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What’s the deal with Greta Thunberg, the 16 years old schoolgirl who has become the face of global environmentalism?
In less than a year she went from sitting with a sign outside the Swedish parliament to giving TED talks to speaking with world leaders at Davos to meeting the Pope. She’s been even nominated to the Nobel Peace Prize.
What she has to say isn’t particularly novel or smart, but she does say it in a fundamentalist way: apocalyptic predictions, explicit black and white thinking, fire
and brimstonereferences.– Why is she so popular? Her parents are rich and famous in Sweden, but they are pretty much unknown outside their country, so I doubt they can prop her up internationally so much. Is she being astroturfed by “the powers that be”? Is it the appeal of the child saint, the mix of innocence and fanatism, that made her into a new Joan d’Arc who can inspire the masses and the elites alike?
– What does this mean for environmentalism? Is it now doomed to be a secular religion of rituals of purity signaling but no actual actions being taken? Greta becoming the face of environmentalism signals a shift from “trust the consensus of climate scientists” to “trust a schoolgirl”. And note how Greta never speaks of any concrete action plan, and when politicians actually try to do something it blows up in their face, e.g. the yellow vests protests in France were provoked by a fuel tax increase. Has environmentalism become just a performative act?
Never heard of her, and this seems like just gratuitously bashing your outgroup. Environmentalism is “doomed to be a secular religion of rituals of purity signaling” because a random teenager became semi-famous for being passionate about it? Sheesh.
I remember when progressives used to make fun of dictators who would kiss babies and put forward indoctrinated children as role models & those we should listen to (a polemic trick, as these children can debate very harshly, but debating back similarly looks like abuse).
Now progressives in my country do this with reckless abandon.
D, don’t you agree that there is something perverse about children with extremist beliefs being asked to speak in parliaments, for the UN, etc; as if they are experts, even though their opinions are typically based on (scientific) falsehoods?
As annoying as I find this case, I gotta say there’s nothing uniquely progressive about it. People of all political stripes have been propping up well-coached children to act as their mouthpieces probably since before the stakes were higher than which monkey gets kicked out of the tree. And then condemning the same thing in their opponents, because hypocrisy comes about as easily as breathing to most of us.
We should know better by now, but is it really surprising that we don’t?
I already very strongly implied this in my first sentence.
Yet I can’t remember this in my country, at the UN, from the Nobels, etc when I was younger. Nor do I see this behavior in others in the West.
At this point in time, it really seems to be a part of New Left culture that is not copied by others.
People of all political stripes have been propping up well-coached children to act as their mouthpieces
Right. There is a reason that drug dealers and warlords find child soldiers so useful. They don’t question you much, and when the other side fights back, you can use them as human shields and talk about how the other side is attacking kids.
This is circular reasoning. “Isn’t my outgroup bad for being wrong?” Yes, if we assume that your outgroup is wrong, i.e. abandon all pretense at rational inquiry and skepticism, I suppose it is.
Greta is not the new leader of the environmental movement. If you want to get in to the spirit of this forum, you might put some thought in to why you want her to be.
I don’t see how that is a fair way to interpret my argument.
My claim is not that the outgroup is being wrong for being wrong, but that these children are being given platforms far beyond what is reasonable, given their credentials and actual contribution to the debate. I think that this disproportionality is largely due to the emotional impact of using children, rather than a rational reason.
Note that I’m not claiming that this is a cynical ploy, but rather that the people who employ these tactics themselves act on emotions when favoring these kids.
This argument depends in no way on this behavior being done by the outgroup or the extent to which I agree with the argument of the person. In fact, I agree more with Greta than with Trump on climate change, so…
She seems to be the leader or at least spokesperson of the children’s protests, which happen in many countries. She got to speak at the UN, in the EU parliament, in various national parliaments, at the World Economic Forum in Davos, etc.
This doesn’t make her “the” leader, but there are very few “the” leaders of movements in general. I never claimed this anyway, so you are demanding that I substantiate a claim that I never made.
Again, my argument is that the level of influence is far beyond what is reasonable, most likely due to the emotional impact of using children, rather than depending on the strength of the argument.
You may dismiss my claims, but do you disagree that the number of youths getting Nobel prizes, getting to speak for the UN, getting to speak in parliaments, etc has increased a lot during the last decade or so? This still demands an explanation, even if you think mine is wrong.
Maybe that’s your new claim. Your previous one was, “there is something perverse about children with extremist beliefs being asked to speak in parliaments, for the UN, etc; as if they are experts, even though their opinions are typically based on (scientific) falsehoods?” That’s not a claim that people without credentials shouldn’t get a platform, it’s a tautology predicated on the assumption that Greta Thunberg has extremist beliefs based on scientific falsehoods.
So, on to your new claim: we shouldn’t give such a big platform to people who lack credentials or expertise. That’s reasonable, but a) it’s not new or specific to Greta – celebrities with no scientific credentials have been giving speeches about environmentalism pretty much non-stop for the last thirty years, and b) it doesn’t say anything about environmentalism – a dummy holding position X is not evidence that X is wrong. (I know you didn’t claim otherwise; OP did. This all started with him asking whether this means the environmental movement is doomed.)
If not the leader she is certainly the figurehead, if you disagree then I challenge you to find any other environmental activist who has gotten anywhere near her level of international public presence in the last year.
A figurehead is a leader without power; AFAICT Greta is not leading anyone. I think the term you’re searching for is “poster child” (which is usually metaphorical, but in this case very literally applicable).
But arguing about semantics is boring. Call her what you like, leader, figurehead, whatever. Your whole premise is that this “means” something, and that’s what I’m saying is wrong. If next year the media darling of the environmental movement is a lovable Scottish grandmother, or a one-legged Tunisian nun, or a giant tortoise with an amusing name, that won’t mean the environmental movement is doomed either.
@vV_Vv
I can’t as I haven’t heard of any, but until you brought her up I never heard of Greta either.
It’s not that the environment isn’t entirely out of the news, today’s New York Times front page has a photo captioned: “Frozen, Stony and Vital to Life
North America’s glaciers are losing ice as the world warms. That’s disrupting habitats for fish, insects and even bacteria.
Page A14″ , with nothing else environmental on the front page though, turning to page A14 I see mentions of “Jon Riedel, a geologist”, and “J. Ryan Bellmore, a biologist” who are presented as researchers, not activists. The last environmentalist activist that I remember getting any press attention was the girl who lived in a tree to prevent it from being cut down one or three decades ago, none on my radar since.
I don’t think that the get much attention otherwise.
How did this Greta girl get your attention?
Environmentalism, its establishment form, is too tied up with leftism to really make a statement about “what is environmentalism?” Activists with no power, like her, just do what activists do, and they often look like a religion or performance art from the outside.
If there is demand for an international figure, her parents creating a national figure might be sufficient. Similar to how Canadian content laws create Canadian bands, which are successful in America. But it’s hard to measure demand if there’s only one slot, vs lots of bands. (And why are Canadian comedians so much more successful than Canadian musicians? Are there relevant laws or subsidies?)
vV_Vv
I never heard of her before, but after a brief glance at the Wikipedia link I’d put her in the “It’s a great big world” category.
She must’ve caught someone’s attention and now folks like you are telling others about her.
That while not as noticeable as in decades past it still continues.
She has Asperger’s and said herself that this makes her very prone to black/white thinking.
Modern (elite) progressives have it very good themselves, but obviously feel that the future is gravely under threat from climate change, nationalists (Brexit), racism, etc.
So it makes perfect for them to focus the debate on future generations, rather than themselves, because if they did the latter, it would not be a good look.
There is definitely an appetite for people who will say the stuff you already believe in a convincing way, either to stuff it to the wrongthinkers or to convince people in the middle.
Lewis Black, John Oliver, Trump, Joe the Plumber, AOC, Ilhan Omar, etc. are popular in part because they’re “not afraid to say” some stuff that their fans already believe to be true. The fact that they don’t make sophisticated arguments is not a problem – their fans are already convinced, and are looking for someone to make vigorous arguments.
This is a big annoyance to me too, in particular “but those things aren’t the same!” Mate, they’re not supposed to be the same. You can tell because they have different words.
Analogies are supposed to be a tool for increasing understanding, and I think it’s legitimate to be annoyed by somebody who deploys an analogy that adds a negative amount of understanding, which was what analogizing rape to dice-fudging would do.
More generally, I once heard this wisdom: analogies are a tool for teaching, but they are nearly useless in an argument.
Happy Easter/Passover/Nice Sunshiny Day to everyone!
Can anyone tell me who invented, or popularised, the phrase “Fully Automated Luxury Gay Space Communism” (as in the wondrous utopia of the post-scarcity, post-AI and robots will do all the work and create such surplus everyone will be rich, future just twenty-five years down the line that’s been promised for the past hundred or so years)?
I ask, because I saw this in Private Eye‘s “Pseuds Corner” and thought “I recognise that phrasing!” Is this person trying to claim it for themselves, or is it knocking around enough everyone (in particular circles) is using it as a common “author: Anonymous” type thing?
According to this, the popularisation of the phrase minus “Gay Space” was a youtube video. My guess is that the full phrase was popularised by a Facebook page, but I don’t know for sure.
So, Andrew Yang, an asian guy running as a democrat in 2020 on Universal Basic Income and lots of other things.
I like this guy a lot, certainly far more than any other candidate. I genuinely think he has the best policy ideas, some of them not so typical, like making taxes fun or have a term limit for Supereme Court Justices
But most importantly, I think he’s got a legitimate ability to distinguish good from bad policy ideas even if both are from his camp, and that just puts him so far above the field. For example, he’s anti-climate change but pro nuclear energy. He’s pro UBI, but not pro minimum wage and not pro universal job guarantee. Pro VAT but not pro wealth tax.
PredictIt has him in 5th place, which is actually above Warren. And this isn’t a one-time thing, the only time I’ve seen him below Warren was right after he was added. Afaik he’s polling at around 3% right now. He’s made lots and lots of appearances on all sorts of outlets left and right, including CNN, MSNBC, Fox, TyT, Ben Shapiro Show, Joe Rogan, Sam Harris, Breakfast Club
These two statements seem like direct contradictions to me. I don’t think I’ve ever heard a credible plan for sustainable energy that doesn’t involve a lot of nuclear.
ETA: Ah, it was a typo. And Yang is indeed pretty solidly pro-nuclear. Never mind.
That was a flat-out error by me. The “not” is just wrong. I edited it out as I noticed it but you must have caught the early version. Apologies! he’s PRO nuclear energy.
sty_silver’s comment looks like it’s been edited to say pro-nuclear rather than not, but in any case your information is out of date. It’s true that a sensible person who’s concerned about climate change should not favour shutting existing nuclear power stations down (they’ll just be replaced with coal, as happened in Germany), but the cost of new nuclear power is now higher than the cost of renewables (I believe due to price change in both directions).
I was under the impression that this was an extremely difficult thing to calculate, and subject to all sorts of critical methodological questions without obvious right answers. It would amaze me to learn there was a reliable consensus on this.
Did you notice that RLMS said that nuclear is increasing in cost? It now has practically infinite cost. Aside from it being illegal, people have completely lost the ability to manage it and now destroy plants in routine maintenance.
Even before nuclear power was politically destroyed, it was increasing in cost. Optimistic people think that this was the same political problem, so that if you could magically solve the first problem, you would solve the second. Aside from the magic, this might just not be true. It’s probably just that concentrated stores of wealth are stolen.
I love nuclear but even China appears, at best, wishy-washy about it. The fracking boom has just made natural gas so cheap.
Maybe humanity could have made it work if we’d done things differently over the past 50+ years. I hope it doesn’t turn out that we really needed it to reverse global warming (because maybe you don’t just need little dirty energy, maybe you also need boat loads of clean energy, to do things like power EVs, grow lab-meat, and do carbon capture).
He’s also for investing in renewable energies, and names that as a tool to combat climate change.
Under Climate Change, he has:
“End the current tax benefits and cuts given to fossil fuel companies which give them an unwarranted competitive advantage over alternative energy sources.”
What are the benefits and cuts that fossil fuels receive that others don’t? I hear this often, but don’t personally know the details.
https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2017/10/6/16428458/us-energy-coal-oil-subsidies
The Intangible Drilling Cost deduction’s impact (the first one in that list) is overstated by a lot, because it treats the revenue impact from time shifting as the “annual cost” of the policy.
It’s a subsidy because it lets companies claim deductions earlier than they otherwise would, but that means the net savings are the time-value of the shift, not the gross amount.
LIFO accounting for taxes (the second one on the list) is similarly a time-shift, and is generally allowed in any business (but only ones with large inventories and rising COGS will use it because that’s when it reduces your taxable income).
MLPs are a way to lower dividend payment now at the cost of paying more (either on dividends or capital gains) in the future. Again a time-shift.
Fixed % deduction does have a real impact beyond time-shifting, because you can eventually claim more than the original investment in deductions.
So on net, the subsidies are real, but they’re not nearly as impactful as the article makes them out to be.
It might be true, but one would have to look pretty far beyond the linked page to tell. The sources of their information clearly have an axe to grind, as do they. What they count as subsidies are mostly tax rules which they think are biased in favor of fossil fuel industries:
Hence one also has to be a tax lawyer or equivalent to tell whether they are really subsidies–the author of the page expects the reader to take his word for it.
Part of the page is on the effect of subsidies on output.
The conclusion the author wants is that, without subsidies, much less oil would be produced. But that doesn’t follow from his argument. If subsidies were eliminated and output fell, prices would go up, so how much oil would be unprofitable at present prices without subsidies doesn’t tell us the actual effect. What he needs and doesn’t provide is some estimate of the elasticity of demand. If it’s perfectly inelastic, then removing a $10 subsidy just means that prices go up by $10 and output stays the same. His calculation is only informative if you assume demand is perfectly elastic, hence removing the subsidy has no effect on price.
I don’t have an opinion on whether the basic claims are true–I assume fossil companies do their best to get benefits from governments, like other firms. What struck me reading the page is that, if you agree with it, it feels like good objective evidence for the conclusion you want. But it isn’t.
This is kind of a segue on the topic of Yang, but I am very interested in the question of how the fossil fuel industry is supposedly so highly subsidized. The link by Hoopy was far from helpful. I had to go three links in before I could even find a listing of these subsidies, and then it was just an amount and not an explanation.
I am very skeptical of these numbers, but I think there ARE some subsidies, and it would be good to know what they are. As Christophe notes, there use of two tax timing differences without explaining that is what they are is a clear indication that the numbers must be closely examined to find the truth.
DF notes that one of the authors states that you have to be a tax lawyer to understand them. Well, I am a tax accountant, so I think I would understand them if there were proper cites. Does anyone know of any cite that actually lays out how each of these numbers are calculated, hopefully without 100 pages of verbiage around it?
Its one of the least subsidized industries in the US in the form of actual subsidies. You can argue its somewhere in the middle or at the low end with regards to the tax code depending on if you think some of their tax writeoffs are targeted at them, or are just a general consequence of encouraging high-capital, relatively high risk endeavors using the tax code.
In either instance they are way behind industries people “like” like auto production and clean energy. Also behind industries that people “hate” like banking.
Thanks Hoopyfreud for the article and the others for the discussion.
“End fossil fuel subsidies” is one of those things that you hear so often, yet I have never seen any specifics. Without knowing what the subsidies are, how can you know that they need ended?
Defining subsidies is hard, for at least three reasons.
1. “Tax expenditure” means a firm paying lower taxes than it would under some alternative set of rules, so calculating it requires you to know what the tax rules should be, which is far from clear.
2. Governments do things for many reasons with many effects. If the government buys fighter planes that presumably raises the income of firms that make airplanes, but we don’t usually consider that a subsidy. If the government gives poor people food stamps that may raise the demand curve for agricultural products, benefiting farmers–and that might be one of the reasons for such a program, so it comes closer.
The biofuels program, turning something like a third of the U.S. maize crop into alcohol, was justified primarily as a way of slowing global warming. I gather that people concerned with global warming eventually concluded that it had no such effect–but the program remains, presumably as a way of subsidizing farmers who grow maize. That’s a somewhat clearer case. Al Gore has publicly admitted that his support for the program was in part because he was running for president and concerned with the Iowa primary.
3. Various activities have, or at least can be argued to have, negative externalities, so one can view the failure to charge for those externalities as a subsidy–and some people calculating subsidies to fossil fuels do so. The size of the externalities is often very uncertain. In the case of climate change, I’ve even argued that the sign of the externality is uncertain.
So anyone who claims to know the magnitude of net subsidies to fossil fuels should be viewed with suspicion. Less so if he specifies what he is including and how he calculates it.
Regarding Supreme Court Term limits:
He proposes two ways of doing it: Constitutional amendment, and only choosing justices who pledge to step down in 18 years. Would either work?
The second method wouldn’t work; it would only limit justices nominated by Yang himself. Later presidents, especially Republicans, would feel no need to follow Yang’s example.
Amendments are always hard, and even more so with the country this partisan. If it gets enough support from one party the other will turn against it. An amendment proposed by the president, and plainly intended to thwart a major goal of the other party, is dead in the water.
There is a situation where it might have some chance: if SCOTUS flips to majority Democrat during Yang’s term. If this convinces Republicans that the amendment now favors them, but Yang still keeps his own party on board, it might have a shot.
Is there any way to enforce term limits other than an amendment?
If not, I think it’s a good idea to have this policy proposal, even if it unlikely to be implemented if he wins.
As a Democrat, I’m against trying to do it without the amendment. Two possibilities:
A. Yang’s appointee actually steps down after 18 years, with about a 50% chance of being replaced by a Republican appointee.
B. Yang’s appointee doesn’t step down after 18 years, and Republicans call him a liar and might even seek to impeach him (impeachment being the remedy that Yang proposed for a justice who broke his pledge to step down).
No Republican appointee would have to deal with this problem because no Republican president will ask for a pledge to step down.
For example, he’s anti-climate change but pro nuclear energy. He’s pro UBI, but not pro minimum wage and not pro universal job guarantee. Pro VAT but not pro wealth tax.
Exactly why running under the Democrat umbrella he has no choice. Look at what they’re all currently doing now, kicked off by Elizabeth Warren – impeach Trump, yeah yeah yeah.
It’s not about policy, it’s about what will grab headlines and beat the tweeting progressives wing of the party to the punch.
I have no idea if a UBI is workable, I’d personally like something of the sort but the financing of it still depends too much on Magic Money Tree thinking (“see, we’ll cut this programme and increase these taxes and pass a brand new Get Money From Very Rich People Bill and voila!”). Being anti-minimum wage and anti-job guarantee is going to get him nowhere with the
18161412 years old and you can have a free pony! young voters that he wants to capture (and that they’re all looking to capture, I love the notion that by simply dropping the voting age enough you will have hordes of mythical engaged activist kids turning up at the polls more than once in a blue moon when they’ve been organised to go by canny adults running a campaign specifically targeted at getting them there, but that’s by the way) – Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez put “universal job guarantee” into herSanta LetterGreen New Deal and that wasn’t by accident. Activist young voters have suckled with their mothers’ milk the notion of guaranteed minimum wage and universal job guarantee, and any candidate not promising them this will be regarded as a dirty centrist (if not an outright filthy rotten right-winger proto-Republican in disguise who hates poor people and wants to make the fat cats even fatter).Nuclear power? The environmentalist left have spent decades campaigning against this; once again, anyone advocating this is going to be met with shrill cries of “Climate change denialist! We all know the only way to save the planet from burning is ban plastic straws and everyone cycle everywhere, not build polluting dangerous nuclear death-traps!”
Again, I think VAT would be sensible because I frankly cannot understand the American system of taxes, local taxes, state taxes and we-just-felt-like-it taxes on products so you have no idea what you’re going to pay at the till, but given that it’s highly unlikely that all these local revenue raising taxes would be stripped away, I fear VAT would only be slapped on top of them all, and that would be disastrous as it would be a genuine huge increase in prices (over here, for example, we have 13.5% VAT rate on services/labour and 21% rate on goods; I’d hate to imagine the final bill if we had to pay “and add in sales tax and then state tax and our particular city tax” on top of that). So that’s not going to be a runner.
Anti-wealth tax? So how’s he going to fund the UBI, given that most suggestions I’ve seen price it on “and we tax rich people/corporations so they pay their fair share and redistribute the wealth”? And again, the young activist voters they want to entice to the polls have it embedded in their bones about “tax the rich, they’re all tax cheats”.
So yeah, no realistic hope. Sorry, Andrew!
I want to keep the question of whether he can win separate from whether it would be good if he won. I think you agree that his policies are unusually reasonable, right?
His answer for how to fund UBI is roughly
– First, UBI is opt-in and it doesn’t stack with most other social services (it does stack with some). Most people though would prefer an unconditional 1000$ with no stigma over whatever their current benefits are (those will involve bureaucracy and often some amount of lying). Therefore, we’d have to spend a lot less on social programs which would bring down the price tag
– Implement the VAT and scale it so it disproportionately affects goods that rich people buy. His justification for a VAT in particular is that it’s harder to evade than other taxes (like a wealth tax)
– If implemented, the UBI would grow the economy by XYZ, which offsets some of the cost
– (usually unsaid) increase the deficit, at least in the beginning
I think the biggest problem with his plan is that there are some people who’re currently benefiting enough from other social services that his UBI wouldn’t help them much (or at all) and they might in some cases be worse off than before, because of the VAT. So it’s not perfect, but that’s criticizing from a really high baseline of sanity. The usual case with political candidates is that they have several ideas that seem obviously stupid (to me, anyway).
As for his chances of winning, my honest view is that if PredictIt has him at 10% then he is objectively a serious candidate. He also outperforms many other candidates in google hits and small donors. (Although by the google trends metric, Pete is currently crushing everyone else.)
Because?
He sounds more thoughtful and interesting than the other Democratic candidates, but that may be damning with faint praise.
Why would it grow the economy, or why would that offset the cost?
Either way I’m probably not qualified to answer that.
He sounds more thoughtful and interesting than the main Republican one as well, but that praise is so faint it’s barely there.
Why would it grow the economy.
The reason Yang gives is that there are usually things like car repairs or buying a new consumer product which people put off based on having no money. Giving them 1000$ per month would then mean they can pay for these kinds of things. Demand goes up and that leads to new jobs.
Maybe it’s best that candidates don’t sound too thoughtful or interesting.
All else equal, boring plans are probably safer than interesting plans.
Of modern American politicians, the one who sounded to me as though he would be most fun to have an hour or two long conversation with on an airplane was Newt Gingrich. I somehow got on a mailing list for tape cassettes of talks he gave and listened to some of them.
Of course, there might well be other and more interesting ones whom I don’t have any equivalent information on.
Unless you raised that money through taxation, in which case someone else has $1000 less to spend buying things. Or you borrowed that money, in which case someone else gets turned down for the $1000 loan they were going to use to buy things. Or you printed that money, in which case inflation happens and you find out that people’s aggregate buying-things ability is $1000 less than it would have been under a naive pre-inflation calculation.
Also, people who receive a windfall that they can’t count on lasting more than an election cycle into the future, often put it into their rainy-day fund rather than rush out to buy things, whereas people who suddenly have to make a $1000 tax payment are more likely to reduce spending to compensate.
This strikes me as the same sort of foolish wishful thinking that leads Republicans to believe that all tax cuts will automagically pay for themselves with increased tax revenue because Laffer Curve FTW! Count me out.
The more persuasive argument, is that the UBI is good because it doesn’t attempt to maximize economic value, but people’s material well-being instead.
Implement the VAT and scale it so it disproportionately affects goods that rich people buy
Yeah, because every one of them is going to be buying an even bigger super yacht than the other guy every six months, hence Profit!
I have a strong suspicion really rich people manage their expenditure so that it all goes via accountancy tricks that they end up not having to pay taxes on. If I can put down my super-jet as “company jet” rather than “my own private jet for my own personal use” and have it treated as a corporate asset, even though in practice as the “company” jet I’m the only one who gets to use it, of course that’s what I’m going to do. And good luck hitting my company with high levels of VAT for business expenses, because we and every other big corporation are going to be lobbying to have corporate VAT rates as low as possible.
I think Dorothy L. Sayers had it right in Murder Must Advertise, where Lord Peter learns that businesses don’t make money off rich people buying stuff, businesses make money off the middle and lower classes buying stuff because (a) in the aggregate, there are more of them than there are of rich people (b) they have to buy more of it to replace what wears out (c) you can coax or entice them into aspirational spending:
To make the figures come out, you are going to have to extend the VAT to more than simply “what rich people disproportionately buy” – look at all the celebs who ‘borrow’ frocks and jewellery etc for the Oscars or big charity bashes, and don’t actually spend one red cent themselves.
I’m very suspicious of that argument because it can be applied equally well for any policy.
The “grow the economy” think looks like classic broken window economics. If you take from the economy with a broad-based tax like a VAT, and give back with a broad-based benefit, there’s no reason to believe the net effect will be greater than zero.
Isn’t the reason very straight-forward? The VAT will be designed to affect the rich disproportionately. Rich people obviously don’t spend all of their money. UBI will go disproportionately to poor people (because there are more poor people). Poor people basically spend all of their money immediately.
And the VAT doesn’t pay entirely for UBI, so there’s more money entering than leaving.
Right. But the money they don’t spend, if it isn’t taken from them, they loan to other people who want to spend it.
Rich people put approximately zero dollars into Giant Money Bins. Poor people often do put money into mattresses.
During a recession: “Now is the time for stimulus spending! Here are all of Keynes’s arguments.”
When not in a recession: “Shut the fuck up, we need to goose consumption spending!”
As John points out, this doesn’t help. If you actually manage a VAT which taxes the rich disproportionately (which is rather unlikely while still getting significant revenue), you’ve moved some of the spending of the rich from investment to other people’s consumption. This does not grow the economy.
That’s borrowed. I don’t think you can borrow the economy to wealth either.
I’m for a VAT, but once you start saying “let’s scale it so that it disproportionately hits the rich” you are now implementing some different beast but slapping the label “VAT” on it to fool me.
Everyone is going to try to make sure their stuff doesn’t get counted as “stuff the rich use.” You can’t just say “my platform is Moloch-proof.” Saying you are Moloch-proof is probably the worst evidence possible of Moloch-proof-ness.
His policies don’t seem all that reasonable. To me he has 2x the maximum amount of utopianism in him for me to consider him reasonable. UBI and VAT are exactly exemplary of that. The UBI trusts people more than I really am willing to, and the VAT trusts politicians more than I am.
I don’t like our welfare state currently, and part of that is because its too complex, but also part is because I don’t think either achieves goals worth achieving. But, in favor of the current welfare system (vs. UBI) is I have high confidence levels in the depravity of my fellow man. And that UBI is gonna go up in smoke a lot of the time, and into needles a lot of the time, and into bottles, etc. And I would be fine with that IF humans lacked compassion. But we have compassion which is why the welfare state exists at all, so in the end we are going to end up giving a lot of people their UBI + what already exists. And his idea of the “opt out” is the ultimate example of his naive utopianism. When John Smith and Joe Johnson OD on heroine they bought with a UBI without having insurance, Yang will make hospitals treat them, and pay for their prescriptions and dialysis and a place to sleep, etc.
(I assume “choice” is a typo for “chance.”)
I’m not sure.
Suppose half of the primary voters are enthusiastic progressives with all the views you describe and the other half are traditional Democratic voters who don’t buy into much of the current left orthodoxy. Four or five progressives split their half, two or three non-progressives split the other half. Seen from that standpoint, the real threat to Yang isn’t from Warren et. al., it’s from Biden.
You are correct, blame the wrong wording on chocolate overload this Easter Sunday 🙂
I think Yang, like the rest of them, is caught between the vocal (whether or not they’ll actually turn out to vote) progressives and the traditional Democrats. In order not to be drowned out in the online rush of condemnation, they have to plug the progressive line (which will turn off the traditionals, who rightly recognise “a VAT rate is not going to be levied on Richie McFatcat alone, it’s going to hit me in the purse or wallet”) and then the appeal to traditionalists (as in “I’m not going to expect every single building in the US to meet zero emissions within five years” type proposals) are going to be loudly booed by the progressives, who will refuse to vote for a compromise like that.
I agree Warren has shot her bolt, but I don’t see Biden or even Sanders as being the ultimate choice. All the doubts about old age and health that were raised about Trump apply every bit as much to Sanders, and Biden has the “old white guy” handicap in this modern race.
I think Yang will do “better than expected” but as a realistic candidate when it comes down to the crunch? Not expecting him to get the nod.
@DavidFriedman
Prompted by your post I thought to look at some polls to see what the relative strengths of “progressive” vs. “traditional” Democrats is (and I think I’ll do a top level post about it in the next “hidden” open thread), but I wanted to first share what seemed notable to me:
1) Both the social “liberal” and “socialist” contingent of the Democratic Party is indeed more than just a few years ago, those who class themselves as “liberal” instead of “moderate” or “conservative” is much higher than in years past, and nearly one-in-ten will now call themselves “socialist” (whether they mean Cuba/North Korea/Venezuela or Canada/Denmark/Norway the polls don’t show), which is probably the highest percentage of Democratic Party voters calling themselves that, at least since the 1940’s, if not ever.
2) Unlike the majority of Republican Party voters who say they think the G.O.P. still isn’t “conservative” enough and is still too “moderate”, the majority of Democratic Party voters say they think that their party isn’t “moderate” enough, and is too left/liberal.
3) The majority of Democratic Party voters has never even heard of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, in many ways the “moderate” wing of the Democratic Party knows less about the “Progressive” wing than Republicans do.
4) “Twitter” Democrats and “off-line” (still the majority) have different views and demographics.
Democrats who post on social media tend to be younger, whiter, more educated, concentrate in expensive cities, and are much more likely to call themselves “progressives” than the majority of Democratic Party voters who tend to be older, more often union members, much more often are African Americans than “on-line” Democrats, a bit more often other non-whites, and are more likely to call themselves “moderates”.
A telling indicator is that after it was publicized that the Democratic Governor of Virginia had a yearbook photo where he’s in ‘black-face’ white Democrats in Virginia were more likely to say he should resign than black Virginian Democrats, and white Democrats nation wide were more likely to blame the fortunes of black Americans on continuing racism than black Democrats and black Americans in general themselves (though still more than all Americans in general).
5) Democrats in “Red States” are more likely to be older, blacker, and self-identified “moderates”, and they still have a say in who is the Presidential nominee, despite living in areas that elect fewer Democrats to Congress and local offices.
Conclusions: ‘Leftists’/’liberals’/’progressives’ are definitely a growing contingent of the Democratic Party coalition and are much more likely to have their voices heard than the “moderates” by journalists (the national press mostly live in the same areas as ‘progressives’) but “moderates” and those who think the Party should be “more moderate” (I presume in order to win in general elections) are still the majority of the Party, but they also tend to be less engaged and decide which candidate to support later.
Biden’s decades old anti-abortion, and anti-bussing statements hurt him more among younger white Democrats than among older black Democrats (who ironically seem to be more forgiving of old enough indications of what may be regarded as anti-black attitudes).
The energy is definitely on the “progressives” side (who want to “build a movement”), but the numbers are still on the side of the “moderates” (who just want to win the current election, and prefer “half a loaf to none”).
Biden and Sanders are currently the leading candidates, but it’s way too earlier to pick a winner now, if an African-American candidate (Booker? Harris?) can get enough name recognition and young white liberal support, then they may grab enough support to get the nomination, historically the candidate thought of as more moderate will win, but I’d say they’ll have a fight similar to the 2016 Clinton/Sanders struggle.
The odds I give to win the Democratic Party nomination are:
Biden: 20% chance to win
Sanders: 15% chance.
Harris 17% chance
Booker: 13% chance
Warren 10% chance (many Democrats agree with her, fewer think she’ll win)
Someone else I don’t know (because it’s still early): 25% chance to win.
If nominated for the general election I’d give:
Biden’s odds to win against Trump as 52%,
Sanders at 45%,
Harris at 40%,
Warren at 35%,
and I’ve no sense of the odds of the other candidates.
Part of what may be happening here is that older people remember farther back.
If you are twenty something and grew up in a politically left of center environment, you may feel that everyone except bigots and crazy people agrees that abortion should be legal, gay sex and even gay marriage is fine, discrimination against blacks is horrible. If you are sixty, even in the same environment, you remember back to a time when lots of what you then considered reasonable people rejected some or all of those views.
@DavidFriedman
I think there’s also another aspect of the generation gap involved, my grandparents generation that first cast a ballot for F.D.R. is now mostly dead, and there’s just not that as many older whites who are Democratic Party voters, anymore, while older blacks still vote for Johnson’s Party, but are more moderate than the youngsters.
The polls show that young whites are more likely to be “Left” and Democrats than older whites, but I haven’t seen any polls that compare young blacks to old whites, I have seen some polls that show that older Hispanic men are more likely to vote for Republicans than other Hispanics, so my guess is that younger blacks will be more “progressive” than older blacks as well, but not to the extent that young whites are as they tend to be less likely to have a college diploma which (in the young) correlates with progressivism (I wish there was a better label).
I may be very wrong (and we will never find out) but I have a hunch that if only and all of black Americans over 60 years old, and an equal number of non-black Americans over 60 selected randomly, or even an equal number from only Republicans had the could decide from among themselves who would govern the U.S.A. they’d have produce a government that less of all citizens “Left” or “Right” would object to if it was kept a secret that most of the Nation was disenfranchised.
On the larger “culture war”; I’m only 50 years old and don’t remember earlier than the 1970’s, but my sense is that “the Left” in the U.S.A. was louder and much more violent in the ’70’s and early ’80’s than today, and “the Right” was louder and more violent in the ’90’s than today, but never at the level of the Left in my lifetime and far less than say the 1920”s.
1970’s and ’80’s the Left was louder, 1990’s and 2009-2010 the Right had mostly been louder, and after 2015 both have been getting louder and a bit more violent, but we’re still nowhere near the political violence of the 1970’s, or the first half of the 20th century, with the 1860’s (of course) the greatest period of political violence in the U.S.A.
Those who decry an increasingly shrill “culture war” are right, it is louder than, and slightly more violent than during most of their lifetimes, but it’s still less than historic norms.
OK, I’m going to confess confusion about your confusion here: you pay sales tax at the till. The rest of “state and city taxes on top of federal taxes” are income taxes, and you file the returns for them all at the same time. Sales taxes are nowhere near as hard as you’re making it. It’s a minor irritation when you first buy something in a jurisdiction, but once you know what the rate is, you just use simple arithmetic. For example, I just took a trip to Illinois, where they have a 9% sales tax. If you buy $8.00 worth of stuff, you pay $.72 of tax. If you’ve got a partial dollar and you’re not fancy with the mental arithmetic, you can just round up to the next whole dollar and you’ll overestimate by a few cents.
As a matter of fact, I despise the very idea of VAT, because you don’t know what you’re paying. Gas prices include the taxes invisibly here, and it’s irritating because I don’t know how much I’m paying in taxes vs. what I’m paying for the product. The lack of transparency is frustrating.
Can you not just look up the gas price tax rate and multiply the price by it?
There isn’t a single gas tax rate. It’s not terribly complicated, but federally there’s an 18-cent-per-gallon tax on gasoline, and then you have widely varying state and local taxes on top of that. California for example levies a 55-cents-a-gallon flat tax, plus a 2.25% sales tax (which is not the same as the state’s ~6% sales tax on everything). And I’ve seen local taxes too, which are uncommon but can get up to about a buck a gallon in especially woke localities.
While the total isn’t exactly hard to calculate it’s not trivial either, especially since the order in which they apply isn’t clear from a Google lookup.
You are ignoring property taxes.
Well, you don’t normally pay property taxes at the till, nor did Deiseach seem to think that you do, so I didn’t think they were too relevant to my point. There’s also room taxes, airline ticket taxes, and various other things that aren’t parceled out on a percentage basis, though I don’t know how those work in other countries. It’s possible that they get rolled into the price of a room/ticket in Europe the way the VAT does and the gas taxes do here. Those types of fixed fees can be a little more difficult to account for, but they’re also generally given to you when you book.
I was just pushing back against the notion that sales taxes in the US are particularly difficult, because it seems to be a common European notion that they’re this arcane, baffling process to deal with at the register; my mom taught me and my sister how to do them when we were six.
Edit: I do have to acknowledge a complexity I didn’t account for in my original post: some things don’t get sales tax. I know in Michigan groceries are in this bucket, so there if you want to know your taxes before reaching the register you’d have to only add up your non-food purchases. I still don’t find it too difficult, and if you’re just trying to make sure you have enough cash out you can still estimate based on your total purchase.
He wants UBI and universal medicare and to keep all the other welfare, which makes him basically Santa Claus for NEETs. I understand the appeal here (UBI) but I don’t think these are at all good policies.
He does not want to keep all the other welfare. UBI would not stack with most welfare programs.
But all those programs are still around, so people get to choose whichever’s bigger. And he doesn’t say which programs. And there’s universal medicare which does stack. Further, any “compromise” which could make it through Congress would be “no cuts in welfare AND UBI”. Also his 10% VAT will be woefully insufficient to fund it, it would be more like 20%. And would require a constitutional amendment. So basically Yang’s UBI is far too expensive as proposed, would be even more expensive as passed, and there’s no practical way to pay for it.
Yeah, and in all cases where UBI is bigger, they will choose UBI (and in some cases where UBI is smaller, they might still be UBI because it comes without bureaucracy). This reduces the price tag. Obviously, the remaining price tag is still large. You can’t do UBI without it being expensive.
Just as importantly, even if his UBI opt out idea passed, it would immediately expand to a “both” program, as UBI choosing people end up without food and housing because they spend all their checks on vices.
UBI would not stack with most welfare programs.
Unwinding all the other welfare programmes would be an absolute fucking nightmare, pardon the use of Strong Language. It wouldn’t be as easy as a straight switch for Mary Singlemother or Joe Unemployed to move to UBI from whatever benefits they are currently receiving, and they might even end up worse off.
So you’ll have a two-tier (at least) system of UBI for those who want to opt-in, and the existing programmes for those already on them or who don’t want to go on UBI, and the juggling of finances to pay for both, the cuts that are going to have to be made, and the replacements of some payments is going to be a long and complicated process to undertake.
The basic idea may be sound, but the assumption “and everybody just switches painlessly over in the morning to their EFT payment into their bank account where the social welfare department automatically updates that now they’re on UBI and not their previous benefit” is not gonna happen, as anyone here who’s dealt with switching large systems on custom and incompatible software and regulations about different schemes which all have a string of exceptions and are mutually inapplicable can tell you.
I completely fail to see the argument here. UBI has simplicity and lack of conditions as a core feature. If you are on some other programs that don’t stack and want to have UBI instead, you can just stop applying for them. That reduces bureaucracy, it doesn’t increase it. Existing programs are very unlikely to make it difficult for you to stop receiving their services.
UBI has simplicity and lack of conditions as a core feature.
https://xkcd.com/927/
You are adding an entirely new system without unwinding the old system. No matter what, you are making the system more complex, for the people managing it and the people using it.
Existing programs are very unlikely to make it difficult for you to stop receiving their services.
You are going to have to check that people aren’t double-dipping, getting both UBI and the old program at once. Those existing programs are going to care.
The best benefit of UBI is that you don’t have to fill out forms to prove to the government that you are incompetent in order to get benefits. But if someone doesn’t fit under the UBI tent for some reason — and it’s obvious that if anyone doesn’t, it’s going to be the poor and those least able to fill out forms — they are going to have an even harder time getting services.
Wait, is this an elaborate plan to kill off the welfare queens? Is Wang a crypto-Reaganite?
Don’t rely on PredictIt. If I had to choose a single source, I would use Betfair (also), but you should look at both.
In this comment you refer only to rank order. That agrees between the two sites. But later you quote 10% from PredictIt. However, most betting markets are designed to encourage excitement by biasing towards long-shots. Betfair has this problem, but to a lesser degree and puts him <5%.
Tangent: electionbettingodds currently has the odds of “other” (someone other than Trump, Pence, Kasich and a couple of others) winning the Republican primary as 7.8%. That seems extraordinarily high to me (compare the “other” odds for the Democrat primary, which seems wide open, at 8.5%).
That may be coming out of the chance that Trump won’t run, either for health reasons or because he is Trump: “You people didn’t appreciate me properly in my first term, now you can go to hell and lose out on all the great things I would have done in my second.”
If Trump doesn’t run, I don’t think there is an obvious alternative candidate.
I’ve never managed to see a political bet on betfair. I’m assuming it’s a region thing but your link doesn’t even work if I use a proxy.
However, your ‘other’ link works, and I’m ok with using that as my main source from now on.
By the way, Yang has the highest P(winning general | winning primary) out of all candidates (that I checked, anyway).He is at 69% while Sanders is at 58% and Biden at 60% and Harris at 53%.
You’re computing P(general | primary) by dividing small numbers. Since the small numbers are garbage, the ratio is even worse.
But I bet you’re misinterpreting it, confusing P(general | primary) with P(general | do(primary)). If he wins the primary, that gives us information about him. Until we have that information, it’s not a reason to believe that he is a viable candidate in the general.
P(A | B) = P(A \cap B) / P(B). In this case B \subset A, so P(A | B) = P(A) / P(B).
Explain why this doesn’t work, please.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propagation_of_uncertainty
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causal_inference
I oppose the UBI, but I was getting ready to get on the Yang bandwagon, because the UBI is less-broken than other alternatives.
And then I look at his policies. Many of them I like. Many others I appreciate are approached from the standpoint of implementing good policies — but pretty much all politicians are trying to implement what they think are good policies. It’s just that you or I disagree.
I also see several things in there which I think are Bad Ideas, or Not The Government’s Business, and it makes me somehow especially annoyed. It *shouldn’t*, because if someone lists out 80 policies and I like 50+ of them, that’s better than the devil I don’t know. But somehow I’m hardening against him, for what is probably irrationality, and what is probably the reason more experienced politicians wait until the last possible second to spell out their proposals.
That’s an interesting reaction which I don’t think I share (though I don’t strongly disagree with any of Yang’s policies so idk). I definitely think you should do a rational calculation when deciding whom to vote for. Which could include all sorts of other factors, like electability or how competent they are at implementing their platform.
Except you don’t have to vote at all.
If you recognize the low probability that your vote will affect the outcome and are not sufficiently altruistic for the number of people affected to outweigh that, voting becomes a consumption activity—you do it because you enjoy doing it.
Voting for a fool or a rogue doesn’t become pleasurable just because the other guy is worse.
I think what you need to examine, rather than the policies, is why you think Yang thinks those policies are a good idea. I think there is a significant likelihood (for you) that this conflict is caused by him and you coming to the same conclusions for different reasons.
I don’t always like to use analogies, but this is a simplifying analogy, so I think it works well:
Mayoral election in your town has become, basically a 1 issue campaign: The water tower. You want a new water tower because the existing one doesn’t provide you enough pressure so you often have to boil water to ensure its safe. Candidate A opposes the new water tower because it will likely cause crops in the town this summer to face water shortages during the rebuild; Candidate B supports the tower because he generally likes public works, and is selling higher water pressure for showers.
Now, lets say you are not a farmer, but you do know some, also you are not going to personally profit from the rebuild (aside from the boiling), but you do recognize that public works often go wrong in your town. Who do you vote for? Obviously candidate A because you know candidate B does not look at things the way you do. B thinks differently than you. A thinks like you do, but he came to a different conclusion.
Remember when Scott read the Very Short Introduction volume on Marx? By some philosopher named Singer? That’s a common name, there must be tons of philosophers named Singer. It turns out that it was Peter Singer. Why did Oxford choose him to write this volume?
Surely the author affected Scott’s decision to chose this volume. Why didn’t he follow the standard practice and write out the first name the first time he mentioned the author? Why did no one in the comments mention this? Several people implied that Singer was an idiosyncratic choice, but I only count two comments that imply that he was someone I might have heard of.
I’m not sure this really has any effect on my interpretation, but I’m bewildered that I managed to miss it.
Peter Singer is the main inspiration behind the Effective Altruism movement, something started by self declared Rationalists. It’s not a surprise Scott would assume his readers know that.
And he’d expect his readers to know who Chesterton is, but when he reviewed a book by Chesterton, he gave the initials, despite it being a much rarer surname.
For what it’s worth, I think my response was “Singer? As in Peter Singer?” and then looking it up on Amazon. It does seem like an odd choice of author from an outsider’s perspective, but I assume he’s done lots of stuff in academic philosophy that outsiders don’t hear as much about as his utilitarian work.
It was totally reasonable for you to assume that and not investigate. But your assumption is wrong, in fact backwards. His utilitarian work was ignored by the public until EA, while his animal rights work (book 1975 + activism) was very influential. You might be interested in the 2006 version of his wikipedia page. Even today, he is most famous as the infanticide bogeyman (1979).
In the comments, David Moss says,
This seems an anachronistic reference to A Darwinian Left (1999), which explicitly rejects Marx. But Singer’s volume on Marx is from 1980, at which point he had rarely mentioned him.
His animal-welfare work is his utilitarian work. As are his positions on infanticide (“post-natal abortion”) and all the other hot-button topics that make him notorious in many circles.
When I said I assume he’s done other work, I meant work other than utilitarian ethics, like political philosophy or something. Which would include his explicit work on Marx. Though now you mention it I had heard of A Darwinian Left which might already qualify (I haven’t read it).
Yeah, whenever I see him mentioned by someone other than rationalists or EAs it’s almost invariably someone outraged by his most mainstream-taboo positions such as those on infanticide or bestiality.
I automatically assume “Singer” when mentioned by any EA or EA-adjacent or Rationalist or Rationalist-adjacent blog or person is going to mean “Peter Singer” and I just as automatically skip over whatever the Guru had to say.
That’s a bit sharp. I’m sorry. But the reason I automatically assume “Singer = Peter” is that he does function as a sort of guru figure to my outside view of it.
I’m not sure “guru” is an accurate description. I’m pretty involved in EA which is probably the most pro-Peter-Singer community you’re likely to find, and while we all think he’s great and so on I’m not sure it’s a “study the works of the Master, so that you too may become wise” kind of relationship. Maybe a term like “founding father” or something would be a better description of our attitude.
I get recommended Parfit’s work quite a bit more often than Singer’s.
A singer is just someone who tries to be good
I just kind-of assumed that was Peter Singer without it even occurring to me it might be someone else with the same last name.
Zizek v Peterson debate:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78BFFq_8XvM
Preregistering the prediction that it’s a garbage fire.
[Meme: slovenly anime man staring at a lobster hanging in midair. Caption: Is this ideology?]
I thought it was going to be this: https://youtu.be/nNuvcoQYnlQ
The entertainment value of that is higher tbh.
Peterson’s platform would be interesting to me if it were well-informed. If he were a knife, I’d call him “sharp, but specialized for shellfish, and untempered,” and I wouldn’t buy him. I like what he does (even though I disagree with him pretty strongly), but I wish he’d do his homework. I’d love a version of this debate I could sink my teeth into, but Peterson has the texture of soft tofu and it puts me off my lunch.
That’s an impressive run of mixed metaphors there.
What do you think about Zizek?
What do you think about Zizek?
Zizek is what I’d expect from an Eastern European academic post-Marxist philosopher now living and working in the West, so I don’t find anything strange, new or startling there.
I would expect him to be deeper in the theory than Peterson, for example, and way sharper at the dialectical part of it, having cut his teeth on arguing heavy (and heavily-politicised) concepts within a very particular framework, while at the same time not being all starry-eyed about the West even if he does critique the structures of his background.
A lot more rigour and dense referential stacking of brick upon brick, therefore. And Peterson is handicapped not by being a Jungian, but by not being Jungian enough – Freudo-Marxism versus Jungian-tinged philosophy-lite is always going to be a smackdown of the Jungian if they’re not mystically and conceptually dense enough to challenge the density of the Marxism 🙂
What Deiseach said, mostly. But just for you, in the knife department Zizek is a utility knife (which, despite the name, offers no additional utility over a chef’s knife and is technically but not practically useful). Wouldn’t buy him either. In terms of texture, he’s… beef jerkey, probably. Chewier than he’s worth most of the time.
Also, @Deiseach
I mean you’re right, but the world in which the debate was Jung vs Lacan: Answers to Questions You’ll Never Have is probably a worse one than this.
Okay, I watched it so y’all don’t have to.
My first impression, as the moderator introduces the two, is wow this audience is annoying. There’s no heckling, but the clapping and whooping still interrupts practically every sentence. Peterson has the first 30 minutes; Zizek has the next 30.
10:00-12:00: I’m not impressed in Peterson’s opening. He starts by psychoanalyzing Marxists, and Marx and Engels in particular, having just reread the Communist Manifesto for the first time in 40 years. Peterson says the book has a high chaff-to-wheat ratio and that Marx and Engels exhibit what Jung calls “typical thinking”: having a thought and just accepting it as true before subjecting it to critical thinking. Peterson says he’s going to go on to outline 10 fundamental “axioms” (he loves that word) to Marxism. He says those axioms are unquestioned in the book, and that they are still held sacrosanct by contemporary academics, and Peterson’s goal here is to question them.
1. “History is to be viewed primarily as an economic class struggle.”
12:00-16:30: Peterson admits that viewing history as struggle between levels of a hierarchy is true so far as struggle like that is omnipresent biologically, but that making it about economic class struggle is mischaracterizing it: class struggle, indeed, predates not only capitalism but human history.
16:30-17:15: Peterson next objects that there are many reasons beyond the economic that people struggle, and that if anything, our primary struggle has been against nature—what Peterson would usually call “chaos,” I think—which he says doesn’t seem to figure into Marxism at all. Indeed, we seem mostly to be cooperating against nature, leading into his next point….
17:15-18:30: Peterson objects that hierarchy at least seems to have positive effects, another thing missing from Marxism. Hierarchy, Peterson seems to think, is one of the things helping us in our struggle against nature, that it is necessary for us to solve complex problems. It’s not clear to me at this point whether Peterson believes that hierarchy as we know it always existed, or whether it was developed by humans as a kind of social technology. If it always existed then the question to my mind is what changed such that it’s so useful today? How did we ever go from prehistory to history? Couldn’t the answer be one of material accumulation and hoarding of wealth? So perhaps Peterson thinks it was developed at some point. But a) that feeds into Marxist contentions that there is no “human nature” and hierarchy can be done away with just as it was adopted, and 2) that somewhat undercuts Peterson’s own first objection that hierarchy in a looser sense is always present.
18:30-20:30: Peterson next objects that Marx views class struggle as binary, but that it’s hard to firmly divide proletariat and bourgeoisie. He says this problem is best exemplified by the Red Terror, in which the list of ways one can be identified as oppressor grew and grew, until it included even the kulaks—viz., peasants who owned their own farms.
20:30-21:30: Peterson continues, saying that when you have a binary division, you implicitly have put all the good on one side and all the evil on the other. I don’t even remotely see how this follows unless, together with Peterson’s previous point, the boundaries are porous: that enables the oppressed to place practically whomever they want in the category of oppressor such that the term “bourgeoisie” is evacuated of any precise meaning beyond enemy.
2. The dictatorship of the proletariat:
21:30-23:00:
Sorry, I know it’s a long quote. I had to, first because Peterson wouldn’t just define the damn thing, and second because this actually follows topically from his previous points about the binary class divide and his admission early on that the Manifesto is a pamphlet, not an academic treatise. So credit where it’s due: I’ve sometimes felt listening to Peterson like he’s meandering, but rhetorically this is quite a good transition.
23:00-23:10: Lol, what is Zizek chatting with the moderator about in the background? Is he pantomiming?
23:10-26:15: Peterson makes a flurry of objections: that Marx is hypothesizing first that the binary division can be made, second that the economy can be centralized such that instead of a market running things economically you have a few people doing it, third that you can choose a minority of proles to run things (because per two it will have to be a minority), fourth that this minority won’t itself be corrupted by newfound power, fifth that they can even make competent decisions about this newly centralized economy. He sixth objects that social pressure being a primary determiner of human behavior, something he says Marxists believe, the proles can be expected to act just like the evil capitalists they’ve replaced.
Peterson seventh and finally objects that the idea that capitalists weren’t themselves producing labor is absurd, because an effective manager can extract more wealth from his ventures than an ineffective manager—If I understand him, he got here by way of pointing out that the proles put in charge will not understand the work that capitalists were doing for their ventures to succeed and consequently will not even understand that there is wisdom which centrally running an economy requires.
[continued]
3. Marx’s criticism of profit.
26:15-28:45: Peterson seems to have backed right into the third big idea with his last objection. He restates it the right way round this time, explaining that the capitalist, by managing his workers well he builds a profit and that, first, profit is (figuratively or literally) how he gets through the winter. Second, profit is how a business grows, and if the product is valuable, good that it grows! Third, profit is a useful constraint on wasted labor: the prospect of not making a profit keeps you from spending resources on ventures that aren’t worthwhile. Peterson gives himself as an example here: he wanted to make his psychological services a for-profit venture on the grounds that “there were forms of stupidity that I couldn’t engage in because I would be punished by the market enough to eradicate the enterprise.”
This was another nice transition to an interesting series of objections, but I think Peterson lets capitalism off the hook too easily with his original objection. A Marxist can agree that an effective manager extracts more wealth than an ineffective manager—where he will disagree is whether that means treating the worker well. Doesn’t the perennially criticized treatment of workers at Wal-Mart or Amazon suggest that effective management doesn’t mean humane management?
4. The centralized economy will be hyperproductive.
29:00-32:00: The era of smooth transitions is over. Peterson leads into this one by way of his criticisms of the previous two ideas, but also implicitly criticizing several more that, to my mind, should constitute some of these 10, like the alienation of labor (mentioned briefly at 30:25) or the utopia ushered in following the revolution (mentioned 30:35). Peterson’s time is beginning to run out, and since this is my first watch, I will charitably guess he’s skipping some of his 10 to get to a stronger criticism for the end. This is a damn shame, though, because I’d really like to hear his thoughts about the alienation of labor. Wheat or chaff, Peterson?
Anyway, that the economy will be hyperproductive is apparently not even his number 4, because he’s implicitly criticized it already—and his objections that follow are aimed at the Marxist eschaton. He first objects that Marx’s vision of post-capitalist man is very shallow: why would everyone settle for bread and circuses and creative labor? According to Dostoevsky, Peterson says, we “were built for trouble,” and we should expect people, handed everything on a platter, to cast it away “just to see what happens.”
I agree that a minority of folks would do just that, and we have evidence of that today even. But is that a force strong enough to destroy that society? Peterson hasn’t gone nearly far enough to show that.
5. Revolution is necessary.
32:00-33:30: He doesn’t even define this one, and his criticism is disappointing. Capitalism is more effective at producing wealth, Peterson says, than anything before it, something extensively documented in the Manifesto itself. So why is a bloody revolution necessary to bring about a change at all? Just let capitalism play itself out, and we’ll get the post-scarcity utopia Marxists dream of anyway.
This is a bizarre objection for the obvious reason that Marxists believe “let[ting] capitalism play itself out” is both hellish and a necessary step in the process. Remember that idea about capitalism inevitably driving down wages that you dispatched in a single sentence earlier, Peterson? That’s what the Marxists think end-stage capitalism looks like, and that’s what is going to prompt the revolution! This is not a case of Peterson getting ahead of himself like before: it’s simply incoherent.
33:30-35:00: Peterson psychoanalyzes Marx some more, calling him narcissistic this time. Yawn.
35:00-38:30: He has perhaps realized his mistake, spending his last few minutes, saying that free markets produce inequality, yes, but also wealth at all levels, while less free markets have only succeeded in producing inequality. He lists off some facts about economic growth in capitalist economies. The purpose of this, evidently, is to show that the race to the bottom Marx predicted has not been borne out. I’m not sure what the point is, though, because 1) Peterson already assumed it earlier for the purpose of his arguments, and 2) the Marxist will simply respond, as (in my impression) they have always responded, that the race to the bottom hasn’t happened yet because we keep finding more resources in more places to extract. I mean, for heaven’s sake, the idea he chooses to close on is saying grandiloquently that the solution to poverty in undeveloped countries is capitalism, and so far as I can tell Marxists would agree! They will simply continue that when we’ve done that as many times, in as many places, as we can, we will experience a race to the bottom and bloody revolution followed by a communist utopia.
My problem here isn’t that I disagree with Peterson about free markets being preferable—I absolutely do agree—my problem is that he’s doing everything but showing where the actual flaw in Marx’s argument is, and he’s doing it in backwards order no less.
6-10. Oh you sweet summer child.
[continued]
Zizek’s turn next.
38:30-40:00: Zizek starts by noting that both he and Peterson are marginalized by the academic community, so it’s a great irony for him to be here defending the left-liberal ideology against neocons when he receives most of his attacks from left-liberals these days.
