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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

#261

Post by ant6n »

pjc50 wrote: post #257
ant6n wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Police didn't randomly shoot people Well, unless they went over the wall while trying to leave. The GDR has been synonymous with "police state" for my entire life, although it's not the place that coined the phrase. The US has colonial policing and people who believe that slavery should not have been abolished.

Well plenty of people got shot crossing the wall, but that's not really a "random shooting". Certainly much less random than "walking while black" or something.

Apparently there were 139 wall-victims in 29 years, so less than 5 per year, or about 0.03 deaths per 100k people per year. Apparently, twice as many people died of natural causes while crossing the border.

The US seems to have about 1000 shootings by police per year [2], which would be about 0.3 deaths per 100k people per year.

So the US has 10x more police-shootings than the GDR had wall-deaths per person.

[1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Todesopfer_an_der_Berliner_Mau... [2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/national/police-shoo...

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

#262

Post by walshemj »

naasking wrote: post #192
walshemj wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeh right no offence but face to face debate does not work very well over teleconferences you need to have everyone in the room. Having a president having to do PMQ's and maintaining the confidence of the house and senate might be a good thing.

I don't know know if you've ever watched C-SPAN, but in person debate already doesn't work. In fact, the wisdom of the crowds effect works best when each actor in the crowd makes up their own mind without the influence of external actors.

Well the US house and senate are some what unreformed 18th century institutions one senator /congress man commented that the house of lords was more democratic - the is pre removal of most of the hereditary pears.

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

#263

Post by boomboomsubban »

mason240 wrote: post #231
boomboomsubban wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

About 60% of people in the poorest, most remote parts of America don't have running water. So what do you say if the utilities work but are too expensive to hook up?

That is completely false.

I may have mistaken electricity or running water for just running water, and any numbers are sketchy as they don't have a lot of trust in the federal government, but life in the SD reservations is fucked up. Lack of utilities, 25% of children are born with fetal alcohol syndrome, people are dying from packs of wild dogs, and ~90% unemployment. You could argue it isn't third world conditions, but a slow burning genocide.

http://www.4aihf.org/id40.html

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

#264

Post by rabboRubble »

CuriouslyC wrote: post #28
nirav72 wrote: post #6

I'm thinking MIT economists haven't lived in a third world. (I was born in one) The U.S is not even remotely close to being a third-world or will be one anytime soon.

I've seen places in Mississippi, Arkansas and West Virginia that looked every bit as third world as rural Philippines/Vietnam. What the US lacks is urban poverty in the form of shantytowns. This is because unlike most third world nations, we quickly raze them when and find excuses to incarcerate the people who live there. If we were more permissive, we'd certainly have them too.

Try visiting Portland, Oregon. A small shanty town has formed in the last year about a block from my home. In the last 2 years there has been a marked spike in homeless encampments along freeways and on public land owned by the OR Department of Transportation. There has been a persistent downtown homeless encampment, I think called Right2Dream. Protests are afoot to find new / additional / different places for permanent encampments.

If these aren't shanty towns, I don't know what is. Other Portlanders beside myself have taken to calling them shantytowns.

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

#265

Post by prawn »

tptacek wrote: post #178
prawn wrote: post #38

Another story about the same person and topic that I found insightful: "America is Regressing into a Developing Nation for Most People" - https://www.ineteconomics.org/perspectives/blog/america-is-r... I have visited the US most years out of the last 5-10, including a trip through 25ish US states a couple of years ago. It's easy to get the impression that competing interests maintain a problematic or worsening status…

Bombay Beach? Wonder Valley? I had to look both of those places up, and both are places with tiny populations. Can you help me understand why I should be thinking about places like those and not, say, Youngstown Ohio?

They were just two that I could easily remember driving through and with easy-to-Google names for anyone who wanted to see. We were driving through 25 states in two months with a couple of toddlers, so details are all over the place. Obviously as a visitor, you are taking in a whole range of things - ruinporn, state of urban areas (footpaths, cleanliness), retail, etc - rather than relying on data.

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

#266

Post by Kaizyn »

gnaritas wrote: post #219
Kaizyn wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First of all, it is a republic and not a democracy. The difference is quite important. Secondly, to attribute the problems to the constitution is mistaken. That founding document is the only thing standing in the way of a complete and total disaster for the country. Nearly all the problems can be traced back to where politicians are ignoring the constitution in part or in full and thereby eroding the public protectio…

> First of all, it is a republic and not a democracy. That's like saying it's a dog not an animal; our republic is also a democracy, they are not mutually exclusive terms so please stop saying this nonsense.

No, we have a republic. Fundamentally different animal.

In a democracy, the public could vote to do something that would be considered wrong such as stripping voting rights from everyone who likes country music. And with majority rule, that would pass and become law of the land.

In a republic like ours, the constitution governs what can and cannot be enacted by the majority. Since such an act would take away guaranteed minority rights, the constitution prevents the majority from doing something like that.

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

#267

Post by Kaizyn »

gnaritas wrote: post #258
Pulcinella wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First of all, a republic is a type of democracy...

No, ours is, but not all republics are democracies. Republic just means we don't have a monarchy and leaders are chosen by some other means. It doesn't mean that means is a democracy.

No, it's a republic because it has a constitution that sets out the rules for what the government is and is not allowed to do. Democracies give the people absolute rule, whereas the constitution denies a majority from enacting certain laws that violate the constitution.

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

#268

Post by Kaizyn »

Brakenshire wrote: post #104
Kaizyn wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First of all, it is a republic and not a democracy. The difference is quite important. Secondly, to attribute the problems to the constitution is mistaken. That founding document is the only thing standing in the way of a complete and total disaster for the country. Nearly all the problems can be traced back to where politicians are ignoring the constitution in part or in full and thereby eroding the public protectio…

On the other hand, the US has a legalistic style of politics which you could blame on people relying too much on the constitution. The US is like an oppositional court room, with each side tearing at each other to get as much benefit as they can. It does diminish the shared duty to do what is right and good for the country and the democracy. Although of course the US is also a relatively fractured country by its natu…

The purpose of the constitution is to protect the public from the tyranny of the government. And within the public, to protect the minorities from the majority.

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

#269

Post by prawn »

anovikov wrote: post #114
nkohari wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're interested in fixing the problem the article discusses, this is pretty much exactly the wrong approach. You would actually be hard-pressed to find a solution more diametrically opposed to fixing the problem.

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 the remaining voters then don't vote in the interests of those net recipients, where will that lead? A medicated underclass?

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

#270

Post by ptaipale »

SimbaOnSteroids wrote: post #156
maxerickson wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

North Korea and Cuba have been pretty well isolated from capitalism. You could also look at countries in Africa that don't have extensive resource extraction (compared to those that do).

As an asside North Korea does ship workers abroad to work as slave laborers.

Partially that scheme seems to be an attempt to engage DPRK in some kind of dialog to prevent an unstable dictatorship with nuclear weapons and a lot of artillery that can reach Seoul from causing bad damage.

But given that utilising or even tolerating slave labourers on the ground in democratic nations is such a shameful thing, it might be better to actually let DPRK be completely isolated from global economy and not allow any of these arrangements. Even if that results in more misery for the people in DPRK.

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