The arena for 'cooperation' has shifted from socio-political realms to economic ones. Business now is the primary vehicle for cooperative efforts.
The Strange Disappearance of Cooperation in America (2013)
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Re: The Strange Disappearance of Cooperation in America (2013)
#12> polarization What polarization is there in Washington? Or outside the beltway? What are the two poles? How people feel about transexuals? I don't see any polarization. The two parties are close together on almost everything. As the real differences fade, unimportant differences must be heightened. Trump is of that type - he makes a big show, but on what big issue in which he can get anywhere is he substantially far…
Your measure of polarization is talking about distance on a political spectrum. This is perhaps the correct way, since it's literally polar.
The vernacular "polarization" here would be better thought of as a measure not of conceptual distance, but of the intensity with which that distance is perceived.
The left and right are both very centrist (with some wacky outlier issues), but they perceive the other side as being very wrong, which allows for polarization regardless of actual political distance.
Re: The Strange Disappearance of Cooperation in America (2013)
#13Population density? I'd love to see a chart of these social indicators plotted against population density.
Re: The Strange Disappearance of Cooperation in America (2013)
#14> polarization What polarization is there in Washington? Or outside the beltway? What are the two poles? How people feel about transexuals? I don't see any polarization. The two parties are close together on almost everything. As the real differences fade, unimportant differences must be heightened. Trump is of that type - he makes a big show, but on what big issue in which he can get anywhere is he substantially far…
I would argue that the big US squabble in the 1960s was civil rights.
Still not resolved (for example a couple of states have just recently been found to be in violation of the Voting Rights Act).
Re: The Strange Disappearance of Cooperation in America (2013)
#15While I found this quite interesting, and I'm as concerned about some of these trends as the next person, I was eerily reminded of some of John Robbins's stuff graphing meat consumption against incidence of diseases and his kind of casual thinking about causation. We have so many datasets available now that it's so easy to graph things against each other and notice things that may be coincidentally related, or even c…
We have so many datasets available now that it's so easy to graph things against each other and notice things that may be coincidentally related, or even causally related, and then tell some kind of story about where the relationship came from. Yeah, it's a fun website -- but you could say that about just about any claimed correlation. Meanwhile, for those who have been around long enough to have a sense for the 'bar…
> Meanwhile, for those who have been around long enough to have a sense for the 'barometric' changes he's talking about -- the shift in the basic, underlying "we're-all-in-this-together" ethos has been not just noticeable, but profound. Probably a lot more work needs to be done to find a solid statistical basis behind this observation (if this is at all possible).
I need to see some very solid evidence before I change my assumption, which is that people have always felt this as they get older, because we romanticize our memories of youth and we are uncomfortable with the societal changes that younger generations inevitably introduce.
Re: The Strange Disappearance of Cooperation in America (2013)
#16> polarization What polarization is there in Washington? Or outside the beltway? What are the two poles? How people feel about transexuals? I don't see any polarization. The two parties are close together on almost everything. As the real differences fade, unimportant differences must be heightened. Trump is of that type - he makes a big show, but on what big issue in which he can get anywhere is he substantially far…
>What polarization is there in Washington? Or outside the beltway? What are the two poles?
The polarization is between those who prefer authoritarian leadership, and those who don't. The poles are defined primarily by personality.
Re: The Strange Disappearance of Cooperation in America (2013)
#17> polarization What polarization is there in Washington? Or outside the beltway? What are the two poles? How people feel about transexuals? I don't see any polarization. The two parties are close together on almost everything. As the real differences fade, unimportant differences must be heightened. Trump is of that type - he makes a big show, but on what big issue in which he can get anywhere is he substantially far…
If you watch/read/listen to pundits you'll see lots of polarization. Or go to Facebook and look at the comments on articles. Liberals are evil. Conservatives are dumb. You'll see all sorts of such comments.
Conservative media portrayed Obama as an extreme leftist when he was, in terms of policies, more in line with Eisenhower and Reagan. Look at the label of RINOs for Congressmen who vote the wrong way on a particular issue.
In the U.S. there is a lot of political polarization.
Re: The Strange Disappearance of Cooperation in America (2013)
#18While I found this quite interesting, and I'm as concerned about some of these trends as the next person, I was eerily reminded of some of John Robbins's stuff graphing meat consumption against incidence of diseases and his kind of casual thinking about causation. We have so many datasets available now that it's so easy to graph things against each other and notice things that may be coincidentally related, or even c…
We have so many datasets available now that it's so easy to graph things against each other and notice things that may be coincidentally related, or even causally related, and then tell some kind of story about where the relationship came from. Yeah, it's a fun website -- but you could say that about just about any claimed correlation. Meanwhile, for those who have been around long enough to have a sense for the 'bar…
I should also have been more careful to more clearly distinguish spurious correlations from correlations where both things are related to a third factor (which I think is probably often the case in John Robbins's graphs and somewhat plausibly here).
Re: The Strange Disappearance of Cooperation in America (2013)
#19The proposed link between civic participation ("cooperation") and both inequality and political polarization is a strange one to me, since civic participation seems like it would be a local phenomenon, and both inequality and political polarization mostly show up as regional differences rather than differences within communities.
Sure, the political space between Allegany County, NY (low income and trump voting) and Westchester County, NY (high income and clinton voting) is huge. But if you go to an elk lodge in Allegany or a (i dunno) running club in Westchester, you're going to find that everybody there has basically the same politics and basically the same income.
Something else is going on here.
Re: The Strange Disappearance of Cooperation in America (2013)
#20The dating market for men has become extremely difficult over the last few years (lots of factors for that), more and more men are unable to find a mate. Men are less inviting of other men from my observation as they are in deep competition with each other -- why risk having another man around when he might take your girl or reduce your chances? Apps, dating sites, clubs, and events are filled with men looking for women, don't expect them to be cooperative with you, you are their compitition.
I believe this is a factor in men becoming less cooperative.