November 4, 2010
Blogging, Status and Nasty Competitive Animals Like You
Shift your gaze to the sidebar on the right. See that little Wikio icon, which gives me a UK-wide blog ranking? The one that is replicated across hundreds of blogs in the UK. What’s that little button doing there?
I guess I’d like to say that it’s for purely instrumental reasons. That when people first visit this site they will note it as widely endorsed, and thus pay more attention. But let’s not pretend that’s doing the serious work.
That little button is there partly as a marker of my status. It’s there to tell people “not only is this a popular blog, but it’s author is successful”. That little icon is thus a mark of my competitive tendency – and more importantly, of my success in that competitive process. I take the same to be true for all the other blogs carrying such icons.
Am I just an over-competitive freak, who needs to get a grip and swallow a heavy dose of modesty? That’s certainly possible, and people have been suggesting so for a very long time. But it may not be the end of the story.
Much of what I’m reading at the moment – like this, this, this and this – argues that competitive status-seeking is in some way what fundamentally characterises absolutely all of us, even if we seek and achieve it in different (often secret) ways.
That is, and to simplify horribly: human beings are creatures who are inherently disposed to compare themselves to their neighbours. But when they compare poorly, this causes them psychological pain. As a result humans develop strategies to successfully compete with – and ultimately dominate – their neighbours, thus achieving reflected glory in the minds of the more lowly.
In stable politically organised societies, the more brutish outlets for competition and subjugation – violence, murder, rape, enslavement of rivals – are prohibited and controlled (perhaps even “monopolised by the state”, as some have had it). But nasty, comparative-competitive humans don’t suddenly become placid saints. Rather, they find new outlets for competition and domination. Like having the fanciest most expensive clothes, or the biggest cars. Or, if they’re really clever, developing self-assured auras that tell others that they don’t care about fancy material goods, because they are above all that.
This is potentially problematic, for leftists in particular.
Typically, rightists – example – aren’t troubled by this diagnosis of inescapable competitive-comparison. They shrug it off or even embrace it as a fact of life, and look for systems to channel, direct and control it without worrying about its consequences for human well-being (which they generally deny or downplay).
Leftists, however, don’t tend to like this sort of thing at all. In fact they really hate it. But here comes the nasty rub, inspired by giving a careful reading to this guy and this guy.
Most leftists tend (I think) to assume that nasty competitive comparisons are a product of material inequality: that because some have more than others, psychological hierarchies emerge and mental and emotional suffering for losers is the result. But what if it is in fact the other way around? What if material inequality – i.e. wealth, unequal possessions, riches and the power they all bring – are employed by already competitive-comparative animals as markers of differential status? That is, material inequality doesn’t so much cause competitive status-seeking and psychological inequality, as the reverse (though the process will be complex and dynamic, and to an extent flow in both directions at different times).
Indeed if that is the case, then there may be a bleak outcome for leftists: reducing material inequalities may well temper the worst excesses of status competition and subjugation, and potentially halt vicious cycles of psychological decline. But the nasty competitive animals will remain, even in a more equal world, and promptly seek out new ways of asserting their deeply-desired status superiorities. Thus, whilst a more equal world may very well be nicer than the one we currently live in, it may inevitably be a lot less nice than many leftists would like to imagine.
UPDATE: Chris Dillow’s response to/development of the above ideas is very much worth reading. Here.
Tim Worstall said,
November 4, 2010 at 11:52 am
As ever, I object to being labelled as a “rightist”. That aside:
“What if material inequality – i.e. wealth, unequal possessions, riches and the power they all bring – are employed by already competitive-comparative animals as markers of differential status?”
Well of course. There has never been any human society which does not have a status competition. The simple mechanics of the breeding of the species see to that, if nothing else (one count is that 80% of the women of the past had children while only 40% of the men did).
Different societies have had different such competitions of course: the last millenia in this country alone has seen status determined by who is the best at cutting the heads off Vikings, then Anglo Saxons, the Welsh, Scots etc. By religious fervour. By which vagina you happend to pop out of (and whether you were the first or subsequent to do so from that specific orifice) and in comparison to these the ownership or not of a slightly larger four wheeled penis extension seems a reasonable channelling of that human status seeking urge.
It does, after all, have the advantage of having positive externalities, this markets and capitalism stuff. Like, for the first time in human history, everyone having enough to eat, to wear, somewhere to get out from under the rain etc.
