United States Politics Thread 46

[Raphael]

That seems unconvincing. 'Running the country like a business' isn't a very socialist take

The idea that Trump will somehow fix healthcare sounds delusional, but that's par for the course.

I was more thinking of the quote I quoted than the specific Trumpists mentioned in the thread.

[Ares Land]

One thing he says is intriguing: 'they want to make sure the people they don't like don't benefit from them'

That honestly sounds incompatible with socialism or progressivism.

I don't know any Trump voters -- the only Americans I really interact with these days are all here
But the idea that right-wing folks are secretely hankering for socialism is familiar. I don't think it works.

Right-wing voters, when it comes down to it, feel that capitalism is natural; they just feel it could be coaxed into working right by a strong enough leader.

So, I'm skeptical of that claim.

[rotting bones]

They think because they work hard, Capitalism will reward them with plenty if we let it do its thing, and it will make the lazy suffer. (Edit: Needless to say, they have wacky ideas about who is or isn't lazy.)

I have read books like Sum of Us which said Americans were generally in favor of socialism until blacks started demanding equal rights. Then it was suddenly all about individualism and personal responsibility. Never believe a moral man.

[MacAnDàil]

After you realize there are people who have honestly convinced themselves that raising corporate profits is the moral thing to do, you have to think about how they strategize to bring the poor over to their side.

OK

3. Because morality is subjective, Marx characterizes society in terms of "class conflict" rather than some pre-lapsarian harmony. Since people have always fought over resources throughout history, the dispossessed majority should unite and dictate terms to the powerful.

Sure, the dispossessed should have more and the powerful less.

1. Education costs money. Trump says he will gut the Department of Education, etc.

Yes, he wants to shut it down, probably to satisfy the Christian fundamentalists who want to bring it to state level to teach creationism and the like.

There are two factions that want to revolutionize society: 1. Those who want to improve people's lives. 2. Those who want to oppress women and minorities like their heroic ancestors did.

It's group 1 that the capitalists are mainly afraid of. Since the costs of group 2's "revolution" will be paid mainly by the multitudes rather than capitalists, the latter fund this group to help them take out group 1. This is called "fascism".

Sure, Peter Thiel and Donald Trump are allies for that reason. And then there may be other groups. For example, some are misanthropes, some are egotistical, some, like RFK Jr, just don’t seem too bothered by the second group as long as they get of their irrational hobby horse.

Certainly, people mostly pay more attention to work, as you say. Something Happens might just be around the corner if a decade of heat records and a storming of the Capitol is not enough.

I kind of don't believe that people don't know what Trump stands for 8 years later. I think Trump pushes a simplistic, wrestling-like narrative of good vs. evil. Since everyone thinks they are good and their adversaries are twisted people, many who don't know better see themselves in Trump's message. For example, I once saw an interview with an immigrant Latino waiter who voted for Trump: "If there are millions of criminals pouring over the border, we have to stop them!" He can't be convinced Trumpists are talking about him because Trump is against evil, and he's a "good person".

First step when someone makes an affirmation should be “is this true?” before thinking “what should be done about the stated problem”. Also, realise that others see you differently from how you see yourself.

OK, essential goods such as food and water are important. And this could be achieved, especially in a large unequal industrial economy such as the US, by redistribution, not economic growth. So, even on this issue, it's as much social as it is economic.

These go back to the fundamentals I've been arguing about since 2019.

1. Redistribution lowers profit, disincentivizing investors from producing essential goods. If production falls, there is less to go around. If there isn't enough to go around, redistribution is insufficient to solve the problem.

If production falls, there would still be more than enough to go around because so much is wasted e.g. food thrown in the bucket. https://news.un.org/en/story/2024/03/1148036

And food doesn’t come from the economy, it comes from ecology. After all, having no money and food growing all around is much better than having trillions of dollars on a burning infertile planet.

