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The dictatorship of the articulate

florentcrivello.com

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Re: The dictatorship of the articulate

#271

Post by VoodooJuJu »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #156

This is what I consider the modern face of Fascism. I know you're not supposed to use that word, because it really upsets Fascists. But really, long passionately argued essays about how democratic governance is stopping us from returning to the good old days and we should let the powerful do whatever they want. Using dubious emotional arguments like laundromats can't be historic buildings? Calling things dictatorship…

>This is what I consider the modern face of Fascism

I see the word Fascism thrown around so much these days, I realized I've forgotten the real meaning of the word, so I had to look it up, and it seems that what the author is saying shares no overlap with the true meaning of the word.

I would suggest coining a new term for whatever it is you're trying to describe, rather than attempting to reinvent the definition of an existing term, because not only is it confusing, but it feels like a manipulative use of language.

Orwell has a brilliant essay on this kind of misuse of language: https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwel...

He actually uses Fascism as an example:

>The word Fascism has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies ‘something not desirable’

Re: The dictatorship of the articulate

#272

Post by thrown_22 »

Cipater wrote: post #250
thrown_22 wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm fine with people dying during construction _if_ we foresee the deaths. What I'm not fine with is killing people with lead/arsenic/asbestos/plastics because we didn't put new tech through it's paces before we deployed it en-mass. We live in a world that is both too conservative and not anywhere near conservative enough.

>I'm fine with people dying during construction _if_ we foresee the deaths. Because that's other people dying. >What I'm not fine with is killing people with lead/arsenic/asbestos/plastics because we didn't put new tech through it's paces before we deployed it en-mass. Because this affects you.

>Because that's other people dying.

My first job out of high school was on an old school oil rig: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/Jn2BU4eyVHQ

What worried me about it wasn't the fact I could lose a hand, but that more than half the chemicals we were getting smeared in daily weren't properly tested for their long term effects on humans.

Re: The dictatorship of the articulate

#273

Post by beeftime »

we're still doing this in 2022? How much of this warmed-over libetrarian claptrap do we still need to sit through? Things are bad because the got dang gubbermint won't let me dump industrial waste into the river! We're failing to innovate because I can't work my employees to death! These dang snowflakes are killing America!

Give me a break.

Re: The dictatorship of the articulate

#274

Post by seydor »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #91

There's a reason we don't just "let the builders build". We used to do that (certainly to a massively greater extent than we do now), and the result was that although a few of them managed to construct monuments we can all be proud of, most of them built a pile of crap and/or damaged the places they built in and the people they nominally built for. This is true of literal buildings, but it's also true of a great many…

Would you say european cities are a pile of crap? most of them were not built to plan

Re: The dictatorship of the articulate

#275

Post by thrown_22 »

notahacker wrote: post #239
thrown_22 wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spoken like someone who's never had to carry all their daily water from a well. Even if you can't drink tap water the fact that you don't need to carry the water for washing, bathing, cleaning, watering, etc. etc. etc. is an amazing improvement in quality of life.

Spoken like someone who didn't read the comment properly, or at all. Building a big red bridge quickly isn't that much of a testament to the ability of people in the 30s to get stuff done if people in the 30s also spent their entire childhood drinking dirty well water because in many parts of the US people hadn't got around to implementing the ancient technology of piped water Not going to lie, I'd pick the society w…

There's a difference between flowing piped water, which is a technology as old as Rome, and static piped water, something that was figured out only in the 20th century.

Re: The dictatorship of the articulate

#276

Post by thrown_22 »

Tsiklon wrote: post #229
thrown_22 wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm fine with people dying during construction _if_ we foresee the deaths. What I'm not fine with is killing people with lead/arsenic/asbestos/plastics because we didn't put new tech through it's paces before we deployed it en-mass. We live in a world that is both too conservative and not anywhere near conservative enough.

That’s a very callous and detached way to consider human life. It’s exactly the sort of thinking that led to the execution of the Ford Pinto. Wherein the bookkeepers determined that the number of deaths and cost of wrongful death settlements would be less than the cost of recalls to fix the fatal design error in the car.

The most American thing in the world is to worry about the 4 deaths per year caused by the faults in that car while ignoring the other 40,000 deaths a year caused by cars in general.