And as you do point out, we do not in fact have just that one single system of measuring status. Blog rankings are one, the best costume at a Trekkies Convention another, Chess Grandmaster, the size of the four wheeled penis extension. Guido’s status is, as a blogger, I’m sure higher than his status as a City dealer was: heck, within his social circle, I’m sure his status as a video games champion was higher than his relative status as a City dealer.
Here’s an interesting question: La Toynbee’s family income is in the £300,000-£400,000 a year range. There are some thousands of City bankers where this is base salary, before bonuses. Who has the higher social status, La Polla or some unknown chained to a dealing desk 60 hours a week?
Quite, we don’t actually measure social status purely by income anyway.
Oh, and I’m 13 in the Wikio rankings. Thrrrrrffppt!
Thomas Kealy said,
November 4, 2010 at 12:23 pm
“that because some have more than others, psychological hierarchies emerge and mental and emotional suffering for losers is the result”
To be honest I’d take this with a pinch of salt. Even though I’m quite academic and musical, I’m not that sporty (and am in fact about 10 pounds overweight). There are, in fact, a whole host of things which I’m useless at. None of that need give me any emotional distress, in fact I’ve found that if I feel emotional suffering, perhaps a gin and tonic is in order.
Luis Enrique said,
November 4, 2010 at 12:31 pm
“status competition” makes it sound like people are competing for plaudits and esteem for its own sake. I imagine that if you want to know how to hunt, you seek the person in the tribe who best knows how to hunt. This individual has status as a skilled hunter. Their status is competitive, in the sense of relative to other less skilled hunters. Somebody who improves their hunting skills will perforce raise their status as a hunter. Somebody who wants to earn a living as a hunter for hire needs people to be aware of their status as a hunter. If people are able to choose which hunter they want to hire, and there is more than one hunter, then there is competition.
None of the above entails status seeking in the lefty-pejorative, vainglorious sense. I don’t know to the extent the above entails anything psychological, to do with an innate human tendency to experience pleasure/pain from high/low status or urges to seek glory in the eyes of others. I mean I can see how one might suggest that may evolve as a mechanism with pragmatic advantages, I’m just uncertain of the magnitude of that, how important it is relative to innocuous non-status-seeking motivations for the same behaviour.
I don’t think I’m saying much – I just get frustrated when this sort of topic comes up how often things like “being known to be good at something” and “wanting to be good at something” get conflated with the desire to “seek status superiority” in abstract. And I think there is a tendency to explain behavior that could very well be explained in purely pragmatic terms (as with my hunting story) by appealing to status-seeking in the vainglorious sense.
I’m frequently baffled by lefty animosity towards competition. Especially seeing how horribly competitive some of the buggers are in blog comments.
Paul Sagar said,
November 4, 2010 at 12:38 pm
I’m frequently baffled by lefty animosity towards competition. Especially seeing how horribly competitive some of the buggers are in blog comments.
Oh, I think Adam Smith, Rousseau, Hume, Mandeville et al would take that as being pretty indicative of the “deep” nature of the competitive-comparative natures of human beings, yes…
Paul Sagar said,
November 4, 2010 at 12:42 pm
And as you do point out, we do not in fact have just that one single system of measuring status. Blog rankings are one, the best costume at a Trekkies Convention another, Chess Grandmaster, the size of the four wheeled penis extension. Guido’s status is, as a blogger, I’m sure higher than his status as a City dealer was: heck, within his social circle, I’m sure his status as a video games champion was higher than his relative status as a City dealer.
Here’s an interesting question: La Toynbee’s family income is in the £300,000-£400,000 a year range. There are some thousands of City bankers where this is base salary, before bonuses. Who has the higher social status, La Polla or some unknown chained to a dealing desk 60 hours a week?
Well quite. Because the game of competition, delineation and superiority is incredibly complex. And as you demonstrate, a relatively quick glance at the world around us indicates that competetive status seeking in the eyes of (at least some) others goes on all around us. And there’s just no way of cashing it all out in terms of a function of material inequality (see what I did there?) But to my frustration most of the right just doesn’t care one way or the other, and much of the left is too narrowly focused on the distribution of stuff, not what motivates and perpetuates it.
Paul Sagar said,
November 4, 2010 at 12:47 pm
Oh, and I’m 13 in the Wikio rankings. Thrrrrrffppt!