40:00-41:30: Zizek says he will illustrate the relationship between happiness, communism, and capitalism with the example of China. China has in the last few decades successfully combined their totalitarian state with capitalist economic practices, bringing about the very growth and wealth that Peterson praised, and have even defended it on the grounds of greater happiness, in a Confucian “harmonious society” sense—while not, perhaps, actually making anybody happier. If we’ve learned anything from psychoanalysis, he says, it’s that humans are good at sabotaging our pursuit of happiness.
41:30-42:30: Happiness, Zizek says, is a confused notion; it relies on our own inability to get what we want. We pretend to want things we don’t really want, and the worst thing for us is getting what we really want. Human life, Zizek concludes, doesn’t consist in pursuing happiness; it consists in finding a meaningful cause beyond our desires.
1. First qualification
42:30-43:00: Zizek stops to qualify that we can’t just accept a cause from some authority; it is our responsibility for finding it. So finding a cause doesn’t consist in just being a servant or instrument of that cause, because we’re free individuals first. At this point I have to stop and caution that I’m not really sure I’m getting the sequence of ideas right—I think this is what he’s saying, but he’s moving a bit more quickly through his arguments than Peterson was and the conclusion he’s working toward isn’t clear at the outset.
43:00-43:45: Zizek observes that when authorities lose their authority they cannot get it back, and if it looks like they have, it’s a “postmodern fake.” Trump is an example of this when it comes to traditional values, he says, and can be seen in his combination of them with obscenity. I have no idea where he’s getting the idea that authority cannot be regained, and while I agree that Trump is a performer, I don’t think it follows that “traditional values” cannot regain their authority. I really, really don’t want to get into the weeds here, because dammit this talk is not about Trump; suffice it to say I would like an actual argument to back up this assertion.
43:45-44:45: Conservatives, Zizek says, believe that we’ve lost reliance on a transcendent being (i.e. religion) for our values, and without that there’s nothing stopping us from simply trying to fulfill our desires. They believe that religion is needed for bad people to do good things. Zizek on the other hand agrees with Weinstein: without religion good people will do good things, but with religion, good people will do bad things. These quotes are so stupidly general that my only reply is, “There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”
44:45-47:00: Dostoevsky, Zizek says, likewise warned that without religion everything is permitted, but if 9/11 proves anything, it’s that people will do anything in the name of God. Yawn. Zizek finally gets to the point: this is the problem with ideology, it makes people do these bad things. This, confirmed around 45:45, is what Zizek meant at the beginning when he said that we shouldn’t be servants or instruments of our cause, but it’s not clear to me yet what his alternative is.
He continues, saying that we must accept the burden of our freedom, but don’t let that burden become an idol. Don’t become obsessed with your own suffering or make the renunciation of pleasure a pleasure. White left-liberals, Zizek says, self-denigrate so that they can retain their position: I think what he’s saying is that their participation in identity politics amounts to hanging a lampshade on their own sinfulness, but I’m not sure how that connects with his point.
2. Second qualification
47:00-49:00: Lacan said that jealousy can be pathological even if the jealous person is right; likewise, Zizek says, Nazi antisemitism can be (and was) pathological even if Jews did various terrible things (which they did not). Jealousy for the husband had become a part of his identity; antisemitism was likewise bound up inextricably with a Nazi ideology of a harmonious society of cooperation, so an ‘intruder’ race like the Jews could not be tolerated. Zizek analogizes this once more to rightwing opposition to taking in more refugees: even if there are serious problems with bringing in more refugees (and Zizek admits this), the reasons for opposing it are pathological, he says.
49:00-52:15: Hitler, Zizek says, was a storyteller, and a successful one at that, for the story he told about the Jews. Ideology, he says, is the story we tell ourselves about ourselves, and it’s always a lie, and must be contrasted with what we actually do; I think the “harmonious society invaded by intruders” is the story Zizek says Hitler was telling. The alt-right today likewise has a story, in which cultural Marxism has pervaded society and is responsible for sexual promiscuity, when in fact what the alt-right too is doing is responsible for the very symptoms it has detected. Zizek references the book Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism by Daniel Bell about how capitalism undermines its own moral foundations; the alt-right is blaming cultural Marxism, it seems he’s saying, because it doesn’t want to face its own culpability for the mess it’s in.
Longtime commenters may remember a discussion some months back about Bell’s form of argument: arguing that the conditions of a society undermine or inevitably birth its contrary. Marx’s wage race to the bottom, where capitalism destroys itself, is one; I’ve referenced here a few times Why Liberalism Failed by Patrick Deneen, which purports to do this with Western liberalism. Bell’s book, I take it, makes an argument like these.
52:15-52:45: After calling the alt-right Nazis for a while, Zizek turns his attention on left-liberals again, saying Trump is their fault, and that they demonize him because they don’t want to face how their own failures created him.
3. Third qualification
52:45-57:00: “One should stop blaming hedonist egotism for our woes.” The opposite of egotist self-love, Zizek says, is not altruism but envy and resentment. Envy makes one act against one’s interests; evil therefore is more spiritual than goodness. I have not got a clue how Zizek arrived at any of this. But, he says, it’s is why egalitarian should not be accepted naively: because it can be distorted into meaning “we must tear others down so that we can all be equal.”
Zizek stops to note that political correctness seems to many to be excessive, but he feels this is masking its own defeat. Zizek says he wants his egalitarianism to be one in which the most people possible can self-actualized. The left is being pushed back from all corners in America: even free healthcare and free education are failing. Having free healthcare and education, according to Zizek, is just a basic necessity for him and others to do that self-actualization.
If I haven’t seemed terribly critical of the last few sections, let me clarify it’s because I basically don’t know where to begin. First, Zizek has flitted quickly from Hitler to the alt-right and back to Hitler and thence to Trump, to the refugee crisis and the obviousness of free healthcare. I’m no stranger to culture war, but if we started discussing all these things at once I don’t think we could ever stop. Second, it’s because I’m having a lot harder time following the thread of Zizek’s argument. I think I have a good grasp on everything Peterson was saying—I don’t have remotely that confidence with Zizek.
[continued]
4. Zizek’s critique of Peterson
57:00-1:03:00: Zizek first qualifies that he’s not a straw social constructionist. He accepts the importance of our species’ evolutionary history. But (and you knew the but was coming) things being biologically determined in various ways doesn’t prevent their being susceptible to incredible emergent behavior. He gives the example of sexual desire and the weird things our species has done with it: obsessions, courtly love, various perversions. Zizek says the same goes for human tradition.
Zizek points out that in Christianity there is an ideal of a community where family relations, race, sex are abolished. Democracy, he says, is an extension of this; a community where decisions fall to all of us, and not to that of an experts, much less the fake experts of the Soviet Union. Zizek does not believe that power, which he defines as exerting authority, can be grounded in competence; it’s something more “mysterious, even irrational” than that. He admits that yes, one lobster might prevail over others, but does not think that lobster has authority. He doesn’t say it, but it seems to me Zizek is saying that democracy has an authority proper to it that competence does not? This part was very confusing to me.
1:03:00-1:05:30: Zizek begins his conclusion by asking, where does communism fit in here? He admits that capitalism won in the twentieth century, but believes that it faces insurmountable obstacles (what he calls “antagonisms”) in the coming years, including the coming ecological collapse and scientific advancements in genetics. These obstacles are all, he says, to do with the “commons”; the global environment is the obvious case. Capitalism cannot face these obstacles not because its many competent and effective managers are evil, but because in their project to create more wealth, the environmental consequences never even factor in.
1:05:30-1:12:00: Zizek concludes his, uh, conclusion, saying that he believes mounting a careful response to ecological collapse and managing the privacy problems created by neural links will be “game changers.” He believes that capitalism has already more or less taken over the world, so where’s our utopia? Instead, we permit disasters like Yemen or regimes like the Congo to continue—situations which create refugees, as he puts it—even as their participation in global capitalism is assured. Zizek’s “plea” as he puts it is that we regulate this global order more. He laments that the state is actually more involved than ever before, and we’ll probably slide into apocalypse.
Peterson’s reply:
1:13:15-1:20:00: Peterson says he heard more an attack on capitalism than a defense of Marxism. Peterson admits early that he’s not confident we can confront the problems Zizek points out; he was himself attacking Marxism more than he was defending capitalism.
Peterson sounds a point of agreement: yes, commodification of culture is bad. But capitalism is responsible for that great increase in wealth, and psychometrically, getting people out of dire straits (as it has done) is much more important than giving them more money after that. He believes that as far as happiness goes, that much is well-defined. This, I take it, is his response to Zizek problematizing the pursuit of happiness.
1:20:00-1:23:00: Peterson stresses that he hasn’t heard an alternative from Zizek. (I can’t say that I did either.) Peterson believes that the social justice folks Zizek criticized are wrong because of their Marxist presuppositions, which presuppositions Zizek did not defend. Peterson heard an egalitarianism that sounds like equality of opportunity, not outcome. Peterson heard a plea for more intervention, but we already have some, and we don’t even know how much intervention is necessary; what’s wrong with our current experiments in intervention?
1:23:00-1:25:15: Peterson concludes with a quick summary, then says that he believes the proper path forward is individual moral responsibility aimed at the common good, an inheritance of our Judeo-Christian tradition. Our society, says Peterson, is structured so that each person is a “locus of responsibility and decision-making,” so that the continuance of the state depends on “the integrity of their character.” Peterson says he advocates people to take on as much responsibility as they can handle while keeping their aim on the highest good. He connects this somehow to iterated games, which I did not pick up.
Zizek’s response:
1:25:15-1:29:45: Zizek talks about happiness again. He mentions a study where people in Scandinavian countries reported very low happiness, while people in Bangladesh reported very high happiness. Zizek says (as far as reported happiness goes, I think), democracy is terrible for it, because you have a burden of responsibility. Happiness is greater when things are bad every once in a while, like no meat once a month. These are absurd results, Zizek thinks, the point being that pursuing happiness is bunk; if it occurs as a byproduct, so be it, but pursue it and you are sure to go awry.
1:29:45-1:31:15: Zizek’s greatest fear, he says, is the way the authoritarian government protects the capitalists in China from things like trade unions.
1:31:15-1:32:30: Zizek says he agrees with some of Peterson’s critiques of the Manifesto. He admits that the class binary thing and Marx’s whole theory of power was a problem, and Marx’s views seemed to idolize the very expertise Zizek decries; but he believes that Marx was aware of the difficulties and had good instincts, to be interested in things like the Paris Commune.
1:32:30-1:38:30: A flurry of responses. Zizek doesn’t know where the equality of outcome thing Peterson is getting comes from; he says Marx only addresses that once, and dismisses it as bourgeois. He insists he doesn’t see how the free market can solve the polluting of the ocean. He asks what Peterson would do about a thing like Yemen. A few others I can’t make out. He says, amusingly, that Peterson’s optimism is very Marxist, while Zizek himself is a great pessimist.
They soon open it up to questions, and I suspect the interesting stuff is behind us. That’s all I’ve got.
Thanks for watching it. It sounds interesting but not over an hour interesting from your summary.
It’s not clear exactly how much the two are addressing each other’s points. But maybe that’s to be expected. What little I’ve read from both of them is a bit mystical.
+1 for the effort.
Thanks. I should warn, though, that the interesting stuff is pretty much all in the opening Peterson stuff and some of the opening Zizek stuff. After that I was losing steam and having a harder time following the arguments. I blame the format of the debate.
+1
I saw this mentioned, thought it was a leg-pull or a spoof (come on, this must be from The Onion, right?)
No, it’s a real headline. (The accompanying story is at least a little better).
Good grief, Charlie Brown!
Meanwhile, a headline from The Onion itself: “French President Pledges To Rebuild Notre Dame In 5 Years”.
Wait, that’s actually true.
Yeah, when did The Onion start doing proper news reporting and the mainstream media start doing the clickbait wacky stuff? 😀
I’ve heard several commentors argue that he was being hyperbolic for the purpose of public discourse, and the actual goal is to be able to reopen to the public at least part of the cathedral within 5 years, not to have the entire thing all done by then.
Side question: Have there been any recent proposals for major projects on the time scale of a cathedral? Even in the the sense of this will take 10 plus years and we won’t know until we start (it doesn’t have to be a monument, earlier today a separate discussion mentioned the building of railroads in the US).
It seems like it is hard to propose anything that will last longer then the next election or shareholder meeting, but maybe I”m missing some good examples.
My vague impression from driving is that the U.S. manages to expand or redo highways all the time. For really big stretches. I could be totally wrong about this, but it seems like the U.S. builds a lot of roads even if they sometimes get blocked or delayed.
Plus, a Cathedral might have been a multi decade or century project way back when, but maybe restoring a piece is only a single decade now.
quanta413: Fair enough, I guess the US interstate highway system would count, although it is close to being completed in most states.
I will be curious if newer technology allows for automated high speed transit along rural interstate routes. I think this is one of the practical near future applications for automation/AI.
The research that ultimately produced the Xerox machine took more than twenty years. Drug companies routinely do research that takes considerably longer than the time to the next stockholder meeting.
Follow up/Clarification:
A number of programs have done what I was asking about in the recent past (such as the two mentioned by quanta413 and DavidFriedman).
But! is there any new programs in their recent stages that meet these requirements?
Asides from highways and train lines, I’ll add next generation nuclear reactors. France’s EPR reactor has been in construction since 2007 and is still in progress — admitedly it was supposed to be completed by 2011 and has been affected by numerous delays and budget inflation. Currently the expected start of operation is 2020.
The Big Dig? (ha ha only serious)
The replacement of the North River Tunnels (train tunnels under the Hudson connecting the Northeast Corridor)? (One must laugh, otherwise one will cry.)
Washington National Cathedral (also Gothic style) took 83 years to build, completed in 1990.
People still seem to be working on fusion power, with the assumption that it will take quite a while to be good enough for real world use.
Stratolaunch was started in 2010 and just did its first test flight a few weeks ago.
Quantum computers have been researched by IBM and Google for quite a while.
The Pratt and Whitney Geared Turbo-fan engine was an idea in 1993, The GTF program officially started in 2001, flight testing started in 2008, and first production version sold in 2016.
Guédelon Castle is an attempt to recreate a 13th century style castle using period tools, techniques and materials. It started in 1997 and is still going.
That’s a project almost exactly on the time scale of a cathedral.
It’s actually not too crazy if he actually moves on it. As an example, repair of the Oroville spillway took two years. If he just says “Make it like it was before. Cost is no object. Aaaaand, GO!” I think there’s a good chance they can get it darn near 5 years. Most of the delays in todays projects are caused by a bunch of bickering and lawsuits about the goals, ways, and means of a project. The big tradeoff, of course, is the whole “money is no object” part. That may or may not be worth it.
Now, if he lets it go until the pack of tools who are trying to propose changes to make it “relevant” and “modern” get a head of steam, then we’ll be back to bickering about it and it’ll take 15 years and a bunch of design studies.
Which is the more tone-deaf part: describing it as a “mecca” or saying it was also a place of worship?
Well, “mecca” was a nice touch, but it’s the common usage that has become totally divorced from its original meaning (and if Muslims want to complain about that, I can sympathise: there’s a chain of bingo outlets in Britain called Mecca Bingo).
No, it was the “Tourist site also has some kind of vague religious connotations, who knew?” tone of the headline (and as I said, the story wasn’t so bad; I sometimes think headline editors are trained to go “What is the most misleading thing I can slap on top here?”).
Compare it to Mecca, or more narrowly the Kaaba and associated sites.
My guess is that, of all the people who pass through Notre Dame in a year, a large majority are tourists there to look at it, not to worship in it.
My guess is that the opposite is true for the Muslim sites.
Yesterday I attended a Passover Seder. My guess is that none of the people present actually believed in the religion whose ceremony we were performing.
Do you merely mean to say they were secular Jews, or that modern Jews in general, even the most devout, are divorced from the realities of the religion prescribed to them in the Torah?
One of my struggles with Karaism has been reading the Torah and constantly encountering things I’m commanded to do but knowing that I can’t — and frankly, don’t want to — do them.
Huh. I knew about Mecca Bingo from the Arctic Monkeys song, but I assumed “mecca” meant something else in the UK, and didn’t connect that the bingo parlor was named after the city.
The worst take on the Notre Dame fire that I saw came across my Facebook feed from a page one of my friends follows called “The Professor Is In.”. A professor of medieval history named Dorothy Kim had advice for her colleagues that if they were interviewed by local media the most important thing is to avoid playing into all trite narratives about the cathedral being a symbol of western civilization:
What should they talk about instead?
I mean, if you insist on the narrative of Notre Dame being the symbolic representation of Christianity and Western Civilization, with Christianity/Western Civilization being what this fire is about (as opposed to the loss of history, architecture, or questions of structural safety), that would just make myself (and many others) galvanized into being glad Notre Dame burned down.
As long as the narrative is broadly-palatable, you’ll have near-universal support and sympathy. Make the narrative about Christianity and the primacy of Western Civilization, and you’ll have people like me laughing and mocking its downfall.
“A symbol of” =/= “the symbolic representation of”.
Also, what do you mean by “making the narrative about Christianity”? Should reporters refuse to mention the fact that Notre Dame was built by Christians as a place of Christian worship? Would you really “laugh and mock its downfall” if Notre Dame’s religious nature were mentioned?
No and no.
“Making the narrative about Christianity” would be to frame Notre Dame as being primarily a symbol of Christianity, and therefore the fire as a loss primarily to Christians. This doesn’t have to be done explicitly, but more commonly via omission. Something along the lines of: “Notre Dame was a built as a symbol of Christianity, used as a house of worship for Christians, and its loss is a blow to Christians”.
All of this framing omits the secular aspects, the reasons why the non-Christian ~50% of the French population might have an interest in Notre Dame.
Note that there’s no symmetry here: making the narrative of Notre Dame about history, architecture, tourism, or safety in no way alienates or excludes Christians. Only by framing the narrative around Christianity do you politicize the accident.
Do you really think that the media — made up largely of people who are non-religious, if not actively hostile to religion — are likely to do that? And what exactly is so wrong about portraying the loss of a place of worship as primarily a loss for the people who actually worship there? I know that if the Great Mosque of Djenne were destroyed by a fire, I’d consider it to be primarily a loss for Muslims, without that detracting from the sorrow I’d feel at the destruction of a beautiful building.
Ignoring the fact that the cathedral is a place of worship and treating it like nothing but a collection of nice artwork doesn’t exclude the worshippers? Come on.
And frankly, if you think that portraying the loss of a cathedral as primarily a loss to the people who worship there “politicises” the loss to such a degree that you would be “laughing and mocking its downfall”, I suspect the problem lies with your own religious bigotry rather than anyone else.
Well, are you sure its an accurate portrayal of the situation? If a famous Shinto shrine burned down in Japan (beloved by the country and a popular tourist destination), do you think it would be accurate to say that active Shinto practitioners are primarily the ones affected?
Would the destruction of the pyramids of Egypt primarily effect practitioners of Egyptian polytheism?
It doesn’t exclude them, assuming they support preserving history and artwork. If you have a point, make it.
What it does do, is universalize the accident such that it can’t be used to advance a specific political or religious agenda. Maybe they’ve looked at the trade-off of politicization, and determined it is worth while. But like I said earlier, make the narrative about Christianity at your own peril.
If it were still an active and important Shinto shrine, sure.
“Treating lynchings in the Deep South as just extra-judicial killings without mentioning the racial aspect doesn’t exclude or alienate black people, assuming they’re opposed to extra-judicial killing.”
“Treating Kristallnacht as just a load of vandalism doesn’t exclude or alienate Jews, assuming they’re opposed to vandalism.”
Not exact parallels, of course, but I think they get the point across that dumbing down everything to the lowest common denominator can in fact be exclusionary and alienating.
If you claim not to see how ignoring the role of religion in building a famous monument can be used to advance a specific agenda, then you’re either extremely naïve or just disingenuous.
Thanks for the advice, but I really have no need of your concern trolling.
Or if you don’t like these analogies, consider the following. Your sister, a noted local philanthropist and pillar of the local community, dies tragically in an accident. Everybody’s very sad and commiserates each other on the loss of such a person, but nobody thinks to commiserate you specifically for having lost a close relative. Do you think it would be possible for you to feel unhappy at this unless you don’t support philanthropy and helping the local community?
I’ve already said that I think Christianity deserves to be mentioned, perhaps I was unclear.
I didn’t say primacy.
I’m going to post what Dorothy Kim wrote with more context, for those who are interested:
I know you didn’t say “primacy”. But there are groups of people, for whom in using the rhetoric of the value of “western civilization”, they have its primacy as the unstated implication.
I imagine you are a good de-coupling rationalist who uses the term “western civilization” as often as “eastern civilization”, and your usage carries no unspoken normative implications regarding the primacy or superiority of either. But there are actual racists and nationalists in our midst who are fighting for the cause of western civilization, and their threat shouldn’t be ignored.
> My colleagues who work on alt-right things have informed me that Richard Spencer and Ben Shapiro are already speaking about this.
This doesn’t make a lot of sense to me.
Western civilization exceeds individual nations, so I am not sure why exactly the nationalists should be the ones fighting for it. For example, European Union is a project of western civilization, but I wouldn’t call it a project of nationalism. As far as I noticed, nationalists would prefer to see their countries separate again.
And racism is almost an opposite of, uhm, civilization-ism. Racism means that civilization almost doesn’t matter, because people are going to do what their genes command them anyway. The opposite perspective is that behavior of people is mostly influenced by the culture where they grew up and where they live; in other words, by civilization.
The vision of “Western civilization” that people like Shapiro and Spencer fight for has nothing to do with Niemoller, Aristotle, and Einstein. It’s the vision of the Crusaders: oppressing people who happen to be marginally different from you in faith, culture or genome for gold and glory.
I can’t speak to the inner-workings of why white nationalists often talk about “western civilization”. But its a common, not-made-up phenomenon.
broblawski, do you have any idea what views Ben Shapiro actually holds or are you just assuming because someone put his name in the same sentence as Richard Spencer?
Judging by his comment, he doesn’t have much idea of what the actual crusaders or their opponents thought, either.
Yes, there’s been this weird thing lately where the mainstream media keeps calling Orthodox Jew Ben Shapiro “alt-right.” Shapiro is the second neoconiest neocon who ever conned a neo*. I don’t know how this stuff gets started, but that Kim lumped Shapiro in with Spencer should be a knock on her credibility with regards to politics.
* After Bill Kristol.
Shapiro gets jumped in due to being anti-islam. Some neoconservatives are often not as rhetorically hostile to Islam as long as the person in question is not affiliated with a geopolitical rival of Israel. They are also generally opposed to hostility towards people considered the out-group (unless the outgroup is explicitly anti-Israel) **in western countries**.
But it doesn’t help Shapiro’s case when RS will say something like he’s a ‘white zionist’ — Zionists really really don’t want to be lumped into that category.
If Western civilization is not superior in some sense, why did Dorothy Kim’s ancestors move there? (Along with a lot of other people from other civilizations, and a lot more wanting to.)
As a current and prospective migrant, I choose my destination on the basis that I think it’s a better place than the one I’m coming from.
There’s been a spat in the online medievalist world the last few years between Dorothy Kim and Rachel Fulton Brown which came to my attention just last year. Kim has been writing about white supremacy pervading medieval studies for a while now; if you click through to some of Fulton Brown’s posts you can get a taste of what else Kim has been saying.
The best part is Dr. Kim’s advice plays right into the hands of the “all trite”.
Well if making Notre Dame about Catholicism, using the noun “civilization” and especially the adjective “Western”, and loving Joan of Arc are altwrite, that’s what people ought to be.
Clearly her problem isn’t with people who say the words “civilization” and “western”, since she is doing so herself.
So either she is foolishly committing an obvious performative contradiction, or you might need to think a little harder about what her intentions are, assuming you aren’t just operating in bad faith.
I don’t think telling people not to use the word X really counts as using the word X.
I don’t think telling people not to use the word X really counts as using the word X.
You would think, huh?
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/jul/12/papa-johns-founder-john-schnatter-resigns-over-racial-slur
https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2011/09/14/jewish_prof_forced_to_defend_himself_against_antisemitism_claims.html
I don’t think in 2019 people are fearful or concerned with Christianity as such, they’re concerned about ethnic Europeans and the things they are associated with. (Including medieval Catholicism) It’s the same sense in which anti-Islam is depicted as a species of racism.
To the literalist and the rationalist this is confusing and nonsensical. But thinking at the object-level it’s completely sensible. ‘Islam’ is a concept but the ‘Muslims’ are much more concrete beings.. And Muslims are [predominantly] “MENA”, which does come closer to the concept of a race or ethnic group.
“Western Civilization” in the same token gets treated as a dog whistle to mean ‘white [ethnic european] supremacy’, rather than some abstract set of characteristics of a society. Because again, it’s easier to think at the object level then the abstract level.
So a combination of very young and very old Europeans who for our purposes are ‘the far right’ who are convinced they’re being intentionally replaced by middle easterners or north or subsaharan africans with the consent and approval of their government will cling to medievalism, or christianity, or neo-paganism or roman iconography, or basically any banner they can rally around.
It’s also easy for such a person to believe that the building was set fire to intentionally by someone with a grudge against Christian [read; european] people.
It’s also easy for such a person to think even if the fire wasn’t set intentionally that the destruction is symbolic of their own fear of erased from history.
So all of these things end up becoming proxies for ethnic struggle and perceived dominance in a territory, whether or not they were intended as such. And people who deal in abstractions are confused at the vitriol surrounding a partially burned cathedral.
Not related to your main point, but, a quibble: Muslims are not predominantly Middle Eastern and North African; none of the top 5 countries by % of world Muslim population are Middle Eastern or North African, and together they’re almost 50% of the world Muslim population. The other slightly-more-than-half isn’t universally MENA either.
I’ll have to revise that part then. I’m tempted to say that the bulk of Muslims currently settling in europe are middle eastern or african rather than Indian/Indonesian but I’m not super confident in that either.
I’d actually be interested in the answer to this. I’d guess that the bulk of current Muslim refugees in Europe are MENA, but I’m not sure about current rates of South Asian Muslim settlement in e.g. the UK.
I’d guess that in continental Europe Muslims tend to be of North African, Middle Eastern, Western Asian (Turkey isn’t MENA, after all), or Central Asian extraction. In the UK, though, I’d imagine a higher % of Muslims are of South Asian origin.
@dndnrsn
I would also guess this. I was just wondering what the Europe-wide pattern would average out to.
This is the subthread for discussing episode 2 of season 8 of Game of Thrones, which will be airing on Sunday. Because this thread will have been superceded by 126.0 by that time, most readers will have moved on, and we will therefore be able to speak freely without covering up spoilers.
Not to change the subject or jump the gun, but: We are, of course, subscribed to HBO streaming for two months. What else is there that we should not miss? I poked around and was surprised how little interesting I saw.
Last season, we also picked up the first season of Westworld, but were mostly pretty disappointed. It had a great look, and the big surprise (nobhg gur gjb qvssrerag gvzr fgernzf) was elegant, but boy did they miss the chance to say something interesting about human-level AI, so we aren’t tempted to look at season 2 unless somebody responsible tells us we should be. The Sopranos and The Wire have never particularly appealed. We started watching Deadwood way back when, but the milieu just seemed indistinguishable from dog-eat-dog anarchy, and we couldn’t stay engaged. (So why do we like Game of Thrones? Who knows? Maybe what saves it is the knowledge that the game of thrones is just a terrible distraction from what really matters.)
The movies are mostly available on Netflix, or will be soon, and if we had wanted to see them sooner we would have seen them in the theater.
Advice?
Just wanted to chime in to anti-recommend season 2 of Westworld. I felt that the show doubled down on having a big twist at the expense of plot, character development, and even basic coherency. Expect to watch through at least twice if you want to understand what the hell’s going on. It also veers dangerously close to pseudo-philosophy in the vein of the Matrix sequels while continuing to say nothing interesting about AGI. Oh, and there’s roughly 10x more violence, mostly gratuitous.
Another quiet episode. The next one will be the big fight.
The scene where Jaime knighted Brienne was quite a thing. Gwendoline Christie did an awesome job of showing herself to be quietly but intensely moved.
And Arya and Gendry got it on. Has every single episode of this shown included either fucking or fighting? I can’t remember.
Definitely has that feel of “talk to all of your squadmates before they die in the big mission” sequence in RPG games.
The real question being, who dies? Some initial thoughts:
-Brienne is basically toast. She has realized her character arc. She has no moving plot left. She’s commanding on the front line.
-Samwell death odds are much higher. I originally thought he had narrator plot armor, but maybe Tyrion has that now after his conversation with Bran. I wouldn’t call it likely or even-money, but higher than the 1% chance I would’ve called it before.
-Lady Mormont says “good fortune,” but not “good fortune in the wars to come.” Subtle difference. Jorah and Lady Mormont both have much higher survival odds, IMO, especially since Jorah now has a +5 plot armor sword.
-How does Gendry even fit into this? Does he even have a point anymore?
-Missandei and Grey Worm should get their happily ever after, they’ve earned it. Someone has to have a happy ending at the end of this show.
Some other random thoughts:
-The War Council did not prepare for the obvious “Ice Dragon” or dozens of White Walkers hurling anti-dragon javelins.
-Ghost appearing off-hand for a few second is annoying.
-Tyrion suggesting that either Varys and the other person that one of them might be wearing the Hand of the King seems like on-the-nose foreshadowing: of Tyrion taking the Iron Throne!
-Tyrion and Bran’s conversation was not shown, presumably meaning some plot relevant details there. Tyrion seems a bit more chipper than the rest of them in the fireplace scene.
-The Crypt is so obviously a death-trap that I have a hard time believing it is a death-trap. Particularly since the Crypt and Winterfell are both supposed to be fed via the magic of dead Stark Kings. However, that aspect has never really been built up in the show, so not really sure whether corpses are going to kill everyone as First Move or Second Move, or whether Sean Bean and the Army of the Dead are going to beat the snot out of the Wights.
-A random reference to Whispering Wood by Jaime. One of GOT’s previously used war tropes is that you try to defeat an army, and the main body of the army was never there. Perhaps the Night King is already heading down to King’s Landing. The more I think about it, the more it doesn’t make any sense to play it out that way, though.
-Arya’s look at the end of the episode is deeply unsettling.
I expect a pretty straight episode where there’s a predictable unpredicted twist, because obviously their plan is freaking terrible. You are going to lure a several thousand year mythical entity into the Godswood and ambush it with Dragons. Yeah. The chances of that succeeding are roughly zero.
I would like to see the army getting mostly curb-stomped, because it’s a ridiculously poor plan.
“What’s your plan, Jon?”
“Well, I’m going to Leeroy Jenkins towards the middle of their line and hope someone arranged for reinforcements and didn’t tell me.”
“So you haven’t learned anything?”
“No, I did tell Theon to zig-zag with Bran’s wheelchair while running away from the Night King”
That was my secret guess for quite a while, but not after we learned about Jon Snow’s true parentage, which so clearly appears to be crucial to untangling everything — just how, I’m not sure. Targaryens wouldn’t object to an aunt/nephew marriage, but Jon wasn’t raised as a Targaryen.
I am intrigued by the assertion that his true name is Aegon, since the books have Aegon Targaryen as Rhaegar’s son by Elia Martell, assumed, probably incorrectly, as deceased. There is a character bumming around on Essos who is alleged to be he, but unless I missed it the series has not mentioned him. This Aegon would have a prior claim to either Daenarys or Jon. It makes me wonder (a) if the series ending will be substantially different from the books’ ending and (b) whether the last book will ever actually appear.
As much as I think they really necked down fast from where the books were, I realize that this was necessary to actually finish the story. All the plot threads they were trying to weave together were an unwieldy mess, which is how you got a bunch of things that really seemed to not have much point; for example, they started the Dorne storyline, realized they wouldn’t have enough time to actually do anything with it as fully developed as it was in the books, and just killed the characters so they could move the fuck on.
I think the sitting around the fire discussion is one of my favorite things in the last season or season and a half. It’s nice to just watch the characters bounce off of each other, and it’s where the good actors they’ve got can really bring things to life.
I think that Dany was too quick to let Tyrion off the hook; I think that she’d have gotten there eventually, but it she was too quickly convinced by others. Like the harrowing of the plot I discussed in the first paragraph, I think this was driven by the fact that they needed to move the story along to not run out of episodes, and it gets a pass from me.
Contra @A Definite Beta Guy, I’m not bagging on their plan, per se. I do think it’s a bad plan, but I don’t know that they actually have the ability to bring off a better one. I can’t think of something more likely to work, and in real life simplicity in a plan counts for a lot.
Finally, I’m not quite sure what to think about Jon telling Dany about his parentage. It wouldn’t surprise me to have her backstab him over this, since she’s really, really invested in putting her ass on the throne, and she’s not all that stable a personality. She’s not anywhere near as petty about it as Cersei, but her continued insistence on the forms of everybody acknowledging her to be the rightful queen even while preparing for the zombie apocalypse is a little concerning. She also really, really likes setting people she perceives as disloyal on fire.
In a vacuum, I think Jon would have been better off to wait until after the crisis passed to pursue this conversation. However, it was a little bit foreshadowed that Sam might have spilled the beans at an inopportune moment due to his anger over his family, so Jon’s best move might have been to try to get out in front of it as he did when he had the ability to control it a little bit.
I liked this episode for what it was, the calm before the storm, a chance for everyone to set their dramatic affairs in order before the battle that will probably kill at good fraction of them. Even when the plotting fails, this show has always been good at putting interesting characters in a room and having them just talk to one another. The fireplace scenes were almost perfect, as were most of the private interactions.
The war planning, as others have noted, less so. In particular, the complete absence of any mention of the Zombie Ice Dragon makes it hard to take the plan, or the planners, seriously.
Finally, the implications of this episode in the overall plotting of the season. This was a bottle episode, cheap to film, and very little of it needed to be filmed in winter, so the stated logic of the season needing to be shrunk to six episodes for cost, schedule, and climate reasons rings hollow. It looks more like the season has been shrunk to the minimum necessary to tie off the plot threads because someone knows they aren’t very good at generating plot. So,
S8E1 – Reminded us where everything was at the end of S7, and ratcheted the dangling plots thereof forward in an absolutely predictable way
S8E2 – Personal and dramatic preparation for the battle against the Zombie Hordes, with minimal plotting and no plot-level surprises
S8E3 – Zombie Hordes defeated, with great spectacle
S8E4 – Preparation for the confrontation with Cersei Lannister, which will need a bit more plotting
S8E5 – The final showdown with Cersei, which may not be a giant battle
S8E6 – Coronation of (p>0.85) Daenerys Targaryen, everyone else still standing gets their happy and/or tragic ending.
Which means a great deal is being cut. Theon’s rescue of Yara deserved more than a brief scene, for both plot and character development reasons. Arya/Gendry needed more than just a bit of gazing over the forge and “craft me a weapon” dialogue to set up. Tyrion’s redemption, which should never have been necessary but after last season clearly was, ditto. OTOH, if this sort of compression led to their ditching the obvious stupid plot where Jon and Sam and Bran keep Jon’s parentage secret from Dany for several episodes of tragic misunderstandings, then I’m OK with that.
Yes, I think that’s the straight-line path from here on.
But is there another possibility? Might the defenders of Winterfell fail, with a few survivors withdrawing in disarray to the Iron Islands? The Night King would continue down Westeros and take on Cersei and the Golden Company. Then, when Cersei and her army have winnowed down the Night King’s forces and Cersei herself has died, a relatively small force of ironborn and the survivors of Winterfell manage to mount a sneak attack and kill the Night King.
I don’t think you can do that in four episodes. More importantly, I don’t think you can make the audience care about the battle between Cersei and the Night King, and I don’t think they will throw away the dramatic potential of a face-to-face confrontation between Cersei Lannister and one her many personal, human enemies. Think Arya/Walder, or Jamie/Olenna, or even Cersei/Ellaria, and consider the Night King’s distinctly limited potential for the sort of interesting dialogue that is late GoT’s strongest suit.
Why not have both? EP3: Jamie assassinated at a poorly-timed moment by Bronn. Winterfell falls, most of the main characters die but some escape on dragons.
EP4: The White Walkers take King’s Landing. Jamie as a near-mindless wight strangles Cersei, but the Night King resurrects her as a White Walker to act as a figurehead, and lets her keep much of her original personality to be extra demoralizing to the others. Meanwhile the Winterfell survivors face down Euron for control of the fleet.
EP5: LoTR-style plan with an army mounting a doomed siege on King’s Landing and negotiating with Walker!Cersei, all as a diversion while a small band takes down the Night King.
EP6: Back to politics.
The Iron Throne as physical object has to be destroyed at some point; it’s the main character of the series. I’m not sure whether it’s the Night King who destroys it, one of Dany’s dragons melting it to slag during a fight, or a peacetime symbolic decision to scrap it in the last episode.
I’m frankly having trouble caring about the battle between Cersei and anyone. I’ve been looking at wrapping up Cersei as basically the scouring of the Shire, and have trouble seeing it as more than that.
If the dragons survive Winterfell and get killed by Cersei, it’s going to leave a bad taste in my mouth.
There is some potential interest in seeing Cersei redeem herself by saving the world. But I agree there is not time; in a mere six episodes it would be deus ex machina.
The Night King has been the main force driving the plot, killing him off in Ep 3 and ending the series with a three-way dynastic struggle between Daenerys, Cersei and Sansa would be anti-climatic and too predictable.
I agree with johan_larson. Here’s my prediction:
– They get their ass kicked in Winterfell and the survivors fall back to the Iron Islands.
– The Night King overruns Kings Landing and Cersei dies, possibly she commits suicide to avoid being turned into a zombie by setting on fire the Red Keep or the whole Kings Landing with wildfire, melting the Iron Throne and culling the army of the dead, thus creating an opportunity for our heroes to counterattack and save the day.
– Once Nighty is defeated, and with the Iron Throne, the symbol of Westeros unity convenently melted, the victors agree to partition the country into independent kingdoms. Ending montage, culminating with 80 years old Tyrion dying with a belly full of wine and a girl’s mouth around his cock. Credits roll.
Debatable, but even if we grant it for the sake of argument, the Literal Game of Thrones has been a very close second in driving the plot of “The Game of Thrones”. Its resolution will not be shoehorned in around the edges.
Counterprediction: Cersei Lannister will be defeated – not necessarily killed, and not necessarily in battle, but defeated – by a living human enemy or enemies, in the context of an episode largely devoted to seeing the defeat of Cersei Lannister play out and with the Night King as at most a supporting character.
Secondary counterprediction: We will not see more than a brief mention of the Iron Islands again, though I am less confident of that one. But, and especially now that they have mentioned Yara has only a few ships, I think it most likely that her appearance in S8E1 was simply to tie up the loose “Hey wasn’t Yara still Euron’s prisoner?” plot thread.
Man, if Cersei doesn’t die by Arya’s hand I’ll eat my hat.
Cersei Lannister killed by Jamie Lannister, 40%
Cersei Lannister killed by Arya Stark, 30%
Cersei Lannister killed by anyone else, 10%
Cersei Lannister defeated but alive, 15%
Cersei Lannister victorious, 5%
Mostly gut feel and reading of tea leaves.
The reason I’m a bit skeptical of the structure John has outlined is that it puts the apparent climax of the story so early. The big fight of the living against the dead is in episode three out of six? Giving us a full half a season for wrap-up? No, something isn’t right here. The climax should be later, unless the writers are pulling a real switcharoo on us. So is Winterfell going to be a bit of a wet firecracker, with the real final boss fight being in the south in a later episode?
But which climax is “apparent”, and to whom?
There are two major plot-driving conflicts left unresolved. The Dead vs. basically every living character not named Cersei Lannister, and Cersei Lannister vs. basically every living character not named Cersei Lannister. You may consider the latter to be an irrelevant afterthought that nobody should care about in comparison to the battle against The Dead, but the plot and the plotters almost certainly don’t. A great deal of effort has been put into making the audience care about that story and those characters, so I think it is unlikely that the final downfall of Cersei Lannister will be treated as “wrap-up”.
Until a few episodes ago, it was at least possible that they’d deal with Cersei first and the Night King second, but that’s now pretty much out of the question. The Night King is going to be the focus of the next episode, and there isn’t room for the Night King story arc’s resolution to stretch much beyond the next episode while still leaving enough time for a story that will satisfy the people who think Cersei Lannister’s arc is still important. Which, again, almost certainly includes the showrunners given the attention they have paid to it.
I agree that Cersei is an important opponent, and it is important for the story that she be defeated. The question is how to present the fight against her as the true climax. To do that will require the fight against her to be somehow bigger than the fight against the dead.
The dead have a vast zombie army, a battalion of creatures of legend, and a dragon. That’s pretty impressive. What the heck can Cersei do to put on that big a show? She has Euron Greyjoy’s fleet, the Golden Company, and as special forces she has Bronn and Ser Robert Strong. Her forces are just not as impressive.
The only way I could see it making sense is for the fight against Cersei to be very different from the fight against the dead. It wouldn’t be a conventional battle. It would be cloak and dagger stuff, one-on-one, very personal struggle.
That would certainly be the way I’d do it, particularly from where we now stand. Possibly it would have been better to deal with Cersei first and the Dead second, and even then I think I’d prefer the cloak-and-dagger or even political route for defeating Cersei. A mass battle against enemies as underdeveloped as Euron Greyjoy(*) and the Golden Company is unlikely to be dramatically satisfying, and Cersei as an adversary is fundamentally better suited to cloak-and-dagger and dirty politics than great battles.
But it’s got to be bigger than “OBTW Arya somehow infiltrated King’s Landing and dispatches Cersei as easily as she did Walder Frey”. So it’s almost certainly going to be at least a solid episode of material, after an episode’s worth of shifting gears from Winterfell to King’s Landing and before an episode of actual wrap-up.
Also, there’s the CleganeBowl to consider, and that probably fits in better with a cloak-and-dagger plot than a mass battle plot.
I fear that we may nonetheless get another, lesser, “great” battle. But however it’s done, four episodes of working space doesn’t leave room for more than an episode, maybe an episode and a half, to put the Night King firmly to bed.
* Who is a naval power, and nobody else has either a fleet or a reason to travel by sea, so how is he even relevant any more? Though it would be nice to see Cersei realize this, and Euron realize that Cersei just realized this…
@johan
I have read that the climax in a story is actually the point where the protagonist realizes what they have to do to bring their struggle to a conclusion, and that the act of them carrying out what they need to do to bring it to a conclusion is actually the denouement, so that ‘climax’ is a counter-intuitive term for people, as they assume that the climax is when the spectacle is at its grandest. The climax of Ned’s story arc in the first ASOIAF book, for instance, would be when he suddenly realizes the truth of Joffrey’s parentage (after Arya offhandedly mentions something about Joffrey’s hair colour), while the act of him confronting Cersei, getting thrown in prison, and then getting his head chopped off would be the denouement. So, according to classical structure, the climax should be coming somewhere near the middle of a work, and, while dramatically it is highly momentous, in terms of spectacle it’s likely to be overshadowed by the denouement.
In John’s predictions, I would define the battle against the ice king as both a moment of great spectacle and the denouement of a given subplot. The confrontation against Cersei would be the denouement of a second subplot, including the ‘preparation’ episode which preceded it. And then the coronation of Daeny would be the resolution of a third subplot in addition to that of the primary plot of the series. I think there’s actually some nice contrast in having the spectacular battle against the night king preceding a more subdued confrontation against Cersei. I also think that fans of the show are probably going to show up for its final episodes regardless of how much action they have, since they are already highly invested in its plot, so that it’s unnecessary to provide them with amazing action. I think focusing on plot rather than spectacle for the final episodes is appropriate.
The other problem with “second big battle “ is that it would require the northern army to mostly survive the battle against the Night King, making that fight unsatisfying.
Euron exists mainly to ferry the golden company around, a much more important role before the kingsroad became a warp portal.
Martin has said that the coming Winter is a metaphor for climate change. As I said elsewhere, the point of Game of Thrones is that the game of thrones is a petty distraction from what is Really Important. Given that, I can’t see resolving it halfway through the final season.
Can we deduce anything else? Daenerys is still hammering on how important it is that everybody acknowledge her as queen. Do her misplaced priorities mean she will not come out on top?
The one person who seems to have finally transcended the game is Jaime, who has deserted his beloved Cersei “to fight for the living”. Unlike Cersei, he has had enough character change that it would be reasonably satisfying to see him pick up the pieces of the kingdom after the last battle — but the last battle would have to take place in the south, not the north, because Jaime would have to be picking up the pieces, with Cersei, Daenerys, and most all other major players gone. Given that The North is almost another character, that doesn’t seem real likely to me, but there might be a way — maybe the zombie dragon lays waste to the complacent south before cleaning up the north.
Any chance at all that the White King wins? That would cause a major crapstorm, but given the metaphor maybe it would be thought important to give fans a sobering ending.
Way to drain all the interest out of a perfectly good gimmick. I’m not even particularly skeptical of climate change, but I’ve seen enough hand-wringing over it to last me three lifetimes (or 10m of sea level, whichever comes first).
Sorry about that. I figured it was both well-known and obvious. I agree with you, but it’s metaphorical enough that it hasn’t sapped my enjoyment. (It would work well enough for any number of other existential threats.) But perhaps I should have stuck with in-story considerations and dramatic meta-level considerations, and skipped author psychology.
@Doctor Mist
I think it’s more precise to say that Martin has said that the plot parallels climate change response in some ways, but that it’s not an intentional metaphor. (Which is probably what you Within the universe, who sits the Iron Throne is fairly unimportant because there happens to be an invasion of ice zombies dedicated to extinguishing all life. But for the 7,000 years between ice zombie invasions, whether the government is good or crappy does matter – just ask the Lazarene.
I do agree with your second sentence and that it’s hard to imagine how Cersei’s plot is going to be relevant – I mean, I suppose she could decide at the last minute that her 20,000 soldiers are better spent helping Dany and Jon than waiting to fight whoever wins, or I guess Jaime could come back, kill her, and use the soldiers for the final battle.
(Here’s GRRM’s quote on the subject:)
Martin:"...It’s kind of ironic because I started writing “Game of Thrones” all the way back in 1991, long before anybody was talking about climate change...."No one?
LIES!!!
Your pants are on fire George ARR! ARR! Martin!
I remember Carl Sagan talking about “the Greenhouse effect” back in 1980 on Cosmos, and I clearly remember in 1991 when Saddam had the oil fields set on fire people talking about what it meant for climate.
Eh, I’ll give him charity for misspeaking. If he had said “before everybody was talking about it”, he’d have been spot on.
I have a question about the Winterfell defenders’ plan. Does it make any sense at all to have troops massed outside the walls? Wouldn’t they be more effective fighting from the battlements of Winterfell, where they have superior position and actual cover? And if there isn’t enough room on the battlements, let them fight in rotating shifts, so they have time to recover. Or perhaps there could be a lighter outer wall that is defended as long as possible, and when/if that is overrrun, the defenders could regroup inside the actual castle.
Why would the undead bother to fight them? Just bypass Winterfell and eat the rest of Westeros.
Or: if they are clustered together in Winterfell, the zombie dragon cold-burns it to the ground, trapping them.
That depends on whether the Night King has the patience and the authority to command a siege. The Living have a rather large army plus apparently most of the North’s civilian population to feed, and the Dead don’t need to eat.
If the Dead will predictably try to storm the walls of Winterfell, yes, that’s probably the best place to meet them. But they may not.
ETA: ninja’d by Dr. Mist
Yeah, that was my thought; the dead seem capable of indefinite siege. While it isn’t clear whether they would take that option, if there’s any chance they would, better not to give it to them.
Yay, I’ve never ninja’d before!
Light outer wall would be overwhelmed within minutes, like what happened at Hardhome. Also, within the context of the show, castles are pretty freakin’ lame defenses. There’s probably no gate on Winterfell worth the name after that Giant destroyed the main gate during Battle of the Bastards, so the wights are just going to walk in and eventually steam-roll whatever small group of defenders are there (no phalanx is going to hold, it’s just the logic of the show that it’s going to collapse within minutes).
After that it just becomes a brutal melee in which the dead are going to win becuase they have the numbers.
Also, Dothraki can’t fight in Winterfell.
Dothraki being fairly capable archers, and Winterfell being lavishly equipped with dragonglass arrowheads, they should be able to re-deadify the Night King’s army with minimal effort or risk so long as A: the Night King orders an assault and B: the writers don’t nerf the castle.
Realistically, the Night King would order a siege. Dramatically, the Night King would order an assault but the writers as you note will always nerf castles.
To be fair, it isn’t even a stretch. The ice dragon took care of The Wall in seconds.
Hmm, but of course, that was ice, and castle walls are earth, so maybe they would be more of a challenge. Still, The Wall was freaking enormous.
Yeah….but I suspect the destruction of the wall was writer bullcrap. Balerion didn’t destroy Harrenhal, so I’m betting there’s no way that dragon should’ve been able to get through the Wall. Except that the plot demanded it.
Standard action tropes demand that gates are fragile, walls are surmountable by standard siege equipment, and practically every castle is easily breached by a little known and unguarded entrance. Once there’s a breach, “elite” soldiers can readily defeat whatever defenders wait on the other side.
A thought / observation – I don’t think the Night King is there. The episode ends on a slow pan up the leg of a zombie horse, up the side of what you assume is going to be the Night King…. but it’s not, just one member of a squad of White Walkers. Nowhere in the wide shot do you see the king or the dragon.
So either he’s lying in wait somewhere to spring from an unexpected direction, or he’s bypassed Winterfell and is headed for Kings Landing, zombifying the whole country along the way.
That might be one way to avoid the awkwardness of two “final confrontations” – the battle of Winterfell is a feint. The defenders win after a hard battle, only to realize that the true threat now has a head start into ripe “recruiting” ground. Deep magic protects Winterfell itself, but they will have to leave it to truly defeat the threat.
That could be a superb plot, worthy of George R. R. Martin. It would take I think two more episodes than the show has remaining to carry it out, unless the plan is to turn the game of thrones part of “The Game of Thrones” into an eight-season shaggy dog story.
Possibly relevant that the remaining episodes are supposed to be 80 minutes of runtime, as opposed to the normal 50-60.
I’m not sure that gets us the 2 extra episodes we’d need, but it’s getting close.
The remaining 4 episodes are ~80 min a pop. 5.5 hours of run time is only an hour less than the entire original Star Wars trilogy. Plenty of time for plot, although obviously the pace needs to pick up.
I think you could do it – next week is Battle of Winterfell, then an episode of piece moving / the freezing of Westeros, then The Battle of 3 Armies, then denouement.
NK to KL was my initial thought as well, since GOT has already pulled that trope a few times (Casterly Rock, Whispering Wood).
But:
1. Doing that really nerfs Cersei for the Final Battle, unless she is meeting up with the Golden Company somewhere else.
2. Why the move back to the Iron Islands? That seems pointless unless you intend to actually use the Iron Islands at some point during the next episode or two.
3. This might just be me talking, but moving an entire army of Wights to KL with no one noticing is ridiculous, especially with the blizzard that would doubtless accompany it.
Maybe Yara gets back to find the Iron Islands frozen and zombified? Maybe they just wanted to put her on a bus?
It doesn’t matter if everyone notices the walker army – there’s is no one south of Winterfell who can effectively oppose them except Cersei, and she doesn’t believe in them as a true threat and won’t do anything proactive to oppose them.
I fixed my sink today. It wasn’t anything major, after some quick diagnostics I just needed to pop the faucet off and dunk it in some vinegar for a few hours to get it flowing again. But at first I was going to just call my super, until I was struck by the vision that somewhere in the Bay Area a single tear was rolling down a man’s face and he didn’t know why. So thank you Plumber, for inspiring me to… uh, deny your profession an easy job? Shit, I think I lost the plot there.
Congratulations! Good job!
Do you mean the aerator or head?
Ah! That explains why I was feeling a bit verklempt…
Your welcome.
Happy to be of service?
Clearly your mere presence inspired Dan L to take on a task he would otherwise have left to others. You taught a man to fish, without actually teaching him anything at all. Not a bad trick, that.
The whole spout, actually. It’s an older piece of hardware, and didn’t have a separable aerator. Step two is probably going out and getting a new spout, because my guess would be that it’ll be a recurring issue what with how much sediment gets flushed through every time the water gets turned back on after maintenance.
So thank you Plumber, for inspiring me to… uh, deny your profession an easy job?
I think we are all deeply moved by this inspiring tale of hands across the ocean, or keyboards, or kitchen sinks 🙂
I think the idea is that when you compare even superficial aspects of two activities, it implies that they are of the same magnitude.
This can be done humorously, such as “My brother asking my girlfriend out was the greatest betrayal since Judas Iscariot.”
It seems to be triggering sort of sacred/purity impulse of not invoking a great tragedy (or more rarely, triumph) for a relatively trivial matter. As a matter of rhetorical hygene, it’s kind of a suspect practice as you are smuggling in the affect of the more momentous event to color the other.
On the grand scheme of things, though, it’s probably just a way to try and score cheap points by finding any remotely credible claim of offense.
I think that’s exactly right, for whatever my two cents are worth.
It also runs a big risk of people drawing different conclusions than intended by the comparison.
“Hitler was like Ghandi in that both were vegetarians” can become:
“Hitler was like Ghandi” can become:
“Hitler was like Ghandi in that both hated the Jews”.
There’s another thing, too.
I once was in an RPG discussion with somebody who was very adamantly opposed to the GM ever fudging the dice (ie, ignoring a roll and declaring it success or failure despite the actual number). This is a dogmatic position for some people, and while I agree that you don’t want the GM just constantly ignoring the system (sounds like the system doesn’t match the game well in that case), I was trying to offer some perspective.
So I was on a general train of argument to the effect of, “Even granting the proposition that it’s a bad idea, you don’t have to freak out about your GM doing something that you think is a bad idea every once in a while. If you love the majority of the game and once every few months there’s one thing that you have a disagreement about, you should try to keep perspective.”
To which people offered up several analogies, including the prospect of the GM, instead of fudging a die roll, whipping off his pants and masturbating in front of you, and also someone who said, “Why would you throw out this great relationship after one little rape?”
So the point is, there are classes of extreme events that have qualities all of their own. The Nazis are the apotheosis of bad people. Murder, torture, and rape are the ultimate crimes.
Comparing everything to the worst possible things is an attempt to remove perspective and nuance. Murder (classic, straightforward, “I went out to kill Bob who has done no wrong” murder) is, to probably the overwhelming majority of all people, unforgivable. If you compare all crimes to murder, you’re pushing people to make all crimes unforgivable.
The rules that apply to slavery, rape, murder, torture, Nazis, the Holocaust, genocide, and other way-over-at-the-end-of-the-spectrum extreme things are different than the rules that should apply to almost everything else. That tends to make them non-useful comparators.
I’m a pretty dogmatic anti-fudger – having once been that GM who really did only fudge every once in a while, and having decided it was still bad – and yeah, that’s a really weird comparison. We had a GM who was just railroading in the most obvious and blatant ways, and while it bugged us, we grinned and bore it. However, we basically revolted over an incident of really over-the-top magical-realming.
In this case, it isn’t just exaggerating something – it’s comparing it to an unlike situation. Fudging in a game is unlike whipping one’s dick out – especially because there was a period of at least a decade where the standard GM advice was “fudging is great, don’t let the dice get in the way of the story” while I have never read GM advice that suggests hauling out one’s junk.
It’s taking something that’s well-intentioned but misguided and ultimately more often than not bad, and likening it to something that is harmful and malicious.
If someone made that comparison, i would ask them if they truly feel that fudging a dice roll represents such a deep and fundamental violation of their trust that it would make it impossible for us to continue gaming together. Because if it does, then i would have to ask them not to play in any game i run, because i can’t promise that i will never, ever fudge a dice roll. Not with the same certainty that i can promise never to start fingering myself at the table. If it’s not that deep a violation of trust, then maybe they should stop being so melodramatic about it.
Relatedly, my take on fudging is that it should never happen. Not because the GM shouldn’t bend the rules of the game, but because such bending should happen before the roll is even called. Once you commit to rolling the dice, you have committed to abiding by the result. For example, let’s say a character is terribly wounded and by the rules has to make a save or die roll. If you don’t intend to let the character die, then just don’t call the roll. Either grant an automatic pass, or make it a save to stay concious, or do something else. Rolling dice only to discard the results is a waste of everyone’s time, so you should avoid it when possible.
Lillian: I shouldn’t admit this….. but I might not be the only the one thinking it: Part of this post made me think “not even if I roll one or more nat 20’s on a persuasion check?”
