A note on economics

[From Bruce Gregory (2010.01.29.1213 UT)]

[From Rick Marken (2010.01.28.1930)]

Bruce Gregory (2010.01.28.2134 UT)–

Republicans tend to be empathy-challenged so this story suits them just fine.

I think that’s terribly unfair. Republicans clearly show a strong
sense of empathy for the plight of the richest 1% of the population. I
mean they are really fighting for these people! What heroes!

I don’t think this is empathy. More like enlightened self interest.

Bruce

[From Rick Marken (2010.01.29.0850)]

Bruce Gregory (2010.01.29.1213 UT)--

Rick Marken (2010.01.28.1930)]

Bruce Gregory (2010.01.28.2134 UT)--

Republicans tend to be empathy-challenged so this story suits them just
fine.

I think that's terribly unfair. Republicans clearly show a strong
sense of empathy for the plight of the richest 1% of the population. I
mean they are really fighting for these people! What heroes!

I don't think this is empathy. More like enlightened self interest.

Sure, enlightened self interested when they just do it for themselves.
But I'm talking about the Republicans in public office, who are doing
it both for themselves _and_ for their wealthy constituents who are
struggling along on a mere $30,000,000/year;-)

Best

Rick

···

--
Richard S. Marken PhD
rsmarken@gmail.com
www.mindreadings.com

[Martin Taylor 2009.01.29.10.54]

[From Bruce Gregory (2010.01.29.1213 UT)]

[From Rick Marken (2010.01.28.1930)]

Bruce Gregory (2010.01.28.2134 UT)–

Republicans tend to be empathy-challenged
so this story suits them just fine.

I think that’s terribly unfair. Republicans clearly show a strong

sense of empathy for the plight of the richest 1% of the population. I

mean they are really fighting for these people! What heroes!

I don’t think this is empathy. More like enlightened self
interest.

“Self-interest” is a PCT tautology, isn’t it? Doesn’t it mean the
reduction of error in some controlled variable(s)? How else could
anyone act? For example, Rick [Rick Marken 2010.01.29.08.50] said in
another response to this message of Bruce’s: “Sure, enlightened self
interested when they just do it for themselves. But I’m talking about
the Republicans in public office, who are doing it both for themselves for their wealthy constituents who
are struggling along on a mere $30,000,000/year
;-)”

If you believe in the essential correctness of PCT, to act on behalf of
their wealthy constituents must be to reduce error in some perceptual
variable they control. To me it seems unlikely that they would be
controlling for perceiving themselves to be totally altruistic, which
is one possible controlled perception that might lead to the observed
actions. Another that might lead to the same kinds of action is a
belief in “trickle down” economics, together with a controlled
perception that the country’s economy should prosper on behalf of all
citizens. Yet another possibility is that acting on behalf of wealthy
constituents is percepived as a way to get the money needed for
re-election, and to be re-elected is a reference value for a controlled
perception of their job situation. There are probably lots more
possibilities, but they all come down to acting in their own
self-interest.

But in PCT terms, what does “enlightened” mean?

Here’s my stab at what “enlightened” might mean. And I mean a “stab”
because tomorrow I might say the opposite.

You, Bruce, are acting as an analyst who can see the workings of an
entire feedback loop. You perceive what perceptions “the Republicans”
are controlling (as though the label applied to all individuals
self-labelled as “Republican”), you perceive the reference values for
those controlled perceptions, and you understand the effects of the
environmental feedback pathways will have on those perceptions, given
the outputs you observe from “the Republicans”. It’s not a bad position
to be in, the analyst’s position. But the analyst has an obligation to
analyze, it seems to me, to say “If perception X is controlled to a
reference value Xr and is perceived by the person analyzed as having
current value Xp, and the person acts in a way Xa, the effect will
be/not be to reduce the deviation Xr-Xp over such and such a time-scale
…”

Now if as an analyst you think that Xr-Xp will be reduced by the
observed actions, you might call the behaviour “enlightened” because
you (not the actor) think the actor’s actions actually will achieve the
results the actor desires. If you think that the actions will not
influence the error, or worse, will create positive feedback that
increases the error, you might call the behaviour “benighted”. But
that’s a consequence of your analysis, and it depends on the accuracy
of your assessment of what perceptions “the Republicans” are
controlling at what reference values, and what effects particular
actions are likely to have on those perceptions. The actors themselves
are presumably acting in ways that they find minimizes the inherent
conflicts involved in controlling multiple non-orthogonal perceptions.
Probably you should not take “they find” to refer to conscious
awareness, so much as a result of long-ago reorganization, perhaps in
childhood. Quite possibly the important reorganizations have to do with
ethical, moral, and religious perceptions, and those reorganizations
probably are covered by the Jesuit’s prayer to have control of the
child until the age of 6.

