Virginia Gun Owners Forum - VGOF

ShotgunBlast wrote:How is that working out for you? Some people call that strategy pragmatism. I think of it as the gradual decay in the quality of our candidates.... I hope this helps. I've enjoyed the dialogue.

It's not... unfortunately. I agree with your opinion of the quality of candidates too.

It does help. Thanks for the information and the conversation. I appreciate it.

What we really need is another Calvin Coolidge...

Calvin Coolidge wrote:"They criticize me for harping on the obvious; if all the folks in the United States would do the few simple things they know they ought to do, most of our big problems would take care of themselves."

"The right thing to do never requires any subterfuge, it is always simple and direct."

"There is no dignity quite so impressive, and no one independence quite so important, as living within your means."

“It is difficult for men in high office to avoid the malady of self-delusion. They are always surrounded by worshipers. They are constantly, and for the most part sincerely, assured of their greatness. They live in an artificial atmosphere of adulation and exaltation which sooner or later impairs their judgment. They are in grave danger of becoming careless and arrogant.”

“Well, they’re going to elect that Superman Hoover, and he’s going to have some trouble. He’s going to have to spend money, but it won’t be enough. Then the Democrats will come in. But they don’t know anything about money.
[To his Secret Service man, Edmund Starling]” (The more things change the more they stay the same)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calvin_Coolidge

WellArmed wrote:Okay, so according to you, one guy supports "tax credits", so you didn't vote for him. Instead you decided to allow the person who supports several things that goes against your principles to not only win, but to also create laws and legislation to force you to comply with those several things that go against your princeables... Makes perfect logical sense to me

I vote for people, not against other people. It is incumbent upon the GOP to select a candidate I can vote for ideally with enthusiasm or at worst with a clean conscience.

It usually fails to do this. If it keeps nominating crap I take my vote elsewhere. Free markets at work.

Kreutz wrote: I vote for people, not against other people. It is incumbent upon the GOP to select a candidate I can vote for ideally with enthusiasm or at worst with a clean conscience.

It usually fails to do this. If it keeps nominating crap I take my vote elsewhere. Free markets at work.

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No, Kreutz, it is not a free market.
There are barriers to entry in the form of the necessary fund-raising ability and the entrenched political parties. You do not, in an election in this country (at least a nationwide or statewide one), have the free range of choices that unlimited entry to a free market affords. Besides, free markets depend upon purchasers/consumers making decisions that maximize their own self-interest; and when you vote for the worst choice because the lesser of two evils hasn't met your maximum standards for "un-evilness", you are most certainly not acting with free-market rationality.

dorminWS wrote:

Kreutz wrote: I vote for people, not against other people. It is incumbent upon the GOP to select a candidate I can vote for ideally with enthusiasm or at worst with a clean conscience.

It usually fails to do this. If it keeps nominating crap I take my vote elsewhere. Free markets at work.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

No, Kreutz, it is not a free market.
There are barriers to entry in the form of the necessary fund-raising ability and the entrenched political parties. You do not, in an election in this country (at least a nationwide or statewide one), have the free range of choices that unlimited entry to a free market affords. Besides, free markets depend upon purchasers/consumers making decisions that maximize their own self-interest; and when you vote for the worst choice because the lesser of two evils hasn't met your maximum standards for "un-evilness", you are most certainly not acting with free-market rationality.

You can nit-pick his argument apart (unsuccessfully, I might add), but the point he was trying to make is that voters have a choice, and if a candidate wants our vote, they (the candidate) have to earn it. The voters need to be looked at as customers, and all this whining that it's the voters (customers) that are wrong are looking at it backwards.

In that respect, it is indeed a free market.

trailrunner wrote:

dorminWS wrote:

Kreutz wrote: I vote for people, not against other people. It is incumbent upon the GOP to select a candidate I can vote for ideally with enthusiasm or at worst with a clean conscience.

It usually fails to do this. If it keeps nominating crap I take my vote elsewhere. Free markets at work.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

No, Kreutz, it is not a free market.
There are barriers to entry in the form of the necessary fund-raising ability and the entrenched political parties. You do not, in an election in this country (at least a nationwide or statewide one), have the free range of choices that unlimited entry to a free market affords. Besides, free markets depend upon purchasers/consumers making decisions that maximize their own self-interest; and when you vote for the worst choice because the lesser of two evils hasn't met your maximum standards for "un-evilness", you are most certainly not acting with free-market rationality.

You can nit-pick his argument apart (unsuccessfully, I might add), but the point he was trying to make is that voters have a choice, and if a candidate wants our vote, they (the candidate) have to earn it. The voters need to be looked at as customers, and all this whining that it's the voters (customers) that are wrong are looking at it backwards.

In that respect, it is indeed a free market.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

No, it is not. (This sort of reminds me of that old Jerry Clower spiel about the treed coon being perfectly free to climb down out of the tree, whup the half-dozen coon hounds baying at the foot of it, and leave if it wants to) That is a manifestation of the fact the voters (within the bounds of how informed they are) are free actors; a corollary of which is that they are free to make suboptimal decisions, too. But it does not make a state or national election in this country a "free market".

