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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

#341

Post by luciusdomitius »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #309
luciusdomitius wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Another hint: coercion is not necessarily direct violence. Capitalism is almost completely coercive and controlling, but direct violence is mostly reserved for minorities and for war adventures in distant countries. At home it's coercive through financial violence (especially income restriction and forced debt), extreme economic apartheid, and overt and covert behaviour modification narratives in the various media. "…

How can someone force you to take debt? Can you give one example when someone was punished physically for refusing to take debt?

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

#343

Post by bko »

avidphantasm wrote: post #332

“He described the nihilism of the many protest movements of 2011 that organized mostly online and that, like Occupy Wall Street, demanded the destruction of existing institutions without offering an alternative vision of the future or an organization that could bring it about.“ Calling Occupy nihilistic is strikes me as blinkered, and shows the neoliberal bias of the author. Occupy is where the 99% vs. 1% lens arose,…

Occupy failed because it didn't have any clear asks or metrics to track. They were against the bailouts. Did they vote anyone out of office? Did the re-election rate of 90% budge? Are there "Occupy Democrats" like there were "Tea Party Republicans"?

But most importantly, did they stop future bailouts? The original uproar about the 2008 bailouts (TARP) was originally authorized to spend $700 billion, of which they spent $431 billion and they were all paid back.

What about with Covid relief? This time the politicians learned not to go through legislature and just use the Federal Reserve directly. This time they were able to disburse 4 trillion in asset purchases, most of which was held by large institutions (banks). $1.3 trillion in mortgage backed securities! Another $3 trillion was spent on liquidity measures, other load purchases, lending facilities, etc. So in total a 10x spend from the proposed 2008 bailout which caused all the uproar. Note this doesn't include any money for income support, stimulus, etc. It was just giving money to banks.

Occupy just taught the politicians how to do things under the radar.

https://www.covidmoneytracker.org/

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

#344

Post by engineeringwoke »

avidphantasm wrote: post #332

“He described the nihilism of the many protest movements of 2011 that organized mostly online and that, like Occupy Wall Street, demanded the destruction of existing institutions without offering an alternative vision of the future or an organization that could bring it about.“ Calling Occupy nihilistic is strikes me as blinkered, and shows the neoliberal bias of the author. Occupy is where the 99% vs. 1% lens arose,…

It's absurd how the author (and presumably their editorial board) are so willing to paint a picture that absolves them of guilt for the inequality in their country.

News flash. If you say that you are wealthy/powerful and "politically liberal", but don't support policies that would give away that wealth or power to those with less of it in society, then you are not "politically liberal", you are conservative. I don't hate the Boomers, but their ideas have been around for far too long. Society in the United States is far too conservative.

It's time for a liberal ideal that isn't about race or gender but about economics and equity. And I mean equity in a color-blind sense, can we please work together here; I know the world is not fair and race does play a role in that equation.

Living in Europe opened my eyes. None of the liberals in the US are liberal. I want CHANGE. Not Barack Obama's "change". I want unions. I want free healthcare. I want to house the homeless. The Dutch can do it, but somehow in the discourse here, it's "impossible". Oh, our country is "too big". Oh my god, stop. Can we please move past the legacy of the boomers and their anti-big government stances. That was just a cynical jab at their parent's generation; it's not real. The government CAN do things. We can do so much if we work together.

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

#345

Post by giantg2 »

michaelmrose wrote: post #325
rayiner wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If these “wedge issues” are manufactured and inconsequential, I’m sure democrats would be happy to go along with the republican positions on abortion, etc., these issues so we can focus on the important economic issues, right? > Case in point- gun laws, abortions, gay marriage are simply not a focus of right wing parties in India. I said social and cultural issues are important to people—the specific social and cultu…

Issues trivial enough for your opponent to disarm by ceding them without society harming consequences make poor wedges. A maximally appropriate wedge is one in which you take a harmful extremist view and present it as righteous without dealing with the results of actually fully getting your way. Abortion has been a great example for decades. Taking away millions of woman's right to choose what to do with their own bo…

"We also make darn sure that this doesn't occur beyond what we deem viability even though a beings ability to survive outside the womb is an artifact of present tech and doesn't measure any reasonable objective benchmark under pain of prison."

This is an interesting topic. The two questions I have, seem to be difficult for people to answer and have them be consistent in other areas of our law and culture.

1) What defines a human life from a logical perspective?

This one seems difficult. For example, you seem to think that if one cannot survive without medical treatment that they don't count as a life or are not worth protecting, yet this is inconsistent with our laws on things like duty of care to special needs individuals, children, or incapacitated people.

