what i get out of his writing is something along the idea that positive liberty is tyrannical because it opposes the freedom to be irrational - and true freedom should uphold the freedom to be as ridiculous, irrational and absurd as one desires. to begin with, i don't think that is actually true. what he's doing is falsely conflating an authoritarian streak towards forcing "progress" (a good example would be stamping out the ridiculousness of christianity by the sword rather than through education, or the british colonial tradition of assimilating aboriginals.....the roots of which are in the inquisition.) with the idea of positive liberty, and then constructing a strawman to take down advocates with. in truth, if positive liberty is the freedom to be in real control of ourselves then it follows rather clearly that these controlling behaviours are in abrogation of positive liberty - and also that any level of absurdity that can be imagined comes clearly from this ideological starting point. his argument is frankly hard to follow.

but, that isn't really what he's getting at - what he's really getting at is more in the question of sanction. that is, he skips a step and takes a big leap of logic to get there and then comes up with something ridiculous with a clear political motive. the more fundamental point - and the one that is actually cogent - that he's really concerned about is the freedom to be absurd without consequence. he then compresses that together into the unified idea of the freedom to be absurd - which is either irrigorous or, more likely, consciously disingenuous.

the answer to this is in mill, and really any writings by any liberal thinker: to separate what he's slyly compressed. the freedom to be absurd is one thing, and the freedom to be absurd without consequence is another. now, if one is absurd and harms nobody then there is no basis for any kind of action by anybody - individual, state, collective or not. but, if one is absurd and that affects others negatively, it does indeed stand to reason that they should be held liable for it. to conclude that one is not truly free to be absurd if they are to be held liable for the consequences of it is itself absurd.

so, berlin's true argument is really simply that true freedom means that the absurd should not be held liable for their behaviour - even when it affects others. you'll have to excuse me for not taking that particularly seriously.

see, you get this argument from libertarians (and some right-leaning liberals) all the time - that positive freedom infringes on negative freedom because you have to take from one to give to another. but, what that argument really states is that property is incompatible with positive freedom; that is, that our entire currency-based economy is designed to prevent positive liberty. when you realize that, it becomes clear that this is actually an argument to rationalize slavery.

nobody outside the left uses this example because it emphasizes that latter point, but it's really the best way to understand the difference. it's not exactly marxist, but it's along those lines (and let's not create strawmen about stalinism, which was antithetical to any kind of freedom whatsoever). consider the issue of employment. if you are a member of the working class - that is, if you must survive by selling your labour - then you are said to have negative freedom if you live in a free labour market. that is, you are free from external restraints (ideally; not if there are race or gender barriers) to pursue the type of employment you desire, after you pursue the proper education. but, because you are a member of the proletariat, you are unfree in deciding whether to work or not. that is, societies centred around markets lack positive freedom in the most basic sense of how we choose to spend our time, unless we are exceedingly lucky or exceedingly talented. the conclusion is that negative liberty is the kind of "liberty" we assign to the lower classes, while reserving true positive liberty for the elite.

once this class division is firmly cemented, this argument about taxation being necessary for or even somehow connected to positive freedom gets trotted out - as though the only way for one worker to be more free is to take something away from another, because the elite is shielded from redistribution (both of resources and labour). the only reason you need to talk about taxation and redistribution is because the system is designed to make positive freedom almost impossible in the first place. even the examples people use - of a well-paid profession having positive freedom because they have resources - are mostly nonsense, because that supposed positive freedom is a consequence of it's non-existence. it reduces positive freedom to a type of feudalism; it presents it as an award for the paying off of one's debts. it is simply a class division on what freedom can be conceived as.

the contradiction arises simply from the class division; they're only contradictory ideas in a society divided by class. the division merely serves to uphold the capitalist status quo. so, of course libertarians and (right-leaning liberals) see the issue through this lens.

however, if we were to abolish property and currency (and hence slavery) then we would see that there is no real contradiction - that positive freedom is required for true negative freedom and vice versa, and both ideas, to be actualized fully, require that abolition.

to put it another way: we could define a free society as a society where negative and positive liberty are not contradictory but cumulative to a coherent, unified concept of liberty.

the so-called luddite fallacy has always failed in the past because somebody needs to build or run the machines. the steam engine may have displaced specific kinds of labour, but somebody had to operate it; the typewriter may have replaced the copyist, but somebody had to type. what we actually saw, mostly, was that technology actually created jobs as a consequence - you would retrain the people to fill their replacement role, and then create jobs in manufacturing the machines.

the issue with bringing robots in to replace....slaves....is that the replacement is total. we've seen this in manufacturing, where job losses have just been total. could you run a restaurant with absolutely no people? you probably wouldn't need more than two - and one is no doubt a security guard.

but, we should still need people to build the robots. except that it's increasingly the case that robots are building robots. well, then we need people to bring the materials in - except that we increasingly don't.

this is only a catastrophe if you're a capitalist. if you're on the left, it's an opportunity to break the bonds of wage slavery and allow people to enjoy true positive freedom in their day-to-day lives. that doesn't - and i would say shouldn't - necessarily mean more high paying jobs, so much as it can mean more artists living near to subsistence that are just happy to have freedom to create. we loony leftists may even go so far as to say it promises to usher in an era of civilization.

