[barmar]

blackshoe, on 2013-July-12, 13:05, said:

Nice abbreviating Mike. Very subtle. Not.

Government has three purposes:

According to our Constitution, the purposes are:

• form a more perfect union
  
• establish justice
  
• insure domestic tranquility
  
• provide for the common defense
  
• promote the general welfare
  
• secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity

Your list only includes #2 and #4. (I'm including both police and civil court in #2).

[kenberg]

barmar, on 2013-July-12, 13:16, said:

According to our Constitution, the purposes are:

• form a more perfect union
• establish justice
• insure domestic tranquility
• provide for the common defense
• promote the general welfare
• secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity

Your list only includes #2 and #4. (I'm including both police and civil court in #2).

I confess it had never occurred to me to take this list and think about how successful modern government is when set against these standards.


Number 1. seems a bit vague, and 3. and 5. seem very open ended. Insuring domestic tranquility sounds downright frightening, promoting the general welfare seems much better. Securing the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity is a wonderful ideal that I would expect conservatives, liberals and whachmacallits like me can agree to even if we may not interpret it in quite the same way.


Number 2., establishing justice, reminds me of when I was in traffic court. The judge informed us all that we could seek justice by demanding a trial. He assured us that if we did that, we would indeed get justice.

Anyway, I like looking over the list. It seems to me that it would be an excellent high school civics assignment to have the students write an essay on how they think we are doing with respect to that list.

[mikeh]

barmar, on 2013-July-12, 13:16, said:

According to our Constitution, the purposes are:

• form a more perfect union
  
• establish justice
  
• insure domestic tranquility
  
• provide for the common defense
  
• promote the general welfare
  
• secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity

Your list only includes #2 and #4. (I'm including both police and civil court in #2).

At the risk of creating even more problems on the thread, I think it useful to point out that the vast majority of humans now alive, and an even vaster proportion of now-dead people do not live and never have lived under the US Constitution, yet all or virtually all live or lived under some form of government.

It is easy to get focused on the US Government, but it seems to me that it may be useful to think, in some respects, to think of government as an idea, as a concept. I have written before that I see government as an aspect of society that is the inevitable consequence of human nature when humans form groups of any kind.

Yes, founding fathers and similar groups of people get together from time to time to create elaborate, lofty documents that often purport to proclaim ideas and rules, and purposes, and goals, and so on.

None of these ever 'create' 'government'. They all document a transition in governance but, to use the US as an example, there was a functioning government in power before and for quite some time during the revolution. It, too, served various purposes, and many of them were, superficially, the same as the purposes of the US Constitution, altho the British constitution was largely unwritten.

This approach to the concept of government as an idea is why I wrote that it is arguable that just about everything governments do is about dispute resolution in one form or another.

This includes foreign affairs...a war is simply an extreme form of dispute resolution, after all.

It includes policing: absent government policing, and sometimes even with it, crimes would give rise to self-help remedies.

Forming a more perfect union amongst subordinate political entities (the individual states) was clearly an attempt at dispute resolution or avoidance.

Insure [sic...one of my pet peeves is the use of 'insure' when the writer means 'ensure'] domestic tranquility: clearly dispute related

Promotion of the general welfare can also be viewed as requiring a regulation of the affairs of the economy, education, and so on in a manner that minimizes, resolves or avoids disputes. Disputes generally disrupt all affected, and this is rarely beneficial. Btw, this power is, within the US framework, at least conceptually a justification for efforts to regulate the economy. We are all to some degree living with the consequences of the deregulation of the US financial markets in the early years of this century.

Securing the blessings of liberty.

Well, even the most sincere of political figures like to wrap themselves in some lofty language, usually while ignoring it in practice. The FF, collectively didn't give a damn about trying to secure liberty for most of the population. They didn't care much for the 1st nations peoples. They didn't (collectively at least) give a damn about negroes, and you can look in vain for any attempt to secure anything resembling freedom for women.

