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MIT economist believes U.S. is shifting to be more similar to developing nations

theintellectualist.co

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Re: MIT economist believes U.S. is shifting to be more similar to developing nations

#201

Post by sqeaky »

naasking wrote: post #147
ethbro wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a pretty strong article a while back (and I assume parent likely also read) that sunshine laws and a decrease in special interest spending ultimately increased partisanship and decreased compromise. Reason being that previous periods of American legislative politics were characterized by back room deals unknown to the public. This afforded politicans an opportunity to strike bargains with the opposition wit…

> Which do you want more: non-partisan cooperation or absolute-transparency? Except you can have both as long as you ensure factual standards for news reporting.

What about ignore how report works and fixing the gerrymandering?

I don't know how, but lets presume there is some way to fix gerrymandering so that a legislators constituency was a statistically fair representation of their region/state. Then the extreme views would be canceled out and the best way to win a primary would be to win a primary would be to appeal to the moderates.

Re: MIT economist believes U.S. is shifting to be more similar to developing nations

#202

Post by kevin_b_er »

accountyaccount wrote: post #166

I definitely support paying more taxes to improve the infrastructure/rural areas of the country, but I also start to think that maybe the country is just too big. Are there any countries that are nearly this large that have a consistent quality of infrastructure for everyone? I live in a large city and it seems that even we have trouble maintaining up our roads/bridges/grid/telecom systems and we pay a lot of state t…

The less dense areas don't or won't soon: http://www.oregonlive.com/pacific-northwest-news/index.ssf/2...

The Republican philosophy means rapidly shrinking public services. These area already have super low taxes and the conservatives who moved there don't want to pay anything that might benefit someone who isn't them. Such is the price to pay when selfishness is the primary political philosophy.

Re: MIT economist believes U.S. is shifting to be more similar to developing nations

#203

Post by sqeaky »

wastedhours wrote: post #184
phkahler wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think most of the division in US politics comes from the way representatives are influenced. By co-locating them all in Washington we enable destructive lobbying while keeping them away from the people they are supposed to represent. The party system is also destructive - I advocate against any legal recognition of political parties and against campaign ads funded by anyone outside the state a person is running in.…

The current US party system might be destructive, but am a believer in party politics - mainly because without it, to get anything done would take the form of voting blocs which can lead down the path to more backroom "scratch my back" deals.

Isn't "backroom deals" just a negative way to describe cooperation and collaboration? If not please explain it to me and pretend I am really dumb on this topic, because I am.

Re: MIT economist believes U.S. is shifting to be more similar to developing nations

#204

Post by JediWing »

kristofferR wrote: post #2

Am I wrong in attributing/connecting most of Americas problems with its flawed constitution/democratic system? The first version of something is rarely the best version, and while the US constitution contained a lot of fantastic elements and freedoms that every educated American knows about, it also contained a democratic system (first past the post/two party system) that is mathematically bound to breed divisiveness…

> The first version of something is rarely the best version

Second, actually

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

As another comment mentioned, it's arguably greater if you include subsequent amendments.

The US Constitution has its share of flaws, but it ignores quite a bit to call it a first version.

Re: MIT economist believes U.S. is shifting to be more similar to developing nations

#205

Post by ant6n »

pjc50 wrote: post #130
anovikov wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My belief is that post-scarcity society with very high technological unemployment and universal democracy are fundamentally incompatible. People who are net recipients from the government, should not vote, or they will vote the society into collapse. Can they ever vote for anything but more free stuff? Other problems are fixable with more attention/funding to law enforcement, and yes using all the AI toys: crime pred…

If it's truly a "post-scarcity" society, people can have all the free stuff they want. If they can't, then it's still a scarcity society. More law enforcement is rarely the solution to any long-term problem: that's how you end up with the East German situation where 1/4 of the population was Stasi informers.

The stasi informal informers where there to monitor attitudes of people, not prevent crimes and either way the system wasn't particularly effective. Overall in East-Germany, people were not very afraid of police ('friend and helper'). Police didn't randomly shoot people.

I'd say the US is a better example of a police state than the GDR.

Re: MIT economist believes U.S. is shifting to be more similar to developing nations

#206

Post by AnthonyMouse »

accountyaccount wrote: post #179
dcdanko wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean like the States?

Sure, but there's no regional intermediary. Government scales from city, to county, to state... then straight to federal.

