intelligence testing and voting

Page 2 - Seeking answers? Join the AnandTech community: where nearly half-a-million members share solutions and discuss the latest tech.

fskimospy

Elite Member
Mar 10, 2006
83,718
47,407
136
Keeping your own money isn't a handout.

(Unless, of course, you're a liberal who believes all money belongs to the govt and any you keep is a handout.)

Fern

It is when you're using things that were communally paid for.
 

Bowfinger

Lifer
Nov 17, 2002
15,776
392
126
Keeping your own money isn't a handout.

(Unless, of course, you're a liberal who believes all money belongs to the govt and any you keep is a handout.)

Fern
No, I'm a fiscally responsible adult who recognizes I wouldn't have "my" money were it not for all of the infrastructure and services -- largely funded by government -- that form the foundation of America's tremendous success. Without a properly-funded government, we'd be just another Guatemala where we all earned a couple of bucks a day. I guess you could also say I'm an optimistic sort who sees that a half-full Big Gulp is better than a 100% full shot glass.
 
Last edited:

Bowfinger

Lifer
Nov 17, 2002
15,776
392
126
It is when you're using things that were communally paid for.
Indeed. Such a simple concept, yet it seems totally beyond those consumed with greed. We have one of the highest standards of living in the world. But so much of the modern right cannot rejoice in what they have, but instead fixate on what they don't. It is that selfish "greed is good" philosophy that flourished during the Reagan administration. Strangely, almost none of them seem eager to move to those low-tax utopias like Guatemala or Somalia.
 

Svnla

Lifer
Nov 10, 2003
17,999
1,396
126
I know, right. Like, "Where's my tax cut? I don't care about paying our bills." And then there are all those big corps looking for incentives, subsidies, and other handouts.

The right is just as guilty as the left of demanding free stuff. It may be different free stuff, but people on both sides are looking for handouts.

I know, like, I wrote "too many voters". Never mentioned the "left" or "right" or "middle". :whiste:

It was YOU that mentioned that and you repeated again in another post above.
 
Last edited:

Newell Steamer

Diamond Member
Jan 27, 2014
6,894
8
0
So, what is intelligence?

You have a good portion of the nation who does not believe in scientific evidence, and chooses religion to explain and justify what direction life (their own,.. and unfortunately the lives of others) should take.

I am OK with you living by the word of God,.. so long as you don't force that on anyone else.

As of late, faith has had a pretty awkward rag of science thrown onto it - and is then being passed as fact,.. the religion itself.

Why should my right to vote be taken away, because I do not have the same agreement and understanding of faith based 'facts' as you?

Again, I am all for faith, so long as said faith is NOT a requirement for all. And, with science being draped over religion, we are venturing into dangerous territory.
 
Nov 25, 2013
32,083
11,718
136
Keeping your own money isn't a handout.

(Unless, of course, you're a liberal who believes all money belongs to the govt and any you keep is a handout.)

Fern

Who are these "liberals"? Care to give us a few names with examples of them expressing such a sentiment?
 

Bowfinger

Lifer
Nov 17, 2002
15,776
392
126
I know, like, I wrote "too many voters". Never mentioned the "left" or "right" or "middle". :whiste:

It was YOU that mentioned that and you repeated again in another post above.
Fair enough. That's a common talking point of the right, that Democrats bribe voters with handouts, failing to recognize that Republicans do the same with tax cuts. I'm glad you are more perceptive.
 

Anarchist420

Diamond Member
Feb 13, 2010
8,645
0
76
www.facebook.com
And if we required IQ tests for people to vote, we'd probably eliminate well over 50% of the population. Sure maybe it's a good thing, but that would never fly in any legal aspect.
i agree with the bolded
Any time you start making tests for people to vote those tests are always twisted by those in power to make sure that only the 'right people' vote. Considering our country's horrible history with voter suppression let's just skip the whole voting test thing.
Not necessarily. Smart people can't be manipulated. and if the smartest saw how much liberty they had, artificial hierarchy could cease to exist.
I also find it funny that everyone always assumes they would be one of those suitably qualified to vote.
Well I don't about all that now given that I knew very well it would exclude me from voting.

Yea, I'd really love to see these asked in the rural areas of Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, etc. I'm sure those red voters would nail the answers
You'd be surprised how smart some the southerners are. Surely the aristocratic souls in the northeast would have less vote than people like grandfather's family. Coolidge may have sent Smedley Butler to protect my grandmother.

If you asked to voters on the right, there would never be a republican in the office again either.
i guess you've never heard of hillary clinton or haven't imagined how she could be the first democrat to win office without winning the popular vote (although richard nixon may have been robbed in 1960). Not that the pop vote makes any difference anymore, but if done earlier it could've stopped lincoln from getting elected. The Neo-Republican Party never could've existed for very long in the first place.