I am not being judgmental about any of this. They were creatures of their time, and it would have struck most, if not all, of them as absurd that women be treated equally with men. Even the abolitionists, then and later, were virtually unanimous in their views that blacks were inferior to whites...the objection to slavery was rarely, if ever, on the grounds that there should be equality between the 'races'. Given the cultural mores that existed, the constitutional documents were impressive. However, societies change, and mores change. The concept and general role of the institution of government doesn't, except perhaps to inevitably become ever more complex as the society it governs becomes more complex.

[GreenMan]

mikeh, on 2013-July-12, 15:06, said:

Insure [sic...one of my pet peeves is the use of 'insure' when the writer means 'ensure'] domestic tranquility: clearly dispute related

The two spellings are mostly interchangeable today and were entirely interchangeable in the 18th century. Getting annoyed when someone in the 1700s doesn't follow the preference of some 21st-century people seems a waste of energy to me.

[mikeh]

GreenMan, on 2013-July-12, 15:20, said:

The two spellings are mostly interchangeable today and were entirely interchangeable in the 18th century. Getting annoyed when someone in the 1700s doesn't follow the preference of some 21st-century people seems a waste of energy to me.

Since they mean fundamentally different things, I think you are mistaken.

When I 'insure', I am making arrangements that will get me compensation in the event that what I am insuring fails or is damaged in some way.

I prepay a hotel reservation and then take out travel insurance so that if I have to cancel, for a reason covered by the insurance, I get my money back.

However, the reason I prepaid was to ensure that I had a place to stay.

I insure my car with 10MM 3rd party liability insurance in an effort to ensure that if I negligently cause catastrophic injury to someone, I won't face financial ruin when I get sued and have to pay out 8MM.

It would make no sense to write that I ensured my car in order to insure that I won't face financial ruin.

Since I am an insurance litigator, I am quite confident that my usage is correct. I ensured that it was so by doing a little research as well. However, I can't insure against the consequences of error.

I may be a pedant, but I do think I'm correct in this: indeed, my research has provided me with assurance such that even if I could insure against being wrong, I think doing so would merely ensure that I was out of pocket to the tune of the premium.

[GreenMan]

mikeh, on 2013-July-12, 15:41, said:

Since they mean fundamentally different things, I think you are mistaken.

... Since I am an insurance litigator, I am quite confident that my usage is correct. I ensured that it was so by doing a little research as well. However, I can't insure against the consequences of error.

I may be a pedant, but I do think I'm correct in this: indeed, my research has provided me with assurance such that even if I could insure against being wrong, I think doing so would merely ensure that I was out of pocket to the tune of the premium.

Using the right language has been my business for probably as long as you've been doing what you're doing. You are speaking from inside the insurance industry, which I'm sure adheres to the convention you describe. In the wider world it's another story. Look in the Merriam-Webster Dictionary of English Usage if you don't believe me; that's pretty much the authoritative resource for usage questions like this. Also check the Oxford English Dictionary to find both spellings for both usages going back to the 1600s if you doubt the historical point.

I know that lots of pop-grammar websites agree with you, but most of them just uncritically pass on usage superstitions rather than doing the hard work of research. I don't mind when people distinguish between insure, ensure and assure, and in fact I do the same in my own writing. But outside specialized areas such as yours, it's a preference, not a law.

[mikeh]

GreenMan, on 2013-July-12, 15:56, said:

Using the right language has been my business for probably as long as you've been doing what you're doing. You are speaking from inside the insurance industry, which I'm sure adheres to the convention you describe. In the wider world it's another story. Look in the Merriam-Webster Dictionary of English Usage if you don't believe me; that's pretty much the authoritative resource for usage questions like this. Also check the Oxford English Dictionary to find both spellings for both usages going back to the 1600s if you doubt the historical point.

I know that lots of pop-grammar websites agree with you, but most of them just uncritically pass on usage superstitions rather than doing the hard work of research. I don't mind when people distinguish between insure, ensure and assure, and in fact I do the same in my own writing. But outside specialized areas such as yours, it's a preference, not a law.

I don't need to check for historical usage, if only because it is of little consequence. I don't intend to be condescending but it really matters little how the words were used in the 1600's. Spelling was idiosyncratic at that time, and it wasn't until the middle of the next century that efforts were made to compile the first English dictionary: presumably a significant event in the standardization of spelling and usage.

