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Building a Functional One-Party Democracy (2019)

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Re: Building a Functional One-Party Democracy (2019)

#51

Post by bildung »

notahacker wrote: post #48
bildung wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm surprised by the implication that the authors think European politics is US politics expressed using a different idiom. I think they meant another dimension than you. I've looked into the underlying value systems in the US and Germany as part of my phd, and the underlying moral frameworks are essentially identical: there are two basic ideas of how a society should look like (the progressive and the conservative…

There are plenty of exceptions to that dualism in Europe though (coexistence of social conservatism with strong ideological commitments to extending social protections and state involvement in industry in many significant European political parties and arguably even more widespread in public sentiment in many European countries) which are relatively rare in US politics.

Yes absolutely, and you have the same in the US (e.g. libertarianism vs. evangelicalism).

But those can mostly be explained within each moral framework (e.g. social conservatism is keeping the us vs. them mentality: "no social benefits for immigrants" or similar).

Keep in mind these are not totally coherent, precisely defined theories, but instead are formed subconsciously by growing up in a particular social environment.

Re: Building a Functional One-Party Democracy (2019)

#52

Post by rualca »

tored wrote: post #40
mpweiher wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We need populations to at the very least stagnate, decline is also not a bad idea.

Yes, the current ideology of constantly increasing populations is not long term sustainable, not economically, nor climate wise or social. You can describe it as a form of a Ponzi scheme, the idea is that we must increase populations so we can continue living on the current living standard, not a future increased living standard. What would it take to get to an improved living standard according to the this ideology?…

> (...) the idea is that we must increase populations so we can continue living on the current living standard

Not necessarily. The drive to keep a positive population growth rate is the need to provide resources to maintain the older segment of the population without draining the resources of the economically active population, aka work force.

Re: Building a Functional One-Party Democracy (2019)

#53

Post by SiempreViernes »

bildung wrote: post #37
yorwba wrote: post #28

> Japanese politics is different from US politics. And not in the quirky, hand-wagging way that European politics is different. Japanese politics is not US politics expressed using a different idiom, but rather a world of its own. I'm surprised by the implication that the authors think European politics is US politics expressed using a different idiom. There's not even such a thing as a single "European politics". Ju…

> I'm surprised by the implication that the authors think European politics is US politics expressed using a different idiom. I think they meant another dimension than you. I've looked into the underlying value systems in the US and Germany as part of my phd, and the underlying moral frameworks are essentially identical: there are two basic ideas of how a society should look like (the progressive and the conservative…

I don't think this is quite right, if the Overton window is different then so are the the poles (for any reasonable definition of pole). What is shared is the "directions" in "moral space", while a pole is above all a specific point.

And to clarify, the main point of the article is that in Japan politics is not organised around how people stand on these moral questions, not that these debates don't happen. The article does not, for example, make the claim that in Japanese criminal politics there isn't a debate between redemption and retribution but rather that positions of the individual politicians in this debate will not correlate very much with their party allegiance.

Re: Building a Functional One-Party Democracy (2019)

#54

Post by rualca »

sneak wrote: post #18
rualca wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You start your comment by claiming GP's comment regarding a stagnant nation might not have anything to do with economics, but your supposedly counterexample, tax revenue, is about it's economy, isn't it?

No, tax revenue decline is only one facet of a declining population. A decline in population causes many other things that are dependent upon human beings to also decline: social interaction, art production, and a bunch of other stuff you might file under "economy": tax revenues, jobs, new businesses, new research, et c. Taking a purely economic view of these things is to misunderstand what is happening. Sure, it's a…

> No, tax revenue decline is only one facet of a declining population. A decline in population causes many other things that are dependent upon human beings to also decline: social interaction, art production, and a bunch of other stuff you might file under "economy": tax revenues, jobs, new businesses, new research, etc.

Japan's current population growth rate is around -0.2%.

It's safe to say that the "evaporating population" hypothesis and it's hypothetical cataclysm on the arts doesn't make much sense nor has any bearing on reality.

> Taking a purely economic view of these things is to misunderstand what is happening. Sure, it's an economic stagnation/downturn when new jobs aren't created, but more important than the money is the loss of the things those jobs produced in society outside of their economic impact: tools, art, research, creativity.

Your "purely economic view" strawman doesn't pass muster. For starters, GDP reflects transactions and economic activity, and money is just the unit of account used to perform those transactions.

Re: Building a Functional One-Party Democracy (2019)

#55

Post by tored »

rualca wrote: post #52
tored wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, the current ideology of constantly increasing populations is not long term sustainable, not economically, nor climate wise or social. You can describe it as a form of a Ponzi scheme, the idea is that we must increase populations so we can continue living on the current living standard, not a future increased living standard. What would it take to get to an improved living standard according to the this ideology?…

> (...) the idea is that we must increase populations so we can continue living on the current living standard Not necessarily. The drive to keep a positive population growth rate is the need to provide resources to maintain the older segment of the population without draining the resources of the economically active population, aka work force.

