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

#391

Post by rayiner » Tue, Apr 12, 2022, 2:05 PM UTC

Spooky23 wrote: post #350

inglor_cz wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 (mos…

> 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.

That’s not true. About half of Black people oppose same sex marriage, about the same as republicans. But they go along with white liberals on social issues in exchange for getting their support on civil rights issues. But, for example, they voted in favor of California’s 2008 ban on same sex marriage. (Back then, they overwhelmingly opposed same sex marriage.) There’s a fair argument that what pushed the referendum over the top was very high Black turnout because Obama was on the ballot.

Similarly, Muslims mostly vote Democrat and support same sex marriage… for other people: https://www.cnn.com/2019/05/28/us/lgbt-muslims-pride-progres...

Non-whites vote democrat for different reasons than whites. For them, issues like civil rights, immigration rights, religious freedom for minorities, etc., are often dispositive of other issues. And insofar as many are immigrants, they don't feel ownership over the broader culture. My parents vote Democrat and view these social and cultural issues as being between white Americans. That works both ways--if Democrats supported outlawing abortion they might have some "population control"-type objections, but really wouldn't care because they'd never accept abortion in their own circle anyway.

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

#392

Post by engineeringwoke » Tue, Apr 12, 2022, 2:14 PM UTC

cle wrote: post #389

engineeringwoke wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Oh, our country is "too big". Oh my god, stop. I wouldn't gloss over this, the US presides over 330 million people across 3.8 million square miles, whereas the Netherlands has 17 million people across 16,000 square miles. This size and diversity of the US is a significant contributor to the national political dynamics IMO.

Yet the EU has better standards and works better for all citizens of the EU in comparison to the United States, despite the cultural and language barriers.

You could have definitely said this twenty years ago and I wouldn't have blinked an eye, but times change. They are doing it... technology and data help governments administrate more efficiently over large land masses. Italy and Germany also have similar federal systems and, again, work better together than we do, although Italy is probably somewhat compareable. At least they have culture lol

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

#393

Post by rayiner » Tue, Apr 12, 2022, 2:16 PM UTC

giantg2 wrote: post #345

michaelmrose wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 def…

I would say that it’s human life at or shortly after conception. It’s alive, it’s a distinct organism, and it’s genetically human. If we found a blastocyst on Mars we’d say “human life found in Mars!” It’s in a stage of the human lifecycle where it’s completely dependent on the mother, but that doesn’t negate either the human part or the life part.

So I think the real debate is over when it’s acceptable to kill a human at an early stage of development. That is fundamentally a moral compromise, in the same way that e.g. the law of self defense is a moral compromise. Nothing in science says a fetus has a “right to life” just as nothing in science says anyone has a “right to bodily autonomy.”

I think partisans and ideologues try to take this issue to extremes based on principle, but I think most people (especially mothers) have a mushy view. They know miscarriages happen naturally in the early weeks and so support some abortion right. They support exceptions for life of mother or fetal abnormalities even in later stages. But for they’ve also seen ultrasounds showing something that looks a lot like a baby at 15 weeks and aren’t ideological enough to think you should be able to kill that without a really good reason.

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

#394

Post by zekrioca » Tue, Apr 12, 2022, 2:19 PM UTC

don_esteban wrote: post #366

luciusdomitius wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You never leave your property and live a happy life in solitude there until you die of boredom or starvation. Everybody is happy to not have to interact with you anymore. Now stop bringing up absurd examples. Just living in a state exposes you to state violence, e.g. for not obeying the (tax) law. If you wanted a realistic example of non-violent society, there are only few, mostly small remote tribes in deep jungle.…

I think the person meant about how the few options available actually come to existence: how are they come to be the ones that would allow the person to pick one over the other? Is it common sense, is it because it was decided this way.. How?

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

#395

Post by giantg2 » Tue, Apr 12, 2022, 2:32 PM UTC

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…

"Not all collective decision-making processes are coercive, either,"

The process is not coercive, but the product is. Laws tend have punishments and are enforced through various levels of force or violence.

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

#396

Post by HWR_14 » Tue, Apr 12, 2022, 2:34 PM UTC

luciusdomitius wrote: post #341

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Unconscious people being taken by an ambulance to the hospital. The falsely accused needing legal representation and to pay a bail bondsman to get out of prison.

Do those examples work for you for people being physically punished for refusing to take on debt? Because I'm also happy to include sick people who need medical care and people who need money for food/heat/shelter/clothiers as being punished physically for refusing to take on debt by being deprived of those things

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

#397

Post by ryathal » Tue, Apr 12, 2022, 2:40 PM 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,…

California literally dictates the emissions standards for the US car market. Single states are already making multi-nationals comply with their rules and are much smaller than the federal government.

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

#398

Post by selimthegrim » Tue, Apr 12, 2022, 2:41 PM UTC

ameister14 wrote: post #374

michaelmrose wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Here's the funny thing about abortion laws. The Democrats have had a majority multiple times since Roe v Wade or even Casey and they have consistently failed to codify Roe into law. Why? Because they really like the money they get for threatening a woman's right to choose, too.

As even RBG realized, Roe is not built on the best doctrinal foundations. Read Reva Siegel on her preferred path.

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

#399

Post by giantg2 » Tue, Apr 12, 2022, 2:44 PM UTC

hattmall wrote: post #261

lovich wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is reducing the federal government to that size not committing to the long term disintegration of our country? When you have states passing laws making it illegal for you to do something in another state that is perfectly legal within that second state, ala the abortion laws places like Idaho are trying to pass, how is the a cohesive nation?

You can frame it the same way too as states making things legal that are illegal in other states. But that's kind of the whole point of states, is for them to be different. It's not actually disintegrating the nation, it's providing choices. The problem comes when states use the federal government to attempt to override other states. If each state can just do their own thing and as a country we focus on prosperity, m…

Aka, the largely ignored 10th Ammendment.

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

#400

Post by dntrkv » Tue, Apr 12, 2022, 2:55 PM UTC

BuyMyBitcoins wrote: post #359

game_the0ry wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed - media portrays OWS as broken movement with no goals and no hope of changing anything. That's neo-lib PR - corp media does not want you take OWS issues (pro-union, anti-corporate, Medicare for all, etc) seriously.

In my home city the OWS movement denigrated into a homeless encampment with a handful of banners and sign waivers. I don’t think a neoliberal media was the culprit because from the beginning the local movement lacked any sense of cohesion or the coordination required to exert pressure on local politicians. The righteous anger burned bright for a few months then slowly faded and nothing really came of it. I distinctly…

Same experience here. I lived in Portland at the time and was sympathetic to the cause. But then seeing the protest devolve and turn the Park Blocks into a sketchy homeless encampment really made it difficult to support the cause. The media didn’t have to twist anything, the results spoke for themselves. Your average person is not going to support something that turns their parks into shanty towns.