The Harsh Couch - 2016.03.29 It Is As It Is

#1

That's my wave - Ivy Thomas

This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at http://theharshcouch.com/thc/2016-03-29/
#2

A relatively small point, but I disagree with Dr Gob’s argument that “if people have a better alternative, then they will take it” in the context of dependence on social security.

I think more complicate and often a product of education, family background and knowledge.

To use an analogy - I grew up in an Anglo-Saxon meat and 3 veg household, where a special home cooked dinner was lamb and roast vegetables. My mother and father both grew up in rural Australia, which was not known for a rich and diverse diet in the 1940s through 60s.

Cooking with spices or more interesting combinations of ingredients was foreign to us. We liked that sort of food, but that’s what you would go out to eat, as cooking it at home was beyond our experience, our capabilities and our imagination.

Compounding this was a perception that cooking was a chore and was not fun.

Later in life, I met my lovely wife and she was appalled by the poverty of my cooking experience. It’s only after I had the benefit of her cooking experience, imagination etc that I started finding cooking enjoyable and realised that there were large, exciting swathes of the supermarket that I’d never visited.

Also, cooking for ourselves gave us cheaper and better tasting food.

All in all, I’ve discovered late in life that cooking is fun, cheaper, better tasting. All around, on a rational level, it’s a “better alternative”.

However, until I met my wife, I was not aware that this alternative was available to me.

How is this long winded analogy relevant to dependence on the welfare state? We’re not all the perfectly rational, perfectly informed people of the monetarist, Chicago school of economics. I think a combination of family and peer experience and lack of knowledge can leave lot of people unaware that there are “better alternatives” available for them to take.

I don’t think this is the sole answer to welfare state dependence and solving this problem would not solve the dependence problem. However, appreciation of the issue may save us looking for too simple solutions.

#3

sorry, McCool, but the F22 is not for sale - there has been an export ban in place, from the very beginning and it is not likely to be lifted any time soon…

the entire point was basically to have air superiority over everything else, including the F35, for the US only

personally, I would not spend another cent on fighter jets ever again - we should be investing in drones, and not just renting one from the US like we’re doing now but actually developing the technology ourselves - and building them ourselves - and, I know this may sound like a radically idea but bear with me, even exporting them - ourselves…

there is nothing an expensive fighter jet can do that a UAV cannot do - only better - it can do tighter turns, pulling more Gs, it can fly higher, faster, further… and so on

also, sorry once again to contradict, but WW2 decisively demonstrated that on the water, air superiority trumps naval superiority every time - this is the reason battleships went out of style, in favour of smaller, faster, destroyers - that can shoot from further away - and aircraft carriers

carriers are where it’s at

carriers that are serving a UAV fleet, even better

(btw I remember hearing somewhere that this is actually the point of our new subs - that they are meant to be a Command and Control platform for drone subs, in the long term - but I cannot back that up with anything right now)

on the subject of drones…

again, perhaps a radical idea but I beg your indulgence…

I think there is room for “innovation” in the medical space as well - in the realm of medical emergencies - by developing a sort of Ambulance Drone

right now, we have ambulances that battle traffic to get to someone, maybe do some treatment onsite, then battle traffic to get that person to a hospital - which may be reaching or over capacity and limited resources may - fatally - lead to problems treating some

what if you could treat that person right there - at the scene - by remote, without having to battle any (ground) traffic?

what if the drone was semi-autonomous and had a certain level of capacity to be able to do some of the work without even the remote connection to a doctor?

what if it did need a doctor to operate (remotely) but the doctor didn’t necessarily even need to be physically located in a hospital, at the time?

just a thought… obviously with Dr Gob being out of work right now, he may not be totally happy with the sound of this, but I would be interested in his opinion

#4

Never apologise for disagreeing with any of us. We are so often so wrong. Especially those other bastards …

#5

The Heard/Depp pseudo-apology (http://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/apr/18/johnny-depp-dogs-apology-review) touches on an interesting topic - why does our justice system enforce apologies that are not sincere?

Other examples would be court-enforced apologies following incidents of hate speech and defamation.

In a society where we pay lip service to freedom of thought and freedom of conscience, it’s odd that few seem troubled that we have a justice system that forces people to say things they patently do not believe.

It’s not exactly Winston Smith’s “Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two makes four. If that is granted, all else follows”, but nonetheless it is somewhat Orwellian that we have a legal system that insists of humiliating the conscience and violating the sanctity of one’s freedom to choose what one says he or she believes.

#6

Perhaps I’m showing my bias here, but I also note that it seems the political Left is more interested in policing thoughtcrime than the Right at this point in history. This may be more a product of the Right’s general dominance in the other avenues of power, such that the Left is left using what tools are available (cf Gramsci’s theories of the Left’s need to make a ‘Long March’ through educational and other institutions so that they can control the paradigms of thought, somewhat Jesuit-style “give me the boy and I’ll give you the man”).

You can probably find other eras where there Right were the main thoughtcrime police (eg Red scares, McCarthyism).

The rise of thoughtcrime policing in Australia over the last few decades, and the lack of principled objection to it, is something I’ve been uneasy about. I’m fine with criminalising people yelling fire in a crowded theatre or inciting a riot against ethnic groups, but the pendulum seems to have swing further than that. I may not like what some people have said (eg Andrew Bolt’s comments on indigenous Australians who can pass for white), but life rarely gives you completely comfortable scenarios to test your principles.

#7

See also the fun review of the apology video by a film reviewer:

http://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/apr/18/johnny-depp-dogs-apology-review

#8

With regard to your thoughtcrime policing point, there has been an recent outbreak (in The Australian primarily, but among the Bolt/Devine axis) of blathering about “Cultural Marxism”.

I’m still trying to understand WTF they are talking about, since it seems to have very little to do with any form of Marxism I understand, and it seems to have a very tenuous link to the term’s origins.

It is currently being used as a catch-all in full conspiratorial mode.

#9

I am also uneasy about the lack of tolerance for other (sometimes repulsive) ideas, but I am also cognisant of the role of language in making social change (and not just reflecting it).

The problem I have with defending the expression of ideas by arsewipes like Bolt is that they are not using language to talk about policy, but as weapons in an ideological battle.

#10

PS … we’re back on tonight.

#11

I shall be audienting.

I don’t read the columns to see the references to Marxist culture warfare. Perhaps they are (accidentally or deliberately) thinking of Gramsci’s concept of cultural hegemony and the need for Marxism to capture cultural institutions?

Edit: link -

#12

in case anyone thought my idea about ambulance drones sounded a little far-fetched…

we are now one step closer to realising my dream, with fully autonomous soft tissue surgery bots