The flaw in your analysis is that the refusal of the voters to vote for the lesser of two evils doesn't do anything to change the outcome. It entrenches the worst choice by penalizing the lesser evil for not being "un-evil" enough. To put it in the terms you've used, I should point out that not voting for the lesser evil is equivalent, in an election where there is no alternative candidate with a chance of winning, to voting for the greater evil; and the greater evil has done even less to earn your vote than the lesser one has. Free markets are about outcomes; not processes.

dorminWS wrote:No, Kreutz, it is not a free market.
There are barriers to entry in the form of the necessary fund-raising ability and the entrenched political parties. You do not, in an election in this country (at least a nationwide or statewide one), have the free range of choices that unlimited entry to a free market affords. Besides, free markets depend upon purchasers/consumers making decisions that maximize their own self-interest; and when you vote for the worst choice because the lesser of two evils hasn't met your maximum standards for "un-evilness", you are most certainly not acting with free-market rationality.

In the context of making a selection of my own free will from all available choices it is most certainly a free market.

I am aware of what goes on in the "development" stage of selecting a political candidate; however only the end product is of interest to me.

Neither of us has a say in Apple or Googles development processes, but we do get a say on purchasing the final product or maybe a Samsung or just not buying one at all. And there is an entry barrier at play here too; maybe Joe Blow has a killer device but he can't get it to market for whatever reason.

Political campaigns are no different.

Kreutz wrote:

dorminWS wrote:No, Kreutz, it is not a free market.
There are barriers to entry in the form of the necessary fund-raising ability and the entrenched political parties. You do not, in an election in this country (at least a nationwide or statewide one), have the free range of choices that unlimited entry to a free market affords. Besides, free markets depend upon purchasers/consumers making decisions that maximize their own self-interest; and when you vote for the worst choice because the lesser of two evils hasn't met your maximum standards for "un-evilness", you are most certainly not acting with free-market rationality.

In the context of making a selection of my own free will from all available choices it is most certainly a free market.

I am aware of what goes on in the "development" stage of selecting a political candidate; however only the end product is of interest to me.

Neither of us has a say in Apple or Googles development processes, but we do get a say on purchasing the final product or maybe a Samsung or just not buying one at all. And there is an entry barrier at play here too; maybe Joe Blow has a killer device but he can't get it to market for whatever reason.

Political campaigns are no different.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Kreutz, you know better than this.

(a) The fact the you have free will does not make any exchange you participate in a "free market". It just makes you a free actor reacting to a limited range of choices.
(b) If you really are only interested in the end product (and assuming you embrace the same conservative values that most of us on this forum espouse), why are you willing to vote for an uber-liberal democrat by refusing to cast a vote for a much-less-liberal-but-not-pristinely-conservative/libertarian alternative? How does the "end product" of entrenching the liberals in office (by refusing to vote for conservatives because they aren't conservative enough) serve your interests?
(c) Your example of Apple vs. Google apps is just lame; because not by any stretch of the imagination is the market that Apple and Google participate in a free market. So to the extent that you can draw any (even superficially) convincing parallels between the election and Apple vs. Google apps, they seem appropriate precisely because you are comparing two markets that are NOT free markets rather than one that is and one that is not.

If you want to cut off your nose to spite your face, it is a free country. But do not delude yourself that you are a rational actor in a free market.

dorminWS wrote:Kreutz, you know better than this.

(a) The fact the you have free will does not make any exchange you participate in a "free market". It just makes you a free actor reacting to a limited range of choices.

Thanks to write-ins I am actually afforded an insane number of choices. The ballot does indeed offer a limited predetermined range of choices, but I don't have to vote for any of them.

(b) If you really are only interested in the end product (and assuming you embrace the same conservative values that most of us on this forum espouse), why are you willing to vote for an uber-liberal democrat by refusing to cast a vote for a much-less-liberal-but-not-pristinely-conservative/libertarian alternative? How does the "end product" of entrenching the liberals in office (by refusing to vote for conservatives because they aren't conservative enough) serve your interests?

I don't consider myself a conservative.

(c) Your example of Apple vs. Google apps is just lame; because not by any stretch of the imagination is the market that Apple and Google participate in a free market. So to the extent that you can draw any (even superficially) convincing parallels between the election and Apple vs. Google apps, they seem appropriate precisely because you are comparing two markets that are NOT free markets rather than one that is and one that is not.

It was a rough apples/oranges analogy, not a dialectic masterpiece

If you want to cut off your nose to spite your face, it is a free country. But do not delude yourself that you are a rational actor in a free market.

Remember, I am discussing only the context of an election wherein choices are predetermined similar to say, the offerings of a tech industry generally dominated by two companies...kinda like a certain two party system we all tell ourselves we're stuck with lest we "waste our vote".

I like the jerry Clower bit. That is kind of how I feel about politics right now. I get to pick which set of hounds I want to devour me.

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