[lit-ideas] Re: "Promissory Materialism" Correction
- From: "Eric Yost" <mr.eric.yost@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 19 Nov 2011 03:35:55 -0500
>>That is not btw why there's an 'A' and a 'B' - they are there
simply so they can they be deployed as shorthand signs for the
propositions they are stated to denote, propositions that do not
differ "from speaker to speaker" but remain constant or invariant in
their content.
Donal, it's structured as dialog, a phone call maybe. A calls his
friend B to describe the local weather and B offers another local
description.
Yet even granting your meaning of "A" and "B" as constant and
invariant, why on earth (That's where we seem to be.) would you
deploy the weather as an example?
Objections:
1. Two statements cannot be made at the same point in space and
time.
2. Assuming a single speaker operating in a longer period of
space time -- in my example a Yankee farmer describing snow drifts
to a Southern visitor -- Yankee farmer points to a patch of field
and remarks, "Here there is snow." (A) Calmly, the Yankee farmer
turns to indicate an area beneath an enclosed patio, and says, "Here
there is no snow." (B) His Southern guest replies, "So that's snow.
Glad I don't have to live with it."
>>Next on the "Eric & Adriano Show": a dazzling demonstration that
there is no contradiction between the view that A. the banks bear a
large measure of the blame for our current fiscal woes.
In 1999, Bill "Nobody Left To Lie To" Clinton repealed the
Glass-Steagall Act, an FDR-era protection against bank bloat. He was
lobbied by a banker who became Citigroup CEO after the repeal.
Shortly after the repeal Clinton's Treasury Secretary Reich went to
work for CitiGroup. This corrupt bipartisan legislation allowed the
"too big to fail" institutions, without which there would have been
no gigantic US bank-bailout. Therefore, legislation may be seen as
the prime mover of our woes. (Both McCain and Obama have tried to
bring back some form of the Glass-Steagall Act.) So much for our
woes. European woes are a different dirge, but I suspect legislation
may be more causal than banks per se. There, that is, rather than
here.
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