What matters is the manner in which the language has evolved, and I recognize that it has evolved! I no longer cringe (well, not visibly) when I hear someone say that so and so did good, when what they mean is he or she did well.

The Oxford Dictionary of Current English (1998 ed) agrees with me and not you. It is a modest work and gives only, I think, the most popular uses and doesn't, as an example, give origins or historical references. My massively larger Merriam Webster is old...1945 Ed.

While it does indeed state that insure is sometimes used to convey the meaning of ensure, this is the 4th of 4 suggested meanings of 'insure' and the editors caution that ensure, in this sense, is the better literary term and the more common usage.

To state that the two words are used interchangeably seems a little much, given the way the dictionaries I have consulted define the words. The short(ish) modern one disagrees with you and the large one suggests that your view is unpopular, and incorrect but exists.

I found this to be an amusing diversion: today's been a slow day in part because I have had a minor health issue. I hadn't even realized we had a Merriam Webster in the office, let alone how huge it is. We used to have one of those editions of the Oxford that came in (IIRC) 2 or more volumes and with a magnifying glass because the print was so small one couldn't read it, even if one were far younger than am I today The M-W is actually quite an attractive book, and one of the losses we'll have when all books are e-books is the loss of the physical beauty of (a few) books.

Oh, while I practice insurance law, that doesn't come close to defining my areas of interest nor does it circumscribe my knowledge of the English language.

[blackshoe]

kenberg, on 2013-July-12, 14:28, said:

I confess it had never occurred to me to take this list and think about how successful modern government is when set against these standards.


Number 1. seems a bit vague, and 3. and 5. seem very open ended. Insuring domestic tranquility sounds downright frightening, promoting the general welfare seems much better. Securing the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity is a wonderful ideal that I would expect conservatives, liberals and whachmacallits like me can agree to even if we may not interpret it in quite the same way.


Number 2., establishing justice, reminds me of when I was in traffic court. The judge informed us all that we could seek justice by demanding a trial. He assured us that if we did that, we would indeed get justice.

Anyway, I like looking over the list. It seems to me that it would be an excellent high school civics assignment to have the students write an essay on how they think we are doing with respect to that list.

Yes, it would be an excellent class assignment.

[hrothgar]

blackshoe, on 2013-July-09, 15:52, said:

Why should I be required to think through all the consequences of a suggestion I threw out for discussion on an Internet forum?

Because if you don't people tend to dismiss your future arguments as having little to no merit...

[hrothgar]

blackshoe, on 2013-July-12, 13:05, said:

Second, I ask you, what is it about a gold standard that makes it "idiotic"?

Here’s a short form critique of the gold standard

1. Maintaining a gold standard means that the Federal government is unable to use monetary policy to cool down / heat up the economy. While some people see this as an advantage, the vast majority of economists believe that the government should apply some form of monetary policy (even if some advocate something simple like have the money supply grow at a fixed rate like 1.38% per year).

2. Gold demand and production of gold exhibit considerable variance. Pegging your money supply to gold isn’t any guarantee of a stable money supply. Historically, the best example of this was the large influx of gold into Western Europe following the Spanish and Portuguese exploitation of South America that devastated economies from Spain to Turkey. However, the recent speculative bubble in gold is another good example.

3. The reason that countries all abandoned the gold supply is that they couldn’t support pegging the price level. There’s no reason to believe that this has changed. The financial maneuvers necessary to go back on the gold standard would be devastating to the economy. It’s estimated that there’s something like 120,000 tons of gold in the world. On average, the US consumes about 10% of world gold production. With gold costing about $1,200 an ounce, this works out to be about half a trillion dollar’s worth of gold. (Note that this is ALL the gold in the US) In contrast, the US money supply (M1) is about $2.5 trillion. Simply put, there’s nowhere near enough gold out there to support the size of the US money supply.