I hope this does not result in your and/or your boyfriend rolling 20’s on unarmed combat against Gray Ice (for entirely understandable purposes).
With a Nat 20 on that Persuation check, i’m sure you could convince my Boyfriend that you’re a funny guy.
K-pop group BTS release album based on a book summarising Jung’s work. Wildly extrapolating from this and Lobster Man, it looks like the zeitgeist of the next few years will be Jungian.
Last year, during the week leading up to Easter, I took part in a special ceremony.
The ceremony was based on the Passover celebration, but it was focused on Passover as Jesus of Nazareth might have known it…and the way that Jesus transformed a portion of the Passover celebration (with Matzah and wine) into the ceremony now called Communion.
It was a little surprising to me. I’ve mostly considered Jesus as a founder of a new religion. But this ceremony reminded me that Jesus spent most of his life as a Rabbi.* He was in Jerusalem to celebrate Passover.
It’s a powerful reminder of the twists and turns of history.
A troublesome Rabbi is condemned by the religious council that is dominant in Judaism; that council convinces the Roman governor to deliver the death penalty. Early the next week, the followers of that Rabbi claim to find an empty tomb; they claim to have seen Jesus living again.
They are persecuted by the leadership of the Temple. Yet the followers of Jesus still go to the Temple to pray for some time, as well as meeting in private houses. Further persecution leads to a dispersal of the followers of Jesus into surrounding areas. They take the story of Jesus with them. And it seems impossible to suppress this new religious group, even after the Jewish leadership of the Temple does all in their power to separate the followers of Jesus from the protective umbrella of Judaism.
* Indeed, it’s possible to make a case that Jesus of Nazareth was the most influential Rabbi in the history of Judaism. At least, among those who answered to the title “Rabbi”, Jesus has more name-recognition than Rabbi Hillel, or Rabbi Maimonides, Rabbi Gamaliel or any other that I can think of.
It was a little surprising to me. I’ve mostly considered Jesus as a founder of a new religion. But this ceremony reminded me that Jesus spent most of his life as a Rabbi. He was in Jerusalem to celebrate Passover.
Today is Good Friday and also the eve of the Passover for this year, so the Gospel narrative is in tune with the times once again:
Somehow related to the career change question. I may mentor a newbie stating programming soon, and at some point we’ll have to decide for a stack. There are no considerations other than being reasonably beginner friendly and quick to becoming employable, so I’d add long term viability to the list. I’m 40 and I had a dollar for every fad that came and went, I could drink coffee at Starbucks for a week.
Personally I’m doing backend with vanilla Java (no enterprise) and MySQL (and happily for 20 years). It could be my personal bias, but I think it kinda fits the bill. Am I blind to other obvious options?
My stack advice for newbies is: the best choice is “whatever the person who’s willing to teach you for free likes”, and second best is Javascript due to the wealth of free newbie resources and the likelihood that your first toy project will be a webapp.
The learning language will definitely be Javascript. No reason not to, these days – slap a leaflet lib and pack it into cordova, and you get yourself a wicked cool mobile app from absolute scratch with only a few weeks worth of programming under your belt.
I feel like web development is maybe a bit easier to get into for someone not coming from a CS degree or similar nowadays (this probably depends on geography). If the mentoring will include referring them to companies you know people in this doesn’t matter, in that case it’s presumably sensible to use the stacks of those companies.
I’d definitely go with something you are comfortable in over something you aren’t. There are enough moving pieces without his mentor in the background trying to come up to speed on insane javascript idioms (for example).
If you go with Java, I would recommend Spring, and perhaps H2 database. For desktop applications, I would probably stay with Swing; for web applications, I would provide web services… and leave the front end to someone else (not necessarily using Java).
For unit testing, JUnit and Mockito. For building, Maven. Probably something from Apache Commons; nothing specific in mind, just good to know that these libraries exist, so you don’t have to reinvent the wheel for trivial things still annoyingly missing in standard Java.
This should be more than enough to find a job.
Guava
Not as important as it was pre-Java 8 but still.
If you’re looking for an all-in-one course on web dev, this book seems good: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1491978910/
The tech is kind of old-fashioned (PHP, MySQL, jQuery), but there are lots of systems out there that use it.
The problem here is that PHP is a really terrible place to start if you can’t already program. Even JavaScript has weird quirks. So this isn’t really the place to start for a complete beginner.
I haven’t programmed PHP since classes were the newest feature, but when I look at people nowadays it really seems like they have to learn it twice: first for the language, then for whatever framework they’ll be using. And I don’t see much skill transfer between, say, yii and laravel. 5 years ago most likely I would have gone with php, it’s insanely popular and not a bad language in itself.
Another downside is that many career paths tend to go towards front end, or even worse stuff like wordpress, and that’s not a happy life.
C# is another good option. Very similar to Java in syntax and design, commonly used, and supported by MS so it’ll be around forever.
There’s not a lot of difference in SQL platforms until you start using more complicated features, so I wouldn’t stress to hard about that one. MySQL is fine.
Also, I would recommend including some web development (HTML, CSS, JS), along with a modern JS framework like React. (It doesn’t matter which one – like you said, fads come and go – but the need to fix the problems in vanilla JS isn’t going away so you should definitely learn one of them.)
I’ve done this last year (went with python, java, postgres, javascript and tooling i.e. AWS, unix, bash, etc. geared for backend. Took about 8 months from start to landing a job.) My only regret is leaving market research towards the end of the course. It still turned out fine, but I discovered that backend jobs typically require more experience, and are rarer than FE jobs. Saw plenty of entry-level web dev positions requiring Node, React, etc. which we weren’t equipped for, which caused momentary panic.
My experience was that for someone who isn’t a CS graduate, the HR layer is the hardest. If they got a good head on their shoulders and stuck with learning, then they shouldn’t have any issues with in-person interviews once they got their foot in the door. I had my student work through “Cracking The Coding Interview” while they built projects for building the resume/have something to talk about.
I’m not sure what your student’s background is, but take that, add whatever you’re willing to teach him to their resume and do an eyeball sanity check for if that’ll get them past the HR layer.
Thanks, this helps. What was the time commitment of the student in this time?
I’m hesitant to give a baseline for this. I doubt we’ll have similar experiences because I imagine there would be massive difference between our students. Mine was an undergrad who had no post-secondary education on math, logic, etc. which made certain topics slower to teach, but on the other hand they were definitely smarter than the average person and incredibly driven (partially from having their back against the wall.)
With that caveat out of the way, I think they committed 5 hours on working days which was planned to be 5-6 days per week. It definitely wasn’t as consistent due to interpersonal issues between family so sometimes nothing got done for a week or two.
I also had a rather hands-off approach after their first language and project, which may be skewering my sense of their time commitment. Told them what they needed to do, provided resources or a project, and it was a “I’ll be available anytime you have a question” thing. They did most of the learning solo after the second month.
I’m noticing that as I realize how complex and interconnected everything is, how unpredictable, and how little understood, I become more and more of a natural recruit for some kind of populism. Burning it all down – and stiffing the people I see as unfairly successful – looks really good.
In that way, being on SSC has actually been bad for my overall middle-of-the-roadness and small-c-conservatism (motto – don’t fix what ain’t broke).
Fortunately (?) I don’t live in a place where any of the local simplistic ideologies on offer actually address the problems that are frustrating me and seeming both insoluble and the result of other people’s bad behaviour. But without the historical warning, I could pretty easily see myself trying to help elect a communist party, and I loved the idea of California seceding from the US until I took a good look at precisely who was backing and bankrolling that movement. I semi-actively blame the executive class and their legislative enablers for just about everything that goes wrong in my life, up to and including the weather, and it’s flamingly obvious when I stop to think about it that this reaction is 90% the fast-and-innaccurate system, not the slow-and-thoughtful system.
It’s notably worse since I became convinced by SSC that it was impractical for me to personally research and understand everything that mattered to me. As long as I believed things were understandable, I was somewhat innoculated against “throw the rascals out” pseudo-solutions – and inclined to distance myself from alies who were basically clueless True Believers.
I don’t think this is good for me. (Writ large, I don’t think it’s good for society either.)
Any thoughts for how to counteract this pattern?
Accept that you can’t know everything you would have to in order to successfully run the system you are bothered by, recognize that no one else can either and fight for the political system that leaves the people closest to individual problems, and therefore know the most about them, free to solve them.
Everyone saying “I have a plan!” from 1000 miles from the problem is Red Mage, not Thrawn.
Basically, become a Libertarian. 😛
I think the way to counteract the problem is to focus your attentions on things within your control. This is the essence of Jorge B. Lobersterman’s “Clean Your Room” advice.
Similarly in The Screwtape Letters, Screwtape is quite pleased when the Patient becomes fascinated with far away problems and political causes and ignores his relationship with his mother.
So, take care of your own life, vote for people who you think will act in some way congruent to your own interest and don’t worry so much about what everyone else is doing.
Is he really filtered?
No. But obfuscating his name signals to the commentariat that “yes I know I’m talking about this guy everyone is sick of talking about but ha ha give me a pass because I said his name funny.”
I was moderately entertained once I realized who it was. +1
It took me some Web searches but I have a guess based on the name of a very famous former fisherman who moved to Italy, and a word for a man related to you.
Someone please e-mail me at
HOJ[dot]Plumber[at]gmail[dot]com
to please let me know if I’m on the right track.
And yes I have seen my guesses name discussed here but I’m pretty unfamiliar with the guys work.
C.S. Lewis I’ve read a lot of (along with Bertrand Russell whi I’d alternate reading works of in my private attempt at something of an education) about 12 to 18 years ago.
Er… what?
It’s Peterson. That’s who we’re talking about.
That’s what Plumber was getting at. Peter is the world’s most famous fisherman and the first Bishop of Rome, and one of the closer male relations a person can have is…
Peterson’s star was cresting right before you started posting here, Plumber. He was (overly?) hyped by the Intellectual Dark Web social media types and (definitely overly) denigrated by the mainstream media and so was a frequent Culture War flashpoint. His name showed up in practically every other OT and I think lots and lots of people got sick of discussions having to do with him.
Oooooooooh thanks Tarpitz.
Thanks @Conrad Honcho,
I saw that he’s got lots of YouTube videos of lectures out, which isn’t really a form of media that like (unless it’s the charming young ladies of “Girls, Guts, and Glory” – “Ichabod” cracks me up), but he’s got some books which mostly seem to be “Self help” for young men – and at my age I’m pretty beyond help, I’d say my masculine role models are my grandfather, some old timers in my union, some Joseph Conrad characters, some John Steinbeck characters, and some attitudes of Matthew Crawford, so would any books by Peterson be worth my reading?
@Plumber
He wrote two books; the first one is complicated and hard to read, the second one is short and (in my opinion) enjoyable.
It has twelve chapters, and after first two or three you will know whether you want to read the rest.
Here is a free audiobook. 😀
Scott did a book review on said second book and was generally positive, for a particularly meaningful datapoint.
Thanks @Viliam and @Dan L,
I tried to listen to the audio book, but that medium just wasn’t for me, I just prefer text, maybe I’ll try later.
I noted that in our host’s review he wrote:
“…If we lack courage, we might stick with Order, refusing to believe anything that would disrupt our cozy view of life, and letting our problems gradually grow larger and larger. This is the person who sticks with a job they hate because they fear the unknown of starting a new career, or the political ideologue who tries to fit everything into one bucket so he doesn’t have to admit he was wrong. Or we might fall into Chaos, always being too timid to make a choice, “keeping our options open” in a way that makes us never become anyone at all…”
Of those two faults I suspect that I now fall much more on the “Order” side, but I think that’s pretty common as one gets older.
This, 100%. Single best part of Lobsterman’s advice.
Seconded.
I’ve heard this described as a three bucket approach (no, don’t put lobsters in the buckets):
1. Things under your control.
2. Things you are not in charge of, but can influence.
3. Things which are out of your control.
Take care of number 1, put in a good word for number 2 when you have the time and energy, and do your best not to worry about number 3.
Its a subtly inaccurate description though. Peterson’s advice is ‘Do bucket 1, which will actually start to push things from bucket 3 into bucket 2 and bucket 2 into bucket 1.’ Roughly half of the criticisms of this rule that I have seen totally ignore this aspect and act like he is trivializing people.
Right—if I remember correctly, Peterson says that “clean your room”/”get your house in order” is a necessary prelude to going out into the world. And his criticism of a lot of activists is that they go out into the world while their house is in shambles, and this distorts or undermines their work.
Also, having your room clean helps you withstand the messes others try to make in your room or the vicinity thereof.
This was his interpretation of the description of Noah, that he was “perfect in his generations.” He had a good relationship with everyone in his family, so when in came time to build the ark, he had family support instead of family trouble.
I mostly wind up acting individually, because that’s what I can do. My problem isn’t that I want to save the world, and can’t.
It’s that I’m seeing “those people” producing results that look (to me) at best like they consider folks like me as objects to be used (no moral worth whatsoever) and sometimes like they are actively out to get us.
In general, I can work around these things, and am certainly significantly better off than most people in the US, never mind the world, both financially and in terms of control over my life. (They often go together.) So I’m to an extent in the position of someone who doesn’t appreciate their (large) share of the pie getting smaller, or even not growing as they expected.
This is perhaps made more complex by my politics. I don’t believe that “greed is good” – not as the primary organizing principle for society, economy, or life – mine or anyone else’s. I’m not going to congratulate myself as being somehow “better” because I happened to have talents that became highly valued in my lifetime, and managed to use those talents to advance myself far beyond my parents.
So while “from each according to his abilities; too each according to his needs” has been demonstrated utopian and unworkable, given human nature (as well as unconsciously sexist), I’m pretty much committed to the idea that “greed is good” is just as bad, and only a mixed system even has a chance to be either long term workable or just.
But none of that has me wanting to overturn the apple cart. That’s evolutionary slow system thinking, not temper and grasping for quick fixes.
I want to upend the system because those people are with me, and I can’t see any way of adjusting their incentives to stop them. Or at least I want to get those .
And in many ways, what they are doing to me is trivial compared to what they are doing to others – but that’s just something I can cite to demonstrate that I’m not just selfishly motivated (even though I am), or that my self interest works for the greater good.
I figure this is a very human reaction – but it doesn’t tend to either make me happy or encourage me to act in ways that are likely to have good outcomes.
I cannot think of any ideological position held by a significant number of people that implies that greed is good. That sounds like the way some people describe the views of other people they don’t like.
It doesn’t, to take the most obvious candidate, describe the position of Ayn Rand or her followers, as should be clear both from her characters and her life.
The basic concept behind the “greed is good” soundbite it is that the invisible hand of the market causes good thing to happen when everyone involved acts only based on their personal self interest.
That concept is unobjectionable, if you insert qualifiers like “often” or “usually, in certain realms of endeavour”. My historical understanding is that this was one of Adam Smith’s big insights – or at least he got credit for saying it clearly first.
The problem is that there are exceptions – and those exceptions are sometimes very bad. (You won’t need to google “tragedy of the commons” or “externality” to find examples of these exceptions, but someone might.)
AFAIK the soundbite itself actually comes from a movie – the 1987 movie Wall Street, put in the mouth of a fictional character named Gordon Gekko.
A quick google found CNN claiming, in 2004, that Ronald Reagan used this soundbite in a speech in 1984. I think both Reagan and CNN qualify as mainstream.
So what you mean by “greed is good” is “greed has good consequences.” The problem on that reading is that “greed” implies considerably more than “acting in one’s self-interest,” which is what Smith argued led to generally desirable outcomes. It’s at least arguable that being greedy is not in your self interest.
(Old Wall Street saying)
You are correct that individuals acting in their own rational interest sometimes leads to sub-optimal outcomes. I like to define “market failure” as describing a situation where individual rationality doesn’t lead to group rationality. The problem is that, while such situations exist in a laissez-faire system, they also exist in all of the alternative systems. As I like to put it, market failure is the exception on the private market, the rule on the political market.
@DavidFriedman
Frankly, some quantity of people – and I can’t really estimate a proportion – act in ways that look to me as if their primary “ethic” – if you can call it that – is “make more money” – either for themselves or sometimes for a business (always one they profit from). Some of them pretty it up as “responsibility to the shareholders” or various other terms. But from where I sit, they appear to have no other ethic in their relationship with customers, employees, etc. (Maybe they are kind to stray kittens, or people they know personally; I wouldn’t be in a position to know that.)
Some also make statements that read, to me, as promoting or teaching that ethical position. I think “greed is good” is a pretty good soundbite for them – and more accessible than anything I could coin based on “the Invisible Hand”.
And it beats simply refering to them as e.g. “sociopaths”, even though that term is appropriate to at least a subset. (Let’s say the subset that wind up convicted of e.g. fraud in their pursuit of profit-uber-alles, since you probably won’t want to defend them.)
Could you point me at a statement of the sort you are describing?
Do you distinguish between greed and a policy of maximizing your own welfare? To me “greed” implies more than that.
@DavidFriedman
Probably not immediately, because I haven’t been keeping a collection, and I don’t read all that much material aimed at MBAs and wannabee MBAs – which is where I’d expect to find much of it, rather than as explicitly political discourse.
One place I see this is reading between the lines a little in statements made by employers (mine) to their employees. It doesn’t take much reading between, but it does take some.
E.g. what does it mean when HR’s response to a criticism of company ethics is a statement that they intend to abide by the law? To me, that’s a statement that they intend to do no more than the bare minimum that the law requires. Sometimes that’s their constant response when asked about specifics, even while advertising their virtue (to employees, or even outside the company) regularly in utterly generic, non-actionable terms.
But after seeing this sort of thing far too commonly, when I read “maximizing shareholder value” held up as the one and only responsibility of management – or worse, as uniquely virtuous, I assume this will be on the backs of the workers, the customers, the suppliers, and most likely many of the shareholders. I.e. such statements tend to support a hypothesis that the speaker (or their employer) acts in accordance with a belief that “greed is good” – at least when it’s their greed, and their benefit.
I think I do, but the whole topic is kind of fuzzy.
In general, if the improvement of your welfare is small, and the cost to the welfare of others is high, then acting to increase your own welfare gets labelled as “greed” – and not just by me.
I would expect that acting to maximize your own welfare implies picking up even trivial gains, regardless of the costs to others. So the behaviour of someone with that policy will usually be labelled “greed” – except when there are no low-benefit, high-cost gains available to them, or the particular ways in which they are pursuing such gains are near universal among relevant social circles.
This gets fuzzier when we start talking about intangible gains. How much does being the wealthiest person on the planet benefit an intensely competitive person, compared to being measureably (but hardly noticeably) merely second? You can come up with a thought experiment where this person gains more “utils” from this tiny promotion, than the total cost to their victims, regardless of how high that cost might be. Fortunately, I’m not even sure I’m utilitarian, let alone willing to ride utilitarianism thru a reductio ad absurdum – if people are e.g. dying as a result of his competition, he’s a bastard, and I hope someone kills him.
You can also fuzz this by presuming the maximizer has to reckon on the possibility of people retaliating against their grasping behaviour, thereby putting limits on the benefit they can get from it.
But as a short answer, unqualified – yes, I see maximizing one’s own welfare without leaving anythign on the table as generally a manifestation of greed. It may not be the result of believing that “greed is good” – the person might profess ordinary values, while failing to live up to them due to personal selfishness. But human nature being what it is, professing “greed is good” is a great way for such a person to have their cake and eat it too 🙁
The company belongs to the shareholders, so I don’t see how maximizing shareholder value can be on their backs. The one thing management can do on the backs of the shareholders is to pursue management’s goals at the expense of shareholder value. The farther management is entitled to go away from maximizing shareholder value towards achieving other goals, the easier it is to do so.
The basic argument is that the other players–workers and customers–can leave if they don’t benefit by their interaction with the company, so the company cannot hurt them, it can only reduce the amount it helps them. A shareholder can only leave if someone else is willing to buy his share. If the company acts in a way that reduces shareholder value, he has to swallow that loss, whether he holds or sells. Rather as if an employee was only allowed to leave if he found a substitute employee to take his place, or a customer had to keep buying unless he found a new customer to replace him.
The argument isn’t perfect because of sunk costs and information costs and such, but it’s the right first approximation. Treating workers, customers, and shareholders as equally “stakeholders,” as some want to do, ignores that fundamental difference.
To me, “greed” implies something beyond selfishness, as suggested by the Wall Street quote in my earlier comment. Someone who is greedy is quite likely to make himself a lot worse off by trying too hard to increase his gains just a little more.
The company graveyard is littered with examples that run counter to this. Current shareholders can become former shareholders, but some shareholders get left holding the bag.
There are plenty of takeover schemes that involve draining a company of cash, leveraging it with debt, and then cashing out. The fact that this leaves a company whose long term health is in much greater doubt than before isn’t material to the people who engaged in the takeover and have turned that into liquid profit.
Sure, in spherical widget world it’s not possible. But out in the real world it absolutely happens.
Or you can simply look at schemes were the far end is Enron’s outright fraud. Yes, the Enron scheme didn’t work out fantastic for the board and the C-level officers, but if they hadn’t pushed quite so hard, they may very well have ended up on the back side, free, clear, and very wealthy.
One person’s usage of a scarce resource necessarily makes another person worse off, since it can’t be used by everybody.
If no one uses the scarce resource, it is as if it did not exist at all, and nobody is at all better off than in a scenario where one person uses it.
My argument is not against the use of resources, but rather in favor of not treating resource use as an island.
That someone else will be made worse off is an unavoidable fact of life. If I eat an apple, that’s an apple you can’t eat. It doesn’t mean I’m against eating apples. It means that we do actually have to consider how our actions effect others.
I mean, would you agree with the statement:
“because you can leave if you don’t benefit by your interaction with a government, a government cannot hurt you, it can only reduce the amount it helps.”
And they are not maximizing shareholder value.
The beauty of the price system is that it makes it in our self interest to do so. The price you must pay to get an apple to eat measures both the value to whoever would otherwise have eaten one more apple and the cost of producing one more apple.
It doesn’t measure it perfectly, but it does measure it, and it is only in your interest to eat the apple if its value to you is at least its price.
Do you think you could do better, or even nearly as well, absent prices, by merely thinking hard about how your eating the apple affects others?
The people trying to maximize shareholder value are already taking account of almost all of the effects their actions have on others. If they need to employ more labor, they have to pay those workers enough so they are willing to come. If they produce more output for the consumers, they get paid by the consumers for the value of that output to the consumers.
This is a very sketchy explanation, and the argument hinges in part on the concepts of marginal cost and marginal value. I have no idea whether you have ever studied price theory, so don’t know if it is all obvious to you and you are making some point about the flaws in the mechanism or if you really have no idea how the problem you raise is routinely solved in a market system.
Yes, extremely easily. A mother makes this very utility calculation every time she feeds her children.
It’s not that prices are an imperfect measure of utility- its that they aren’t a measure of utility. You’re looking where the light is, trying to find a way to make utility easily measurable and quantifiable, settling for the the simple but incorrect conclusion that market value is a proxy for it.
What system even contemplates allowing that?
That argument might (and I must emphasize might) have been valid in 1600, but we currently have a global government cartel of interconnected governments who prop each other up. Until we have inter-space travel at a fairly reliable level this argument has no merit.
A “market system” is a thing that literally cannot exist. Private property precludes it, since property enforcement is a non-market mechanism. A system without any property (mob justice) precludes it for the same reasons.
@Clutzy
Do you take issue with the statement that you can leave your government? Seems pretty obvious you can, unless you’re posting from the DPRK.
Consider a scenario of a starving man with one cent to his name, who wants to buy a loaf of bread.
A rich man, already with lots of food, comes along and wants to buy the loaf instead, and is willing to pay two dollars.
Conduct a poll, include educated and uneducated, children to the elderly, across nations and languages, and the answer will be the same: Give the starving man the bread, he will literally die without it, because his well-being (his, ahem, utility) depends on it.
Only someone who’s mind has been seeped in years of neoliberal ideology will answer that the best choice is for the rich man to get it it, because it produces 200x more utility for him compared to the poor man. Because “economic value = utils”, or as you might qualify the statement, an “imperfect measure” but better than any alternative.
But is there really no alternative? What is it that everyone else seems to understand, all those people who didn’t spend their life in the chamber of neoliberal economics? There must be something going on there. The polarization of opinion indicates that either liberal economists have unlocked a highly counter-intuitive secret to understanding human well-being that everyone else missed, or that one of their basic foundational assumptions is simply incorrect. I’m betting on the latter.
And I already know your answer to this: economic value may not actually be utility, but we don’t have to worry about it, because the utility losses will all even out over the long run, and so as long as its a Marshall Improvement, its okay. But it doesn’t even out, not over the long run, and no matter how many more people you add to the mix, because the wealth is not distributed evenly. And if the “winners” of Marshall Improvements aren’t distributed evenly, they are no longer an indicator of utility, just “rich guy wins”.
Figuring out the effect of your actions on several hundred million strangers is a somewhat harder problem.
They are a measure of utility distorted by differing marginal utilities of income. Unless you happen to know the MUI of the person who was the next highest bidder for the apple, you have no good way of improving on that.
And you think I’m using spherical cows?
Consider the application of fluid dynamics to an airplane. One can imagine logically possible situations in which the design implied is not optimal. Hence we cannot design planes? We don’t have a solution to the tree body problem. Hence we cannot fly satellites in the Earth-Moon system.
One can imagine circumstances in which prices give the wrong answer—all it takes is a world entirely populated by starving people and millionaires. Fortunately, that isn’t the world we live in.
@DavidFriedman
In brief, when I hear an executive talking about “maximizing shareholder value” I expect it to be a euphemism for “manipulating the stock price in such a way that this executive can maximize their own income”. If the executive is an “activist investor” I’m even more certain of this – their whole business model is to buy up enough shares to take control, force short to medium term payouts at any cost whatsover (excessive long term risks, effective business suicide, etc.), and then sell out.
This is not the way “maximizing shareholder value” is used by folks discussing economic or even political theory. But IMNSHO, it’s the misleading soundbite routinely used by executives to excuse behaviour that rarely does what the soundbite implies.
But we do live in a world where wealth is highly concentrated. Hence, my thought experiment is not just an empty abstraction, but rather a demonstration of the inadequacy of your proposed system. If you have to assume economic quality to make it logically work, it doesn’t work.
Question: Do you agree that the giving the starving man the bread produces more utility, or not?
We shareholders seem to be doing pretty well, for people whose value management is only pretending to maximize.
@Guy in TN
I’d like to joke about each of those 7.53 billion people donating 2.67e-10 dollars. Listening to the question and responding to the poll is probably more expensive to those people (in terms of utility). Putting any actual thought into the question is definitely more expensive (in terms of utility). And so, even in this case, economic value is still ~ utility.
Perhaps you could refine your criticism. Instead of attacking, “Market prices are literally exactly equivalent to utility in every situation, even the most pathological,” perhaps you could critique, “Market prices are, most of the time, the best proxy we have for utility, and we hope that things like charity can alleviate the edge cases.” This would, for example, cut at statements like
Because we don’t live in a world where market prices + charity fail in allocating $2 loaves of bread. This has been an extreme success of capitalism, which has been uniquely good at (ahem) capitalizing on the industrial revolution to plow through Malthus’s cap. The exceptions, where distribution has been disrupted, tend to be due to corrupt, powerful governments (e.g., holodomor, various warlords through Africa/middle east, etc.).
If leaving a company involved as much expense as leaving a country, then not leaving would be much weaker evidence that you benefit by staying. But it doesn’t: for starters, you don’t actually have to go anywhere if you leave a company. (The main point of Friedman’s anarcho-capitalism is to try to make changing “governments” [ETA: scare quotes added] as inexpensive as changing companies.)
@Paul Zrimsek
"If leaving a company involved as much expense as leaving a country, then not leaving would be much weaker evidence that you benefit by staying. But it doesn’t: for starters, you don’t actually have to go anywhere if you leave a company. (The main point of Friedman’s anarcho-capitalism is to try to make changing “governments” [ETA: scare quotes added] as inexpensive as changing companies.)"How does one change “governments” in anarcho-capitalandia?If it’s by one person-one-vote then what makes it different than democracy?
If it’s by one-coin-one vote then (of course) power imbalances are baked in, and if it’s by “voting-with-your-feet” then I’m bitterly opposed, I want residents impowered to change the circumstances of where they live and have grown among, and not to have to move.
You can empower people to change the circumstances of where they live and have grown among, or you can ensure that nobody gets priced out of a detached single-family home, but you can’t do both. Gentrification is precisely what you get when people are sufficiently empowered to change their circumstances.
@Guy in TN
IMHO, the problem is that without price signals, the wrong amount of bread will be baked. If you take away enough bread from the baker and give it to the starving man, the baker will start to bake less bread, and fewer people will build bakeries. It might take a while.
A better solution is for the people who want the starving man to have bread to buy him some bread. (Or better, yet, give him enough money to buy bread and let him decide what to spend it on, unless we have serious concerns about his judgment.) You can do that through private charity on the part of the people voting that he should have bread, or through government redistribution.
But blaming the prices on the distribution is not mid-long term helpful, even if it’s common.
Almost certainly. Although I suppose it could just keep him alive long enough to go through horrible weeks with net negative utility.
What I disagree with is the idea that some alternative mechanism for solving the coordination problem would produce more utility than the market solution. We don’t have the option of turning the problem over to an omniscient, omnipotent and benevolent social planner.
@DinoNerd
I don’t know if this will change your mind on the topic or harden your current position, but in business school I was taught that ethics require management to maximize shareholder value. To do anything else is tantamount to defrauding your investors for the simple reason that it’s their money, they provided it in exchange for expected profit, and if management pursues some other end they’ve taken it under false pretenses.
@Guy in TN
I indeed take issue with that statement. I take issue with it to such an extreme extent that I almost consider anyone who disagrees with me insane.
@GuyinTN, @DavidFriedman
Thinking about the starving man hypothetical a little more, I think I have a useful insight:
All the price tells us about the utility of a loaf of bread is that it is worth at least two dollars. That information is, under the facts of the hypothetical, accurate.
The problem isn’t that we haven’t forced bread makers to sell their bread for $0.01, it’s that the starving man doesn’t have $2 to buy bread. The price signal is absolutely accurate that bread has at least $2 worth of utility.
If we give the starving man $2.50 and he lives in a country with a functioning market,* he can buy what he wants. If the rich man bids bread up to $10, (a) the starving man can buy rice or hamburgers, and (b) bakers will start to bake more bread.
* True scarcity is a special case. If the only food in the entire county is two loaves of bread, and there’s no way to get more food without the starving man dying or suffering injury, and the rich man wants them both, then we’re in an unusual case, but in the normal case, price signals measure minimum utility pretty well, and we should remedy the situation by giving the starving man money.
@Plumber wrote:
How does one change (for example) insurance companies (health, auto, or life), or private security companies, or private schools, in mixed-economyville (like the USA today)?
Is it done by one-person-one-vote, by one-coin-one-vote, or by voting with one’s feet?
@Guy in TN wrote:
Somebody else — exactly who it was escapes me at the moment — once wrote a book in which he said:
Someone else — couldn’t have been the same guy — wrote:
@Guy in TN wrote:
Another random quote from an unknown author:
@Ventrue Capital wrote:"How does one change (for example) insurance companies (health, auto, or life), or private security companies, or private schools, in mixed-economyville (like the USA today)?
Is it done by one-person-one-vote, by one-coin-one-vote, or by voting with one’s feet?"
By all three.
The rules under which they operate are one-person-one vote, which has decided that many of those decisions shall be decided by one-dollar-one-vote, except when overruled by the political process which makes different municipalities, states, and nations have different rules.
@Controls Freak
If we allow the possibility that economic value may, even in the rarest and most extreme circumstances, not be a good indicator of utility, then we open up the Pandora’s Box of having to investigate under what circumstances this occurs, and what the non-market remedies are for such situations.
This is basically my critique, except I replace “charity” with “wealth redistribution”. I am not an advocate of strict central-planning.
@J Mann
In a hypothetical system where the allocation of goods are determined exclusively by markets, and not by the central-planning of private agencies (charity) or the government (welfare), then it would be quite correct to blame the price system on the distribution.
Fortunately we don’t have such a system, and have incorporated plenty of non-market mechanisms to prevent the worst excesses of disutility.
@DavidFriedman
But how can you tell it produces more utility, though? Giving the poor man the bread is not the market solution, so you must be using some other mechanism.
I wrote:
@Plumber wrote::
I apologize for not asking my question clearly enough.
When a person in the contemporary United States wants to switch to a different life insurance company, or automobile insurance company, or send their children to a different (private) school, or when a business wants to use a different private security guard company, they don’t have take a vote of their neighbors. They simply decide to cancel their contract with their current vendor, and make a contract to use a different one.
It will work the same way in Ancapistan: an individual or group can switch to a different police service, crime-insurance company, or judicial firm, without having to take a vote and/or move.
@Ghillie Dhu
Actually, this is part of the problem. If the executives are paperclip maximizers on behalf of the shareholders – it’s not likely to go well for employees, customers, neighbours, etc., particularly if e.g. the business is “too big to fail”, or big enough to buy the local government.
Fortunately most executives remain human, and balk at some types of wrongdoing, even if it would be profitable, as well as often letting their “fast” system trick them into treating some people as if they were e.g. friends or family, regardless of the gains to be made by not doing so.
Unfortunately, they’ll also, predictably, maximize their own value ahead of (other) shareholders, and/or do stupid destructive things not in either their long term interest or that of the company.
A possibility raised by Alfred Marshall, who pretty much invented the concept currently referred to as economic efficiency. And discussed.
I’m less interested in what he thinks, than I am in what you think.
I have little interest in reading someone’s bad ideas that I cannot personally rebut.
What I think is available in Price Theory and elsewhere, and in part based on what Marshall thought.
I was responding to the tone of your comment, which seemed to imply that this was a point economists didn’t routinely allow for–when in fact recognition of the point is as old and as conventional as the economic analysis you want to use it as a critique of. I devoted part of a chapter to it in Price Theory, three pages in Law’s Order, four in Hidden Order.
I’m still curious what your mechanism is, for determining that giving the bread to the starving man produces more utility, despite producing less economic value.
This rejection of the market is atypical for you, would be interesting to hear what your rationale is.
I don’t think this is much of a Pandora’s Box, and I actually welcome this investigation. That said, I think it’s extremely likely that when you find such cases, you’re likely to find an alternative mechanism that already exists within the market structure. One obvious example is the circumstance you identified, where charities already exist within the market structure and suitably fix the problem.
Why?
It’s silly to call this “central-planning”. Let’s consider a simple case; if I see a homeless guy on the street and buy him some Chipotle, is that “central-planning”?
@Guy in TN
Price is a good way of determining a floor on utility. If the rich man would pay $2 for the bread, we can infer that he believes the bread is likely to create at least $2 in utility for him, and that he believes it is likely to create more utility than any alternative use of the $2 that he has. Price can’t actually tell us how much utility, or whether he’s correct in that belief.
Similarly, if we find out what the starving man would pay for the bread if he had the money, (let’s say $2.01), then we can infer that the starving man believes that the bread is likely to have at least $2.01 in utility for him, and more than any alternative use of the $2.01. Again, we can’t tell how much more than $2.01, but that’s how prices work.
If your complaint is that prices aren’t a magic tool that reveals consumer surplus, you’re correct.
If your complaint is that the man is starving, then the problem isn’t that prices exist, it’s that the starving man doesn’t have $2. The solution is to give him some money, at which point prices will reveal whether the starving man prefers bread or rice, or whether he’s on a hunger strike and the bread would actually create more utility in the hands of the rich man. If the starving man prefers bread, prices would also communicate to bread and grain producers that there is a demand for more bread.
Yay prices, boo poverty!
@Controls Freak
Charity is not a market transaction. The act of charitable giving explicitly rejects the price signal and instead uses planning of the property owner to allocate resources. Quibble over the term “central planning” if you like, but its still planning as opposed to market-determined. No real difference from the state allocating out food stamps.
So the question is: under what circumstances do we reject using market value as a proxy for utility and switch to planning (via either the state or private) instead? Would love to see it fleshed out, not something I’ve ever hear David talk about.
@J Mann
I basically agree with you. In a system of perfect wealth equality, prices would be a much stronger indicator of utility. However, to the extent that we have wealth inequality, is the extent to which they are not.
So the solution is either: 1. Achieving wealth equality, at which point the market system is very good at maximizing utility. 2. Allowing for wealth inequality, and using non-market transfers to mop us the disutility distortions caused by the market.
Maybe ‘non-market transfer’ (as you use in the next comment) rather than ‘planning’.
I don’t think this is the case. You have to add significant constraints on market transactions to achieve perfect wealth equality. I once did a simple simulation where, on their 18th birthday, every individual began receiving an identical yearly income, each consuming/saving identical fractions of that income, each retiring at [I don’t remember what age I picked now, but they were all the same], with enough savings to live out their life at the same consumption level (with some reasonable estimates for inflation/ROI); I used existing population age data to describe when they would die, and there was a 100% estate tax (anything they had left just went back into the imaginary bucket). I pretty easily came up with one of those, “The top X% owns Y% of the wealth,” with Y significantly greater than X (the numbers that come to mind is something in the 10-20% range for X and the 50-70% range for Y, but all the details are on a computer located elsewhere at the moment). This is only age effects.
We’d have to put significant constraints on things like consumption (and other market transactions) in order to achieve anything remotely like perfect wealth equality. Doing so would massively distort the market, likely doing more to decouple prices from utility than anything we have now.
I’m not sure I want to say much else besides to direct you back to the question that I think is still lingering:
One of the nice things about free-market capitalism are the homeostatic effects it carries. For example, no one can establish a monopoly on a commodity and then raise the price without bound, because people can always opt to not buy that commodity. Even a commodity with inelastic demand (e.g. water) cannot be run this way; something else would have to be dreadfully wrong before that was even possible. So, the price is held within a range that will clear that market.
Similar effects apply to wealth inequality. For example, the greater a person’s wealth, the lower the utility of each additional ducat, meaning the rich man is usually willing to pay more ducats for a given item than the poor man. This causes the rich man’s wealth to leak into the rest of the economy faster than the poor man’s. In other words, the buying power per ducat of the poor will tend to increase faster than that of the rich, even if the rich’s overall buying power increases faster due to returns on invested capital.
More importantly, that wealth benefits everyone else. The more rich people there are, the greater that benefit. Which suggests that wealth inequality is good news for the poorer people, not bad. The only way I’ve seen it argued that it is bad, relies on a premise that wealth is zero-sum, and that premise doesn’t hold, although it is often thought to. Is there an argument that it is bad, which does not rely on that premise?
@Paul Brinkley
I doubt many people actually believe wealth is truly zero-sum in the absolute sense. But rather, the argument is that while wealth can be created, it is difficult to create. Sometimes its easier to use rhetorical zero-sum shorthand rather than be pedantic about it.
Its like, if my plan is to blow up the planet, one argument against it would be that its the only planet we live on. This, of course, falls into the zero-sum fallacy: it ignores that we could simply harness the power of the sun and forge a new plant Earth, given enough resources are allocated to the project.
You would understand this quickly, I imagine, if the anti-zero-sum argument was turned on something you might be opposed to. For example: Do you have an argument for why the government of the China owning the territory they control is bad, that doesn’t rely on wealth being zero-sum? Couldn’t the people opposed to it just build new land if they don’t like it?
@Controls Freak
My opposition to relying solely on charity, is that it adds an additional layer of complexity, an unnecessary moving part that reduces efficiency. Its like, do you want to solve poverty in the first distribution, or use the first distribution to create poverty, then use a second distribution to try to un-create it.
To help clarify, my plan is:
1. Use the law to distribute property in a way that eliminates poverty.
The charity-only plan is:
1. Use the law to distribute property in a way that creates poverty.
2. Use charity to redistribute property in a way that undoes the poverty created.
So why not just skip past the part where we allocate resources in a way that creates poverty? The charity plan would have to be 100% effective to reach the levels of poverty-reducing you could have achieved with the first plan.
There’s also the problem that charity via private organization is allocated autocratically or oligarchically, but welfare (if administrated by a democratic state) is allocated with democratic input, which help keep weird pet-causes from becoming the focus.
Been thinking more about the charity vs. redistribution angle today:
Right now, as a baseline, we have of certain flows of wealth that go to people, such medicare, social security, food stamps, housing subsidies, et cetera. These flows of wealth are part of our economic distribution.
We also all have distributive goals. That is, ideal systems we are advocating for that differ from the current system. For those of us who are advocating for changes to the current system (either in favor of more welfare spending or less), we are advocating for a re-distribution of the wealth. Eliminating welfare is redistribution, just as much as increasing it is.
So your question for me, is “if you don’t like the current distribution, why not just use charity instead of redistribution?”
But I could also ask the same of you. If you don’t like the welfare state, why not just use charity to try to undo it (e.g. give money to rich people), rather than turning to a re-distributive dismantling?
1. That is adding steps. A simpler system is typically a better system, particularly in this case where there is deadweight loss at every stage of redistribution.
2. One of the main benefits of reducing welfare and taxes that pay for it is it increases good incentives (like building and utilizing capital both human and mechanical), and reduces bad ones. Shifting money up the income scale doesn’t do that, just like we see with current bad policies such as the mortgage interest deduction and farm subsidies.
3. Doesn’t actually eliminate any of the state coercion involved in the system.
4. Likely impossible based on human psychology.
Well, we’re in agreement on this point then. No matter what your distributive goals (less welfare, or more), charity is an inferior way of achieving it, compared to simply designing a good system to begin with.
I think you’re being too clever by half with your claim that private charity is somehow more complex than government redistribution. Both of your stated plans start with
This seems to imply that the concept of private property is baked into both plans, right? (Really want to make sure “end private property” isn’t still lurking in your plan somehow.) So, it seems like you’re burying multiple steps into one of your ‘single steps’. It seems more like:
1. Use the law to protect property.
2a. Use the market+law to distribute property in a way that eliminates poverty, or
2b. Use the market+charity to distribute property in a way that eliminates poverty.
In fact, unless our law to protect property outlawed charity, it’s almost certain that charity would exist even if we just did (1), regardless of how the rest of the law affects the distribution of property.
This is actually the opposite of true. The government is one entity (or a small handful of them if we include local/state/federal), and its control over welfare looks vastly more autocratic/oligarchic than private charities. Democratic control over the government has always been somewhat of an epicycle to attempt to ensure that those privileged few make decisions which benefit people (and avoid too many pet-causes). As the looong history of pork illustrates, it is certainly no guarantee of avoiding pet-causes.
Instead, when it comes to the particular type of decoupling of price/utility that you’ve identified (inability of ultra-poor to buy bread), private charity actually has fewer failure modes. If 50%+1 of the population decides to not fund this, it just goes away. Poof. (And that’s assuming that democratic control even actually works rather than the lawmaking apparatus being co-opted by powerful/moneyed interests.) But especially given the fact that actual ultra-poor is an extremely small percentage of our population, it takes only a small minority of charitable folks to cover the need. Maybe 5%? (And it could be any set of 5% out of the population, not just the folks who are powerful/moneyed enough to perhaps wrangle control of the government.) I can buy the guy on the street some Chipotle and donate to my local food banks/soup kitchens without convincing almost anyone else that it’s a utility-improving non-market transaction.
You’re right that this doesn’t totally eliminate pet-causes, either. I think that eliminating pet-causes is essentially impossible without full-on central-planning… but even then, you’d need a magic deity in charge of the whole thing.
Sure. With respect to the status quo. Given any two distributions, moving from one to another is a “redistribution”. It takes a bit more work to determine whether there is any special prior or ‘first’ distribution.
This doesn’t actually make any sense. That’s not what the role of charity is, in any plan. Charity has an intrinsic purpose and intrinsic properties. You might as well ask, “Why not just use charity to give an aircraft lift?” Uh, it’s just not that kind of thing.
Logically, step 1 can’t be to “protect property”, but to distribute property (i.e., to figure out who owns what). Property can’t be protected until we first determine how its distributed, after all. It is in the first stage that we determine what the initial property distribution will be. I support using property law to create a more equitable initial distribution. So in my plan, there is no step 2, because we take care of the poverty at the distribution stage, rather than in a later post-distribution stage.
In contrast, the charity argument says that we should first distribute property in a way that creates poverty, then re-distribute it in a way that un-creates it. Two steps.
Compare to switching to a system private charity, without taxation. If the 1,000,000 richest people in the US (<1% of the population) all decided to stop funding welfare and other state services, poof. You may have to end up convincing something like 99% of the population (large enough to include those 1,000,000 richest people), to keep those welfare services from disappearing. I'll take relying on 50%+1 any day over this!
Charity is about achieving a certain outcome regarding resource distribution, no? If your distributive goal is for the rich to have the same amount of wealth that they otherwise would if not for the welfare state, you can try to achieve that via charity.
(It’s not absurd to use the term “charity” for donations from the less wealthy to the more wealthy, e.g. if I give to The Nature Conservancy, a very rich organization.)
If I proposed to you: Why not distribute wealth equally, then you can use charity to achieve your distributive goals? I’m hoping you are thinking “but wait, using the law to distribute wealth equally, then using private transfers to try to undo it is terribly ineffective…”
Well yes, this is my point: It’s always better, for whatever your distributive goals may be, to take care of it at the initial distribution level.
I kinda threw it in there later, but this implicates what I had said:
Certainly, the first instantiation of a legal system meant to protect property has to figure out who owns what, but that doesn’t necessarily do the ‘distributing’. If, prior to said legal system, Individual X has one coconut that he protects with his fists and Individual Y has two coconuts that he protects with his fists, that’s a sort of distribution of resources, even if those resources aren’t “property” under some legal system. By the time we erect our first legal system protecting property, a distribution of resources necessarily exists.
Now, thankfully, these legal systems were set up long ago. People hadn’t gathered many resources yet, and there was still plenty out there. So, in the real world, they just set up the system to respect the gathering of resources that had already occurred. Also in the real world, they set up mechanisms by which individuals could go out and acquire new resources that were unclaimed. They would become ‘property’.
Your perspective divorces us from the real world. You want to set up a counterfactual world in which the first step of setting up a legal system to protect private property necessarily involves reassessing which resources every individual currently possesses as well as prospectively distributing all other resources in the world, including resources that we only hypothesize will be of value in the future and including determining that distribution with respect to hypothetical future individuals.
This seems like you’re saying that the only way to implement your plan is to literally time travel back to when the first property law was established, so that we can at that point set up the initial distribution of all of the resources of the world, in order to avoid any ‘step 2’ problems? Wow.
Alternatively, perhaps your perspective turns on the factual nature of the first ever law on property. Suppose we had an oracle and were able to interrogate what happened in the distant past. We wanted to know how the first ever law on property occurred. Suppose we discovered one of two possibilities:
1. They went ahead and let Individual Y keep his two coconuts while Individual X kept his one coconut.
2. They agreed that Individual Y would split one coconut in half and give it to Individual X.
If it was factually the case that (1) occurred, then it seems like we’re just screwed. We can’t fix the initial distribution of property. Ever. It was in the past! We’re just doomed.
If it was factually the case that (2) occurred, would you be satisfied? “Yep! We solved poverty with the initial distribution of property.” if not, what’s missing?
This is different in kind from the specific situation you identified where price diverges from utility – inability of the ultra-poor to buy a loaf of bread. Can you address this particular situation, in context of the reality of our present world?
Not at all. Wikipedia gives, “A charity or charitable organization is a non-profit organization whose primary objectives are philanthropy and social well-being,” or, “The practice of charity means the voluntary giving of help to those in need, as a humanitarian act.” You simply have the kind of thing that charity is wrong, so the entire argument fails to get off the ground.
Maybe I was unclear on the temporal aspects here. While the origination of property law occurred hundreds of years ago, that’s not what I’m talking about when I say “initial distribution”. I’m talking about the background distribution, that is necessarily determined prior to private exchanges or transfers that take place later. This initial distribution could have been determined decades, years, months, or days ago. If you receive food stamps, that’s an initial distribution of property that is determined every month. The legal allocation of food stamps is the logically necessary, prior background that occurs before the exchanges take place.
Importantly, property is actively determined and enforced by the law every day. The distribution of tomorrow is still unset. We can change tomorrow’s “initial distribution” without having to go into the past.
So, to bring it back, when you give to charity, the first step is to come into ownership of what you give. This acquisition, the initial background distribution, could have happened even just seconds prior. But it is necessarily prior.
My plan is to take care of poverty at the initial, prior step, the background distribution. The charity plan is to first use the prior background distribution to create poverty, which I think is counter-productive.
I’m confused. Is your argument not that the changes in distribution brought about by taxation/welfare are counter-productive for social well-being? And thus, restoring the distribution to a pre-taxation arrangement would be for the benefit of mankind (aka “charity”)?
The bread example is a thought experiment to help illustrate a more general principle, that economic value is a bad proxy for utility. If it is true, then there are implications for much more than just this highly specific example.
If I’m talking about the Trolley Problem, my concern is not actually about railroad safety procedures.
Did that food stamp come from somewhere? Did the food that you’re able to acquire with it come from somewhere? Then, wasn’t the initial distribution the place where it came from?
It sounds like you’re saying that if the government gives you something from someone else, that’s part of the “new initial distribution”. Frankly, I don’t know what else to say other than that that’s patently absurd.
So, using the market+charity to set tomorrow’s “initial distribution” is just as ‘logically prior’?
How in the world is, “Transactions are going to occur between today and tomorrow. Some of them are dictated by the market; some of them are dictated by the government; some of them are dictated by charitable giving. The first two count for setting tomorrow’s ‘initial distribution’, but the third doesn’t count whatsoever” a remotely defensible position? …maybe…
You’re really going to have to try again, because I can’t make any bloody sense of this. Honestly, the best I can do is that you think that a new ‘initial distribution’ occurs
every dayevery time the government gives someone a food stamp and that this sort of government action is the only thing that ‘resets’ the ‘initial distribution’. I can’t come up with even an absurd-sounding theory for why this should be called an ‘initial distribution’.Interestingly, I never made that argument.
But as I argued, this is probably false in general. Economic value is a pretty damn good proxy for utility, except in some edge cases. You replied with a remark about Pandora’s Box. I invited
Harrison Ford and the Nazisinvestigation to show when that was the case. You dropped the point. So, we have one exemplar for when price diverges from utility. We should be able to test your position against the case we both agree it would be applicable for.That is, if we’re discussing, “How should we handle price diverging from utility in some cases,” it makes a lot more sense to consider the cases where we agree this occurs. Otherwise, we have to go back and argue whether price actually diverged from utility in the case being considered (which is going to derail the entire conversation, given that you immediately opened it up to ‘all welfare and state services, entirely’).
This is a really straightforward idea.
Conceptually, the definition of “charity” requires two distributions: An initial distribution set by the law, and the changed distribution determined with the influence of private actors. This is what it means to do charity, you change from the distribution set by the law (the initial distribution) to the changed distribution. Same thing with the market, in order for people to exchange, there has to be an initial distribution set first (otherwise what are they exchanging?). This is why charity and the market cannot set an initial (or “background”, or “prior”) distribution, its always a two-part process the requires an previous distribution set by the law beforehand.
In contrast to charity or the market, when the government determines the allocation of property, no previous distribution is required. To answer your specific food stamp question, in this case the government actually brings the property into existence when it issues them.
For instance, if the government declares “you plowed this field, so you are now the owner” that allocation of property in no way relies on a previous ownership of that property for it to be enforced. The property could previously be unowned, owned by a private entity, or owned the government. It doesn’t matter at all. When the government declares ownership, the prior distribution is irrelevant. This is in contrast to charity or the market, which uses the prior distribution set by the government as the background to make further changes.
@Guy in TN
I hope you find this. It won’t let me directly reply for some reason.
So, it is by definition impossible for the government to “redistribute”? Literally any action the government takes concerning ownership of property results merely in a “new initial distribution”? I just want to confirm that I’m actually reading you correctly before I respond in detail to what sounds to be pretty ridiculous.
Ugh. Well, it seems to have posted in the right place, but it won’t let me edit. I guess I would like to add another question. Does this contradict when you said that you were in favor of redistribution or when you said:
Were you just wrong back then? Eliminating welfare is setting a new initial distribution, just as much as increasing it is?
I thought it was obvious what my position was but I’ll make it clear: The bread examples demonstrates that as long as there is wealth inequality, market value is not a proxy for utility.
If you disagree, then I would ask: why do you think the bread scenario is an example of a disconnect between economic value and utility (if you do at all)? David Friedman seemed to agree that is was a disconnect (indicating that he would ignore market value and give to the starving man), but then declined to elaborate why. It seems like the wealth inequality is the diving factor here, but I’m open to alternatives.
This is almost certainly not true, either. The bread example demonstrates that under certain conditions of wealth inequality, market value isn’t a perfect proxy for all utility. You’ve demonstrated no more than that.
Extreme poverty.
You could describe the exchanges that take place on a market after a redistribution, as relying on a new initial distribution as the prior. That makes sense to me. Maybe it would be more helpful to call the “initial distribution” the “background distribution?”
The idea of the background distribution, is that if two people exchange, they have to come into ownership of the things first. How they come into ownership could be based on a redistribution of wealth, or a maintenance of the current distribution, its not really relevant.
Eliminating welfare is a redistribution that sets a new initial distribution (or background distribution), for the purposes of the context of further charity or exchanges. Is there a word I need to taboo to make this more clear?
Saying “we need to rely on charity” implies that we create a system where are continuously allocating resources one way, and then are changing the allocation later. We continually allocate to the rich and unallocate to the poor.
Saying “we need to change the legal distribution” implies that we simply allocate to the poor to begin with. And “begin with” means right now, not hundreds of years ago. We create a system where wealth is already allocated to the poor, so no second part is necessary.
Is it like a binary that cuts off at a certain income level (extreme poverty= market value is bad, non-extreme poverty= market value is good), or would you describe it more as a sliding scale?
Trying to think how to make this point:
Let’s say we both agree that the best distribution is for you to own 2 apples, and for me to own none.
One way to do this, is to have the law say “you own 2 apples”. Boom, its done. Our distribution goal is complete.
Another way to do this, much weirder, would be to say “let have the law say I’m the initial owner of both apples, and then I can give you the two apples as charity/exchange. This way, we rely on charity to achieve our distributive goal.”
I mean, this may be able to accomplish the same outcome, but it creates a lot more room for failure points along the way.
So, when a government takes an action concerning ownership of property, is that a “redistribution” or a “new initial/background distribution”?
Maybe it’s both? And increasing welfare is also a redistribution that sets a new initial/background distribution?
Because every time the government hands out a food stamp, they’re redistributing and creating a new initial/background distribution. Your “one step plan” skipped the second step, which is, “Redistribute (reset the initial/background distribution) over and over again constantly.” Or as you put it,
So, we’ve actually done that. We handed out a bunch of food stamps already. So, we’re done, right? No second part is necessary, you said. The gov’t can pack it up?
I don’t know how sharp the sigmoid would look, but I’m open to that Pandora’s Box of investigation.
Yes, this is correct. Note how welfare differs from charity, in that it does not rely on a previous distribution for it to take place. It does not rely on the the idea the government previously owned the wealth, private entities owned the wealth, or anyone owned the wealth. It’s a stand-alone thing.
But this same step (the government maintaining the background distribution, every day), is one that also applies to the charity plan. It’s +1 to both sides of the ledger, leaving the charity plan still with one extra step.
Today we enforce property law. Tomorrow we enforce property law. If you get to count the welfare state’s two days of property enforcement (ensuring flows of welfare) as two acts, then surely we must count the neoliberal state’s enforcement (ensuring flows to owners of capital) the same way.
Curious how you are able to make interpersonal utility comparisons without using prices? Some economists say such a thing can’t be done.
I personally think its doable, and I have my methods, but I’m afraid you might find them a little silly if I explained. But I’m glad to see we are in agreement on this point.
Can the government “pack it up” in your scenario either? No, it has to continually enforce property law.
To spell it out, my plan is:
1. The government enforces the background property law, for today.
2. The government enforces the background property law, continuously for the future.
The charity plan is:
1.The government enforces the background property law, for today.
2. Private actors try to undo the distribution initially set by the government.
3. The government enforces the background property law, continuously for the future.
4. Private actors try to undo the distribution set by the government, continuously in the future.
I mean, there could be a legitimate reason why we would want to take on the transaction costs involved in the charity plan that would be absent from the initial distribution plan, but all else equal the first plan seems superior.
This gets causality the wrong way ’round. Charity does not rely on a previous distribution. And even if it did, the only real conclusion we get out of this statement is, “If we got rid of private property, we could get rid of charity, because people would have literally nothing that they could give.” Are you back to abolishing private property again?