"Money" is technically an incorrect shorthand for goods. The presence of goods causally implies the production of goods. Producing more goods is conventionally called "a healthy economy" by those subjected to capitalist indoctrination.

Money is not a shorthand for goods at all. It may be a means to obtain them but it is not the goods itself. Producing more goods is a problem on a planet with limited resources where the resources have been overused for more than half a century.

So neorurals? This article appears to support your idea that rurals on average have higher environmental impact: https://climateadaptationplatform.com/w ... -dwellers/

It also says, based on https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/t ... -emissions: "Consume less from clothes, furnishings, and electronic gadgets. Be a minimalist."

The original source says: "City dwellers consume a lot of carbon indirectly — enough to approach, or even exceed, the carbon footprints of their rural counterparts. We find in cities folks who are early adopters," University of Maine anthropologist Cynthia Isenhour said on The Takeaway. "They are more responsive to ideas about fashion or technological obsolescence. So they do tend to replace things like clothing, furnishings, and electronics more frequently."

Is this the one? https://zompist.com/jacobs.html

I always forget.

That article argues for the importance of cities, not their lower ecological impact.

So neorurals? This article appears to support your idea that rurals on average have higher environmental impact: https://climateadaptationplatform.com/w ... -dwellers/

I lived in the countryside, I used to live in the city -- in both cases trying to minimize environmental impact.
It's generally just as easy (or just as difficult) here in the countryside; easier in some respects. The one huge exception is having to drive most everywhere; there really aren't any good alternatives. And electric cars are still horribly expensive. What I'd like is a bus service to the closest city:that wouldn't be too hard to set up and would fix almost all of the problem, but there just isn't one.

Yes and that could also be an improvement in some cities.

To summarize, the problem is that: 1. The various interests in society will hire fancy lawyers to argue that helping them is the moral position. To your surprise, they will convince people. 2. As long as you keep capitalism around, the argument put forward by capitalists that raising profits is necessary to feed the poor won't be entirely wrong. This is because, under capitalism, the poor are fed when investors feel like feeding the poor will raise profits.

All the capitalist arguments against this position are like perpetual motion machines: there is a flaw somewhere in the scheme that opposes the flow of capital. However, this is not a problem outside capitalism. Just feed the poor through socialized industries.

Note that these answers are tailored to your framing of the problem, which I fundamentally disagree with. I have posted many times about the approach that I think minimizes harm.

What do mean by capitalism? So your approach to morality involves minimising harm?

3. Redistribution lowers the self-esteem of young and healthy people who are forced to receive handouts instead of working. These people have a lot of energy and feel like it's going to waste if they can't make a difference in the world.

Certainly, not working can lower self-esteem. What does redistribution mean to you?

I have been arguing for an alternative for years.

What is your alternative? Is it mutually incompatible with redistribution?

2. Because redistribution lowers profit, moneyed individuals like Elon Musk fight tooth and nail to prevent governments from enacting such policies. Recently, they have been winning these fights worldwide by scapegoating Muslims, immigrants (especially nonwhites but in Europe, also Jews, Poles, etc), gays, trans people and other marginalized communities.

Scapegoating marginalised communities is a bad thing, of course. Sometimes scapegoating has worked more than others. The existence of scapegoating to avoid redistributing is no better an argument against it than the avoidance of a revolution because the monarchy would disagree.

That may be the case and the argument for an examined life, not for abandonning morality. That would be like throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Even some of the least examined lifes may realise that killing people is a bad thing and one of the most basically bad things.

No they don't. I have met people who honestly don't understand how anyone can think of Arabs as intelligent lifeforms.

That is a shame. There are some who make more exceptions than others. Generally, the more coherent and thought-out moral positions make less exceptions and less arbitrary ones.

2. Morality is subjective. Those who reflect on it often come to conclusions that are diametrically opposed to the majority. This often aligns with one's class interests. For example, Nietzsche rejects the golden rule by saying the powerful should simply take what they can because they can. Whichever class thinks they are about to win is often a fan of Nietzsche, whether capitalists or revolutionaries. There are also similar, more reasonable individualist alternatives like in Max Stirner's book.