Not for much longer:
http://www.mattwardman.com/blog/2010/11/03/wikio-politics-blog-rankings-november-2010-preview/
They’ve started including stupid Twitter links in the calculation. You’ve taken a massive dive. I’m not even top 50 anymore. Harsh time.
Tim Worstall said,
November 4, 2010 at 12:54 pm
“And there’s just no way of cashing it all out in terms of a function of material inequality (see what I did there?) But to my frustration most of the right just doesn’t care one way or the other,”
Well, hmm, I have actually thought about it (in what passes for thought for a Worstall of course) and have come to a conclusion.
That if such status seeking is inevitable (which I certainly believe it is) then that status seeking by material possession is, at the very least, the least bad of those other systems we’ve so far tried. Precisely because it does have that positive externality of positive economic growth.
As to wikio….well, that explains those long lists of Twitter links below every LC and LFF post then….
Ste For Sure said,
November 4, 2010 at 1:55 pm
A competitive desire for status motivates us all at times, it is true. But leftists can, I think, correctly point out that this desire is not what is motivating most people most of the time. People who are motivated by this most of the time are twats and everybody hates them.
We are motivated by desire to be part of a community, to look after family and friends, to live ethically, to feel the sense of achievement that comes from hard work, to enjoy ourselves and socialise etc etc etc. I think, for most people, the desire for social status is a little niggle, which gets expressed through peculiar little outlets from time to time (like your little top blogs button!), and is a small component in what motivates our major life projects.
Of course, there are some people who have the desire for increased status as the fundamental underlying driving force behind their choices. They are the kinds of people who take 55% pay rises when they are already multimillionaires, and the rest of the population faces economic hardship – and they are the kinds of people leftists want to, quite rightly, rein in.
Paul Sagar said,
November 4, 2010 at 2:08 pm
Ste,
“But leftists can, I think, correctly point out that this desire is not what is motivating most people most of the time. People who are motivated by this most of the time are twats and everybody hates them. ”
Yes, that is, basically, an important component of the Hume/Smith response/interjection.
What’s philosophically interesting and “deep”, however, remains the apparently hard-wired psychological tendency to constantly compare and contrast, and to understand ourselves via the way we take others to perceive us, in complex patterns of mutual presentation, comparison and psychological second-guessing. It need not cash-out in terms of a dark, nasty, pessimistic Hobbist/Mandevillean vision, as Smith and Hume tried at length to show, but nonetheless what’s important here at a foundational level is the constant need and desire to compare and know what others think of ourselves.
donpaskini said,
November 4, 2010 at 2:19 pm
What do you think of Wilkinson’s and Pickett’s research in this area?
One thought immediately springs to mind – humans are competitive by nature, but are also co-operative. One feature of a more egalitarian society might be that people get greater benefits from co-operating rather than competing.
Ronald Collinson said,
November 4, 2010 at 2:25 pm
Ste is right about one thing – we appear to escape from our competitiveness when we comport ourselves towards those [people/things/theories/communities/institutions] we love. Which is very nice and cosy, although it doesn’t help much in promoting the rights of man.
I have always claimed that Hume was a fundamentally conservative thinker. I am now adding Smith to this list. I think that Bernard Williams is in the same camp [or at least a similar one], and I look forward to tacking Paul Sagar on to the end.
The modern left *obviously* has problems – it’s a hideous hybrid of a philosophically rigorous Marxism [which in my view is arguably the greatest challenge to conservatism, although Weberianism runs it close] and a fluffy liberalism [which in my view just doesn't have a handle on human nature, and consists mainly of neo-Christian self-deceit]. In my view, the only useful purpose of the modern left is to act as a conservative check on neo-liberalism.
Disclaimer: the above comment is intended to tease Paul and consists entirely of unsupported assertions, mainly because I’m now getting worried about my essay and don’t have time for anything more substantive.
Luis Enrique said,
November 4, 2010 at 2:34 pm
of course if status is attained by “helping other people” etc. then status seeking behavior is not remotely antithetical to lefty goals. It’s merely a matter of aligning status with being good.
(indeed there’s no shortage of lefties who compete for lefty virtuous status. A conservative might allege a lefty tendency to flaunt righteous motives and condemn others without paying enough attention to practicalities)
donpanski, I know you didn’t ask me, and I speak with the full authority of somebody who hasn’t read the book, but it strikes me that of all the available mechanisms via which inequality may lead to bad outcomes, they have chosen the least convincing.
Tim Worstall said,
November 4, 2010 at 2:51 pm
“but it strikes me that of all the available mechanisms via which inequality may lead to bad outcomes, they have chosen the least convincing.”
