgel to swat down upstarts.
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