Morality is subjective, of course, which is why we may at most accept that some moral stances may lead to genocide, not all. One’s identity may involve one’s class, or species or anything else. Life is not just about social class. Social class may be defined in different ways, including money, identity, education or any combination thereof. That is perhaps part of the subjectivity of morality.

Can't believe I'm having an argument about moral relativism with an atheist. I think you are so insulated in a leftist bubble that things leftists say sound like common sense to you. This is not how humanity in general thinks of the problems confronting us.

I know other people I know think differently, as neighbour, friend, family member and activist. I do not believe in the interest of moorality because it is the only thing I am exposed to but because it is among the most convincing things that I am exposed to. When Zompist proposes to base our ideas and practices on science and moral philosophy, I get him on that. When Ryan Holiday, following on from Stoics and other ancient philosophers suggests basing our decisions on virtue, I get him too. Likewise with Stephen R. Covey and the importance on aligning oneself with one’s values. These are somewhat different positions but share characteristics: 1° based on morality, ethics, virtue 2° things I have read 3° things I have recently and rarely been exposed to 4° are convincing

Yes, indeed, and so too much attention is paid to them.

I'm too poor to have books without screens.

How?

That may well be the average in your experience and that differs from the statistics cited in Faites-les lire (Get Them to Read) by Michel Desmurget, p. 44-7.

I'm not sure I trust Desmurget that much. He's a 'cognitive neuroscientist' which is IMO borderline pseudoscience.

I do agree with the idea that people should generally do things and read books; it is a problem, what I disagree with is the idea it's a new problem. It's been that way for decades.

One idea, supported by the data, is that it has been getting worse for decades.

He's a 'cognitive neuroscientist' which is IMO borderline pseudoscience.

Hmm, what makes you say that? (I know very little about the field.)

I honestly don't know about it that much; I can't really follow the actual scientific work. But it's fashionable as pop-science these days. I've read several books that claim to be supported by 'neuroscience' and I have two problems with them:

• They assume we know a lot more about how the human brains works than we really do. Last I checked we still have very little idea how the human mind works. We can see how and when mirror neurons fire up and that's fascinating but I think we're still very far from drawing conclusions about it.
• There is a certain tendancy to bully the reader into accepting the authors' thesis. You should do X / educate your children in that way BECAUSE SCIENCE SAYS SO. (And to the extent I can follow the actual scientific work -- it does not says so.)

I am very skeptical when a scientists relays very human cognitive bias, such as 'kids these days are stupid', 'things were better when I was personally younger' or 'this new thing which did not exist when I was young is obviously detrimental to human health'.
I may be unfair to Desmurget, especially since I kind of agree with him. There's plenty of evidence of the Internet making people stupid -- but didn't people make themselves stupid in other ways before that?

There is surely an important difference between pop-science that claims to be backed up by neuroscience and one of the top neuroscientists in the country.

Cognitive biases are to be avoided of course. That includes both neophobia and neophilia. It is the latter that appears more common nowadays, many wanting to have the latest gadget or fashion for no better reason than voting RN: “we haven’t tried it yet”. I think that one cognitive bias we are often vulnerable to is “I do it therefore it is fine” which I managed to avoid by deleting video games and reducing and otherwise improving other screen use. My use of the ZBB is still imperfect but has improved since I had first joined, partly by reducing the number of open tabs at once and at least sometimes taking time to think about my post before sending it.

I may be unfair to Desmurget, especially since I kind of agree with him. There's plenty of evidence of the Internet making people stupid -- but didn't people make themselves stupid in other ways before that?

I think that the idea that people are stupid because of the Internet in particular is misguided. Stepping back a few decades one can say the very same thing about TV, if not more so. (I remember as a kid -- I was born in the 1980's -- finding most TV to be exceptionally stupid, and once my family had the Internet finding the Internet to be far superior to it.)

