Interesting Links for 18-07-2013

[andrewducker]

• Should we regard young driver deaths as a scandal? How to solve an age-old problem.
  (tags: uk driving )
• Reuters is deliberately toning down its coverage of climate change
  (tags: news globalwarming newspapers climatechange media )
• The family tree of fish is altogether odder than anyone thought.
  (tags: genetics fish )
• I love that I can ask a

Comments

[philmophlegm]

Good point.

[philmophlegm]

"One in five young drivers (17-24 year-olds) will have an accident within six months of passing their test and 1,552 young drivers were killed or seriously injured on Britain’s roads in 2011 - more than 4 per day... If this was any other area of public health there would be an outcry."

That death rate doesn't seem far removed from the 'excess death' statistics quoted in the Keogh Report, and with a few exceptions there doesn't seem to be much of an outcry about that.

[supergee]

"Objectivist libertarian" is like "Catholic Protestant."

[theweaselking]

Only if you redefine "libertarian" to mean "nothing like what most self-described libertarians mean when they self-describe".

[philmophlegm]

The problem I think is the difference between British and American terminology. I'd prefer to call myself a liberal, but in the US (and increasingly over here) that means someone into political correctness, big government, constraints on freedom of the individual - the very opposite of what I think it should mean.

I think very few of us 'libertarians' on the British side of the Atlantic would identify with Ayn Rand objectivism. And to be honest, we probably get tired of being hit with that stick.

[theweaselking]

If by "political correctness, big government, constraints on freedom of the individual" you mean "halting malcious abuse, smaller and more efficient government that happens to also do more and better things, and no really your right to swing your fist REALLY DOES stop before my nose so stop fucking punching me", then yes, "liberal" means that.

But "Libertarian" in modern politics means "Randroid asshole".

You might need a third different term.

[gonzo21]

Yeah, I've long held that immigration is absolutely necessary to pay for our aging population. Isn't the welfare bill for pensions something like 10 times the cost of other state benefits?

I'm not sure what happens when it becomes apparent that the banks have most probably gambled away their pension funds.

[andrewducker]

Pension funds are, nowadays, quite highly regulated, precisely to stop that kind of behaviour (because it used to happen semi-regularly).