US Election 2020

[Gnarls]

They're all just saying "no current evidence", the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, try to indulge in a little less confirmation bias from time to time ...

just can't help himself.

 

[greg0205]

You are cute. I can tell you don't live in South Africa.

Ferndale actually... Moved here from North Riding because traffic there is just ridiculous.

 

[TysonRoux]

They're all just saying "no current evidence", the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, try to indulge in a little less confirmation bias from time to time ...

Good point.

Mike Pompeo: 'enormous evidence' coronavirus came from Chinese lab

Trump aide does not provide any evidence and seems confused over whether claim is virus was manmade

www.theguardian.com

Trump contradicts US intel community by claiming he's seen evidence coronavirus originated in Chinese lab

President Donald Trump contradicted a rare on-the-record statement from his own intelligence community by claiming Thursday that he has seen evidence that gives him a "high degree of confidence" the novel coronavirus originated in a laboratory in Wuhan, China, but declined to provide details to...

www.cnn.com

Trump claims to have evidence coronavirus started in Chinese lab but offers no details

President touts unsubstantiated theory shortly after director of national intelligence rejects it

www.theguardian.com

 

[NarrowBandFtw]

Good point.

Mike Pompeo: 'enormous evidence' coronavirus came from Chinese lab

Trump aide does not provide any evidence and seems confused over whether claim is virus was manmade

www.theguardian.com

Trump contradicts US intel community by claiming he's seen evidence coronavirus originated in Chinese lab

President Donald Trump contradicted a rare on-the-record statement from his own intelligence community by claiming Thursday that he has seen evidence that gives him a "high degree of confidence" the novel coronavirus originated in a laboratory in Wuhan, China, but declined to provide details to...

www.cnn.com

Trump claims to have evidence coronavirus started in Chinese lab but offers no details

President touts unsubstantiated theory shortly after director of national intelligence rejects it

www.theguardian.com

so one side says there's evidence without sharing that evidence, the other side says there is no current evidence

neither side has proven that the outbreak has / has not originated from a lab, all they've proven is they're all political animals

 

[konfab]

Ferndale actually... Moved here from North Riding because traffic there is just ridiculous.

Well pardon me. You must love Eskom and their wonderful ability to deliver electricity at a low price with high reliability. Ditto for Sanral and their oh-so-wonderful e-tolls that no-one wanted. And we certainly can't forget about the excellent public healthcare system, that you are most certainly a fan of and thus do not have any need for the likes of private health insurance. And I am sure you must have felt privileged to have been forced to ration water.

 

[TysonRoux]

so one side says there's evidence without sharing that evidence, the other side says there is no current evidence

neither side has proven that the outbreak has / has not originated from a lab, all they've proven is they're all political animals

Only those, like the Orange Dotard, with ulterior motives making such claims without evidence that it came from a lab - doubt that you'd let it rest if a false claim of rape was made against you.

 

[greg0205]

Well pardon me. You must love Eskom and their wonderful ability to deliver electricity at a low price with high reliability. Ditto for Sanral and their oh-so-wonderful e-tolls that no-one wanted. And we certainly can't forget about the excellent public healthcare system, that you are most certainly a fan of and thus do not have any need for the likes of private health insurance. And I am sure you must have felt privileged to have been forced to ration water.

And this folks, is honest to goodness red herring.

 

[The_Right_Honourable_Brit]

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1257650761489620993

The very popular Democratic governor of ruby red Montana is leading in the Senate race.

 

[NarrowBandFtw]

Only those, like the Orange Dotard, with ulterior motives making such claims without evidence that it came from a lab - doubt that you'd let it rest if a false claim of rape was made against you.

You don't think the intelligence community, the WHO, China and even Fauci has any reason whatsoever to disagree with Trump publicly just for the sake of giving him shyte? Think again, everyone has ulterior motives.

To punish a false accusation you still need to prove it is a false accusation of course ...

 

[greg0205]

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1257650761489620993

The very popular Democratic governor of ruby red Montana is leading in the Senate race.

Three seats if Joe wins, four if he doesn't... That's the math.

 

[TysonRoux]

You don't think the intelligence community, the WHO, China and even Fauci has any reason whatsoever to disagree with Trump publicly just for the sake of giving him shyte? Think again, everyone has ulterior motives.

To punish a false accusation you still need to prove it is a false accusation of course ...