I already answered this objection earlier in this thread.

I am very skeptical when a scientists relays very human cognitive bias, such as 'kids these days are stupid', 'things were better when I was personally younger' or 'this new thing which did not exist when I was young is obviously detrimental to human health'.

I think that the idea that people are stupid because of the Internet in particular is misguided. Stepping back a few decades one can say the very same thing about TV, if not more so. (I remember as a kid -- I was born in the 1980's -- finding most TV to be exceptionally stupid, and once my family had the Internet finding the Internet to be far superior to it.)

Just as suspect is the idea that kids used to be smart. Was there an ideal time when kids loved education, admired the intelligent, did calculus problems for fun, and avoided all non-education pastimes? There was not. As Travis says, before the Internet was blamed, the culprit was TV. Before TV, it was comic books; before that, jazz and trashy novels; before that, novels in general.

Kids used to be smarter, not perfect but better. Most kids doing calculus problems for fun or avoiding all non-educational pastimes? AFAIK, noone suggests it. Novels are among the solutions Desmurget proposes to improve cognitive ability. Music and sport too. Kids seem to love education more when they realise they might be deprived of it or recently were.

[Travis B.]

I think that the idea that people are stupid because of the Internet in particular is misguided. Stepping back a few decades one can say the very same thing about TV, if not more so. (I remember as a kid -- I was born in the 1980's -- finding most TV to be exceptionally stupid, and once my family had the Internet finding the Internet to be far superior to it.)

Just as suspect is the idea that kids used to be smart. Was there an ideal time when kids loved education, admired the intelligent, did calculus problems for fun, and avoided all non-education pastimes? There was not. As Travis says, before the Internet was blamed, the culprit was TV. Before TV, it was comic books; before that, jazz and trashy novels; before that, novels in general.

Kids used to be smarter, not perfect but better. Most kids doing calculus problems for fun or avoiding all non-educational pastimes? AFAIK, noone suggests it. Novels are among the solutions Desmurget proposes to improve cognitive ability. Music and sport too. Kids seem to love education more when they realise they might be deprived of it or recently were.

You do realize that people have been saying that the kids used to be smarter for millenia, right? People were making similar comments back in the days of Ancient Greece, e.g.

[Ares Land]

I was thinking about this and a somewhat provocative idea came to mind.
I was born in the 80s -- what if my generation was the fucked up one? And the cohort immediately earlier (folks born in the 70s), and maybe folks born in the early 90s.

We had a lot of screen time -- I remember kids watching quite a lot of TV, not all of it appropriate. (Kids' shows these days are a lot nicer, often educational, often without commercial and pretty closely monitored). Computer and internet access, unrestricted (Our parents really didn't understand this stuff!) -- as kids for us; for folks born in the 70s, not as kids but still at a young impressionable age.
Looking at this age group, vaguely defined as 30 to 50... Screen was very high, and from an early age on. Maybe that did rot our brains.

Let's look at the results; my age group isn't doing well. Dismissive of the elders ("boomers", need I say more?) and of those younger (entitled Gen-Z with no work ethic!). Voting for the far right (Trump vote is high in that age bracket; here the far right does best in that age group, likely in other EU countries as well.) Unhealthy attitudes to work and relationships. Generally, as our generation grew up to be adult and started voting and more generally being in charge... things got worse.
Maybe, yeah, as a generation isn't as smart as we should be.

(Let's not take this too seriously; I'm still not sure whether I'm joking or not )

[Ares Land]

If production falls, there would still be more than enough to go around because so much is wasted e.g. food thrown in the bucket. https://news.un.org/en/story/2024/03/1148036

And food doesn’t come from the economy, it comes from ecology. After all, having no money and food growing all around is much better than having trillions of dollars on a burning infertile planet.

