Hi

[AlexM]

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If someone wants to start a thread about raising/cutting taxes it is reasonable to expect that the thread won't be overun with people that want to talk the government being immoral.

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Why? If you pose an open question to the forum, how are you not expecting anyone to answer who has an opinion unless you specify otherwise? This is like saying that if someone in SMP started a thread on "what is the nature of God" that atheists couldn't respond with their beliefs. They have an opinion on what the nature of God is as well, but because their opinion is in such strong disagreement with the religious crowd, it gets to be censored? That's, frankly, BS.

[AlexM]

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It's politics, discussions should be allowed to go wherever they are going.



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New regime, new rules. You can disabuse yourself of this idea.

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Discussions can go wherever they are going provided the place that they are going isn't:

-State Bad!
-State Good!
-State Bad!
-State Good!

Or:

Dems Bad!
Repubs Bad!
Dems Bad!
Repubs Bad!

Or:
-9/11 conspiracy!
-9/11 not conspiracy!
-9/11 not conspiracy!
-9/11 not conspiracy!
-9/11 not conspiracy!
-9/11 not conspiracy!
-9/11 not conspiracy!
-9/11 conspiracy!

etc.

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That's what discussion is. [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

[valenzuela]

this forum is on its way to be officialy ruined. btw I will come back in 2 weeks and see how many " great politics poster" finnaly post here because the forum is "cleaned".

[Skidoo]

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but to put the burden on one part of the political spectrum to police their responses, to squelch their own political views and not have this apply to others feels quite unfair.


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Nobody is being asked to squelch their political views. People are being asked to respect one another. If someone wants to start a thread about raising/cutting taxes it is reasonable to expect that the thread won't be overun with people that want to talk the government being immoral. When your posts contribute nothing to the topic at hand and serve only to cause others to leave they are no longer welcome.

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RR-

If this is the case, I think it would make more sense if you and [censored] said that you were going to simply enforce that posts stay on topic, in the spirit of the OP. That's a good rule, no complaints there.

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I think that's basically what they're saying. If I read the new policy right, ACists can still mention specifically relevant AC ideas in any thread but not introduce the general state/no-state topic itself where it is not already being discussed.

[AlexM]

What really bothers me is that they seem to be implying that ACists are the ones hijacking threads when that's rarely the case. Usually ACists respond completely on topic and then someone attacks them, hijacking the thread. You might say it takes two to hijack, and maybe such posts should simply be reported rather than responded to, but it's pretty hard to not defend your views when someone's attacking you.

[pvn]

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but to put the burden on one part of the political spectrum to police their responses, to squelch their own political views and not have this apply to others feels quite unfair.


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Nobody is being asked to squelch their political views. People are being asked to respect one another. If someone wants to start a thread about raising/cutting taxes it is reasonable to expect that the thread won't be overun with people that want to talk the government being immoral. When your posts contribute nothing to the topic at hand and serve only to cause others to leave they are no longer welcome.

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Ah, the old "AC Troll Mafia Hijack Alert" strawman. For those of you just joining us, it has been shown that the vast majority of the "AC Hijacks" that supposedly plague this forum and make it "borderline unreadable" are in fact undertaken by statists. Generally the way it goes is something like this:

Statist #1: Policy XYZ should be enacted.
ACer: But that policy will have effect ABC.
Statist #2: So who is going to do XYZ when there's NO GOVERNMENT? Huh? Huh????

[pvn]

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Clearly this is a case of someone trying to push some buttons and thus an AC vs State debate should be fair game here.

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When someone is trying to push buttons like this I would suggest leaving it alone. They don't have an actual question, so why debate someone that is just looking for a fight?

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Uh, what do you think the purpose of this forum is?

I have recently been asked to provide management services to a boxing gym. I am bringing new rules with me. The first is one that I learned in Kindergarden - respect other people. And since punching people is not respectful, I have decided to ban all sparring in the gym.

[valenzuela]

All,

remember that some awesome posters will now start posting because we have more mods and BGC was banned. There isnt an exact date of when will these awesome posters will start arriving though.

[John Kilduff]

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What really bothers me is that they seem to be implying that ACists are the ones hijacking threads when that's rarely the case. Usually ACists respond completely on topic and then someone attacks them, hijacking the thread. You might say it takes two to hijack, and maybe such posts should simply be reported rather than responded to, but it's pretty hard to not defend your views when someone's attacking you.

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I think threads veering OT occurs in several ways. Some of it is unavoidable to an extent, while at other times it is avoidable. By the way, I sometimes veer off-topic, too, but that is usually (I hope! [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img] in response to someone else bringing up an debatable point in their own efforts to make a point.

I think where it is clearly out-of-place is in an example such as the following:

Poster A: "Should immigration be increased, decreased or stay the same?" (presents his thoughts and reasons)

Poster B, who is the second or third respondent: "If the state didn't exist, what reason would there be for immigration? Immigration is just another example of the uselessness of the state."

Well, that's going too far afield at that point, in my opinion. The OP wants to discuss immigration levels - and maybe even no restrictions on immigration, which could be considered a "level" of sorts - not whether immigration would exist without the state.

If however the discussion slowly veered in that direction due to back-and-forth debate on points leading up to that, it might not be out-of-place at all.

I know I sometimes stray, perhaps through carelessness, and at other times it seems unavoidable. But I think the general idea here is, let's not start out by immediately straying from the OP point under discussion. If the thread evolves into several branched paths then that may be different. But if the OP is about Global Warming we don't need to jump to belief in Creationism right away.

Just my take...God, please help me not to stray [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

[pvn]

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I'm not retreating from the criticism at all. But everytime someone asks something about AC the debate would just be...

"How will this work in AC-land?"
"Free market, next topic."

We can't say exactly HOW the free market will solve certain things and we never claim utopia where everything has a happy solution.


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When they ask this sort of question one of two things is true. Either they are trolling for a state vs. AC debate or they want to know how the free market will deal with this. It is ok to not know the answer when someone asks a question. If you don't know the how they are asking about it might be time to examine your own position rather than counting on the market to work through it.
I believe markets are very powerful, but I reached that conclusion through study not blind faith.

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Wow, this is a very interesting position. So you know how the free market will deal with things? Because if this is true, you can probably get a nobel prize.

Please start a new thread with your ideas on this subject, I am very anxious to hear them. Also, I'd love to see your list of "services that the government is quite good at providing." I can think of a few, but I suspect they are quite different than the ones you have in mind.