Letters to the Editor
Published Letters: 292 Editor's Choice: 33
-
A natural free market is neither
[Read the article: Brit Hume is a "journalist"; Keith Olbermann is "partisan"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Mona opines:
No one designs markets. They just are, if allowed to be.
This is perhaps the most uninformed statement I have heard today, though to be fair I don't listen to talk radio or watch cable news so you don't have much competition there.
Markets are an emergent and deliberate structure with extremely complex governing factors, from spending caps and rate adjustments to corporate investments and silent mergers. Your incredible belief that these are self-organizing systems is astounding. That is on par with the notion that a 5-star French kitchen is a miraculous box that turns raw materials into haute cuisine through intrinsic and ungoverned processes.
The market is a work of many hands, each of which labors to impose its own degree of design and direction. There is nothing self-regulating about it, and it is sheer simplicity to think otherwise.
I appreciate what human beings generate when they are free to do so. Like, for instance, the quality of American medicine, it totally rocks.
And the instances where it does so is because of regulation, not in spite of it. I worked for the FDA for several years and saw all manner of horrors perpetrated by your magical market Americans. One entrepeneur decided it was more cost effective to subsitute dog vitamins for malaria medication in the production of his cures. Fortunately that was one of the ones that was caught. Do you genuinely think that was an isolated case? Or that most Americans will always want to make the best product they can, damn the expense, as long as there's no oversight?
Believe me, I understand the appeal of libertarianism. If comes from a core philosophy of "leave me alone and I'll leave you alone". But the problem is there are too many people who won't leave you alone, who see you as something to exploit to make their own life better (usually via money). And an unregulated "free" market is an open invitation for these people to suck folks like you dry.
-
Psychic vs. somatic
[Read the article: Is virtual rape a crime?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]First off let me say that I can understand how someone playing a virtual character would feel genuinely traumatised, perhaps even "raped". Role-playing is an intensely powerful psychological tool which blurs the boundary between psychic (mental) and somatic (physical) experience. A person submerged deep enough into their role experiences the role-playing as a personal sensorium, rather than as a remote one.
And this is where, to me, the problem begins. Role-playing (in the psychological science sense) is useful precisely because it's so powerful, but it is not intended to be used recreationally. Superficial role-playing, of the sort we engage in when playing D&D or most video games, is appropriate and even cathartic, because we remain sufficiently detached from our in-game persona.
But the kind of role-playing that occurs in venues like Second Life is far more immersive for many people. It approaches psychiatric grade role-playing, which is a curative and rehabilitative tool. Using this mindstate in an unstructured environment, one where others are not in the same mindstate or supportive of those who are, is an open invitation to psychic trauma.
In many ways playing a game at this level of internal identification is on par with self-medicating. The player is engaging in psychological tinkering without a safety net, and without the protection of a supervisory agent. I don't doubt that in these circumstances events as traumatic as perceived rape could indeed occur, and with genuine consequences to the recipient.
That being said, I do not believe in equating virtual crimes with real ones. Rather, I believe people should avoid deep immersion in virtual spaces as a recreational activity, at least those in which self-identification is too great. The old reptile midbrain is not yet ready for the kind of boundary disambiguation that occurs there and it's too easy to suffer shocks to the ego when in the transitive state that virtuality provides.
-
Papal infallibility
[Read the article: Neocons' rejection of the rule of law extends to the personal level]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Those ordained by God are never wrong. Mix that with an unhealthy dose of paranoia and stir in an unabating hunger for power, garnish with lockstep groupthink, and you've got the modern neocon movement.
Words are indeed meaningless where this group is concerned. They amount to verbal legerdemain, showy gestures to distract you from the real trick underway.
-
The essence of a quagmire
[Read the article: Bush's favorite historian]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I suppose I should be comforted that I'm not an moron just becase I can't see a way out of the Iraq quagmire, since a distinguished historian can't either. I think the Republicans are wrong with their endless commitment to stay, but the Democrats are also wrong with their urgent timetable for compelete withdrawal.
To me the who situation is akin to some idiot building a nuclear reactor in his back yard. Obviously you want him to stop, but the problem is that then you'll have unshielded uranium sitting around. However if you let him keep building then you'll have a worse problem when the reactor inevitably goes critical. (Ideally it would be best if the idiot never started building the reactor, but it's too late for that.)
The only solution I see there is stop the idiot from building any more and call in some actual professionals to dismantle the reactor. In the Iraq situation, who would be those professionals?
-
Correction and addendum
[Read the article: Bush's favorite historian]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]In my post above, the fragment "the who situation" should read "the whole situation".
Also, with regards to European efforts stifling Muslim democracies, I'm suprised at the omission of the Crusades. These incursions were events which turned a Muslim world in the throes of its own Enlightenment into a military state, thanks to the aggression of Christian imperialism. The hatred and mistrust these ventures created remain with us today, deeply woven into societies on both sides.
After several centuries of mismanagement by the Big White Boss, is it any wonder Middle Eastern peoples would want to run the show themselves now?