United States Politics Thread 46

[Nortaneous]

The existence of crack seems like a civilizational failure that could've been avoided if we'd just normalized coca tea. But who knows, maybe people would do that with caffeine if it had a wider efficacy window.

Maybe if coffee and tea were illegal we would have people taking hits of powder caffeine cut with random substances (as straight caffeine is horribly easy to overdose on).

that's "efficacy window" as in "distance between the dose that has the desired effect and the dose that causes severe medical complications", which I think there's a better word for but am completely blanking on

[Rounin Ryuuji]

This is two different questions. Do we want our law enforcement to work well? Yes, of course we do, otherwise the institution of laws is pointless. Do we want every law presently on the books to be on the books? Certainly not, whether we've engaged in recreational drug use or not. Conflating the two is unhelpful, and rather silly.

But given that the laws will never be entirely correct, selective enforcement is another avenue by which the experience of living under a government can be improved - and the subjects of a government can engage in collective action to render certain laws unenforceable.

Are you trying to imply that I said "law enforcement should impose the letter of the law in all cases whatever" as opposed to expressing the idea that law enforcement ought to work well, or that I would understand nitpicking over tiny harmless violations to fall under "working well"? I don't believe I ever expressed such a sentiment. If the systems to enforce dangerous traffic problems, or noise ordinances, were working well, the problems you apparently think would be solved well with threats of lethal violence would be much less troublesome, or even non-existent, without a single private citizen needing to use an object more deadly than a telephone or website.

Speeding is harmless, but tailgaters should be summarily executed. Not a day goes by when I don't have to take evasive action against a Hausfraupanzer trying to crawl up my ass.

What is the relevance of this bizarre and mildly disturbing aside? Does it have anything to do with wanting law enforcement to work reasonably well, and people not to go round threatening each-other with dangerous objects instead?

Having had decades to "win" it, the United States has had an entirely pathetic result (and we perhaps ought to remember that Prohibition did not go very well, either; it just resulted in enormous and ultimately pointless social harm). I don't see why even you would make such an excessively fanciful assertion.

I'm told it's pretty hard to get weed in Singapore. Certainly harder than in the US.

Oh, so it's relatively easier to police a small island city-state than a large spawling swath of a continent? Who would have thought it?

Is this the norm, or a weird outlier? From what the news and Google suggest, there are areas with water problems, but there are areas without (beyond environmental contamination by widespread contaminants which are nigh unescapable anywhere). I can provide a counter-anecdote of having never seen anything of the kind you describe in more than three decades of having lived in the United States, and it's equally valid.

It varies by area. It's fine in some places and atrocious in others, including the entire greater DC area.

The last time I went to the Shake Shack in Union Station, the water from the fountain was more chlorinated than the local pool.

Of course, this lays aside the idea of the United States having a developed economy — one much larger than any of the European countries which have enacted far more sensible social and economic policies. The United States certainly could fix those problems. It could house every homeless person, and feed every hungry person, except post-Reagan Neoliberalism seems to like to punish poverty where it can. Trump was no different, though he said different things from Reagan, their policies were pretty in line with each-other, and "Make America Great Again" was originally Reagan's slogan. That poverty exists at all is more a matter of policy than anything else.

Almost got me with that tangent, though. Nice try.

[Ares Land]

Having had decades to "win" it, the United States has had an entirely pathetic result (and we perhaps ought to remember that Prohibition did not go very well, either; it just resulted in enormous and ultimately pointless social harm). I don't see why even you would make such an excessively fanciful assertion.

I'm told it's pretty hard to get weed in Singapore. Certainly harder than in the US.

Oh, so it's relatively easier to police a small island city-state than a large spawling swath of a continent? Who would have thought it?

Besides, Singapore is a disturbing authoritarian place. It has a very low crime rate, but I don't think any of us would like their model.

The existence of crack seems like a civilizational failure that could've been avoided if we'd just normalized coca tea. But who knows, maybe people would do that with caffeine if it had a wider efficacy window.

There's chifir. Apparently people make do with that in Russian prisons.
Otherwise, yeah, I agree with you.

