United States Politics Thread 46

[bradrn]

The Washington Post is the #2 paper in a world where Magnus Carlsen is famous and Fabiano Caruana is not

I don’t understand what you mean by this.

I realize this is a lost battle by now, but both of you are demonstrating that "liberal" has no meaning any more. The people who love the NYT are centrists; that is, moderate and conservative Democrats, and whatever little fringe of moderate Republicans still exist.

Perhaps I’ve gotten a distorted impression of American society, but I thought that those are the major groups of people who still subscribe to liberalism in the classical sense?

[Nortaneous]

I realize this is a lost battle by now, but both of you are demonstrating that "liberal" has no meaning any more. The people who love the NYT are centrists; that is, moderate and conservative Democrats, and whatever little fringe of moderate Republicans still exist.

Given that we live in a country founded by a successful liberal revolution, there isn't much for it to contrast with. Maybe if we had a major political faction that wanted to abolish the First Amendment and have TV licenses and a king.

The Washington Post is the #2 paper in a world where Magnus Carlsen is famous and Fabiano Caruana is not

I don’t understand what you mean by this.

If you don't follow chess closely, you might know who Magnus Carlsen (the top-ranked chess player) is, but you probably don't know who Fabiano Caruana (the #2-ranked chess player) is.

If you don't follow newspapers closely, you might know things about the New York Times, but you probably don't know things about the Washington Post. They broke Watergate or whatever, right? Do they have a style section? I don't know but imagine if they did lmao. Imagine the articles about plain white shirts from Charles Tyrwhitt and new editions of the weird Keebler Elf brogues that the guys from Oklabraska whose job descriptions cure insomnia think are formal. Do they have crosswords?

[bradrn]

The Washington Post is the #2 paper in a world where Magnus Carlsen is famous and Fabiano Caruana is not

I don’t understand what you mean by this.

If you don't follow chess closely, you might know who Magnus Carlsen (the top-ranked chess player) is, but you probably don't know who Fabiano Caruana (the #2-ranked chess player) is.

If you don't follow newspapers closely, you might know things about the New York Times, but you probably don't know things about the Washington Post. They broke Watergate or whatever, right? Do they have a style section? I don't know but imagine if they did lmao. Imagine the articles about plain white shirts from Charles Tyrwhitt and new editions of the weird Keebler Elf brogues that the guys from Oklabraska whose job descriptions cure insomnia think are formal. Do they have crosswords?

Perhaps this analogy doesn’t quite work for me, then, because the main newspaper I read is the Sydney Morning Herald. All the American newspapers are more or less equally exotic to me. (I know that the NYT and Washington Post are vaguely left-wing, and the Wall Street Journal is vaguely right-wing… beyond that? No idea.)

[Ares Land]

Man, there's nothing like a socialist for making capitalism look good.

Let's see if I can't make it look bad again

There's no such thing as cucumber blessing. I just checked: a cucumber is $0.79 at the closest store.

There are plenty of inefficiencies or just plain old stupid economic behavior though:

• There's the whole advertising and marketing industry, which nobody likes, including the people who work for them.
• Not cucumbers, but still about food: I live right next to a major fruit producing area. As it happens, Chilean apples in the supermarket are cheaper than locally grown ones. I have nothing against Chilean apple farmers, the carbon emissions that comes with importing stuff that is produced literally next door to the supermarket is killing us.
• Lots of talk these days about Threads, Twitter and Bluesky. Looking at it as a programmer, there's nothing complex about these tools. Exchanging text messages over a computer network is not hard, we've done that for decades. But social media are huge monsters that require enormous datacenters precisely because they require, not cucumber blessing (which would be fun and innocuous) but targetted ads and a curating algorithm.

Or getting back to the inkjet printers.

Selling inkjet printer ink is a scam. But there's an alternative: buy a black&white Brother laser printer, for not much more money. A cartridge will print 1000 pages or so. (An inkjet cartridge might get just 175.)

Sure, it's no big deal.... except making the printers, and the inks is a heavy industrial process that uses up non-renewable resources.

And -- and there's the gist of the degrowth argument -- all of that is useless or actively deleterious but counts towards GDP. And under our economic and political system, GDP is more or less taken as the measure of human happiness, which means such inefficiency is not only not eliminated, but in fact actively encouraged.
Productivity in the US has for example at least doubled (probably more!) since 1984. I think 1984 Americans already enjoyed a very high standard of living (in some ways more comfortable than they do now) -- this means Americans could enjoy a very comfortable lifestyle on about half the working hours they put in now. This, in itself, is enough to question the point of economic growth. But that's not enough -- the problem is, under current economics and technology, the GDP growth that went on during these past fourty years has actively degraded the ecosphere.

For housing, pardon me if I'm not excited over the "wait seven years to get allocated a crummy apartment" system.