Andrew Jackson, one of the smartest and most eloquent presidents ever (if you look at his private correspondence as well as his choice of speechwriter "Old Bullion" then you can see that he had a high-functioning dorsolateral prefrontal cortex), tried to get popular vote amendment ratified as precisely as possible, but too many power-hungry Whigs were in Congress.

an opinion: the State shouldn't have access to gold; I am not sure why he issued the specie circular. Perhaps Nicholas Biddle couldn't be trusted to supply paper to the State if he wasn't guaranteed a profit from it. But the government was spending too much and he prevented damage a lot more smartly than the totalitarian U.S. Grant ever did.
 
Last edited:

Svnla

Lifer
Nov 10, 2003
17,999
1,396
126

Bowfinger

Lifer
Nov 17, 2002
15,776
392
126
This is from another thread but it shows how voters do not want to do the difficult things (vote for the guys/gals that keep kicking the can down the road..) = http://forums.anandtech.com/showpost.php?p=36748709&postcount=20
America has become a country of spoiled children demanding instant gratification. We have the voters who refuse to look at the big picture but instead fixate on their own short-term interests. They can't even be bothered to learn about the people they're voting for and what their elected officials are doing. After all, American Idol is on.

Then we have politicians who fixate on demonizing their opposition at every turn and refuse to be real leaders who make the hard decisions required to govern effectively. (Well that, and lining their own pockets, of course.) Ultimately, we all lose, or perhaps more accurately, our children and grandchildren lose, because we are so selfish and ignorant.
 

Anarchist420

Diamond Member
Feb 13, 2010
8,645
0
76
www.facebook.com
America has become a country of spoiled children demanding instant gratification. We have the voters who refuse to look at the big picture but instead fixate on their own short-term interests. They can't even be bothered to learn about the people they're voting for and what their elected officials are doing. After all, American Idol is on. Then we have politicians who fixate on demonizing their opposition at every turn and refuse to be real leaders who make the hard decisions required to govern effectively. (Well that, and lining their own pockets, of course.) Ultimately, we all lose, or perhaps more accurately, our children and grandchildren lose, because we are so selfish and ignorant.
It isn't the voters or the people; it is the System and the State manipulating voters.

Just one example would be the 22nd Amendment solving nothing and how any congressional term limit amendments would never get it right. As I'm not the only one to have said before, disallowing consecutive terms is best. Lobbying isn't an issue because anyone can lobby and it really doesn't require cash at all. party systems suck and could be minimized to practically nothing if only consecutive terms were constitutionally barred.

And w/o mainstream parties the lobbyists would have less uniformity and those who try to take office after a hiatus are loved even more by their constituents if and after they get back into office. Ron Paul, had several hiatuses (one possibly due to the LBJ machine cheating) and he got more popular each time. Theodore Roosevelt was a bad president, but he could've won a popular vote run-off against wilson and been more popular the second time because he knew what groups wanted and would've acted on it.

At least 2/3 of all career doctors (juris, philosophy, and medicine) prefer an extreme amount of reformed legislation (rather than repeal) and they like to be part of the enforcement process, so they will have a much tougher time without licensure. Many CEOs have to structure everything for themselves and they better ones know what is popular but only at the moment. The best CEOs don't need structure but they are relatively rare. Pro-structure (obsessive compulsive disordered either biased towards security or biased towards profits) CEOs generally like having a lot of red tape as lawyers and patents can alter business practices by threats alone which lead to CEOs getting more credit and being longer-lasting than more governance by a pure market would (i.e., nvidia and intel have very powerful management). If intel hadn't had so many patents, copyrights, and TM (marketing like intel inside stickers), I doubt it could've recovered from the Pentium IV and Pentium D like it did. The Core 2 Duo was excellent for its day, but something similar could've been made by someone else. Nvidia's CEO probably retains workers with contracts while the most talented developers will just leave. And then the patents, trademarks, and copyrights take away savings from the bottom to the point that entrepreneurs don't have a chance. i mean, JHH has so many paper assets, that he could invest them in homes in multiple countries, trust someone to help him plan without even having to pay them, all for his future and his family's future. But he is always self-convinced that he is right yet he is not easily fooled like I am, so everyone has the same or less chance of benefiting from independent developers. Most may very well be satisfied with me-too products, but that does not make me-too products better. I mean, the mega drive didn't generate always objectively and absolutely worse graphics or audio than the Super NES; Sega was different and Nintendo kind of copied the MD's synth/noise (i.e., computer generated music without orchestral instruments) with N64 games. Nintendo also made it hard for devs to use more scrolling because they aimed for realism while the Mega Drive had more register combination capabilities or something like that. And Sega having split management was always good because it allowed them to not make hardware due the 32X fiasco while it also allowed for Tom Kalinske to want to leave when he was too hard-headed or rebellious (but in a very good way) to Divided management also allowed Bernie Stolar (aka superman) to practically give away dreamcasts. He even included a 56k modem and some software all for $199.99 (i enjoyed quake 3 that i bought new at target for $9.99 in early '01 on a free sega net trial; there was a lot of lag and hold-ups but i had fun) and even I was smart enough to pick my first up at midnight on 9.9.99 when I knew games weren't going to be made for it for long. i'm hopeful that digression wasn't bad for anyone and i am hoping that someone who interprets well will profit from it and maybe even help me out sometimes in the future.