[MacAnDàil]

Speeding is not harmless. It's well known that road deaths occur which could have been prevented and speeding is often a factor.

[Raphael]

Speeding is not harmless. It's well known that road deaths occur which could have been prevented and speeding is often a factor.

Yeah, I don't agree with the general habit of using traffic violations as the standard example of something that's technically against the law but a trivial matter. IMO driving like an idiot (with or without violating the traffic rules in the process) is more ethically problematic than petty theft.

[Rounin Ryuuji]

I'm told it's pretty hard to get weed in Singapore. Certainly harder than in the US.

Oh, so it's relatively easier to police a small island city-state than a large spawling swath of a continent? Who would have thought it?

Besides, Singapore is a disturbing authoritarian place. It has a very low crime rate, but I don't think any of us would like their model.

I very much would not.

[Nachtswalbe]

The Intellectual Dark Web created an “University of Austin” :
https://mobile.twitter.com/BigMeanInter ... 0027173888

[Nortaneous]

With the first post-2020 national election (actually a gubernatorial election in a state that happens to contain the rich and #relevant suburbs of DC, and, relatedly, the highest proportion of GOP consultants of the old school of anywhere in the country) we see a return to the pre-Obama party system, where Concerned Parents hold their noses on policy and vote on values.

Which isn't surprising - the election was always going to be decided by middle-aged women in Fairfax who drive their SUVs to soccer practice to pick up their two kids and who work for the Department of Energy or some such bolus - but the only way this isn't existentially difficult for the country is if everyone agrees not to learn anything from it. Is there any way we survive with the party system we have?

OTOH internal issues might not even matter at this rate - depending on how the Taiwan issue shakes out, the position may end up simplified to the point where America's domestic politics don't even matter, and what paths even are there to a substantial improvement in our position there? Are there any that don't go through, like, Peter Thiel?

[hwhatting]

@Nort: Like so very often, I have no idea what you're saying there. It would help if you wouldn't speak in a code and in allusions that only you (and maybe people in whatever circle you're part of) understand. (NB: I know who Peter Thiel is, but how is he relevant here?)

[Travis B.]

@Nort: Like so very often, I have no idea what you're saying there. It would help if you wouldn't speak in a code and in allusions that only you (and maybe people in whatever circle you're part of) understand. (NB: I know who Peter Thiel is, but how is he relevant here?)

Agreed. Half the time I have no clue as to what Nort really means beyond some right-wing gobbledygook.

[Rounin Ryuuji]

I think the highly and perplexingly fanciful way in which he appears to perceive the world makes him rather difficult to understand. I often feel as if he were describing an especially vivid dream, rather than articulating actual policy ideas. Then again, much of right-wing economics is spread through fanciful stories (the idea of rags-to-riches, while extremely rare in reality, does have its appeal), often appealing more to the emotions than to anything with a factual basis. I like Romanticism well enough in literature and art, but applied to reality, it becomes more problematic.

[Hallow XIII]

This genre of post reminds me very strongly of the time when I was arguing with an anarchist who for the life of him could (or, more likely, would) not understand that there were ways of being opposed to anarchism that don't entail the belief that "voting for social-democratic politicians will solve everything", as he put it.

As for economics, it is unarguable that there is no such thing as right-wing economic thought anymore, but then neither is there anything really resembling left-wing economic thought. There is basically establishment economic thought and then there are vague demands of greater economic privilege by various interest groups. Political philosophy appears to have become entirely disjoint from economic philosophy. This possibly happened as a consequence of the present-day economic system in the West being so abstracted that nobody outside of departments of economics purports to understand them -- either which way, it is a problem.

[Nortaneous]

@Nort: Like so very often, I have no idea what you're saying there. It would help if you wouldn't speak in a code and in allusions that only you (and maybe people in whatever circle you're part of) understand. (NB: I know who Peter Thiel is, but how is he relevant here?)

What's hard to understand?

Virginia had an election for governor. The Democrat was the previous governor. Not the incumbent, but the guy before him - Virginia prohibits governors from holding consecutive terms. The Republican was some guy from the Carlyle Group, some sort of organization which has something to do with finance and I think also the defense industry. This was highly nationally prominent and seen as a barometer of... something.

