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Why the past 10 years of American life have been uniquely stupid

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Re: Why the past 10 years of American life have been uniquely stupid

#101

Post by confidantlake »

floren wrote: post #87
qball wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Canada hasn't fallen into the same sort of divisiveness the US has Canada is, politically, even more harshly-divided than the US is. We even have specific political parties for it: the Quebec Party, the Western Party, and the Largest Cities Party (the latter two will deny this, but that's the truth). Quebec has tried to separate from Canada twice in the last 50 years, and was within a Brexit's margin of their latest…

> NYC and DC picked every single representative, senator, and the President. This is essentially the goal of those who complain about the electoral college and the Senate.

Under the electoral college system if California had the majority of the population they would pick the president. Wouldn't matter if it was 51-49 percent in California and 0-100 in every other state.

Under a popular vote California or NYC or DC wouldn't pick anything. States wouldn't vote, people would. One person, one vote no matter where you live.

Re: Why the past 10 years of American life have been uniquely stupid

#102

Post by giraffe_lady »

marcusverus wrote: post #71
giraffe_lady wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Differences in world view are less significant when the bureaucrats and executives with power over your life live nearby instead of in another city and state. How do you reconcile this with jim crow-era terrorism, for example? The movements were local and very loosely organized on even a regional level, but the bureaucrats wielded incredible power over individuals in their jurisdiction. There were definitely other…

How do you reconcile a strong federal government with the fugitive slave act, the Dred Scott decision or the Patriot Act? The federal government is just as capable of making terrible policy as the states. But whereas a person can easily escape a state whose policies they find to be reprehensible, (you could literally move to a new state over a weekend) escaping the USA is not really an option for most.

I'm not trying to? Could you reread the question I'm asking up there? It's a very specific one. At no point am I trying to argue in favor of increased centralized federal power or whatever.

I'm pointing out an abuse of local power that doesn't seem to fit with the assertion that local power is less subject to abuse.

Personally I think neither centralization nor decentralization are themselves limits on power, and other constraints must be found and imposed.

Re: Why the past 10 years of American life have been uniquely stupid

#103

Post by sweetbitter »

oconnor663 wrote: post #62
sweetbitter wrote: post #48

> Banks and other industries have “know your customer” rules so that they can’t do business with anonymous clients laundering money from criminal enterprises. Large social-media platforms should be required to do the same. That does not mean users would have to post under their real names; they could still use a pseudonym. It just means that before a platform spreads your words to millions of people, it has an obliga…

> Yet anonymity/pseudonymity is incredibly valuable > Just outlaw or intensely regulate these massive, centralized/proprietary social media algorithms I feel like I'm seeing a pattern here, something like "Hey, it's not that simple. Your solution ignores important tradeoffs. So here's my simple solution that ignores different tradeoffs." Basically I'm objecting to any use of the word "just" in thorny social issues li…

Hahaha that's very true! My bias against the front-ends of those services is showing. That still doesn't mean they don't need regulation though.

To elaborate, there is a world of difference between some smaller forum/board/chat network/webserver run by some random guy/girl in a community, and a multi-billion dollar public corporate entity hellbent on extracting every bit of value from every facet of your life that they possibly can. Either the fact that these companies can wield such enormous powers over the population, or the manner in which they do so, needs to see the light and society must decide on how they will restrain these actors.

I know that some people (ugh, yes... most people...) favor these media today as their means of communication, marketing, discourse, etc, but these corporations have gone way too far, and restricting the actual good things the internet brings like anonymity while ignoring the far more pressing evils of these unchecked capitalists is silly.

Re: Why the past 10 years of American life have been uniquely stupid

#104

Post by selimthegrim »

rayiner wrote: post #92
Spooky23 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Small government types” are a fraud. That stuff is just chum for the masses. Wedge issues like guns, abortion, etc are designed to break traditional democratic constituencies from the herd. Catholic priests were leaders of socialist revolutions in Latin America. In the United States, some catholic bishops were in favor of child separation due to abortion.

I think you’ve got this backwards. Social and cultural issues—different people’s conception of how to preserve freedom, when life begins, how to socialize their children, God, etc.—are always important to people and always have been. What precipitated the independence war that created my country was a language movement: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bengali_language_movement It’s the insistence on ideological uniform…

Uh, maybe it had something to do with West Pakistan robbing East Pakistan blind of foreign exchange too?

Re: Why the past 10 years of American life have been uniquely stupid

#105

Post by AnimalMuppet »

confidantlake wrote: post #101
floren wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> NYC and DC picked every single representative, senator, and the President. This is essentially the goal of those who complain about the electoral college and the Senate.

Under the electoral college system if California had the majority of the population they would pick the president. Wouldn't matter if it was 51-49 percent in California and 0-100 in every other state. Under a popular vote California or NYC or DC wouldn't pick anything. States wouldn't vote, people would. One person, one vote no matter where you live.

> Under the electoral college system if California had the majority of the population they would pick the president.

Not true. California would have the majority of the House, but only two Senators. So they would not have the majority of the electoral votes.

Re: Why the past 10 years of American life have been uniquely stupid

#106

Post by smackeyacky »

russellbeattie wrote: post #78
smackeyacky wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the idea is to paint Jan 6 as an aberration for which the participants were deliberately mislead by a foreign power and therefore somehow less responsible for their actions. IMHO its a dangerous step to take. The rule of law is the founding bedrock of civil society where justice needs not only to be done, but seen to be done. The US hasn't helped itself by having two justice systems, one for the elites and on…

Yes, an olive branch is exactly what my idea was. I think your contrary opinion is totally valid way to look at it. What I'm talking about would definitely be a gamble.

I'd be happy if something could be offered as an olive branch as long as it fits within the normal sentencing leniency (i.e. suspended sentences, community service etc) other than for violent offenders.

Re: Why the past 10 years of American life have been uniquely stupid

#107

Post by VictorPath »

mymythisisthis wrote: post #44

40 years of austerity in the west. Life span actually decreasing. Desperate people act out.

Also with productivity gains, the average inflation-adjusted hourly wage of half a century ago is the same as it was in 2018, and it has popped slightly up and down since the . All gains have been sucked up by the heirs, the aristocracy.

Re: Why the past 10 years of American life have been uniquely stupid

#108

Post by sokoloff »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #65
rayiner wrote: post #11

Haidt makes an excellent observation about the mid-20th century unity being an aberration due to the technology of the time: > Gurri is no fan of elites or of centralized authority, but he notes a constructive feature of the pre-digital era: a single “mass audience,” all consuming the same content, as if they were all looking into the same gigantic mirror at the reflection of their own society. Something I think we o…

> What I see missing from Haidt's analysis is increased federalism and localism as a solution. I'm theoretically in favor of this, but ... one of the reasons we need a bigger, more powerful federal government is to have a governmental entity that can take on the massively more powerful private entities (corporations) that exist. No state government can take on Walmart or Amazon. The federal government can (or could,…

Wanting a powerful federal government to take on Walmart and Amazon seems like burning your house down because it has mice in it. Yeah, you might have some work to do to get the mice under control, but you don’t need to give up your house to do it.

Re: Why the past 10 years of American life have been uniquely stupid

#110

Post by dominotw »

1121redblackgo wrote: post #46

This thread is the prototypical example of what Haidt is talking about. I have no interest in taking part in this comments section other than to make this observation.

you mean comments like yours that break the site guidelines?
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