Especially since one of their examples of a low inequality society is Japan: a place which does indeed have low inequality of income, but which has, by everyone else’s standards, howlingly huge inequality of status.
So Japan is actually an example of the opposite of their thesis, that it is the stress of status inequality which leads to hte bad things happening.
Paul Sagar said,
November 4, 2010 at 2:55 pm
Don,
David Runciman wrote the best single piece on The Spirit Level, IMO:
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v31/n20/david-runciman/how-messy-it-all-is
not sure I have much to add to that, apart from maybe Stuart White’s recent thoughts over at Next Left explaining why Rupert Read hasn’t a clue what he’s talking about.
Ronnie,
“I have always claimed that Hume was a fundamentally conservative thinker. I am now adding Smith to this list. I think that Bernard Williams is in the same camp”
Don’t say this in Istvan’s ear shot. He will rightly obliterate you for it. At the very least, calling Hume and Smith “conservative” is a grossly unhelpful anachronism. Remember that stuff we looked at on Tuesday about Smith struggling with the paradoxes of reform and its intractable difficulties? *That’s* the problem he and Hume and facing down. It’s a deep fissure in the politics of commercial modernity, and cannot helpfully be reduced down to some platitude about “conservatism”. Furthermore, Hume’s theory of justice properly understood provides active resources for criticising established practices – the problem however is how to gain and be sure of the *judgement* needed when changing established practices, and that’s a political problem which cuts deep for *all* serious thinkers, and doesn’t in any way reduce them all to being “conservative” (unless by that term you mean “anybody who isn’t in favour of mad revolutions undertaken by fanatics with too much power who are prepared to kill” – in which case we are *all* conservatives outside of the remnants of The Trotskyist Militant International Tendency, but thereby the term becomes unhelpful and undescriptive)
As for Bernard Williams, the idea that somebody who is deeply influenced by his readings of Nietzsche and of very sharp understandings of the politics and conflicts of the ancient world, I’d again suggest that it’s at best unhelpful to lump him under this label “conservative”.
So, consider me properly teased.
As for your comments about the modern left’s relationship with Marx and some sort of liberalism….meh, I don’t think so. It’s much more complicated than that. But no time to explain. I have a talking lion to attend to, in the further investigation of whether any of us can really be virtuous without God’s help, or whether in fact we are all by necessity deep moral hypocrites.
You think I’m joking, but I’m not. There really is a talking lion.
Tim Worstall said,
November 4, 2010 at 3:00 pm
“There really is a talking lion.”
Well, yes, but I didn’t expect you to be getting your philosophic gems from the Narnia books.
Paul Sagar said,
November 4, 2010 at 3:09 pm
Guess again:
Tim, you really ought to read Bernard Mandeville’s Fable of the Bees. I know you’ve read Smith, but my sense is you’re much more of a Mandevillean than a Smithean. You’ll definitely like his books, that’s for sure. Actually, they remind me a lot of timworstall.com…
http://oll.libertyfund.org/index.php?option=com_staticxt&staticfile=show.php%3Ftitle=846&Itemid=99999999
Dan said,
November 4, 2010 at 3:19 pm
Who says those on the right don’t think about this? From an excellent essay (Against Equality Again by JR Lucas):
A status society does not have to be strictly ordered. It is compatible with there being some ordering-but the ordering does not have to be complete, and, more importantly, does not have to be all important. What is desired is that each man should stand in regard to the rest of society in a relation which other men do not, and that this relation should itself be the ground of respect. The village cobbler performs a different function from the squire or the parson, and one that is needed, and cannot be performed, by them, however wealthy or well educated they may be. Each man wants to be respected. The egalitarian seeks to satisfy this need by ensuring that no man is ever in an inferior position vis-…-vis anybody else, and so insists that all social relations shall be equivalence relations. That fails to meet the need, which is much better met by allowing relations which are asymmetric but securing for each man that there is some relation with respect to which he is superior to other people. No one should be always the underdog. We can object to strictly hierarchical societies on the grounds that those on the bottom of the hierarchy—the serfs, the villeins, or the prison-camp slaves—are accorded no respect at all. But we should remedy this by having more than one hierarchy, and, in so far as any one ranking system is dominant and generally accepted as constituting the social order, demanding that those who are deferred to should make manifest their respect and consideration for those who render them services.