Not having intentionally heard anything about the race, my impression is that McAuliffe ran on the campaign of saying parents shouldn't know what's going on in their kids' schools, and the additional point of having a (D) next to his name, and Youngkin ran on the platform of hating fags, trannies, communists, and... school shutdowns, an issue near and dear to the heart of every Northern Virginia commuter who works for the federal government, hates their kids, and now can't "work late" with the secretary/personal trainer. (That's just a joke, of course - most of them are in swingers' clubs, and the rest are alcoholics.)

But, like, what kind of party system does this imply? The Democrat runs on social issues a little to the left of the median voter, and the Republican runs on low taxes and family values - that's what things have been like since Nixon. (The USSR came up when it existed, but it doesn't.) The 2016 election was not like that, which led people to think that elections in general might stop being like that, but there's just been an election that followed that pattern. This is not surprising, since the swing voters who everyone knew would decide the election are rich people who live in the DC suburbs, but it could lead political operatives to decide to return to the old way of deciding what to campaign on and what to ignore.

I don't think that's good, because this country has problems that aren't about social issues a little to the left of the median voter, low taxes, or family values, and it's unclear how those issues can be addressed without a clear electoral mandate to address them. As well as an army of well-placed functionaries and procedural outcome manipulators, etc.

Peter Thiel is a rich tech guy who co-founded an intelligence analytics company, secretly reads fringe extremist blogs, and now wants to be a political operative. Most people in that class do not read fringe extremist blogs, except for the Washington Post and the New York Times.

[hwhatting]

You see, that was much less cryptic and now I think I got what you wanted to say.
The only thing I still don't understand is why you brought Thiel in after discussing Taiwan - for a bit I thought you implied that homesteading would somehow help if we get a nuclear winter, but that doesn't make sense, so what am I missing here? Do you think he could be the man some people thought Trump was but didn't turn out to be?

[KathTheDragon]

Hi Nort please can you not use slurs thakyou.

[MacAnDàil]

This genre of post reminds me very strongly of the time when I was arguing with an anarchist who for the life of him could (or, more likely, would) not understand that there were ways of being opposed to anarchism that don't entail the belief that "voting for social-democratic politicians will solve everything", as he put it.

As for economics, it is unarguable that there is no such thing as right-wing economic thought anymore, but then neither is there anything really resembling left-wing economic thought. There is basically establishment economic thought and then there are vague demands of greater economic privilege by various interest groups. Political philosophy appears to have become entirely disjoint from economic philosophy. This possibly happened as a consequence of the present-day economic system in the West being so abstracted that nobody outside of departments of economics purports to understand them -- either which way, it is a problem.

I disagree. Thomas Piketty is clearly left wing economic thought as far as I am concerned, and many other economists are right wing.

[Moose-tache]

Left and right wing economics have had to reinvent themselves several times over, so they're easy to miss if you don't know what you're looking for. Gone are the days when it was the Chamber of Commerce vs the Tankies. Both sides are lousy with pseudoscientific anti-globalism, for example, that would have been hard to categorize a couple of generations ago. I would characterize the new economic right as being a weird hybrid of Neoliberalism and nostalgia (i.e. have your cheap foreign products, but also keep your Carter-era rust belt manufacturing job somehow), while the economic left is dominated by magical thinking about how wonderful everything will be after we dynamite Capitalism and replace it with nothing. Both sides seem convinced that there was a mid-century economic utopia when you could live a life of luxury as a carpenter or something, but the left is convinced that Reagan ruined everything, and on the right the culprit is Black people and feminists.

[Nortaneous]

The only thing I still don't understand is why you brought Thiel in after discussing Taiwan - for a bit I thought you implied that homesteading would somehow help if we get a nuclear winter, but that doesn't make sense, so what am I missing here? Do you think he could be the man some people thought Trump was but didn't turn out to be?

He's not Trump. Reagan wasn't Weyrich and Weyrich wasn't Viguerie, and neither was Obama Morris Dees.