In this context, “enlightened” seems to be a judgment taken from an
analyst’s position, in which the analyst assumes superior knowledge not
available to the actor. But it is a judgment, and not necessarily one
that would be accepted by the person so adjudged, at least if the
judgment is “benighted” as opposed to “enlightened”.

Now, for what it’s worth, politically I would take the same “superior
knowledge” position, a position to which we are all equally entitled
:-), But I would call “the Republican” position “benighted” because if
they are controlling for what I imagine they do to the references I
imagine they have, I think the environmental feedback functions work
opposite to the way they believe them to work. And, of course, I know
best :slight_smile:

Martin

PS. Without much supporting evidence, I would like to believe most of
them (“the Republicans” and “the Democrats”) have similar controlled
perceptions along the lines of wanting a prosperous country in which
most people could become happy if they worked at it appropriately. But
I believe that adherents of the two parties have widely different views
about how the environment works, and therefore about the means to reach
the state they mostly agree to be what they want to achieve. “Trickle
down” economics, for example. And again for what it’s worth, I believe
that from the standpoint of much of the industrialized world, there
isn’t a lot of difference between Republicans and Democrats, the core
views of both parties being very conservative as compared to the
majority views of the populations of other countries, especially those
with high living standards and high scores on the UN Quality of Life
index.

···

and__

[From Bruce Gregory (2010.01.30.1218 UT)]

[Martin Taylor 2009.01.29.10.54]

PS. Without much supporting evidence, I would like to believe most of
them (“the Republicans” and “the Democrats”) have similar controlled
perceptions along the lines of wanting a prosperous country in which
most people could become happy if they worked at it appropriately. But
I believe that adherents of the two parties have widely different views
about how the environment works, and therefore about the means to reach
the state they mostly agree to be what they want to achieve. “Trickle
down” economics, for example. And again for what it’s worth, I believe
that from the standpoint of much of the industrialized world, there
isn’t a lot of difference between Republicans and Democrats, the core
views of both parties being very conservative as compared to the
majority views of the populations of other countries, especially those
with high living standards and high scores on the UN Quality of Life
index.

Taking my cues from Jesus (by their fruits ye shall know them) and Powers (look for the controlled variable) I fear I am less generous than you are. Whatever the Republicans in Congress are pleased to believe, and I am certain that many believe that they want to live in a prosperous country in which most people could become happy if they worked at it appropriately, their actions tell a different story. Their actions reveal that their primary goal is to see that Obama fails no matter what the implications for the country. Or at least, if I make this uncharitable assumption I find that I can invariably predict how they will vote on any issue. I, too am amused by descriptions of the “left” or “extreme left,” in a country where the furthest left any politician falls on the spectrum would be considered conservative in any developed country. Tax cuts and American football have taken the place of bread and circuses.

Bruce

[From Rick Marken (2010.01.30.1010)]

Martin Taylor (2009.01.29.10.54) --

"Self-interest" is a PCT tautology, isn't it?

Not really. Unless "self interest" means "control of perception". I
think it means control of a perception of "self", whatever that is.

Doesn't it mean the reduction of error in some controlled variable(s)?

Not necessarily. I think "self-interest" could refer to people who are
controlling for a perceptual variable called "self". I think of people
who are self-interested as being people who control with particularly
high gain for a particular imagine of themselves, as powerful, rich or
whatever.

How else could anyone act?

Selflessly.

If you believe in the essential correctness of PCT, to act on behalf of
their wealthy constituents must be to reduce error in some perceptual
variable they control.

Of course.

To me it seems unlikely that they would be controlling for perceiving
themselves to be totally altruistic, which is one possible controlled
perception that might lead to the observed actions.

Then they would not be controlling for "self-interest" as I
understand the term. If they are controlling for a perception of other
people being comfortable, then they are controlling for a perception
of others, not of themselves.

Another that might lead to the same kinds of action is a belief in "trickle
down" economics, together with a controlled perception that the country's
economy should prosper on behalf of all citizens.