Yes, and more on that:
Agriculture is about 4% of global GDP; an almost negligible part of it. Even lower in developed country. This suggests, if we do want degrowth, we could cut back quite a lot before people starve. (And conversely, that economic growth is little to do with preventing starvation!)

The important thing about degrowth is that it's about cutting back in a smart way; deciding on what we'd rather do without and planning accordingly. (Just cutting back on production unthinkingly is just, well, a plain old recession.)

[MacAnDàil]

If production falls, there would still be more than enough to go around because so much is wasted e.g. food thrown in the bucket. https://news.un.org/en/story/2024/03/1148036

And food doesn’t come from the economy, it comes from ecology. After all, having no money and food growing all around is much better than having trillions of dollars on a burning infertile planet.

Yes, and more on that:
Agriculture is about 4% of global GDP; an almost negligible part of it. Even lower in developed country. This suggests, if we do want degrowth, we could cut back quite a lot before people starve. (And conversely, that economic growth is little to do with preventing starvation!)

The important thing about degrowth is that it's about cutting back in a smart way; deciding on what we'd rather do without and planning accordingly. (Just cutting back on production unthinkingly is just, well, a plain old recession.)

Yes, indeed.

Just as suspect is the idea that kids used to be smart. Was there an ideal time when kids loved education, admired the intelligent, did calculus problems for fun, and avoided all non-education pastimes? There was not. As Travis says, before the Internet was blamed, the culprit was TV. Before TV, it was comic books; before that, jazz and trashy novels; before that, novels in general.

Kids used to be smarter, not perfect but better. Most kids doing calculus problems for fun or avoiding all non-educational pastimes? AFAIK, noone suggests it. Novels are among the solutions Desmurget proposes to improve cognitive ability. Music and sport too. Kids seem to love education more when they realise they might be deprived of it or recently were.

You do realize that people have been saying that the kids used to be smarter for millenia, right? People were making similar comments back in the days of Ancient Greece, e.g.

Just making the comments does not count. What counts is having arguments and/or data to support it. Desmurget has both in buckets and spades. Sources include https://www.researchgate.net/publicatio ... r_the_mind, https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2017-47887-003 and https://literacytrust.org.uk/research-s ... t-in-2021/ among thousands of other references, mainly scholarly or statistical. It refers to the scientific literature on video deficit for example: https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/di ... 1-0187.xml. Let's not blame any generation in any overgeneralisation, let's just improve behaviour based on facts.

[Travis B.]

Just making the comments does not count. What counts is having arguments and/or data to support it. Desmurget has both in buckets and spades. Sources include https://www.researchgate.net/publicatio ... r_the_mind, https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2017-47887-003 and https://literacytrust.org.uk/research-s ... t-in-2021/ among thousands of other references, mainly scholarly or statistical. It refers to the scientific literature on video deficit for example: https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/di ... 1-0187.xml. Let's not blame any generation in any overgeneralisation, let's just improve behaviour based on facts.

To me complaining about 'screens' is a very broad brush, because 'screens' comprise a very wide range of media, from e-books to blogs to Internet forums to Facebook to IRC to Facebook Messenger to YouTube to TikTok to Spotify to TV. For instance, I use the Internet far more than I read dead tree books, but the vast majority of the media I consume is in written format, particularly in the form of Internet forum-type media, blog posts, Facebook, and lengthier written media such as e-books, with the exception of listening to music and usually one foreign murder mystery per week. I scarcely use YouTube, except to listen to music, and don't even touch the likes of TikTok. What I see in those linked papers is a disparate collection of comments about reading and video content, with one that suggests that supposedly dead tree books are better than e-books.

[Ares Land]

Heh, I don't find much to disagree with in these studies.
I read to my kids, tried to expose them to as much books as possible. I think it did them good; also, they enjoy it which is immensely more important.
I use an e-reader myself. Interestingly, kids don't really 'get' these.

