quote:Here's part of the problem, Irami: by law, a publicly-held company's only actual duty is to maximize profits for its shareholders.
Flat out not true. I just got to that part of my Corporations outline.
Even if it were, there's a serious business case to be made for keeping employees very happy, acting responsibly toward te community, and concentrating on long-term growth and profit.
quote:Even if it were, there's a serious business case to be made for keeping employees very happy, acting responsibly toward te community, and concentrating on long-term growth and profit.
The problem is that's it's derivative, there is a prior, more amoral goal.
I'm not advocating a moral clause to be introduced into business law, I would submit that while education is essential moral, business is only derivatively so.
Actually, the problem with NCLB is that it is trying to make education beholden to an amoral test.
Posts: 5600 | Registered: Jul 2001
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posted
Ok I'm finally calm and collected enough to rebut Rabbits point that really really ticked me off:
quote: This is despite the fact that I have never seen an accusation that there is any type of political screening in highering engineering professors. I have served on numerous hiring commitees and have never seen any evidence of any political bias in highering science or engineering professors or in recruiting graduate students for science and engineering programs.
Utter baloney. I would rather have a competent male professor any day over the several incompetent female PhD's that were unfortunately hired as proffessors where I went to college. Why were they hired? Cause they were female. If that isn't politics, what is? A female graduate engineering student is either a commodity for a department trying not to look bad, or a hinderance by those people who were unfortunately exposed to an incompetent female in the field. I think both competency and incompetency in engineering is equally distributed across the genders. However because women are in the severe minority, the incompetent ones are more glaringly obvious and do a severe disservice to us all.
Of course the joke in industry is that the incompetent engineers are the ones that end up in academia, and too often there is a ring of truth to that too.
posted
TomD: actually, I'd say most of the (relatively easily fixable) problems in the corporate world today are because people (particularly those in corporations) think that is true when it most definitely isn't.
There is a good trend in modern business-speak wrt "stakeholders" (all those with an interest in the business; employees, customers, stockholders, et cetera), but the exact results of it are still quite unclear.
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posted
One of my female faculty made an interesting point once. She said that you'd know there was an equal ratio of men to women in the field when women could be incompetent and no one would really care. She was right too. I have had tons of totally incompetent male faculty. But no one seemed to notice. Or if they did, it was just another dumb prof. But when I've had really incompetent female faculty everyone assumes she's hired b/c she's a woman. And while this might be true one wonders why the incompetent males are hired.
Posts: 872 | Registered: Mar 2002
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posted
A few people have said that philsoophy departments lean to the left. They are quiet about it because, well, a whole lot of them are above the fray. It's not by coincidence.
When everything is at stake, everything at stake, it doesn't look so good when it comes back. It's like putting everything that is important to you through a game of telephone.
It's the uni in the [/i]Uni[/i]versity, and the Ph in PhD. Being conservative, by definition, means setting a default metaphysical understanding equal to carrying traditions with you without examination. They are putting more at stake, by definition.
This doesn't mean that conservatives will not survive or thrive in graduate school, but they have to put more at stake in graduate school than in business with none of the material rewards.
Graduate school can't be amoral. It's impossible. It can be, but then, what are you doing? And it can't be unconsidered, because then it's not philosophy.
I'd get kicked out of the military and the office suite for asking the same questions, "What sense does this make?" It's kind of like Jon Stewart breaking the rules on Crossfire. It's what you are supposed to do. Anyway, I'm starting to ramble.
posted
Reasoned theoretical argument supports liberal positions in an immediate way far more often than conservative positions. The whole idea of liberalism is the idea of using reasoning to determine better theoretical paths to take. Since graduate programs teach you to base beliefs on reasoned theoretical argument, it should be no surprise that people in academia are often liberal.
Previous practical experience supports conservative positions in an immediate way much more than liberal positions. That's just what conservativism is all about - tradition, experience, and practicality. In the business world, it is your experience that gets you places, and thus it should be no surprise that people there think in a conservative fashion.
Posts: 2432 | Registered: Feb 2001
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posted
Except that those uses of the words "liberalism" and "conservative" do NOT reflect the way they're used in a political sense. And the political sense is what's at issue here.
posted
Politically they don't always follow that rule, but they still TEND to follow that rule. The Republican platform is based on experience/tradition much moreso than the Democratic platform, which is based much more on reasoned-based theory, even though both go both ways on many occassions.
Posts: 2432 | Registered: Feb 2001
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posted
Oh please. Talk about convenient and politically-loaded definitions.
You could say that the Republicans' platform is based on what works, and that the Democrats' platform is based on what would be nice if it worked.
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posted
Well, no - that would imply conservative ideas are always right and liberal ideas are always wrong, which is wrong.
