Why the past 10 years of American life have been uniquely stupid • Hacker News Board

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

#251

Post by freshhawk » Tue, Apr 12, 2022, 6:43 AM UTC

oceanplexian wrote: post #196

nr2x wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook is mentioned 19 times, Fox News once, and talk radio zero. This is a very techno deterministic argument that utterly fails to acknowledge the main source of misinformation and division is boring old tech like cable news and radio. The main role Facebook serves is to make Fox and radio personalities more accessible.

I don’t know why Fox gets all the credit. I distinctly remember watching MSNBC in the early 2000s during the Bush era and it was surprisingly… centrist. Most of the stuff that passes for news today would have been considered radical.

Murdoch's international scope and relatively ruthless and firm handed narrative control.

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

#252

Post by hattmall » Tue, Apr 12, 2022, 6:45 AM UTC

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #96

jkhdigital wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No state government can take on Walmart or Amazon. An alternative theory posits that these massive corporations in fact depend upon the centralization of governmental regulatory and fiscal powers for their very existence. Regulatory capture is much easier to pull off when there’s only one central authority that needs to be captured.

Regulatory capture is indeed a problem. But it's a hand-waving assertion that it's "much easier to pull off when there’s only one central authority that needs to be captured." This sort of claim seems to me fundamentally rooted in some specific ideas about large human organizations, specifically of the governmental kind. One of the key ideas it requires to be true is that the corruption endemic to small-scale institu…

The corruption is so endemic in large organizations it becomes a necessary quality to even be a possible participant. This is very up front and visible in US federal government.

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

#253

Post by nostromo » Tue, Apr 12, 2022, 6:49 AM UTC

rtpg wrote: post #248

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…

But from the very basic metric of not wanting people to have bad things happen to them, when you see promoters of state powers intent on using it to tear down civil rights as fast as possible, strong state power in the current political environment seems like a major regression for many people in the country. OK sure, some people want more local power. Why? Lower taxes? Or maybe because they don't like Oberfell or Ca…

Federal power can be used to eliminate civil rights just as easily as it can be used to create them.

Besides, the congress stopped expanding civil rights decades ago. Now it only comes from the Supreme Court, which is unaffected by more federalism.

Congress could vote tomorrow to cement abortion as a right, or gay marriage as a right… but they choose not too. The cynic in me thinks that they choose not to so both sides can continue to raise money fear mongering about the Supreme Court.

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

#254

Post by freshhawk » Tue, Apr 12, 2022, 6:49 AM UTC

__MatrixMan__ wrote: post #222

TedShiller wrote: post #212

People will look back on this period and be amazed that giving out free crack pipes was actually a thing the US government did.

Given that the government was selling crack in the 90's I don't think an observer from the future would seize on this era in particular for that sort of thing. It's just a piece of glass.

They will absolutely study the use of sound bites/memes like this one in political discussions though.

The "but that's definitely untrue", "yeah, ok, but ... you know what I mean, right?" type comments build a very interesting context for these weird talking point memes.

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

#255

Post by redmen » Tue, Apr 12, 2022, 6:49 AM UTC

watwut wrote: post #240

redmen wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are giving too much credit to Putin. All he did was identify already-existing issues and fuel them further. Saying this: "The reactions to what I'm saying will be predictable" is a good attempt but doesn't really work I've found. Of course it's predictable, that doesn't make it incorrect. Yes you guys have been played, but if you didn't see huge growing divisions within the united States well before Putin started…

> You are giving too much credit to Putin. All he did was identify already-existing issues and fuel them further. Yes. But also, fuel on fire makes much worst fire and possibly explosion. While the exact same fire with no fuel could be stopped or would stop. And it will be actually interesting to watch what will happen with politics abroad as Russia will have less money. Putin was shelling money and supported not jus…

In my analogy I was meaning to say Putin is a parasite to the USA's host.

I was attempting to argue that it's not so much that Putin is strong, it's that right now the west is weak.

And sure one could argue against that and say that the west uniting against him is a sign of unity and strength. But I'm not so sure.