Public housing can definitely suck, but it doesn't have to. In fact, I've had a pretty positive experience with it.
We lived in public housing back when we lived in Paris, so did many of our friends. It turns out to be the only way to provide housing to middle-class families with kids. The apartments were definitely not crummy (we're talking decent two or three bedrooms in great neighborhoods). I won't say there weren't issues at times (they were) or that waiting times aren't long (they definitely were!).
The important is, it provided housing which the private sector was entirely unable to provide. You just can't live in Paris with two kids under the current market rates, even with very decent salaries.
A public service, State (or sometimes city-)-owned approach worked, with issues of course.(I should stress this issues were ordinary apartment building stuff and didn't involve sharing a tiny flat with a KGB agent and an angry Russian babushka.) The market approach just doesn't.

[zompist]

[*]There's the whole advertising and marketing industry, which nobody likes, including the people who work for them.

Surely this is a matter of proportion? Commercials have gotten longer over the decades, to the point where TV is pretty much unwatchable. Likewise I can't watch Twitch any more-- I'm not devoted enough to any streamer to sit through a minute of ads. When ads are kept in check, I don't think people mind that much, and may even enjoy them. Or take the opportunity to go to the bathroom.

For that matter, socialist systems have propaganda departments! I'm all for socialist solutions when they work, but I get tired of "capitalism lol" as the answer to everything.

[*]Not cucumbers, but still about food: I live right next to a major fruit producing area. As it happens, Chilean apples in the supermarket are cheaper than locally grown ones. I have nothing against Chilean apple farmers, the carbon emissions that comes with importing stuff that is produced literally next door to the supermarket is killing us.

Climate change is the big killer, yes. Again, socialist systems contributed just as much, if not more: the environmental movement didn't come from the communist countries. The planet doesn't distinguish between capitalist and communist carbon.

[*]Lots of talk these days about Threads, Twitter and Bluesky. Looking at it as a programmer, there's nothing complex about these tools. Exchanging text messages over a computer network is not hard, we've done that for decades. But social media are huge monsters that require enormous datacenters precisely because they require, not cucumber blessing (which would be fun and innocuous) but targetted ads and a curating algorithm.

Which is why I'm on Mastodon.

And -- and there's the gist of the degrowth argument -- all of that is useless or actively deleterious but counts towards GDP. And under our economic and political system, GDP is more or less taken as the measure of human happiness, which means such inefficiency is not only not eliminated, but in fact actively encouraged.
Productivity in the US has for example at least doubled (probably more!) since 1984. I think 1984 Americans already enjoyed a very high standard of living (in some ways more comfortable than they do now) -- this means Americans could enjoy a very comfortable lifestyle on about half the working hours they put in now. This, in itself, is enough to question the point of economic growth. But that's not enough -- the problem is, under current economics and technology, the GDP growth that went on during these past fourty years has actively degraded the ecosphere.

I'd quibble about the judgment here: was it better when everything was on paper? I happen to love physical books, but it's a huge improvement that so much can be done online.

But again, climate change is scary but the whole world is addicted to it. Not just the US, but the US has elected someone who will make it worse, and tech companies are falling over themselves to push carbon-spewing technologies like AI. Absolutely insane. On the other hand, if anything can wean us off fossil fuels, it's new technology. We weren't going to solve the problem by going back to bicycles and burning cow manure. Solar and windpower have become far cheaper and more competitive, and nuclear power looks better than it did in years.

Public housing can definitely suck, but it doesn't have to. In fact, I've had a pretty positive experience with it.
We lived in public housing back when we lived in Paris, so did many of our friends. It turns out to be the only way to provide housing to middle-class families with kids. The apartments were definitely not crummy (we're talking decent two or three bedrooms in great neighborhoods). I won't say there weren't issues at times (they were) or that waiting times aren't long (they definitely were!).

France isn't Russia, despite what a few of our reactionaries here think.

[zompist]

[*]Lots of talk these days about Threads, Twitter and Bluesky. Looking at it as a programmer, there's nothing complex about these tools. Exchanging text messages over a computer network is not hard, we've done that for decades. But social media are huge monsters that require enormous datacenters precisely because they require, not cucumber blessing (which would be fun and innocuous) but targetted ads and a curating algorithm.

Not long after responding to this, I came across this article on how Amazon's Kindle failed in China.

It wasn't, as one might expect, interference from the government. It was inability to compete. The Kindle had an early advantage, but threw it away: competitors came with new features, Kindle insisted on a closed garden model while the rivals all used Android, and for some reason Kindle didn't sell much fiction, which is huge in China.

So, the whole "create a silo that we hope will become a monopoly" which all the US tech giants are going for just doesn't work when there's real competition.

[Ares Land]

Surely this is a matter of proportion? Commercials have gotten longer over the decades, to the point where TV is pretty much unwatchable. Likewise I can't watch Twitch any more-- I'm not devoted enough to any streamer to sit through a minute of ads. When ads are kept in check, I don't think people mind that much, and may even enjoy them. Or take the opportunity to go to the bathroom.