The argument can, in part, be transposed to a lower key. Two inequalities are better than one. It is better to have a society in which there are a number of different pecking orders, so that a person who comes low according to one order can nevertheless rate highly according to another. One advantage that English society used to have over American was that whereas in America wealth was the only criterion, in England social standing was largely independent of wealth, and could, therefore, act as a corrective. More generally, it is good that there should be an athletic hierarchy besides the academic one, so that boys who are not blessed with brains may nevertheless be, and feel themselves to be, the stars of the football field. A man may not be a great success economically but still can be a big noise in the Boy Scout Association or the pigeon fanciers’ club. So long as we have plenty of different inequalities, nobody need be absolutely inferior. It is only if, in the name of equality, we set about eliminating them all, that we shall succeed in eliminating many of them and thereby make those that remain far more burdensome.
Mark said,
November 4, 2010 at 3:46 pm
“There has never been any human society which does not have a status competition. The simple mechanics of the breeding of the species see to that, if nothing else (one count is that 80% of the women of the past had children while only 40% of the men did).”
I’m really not too sure that this means what everyone seems to suggest it does. In primitive (and not so primitive) societies a very large proportion of men tend to die violent deaths. It quite possible that the majority of that difference is due to a higher proportion of men being killed. For example, I’ve read estimates that in some Native American tribes 60% of men were killed.
If the genetic record is really telling us that primitive society is incredibly homicidal it would tend to suggest that status competition, while certainly an element of the human make up, isn’t as absolutely fundamental as everyone seems to think.
Perhaps, humans are too dangerous for status alone to make much difference and status which makes us more dangerous (kingships etc.) is simply a product of some specific cultures rather than a general rule. Put simply – if I was sharing a village with some guy who was shagging all the women, I’d kill him. Only culture could save him from that.
Obviously none of these goings on tell us anything about how we should live because we (luckily) have a different sense of morality and beauty – people tend to use evolutionary psychology as a tool to promote the ugliest philosophies possible and that is something that all sensible people should reject.
“A competitive desire for status motivates us all at times, it is true. But leftists can, I think, correctly point out that this desire is not what is motivating most people most of the time.”
I think that without competitive desire for status, the modern left is in dire trouble. What other justification is there for attempting to combat relative poverty?
The left has to promote it in order to boost their own statist agenda. Otherwise we’d probably all be fishing in the morning and reading poetry in the evening – what would the management do then?
I’m a rightist and I don’t want lower taxes in order for me to boost my own status – I want lower taxes because I feel that the current poor use of tax money is morally corrupting and disrupts people from pursuing their own interests.
Paul Sagar said,
November 4, 2010 at 4:18 pm
Dan, I didn’t say that rightist don’t think about this stuff, I said they don’t care about it (at least in the way that leftist egalitarians do).
Indeed, you’ve just quoted a long passage which shows exactly that point: the underlying fact of status inequality and competetive hierarchy is not, apparently, in itself objectionable in some fundamental sense, but rather it’s inevitable so the best thing to do is have lots of status hierarhcies. Now, you might reply: but that’s just dealing with the facts of life in a realistic manner. And maybe you’d be right. But what I’m getting at is the division whereby the left would broadly like to eliminate status inequality and is deeply troubled by its persistence, whereas the right (generally) is not deeply troubled by its persistence – or at least, not to anything like the same extent.
(I know you’re now going to come back with a claim that your passage shows that this righist *does* care about status inequality…but my point is that he doesn’t care about it all that much, or not in the same “fundamental” way as most leftists, if his solution is to generate more of it so as to diffuse some of the more extreme effects)
Ronald Collinson said,
November 4, 2010 at 4:48 pm
“At the very least, calling Hume and Smith “conservative” is a grossly unhelpful anachronism.”
That’s obviously true – it’s even true of Burke – but it’s only relevant in so far as you’re are looking to give a historically accurate exposition of somebody’s thought. I’m not: I’m picking sides, identifying friends and foes, claiming family resemblances. This is a deeply silly exercise, but everybody does it, and frankly it’s fun. To say that Hume is conservative doesn’t tell you *anything* about Hume, that’s true; but I think it is at least interesting to see what contemporary conservatives can draw from Hume, and whether this seems more plausible or more ‘Humean’ than what you weird left-wing Humeans might decide to draw from Hume. But I have no intention of doing that right now, and am instead going to throw in some more unsubstantiated assertions.
