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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

#401

Post by tdba »

engineeringwoke wrote: post #392
cle wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 s…

If you want unions, socialized healthcare, public services and the other trappings of European societies you need to start thinking about immigration and demographics. The very high levels of immigration (both legal and illegal) into the US is what makes it difficult for workers to exercise leverage because they can easily be replaced by people who will work for much less compensation. Ethnically diverse workforces are also less likely to unionize (e.g. this is a factor Amazon looks at when assessing unionization risk). It seems to me that socialist policies can only work in relatively ethnically homogeneous societies, which is what you see in Europe. Although that is now changing there too: it will be interesting to see whether they are able to maintain generous social services in the face of major demographic change.

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

#402

Post by lovich »

nradov wrote: post #351
lovich wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not talking about the states making things differently legal within their borders. I’m taking about things like the laws that make it illegal for you to get an abortion in another state where abortion is legal. It’s one state infringing on the rights of another state unless you view people as citizens of their states and not the country as a whole. That’s why I am asking how it isn’t breaking up a cohesive nation…

People literally are citizens of both their states and the country as a whole. For better our worse, the USA was intentionally structured that way with dual sovereignty.

Yes, but the states have a sovereignty that is equal to each other. They aren’t allowed to make conduct illegal that occurs in other states. Even if it was legal it’s not part of being a cohesive country.

The post I responded to originally implied that having the federal government enforce standards would lead to “The long term disintegration” of the country. I am pointing out that without the federal government enforcing standards we are already seeing states set up a long term disintegration of the country.

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

#403

Post by giantg2 »

andrewclunn wrote: post #167
natsup123490 wrote: post #117

I have to speculate that the reason why "social media is indeed corrosive to trust in governments, news media, and people and institutions in general" is oftentimes because it highlights their apparent failings (biases, lies, etc). That is, the problem is not primarily one of people failing to trust in trustworthy institutions, but due to a hyper-focus (retweeting) on the failings of those institutions. As we communi…

Telling these institutions that if they want more trust, that they should earn it, is missing the point. The entire reason for ensuring trust in an institution is so that you can then cash in on it. It's marketing. The notion that these institutions were ever trustworthy is the remnants of whatever messaging you've internalized from them. The freer expression and archival powers of the internet allow for people to se…

"The notion that these institutions were ever trustworthy is the remnants of whatever messaging you've internalized from them."

Bingo. If anything, exposure and discussion of their misconduct should incentivize changes/improvements.

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

#404

Post by nr2x »

jdkee wrote: post #163
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.

Fox News and conservative talk radio have existed since the early 1990s yet the extreme polarization in American life didn't begin until ~2010, which appears to prove Haidt's point.

Began with Gingrich

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

#405

Post by giantg2 »

IIAOPSW wrote: post #70
oh_sigh wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I view the "independent" label to actually just mean "my party isn't part of my identity." Most "independents" consistently vote for one party, they just aren't married to it in principle.

I agree. In many places you have to pick a party to be able to participate in their primary. So officially you might be listed as a certain party, but still be "independent" as you describe.

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

#406

Post by selimthegrim »

rayiner wrote: post #331
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…

> Abortion has been a great example for decades. Taking away millions of woman's right to choose what to do with their own bodies in order to save what are almost entirely insensate lumps of cells I used to believe this too because of America’s awful science education. It wasn’t until I went to the ultrasound appointments for my first kid that I realized how incorrect that was. A 13 week fetus, which under Roe can be…

>Sure, if you wave your hands and say that your side is obviously right about the issues at the heart of a political dispute, you can make any issue seem manufactured. You should go to India and tell the Hindus and the Muslims that they’re both wrong about their “imaginary friends” and that their dispute is a manufactured triviality.

Take it from the child of an Ahmedi who left Pakistan in 1986. When _you’re_ the wedge issue, you don’t have many other choices.

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

#407

Post by acuozzo »

NoImmatureAdHom wrote: post #154
mymythisisthis wrote: post #44

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

People aren't desperate in the West, not by a long shot. It's popular to complain in this particular way, but it just isn't borne out by facts. We are so rich that our poor are chronically fat. Even very poor people have very high standards of material living. Refrigerators, televisions, heat, etc. Many people in the world do not have these things still. There are people for whom lifespans are limited by things other…

> Even very poor people have very high standards of material living.

True, but their standard of living is still worse than that of their parents which is what I believe OP is trying to convey.

It's no longer possible for an assembly line worker to own a modest home; care for a stay-at-home-spouse; raise two children; go on a modest vacation once per year; save a little bit to deal with unexpected costs; and retire with a modest pension.

This, more than anything else, is the fundamental cause of division in the US. It's what Michael Moore is highlighting in Roger & Me. It's the—now broken—social contract Gen X and Millennials were raised to trust.

The ideological division we see today existed before the social contract was broken, but most people were too busy living their lives to care.

I haven't looked too closely into this, but I'd bet that the total KKK membership count tracks pretty closely to the amount of economic stress experienced by the median American.

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

#409

Post by chipsa »

giantg2 wrote: post #408

I just want my own land, to do my own shit on, not bother anyone, and not be bothered by anyone. Why is this so hard? Why do we want to be controlling other's actions so greatly through the implied threat of government violence? Edit: why disagree?

Because both the left and the right want to control what you do for your own (or "society's") good.

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

#410

Post by rossdavidh »

grapeskin wrote: post #162
rossdavidh wrote: post #97

While I am a big fan of Jonathan Haidt, and have read several of his books, I can't help but feel that this is written from a point of view that is entirely too impressed with (if also afraid of) technology. Peter Turchin predicted escalating levels of polarization in the US, reaching a peak around 2020, without any need to look at social media. The level of political polarization now, while high, is less than the la…

> The level of political polarization now, while high, is less than the late 1850's. I know this is in the context of the build up to the civil war, but how much were neighbors at each other’s necks? I don’t know much about that period aside from the obvious events that followed (slavery being the huge and obvious motivator for the war), so I’m not sure how divided everybody was. But it seems like in the US today, th…

Well I'm told there were numerous instances of brothers in the same family fighting on different sides. In some states such as Kansas, neighbors were most definitely attacking each other (and not just verbally).
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