Sure. But, again, this would not be "self interest" as I understand
it. It's an interest in controlling for a particular economic policy
(trickle down) and result (general prosperity).

Of course, this is all pertinent to nothing. If you actually want to
see some really interesting data regarding Republican goals I highly
recommend watching the entire clip of Obama's Q&A with the Republican
caucus that occurred yesterday.

Best

Rick

···

--
Richard S. Marken PhD
rsmarken@gmail.com
www.mindreadings.com

[Martin Lewitt 2009.01.31.0357 Mountain]

[Martin Taylor 2009.01.29.10.54]

PS. Without much supporting evidence, I would like to believe most of them ("the Republicans" and "the Democrats") have similar controlled perceptions along the lines of wanting a prosperous country in which most people could become happy if they worked at it appropriately. But I believe that adherents of the two parties have widely different views about how the environment works, and therefore about the means to reach the state they mostly agree to be what they want to achieve. "Trickle down" economics, for example. And again for what it's worth, I believe that from the standpoint of much of the industrialized world, there isn't a lot of difference between Republicans and Democrats, the core views of both parties being very conservative as compared to the majority views of the populations of other countries, especially those with high living standards and high scores on the UN Quality of Life index.

I don't think it is different views about how the environment works, but rather, even if it is agreed what "works", which way of working is moral or to be preferred. Some forms of social organization may be preferred even if they don't work as well. Human nature appears very susceptible to control by terror, and terror governments have worked well by several measures, including low crime rates, personal security, equality of wealth distribution and stability over long periods of time. Ethnic hostilities were well controlled under Tito in Yugoslavia, Saddam in Iraq, the Taliban in Afghanistan and British colonial rule in India. Crime rates are low and equal distribution of poverty are well maintained in Cuba and the PRK. A huge middle class is rising out of poverty under the PRC terror regime. Slavery supported the Greek and Roman civilizations for hundreds of years. Both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union built industrial bases in record time with low crime rates and high social conformity. The problem for the classical liberals of the American right (conservatives), is not that these other means of organizations don't work, but that they do and might represent stable local optima that are difficult to escape if we should drift into them. These conservatives would probably argue that the market based approach of voluntary relationships would result in a global optimum, but they would argue that constitutionally limited government should be preferred for moral and practical reasons even if it isn't a global optimum. Human nature is not to be trusted with poorly constrained power over others. Humans are too prone to being corrupted by power, and too prone to divisive collective identities, mob behavior and demonizing the other. Classical liberals don't even argue that constitutionally limited government with checks and balances is inherently stable. They emphasized how easily it could slip away without a culture of personal and civil morality to continually maintain it.

When it comes to empathy, it is not the classical liberals that engage in divisive identity politics. Trickle down economics arguably has worked well, with economic liberalization lifting huge middle classes numbering in the hundreds of millions out of poverty in China and India. Those wedded to divisive national identities argue that the wrong people are benefiting from trickle down economics, the wealth of the American middle class has been stagnant for decades. For classical liberals there are no "wrong people", but only wrong means. Classical liberals don't favor the wealthy, they just don't have the hubris to presume that they or the government would be better stewards of the wealth than those who created it, or that they could better incentive wealth creation than by allowing those that create it to possess it, manage it and determine its ultimate distribution.

regards,
    Martin L

[From Bruce Gregory (2010.01.31.1325 UT)]

[Martin Lewitt 2009.01.31.0357 Mountain]

When it comes to empathy, it is not the classical liberals that engage in divisive identity politics. Trickle down economics arguably has worked well, with economic liberalization lifting huge middle classes numbering in the hundreds of millions out of poverty in China and India. Those wedded to divisive national identities argue that the wrong people are benefiting from trickle down economics, the wealth of the American middle class has been stagnant for decades. For classical liberals there are no “wrong people”, but only wrong means. Classical liberals don’t favor the wealthy, they just don’t have the hubris to presume that they or the government would be better stewards of the wealth than those who created it, or that they could better incentive wealth creation than by allowing those that create it to possess it, manage it and determine its ultimate distribution.

What sort of evidence might lead a Classical Liberal to conclude that he or she was mistaken?

