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Well thought out and excellent reasoning. I really enjoyed this and agree wholeheartedly.

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This has a number of very good parts. The problem is this. In my considered view (as an independent economics theorist) the "left" and "right" alternatives are a dialectical pairing. If the left method has a flaw, the rightists' method has a parallel flaw. This is precisely the reason for the way both views have, beginning at about Rousseau's period, existed at the same time. Each is equally correct. My opinion, based on that reasoning was always that the "liberal" policy is the one to pick, but only because it is more practical. Capitalism, for example, tends liberal.

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Chock-full of good stuff as usual. There is no totalitarianism like the totalitarianism of "care." In this aspect Olivia Chow is just another little Eichmann.

I too am an environmentalist -- insofar as I care about the Earth and all its living creatures and wish for them to exist in health and perpetuity -- but Big Corporate Environmentalism is a horror. These people don't care about the Earth, they care about themselves; it's virtue-signaling malignant narcissism. Exhibit A is Greta Thunberg; exhibit B is Joe Biden, whom I am unconvinced has ever held a sincere position his his life (he's no Ed Abbey, for sure).

I tried out Buddhism for a while, but I found its insistence on "good intentions" over "good outcomes" to be ultimately incompatible with my own sense of "moral justice" (for lack of a better term; it seems haughty, but there it is). I in no way indict the Buddhist faith; I merely observe that "good intentions" being the end-all did not work out for me personally on a spiritual level. I still find meditation to be a deeply helpful practice, so I got that out of it at least.

I think a corrupt, pragmatic villain who works good in the world, perhaps entirely by accident, has moral superiority over the "well-intentioned" person driven by their own ego and desire to BE SEEN AS GOOD, as opposed to actually doing good.

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deletedNov 6, 2023Liked by Theodore Atkinson
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