But even this doesn’t actually work. Even if we got rid of legal property, people would still acquire resources, and charity would likely still occur (unless we’re so harsh in preventing people from acquiring anything that looks like private property so that everyone lives in extreme poverty, having no resources).
But, unfortunately for you, there actually was a prior distribution. So, unless you’re going back in time to the beginning, the factual state of affairs in which your government is operating is one where various people/entities own wealth and are exchanging it in market/non-market transactions.
Look, I get that you’re focused on, “Welfare is government action. Legal protection of property is government action. If we squint and don’t think too much, all government action is the same, so these things are the same!” But this reasoning would implicate basically every other government action, equally. Whatever convoluted combination of government action you can imagine is all “one step”. Warfare? Part of the one step. This is just a conceptual mess in order to reach a motivated conclusion. Sure, in certain domains, simpler things tend to work better than more complicated things. But the way you’ve twisted this domain, there’s no reason why this one has to work according to that heuristic. Especially since you’ve twisted your measure of “simple” to include potentially extremely un-simple things.
Not only are you combining any multi-step, perpetual, convoluted set of government actions into “one step”, but this “step” can’t possibly occur in a vacuum. From the coconuts example, people gather resources, whether or not a government protects it as property. Unless you want to go full Khmer Rouge and punish people for picking
coconutsberries, they’re going to go out and acquire resources. And they’re going to trade. And they’re going to exhibit charity. This is constantly happening, and your messed up wrangling trying to talk about “initial distributions”, as if they were discrete resets for an underlying continuous dynamical system, made it clear that we can’t get away from it. Your plan is not simpler, because it still involves the underlying system.Or is this really because you just reject realism concerning the underlying system? Clearly, without the legal apparatus, folks will gather resources, trade, and perform charity. I don’t think you reject this, but maybe you still think that we can just abandon private property, having a central planner perfectly allocate everything to everyone in just the right way that no one will ever desire to trade or give away?
It’s probably not completely impossible in all cases, but it’s extremely difficult, which is part of why you needed such an extreme edge case. Most of the time, prices work best.
So, how are you going to get rid of latter step in your plan? Say, what about:
1. The government enforces the background property law, continuously for the future.
2. Private actors try to ‘undo’ the distribution set by the government via market trades continuously in the future?
Are market trades similarly “undoing the distribution”? Do you think that the government will be so perfect at every detail of the distribution they set that no individual will have any desire to either trade or perform charity? Is that what you’re going for? …do think this is something other than total central planning?
One of the core concepts behind the idea of “charity” is that you own the things you are giving, right? Merely acquiring them is insufficient. I think you would agree that it is insufficient, if they case were say, breaking into a house and acquiring a television, then giving the TV away as supposed charity.
The reason why you discount the television example, but not the coconut example, is probably because you are operating under the idea that there is a pre-legal “real” distribution of property, and the government is just coming along and mucking it up with their additional distributions.
But what is the “real” distribution of property? It’s not just be whatever people can grab (the television example). So what are these unspoken, unwritten rules that supersede the law, and why should I accept them as defining “real” property?
I don’t support abolishing private property. On the contrary, my distribution-plan relies on the government’s rigorous enforcement of a new property law.
Right, but all the previous ownerships before the government sets the distribution are conceptually irrelevant for my plan. (They are also conceptually irrelevant for your chairty-plan: so +0 to both sides on this one)
I never claimed my plan was simpler because it doesn’t rely on the underlying system. Of course it relies on the underlying property law system. Yours does to.
My plan, like your plan, isn’t simple, and involves lots of moving parts and various actors. But crucially, these are much of the same parts and actors involved in both plans. So you keep trying to make my plan sound more complicated than it is, but at every attempt so far, you’ve ignored how that additional level of complication applies equally to your own plan.
So when you subtract away all the similarities, you are left: my plan requires one person, and your plan requires two people.
You say my plan involves government? Yours does to.
You say my plan involves people who previously owned things before either plan was implemented? Yours does to.
You say my plan relies on the underlying property system? Your does to.
I’m not opposed to market trades. I didn’t include market trades as part of my plan, because they are not part of the poverty-reducing aspect about my plan. If people want to do them, they can, if they don’t then they don’t. In my plan, poverty will already be taken care of before charity is necessary.
Contrast this with the charity-only plan, which relies on additional trading (or at least, transfers) as part of the poverty-reducing aspect.
I disagree.
I don’t discount the television example. If we had no legal property rights, it basically would be whoever could grab a television (and protect it with force). It’s the assumption of an existing legal system that you’re baking into the television example, likely due to the fact that it’s probably impossible to get people to coordinate sufficiently to make something like a television in a world without property rights (but mostly just poisoning the hypo, because we implicitly correlate televisions with societies with property rights).
No. I simply disagree with your claim that your plan is simpler in comparison.
This is also not true. You need at least 50%+1 to set up the scheme plus additional people to administrate it.
Most of the rest of your comment is showing how they’re of roughly equal complexity. This is closer to what I think. I think you’re just barking up the wrong tree in thinking that complexity analysis is going to be helpful here (or even well-defined).
They’re not part of the poverty-reducing aspect about any plan. I’m glad you agree with this.
I’ll ask again, since you didn’t answer it the first time: Do you think that the government will be so perfect at every detail of the distribution they set that no individual will have any desire to either trade or perform charity? Is that what you’re going for? …do think this is something other than total central planning?
Wait, so by “acquire” you really just mean acquire, including by any means?
So, to be consistent, if the government taxed wealth, making it the new owner of the wealth, and gave that wealth away in the form of welfare, you would describe this situation as “charity”?
My argument doesn’t hinge on a democratic government enforcing the distribution mechanism. If the government was autocratic, the same logic of charity requiring more people would apply.
It’s true that a distribution-based plan in a democratic government would require more people than a charity-only plan in an autocratic government, but that’s just tacking on an unnecessary and unrelated second variable.
Right, the charity-only plan doesn’t rely on market trades to reduce poverty. But it does rely on additional transfers. Like, conceptually, the word “charity” involves two people (plus, of course, the government, as we’re been over). While the concept of “I own this” requires just one person (plus the government).
No, there will be plenty of errors I’m sure, where charity can pick up the slack. Remember my argument isn’t that charity is bad. Its that its inferior to the best option.
It’s like “we should design cars with better airbags” vs. “we should design AI cars that don’t ever crash”. Surely you would agree, that if it could be done, cars that don’t crash would be the superior option?
The analogy doesn’t even do it justice, because unlike AI cars that don’t crash, the technology to distribute resources such that poverty is eliminated is already here, we are just choosing not to implement it.
Ideally, I would like to design our economic institutions such that we don’t intentionally choose to create poverty, yes.
The charity-only plan is non-market based and involves planning the distribution of resources from a centralized point (that of the property owner).
And while its true that, within a given country, a government is necessarily larger (more “centralized’) than the individual property owners underneath it, there is a level of decentralization below even them: The non-property owners.
So my question to you is, why have you settled on this particular level of central planning, no more and no less?
EDIT: And as one more addendum, it feels a little weird to describe as “total central planning” what would only amount to a small portion of the economy: Enough to get and keep everyone out of poverty.
Aye.
Aye. “Public charity”, if you will. We’ve been short-handing “private charity” above.
Not necessarily. You could set it up different ways administratively. But in an important sense, just counting up the number of people “involved” isn’t particularly useful. As I said above, any subset of individuals can choose to provide private charity, and if some of them drop out, others can take their place on their own accord. On the other hand, the autarch can take away public charity on a whim, and no one can do a thing about it.
You think the government isn’t people. Cute. In any event, for the same reasons I said above, counting the number of people “involved” isn’t particularly useful. It doesn’t really correlate with “simplicity” within any domain for which the heuristic “simpler things work better” is applicable.
So, your system isn’t simpler, because it still has charity. Since that was the only reason you gave for your system being superior, but that reason was false, your conclusion does not follow.
That’s not what “centralized” means. And that’s why your later question doesn’t even make sense.
I was asking specifically about whether you thought you were going to eliminate charity and/or market transfers. You have denied this, so the conclusion does not apply.
Okay this part is absolutely critical, and I think we’re getting to the meat of the matter: Your plan requires two people who must make a transfer. And there are always costs to a transaction. From an economic standpoint, any reduction in the number of transactions necessary is certainly relevant.
This transaction costs that are present in the charity plan is absent from the direct-distribution plan.
My system has less charity, and therefore less transaction costs. Think of it as a spectrum.
It’s like
A:”wouldn’t it be simpler if we took a direct bus route instead of one that has a stop-over in another city?”
B:”ah, but what if the bus needed need to go through that city anyway because of road closures?”
A:”uh, yeah I guess when that happens it would be equally as simple?”
B: “But not stopping in that city was the only reason you gave for it being simpler. Therefore, all bus routes are equally as simple”
A: …
Alright. So since you are a supporter of public charity over direct-distribution, can you tell me your reasoning for making the government the legal owner of resources prior to distributing them out as charity?
For instance, in a land redistribution program, what advantage would there be to the government first expropriating the property under state control, before distributing it out to the new private owners? Why create the middleman, instead of doing it directly?
This is not true. There are plenty of transaction costs for state charity.
I didn’t say that.
I’m contrasting it to the direct distribution plan, not the state charity plan. I agree that in the state charity plan there are equal an equal number transactions, but that’s not the same as my plan, the direct-distribution plan.
I’m going to tally up the number of transactions for each plan.
Direct distribution plan:
1. Property is allocated by the state.
Charity plan (state or private):
1. Property is allocated by the state.
2. Property changes hands.
Before you respond with an additional +1 transfer to the direct-distribution plan, think really really hard about whether the same transfer applies to the charity plan. Examples of such transfers that apply equally include:
1. Transfers that happened before the property is allocated by the state
2. Transfers that are required to maintain the overall property enforcement framework, both currently and in the future
3. Transfers that occur outside of the poverty-reducing program
4. Transfers that occur when one of the systems fails
Well, what’s your position then? That the charity and direct-distribution plans are exactly equal? Or that the direct-distribution is superior, and we’re actually in full agreement, just quibbling over the rationale?
There are plenty of transaction costs to direct-distribution. Also, there’s basically no way we can actually quantify either sort in the space of a couple comments without significant modeling and econometrics.
Let me ask a quick practical question for your plan: a person picks a berry. How is this property allocated by the state?
No and no. It’s that your analysis is wrong, and you just can’t measure “simple” in that way, nor does your measure of “simple” necessarily correlate with “better” in this space.
Of course, I agree. There’s just one less transaction in the direct-distribution plan.
Counting transaction steps is not a fringe concept. This isn’t some weird socialist thing. For example, if I were wanting to sell hamburgers, I could think about selling them directly to the consumer, or selling them to a distributor who sells them to the consumer.
All else equal the most direct route (producer to consumer) would be the most beneficial for the consumer, since at every step along the way there are transaction costs. If the middleman is adding some value to the process (shipping, advertising, ect) then it might add enough benefit to overcome the costs of having additional transactions. But our debate is in the abstract, meta-level here: in concept and all else equal, having fewer transactions should be the best choice of action regarding distributing resources to the poor.
Is your question in regards to how things operate in the US in 2019? Most berry picking is accomplished on farms, by people who don’t own the berries they are picking. Because of this, the property of the berry is allocated to the landowner, not the berry-picker, by the force of law. The state could choose to allocate it to anyone they like, but at this point in time they choose the landowner.
As for how its allocated this way: the property is created, maintained, and enforced by the state the same way any other legal institutions are enforced. By utilizing a claim of monopoly on the legitimate use of violence, in this case being legitimized through democratic consent.
In your plan.
In my idealized plan? The berries and the land would be owned by the state. Poverty would be addressed not by the allocation of berry bushes to the poor, but by allocation of money. Use the state owned enterprises to generate wealth, then distributed it out.
The new wealth created would be directly distributed to the poor, thus solving poverty without having to use the two-part system of charity (i.e, no one owns it as a middleman).
So, if a person goes out and picks some berries for his family, do you arrest him and put him in jail?
If you pick berries you don’t own without authorization, you could reasonably go to jail, yes.
Note how this policy is identical to our current system, and most proposed fully-capitalist systems.
Ok, so berry-picking is out. If a person is unhappy with their current allotment from the State, can they go out and engage in any other private enterprise in order to improve their life or the lives of their family members? Or are they just all state-owned?
And I suppose I dropped this from before, but I also intended to point out that the parties involved in your conception of today’s system is “exploited worker -> landed gentry -> poor”, with that final arrow representing charity… while the parties involved in your system seem to be “worker [not exploited for some reason] -> State [totally not run by the landed gentry somehow] -> poor”, with that final arrow representing welfare or “public charity”. Notice that there are the same number of transactions, and thus, your earlier claim was false.
If he is unhappy with the law of the state, he can either exit the relationship (which may require moving, if he lives within the boundaries of the state), forge some sort of bargain, or try to change it via the vote.
Note how his options are improved here compared a scenario of private ownership, where his only options would be to either exit the relationship (which may require moving, if he lives within the boundaries of the property owner), or bargain for power (via offering to buy the property).
Unlike in private ownership, the democratic state is forced to submit to the will of the people.
This is incorrect. I have specifically laid out that the wealth produced by state owned enterprises would be directly distributed to the poor, with the state never being the owner.
My plan is not that the state become the owner, and then decides to transfer it to the poor at some later point. It’s that a portion of the wealth produced by the state becomes directly the poor’s property at the time it is created.
That the state physically acquires it is of no consequence, regarding the number of transactions. Consider a gold miner: despite carrying around buckets full of gold, at no point is the gold his property. It is never legally distributed to him. No one would say, at the end of the day, when he dumps his bucket of gold off for his manager that he is committing “charity”.
Transaction ≠ transportation
In the economic sense, a transaction occurs only when there is a transfer of ownership.
Ok, so all “private enterprise” is outlawed. We’ve seen this story before. Or, when you say that he can “forge some sort of bargain”, do you mean, “Engage in some private enterprise,” or, “Engage in some private market transactions,” or, “Acquire private charity”? Also note that your tribe is already complaining about how both the vote and moving with your feet are worthless.
This is flatly untrue. A person is completely free to engage in whatever private enterprise they feel like engaging in. For example, Zuckerberg did not have to exit any relationship or bargain for power. He merely needed to engage in the private enterprise of his choosing. He didn’t like picking berries, so he found something else to do…. something that the State wasn’t doing and that 50%+1 of the vote (or, really, the landed gentry who really run things) would never get around to doing.
Asserted without argument. Literally magic.
You also said:
Were you lying before or are you lying now?
The state already maintains the highest authority to the usage of property, as evidenced by its ability to tax ownership and the usage of eminent domain. Libertarians are correct to note that if the state can control your usage of something, or take it away, then you don’t really own it in any complete sense.
So why haven’t we gone Khmer Rouge? What is missing from your simplistic cause-and-effect story?
I mean he can propose a transaction, by offering something the state might want. For instance, resources outside the state’s control. I make no presumptions of my ideal state being a global-encompassing entity.
In the US you are free in engage in private enterprise, if you first obtain the power of property ownership. And how do you obtain property? One common way is to offer somebody something in return, i.e. bargaining. Not much homesteading going on in the 21st century.
Is your objection that democratic states literally cannot exist? I didn’t think I needed to prove that one.
Excuse me, slip of the tongue. Let me clarify:
The [portion of the wealth necessary to eliminate poverty] that is produced by state owned enterprises would be directly distributed to the poor, with the state never being the owner.
Obviously the poor are not getting all of the wealth produced by state owned enterprises, that would be silly and unsustainable.
I want to touch on this a little more. Imagine two scenarios:
1. Most land is privately owned. The state retains the right to tax wealth generated on the land, as also has as a list of restrictions regarding private decision-making (i.e. regulates its usage).
2. Most land is state owned. The state allows private individuals who use the land to keep a percentage of profits they generate, and also gives them a list of certain decision-making powers.
What is the difference between these two scenarios? It’s nothing. Or rather, the difference is only who nominally “owns” the land. The tangible effects are identical.
You may notice that situation 1 looks a lot like how most modern countries work. So why do I bother with proposing state ownership, if I think the effects are identical?
The rationale is, despite it being the norm everywhere, people have a really really hard time wrapping their mind around the idea that you can simultaneously own something, and also have it taxed and regulated. And so people develop ideologies, and push policies, that are based on the idea that such a simultaneous thing cannot be possible. Hence we get slogans like “taxation is theft”, and the belief that regulation infringes on ownership, as if a non-regulated ownership was ever the norm.
So if the cultural ideological memes of the U.S. insist that nominal “private ownership” requires 100% control and 0% taxation, then I am forced to advocate for nominal “state ownership” just to move to >0% taxation and <100% private control. In other words, just to justify the system we have now to the libertarian-minded.
And what they actually do with that power is currently a far cry from banning private enterprise. It’s a far cry from total central planning (which is another consequence of your plan). Frankly, they’re different in kind, not degree.
Because
Pol Potyou haven’t gotten into power, banned private enterprise, and implemented total central planning yet. But that’s exactly what you say you want.How does this work, exactly? Give me a concrete example of how you see this working. Is the only private enterprise allowed basically colonialism?
That’s not “bargaining for power“, which is what you said. I mean, I guess if you really mean “engage in a market transaction”, whatever. But you’re just using words with negative affect to taint all voluntary exchange of resources. Do you seriously think that every voluntary exchange of resources is “bargaining for power”? …do you think that every voluntary exchange of resources is “bad”?!
And you had also said that in your plan, a person could “forge some sort of bargain”. Are you using the same words to mean something different here, or have you snuck “buying property” back into your plan?
You said, “Unlike in private ownership, the democratic state is forced to submit to the will of the people [emphasis added].” Is your objection that democratic states literally cannot exist if they protect private property?
I didn’t assume that all of the wealth was being given to the poor. You literally said that the berries and the land would be owned by the state. You said that “this policy is identical to our current system, and most proposed fully-capitalist systems.” (Forgetting about unowned land,) today, I think the picture you’re painting is that if the owner of a berry farm hires a laborer to pick berries, the land and berries belong to the owner, and the laborer just gets wages from the owner. Similarly, your state-owned enterprise would own the land and the berries, and the laborers they assign to pick berries would only get wages. Then, after the berries are picked and owned by the state-owned enterprise, some of the berries are distributed to the poor (maybe in the city or something). How exactly do you imagine “direct distribution” with “the state never being the owner” actually working?! Details!
I’m not a libertarian. Are you saying that the reason why I think you’ve been taking dumb positions is because you’ve intentionally been taking dumb positions, just because you think some other people have weird beliefs?
The ownership of the resources has no relation to the process of how the resources are distributed. You could hypothetically have a 100% market system, with complete state ownership. Or alternatively, complete private ownership with only planned exchanges. No need to conflate the two concepts.
Countries make deals between each other all the time. Let’s say Japan wants access to some island in the Pacific, that China currently owns. One way to do this would be to offer them something it return, such as money or a land swap.
The point, is that it’s conceptually the same sort of bargain you might make to influence a property owner. You want to pick apples on his land? Give him money, propose some kind of deal, or leave.
I don’t think power is bad, and I don’t think bargaining for power is bad. When you exchange resources, you exchange having legal authority (i.e. “power”) over said resource, so I think it is an accurate description. If I want an apple someone else owns, I have to “bargain for the power” to eat that apple.
If you want to call it “buying property” you can, but you have to make sure you are offering something the state doesn’t already have control over (so not any land or resources that already exists in its territory). I’m just being realistic, in assuming than my plan would not be implemented in a global one-world government scenario, but more likely on a country-by-country basis, with many resources still outside the state’s control.
Oh no, sorry about the confusion. I mean, within the democratic state, the aspects which are strictly private property do not have to submit to the will of the people (at least in the idealized capitalist version of “private property”). So if our hypothetical person was dealing with state ownership instead of private ownership, has the additional option of voting on the issue, which would be absent if it was privately owned.
This is pretty close, really. The only aspect I would change, is instead of assigning 100% of the wealth generated by the berries to the state, some fraction of this (not all) would be initially legally distributed to the poor. As in, when the wealth is generated, it is legally binding that x% of it is actually the poor’s and the state is just handling it for them (like a gold miner carrying gold).
So in summary: the state owns the berries, hires people to pick the berries, and initially distributes the wealth of x% of the berries picked to the poor. In this case, the more practical option would be for the state to also take over the processing, shipping, and selling aspects or berry farming. So rather than giving the poor buckets or berries at the end of the day, they give them money. But regardless, x% of the berries were always owned by the poor, from the start.
So it may feel like a bit of a “legal fiction”, but then again, so is all property. “Transaction costs” are often the costs of doing nothing more than switching a name on a legal document, but they are costs just the same. At every additional transaction step along the way, there is room for mistakes to be made, and the chance that the transfer won’t be 100% (e.g. the middleman taking a cut).
And most importantly, I just don’t see any atvantage to creating a legal middleman in the first place.
I’m not a linguistic prescriptivist. I don’t think its a dumb position to say that “capitalism” means the state isn’t taxing or regulating, it’s just a question of definitions.
The prevailing definition in the U.S. seems to be, that to the extent that a country taxes and regulates, is the extent that it isn’t capitalist. Like, most political commentators would agree that Elizabeth Warren is “less capitalist” than Ted Cruz, despite both of them probably sharing basically the same views on who the nominal owner of property should be.
So, I could go out there and be like “I support private property rights and capitalism! Also, I think the state should tax wealth at 80%, and control most aspects of private property use”. And while people in Norway might be nodding along think “yes, this is a logically coherent position” people in the US would laugh me out of the room.
Like I said earlier, as long the property is taxed and regulated, the nominal owner shouldn’t really matter. But it does unfortunately have practical consequences, because people have constructed ideologies around “private property” that give it a special kind of meta-legal meaning.
If someone says “I own this, therefore the state shouldn’t tell me how to use it”, which is the easier route for getting them to understand my position: Explaining to them that that’s not how the legal concept of ownership actually works, or just telling them “okay, you won’t own it anymore”.
In what sense would the former be “markets”, and it what sense would the latter be “ownership”?
Interestingly, you dropped the bit about banning private enterprise. That was pretty important.
So, the only private enterprise that a citizen who lives in, say, Iowa can do to improve his life or the life of his family is to go overseas and engage in a sort of colonialism, acquiring foreign resources to trade to the State? If he doesn’t think the State has given his family enough berries, he can’t, say, go plant a tree? After all, that would be “private enterprise”.
But he loses the option to just buy it from somebody. Right now, he still has the option to vote gifts to himself.
Dude can’t eat money. At some point, he needs to transact that money for food, and so the State is involved in two transactions with the poor, resulting in two sets of transactions costs.
Your State is the legal middleman for everything.
Why wouldn’t it? Do you work just as hard for your boss’s bonus as you do your own? That money is taxed and regulated, so why do you think its nominal owner might affect your behavior?
A market is a allocation mechanism that uses bidding and currency. But you don’t have to own the currency you bid with, or the things you are bidding on. For example, see electronic in-game currency markets.
As for “ownership”, this is easy: we’ve already established that owners use non-market, planned transfers (e.g. charity) on a regular basis. If for some reason, the owners decided to exclusively use non-market, planned transfers I don’t see how this changes their ownership status.
People would generally be allowed to start for-profit businesses, essentially identically to those that exist today. They just wouldn’t be the nominal owner.
Planting a tree is not “private enterprise” in my understanding of the word. I’m sure the extra productivity of planting trees would be welcome, assuming the trees didn’t interfere with anything important. The state is the owner, not the micromanager.
Its true that in order to buy a resource from someone, you have to offer them something they want. And if you don’t have something they want, you’re out of luck on this front. This is not exactly a stunning indictment of socialism.
We’re been talking about the option of buying from the owner (the state) for a while now? I don’t follow this.
Poverty is measured in dollars, not amount of food. You’re adding on a non-poverty reducing aspect again. My claim is that direct distribution takes less transactions to reduce poverty, not to reduce some other thing.
Its not the legal middleman for the x% of wealth that is directly legally distributed to the poor. Very critical part of my plan, needs to be emphasized.
That you can use taxes and regulations to create an equal outcome regardless of the nominal owner, doesn’t mean that we currently do.
For example: If I wanted to achieve the outcome of me and my boss each getting half the money, it doesn’t matter whether my boss is the “owner” who is taxed at 50% with the other half redistributed to myself, or I am the “owner” who is taxed at 50% with the other half redistributed to my boss.
Likewise with state ownership. In terms of wealth, there’s no difference between owning the a business that is taxed at 20% vs. working for a state-owned business that pays 80% of what you produce as an incentive, and allows you to sell the right to work there (essentially identical to selling the business).
You own electronic in-game currency in approximately the same way that you own electronic currency in a bank.
This is an incorrect definition of “planning”, so your original statement does not hold.
How?
It was to the Khmer Rouge. How do you draw the line differently?
So you’re saying that people can engage in private enterprise, so long as it’s small enough and hidden enough that the State doesn’t see it?! “You can evade paying taxes if you just hide your income.”
You didn’t engage with my statement at all. The only way a person from Iowa can acquire resources with which to trade is to go overseas and engage in a sort of colonialism in your system. In the current system, a person can plant trees, pick berries, or start Facebook.
This was in context of the guy in Iowa who has no option to acquire things to trade to the State. (Assuming he doesn’t go overseas to plunder.)
This entire conversation was started with you saying that money=/=utility, with your only example being lack of food. Are you now denying this?
This is not true, as an exchange of money from the State to a poor person requires the same number of transactions as the charitable exchange of money from one private citizen to a poor person.
But this doesn’t occur. The state owns the land, the trees, and the berries. The State owns the paper and the ink used to make currency. The State owns the currency once it’s printed. Then, it engages in a transaction to give that currency to poor people. Then, it engages in another transaction to exchange that currency back for food.
This completely side-stepped the question about incentives.
Right, but in your system, every single selection of “if I wanted” is a decision made by the State. This is the essence of central planning. Will you admit that your plan is absolute central planning?
This is very not identical to selling the business. Can you actually sell your entire 80% stake to someone? Can you “sell the right to work there” according to fixed rate, rather than a percentage? Can you select percentages/fixed rates that are not all equal?
Er, not sure about this, I’m thinking its all owned by the gaming company if its located on their servers. Let me give another example: redeemable reward points. You can use these points to buy things, but I think the points remain property of the company.
Dictionary tells me “to plan” means “to decide on and arrange in advance.” Are you using some other definition?
You would go to the property owner (the state) and be like “I want to start a business here, what does it cost to buy that right?” and if you can agree on a price, then you can use that plot of land to do whatever it was you said. It’s pretty straightforward.
Private enterprise requires that you own capital, right? “Planting trees” is an activity that could take place in either private, state, or unowned land.
I’m saying people can plant trees as long as the state doesn’t disagree with it.
It’s not colonialism if you already own the land to begin with. And in order to “pick berries, plant trees” in the current system, you have to own the land first. So in both scenarios, the requirement is that the person has to own things, before he can trade.
Here’s the thing: I don’t like private ownership of land, and am trying to minimize it. I much prefer state ownership, because it can be democratically controlled. So if the guy in Iowa, who wants to find a way to circumvent the rule of the democratic state by simply buying the property finds that it is difficult, this is my system working as intended. I want it to be onerous and difficult to circumvent democratic rule, and gain the power of autocratic rule by buying full private ownership.
And before you go “aha! So he is worse off in your system” consider this: The same difficulty in acquiring property exists in the current system if you’re poor. “Buy land, plant things” is not an option for a sizeable segment of people in the Untied States.
So I will concede this point: If you are currently wealthy, my system will make you worse off. This is by design.
I thought I made it clear back on April 24th that I thought your question of charity vs. initial distribution was in regards to the larger question of poverty, rather than access to a specific good.
But anyway, let’s roll with it. You are interested in the question of what is the best way to distribute bread. So let’s tally up the transactions:
Direct distribution plan:
1. State allocates money to the poor.
2. Poor exchange money for bread.
Charity plan:
1. State allocates money to someone who is not poor.
2. That person gives money to the poor.
3. The poor exchange the money for bread.
But wait! You say you by “charity” you specifically meant things like food banks, where people directly give goods instead of money, right? That was never clear from the start, but whatever. Let’s tally it up:
Food bank plan:
1. State allocates food to someone who is not poor (I’ll be generous to you and let the state allocate food directly, since if the state allocated money there would be an additional transaction)
2. That person gives food to the poor.
So now the food bank plan and my direct distribution plan have the same number of transactions. Although we’ve now equalized it on that front, there is still a major difference between them. In my plan, the poor gets money, which it can use to buy things like clothes, shelter, or medicine. In your plan, the poor get strictly food (or whatever the charity is deciding to give out).
I prefer giving people choices over their life, letting them buy things over the market, rather than having these decisions made for them by someone else. Each person’s needs are going to differ slightly, and only they know what is best for them.
I’m curious to hear if you disagree with this, and if so why.
I don’t think I’ve advocated for the state owning all the money. In fact, time and time again in this thread, I have said that the poor people would be legally distributed ownership of the wealth produced, in the form of money.
In my system, people have money which they exchange to access goods and services. Is this central planning?
While its true that framework under which this happens has taxes and regulations set by the state, so does our current system. Is our current system central planning?
The state could easily set up such a regulatory system, if it wanted to.
You can sue a company if they take away your rewards points without demonstrating that you breached the contract (via fraud or something).
Then all regular market transactions are “planned”, and your distinction is meaningless.
What would you offer? Berries that you can’t pick/gather?
As I linked, the Khmer Rouge thought picking berries to acquire additional resources (which could then be traded for other things) was private enterprise. Are you saying that Joe can pick berries with his hand, but if he makes a bucket or a step-stool to make him more efficient, that’s capital and unacceptable?
Boy. Wow.
He’s in Iowa, and he doesn’t own the land. Your State owns his land. He’d have to go overseas and engage in colonialism on other people’s land in order to acquire resource with which to bargain with the State for additional things.
Sort of true. Unfortunately, you’ve made it nearly impossible for anyone to own anything. But regardless, a fairly minimal amount of ownership is required in the current system, due to the legality of private enterprise. Remember, basically all that Zuckerberg needed was a computer. Your system would prohibit him from engaging in this private enterprise.
Will you at least stop at land, and not take our computers, our buckets, our stools, and our berries, too?
Maybe. It depends on how many people you want to let be a part of your government. You’ll need enough to force us off the
King’sState’s lands, take our computers/buckets/stools/berries. And you’ll need give them some luxuries greater than sustenance in order to convince them to do this. But the control of all that land/computers/buckets/stools/berries will almost certainly fall to a small set of [previously-wealthy] government folks who have the resources to maintain the threat of force toward anyone who has a hankering for more berries than they’re allotted.Probably not. Who is going to have extras? If someone starts to make new clothing, they’re going to get thrown in jail for the crime of private enterprise, and your State is only going to allocate production to satisfy the absolute need. The fact that you can say, “Here is your ration, comrade; you can trade it for food/clothes/shelter/medicine, but only in the quantities defined,” isn’t really going to cut it. Your State owns all the businesses.
Charities can give out money just the same. But I really like how your State creates money from magic.
This is rich coming from the guy who won’t let us have computers, buckets, stools, or berries.
Money is a debt, not wealth. (Note that the price system does not rely completely on money; barter prices can be prices, even if they’re less efficient.) If carefully taken care of, a currency can function as a medium of exchange for wealth and a store of value. If it adds being a unit of account, it becomes money.
Can they buy a bucket, or is that “private enterprise”?!
So, you’re fine with someone having the 80% stake in a business and hiring someone at a fixed wage to combine with the capital of the business in order to produce profit which then accrues to that person with the total-but-for-the-State’s-20% stake? Are you fine with, “How about we all just agree that
Godthe State ‘actually’ owns all the things, butGodthe State doesn’t really do anything with that ownership, and instead, there are people who ‘run’ the place and accumulate the profits”? Because it sounds like you’re trying to play games with, “I’m defining ownership so vaguely that it could be literally no change at all from the current system,” (literally we just all profess that God owns everything and then go about our day like normal) in order to hide what your plan actually entails.I didn’t know that. Anyway, the video game example still holds, and since you just need one example to show that something isn’t always so, that’s enough.
Some food pantry distributors also use a token system for bidding, e.g. everyone who wants food is distributed 100 tokens (owned by the food pantry) to bid on items. That’s a market, where the bidders don’t own the currency.
Markets are distinguished from planning by not being “decided in advance”, but by being decided by the highest bidder.
Anyway, if you disagree with the dictionary definition, please feel free to provide your own that I can work with.
You could offer money.
Is this a definition you agree with, the Khmer Rouge’s? Seems like they might not be the most precise political philosophers that we should base our definitions off of?
No, he can definitely make buckets and step-up stools, if the state was okay with it.
Maybe, it depends. If too many people hang on to meta-legal concepts of private ownership that get in the way of optimal regulation, then us socialists may have to do this the hard way. But if as a country, we could mentally reconcile the idea that regulation doesn’t interfere with ownership, but is rather a necessary component of it, then nominal private ownership could definitely be maintained.
Come on now, we can’t do this if you are going to just make up positions I supposedly have.
Why would they do this? Is this what the state-owned enterprises of the Nordic’s do?
If you’re charities are giving out money, then you’ve just obliterated your argument that my system gets +1 transactions because the poor have to go spend that money for food. Then they have to do it in yours as well! Jesus man, follow along or drop the thread.
They can buy the right to use the bucket for some purposes, but not for all purposes. Like all currently existing systems, there are regulations.
There’s two levels of discussion here:
1. Who should own it?
2. What should they do, once they own it?
I think the state should own it. And if the state felt like your hypothetical system produced the most social good, then they certainty could set things up that way.
On the object level, I would make some tweaks (the state’s allocation of 80% to the operator seems far too high), but for the meta-question of “could the state do such a thing” the answer is yes.
It’s not a game, but the truth: By using the tools of taxation and regulation, we can make who the nominal owner is have little effect. The only reason it does matter, is because of certain cultural ideological memes regarding private ownership. With a blank-slate society, I wouldn’t care whether you call it private or public ownership. But we don’t have a blank slate.
“God owns everything” honestly isn’t a bad strategy to break the ideological stranglehold people have regarding private property. If it’s not yours, people have to think of better arguments for why taxation and regulation is wrong, rather than the lousy usual ones. I’ve seen some radical Catholics utilize the arg, but it seems like an losing strategy for the 21st century, given the trends.
Fair enough. Notice that the entire point is to approximate actual ownership so that prices best approximate utility. However, this requires significant constraints to pull off artificially.
This is silly, and yes, I disagree with your interpretation of the dictionary definition. When people bid on something, they generally have a “plan” for what they want, what they want to spend, etc., right? You’re again trying to be too clever by half.
You’re going to offer the money the State gave you for the State’s property. This is a “bargain”. Brilliant.
I’m asking you to even try to distinguish your plan, because otherwise, we’ve seen how your plan ends up.
So you’re resting on, “He can pick berries, if the State is okay with it; he can gain capital, if the State is okay with it; he can own land, if the State is okay with it.” Forget it; let’s just say the State is okay with the current state of affairs. We’re done here. Your “plan” is infinitely malleable.
They don’t own all of the land/capital, like they do in your plan (or at least, I think, because now you’re starting to refuse to even have a plan).
That wasn’t my argument. Try again.
Again, vagueness personified. Look, if your only position really is, “The State can do things,” and you’re still arguing against a libertarian straw man, just stop. If you want to take actual positions on ownership, private enterprise, capital, etc., then take them.
Expletive. I was right. You’re being intentionally stupid, arguing against a libertarian straw man (see also “If it’s not yours, people have to think of better arguments for why taxation and regulation is wrong, rather than the lousy usual ones”), literally unwilling to defend anything stronger than that we should all say a magic incantation around a word you don’t like, but let everything else about how the world works stay exactly the same. Who cares if we then use a new word or set of words to eventually mean exactly the same thing as we used to? You feel a little better, because you didn’t like the bad word.
This is no longer fruitful.
It approximates an egalitarian ownership, in which I agree markets are a good proxy for utility. If the food pantry distributed 100 tokens to some people, but only 1 to others, it would not be a good proxy.
The question of who should own the property is separate from the question of how the owners should govern it. Thus far, we’ve been honing in on the first question, so I’ve been giving you a narrow answer.
The topic we are discussing is not the entirety of my political beliefs.
So what is your argument here? If they did own all the land and capital, that they would cease to try to produce beyond the bare-minimum to satisfy human needs? I’m missing the cause and effect here.
You:
Me:
You:
???
Libertarians agree that the state should have the power to tax and regulate? I mean, the SSC bubble is weird, so maybe that is the case here. I don’t think it’s true on the outside.
It wouldn’t be exactly the same, because people have ideological hangups regarding private property that keep us from implementing optimal taxation and regulations, resulting in the U.S. lagging behind European welfare states in terms of human well-being.
If we are going to implement something like a social wealth fund, it’s going to be a lot easier to do in the US if the state owns the property. Like, the entire Tea Party movement, and its consequences, was borne out of this misunderstanding regarding the nature of private property.
The words we use matter, because they have cultural and historical context that poke at human’s emotion lobes.
The cherry on top is that even given your measures, your claims of simplicity have failed (both on the number of participants and on the number of transactions).
“God owns everything.” The capitalist scum merely possesses and exerts control over property in a way that is exactly like ownership, but isn’t called ownership. I guess we’re done here. (Hell, we don’t need a State at all to make you happy, apparently.)
You’re just re-asserting your position here, ignoring the counter-argument I already provided. So I’ll repeat myself in case you missed it:
Direct distribution plan:
1. State allocates money to the poor.
2. Poor exchange money for bread.
Charity plan:
1. State allocates money to someone who is not poor.
2. That person gives money to the poor.
3. The poor exchange the money for bread.
Or rather, my plan is nothing at all like ownership if you have a particular liberal viewpoint that demands the owner be the highest sovereign over a given territory (i.e., the most common conception of “private ownership” in the US.)
We just need just democratic regulation, high taxation, and generous welfare. If you can do with private property that’s great, but I’m not getting my hopes up.
.
These aren’t the same thing.
What part, the arithmetic? Seems pretty basic: 3 > 2.
While there are many dimensions one can measure the concept of “simple”, the number of transactions seems like a fairly straightforward one. I think most people would agree that, all else equal, a plan with two owners is more simple than a plan with three.
Given the inherent transaction costs, all else equal it should be a superior plan. But I’m open to the idea that creating a legal middleman is adding something of value to the process, you are right that simpler isn’t always better. If you have an argument for why we should be using a middleman in this case, I’m all ears.
That’s the cherry on top bit.
Not really. What is the economic meaning of the velocity of money? What is the utility meaning? Often, people on the left make arguments that conclude in increasing the velocity of money, and then jump to, “And this is good.”
In regards to the concept of “simple”, clearly a lower velocity of money is “simpler” than a higher, sense there are less transactions. I think most people would agree that the concept of “simple” implies a situation with less of a thing, rather than a situation with more of a thing.
If we agree that a certain end result produces the most utility (e.g. the poor having the bread), then every transaction along the way (i.e. the velocity of money), and the associated transaction costs, introduce the possibility of decreasing the final amount of bread the poor will get. Hence, every transaction along the way reduces their final utility.
If this seems weird, its because liberal economists usually don’t establish establish an end goal dsitribution as a utility-maximum, but rather focus how market transactions increase utility. But since both me and you agree that we should abandon typical market transactions in the scenario, and give the poor the bread despite it producing less economic value, the typical logic of the market no longer applies.
Here’s an easy thought experiment to see why the middlemen matter:
Let’s say 100 people are all standing in a room, and you and me agree that the outcome that produces the most utility is for the poorest person to have a loaf of bread.
One option, is for the poor person to be assigned ownership of the bread. The poor person could then grab the bread themselves, or have someone else bring it to them. Either way, its the poor person’s bread, legally.
Another option, is to first assign ownership of the bread to person A. He then assigns it to person B. Who then assigns it to C. And so on, for 99 ownership transactions, until the poor person, at the very end, gets the bread.
From what I can gather from your argument, you think these scenarios have the same utility outcome. I propose they are not, based on transaction costs alone.
But transaction costs aren’t even the only threat we’ve introduced, with the second option. This is because the owner of the bread can always eat the bread himself. Every time someone who isn’t the poor person owns it, there’s always that risk. Heck, there could even be someone along the chain who doesn’t even agree that the poor person should get the bread, and would refuse to make further transactions, thwarting who whole plan.
So why take that risk? Clearly the two plans are not equal, in terms of utility. The second plan has to go perfectly smoothly (with no one going rouge), and even then we’ve introduced a hundred unnecessary transaction costs.
There is almost never just a thing. You’re picking out one of a variety of possible things.
This doesn’t make sense. You seem to be assuming that there is a fixed quantity of money, and that as it is transacted, some of it disappears, leaving less money. I don’t see how this model remotely describes the real world.
That’s right- I’m saying its simpler in this one aspect, all else equal. That’s my argument, honestly. If you want to say that it’s more complex because of some other aspect, that’s fine. But can you at least concede this point?
I am not assuming there is a fixed quantity of money, or bread. Of course there’s not. I am assuming there’s a cost to making new wealth, though.
Also, I am assuming that every transaction has a utility cost. This is just basic econ. Sometimes transactions also have utility benefits, and these benefits outweigh the costs. But I’m failing to see any utility benefit at all to these additional transactions- it seems like they just increase the possibility of the poor not actually getting the wealth, or getting less of the wealth than they otherwise could.
The charity proposal sounds to like “we should introduce utility costs”, and I’m like “okay maybe, but only if there a utility benefit that outweighs it”, but this benefit is yet to be articulated.
Nah, because you’re still using silly ideas like government ownership not being ownership and government transactions being a “resetting” rather than a transaction.
How is that new wealth created, and is the magnitude of that new wealth greater or lesser than the magnitude of the costs?
This is not basic econ.
This is basic econ.
You haven’t supported this in the slightest. You’ve just said, “Transactions cost exist -> magic -> increased possibility of the poor not actually getting the wealth.” There’s no mechanism, no comparison of alternatives, nothing. I have literally no reason to conclude anything about this probability from the one factor you’ve pulled out.
Allow me to repost since you seem to have missed it. I said:
“This is because the owner of the bread can always eat the bread himself. Every time someone who isn’t the poor person owns it, there’s always that risk. Heck, there could even be someone along the chain who doesn’t even agree that the poor person should get the bread, and would refuse to make further transactions, thwarting who whole plan.”
We’re talking about money being transacted along with goods/services. Sometimes, bread is involved; sometimes, it isn’t. And again, a private charity can simply give money to a poor person.
EDIT: Your current model seems to be that there is a fixed amount of bread; as transactions occur in the economy, some bread disappears; therefore more transactions -> less bread that can be given to the poor. This is still a silly model.
Right, and this carries the exact same risks. What if that person disagrees that the poor should receive the money? What if they disagree about the amount? Why take that chance, when the poor person’s utility depends on it?
My model makes no such assumptions. The concept of “number of transactions” is distinct from the concept of “bread production”. Of course you can produce more bread! You can also irrigate the soil for wheat, improve transportation routes, lower the unemployment rate, and change all sorts of other variables outside the question at hand.
Like any model, when focusing on a variable (number of transactions), you want to leave all other variables constant (e.g. bread production) to figure out what effect the variable in question has.
Again, any subset of private citizens can engage in private charity.
Concerning the rest of your comment, you haven’t fixed the problem. At all. You posed a model where transactions somehow meant less bread. You quoted yourself for the mechanism being:
You even prefaced this with things like:
This makes no bloody sense when you think about the actual transactions involved for more than a quarter of a second. You’re not “holding other variables constant”. You’re setting up a fictional world with fictional dynamics that make no sense. The only things that happen in your fictional world are transactions which reduce the quantity of bread. That’s it. It’s bloody absurd. That’s why it fails to tell us anything meaningful about the real world. You’ve pulled out one poorly-defined thing (because you’re performing definitional twister with government “ownership” and government “transactions”), counted poorly, transferred your bad number to an even worse thought experiment, and left us all dumber for humoring you this far.
I don’t understand the argument. That a person can engage in charity doesn’t mean that they will. That the 99-person bread transfer scheme can produce the same end result as direct-distribution, doesn’t mean it has the same likelihood.
Explain? The inherent variation in people’s opinions regarding the distribution bread is not the variable under consideration. I’m assuming there’s set distribution of opinion as a constant, i.e. “some portion of the population disagrees that the poor should get the bread”. Is this a ridiculous assumption?
It’s a thought-experiment model to address the question of “how many transactions should there be”, not an exhaustive description of the all the real-world economic institutions in existence. It’s a question of all else equal.
If you want to determine the best policies, one good way to do this is by starting with the correct principles and working from there. You can deduce the best principle by examining simplified situations, in the form of models and thought-experiments.
If I had just come out of the gate and told you what I thought the best policies were, you would probably ask “but why?”. So I am talking about economic principles instead. If you object to that, you object to the very concept of a thought experiment. Going to be hard to make any headway with those restrictions.
FTFY
Honestly, this is what it comes down to. You don’t even believe that your absurd scenario makes sense (hell; according to the principles you espoused earlier above, the State can perform those 99 transfers of ownership basically immediately, sooo…). Nor do you actually think that poorly counting up transactions actually results in some sort of meaningful transactions cost analysis or magic reductions in bread. Instead, it comes down to, “I personally trust the State more than I trust private charity to have a higher probability of doing what I want.” That’s how you really got the “magic” part of “magic -> increased possibility of the poor not actually getting the wealth”.
No, it’s not, because it’s not remotely reflective of how any of this actually works in the real world. You’re just holding bad assumptions equal. Look, I could just assume something silly about how transactions always generate wealth. “All I’m doing is holding everything else equal. Hey, look at that! More transactions means that there is more wealth to give to the poor! If you object to that, you object to the very concept of a thought experiment.”
Absolutely not. I object to terrible thought experiments.
Well obviously? If the state doesn’t want the poor to have the bread, then neither your nor my plan can help them.
Nothing “actually results” with 100% probability, outside of the realm of physics. Come on, think like a rationalist here. I said it increases the likelihood of there being less bread (due to people eating it, cut that “magic” shit out).
Nope. I trust that having less transactions will result in the best outcome. If the entity that determines legal property distribution was some sort of non-state dictator, that would still be the preferable plan.
Just to be clear, you object to the very notion that all transactions have costs? Can you find any economists who share this viewpoint? It seems so basic and obvious, like “all movement requires energy” that I am surprised this is up for debate.
Google the phrase “all transactions have costs”, you get a lot of hits.
Google the phrase “all transactions have benefits” and you get…nothing.
There’s a reason this page exists, but not its inverse.
I mean, I can just give them bread. Unless the state completes the panopticon and punishes me for it, of course. That doesn’t make your original argument any good. [EDIT: This has pretty much happened before, as we can go back to the Khmer Rouge example. Anyone who picked additional berries, even if just for their family or poor friends, was prosecuted for “private enterprise”. This hasn’t been a feature of any government that has operated remotely like the plan you dislike.]
So, your model is that more transactions (or an increase in the velocity of money) leads to less bread, because people eat it? This applies to all goods, right? Do you think an increase in the velocity of money leads to fewer pencils?
Nope. I simply presented a competing model. Are you objecting to the very concept of a thought experiment, holding everything else equal?
Will there be less pencils for the poor at the end of the chain? If you hold pencil production as a constant, I don’t see how it could result in anything but. More pencils changing hands, means more people using them, losing them, and also increases the likelihood of landing on a non-trader.
——————————————————-
Not wanting to devolve too heavy into “gotcha”, but:
Me:
You:
Me:
You:
???
No idea. Your model doesn’t really speak to this, either.
Then, lets go back to the question I asked, altered only slightly. Do you think an increase in the velocity of money leads to
fewerthe same number of pencils… being produced?I’m not objecting, because it’s not worth my time to object. I’m merely ignoring it.
It certainly does, I’ve addressed the mechanism and even re-posted it. Should I repost a third time?
The amount of pencil transactions has no direct relation to the number of pencils produced. Curious where you are going with this, seems like a tangent.
Soooo, there’s this equation in the quantity theory of money. As they explain in the video, it’s considered an ‘identity’ and ‘true by definition’. My sense is that while folks have disagreed on how to approach this identity from a policy perspective (it’s four variables, so there is room for additional relations between them and with other economic parameters, while retaining the truth of this identity), most everyone agrees on an identity equation that looks basically like this.
One thing that an identity relation like this implies is that you can’t merely hold everything else constant. Asking, “What would happen to [something else] if we held velocity of money, price level, and output constant while increasing the money supply,” is simply not a question we can ask, because the assumptions, on their own, break something extremely fundamental.
I guess this is to now ask… in claiming that there is no direct relation between the velocity of money and output, are you rejecting this identity? In claiming that you want to hold everything else constant and only change velocity of money, is there a reason why I can’t just point to this identity and say, “Uh, you can’t do that”?
If you change V, you can keep it equal to P x Y by either changing P or Y.
So the answer to “what happens to production when we increase the velocity of money” is “we can’t actually say”. There’s no direct relationship, because the equation explicitly says so. My answer is the one that accepts this identity!
If you are trying to argue that you can’t hold both price and production constant, well that is obviously correct. If you hold price constant production would increase.
But what of it? Higher production has no relation to how resources are distributed. You could make all the bread in the world, and if it doens’t go to the poor, then it means nothing it terms of their utility.
To put it in more concrete terms, you could very easily switch from a two person bread-chain to a 99 person bread chain (i.e. increase the velocity) without effecting the production of bread. It would just become a very expensive loaf of bread in the end (increase P).
You can’t hold all else constant. That’s what of it.
And you think this is the model you want to go with? You think that a system with private charity makes bread more expensive than a system with public charity, because you think there are “more” transactions involved?
Can you square this with standard micro theory? You’ve held the supply curve fixed, and the quantity supplied fixed, so the price would be fixed.
M x V = P x Y
If you hold Y constant and increase V, then obviously P must increase.
Can I square M x V = P x Y with standard micro? It’s a little outside my wheelhouse, but the experts say the reason V effects P, is because an increase in V actually drops the buying power of money (decreasing the demand for money), causing prices to rise.
This is starting to sound complicated. Almost like you can’t just hold everything constant, count up things that look like transactions (but aren’t, because you’ve defined them screwy), and make sweeping conclusions about what is a better way to provide bread to the poor.
lol this your tangent, not mine. I don’t even know where you were going with this pencil production argument.
My argument for the superiority of direct distribution has nothing to do with production, prices, or GDP.
Your argument for the superiority of direct distribution has nothing to do with production, prices, or GDP… or really anything at all, because you can’t just hold everything constant, count up things that look like transactions (but aren’t, because you’ve defined them screwy), and make sweeping conclusions about what is a better way to provide bread to the poor.
I’m defining “transaction” as a transfer of ownership from one person (or entity) to another.
How are you defining it?
So you really have no opinion regarding the 99-person bread transfer scheme vs. the 2-person?
Are there no tools in our intellectual toolbox we can use to asses which might produce the best outcome? Is it really too complicated of a question to be knowable?
If I were to come to you and be like:
“Say, your charity idea is pretty good. But what if we took it one step further? I have an idea called super charity. In super charity, instead of giving money directly to the poor, you give it to people who are not poor, and you hope that they have the same good-will you do, and will continue to pass it along to the actual poor. How about that?”
Would your response be “Ah…since we can never truly hold everything constant, we have no way of gauging whether this plan is superior to my ordinary charity plan. The number of transactions is a meaningless variable for our purposes. Ergo, this super-charity plan is equally as good as my normal charity plan.”
So, transactions can occur infinitely-many times in an infinitesimally-short interval, as decreed by the State?
I could go with, “A financial transaction is an agreement, or communication, carried out between a buyer and a seller to exchange an asset for payment.”
I picked a model. Holding all other things constant, more transactions increase wealth. That means that more transactions would result in more wealth to give to the poor. Do you object to the very concept of a thought experiment?
One of the great things about many private charity institutions (“super charities”) is that they explicitly tell you what they plan to do with the money, and usually publicly release external audits of their books.
Not infinitesimally short, but milliseconds is fine.
Hmmm if this is what “transaction” means then why do they preclude it with the word “financial”? Seems like this is just a subset of the concept of “transactions”, otherwise the word “financial” would be redundant. Things like inheritance and gifts seems to fail to fit this definition, but surely we would agree they have transaction costs? [EDIT: I might be wrong about this. It seems that planned exchanges may not have any “transaction” costs at all]
I’m glad you’ve finally spelled out your reasoning for why you think charity is superior: The 100 person chain is superior because you think all transactions create wealth.
Bizarre choice, but I’ll let you have it. It’s honest, at least.
This isn’t the case for the super-charity plan that I’m proposing, though. They are just random property owners, just like the initial property owners in your proposal.
So what is your take on it? Why not give money to random property owners, who have made no claims of supporting charity whatsoever, instead? The number of transactions doesn’t matter, right?
Why not? The State isn’t limited by needing to connect a buyer and a seller. They merely declare that ownership has been transferred. There is nothing preventing this from happening within an arbitrarily short period of time.
Barter transactions exchange assets for assets.
That’s what I thought about yours. Honestly, I can’t believe that you didn’t even try to argue that your model is a more accurate description of reality. It really demonstrates how little you actually believed your model, instead simply using it as a shoddy rhetorical tactic.
The remainder of your comment doesn’t seem reflective of anything worth commenting on. At best, it’s another utterly silly model. I might as well say, “Why not give money to a State that makes no claim of doing State-like things?” As though this is a worthwhile argument against the existence of the State.
Let’s go with it: What’s your argument against giving money to them?
By your logic it shouldn’t seem to matter, number of transactions being irrelevant and all.
Yeah, I pretty much agree that I don’t see how number of transactions matters for anything here. There may be other factors at play, but number of transactions doesn’t seem relevant.
Edit: This is made clear by the fact that you’re adjusting things that aren’t the number of transactions (things like whether the organization has made a public commitment) and expecting there to be a difference.
Perhaps my objection to the charity plan would be better phrased for you as: it relies on initially allocating money to people who may not be charitable, while the direct-distribution plan ensures that a certain level of resources are allocated for the poor.
As I wrote:
I’m assuming by “charity” you are visualizing the ownership of property moving something like this:
private individual-> charity organization -> poor person
And while it’s true that the charity organization has a dedication to giving to the poor person, the private individual does not. When the state allocates property to him, they are taking a gamble that he will give to charity at all.
My first alternative, was to simply allocate property directly to the poor person. But because I do trust private charitable organizations equally to the state, I’m willing to explore an additional option I hadn’t previously considered. It looks like this:
charity organization -> poor person
In this plan, the charity is the initial owner, not private individuals. This plan prevents the property from ever passing through the hands of a person who hasn’t made a public commitment to serving the poor.
Because I trust private charity as much as the state, I’m fine with this plan too. Property would be directly allocated to the charities, who then transfer it to the poor people.
If we can agree that only organizations who have made a public commitment to serving the poor should be trusted, then my charity organization -> poor person plan is surely superior to one that begins with people who have made no such commitments.
This is hilarious. Just amazing. BRING BACK PURITY OATHS! But seriously, this has nothing to do with economics. It has nothing to do with simplicity. It has nothing to do with number of transactions. Shit, it has nothing to do with exploring when price diverges from utility. You’ve made clear what you’re about. I’m actually done now.
Wait, wasn’t your objection to giving money to random people is that unlike charities, they failed to make a public commitment?
I guess you never answered the question directly, but you did seem to imply it here.
It was just amusing how you wrote it with no qualifier. “Think this guy’s telling the truth about the murder he claimed to have seen?” “I don’t know. Has he made a public commitment to serving the poor?”
I had to laugh.
I thought the qualify [“trusted…to pass it on“] was unnecessary due to context.
So anyway, what is your objection to giving money to non-charities instead, again?
It was for the lulz. All that’s left in this conversation is the lulz.
I don’t recall objecting. I’m pretty sure this conversation is over. But don’t be sad. We’ve made real progress here. You’ve finally come around to being able to trust private charities. That’s a lot for you. You should take a week or so, and let it settle in.
Trust was never the issue for me? Ctrl+f “trust” and the only time I mention it, is when I say that I would trust a private entity with direct-distribution power.
If all you’ve got left are straw men, I’d say I’m fucking killing it over here.
I would gladly link this conversation to the main open threads for others to be enlightened by it, and I plan to.
So, you have no objection to instead of giving money to charities, you give money to non-charities and hope that they give money to charities? No objection at all? This is your serious position?
The tell-tale sounds of a man about to lose an argument.
This is false. You’ve long since given up trying to argue by counting transactions.