Bruce

Excellent points, and your exposition finally helped me understand
something. The American conservative view, it seems to me, puts a lot
more emphasis on the moral interpretation of behavior that does the
liberal: on principles in general. That’s why conservatives were so
outraged by bleeding hearts who extended understanding to transgressors
and tried to help them recover from whatever bad things had supposedly
happened to them. Conservatives believe that to forgive transgressions
simply sets a bad example for others; people ought to realize that
actions have consequences, and it is not in society’s interest to rescue
them from those consequences. The suffering people have brought on
themselves is outweighed by the good it does others to see that
suffering, because that example will prevent many more people from making
the same mistake. If people do not experience bad consequences (for
others or themselves) from doing things that are bad, then we must create
those bad consequences for them: they must be caught and punished. And
others must see that punishment, and witness the pain and humiliation;
otherwise the lesson will be lost.
This idea of using suffering to send messages extends even to the
innocent. It is wrong to end human life before birth, so a 13-year-old
girl and her partner who indulge in sexual pleasures, without considering
the risk of pregancy, or even with it, should be made to suffer the
consequences of bearing and raising an unwanted child, and also the child
must suffer, to punish the mother and father if they love it. See what
misery is caused by teen-age sex? Be warned, all you other 13-year-olds.
You have to learn to defer short-term pleasure to obtain a greater, later
good. Abortion simply encourages more teen-aged sex by removing the
consequences. A teen-age girl who defies morality by having sex
should get pregnant and give birth and suffer all that follows,
and for that reason contraceptives should not be freely available. If she
and her partner can have sex without all those bad consequences, how will
teenagers ever learn? Let the suffering ones be an example to all the
rest.

Economic theory, too, shows this conservative attitude. “Market
forces” should be allowed to work, which means that if a company
mismanages itself or fails to be competitive enough, it should simply be
allowed to fail and be replaced by a more effective company. It’s too bad
that the employees of the failed company lose their jobs, but if they’re
simply supported in comfort by welfare they will not try to find other
jobs or improve themselves by education or training. They must be allowed
to suffer also as an example to welfare queens and all those others who
would abuse the system if given the chance, and to show the managers of
the company what they have done by their mismanagement. If some people
competing for a commodity like food do not earn enough money to buy
enough food for their family, they should get a better job or work
harder, and if they don’t, they should be given only the barest minimum
of aid to help them survive in squalid circumstances. Letting them live
in what would, in a third-world country, be considered luxury, would
remove the incentive to find other employment at whatever wage the
employer decides to offer.

What we see here is a set of practical, business-like principles which
use a clear logic to organize rules and procedures that support and obey
the principles in a consistent, even-handed way: the rule of law under
suitable principles of morality and legality. To carry out these
principles one must be consistent, not change with every passing whim,
even if the immediate results may seem cruel (though there is a certain
grim pleasure to be obtained by seeing the evil suffer the consequences
of their behavior). One must tolerate present unpleasantness to achieve a
greater good in the future. Logically, it follows that we must discourage
any attempt to interfere with the natural consequences of behavior even
when we see a way to do it. Behavior, as one famous psychologist put it,
is controlled by perception of its consequences.

I think that this picture explains a great deal about conservatism. I’ve
heard all these principles explained by conservatives, as well as the way
they’re used to justify what seem like inequities or unnecessary
hardships created as a result of adhering to them. Within the scope of
the subjects discussed, it is a logical and self-consistent organization
of perception and control. To understand how people could support this
way of thinking and acting, we must understand how self-contained and
internally consistent it is, how inevitable its logic seems.

And we must see how clear the roles of the people in it are. Teenagers,
adults, leaders, followers, employees, workers, good people, bad people,
self-indulgent people, prudent people, irrational people, rational
people. Human beings and other organized entities appear in this system
of thought only as categories, not as unique individuals.

The principles in this system are absolute. The idea of “moral
relativism” is abhorrent; a principle that can be changed freely to
fit the circumstances is no principle at all, no morality at all. Morals
are given by God; all people of faith know right from wrong; indeed
“The traditional test of insanity in criminal cases is whether the
accused knew ‘the difference between right and wrong,’ following the
‘M’Naughten Rule’ from 19th Century England.”

[

](Insanity legal definition of insanity)There, I think, we have a clue as to what is going on here. In HPCT,
reference conditions are set by higher-order systems, or at the top
level, by reorganization or heredity. We can easily see that a reference
signal that specifies going shopping for groceries has to be turned on
and off by higher systems – otherwise we would never go shopping or
would be unable to stop going shopping and would never be able to do
anything else. A fixed reference level implies that there is no
higher-level control system. “Shopping relativism” implies that
the reference signal for going shopping is not a constant, is not set
once and for all, but is adjusted to fit in with higher-level
considerations.

