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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

#431

Post by TimTheTinker »

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?

> You need a government with enough heft

Could you elucidate what you mean by "heft"? Sometimes I think people want a feeling of power over them (or others) without a clear sense of the mechanism or implications of that power.

It could be any of:

    - more taxes
    - more government employees
    - more laws
    - more law enforcement
    - more bureaucracy
    - more regulations
    - more enforcement of regulations
    - more military power
    - more domestic espionage
    - more foreign espionage
    - martial law
    - less democracy
I'd argue that having a better government does not imply more heft, but more efficiency and justice, without sacrificing democratic election and separation/limitation of powers.

Some of the most efficient governments in the world also lack proper separation and limitation of powers, which degrades personal freedom. Democracy that leads to freedom is an extraordinarily tough balancing act; early US founders recognized that and publicly called on almighty God to help and aid them in their efforts.

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

#432

Post by JJMcJ »

lkrubner wrote: post #137

A contrarian take focuses on the increasing specialization of knowledge and the increasingly fine-grained international division of labor, which has had increasing impact on a government that fails to keep up. A rough history of that: In the 1700s the Western democracies established nominally omnicompetant, unspecialized legislatures. In the last 1800s, given the increasing specialization of knowledge, the first comm…

The committee chairs were very powerful people, especially in the House. Of these Ways and Means, where tax legislation originated, is probably the most important. Wilbur Mills, who was chair for 20 years, was a very important person indeed.

Easy amendments: While often not exactly amendments, the ballot propositions in various states function in the same way; usually, as you say, "[the] law is assuredly badly written, and full of unintended consequences".

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

#433

Post by TuringNYC »

luciusdomitius wrote: post #378
pmyteh wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I gave you an answer. You can suck it up, complain, or leave. And yes, those choices are unpleasant. If this was supposed to be a 'actually it all comes down to the threat of violence' gotcha then, sure - if you insist on your property rights, don't pay your taxes and then decide to fight the bailiffs you're going to have a bad time. Sorry.

You did not answer - you listed my options and I was asking for the reaction of the collective. Because I know that functional illiteracy is becoming a serious problem, I'll do my best to help you: "How exactly are they going to limit my options to those, what are they going to do specifically?"

Specifically, the township would put a property tax lien on your property. Eventually, the liens would pile up and your property would have so many liens you'd have no value left in your house. Then the township would take you to court to enforce their right to collect the judgements. At that point, you'd most likely be forced to move out. The township would sell your home to recover the tax liens and judgements. A sheriff would forcibly remove you from your home in such cases.

Presumably, you could buy another home in the same township, and go thru all the above processes again. OR you could choose one of the original options given by a parent post:

1. Go to town hall and influence decisions

2. Exit township, find one that you agree with

3. Bear with it and stay in the township.

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

#434

Post by TuringNYC »

zekrioca wrote: post #394
don_esteban wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I think there are a lot of options. Across US states, counties, and townships, for example, there is a full spectrum of political positions literally w/r/t how money is collected (or not) and spent (or not)

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

#435

Post by TaylorAlexander »

luciusdomitius wrote: post #289
TaylorAlexander wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

> How do you force him without coercieon?

You’re missing the point. You don’t force anyone. If someone doesn’t want to do the thing, you don’t make them. You find a different way to accomplish your goals.

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

#436

Post by TaylorAlexander »

luciusdomitius wrote: post #361
don_esteban wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

If Pariah means the collectivist people not trading or communicating with you and no violence then I am OK with that. Now, could you explain how this is collectivism and not voluntaryism?

You can have voluntary collectivism. This is where everyone works to find agreement with the group as a matter of course, but only proceeds if that agreement is found. You might find this kind of management in a collectively owned business for example.

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

#437

Post by [deleted] »

luciusdomitius wrote: post #347
pmyteh wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[deleted]

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

#438

Post by HWR_14 »

jkhdigital wrote: post #84
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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,…

> 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.

> An alternative theory posits that these massive corporations in fact depend upon the centralization of governmental regulatory and fiscal powers for their very existence.

I don't see what evidence there is of that. How does Walmart (specifically, since it was mentioned) benefit from federal government regulations in a way that gives them an advantage over other brick and mortars?

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

#439

Post by HWR_14 »

Mountain_Skies wrote: post #174
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.

When I worked as a consultant at Home Depot's headquarters, they often sent out emails from the "Orange Voice" pushing employees to lobby their members of Congress on various bits of legislation and issues. What was very clear was that Home Depot absolutely hated each state having its own set of laws. Even worse were local laws. They wanted there to be just one government for them to lobby for their issues and when o…

That's different and understandable. Everyone wants to have to comply with one set of regulations instead of one set of regulations plus fifty more additional sets of regulations (or more with counties/cities) that require additional effort to comply with and ensure the correct ones are complied with. Just the additional labor costs for lawyers must be real. Add to that the need to have special cash registers for one state, or other changes, and it gets pretty expensive. Hell, Home Depot would probably rather one national sales tax (regardless of whether it's higher or lower than the current national average) over the complexity of the current sales tax code. Just for the operational simplicity.

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

#440

Post by tdba »

engineeringwoke wrote: post #426
tdba wrote: post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a…

There's a lot to unpack here. Western Europe took in more immigrants than the United States did last year, by numbers and percentage. You could make an argument that illegal immigration tips that towards the US, but I don't think that's true. > relatively ethnically homogeneous societies, which is what you see in Europe So, this one. It's always hard to say because European countries don't measure "race" in the way t…

The US Border Patrol encountered over 100,000 attempted illegal crossings every month in 2021. It's estimated that each year somewhere between 500,000 and 1,000,000 people cross the border illegally without being caught or overstay their visa. There are nearly 50 million foreign born persons in the US total, about double the rate per capita of Europe.

Europe is on the same demographic trajectory - the current statistics put Europe where the US was in the 1990s. Focusing on unions as an example, since the 1990s, the US has lost approximately half the union membership rate in the private sector. This is in part due to immigration and in part due to offshoring, both mechanisms serve to weaken the power of the domestic worker.

You may be right that "race" isn't perfectly well defined, but socially and culturally it does exist and it plays a role in how people act. For example, even in highly diverse and progressive places you find clear racially segregated patterns of residence, with major downstream effects in areas like education, employment and healthcare. This is true in both the US and Europe. I'd be curious to hear your thoughts on that phenomenon.

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