Reframing on what I already said. I include older generations in "we".

Re: Building a Functional One-Party Democracy (2019)

#56

Post by [deleted] »

SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #41
johnnycerberus wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would you give up on freedom and live in a society as rigid (not in a derogatory sense) as Japan's? I'm also European, but I would rather live in US than in Japan. I believe opinions on US differ in Europe, you should have said that it's your personal opinion, if you dislike US that doesn't mean that it has any correlation with the fact thay you are European.

> Why would you give up on freedom Not OP, but I would guess the simplest formula is to total up (Heath care - gun violence). i.e. the more likely you are to have health care for whatever happens to you, and the less likely you are to get shot, the better. I agree with William Gibson: "People who feel safer with a gun than with guaranteed medical insurance don't yet have a fully adult concept of scary." - https://twi…

[deleted]

Re: Building a Functional One-Party Democracy (2019)

#57

Post by enkid »

atoav wrote: post #7
keenreed wrote: post #2

I read statistics where 40% of young people do not start family, do not date, and basically withdraw from society. In interviews they blame it on long working hours and rigid rules in society in general. So maybe there is no conflict, but it is hardly functional.

From a european perspective I find the current state the US is in vastly more dystopian than Japan. As of now I'd rather live in Japan than the US.

Do you have any personal experience or data to back this up, or is this just based on your perceptions?

Re: Building a Functional One-Party Democracy (2019)

#58

Post by bildung »

SiempreViernes wrote: post #53
bildung wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm surprised by the implication that the authors think European politics is US politics expressed using a different idiom. I think they meant another dimension than you. I've looked into the underlying value systems in the US and Germany as part of my phd, and the underlying moral frameworks are essentially identical: there are two basic ideas of how a society should look like (the progressive and the conservative…

I don't think this is quite right, if the Overton window is different then so are the the poles (for any reasonable definition of pole). What is shared is the "directions" in "moral space", while a pole is above all a specific point. And to clarify, the main point of the article is that in Japan politics is not organised around how people stand on these moral questions, not that these debates don't happen. The articl…

> I don't think this is quite right, if the Overton window is different then so are the the poles (for any reasonable definition of pole)

Why? In my understanding the overton window is a sliding frame on an axis, so it makes no statement about the axis, only about the position on the axis.

> And to clarify, the main point of the article is that in Japan politics is not organised around how people stand on these moral questions, not that these debates don't happen.

Yes, that is what I have understood from the text, too. I find it hard to believe that there is no ideological consistency there (how are people able to make moral decisions without them, i.e. integrate their behaviour with their sense of identity?), though just as in the west the ideology and the actual political practice can obviously differ widely.

Re: Building a Functional One-Party Democracy (2019)

#59

Post by _hzrk »

SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #41
johnnycerberus wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would you give up on freedom and live in a society as rigid (not in a derogatory sense) as Japan's? I'm also European, but I would rather live in US than in Japan. I believe opinions on US differ in Europe, you should have said that it's your personal opinion, if you dislike US that doesn't mean that it has any correlation with the fact thay you are European.

> Why would you give up on freedom Not OP, but I would guess the simplest formula is to total up (Heath care - gun violence). i.e. the more likely you are to have health care for whatever happens to you, and the less likely you are to get shot, the better. I agree with William Gibson: "People who feel safer with a gun than with guaranteed medical insurance don't yet have a fully adult concept of scary." - https://twi…

Freedom does not translate into gun ownership. That's a very leftist/right-wing thing to say. Seems like people have been hardwired by the media to only think about America in terms of gun violence. When a Yakuza mobster terrorizes a small business in Kyoto, I wonder how a guaranteed medical insurance will help then. Don't forget that Japan is the country with the highest mob involvement in the legitimate economy. If the US gov would shake hands with the Irish/Italian mafia to keep the crime rate low, we would call it a feudal alliance but if Japanese government does systematic coverups, we just call them EFFICIENT.

Re: Building a Functional One-Party Democracy (2019)

#60

Post by rualca »

tored wrote: post #55
rualca wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (...) the idea is that we must increase populations so we can continue living on the current living standard Not necessarily. The drive to keep a positive population growth rate is the need to provide resources to maintain the older segment of the population without draining the resources of the economically active population, aka work force.

Reframing on what I already said. I include older generations in "we".

Reframing it does not address it's problem. It is not an issue of "quality of life". It's a problem of being unable to produce the goods and services required to maintain the older segment of the population, which are no longer able to generate income to provide for themselves and have an increasingly greater demand for healthcare.
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