On Fri, May 24, 2013 at 5:13 PM, Russell Coker <russell@coker.com.au> wrote:
On Fri, 24 May 2013, Tim Josling <tim.josling@gmail.com> wrote:
previous discussion that you refer to If there is any evidence of some parts of the ABC appear to have any sort of right-wing bias then it refutes the claim that the ABC is totally biased towards left-wing politics.
I don't think anyone would argue that the ABC is always and totally biased in one direction. That is a much stronger statement even than saying that overall they are seriously biased.
An ABC employee once explained to me that the ABC had to have a left wing bias, to balance the right wing bias of the commercial media, a view I have some sympathy with. I remember one election night watching the ABC, and one ABC commentater stated "I think **we**'re going to win that seat", meaning the ALP was going to win it.
Who was the commentator and what was their position? Were the supposed to be offering journalistic commentary or personal opinion?
From memory I think it was Ken Begg. His role on the night was to be an
unbiased commentator on the progress of the election results. [This was not the sort of role where they get a working or retired politician to add some spice and inside knowledge from the scrutineers.]
There are other models, the Political Compass is one.
This is an improvement on a one-dimensional approach but still very crude. Not sure about using "left/right" for the economic dimension. I've done that before; it has me as centre on economics/slightly libertarian on the liberty dimension.
An ad-hominem attack would be to say "because he is heartless his arguments lack merit", that's not my position at all.
I am surprised to hear this.
If they aren't all Randians who want the poor to live^D^D^D^Ddie in squalor then why does the blurb for the book you cite suggest that the US government have no provision for social security?
I thought I had suggesting reading the book rather than just the blurb. To give you a flavour, the argument re welfare payments is that government welfare programs have many pernicious effects, and that community based cooperative solutions, while not perfect, are better overall. I am not suggesting reading this because you are likely to agree with all of it but because it is quite eye-opening. As were Mein Kampf, Das Capital, and Poltics (Aristotle) in different ways. http://lesswrong.com/lw/gw/politics_is_the_mindkiller/ Tim