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David Simon: 'There are now two Americas. My country is a horror show'

theguardian.com

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Re: David Simon: 'There are now two Americas. My country is a horror show'

#91

Post by justincormack »

chongli wrote: post #16
majika wrote: post #6

This is a remarkably sensible speech. The idea that the market will solve such things as environmental concerns, as our racial divides, as our class distinctions, our problems with educating and incorporating one generation of workers into the economy after the other when that economy is changing; the idea that the market is going to heed all of the human concerns and still maximise profit is juvenile. It's a juvenil…

Can the Nordic model work in every country, though? All of the Nordic countries have trade surpluses, especially when you look at the per-capita numbers. How would this work in a country of large trade deficits like the US?

Its not really to do with trade surpluses. They have not always had trade surpluses, indeed they mostly had huge banking and deficit crises a while back, the surpluses are more recent (Finland's started with Nokia, which at one point dominated the economy and trade).

Re: David Simon: 'There are now two Americas. My country is a horror show'

#92

Post by steveklabnik »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #79
adriand wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The libertarian and anti-government sentiments aren't saying that we shouldn't be all in this together, but that we shouldn't be forced to be all in this together. That difference is what the entire argument is about. That's the kind of facile, juvenile argument the OP decries in this article. To make an analogy, I could equally say, "I shouldn't be forced to be in a family. Families are great and everything, but w…

This is kind of a funny analogy, perhaps better than you realized. Families and governments compete directly with each other for power over society. The English-speaking countries are way, way out on the government end of the continuum; here, you don't have to be in a family if it's not to your taste. Compared to the rest of the world, Americans, Canadians, and Britons already have only the most tenuous connection to…

Fun fact: Engels actually wrote a whole book about this: http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1884/origin-famil...

Re: David Simon: 'There are now two Americas. My country is a horror show'

#93

Post by VMG »

ant512 wrote: post #73
avar wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The libertarian and anti-government sentiments aren't saying that we shouldn't be all in this together, but that we shouldn't be forced to be all in this together. That difference is what the entire argument is about. Few people are saying saying "let's not do this" for some value of "this", they're saying "let's not force everyone to do this". That's a very profound difference, it's why having the government make an…

> Few people are saying saying "let's not do this" for some value of "this", they're saying "let's not force everyone to do this". There are four guys in a crippled spaceship. They have 7 hours of oxygen left if they continue to breathe normally. If they all make a concerted effort to breathe slowly they could extend the oxygen to 8 hours. The rescue ship arrives in 8 hours. They are all in it together. There's nothi…

Contrived example time?

What is the political system on the spaceship that allows three of the four to hold a vote and kill off the least popular guy on the spaceship?

Re: David Simon: 'There are now two Americas. My country is a horror show'

#94

Post by kungfooguru »

patrickmay wrote: post #10
gum_ina_package wrote: post #4

When I see arguments like this one, I always remember the little known fact that Adam Smith was a moral philosopher before he wrote about economics. A fundamental principle for capitalism is that people will behave morally and be compassionate. Without a moral society, no matter what system you're talking about, that society will always collapse. I think David Simon, and many other modern critics of capitalism, have…

As well as Smith, I am reminded of Bastiat: “Socialism, like the ancient ideas from which it springs, confuses the distinction between government and society. As a result of this, every time we object to a thing being done by government, the socialists conclude that we object to its being done at all. We disapprove of state education. Then the socialists say that we are opposed to any education. We object to a state…

Hardly. We make clear distinctions between the State and society. But also know that "government" isn't always a State.

A State exists if there are class divisions, with the more powerful class holding the power of the State.

Since the resources and infrastructure to begin a society without want exists, we support taking control of the State (still a State but with the class holding the power reversed) to use it for those goals.

End goal being no State due to no classes.

Re: David Simon: 'There are now two Americas. My country is a horror show'

#95

Post by mudil »

majika wrote: post #6

This is a remarkably sensible speech. The idea that the market will solve such things as environmental concerns, as our racial divides, as our class distinctions, our problems with educating and incorporating one generation of workers into the economy after the other when that economy is changing; the idea that the market is going to heed all of the human concerns and still maximise profit is juvenile. It's a juvenil…

I am not in this together. I am here for myself and my family. To use the famous example of a pencil: no one knows how to produce a pencil. It takes expertise (and infrastructure, i.e. private property) to cut and process wood, to mine graphite and iron for a band, etc etc etc. If some social engineer like David Simon comes in and says "we need to produce pencils together", nothing is going to be done. Because inevitably social engineering means that he (or the bureaucrats that share his ideology) will decide how to shift resources and someone's private property to better produce pencils.