if you take this view, the challenges of this shift lay less in unemployment and more in immigration and family size. we want to keep breeding down near replacement, and no longer have economic reasons to bring people in - which is no doubt to create a different kind of racial conflict. i'd like to see a report by brookings on that topic. what are the social consequences, in terms of race harmony, of a society rooted in automated labour?

nina Zebra
Could the government be just calling it a missile to cover something up? Just a theory...

jessica
i don't think there's any question it's a missile. the question is what it is that the missile is intercepting.

so, the navy claims this is a "missile test". my guess is that's more accurate than not - but i suspect it wasn't a test. the dangers in doing a test like this over los angeles are too large for that to be feasible.

what it looks like is an object breaking up in the atmosphere, and that's no doubt what it actually is. but, if you look carefully you can see planes flying around it. there's also a second explosion that this camera shot catches briefly.

it could be decades before this is declassified. however, i think it's rather clear that something just got shot down over los angeles. what exactly that is isn't entirely clear. you're not being told what actually happened for the good reason that you'd collectively flip out.

but i pity the fool that launched it.

i'm 34 and i've never paid for cable. not just a young person thing...

want numbers as to what would pull me in?

i'd pay up to $1/month per channel for certain channels. i don't want *any* basic package. i'd be mostly interest in news channels, and maybe the comedy network.

i wouldn't pay more than $10/month.

www.cbc.ca/news/business/cord-nevers-cord-cutters-tv-1.3308072

it might hurt, but they should have waited to buy. i mean, that's how this is supposed to work. we can't keep spiralling housing prices up ten times faster than wages - this is unsustainable. this microgeneration might get nailed, but readjusting the prices to correspond more reasonably to realistic wage levels will help the next batch. the challenge is going to be in keeping it there.

it will also hurt people about to retire, but it's necessary and people need to plan for it.

it's also a good lesson. investments carry risks. investing in property is not a sure thing, and should never be treated like money in the bank.

www.cbc.ca/news/business/ccpa-housing-correction-1.3310401

do you expect the "power of business" to innovate a way to accelerate grid conversion? i can tell you the result of the brainstorming session right now: further deregulation, so they can invest in their own renewable generation.

the true power of business is, of course, collusion in price-setting. that is, passing on costs. investors have no conscience....

the conservatives had crappy policies, but i do think they would have probably implemented a tax if they thought it would work. they were right in realizing it won't.

regulation may be messy, but, you know: deal with it.

the truth is that if we can just shut down the coal plants, we're a good ways there. that really, truly shouldn't be so hard.

www.cbc.ca/news/business/paris-climate-conference-canada-provinces-1.3301615

i think it's good that these kids are out there, and i do expect them to install solar panels at the residence even if it's merely cosmetic, but i wish they'd be a little more constructive. i've been in and out of protest circles in ottawa; i know a lot of those people.

you need to realize that a lot of these kids have no real memory of living with a liberal government, and they're being driven by what are essentially ndp partisans to believe that the liberals and conservatives are as identical as the democrats and republicans. they've been set up to expect a continuation of conservative policies. in their minds, nothing happened on the 19th except a change of clothes for the corporatocracy.

i'm not a partisan liberal supporter, but i'm old enough and read enough to know that this isn't reality. the liberals are a capitalist party, there's a lot of reasons to criticize them, but they represent a significant improvement - these people will not concede that point. there's a lot of overlap with the mcguinty government, which made giant progress in reducing emissions here. the actual reality is that the liberals presented a better climate change platform than the ndp did, and if it wasn't for naomi klein's family history i have to suspect she'd have seen the value in endorsing the liberals over the ndp, relative to her own proposals. when you've got stephen lewis on your panel, and avi lewis helping with promo, it should raise some eyebrows that an endorsement didn't come out of it - that the language was about being non-partisan.

shutting down the tar sands is a good, in fact necessary, idea. but it's impossible to do this tomorrow. there has to be a push for infrastructure first. four years is being optimistic - but the government should be graded on how far they've gone, at that time.

in the mean time, it's good they're out there. naive pressure is better than no pressure. i just wish they'd see the bigger picture, and protest for step one first, rather than jumping to step eight.

www.huffingtonpost.ca/2015/11/09/justin-trudeau-solar-panels_n_8510962.html

Cynthia Joan Morrison
The Liberals had NO climate change platform.

jessica amber murray
see, this is what i mean. it's like arguing with a cult.

the liberal platform promises 20 billion dollars in direct investment on environmental infrastructure. that is a tried and tested left-wing policy that will actually work in addressing the structural realities around infrastructure - not an experimental market scam based on neo-conservative economic theory.

the liberals put down concrete spending changes. the ndp tossed around market theory and asked us to pray to the invisible hand for guidance. but, keep chanting those slogans, maybe god will answer your prayers.

fwiw...i know this is symbolic. but, the reality is that ontario already has a green grid thanks to mcguinty. you don't reduce emissions in swapping hydro out for solar.

this isn't a free trade agreement. it's an annexation agreement.

www.cbc.ca/news/business/jim-balsillie-tpp-1.3310179

08-11-2015: another lost day