Moral relativism implies that there is a higher system that adjusts the
reference signals at the principle level according to circumstances under
control, and of course perceived, by the higher level. In a family, for
example, we do not always tell the truth, even though in most
circumstances we like to maintain this moral reference-principle. We do
not tell a child showing us a crayon drawing “I don’t know what that
scribble is supposed to be – it’s just a mess.” So morals are,
under suitable circumstances, adustable. We are not always, rigidly,
honest. We do not always, rigidly, obey the ten commandments, like the
one that says thou shalt not kill, or covet.

People who think of morality or other principles as fixed and immutable,
or as given by God and therefore not to be changed, might not have
developed a system concept level at all. Or it’s possible that while they
do have a system concept level, they are unaware of it and so it
reorganizes only slowly if at all (under the MOL principle that
reorganization follows awareness). I say those things hesitantly not only
because of the obvious riskiness as an opinion to make public, but
because it seems unlikely to me that anyone utterly lacks that level or
is never aware from that position. But there is something different in
the conservative system concept in comparison with mine, and the liberal
concept in general, and I think we need to understand just what that
difference is.

It’s also possible that the system concept level is a relative latecomer
in the human organization. It may not be in very good shape yet; it may
still be engaged in resolving conflicts at the principle level, or even
within itself. Perhaps even conservatives are torn, sometimes, between
conflicting principles, those dictated by their understanding of the
marketplace, and those they devoutly accept while in church.

And it’s also possible that a conservative PCTer, looking at liberals
from the outside as I look at conservatives, might come to similar
conclusions about liberals. That, too, would be useful, because we’re all
trying to understand how the human system is organized, and we’re all,
perhaps, trying to take the first steps toward building Level
Twelve.

Best,

Bill P.

···

At 04:54 AM 1/31/2010 -0700, you wrote:

[Martin Lewitt 2009.01.31.0357
Mountain]

[Martin Taylor
2009.01.29.10.54]

[Martin Taylor] PS. Without much supporting evidence, I would like to
believe most of them (“the Republicans” and “the
Democrats”) have similar controlled perceptions along the lines of
wanting a prosperous country in which most people could become happy if
they worked at it appropriately.

ML: I don’t think it is
different views about how the environment works, but rather, even if it
is agreed what “works”, which way of working is moral or to be
preferred. Some forms of social organization may be preferred even
if they don’t work as well. Human nature appears very susceptible
to control by terror, and terror governments have worked well by several
measures, including low crime rates, personal security, equality of
wealth distribution and stability over long periods of time. Ethnic
hostilities were well controlled under Tito in Yugoslavia, Saddam in
Iraq, the Taliban in Afghanistan and British colonial rule in
India.

[Martin Lewitt 2009.01.31.0357 Mountain]

[From Bruce Gregory (2010.01.31.1125 Mountain)]

[Martin Lewitt 2009.01.31.0357 Mountain]

When it comes to empathy, it is not the classical liberals that engage in divisive identity politics. Trickle down economics arguably has worked well, with economic liberalization lifting huge middle classes numbering in the hundreds of millions out of poverty in China and India. Those wedded to divisive national identities argue that the wrong people are benefiting from trickle down economics, the wealth of the American middle class has been stagnant for decades. For classical liberals there are no "wrong people", but only wrong means. Classical liberals don't favor the wealthy, they just don't have the hubris to presume that they or the government would be better stewards of the wealth than those who created it, or that they could better incentive wealth creation than by allowing those that create it to possess it, manage it and determine its ultimate distribution.

What sort of evidence might lead a Classical Liberal to conclude that he or she was mistaken?

Bruce

I think there would have to be evidence that human nature is more mutable than they thought. After so many centuries of history, it might take a century or two at least of humans not being corrupted by power, of legislation not being peppered with earmarks, of humans being treated as individuals rather than based upon some assigned collective identity, of central planning that never committed extensive resources based upon populist feeling or fervently held beliefs rather than evidence based reasoning, and evidence that humans all wanted exactly the same things without being coerced.