I didn’t say that. I said that this line of questioning makes it clear that you’re no longer making an argument about economics, simplicity, number of transactions, or when price diverges from utility. If all you’ve got left are straw men, I’d say I’m fucking killing it over here.
ROFL. After I predicted your real position forever ago, it eventually came out that I was right. We’ve gotten to the root of the issue. We’ve solved the main problem. The only thing left is for you to realize that number of transactions has nothing to do with it.
Man, you are really bad at context clues. Trust of charities to distribute to the poor was never as issue for me. So your paternalistic “oh look how you’ve grown to trust charities” is nonsense.
I mean, all arguments about the distribution of property is economics. If you want to bow out from this “line of questioning” because it’s outside of your expertise, that’s fine. I’ll let you concede the debate.
It’s all interconnected:
You wouldn’t even be advocating for charity, if you didn’t believe that there were cases where prices diverged from utility. So that was a necessary prior for the whole conservation.
And I haven’t abandoned the number of transactions argument- it was you who suggested that trust of public commitments was a second, more important factor! So that’s two reasons I have for why direct distribution is superior. When I’m talking about one, that doesn’t mean I’ve abandoned the other.
I’m glad we agree that private charities result in a plenty high probability of wealth getting to the poor.
Man, you are really bad at context clues. But really, I’m not even sure if you still have an argument. You’ve certainly left counting up transactions. You’ve certainly left considering when price diverges from utility. And now you’re fine with private charities resulting in a plenty high probability of wealth getting to the poor. I’m not sure there’s any argument left to be had. I think when we’re down to the null set, we can pretty much say, “The null set is not economics.”
I mean, if you have an argument, please state it. I haven’t seen on in a while.
You were the one who boiled the problem down to trust, not transactions.
My argument is right here.
That’s an argument about trust, not transactions.
On second thought, I’m not going to waste time with someone “here for the lulz”.
It depends on how de minimis of a ‘cost’ you’ll accept.
EDIT: Well, okay. If you’ve got an argument that rises above the level of lulz, let me know.
Arrgh – too late to correct, I see that random text enclosed in angle brackets gets deleted by this system. I was using <expletive> in several places in ym emssage above, which is why this sentence in particular appears incoherent.
Well, this is why I was very pro-Trump and still am, even though I don’t really have any idea how he’s doing. It really doesn’t matter, as long as he’s not burning the house down. What was really getting critical was shaking the status quo a bit. Having a country led by two dynasties for… how long was it already? If Hillary had won, it would have been 7 terms, I think, and you can pretty much count Obama as well even if he doesn’t have the same last name. This is already “not funny” territory, for a country that prides itself on not being a monarchy.
Trump has a critical advantage for a shaker – he’s against the pendulum. The danger he posed was a nazi style, executive order abusing, president-for-life kind – and that’s very, very unpopular right now. Well worth the risk.
Any left-directed “burning down” would be a positive feedback loop (as opposed to a very steep negative loop for Trump). And … well, actually, that’s a SSC worthy question, but my humble opinion is the more drastic the revolution, the worse the results. The really successful ones were either evolutions (British Empire), building from ground up (US) or transitions, the gentler the better (Slovenia, Czech Republic compared to Romania, Yugoslavia, China vs South Korea and Japan, first Chinese revolution vs the second capitalist-oriented one).
It could be just me, but at the moment I can’t think of a radical revolution that went really well.
So I’d suggest you do your own short historical research, and if you come to the same conclusion it should help protect you from too much “burning down” desires.
This is so far removed from what “dynasty” actually means that you should reconsider what your point is. If your true objection is “I don’t like the bipartisan consensus” then fine, but then you need to be making a different argument.
You can’t count the one guy who wasn’t part of a political dynasty over the last quarter century as part of one. That’s cheating.
Especially when he beat the dynast in the election.
On the one hand, we do, like all of the other ape descended life forms on the planet, seem to like our royal blood. The Bushes, the Cheneys, the Clintons (kinda), the Kennedys, the Cuomos, the Daleys, the Roosevelts, etc.
On the other hand, if we are talking about the actual US presidency, the only sorta-dynastic final result that has occurred since Roosevelt is, I believe, W. Bush. So, uh, yeah….
@ HBC:
An argument can be made that H.W. also counted, as he was the son of Senator Prescott Bush. But I’d award partial credit at best, as the two never held the same office.
Talk of political “dynasties” is a clumsy metaphor that IME is used to identify a family whose trade is politics. That’s not the same thing at all, and there is good reason to expect the latter to crop up for the standard list of reasons family trades exist in the first place.
@Dan L:
Sure, sure. I just meant “The king is dead, long live the king” kind of “dynasty” talk, where you draw the next royal from the relatives of former royals.
@Dan L
Good point. Should have said “families”.
And yes, family trades exist for good reasons, except in politics, where we have terms for the very reasons we don’t want families. Power entrenchment, conflicts of interest, doubt of competence (would Hillary have made it to the top if she hadn’t been first lady?) etc.
@ Radu:
I don’t particularly disagree. But Hillary didn’t make it to the top, and neither did Jeb. Voters these days seem quite capable of ousting the old faces when they’ve had enough.
I really hope you don’t think I’m arguing for fun – I particularly like SSC for the lack of that. But I do want to make a point here – a Rationality lesson is to judge how good your performance was not solely by the final result, but by how good the original reasoning was, given the information available. Or, the way Picard put it, “It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not a weakness; that is life.”
Hillary got pretty damn close to the top. Waaay closer than she should have, now that we know how partisan DNC was. It took a Black Swan to make her lose (Trump looked damn unlikely in the very beginning). And things got that way exactly because both parties got too close to family trade as opposed to real democracy.
But I guess I shouldn’t have put Obama in the same pot, since we was actually a very clear exception to that – he won the nomination in spite of the existing power groups.
@ Radu:
I’m not picking on you for fun here, I’m objecting to your central point because the evidence in favor of it is thin and the evidence against strong.
Trump wasn’t a Black Swan, he’s run multiple times before. In 2016 he had the distinction of having the worst net favorability of any candidate in modern election history. And he won! That’s not eking out a victory against long odds, it’s being pushed across the finish line by a strong tailwind.
I gave H.W. partial credit and W. obviously gets full credit, but it’s insanity to think that Bill Clinton is retroactively an dynastic power due to his wife’s ambitions (and later mixed successes). This isn’t limited to Obama – your original claim was 7 terms and the best I can give you is two and a half.
If you’re advocating political action as a response to entrenched power groups, it matters that you’ve overestimated those groups by more than double. Or more relevantly, you completely overlooked the forces opposing them.
@Dan
I rechecked my math. We were discussing how Trump was a good choice despite being himself, so it’s natural to compare it with the alternative (2 terms for Hillary). Had Hillary won, it would have made Clinton presidency a family business (another 2 terms). Plus 3 terms of Bush, makes 7. And like I said in the other comment, she was damn close enough to count, and the way she got this close was also supportive of a “family trade” hypothesis.
The reason the count is not real is due to Trump – ergo Trump good, at least from this point of view.
@ Radu:
Two terms of Hillary is not the inevitable alternative to a Trump win – you’re glossing over assumptions, and it’s sloppy. Also, see previous comments re: H.W. and Bill.
But I think I’m disengaging at this point, since my primary interest was in rebutting the dynastic claim in the context of “a country that prides itself on not being a monarchy” and you seem to be sliding away from a discussion of vertical transfers of power. I invite you to reconsider why you would have mistakenly included Obama if your true objection was the “family trade” hypothesis, but that’s a different discussion.
Pinging in to agree with Dan L again. As far as countries go, the U.S. doesn’t seem either very enamored or the opposite of dynasties. I don’t think Trump was a weird black swan in his chances of winning. Another Republican would’ve probably had similar odds.
I think that “no dynasty” thinking in the last election hurt Jed Bush. Both his father and brother had previously held the same office, and his grandfather was a senator.
Hillary, on the other hand, was the spouse of a former president, which is a case that has not happened in the US.
However, outside of the strict definition of dynasty, then general idea of: “I don’t want the same clique in charge of things” may have worked against Hillary as well.
@Dan
Because I already conceded that point 🙂 Family trade is a much better concept than what I was trying to do.
And I’m actually prepared to go further back – the gist of what I’m trying (maybe clumsily) to say is that there are power structures that eschew normal democratic mechanisms inside the parties.
Well, actually that was a glancing observation. The point of the original comment was that left leaning revolutions are more dangerous right now because they’re more likely to end in a positive feedback loop, so it’s probably ok we ended up with the self-limiting version.
While we don’t have dynasties as such, we do have a certain number of people who are dynastically-minded enough to be imagining a big future for Chelsea Clinton.
Complexity and the failure of new fixes to actually fix the messes does make the “burn it all down, clear the ground, start afresh” solution very tempting.
Conservatism should remind us of how out of control fires can get, and how weeds grow up once more in the cleared ground to choke the new beginning and entangle it in fresh complexity that the new fix can’t mend. Memory is the duty of conservatism.
Just keep the billhook sharp to keep the weeds in order and patch the leaks – don’t burn it down deliberately (accidental or natural fires are a different matter). See Notre Dame – it survived the recent fire very well, it would not have been better to stand back and say “let it all burn” or knock down the structure still standing after the fire.
@DinoNerd
For your own psyche?
It probably isn’t, being angry much of the time probably isn’t healthy.
I’m not sure about that, I think a big part of the problem is how un-democratic (small “d”) and centralized how we are governed is and I think much rancor could be eased by justgiving most people what they want politically, as in my reading of the polls of what most American voters want, it’s clear to me that a (slight) majority of Americans is both to the “Left” of even the congressional Democratic Party median with economics, and much closer to the Republican Party when it comes to “social issues” – plus people in different areas want different things, “One size doesn’t fit all”, Salt Lake City, San Antonio, San Francisco, and Seattle are different culturally and shouldn’t have to follow the same rules – more democracy and localism could ease the problem of the wishes of the majority being ignored, not “Libertarianism” (letting the powerful do whatever they want) as most want a “big brother” (cop) to keep the boss from putting his hands on your throat and the neighbor inline who keeps blocking my driveway when my wife is pregnant and I told him I may need to get her to the hospital quickly damnit!
Basically the politics opposite of what Howard Schultz peddles, his is the “centrism” of the educated and wealthy not the (slight) majority.
Read less news (especially opinions), read more fiction, play Dungeons & Dragons, go bowling, maybe do some archery, once I would’ve suggested “plinking” (target shooting with a .22) but that’s too politicised now, re-build a fence, build some furniture, have a beer with friends and grill some steaks, take your kid to the park or a bicycle ride, walk by a lake, cook dinner for your wife, get a motorcycle (only do the last one if your kids are grown – as it really is dangerous, fun though), go sailing.
Also @DinoNerd, it’s a little eerie on how closely your thinking seens to match mine, I’m not used to that.
How much work are the quotes doing there? The parenthetical isn’t Libertarianism at all and both of those examples are exactly what a Libertarian government would be focused on preventing.
@greenwoodjw,
My impression is that Libertarianism plans to reduce the buffer of government between us and the bosses and eliminate what little is left of the safety net, and gut unions (and yes the example of a bosses hands around my neck is from life – I worked there an additional five years), bringing us back to the 19th century when we were “free” to be whipped for lack of production as a condition of employment, and also reduce taxes so there’s even less funds to pay for the cops to get that car towed who’s now free to block my driveway (being Oakland, California where the cops are overburdened the guy only got tickted and towed a few times and I had to resort to what the Wobbles call “direct action”, which I was free to do because I the cops weren’t going to come for that, as I told the guy when he tried to confront me “Go ahead and call, you seem to believe the landlord about which city the building is in, well Berkeley is two blocks north, and those cops drive by here every day, but they won’t stop”.
I want a social safety net, even a “hammock” so you don’t have endure the tyranny of working in the private sector or be homeless.
I want cops that come when called so you don’t have to be armed and ready to enforce “justice” on your own.
Those things don’t come cheap.
I get that you’re an old Union guy, but I’ve worked in some pretty terrible jobs and never had to deal with violence or tyranny. I’ve actually been on pretty good terms with most of my bosses, and I think that’s much easier without the hostility bred by a “labor vs. management” mindset.
More than that, an economy that is not so tightly controlled is easier to find work in, so it’s easier to quit work. When it’s easier to quit work, it increases the costs of being a dickish super.
And if the police aren’t shaking down motorists for revenue generation or conducting no-knock raids for pot baggies, they have more time and can take more seriously things like people blocking traffic or obstructing their neighbors.
@greenwoodjw,
That all sounds plausible, and different life experiences can inchoate different attitudes, and different mind-sets may engender different life experiences.
I think it would be neat, if say New Hampshire became extremely libertarian and next door Vermont became something between Cuba and Sweden, so we could see how well they work (keep Maine as is as a control).
Which side do you think the government is more likely to be on, the workers or the bosses? The government, almost by definition, is a creature of the rich and powerful. If you’re weak, you should want it to be less powerful, not more, because it’s not going to work for you.
@cassander,
Historically AFAIK over the last 2,000 years the boss, government, and landlord have usually all been one and the same, and while blood soaked lawless lands and times exist, I’m aware that the worst Hells humanity has made had governments (assuming that you call the Khmer Rouge a ‘government’ instead of a death-cult), but disparities in power and wealth don’t dissipate in the absence of nominal government – warbands/gangs or plutocracy are the default.
But a better way is possible -related capitalist welfare state democratic republics/social democracies.
Of the places where most people thive – are happiest and live long: modern Australia, Canada, Costa Rica, Japan, Germany, New Zealand, Scandinavia, Sinapore, Switzerland, Utah – most are welfare states and democratic republics to greater or lower extent (full disclosure: the only one of these I’ve seen up close is Canada), Utah has less of nominally governmental welfare programs than the rest – but the Mormon church more than takes up the slack, Singapore is definitely an outlier with it’s “authoritarian” system (relatively benign fascism?) and if someone wants to detail why that system seems to work there I’m curious, Costa Rica seems to me to be the biggest outlier, and AFAIK if anywhere on the globe could be described as a successful libertarian-ish place it would be there, all I know of it is they’re relatively happy, long lived, have no standing army, but are relatively poor – I invite more details.
@Plumber
The call for limited government isn’t a call for anarchy. even David Friedman doesn’t want anarchy in the sense of total lawlessness. What it’s a call for is a government that is limited in its functions, for two reasons. Because as you rightly point out, the bosses are cruelest when they are backed by the power of the state. But also because a state that is only doing a few things can be more closely monitored. the cops in Oakland are crap for a lot of reasons, but one of the major ones is that the city spends 300 million a year on the cops and 1.3 billion on other things. The fewer things the government is doing, the more scrutiny they will get from senior leadership and the public, almost by definition.
As to the assertion that every happy place today is a welfare state, well in 1945, every democratic state was christian. Another world is possible, as our friends on the left used to be fond of saying. And the places you list almost all top the list of the most capitalistic places on earth. Whipping as a condition of employment in the 19th century because whipping was condition of existence for most of human history. What ended whipping wasn’t democracy or democratic control of companies, it was capitalism raising people’s living standards and providing them with options so that they could afford to refuse those offers. Capitalism is working at bringing about the world you desire, we just need to use it more.
Has it been your experience that people working in government are notably more virtuous in what they do with their power than people who are working outside government?
@sharper13,
In my personal experience?
On average yes, the best places I’ve worked have all been in private industry, but those were outnumbered by the bad places to work in private industry, and by far the worst places were sole proprietor – as were the best places, an involved owner really puts a stamp on the character of a place, for better or worse.
In my experience as a government employee it’s on average better than being in most jobs in the private sector, but not as good as the best places.
I’ve known more True Believers (on a proportional and total basis) in government positions than in the free market. They are trying to do good with their position.
I will quibble with their results, of course.
Yes. Being angry may be motivational (see unrelated thread about depression) but it’s unpleasant, and likely to create physical stress symptoms, some potentially very bad indeed.
I like your suggestions, and intend to try some of them.
Yes, I’ve noticed that you are the person here I’m most likely to agree with.
I suspect we have similar early backgrounds. My father was a good union man, and your “dented tins store” anecdote definitely rang bells for me. I didn’t have your terrible experience with high school/college though – instead had the reverse experience, and left my family’s class forever at that point via an almost full ride scholarship to an elite university, then got into tech. But while you can lift a kid out of the working class, they are likely to keep many working class values, and somehow the older I get, the less satisfied I am with the common beliefs and values of my adopted class.
The desire for the world being simple is natural, literally. Our ancestors lived their simple lives in a jungle, and that’s what the nature optimized us for.
On the other hand, many valuable things are complex. Even the seemingly simple ones. In the jungle, you get no antibiotics, and no internet.
This is indeed what the historical lessons are for. A populist can easily say “you have nothing to lose but your chains”, when the reality is going to be like “you will see your friends killed, then you will watch your children starve to death, then you will eat the bodies of your children but soon you will starve to death anyway”.
One of the reasons is that the simplicity of the jungle can only feed a several orders of magnitude smaller density of population than we have now.
Clean your room, exercise, eat healthy food, make money, connect with people… increase your power in all dimensions. First it will help with your personal problems. And later, if you get far enough, perhaps you get a chance to improve something on a larger scale.
(And even in the case someone else makes the world burn… it will be better for you to be fit, healthy, and have useful skills.)
Grow up.
Like so many around you, you have gotten a glimpse of life’s complexity and panicked. And you are teetering on a dilemma – do we burn down civilization and start anew (as if that would alter life’s complexity) or do we just focus on the small, easy problems and ignore the big ones (as though ignoring a problem will make it go away).
But at heart, those are different flavors of the same thing : the desire to abdicate personal responsibility.
Maybe you’re looking for a leader. Arson-minded populists and small-problem conservatives make excellent followers, but they require a particular kind of leadership. They need something big enough to take everything from them. SSC, deightful space that it is, is chock-full of those types (the source of Scott’s problems).
Or maybe you’re going to figure out why you’re here, and then go do something.
Beats me. Good luck.
When you advise people to grow up, it’s more effective if you don’t take juvenile swipes at other random unrelated groups below.
everything is interconnected
Less of this, please.
See, this is what I’m talking about.
The magic through which you somehow derive knowledge about unrelated topics from criticism about you is quite interesting.
For the record, I actually agree you were somewhat correct about OP needing to grow up. You just weren’t the right person to deliver that message.
You know what is really ironic? Reflecting upon one’s own negative tendencies, the causes, tendencies and cures, is one of the most mature and maturing things one can do.
So the advice to grow up is missing the point, which is that OP is already actively engaged in this.
@HeelBearCub
You’re getting good advice into my mud wrestling. What’s all this raising the level of the discourse?
DinoNerd,
Observe.
When I told you “Grow up,” quanta felt the need to defend themself from me. And I don’t have to say very much to get them to blurt out a bunch of confused sanctimony.
Do you think that is a behavior that springs from authenticity? Or is it simply the response of a person who is easily manipulated.
You might think I’m wrong. Maybe I am – who cares. But ask yourself : is that a life you want to live? Do you want to twist on other people’s hooks like that?
quanta positively leapt onto mine and is hoping to stay there. They’re either going to respond in hopes of provoking a conversation, or, they will go silent and congratulate themself for refusing to “rise to the bait.”
Doesn’t matter. Like I said, figure out why you’re here and go do something. Good luck.
Cheers!
You need to work on your mudslinging. I am the amused one. You are the sanctimonious one.
You can tell because you randomly attacked some unnamed subset of posters. Whereas I attacked you. So now you retreat into more sanctimony. At least I am honest about mud wrestling when I engage in it.
When you predict all possibilities, your prediction is meaningless.
Via the one non-evil journalist in the world, an interesting article about astrology startups. I found this amusing for two reasons:
– the worst part of dating is screaming into an endless void of totally uninterested women who flake on you, but the most annoying part is how every fucking girl on Tinder is obsessed with being “witchy” and astrology. OMFG. But the woman quoted telling VCs to just talk to an arbitrary young girl is right.
– Say what you will about capitalism, but if you tell capitalism it’s evil (From another piece on astrology, “Every astrologer I interviewed for this piece told me, unprompted, that she believes the fall of American capitalism is imminent. Much to look forward to.”) capitalism will cheerily nod and sell you merch and services. There’s really something admirable about that, isn’t there? Lenin said “The capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them,” and the capitalists cheerily agreed, sold him the rope, and won. I think that’s a great attitude.
I’m guessing you’re referring to this paragraph:
What strikes me about that response is that she doesn’t even address the pseudoscience part of the criticism. She either seems to cynically consider it an irrelevant detail when there’s $$$ to be made from parting fools from their money, or to consider the claim that it’s a pseudoscience as so absurd that it’s beneath response.
I found it a bit surprising that NYTimes seemed to just let this slide. Overall, the article seems to only pay a bit of lip service to the criticism that astrology is pseudoscientific nonsense that causes unnecessary suffering in the world due to people changing their behaviors based on these completely false beliefs. I wonder, had anti-vaccination gotten similar traction among the general population and VCs were putting $$$ into startups which were catering to anti-vaxxers, if a NYTimes article on that would similarly gloss over the fact that what they’re selling is totally bogus and possibly exploitative, instead focusing on how keeping their kids unvaccinated allows parents to “create some sense of structure and hope and stability in their lives” in the age of Trump or whatever.
Reminds me of the quote “The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it” from John Gilmore
I think astrology tends to get a pass because most astrological advice is harmless, or even beneficial if meaningless. Here’s my horoscope for today:
So, relax, chill out and be optimistic because I can handle the stuff life throws at me. Got it. That seems like pretty good advice. Maybe there’s no real pressing need for the NY Times to put the kibosh on that.
ETA: Also, isn’t astrology more a pseudoreligion than pseudoscience? Just about everything religious in nature gets a pass from mainstream debunking.
It might be the case that astrology-based advice is mostly harmless – I don’t know, but it seems plausible – but that’s not where I see most of the harm from astrology coming from. Most of the harm is from inculcating a belief in magical faith-based thinking. Of course, people tend to be good at compartmentalizing, so people who think the relative locations of stars and planets have actual physical effect in their day-to-day lives in the way that astrologers tell them they do aren’t all going out and hopping off cliffs in the belief that they magically know how to fly. But I still think it has some significant effect on the margins of encouraging people to be more credulous of magical faith-based explanations like homeopathy or anti-vaccination.
I’m not sure which is a better descriptor for it. But I think pseudoscience makes sense, since it’s something that claims to make accurate predictions about the behavior of things in the physical world based on some mechanism.
I do agree that the mainstream seems to largely carved out an exception for things that are religious in nature, but I think astrology getting a pass like this is more a parallel phenomenon rather than the same one. That is, astrology, like religion, has a veneer of authority thanks to its long history, and like religion at least in the secular Western world, it’s considered a personal thing that you largely keep to yourself, and so it gets a pass. I think homeopathy enjoys something similar, even though IIRC homeopathy is only a couple hundred years old.
I just would have hoped that NYTimes would buck these trends.
One possible argument for both astrology and tarot is that, although they provide no real information, they are a useful heuristic. Someone is told something random about himself or his life, and that starts him thinking–how is this true? Is this true? If it is true what does it imply?
On that model, all the real information is generated by the person, not the stars or the cards.
Divination as hypothesis generator? I can buy that being helpful. I don’t think astrology’s as rich in associations as most Tarot reading formats are, though. Maybe it can be if you get really deep into it, but I don’t think your average Tinder witch is on that level.
I think the only way for them to buck this trend would be to start “debunking” religion in general. And if you want that done in an article like this one about an astrology service…the article is not about astrology per se. Might as well ask for an article on a new halal butcher shop to include a few paragraphs about why Islam is not true so as not to inculcate a belief in faith-based thinking. I don’t think that’s going to go over well, so maybe everybody just smiles and nods at everyone else’s religious beliefs in public.
@DavidFriedman & Nornagest: That’s the gimmick in John Sandford’s heist books (usually called the “Kidd and Luann” series after their main characters, IIRC).
One of the main characters uses Tarot spreads, and tells himself that they’re just to break preconceptions and cause him to think creatively, but of course the author uses them to foreshadow the plot, so they’re usually fairly on target regarding what is going to go wrong with the heist.
This is my horoscope today:
I give them credit for being falsifiable, because this is false. I’m off work today for Good Friday, and I live alone, so no, no one has given me any chores to do without proper coaching.
Here’s one from another site:
Hey SSC, are you more in love with my ideas than ever before? 😀
Bring me food and and I’ll consider upgrading passing interest to potential affection.
I task you with making me more in love with your ideas than ever before. No, I will not coach you on how to do this.
ASTROLOGY CONFIRMED FOR REAL.
@Nick
Um…
I may be misrembering, but I recall you as being a Catholic, a Libertarian, and a player of 3.5 D&D, well I’m not a believer but I am affectionate towards Catholicism, and I usually like the Catholics that I know more than my fellow atheists – so no real change there but I did abstain from eatiing meat today in fellowship of my mostly Catholic co-workers (though the steak the Baptist had looked really damn good!), I’m still pretty anti-libertarian but @DavidFriedman has given convincing reasons why someone may believe that it would be for the greater good, as for 3.5 D&D – okay I can only be so charitable, um… it’s still called D&D, 4e is supposed to be even more different from
realTSR D&D, and at low levels the Ranger doesn’t look that hard and probably fun to play, I could do that sure.I guess the stars do know.
I’m more a ‘reform conservative’ like Ross Douthat or Michael Brendan Dougherty than a libertarian, and strictly speaking I play Pathfinder and not 3.5, but I’m also in Le Maistre Chat’s retro D&D campaign right now… maybe the stars aren’t too far off!
@Plumber wrote (about @Nick):
FWIW I’m Anglo-Catholic and an anarcho-capitalist Libertarian, and I have run every version of D&D (including Pathfinder) except, of course, 4th Edition.
@Plumber, @Nick, why aren’t you in my current campaign?
@Ventrue Capital – how many players do you want in your campaign?
@Ventrue Capital
I’m intrigued, but it’s been decades since I’ve made a GURPS PC and doing the character creation again seems like a chore to me as does studying rules I’ve forgotten (if the rules were BRP/Pendragon/TSR D&D/WotC 5e D&D I’d better remember, no slight to GURPS or The Fantasy Trip/Melee/Wizard – IIRC those are fine rules, but it’s been decades since I last looked at them, and I just don’t enjoy studying so much “crunch” at once), go pre-gen PC’s and ask: “What do you do? Instead of “What stat do you use? and I’m more intrigued.
I like PC’s that may:
Climb,
Heal (non-magically, i.e. apply first aid),
Run,
Shoot arrows,
Sneak,
Speak,
Swim,
Swing swords
Track,
and
Walk
As far as “back-stories” go, I loath that newfangled convention, but that hasn’t stopped me from making some Batman/ Mad Max-ish tragic blah-blah claptrap to play other PbP games, see some: here
and I actually had fun writing the B.S. (“back-story”) for “Hans” from the village of “Dorfweitwegvonüberall”, but ultimately every single one of my PC’s amounts to “Guy with a bow and/or sword looking for loot and/or to do good depending on the circumstances” (“Why are we risking our necks to save the villagers from the Hobgoblin again? Gorobei Katayama expected to at least be paid!”)
I doubt that I know the theory well enough to tell if I’m a “gamist”, a “narrativist”, or a “simulationist” (perhaps “laziest”?).
To illustrate my experience of RPG’s in the 21st century:
Me: I really miss playing the RPG’s I used to enjoy, but no one wanted to play them anymore, even D&D which used to be really popular.
Other people: You’re in luck, D&D is really popular again!
Me: Really? Great! But I’m really rusty.
Other people: Don’t worry the current edition is much simpler than old D&D.
Me: Simpler? Awesome!
(Arcane Trickster?, Feats?)
Hey! This is even more complex!
Other people: No way it’s simpler!
Me: *Looks at old books*
All these extra PC abilities and options make 5e look like a more complex game than old D&D.
Other people: No way dude! Old D&D had Prestige Classes and even more Feats.
Me: Presti…..what?
Just what do you mean by “old” D&D?
Other people:
You know old, 3.5
Me: 3.5?
That’s not old D&D!
Other people:
Whatever Grandpa.
Me: Dagnabbit!
@J Mann wrote:
At least one more than whatever I have when someone asks me.
(Like the apocryphal farmer who only wants whatever land is next to his.)
Here’s a link to join my game’s Discord server, which expires in 24 hours.
What game systems are you familiar with and what fiction do you enjoy?
@Plumber wrote:
I believe that one shouldn’t need to know the rules, or do a lot of homework about the setting, before playing in a well-run RPG.
I’m happy to hand you a pre-generated PC and I *always* ask people “What do you do?” instead of “What stat/skill do you use?”
I’ve been Old School since 1976.
How would you describe your character, either if he were a character in a book that you were explaining to me; or in RPG terms, i.e. race/class? I’m partial to this list, myself.
Game Systems – 30-25 years ago: AD&D, Champions, DC Superheros, Cyberpunk, Paranoia, Amber, Villians and Vigilantes, Space Opera, Top Secret, Boot Hill. Now: DnD 5e.
Fiction – Classic: Dumas, Vanity Fair, Jane Austen, John Carter of Mars; Historical: Bernard Cornwell, Patrick O’Brian, George MacDonald Fraser, The Name of the Rose, Arturo Perez-Reverte; Fantasy: Tolkien, His Cold Commands, Pratchett; Sci-Fi: Currently enjoying the Expanse, like the best of David Brin and Orson Scott Card.
I don’t know GURPS – that’s the biggest question I have
@J Mann said:
You don’t need to know the system in order to play in a well-run RPG.
All you need is a character concept, and someone who knows the system (either another player, or the GM,) can write it up for you.
And all you need to do during play is say what you want your character to (try to) do, and someone else at the table can tell you what funny-sided dice to roll.
@Ventrue Capital,
“Discord” may be a dealbreaker, as it’s an ‘App’ that I’d have to buy, and the phone I use is my employers and I’m not free to just install stuff wily-nily, plus I’m extremely reluctant to do any kind of “e-commerce”.
Regardless from the list:
The Bow and Blade Ranger,
Scout,
Knight,
Swashbuckler,
Warden,
Barbarian,
Samurai,
Cavalier,
Rebel,
Thief,
Bandit,
and
the Sniper Ranger
all look cool as do:
Conan,
D’Artagnan,
Fafhrd,
The Grey Mouser,
Sir Percival,
Robin Hood, and
Sinbad.
Discord is free. Your employer’s phone policy is of course up to him.
@Nornagest,
Thanks.
It kept asking me for a credit card number of a pay pal account until I pushed the right button to just put in my gmail address (and then had me do a long and annoying “I am not a robot”.
From what little I’ve seen tonight, I don’t like “Discord”it confuses me and it’s hard to read, it reminds me of the old Ridgidforum plumbers tools site, though I suppose that I just need to get used to it and figure out a way to enlarge the type.
@Plumber – I like Discord’s Windows client quite a lot. My main warning about Discord is that once you’re on it at all, you’ll find that everything you do has a Discord, and then you’ll be subscribed to 103 of them.
@Ventrue Capital
I’m not in your campaign because I don’t know GURPS at all, and I’m not sure I buy that knowing the system is unnecessary. If a DM is trying to keep track of all the modifiers, he’ll at least need access to the player’s character sheet, and it’s doable but tedious to have the DM do this every round. And knowing the system well is how you know what’s possible (and practical) for your player, giving you ideas you might not otherwise have, or eliminating bad ones that would never work. A player not knowing the system is handicapped there.
@Plumber
If you have a home computer you can download the app there or just login through your browser with the same email and password. Unlike the apps, the browser one actually does let you scale font size by hitting the “User Settings” gear in the bottom left and clicking Appearance in the menu.
I’m in two RPG servers on Discord, and I’ve been really happy with them. We’ve just had some hiccups with our dice rolling bot lately.
@Nick wrote:
I understand your point. One of the advantages of Old School-style gaming (at least by my definition of Old School) is that it encourages thinking “outside the skills list” and one of the advantages of GURPS is that it’s tactically transparent.
“The idea is that the OSR encourages a sort of innovative, ad-hoc gameplay where players are always innovating and solving problems with outside-of-the-box solutions. They’re thinking with their heads, not their character sheets.” Technically-NSFW post: uses the f-word once
List of some OSR-style challenges, defined as “obstacles that meet the following requirements:
No obvious solution. (Straight combat is always obvious.)
Many possible solutions.
Solvable via common sense (as opposed to system mastery).
No special tools required (no unique spells, no plot McGuffins at the bottom of a dungeon).
Not solvable by a specific class or ability.”
Link to Zak S.’s wonderful article “Drunk, Prone, and On Fire” about tactical transparency, which he defines as
.
.
@Ventrue Capital
Thanks. If that’s the case, good on GURPS. Does GURPS have umpteen modifiers on actions like 3.x?
My third and final objection is that I don’t like the sound of play by post, which I think your page mentioned. How temporary is that? And how big is the group; is the problem that you can’t get all the players together?
@Nick wrote:
I would say “Yes, but they’re all tactically transparent. Things — like being prone, or drunk, or on fire — have the same effect they would in real life.”
Play-by-Post is until I get a job, or at least get my looking-for-a-job project under control to the point that I can resume running regular sessions on Roll20. Your guess as to how long that will take is as good as mine, unfortunately.
The roster of players is plenty big, which is why I was running three sessions per week. It was (and will be) sort of a West Marches thing. (Since it was centered around a large swamp, I decided to call it the West Marshes.)
And definitely an open table.
@Ventrue Capital
Thanks. I’m not sure I buy how tactically transparent the modifiers are but I’ll take your word for it. And I still don’t like the sound of play by post, but if it’s a large group with an open table that sounds just fine to me. Let me know when you’re back to regular sessions and I’ll consider joining.
P.S. If you need to reach me for it try DMing me on Discord. I’m Avpx#2027, name ROT13’ed of course.
> What strikes me about that response is that she doesn’t even address the pseudoscience part of the criticism.
She can’t really have a public quote saying that yeah, it’s pseudoscience but it’s irrelevant. In her position that’s as close to that as it can get.
Well, she could always say, “No, those people calling it pseudoscience are mistaken.” Well, that might get into false advertising and fraud issues, so “No, I disagree that it’s a pseudoscience. I believe it’s absolutely real based on [these terrible shitty ‘studies’ that an illiterate 6 year old could tell in one glance are nothing but bullshit]” might work better. Heck, I’m pretty sure homeopaths, chiropractors, reiki healers, acupuncturists, magnet healers, etc. actually use that exact line of argument.
Or “I’m not a scientist, but I’ve found this to be deeply meaningful in my life and I’d like to help others as well.”
Still probably not true, but it sounds good and can’t be disproved.
You’re overanalysing. The witchy nonsense has been around and appealing to teeangers and young women for decades (Titania Hardie has been making a tidy living out of “I’m a third generation white witch” since the 80s with her books and website and what-not).
The resurgence in what you could call Gardnerian witchcraft in the 60s, itself growing out of the inter-war Spiritualism fad/craze/growth, was more serious in that they really did try to slap some history and pseudo-science in it, and you had to have some kind of faux-scholarly depth.
The New Age crystals, candles and cards style witchiness and astrology of our times hasn’t any of that; it’s aesthetics more than anything else. Plus I’d imagine this particular iteration of it has appeal to white/non-POC young women (because let’s face it, it’ll be primarily white girls and women buying this) because of the whole SJW “cultural appropriation” accusations that get slung around. Astrology is safely Westernised, nobody can be accused of ripping off Sacred Native Indigenous Traditions and Wisdom.
It has all the benefits of “spiritual but not religious” and you don’t have to believe believe in it, you can believe in it without it really making any more of a difference than a surface-level “I’m gluten-intolerant” for the non-coeliacs or trendy veganism really inconveniences anyone.
Sure it’s irrational but it’s fun. I like messing around with Tarot a bit myself, but I don’t seriously think of it as foretelling the future or anything deeper than playing with symbolism in an amusing and demi-artistic way. Look at UNSONG – that was immense fun!
Some ventures will make money off this riding the trend of the moment, as long as they’re smart enough to get off the horse when the end of the fad approaches. Some will fail. This isn’t promoting irrationality, or at least no more strongly than the “gluten-free!” labels plastered on products that never had any gluten in them to begin with – it’s all just marketing cashing in on the bandwagon trend of the moment.
It is immense fun, but I do wonder how much we should be dabbling in it as
stodgy PuritansChristians. We certainly shouldn’t be using Ouija boards, for instance—those are firmly on the other side of the line. CS Lewis was a friend and admirer of Charles Williams, whose work was heavily influenced by the occult—but at the same time, he writes in Surprised by Joy of the danger the occult posed to him, drawing him away from Christianity in his teen years!I’m certainly no theologian, but if you go into it with a firm understanding that nothing supernatural is actually going on, I can’t see as it’s any worse than dressing up for Halloween.
(Edit: moved between comment levels.)
The Biblical prohibitions on divination have always seemed to me to indicate that you’re supposed to avoid it quite irrespective of whether or not it works, but I couldn’t give a strong textual argument on that one.
I think the problem with a Ouija board is that it is specifically about contacting supernatural forces. Shuffling out tarot cards isn’t any different than consulting a Magic 8 Ball.
This seems to permit almost anything from the occult
To add my 2 cents on the occult and christianity, while I see nothing wrong with Tarot cards, astrology, and other forms of platonic divination inherently, it is the invocation of supernatural forces that indicates an issue. The Bible’s ban on divination is, based upon several passages, clearly based upon the idea that it works for at least some people (king Saul comes to mind) but also inherently involves invoking idols or other gods. Playing with cards or reading astrology are not inherently invoking other gods, and therefore are not inherently sinful, but present a risk as a “gateway” to other forms of idolatry. (Admittedly, in today’s society, the most prevalent idol is not divination or other gods but the almighty dollar)
Citation 1 Corinthians 10:23
Well, so I checked an old manual and it appears the sin (divination) admits lightness if I have no faith in it:
I’m pretty sure Ouija, seance, etc., fall under this, because of acting as media for outside forces, which are invariably evil spirits; and circumstantially light or not, it’s still sinful and practicing it to be avoided. Actually using a Tarot deck is implicit invocation in their opinion, too:
That reads confusingly to me; even if you don’t invoke the devil, it is by it’s nature a mortal sin, but a light one? (It would read better if that first “no” wasn’t there, imo). Is that like “light treason”?
I assume this is of a different sort than leaving a decision up to chance, eg, casting lots for the cloak of an executed man? (Though in that case there are probably more worrying crimes having been committed).
What I read is that even when the “fortunes being read” are based upon chance or superstition, they should still be considered sin because they are relying on forces other than God to determine your fate. Which is fair, but I don’t believe that it is calling Tarot a mortal sin, just sin. Mortal sins, from what I recall, are things that can endanger the fate of one’s soul.
That said, playing with Tarot cards is not the same actually anticipating real fortunes. If you lay out cards and then “read” them without any intent to take any credence with them, it is not divination. This seems to me like splitting hairs, but a lot of what is or is not sin has to do with the state of one’s heart, and not inherent to the activity performed.
I’m just trying to parse Nick’s first quote.
Mortal is the bad kind, yeah?
It’s the second most bad kind. The “worst” kind is denial of the Holy Spirit which is the only sin (to my knowledge) which is unforgivable by Christ’s death.
The “no” is there advisedly; the previous sentence was “If there is explicit invocation of evil spirits, divination is of its nature a mortal sin that admits of no lightness of matter, for it gives divine worship to a creature, acts on friendly terms with the enemy of God, and prepares one for apostasy and eternal damnation.”
Anyway, I think the text is getting at the subjective culpability of the sinner. For a sin to be mortal, it needs to meet the criteria of (1) being a grave matter, (2) being done with full knowledge, and (3) being done with full consent. Practising divination is a grave matter, and hence “of its nature mortal” in that, if you do it with full knowledge and consent, you will thereby remove yourself from the state of grace; but since most people who dabble in it don’t really believe that it has anything to do with evil spirits, they aren’t doing it with full knowledge, and hence their sin is venial (“light on account of the dispositions of the offender”).
@The original Mr. X
Well explained and clears up the confusion.
@woah77
I’m honestly pretty clueless about what precisely this means. I assume it isn’t referring just to denying the trinitarian doctrine, since that would rule out conversion, basically.
I don’t have a simple answer for you on that, but my understanding about blaspheming is that it’s not just “I’m not sure what you’re talking about” but more of a “I know this is real and I hereby choose, with full knowledge and understanding to declare the holy spirit to be evil and deranged” etc. It’s more than having doubts and is more akin to intentionally denying and going so far as to declare something evil.
@ Randy M:
I’m glad you fond it helpful.
One of the more plausible answers I’ve come across is that “blasphemy against the Holy Spirit” means despair of God’s ability to forgive your sins. Since you can’t really ask for forgiveness if you don’t believe it’s possible, this would explain why somebody guilty of this sin “will not be forgiven” (since on most systems of moral theology you need to ask for forgiveness to be granted it); and, since you’re implicitly either denying God’s truthfulness (“God *says* he forgives sins, but I don’t believe him”) or his power (“My sins are so great, even God can’t forgive them!”), it counts as blasphemy as well. I’m not sure why it’s specifically against the Holy Ghost, but no doubt somebody’s thought of an answer for this as well.
Why the Holy Spirit specifically? It seems theologically inconsistent to place that one a categorically worse plane than other blaspheme or intentional sins.
Actually, I should provide more context:
The discussion of blaspheming the Spirit is brought about by teachers denying the work of Christ and attributing it to evil. So it’s not really about doctrine. Seems like it is more of intentionally leading someone away from Christ.
Other possibility, given the role of the Spirit is to encourage repentance, it could be referring to encouraging others to continue in sin. Knowingly encouraging someone to endanger their own soul. Like taking a recovering alcoholic out for a few drinks.
@The original Mr. X
That may be true, but is seems rather convenient. “The only thing that can’t be forgiven is not asking for forgiveness.”
Well, by convenient I guess I mean if fits together pretty well, but isn’t a perfectly straightforward reading. I think I like it more than my suggestions–but just to be safe, I’ll avoid all variations thereof.
[Apologies to the non-Christian majority here for this theological tangent. I think we can be forgiven this week…]
@Randy M: That is a genuinely difficult passage. Augustine struggled with it several times; you can read his later solution in his Sermon 21 on the Gospels, when he’s discussing the similar passage in Matthew 12. It goes like this: he first (§9-18) points out that the passage says “whosoever speaks a word” against the Holy Spirit; that’s not how the Greek goes, of course, but βλασφημία is indeed in the singular there, with no accompanying “any.” Augustine concludes that there must be a specific kind of blasphemy, not just any blasphemy at all, that is unforgivable, because otherwise Scripture would be contradicting itself; we know from elsewhere that all sins can be forgiven, and that Jews and heretics who deny the Holy Spirit can and have been reconciled to the Church.
Second (§19), Augustine lists several passages indicating that the power to forgive sins is appropriate to the Holy Spirit. The remission of sins is the first gift of faith, as baptism washes away original sin, and the Holy Spirit especially is present: “Unless a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God” (John 3:5). And when Jesus appears to the disciples after the Resurrection, he said “Receive the Holy Spirit,” and immediately after, “If you forgive anyone his sins, they are forgiven; if you withhold forgiveness from anyone, it is withheld” (John 20:22-3)—it would appear that the power to forgive sins was passed to the disciples by virtue of their receiving the Holy Spirit. At Pentecost the Holy Spirit descends on the apostles as tongues of fire, and they go out into the crowds to preach, and Peter says (Acts 2:38), “Repent and be baptized, everyone one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit”—it seems Peter means the forgiveness of sins which accompanies their baptizing them. Augustine refers in quick succession to many passages like this; I’m listing the references I understood, but there are more. Anyway, from this profusion of quotes Augustine concludes the close association of the Holy Spirit with the forgiveness of sins, and consequently that blasphemy of the Spirit is foremost (hence plausibly in this passage) rejection of the power to forgive sins.
Third, a point Augustine made in the middle there, easily overlooked. If the forgiveness of sins is associated with the Holy Spirit, then Jesus forgives sins through the Holy Spirit too. And we know he casts out devils through the power of the Holy Spirit too, because he says as much—and Augustine doesn’t say it explicitly, but it seems to me the two must be identified, for 1) possession was thought a punishment for sin, and 2) Jesus fluidly turns in this passage from the casting out of devils to the forgiveness of sins, and 3) the power he gave the disciples likewise includes the power to cast out devils. Casting out devils is forgiving sins; and forgiving sins, for Jesus, often meant casting out devils. I confess this is the weakest part of Augustine’s argument for me; decide for yourself whether his confidence on this point is warranted, or whether perhaps I’ve misunderstood him.
Finally, this raises the question why Jesus would distinguish here of all places between forgivable and unforgivable sins. The following interpretation I owe to Aquinas’ commentary on Matthew. It’s one thing for the Pharisees to mock Jesus himself by claiming he’s under the power of Beelzebub, but another thing entirely to mock that power to drive out demons; Jesus says as much in Matthew 12:32. He responds to the Pharisees with a series of arguments: the power to cast out devils, he stipulates, must come from Beelzebub or from the Spirit. But if it comes from Beelzebub, then his house must be turned against itself; but then how can it stand? And second, the Pharisees believe they can cast out devils; but how can they, if that power too must come from Beelzebub? Third, it takes a stronger man to enter a strong man’s house; so if Christ can cast a demon out of its dwelling, it must be because he’s stronger than the demons; but if Beelzebub has dominion over people, that leaves only God the one stronger. Fourth, demons overtake by violence, but he did not drive the demon out violently, so it cannot be that he is like demons.
Jesus turns then to inveighing against the Pharisees themselves. He says that one who speaks against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but saying a word against the Holy Spirit won’t be. This is Jesus’ last, best argument: that he has proven his power to cast out devils comes from the Spirit, and that by casting doubt on that, the Pharisees are denying themselves any hope of salvation. But this only follows if denying the Holy Spirit confers the power to cast out devils is what denies them salvation. And the power to cast out devils is the same as the power to forgive sins. So the blasphemy against the Holy Spirit which closes off one’s salvation is denying the forgiveness of sins.
I admit that I have little understanding of the Holy Spirit: why the Divine Trinity has a third person in addition to the One and the Logos, why blasphemy of Him is rightly treated worse than blasphemy of the Father or Son (of Man), etc
As to tarot reading, I consider it just a prompt to think about archetypes, which have their origin in the Divine mind. Belief thaat the cards drawn divine one’s future would be total bunk and so, I suppose, a sin (lit. “Missing the mark”). It’d be irrational and thus a vice if rationality is virtuous, but surely not a mortal sin.
@deiseach
Kind of a Freudian slip? Do you have irate kids in your life?
@Andrew Hunter
I’ve no experience with “Tinder” or with the young ladies of today, but I had to laugh as when I was a teenage boy and a young man in the ’80’s it seemed that all the girls were into anarchism, vegetarianism, and/or “goth” – and most had tattoos (when I found a girl without a tattoo I married her).
As you get older the women the same age as you will grow out of it, until then I recommend older women, five years older should be enough – if not go older, though there’s a reason someone isn’t already “spoken for”, often it’s from being busy with job and/or school – but sometimes. ..
Plumber:
I think the underrated part of your advise here is: “when I found a girl without [thing I didn’t like], I married her.”
The Vox article is exactly what I’d expect – the nonbinary genderfluid yoga woman (and it’s always women who are ‘nonbinary genderfluid’) and her integration of the forces is the exemplar but that’s the kind of trendy non-intellectual stuff going on.
Some of the “Magick Pagan Feminist Empowerment” types have one eye shrewdly on the bottom line – a bookshop holding a spell-casting night is hoping to hook some customers out of that from the types who would turn up to a spell-casting La Résistance night, as well as the persons who are chief cook and bottlewasher of their own Hedgewitch Valkyrie Hoodoo Coven Cunningwymyn’s Circle sending out press releases about their direct action spells.
The best sport was in the direct wake of the election, and in a lesser sense this kind of L’Affaire Kavanaugh brouhaha, when neophytes of this type were broadcasting spells and action circles to wage occult war on Trump, and the kinds of scholarly Gardnerian/Western Esoteric Tradition groups were getting stuck in with “this so-called ritual is stupid, you’re stupid, and here’s why it won’t do what you want, will do the opposite, and blow back on you with the forces you’re trying to invoke and don’t have a clue what you’re doing”.
The “purple velvet dresses, chains of talismans round their neck and flowers and candles” type witchcraft gets short shrift from the “this is an actual tradition, goshdarnit, not something to play with as a trend!” types 🙂
In Terry Pratchett’s Witches novels, Magrat Garlick is the “purple velvet and talismans” type, only spoiled by the fact that she does possess genuine and real powers:
Motivation/willpower question: my wife currently has exactly two ways in which she is capable of motivating herself to perform an action: sincere desire and rage; if she doesn’t want to do something already, she has to scream at herself in order to act. Basically, she doesn’t seem to have any valence-less willpower. She’d prefer to act without the rage, but more than once it’s come to her lying on our bed asking calmly how she’s supposed to move without getting angry at herself. Typically, this ends with her giving up and screaming until she gets up.
Any advice on how to proceed here? I’m thoroughly lost.
That sounds like she might have untreated inattentive-type ADHD: a common issue for ADHD-i is finding it much harder to motivate yourself to do something you don’t urgently want or need to do, and a common family of management techniques involve creating artificial urgency to get things done when it would be nice to have them done rather than waiting until you actively need to do it. “Screaming at yourself in rage until you do it” probably isn’t the nicest way to create an artificial feeling of urgency, but I can see it doing the trick.
I’d suggest encouraging her to see a psychiatrist to get evaluated for ADHD. If the psychiatrist confirms it, they can offer treatment options (usually a combination of stimulant medication and therapy to learn more constructive coping techniques). Or if I’m way off base and she doesn’t have ADHD, the psychiatrist can tell her that, too. And a lot of the other alternatives (depression, executive function disorder, etc) are also treatable.
Also: is this a new issue or something she’s had as long as she can remember? The latter is a much better fit for ADHD, while the former might suggest some kind of depression instead.
Interesting thought, I’ll look into it.
As to how long this has been going on, unclear. She has a tendency toward self-hatred that goes back forever, but varying life circumstances make it hard to diagnose the start of the motivation issues (she procrastinated heavily in college, for example, but who doesn’t?) It’s only in the last couple years that she’s really had to face the problem of day-to-day mundane tasks without oversight, which is where the problem manifests.
This is basically me most of the time, outside of the rage.
Same here. I’ve come around to the idea that procrastination is the nature order of things – at least personally – if it was actually important you would want to do it right away, or at least put it in some sort of queue for the day/week/month.
The key then is in the evaluation of what is “urgent” – if you don’t care about your appearance, for instance, doing laundry is going to sink down in priority. If you don’t value a task, it’s not getting done.
No. There is important stuff that needs to be done but I always put it off right before the drop-dead time even though I know that increases the inconvenience and risk of failure. Or I actually do care about it and gain satisfaction from it (Cleaning my apartment or writing, for example) but I cannot bring myself to do it outside of rare circumstances where I’m actually capable of bringing myself to do things.
Is this purely verbal, or have you noticed things like fingernail crescents on her palms and/or bruising? High chance this is projection, but this matches some of my deeply unhealthy behaviors.
No fingernail crescents, occasional bruising. She has been known to hit herself as part of the rage, but we’ve worked on that quite a bit and it’s getting progressively less frequent (less than once a month now). She’s generally had good success removing the negative actions/motivators in her life, she just hasn’t found anything positive to replace them with, and as a result now lacks any form of motivation.
Yeah, that sounds consistent with what I’ve got going on. I wish I could offer some advice about seeking treatment, but I haven’t been able to afford any. Props to you for sticking by her, man – I know I’ve driven away friends when it’s been bad. It can be scary as hell. You’re a good.
I’m pretty sure that this is some sort of depression, possibly with an unusual pathology. In my case it’s probably linked to childhood trauma. I have a feeling that acting from that place of rage is maladaptive – usually when I hurt myself now I just break down crying about how awful it feels. Which, to be clear, is a step up from feeling good about hurting myself, and has accompanied a reduction in that sort of behavior. I’m not sure how much slack there is in your lives right now, but I’d suggest that she try not to allow herself to motivate herself this way. If nothing else, it’ll encourage her to find an alternative means. Also, this might sound manipulative, but people I love showing me how much this sort of thing hurts them helps me avoid it. Whether or not that’ll be helpful for your wife I cannot say.
Does she like music, audiobooks, or short stories? I put some on when I have chores to do and I find that it’s easier for me to actually get my body moving when my mind is absorbed in something I love. I can recommend some short story podcasts if she’d like to try them – they probably saved my life, and she’ll have a near-decade of backlog to go through if she starts now. Pets have also helped – taking care of them is a good motivator and it’s nice to have some sort of creature that loves you around. Also, I’ve avoided alcohol my whole life, partly because of this issue. I have no idea how much that’s helped, but a family history of alcoholism and depression are a bad combo.
FWIW, I have a deep fear of the side-effects of psychiatric meds, and would probably avoid them even if I could afford them. Emotional deadening, addiction, and hormone changes are a real risk. I probably have it a bit worse than I could if I were on meds… but it’s manageable, and I don’t have to worry about zombification. I’m not saying she shouldn’t look into the possibility; I’m saying that she may be able to work through this behaviorally if she wants to.
Good luck. I don’t know if this sort of thing ever goes away, but it does get better. If she’s anything like me, you loving her helps more than you may be able to understand.
That’s a disconcertingly well-matched series of detail (right down to her rational for generally avoiding alcohol). Best of luck to you as you move forward, and i’d love to hear those podcast recommendations.
@MasteringTheClassics
For science fiction, fantasy, and horror, the Escape Artists podcasts at http://escapeartists.net/. Pseudopod, the horror one, is the best as far as I’m concerned.
For stuff that’s… just very weird, there’s the drabblecast: https://www.drabblecast.org/
General lit, LeVar Burton Reads: https://art19.com/shows/levar-burton-reads. Also Beneath Ceaseless Skies: http://www.beneath-ceaseless-skies.com/
I listen on an iPod classic; they’re not particularly available nowadays, but Sony’s latest Walkman models (no, seriously) are apparently pretty good; that’s what I’m eying for when mine gives up the ghost. Phones are too easy to procrastinate with.
Good luck to you and yours as well.
I’ve had a similar issue for the last few years. Can’t do anything I’m not intrinsically motivated to do, even if I really really should (like taxes or term papers). I haven’t tried the yelling thing, that sounds interesting.
Caffeine helps until I develop a tolerance, then prescription simulants help until I develop a tolerance (at which point I go cold turkey and try to reset my brain). Otherwise I just hope the pressure of a deadline helps.
Are there other signs of depression?
My wife is the same way except instead of rage it’s guilt. She’s been diagnosed with ADHD, depression, and GAD anxiety. SSRIs and adderall helped her, though she experiences enough side effects from adderall that she only takes it when she needs extra motivation. Seeing a psychiatrist is a good start, if she genuinely wants to change.
I had something like this. I’ve busted up a lot of my furniture, put dents in a lot of my walls, and chipped a couple of bones in the process, because I was so angry that I couldn’t get myself to do various important things and rage seemed like the only way to motivate any action at all. It started out being spontaneous expressions of overwhelming frustration with my own inaction, but eventually I started to cultivate it in lesser forms — “I have to get mad enough to pick myself up off the floor or I’m just going to lay here all day”, which would be accompanied by various mental and verbal growlings until I did so.
The rage sure feels like an awfully inefficient approach to getting things done if there’s anything better available — it just emerges when there isn’t. The rage didn’t necessarily seem to relate to inducing a sense of urgency about the task — it was more about stepping up to a higher level of physiologic arousal. Genuinely life-threatening situations like almost driving off a cliff might have worked just as well at stepping up the adrenaline and pulling out the stop on the desired action, but those situations were just not as practical for normal use as rage.
I got the depression diagnosis. Got the inattentive ADHD diagnosis. Took all the meds and then some, all bullshit. Turned out for me the problem was in my head, just not in my brain — it was a subtle sleep-breathing disorder caused by the shape of my jaw that was draining all my waking energy to do anything, and provoking these insane compensatory behaviors. For me the rage-inducing motivation problem turned out to be deeply physiological, and only responded to gross anatomical intervention. That’s not to say that’s the kind of problem she has, but sometimes the intractable problems that drive people to rage at themselves to do anything reflect problems with hardware, not software. Software fixes are often cheaper and easier to try, but sometimes they just miss the mark.
I don’t know if this kind of behavior is really specific to any particular root cause of motivation problems, but maybe it arises in response to ones that really don’t respond to anything reasonable. As unhealthy as it looks, I’m inclined to think it’s a sort of positive sign — rage is better than resignation. If I weren’t the sort of person who regularly felt like tearing things apart with my teeth because I wasn’t meeting my own expectations, I don’t think I would have fought through the haze and figured out how to fix myself.