It'd be more accurate to say conservative ideas tend to be what has worked and liberal ideas tend to be what we think might work better. That may be loaded, but which side it is loaded in favor of will change depending on what you think is more important.
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posted
I agree with conservatives a lot. However, conservative views ARE less theoretically-based - that's just the way it is.
In fact, if it were otherwise, we'd have good reason to reject conservative views fairly quickly, because academia really are the masters of reasoned argument and theory. If conservative ideas were based largely on reasoned theory, and academia soundly rejected those theories as poor reasoning, conservatives wouldn't really have much of a case. It is because conservativism can turn to experience and tradition that they have good reason to reject academia's opinion, because academia is weak in those areas.
quote:academia really are the masters as reasoned argument and theory.
Are you and Rabbit in this thread supposed to be examples of that?
It's easy to consider yourself the master of reason if you ignore everything that's wrong with your argument.
<from the other thread>
Maybe that's why there are so many liberals in academia? Because academia is about providing thoughts for other people to take action. Research for someone else to use, theory for other people to think about, teaching so that the people actually act have the background to do so wisely. There is definitely value in that, but it's a dependent position. Perhaps those who feel the need to act do not see academia as a way to do that.
posted
Those are philosophers and academics... of course they are more theoretically based. There are people of this sort for any belief system, even fundamentalist religions who hold tradition above everything.
I'm talking about political conservativism as a whole - what your average conservative believes or what the party platform is.
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posted
It's not theory - it's experience.... Just listen to what conservatives and liberals say. Conservatives will talk about losing family values, the government becomming too large, the proven need for a stronger military, the failure of gun control, the dissolution of character... all of these are based most prominently on experience-based and tradition-based arguments. Liberals talk about the need for the government to do more, becoming a more tolerant society, how it would be better to have fewer guns on the street, the need to help the downtrodden more, building a more civil foreign policy, loosening morality codes... all of these are based most prominently on theoretical ideas about what we can change to become better in a way we've never been before.
Or, just look at which institutions align with which sides. Religious groups, traditional and established industries, the military, even the boy scouts... all areas in which tradition and experienced are valued most highly, and all lean conservative. Then you have academia, the media, artistic institutions, "new" industries (dotcoms, for instance)... institutions that highly value ideas and reason. It is not just accidental that they align this way.
Now, if you are saying I'm flat out wrong.... where is your evidence?
posted
Maybe it's just that Vermont politics are crazy (and they are), but I just don't see that in local conservative and liberal representitives.
There are liberals who want to initiate a single-payer health care system in Vermont, but they turn around and say they want to block sustainable power like Biomass and wind.
Similarly, there are conservatives (like the Vermont-flavored Howard, before he got hit with gamma rays and became the raving Hulk you see today) who pushed for stronger environment impact studies before construction.
I'm not sure I buy your theory, because I see too many exceptions to it.
Posts: 903 | Registered: May 2003
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quote:Conservatives will talk about losing family values,
Based on the theory that family values are good.
quote:the government becomming too large,
Based on the theory that the government should perform limited functions.
quote:the proven need for a stronger military,
First, conservatives are NOT united on the need for a stronger military.
quote:the failure of gun control,
This is the clearest argument against what you're saying - the reason for opposing gun control is almost entirely theoretical - that personal autonomy supports personal ownership of arms.
The arguments about whether gun control works are responses to gun control advocates claims.
quote: The argument points to a certain truth about President Bush's free-market economic policies that Bush supporters say is unappreciated: In crafting a broad agenda for his second term, Bush is trying to adhere strictly to economic theory, perhaps even more so than during the Reagan administration's early battles over deregulation and taxes.
In a speech yesterday at the American Enterprise Institute, N. Gregory Mankiw, chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, spoke repeatedly of "standard economic theory," "textbook economic theory" and "scholarly literature in economics" to bolster his arguments.
Indeed, theories on economic efficiency, savings incentives and government debt finance -- arcane in the nation's capital if not in the academy -- will likely dominate debate over the president's push to revamp Social Security and the tax code in the coming years. It will pit Bush's philosophy that taxation and government spending distort economic decision-making and impede growth against arguments that government should steer some decisions for the broader good.
"I can say without equivocation: This president has been pretty heavily influenced by economic theory," said R. Glenn Hubbard, who was Bush's first Council of Economic Advisers chairman.
Critics say the White House's theoretical arguments may fly in the face of empirical evidence. They argue that health care, for instance, is fundamentally different from auto care: If insurance does not motivate to get routine checkups, the ultimate cost to the health care system of treating late-stage cancer is far higher then replacing a transmission. And while the business deduction for health insurance costs may violate some standard textbook tenets, said Austan Goolsbee, an economist at the University of Chicago, consider the alternatives.
quote:Religious groups, traditional and established industries, the military, even the boy scouts... all areas in which tradition and experienced are valued most highly, and all lean conservative. Then you have academia, the media, artistic institutions, "new" industries (dotcoms, for instance)... institutions that highly value ideas and reason.