Both sides seem convinced that there was a mid-century economic utopia when you could live a life of luxury as a carpenter or something, but the left is convinced that Reagan ruined everything, and on the right the culprit is Black people and feminists.

My grandfather had some kind of sitcom dad job and was able to buy a house, two cars, and an RV, and send his kids to college, without running into financial difficulties, and without his wife having to get a job. His house, which was in an area that no reasonable person would describe as "good", sold for half a million dollars.

Cheap foreign products are cringe. You can get an OBD-II reader for $15 or for $60. That's a 4x price difference, but who cares? If it lasts as long as OBD-II itself does, you'll only need to buy it once - and if it doesn't, why the hell not? Somewhere in storage I have electronic Happy Meal toys from when I was 8 that still run.

Cheap foreign clothes are good though. Any man with fashion sense gets his clothes off AliExpress - no-name Chinese vendors are the only people who try.

[Moose-tache]

Both sides seem convinced that there was a mid-century economic utopia when you could live a life of luxury as a carpenter or something, but the left is convinced that Reagan ruined everything, and on the right the culprit is Black people and feminists.

My grandfather had some kind of sitcom dad job and was able to buy a house, two cars, and an RV, and send his kids to college, without running into financial difficulties, and without his wife having to get a job. His house, which was in an area that no reasonable person would describe as "good", sold for half a million dollars.

Exhibit A. It's crazy that people actually believe this nonsense. When your grandfather was most likely a young man home ownership (and car-ownership) rates were lower than they are now, people used less energy and spent a larger portion of their income on food. No doubt a lot of people think their grandpa just had a "regular job," either because we underestimate just how high up the value-added ladder jobs like "master plumber" were in the pre-digital age, or because we underestimate just how much larger the whiteness dividend used to be. For example, home ownership for black families has never passed 50% in the United States, and as the saying goes, if you're not paying into your own mortgage, you're paying into someone else's mortgage. An actual "regular" guy would be chronically unemployed, always on the edge of not having sufficient clothing or fuel or food, and shivering in a tiny GI bill Cape Cod that didn't sell for half a mil because it was demolished years ago.

[zompist]

My grandfather had some kind of sitcom dad job and was able to buy a house, two cars, and an RV, and send his kids to college, without running into financial difficulties, and without his wife having to get a job. His house, which was in an area that no reasonable person would describe as "good", sold for half a million dollars.

Exhibit A. It's crazy that people actually believe this nonsense. When your grandfather was most likely a young man home ownership (and car-ownership) rates were lower than they are now, people used less energy and spent a larger portion of their income on food. No doubt a lot of people think their grandpa just had a "regular job," either because we underestimate just how high up the value-added ladder jobs like "master plumber" were in the pre-digital age, or because we underestimate just how much larger the whiteness dividend used to be. For example, home ownership for black families has never passed 50% in the United States, and as the saying goes, if you're not paying into your own mortgage, you're paying into someone else's mortgage. An actual "regular" guy would be chronically unemployed, always on the edge of not having sufficient clothing or fuel or food, and shivering in a tiny GI bill Cape Cod that didn't sell for half a mil because it was demolished years ago.

Some of this might be true if you're thinking of Nort's grandfather as being born in 1890. It's pretty ridiculous for the US after 1940. People look back fondly to the postwar period because it was a huge step up for every class.

The home ownership rates for whites went from 42% to 74% in this period. That is, the average white person went from renting to owning a house.

Home ownership for blacks meanwhile went from 20% to 54%. Yes, they were behind whites and that's due to horrible things like redlining. But note that their ownership rate went up 270% while whites' rate went up 176%.

And no, home ownership has not been rising in the last 40 years. For whites the 2019 rate was 73%; for blacks, 42%.

Other indicators like the poverty rate or household income tell a similar story: a huge improvement after the war, stagnation since Reagan.

Perhaps you're right that food is cheaper now. But housing, college, and health care can be absolute killers, and the jobs are worse.

I could show you family pictures from the 1950s where everyone looks like hobos. But it doesn't matter, because for a long time each generation was better off than the one before. That does a lot for morale. Now it's the reverse: twentysomethings don't see jobs or lives that are as comfortable as their parents'.