Yes, Mollydukes, your straightforward style is refreshing.

It's interesting that Peter can't see the humanity for the "system". In his ideology ordinary human needs and societal harmony take a back seat. It's "all" economics.

British autism expert, Simon Baron-Cohen has a theory that people with Aspergers (or high-functioning autism) operate with an overly "male" brain, in that "systems" tend to override other considerations. Female psychology, on the other hand, is more empathetic. Most humans (and their social arrangements) usually demonstrate a healthy balance between the two.

As Mollydukes has shown, it is possible for a person affected to understand empathy well. My son tends to have more of problem regulating his empathy as he tends sometimes to worry and fret about people and things that aren't his province of concern.
Libertarian ideology appears to have an opposite problem.

Poirot, I can empathise with Mollydukes's problem, but that doesn't make it my problem. Is my depression hers? She apparently feels no empathy whatever for me.

The difference between us is that I don't expect anyone to do anything at all for me without a quid pro quo. If a friend gives me a hand I throw on a some beers, or provide dinner and if they need a hand the same thing applies. If I need staff, I pay them for their work and I expect them to work hard for their pay. This is what Howard called "mutual obligation" that was so hated by the victimologists. Yet it's a reasonable thing to expect of someone who is not incapable of contributing.

There ain't no such thing as a free lunch, as Mr McIlhenny, my old senior maths teacher was so fond of saying. If you manipulate one side of an equation, there must be a similar manipulation on the other, or it is no longer the same equation. It no longer models the same problem

There is only so much abundance available and using it for the support of people who are able to support themselves, albeit perhaps not in the style they aspire to, is simply wasteful and will lead to highly unproductive outcomes.

Similarly, assessing the success of social programs by their impact on GDP gives a misleading impression of the outcomes, since GDP does not measure net outcomes, just national turnover. So money spent on support of Mollydukes is counted the same as money earnt by selling a product overseas. However, if that product had not been sold overseas, then Mollydukes would not be able to be supported but if Mollydukes did not exist or was supporting herself, the product sale money still would.

One is productive and one is not.

Antiseptic,

No doubt you're correct, but don't underestimate the power and inventiveness displayed by people with Aspergers.
A particular talent of theirs is the ability for obsessive concentration in specific areas. It's often said that half the population of Silicon Valley probably has some degree of Aspergers (it's a spectrum condition) - same goes for academic and scientific study, as the cloistered atmosphere suits them to a tee.

I'd posit that a good many advances in human knowledge and discovery are down to an autistic outlook. Newton, Einstein...etc. I've heard it reported that Bill Gates has Asperger Syndrome.

As I've stated, the human condition is complicated and so are the various systems that regulate it.

Only tim to pop in to say that Fran Kelly described the think tank as "left leaning" this morning. Sounded interesting but I haven't had the chance to check it out yet.
Any economist who's not a free marketeer as gotta be refreshing!

Poirot
The difference between your ad hominem and mine is that yours is the *foundation* of your entire argument – that and circularity. Mine is the *conclusion* of an argument that demonstrates irrefutably that you cannot evidence the benefits you allege without suspending reason.

Citing history does not and cannot prove what you need to prove, because the question is how do you know that the interventions did not cause greater unemployment, poverty and hardship?

You openly acknowledge the abuses of a one-size-fits-all education system, so it's you who think the economic issues - in your case, trying to force other people to pay for your values - is more important than society. Economics completely disproves the assumption behind your self-awarded halo of fallacious manufacture.

But perhaps if you keep repeating your incantations they will become true eventually?
“Hare Krishna Hare Krishna Hare Ram Hare Ram
Four legs good, two legs bad
Baaaaaaaah”.


Squeers
Ditto. That guy on the atheist thread really had you pegged, didn’t he? A “pseudo-intellectual prattler” – this time prattling that compulsory funding, compulsory attendance, compulsory curriculum and compulsory qualifications of state education are “free market”, you fool.


Molly
You appear to be under the false impression you’ve made an argument against capitalism. You haven’t, apart from openly stating that you feel entitled to live on other people’s efforts taken by coercion – the opposite of empathy.

Antiseptic
No, Molly didn’t answer your question, and none of them answered mine, did they? All we got was the leftists’ conceit that they speak down from a higher moral plane to the people they violate, while simultaneously making society more conflict - and caste –ridden, and poorer. Such vanity.

So since the leftitsts’ discourse is ultimately not rational, you’ve really got to wonder what is the psychological process behind this infantile behaviour. Speaking of autism spectrum, I think “Animals in Translation’ by the famous autistic Temple Grandin has explaining power. The pre-frontal cortex is associated with reasoning, logic, critical thinking and all that. The more primitive mammalian mid-brain is associated with feelings of hierarchy, dominance, submission, groupthink. That’s where the leftists are coming from, which explains
a) the irrationality of their intellectual method – it consists only of arguing in a circle
b) their infantile feeling of entitlement to tittie, somehow, anyhow
c) why it consists only of groupthink. Incanting Marxists slogans works just fine with their co-religionists sucking off government in Marxist kindergartens. Any objection that it doesn’t actually make sense is met with xenophobic malice and personal insult. That’s it.