Do you even believe this baloney? You're saying that academic institutions don't value tradition, and that industries don't value ideas?
Have you ever been to either a college or a factory? They LIVE off of those things. The patent office wasn't created for philosophers, and there's a reason the joke about the Great Bench at Yale went over so well on Gilmore Girls.
posted
Okay, you can technically call anything theoretical I suppose. But the idea behind each of those is still primarily to protect something we've learned to be true over our history. The arguments against gun control stem from the TRADITION of gun ownership in this society, and from arguments that in practice people need guns. The arguments for it are that we can have a happier, safer society if there are no guns - something built on many more hypotheticals, because we cannot point to any experiences or tradition that makes this true, and rely on our intuition that it should be that way. The others fall along the same lines... Conservatives typically argue that character is something that was once valued, and that losing it it causing us problems - a tradition-based argument. Family values are along the same lines. The argument for small government comes from our experience and tradition with a small government in the past, suggesting that it worked then and will become worse as we add more.
quote:I must say, Xap is particularly full of it in this thread.
Fugu, why must you say it? Is it intended to add anything to the discussion other than a unsupported attack on me?
If you have a reason why I'm wrong, then you can explain, but just calling a person wrong or "full of it" on Hatrack illustrates nothing.
quote:You're saying that academic institutions don't value tradition, and that industries don't value ideas?
No, I'm saying academic institutions value ideas more than tradition, and that traditional industries value experience more than ideas.
posted
Of course, part of the problem is that Mankiw wrote most of those textbooks. Seriously, tak a look at all the economic textbooks he's authored. Unsurprisingly positions he advocates agree with . . . other positions he advocates.
However, Bush's economics have most certainly not been textbook, in the sense of agreeing with the general economic community consensus. In textbook economics, tax cuts are not pushed in identical ways (if they're pushed at all) under both good times and bad. In textbook economics, there are no trade barriers. In textbook economics, an entity tries to regulate how much it spends by how much it takes in, instead of not vetoing a single pork bill (or any bill, for that matter). In textbook economics, we pay attention to the value of the dollar instead of watching it plummet and commenting on the pretty colors.
In particular, I'm mystified at where the "government spending distort[s] economic decision-making and impede[s] growth" part comes into Bush's philosophy, as I've certainly seen no evidence of it. I mean, the man has not vetoed one single bill, and there have been bills stuffed to their gills with extraneous government spending and no other substantial effect!
While a lot of economists didn't like Kerry's plans, huge numbers of economists hate Bush's policies too: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5818277 There's ten Nobel prize winning economists, for instance, whose basic position boils down to "Bush's economics suck so bad, that even were Kerry a mediocre to bad president by the standards of the last century or so, his economic policies would be better" (my summary, but I think you'll find it born out).
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posted
Oh, other people are doing plenty to dissect your idiocy, Tres, I was just letting them know my support for that.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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posted
Being based on theory doesn't require that it be based on accepted theory.
Or even good theory, although I don't feel like arguing that. My point is that theory is used as the basis for as many conservative policy preferences as liberal.
posted
(my comment on Bush's economics is a side note in this discussion; however, while whether Bush's tax reform plans are based on theory remains to be seen, his tax cuts were not: he was for them no matter what the situation, he provided no economic justification for them beyond what boiled down to "more tax cuts equals more money for people equals a better economy", which is hardly particularly steeped in theory, and evidenced by the fact that the budget office that made projections based for his budgets was consistently even further off (making things project far rosier than they actually turned out) than the congressional budget offices, which had changed their economic models when they stopped working, which the bush controlled estimates failed to do despite demonstrable problems -- actually, I suppose that could be considered relying on bad theory . . .)
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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posted
Fugu, you did it again now. You know name calling is bad form here. (Certain individuals who I disagree with on the matter would call it trolling. ) If that's all the "support" you have to offer, don't offer it.
...
I'm curious... why are all the complaints about my suggestions on conservativism? Lots of people think conservativism is just as theory-based as libralism, but nobody is trying to argue that liberalism is just as grounded in experience and practicality as conservativism?
posted
You know I liked tresopax, but over the last few weeks xaposert has destroyed a lot of the respect I ever had for tres. It's only been recently too. I wonder why.
