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

theatlantic.com

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

#281

Post by Brybry »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #234
topkai22 wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You need to change the incentives of the federal government (specifically the congress) to be in more in favor of localism. In 1900, senators were (at least partially) still appointed by state legislators and the local political parties held far greater control over their nomination process. Those mechanisms had their own issues with corruption and were replaced by more democratic processes, but they made members of…

You'll have to forgive me. I live in a small population state (NM). I trust my local politicians far less than I trust the 3 or 4 we send to DC. When I lived in a larger population state (PA) the situation wasn't much different. The distrust of large national institutions is, IMO, a result of more than a century (or two!) worth of campaigning by the capital class to try to limit the belief in the virtues of the feder…

I have to agree. While I do think for most government local institutions are better... the federal government has done more for freedom and prevention of abuse than my state certainly has.

Living in the south it's very apparent that a weak federal government was a bad thing. Civil rights have to be mandated top down, history is the proof.

And I believe there is still sufficient party interest and government design to protect "state's rights". Most federal programs are state/municipality implemented. Sure, the feds might stick rules to how money can be used, in order to prevent abuse, but that's a good thing.

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

#282

Post by dorkabork »

baud147258 wrote: post #264
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You need a government with enough heft to take on a corporation that has decided to ignore the law. If you think you can get heft via "better", go for it. History doesn't give me much reason to be optimistic. "The problem with corruption, inefficiency and stupidity in government is corruption, inefficieny and stupidity, not government."

> You need a government with enough heft Governments have the monopoly on the use of legitimate force on their territory (and the means that go with it). Isn't that enough heft to go after any corporation?

I can’t tell and I’m genuinely asking: are you suggesting we empower government to dispatch force against a private corporation? As in, the imaginary paperwork construct we all agree upon being an actual thing and accordingly empower with agency and a noun and a stock symbol? You want to park an Abrams in front of that thing and aim?

(On reflection, what’s interesting about my question here is how it’s simultaneously metaphorical and literal through absolutely no effort of mine. The idea itself made that happen, rather oddly.)

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

#283

Post by DoItToMe81 »

Social media companies encourage manufactured outrage by providing controversial and divisive 'extreme' content for "engagement metrics". We know this from the Facebook leaks, court cases and common sense.

The solution to this suggested in this article is to give them more power over individual information by making giving your name and address to the company mandatory. No thank you. I don't think expanding one of the core parts of the problem while annihilating the capability for people in repressive countries to shield themselves is any solution at all.

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

#284

Post by foldr »

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.

British local government is notoriously corrupt and very few Brits pay much attention to it in comparison to national politics (partly because it’s not reported on in major news outlets). See for example Private Eye’s “rotten boroughs” column. So that would be one counterexample.

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

#285

Post by ggm »

An increase in people's ability to share views on complicated matters and a decrease in nuance understanding complicated matters.

Everyone has an opinion on the Supreme Court. Few people (I do not include myself in that few) truly understand it's constraints around operation.

Or something as simple as the separation of powers between arms of the establishment (government, judiciary, civil service)

Take a subject like faithless electors, or proposals to disregard the popular vote and appoint electors.

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

#286

Post by egberts1 »

oh_sigh wrote: post #56
egberts1 wrote: post #39

Meanwhile, red/blue partisanship has declined and more independent (non-partisan) voters emerge. The article is blowing smokes up where the sun doesn’t shine. Meanwhile, http://www.stevenwwebster.com/negative-partisanship-rabid.pd...

I don't think it is safe to say that more independents means less partisanship. If people are going independent because they see themselves as somewhere between Rs and Ds, then sure. But if they go independent because they think the Rs are not right enough, or the Ds are not left enough, then that is only an example of magnifying partisanship.

or it could be that political parties needs to reform themselves to accommodate the general public (and not the paying corporate bigwigs?)

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

#288

Post by spupe »

sweetbitter wrote: post #103
oconnor663 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 th…

The internet can remain anonymous at large, but we could require any company with an audience larger than, say, 10k people to operate within the parameters Haidt describes. In other words, you can be completely anonymous if using small communities, but if you are operating within a platform so large that it has the power to influence the outcome of elections, we need to regulate whether or not you are actually human. And yes, we do need to make you accountable if you break laws in these platforms. I do value anonymity immensely, yet I see no other way around this hurdle. The solution you describe - simply banning Twitter, Facebook, etc. - is more damaging in my opinion.

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

#289

Post by luciusdomitius »

TaylorAlexander wrote: post #250
oceanplexian wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Collectivism, by definition, requires the use of force against people who aren’t complaint with the “collective”, so it requires violence. It’s a lot easier to commit violence against people when you can outsource it to someone else, so collectivism requires a strong, central authority. The less local that authority is, the less culpable we can convince ourselves we are when it goes wrong. The reason we keep building…

You can absolutely have voluntary collectivism where you simply do not do things unless everyone agrees upon them. This works best in small or medium sized groups and probably does not work for large groups, but your post reads like you think collectivism always necessitates violence and that simply isn’t true.

And what do you do if someone disagrees with the crowd? How do you force him without coercieon? (hint those two words are synonyms).

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

#290

Post by rmbyrro »

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…

Totally agree. Thinking social media is the cause of the current divide is naive. It's certainly a mean to make it evident. Perhaps a catalist. But it's certainly not the cause.
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