It’s perfectly obvious that most of us are conservative to some extent, even if for most of us it’s a natural symptom of the human condition, mostly subconscious and articulated through a medium of self-deception. The world would be a pretty awful place if we weren’t. Mostly in daily life, conservatism prevails everywhere and wins constantly; only in high politics and in universities does it have difficulty.
And obviously the true history of the modern left is extremely complicated. I was being a bit facetious, mainly so that I’d have an opportunity to throw in praise of Marx [currently re-reading an insane but rather good book about the similarities between Marx and Burke].
I hope the talking lion was helpful. I want one.
Mark said,
November 4, 2010 at 5:05 pm
“But what I’m getting at is the division whereby the left would broadly like to eliminate status inequality and is deeply troubled by its persistence, whereas the right (generally) is not deeply troubled by its persistence – or at least, not to anything like the same extent.”
I don’t think that the left is particularly bothered by status inequality. If they were, you’d be writing my comments.
The left are worried about money.
grrl said,
November 5, 2010 at 10:11 am
@Mark
“I’m a rightist and I don’t want lower taxes in order for me to boost my own status – I want lower taxes because I feel that the current poor use of tax money is morally corrupting and disrupts people from pursuing their own interests.”
Seems that you, Mark; think that leftists are, per definionem, people that want to cash high taxes (and this mainly from rightists), in order to give it to people that will then – as a folowing of ‘enjoying’ the higher-tax money (cashed from tax-unwilling rightists) feel disrupted from pursuing their own intersts, interests which comprise mainly taking seriously the righists’ unwillingness to contribute to the tax-pool, with other words, people having enough money at disposition for community purposes will be disrupted from their interest to remove the rightists from key positions where they decide upon the amount of taxation?
Following your argumentation, your should actually feel in a more favourable position when paying not so low taxes(or none, as I guess you might want) because then, the bulk of people standing there without the necessary funds for ‚community-purposes’ will feel disrupted from concentrating on you, and your (untaxed)money selfishly kept in the matress…
Mark said,
November 5, 2010 at 1:47 pm
Grrl,
I’m not sure if it’s a definition, but I consider leftists to be those with a deep dislike of anything but collective ownership, normally with a large degree of suspicion towards the market thrown in. There is also a tendency for them to excuse any immoral behavior (except that associated with ownership or markets) on the grounds that it is caused by non-collective ownership, or markets.
So, I’m not sure that I’d agree that leftists want to take money from rightists to give to others. They want to take money from everyone and then give it back to everyone because (a) they believe we should all have a part of everything that goes on in some random geographical area and (b) because they don’t trust peoples ability to get anywhere good without their help.
But basically, yes, you’re absolutely right – I think people would be happier if they acknowledged that in a society with our level of technological and economical development, moral and personal factors are more important than financial ones. As we get richer, our activities become further and further removed from producing the universal necessities and more and more about personal choice. We can be certain that everyone wants some food etc. but once that is satisfied our preferences become far more diverse. Our moral and personal life are more important than learning Klingon, traveling to Mars, watching big screen TV or anything else that people might get up to in the modern world. The emphasis on equality in physical goods is corrupting and wrong.
And I do think it rather unreasonable that everyone must contribute to everyone else’s interests, no matter what we think of them. Though of course, collective ownership generally brings with it concentrated and unaccountable management – incapable of determining exactly what we actually desire but determined to supply us with it – which will probably act to prohibit us from doing what we wish unless it contributes to some base vision of the common good.
Hence subsidised TV’s, flats in London, Cars etc.
Michael Fowke said,
November 5, 2010 at 4:25 pm
There’s nothing wrong with you showing off your status – as long as you understand that a Wikio ranking is only a sign of how many of your mates link to your posts.
grrl said,
November 5, 2010 at 4:49 pm
Mark,
can’t help noticing a less than discreet – actually disturbingly obvious – tendency of yours to assume/imply/insinuate [please choose the most negative term of the three] that people in the community would, as soon as they get the ‘tax money allocated to community issues’ they run in a shop to buy TVs, flats, cars, etc. [shall not enumerate the tax funded community issues as such, but then, we know why modern societies need a tax money pool] .
Or, do you possibly mean people buy TVs, cars, abd subsidise their second home. or buy dog food or toilet paper for their second and third home (that they need when they visit their constituency) as I have read that a lot of rightist politicians have done (too) not so far ago?
On another note, not everyone should be forced to have YOUR ‘cultural preferences’.