AJ
I guess it is because you aren't actually *listening* to what people are saying anymore Tress. You have been telling them what they think even when they say they don't think that, repeatedly and often in the last month. Who are you to say what they think, or to judge? And your logic has been getting worse and worse and the errors have been more and more egregious. Why? You are better than this. Look at your own landmark.
posted
Tres, its only trolling if its not true, or only done to provoke a (positive, as in more posting, reaction). I'm smart enough to know you'll continue spouting idiocy no matter what I say, so I'm certainly not doing it just to promote a reaction. And its definitely true.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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posted
Awww, c'mon Dag, you've got some "liberal" positions . Actually, I tend to reject the idea that conservatism and liberalism are philosophically separate. I rather think that much of traditional liberalism and traditional conservatism are the results of ultimately similar philosophies upon wildly different premises. But that's just an idle thought.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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posted
I have to say personally, that while I have no idea whatsoever as to the facts. The radical marked decrease in xaps's posting quality and logic over the last month honestly makes me worried and concerned for the actual person behind the posts and wonder whether there is actually something stressful or troubling going on in his real life.
posted
Since I feel like, to further my idle thought:
The currently somewhat en vogue idea is that liberalism and conservatism are two sides of some sort of spectrum, or possibly separate ideals depending upon which sphere one talks about (social or economic), but in those spheres two sides.
This, while it applies well to many peoples' primitive positions, does not apply easily to millions and millions of people who have thoughtful, nuanced positions which take positions that draw on those commonly held by both positions without drawing exclusively from one or the other.
My suggestion deals better with those cases.
Instead, position can then come to be explained by what premises people choose to accept, and the criteria they use to evaluate those, which while they may commonly cause the results of those premises to line up somewhat with what we call liberalism and conservatism, are not along any sort of spectrum.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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That's why Mormons get along with them swimmingly .
Is that why I've always enjoyed Dagonee's posts? I knew there was a reason. And as I've learned here, there's no way it can be because of reasoned arguments.
Posts: 16551 | Registered: Feb 2003
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quote:Awww, c'mon Dag, you've got some "liberal" positions.
True. While I think calling me conservative is probably incomplete, if not wrong, a colorable case can be made.
There is no case that can be made that I'm a liberal. Even my justifications for my "liberal" positions are based on premises that would be roundly rejected by most liberals.
quote:Actually, I tend to reject the idea that conservatism and liberalism are philosophically separate. I rather think that much of traditional liberalism and traditional conservatism are the results of ultimately similar philosophies upon wildly different premises. But that's just an idle thought.
I think the labels are at best misleading. But as used in this thread, they have some meaning, and there are likely no better labels available.
posted
fugu, as far as position based on premise, I can definitely say the same thing holds true in Christian theology. Though I'm not as fluent in the more "liberal" christian denominations (and I'm now finding I like their theology much better) if you tell me the premises you are coming from I can probably tell you what denomination your theology concides with or has similarities to. (This is particularly fun for the conservative "independent" Christians who don't wish to be affiliated with a denomination.)
posted
I'm upset because you're invoking the "The differences between white people and black people" comedy bit but you're not being funny. It could be like "See, conservatives drive like this: 'I'm the King of the Road! My reconverted Abrahms tank SUV makes me the Lord of Creation! Y'all better bow down before me, you puny...oh crap, I need to stop for gas again, probably because of something Clinton did. I'm going to go look for something to shoot while the tank fills up.' but liberals drive like this: 'Tee-da-lee-da-lee. My car powered by the sun, wind, and my own smug self-righteousness makes me a better preson than you. Oh crap, it's starting to cloud up. Save me oh mighty meaningless series of coincidences.'" That's not all that funny really (you need to voices for it to work), but it's much funnier than what you've been doing and about as accurate.
If you sift through all the irresponsible partisan crap (like that execrable Standford study), there is actually some reliable information about trait differences between people who self-identify as liberal or conservative. One of the biggest things you might notice in these things is that they speak of tendencies towards certain traits, not of a definite characterology. In most cases, these tendencies aren't all that profound either. Of course, it's much easier and apparently useful to just come up with how you want to see the other side and present that as fact. That's why prejudice has stuck with us for so long.
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quote: When everything is at stake, everything at stake, it doesn't look so good when it comes back. It's like putting everything that is important to you through a game of telephone.
I agree completely. Especially in a degree that does this kind of thing: English, History, Philosophy.
Students who have violent aversions to the Bible, for instance, discover that in order to properly discuss literature they have to internalize those ideas at least for the time while they read the book.
Students who are very religious have the same problem with the same book. All of a sudden, things are showing up that they never realised existsed and their belief system is being challenged.
By nature, a University presents you with a multitude of ideas at once and once you've entered nothing is going to be quite the same; usually you end up more moderate, but not necessarily. I think that because University professors have gone through this process for not only four or six years but seven or eight or more they tend to be more moderate.
To the conservative eye, this looks like liberalism. To the liberal, it looks like the beliefs of a moderate.
posted
Oh, I don't dispute they have use in the general conversation, I'm just meandering off on a side track, in the hope that something interesting will come of this thread instead of just people (justifiably) smacking down Tres.
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