The pop science distillation of those studies I have more trouble with. I never thought the Octonauts or Danny Tiger's Neighborhood or (oh gods) Paw Patrol could rot kids' brain.
We hear horror stories about parents using phones and videos to babysit kids for hours on end. That of course is exceptionally poor parenting; I have no idea how often that occurs.

Kids reading books and getting some fresh air is good for them and kids generally don't read enough or have enough access to books. I'm not sure how new this is; it seems to me this was a problem when I was a kid too. Which certainly doesn't mean we shouldn't improve on things!

I think all of this relates to class. We're not wealthy (not even close to wealthy) but we do have https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_capital which relates to a certain social class (we're in intellectual professions, broadly speaking). I'm convinced kids reading enough or not is almost 100% a factor of who their parents are, what kind of education they got and the like.
Here schools do a decent job of exposing kids to books and the like; we do get the compulsory start-of-year lecture about "screens" -- and that bit doesn't help.

[Travis B.]

Aaron Siri, a lawyer closely tied to RFK Jr., submitted a petition to the FDA to revoke the approval of the polio vaccine... ugh...

[Man in Space]

Aaron Siri, a lawyer closely tied to RFK Jr., submitted a petition to the FDA to revoke the approval of the polio vaccine... ugh...

An Apple a day…

[jcb]

So, by recognizing the actual fact that the Democratic party is more than half "moderate or conservative", that is somehow forcing you to support them?

Okay, I'll vote for a different party. Oh wait, now I'm going to be criticized and told that voting for anything other than the Democrats is equivalent to voting for the Republicans.

And if you're mad when some of the Democratic party wants to go that direction as well, half the party agrees with you. You just apparently hate to recognize that you have allies.

That's just the thing: I don't see them as allies. If/when this problem is ever solved, I don't think that the liberals (what you would call the conservative democrats) will be in the same party as the workers. On the left, there will be the real populists (Sanders, FDR, etc) and workers. On the right, there will be the liberals (Obama, Clinton, etc) and the rich businessmen (Romney, McKinley, etc). Maybe the left party will be the Democratic party, and the right party the Republican party, or maybe it will be vice-versa; It doesn't matter. Parties are just vessels for the people that command them.

The anti-immigration stance is a big hint; they're also, in favor of cheap gas when it comes to the climate, they have a backwards stance on gender, defend 'traditional family values' and feel the AfD is unfairly treated.

(1) Do you know how unions work? They work by controlling the supply of labor. Part of doing so is controlling immigration.
(2) Maybe they have that stance on gender because they realize that trans issues are irrelevant to 99% of people.
(3) Maybe they realize that some of the people voting for the AfD have genuine grievances, and they don't want to alienate them.

They do support welfare and redistribution and anti-markets -- but that sort of talk isn't unknown of on the far right. (And usually is quietly jettisoned whenever convenient.)

Why would you expect Wagenknecht to do this? Hasn't she had left stances on economics her whole life?

But I mean, no matter what Sahra Wagenknecht used to believe when she was younger, I don't see how the BSW can be anything other than far right.

Honestly, this description is exactly what I mean when I complain about economics being deleted from politics.

At my last job, I talked politics alot with this one guy who was a Trump supporter. I later left that job, but my friend (who is also far left like me) who still worked there still talks politics with him, and he (my friend) said that he (the Trump supporter) described my politics as "neither left or right". Only in a world where the economic dimension is so thoroughly deleted from politics can such a description happen. It reminds me of how in the somewhat famous book "Flatland", the 1-dimensional characters can't understand how the 2-dimensional characters that visit them appear and disappear, because they can't perceive a second dimension.

[Ares Land]

(1) Do you know how unions work? They work by controlling the supply of labor. Part of doing so is controlling immigration.

I have a fair idea, yeah. Blaming one category of workers (immigrant workers) in the hopes that your category of worker will have it better is not a left-wing stance, is all. I don't think it's morally acceptable, or that it even works, and I wouldn't care to join or vote for such an union (sometimes we vote for unions here).

(2) Maybe they have that stance on gender because they realize that trans issues are irrelevant to 99% of people.