Let's also not forget that founder fathers consistently looked at this and came to the conclusion that an attack on private property is an attack on liberty. That's the reason for a limited gov't.

The big question is why at a time when we have unprecedented size and reach of gov't, and liberty is tramped, we hear these desperate calls that things are not working well?

Re: David Simon: 'There are now two Americas. My country is a horror show'

#97

Post by apsec112 »

The US as it exists today simply is not capitalist. The Great Depression and 19th-century industrial slums can reasonably be blamed on capitalism. American problems today cannot.

This isn't the fallacy of "no true Scotsman". It's just simple arithmetic. Look at a pie chart of GDP. About 40% of it is outright owned by the government (public spending). Another 40% of it is nominally private, but is extremely heavily regulated License-Raj-style, like real estate and medicine.

For example, if you want to build a new apartment tower, this is almost everywhere illegal because of zoning codes. The government has to give you permission to build anything, and then once you get permission, they dictate what you can build, how high you can build, what the building can be used for, how much parking there will be, how much of the land has to be building vs. landscaping, how far your building is away from the street, etc. etc. etc. It's literal central planning - a government committee takes out a map and draws lines, and then dictates at each spot exactly what kind of buildings there will be. None of this existed prior to the mid 20th century.

Re: David Simon: 'There are now two Americas. My country is a horror show'

#98

Post by ant512 »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #88
ant512 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Few people are saying saying "let's not do this" for some value of "this", they're saying "let's not force everyone to do this". There are four guys in a crippled spaceship. They have 7 hours of oxygen left if they continue to breathe normally. If they all make a concerted effort to breathe slowly they could extend the oxygen to 8 hours. The rescue ship arrives in 8 hours. They are all in it together. There's nothi…

Do you have a permit from the EPA to burn all of that straw?

It's a contrived analogy, mainly because - as Simon points out in the article:

> Their eyes glaze...It's too much. Too much to contemplate the idea that the whole country might be actually connected.

It seems to me that people struggle to deal with this issue when scaled out to a population beyond their immediate social circle. That's one of the problems.

The other is, as soon as you scale it back to a comprehensible size, people shout "straw man!" and the debate goes nowhere.

Re: David Simon: 'There are now two Americas. My country is a horror show'

#99

Post by saraid216 »

bmelton wrote: post #31
majika wrote: post #6

This is a remarkably sensible speech. The idea that the market will solve such things as environmental concerns, as our racial divides, as our class distinctions, our problems with educating and incorporating one generation of workers into the economy after the other when that economy is changing; the idea that the market is going to heed all of the human concerns and still maximise profit is juvenile. It's a juvenil…

I upvoted you, but I think I disagree largely with the sentiment you expressed. As one of those wacky libertarians, I'd like to defend (what I think is) the default liberty-oriented position. Disclaimer, the following is a series of value judgements, and not necessarily steeped in fact. The argument isn't necessarily one based on 'more' vs. 'less' government, but 'Constitutionally prescribed' government size. The Con…

Appealing to the Constitution isn't really a valid line of argument, though. The Constitution isn't the Bible. It cannot, and should not, prescribe morality, which is what should drive law-making; nor should any part of it, including the Bill of Rights, be sacrosanct. The Constitution, and its derivates the US Code and state constitutions, are authoritative only to the point that they usefully represent their constituents' morality.

> it should be encouraged at every step, though never forced

I think you'll find that most of your "wacky libertarian" buddies don't see the distinction between these two methods.

> Probably, the answer is somewhere in the middle, and I don't claim to know where it is.

I'd recommend reading this book: http://www.amazon.com/Talking-Strangers-Anxieties-Citizenshi... One of the things it helps do is explain how and why we should negotiate the middle.

Re: David Simon: 'There are now two Americas. My country is a horror show'

#100

Post by chrisgd »

spindritf wrote: post #15
majika wrote: post #6

This is a remarkably sensible speech. The idea that the market will solve such things as environmental concerns, as our racial divides, as our class distinctions, our problems with educating and incorporating one generation of workers into the economy after the other when that economy is changing; the idea that the market is going to heed all of the human concerns and still maximise profit is juvenile. It's a juvenil…

The idea that the market will solve such things as environmental concerns, as our racial divides, as our class distinctions, our problems with educating and incorporating one generation of workers into the economy after the other when that economy is changing Is this idea actually being implemented anywhere? Isn't education, even in the US, almost wholly sponsored by the government? People talk about student loans bu…

People convince the government to defund public schools, they then complain public schools are failing in order to get more private schools built.
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