A certain amount of advertisement is fine yes. Some commercials are, or were, even well done and enjoyable. The trouble is, the whole sector has grown out of proportion. And just looking at GDP growth -- which is how most economics and all policy making is done these days -- you don't see any problem there!

For that matter, socialist systems have propaganda departments! I'm all for socialist solutions when they work, but I get tired of "capitalism lol" as the answer to everything.

Climate change is the big killer, yes. Again, socialist systems contributed just as much, if not more: the environmental movement didn't come from the communist countries. The planet doesn't distinguish between capitalist and communist carbon.

I find I blame capitalism a lot more these days; there is a common thread that seems to block solutions to actual problem, and honestly it's not often that it doesn't come down to the profit motive or ownership.
It's obvious the Soviet system isn't the solution; but there are times when the post-Reagan capitalist system doesn't seem to be doing it either. And I really have my doubt any capitalist system can figure things out, at least not without a lot of socialist mechanisms within it.

One particular source of frustration is the perennial talk about the Climate Change Conference, or global warming targets -- there are things we should be doing right now but oh no we can't do it because GDP might suffer.

I'd quibble about the judgment here: was it better when everything was on paper? I happen to love physical books, but it's a huge improvement that so much can be done online.

That's an interesting point -- because when I talk about productivity gains since the 80s, a lot of it comes down to computers and the Internet. There's nothing wrong about productivity gains; these gains translated to GDP growth; but how much of this growth improved quality of life?
(Smartphones are great; but they don't compensate for basic needs like housing and education being unaffordable.)

But again, climate change is scary but the whole world is addicted to it. Not just the US, but the US has elected someone who will make it worse, and tech companies are falling over themselves to push carbon-spewing technologies like AI. Absolutely insane. On the other hand, if anything can wean us off fossil fuels, it's new technology. We weren't going to solve the problem by going back to bicycles and burning cow manure. Solar and windpower have become far cheaper and more competitive, and nuclear power looks better than it did in years.

It's important -- and not that easy to distinguish technology from its applications. Of course we need new technology, the question is how do we use it? It seems to me that right now, there are many incentives towards putting new technology to incredibly insane applications.

Taking CPU and GPUs and other computing hardware; we could be running the internet as it was in 2010 (picking an arbitrary date) for free, energy wise. Instead we get ginormous datacenters (which will soon include, if the rumours are true, an embedded nuclear reactor to power them) so that Midjourney and ChatGPT can hallucinate stuff.
Not that AI and LLM are evil in themselves, mind!

Again, we can translate this into productivity gains and wonder how much payback people such as ourselves get from these gains, and how much artificially inflates billionaire fortunes, or is put to actively destructive use. And of course at this point it does intersect with socialism.

Public housing can definitely suck, but it doesn't have to. In fact, I've had a pretty positive experience with it.
We lived in public housing back when we lived in Paris, so did many of our friends. It turns out to be the only way to provide housing to middle-class families with kids. The apartments were definitely not crummy (we're talking decent two or three bedrooms in great neighborhoods). I won't say there weren't issues at times (they were) or that waiting times aren't long (they definitely were!).

France isn't Russia, despite what a few of our reactionaries here think.

I don't think France is a particularly great country -- nor is it a bad one to live in; in some ways US problems can be very relatable. The interesting thing we got though, is little pockets of socialism here and there and doesn't work too bad; or ways we used to do thing that would feel very Soviet but actually worked.
It's a good source of examples of actually working socialism; which isn't socialist utopia but isn't Soviet union either, and is often better than the capitalist system -- I'm not trading my health coverage for American-style health insurance, for instance.
The above is true of most of Western Europe, btw. It's just that French examples are right at hand.

[zompist]

It's obvious the Soviet system isn't the solution; but there are times when the post-Reagan capitalist system doesn't seem to be doing it either. And I really have my doubt any capitalist system can figure things out, at least not without a lot of socialist mechanisms within it.

One particular source of frustration is the perennial talk about the Climate Change Conference, or global warming targets -- there are things we should be doing right now but oh no we can't do it because GDP might suffer.

I don't disagree at all here.

Economics already has a concept to correct for false productivity: externalities. Really we should subtract externalities from GDP. There are theoretical problems-- like how exactly to measure them-- but really the problem is that people don't want to.

I don't think France is a particularly great country -- nor is it a bad one to live in; in some ways US problems can be very relatable. The interesting thing we got though, is little pockets of socialism here and there and doesn't work too bad; or ways we used to do thing that would feel very Soviet but actually worked.
It's a good source of examples of actually working socialism; which isn't socialist utopia but isn't Soviet union either, and is often better than the capitalist system -- I'm not trading my health coverage for American-style health insurance, for instance.
The above is true of most of Western Europe, btw. It's just that French examples are right at hand.

Again, I don't disagree. But the US/Europe comparison is often exaggerated. E.g. the public sector is about 36% of the economy here, 58% in France. That's on the high end for Europe. On the other hand it's just 32% in Switzerland.