Short thoughts

Brief thoughts. They may or may not become longer one day...

Education

Knowledge of pollination, cell nuclei, sound waves, atomic structure, ionic compounds, transition metals, auxin and phototropism is useful for humanity as a whole and perhaps fascinating, but education takes place in limited time and the overwhelming majority of children will never use or need to know these things as they go through life. 

The same could be said for glaciers and oxbow lakes. French or Spanish verb forms are not useful to the majority of children that will never speak the language competently anyway.

On the other hand, every child without exception will need to live among other human beings, and the overwhelming majority will be involved in the events that define the direction in which millions will move, that is to say, elections (whether voting or choosing not to).

If the school system is to produce humans to live among humans, then philosophy, religion, politics, economics and statistics seem to me much more important then chemistry, biology and physics. In fact I would say only English and maths, as the foundation on which all other subjects can be learnt, should have higher priority.

Education 2

So-called liberals seem to think that the function of schools is to teach their opinions.

Money

Money is power. Units of currency are literally little power tokens. If you have enough of them, you can make people make things, or provide things, or say things, or do pretty much anything within the law and probably outside it. Or you can make them not do things. Money is the power to make things happen. You might say you are only as free as your bank account.

The state is, as a general rule, more powerful than money. However, as a general rule, anything not controlled by the state is controlled by the biggest money to take an interest.

Very short thoughts

• "Liberals" often try to capture words instead of arguing points. "Love", "tolerance", etc., they capture to grant themselves. "Hate" etc. they capture to cast at their enemies. Calling their policy love and their opponent's hate seems to satisfy them in lieu of a coherent argument.
• "Liberals" focus on overarching principles that they seek to impose upon the facts. Their opponents tend to work from the facts to try to decide what principles should apply (deduction vs. induction and abduction).
• Both word capture and deductive (as opposed to inductive and abductive) reasoning seem to lead to "liberals" thinking in buzzwords.

Pseudo-morality

I have noticed that it is important to many people to be good people - in the eyes of people.

Many fewer seek to be good despite cost and self-sacrifice - which is genuinely seeking to be good. 

There is inevitably a striking difference in the behaviour of people who wish to be good people, and the behaviour of those who wish to be considered to be good people. 

Those who wish to be seen as good seek the sentimentally simplest solution. They also lack a sense of responsibility for what they have caused to happen but not done themselves.

Those who genuinely wish to be good people will inevitably come up against resentment and opposition from those they challenge or discomfort, or whose interests they threaten. They will often see the need for measures that those who simply wish to be seen as good will find it convenient to sentimentally reject, in a disingenuous display of moral superiority.

It is quite the opposite experience from trying to be considered a good person.

The modern cleavage

Perhaps, in essence, the major cleavage in modern politics throughout the western world is between those who support boundaries - national, moral, social, legal - and those who wish to get rid of as many as possible, preserving only those (essentially implicit or explicit boundaries on debate) that allow them to be rid of the others. 

Elections

I might do them something like this:

The party/list with the most votes gets

percent of seats received = ⅔ v + 26 ⅔ %, 

where v = percent of votes received.

The remaining seats are then distributed among the other parties in proportion to the votes they received.

Additionally or alternatively, one could introduce the concept of binding referenda on popular initiative.

Abortion lobbies

I have decided views on abortion, but on one issue I am against both points of view: the names they call themselves. Both "pro-choice" and "pro-life" are unreasonably vague terms. In favour of what choice? In favour of what life? Of course we know, but the names seek to disingenuously invoke much wider issues on an emotional level. In fact for the "pro-choice" lobby, they are perhaps invoking, when one thinks about it, no issue at all, since while a generic issue of 'life' is nebulous, a definitively coherent generic issue of 'choice' seems beyond reach. 

In order to be definitively pro-life, which would at least seem possible, all holders of anti-abortion views would have to be vegetarian pacifists opposed to the death penalty. At least such a thing is possible, whereas to be definitively pro-choice is impossible, as choices necessarily curtail other people's choices. How could one maximise choices? What would this even mean?

They would be much more reasonable calling themselves pro-abortion and anti-abortion. Things should be specific and clear.

Drug dealers

As a general rule, people think for badly of drug users and drug traffickers, but not particularly badly of casual drug users. (Current plus former drug users, including the casual, are of course an uncomfortably large part of the population.) Drug users are considered bad because of the (other) crimes connected to them, particularly violence.

The problem is that drug dealers only work for, and thanks to, drug users. The drug user does not pay on the condition that the dealers and traffickers refrain from violence. Any person who pays for drugs pays for the violence required to get them to the user. 

There is very little point in trying to arrest drug dealers if one is not willing to arrest the users they work for. If being in possession of drugs were to be properly penalised, then the demand for drug dealers' work would be much reduced. The problem is that then a lot of people who want to think they are good would be punished.

The purchasers of drugs should be targeted and punished by the law, and if tht is not desirable, the next best thing is to legalise the drugs and take criminal profits out of it. The current set-up is the worst.

[I find it interesting that Islamic jurisprudence, or at least Sunni jurisprudence, actually treats dog-dealing in this way: It is the dog-dealer who is committing an offence, while the customer is not. Islam is not very positive at all about dogs, although Turkish shepherds seem to frequently use pretty scary looking ones.]

Death penalty

A recent objection to the death penalty is that it is more expensive than life imprisonment. Apparently there is a much more exhaustive and expensive trial system, because "a life is at stake". This costs very dearly. 

In reality, this does not tell us about the death penalty. A life is at stake in the case of life imprisonment too. In principle, to kill a man is cheaper than to maintain him for the rest of his life, although a prison system could theoretically reduce its costs, cover its costs, or even turn a profit, through the use of prisoners' labour.

The real issue with the cost of the death penalty is that, up to the point of sentencing, the trial processes should cost the same and take the same amount of time. Either death penalty trials are being conducted in a wastefully expensive manner, or life imprisonment trials are being conducted in a disturbingly cheap manner. If there is a massive cost discrepancy, that is itself the problem.