4. Empirically, the gold standard hasn’t provided the stability that its proponent’s claim. Empirically, economies that are on the gold standard experience significantly hort term price volatility and numerous financial crises. As an example, the under the gold standard the US experienced financial crises in 1873, 1884, 1890, 1893, 1907, 1930, 1931, 1932, and 1933

[GreenMan]

mikeh, on 2013-July-12, 16:59, said:

I don't need to check for historical usage, if only because it is of little consequence. I don't intend to be condescending but it really matters little how the words were used in the 1600's.

This is quite disingenuous considering that you were griping about an example of its usage in the 1700s. Our Founding Fathers did not anticipate 21st-century grammar nags! Oh, what great men they might have been.

Quote

The Oxford Dictionary of Current English (1998 ed) agrees with me and not you. It is a modest work and gives only, I think, the most popular uses and doesn't, as an example, give origins or historical references. My massively larger Merriam Webster is old...1945 Ed.

While it does indeed state that insure is sometimes used to convey the meaning of ensure, this is the 4th of 4 suggested meanings of 'insure' and the editors caution that ensure, in this sense, is the better literary term and the more common usage.

Now you're relying on a small British publication to argue American usage, and saying a 1945 dictionary overrides the same publisher's 1994 usage volume. That's just laughable.

[cherdano]

blackshoe, on 2013-July-12, 13:05, said:

Cherdano: you mentioned "the gold standard". First, there's more than one way to establish a gold standard. Second, I ask you, what is it about a gold standard that makes it "idiotic"?

Think about how much we right now sweat whether the projected 5 year inflation is 1.8% or 2.5% or 4%. Then look at this:
Yahoo Gold price chart 2008-2013
These fluctuations would be terrible periods of inflation or deflation (which after all is nothing but money getting more or less expensive).
If that doesn't convince you, probably http://blogs.wsj.com...top-economists/ won't convince you either.

In any case, the problem isn't that you personally are unaware of such basic economics. The problem is that libertarians have created their own world of macroeconomic illiteracy in which they reinforce each others' macroeconomic views, without any input from the universal consensus by the people who do know about macroeconomics (i.e., economists).

[mikeh]

GreenMan, on 2013-July-12, 17:36, said:

This is quite disingenuous considering that you were griping about an example of its usage in the 1700s. Our Founding Fathers did not anticipate 21st-century grammar nags! Oh, what great men they might have been.



Now you're relying on a small British publication to argue American usage, and saying a 1945 dictionary overrides the same publisher's 1994 usage volume. That's just laughable.

When did I ever express any concern about 'American usage'?????

I'm not *drumroll please* an American.

I don't speak American and I don't write American

I was writing about a peeve, or very minor level of annoyance, I have with the conflation by some (and I see it here in Canada and elsewhere) of two words that, to me, seem to be quite different in meaning. My perception is based on my understanding of the English language as I learned it in (second drumroll, please) England, at what is known there as a Public School....an institution known for its inculcation of the English language in its students.

That understanding has been influenced by further education in Canada and work, using words as my primary tool, for almost 40 years.

You butted in by asserting that I was mistaken in my usage of the English language.

It turns out that you assumed, due to arrogance mixed with ignorance, that I was using American English. I wasn't.

I spell programme with more letters than I assume you do. I pronounce the letter 'Z' as 'zed'. I use colourful language on occasion, and never color anything.

If I ever want a lesson in American usage, I'll let you know. Otherwise, maybe we can end this silly exchange. Unless, of course, you are now going to tell me that I am wrong in my English or Canadian usage of English as well

I just figured out the first part of that quote: I had assumed that the poster who used insure rather than ensure was making a mistake: I didn't assume that he was quoting from the historical document! Maybe I was wrong: maybe the FF did use 'insure' and if so, then I was in error in my assumption and this whole string of posts has been a semi-comical series of errors. I wasn't debating 17th or 18th century meanings: how people used the words back then isn't something that peeves me in the slightest.

[jonottawa]

mikeh, on 2013-July-12, 18:42, said:

When did I ever express any concern about 'American usage'?????

I'm not *drumroll please* an American.