-- Martin L

[From Bruce Gregory (2010.01.31.1915 UT)]

···

On Jan 31, 2010, at 1:38 PM, Martin Lewitt wrote:

I think there would have to be evidence that human nature is more mutable than they thought. After so many centuries of history, it might take a century or two at least of humans not being corrupted by power, of legislation not being peppered with earmarks, of humans being treated as individuals rather than based upon some assigned collective identity, of central planning that never committed extensive resources based upon populist feeling or fervently held beliefs rather than evidence based reasoning, and evidence that humans all wanted exactly the same things without being coerced.

I suspect it might take more than century or two. But I take your point, discussing evidence with a Classical Liberal is a total waste of effort unless you have a century or two of free time.

Bruce

[From Rick Marken (2010.01.31.1130)]

Martin Lewitt (2009.01.31.0357 Mountain)--

After reading Bill Powers' extraordinary reply to this I realize that
my own reply is pretty shallow; it probably comes from the level of my
own liberal principles rather from the higher level system concept
that sets them; but I spent some time on this so I'll just throw it
out for the heck of it.

�The problem for the
classical liberals of the American right (conservatives), is not that these
other means of organizations ["terror regimes"] don't work, but that they
do and might represent stable local optima that are difficult to escape if
we should drift into them.

Then the "classical liberals of the American right" are on the wrong
side. The American Right is far more likely to impose a "terror
regime" than the American Left (to the extent that the latter even
exists anymore). The last eight years of Republican rule and the
latest Supreme Court ruling should demonstrate that to you rather
clearly.

�These conservatives would probably argue that the market
based approach of voluntary relationships would result in a global optimum,
but they would argue that constitutionally limited government should be
preferred for moral and practical reasons even if it isn't a global optimum.

Yes, but the Right in America doesn't give a shit about
constitutionally limited government, or "freedom" for that matter. The
Right wing Supreme Court says that money is speech which means that
the constitutional guarantee of free speech is only for people with
money and the more money you have the more of this freedom you have.
The Right also wants to take away a woman's ability to control her own
body. What could be more "terror regime" than that. In his brilliant
Q&A, Obama chided the Republicans (those "classical liberals of the
American right") for making his mainstream healthcare proposals out to
be a Bolshevik plot. This is what you are doing in your arguments
here; making reasonable, mainstream proposals about regulating markets
or generating revenue through progressive taxation out to be the first
steps toward implementation of a "terror regime". In fact, this
reaction from the Right is just demagoguery; a way of getting the
fairly mindless masses to oppose policies that are in their own best
interest and fight for policies that are in the interests of the
wealthy and powerful.

What we "classical liberals of the American left" want is a society
built on cooperation and fair competition. We Lefties like freedom
even better than you Righties do. But we know that freedom depends on
cooperation, not selfishness. People who are poor, who are going
bankrupt due to illness, who have no income stream because of
joblessness, who don't make nearly enough when they do have a job;
these people are not free (in the control theory sense of being able
to control the variables they need to control). The freedom of the
Right is just freedom for the few who are clever enough (like Henry
Ford) or lucky enough (like the heirs to great fortunes) or knavish
enough (like the derivative traders) to make enough money to control
as they wish.

Classical liberals don't favor the wealthy, they
just don't have the hubris to presume that they or the government would be
better stewards of the wealth than those who created it, or that they could
better incentive wealth creation �than by allowing those that create it to
possess it, manage it and determine its ultimate distribution.

Well, you gave away the game right there. The Right believes that the
wealthy are the ones who create the wealth. I believe this view of the
economy is not only technically wrong but also morally offensive. It
is technically wrong because it ignores two important facts about the
way an economy works: 1) producers produce wealth only to the extent
that there are consumers who demand the goods and services produced
and 2) producers are collections of individuals; it's not the Henry
Fords alone who produce the wealth although many probably come to
think of themselves that way; and many hopefuls in the mindless masses
(in the US anyway) buy into this crap.

I think there are a lot of things about "classical liberals of the
American left" that I don't care for. I think affirmative action
should be need rather than race based; I think political correctness
has gone way overboard. But when it come to the things that really
made America great (when it was great, back in the progressive era
before that charming huckster Reagan came in) it's the principles of
"classical liberals of the American left" that really allowed people
to be in control of their own lives while not interfering with others'
ability to control theirs, which is my Lefty criterion for a truly
free society.

Best

Rick

···

--
Richard S. Marken PhD
rsmarken@gmail.com
www.mindreadings.com