I wish her the best.
The Full Mueller Report has been released (with some redactions). There’s a lot here, but quick impressions/talking points:
– Yikes Barr’s summary was straight up misleading. I expected some fudgery around the obstruction stuff, but it was everything.
– Barr presented the main investigation as far more conclusive and exonerating than it was. Mueller had his eyebrows firmly raised, the investigation landed pretty squarely on “We didn’t find enough conclusive evidence to support a conviction” side of not pressing charges (rather than Nothing Suspicious Happened).
– A lot of attempted obstructed behavior “The President’s efforts to influence the investigation were mostly unsuccessful, but that is largely because the persons who surrounded the President declined to carry out orders or accede to his requests.”
– Barr painted the no recommendation on obstruction as a toss up or something, but Mueller seemed heavily leaning towards obstruction. The section on pg. 368 onwards is really not kind to Trump on this point.
====
I doubt this changes anything long run, there’s still no clear condemnation or corrupt action to start an impeachment process or anything. But man Trump is lucky his AG gets the first public spin on these reports.
(And I feel a little vindicated Mueller was like “Yeah, those tweets about Cohen’s family were pretty questionable” on a lot of public things.)
Exactly what justice was being obstructed? You want to overturn an election because Trump was a jerk to the people trying to convict him of something he was probably innocent of? (It’s not just Trump – I have serious issues with “obstruction” and “lying to the Feds about something legal” being crimes in general because it feels a lot like “show me the man and I’ll find the crime”)
There were much more powerful tools at Trump’s disposal to obstruct justice if that were his intent, and he chose not to use them.
The sudden media focus on “obstruction” and “redacted” is so much freaking goalpost moving. This has tied up the country and been polarizing and damaging to democracy for 2 years, all for naught. I think it’s finally time for the Dems to accept the results of the 2016 election and move the hell on.
Trying to illegally prevent someone from investigating you is pretty straightforward obstruction of justice.
“Illegally” is doing all the work there though. I’m asking if “obstruction” should ever really be a crime when there is no underlying “justice” to obstruct. I mean yeah, if you destroy evidence or murder witnesses that’s obstructing justice. But there can only be evidence of or witnesses to a crime if a crime actually occurred! As it is, it seems like we don’t really have evidence that Trump colluded with the Russians, the ostensible purpose of this investigation, and it doesn’t seem like they have any reason to believe they WOULD have evidence of collusion if only Trump had been more cooperative.
For the record I think impeaching Clinton for lying about getting a BJ was also ridiculous. It’s the same problem – you whiffed on proving a real crime so you try to peg a guy on procedural crimes that only happened because of the investigation into the nonexistent underlying crime.
So, Trump shouldn’t get in trouble for obstructing the search for evidence that he committed a crime, as long as the investigation doesn’t end up finding evidence he committed a crime?
So it is a hideous feature of the Federal investigative process that anyone the Feds investigate is likely to rapidly become guilty of the crime of lying to the Feds, because humanity as a whole is incapable of keeping its story straight even when innocent, allowing the Feds almost limitless power to prosecute who they will.
@gbdub
First, you quickly get caught in a catch-22. If I did commit a crime, I then just obstruct as much as possible, and destroy as much evidence as possible, hoping that I do enough that they can’t prove the crime. Now I’m free to go since obstruction isn’t a crime if there is no underlying crime. I don’t see a way around this unless you have an oracle to know when there actually is an underlying crime. But in that case, who cares about obstruction, you already know the result.
The problem is you don’t know if the crime occurred without the evidence. Say I have an email that places near the vicinity of a murder. Is that evidence of a crime? It is evidence, but we don’t know if I committed the crime or not. I have just been in the same place coincidentally. So maybe I get spooked, but I’m still not allowed to delete that email, even if it wasn’t me.
“We can’t prove you or anyone else actually did what we accused you of, but maybe if you were more cooperative we could have, so off to jail with you!” Can’t you see how that flips the burden of proof in a way that’s really easy for a motivated prosecutor to abuse?
With a murder, you’ve got a body, or at least a suspiciously missing person. With a robbery, you’ve got missing jewels. In a case like this, you can’t even prove that a crime of any kind, committed by anyone, actually occurred (I guess they dredged up some not really related stuff on Manafort, but shine a bright enough light anywhere in DC and you’ll find some cockroaches).
Given that:
1) Trump’s actual, threatened, and/or blustered about but not really implemented “obstruction” does not appear to have materially impacted the outcome of the investigation
2) said outcome is that Trump appears to be innocent of “collusion with Russia”
3) “I knew I was innocent and I was sick of being undermined in my role as duly elected President of the United States, and anyway I did cooperate in lot of meaningful ways and turn down a lot of options for effective obstruction” is actually a pretty compelling defense to the corrupt motives the prosecution would need to prove beyond a reasonable doubt
4) Trump “getting in trouble” would mean a huge circus that would do even more damage to the republic in terms of polarization and lost faith in the government
5) the election is next year anyway…
No, I do not think Trump should get in trouble.
I do see. It’s a good thing that’s not what obstruction of justice is.
It’s on page 10:
Yes, it is a good thing that, in theory anyway, obstruction requires proof of intent. But in theory, plea bargains are a fine way to streamline the justice system, and cops get punished for use of deadly force in cases where they were not in imminent danger. But we don’t live in theory, and this, along with “you lied about something completely legal but we don’t like you so we’re going to book you for lying to the Feds” are really, really easy to abuse.
“Sometimes the statements were false” – well apparently you proved they were false, but the truth didn’t reveal any underlying crime.
“Some people / records were abroad” – Trump should go to jail for that? That’s his fault?
“Communicated in ways not providing for long term retention” – sometimes illegal, but also precisely what Hillary got off completely scot-free for (and in that case, an underlying misdeed was a provable fact, not merely a negative that couldn’t be disproved). Also, says “some people” (weasel words) “associated with the Trump campaign” – but not Trump.
I’m going to go out on a limb and say this has been true of basically every significant investigation ever.
@gbdub
Let’s figure this thing out first before get into Trump specifics.
I can fully agree that prosecutorial overreach is a bad thing. But that doesn’t automatically excuse all forms of certain other crimes.
There are two things I would like to agree on.
1. Forget about this case. In general, can obstruction be an independent crime? The answer I believe is definitively yes. The follow up, ‘should’ it be a crime is more open to interpretation, but I believe is also yes, and important for a functioning justice system.
2. The SCO says on page 10 that its investigation was hindered by obstruction.
No, I agree here. Not everything Mueller cites that hindered the investigation is obstruction (this section was enumerating multiple sources of information gaps in the investigation). I was just trying to avoid using ellipses, which sometimes casts doubt on the accuracy or context of a quote. (for example I didn’t include earlier in the paragraph where he mentions 5th amendment rights being invoked. Obviously it is legal to do so.) The relevant part would be only the lying and deleting part.
Perhaps in this case, but again in general showing something is false does not necessarily mean you know the truth, and thus could still be in the dark about if there was a crime or not.
Where were you the night of the murder?
“I was on a Southwest flight to Dallas.”
Proving that false (checking flight records) does not get you the truth.
Part of the issue is the asymmetry. The Feds can threaten you or make promises they have no obligation to keep, lie to you about what they know or about what others have said, mislead you about your rights and responsibilities, deliberately put you in situations designed to maximize psychological distress, etc., with zero consequence. When all of that is addressed, maybe making “obstruction” an independent crime is more fair.
Let’s say they ask you “where were you on the night of the murder” and you were actually banging your mistress. Well that’s super embarrassing, so you lie. You didn’t commit the murder – you actually have a solid alibi! – but now if the prosecutor doesn’t like you you can get hit with an obstruction charge. Then again, you haven’t really obstructed anything – the truth is you weren’t there to commit the crime, and that’s all they really needed to know.
And again, that’s in a case where a crime definitely occurred. It’s much more troubling when the investigation itself is a bit of a fishing expedition.
I kind of feel like the Trump investigation was the law enforcement equivalent of p-hacking – Mueller should have been required to pre-register his hypothesized charges (I’m only 2/3 joking).
To be clear, you are saying it is a crime under current law, but shouldn’t be? Or that you don’t believe it is a crime under current law?
@meh
Don’t you see how ridiculous it is to call this obstruction? These statements apply to people who (routinely) clean up their mail boxes and/or use encrypted communication. The latter happens automatically when you use some of the most popular ways to communicate, like WhatsApp or GMail. Most people who use these are probably not even aware of the encryption.
A lot of authoritarians/investigators seem to believe that it is the duty of citizens to keep detailed records of their exploits and to make everything transparent, to make investigations easy. This is neither the law or reasonable.
In my opinion, actual evidence of intent to obstruct requires more than merely making the life of investigators hard. For example, someone going on a delete-spree just after the investigation is announced or they personally are implicated. Or the selective deletion of messages specific to this investigation. Or someone switching to safer communication at a suspicious moment. Etc.
The part from the report you quote omits such allegations in favor of statements that sound damning, but could probably be used to persecute the vast majority of citizens, if they’d be subject to an investigation and the thing being investigated involved communicating.
Presumably, if Mueller could substantiate more damning allegations, even for one person, he would have written this in his report. So in my eyes, this passage you quote is more exonerating than damning.
@Aapje
Our discussion has wandered from this case specifically to obstruction in general.
Also I believe you are wrong about GMail.
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/jiBFC7DcCrZjGmZnJ/conservation-of-expected-evidence
No I think Aapje makes a good point that illustrates what I mean by flipping the burden of proof – the ambiguous statements about communications are using absence of evidence of an underlying crime as evidence of obstruction. It’s specific to this case but I think somewhat illustrative of how obstruction accusations happen in general.
Now I don’t think obstruction should never be a crime. But it seems to be one of those crimes on the books, like perjury or making a false report, that is frequently dismissed … unless the suspect is a hated villain we really want to stick with something but failed to prove something more nefarious. So it’s open to abuse.
I think one strong sign that obstruction might be being abused is lack of evidence of an underlying crime (no “justice” to obstruct). IANAL, I’m just positing that in general, the law ought to be structured in a way that minimizes potential for abuse by prosecutors, and maybe obstruction should be rewritten somehow to only apply to the more egregious cases that would get prosecuted, rather than potentially covering basically anybody who gets investigated.
Now, let’s say your mistress kills someone one night, without you being involved, and without your knowledge, and then meets you nearby.
Let’s say they ask you “where were you on the night of the murder” and you were actually banging your mistress. Well that’s super embarrassing, so you lie. You didn’t commit the murder – you actually have a solid alibi! – but now if the prosecutor doesn’t like you you can get hit with an obstruction charge. Then again, you haven’t really obstructed anything – the truth is you weren’t there to commit the crime, and that’s all they really needed to know.
Or maybe you suspect your mistress, and you don’t want the police making the wrong associations, so you lie. You didn’t commit the murder. What have you obstructed?
We’ve got several different discussions here.
1. Do the Feds have too much power under Section 1001?
Absolutely. Popehat has been blogging about this for years, well before Trump, so he has a solid reputation on this. It’s a bad feature. You can say something that does not mislead the cops at all (because they already have video evidence of you banging your mistress, say) and that gets you sent away. The standards here should be raised, perhaps such that what you said to the cops actually misled them.
2. Can you obstruct if they can’t prove a crime?
Yes. I do not know what the current standard is for this, but I feel that you should at least be able to show that there was some gap where someone got rid of something that might have showed a crime.
3. Do people have a duty to preserve evidence?
Yes, but only if legally informed. I deal with this a lot in the corporate world, and it is 100% proper to have a data-deletion policy. I contracted for a bank that wiped out all mail older than 90 days. However, and they drilled this into us during training, if legal tells you there is a hold (and the term is just that, Legal Hold), then you absolutely do not delete anything once that process starts. And things like email-retention are not under individual control: there are disinterested IT professionals not anywhere under my chain of command who control those settings.
If anyone was informed to not delete anything, they have a duty to not delete anything. Also, there are federal record-keeping laws, which I’m going to guess automatically apply to just about everyone in the White House, although I’m ready to hear why certain people should be exempt. This was one of my big problems with Clinton’s private server: instead of turning control of the records over to disinterested career civil servants who would dispassionately decide what was relevant or not, she had people who reported directly to her go out and delete her stuff. That’s improper.
4. How bad is it that Trump’s workers protected him?
I don’t think this should legally be obstruction. If my boss orders me to do something, and I say “no, that’s illegal, I won’t do it,” and the next day he doesn’t bring it up, then I’d say he took my council well. Surrounding yourself with people who protect you and stop you from breaking the law should be encouraged and rewarded.
Politically, you can argue it makes Trump unsuited for office. I agree, but already did.
Edward is 100% correct on all of that
communicated during the relevant period using applications that feature encryption or that do not provide for long-term retention of data or communications records.
Stop the presses! People talk to each other!
I’ll take the obstruction complains seriously only from people who were outraged at Hillary Clinton destroying emails under subpoena while being investigated for a crime, let us not forget, that she actually was guilty of.
I would like to voice my complaint about obstruction
I’ve figured out my amendment!
Every new president shall hereby have a special council convened to investigate them and all their associates for a vague crime they didn’t commit. Any procedural violations during the course of the investigation or unrelated past dirt discovered about members of the administration shall result in severe legal consequences for those members.
This should properly promote gridlock, by bogging down the administration, and making sure any Washington players with any experience (all of whom have dirt) stay far away from it.
You guys enjoy all your theoretical amendments that will never happen. Mine is sure to be enacted in practice even if not in writing.
just another tradition Obama had to crap on
https://www.businessinsider.com/obama-nixon-trump-russia-independent-investigation-2017-10
Hey! Stop blaming Obama for everything! This yet another clear case of norm-breaking by the Republican Congress at the time. Call Mitch McConnell and tell him to do his job!
This post probably falls below the bar [no pun intended] set for SSC quality but I couldn’t help but laugh at it.
I do wonder how the average administration would hold up under the circumstances. I suspect Trump is worse than average, but that few if any would come out totally clean.
Part of the issue with Trump is that he was perceived to be so toxic that the available pool of people who were willing to work with him probably had an above average ratio of sleaze bags. Assign blame for that as you wish.
I propose a while back that each party gets one special counsel investigation every four years that they can point at anyone in the world – A Koch brother, Vladimir Putin, AOC, Santa Claus, Pope Francis – anyone – but there aren’t any other special counsel investigations. (Of course, if they choose a fictional person or someone outside the jurisdiction of the SC, that’t their problem.)
The downside is that it would further entrench the two party system. The upside is that it would be funny, and would probably turn up some crimes.
New idea: Make the CIA the fourth official branch of the government. They’re very powerful except they have all the traditional weaknesses of vampires (can’t cross running water, can’t come out during the day, etc.)
I don’t think you can actually give them those weaknesses just by writing into the constitution that they are supposed to have them. Though I’m not aware of it having been tried, so I suppose I could be wrong.
The Barr/Mueller split on obstruction was laid out by Andy McCarthy here and elsewhere. Its perfectly expected that there would be a lot of instances where Trump was annoyed with the investigation and looked for ways to terminate it because it was undermining him. The problem with the idea of obstruction charges is they rest on a dubious legal ground (not just because the DOJ has policies against indicting a president). Thats because it means any prosecutor could question the decisions of their superior and charge them with obstruction. Did Comey obstruct justice in the Clinton probe? Surely some DOJ prosecutor thinks he interfered with a proper investigation, so could they charge? That is the legal theory of obstruction advanced by the Mueller team, and it seems fairly unworkable.
I just want to know what the fuck Papadopoulos and Page were on (and who the last Trump staffer redacted a few times was). Are people this slimy, underhanded, sketchy, and useless unique to Trump or are they ubiquitous?
Either way, I feel vindicated in my suspicion that individuals in the Trump campaign were trying to leverage connections with Russia. That it was mostly the people who he shitcanned is at least a relief. I’m going to call my “evidence that staffers besides Manafort had contact with Russian agents, but not that the Big Man ordered them to” prediction vindicated – there might not be evidence to convict, but it sounds like there’s some evidence at least pointing to Page.
Final analysis: nothing worth impeaching for, thank god. Anyone trying to chase obstruction is barking up a dead tree. Trump’s behavior was egregious and bad, but not a high crime – he never managed to fire Mueller. If he had, I’d be taking the opposite position. US president not a Russian puppet = confirmed. US president has terrible taste in advisors = also confirmed. A reason to vote against him, but not a reason to remove him. If the democrats try to spin this further they’ll hang themselves. I expect them to do so.
Also, seeing those giant redacted blocks around the election hacks and investigations into actual Russians was pretty neat. I wonder what those investigations look like.
Yeah, how dare they try to leverage their connections to Russia! How sleazy! Everyone knows the right and proper thing to do is to pay Fusion GPS with political funds to leverage their Russian connections to make up unverifiable salacious accusations you can, with the help of sympathetic political appointees in the Justice Department, use to help build a case to put surveillance on members of an opposing political campaign.
(Yes, I get how there could be a legal distinction, but am at a loss for how there is a moral one that could favor the Democrats – also I actually agree with most of your comment)
What do you think that Page did that’s so bad?
Speaking of Page, can we now start the investigation into how all this mess got started*? Carter Page was the star witness in an FBI investigation of Russian spies. He was not a spy himself.
Six months later, though, Comey and pals get a FISA warrant for him, stating that he was a “U.S. person, and agent of a foreign power.” Also from the application: “The FBI believes that the Russian Government’s efforts are being coordinated with (Carter) Page.”
But from the Mueller report, Trump did not collude with the Russians, no one in the Trump campaign colluded with the Russians, and no US person colluded with the Russians. So what exactly did the FBI base their allegations against Page on?
This seems kind of important because the NSA spying apparatus is the Tyranny Machine. The ability for the government, either the politicians in power or the careerists (i.e., “The Deep State”) to spy on anyone, political opponents, dig up their dirt and leak it to the public, find crimes real or planted to accuse them of. This was the nightmare fuel that everyone was talking about after the Snowden revelations.
But we were assured it’s all supposed to be okay because it’s only for foreigners. But I guess if you can make someone an “agent of a foreign power” by simply stating so, and thereby spy on them and everyone they talk to (like, say, the opposition candidate in a presidential election) then we’re all foreigners now.
* I’ll go ahead and give you the spoiler: this all started because Obama and pals wanted to spy on their political opponents using the evil government panopticon so they invented ludicrous claims of Russian conspiracy. No one was ever supposed to know because Hillary was supposed to win. This all makes Watergate look like shoplifting bubblegum and an awful lot of people should be in jail but nothing will ever happen because the media approves of illegally spying on Republicans.
Note that “U.S. person, and agent of a foreign power” isn’t limited to Russia. It’s possible that he was an agent of another country. I seem to recall hearing Turkey brought up a few times. Concurrently, a number of Trump’s team also worked for Ukraine. Concurrently, a number of other countries (China, Mexico) have sought to impact the US elections as well.
Any evidence for these astounding claims in the Mueller report?
In the Mueller report? No because he wasn’t investigating the DoJ or the FBI. But there is a lot of suspect behavior by Obama’s DoJ and FBI. They definitely spied on the Trump campaign. Given that Mueller found no conspiracy or collusion with the Russians, it does not appear as though the spying was predicated on anything. This is why we need an investigation into the start of the Russia probe.
As far as I can tell, Page is fine. He had some business connections in Russia and thought he could help broker more cooperation between the countries. He testified for hours to the FBI and Congress without a lawyer, and as far as anyone can tell, didn’t tell a lie or commit a crime. He’s a private citizen who got muckraked because he was a convenient name for Steele’s sources to put into the garbage they were feeding Steele.
You come down on Barr here, but I think Mueller was really weasely. By refusing to make a recommendation one way or the other but putting in plenty of gray area fodder for both sides, he put Barr in an impossible position – either prosecute his own boss, the duly elected POTUS, on a weak case Mueller already undermined by refusing to endorse, or decline to prosecute despite some bad-looking behavior and get labeled a political spin doctor.
So Barr made a decision, got in front of the cameras, and did his best to present a case defending it. What else was he supposed to do?
First Comey and now Mueller – how do we end up with these chief investigators who don’t have the stones to defend the conclusions of their own investigation?
Isn’t that what you’d expect?
It is practically impossible for these kind of investigations, if they fail to find a smoking gun, to end up finding conclusively proof that the person is innocent. Furthermore, there nearly always is some evidence that is at least somewhat dubious (or the investigation would not have started in the first place).
For an investigator, there is thus always a risk that new evidence pops up that will be a smoking gun. Since people tend to be unreasonable by judging actions from the past by the knowledge of today, this would leave a permanent mark on the investigator.
So the incentive is for them to hedge their bets.
Also, two more points–if the crime is obvious there’s no need for the investigation, and if there was obviously no crime or even appearance of such, there’s probably not an investigation started.
And after spending so much time looking, the investigators are going to come up with something to write down that justifies the time spent.
Yes, Trump was extremely lucky to get…some early comments in before the media floods us with wall-to-wall lies about the 400 page report of embarrassing and misleading information from an invasive two-year investigation into he and everyone he knows predicated on a hoax illegally instigated by his political opponents in the previous administration about a crime that not only he didn’t commit, but no one committed. To be so lucky…
Remember when Ken Starr’s report was kept sealed and unleaked, and all we had to go on was Janet Reno’s summary? That’s what Trump is lucky in comparison to, not a hypothetical world in which the media collectively assumed he would be exonerated.
The fact that this is being spun as good for Trump is some truly masterful work by his advocates. The Mueller report basically confirms all the original allegations that started this, including on collusion.
It basically states:
* The Russian government was directly involved in manipulating election results, including efforts to actively hack into state election systems.
* The “no conspiracy” thing specifically means the Trump campaign was not directly involved with the hacking efforts. They were, however, in communication with the Russian government, aware of an actively encouraging the efforts to interfere in the election. Oh, and the campaign chairman was feeding campaign information to Russian intelligence all through it.
* After the election they received policy proposals from the Russian government for allowing the Russian government to take over Ukraine without interference from the US, and Kushner then passed that proposal to the Secretary of State.
In other words, basically the exact stuff folks around here were calling deranged liberal conspiracy theory back in 2016 turns out to be true. The Russians were doing everything the deranged conspiracy theorists said, and the Trump campaign were not only aware but actively encouraged it, along with proposals of changing US policy to better suit Putin.
No they weren’t.
No they weren’t, and no they didn’t.
One time the guy who was campaign chairman for about 3 months of the 18 month long campaign shared some polling data with a business associate who was Russian. “Hey Paul, how’s the campaign going?” “Pretty good, Igor, our polling data says we’re up by 5%!” Got ’em!
I don’t even know what you’re talking about here, but it sounds like the Russian government told the US government they wanted to do something. And the US government didn’t do it. What?
No, they weren’t. They weren’t doing any of it. This always has been and still is extremely deranged and delusional.
No they weren’t.
There is a whole section on the GRU’s months-long efforts to infiltrate state election systems and voter databases, with at least one confirmed instance of them succeeding; the report goes on to say the Mueller team didn’t examine the hacked servers to see exactly what was accomplished because other investigations were doing so.
No they weren’t, and no they didn’t.
The report details specific offers of assistance to the campaign by the Russian government, and shows that the Trump campaign received these offers and “expected to benefit electorally” from them.
One time the guy who was campaign chairman for about 3 months of the 18 month long campaign shared some polling data with a business associate who was Russian. “Hey Paul, how’s the campaign going?” “Pretty good, Igor, our polling data says we’re up by 5%!” Got ’em!
Nice try, but Rick Gates has already testified that he and Paul knew Kilimnik was a “spy” (his word).
(At this point copy and paste broke on my phone which happens on the site sometimes, don’t know what’s up with that.)
The bit about the policy proposal was that a Russian businessman got a policy proposal which they themselves presented as having come directly from Putin to Jared Kushner. Jared responded by passing copies along to Steve Bannon and Rex Tillerson.
So we’re agreed your statement
is false, correct? The Russian government did not manipulate any election results. If they did, please point to the election results they manipulated. Which election results as recorded are wrong because of actions of the Russian government?
Are we talking about the Trump Tower meeting? The lady was not “the Russian government,” and she did not, in fact, provide the Russian documents proving crimes committed by Hillary Clinton. If she did, I would very much like to know what crimes Hillary committed with the Russian government. Can we #LockHerUp for these? Let’s get an investigation on that ASAP.
Also, it’s okay to get foreign documents proving your competitor is a criminal, right? If Putin called you up and said “MrApophenia I am havink documents provink Trump is the Rooskie spy!” you would not say “no way Vlad, you just keep those to yourself I’m not colluding with no Russians!”
Well if tax cheat, fraudster and serial fabulist Rick Gates says it, let’s impeach the motherf’er! And again, sharing some polling data with a former business partner is in no way nefarious. Also, we can agree your additional statement that the campaign chairmen was feeding them information “all through it” is false, correct? One time, sharing some polling data is not “all through it.”
After the election. So the Russian government proposed something to the US government and the US government ignored it. What is the bad thing here?
There is nothing here. There never was. And the media has spent two years driving people to insanity while torching the political commons. Over…nothing.
Hillary lost because she was deeply unlikable and her policy prescriptions did not address the economic concerns of the rust belt. While she also shat on them for being terrible people. Not because Trump cheated with the Russians. It’s time to move on.
If a tree falls in the woods…
I think 2 rounds of this discussion could have been avoided by simply pointing out and clarifying imprecise language use instead of playing gotcha with it.
M.A.
C.H.
M.A.
I haven’t read the report and don’t plan to. I quoted this bit because it looks as though Mr. Apophenia is implicitly admitting that what he said wasn’t true, and I want to check whether that is correct.
The key phrase is “all through it.” Am I correct in concluding from what I quoted that M.A.’s claim was specifically about Rick Gates, and that Rick Gates was only campaign chairman for a small fraction of the campaign?
If so, then Mr. Apophenia was saying something he knew was not true, which saves me the trouble of trying to check which of M.A. and C.H. is correct in the rest of the issues they dispute.
There is even a convenient Latin tag for the principle.
Based on the CH quote
I believe they are talking about Paul M, not Ricky G.
I guess this saves me the trouble of having to check if you are correct in the rest of the issues you dispute.
@ David:
If you have to guess which of Manafort or Gates served as Trump’s campaign manager – and guess incorrectly – you should consider that you know too little about the 2016 election to be making inferences with any degree of confidence.
Conrad’s comment contains enough falsehoods/mistakes that a rigorous fisking would take legitimate effort. You should not assume that a given assertion was accurate just because a specific commenter failed to remark upon it. Especially when that comment explicitly mentions they were having trouble posting.
Read the report. Please. The section most directly relevant to this discussion begins on volume 1, page 135.
Having read the section of the report, yes, my previous statement that it was “one time” was inaccurate. Manafort told Gates once to share polling data, but the data was shared multiple times.
It still was not “all through the campaign,” and as far as Mueller could tell was unrelated to any other Russian influence campaigns.
“The Russian government interfered in the 2016 presidential election in sweeping and systematic fashion.” is the second sentence in the report.
Interfering with the process, and manipulating the results have differing connotations. The latter implies that the outcome was pretty much solely due to the Russians, while with the former they may have actually had no influence in the final result (as is likely the case if they “merely” spread propaganda on each side in order to increase division).
Of course, going beyond the second sentence may well make that point moot; but the particular phrasing can do a lot to imply that the current President is entirely illegitimate.
Unless you specify each and every time if you mean
(1) successful change of voting results
(2) attempted change of results / infiltration of election systems
(3) propaganda campaign
you will get disagreement
“Manipulating the election” and “Manipulating the election results” are different things. The first is what everybody campaigning does. The second is changing vote counts or swapping out ballot boxes or similar.
In accordance with the Principle of Charity, and since we’re not gigantic assholes who hate clear communication and despise constructive debate, maybe when someone says the Mueller report says the Russians “manipulated” something, we could pick whatever definition of manipulate actually accords with a reasonable reading of the Mueller report?
@dick
Agree mostly, but allowing the imprecision to persist can allow for a motte & bailey.
I do agree that when the word or language is just an obvious slight imprecision we should be charitable and just correct or clarify, rather than acting like we have no idea what they are talking about, and trying to catch them in a gotcha moment.
Language is imprecise, there’s no way around that. No one can phrase a thought so perfectly that an uncharitable reader can’t misconstrue it. That’s why the principle of charity isn’t optional; it’s not something we “should” do in the moral sense, it’s a precondition for a useful discussion to happen at all.
Meh – it’s pretty standard politics to take the most extreme arguments of your opponents and engage those. Obama would frequently say “these are the same kinds of people who claim I was born in Kenya” or the like when he was on his back foot over some issue, and this is the same kind of obvious thing.
I do think it’s a net win for Trump, but not a decisive one. It takes the more extreme allegations (literal treason, taking orders from Putin as a quid pro quo, the idea that the Steele dossier is likely to be substantially correct), and moves them mostly off the table. It does collect a number of the lesser allegations in one place and confirm those, but most of those were known. It also paints a picture of the Trump administration as deeply disfunctional.
I remember Somesay!
Some say we should give a gun to every kindergartner in the nation. Some say we should outlaw fire itself. But I think we can find a reasonable middle ground if we put partisanship behind us.
So Sunday, Tuesday, Thursday and every other Saturday we’ll do what half the people like and Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and every other Saturday we’ll do what the other half of people like.
Did I put partisanship behind us?
I doubt it changes anything at all. As far as I’ve seen, the effect of the report has confirmed everyone’s priors and changed exactly 0 minds. It feels to me that people who want to support Trump are going to do so and that people who want to proclaim Trump as the anti-Christ (or your favorite evil mortal) will also continue to do so. If there was anything definite in the report that would change minds, actions would be being taken, but since there isn’t, everyone just got a large surge of tribal vindication and kept believing the exact same things they always did.
Anecdotally, based on the talk radio I listen to while driving, callers were not moved much on Trump, but were on the AG.
What about him? I’ve seen very little that made me think about him one way or another.
As I expected. Nothing will come of this, but endless shouting for the rest of Trump’s term in office. Wake me up in six years.
Pursuant to meh’s claims about whether obstruction should be a crime, more elementary questions:
Should obstruction be considered more serious a crime than the crime whose investigation was obstructed? For example, suppose I work for the state, and investigate whether you embezzled $1M. You obstruct my investigation. I prove you obstructed. Should that be as serious as embezzling $1M? Half as serious? 90%? 10%?
If the state finds you guilty of the embezzling, does that affect the seriousness of the obstruction? Alternately, what if the obstruction is found by the state to not have made a material difference in the finding for the original crime?
Pursuant to Aapje’s points about obstruction:
Should it be considered obstruction if the target takes action to make an investigation harder? I expect everyone here would say it is. Conversely, should it be considered obstruction if the target fails to take action to make an investigation easier? I expect some might say it can depend on the specific details – for instance, if they failed to take action that they could reasonably be expected to take otherwise (e.g. someone routinely backs up their emails, but then skips a backup for the period being investigated).
Also, my understanding is that a target (in the US) cannot be held guilty of obstruction of an investigation against themselves on grounds of failure to aid the investigation, by way of the Fifth Amendment, but could be held guilty in at least some cases if they fail to aid an investigation against someone else.
I disagree with that statement. I think there are plenty acts that make an investigation harder that should not be wrong. (But I’m not qualified to say if they are actually illegal, so please consult a lawyer if that question is material to you!)
Let’s start with a hypothetical investigation of a group of government leakers, one of whom I consider to be a whistleblower and who is a personal friend of mine. Consider the following actions.
1) I write a blog post outlining people’s legal right to refuse to cooperate with an investigation without any specific investigation in mind.
2) I write a blog post arguing that the investigation is BS.
3) Concerned that the police are abusing people’s rights in a particular investigation (which I oppose), I email the witnesses of the investigation and say “I am not advising you whether or not to cooperate, but when making that decision, you should know that (a) you have no legal obligation to talk to the police, (b) you may request an attorney at any time, in which case the police have to stop questioning you, (c) please consider reading this article by Popehat, in which he argues that no one should speak to the FBI without first consulting a lawyer.
4) When the FBI arrives to talk to one of my coworkers, I yell at them “You should be ashamed about this investigation. You’re persecuting innocent whistleblowers!”
The whole point of an investigation is that you don’t know what happened. Suppose you subpoena my emails to see if I colluded with the Russians, and I delete all my emails to hide the evidence that I colluded with North Korea. Deleting subpoena’d emails is clearly obstruction; should I get a pass on it because I didn’t do the thing you went in suspecting me of? It seems obvious to me that I shouldn’t.
What about the situation where you’re completely innocent of the underlying crime, so while you don’t actually do anything which prevents any relevant information from reaching the investigators, and in fact direct your subordinates to fully comply with information requests from the investigators, you’re pretty pissed off at being the subject of a massive multi-year investigation into something you didn’t do and thus you complain vigorously the whole time about the ongoing damage to your ability to work on what you think is important publicly, to the press, your friends and your subordinates?
Is that obstruction, in your view? Just being opposed to the investigation because you think it’s not only a waste of time, but counterproductive in preventing real work from getting done? In my understanding, you have to actually do something which is actually directly linked to preventing the investigation from having some relevant information (setting aside 5th amendment responses) or being completed.
Having read the entire document, there doesn’t seem to be any actions by Trump in it which demonstrate anything more than not liking the investigation’s existence because he didn’t do anything and was really upset at the ongoing political impact to his priorities.
It’s amazing how often this needs repeating, but the crime Mueller was investigating was Russian election interference, and it definitely did happen.
It’s indisputable that Trump obstructed the investigation, in the non-techinical everyday sense of the word. He tried to fire Mueller, for example. The issue is whether he obstructed it in the technical legal sense. On that, not being a lawyer, I have no opinion.
the crime Mueller was investigation was trump’s participation in said interference, not what the Russians did on their own.
And trump didn’t try to fire mueller. he talked about it. He talks about a lot of things.
He seems to have erroneously included a lot of info about it in his report then.
“On June 17, 2017, the President called McGahn at home and directed him to call the Acting Attorney General and say that the Special Counsel had conflicts of interest and must be removed. McGahn did not carry out the direction, however, deciding that he would resign rather than trigger what he regarded as a potential Saturday Night Massacre.”
This is so easily looked up online, I don’t understand why there is an argument about it:
https://www.justice.gov/opa/press-release/file/967231/download
no where is investigating trump mentioned, only russian interference (possibly why non russian crimes were left out or referred to other departments)
The SCO found lots of crimes related to russian interference. Maybe you committed none of them, and were only loosely associated with, or had minimal communication with the people who did. I’m sure that would piss you off big time; but I don’t think that gives you a pass at obstruction. MY POINT IS THAT NOT BEING GUILTY DOES NOT ABSOLVE YOU IN ITSELF OF OBSTRUCTION. OTHER ARGUMENTS CAN BE MADE AS TO WHAT CONSTITUTES OBSTRUCTION, BUT I AM NOT MAKING THEM HERE SO THERE IS NO POINT IN RESPONDING TO ME WITH THEM.
The report is long and I can’t force people to read it, but if you want your contributions to be meaningful then please at the very least read the table of contents. If there is a section directly relevant to your comment, think about referencing it. If you instead argue that something is absent, be ready to point to where its absence is conspicuous.
There is something incredibly disheartening about the fact that all of the above posts are referencing the same document (which is in the public domain) and none can even agree what it says.
I wonder if it may be more helpful to pose a different question: is there anyone here whose opinion as to the factual predicate of the Mueller Inquiry was changed in a material way as a result of the Inquiry and the report itself? Or, does anyone know of any public commentator whose opinions changed materially over time and in direct response to Mueller’s actions and reports?
I’ll perhaps start first. Before the Inquiry, I assigned a fairly significant (IIRC 20-30%) to the possibility that Trump associates actively, successfully and knowingly colluded – in the unambiguous and blatant meaning of the word – with Russian state agents. Maybe someone took a loan from a Russian bank, for instance, or Russia may even have directly funded part of the campaign itself, perhaps a PAC of some kind. All of the above was based on the simple and provable fact that Russia routinely assists like-minded political entities all over the world, which is knowingly received by local confederates.
Over time, I came to believe that was not the case from reading Andrew McCarthy’s columns in the National Review, and by about a year ago, already knew that the final report was going to look more or less the way it presently does – damningly scathing of the blatant idiocies of the Trump administration and of the man himself, but coming up empty on ‘active’ collusion (for want of a better word).
I think very few people have bothered to so much as glance at the primary source.
It was something I already believed, but reading page two of the report certainly helped convince me that that this isn’t a thing. Whether or not an act meets the definition of a word can be unambiguous and blatant, but that means you’re using a strict definition rather than a commonplace, median one.
Broadly, my opinion has changed to view “collusion” as a weasel word, and while I’ve previously put forth the definition I would have given it I’m ultimately glad the Special Counsel declined to make up their own.
The Nixon comparisons have been bandied about for a while, but I’ve come to believe that Trump’s administration looks a lot more like Harding’s. Cohen’s various testimonies plus the existing literature on Trump’s managerial style (very much including his own words) show a man who prefers to empower subordinates in their efforts, but the autonomy needed to insulate Trump appears to also have led to an administration where his nominal employees feel free to openly disobey or countermand their instructions. In a few cases, that includes the pursuit of their own goals very much at Trump’s expense. Michael Wolff’s book claimed as such, but it’s sobering to see similar events dryly repeated in the SC’s report.
Not really familiar with his political views, but I found this quote interesting
Career question for those working in tech in the SF Bay Area:
I am trying to do a career change into front end development. I would like to find a junior front end role to get a start in. What skills should I be working on? What kinds of positions should I be looking for? Any tips for the job hunt?
My previous experience is I worked in mostly marketing and graphic design. After working at a startup doing a little bit of everything–design, marketing, copywriting, UX, UI, front end–I felt a bit burnt out. I then had a few years of me trying to do freelance design here and there, supplemented with various 1099 gig economy type jobs (Uber, Lyft, Zesty, Doordash, etc).
I have college degrees but in non-technical fields–marketing and english lit.
I completed a Udacity certificate program for front end web development to get a foundation of knowledge. I’m now thinking I should focus on learning React and doing some projects in it, also I’ve been looking at a Tyler Mcginness course that seems to teach all that modern React centered web dev stuff. I’m also volunteering on the side with a Code for America brigade to contribute to a project there.
Been feeling a bit discouraged lately–just feeling like there’s a lot to learn especially on the tooling/framework/library side where I don’t feel comfortable trying to apply to anything. There’s plenty of people who have been doing this stuff way longer than me and with way more technical credentials.
Regarding why front end–I like the visual aspect of it.
You are right to focus on React right now. Your first job is going to be the toughest to get. If you have people in your network who have worked with you before and can attest to your basic non-schmuckiness, at an org that has any front-end positions, that’s going to be useful to you.
I wouldn’t worry too much about tooling/library/setting up a productive dev environment. Those things are super important, but they’re not what people interview on, and if you join a basically functional front-end team, they’ll have tools that they want you to use anyway, and lots of help setting them up.
Can you get interviews at all? If so, I’d go to one of those sites and/or read one of those books on how to solve dumb whiteboard coding challenges. Have you tried Triplebyte and its various competitors? Do those things, certainly. Angellist is I think a pretty decent way for junior people to get hired, though avoid working at a place with like five total employees — you want someplace where other people can fill in all those skills that you don’t have because you’ve never worked in the field at all, not one where you have to completely self-start.
Do you have a portfolio of sites? Since front end is so much more visual it’s easy to show off a good portfolio and get a job regardless of credentials. If you’re looking for someone to train you a bit, that’s a bit harder. Agreed react is great right now.
You might consider UX designer, which at a lot of small companies is kind of a utility-infielder position that means formal UX, light front-end work, and helping the “real” front-end devs with their CSS. There are probably 20 junior React front-end developers in the Bay for every UX designer.
Also you could specialize specifically in the sub-area of compliance, which I think will become a very lucrative thing (kind of like Y2K conversions were) once people start taking WCAG seriously and worrying about ADA lawsuits. But that’s just me betting on the future, not necessarily sound advice.
Polygenic Prediction of Weight and Obesity Trajectories from Birth to Adulthood
Abstract:
Severe obesity is a rapidly growing global health threat. Although often attributed to unhealthy lifestyle choices or environmental factors, obesity is known to be heritable and highly polygenic; the majority of inherited susceptibility is related to the cumulative effect of many common DNA variants. Here we derive and validate a new polygenic predictor comprised of 2.1 million common variants to quantify this susceptibility and test this predictor in more than 300,000 individuals ranging from middle age to birth. Among middle-aged adults, we observe a 13-kg gradient in weight and a 25-fold gradient in risk of severe obesity across polygenic score deciles. In a longitudinal birth cohort, we note minimal differences in birthweight across score deciles, but a significant gradient emerged in early childhood and reached 12 kg by 18 years of age. This new approach to quantify inherited susceptibility to obesity affords new opportunities for clinical prevention and mechanistic assessment
https://www.cell.com/cell/pdf/S0092-8674(19)30290-9.pdf
I read Arthur C. Clarke’s “Rendezvous With Rama” a while back, liked it a lot, and now I’m reading “Rama II” which I guess he just provided ideas for and it was mainly written by Gentry Lee. It took 111 pages to get through the soap opera stuff and then the story finally became good, although for me at least it requires way more suspension of disbelief than the first book did. The characters are a bit thin, and the writing is very … not sure how to describe it exactly. Basic? Even a tad amateurish maybe? (Not that Lee is an amateur, and there are definitely moments where his talent is apparent.)
Also, it’s annoying that gravity seems to turn on and off randomly in the Newton while it’s docked at the end of Rama. Like, in one scene a character will walk into someone’s office on the ship, slam a door, and do other things like that indicating there is gravity, and then in the next scene there’ll be a book floating above their bed. Oh, and they have a bed rather than a sleeping bag tethered to the wall at both ends. That kind of thing.
Anyway, just curious what others here thought of these books. I almost gave up on Rama II at one point. Should I bother with more sequels after this one?
I had the same impression. RwR was amazing, the sequels are less so. I don’t think there’s a dropoff between 2 and the rest though, so you should expect more Rama 2 if you keep on reading. Let that expectation guide you.
The first book was incredible, two was pretty good, and the rest pretty meh.
Agreed. With RwR (and pretty true of Clarke generally) the strength is in the concepts & ideas, not so much in characters or even plots. RwR had a fantastic big idea – the sequels set in the same universe evidently could never reach the same level because the big ides had already been done. (Even though RwR ends with a massive sequel hook, which shows Clarke wanted to explore the idea further. Actually 2001 the novel does the same thing – though in that case the sequel, 2010, is more fully achieved.)
Coincidentally, despite almost never seeming to manage to find time to fit fiction into my life these days, I did listen to the audiobook of RwR a couple of weekends back when I was on a trip away. And I chose that one mainly because I knew it is also available in the language I’m currently trying to learn (Bulgarian). Great fun story, albeit with some major retrospective plot holes given things that we have already invented that would have made some of the cast’s problems into non-problems… but I am unlikely to bother with the sequels given what I’ve heard.
Follow-up: I got to the part where Nicole, David, and Francesca are out in New York searching for Takagashi and I decided to stop reading. I can’t take it anymore, this is adding nothing of value to my life.
@Well…,
If you’re looking for a good read, while I feel a little bad for not picking my Gene Wolfe book to read just before he died, but for what little it’s worth in my sort-of re-read of Poul Anderson’s The Broken Sword (I read the ’71 revision years ago, and it’s now the original ’54 version I’m reading) I’m finding it even more AWESOME!!! than I remember.
Highly recommended!
Is there anything cheap for families to do in the Bay area? We’re going to vacation in Sonoma county next week.
If I don’t set foot in San Francisco, that’s fine, but if there’s something worth doing, I’m open to that.
What is “cheap” by your standards? What ages of children in the family?
Golden Gate Park is pretty cool! It’s big (bigger than Central Park in NYC), and contains a large collection of random, interesting things. By the ocean, there are these rather cyclopean windmills. There’s a bison paddock. There’s the Japanese Tea Garden (which has an entry fee) and a couple of museums (likewise). The Academy of Science has some pretty cool nature-style exhibits that kids may like, including a greenhouse jungle section with lots of butterflies.
If you’re moderately outdoorsy and/or interested by remnants of (relatively recent) history, you might enjoy hiking in the Marin Headlands. I usually go here: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Unnamed+Road,+Mill+Valley,+CA+94941/@37.8302601,-122.5388318,313a,35y,28.44h,44.88t/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x80858f6049b668cf:0x872b70b9ce4a43f4!8m2!3d37.8324739!4d-122.538788
And then travel south/east along the beach up to the headlands, and follow trails from there. There are the remains of old coast-defense batteries that I find quite interesting, there’s a lighthouse, and the natural scenery is dramatic and in my estimation pretty. This is all free.
I think that Stern Grove park is really interesting — it’s some kind of mostly-dry watershed, and the city really disappears from you despite being only like 100 yards away. Parts of it are very pretty too. If you’re in the city, you might like to picnic there. Free.
I also enjoy wandering around Treasure Island/Yerba Buena Island. You have to be willing to ignore signs that suggest that you should not be where you are. This may be an idiosyncratic taste.
Good question. Cheap is basically 20-30 bucks for parking, free admission kind of thing. Like a national park, museum, or the like. Children are 6, 8, & 11.
And you’re totally underselling the Marin headlands by not mentioning the whale skeleton!
the exploratorium is amazing, but a little pricier than that.
There’s ways to get in free.
I was hoping that link would be a map detailing how to get in through the sewers or something. 🙂
@toastengineer,
Sorry.
It’s on a pier, if you want to sneak in you swim or boat in, unless you walk a very long way during times of extreme low tide (and be quick, the tide comes in fast).
If there’s any building in the world that should have a Deus Ex style secret underground entrance, it’s the exploratorium.
The Bay Area Discovery Museum is not free admission, but does have free parking and is a great place to take kids. The immediate surrounding area is also very beautiful if the weather is clear.
Sonoma County’s kinda out of the way for hitting the big tourist sites in the Bay Area (Golden Gate Bridge, Fisherman’s Wharf, Alcatraz, etc.). Napa and Sonoma Counties get their share of tourism, but it’s mostly wine enthusiasts.
That said, Point Reyes in neighboring Marin County is worth a look, for easy to moderate hiking and the (generally bleak and foggy, but not without its charms) Northern California seaside experience. I’m a bigger fan of the Marin Headlands, just off the north side of the Golden Gate, but that might be out of the way for you. The Russian River area gets a lot of tourism, too. If your family’s interested in history, Fort Ross might be worth a day trip, or Mission San Francisco Solano (in Sonoma — the mission in SF was Mission San Francisco de Asis). There’s probably a redwood grove you could hit — Muir Woods is the most famous one in the northern Bay Area, but it’s an hour’s drive from Santa Rosa and usually clogged with tourists. There are several working farms on the west side of Sonoma County, some of which can be toured by reservation or on certain days — one puts on a Mother’s Day event where you can play with newborn goats, for example.
All of these should be free or cheap.
We’re staying in Petaluma, so actually pretty close to the Bay. I have my eye on Point Reyes. My usual vacation strategy is to find the green areas on the map and check them out on google for photos, reviews, etc.
I do want to avoid the situation where we drive to some neat little place that’s super popular, sit in long lines of cars competing for scant parking places, and get out of the car too cramped and grumpy to appreciate it, if at all.
Sadly, one of my old favorite So Cal sites, Joshua Tree, has gotten pretty crowded since I visited it as a kid.
I do want to avoid the situation where we drive to some neat little place that’s super popular, sit in long lines of cars competing for scant parking places, and get out of the car too cramped and grumpy to appreciate it, if at all.
So don’t go to Muir Woods.
Santa Rosa has the Charles Schulz Museum (which survived the fire), which is interesting for both kids and adults, and is less than a half-hour from Petaluma.
The city of Sonoma has one of the California Missions, and a cute town square, though most of the restaurants and shops on it are pricey. There’s a cheese shop there, which has lots of different cheeses from reasonably-priced to “how can people eat something that costs that much?”
One of the three faithful geysers in the world is in Calistoga, not too far from Petaluma. (Google Maps says 50 minutes; the ride over the hills is pretty, but winds a lot.)
In SF, the Presidio has lots of lovely trails that make good short hikes that kids can do. Further north there is China Camp State Park, beautiful wooded trails and bayfront scenery and not very touristed. In the headlands, the Tennessee Valley Trail gives you a nice trail to walk on to a pleasant scenic cove with a sandy beach.
I second the recommendation of Point Reyes, specifically the Tomales Point Trail. The trailhead is at an old dairy ranch which is cool in and of itself (there are a few buildings to explore) but the highlight is without a doubt the Tule Elk herds. There is a series of watering holes about 2 miles into the hike that attract tons of Elk (honestly with younger kids it probably makes sense to lunch there and then just turn around).
I’m not sure I have been on a hike with a better combination of scenery / views, wildlife, and kid-accessibility.
This recent review echoes my experience, except we also saw tons of make elk jousting (?).
That was pretty much all we did from this list, but it was very nice, though point Reyes was a bit of a drive (and would have been a heck of a place to run out of gas) it was a beautiful one, and the Tule Elk reserve was beautiful, full of wild flowers etc.
We also hit up some beaches, horseback riding, regional park in Petaluma, kyaking, fishing, and lizard hunting on the ranch we were staying at, and ice cream tasting.
Just in case anyone was wondering.
@Randy M,
That sounds wonderful!
Did you actually get to see the elk?
@Randy M ,
The “Little Farm”, and the nearby “Nature Study Area” at Tilden Park in the hills above Berkeley are free to visit.
The mock up of a Nike Missile Base in the Marin Headlands,
Kennedy Park at the border between Hayward and San Lorenzo has a train ride and petting zoo (mostly goats)
Once a month the Children’s Discovery Museum has a free admission day (crowded, but great for little ones).
If you can get a local library card free passes to lots of museums and even zoo’s may be checked out.
For more cash there’s the Liberty Ship and WW2 submarine in San Francisco.
If your’re really bored and you give a heads up I could show you thr giant boilers, old morgue, and the inmate holding cells at the S.F. Hall of Justice around dawn on a weekday, but I’ve no idea where you’d park for free if you lingered near here.
The Tech museum in San Jose was great when I was a kid (formally known as The Garage).
https://www.thetech.org/
Now it is awful, one of the worst science/technology museums I’ve been to. Flashy without substance, exhibits with knobs that make things happen for no reason. My kids hated it about as much as I did, possibly more.
Yep, the last time I went I was very not impressed. The Exploratorium is miles better. The Academy of Science is okay on the science, but pretty nice as a quasi-zoo.
The Computer History Museum in Mountain View is a much better alternative, though not great for younger kids.
What about the Children’s Discovery Museum in San Jose? I remember that one being pretty good but I may be confusing it with another one.
If your kids are into how stuff gets made, may I suggest:
Mrs. Grossman’s Paper Company is located in Petaluma. I still remember taking the tour 25 years later. It appears that there is a fee and reservations are required.
The Jelly Belly Candy Co. has a manufacturing facility about an hour drive east of Petaluma. The factory tour is free and jelly beans are self-recommending.
sf.funcheap.com
Also includes events from all around the area. Relevant to Sonoma: https://sf.funcheap.com/region/north-bay/
I’m surprised that it hasn’t been mentioned yet, but the “Bay Model” in Sausalito is one of my favorite museum-type experiences in the Bay Area, and it’s free! Depending on you and your family, it may be perfect, or may be the worst suggestion ever. Reading the description will probably be sufficient to decide: “The Bay Model is a three-dimensional hydraulic model of San Francisco Bay and Delta areas capable of simulating tides and currents. It is over 1.5 acres in size and represents an area from the Pacific Ocean to Sacramento and Stockton, including: the San Francisco, San Pablo and Suisun Bays and a portion of the Sacramento – San Joaquin Delta.” https://www.spn.usace.army.mil/missions/recreation/bay-model-visitor-center/
Failing that (and again depending on your taste) I’d suggest you try to hit any of the major farmers’ markets in the area. Depending on where you are coming from, the fruit selection should be great, and many vendors lets you sample before you buy. There are prepared food vendors too. If I had to choose a North Bay market for a visit (I had a business that sold at many), probably the San Rafael Sunday. Or just choose any convenient one on any day of your choice: http://www.mcguire.com/blog/2017/05/bay-area-farmers-markets/#northbay
The Sonoma County coastline is really striking. I’d suggest taking a drive north just to see the sights. Fort Ross might make a nice destination. It’s $8 per car for “day use”, but I think the (good) museum is free: “Fort Ross, one of the main tourist attractions between Bodega Bay and Fort Bragg, is a California State Historic Park showcasing a historic Russian-era fort compound that has been designated National Historic Landmark status. Located eleven miles north of Jenner on California Highway One, one of the most scenic coastal routes in the world Fort Ross is surrounded by sandy beaches, panoramic coves, and redwood forests, with breathtaking views of the Pacific Ocean.” https://www.fortross.org.
If “next week” happens to include the weekend of May 4-5, Sturgeon’s Mill might be nice: “Sturgeon’s mill is a 105 year old steam powered sawmill. We are a working museum that is open 4 weekends a year to the general public. On these weekends historians, gear heads, steam heads and students of California history come to “Step back into History” at our museum.” http://www.sturgeonsmill.com
Along the same lines but a different type of mill, the Bale Grist Mill is in a pleasant spot with nice walking trails, and does demos most weekends: “The park is the site of a water-powered grist mill that was built in 1846. It was once the center of social activity as Napa Valley settlers gathered to have their corn and wheat ground into meal or flour. … The mill and its 36-foot water wheel are protected as a state historic landmark and have been partially restored. A trail connects the historic park to Bothe-Napa Valley State Park.” https://www.parks.ca.gov/?page_id=482
+1 to Fort Ross, the historical presentation of the village is great.
If you’re at Point Reyes on a Saturday afternoon (between noon and 5pm), the historic ship-to-shore radio station KPH will be open. Vintage radio equipment, machines whirring and beeping and spewing out Baudot-code tape, humans sending Morse code. Admission is free and it’s a short and beautiful walk from Sir Francis Drake Blvd (the road that goes to the lighthouse).
More info at Maritime Radio Historical Society, and the National Park Service has a page on it as well.
@Randy M,
Sorry I forgot this earlier, this last month I took our almost 3 year-old son to the Randall Museum in San Francisco, admission is free.
The museum isn’t that big, but our son enjoyed it. There’s a live owl, raccoon, some othet animals (our son was most interested in a snake that’s cage was about his height), some model trains, a little indoor play area (which was great ’cause it was raining), some legos, a bunch of Indian baskets, and there’s a good view of the City from there.
Parking was tight when we were there on a Saturday, but it’s free and and it didn’t take us too long to find a spot but I could see that being a problem, I imagine that there’d be more spaces on a weekday.
Down a steep path from the museum there’s what looks like a vintage 1970’s metal structure playground with sand instead of the modern plastic and rubber safety ones (or the mostly wood and wood chips interim playgrounds) so your kids can see what play used to be like.
Unlike near my work I didn’t see any evidence of the homeless there (no beggers and tents), though (as usual) tents were visible along the highway leading to the Bay Bridge, which I don’t think you’ll see if your coming from Marin County via the Golden Gate Bridge – be ready for a toll to cross the bridge coming in to San Francisco, but it’s free going out.
Is rationality the opposite of emotionality?
Is hand the opposite of foot?
What is the sound of one foot emoting?
Sounds like a third of an emotive yard. But if you’re passionate about landscaping that’s still a lot.
You can either stand on your feet or on your hands. One is for most people more difficult. So are you saying it depends on the person that it’s either easier to be rational or be emotional?
But most people base their decisions with both parts.
I’m refering to the theory of rationalism: As I understand it rationalism wants to minimise the influence of emotions in decision making. (Just like communism wants to minimise capitalistic influence. Bad example, but I hope you know what I mean.)
Or are you just saying both are part of one being?
Rationalism wants to minimize the influence of bias in decision making. This can be bias within a person, like hindsight bias, or issues that arise in a group, like coordination problems.
There are some biases that can be caused by strong emotion, but it’s not the same thing as being emotional. You need emotions to be able to decide what you want from life, then rationalism (purports to) help you get there.
Okay, thanks.
I’ve always thought that rationality pretty much amounts to making the decisions that are apt to lead to the emotions you most prefer.
I think you’re looking for the Feeling Rational essay?
“But I know, now, that there’s nothing wrong with feeling strongly… When something good happens, I am happy, and there is no confusion in my mind about whether it is rational for me to be happy.”