2) When is it acceptable to take, or not save, a life?

This is definitely and interesting topic.

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

#346

Post by don_esteban »

luciusdomitius wrote: post #334
iostream24 wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While the “ism” suggests an ideology rather than an attribute of a real world society, what you describe is the essential balance every society needs to strike between the group and the individuals, and so you find jail and fines as coercion across a wide variety of countries and systems. As a native English speaker myself, I urge you to get into etymology and understand socius and collective and community and thereb…

Please, answer the simple question. I refuse to go by the collective will and there could be no violence involved. What happens next? I cannot believe that you went on insulting large groups of people while being unable to answer a simple 6 words question. P.S. I speak relatively fluent Latin, so the etymology play made me chuckle a bit.

you will become pariah until you leave or change your mind?

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

#347

Post by luciusdomitius »

pmyteh wrote: post #339
luciusdomitius wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alright. It is a township then. I refuse to go by the collective will. What happens next if violence is not an option and private property is respected?

In general, you have the same three choices you have in any other situation where you don't like what's going on: loyalty, voice, or exit. In the first, you decide to accept the general will in order to maintain your individual credit, hoping that by cooperating on this occasion you encourage people to encourage with you later. Alternatively, you can protest the decision, hoping in doing so to encourage your fellow t…

Look. It is a very simple question. The township has a 1 promile property tax. I never pay it and refuse to leave my property. What happens next?

You guys wrote 5 walls of text just dodging the easiest question on Earth.

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

#348

Post by nradov »

lovich wrote: post #229
nradov wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rogan claims to have voted for Barack Obama twice. That's pretty typical for a moderate leftist. He gives his guests a chance to express a lot more nuance than you see in mainstream media channels. Most of the criticism comes from people who haven't actually listened to many episodes all the way through, and just rely on biased takes from critics or short quotes taken out of context. I also used to have a negative op…

Youre skipping the criticism of his guest list. He's had Bernie Sanders on what, once, twice? Then he's had no other major leftist political figures or commentators but has has loads of extreme right wing figures including crackpots like Alex Jones. Joe Rogan can claim he is a moderate leftist all he wants, but his guest list on JRE does not support that

You're really missing the point. The JRE podcast has very few straight up politicians as guests. But it does frequently have guests who express leftist views as part of a broader conversation about other topics. For example Oliver Stone or Meghan Murphy or Ben Burgis or Andrew Dessler.

This is why the show resonates with a lot of listeners who are themselves moderates and don't buy into the fake news narrative about an irreconcilable political divide.

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

#349

Post by giantg2 »

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,…

With the highly mobile nature of society, the federal government should mostly be about ensuring the application/protection of federal rights through the country. Then the local can set the laws that work best for them.

The tough part is that additional laws restricting actions tend to interfere with the laws preserving freedoms. So the two tend to be at odds with each other and result in circuitous and controversial judicial reasoning to determine if the restriction violates a right or freedom.

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

#350

Post by Spooky23 »

inglor_cz wrote: post #241
random314 wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a Republican narrative, not really backed up by any sound historical analysis. Whereas creation, nurture and development of wedge issues is a standard right wing tactic across the world. Be it love-jihad in India, miscegenation in USA, jewish hatred in nazi Germany or recognition of Ahmediyas as muslims in Pakistan. It incentivizes voters to vote on ideological lines while ignoring/ letting politicians/wealthy…

Are there any legitimate wedge issues in your opinion, or is just everything artificially made up? Your take feels very cynical, along the lines of "religion is opium for the masses". In this view, people are dupes stringed along by Machiavellist figures, who cannot possibly have strong feelings about various topics themselves. Gun laws may not be very relevant in India, but neither are caste-related topics in the US…

There are legit issues, and wedge issues aren’t necessarily bullshit.

But the right-wing playbook is the same everywhere, frame these issues in a way to maximize fear and link that fear to nostalgia of a better past. In the US guns are big. In Russia there’s an appeal to the bygone Soviet era where all Russian speakers were under one flag.

In the US, the gun argument is the most transparent. Gun marketers evoke (mostly bullshit) memories of how great great grandpa fed the family shooting turkeys with his flintlock, then fought some redcoats for freedom. Then they hard pivot to why you need a concealed carry pistol to stop wild Mexicans from raping your daughter. It’s a really effective argument because it links the gun, crime, immigration, abortion, etc. Then after you spend this money, the liberals are gonna take your guns, so buy more.

The more moderate side is a different kind of coalition driven by different goals and ideas. Black and Hispanic voters are socially conservative, and don’t care about LGBT issues. Progressive voters care about everything, but the get out the vote machines are more moderate.

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