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ORIGINAL: Faramir



Your thoughts are all wrong.

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Did we forget to take our Zoloft today?

Lordandmaster

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(advised this was not directed at Lam; will endeavorr to find out who it was for)
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Is that a poker up your ass or did I hit a nerve?

Ha ha

Faramir

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Still, I'd like to know what FARAMIR meant, because it sounded fishy. My point was simple: a leader's popularity is no indication of whether he is a good or bad leader. (I said this in response to Faramir's argument that Bush can't be one of the worst presidents in American history because he was duly elected and we are a democracy.) If Faramir wants to deny that Hitler was one of the worst leaders in history, I would love to hear his argument.

Lordandmaster

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I would hold Hitler as a superior political leader, with deep flaws. Please note that I am speaking strictly in efficacy – in his ability as a leader to meet the needs of his electorate. I’m not addressing his ethics – National Socialist Germany ranks only below The Lenin-Stalin experiment in collectivism for sheer horror.

Post-war Germany was in a rigged game – the Allies framed a game Germany could not win: reparation payments that were high enough a part of German GDP so as to marginally destroy the country. In order to make the payments, the Social Democrats had to set tax rates at a prohibitively high rate, moving from somewhere between points “E” and “C” on the Laffer Curve to perhaps point “A.” The move up the Curve lowered revenues, putting the Social Democrats in an insoluble bind: the higher they raised taxes to pay reparations, the less revenues from which to pay. They turned to one of the oldest revenue tricks in the book: coin clipping. Since the reparation payments were denominated in marks, each devaluation of the currency lowered the effective burden of the payments, but each introduction of increasing monetary error shrank the economy – the revenue pool continued to shrink as the economy was destroyed by monetary inflation.

The Social Democrats could not solve the nations problems* – another set of revolutions was around the corner, when Hitler arrived with a brilliant solution to the nation’s problems: unilateral suspension of payments to the Allies, monetary stability and tax reform.

Hitler met the needs of the German electorate in a fashion superior to that of the SD’s and other socialist parties in the Weimar – he was the superior leader among the available choices in Germany.

He was also deeply flawed as a leader. The global electorate had already demonstrated with Napoleon that empire through conquest was no longer a permissible way to lower production barriers and meet needs. I think there is a useful comparison between Imperial France and National Socialist Germany: two totalitarian dictatorships with a secret police security apparatus, imperial ambitions through conquest, and a failure to understand that the global electorate no longer allowed empire via conquest. Sure, the Nazi’s far exceeded the French in horror – but the difference is in scale, not type.

Now – I really don’t think of Hitler as a superior leader. Ultimately the global electorate put him down hard, and he led his nation to ruin. In the end Hitler really was an awful political leader. He was however superior to the other leadership choices out there at the time – it is useful to see how when you have two bad choices, the electorate chooses the best of them. I think if you simply put Adolf Hitler in the “evil” box it frees you from having to do nuanced, critical political thinking – and you miss some important lessons in political economy.

*I am simplifying for brevity and skipping over Stressemann and the Dawe’s Plan – the US destroyed any chance the SD’s had with Smoot-Hawley in 1929.

< Message edited by Faramir -- 7/1/2005 1:29:14 PM >

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Is it sour grapes on my part?

ehlovindom

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Hella sour grapes.

Brother, this is going to happen to you oh, like 85 more times. You can accept that women at this and other sites will frequently do things that chap your ass, and keep wlaking your path with dignity, or you can not accept it, let it get to you, and come to the forums with bitching about how you got done wrong...with no dignity.

Faramir

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ORIGINAL: ivana

When i first read the OP i suddenly became terrified it was about me. i think there are at least one or two male Doms who could very easily have said the exact same thing in regards to what i've done as well.

i'm choosing to do it this way (almost exactly as you described except that it was a month and would have given you an explaination not a blank wall) for a couple of reasons. Ironically to me, the main one is for safety both physical and emotional. Even as i type this, i know how ignorant that must sound, but i honestly need to focus wholeheartedly on one person at at time while i learn what they're about. Liars and cheaters write great profiles too and i'm the first to admit i'm not good at judging character. Basically this "collar" is my way of saying i'm considering someone that i think i want to consider me, not "i have found the One."

It may seem fast but it really isn't jumping in with both feet, it's taking the time to test the water. i wouldn't have agreed to the arrangement without some at least basic compatibility information upfront, but i'm learning so very fast how broad a spectrum there is in D/s and how necessary it is to get down to the real details so that i don't get hurt physically or emotionally because i'm in over my head and admittedly need help finding my way.

Secondly, maybe i'm wrong (what do i know? i'm a newbie,) i like to think it's more respectful to take it one day at a time, one Dom at a time. There's just as much a chance that he won't be "the One" as there is that he will. But isn't my goal to find out? i just see myself at this point as a complete BDSM virgin and will take it as slow as i need to. Don't let me be one of those whose first experience sends them screaming for the hills, never to return. Please, not me.

It does seem red-flaggish and i totally understand how you might feel this way by this behaviour. i see it in myself but i understand my motivations and do not profess to understand anyone elses. Thank you for listening.

~ivana

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This is such a refreshing viewpoint. Altho i am "not into" the "collar of consideration" theory.
Focusing on just one and then mvoing on if that is not appropriate is such a good thing.... but it also might have its negative sides..... my biological Dad always told me, dont trip over the orchid in search of the rose.
i think we do that to ourselves when we rush.
Honesty is refreshing when speaking with someone.... i had often asked one dom years ago, are you speaking with others too? he always replied "no." my gut told me otherwise. so when it fizzled, i knew my gut was right.

it would be nice to be told straight up...yes am talking with another special interest as well.

~~shy

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"collar of consideration"

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To me, it runs closely to not letting your new girlfriend go to the bar because you're afraid she'll meet someone else

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ORIGINAL: pinkpleasures

enlovindom, Your expectations of submissive women and slaves on collarme exactly matches the one i had when i first arrived. i believed every man who wrote to me claiming to be a Dom. i thought this was where Doms hung out, looking for real life relationships with submissive women and slaves. What could be simplier?

Losing that first layer of trust is painful, and You were entitled to post an Op about it. In fact, as far as i can tell, You are entitled to post an Op on what color cheese the moon is made of.

i know and regret Your pain, Sir. There are sincere women on this site. It would be great to wave a magic wand and clear put all the nuisance members, so we could speak with one another more easily.

Unfortunately nothing of the sort is possible; so You must develop a sense of which women are sincere and which are not; a tedious, hit-or-miss proposition that fails as often as it works.

pinkpleasures

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But no matter, now I have I have to sit here and think what kind of cheese the moon is made out of! Thanks a lot!!! :)

Big hug to you!

enlovindom