Trans people aren't irrelevant to 99% of people. If that was the case, all political parties would support trans right -- you get support from the 1% that care, and don't lose anything with the others. Except that doesn't happen.
The thing is, lots of people are deeply bothered by trans people, it's not 'irrelevant' to them -- they care about it, and they don't like what's happening. That's why people oppose trans rights

(3) Maybe they realize that some of the people voting for the AfD have genuine grievances, and they don't want to alienate them.

What grievances are these, specifically? Is it about immigration and trans right? Then these are right-wing concerns.

Honestly, this description is exactly what I mean when I complain about economics being deleted from politics.
[...]
At my last job, I talked politics alot with this one guy who was a Trump supporter. I later left that job, but my friend (who is also far left like me) who still worked there still talks politics with him, and he (my friend) said that he (the Trump supporter) described my politics as "neither left or right".

The far-right is essentially a scam. They'll say just about anything to get your votes. They'll even claim to be in favor of left-wing economic policies.
Here in France, the far-right supported economically left-wing policies right until the point where it hurt them electorally; they immediately dropped these.
Trump sounded like he was on the side of the American working class; but during his last four-year term, did he do anything about it? As far as I can his policies were what you'd expect from a Republican president.

Is there any example, anywhere in the world, of a nationalist, anti-immigration, socially conservative movement that turned out to be on the side of the working class? Is Meloni taking on inequality? Is Orban doing so?
'Left-wing economically, right-wing socially' is theoretically possible, so is 'left-wing on social issue, right-wing on economics' (which is what the libertarians claimed to be at one point). In practice, this isn't a stable political position.

Why would you expect Wagenknecht to do this? Hasn't she had left stances on economics her whole life?

Some people change their views. It happens; people's views getting conservative as they age is a well-known trope. Clearly Wagenknecht got more conservative on several political issues; why not on the others?

Only in a world where the economic dimension is so thoroughly deleted from politics can such a description happen.

That point is interested; I think, on the contrary that it's all about the economy. Political views are all related on each other; you can't decouple your views on social issues from your views on the economy. One is likely to be a good predictor to the other.
Immigration particularly so. You can't be conservative on immigration and socialist when it comes to the economy; or conversely liberal on immigration and conservative on economics. It just doesn't work that way.

There are several reasons why; one of these is that socialism is about class first. A hard anti-immigration stance means you start caring more about nationality than class -- a position that is no longer socialism.

[Lērisama]

Is there any example, anywhere in the world, of a nationalist, anti-immigration, socially conservative movement that turned out to be on the side of the working class? Is Meloni taking on inequality? Is Orban doing so?

Not sure, but maybe the Five-star movement¹?

¹ Depending on how you classify it. And your definition of ‘on the side of the working class’ as opposed to ‘on the side of Beppe Grillo’²
² Although they have managed to kick him out now. We'll see what results

[Ares Land]

Is there any example, anywhere in the world, of a nationalist, anti-immigration, socially conservative movement that turned out to be on the side of the working class? Is Meloni taking on inequality? Is Orban doing so?

Not sure, but maybe the Five-star movement¹?

¹ Depending on how you classify it. And your definition of ‘on the side of the working class’ as opposed to ‘on the side of Beppe Grillo’²
² Although they have managed to kick him out now. We'll see what results

Haven't they broken up?
I'm also not sure they actually did anything when in government, though I may be mistaken.

[Lērisama]

Is there any example, anywhere in the world, of a nationalist, anti-immigration, socially conservative movement that turned out to be on the side of the working class? Is Meloni taking on inequality? Is Orban doing so?

Not sure, but maybe the Five-star movement¹?

¹ Depending on how you classify it. And your definition of ‘on the side of the working class’ as opposed to ‘on the side of Beppe Grillo’²
² Although they have managed to kick him out now. We'll see what results

Haven't they broken up?
I'm also not sure they actually did anything when in government, though I may be mistaken.