And, on another note (or possibly the same), leftist doesn’t mean one is for “collective ownership” – that is soviet practice that was never considered in UK (just in case you are existentially affraid of ‘leftism’)
Tim Worstall said,
November 5, 2010 at 4:50 pm
“There’s nothing wrong with you showing off your status – as long as you understand that a Wikio ranking is only a sign of how many of your mates link to your posts.”
Yes, but our host is a Ph D student in philosophy….a geek, a nerd. Having a wikio ranking is thus a sign that he has mates: something which in the world of Ph D philosophy students is indeed sufficiently unusual to indicate status.
:-)
grrl said,
November 5, 2010 at 4:58 pm
Michael Fowke,
surely a ranking – any kind of ranking – will have to be measured by some kind of ‘facts’.
THus “mates link(ing) to your posts” means you are popular among your mates, you attract their attention, and surely not only your name is ‘Paul’. Or, possibly just because of that?
I am am not Paul’s mate, am writing from abroad, do not teach/research in politics (but someting else). and I find Paul style – both of writing and argumenting – quite on top of what ever ranking (on academic terms).
Michael Fowke said,
November 5, 2010 at 5:01 pm
Good point, Tim!
@Grrl – I wasn’t criticizing him, just pointing out that Wikio is a load of crap.
grrl said,
November 5, 2010 at 5:06 pm
@Michael Fowke
also the metric system is “a load of crap” :-), but you have to use some sort of ‘units’ to do ‘measurements’
Michael Fowke said,
November 5, 2010 at 5:08 pm
But Wikio really is a load of crap. It’s like nothing else.
grrl said,
November 5, 2010 at 5:14 pm
Michael Fowke
you know what? I don’t simply ‘believe’ what you say, like, you say “Wikio really is a load of crap” and then that has to ‘stand’ there as an universal truth. Can you argument in such a manner that I am convinced “Wikio really is a load of crap” (at the moment I am not convinced).
Mark said,
November 5, 2010 at 5:47 pm
So communities issues don’t have flats, TVs or cars? Great. Sign me up then. (though no housing would be a little harsh).
The problem isn’t what these issues spend our money on so much as the way in which spending increases are justified with respect to what other people have rather than what we need. Even if issues aren’t spending money on wide screen TV’s now, presumably at some point in the future, they will be?
“Or, do you possibly mean people buy TVs, cars, abd subsidise their second home. or buy dog food or toilet paper for their second and third home (that they need when they visit their constituency) as I have read that a lot of rightist politicians have done (too) not so far ago?”
I’m not sure that that’s relevant to anything I’ve said – I certainly didn’t vote for anyone who abused their expenses and I find it remarkable that so many people did.
“On another note, not everyone should be forced to have YOUR ‘cultural preferences’.”
But presumably people should be forced to have some cultural preferences?
Which ones exactly?
grrl said,
November 5, 2010 at 6:10 pm
@Mark
“But presumably people should be forced to have some cultural preferences?
Which ones exactly?”
I, for one, play piano (without anyone forcing me to do it).
And you?
Mark said,
November 5, 2010 at 6:41 pm
grrl,
Sorry, what are we talking about now? Things we like doing? I like reading books, talking with my friends and singing.
I’m not suggesting that anyone should be forced to do these things – the exact opposite. I’m saying that once we get beyond a certain base level our desires are so different it makes no sense to compare ourselves to each other, but that somewhere in between “food” and “hobbies” comes our emotional and moral life, where some similarities remain.
I presumed that you were suggesting that people shouldn’t be forced to share my moral code – given that there isn’t a society yet which doesn’t enforce some moral code or another I wondered what kind of culture should be enforced.
I’m not sure where your interest in the piano comes into this, though.
grrl said,
November 5, 2010 at 10:01 pm
@Mark
“I like reading books, talking with my friends and singing.
I’m not suggesting that anyone should be forced to do these things – the exact opposite.”
So, you are suggesting that people should be forced to do “the exact opposite” of “reading books, talking with (…) friends and singing” . Well, that’s not very nice of you, really!
I understand rightism – as you ‘preach’ it – means ‘forcing people’ to either ‘do something’, or ‘not do something’ – depending on which of the two ‘forcings’ requires less taxation of the… rightists. Very clever! .
Mark said,
November 6, 2010 at 12:12 am
Well, when you put it like that, I guess I *am* evil.
grrl said,
November 6, 2010 at 12:48 pm
@Mark
Bingo!
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