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

#256

Post by kansface » Tue, Apr 12, 2022, 6:52 AM UTC

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,…

Do the numbers check out here? How does Amazon compare to Standard Oil divided by the relative sizes of the federal government? I’d guess that Rockefeller comes out way ahead.

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

#257

Post by R0b0t1 » Tue, Apr 12, 2022, 6:56 AM UTC

jkhdigital wrote: post #88

roenxi wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This might be a weird outcome of the inability of large groups to process nuance. Groups seem to struggle with the idea that things can be done one way in one place and another way in another place - and struggle in a way that individuals seem not to. Groups - even small government types, weirdly - seem to fall into a trap whenever something goes wrong. The answer to a challenge is "centralise power, then do things m…

Large groups cannot “process” anything; individual humans do that. Maybe what you mean is simply that humans act tribally, and most of the traditional tribe proxies (clubs, churches, etc.) have weakened or died off in modern society so we are left only with borderless ideologies as tribal allegiances.

No. Groups process things, but you must frame your question in terms of things you can measure about a group.

An individual is a system; using your own logic it is inappropriate to talk about how a human feels. One must talk about each individual neuron and cell.

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

#258

Post by dmead » Tue, Apr 12, 2022, 6:58 AM UTC

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…

>The federal government had a vastly smaller scope back then, but so did nationwide and multinational corporations.

This sounds wrong. see railroad workers in the western states or mining towns in western PA or West Virginia. People literally had to fight paid soldiers their employers sent to control their lives. I'd say that's pretty huge scope.

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

#259

Post by meheleventyone » Tue, Apr 12, 2022, 7:01 AM UTC

zozbot234 wrote: post #98

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regulatory capture is indeed a problem. But it's a hand-waving assertion that it's "much easier to pull off when there’s only one central authority that needs to be captured." This sort of claim seems to me fundamentally rooted in some specific ideas about large human organizations, specifically of the governmental kind. One of the key ideas it requires to be true is that the corruption endemic to small-scale institu…

Corruption at all levels is far more "endemic" to large organizations than small ones. It's also less visible, because size correlates with a lack of transparency.

Even if we take this as true small, local governments are still large in aggregate and suffer the same problem. Fighting small town corruption is a trope for a reason. If anything decentralisation makes organisations less transparent (e.g. cell organisation for crime/spies/terrorists) because there is no common means to look into them.

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

#260

Post by rtpg » Tue, Apr 12, 2022, 7:02 AM UTC

nostromo wrote: post #253

rtpg wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But from the very basic metric of not wanting people to have bad things happen to them, when you see promoters of state powers intent on using it to tear down civil rights as fast as possible, strong state power in the current political environment seems like a major regression for many people in the country. OK sure, some people want more local power. Why? Lower taxes? Or maybe because they don't like Oberfell or Ca…

Federal power can be used to eliminate civil rights just as easily as it can be used to create them. Besides, the congress stopped expanding civil rights decades ago. Now it only comes from the Supreme Court, which is unaffected by more federalism. Congress could vote tomorrow to cement abortion as a right, or gay marriage as a right… but they choose not too. The cynic in me thinks that they choose not to so both sid…

States follow the Supreme Court's rulings, that is less guaranteed in a situation where there is less balance of power. There is no physical force preventing states from ignoring rulings (and of course in practice they do ignore shit, but politics happens at the courts as well).

I agree 100% that Congress could cement abortion as a right tomorrow and should have a billion years ago. It's insulting to everyone that we have had to watch the degradation of rights through court rulings over time as congress shrugs its shoulders because they are afraid of having convictions.

But I still think that if states had more power, we simply would have less civil rights across the board. States can already pass laws and guarantee rights at a state level, and many simply choose not to.

It's all terrible right now, but I can only see things getting worse if you just say "let's have the states do stuff", based on the past ... I don't know, century of American history.

Just how I see things at the moment though, and I will freely admit I am biased to believe my theory and haven't tried to research much to the contrary.