I may be working on outdated information. It's very easy to lose track of Italian politics. On your second point, that's what my maybe was about. I'm honestly not sure.

[Travis B.]

[snip]

The supposedly left-wing populism that you seem to favor is not what I envision for the left, and is something I am deeply against. Socialism is supposed to be for all workers, not the workers of one nation, and while I like to complain about the social justice people for a wide range of reasons, I believe in freedom and equality for all people, not just some, and treating all people as individuals, not as groups, to be judged solely on the basis of their actions and inactions (the reason why I oppose them is precisely because they don't believe in freedom and equality for all people and they like to lump together people as groups even though typically people have little to no choice in such matters).

[MacAnDàil]

Just making the comments does not count. What counts is having arguments and/or data to support it. Desmurget has both in buckets and spades. Sources include https://www.researchgate.net/publicatio ... r_the_mind, https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2017-47887-003 and https://literacytrust.org.uk/research-s ... t-in-2021/ among thousands of other references, mainly scholarly or statistical. It refers to the scientific literature on video deficit for example: https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/di ... 1-0187.xml. Let's not blame any generation in any overgeneralisation, let's just improve behaviour based on facts.

To me complaining about 'screens' is a very broad brush, because 'screens' comprise a very wide range of media, from e-books to blogs to Internet forums to Facebook to IRC to Facebook Messenger to YouTube to TikTok to Spotify to TV. For instance, I use the Internet far more than I read dead tree books, but the vast majority of the media I consume is in written format, particularly in the form of Internet forum-type media, blog posts, Facebook, and lengthier written media such as e-books, with the exception of listening to music and usually one foreign murder mystery per week. I scarcely use YouTube, except to listen to music, and don't even touch the likes of TikTok. What I see in those linked papers is a disparate collection of comments about reading and video content, with one that suggests that supposedly dead tree books are better than e-books.

There are certainly different kinds of screen use, some worse than others e.g. involving more concentration or learning. Paper books, all things being equal, allow us to concentrate more. If we say ‘dead tree’ for ‘paper’, then surely we can also ‘dead air, Uighur, Congolese, mountain and dinosaur’ for ‘electronic’, can’t we? You seem to be sceptical about that article. Is that true? If so, why?

Heh, I don't find much to disagree with in these studies.
I read to my kids, tried to expose them to as much books as possible. I think it did them good; also, they enjoy it which is immensely more important.
I use an e-reader myself. Interestingly, kids don't really 'get' these.

The pop science distillation of those studies I have more trouble with. I never thought the Octonauts or Danny Tiger's Neighborhood or (oh gods) Paw Patrol could rot kids' brain.
We hear horror stories about parents using phones and videos to babysit kids for hours on end. That of course is exceptionally poor parenting; I have no idea how often that occurs.

I have seen many examples of this. It is not just poor parenting, it’s also horribly annoying when the probably eight-year-old plays a shoot-me-up loud enough for everyone to hear on the bus.

Kids reading books and getting some fresh air is good for them and kids generally don't read enough or have enough access to books. I'm not sure how new this is; it seems to me this was a problem when I was a kid too. Which certainly doesn't mean we shouldn't improve on things!

Yes and is there is something better to do than try to improve on things?

I think all of this relates to class. We're not wealthy (not even close to wealthy) but we do have https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_capital which relates to a certain social class (we're in intellectual professions, broadly speaking). I'm convinced kids reading enough or not is almost 100% a factor of who their parents are, what kind of education they got and the like.
Here schools do a decent job of exposing kids to books and the like; we do get the compulsory start-of-year lecture about "screens" -- and that bit doesn't help.

Here schools do not enough to expose kids to books because the inspection hierarchy insists on new teachers using powerpoints but not on them sharing books. Thankfully, one teacher gave a parent I know a lecture on screens because, when we told them, they did not take into consideration.

[Zju]

So is president-unelect Musk running the show now?