Re: The dictatorship of the articulate

#277

Post by ZeroGravitas »

VoodooJuJu wrote: post #271
ZeroGravitas wrote: post #156

This is what I consider the modern face of Fascism. I know you're not supposed to use that word, because it really upsets Fascists. But really, long passionately argued essays about how democratic governance is stopping us from returning to the good old days and we should let the powerful do whatever they want. Using dubious emotional arguments like laundromats can't be historic buildings? Calling things dictatorship…

>This is what I consider the modern face of Fascism I see the word Fascism thrown around so much these days, I realized I've forgotten the real meaning of the word, so I had to look it up, and it seems that what the author is saying shares no overlap with the true meaning of the word. I would suggest coining a new term for whatever it is you're trying to describe, rather than attempting to reinvent the definition of…

Which definition do you prefer?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Definitions_of_fascism

Some of my favourites:

> [F]ascism is best defined as a revolutionary form of nationalism, one that sets out to be a political, social and ethical revolution, welding the "people" into a dynamic national community under new elites infused with heroic values. The core myth that inspires this project is that only a populist, trans-class movement of purifying, cathartic national rebirth (palingenesis) can stem the tide of decadence. -- Roger Griffin

> Marxists argue that fascism represents the last attempt of a ruling class (specifically, the capitalist bourgeoisie) to preserve its grip on power in the face of an imminent proletarian revolution. Fascist movements are not necessarily created by the ruling class, but they can only gain political power with the help of that class and with funding from big business. Once in power, the fascists serve the interests of their benefactors

> It is usually assumed, for instance, that Fascism is inherently warlike, that it thrives in an atmosphere of war hysteria and can only solve its economic problems by means of war preparation or foreign conquests. But clearly this is not true of, say, Portugal or the various South American dictatorships. Or again, antisemitism is supposed to be one of the distinguishing marks of Fascism; but some Fascist movements are not antisemitic. Learned controversies, reverberating for years on end in American magazines, have not even been able to determine whether or not Fascism is a form of capitalism. But still, when we apply the term ‘Fascism’ to Germany or Japan or Mussolini's Italy, we know broadly what we mean. -- Orwell

> The first truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism — ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power -- FDR

I thought I was clear on the aspects I recognised.

Re: The dictatorship of the articulate

#278

Post by rich_sasha »

badpun wrote: post #191
rich_sasha wrote: post #190

Looking at the graph of price changes, it looks mostly like things that are cheaper come from abroad. Things that got more expensive are strictly domestic / unoffshorable. I guess this says a few things even before you get to regulation: - America outsourced a lot of engineering jobs of all sorts, leading to a lower supply of skilled labour at home. The places that received the outsourced jobs got better at it and do…

> Where in the past there were plenty of poor people happy to work in childcare for very little money Citation needed on the "happy" part. People just did what they had to do to survive.

Yeah, agreed, I meant idiomatic "happy" as in you could find people who would work longer hours in worse conditions for less money.

Childcare must be the best example, it's expensive throughout the developed world and end user cost is mostly wages, I'd imagine. If it is expensive, it means you can't find people who will do childcare more cheaply.

Re: The dictatorship of the articulate

#279

Post by MichaelZuo »

dane-pgp wrote: post #215
concordDance wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Essentially the more people have veto power or require consultation the harder it is to get anything done. The more policies and rules there are (particularly once uncertainty about what the rules are creeps in), the harder it is to build. If you've worked in a large corporation and a 10 man startup this should be obvious. In the latter you can spin up a new service in a couple of hours. In the former a couple of mon…

> In the latter you can spin up a new service in a couple of hours. In the former a couple of months is a blistering pace. In the latter you can harm society in ways that take a couple of hours to fix. In the former, you can cause harms that take months or years to fix (and, with enough lobbying, you can make taxpayers foot the bill).

Very true. It's quite shocking how often supposedly 'very smart' folks suddenly stop thinking when considering second order, and higher, consequences. Maybe it's a symptom of some deeper underlying problem, motivated thinking, etc...

Re: The dictatorship of the articulate

#280

Post by [deleted] »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #257
thrown_22 wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, they also made the trains run on time. I guess Switzerland is the fascist capital of the world with their perfect time tables. The reason why fascism is bad isn't because it ignores the trappings of American kleptocracy, it's bad because it kills people.

Ha, I nearly brought that myth up as further evidence: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/loco-motive/ Why do people have such a false, cartoon-like, impression of what actual historical fascist movements did? But you're right, it's much more important that he killed people: > Fascist squads, militias inspired by Mussolini but often created by local leaders, swept through the countryside of the Po Valley and the Pugli…

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