Oh, thank you!
https://quillette.com/2019/04/17/why-everyone-values-freedom/
He argues against the right-wing concept of freedom as freedom from oppression, or at least proposes alternative definitions of freedom that are helpful in interpreting left-wing ideology. Specifically, freedom can be interpreted to mean having more choices, and redistribution or social safety nets is one way of giving people more choices than they would otherwise have. While taxation is coercion by the state, poverty can also be coercive. (My strawish attempt at steelmanning, please go read the actual article before arguing.)
Anybody read this? Thoughts?
He, along with much of (most, all?) left wing though on freedom skips half of the equation. Actually more like 2/3rds, he takes a group/class of people and defines freedom within that framework treating everything else as exogenous. Like here
Here the only freedom that matters for the discussion is the individual woman’s. Not included are the freedoms of the person paying for the welfare, and not included are the infringement on the mother’s economic possibilities as welfare reduces social mobility (both theoretically and empirically).
Dragging abortion into this seems to me like a uniquely American sidetracking of the issue. This is a matter of defining the limits of a woman’s body and/or when a fetus is granted human rights as an individual. Whatever your stance on abortion, it’s perfectly defensible anywhere on the libertarian/social-democratic/collectivist/authoritarian spectrum.
Back on topic:
But I think the issue of freedom could use some nuancing. Often, for instance, freedom of speech is considered only to concern limitations of speech by the state, and maybe even there limited to the judicial system. But speech is mostly limited by other factors, for instance twitter mobs whipping up storms to get people with opinions they find offensive fired. Laws protecting employees from being fired without (narrowly defined) reasonable cause could be important to secure a free and open debate, much more so than relaxing laws directly affecting speech.
And if we agree¹ that some government is needed, and that some tax collection is necessary, wouldn’t some redistribution in order to give poor people more choices make sense? Funding public education, for instance?
He uses abortion to make a point about economic freedom, claiming that the a pro choice libertarian isn’t for as much freedom as a pro choice + welfare state democrat. That comparison seems reasonable to me, except for the part where he ignores all the costs of the welfare state and pretends like it is obviously increasing freedom.
The case has not been made that it does, which is the complaint. Obviously if someone gives me more money the *I* am in a different, and probably preferable situation, but ignoring the person who gives it to me is ridiculous, and ignoring the apparatus that does the transferring is ridiculous and ignoring the system that built enough wealth that we could make the transfer is ridiculous.
Sure, but nuance would be a discussion of the costs and benefits, not only the benefits or the costs.
I lost the footnote I intended to put there, sorry. But I think a very large majority would believe in some government, so I don’t think it is fair to interpret the article as aimed at libertarian anarchists. Which is why I think I may make that assumption.
Exactly. And I find he has a point in that most libertarian/right-wing argumentation is quite uncompromising, and very rarely tries to find a balanced view.
So is a lot of big government/left-wing argumentation.
People make biased arguments, leaving out things that clash with their desired policies. These policies are often desired because they benefit the person favoring the policy and/or because they appeal to the intuitions of the person, not because of a rational assessment based on universal values.
—
IMHO, the writer of the article fundamentally misunderstands his opponents. They also believe in positive freedom.
They just believe (more strongly) that positive freedom is something that has to be earned (not necessarily so much in a moral sense, but in a practical sense: that people will only make the sacrifices to generate wealth if the personal sacrifice is offset by a personal advantage).
Contention that broadly defined help for poor people paid by slightly higher taxes on the rich is a net infringement on aggregate freedom appears to be one of key components of libertarianism. However, as a nonlibertarian, I almost never found it appealing. There are other arguments against tax increases that I think are in some contexts quite persuasive, unlike this one.
Imho enhancing living standards of poor people in virtually every modern country (perhaps except few outliers, e.g. Sweden) would bring them more freedom than taking away some trivial fraction of their income would decrease freedom of the rich. Wealth brings people more choices, and diminishing marginal utility of wealth with respect to this seems very real.
I agree.
Unless you are an uncompromising and very principled libertarian, you have to accept some infringement on freedom as the price for living in a lawful society. And just like we can discuss how society should be structured for maximizing utility (i.e., one argument in favor of free enterprise, less regulation, and markets), we should be able to discuss how society should be structured in order to maximize freedom.
That doesn’t speak to the question, which was “What is freedom?” The freedom of the welfare recipient to live and eat without working is paid for in more work and less freedom for net tax contributors, whether or not the infringement is justified.
Assuming that the choice is between helping poor people and economic growth (this is debatable of course), then if we take the long view that increased growth brings us luxury space communism in 200 years instead of 300, we should be damning the poor people today and going for the growth if we want to maximize ‘freedom’ or ‘quality of life’ for the greatest number.
Similarly, if we had decided to help the poor people of 1750 instead of going for growth, then today nobody would have access to modern dentistry.
@LesHapablap
To take your argument further, we could say that, because the middle class spends most of its wealth on consumption, it would be prudent, in regards to the advancement of civilization, to tax the greater amount of their wealth and to redistribute it to that class which spends the greatest amount of its wealth on investments: the upper class. In that way, we could maximize progress to its fullest.
Isn’t that the “trickle down” agenda in a nut shell?
I don’t know enough about economics to know whether taxing everyone but the rich would maximize progress, but I doubt it for a few reasons.
For one, a lot of wealth is created by people who are middle class and become wealthy through start ups. Lowering taxes on the wealthy increases the incentive I guess, but taxing the wealth (or income) of the middle class lowers the resources available to create start ups.
Second, if you lowered consumption through the taxes that seems like it would have some bad macro effects.
Third, morale would be terrible. Productivity in the work force would drop substantially I suspect.
I’m not expert on this stuff though and I could be wrong. If, for example, the middle class just stopped drinking alcohol and put that money into savings accounts, what would happen to the economy and growth?
@DinoNerd
I am pretty sure it is, and despite ‘trickle down’ being, in most cases, a sort of sneer word, I do believe it is fundamentally correct in what it asserts.
@LesHapablap
A lot of startups seem to be in retail, which is that sector of the economy entirely devoted to facilitating consumption. So, if you are in the business of reducing consumption in the first place, through taxes, then in addition to reducing possible funds to be spent on retail you are also eliminating the need for much of it in the first place. I do not have an expert view of economics either, but based on my folkish perceptions and intuitions, I believe that there are aspects of the economy that serve little to no function in terms of how the promote meaningful technological progress. Retail and housing development are two industries that immediately come to mind in that way, and they, combined, probably account for most of the middle class’s expenditures. If you taxed the middle class more then I’d expect to see a diminution of those two industries, but I wouldn’t expect it to have a major impact on technological progress. They are sort of like eddies set apart from the main flow of progress.
@The Red Fiolot,
That raises another question: what kind of progress are we shooting for if we are making sacrifices today for the good of the future. Technological? Which technologies then, and what’s the best way to go about maximizing them? Would $10,000 be better spent on malaria nets to boost human productivity in Africa, thereby creating a stronger economic base for big future projects, or would it be better spent funding technology research directly, and if so what kind?
@LesHapablap
That is an easy question. The best technologies to target are those which enhance our ability to make additional advancements. Those would be AI and genetic engineering, as best I can tell. Investments into developing countries with functional governments would also be productive, on the basis that, once developed, those countries could provide additional brains for research, and additional bodies for sustaining those brains.
Presently, I believe the middle class invests most of its wealth into real estate development and speculation, which, to reiterate my previous point, is one of the worst things they can spend their money on, as it is a closed loop in the economy that doesn’t hold relevance for anything else.
@Dinonerd
No, that’s not supply-side. Supply-side is basically “Let people figure out how to produce and everyone wins”. It’s sneered at as “trickle-down” because the guy who produces by opening a hot-dog stand grows less (but starts much lower) than the guy opening a hot-dog factory. That’s a result of growth being exponential, not an explicit goal.
More seriously, it appears that modern economies are dependent on consumer confidence. Reduce consumption, and the result is yet another depression (mislabelled to seem less threatening). Businesses that don’t keep constantly growing are seen as failures, and the only way to keep growing is to sell more stuff to more people. and executive pay is based on the stock price, which is mostly sensitive to growth or lack thereof, so that’s all the incentive they have.
With this overall system, reducing consumption just tends to cause crashes. It’s possible that spare money neither consumed nor kept under a mattress might wind up invested in technological progress, but AFAICT, not very much of it. It’s much more profitable to e.g. over-market Fentanyl, creating an “opiod epidemic” than to attempt to develop pain killers that are equally effective but not so addictive 🙁
Add to that the overall short termism of modern executive compensation, and I just don’t see much investment-in-progress happening, however much is taken from the poor to give to the rich.
@LesHapablap
A “pie in the sky” a hundred years earlier in return for 200 years of not easing the lives of the “least among us?
Given the premise I give that path a hard “Nope!”
Define easing though?
I think we can all agree to pay for penicillin for the least. But do we all agree on expensive experimental cancer treatments? On round the clock ICU care for years? On reconstructive knee surgery so they can keep skiing at 60? At some point easing their lives will have serious costs, the question is where to set the line.
@cassander
Agreed, and that’s what electoral politics is for (well, also tribal signaling, and a hobby).
As to the parent question, judging by “actually existing socialism” (Cuba, the Soviet Union) hyper-redistribution does retard economic growth and technological development, and how much re-distribution is worth that cost is the question.
Since I dislike most change and visible poverty I probably have a higher tolerance for lower growth and progress than the average SSC commenter, most of whom I perceive as more technophillc than me.
A compelling argument is that “the pie” has to grow enough so that everyone gets more than crumbs (“Equal wrongs for all“), but I don’t buy the “A rising tide lifts all ships” argument when there’s those just treading water to keep from drowning.
I do though think that different communities should be empowered to set that line differently which is why I support federalism (and also California being multiple States), but those are secondary to my desire for a stronger safety net here and now.
If I was in Salt Lake City instead of San Francisco I’d probably judge where the line should be differently as I suspect we have more visible poverty here.
Is it clear that the Soviet Union actually had “hyper-redistribution”? My impression is that, despite the rhetoric, it was a very unequal society, probably more unequal than the U.S. It was a poor first world country for the relatively elite, largely in Moscow, and a third world country for most of the rest of the population. That’s based partly on The Russians, partly on one of Solzhenitsyn’s books.
It was a very unsuccessful economy, but I think that was due to using central planning instead of markets, not to massive redistribution of income.
@DavidFriedman,
That Central Planning retarded growth and progress more than redistribution wouldn’t suprised me, though I have no examples I can think of to test that.
Most of my co-workers who lived in the former Soviet Union have told me of the “free” stuff they got, and they mostly lived in the Ukraine, with one guy in Georgia – despite mostly being “ethnic” Russians.
They did stress both that they didn’t see the homeless there – unlike “Sanfransiska” but also how shoddy everything was, and how much petty bribery was required – to get treated by a physician more than cursorly.for example.
The general impression I get is a higher floor, but a much lower ceiling.
From what they described, I’d guess if Americans suddenly all had Soviet lifestyles about 15% of us would be better off, 10% would be about the same, and 75% of us would be worse off.
Self-selected of course, but the guy I know who left in ’79 described it as truly awful, while another co-worker who overheard him who left the former U.S.S.R. in the ’90’s (he stayed till after the fall) told me “Don’t listen to him, it wasn’t that bad”, but he still said he has it better here now (he drives a new German car).
A consistent complaint about here I’ve heard from the emigres seems to be of our schools, though I suspect they’re just objecting to their kids being more American than Russian
@DavidFriedman,
@Plumber,
My impression regarding inequality in the Soviet Union is that it depended on which kind of inequality we are talking about.
Wealth inequality was probably very low, because of the whole “government owns means of production” thing. Citizens owned very little property, altough more than nothing – limited amounts of real estate and money, including bank accounts, were permitted, but actual disposition even with such limited property was limited. So, high level functionaries owned nice dachas in Crimea, but were very far from a level of wealth of Bill Gates or Koch brothers, and vast majority of citizens owned virtually nothing of value.
However, in realms of consumption inequality and social status inequality, things were… complicated. Comparisons with current US are difficult but it is definitely not clear cut that Soviet Union was more equal.
Claims that there were no homeless people in Soviet Union are somewhat misleading. In communist Czechoslovakia, and I think Soviet Union was fairly similar, there were no visible homeless on the streets because anyone attempting to live in such a way would be promptly locked up by the authorities. Communist countries had large numbers of “antisocial” people in prisons and in psychiatric institutions without their consent. Also, lot of people lived in workers ubications or dormitories (I am not sure what is proper English translations) adjacent to some factory, without proper home. Those dormitories had rules regarding hours of visits, alcohol and so on.
Seems like kind of old news to me, and I am also inclined to fear that an article which cites Sen is mostly going to be read by people for whom this is also old news, rather than people who might need the help in seeing that issues are (as always) more nuanced than they had previously thought. And I also am inclined to think that it is more productive to debate the ground level issues that are in question than to fight over the word “freedom.” But perhaps on the latter point I am being tactically naive.
These positions are not nuanced at all, they actually strip out huge amounts of complicating factors so that they can focus on subsections of the population.
One very simple example: What is (are) the mechanism(s) that create the wealth that is to be redistributed to those with fewer options? It is a necessity for these theories to have a robust explanation for how economies grow and maintain stability, without that explanation none of the downstream logic holds. Even Marx knew this, hence his labor theory of value approach.
Obviously, for a short article some things are omitted for ease of exposition. You evidently disagree with some of the choices of which things (as no doubt would I had I bothered to read the article closely). But talking about one issue rather than others for a piece in such a format should never be interpreted as a claim that other issues don’t exist; it isn’t possible to fit Das Kapital into a short essay on a popular web site. Certainly if you read Sen, rather than this attempt to popularize a couple of thoughts from Sen, he is much more thorough.
Its a matter of primary vs secondary principles. The article is claiming that increasing economic opportunities = increasing freedom, and then just assumes that the broad structure is indifferent to their proposals. The author here doesn’t have to expound on that in every piece he writes, but costs have to be acknowledged somewhere for the piece to be taken seriously. Without that its not nuance, its cherry picked details to support one side, ie propoganda.
Lockean, and related, natural rights arguments have these things built in. I have a right to my body and my labor, but not your body and your labor while you have the same, any further exposition on the subject has that base where only two things need to exist for the discussion. In an economic rights argument, be it welfare, a living wage etc, requires that economic development of a certain level exists. Lockean rights can be used on a desert island with two stranded people, the arguments presented by this author cannot.
The shortness of the article is not an excuse for answering the basic question of “Who provides the options?”. That’s the wall separating traditional freedom from positive liberty.
The problem with positive liberty is that, once you actually push past the evasions and obfuscations and get the question answered, you find that positive liberty always seems to comes down to “Our liberty to club those people over the head if they don’t give us what we want.”
What about the “veil of ignorance” approach?
If you would know that in your next reincarnation, your chances to be a homeless guy are thousand times greater than your chances to be a billionaire, would you support a tax on billionaires to feed the homeless?
(I don’t think the homeless can realistically coordinate to club the billionaires over their heads.)
No, on the general grounds that taking from one to give to another is bad and has no limiting principle.
You can say that we should use a veil of ignorance approach to decide policy, but then admit that you prefer using a principle other than freedom to decide policy, rather than redefine freedom in such a way that this policy now counts as freedom.
The question of who’s behind the veil does not seem very tractable.
Viliam,
A true veil of ignorance should leave you with just as much chance of being reborn at any time in the future. Otherwise you’re incentivized to make policy which racks up debt or slows growth for the benefit of the present population and the detriment of the (much larger) future population.
@Viliam,
This questions seems to continue the problem discussed by others earlier in the thread, it ignores what changes the suggested solution (tax billionaires) does to the quantity of billionaires to tax as well as quantity of homeless over time.
So for example, if the tax on billionaires proposed means there are 20% additional homeless each year, increasing annually, because billionaires would otherwise invest the money taxed away into things which produce economic growth that would make being homeless less likely, than yeah, I’ll pick the society without the tax. (All numbers made up for sake of argument.)
Unless someone is going to work through not just the “seen” impacts, but also the “unseen” impacts of the proposed policy, their analysis isn’t that meaningful.
The question doesn’t ignore this problem, the (perhaps implied) answer that if you assumed a veil of ignorance, you would support a very high tax on billionaires, does. If we don’t ignore the problem, we can answer that we would support some tax, but not too high.
I don’t see much here that hasn’t been written at least as well elsewhere, it’s basically just a spin on positive vs. negative liberty. And while I don’t deny that many on the left see themselves as fighting for freedom via positive liberty, I think they’re objective wrong and are ignoring and downplaying the costs of the positive liberties they want to grant and the vast coercive apparatus that they invariably require. “Do this is or I won’t reward you” is a categorically different threat than “do this or I will punish you with violence.”
And why the hell to people keep quoting Sen, who is quite literally an apologist for Mao?
A little web searching gave me some clues, but insofar as what I found didn’t actually seem to justify this description, I’d appreciate some clarification as to what you mean, so I can tell whether I’ve missed something or whether this is just your usual biases at work.
He has made the claim that post independence india racked up more deaths than maoist china, comparing excess mortality rates from before 1947/49 to after. He ignores that china spend the few decades before 1949 in, you know, a massive civil war then getting invaded by the japanese and that the end of 3 decades of warfare might have some effect on mortality rates.
Where? I can’t see any examples from skimming that paper. It just seems to have true claims that India has had an overall higher infant mortality rate and lower life expectancy in the period 1950-1980.
@rlms
Are we reading the same paper? It’s comparing the overall mortality rates and deltas in LE, and talking about excess mortality continually. Among other quotes,
THis claim is made on the basis that china and india had similar LEs in 1947/49, ignoring that china had just exited one of the most brutal civil wars in history.
@cassander
The next sentence is
The excess is India relative to China, not each country compared to itself before/after 1949. I don’t see why the death rates before 1949 are relevant.
@rlms
The comparison is future years relative to 1949/47, not from before. I mistyped earlier.
He’s attributing the lower chinese death rate to things the chinese government did, not a natural reversion following the end of a devastating war. He also makes some rather incredible claims about the famine, noting that it “oddly” didn’t receive much official scrutiny before Mao’s death, describing it as a period of “economic and political chaos,” as if it was some 3rd party act of nature and not the result of deliberate collectivisation.
Yeah, that’s what I thought you were referring to. But anyone familiar with Sen would know that isn’t intended to be pro-Mao, but rather a confession of something embarasssing for Sen. One of his main theses is that democracy is the best way of ensuring that the needs of the people are met, and so on his theory it is not at all surprising that undemocratic China had a huge famine. On the other hand, it is extremely embarassing for his thesis that on some measures democratic India did even worse. But, being an honest scholar, he needs to confront the actual data as it is, not as he wishes it were.
I still don’t see in what sense the comparison is relative to 1949. Since the Chinese mortality rate continued to decrease significantly after 1950 (again, ignoring the famine) it can’t be the case that it simply reverted to a constant rate below India’s. Certainly it’s possible that “natural” reversion to a starting rate below India’s is relevant (it’s difficult to say without data for before the war) but equally it’s possible that the government deserves credit for that. It looks to me from the first graph in the paper that the rate of improvement China from 1955 to 1970 was higher than in India, and it seems unlikely that that’s natural reversion (maybe Chinese life expectancy was in the 60s before the war but that seems doubtful).
I think you’re being uncharitable regarding the claims about the famine. The paper has several pages blaming the Chinese government for the famine. Maybe there should be more, but I think Maoist apologism typically involves blaming the peasants for being lazy and counter-revolutionary and whataboutery involving Indian famines, rather than pointing out that the Chinese famine was 5-10 times worse than the worst Indian 20th century one and blaming it on a lack of opposition to the Chinese government.
@Protagoras
I have seen quotes of sen openly praising mao’s “achievements” in reducing deaths in china. Or, at least, I am pretty sure I have. I can’t find the quote I was looking for. Perhaps the I am confusing him with someone else or (more likely, given his name), what I saw was in error. Either way, I don’t like to call people outright apologists for something unless I have hard evidence of them apologizing for that thing, so I withdraw the accusation against sen for now, as much as I disagree with his methods and conclusions.
I dunno, dude’s take reminds me of the Cavaliers from Scott’s treatment of Albion’s Seed. Paraphrasing snidely… ~”In order for us to be free other people have to enable us, because how free can we really be if we have to work on our own behalf? That’s a constraint!”
Well, to be a bit more charitable, it really is true that in order to survive you typically must convince others to cooperate with you. So if those others put conditions on their cooperation with you, those conditions can understandably feel like restraints on your freedom. Thus the broad resonance of the claim that, for example, employers threatening to fire you if you don’t do what they want are dominating/tyrannizing/oppressing you by making that threat, even though “firing” is usually nothing but a peaceful withdrawal of cooperation.
On the other hand, being able to put conditions on when and how you will cooperate with others is also an important type of freedom. Almost everyone recognizes this freedom as important and requiring respect when it is exercised by people they like toward ends they like. In my view it is attempts to resolve this tension– between the desire to choose when and how you will cooperate with others and the fear of others making choices about when and how to cooperate with you that make your life harder– that drive a lot of the theorizing about “positive liberty.”
This seems to me to be a fairly standard argument I’ve heard. The part where is falls flat, to me, is that is is very short sighted and seems to ignore human nature. What increases choice today often severely reduces choices tomorrow. That is likely true for the welfare state, for both reasons.
My thoughts as a leftist: The Left should probably abandon trying to rescue the word “freedom”. It’s not a fight worth having, the libertarians have basically won this battle, and we have more unambiguous terminology we can use instead. It reminds me of those folks who chime in “well actually, ‘libertarian’ originally means a type of socialist…”. It just comes across and pedantic and dopey. “Freedom” now means unregulated property ownership. We lost, move on.
So just cut to the chase and talk about power: who gets it, and how its distributed. After all, “power” and “positive liberty” are practically synonyms. And if the libertarians insist on talking about negative liberty, we can just play the hits: by reminding everyone that all property is based on coercive violence, axiomatic “self-ownership” is an is/ought fallacy, ect.
Well actually, “libertarian” originally meant a believer in free will rather than determinism.
At least, that’s my understanding of the history of the term.
Given the descriptions here, the argument seems to run classically afoul of the utility monster problem. The poor are nearly always better off with the wealth of the rich than the rich are, so the rich should always give it away.
Disregarding practical concerns about incentives (which aren’t small), that seems obviously correct. The rich are broadly evil.
As someone who, in all likelihood, owns less wealth than you, I see no reason to disagree.
The rich are broadly evil because people are broadly evil. I don’t like to encourage evil to fight it out too much since there’s an awful lot of collateral damage. So let’s not have have too much money transferred from evil to evil. Then the new evil who gets enough money will have to engage in ritual purges of the old evil. Just transfer enough money to keep everyone watching TV or playing silly games instead of moving on to stabbing.
I see no evidence for and broadly reject that people, rich or not, are broadly evil. Evil people didn’t build the West, and that culture is the dominant one. That cuts against the thesis.
I think most people lean, if you’ll pardon the DnD expression, Lawful Good, at least to people around them. Western structures and Libertarian and Objectivist philosophies seek to create incentive structures that exploit that and cause benefits to expand more broadly.
@greenwoodjw
Yeah, I’d say NOPE!
From: THE MEANING OF LAW AND CHAOS IN DUNGEONS & DRAGONS AND THEIR RELATIONSHIPS TO GOOD AND EVIL
FEBRUARY 1976
"...."As a final note, most of humanity falls into the lawful category, and most of lawful humanity lies near the line between good and evil. With proper leadership the majority will be prone towards lawful/good. Few humans are chaotic, and very few are chaotic and evil"- E. Gary Gygax
Most people are “Lawful Good” when placed in high trust societies where they perceive the social order leaning enough towards fair play, but this can easily change:
".... In yet another experiment, this one designed to explore how AI might affect the “tragedy of the commons”—the notion that individuals’ self-centered actions may collectively damage their common interests—we gave several thousand subjects money to use over multiple rounds of an online game. In each round, subjects were told that they could either keep their money or donate some or all of it to their neighbors. If they made a donation, we would match it, doubling the money their neighbors received. Early in the game, two-thirds of players acted altruistically. After all, they realized that being generous to their neighbors in one round might prompt their neighbors to be generous to them in the next one, establishing a norm of reciprocity. From a selfish and short-term point of view, however, the best outcome would be to keep your own money and receive money from your neighbors. In this experiment, we found that by adding just a few bots (posing as human players) that behaved in a selfish, free-riding way, we could drive the group to behave similarly. Eventually, the human players ceased cooperating altogether. The bots thus converted a group of generous people into selfish jerks.Let’s pause to contemplate the implications of this finding. Cooperation is a key feature of our species, essential for social life. And trust and generosity are crucial in differentiating successful groups from unsuccessful ones. If everyone pitches in and sacrifices in order to help the group, everyone should benefit. When this behavior breaks down, however, the very notion of a public good disappears, and everyone suffers. The fact that AI might meaningfully reduce our ability to work together is extremely concerning..."
Perhaps Sir Terry Pratchett’s character Lord Vetinari said it best:
"They think they want good government and justice for all, Vimes, yet what is it they really crave, deep in their hearts? Only that things go on as normal and tomorrow is pretty much like today"The median Alignment is: Lawful Neutral
The people who built the West believed that people were broadly evil, and built accordingly.
@Plumber
My use of the word “lean” was intentional. It’s not an over-riding inclination, but most people will naturally trend in that direction without pressure the other way.
@Jask
That doesn’t fit with the development of history or the structures developed by the West, especially the US.
James Madison, Federalist 51
Catechism of the Catholic Church
John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion
@greenwoodjw
I’m guessing that rlms is arguing that in his/her view, it’s morally imperative to give your money to someone who has less than you until there is no one who has less money than you, and since the rich have obviously not done this, they are therefore “evil” under rlms’ framework.
If I’m right, then I’d object that qualifying this statement to “the rich” is somewhat misleading – under that standard, nearly everyone is broadly evil.
That’s actually the Objectivist view of Altruism, I didn’t think anyone actually believed it. Such a view is itself evil (since it promotes universal suffering). Without passing judgment on rlms, of course.
There are different degrees of moral imperative, and “evil” means failing to meet the more important ones. So I don’t think it’s fair to call people who don’t give their money to only slightly poorer people “evil”. I was also glibly ignoring the issue that we often don’t call people “evil” even if they do reprehensible things if they live in a culture where they are normalised for rhetorical effect. And certainly there are issues that limit how much redistribution is practically sensible (hence the first half of my comment being qualification about that). But those issues don’t come up when you consider e.g. someone with a six figure income not giving a few thousand dollars a year to people in extreme poverty, so I’m happy calling that act (and hence, glibly, those people) evil.
Doesn’t that argument equally apply to someone with an average, or even modestly below average, U.S. income who doesn’t give a substantial part of it to people in Africa or India who are much poorer than he is?
@DavidFriedman
Arguably yes (or to someone with a six figure income not giving a few tens of thousands). But the case is harder to make, because even if the average income person is spending money on things that are objectively luxuries on a global scale, psychologically they might not seem that way. It’s plausible that if every average income American donated a substantial amount to charity (either by collective individual choice or external mandate) that would change incentives and reduce US productivity enough to make the overall long term effect worse. But it’s a lot less plausible that the same thing would happen if every American with a six figure income decided to donate a few thousand dollars each year.
What’s preventing the same psychological thing from happening to rich people?
How many people making over six figures aren’t donating or tithing a few thousand each year on average though? Got any numbers?
rlms,
I guarantee that lot of people making six figures in expensive areas do not feel like they have much to spare.
Also, if a person making six figures who donates zero is evil, then they are still plenty evil if they donate a few thousand. That was the point of Nobody is Perfect, Everything is Commensurable
@quanta413
If someone earning six figures says they can’t spare a few thousand, it should be easy to come up with some luxuries that the average person would say they can do without. On the other hand, while someone with below average income could in theory switch to a rice and lentils diet and donate more, it seems less reasonable to ask them to do so. This is what I mean by psychological.
In terms of numbers, some random source from Google suggests 3-5% is common in the general population, which is higher than I’d have guessed (although you need to adjust down a bit to account for tax advantages). So maybe I need to adjust my terms a bit; that doesn’t alter the thrust of my argument.
@LesHapablap
They might feel like that, for the most part that’s because they’re decadent and should be eaten.
Well, maybe. That’s not in opposition to my point.
rlms,
It seems suspicious to me that you’re granting average-income Americans a pass on being evil for ‘psychological reasons.’ Psychological reasons are not good excuses for being evil. I guarantee average-income Americans have plenty of luxuries that your average-income Haitian could point out are decadent and frivolous, without going anywhere near ‘lentils and rice’ subsistence.
3-5% is the average percentage of income donated or something else? That’s slightly higher than I would expect. You adjust downward for tax benefits; you should also adjust upward for the share of taxes people pay that go towards benefits that are for the private good of those poorer than them. This will considerably increase the percentage.
I wouldn’t call what you have an argument. There isn’t any principle or reasoning you’ve provided. It’s just a vague feeling that some people are too rich, but definitely not most people in the U.S. (and to be clear a lot of Europe too) even though more than half could easily give up luxuries (give up T.V., don’t use a smartphone, get a cheaper car, eat out less, buy generic brands at the grocery store, and on and on and on) that many poorer people in the world can merely dream of. They’d still be materially incredibly well off. Just not quite as much so.
As far as I can tell what you think is acceptable or not just flows from acclimation to some standard you’re used to. There’s no principled method of setting the cutoff.
If people donated a significant amount to charity as a result of individual altruism, that wouldn’t really change incentives for the worse. I guess if you want to argue that there is a moral obligation to donate a significant amount (not that I agree with it), it makes sense to phrase it as a significant fraction of what you are capable of making, rather than what you are actually making. Then, as your own sense of moral obligation doesn’t decrease if you make less money out of choice, then your incentive to work hard doesn’t diminish. It would also make sense to tax a given percentage of what you are capable of making, rather than what you actually make, as it would eliminate the deadweight loss caused by income taxes; we just resort to taxing actual income because government can’t determine how much you are capable of making. However, you, personally, know that.
If donating was a legal mandate, or enforced by social pressure, that would have entirely different effects, and all the incentive problems caused by high tax rates would come with it.
If you evaluate what the high income person can do without by the standards of the “average person,” i.e. someone substantially lower income than he is, shouldn’t you similarly evaluate what the below average U.S. person can do without by the standards of someone with a substantially lower income than his as well—maybe someone with the median world income?
As it is, all you seem to be observing is that most people regard much of the consumption of those considerably richer than themselves as superfluous luxury.
@quanta413
Yes. I don’t think it’s reasonable to adjust for taxes, which are a payment to avoid jail.
I’m not saying that (in developed countries) some people are too rich and therefore evil, but a lot of people aren’t either. My claim is that there are some people who are unarguably too rich. Maybe you think some of the people with an arguable status are also too rich; that’s fine, I probably agree to a large extent, but that’s not relevant to the central claim. The point of using “rich” as a qualifier is to simply defend against people saying “I’m a non-rich American and I spend all my money on housing, food, transport to work and healthcare. I can’t spare any money to charity!”. I could instead argue against that on a concrete level, but there’s no need since it’s not related to the central point (and besides it would be correct for some definitions of non-rich).
In other words, my claim is “you can’t deny that a rich (by American standards) person has a moral obligation to give away significantly more money than they on average do”. There are stronger related claims like “a rich (by global standards) person also has this obligation” and “a rich (by American standards) has a moral obligation to give away almost all their money”. I’m saying the first claim is true, but I’m not taking a position on the stronger ones either way since that would require discussing practical matters about living standards, incentives and politics, whereas I’m trying to make a more abstract point.
If you’re giving away more than a quarter of your income to a federal government that largely uses said money to fund world peace and income transfer programs, I don’t see how you can be evil. That is massively watering down the term
@A Definite Beta Guy
It’s glib for rhetorical purposes, but not for that reason (rather because it’s a bit weird to call people evil for doing things that are normalised in their culture). Even granting that as a fair description of what tax money is used for, fulfilling one moral obligation doesn’t discharge you from others. If you save one conveniently-easy-to-rescue drowning child, that doesn’t mean you can ignore the next one you encounter.
I don’t think it does require that discussion.
Simple but relevant factoid. The average real income in the developed world at present is twenty to thirty times higher than the global average was through most of history.
My point was that the abstract point you are arguing for has logical implications. If you don’t like them, you shouldn’t be making the argument. If you do, you should be willing to defend them.
One of the implications might be that you yourself are, by your own standards, evil.
@DavidFriedman
It definitely does; you engage in that discussion in your next paragraph!
Let (1) be the statement that the developed world rich are (mostly) evil, and
(2) be the same statement as applied to the developed world in general (or a similar stronger claim)
My argument is that there are two plausible positions one can take: either (1) but not (2), or both (1) and (2). Both of them contain the uncomfortable statement about the rich, which is the point I want to get across. If you’re genuinely taking the second position, then great. I’m perfectly happy to bite the bullet that it’s the global rich who are evil, not just the local. But you and other people in this conversation don’t strike me as raging leftists, so that seems unlikely.
My reading is that instead you are arguing that someone who accepts (1) should take the second position, with the implied followup that believing (2) is hypocritical/absurd and therefore the original statement is wrong. But that’s not a valid thing to do. The abstract moral argument (0) that could imply both is “people who have major moral obligations that they could easily fulfil but don’t are evil”. If you’re saying (2) is absurd (but (1) isn’t, otherwise you could just make that argument) then that’s because it doesn’t meet the “easily” part of (0). Regardless of whether it does or doesn’t meet it, (1) isn’t affected and definitely fulfils the “easily” part because I get to define “rich” to make it so.
There are definitely arguments you can make against this claim. I think the most common one is denying that the “major moral obligations” part of (0) applies. But you can’t do so by claiming that both (1) and (2) is the only plausible position and simultaneously that (2) is absurd, since there’s no implication between them (only from another premise to both of them).
Six figures is not the point at which anyone can easily give money away to charity. If you’re making $100,000 in the bay area for example, giving money away means you are going without something.
Seven figures, yes probably, but then it also depends what the person would do with it aside from give it to charity. Would the person otherwise be investing that money in something that improves the world? If so, then why should he or she be condemned as evil for not giving it to charity?
I think the language here that you are using is the problem: ‘evil’ ‘decadent’ ‘deserve to be eaten.’ The implication is that you’d eat the rich if given the opportunity, with ‘the rich’ automatically defined as six-figure income. Logically, and historically, if the time came where the rich get eaten, six-figures will not be the cut-off.
I don’t think just bullets (1) and (2) are true. Allow me to quote myself upthread.
And Jaskologist
Unlike you, I don’t think this should lead to “eat the decadent rich”.
If I was Christian I’d probably put it more nicely than “people are broadly evil”. Something like “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God”.
Morally should people give more to certain charities? Yes. Does that mean I think whatever “solution” you may propose (if you get to one) is better than the status quo? No, probably not, but you could surprise me.
I am not saying that believing (2) is hypocritical or wrong. I’m saying that believing (1) and not (2) is inconsistent, or at least evidence of a very superficial examination of the question biased by your particular circumstances.
I believe neither (1) nor (2), as you suspect. But my complaint is that, in order to support (1) without having to support (2) you have to believe that people with an income of sixty times the average global income of the world through most of history can easily give up a few percent of it, but people with an income of only twenty times cannot.
And I suspect the only reason you believe that is that you and those you know have incomes of about twenty to forty times and you, like most people, take your circumstances as defining the normal–including your level of consumption. “Living like this is what ordinary people do, the proper standard of what one needs for a reasonable life is that of ordinary people, and ordinary people are defined as people like me.”
That’s how I interpreted your comments, perhaps incorrectly—obviously I don’t know you.
@quanta413
That’s one way to deal with it. I disagree though, in that I think it’s interesting and useful to consider this example of evil in particular.
@DavidFriedman
I’m happy to accept (2). Although there are important practical differences between (1) and (2) if you’re considering e.g. designing a social movement. I don’t think I’m evil by this standard (as a student my income is irregular, but when it is present I donate a reasonable chunk of it and I think lack of higher spending is approximately justifiable as maximising future donations) but certainly most people I know are!
Sure. We may even agree in other ways. For example, I think the level of obligation scales with power or success (which income is part of) in a progressive sense. So while everyone fails, they probably don’t fail to the same extent.
On the other hand, even if rich people fail more on average there are fewer of them. There is more benefit to others per rich person convinced to do more for others, but you may do more good overall by convincing more less rich people. And there are forms of power people have besides wealth which I think are often more relevant.
Yep, that’s definitely all true. Hooray for agreement!
There would be less hunger in the world if more Marxist intellectuals were fed to starving children.
Ventrue is banned for one week
Not quite seeing your point. It is simply a fact that, in general, inequality produces a reduction in utility due to the poor having more need for the resources than the rich. This means that it is always beneficial to reduce inequality, unless doing so would be too costly in other ways. And, of course, any effort to reduce inequality is costly in a variety of ways, and in many cases it is in fact too costly and so a considerable amount of inequality must be tolerated. But that’s all just obviously true; I’m not seeing how there is any problem here, much less any analog of the utility monster thought experiment.
Because you’re not counting the societal or wide-ranging benefits that were created by the rich person for the compensation of them (and/or their children) being rich, which would be eliminated going forward.
You’re also not counting the benefits of rich people will to spend large amounts of money on luxuries, incentivizing other people to develop them and make the luxury affordable to more people.
You’re also not considering that anyone with more money than someone else is rich to that second person. The mansion owner is eaten by the homeowner is eaten by the renter is eaten by the homeless.
You’re also not realizing that some people are happy at the bottom, or at least less miserable there then they are higher up. Trying to raise them up is chasing a chimera.
Finally, you don’t seem to understand that some people are just malicious. They just want to hurt people and will happily feign starvation to compel everyone else to suffer.
You miss so much in your utility calculus, but that’s not uncommon. It’s one of the reasons this kind of thinking simply doesn’t work.
Wouldn’t those considerations be covered under “any effort to reduce inequality is costly in a variety of ways, and in many cases it is in fact too costly and so a considerable amount of inequality must be tolerated”?
Technically. But those are pretty much just weasel words. “I’m right unless I’m not in unspecified ways I won’t give examples of much less enumerate”.
There’s nothing solid enough to hang much on either way. I don’t think the counterfactual of money being here or there is even sensibly framed enough to allow any meaningful conclusion to be drawn.
I was writing a comment, not a book. When I referred to the considerable costs of reducing inequality, I was referring to the considerable costs of reducing inequality, and so it is a little irritating to have you say I was not counting the costs of reducing inequality when it was right there in my comment; I do not know why you think it needed to be broken down into subcategories. It’s not as if any specific policy were being discussed (or as if your own breakdown of some of the costs was actually detailed enough that it would have been of any use if we were actually evaluating a policy, for that matter).
That’s the conventional view, but it’s a little too strong. The implicit assumption is that everyone has the same utility function, and people differ in income due to differing opportunities to convert leisure into money (or other external differences, such as inheritance).
Suppose you reverse the assumption. Everyone has the same opportunities to convert leisure into income and the same taste for leisure. Incomes differ because of differing utility functions for income.
The conclusion then also reverses. High income people are those who very much like what money buys. Since they are optimizing between leisure and money and end up with less leisure, their marginal utility of income must be higher, not lower, than that of those with lower incomes.
In the real world, people differ in both utility function and ability to earn, as well as other things that affect wealth. It may be true in practice that the first set of assumptions is close enough to correct so that, on average, marginal utility of income is lower for those with more income, but “it is simply a fact” overstates the claim.
But the reversed assumption is absurd; if income were determined by taste for leisure, there would be a much clearer correlation between high taste for leisure and low income than we actually observe. The scale of inequality also undermines the plausibility of the reverse assumption, insofar as in order for that to be the case, billionaires would have to derive many orders of magnitude more utility from their money than ordinary people. So while I grant that the utility function is of course complicated, so that there will not be a straightforward function from income to utility of money without any other factors, I don’t see any need to reduce my confidence in what you so helpfully summarize as the claim I need, that “on average, marginal utility of income is lower for those with more income.”
@Ketil,
I read the essay and the Reagan quote and the stuff about Marx was kind of interesting (though not that suprising),but most of the essay seems old hat and obvious, and I’m not sure who’s it for, maybe a teenager who’s new to these ideas?
I’m pretty sure libertarians and socialists already know that they have different desires and fears (though there was the surprising Libertarian Mugged by Reality to match “A liberal mugged by reality“ which suprised me as I think of values being set earlier, and I’m unaware of evidence in the last 25 years [half my life] that will make anyone change there minds about such things, especially if you read history).
Ok, I give up. Can anybody give me a hint for Metamechanical’s puzzle game? (By the way, if you haven’t given it a go yet, you should!)
I’ve got to the last level and I just can’t figure it out. I’ll describe my thoughts so far in rot13 below. Please rot13 your hints to avoid giving others spoilers. If you’re able to give a small hint that points me in the right direction without completely giving it away that’s great, but if that’s impossible I’d be happy just to be told the answer at this point. I’ve wasted too many hours staring at it! 😛
Vg frrzf gb zr gung ng gur fgneg lbh unir gjb bcgvbaf: lbh pna rvgure serr gur “sevraq” naq trg gur xrl be lbh pna tb ivn gur obggbz genpx naq qb fbzr cerc orsberunaq. Vs lbh serr gur sevraq svefg naq gura gnxr gur zbfg qverpg ebhgr gb gur raq (guebhtu gur zvqqyr gura qbja guebhtu gur iregvpny fyvqref gura evtug gura hc gura evtug) gura lbh jvyy nyjnlf or ‘orngra’ gb gur iregvpny fyvqref ng gur raq naq gur sevraq jvyy chfu gurz hc naq oybpx lbhe cngu.
Vs, ubjrire, lbh qb nal cerc (sbe rknzcyr chggvat gur ubevmbagny fyvqre ba gbc bs gur svany iregvpny fyvqref fb gurl pna’g oybpx lbhe cngu, be zbivat fbzr bs gur inevbhf bgure iregvpny fyvqref gb oybpx gur sevraq’f cngu) gura lbh zhfg zbir gur bofgnpyr ng gur obggbz bs gur ovt punva gung pbafgenvaf gur sevraq, naq nf sne nf V pna gryy vg’f vzcbffvoyr gb chg vg onpx, be gb chg nalguvat ryfr va n fvzvyne cynpr. Guvf zrnaf gung jura lbh serr gur sevraq vg pna rfpncr ivn gur obggbz bs vgf pntr naq urnq lbh bss, genccvat lbh va gur gbc-yrsg.
Naq vg’f qbvat zl urnq va, orpnhfr nyy gur bgure uneq yriryf unq ybgf bs bcgvbaf fb V gubhtug “jryy pyrneyl V whfg arrq gb jbex bhg gur evtug frdhrapr naq riraghnyyl V’yy svther vg bhg” ohg guvf bar bayl ernyyl frrzf gb unir gjb bcgvbaf naq arvgure bar jbexf! Boivbhfyl V’z zvffvat fbzrguvat, ohg jung???
If you do anything other than get the key right away, the level becomes unwinnable. Don’t touch the two blocks at the top left of the friend room.
Try the path at the very bottom. You will have to think creatively to find the solution.
You might have wanted to spoiler that.
Yeah, if you looked at my comment spoilers the last time it was mentioned, that’s pretty close to what I figured after a “Duh” moment.
Still took a bit after that to work out how to do it, but the hard part of figuring out which “options” are actually traps was already done.
Ah, got it now! Thanks. 🙂
If you could add one amendment to the US Constitution, what would it be?
Rules:
1. It can only do one thing; you can’t add your whole party platform as an amendment.
2. It can’t be longer than existing amendments.
3. Congress and the states can amend the Constitution back if they don’t like it, but they would need the usual supermajority and it would be pretty hard. Still, if you propose something totally offensive to the vast majority of the American people, they’ll make it happen.
4. You can’t declare yourself dictator or otherwise wish for more wishes. You can’t ban Congress and the states from unamending your amendment.
5. The Supreme Court gets to interpret your amendment as per the usual process. The real, actually existing Supreme Court, with John Roberts and Neil Gorsuch and all those people. You can try explaining to them what you meant, but they won’t care unless they’re already originalists.
Repeal the following amendments:
17th
23rd
26th
Why?
17th – popular election of senators
23rd – DC gets Electoral College votes
26th – voting age is 18
I don’t see why these are bad
For the 26th one could argue that an 18 year old today is equivalent to a 15-16 year old 2 generations back, and possibly younger going back even farther. We’re generally talking about someone who generally has zero job experience, no practical life experience outside of a controlled classroom environment, no income, no equity, no children to take care of, etc. etc.
There are certain implicit assumptions to opposing 26th on these grounds, namely that voting requires or ought to require the voter to have a certain amount of ‘adulting’ experience under their belt and also preferably have a stake in the future.
I’m personally ambivalent about it, but someone who cares more about states rights would likely want more federal offices appointed by state legislatures.
17th – substantially destroyed State power as a check on Federal power.
23rd – DC was never supposed to matter. It isn’t a State and thus shouldn’t get a vote, much like Puerto Rico. If they want to vote for President, residents can move the roughly 4 miles they need to in order to be in a State. Or the other States can take back the parts of DC not needed by the Feds.
26th – we keep adding more and more things that you have to be 21 to do. Among others, drinking, buying handguns, driving commercially across state lines or hauling hazardous materials, gambling in some states, and recently smoking tobacco in some states. If we aren’t going to claim that someone is responsible enough, they aren’t adults.
Edited to add: also to be a “commercial aircraft co-pilot”.
Garrett, do you think Selective Service registration should be mandatory at age 18 while voting age is 21?
I think Selective Service registration should go away completely.
@Andrew Cady
Would you also not have to pay taxes until you are 21?
Garrett: Do you support a straight repeal of #26 or only a version that also abolishes Selective Service registration?
meh: I don’t understand the question. What scenario are you asking about? I’m not aware of any taxes at all that are age-dependent.
There are suggestions over here of dropping the voting age to 16 which makes me roll my eyes; the voting age used to be 21, then it was reduced to 18 partly on the same grounds – this will mean more young people vote!
Turns out 18 year olds aren’t particularly interested in voting, not as much as Old People (like me who were raised to consider it Your Civic Duty and Being A Good Citizen) so now they want to drop it down to 16 to solve the problem of Why Don’t Young People Turn Out Like Old People Do?
Why on earth they think 16 year olds are simply panting to go to the polling booths I have no idea, and I certainly don’t expect a rush of Transition Year students going out to do their bit if ever this happens. When the age drop fails to get more young people out to vote, what next? Drop it down to 14 with the lure of – what do they lure kids with nowadays? Free phone if you vote for the first time?
As an old person, I am also grimly amused by the “people over a certain age should lose the vote because they don’t have a stake in society any longer and they only vote in their own interests”. Oh yes, and you think a bunch of 16 year olds wouldn’t be enticed to vote for the candidate that will promise to legalise all drugs, do away with homework, and pass a law guaranteeing your parents are not the boss of you since you’re an adult now so they can’t force you to come home before twelve o’clock at night on the weekend?
Everyone votes for their interests. A bunch of idealistic kids will vote for what they think are their interests (as sold to them by activists and slick young politicians) and that will be as injurious for the nation as a whole as a bunch of seventy year olds voting for their interests.
When I was a high school student being corralled into anti-smoking rallies at the state capitol, it was partly free swag — T-shirts and hats and such — but mostly the feeling that you were A Good Person who was Making A Difference. Even, oddly, if you didn’t really care much about the cause. Embarrassing in retrospect, but it’s not even in the top ten most embarrassing things I did in high school, so whatever.
Of course, a rally is a lot more… people-oriented than just showing up to vote, if that makes sense. The folks throwing one have an incentive to play to their constituents’ egos. Plus, it’s unusual and vaguely rebellious. All of that means I’d expect it to appeal a lot more to your average 16-year-old than just showing up to vote.
@Deiseach
The young people who vote are extremely disproportionately the well-educated (and thus elite) and tend to have certain political beliefs.
My strong impression is that those who desire a lower voting age intuitively recognize that this will result in more voters that support their politics.
@Aapje
Even if I turn on my maximum cynicism, I don’t think that’s it because that wouldn’t last, and I think politicians are smart and/or experienced enough to realize it.
Policy would probably be a little different if young people voted more though (including the people who already can legally vote).
@quanta41
To the extent that the same people who want to lower the voting age to 16 also want to increase the age where a person is considered an adult in the criminal justice system to 23 or 25 I am quite cynical.
OK, so several people have explained the basic ideas. While I think there are some other good and/or interesting ideas lower down in the thread, my idea was to stay short, plus simple, plus on one basic theme.
All of the repeals I suggested are related to how voting is conducted. My expectation is that senators being in charge of state legislators (or Governors, as suggested in a separate comment), would result in the Senate being more representative of State interests. This would shift some power (not rights) to states vs. the national government.
For DC, I agree with the other comments: mostly residential sections should be part of the nearest state. DC should only be the seat of government. I would hope this results in better governance for current DC citizens and one less distraction for congress.
For the 26th: I would like to have one full adult age. If people are comfortable letting 18 year olds buy beer and handguns, then let them vote as well. But if not, then let voting start at the same time. As far as the selective service is concerned, I think everyone (male, female, other) should have to register. However, the draft should only be used in times of actual crisis. If the question of: “do the 18 years we are drafting have the theoretical ability to vote in the next election” will change your answer regarding “does this require a draft”, then the conclusion is: “No, we don’t need a draft yet.
Change Article V, the amending formula.
The Congress, whenever
two thirdssimple majorities of both houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose amendments to this Constitution, or, on the application of the legislatures oftwo thirdsa majority of the several states, shall call a convention for proposing amendments, which, in either case, shall be valid to all intents and purposes, as part of this Constitution, when ratified by the legislatures ofthree fourthsthree fifths of the several states, or by conventions inthree fourthsthree fifths thereof, as the one or the other mode of ratification may be proposed by the Congress; provided that no amendment which may be made prior to the year one thousand eight hundred and eight shall in any manner affect the first and fourth clauses in the ninth section of the first article; and that no state, without its consent, shall be deprived of its equal suffrage in the Senate.If I could add a second change, I’d make it possible for congress to strike down Supreme Court judgements outright. Checks and balances are a good thing, and right now the Supreme Court isn’t subject to enough of them. It should be hard, but it shouldn’t require changing the constitution.
Perhaps something like Canada’s notwithstanding clause?
On a federal level, I have to imagine that the two-party system in the US would cause the notwithstanding clause-equivalent to become a commonly used weapon. Our three-party system is more like a Mexican standoff than the US two-party quickdraw duel – the Conservatives are limited in how right they can go, the NDP in how left they can go, the Liberals in how far they can go in either direction, by the threat of another party peeling off votes, far more than either party in the US is limited. This extends to the notwithstanding clause, where it’s sort of agreed that it won’t be used a lot. I think in the US that wouldn’t stand up to polarization.
Additionally, we don’t have the same executive/legislative/judicial split as the US.
This is the most reasonable change to the US constitution. The USA theoretically know what they should change in their system, the only problem is there is no political feasible way to implement that.
Maybe the amending formula should be changed a little bit more radically. The senate already represents the states as single entities, the only reason the state legislatives get a say in the amendment process is because the USA historically is a state union like the EU. If you pull the state legislatives into the procedure, any amendment has to be debated and ratified in 30 state parliaments, which have no incentive to care about federal politics.
Instead, I suggest that the house (the fast moving chamber) should be able to propose one constitutional amendment each year with a simple majority (50%), which forces the senate to debate it, and if they ratify it with 60% of the votes, it’s through. Getting 60% of the senate vote will still be hard enough, but senators have at least some reason to care more about the long term perspective, so they should have to make the decision that a proposed amendment is good.
Congress being able to override the Supreme court I think would make the US law system even weirder. Right now rulings are based on precedent and some documents like the constitution, what happens when congress votes down a Supreme Court judgement that is based on the constitution? Then the US law system becomes even more illogical. It would be better to move the law system away from precedents and more towards codified law, which conveniently would give the legislative more Checks and balances against the justice system.
For example, we have in this very thread both proposals to massively expand the power of States and ones to massively reduce it
That’s too easy. You need 60% to get anything controversial done in the Senate anyway, so what you’re effectively doing is making one law a year impossible to repeal — and unlike this thread there is no requirement that an amendment do just one thing. That gives whoever holds 51% of the House and 60% of the Senate a huge amount of totally unaccountable power. If the amendment process stands, then the other guys can just revoke it whenever they get the votes, but there’s nothing preventing you from corrupting it.
That sounds dangerous. I’d be ok with the 3/4 -> 3/5 parts, but the simple majority in congress sounds like inviting a never ending stream of amendments whenever one of the parties got lucky at the vote that year.
It’s a simple majority in both houses of congress to propose amendments. They still need to be ratified by the states. Presumably congress won’t formally pass amendments that have no chance of being accepted by the states.
Have we learned nothing from Brexit?
Empirically? It sure doesn’t look like it.
I was going to suggest the second one, but I would make it two thirds of both houses so it is like a Veto.
Since you already took mine, I would add 18year staggered term limits to all Supreme Court Justices. We should have to consult actuaries when we nominate SC justices.
Expand the explicit rights of non-citizens, both in the US and abroad. I don’t exactly what you’d have to write to make this work, but the goal would be to, eg, guarantee enemy combatants right to a lawyer and fair trial if being held. And get rid of the surveillance loophole where the US can spy on British citizens and Britain can spy on US citizens and then share their info. (I’m sure this wouldn’t change that in practice, they’d justify surveillance by another means.) Mostly this amendment would be enshrine the idea that it’s not okay to do to non-citizens what you wouldn’t to citizens. I think this protects both citizens and non-citizens and is morally important for us to make this an American ideal, one which will hopefully seep into the public subconscious.
“guarantee enemy combatants right to a lawyer and fair trial if being held”
So now every infantry squad needs a forensic scientist to dust for fingerprints immediately after a firefight?
Prisoners of War are different from Enemy Combatants. Part of what people objected to about the Bush doctrine of dealing with terrorists was exactly that the terror suspects weren’t afforded either the protections of Prisoners of War or the protections of ordinary criminals.
If we were treating them as “Prisoners of War” we’d traditionally be within our rights to execute them as spies, given their lack of uniforms and deliberate attempts to hide among civilians.
It’s a legitimately hard problem and “give them a trial with the same rights they’d have as US citizens” is so impractical a suggestion as to indicate that a proponent of such hasn’t thought very deeply about the details of problem.
EDIT: that’s too harsh on my part. But still, I think the suggestion would lead to effectively releasing a whole bunch of people we are pretty sure are terrorists because the exigencies of international war prevent the same level of legal investigation and protection we have for domestic crimes.
As I said, hard problem.
I agree that it’s a legitimately hard problem.
I was interpreting you — perhaps incorrectly, I now think — as saying that requiring that we treat enemy combatants as having rights would mean that in a conventional, uniformed war, our infantry squads would have to keep lawyers with them. I was saying that they wouldn’t, because in a traditional war, they wouldn’t be capturing enemy combatants, they’d be capturing prisoners of war.
But perhaps you were saying that peacekeeping infantry squads in Afghanistan — facing non-uniformed guerrilla opposition — would have to keep lawyers with them.
I agree that it’s a hard problem, I am radically unconvinced that the answer to dealing with this hard problem is to have a standard of prisoner in which no rules apply other than what the current President decides.
@sandoratthezoo
The army that has to fight with the permission of lawyers will lose to the army that doesn’t every time.
Frankly, we would be better off from a human rights perspective keeping to the traditional rules and hanging un-uniformed combatants and those hiding among civilians on sight. They’d learn the dangers of doing so quickly, and stop doing it. It’s precisely the attempt to give them more due process that has created such a tricky problem.
Cassander is right. The reason spies and saboteurs were executed immediately was because of the danger they represented. Not just to the army they were attacking, but the civilians they were cowering behind as well – an army that loses discipline as a result of repeated “civilian” attacks results in massacre.
The “problem” with terrorists is that they decided to make an entire army of spies and saboteurs.
Do we get to tax non-citizens abroad now?
The justification for taxing citizens abroad I’ve heard of is that, even when you live abroad, if you get in trouble and end up in a war zone, kidnapped by pirates, terrorists or whatever, the US Marines will go rescue you, so you should still pay for the army, and the embassies, which give you some benefits even when you are abroad.
And they do really do that. I personally know an American-Lebanese girl who was rescued during armed conflict in Lebanon.
Will the US Navy start sending Marines for kidnapped non-citizens now?
It’s an inversion but seems within the spirit of
Is your focus specifically on the surveillance and due process, or do you think non-citizens should have full access to most entitlements (which permanent residents mostly do)? What would be a privilege citizens got that non-citizens didn’t, other than voting?