Of course, every organisation, except Faux News, overnight became scumbags.

15 times Trump praised China as coronavirus was spreading across the globe

The president has lambasted the WHO for accepting Beijing’s assurances about the outbreak, but he repeated them, as well.

www.politico.com

W.H.O., Now Trump’s Scapegoat, Warned About Coronavirus Early and Often (Published 2020)

The World Health Organization, always cautious, acted more forcefully and faster than many national governments. But President Trump has decided to cut off U.S. funding to the organization.

www.nytimes.com

 

[cerebus]

so one side says there's evidence without sharing that evidence, the other side says there is no current evidence

neither side has proven that the outbreak has / has not originated from a lab, all they've proven is they're all political animals

The side making the claim has to provide the evidence. Nobody has to disprove claims without evidence. That’s basic

 

[NarrowBandFtw]

Of course, every organisation, except Faux News, overnight became scumbags

I believe you ought to stop and smell the roses from time to time, you seem very deeply entrenched in your TDS, I wish you a speedy recovery.

Nobody said Fox doesn't also have an ulterior motive, and nobody said people with ulterior motives are necessarily scumbags. It would however be naive to think that someone with an ulterior motive can be neutral.

 

[NarrowBandFtw]

The side making the claim has to provide the evidence. Nobody has to disprove claims without evidence. That’s basic

Tell that to all the outlets claiming Fauci / 5 eyes / WHO has disproven it. I'm merely commenting on their claims, if you can find any post where I imply that Trump has somehow proven his claims feel free to quote it.

The lab possibility needs to be thoroughly investigated however, there are too many coincidences to just dismiss it without a thorough and impartial investigation.

 

[konfab]

And this folks, is honest to goodness red herring.

No it isn't. You are the one who claimed that I am benefiting from these wonderful institutions. So go ahead. Tell me how my life is being made better by being forced to subsidise corrupt institutions like Eskom, Sanral, the public healthcare system and so on.

These institutions are so good and wonderful that it should be illegal for the private sector to compete with them don't you think. And people should be forced to use their monopolies. After all, as you have been sagely telling me, it is for the common good.

 

[greg0205]

No it isn't. You are the one who claimed that I am benefiting from these wonderful institutions. So go ahead. Tell me how my life is being made better by being forced to subsidise corrupt institutions like Eskom, Sanral, the public healthcare system and so on.

These institutions are so good and wonderful that it should be illegal for the private sector to compete with them don't you think. And people should be forced to use their monopolies. After all, as you have been sagely telling me, it is for the common good.

Point, Greg: The social compact between a citizenry and its leadership includes individuals agreeing to contribute a portion of their income to benefit the whole. Some contribute more and some less, depending on their means. Leadership commit to using those contributions for providing roads, water, sanitation, electricity, security and other services that might be too expensive, or not profitable enough for the private sector to provide.

The citizenry are all entitled to use those services and, in the main, the whole benefit.

Counterpoint, konfab: Eskom bad.

You're counterpoint, deliberately coached in a veneer of Eskom and Sanral, creates a superficial appearance of addressing my point... But you've done nothing of the kind.

Perhaps google 'red herring' before we carry on with this conversation.

 

[konfab]

Point, Greg: The social compact between a citizenry and its leadership includes individuals agreeing to contribute a portion of their income to benefit the whole. Some contribute more and some less, depending on their means. Leadership commit to using those contributions for providing roads, water, sanitation, electricity, security and other services that might be too expensive, or not profitable enough for the private sector to provide.

The citizenry are all entitled to use those services and, in the main, the whole benefit.

Counterpoint, konfab: Eskom bad.

You're counterpoint, deliberately coached in a veneer of Eskom and Sanral, creates a superficial appearance of addressing my point... But you've done nothing of the kind.

Perhaps google 'red herring' before we carry on with this conversation.

LOL
Firstly, you have bastardised the social contract. It actually has nothing to do with petty things like roads and such.
Secondly, none of the SOEs in South Africa operate even remotely close to being "too expensive" or "not profitable enough". And you are so completely wrong on this because if they were "too expensive, or not profitable enough" then why does the state make it illegal to for private companies to compete with them? You are committing the central planning fallacy where you think you can determine the value of a good or service by committee. If you bother to understand the concept of marginal utility, you would know why they will always get it wrong.

