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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 26th, 2023

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  • Abolishing land ownership sounds like an attractive idea, the problem is that it doesn’t work well in practice. Ownership of land, and a legal system to protect it, brings remarkable economic benefits. It allows owners to raise capital using the land as collateral and then to develop the land. A free market ensures that land is correctly valued. When values are set by government they tend to be incorrect or, worse, deliberately distorted by corruption. A quick look around the world shows that the richest countries all allow private ownership of land. China is the notable exception. It’s true that productivity in China has increased dramatically over the past few decades but this has been driven by urban centers and manufacturing… rural areas, where land remains under state control remain poor and impoverished.




  • I’m pretty sure that he does know what it is. As I said I don’t agree with many of his arguments, but they are nonetheless cogent and reasoned arguments.

    He claims for example that CRT proponents are mostly white liberal elites who just want to demonstrate their anti-racist credentials. He also makes the point that CRT ultimately harms blacks and people of color by implicitly lowering standards for those groups. The “soft racism of low expectations”. These are valid criticisms.

    Instead of dismissing him as ignorant, (as so many of us liberals often do), it’s better to engage and try to refute what he claims.


  • I can’t speak for the the person you replied to but I get my information from a variety of sources. One is the Economist magazine, (hardly a right wing tabloid). In a recent op-ed John McWhorter, who is a professor of English and comparative literature at Columbia University, and the author of more than a dozen books, and who also happens to be black, Mr McWhorter laments that CRT has “painted black Americans as hypersensitive children, immune to reason and indifferent to nuance”. He goes on to say that “Whites insist this is progress in order to feel unracist. Black people (although hardly in the lockstep many suppose) insist this is progress because it lends them a useful “noble victim” status. The result is a chronic, pervasive mendacity, dehumanising black people as thoroughly as outright bigotry did, despite being presented as respect and even worship.”.

    You may disagree with Mr McWhorter. I certainly do. But for you to so casually dismiss another person as an gnorant, fox news dummy simply because they have different views tells us more about you than about them.


  • I can appreciate opposing views, including conservative ones, if they are grounded in reason. In fact I welcome them … they sharpen my own arguments and make me question my beliefs which is seldom a bad thing.

    What I cannot accept is any argument based on a supernatural entity. If you want to make laws because your holy book tells you to then I’ll do everything in my power to block you. You have the absolute right to follow your own beliefs but you have no right to force those beliefs on others.