I don't speak American and I don't write American

I was writing about a peeve, or very minor level of annoyance, I have with the conflation by some (and I see it here in Canada and elsewhere) of two words that, to me, seem to be quite different in meaning. My perception is based on my understanding of the English language as I learned it in (second drumroll, please) England, at what is known there as a Public School....an institution known for its inculcation of the English language in its students.

That understanding has been influenced by further education in Canada and work, using words as my primary tool, for almost 40 years.

You butted in by asserting that I was mistaken in my usage of the English language.

It turns out that you assumed, due to arrogance mixed with ignorance, that I was using American English. I wasn't.

I spell programme with more letters than I assume you do. I pronounce the letter 'Z' as 'zed'. I use colourful language on occasion, and never color anything.

If I ever want a lesson in American usage, I'll let you know. Otherwise, maybe we can end this silly exchange. Unless, of course, you are now going to tell me that I am wrong in my English or Canadian usage of English as well

I just figured out the first part of that quote: I had assumed that the poster who used insure rather than ensure was making a mistake: I didn't assume that he was quoting from the historical document! Maybe I was wrong: maybe the FF did use 'insure' and if so, then I was in error in my assumption and this whole string of posts has been a semi-comical series of errors. I wasn't debating 17th or 18th century meanings: how people used the words back then isn't something that peeves me in the slightest.

I guess that's as close as you're going to come to an apology for your 'arrogance mixed with ignorance'?

[mikeh]

jonottawa, on 2013-July-12, 19:25, said:

I guess that's as close as you're going to come to an apology for your 'arrogance mixed with ignorance'?

I did a little research and find that my assumptions were in error. I apologize. I now see why greenman was so bent out of shape: he thought I was expressing a peeve about the actual uasge employed in the preamble to US Constitution while I thought, mistakenly, that barmar had either mispelled the word or made an improper usage. So I offended greenman, for sure, and implicitly insulted barmar. I apologize to both.

I still remain peeved by those who conflate the two terms these days

[jonottawa]

My faith in MikeH is restored. All is right with the world.

I apologize for butting in.

[blackshoe]

cherdano, on 2013-July-12, 17:55, said:

Think about how much we right now sweat whether the projected 5 year inflation is 1.8% or 2.5% or 4%. Then look at this:
Yahoo Gold price chart 2008-2013
These fluctuations would be terrible periods of inflation or deflation (which after all is nothing but money getting more or less expensive).
If that doesn't convince you, probably http://blogs.wsj.com...top-economists/ won't convince you either.

In any case, the problem isn't that you personally are unaware of such basic economics. The problem is that libertarians have created their own world of macroeconomic illiteracy in which they reinforce each others' macroeconomic views, without any input from the universal consensus by the people who do know about macroeconomics (i.e., economists).

What causes inflation? Does government screwing around with the economy or the market have anything to do with it?

How many of those "top economists" were of the Austrian School? If you ask 20 "top" Precision players what the best bidding system is, how many of them will say "Standard American"?

I think returning to a gold standard, at this point, would be very, very difficult, for a lot of reasons. But I don't think that in itself is reason not to do it.

[kenberg]

mikeh, on 2013-July-12, 19:37, said:

I did a little research and find that my assumptions were in error. I apologize. I now see why greenman was so bent out of shape: he thought I was expressing a peeve about the actual uasge employed in the preamble to US Constitution while I thought, mistakenly, that barmar had either mispelled the word or made an improper usage. So I offended greenman, for sure, and implicitly insulted barmar. I apologize to both.

I still remain peeved by those who conflate the two terms these days

I was very pleased to see this prolonged discussion. Whenever someone demeans mathematicians as being unbearable fussbudgets I shall refer them to this thread.

[blackshoe]

ROFL!

[cherdano]

mikeh, on 2013-July-12, 19:37, said:

he thought I was expressing a peeve about the actual uasge employed in the preamble to US Constitution while I thought, mistakenly, that barmar had either mispelled the word or made an improper usage.

Wow, you didn't realize that barmar's post was essentially a quote? You guys must have a really big wall at the border to prevent you from noticing anything that's said on the Southern side of the fence.

In any case, Merriam Webster lists both meanings for "insure".