This insight further addresses wage issues that would otherwise mystify people. Why does a basketball star, who would seem to provide nothing necessary to human life, make so much more money than a reading teacher, who is teaching a crucial skill? Again, it is not the total utility of the task that matters for economics, but the utility of the incremental choice of the acting person.

Why, on holidays, are restaurants open but banks closed, when surely banking provides a more unique service to society and anyone can cook stuff at home anytime? The answer is that restaurants make higher profits on the margin on holidays, when people want to go out to eat, whereas the banks have discovered that their profit margins are best served by opening when people tend to do their banking, which is not on holidays.

Marginalism helps illuminate many other economic concepts, such as opportunity cost (the real cost of anything is the thing you give up to get it), subjective value (economic value resides in the human mind, not the physical good), diminishing marginal utility (the more of each additional unit you buy, the less you are willing to pay for it), and the relationship of cost and price (the cost of a good never dictates its market prices; indeed, the reverse is true).

It provides insight into nearly every aspect of human behavior, provided we have maximum choice to express our preferences.

On the other hand, political democracy poses a serious problem for the reality of marginalism. When people vote, they seem to be making an absolute choice for someone to be a ruler. This is where the idea of a “mandate” comes from.

In reality, people are most often choosing on the margin: avoiding a worst fate, holding their noses to guess at the least bad, doing what they feel they must do under the circumstances, or maybe expressing a temper tantrum over one which issue among a million – same as the rest of life. Politics chews up all these complications and spits them out as your new overlord, as if marginalism doesn’t matter.

Markets, in contrast, are forever accommodating choices on the margin – a daily plebiscite in which every voter/consumer wins, as Ludwig von Mises says.

Small and great evils in the world have come from absolutism, the belief that there is only one way forward, and that if that way is not what you choose, that makes you the evil enemy. Governments think this way. They don’t think on the margin. A world of billions of people acting and thinking based on marginal utility is too complicated a notion for them. So they decide to just ignore it all and divide the world between us and them.

https://www.aier.org/article/cuckoo-for-marginalism/

Thirdly, the only functional services in South Africa are those that people agree to use. The ones that we are forced to use are a pile of garbage. Why don't you scratch you head and think to yourself why that is the case. Heck, your usage of the phrase " individuals agreeing to contribute a portion of their income to benefit the whole", is not only wrong because I didn't agree to the government lifting 35% of my salary every month for my own good as you put it, but it is also wrong because you can objectively prove that the money isn't benefiting the whole. Do you think SAA benefits the whole? Or do you think Eskom running at a massive cost to everyone benefits the whole?

Since you have defined the rights of individuals by the needs of others, there is just about no limits to the depravity that you can descend to.

But you further dabble in the wondrous realms of utilitarianism with this argument. For example, if everyone was forced to "donate" a pint of blood every month, there wouldn't be a shortage of blood, and society would be better "as a whole". But we can go even further. A person with healthy organs has much more means than a person with diseased organs, why not pick off a couple of healthy people every month to be used as organ "donations". Since you have already moralised theft on the part of the state, why not go a little bit further and add murder to the list. One organ donor can save the lives of 8 people, and dramatically enhance the lives of 50 people. That is for a huge benefit at the small cost of one lousy life.

 

[greg0205]

LOL
Firstly, you have bastardised the social contract. It actually has nothing to do with petty things like roads and such.
Secondly, none of the SOEs in South Africa operate even remotely close to being "too expensive" or "not profitable enough". And you are so completely wrong on this because if they were "too expensive, or not profitable enough" then why does the state make it illegal to for private companies to compete with them? You are committing the central planning fallacy where you think you can determine the value of a good or service by committee. If you bother to understand the concept of marginal utility, you would know why they will always get it wrong.

https://www.aier.org/article/cuckoo-for-marginalism/

Red herring... followed by a strawman.

Pay attention folks, konfab's logical fallacies 101 class in in session. There will be a quiz later.

 

[konfab]

Red herring... followed by a strawman.

Pay attention folks, konfab's logical fallacies 101 class in in session. There will be a quiz later.

You haven't answered the question. If the things that you think the state should perform are "too expensive" or "not profitable enough" for the private sector, why does the government make it illegal to compete with them?

 

[The_Right_Honourable_Brit]

Three seats if Joe wins, four if he doesn't... That's the math.

Well they are going to lose Alabama. It's a lock for the Republicans. So Democrats will need to find another seat somewhere else.