skepticlawyer

13 Comments

1. fatfingers
   Posted December 31, 2007 at 11:32 am | Permalink

   Amen to that, sister.

   Stupid humans.

2. Graham Bell
   Posted December 31, 2007 at 7:06 pm | Permalink

   SkepticLawyer;

   I hereby second Fatfingers’ motion ….

   Wonder, just wonder, if India and Pakistan could ever be ………… departitioned?

3. Justin Jefferson
   Posted December 31, 2007 at 8:38 pm | Permalink

   By the way skepticlawyer, how’re you going with ploughing through Human Action? Got it down pat have you?

4. skepticlawyer
   Posted December 31, 2007 at 8:54 pm | Permalink

   I’m actually revisiting Anarchy, State and Utopia just now - about half way through. I need it to put together my thesis proposal for second year.

5. Justin Jefferson
   Posted December 31, 2007 at 10:50 pm | Permalink

   Oh? What’s your thesis going to be on?

6. Rafe Champion
   Posted January 1, 2008 at 12:28 am | Permalink

   The disaster of partition has been played over and over again (check out Sri Lanka and Ireland). It is based on the idea of self-determination for particular groups, so that a minority thinks (possibly correctly) they they will suffer discrimination, so they want to secede or join up with some other grouping where they will be the majority.

   I think it became big on the international scene after WWI possibly propelled by President Wilson. The break-up of the Austro Hungarain empire was the first practical application of the doctrine on a large scale. Hence the term ‘Balkanisation’. Love the consequences.

   The alternative arrangement is the classical liberal order where the state is not designed to provide favours, just to maintain law and order and essential services, so it doesn’t matter all that much who is in power at any time.

7. GMB
   Posted January 1, 2008 at 10:58 am | Permalink

   “I’m actually revisiting Anarchy, State and Utopia just now - about half way through. I need it to put together my thesis proposal for second year.”

   Ha ha ha.

   First time I read this I thought you said “REVISING”. That you were just sort of “revising” Anarchy, State and Utopia.

   That would have given me the confidence to revise King Lear.

   What you ought to look for this time around skeptic is what great lengths he had to go to to massage the egos of the philosophy preisthood.

   Magnificent book apart from that though.

8. observa
   Posted January 1, 2008 at 12:06 pm | Permalink

   Yeah, well I’m pretty comfortable with strangers with a calm, judicial pen scratching all those borders up at the Lands Titles Office and so should we all be. It’s just the bleeding rates that make me see red.

9. observa
   Posted January 1, 2008 at 12:12 pm | Permalink

   observa: Obverse: Prose for Our Times, 2008

10. Justin Jefferson
    Posted January 1, 2008 at 1:10 pm | Permalink

    Interestingly enough, the civil war in Sri Lanka had its origin in different - race-based - university entry scores. Before independence from Great Britian in 1975, the Tamil youth had been getting into university out of proportion to their numbers in the population. After independence the majority Sinhalese, fired up by the idea that equality was a matter of social justice, fixed things so that a Sinhalese needed a lower score, and a Tamil a higher score, to enter the same course. All perfectly consistent with the Australian socialist notion of social justice, race-based laws, and the value of state-engineered equality. The Tamil youths, who didn’t see why they should be penalised for being brainier or more diligent, decided to fight this injustice. And the rest is history.

    All government departments in NSW have positions entry into which is biased on such race-based criteria, based on the same reasoning.

11. skepticlawyer
    Posted January 2, 2008 at 5:42 am | Permalink

    You forgot the stamp duty, obs. That’s reasonably red-inducing too.

12. Graham Bell
    Posted January 2, 2008 at 7:25 am | Permalink

    Everyone:
    “Depatitioning” again.

    It’s not absolutely impossible …. and it would have outstanding social and economic beneits for the people of both countries..

    France and Bavaria/Prussia/Germany managed to get together in an economic confederation after many episodes of mutual slaughter and destruction over the past few centuries.

    However …. China, United States and maybe Saudi Arabia mightn’t be too enthusiastic about a confederation of India and Pakistan..

13. Rafe Champion
    Posted January 3, 2008 at 12:05 am | Permalink

    #10 Sowell on the debacle of affirmative action in recent times, Malaysia, Nigeria (BIafra),Sir Lanka and other places. http://www.the-rathouse.com/revaffirm.html