Because I’m Tired of the Child Accusation

fair enough... I guess I've just grown used to the attitude.

Let’s keep in mind Flashlight contributed to a lot reps.

How the heck do you even check what percentage of positive reps you have?

I would tell you but then I'd have to kill you.

It takes a lot of bottle (as our Brit friends would say...wait do we have any Brit friends?...moving right along) to face up to one's own shortcomings. I think a good long term project would be to carefully examine the entire concept of being a "Libertarian". One problem that I see is that those who proclaim themselves "Libertarians" often come across as spoiled children pitching 's because they can't do whatever they want do, whilst completely refusing to acknowledge that every "society" is built around some degree of people being able to sacrifice some degree of "liberty" for the common good. Not that there's anything wrong with questioning whether "society" is demanding too much sacrifice for too little return. There is also the implicit idea that progress could be made without an organized society. I've been watching a lot of the British TV series "Time Team" and it's striking how things like building an Iron Age roundhouse or even Stonhenge require a great degree of community organization. I wonder if there were "libertarians" who refused to take part or to contribute on the grounds that they were being asked to do too much or if they simply didn't want somebody else telling them what to do.
Backing away from a knee-jerk libertarian response (not saying you should sacrifice your beliefs just for an easier time as a poster), but taking a more thoughtful approach to issues, might be a start to a more productive relationship.

As ff's big brother I demand you get off your high horse and face up to your own.

Diacanu also has about 8x more posts than you and close to 3x more than FF. A small reduction in quality for 3 - 8 times more output is what we in management would call a win.

In my early 20s I was a libertarian, as I got older I became more liberal, or maybe government got more conservative it’s hard to tell.

But anyways, the trick I found is to question everything, even if it’s something I agree with. If I read an article that says the President said something stupid, I don’t take it at face value. I then go and research it, find alternative sources, maybe see if there’s a video or reliable first hand source. It’s pretty exhausting, and most of the time I find that the initial source was right, but the key is to not take the easy route and pick the data that agrees with my argument. On the other hand though, I don’t often experience a lot of cognitive dissonance. My views are subject to the information I have available, rather than some sort of dogma or my feelings about the topic.

Ultimately the trick is to recognize that there’s no shame in admitting you don’t have enough data to form an opinion on something.

Who are you?

Why question everything?

He's Nick.

Looks like @steve2^4 is dividing total positive ratings by post count to get that percentage. If you want to see a total breakdown of what you have received and given it's on your profile page.

So I'd be at 107%? Why do my positive reps outnumber my total number of posts?

EDIT: you baited me into using math in the Red Room.

You can get multiple reps on a post from different people, and clearly you're doing well!

Because 107% of your posts are wonderfully brilliant.

And only 103% of them are stupid and useless.

So overall, you're not too bad.

My math, on the other hand...

is causing Muad to have post-mortem seizures

Moi?

@matthunter?

@RickDeckard sort of?

Balls. AAAAK! I thought he seemed familiar.

Didn’t most of the original members bring our post count over from TBBS?

I don't believe so. I had a lot of posts over there and it took me a long time to get back to around the same number here.

I’m the opposite. As I get older, learn more about how governments actually work and what they actually do (as opposed to what’s in their press releases) I become more libertarian. Governments can’t be trusted and must therefore be kept as small and restrained as is practical. Agree with the rest of your post, tho. For example, over the last ten-fifteen years I’ve done a 180 on anthropogenic climate change. The science has firmed up and humanity’s effect on climate is pretty much undeniable at this point.

I don't remember that, and even if so those original accounts were gone when we had to reregister at WF early on IIRC.

Don't worry about that movement, over the past few weeks we've seen that there are plenty of people dedicated to making sure that they won't rise again.

i doubt many lefties would disagree governments can't be trusted-that's why we're all in antifa
thing is, the private sector is somewhat more nefarious when left to it's own devices.
as a citizen, at least i can have a butterfly effect on elected representatives.
not so much on the guy who wants to pay me half of minimum wage to make him rich.

At first, yes. But that was soon rescinded as not making any sense, and post counts were reset to include only posts on WF.

It may also be that when the board had to reset (which is why our join dates are actually nearly a year later than when we all came over here, in the summer of 2003), our post counts reset again. But that was all so long ago that I don't remember the details any more.

This is what confuses me, why the free pass to a non governmental body?

I'm one of the more socialist leaning of our members, I'm an ex union man, occasional protester and/or organiser of minor industrial action, public sector employee, friends with many of our local labour and lib dem officials and have been approached more than once as to my (distinct lack of) interest in taking an active involvement in politics.

Despite all that I don't trust government any more than you do, but I also mistrust other concentrations of power, money and self interest which impact the public. An elected government can lie, mislead, oppress and commit any other number of sins but so can a private company, or a charity for that matter. I'm all in favour of pressing for oversight and transparency in government, but I also expect the same safeguards to be applied to those whose only pretence of acting in the public good is the need to please shareholders.

Libertarian arguments often seem to boil down to the idea that reducing oversight and regulation in the free market would undermine a governmental monopoly on power, but to me that just means opening an alternative avenue for corruption and abuse, one which is given an ideological pass.

The government impact on our lives is involuntary. We can vote and do other things to change that impact and domes might change in your favor or they may not. The market speaks for itself, if I don’t like Apple because I don’t like that they essentially use slave labor to make their products, I can choose to not use Apple products. People have choice in government as well, they can vote with their feet. The government has the power of police to compel us to do what they want us to do, the market doesn’t. I say don’t trust either, but I feel like there’s a lot more I can do about corporations than I can about government.