Dust-Up with Patterico
I’m spending this week in a daily tit-for-tat online “dust-up” with conservative blogger Patterico over the future of The Los Angeles Times (and of newspapers in general).
The first round can be found here at LATimes.com . Join us and leave a comment or two. Heaven knows the poor things over at Tribune Company need your traffic.
July 7th, 2008 at 1:02 pm
Okay, I put my two cents in on the comments section. It’s like a deathwatch in Los Angeles.
July 7th, 2008 at 1:56 pm
I added my dollar’s worth. Sorry.
July 7th, 2008 at 3:36 pm
I read the comments section and the key thread is the intense dislike of “Illegals” – read “Mexicans” there. Any wonder the GOP is going down the drain in this state?
July 7th, 2008 at 4:09 pm
Only if the Democrats continue to fight voter ID and allow illegals to illegally vote.
July 7th, 2008 at 7:01 pm
Marc,
Your central argument seems to be that Sam Zell is demanding an unreasonable rate of return on his capital. What’s a reasonable rate of return on capital? Is there some sort of left-wing rule about this? Should Michael Moore be subject to a windfall profits tax, like the oil companies, or is this just an argument you roll out whenever you need it?
I don’t understand the argument you are making because I don’t understand what standard you are attempting to promote.
July 7th, 2008 at 7:58 pm
Samuel actually makes a good point.
Within the framework of capitalism, the reasonable rate of return is accumulate! accumulate! accumulate! What capitalist fanatics calll “market distortions” really are market distortions. Monopoly and consolidation are natural within capitalism, and state-based approaches to controlling them – which I support for lack of alternatives – will only make the problem worse, as Keynesianism did with Stagflation, etc.
Capitalism itself needs to be contested. Not capitalists.
July 8th, 2008 at 9:56 am
Greed: A word commonly used by liberals, low achievers, anti-capitalists and society’s losers to denigrate, shame and discredit those who have acquired superior job skills and decision-making capabilities and who, through the application of those job skills, achieve success. (Neal Boortz)
July 8th, 2008 at 10:37 am
Actually, a sincere anti-capitalist would not oppose greed within a capitalist context, since capitalism inevitably leads to greed, not vice versa. A sincere anti-capitalist would oppose the system itself, not individual capitalists, however rapacious.
July 8th, 2008 at 12:39 pm
Greed is a sin against God, just as all mortal sins, in as much as man condemns things eternal for the sake of temporal things.
Woody, it’s back to Sunday school for you. That or the fiery flames of Gehenna.
July 8th, 2008 at 1:37 pm
Since lefties don’t believe in God, it’s strange when they use Him for an argument.
But, to carry this along, liberals are guilty of wealth envy. They attack those who are successful. They use the power of government to seize their money. They accuse the achievers of greed. They try to undermine their businesses.
Let’s see where this fits within your lives and within Marc’s article.
Here are definitions from Wikipedia.
Envy may be defined as an emotion that “occurs when a person lacks another’s superior quality, achievement, or possession and either desires it or wishes that the other lacked it.”
and
Like greed, envy is characterized by an insatiable desire…. …those who commit the sin of envy resent that another person has something they perceive themselves as lacking, and wish the other person to be deprived of it. Dante defined this as “love of one’s own good perverted to a desire to deprive other men of theirs.”
or, from your source, T.A. ….
Envy – Jealousy and dislike felt toward another because they have a position, possession or quality one desires. You just want it, but you want it without wanting to pay the cost for it. It’s a free-ride type of desire.
Envy Is A Characteristic Of An Unregenerate Life:
Titus 3:3 KJV “For we ourselves also were sometimes foolish, disobedient, deceived, serving divers lusts and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful, and hating one another.”
Notice what follows envy: “hateful, and hating one another.” Envy will always cause you to hate something or someone because you can’t have what you want and they have, but the desire is there. You’ll get blinded by the lust of the eyes.
A Final Word
Timothy really sums up almost everything about envy:
1 Tim 6:4 KJV “He is proud, knowing nothing, but doting about questions and strifes of words, whereof cometh envy, strife, railings, evil surmisings…”
But, the Bible doesn’t list the “Seven Deadly Sins,” which came from early Christian teachings, so maybe some of you are in luck–assuming that you have accepted Christ.
July 8th, 2008 at 1:40 pm
I dont use Him as an argument.
Jesus hates me.
And with good reason!
July 8th, 2008 at 1:50 pm
Jesus doesn’t hate you, Marc. It’s just that Jesus is a Republican.
July 8th, 2008 at 2:43 pm
I’m with the Christ of MLK, Berrigan and Romero. A great Palestinian Jewish revolutionary anti-imperialist Rabbi. I’m an atheist, but I’ll take the eye-of-the-needle mofo over Hitchens or Sam Harris any day.
July 8th, 2008 at 8:02 pm
Well jcummings,
all you have to do is come up with some sort of anti-capitalist system that doesn’t involve the gulag and plenty of people will be interested in hearing about it.
As Marx noted frequently, communism proposes to change the Conditions of Production. How the fuck is that possible? Don’t vaporize. Start growing corn and smelting iron-ore, the communist way.
July 9th, 2008 at 7:25 am
I can further name dozens, if not hundreds of systems that are in some way shape or form anti-caitalist, that have no gulag. Whoops, cats out of the bag, the Swedes, Bolivians and Post-war British Labour all just admitted their Gulag pencant.
July 9th, 2008 at 8:14 am
You left out Canada and their pencant Gulags.
July 9th, 2008 at 8:16 am
That would be ‘penchant’ of course. Should have known better.
July 9th, 2008 at 8:52 am
Since lefties don’t believe in God, it’s strange when they use Him for an argument.
I’m a regular mass-attending Roman Catholic. Generalizations just make you look even stupider than you are.
July 9th, 2008 at 9:01 am
It’s just that Jesus is a Republican
Among your many sins, we can now add blasphemy.
April 11th, 2010 at 11:28 pm
Hello, I see all your blogs, keep them coming.