States ranked by FREEDOM

nittany ram wrote:

wv wrote:

nittany ram wrote:

wv wrote:

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Yes, which leads me to repost my favorite ‘law quote’ for the
gazillionth time. I never tire of reading
btw, what do you think is the core, fundamental, difference tween
right-thinkers and left-thinkers? What is the heart of the ‘difference’ ?

I think of this right / left thing sometimes when i see debates
about Fisher, btw. Sometimes i think the core difference tween righties and lefties has ‘something’ to do with how they view…’context’. I mean is ‘injuries’ an ‘excuse’ or do we look at the context…. I dunno. Just rambling…

w
v

My all too brief and simplistic response to that is the right views the world through a ‘moral absolutist’ lense. Everything falls into a category of either right or wrong, true or false. There’s no gradation between the categories. It’s black or white, period. No room for more than one truth. Whereas a leftist’s views are more nuanced. They recognize an entire spectrum exists between black and white…one shade grading into the other and what shade you see is a matter of perspective. Of course as I said that’s overly simplistic and there is a lot more to it and there are exceptions yada, yada but to me that’s the gist of it.

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I dunno. I think there is something to that, but i dunno.

Sure seems like, above all else, they Blame the Poor.

I just wonder where that comes from.

w
v

I wonder if blaming the poor is an American thing. The poor are mistreated all over the world but it seems to me that only in America are they are blamed for being poor. It probably stems from that ridiculous idea that in America, if you work hard enough you WILL succeed so anyone that doesn’t succeed must be lazy. Anyone not succeeding simply isn’t trying hard enough. That’s probably rooted in American Exceptionalism or some other BS.

It’s not really unique to America, though we’re probably the biggest true believers. It really stems from the so-called “Protestant Work Ethic,” which was imported from Europe. If you read the political economists of the 18th and early 19th centuries, especially — and more than a few of the Enlightenment philosophers — they were often in the habit of shaming the poor into working. This, in fact, was a key aspect of primitive accumulation . . . getting “the peasants” to forsake their own means of self-provisioning, small farms, atisanship, home ec provisioning, to go into the factories to work for a pittance. Adam Smith and his very wealthy peers, all men of leisure, were always going on and on about how lazy and unproductive the peasants were . . . primarily because they prioritized family and friends above working to make others rich.

The state, of course, stepped in to put muscle behind the work-shaming, with enclosures, and changing the laws regarding hunting and fishing, etc. etc. But this actually all starts in Europe, with England being the prime locale.

Billy_T wrote:

I’ve mentioned it before, but Michael Perelman’s The Invention of Capitalism is really excellent on the subject — with copious direct quotes from the powers that be.

And the Church did its best to also shame the poor into giving up their free time to work in the factories, the mines, the slave ships and so on. And this work-shaming was especially overwhelming and stigmatizing in Ireland and other British colonies.

That’s interesting, Billy. I’ll have to check that book out.