The natural employment rate may be less than 45% at any given time, but employment isn't everything. Private wealth and private charity are good too. Savings are low with legal tender, with a bunch of licensed professionals, and regulated hospitals with above market revenue.

Ron Paul couldn't win because of the establishment around him who probably still wants to murder him. I don't want to him or anyone else to be charged with treason ever.

In executive State office, Ron Paul would've experienced an emotional conflict within himself (like Martin Van Buren did over slavery and the mexican american war) as he would've seen he couldn't balance liberty and order (but he may never fully understand that the two can't be arbitrarily balanced with success and happiness) Like Jesus and Martin Van buren did, ron paul loves liberty (and everyone will love him for eternity as he loves humanity). at the same time, there is a great and good moralist in him that makes him want to please everyone yet he can only help one person at a time. He is an egalitarian like rothbard, madison, obama and jefferson often had been, but unlike the latter four, ron paul can't ever handle seeing anyone suffer; he has emotional OCD while the other men were pure reasoners who adapted. Rand Paul is a reasoner, but he tries to end disorder with reason unlike his father who couldn't initiate violence to end disorder (like how one of our friends named martin couldn't order the military or the original americans around; WHH was ill and John Tyler didn't seem too happy with those he called "assemblages" but he ordered the war ended for his peace which was actually the best thing to do).

The elite don't want to give any of their power up. And it isn't just welfare people want, it is the concept in the minds of many that someone like me should always have the State right by my side. Or that Bush and Cheney somehow deserve secret service or that the former's incompetence and anger as well as the latter's hawkishness and desire for structure to profit from the tax payer is appropriate. Then another harmful concept is that Obama is actually in charge and running the show when in reality he never gives just one signal at a time (he precisely gives many signals at once) which means the cops, military, and bureaucrats go wild. He let me and holder go wild and he just didn't see it; he interpreted it and understood he couldn't take direct action. Gov. McAwful probably wanted to smash me.
Another way you know Bush desired his own security and was mentally unstable like me is that if Ron Paul had been president-elect in '08 ... then Bush 43 would've met with business leaders to make sure they crashed the economy; he would've gotten the bailouts enacted completely and earlier. He was incompetent, myopic, and easily controlled as Hoover and FDR were (like I am). President Bill Clinton wasn't incompetent at all, but he was still very myopic on his own and he took advice that wasn't good. President Obama is certainly more competent than Romney and Hillary Clinton ever were, and minimizing risks comes naturally to him. Jackson and LBJ could minimize risks too, but Obama (like thomas jefferson and james madison) understands human action (doesn't underestimate it like LBJ and Jackson did), and is less racially aware all the time (compared to men like LBJ and Jackson). Jackson and LBJ were among the most ideologically aware presidents ever... they were democratic nationalists. James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, and Obama on the other side of the same hand are the only three Presidents who came anywhere close to being great philosophers. Muslims, for example, were not always considered evil to them like 90% of all native americans were always considered evil to Andrew Jackson. But FDR and Bush represented the common executive because they ordered the Japanese murdered for his own sense of security, yet FDR felt some sorrow for those he ordered the mass murder of when he got a letter opener. Bush did the same with wanting the Iraqis free by the sword and by ordering bin laden's innocent family members out of CA when Bush actually was friendly with the members of the house of saud who planned it. It is bad for liberty that we don't have more unaware liberals (devil's advocates) like Obama and Gingrich. In fact, most self-described "liberals" today are most like the original progressives (i.e., thomas wilson and theodore roosevelt's new nationalism which were really just globalizing hamiltonianism). The LGBT movement is like original progressivism. The "Civil Rights" movement was not classical liberal. Modern liberalism really didn't exist in pure form because it is incoherent (FDR was actually far-right while democratic centralists such as the Jacksonians and LBJ underestimated human action and wound up replacing old centralist ideas with new anti-original ones like the Specie Circular and the "Independent" Treasury System) as "social issues" and "economic issues" are really two sides of the same coin; originality and independence were advocated by classical liberalism (which was perfectly coherent) and they interpreted executive power as fostering dependence.

Anyway, your voice can be interpreted without currency, especially without the most monopolistic currency which compiles shit like war rather than interprets voices. obama is a good interpreter but the Party of Lincoln and men like Thomas Wilson have always recycled Hamilton's waste.