> Sure, but there's no regional intermediary. Government scales from city, to county, to state... then straight to federal.

There are only 50 states. The median state is larger than Greece.

The true problem is that the federal government is responsible for spending three times as many tax dollars as all the states put together. The county government knows they need to fix the bridge, but the feds took all the money the local taxpayers could spare and spent it on not-the-bridge.

Re: MIT economist believes U.S. is shifting to be more similar to developing nations

#207

Post by rpiguy »

ashark wrote: post #140
sharemywin wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

completely disagree. Why is china expanding faster than most "democratic" countries. India is focused on technology which should be easier to outsource yet, Knowledge workers are doing fine in the US. It's because china is coordinates its activity like a giant company, in my opinion, to exploit markets. investing heavily in infrastructure, stealing trade secrets, destroying the environment, exploiting children and cr…

> It's because china is coordinates its activity like a giant company, in my opinion, to exploit markets. Same thing Japan did after WWII. Works great if you can pull it off.

Japan didn't just "do it." The US allowed it and encouraged it. The US wanted a strong, capitalist ally in the region to counter Communism and Japan fit the bill. The US willfully ignored Japan's protectionism while allowing them high levels of access to our markets.

For example, the end of Kodak began when Fuji film infringed on their patents and the US government did nothing, still allowing Fuji to sell their film in the US.

You can look at that in two ways. The government broke up a near monopoly on print film that Kodak had, created competition and lowered prices for consumers. But ultimately it started an employer of 200K people on the path toward extinction. Yes it would have been eclipsed by digital anyway, but wouldn't it have been nice if those 200K people had their jobs a little longer?

I am personally torn on issues like this. I see the benefit of competition and globalization, but also the cost to local economies and industries.

Re: MIT economist believes U.S. is shifting to be more similar to developing nations

#208

Post by gnaritas »

naasking wrote: post #185
ethbro wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can only have both as long as you have a dispassionate electorate driven by logic and willing to research issues with the aid of a well-funded and independent press. Given that I don't think we've ever had those conditions... lesser transparency for more cooperation seems a decent bargain.

Like I said, mandate factual reporting standards and the news agencies will do the research for the people. That's their purpose after all. Studies have shown that moderate positions need evangelists just as much as extreme positions, as people tend to cluster around the positions with evangelists. Mandating factual standards ensures evangelists at least have justifiable reasons for their positions.

> Like I said, mandate factual reporting standards and the news agencies will do the research for the people.

You can't mandate factual reporting and still call it a free press as those enforcing the "fact" standards now control the press. You seem to think that you can't lie with facts, but it's quite easy, watch fox news they do it all day long. Free press and free speech mean just that; free and that includes lying and the supreme court has affirmed this to be true. You're talking about essentially removing the right to a free press.

Re: MIT economist believes U.S. is shifting to be more similar to developing nations

#209

Post by xg15 »

H4CK3RM4N wrote: post #54
xg15 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> societies would be best served by an educated aristocracy And what goals and principles would that aristorcracy govern by? Who is deciding about the goals and who makes sure they are actually enacted? What if said leaders decide that, in order to combat overpopulation, parts of the "surplus class" need to be removed? The reason many people migrated to the US centuries ago was to get away from aristorcracy. So how d…

How do you propose ensuring a democracy doesn't fail? In the first passage I linked, hereditary aristocracy is referred to as "the worst of all governments", it suggests that "the wisest should govern the many", and Rousseau even acknowledges that aristtocracy "demands others which are peculiar to itself; for instance, moderation on the side of the rich and contentment on that of the poor".

But representative democracies - the wide majority of current-day democracies - absolutely follow "the wisest should govern the many": Most things are not decided by general elections but by specialists. Only the questions of what exactly constitutes a specialist and what the goal of their work should be are resolved via elections. (At least that's the theory)

Re: MIT economist believes U.S. is shifting to be more similar to developing nations

#210

Post by rpiguy »

sharemywin wrote: post #106
wcummings wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Globalism doesn't "attempt" anything, its not designed and it doesn't have agency.

I don't 100% agree with that. doesn't have agency true. not designed not so sure. There are plenty of treaties and other contracts between countries that effect how money etc. flows to countries. world bank and others.

You are correct, globalism is in fact designed and it is not inevitable. While as a broad concept it may lack agency, it certainly is driven by financial interests, and I am happy to assign the "agency" to them.
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