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

theguardian.com

161–170 of 373 posts

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

#161
There are so many things to love about this speech, but I think my favorite part is this: "the only thing that actually works is not ideological, it is impure, has elements of both arguments and never actually achieves any kind of partisan or philosophical perfection."

That's an extremely cogent observation about capitalism, but it would be just as relevant in a discussion about FP and OO, or about team social dynamics. Across the board, I see people doing better work when they spend less time seeking philosophical consistency and purity, and more time responding to real observed situations.

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

#162
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…

To defend the free market position though I don't agree with it, an evil party can be elected in those countries who could purposely mismanage the welfare state and destroy it. Then they point to the ruins and say look this doesn't work adopt our new evil system. Canada and UK try to do this whenever an ultra conservative local or national gov is elected. They can purposely fuck it all up with a wave of the hand which is why relying on government is risky.

Nordic countries also have strict speech controls and censorship which is why a lot of artists leave those countries. Banning films and literature is common

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

#163

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". And while this makes sense from a naive perspective, it always rapidly breaks down in reality. That's why Simon, and others, call it juvenile. The complexity isn't hard to see: just use one level of meta. Given an action or policy or whatever S, have the policy S' of "Do not force everyon…

>> The paradox of tolerance has been a major problem in liberal philosophy for a long, long time. The simplistic notion of "Don't force them" just refuses to engage with any kind of depth, and in doing so, perverts and defeats itself. Nope, the idea of not forcing anyone to do anything is rooted in the Non-Aggression Principle, which stipulates that any initiation of force (violence/coercion) is forbidden . The flips…

The NAP is pretty useless, because it doesn't define what 'force' or 'initiation' means. People have very significant disagreements about these definitions.

Furthermore, it only makes sense in an alternate reality where we're re-set to zero. The NAP doesn't really provide a means from getting from where we are today to a world 'without force,' as if that was even possible.

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

#164
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…

Replace "juvenile" with "a straw man" and you get a much more accurate statement.

I believe in redistribution of wealth, but I call it what it is: redistributing money from rich people to poor people.

The author dresses it up in fancy sounding (though completely outdated) concepts of "labor" and "capital". Economists also believe in Labor and Capital, they are the variables L and C in macro models. However, we don't believe that there is some eternal battle between the two, because, while people who only own labor would like a better deal for labor, and people who mainly own capital would like a better deal for capital, there is no "deal" to be had. Labor and Capital receive their marginal products, because at the highest level we live in a free market and there is almost nothing the government can do to prevent this. What the government can do is redistribute money from rich to poor. But this probably sounds a bit too socialist for some, so people come up with ways to dress it up in outdated economics.

So I would tentatively answer "yes" to the question "are we in this together...?" but with the condition that answering yes does not imply I support the author's bogus economics.

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

#165

It's really a shame that more people don't actually read 'Capital,' or at least the first three chapters of Capital I. While I ultimately disagree with Marx, I think he does a much, much better job of analyzing the problems we have than most people. Hence Simon's distinction between 'diagnostician' and 'clinician.' It was Lenin and Mao that really tried to be the clinicians, anyway. It's a Sunday, if you've got some…

People like to say that Lenin and Mao were bad clinicians, if only there was a messiah smart enough to implement communism. In spite of the fact that plenty of other governments gave it a try too. Truth is, Lenin and even Stalin were pretty smart guys and they implemented communism the way it was meant to be . Actually, a guy predicted the Lenin/Stalin way would be the end-result for any communism implementation. The guy who predicted was an anarchist so not particularly right wing:

