Earlier quoted context omitted.
Here's the thing you don't understand: Yes, conservatives do want the poor to suffer, because they think the poor are poor because they're too lazy to work hard and overcome their poverty. Making them suffer is the only way to make them contribute to society, in their view. Also, yes, as a liberal, I do want to take money from the rich and give it to people who don't deserve it. That is exactly what I want to do. Wha…
> I do want to take money from the rich and give it to people who don't deserve it And what give you the right to take what belongs to others?
David Simon: 'There are now two Americas. My country is a horror show'
251–260 of 373 posts
Re: David Simon: 'There are now two Americas. My country is a horror show'
#252Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's contrived but it highlights a real problem: free markets are very poorly suited to the task of avoiding tragedies of the commons. Unless you think tragedies of the commons don't happen in real life, the contrived example is relevant.
The problem with the example is that it doesn't illustrate the tragedy of the commons. Self-interest alone will lead the astronauts to do the right thing, because they're rational actors who are fully aware of their situation, and who are not in competition with each other. There's no incentive for the "libertarian" astronaut to consume more oxygen than the others. In your example, only stupid astronauts (or, I suppo…
Why?
Re: David Simon: 'There are now two Americas. My country is a horror show'
#253Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 constit…
Fully agree - because it's only valid in the USA. Assuming libertarianism has some value outside of the States, the fact that the Constitution (and the Founding Fathers) may or may not back it up is irrelevant.
Re: David Simon: 'There are now two Americas. My country is a horror show'
#254Earlier quoted context omitted.
Here's the thing you don't understand: Yes, conservatives do want the poor to suffer, because they think the poor are poor because they're too lazy to work hard and overcome their poverty. Making them suffer is the only way to make them contribute to society, in their view. Also, yes, as a liberal, I do want to take money from the rich and give it to people who don't deserve it. That is exactly what I want to do. Wha…
One of the most honest comments in the entire thread. The problem is, both sides don't want to admit this. The conservatives because it makes them out to be assholes (and they'd never win another election again). The liberals because they think they'll lose the argument if they say they want income redistribution--everyone will jump on them and call them (unfairly) socialists or communists (yes, I know they're differ…
Re: David Simon: 'There are now two Americas. My country is a horror show'
#255I think we should view market capitalism as like an AI algorithm in a very convoluted space.
Start everyone off with the same amount of resources, and then let market capitalism go. For the first few iterations, inequality is forming but everyone is better off; even the poor are making absolute gains. You'll conclude that the algorithm (market capitalism) works. Untended, though, it starts to diverge after some time. The parameters go to infinity, the model gets ridiculous and ceases to represent real information (which institutions are worthy and add value, which do not) and goes into the self-perpetuation of early, parochial advantage (like overtraining, in ML, where noise in the data is misinterpreted as genuine signal).
What we want is to have the growth of that initial training arc, not the degeneracy as the algorithm diverges, and you want to keep having that growth and increasing general prosperity indefinitely. So we need continuous regularization. The welfare state is supposed to do that, but the increasing ability for those with wealth to convert it into power has rendered our government severely dysfunctional, so the normalization has stopped.
The problem with poverty in capitalism is that there's no real solution. Divergence and perpetuation of poverty is exactly what you'd expect. Markets are all about trade, but a person with nothing-- no social capital, no cultural capital, no wealth-- has nothing to trade, except for when terms for labor are extremely favorable-- like, skilled labor is in such shortage that even the out-of-touch rich see value in training the poor, for free-- and that's something we haven't seen since the 1960s.
Re: David Simon: 'There are now two Americas. My country is a horror show'
#256This 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 question - and only question - should be what David Simon asks: are we all in this together or are we not? I think this question is frankly naïve. Humans have functional limitations on how much we can care about other people, aka Dunbar's number. This is not something you can improve (maybe by .0001%) or create policy around, it's a hard limit. The fact that, at least in the United States, virtually everyone live…
Yes! And when people have more than 2.1 children, thus increasing global population, things get even scarcer. So no, your 19 children are clearly not 'all in it together' with my 2, to whom I would like to feed grass fed beef as God - not Monsanto - intended*. But lets all overlook population growth.
[1] Actually I would prefer fish, but lets be realistic - the oceans are now a mercury filled shithole.
Re: David Simon: 'There are now two Americas. My country is a horror show'
#257Very good speech and an important national dialog to spark. I'd like to call attention to one thing though: "I don't believe that a state-run economy can be as viable as market capitalism in producing mass wealth." This demonstrates a basic confusion that we Americans have about ourselves, even most "lefties" and "libertarians": The false belief that we live in a free market economy. The truth is, the state plays a m…
Corporatism (the current system) is neither socialism nor capitalism. It's designed to give a well-connected elite the best of both systems and the rest of society the worst of both. It's like suburbia, which delivers the best of both worlds (urban and rural) for the rich and the worst of both to the poor.
The truth is that the elite of our society do not meaningfully compete. They serve on each others' corporate boards, arrange jobs for one another in event of adverse circumstances, and have generally set up their own private welfare system (see: EIR gigs). The competition rhetoric exists because they intend for us to compete-- against each other, thus ignoring them.
Re: David Simon: 'There are now two Americas. My country is a horror show'
#258This 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…
Not just the Nordic model, but even the achievements of some European countries (notably Germany) and Japan, would have been possible without US security guarantees? Essentially the US/Nato is the main protector of Western interests, and American taxpayers ( + deficit financing ) essentially props up these 'regimes' - granted they are more democratic, and there is a great deal of autonomy than a traditional vassal st…
As a European (with a keen interest in history) I'm not ungrateful for US aid, but to suggest that aid was entirely selfless is incorrect. (You may wish to draw parallels with the French support that made the American revolution a success, a similar situation...)
Re: David Simon: 'There are now two Americas. My country is a horror show'
#259This 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…
In some sense, when I hear this argument, I'm reminded by the claim of some Marxists, that you shouldn't conclude that communism doesn't work just becuase it failed in so many countries, after all they didn't implement the communist ideal properly!
As you say, I think neither extreme will ever work well as long as we humans are who we are.
When corporations pour money into politics like they do today, couldn't you say that it's just true capitalism working its way as "intended"? Would this problem become worse or better if we removed campaign funding regulations and?
Re: David Simon: 'There are now two Americas. My country is a horror show'
#260Earlier quoted context omitted.
> You're an American (or a Canadian or a Briton or whatever). You are part of a society and part of a nation whether you like it or not. So let's make it work for everyone. Regardless of which lines one did not to choose to be drawn around them, not everyone has an affinity for them, and if history is any example of such, blood will be drawn for those to fight for their will to reconstruct such lines to their choosin…
> Regardless of which lines one did not to choose to be drawn around them, not everyone has an affinity for them Yes -- there are always selfish pricks, who think that they should have a say in if they'd have affinity to their family or society or fellow humans. It's like seeing a child drowning and saying, "well, I don't know this kid or feel anything for this, so why should I do anything to help it?" -- instead of…
Yet such men (and women), who stand on the pillars of history, who have helped create the social constructs we find ourselves living by to some degree today, were "selfish pricks" to those who apposed them and died in their wake.