"First, then, State Socialism, which may be described as the doctrine that all the affairs of men should be managed by the government, regardless of individual choice. Marx, its founder, concluded that the only way to abolish the class monopolies was to centralize and consolidate all industrial and commercial interests, all productive and distributive agencies, in one vast monopoly in the hands of the State. The government must become banker, manufacturer, farmer, carrier, and merchant, and in these capacities must suffer no competition. Land, tools, and all instruments of production must be wrested from individual hands, and made the property of the collectivity. To the individual can belong only the products to be consumed, not the means of producing them. A man may own his clothes and his food, but not the sewing-machine which makes his shirts or the spade which digs his potatoes. Product and capital are essentially different things; the former belongs to individuals, the latter to society. Society must seize the capital which belongs to it, by the ballot if it can, by revolution if it must. Once in possession of it, it must administer it on the majority principle, though its organ, the State, utilize it in production and distribution, fix all prices by the amount of labor involved, and employ the whole people in its workshops, farms, stores, etc. The nation must be transformed into a vast bureaucracy, and every individual into a State official. Everything must be done on the cost principle, the people having no motive to make a profit out of themselves. Individuals not being allowed to own capital, no one can employ another, or even himself. Every man will be a wage-receiver, and the State the only wage-payer. He who will not work for the State must starve, or, more likely, go to prison. All freedom of trade must disappear. Competition must be utterly wiped out. All industrial and commercial activity must be centered in one vast, enormous, all-inclusive monopoly. The remedy for monopolies is monopoly. Such is the economic programme of State Socialism as adopted from Karl Marx."

Benjamin Tucker, State Socialism and Anarchism: How Far They Agree, and Wherin They Differ (1888)

Sounds familiar?

Second point, the labor theories of value described in the Capital you enjoyed so much has been proven wrong. The argument that the value of a commodity is only related to the labor needed to produce or obtain that commodity and not to other factors is now well known to be wrong. Running out of time here so here's a quick explanation:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_theory_of_value#Criticism...

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

#166
post #85

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?

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

#167
post #61

Very 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…

Very well put. Mariana Mazzucato talks about this idea: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3r1IPsldbBg and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPvG_fGPvQo

that is a crazy video. You can either take her thesis at her word, or you can read between the lines and realize that this is an incredible outline of how government transfers wealth to the already wealthy. Her suggestion is that the reason why the US is such a dynamic economic system is because the government underwrites it; but this is a flawed concept. In the era 1860-1920 the US government did not underwrite very much scientific or technology or provide SBIRs or any such thing, and you would be hard pressed to argue that the US did not undergo major economic improvement.

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

#168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

His point (as I read it) isn't that the Constitution as written is sacrosanct, but that it is extremely useful to have a document whose rules are 1) executed as closely as possible in the present, and 2) changeable in the future. Otherwise there are no rules, and people are just making things up as they go. I tend to agree that this is the situation we currently find ourselves in, but I think a lot of the blame for i…

if the government fails to follow its own rules, then there will be a time when the people come to realize that they should not follow any of the government's rules, either.

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

#169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's an often repeated libertarian mantra that the 22.6% of the US economy under state control is responsible for ~100% of the inequity. Unfortunately, the network effect ensures that a "government node" in the economic graph is always nearby, and the coplexity inherent in the system makes it easy to form a plausible argument assigning blame to any node within distance 2 or 3 of a problem, making the mantra non-falsi…

22.6% of the US economy under state control is responsible for ~100% of the inequity. Inflation has a compounding effect of screwing the poor and transferring that wealth to the rich. It shouldn't be surprising that in 1970 Nixon unpegged the dollar and let inflation float and since 1973 the income inequality in this country has gradually become unhinged. we keep giving more power to fewer people under the rubric of…

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

#170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> The paradox of tolerance has been a major problem in liberal philosophy for a long, long time. The simplistic notion of "Don't force them" just refuses to engage with any kind of depth, and in doing so, perverts and defeats itself. Nope, the idea of not forcing anyone to do anything is rooted in the Non-Aggression Principle, which stipulates that any initiation of force (violence/coercion) is forbidden . The flips…

The NAP is pretty useless, because it doesn't define what 'force' or 'initiation' means. People have very significant disagreements about these definitions. Furthermore, it only makes sense in an alternate reality where we're re-set to zero. The NAP doesn't really provide a means from getting from where we are today to a world 'without force,' as if that was even possible.

>> The NAP is pretty useless, because it doesn't define what 'force' or 'initiation' means.

Do you also need a definition for, say "rape", "kill", "steal", "rob"? What does it mean to "force someone to do something"? Have you got an inkling, perhaps?

>> The NAP doesn't really provide a means from getting from where we are today to a world 'without force,' as if that was even possible.

Why would it need to? It's not a system of social organization, it's a principle. But if everyone adhered to it, the world would be a lovely place. Sure, not everyone does. But even their choices and actions have consequences, and that's not about to change either way.

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