Federal income taxes, inclusive of payroll taxes, cannot exceed 25% of individual AGI, except when Congress has explicitly declared a state of war.
User fees, sales tax, imports, etc exempt.
What’s to stop them just slapping a VAT that keeps revenue even or growing?
Nothing. If you convince a majority of Congress to implement and raise a VAT, go for it.
You’d have to revoke the apportionment clause to get a federal VAT.
We’ve always been at war with Oceania.
Total or top marginal rate?
1) All Bills shall originate in the House of Representatives. The House of Representatives may present a bill to the President for his approval notwithstanding the lack of agreement from the Senate.
2) The President shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the House of Representatives to make Treaties; and he shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the House of Representatives, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States, whose Appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by Law: but the Congress may by Law vest the Appointment of such inferior Officers, as they think proper, in the President alone, in the Courts of Law, or in the Heads of Departments.
3) The House of Representatives shall have the sole Power to try all Impeachments. When sitting for that Purpose, they shall be on Oath or Affirmation. When the President of the United States is tried, the Chief Justice shall preside: And no Person shall be convicted without the Concurrence of two thirds of the Members present.
How is this not just an elimination of the Senate? And if that is the intent, why not just disband it?
The constitution arguably forbids an amendment abolishing the Senate. I’m confident the above amendment complies with the requirements of Article V.
How about giving every state two bonus Reps and increasing House terms to 4 years. I could live with that compromise.
If that’s what it takes, sure. The four year part is probably a good idea regardless.
I think I see where you’re going with this, but I have a question about a possible comprise: Would you be willing to give the senate the ability to override a veto with 60% of their votes in exchange for the other shift of powers to the house? (Or other > 50% number to be proposed).
I’d want at least 75%. That’d still be politicians representing as little as 38% of the people. Also, I don’t love the idea of a political body that can only block, I think it kind of screws with their incentives. What do you think about gbdub’s compromise instead?
Perhaps an amendment to make voting compulsory (possibly including related clauses to make that change workable)? I won’t bother trying to provide what the exact wording would be; it seems clear that an amendment to do that could be short enough to satisfy the conditions.
If voting is compulsory, then there should be an option “none of the above”. Even if choosing that option would be equivalent to not voting today. To make a difference between people who don’t vote because they are too lazy, and people who don’t vote because all options seem too bad to them.
Why is compulsory voting desirable?
Because politicians have no incentive to care about the interests of people who don’t vote, and I’m not inclined to hang those people out to dry just because of their own cluelessness. Less importantly but still significantly, I am somewhat concerned about shenanigans that influence voter turnout, and so I would rather see everyone vote than have our voluntary sytem vulnerable to various corrupt methods of encouraging some groups and discouraging others.
This statement seems incorrect to me in a couple of ways.
First, let assume politicians have some meaningful incentive to care about the interests of the electorate, at least sometimes (prior to considering the of current voter status of the members of the electorate).
If that is so, then a politician should still care about the interests of non-voters, because his or her actions could convert a non-voter to a voter. It’s not dissimilar to the idea of a business trying to attract a new customer.
Second, why should we make the initial assumption (that a politician cares about the interest of voters)? We might assume it by proxy, in the sense that a politician cares about being elected, and that acting in voters’ interest might be tied to popularity and to being elected, but they are not the same thing. How large is the gap between the voter vs. non-voter interest? How much does interest, correctly assessed, tie in to the choice of the “voter”? How well is self-interest calculated?
It seems to me you are making a very strong claim, and also that those questions are relevant and not trivial to answer.
It also occurs to me that places with a history of compulsory voting have not typically been wonderful places to live.
Correlation doesn’t imply causation. Australia currently has compulsory voting btw, among a few other democratic countries.
I don’t see what Australia’s murderfauna has to do with compulsory voting
and I’m not inclined to hang those people out to dry just because of their own cluelessness
You assume that saying “voting is compulsory” will get those people to vote. What is more likely to happen is that you are going to start prosecuting and fining people who already are living on a perpetual brink of collapse.
This pattern matches a lot with “let’s drug-test everyone on welfare.” Yeah, you say it’s for their own good, and in this case I honestly believe your motive, but it just ends up punitive.
I had a larger comment but upon reflection it’s too annoyed and I don’t feel like spending the time to rewrite the whole thing with a better tone.
The one nugget I think worth posting: How about an inverse Voter Registration system? If you register as non-voting at least X months before the election, you don’t get fined for not showing up. But you also don’t get to change your mind and go in anyway.
Registration would last indefinitely until rescinded. Practically speaking there’d need to be a deadline to rescind by in order to vote in the next election.
No one’s going to bother actively prosecuting these people. What’s actually going to happen is, first, nothing, and then three years later they get pulled over in a traffic stop and discover that they’re on the hook for the speeding ticket plus $X in fines for not voting three years ago. A lot like how skipping out on jury duty works.
Whether this is better or worse depends on your perspective. Less active persecution, but also less accountability and transparency on the system’s part.
Two obvious objections:
(1) Somebody who won’t vote unless you force them to is unlikely to be very well-informed, and making the electorate worse-informed overall is unlikely to be good for the quality of candidates elected.
(2) If somebody can’t be bothered to vote, why do they deserve to have their interests taken into account in the first place?
Someone who doesn’t vote is basically giving a vote of minimal confidence to the status quo, or possibly a vote of no confidence whatsoever in the system. Either way, there’s nothing saying the a politician couldn’t lose or gain these votes, respectively, by some subsequent screw up, so they are do need to consider these people at some level, even beyond how screwing them over could impact the votes of their peers who already are voting.
Yeah, I realized I ended up making the same point as sentientbeings did previously. Take that as a +1.
I’d go further than sentientbeings on
“If that is so, then a politician should still care about the interests of non-voters, because his or her actions could convert a non-voter to a voter”
I tend to think mandatory voting would make politicians less responsive (at least in FPTP, more or less 2 party type systems like US/UK) because it means you don’t have to worry about failing to meet the concerns of your base as long they hate the other guys more. Obviously you can technically abstain (or vote 3rd party) in these circumstances, but as it stands, people have to actually give people reasons to bother to vote for them, not just make themselves marginally less despised. And I think that this probably boosts responsiveness to groups that otherwise would be almost entirely ignored (voters who are taken for granted for your side).
In terms of overall impact I imagine this tends to push against the tendency that otherwise in a 2-party system logically everyone is trying to hug the middle ground and pitch themselves as just left/right of wherever the other guys are to hoover up maximum votes.
@The original Mr. X : One issue is that if people in similar circumstances or with similar preferences to you are less likely to vote than others, then your interests get little weight, even if you personally vote.
Alternate proposal:
– Voters pay income tax at standard rate.
– Nonvoters pay income tax at standard rate plus minor increase. (enough an individual voter would notice, not enough the government would be trying to prevent voting)
The probability that your vote decides the outcome is so small that it’s typically not in your interest to take the effort to go to the polling station. Of course the majority of people are irrational and/or altruistic enough that they vote, but since the willingness to vote in spite of the above may be correlated with demographic or personal attributes, and thus with voting preference, this may affect the outcome, which may be seen as undesirable by democrats. Compulsory voting eliminates this.
I really would like to pin down the fallacy name for the persistent notion that voting only matters if your vote decides the outcome…
@Gobbobobble If you can’t name it, please explain why you think it’s a fallacy.
Two conceptual issues I think of:
1. It’s a non-universalizable belief. That is, if everyone believed it to be true, then it would cease to be true.
It’s like saying “traffic is so bad, its faster to walk than to drive”. This only holds true so long as not too many people believe it to be so, otherwise it flips. Its the same with statements regarding the irrelevance of the individual vote. Which prevents the statement from being any sort of actionable advice you could build a system around.
2. It views the most important vote as the 50%+1 vote, when actually the 50%+1 vote relies equally on the 50% of votes that came before to have importance. Which is to say, no ones vote is the “deciding factor”, everyone’s vote is, among those who voted for the winner.
Imagine a basketball game. It’s like saying “meh, the chances that you will be the guy who shoots the three pointer that overtakes the other team is so low, why even bother to make shots at all?” But surely anyone can tell you that it isn’t only the shot that takes you past the other team that matters, but all the ones that built up to it as well.
Okay, let’s be real, i’d ban abortion (full stop, no exceptions). If that were for some reason off the table, the more interesting amendment I’d institute would be along the lines of the following:
I. Congress shall require a 2/3 majority to execute any action, and a 4/5 majority to override a presidential veto.
II. The power of the president to issue executive orders is hereby revoked, and all previous executive orders declared null and void.
III. The power of judicial review by the supreme court shall be limited to rulings on federal laws and regulations, which shall require at least a 3/4 majority, and the number of justices shall not exceed 9. All previous decisions not in accordance with this amendment are declared null and void.
This may sound like multiple things, but it’s really one thing with a couple loopholes plugged: if you want a law, Congress will need a supermajority to pass it, and there’ll be no dodging this requirement via executive orders or crafty judicial decisions. You will learn to work together or this country will go down in flames.
repealing executive orders does you absolutely no good. at their core, executive orders are just formal, written instructions from the president to the executive branch. unless you intend to make the president purely a figurehead, they’ll immediately pop up under a different name, like presidential memorandum.
Fair enough, however you have to modify the amendment to make it clear that the president can’t make defacto law absent Congress is fine with me.
And I don’t think this makes the president merely a figurehead, (not to minimize the soft power a head of state wields): he still gets to sign/veto legislation, appoint judges, make treaties, command the armed forces, pardon people, etc.
The real problem is the scope and independence of the administrative state; the President is just the guy directing it. And I don’t think that’s the sort of thing that a constitutional amendment in the conventional (viz. pithy) style is equipped to solve. Maybe if it had come 150 years ago, but not now.
the ultimate job of the president is CEO of the executive branch. If you don’t like what the executive branch is doing, curtailing the power of the president does you no good, you need to curtail the executive he’s in charge of. As Nornagest says, curb the APA and the administrative state. if you cripple the president you won’t get fewer legislated laws, you’ll get more, and there will be no one with any ability to repeal them.
The secret to happiness is a strong president and a weak (or at least highly limited) executive, not a weak president and a massive executive branch that no one is in charge of.
That… seems broadly correct. Nuts, I was hoping I didn’t have to contend with the executive bureaucracy, as they are clearly outside the scope of a single amendment to reign in.
Very well, new plan:
IV. Anyone found to be fucking up my utopia shall be shot.
I foresee no unforeseeable problems with this plan.
This might be too big for one amendment, realistically it would probably need a new Constitutional Convention, but here goes:
I would replace the House of Representatives and the Senate with a unicameral Electoral College. Each state keeps the same number of seats as they had under the old system and state legislatures maintain the ability to choose how to apportion their electors however they like. All of the current powers of the House and Senate go to the Electoral College, in addition to it’s normal ability to choose the president and vice president once every four years.
This move would hopefully restore some sense of federalism by placing more power into the hands of state legislatures. The unicameral nature of the new legislature might also help pull power away from the executive and judiciary, restoring the system of checks and balances somewhat. Putting the electoral college into a higher profile role would also make it clearer to people how Presidential elections actually work so that we don’t have an existential crisis every four years when we’re reminded that the US has never directly elected its presidents.
Why would this give the states more power? The Senate is the body that does more to protect states rights than any other part of government. I would expect the unicameral legislature would have an easier time screwing over fly over states than the current system.
It doesn’t give the states more power, but it does give state legislatures more power, as they now get to decide how the state’s representatives are chosen.
@Scott Alexander,
No State shall have more than 20,000,000 residents.
When any single State has over 20,000,000 residents then that State must be divided within 10 years into two States neither of which shall have a population exceeding 14,000,000 at the time of creation.
(California, Florida, and Texas would be divided, New York likely would be divided soon).
I like this one. I’d make the threshold a multiple of the smallest state’s population. Don’t want magic numbers in our constitution.
How about:
1. Any statistical municipal area over 5 million is a city state.
2. States under 2 million must combine with other states if there is a land border between them.
3. Calculate some appropriate scaling for size to adjust the above numbers for future census.
That’s not very forward-thinking.
Cities in Asia, like Tokyo, Beijing and New Deli already show that you can have over 20 million people in one city. Assuming that we don’t collapse first, it’s only a matter of time before American cities reach that level of urbanization. It’s one thing to turn Downstate New York into a de facto city state but it’s going to be a lot harder to divide, say, Los Angeles into multiple states.
Comically suggested solution: Gladiator fights done by raffle? You just have to make it risky enough that risk averse people won’t come to the city and only apply after so many people live there, ceasing if the population drops.
ETA: Alternatively, Cities don’t get votes. If you want full representation, you spread out.
Two states enter, one state leaves.
Why would we want to destroy all the country’s wealth?
It’s not being destroyed, just… redistributed
If you dismember the goose that laid the golden egg and send parts of its body to different places, you’ve destroyed wealth not redistributed it.
@Nabil ad Dajjal
Los Angeles seems relatively low density now, but even if it means one floor of an
arcologygiant skyscraper is a separate State I don’t see the problem, but I suppose an exemption could be made for a certain minimum of land area (still not really seeing the problem) and frankly, except that radical changes usually go badly, I’d be fine with 500 States instead of 50.I see this as a feature, not a bug.
On the other hand, this kind of thing could only be feasible after strong anti-gerrymandering regulation is passed, or there will be every kind of political shenanigans in the splitting process.
(For example, Texas gleefully splitting their big cities to neutralize their growing Democrat voting population.)
Changes to the age limits for federal office. Nobody is allowed to be elected/appointed after they reach 65. If we don’t let people fly airliners after that age under any circumstances, why do we let them run the country?
If a 65+ pilot dies of a heart attack while flying a plane, it’s a pretty different problem from a 65+ congressperson dying of a heart attack while congress is in session.
But if the person with the big red button, or even just the swing vote on the Supreme Court, has dementia, that’s pretty damn bad.
I see an age cutoff as a little dubious due to ~15% of the population being 65+.
A person in a critical position with dementia is a problem over a much longer time frame than a plane crash, and has a longer window for action. I agree an age limit on appointed positions with no term limits makes sense, but otherwise the election or other measures (impeachment? their party/both parties strongly recommending early retirement on medical grounds?) could be used to remove a person with medically disqualifying issues.
Letting any one person be in charge of the big red button is another issue entirely…
The over-65 limit is absolute. You could have every cardiologist in the world swear your heart is in good shape, and no history of heart problems in your family going back to Adam. Want to fly an airliner at 66? You’re out of luck.
There’s a fair bit of evidence that people start to get at least subtle mental problems in their 60s and later. Age limits solve this, as well as facilitating turnover in government, without the problems of term limits.
Is the 65+ limit on commercial airliners only or on any type of plane?
In general flying a plane seems like it has pretty different requirements than holding office. Decreases in physical reaction times, visual and auditory acuity, ect all come with age and could seriously effect plane flying ability while having much smaller effect on law-making/ect ability. I can’t say I know anything about the specifics, but I’d imagine that any major age related issues can be better dealt with over a longer time period in office rather than couple hours in air.
What do you see as the benefits of age limits over term limits?
Reaction time. Buffer for unidentified health issues.
(1) Any affirmative vote by a Senator or Congressperson for a piece of legislation (or negative vote for an explicit, complete repeal of prior legislation) can only be cast after having read the legislation in its entirety.
(2) Any such vote must be accompanied by a sworn (affirmed) statement truthfully acknowledging having read the legislation in its entirety.
(3) Any Senator or Congressperson found to have violated these provisions will be immediately removed from office and permanently expelled from United States and its territories.
(You might also have to include something about only using roll call votes)
Other idea: a negative legislature, but I’m not sure what exact formulation I’d endorse
Maybe this from The Moon is a Harsh Mistress: one house of legislators, another whose single duty is to repeal laws. Let the legislators pass laws only with a two-thirds majority… while the repealers are able to cancel any law through a mere one-third minority. Preposterous? Think about it. If a bill is so poor that it cannot command two-thirds of your consents, is it not likely that it would make a poor law? And if a law is disliked by as many as one-third is it not likely that you would be better off without it?
@sentient:
1,000,000 times this.
This would force fewer and shorter laws, which I feel would result in Congress delegating even more power to the President and bureaucracy.
Yes
That would be a bad consequence, and certainly is not outside the realm of possibility. I think it would moderately unlikely/unimportant, though. The executive bureaucracy gets its massive power not so much through its leeway in deciding the enforcement of legislation but through the incredible breadth and depth of legislation passed by the legislative branch (for which it then has leeway in deciding the particulars). I also think that Congress prefers delegation through obfuscation as opposed to direct ceding of power.
As for increased delegation of power to the President himself, we could grant that as likely without it necessarily being an issue – the President has fewer hours in his day than Senators and Congresspeople do to make mischief.
I’d like to repeal the 16th, or pull the rug out from the Administrative Procedures Act, but they’d just put them back.
So probably the most I could get away with is drastically limiting the scope of the Interstate Commerce Clause, so it really applied only to things ordinary people would consider “interstate commerce” and not to everything that might affect it; I’d need a tricksy lawyer to draft it (e.g. to translate into lawyerese “…and no using the elastic clause either!”) but it shouldn’t need to be longer than the Fourteenth Amendment.
We really need an alternative to the first past the post voting system so I would reform the system so that if a candidate doesn’t get 50% of the vote, there’s a run off.
We already have a vaguely similar mechanism: if a candidate doesn’t get 50% of Electoral College votes, the decision falls to the House of Representatives. It’s just that the founders thought that would happen a lot and it turned out to happen never.
Once, actually
Huh, my mistake. Once, then.
Once for President since the ratification of the 12th Amendment. Plus once under the original Article II procedures in 1800, when Jefferson and Burr tied for first place (with each elector casting two votes) and the House got to pick which would be President and which Vice President.
There was also a contingent election for Vice President in 1836, when Virginia’s electors (elected on a Democratic ticket) refused to support the Democratic VP nominee (Richard Johnson), denying him a majority in the electoral college. So the Senate got to pick between the top two candidates (Johnson and the Whig VP candidate Francis Granger). Unsurprisingly, the Democratic-majority Senate elected Johnson.
I can’t. There’s just too much wrong with it. It’s unsalvageable.
If I could wholesale adopt some other country’s constitution with the serial numbers filed off, that’d be…interesting.
Which country do you think has a better constitution?
That’s not meant as a challenge exactly, it’s just an odd statement. Most constitutions are too recent to get a sense of how they work, only being drafted in the late 20th century, and the rest belong to minor countries like Luxembourg or Norway. Other than the Republic of San Marino the US has the oldest constitution and given our prominence it’s had to weather the most exposure to geopolitical stresses.
So the UK doesn’t have a formal written constitution, but I think that in most cases (apart from the House of Lords, obviously), the choices we’ve made on the issues the US constitution covers are more sensible.
:- We have a single parliament, which then elects the executive (guaranteeing that most of the time they’re at least reasonably sympathetic to one another, although this is being tested at the moment), and the government can and does overrule filibusters. Compare with the US system of two houses, a presidency, and various state-level institutions with constitutionally-protected powers, all elected separately and with the power to block one another’s actions. This means that we get far less gridlock than the US does, and our government doesn’t sometimes randomly BSOD.
:- We have a non-partisan electoral commission, and nothing as obviously undemocratic as the Senate, meaning that our elections probably reflect the will of the people a little better than yours do, although still not brilliantly (I think we do a pretty good job of deciding fairly which of the two main parties gets to form the government, but a very bad job of treating smaller parties fairly – regional parties get too many seats compared with national ones like the Lib Dems and UKIP).
:- The fact that we don’t have an extensive written constitution means that we place less power on issues that I think ought to be decided democratically in the hands of judges and more in the hands of politicians. Human rights legislation is making this less true than it was, but it’s still somewhat true.
:- We don’t have anything like the second amendment, which almost certainly contributes to our much lower homicide and suicide rates (although there are other factors at play there too, obviously).
:- On the flip side, I think that the stances we take on the issues the first amendment covers are generally ones I agree with much less than yours – freedom of speech is one area where I think the US genuinely is a model of how to do it right.
The US constitution was written for a very different situation, and because it’s purposefully designed to be hard to change there are a lot of aspects of it that are optimised for meeting the specific demands 13 18th-century colonies want satisfied before they’ll agree to an alliance, rather than for running a large modern state.
Y’all also sleepwalked into Brexit. Gridlock is not a bug, it’s a feature.
One modus ponens is another’s modus tollens. I’m reading your list and all of the things you see as problems I see as clear advantages of the US system.
Features, not bugs. The American system was deliberately designed to crash if small majorities tried to force through major changes.
All the different power sources with different spheres of authority make it hard to covertly co-ordinate intentionally. It’s almost impossible to get multiple governments working together on something secretly, which means if a state’s population opposes something, the state government generally will as well.
Isn’t the House Of Lords appointed? Don’t they have some actual influence, even if generally they just roll with the Commons?
The issue with Brexit is that a large majority of the Commons is still Remain. Even the PM is Remain. They’re trying to appease the population that narrowly voted Leave and the population that would be apoplectic if the referendum is ignored while not actually quitting the EU. Not so much “Will of the people”, there.
You’d support proportional representation over accountable individuals, it sounds like. Am I correct in that presumption?
That’s less to do with the constitutional structure and more to do with over-reach, but I don’t like it either.
If you control for race (NOTE: I think the real issue is culture but the two are strongly correlated for historical reasons) there really are two Americas – the white one is very close to both the UK and Europe in terms of criminality, and the mixed-race one is really awful.
I agree completely.
The Constitution was written with expansion and modification in mind.
More importantly, virtually everything you see as anachronistic is really a different structural choice: You see a “modern” government as a unitary, largely unconstrained government that can directly address social ills, but the Constitution was built on the core concept that a distant government overseeing a large territory could itself cause untold social ills. (A theory which I believe has been proven true)
Wha?
The homicide rate for non-hispanic whites in 2015 was 2.6/100,000.
Compare this with what Wikipedia lists:
France: 1.35
Belgium: 1.95
Germany: 1.18
Spain: 0.63
Italy: 0.67
UK: 1.2
Netherlands: 0.55
I’ve not really bothered controlling these for race, but the data seem to show a wide margin between the white American and general European murder rates. The only countries to approach and exceed the murder rate of white America are quite far to the east, and even non-EU nations like Serbia and Bosnia have less murder than the US does.
@DeWitt
Are you certain that source isn’t showing the death rate from homicide? It’s a CDC graph and it keeps using the term ‘deaths from homicide’
https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2013/crime-in-the-u.s.-2013/tables/table-43
which was sourced in wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_crime_in_the_United_States#Homicide
Using Wikipedia as you did it shows
(3,799/198,077,165) is the percentage they give which translates into a rate of 1.4 per 100k, which is maybe on the more violent side for western Europe (which makes sense if half of america’s founding stock was cavaliers and borderers) but it’s well within the range of EU countries.
Note that this is arrest data, There’s the national crime victimization survey but I can’t find out of they have homicide data. The counter argument is that the police are racist and so using arrest data is biased.
It would also make sense that the arrest rate would be lower than the death rate since 1. A homicide offender can kill more than one person 2. A homicide victim can die from members of another race or ethnic group
Supposedly the US Government stopped publishing this data after it kept getting cited by unsavory sorts of people, to the point where ‘Table 43’ became a meme so i don’t know if more recent numbers exist.
Using FBI expanded homicide data I find 6579 white homicide victims in 2017. Census estimates give me 249,719,910 as the white population of the US in 2017. This gives 2.63 white homicide victims per white person in the US, total — not non-Hispanic. There does not appear to be enough information to calculate a white non-Hispanic homicide rate from FBI data, since ethnicity data is incomplete and is not broken out by race.
Also Table 43 is still available. The homicide victim table (Table 1 of expanded homicide data) is bad enough by itself; more blacks than whites are killed in the US, despite there being many more whites.
@Tatterdemalion
The british political system is impressive in some ways, but I have a hard time imagining it working anywhere but the UK. And as you lot are fond of saying, it made Britain what she is today….
Eh, right now it feels like every country on earth is going to hell simultaneously in its own way.
A major problem in America is that election results have become totally disconnected from policy. A party needs the presidency and both houses of Congress to be able to even try to change anything – and as 2009-10 and 2017-18 showed, even then it’s a heavy lift. The normal state of affairs is deadlock. (The civil service and the courts have become the main centers of policy-making, but they’re unaccountable and lousy at it.) A parliamentary system, or one with explicit rules for power-sharing in divided government, would solve this… but look at the crises in Britain and France, which their less deadlock-prone constitutions have failed to prevent. I just don’t know, man.
Stop reading any news.
Britain’s biggest political issue right now isn’t one caused by its political system, as best I can tell. I’m not sure what crisis in France you’re referring to. The world is ostensibly getting better in very many ways, and giving in to the doomsaying so popular across all ages isn’t helpful 😐
Electoral reform, implementing STV.
Maybe throw in a prohibition on voting machines, if i’m allowed.
And an irrelevant prefatory clause to annoy legal and political scholars.
Only one agency (the FBI) shall be authorized to make arrests and execute searches within the land of the United States. Exclusions/exemptions: the border patrol can still operate at the border and ports of entry, on federal lands (national parks, national forests, etc) rangers can continue to operate, and at sea the coast guard can continue to operate. This amendment applies federally so it doesn’t affect state and city police forces. But agencies like the DEA, BATFE, ICE, and all the random departments that keep a SWAT team or two on staff have to come under the FBI (or cease operations). The purpose of this is to get rid of questions of jurisdiction for police powers at a federal level and facilitate civilian oversight by having all federal domestic law enforcement in a single chain of command so it’s clear where the buck stops.
Wait, are you proposing eliminating state and local police forces?
I read it as proposing maintaining the facts on the ground but changing the administrative and legal structures – state and local police officers would become FBI agents of a sort, and hence subject to the same rules and oversight.
Oosp, missed it.
No, this only applies to the feds. The idea is to get some consolidation of this list. Not complete consolidation, since the border (including at sea) deserves to be its own thing and military policing should be separate from civilian. Agencies that are only operating in federal areas (park rangers, Capitol police) or only doing inspections or protection rather than arrests can also stay. But if search or arrest warrants are being served to civilian in the US by the feds it should be a single agency that everyone has heard of. The hope is also to provide a (slight) impediment to over-criminalization by not being able to set up a niche agency to enforce an obscure law.
The Daily Wire isn’t my favorite source, but:
@Edward Scizorhands
I can do you one better, the Government Printing Office has 53 uniformed police officers and I’ve seen at least one squad car. Assuming they make the DC average, that’s 3.2 million a year in salary, not counting benefits, equipment, or any other costs.
How about:
1. A Federal police force is established.
2. Counterintelligence functions of the FBI are part of a different agency.
3. Federal Law enforcement based on all other agencies is rolled into the Federal police, or disbanded.
That would do away with the plot line of roughly half of all cop shows. Unacceptable!
One senator per state, and he serves at the pleasure of that state’s governor.
Screw repealing the 17th, this is a move that would actually transfer a huge amount of power to the most accountable people in the system, state governors. For bonus points, you could also make it that only current and former governors, cabinet officials, and general officers are eligible for the presidency.
Why not just go back to state legislatures selecting senators?
(A) state legislators elected every 2 years can’t exercise much practical control over senators elected for 6.
(B) Because he can’t really control senators once appointed, the most rational choice for a legislator was to try to auction off his vote to the highest bidder. This led to corruption. See also blagojevich, who also realized that he had a valuable gift to sell, not a servant to appoint.
(C) the most accountable position in our federal system are state governorships. Because they’re the most accountable, that’s where most of the power should be vested. Making senators the servants of governors makes governors more powerful without the potential for corruption that independent senators represented.
Some states have been gerrymandered to death, like North Carolina.
Thank you for proposing a method for choosing Senators that actually acknowledges the reasons the 17th was passed in the first place. I don’t know why that’s so rare, but it annoys me to see the assumption that something as difficult as a Constitutional Amendment was advanced without there having been some powerful justification.
That said, I’m not sure about leaving it in the hands of Governors – I fear this would be more liable to make Governors worse than Senators better. In particular, I think that would dramatically increase partisanship for an office that actually tends to do well when it’s holder bucks their state’s trend.
(Come to think of it, I’ve voted for an R governor in every D state I’ve lived in and vice versa. Huh.)
How about Senators appointed by Governors with the advice and consent of their legislatures? Then they function as, essentially, the States’ ambassadors to the Union.
At first that seemed too obvious,but on second thought I think it just might work. I’d need to think about the degenerate cases a bit more, but at first blush the gridlock scenario would simply decrease the state’s influence until they got their act together. And appointed a consensus centrist, if we are very lucky.
@ cassander:
What do you think? Did we miss the obvious failure mode?
the point is to make senators actual ambassadors for their states. i.e. the ideal would be that the senate is literally just the 50 governors, but we don’t want governors spending all their time in DC, so we have them send someone in their place. My goal is to make it so that Senators wouldn’t really be independent officials anymore, (they aren’t appointed for a 6 year term, they serve at the pleasure of the governor, period) they’d be delegates from the state governors.
By making them a pure creature of the governor, you remove politics from the realm of selection a bit. it looks more like the selection of a white house chief of staff and less like a cabinet official. appointing senators with advice and consent of state legislators isn’t terrible, but I don’t that it buys you much besides the opportunity for the legislature and governor to disagree over the selection. But I’d certainly prefer that to what we have now and it’s probably a more politically palatable option, not that it would ever happen anyway.
You might instead end up making the central issue of all gubernatorial campaigns what person they are going to appoint to the Senate, kind of like how Republicans view presidential races and Supreme Court nominations. If you don’t first shrink the federal government enough to be less impactful on people, you have probably succeeded only in making state campaigns little more than proxy wars for federal control.
@jacksologist
I think the risk of that happening is relatively unlikely for two reasons. One, because unlike the supreme court, you’re not appointing a senator who sticks around. he’s just the governor’s guy in DC. so it becomes a bit of a fight about what the governor wants to do in DC, which I think is fine.
And two, the governor controls a whole lot of other things.
it’s too important a position to get swamped by purely federal concerns.
@ cassander:
I don’t think it works that way – that’s as an observation, not theory. Federal politics sway vastly more directly-powerful local elections all the time, and if nothing else it’s an extremely ripe wedge issue.
I don’t know if the National Governor’s Association would survive as a nonpartisan organization if the Senate is turned into a battleground for the same. That’s just one group, but I think it’s an example of how this particular power could be corrosive to the very things that currently make Governors one of the more effective offices in the US.
I’d make America a parliamentary democracy rather than a Republic.
:- Congresspeople elected at the same time as the President, for four year terms, with non-geographic top-up seats to ensure that the results reflect the popular vote regardless of its geographic distribution, and that gerrymandering doesn’t help.
:- President elected either by popular vote or by Congress.
:- Senate stripped of most of its powers, or just abolished.
:- Concept of “states’ rights” completely abolished. The states shall exercise such powers as Congress chooses to delegate to them.
I think a country as large as the US needs robust federalism.
Force states to apportion electoral votes by proportion of in-state popular vote. Get rid of “electors” as such.
Hopefully this will stop everyone’s whining. This seems like the amendment least likely to be overturned to me.
Alternatively, “the following is hereby appended to the fourth amendment: Any property siezed in the manner hereby prescribed shall be returned to its proper owner promply, unless the owner is found to be guilty of a crime and is ordered to forefiet said property by a court of law.”
Let the courts and legislature chew on “promptly.”
Beat me to it. Electoral college upsets are almost entirely the result of the winner-take-all system used by 48 states, not unequal representation as is often assumed. Currently, a statistical tie that randomly goes the wrong way in a couple large swing states can override a weak preference by the rest of the country.
How do you determine this? I see it as one of each in the last two times it has happened.
Here are two hypothetical ways of running elections. In system (A) a state gets a number of electors equal to its population, but they all vote the same, according to the popular vote in that state. In system (B) a state gets a number of points equal to its electors in the current electoral college, but they are divided into fractional votes proportional to the vote in that state.
(A) shows the effect of winner-take-all state voting systems. (B) shows the effect of weighted voting power. I claim that in every historical election (A) has the same result as the electoral college and (B) has the same result as the popular vote. (Except that the second claim has to be made carefully. Let’s say since 1900.)
since 1900 differences have only happened twice, so we’re just talking about 2 elections.
In our current system, each state is given approximately 2 more votes than would be given according to population alone. For Bush/Gore, Bush won 30 states to Gore’s 20, giving him +20 electoral votes due to state advantage, yet he won the EC by only 5 votes. This seems to be a counterexample to System (A) giving the same result as the EC.
Trump/Clinton was also 30/20 state split, but Trump won EC by 77, so the extra electors per state alone was not enough to over come popular vote, winner take all in close states was also needed.
If that’s your calculation, then Bush needed both winner-take-all and senate votes. You could say that that contradicts itex, but your previous statement seemed to say that you counted him in the senate column and not in the winner-take-all column.
I would say it contradicts itex, as well as your system A/B distinction.
Maybe. The proportional electors approximation seemed more tedious so I honestly did not do it. I would be interested in seeing what your results of this calculation were.
@Douglas Knight
Ok, I found a spreadsheet of 2000 results that made calculations easier. IF states gave EVs proportional to popular vote, I get
Bush: 259.3
Gore: 258.4
Nader: 14.8
Which seems to me that Bush still wins without winner take all. All I did was multiple the states # of EVs by popular vote percent. What method did you use to conclude Bush needed winner take all?
Yeah, my claim was wrong.
But I meant that your calculation implied it about your model. Unfortunately, I can’t reconstruct what I thought your model was.
Even with proportional voting don’t states have to assign EVs in integer amounts?
In a hypothetical voting system that you make up, I think you can do whatever you want.
Is there some claim you are getting to?
A more modest tweak would be to mandate the Maine-Nebraska system (winner of the vote in a Congressional district gets the 1 EV associated with it, statewide winner gets the 2 EVs associated with the Senators).
This also not only preserves but enhances the EC’s function as a bulwark against localized shenanigans; a rogue precinct can effect at most 3 EVs, which would probably not be determinative.
Presidents can serve just one term.
Paring back the commerce clause was already mentioned, so I’m going with making the size of the House grow with each census. Not sure between cube root or Wyoming rule, but the results are similar anyways.
No Act of Congress shall have the force of law beyond ten years, and no treaty shall remain binding more than twenty years since its last ratification.
So the next Government Shutdown game leads to The Purge?
They’d just pass a continuing resolution for all laws right before the shutdown.
In general, this whole ideal of term-limiting laws is a nice idea, but in practice it would just mean that every X years, Congress passes the “Re-Enact The Entire Legal Code Omnibus.”
I doubt any GOP legislators would vote for such a thing, since they could just not and Obamacare expires on its own without them having to take ownership of the repeal; likewise for the Dems & the Patriot Act.
In general, I think both sides would be more satisfied eliminating the other’s bad laws than enacting their own, but the ratchet effect plus concentrated-benefits-diffuse-costs makes that less feasible than continuing to add Byzantine cruft.
ETA: If I’m wrong and there is a pro forma renewal, then there’s no change (i.e., no damage) relative to the current muddling along; humility when making changes to something so fundamental as the Constitution is a virtue.
No more than now; shutdowns are just about the budget, which is already an annual activity (so my proposal wouldn’t be a binding constraint on it).
Nah, most of the laws against MurderDeathKilling people for fun are state and local. Washington, DC is an interesting edge case, though.
Ban political party affiliation being listed on election ballots and, if it doesn’t count as a two-fer, require candidates to be listed in alphabetical order (random would be better but easy to lie about so I’ll settle for transparent).
I’d like to ban parties altogether but that’s not practical. Anything to undercut the duopoly would be great but I can’t think of something elegant at the moment so I’ll settle for the Fair Ballot Amendment.
In the past I’ve toyed with the idea of making all candidates write-ins (modulo some assistance for the illiterate among us).
5. Is the kicker, because otherwise I would just say “actually enforce the 10th Amendment”.
Maybe you could amend the Commerce Clause in such a way as to actually force a limited scope, originalist interpretation?
Can you add an amendment along the lines of: for purposes of judicial review, all rulings shall be made in accordance with what the framers of the constitution actually meant at the time of writing?
You’d need to add an “or would have meant” to allow for things like the Founders not having heard of TV and the Internet so you don’t have free speech on them.
Then you’d have to phrase it very carefully so this doesn’t get used for “the founders never heard about ___ theory about guns and I’m sure they would have banned all the guns if they had just known”.
I like what Gray Ice did. I think, repeal the 2nd and 10th. Barring that, something to eliminate the electoral college and give one man (person), one vote some teeth.
So, one country, ruled entirely by the whims of California. Hard pass.
One country, ruled by the will of the majority. If California has half the people and they all vote the same way, then sure. Should Californians have their franchise diluted because you don’t like them?
No. Californians should have the maximum state autonomy consistent with maintaining common defense of and commerce in the Union, same as the minorities elsewhere.
If I wanted to live in California, I would move there.
Do you think there are 200 million democrats in California, and no Republicans? The fact is, in raw totals, 39.5 million out of 327 million, or 12% of the US population, lives there, and in 2018 the Dem won the Senatorial race 54% to 46%. You’re not going be “ruled entirely by the whims of California” under a popular vote system.
Your broader point stands, but it is worth noting that the 2018 senatorial general election was between *two Democrats* so in fact Dems got 100% of the vote in that round. This is partly because the “jungle primary” in June was a total mess, but: if the California Republican Party had a candidate who could have gotten 46% against DiFi, that candidate would have gotten the second slot in the primary. They didn’t, so no serious Republican even bothered to run, a bunch of vanity candidates split what remained of the conservative vote, and de Leon got the second place slot with 12% of the primary vote running to DiFi’s left.
A better approximation of the statewide partisan split is the gubernatorial race, which Newsom won with 62% to 38% for Cox.
That wasn’t very meta level of you.
Need to think about the phrasing, but good candidates might be:
-Forcing what should go throigh courts to go through courts – notably, not letting EPAs/DOLs/etc. Be just jury and executioner without reasonable recourse in normal court
-clarifying that the fourth amendment means what it makes sense for it mean – i.e. includes your emails and such, obviates stupid technicalities like “well Google can reach your email so you have no expectation of privacy”
-Sunset law for regulations
The 14th Amendment is hereby repealed.
The 24th Amendment is hereby repealed.
1st amendment shall limit Congress only, and shall not restrict governments other than the national government.
Freedom of association shall not be infringed.
Any funds distributed by the national government to the states or any entity within a state shall be distributed either on the basis of income or of population.
No federal court shall adjudicate any dispute between a state and citizens of that state.
Need an idea for wording: Only Congress can make laws; reduce the power of agencies to the pre-1930’s norm. (No law-like administrative rulings.)
You realize that would re-enable Jim Crow, as well as protect every state’s violation of rights and a lot of other things, yes?
I’d much prefer state-level violations of rights (given the visible lack of agreement on what things are rights, and the fact that people can move to another state) to the “make stuff up and call it a law” jurisprudence of the last 100 years. If only Massachusetts, rather than the federal government, restricted freedom of association, I could plausibly move somewhere else.
If there’s sufficient agreement that some specific thing is a right to get it through the Amendment process, do so. That ensures a stable, widespread consensus that said thing actually is a right. (I think that some additional limit on searches, for example, will soon pass that test.)
There’s certainly been some overreach by the courts, but “If there’s sufficient agreement that some specific thing is a right to get it through the Amendment process, do so.” was basically the 14th Amendment.
I think our perceptions are different: I would count all the desegregation decisions, and all the gender-related decisions, as having been very unlikely to make it through the amendment process as a tightly-defined specific right.
Or–in the form I put it when annoyed–“you do know the ERA failed to pass, right?”
SamChevre the ability to move is definitely not a sufficient remedy for all possible rights violations. If the government seizes or destroys your property, imprisons you, enslaves you, or kills you, then the power to move is either insufficient remedy or not actually available.
That’s what I meant by pulling the rug out out from under the Administrative Procedures Act, but they’d reverse it.
I hate as much as the next guy the fact that the executive bureaucracy is effectively making laws outside the legislative branch. I imagine sometimes: what if Congress had foreseen that problem, and housed the FTC, EPA, OSHA, etc. under itself rather than under the President? Is there any chance things would have turned out better?
Sometimes I think yes, if there were a concerted and consistent effort to divide things properly, with policy set by the legislative bureaucracy and enforcement by the executive bureaucracy (and, I guess, penalties and appeals handled by a legit judicial bureacracy). But sometimes I think no, it would be even worse than what we have now, because the bureaucracy would probably be three times as big.
Choice 1) Something enshrining aggressive trust busting as the order of the day. Limit corporations to some percentage of GDP AND some percentage of the industries they’re in, unless they submit to utility status?
Choice 2) Something preventing a corn subsidies situation from ever arising again
Choice 3) A word count limit on laws. They can only do one thing, address a specific mechanism. In practice, though, I think this would result in an “all potential Brexit deals get shot down” situation. So, perhaps then:
Choice 4) Rather than yes/no votes on bills, each legislative session is organized by a slate of Issues/Problems determined at the end of the last session. Each Issue/Problem has a submission period for representatives to submit solutions (new laws), and then a period for representatives to read all submissions, do their negotiations and such. At the end of these two periods per Issue, there is instant runoff voting on the submitted solutions.
Any sort of population-referendum approach to passing law is also subject to this Issue/Solution/Runoff model.
I foresee this not going well. Likely it would result in the law referencing other documents that were as long as old bills were.
Laws can’t incorporate things by reference, save for regulations by government agencies, but if word counts apply to those too…
It would have little consequence if the government is free to decide what restrictions (if any) come with utility status.
Fair enough. But the current regulations on utilities seem to be on the right track. I’d prefer that the legislature got to decide those things, though, rather than appointed department heads.
Legislatures can already decide to expand antitrust regulations, and break up very large companies or submit them to utility status, if they want. If they don’t do so (more than they are currently doing), that suggests that they don’t want to. Then, even if the current utility regulations are right, if you put it in the constitution that very large companies must submit to utility status, but legislators don’t actually want to regulate them more than today, then they can always redefine utility status in such a way that it doesn’t come with significant restrictions (at least in some cases), so your constitutional amendment has no effect. (In any case, I don’t see what would be the point of putting something like that in the constitution, compared to having the legislatures decide it.)
This is very true.
Sounds like a good way to get “something must be done, this is something, therefore this must be done”.
Right, but you have vigorous Politicking over whether or not an Issue makes it to the slate. If the parties agree that there are no good solutions ready, they would fight against the Issue being brought up that session.
You’re a lot more optimistic about political parties’ willingness to recognize bad solutions than I am.
The status quo is “all Brexit deals are voted down, including no-deal.” This burns political capital for nothing, because representatives do a whole lot of horse trading to get votes and then things still don’t pass. However, it also demonstrates that parties would much prefer “issue never comes up for a vote” than “a slew of half-assed solutions come up for a vote, with the risk that a bad dark horse solution wins.”
We’re also seeing that the people on the state level are already moving towards this anyways, forcing laws to get made through referendums because nothing gets done by the legislature because they’re all burning their political capital on losing votes.
The proposed system moves the legislature closer to the Supreme Court model, in which decisions must be made, but there is leeway in which cases they decide to hear. Representatives do a whole lot of horse trading to get their pet issue on the slate, but only if they’re very very confident that they can live with the results even if they lose. Their political capital is never spent for nothing.
In practice, though, I expect that someone will always submit “no change to status quo” as a solution, which will de facto replace a basic “nay” vote, and then we’re back to first-past-the-post nonsense. So better forbid those in the amendment while we’re at it.
It’s probably a better system than the status quo in the specific example of Brexit, but Brexit’s an unusual case in a lot of ways. I think it’s more common for legislatures to be faced with problems arising from moral panic, where all the competing policy proposals are worse than useless but the public wants to see their representatives Doing Something, or at least debating it. So it’s useful to leave a way for the legislature to posture and run out the clock. If the legislature’s being idiots too, then at least there’s a good chance that any actual policy changes will die of partisan gridlock since there isn’t a clear best choice.
The Supreme Court refuses to hear stuff related to the moral panic du jour all the time, but they’re getting away with that because of their life terms, their nominal nonpartisanship, and their role as referees rather than representatives. I think a legislature would have much harder time with it.
The things really required for government to function are paid for by a highly progressive income tax.
The optional things that make things better for people are paid for by a VAT.
Obviously everyone would say their pet issue is “required” so this would be unworkable. Also, money is fungible.
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
…and we really mean it this time.
My goal here is to make U.S. spending more non-zero-sum without making an enemy of the military-industrial complex or setting a ceiling on defense spending. The amendment does very little at first and can be satisfied by repurposing existing military infrastructure so nobody loses their jobs. By 2054, the ratio becomes 1…so we can still fight a world war if we have to, we just have to also spend the same amount to pre-fund the rebuilding effort.
Numbers chosen for looking appealingly round; the only reason the exponent is e is that 2 seemed too small and 3 seemed too big.
1. What happens when WWIII breaks out in 2064?
2. The military already does a lot of aid work. We have whole ships that spend almost all of their active lives cruising around giving medical care to the impoverished in other countries. When a major natural disaster hits, the US military is often the first group to show up with food and water.
3. Despite 2, the point of the military is to kill people and break things. Saying “we’ve added non-military humanitarian work to their charter” isn’t going to change culture overnight. If you try to do that, you’re likely to cause all sorts of cultural problems. Yes, foreign aid is valuable. I agree that basic foreign aid is a good thing and can give a lot of soft power, and that spending more on that might be a good thing. In theory, I think this is what the Peace Corps was supposed to do. Expand it and start paying.
The biggest issue I see right now is that some of the language in the 14th Amendment no longer makes sense. The opening clause “All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” was intended to address post Civil War / Reconstruction issues where the Southern States declared black people as non-citizens and therefore not eligible to vote. This was made more complicated due to lack of birth or other records which could have allowed for foreign citizenship to be determined. The cost of sending these folks “home” would also have been astronomical. The only reasonable thing to do was to declare them citizens and move forward.
As a thought experiment: imagine a pregnant executive flying from Portugal to Brazil for a business trip. For whatever reason, the plane diverts to Florida. While on the ground, the woman goes into early labor, is taken to a hospital and delivers a healthy child. A few days later they both return to Portugal, and she re-schedules her business trip for a later date.
In the case of the businesswoman, she and her child were not intending to be the US at all. It was only against their will that this occurred. But unlike the freed slaves, she and her child had a home and life to return to. The trip to the US was accidental and very brief. In the case of the freed slaves, many of them had lived in the US for generations. The idea that the child who was born in the country only by accident and with the means to go home should be treated to US citizenship the same was as a freed slave with no written history and no home country to go back to is ludicrous.
Instead, we should be allowed to have citizenship of children born in the US reflect the status of their parents in the country. For example, children born to parents admitted under non-immigrant visas might not automatically get citizenship.
I’m not certain how to phrase the change, however. Ideally, the power should be delegated to Congress without the policy being explicitly codified. Putting policy like that into a Constitution frequently causes problems.
There’s some movement toward trying to get the judiciary to clarify exactly what this clause means, with the hope that they do so in a manner consistent with what you’re advocating.
I sympathize with the policy goals of your amendment. However, I’d like to tread carefully for two reasons.
First, your policy would make it much harder to prove citizenship. As it is, I can point to my birth certificate saying I was born at place X in the State of North Carolina; nothing else matters; I’m a citizen. If your policy were in place when I was born, I’d also need to point to several things about my parents’ legal status. In theory, that could also be included on my birth certificate, but that’d be a significant administrative overhead for hospitals who currently have no reason to even care about such things let alone uncover lies from the parents.
Second, if we have the status of the children reflect the status of parents across the board, we’d be left with a number of children growing up in the United States for ten years or more – whether their parents are working on “temporary” work visas or illegally present or whatever other reason – who end up without citizenship. I consider them enough a part of American culture to be given citizenship. Of course, we could do this without impacting the rest of your policy – but then we’d run afoul of my first point even worse.
For point 1, I’d note that not all other countries have jus soli and manage to do just fine. Likewise, there are lots of US citizens who are born abroad (like myself) who also manage to handle things without much of an issue. Yes, it involves a bit more paperwork. But we’re getting really good at paperwork.
For point 2, this can be addressed in multiple ways. The illegally-present is the topic of the day, and addressing that US Citizenship is valuable and thus an inter-generational benefit for parents who enter illegally is an incentive which should be addressed. But on the larger point, the legislature should decide who gets to have US citizenship as a result of being born here to visitors. Perhaps we want to provide it automatically if the parents are citizens and longtime residents of some countries, but not others. Perhaps we really want to enforce the non-immigrant part of the non-immigrant part of the visa. To address concerns over being stateless we only let in visitors who come from countries which would provide jus sanguinis to any children born.
> I consider them enough a part of American culture to be given citizenship.
I disagree. Or, more specifically, I think it is bad policy. And I agree that this sort of thing should be debated and able to be adjusted by Congress as appropriate.
What if an amendment incorporated the important bits of the declaration of independence into the constitution?
Well, what if it did? What would that change?
As I see it, you’d have a lot of cases of people alleging that this or that law was infringing on someone’s right to pursue happiness.
And no end to arguments about how you are violating the first amendment’s prohibition on establishing a religion by putting Creator in the constitution.
And you probably give the pro-life cause another argument to use, as well as anti-capital punishment. Heck, anti-prison, as well. They are unalienable rights, not contingent rights!
This is the problematic part. Basically, Liberty and Happiness both reduce to a base state of “Don’t pass any laws, all laws will inherently infringe on someone’s liberty/happiness.” That doesn’t mean there would be no laws, it means that legislators would need to demonstrate a need for every single thing they pass instead of just passing whatever they (collectively) want. Which sounds good to me. But hard for many people to grok from the text, I expect.
I don’t think that would actually be a problem. As far as the first amendment goes, the Free Exercise Clause guarantees a person’s right to hold whatever religious beliefs he or she wants, and to freely exercise that belief, and its Establishment Clause prevents the government from designating an official national religion or favoring one religion over another.
Now that’s a feature, not a bug, as far as I’m concerned.
In practice it seems to do more than that, or at least there would be argument thereof; it’s not enough (for some) that the government doesn’t promote a specific religion; any governmental actions that promote religion are opposed. I agree that this is not likely the original intent.
Okay, wasn’t sure. FWIW, I don’t think it would actually move the window legally on abortion (we simply declare the unborn not ‘human’ in legal parlance) but would probably lead to capital punishment being outlawed. Basically it would be a way to trick conservatives into trading away capital punishment for an ineffective movement on abortion.
What if an amendment incorporated the important bits of the declaration of independence into the constitution?
You’d have the screeching about including the phrase “their Creator” because it would be too religious for some and not religious enough for others, and the yelling over “there are no such things as rights, much less inalienable rights” and what is or is not a right anyway, and abortion being legal has pretty much knocked “the right to life” as an inalienable right on the head (turns out it’s fairly well alienable if you can define the being as “not a person, only a potential person”).
What is “the pursuit of happiness”? Everyone gets the guaranteed thousand dollars a month? You’ve already seen the arguments on here about how the heck do you fund that. If Jeff Bezos or Mark Zuckerberg can have a lifestyle of potential wonderful happiness, why can’t I, look it’s right there in the Constitution guaranteed to me as an inalienable right, I want my own private island and millionaire lifestyle!
The power granted Congress in Article I, Section 8 to regulate commerce shall be limited to the regulation of activity which is commercial in itself, and shall not be construed to extend to the regulation of any non-commercial activity on the grounds that it will or may affect commerce.
I like.
It should probably be accompanied by something to keep the “necessary and proper” clause in bounds, but I didn’t feel equal to the challenge.
Signed
#5. Kinda makes any suggestion that is not structural and simple kind of useless. To that end Gray Ice, Nabil, Wrong, cassander, and some of samchevre’s seem to be the only one’s that would hold up to this requirement.
I do think I do have one that I’m not sure would work, but it would be good.
Any territory of the United States must become an incorporated US state within 20 years of acquisition, or be released from control of the United States.
I’d try to do something to put centrists in power. Not because I’m a centrist (I’m not), but for as long as I can remember half the country has regarded the president as the devil, which I don’t feel is healthy. Also I’d rather have a bland centrist most of the time than have to put up with the other party’s psychopath half the time.
I’m not at all sure how to do this. My best guess is:
House of Representatives elected by proportional representation in states with enough seats for proportional representation to work. (Three, maybe?) No districts, each representative serves the whole state. Electors in the electoral college chosen by the same method. Senators are elected by instant-runoff, as are representatives in states with only one or two seats.
If no presidential candidate wins a majority of the electoral college, they discuss and try again, as often as necessary, for up to a month; only then does it get kicked to Congress.
if you want centrist candidates, you want single member districts. PR systems empower lots of pandering to extremist/single issue parties that have very little incentive to cooperate.
@bullseye
Putting ‘centrists’ in power merely means that those who disagree strongly with those centrists strongly hate the president. If you have a strongly polarized country, then a centrist president will be hated by both sides. His/her blandness will be offensive to those who demand change.
If people strongly desire change and politicians are unresponsive to this, then people tend to radicalize, supporting increasingly extremist candidates until something actually changes.
Anyway, if you want the least objectionable president, you should ask for a switch to a voting method that favors a less objectionable president more, like Condorcet or approval voting.
Yeah, I’d be strongly tempted to choose an amendment requiring RCV or approval voting for all elected offices.
Can I get both gerrymandering and campaign finance reform? Can I get approval voting as well?
Can my amendment be: “this is the rules we will use for all elections”?
If you made me choose, I’d probably fix gerrymandering first, but it would be a tough decision.
I think these steps will lead to more centrists being elected and will end a lot of the partisanship we’ve been seeing.
Campaign finance is incumbent protection. If you mean RCV by approval voting I can give you 2/3. I’ve been involved in the effort to reform gerrymandering in MD.
If you mean hamburger by steak
Yeah that doesn’t help me
I agree that the current state of the campaign finance system gives an advantage to the incumbent. If we reform the campaign finance system, for example by giving every candidate X amount of government funding and having a broadly worded ban on all campaign donations, that would remove some of the incumbent advantage, and also hopefully would cause our politicians to spend less time thinking about fundraising.
You’ve said: “Campaign finance is incumbent protection.” like you think that’s an argument against campaign finance reform. Why do you think that?
I’m not sure what you mean when you say “RCV” — I mean, the acronym seems to mean “Ranked Choice Voting”, but there are many voting systems that use ranked choices.
Most of what I know about voting systems, I learned from Ka-Ping Yee’s excellent voting system visualizations. This page compares plurality and approval voting to three ranked-choice systems, and approval voting comes out looking pretty good.
Hmmm. Interesting analysis. I do kind of feel like the exceptionally odd results are partly an artifact of the unrealistic assumptions, but nonetheless, Yee has pushed me further toward approval. Approval, Condorcet, and Borda all look like they should work, and they all get similar, plausible results in the simulations. While their getting similar results may mean that they have a related weakness, it is hard to see what that could be, and again the results also look reasonable, so I’m more inclined to conclude that they’re all getting good results. And approval is obviously the simplest of the three, which if they’re all getting similar results seems to make it the one to choose.
RCV was a rebranding by IRV proponents, since too many people knew IRV was a poor system.
If you don’t mind harsh and unforgiving writing and analysis, written by a crazy person, then this site is an excellent resource
https://rangevoting.org/
if you prefer a click-baity for the masses style, but less precise information, than go here
https://www.electionscience.org/
Right, so the longest amendment thus far passed is the fourteenth amendment, ~430 words. So let’s see what we can work with inside that limitation.
425 words, not counting the title and section headers. I think that’s a pretty solid set of amendments. Possibly falling afoul of the “you can’t put your party’s platform as an amendment”, but I don’t think this is the platform of any political party.
To explain:
Section 1 – repeals contradictory current amendments.
Section 2 – Aimed at making the House more representative and slightly less concerned with elections. Single Stochastic Ballot is, in my view, the best system at producing both proportionality and local accountability. Extending their term to three years should give them another year to focus on governing before being focused on reelection. Also, Single Stochastic Ballot provides far more rotation of Representatives than the current system. Fitting for the house of the people, IMO.
Section 3 – Reforms the Senate. Goals here are to give the states some representation that was lost with the passage of the 17th amendment, let the people of each state choose some congressmen without random elements, provide somewhat better proportionality than with the current senate, and not fall afoul of the rule that each state gets the same number of senators.
Section 4 – Closes a major gap in the present Constitution, namely weak continuity of government provisions.
Section 5 – Alters the scheme of presidential elections. Presidents now serve either six or eight years, and are elected with the entire House and half the Senate. There are many implications to unpack here, but I think that in general this would reduce partisanship.
Section 6 – Self explanatory, needed because under this scheme the electoral college is potentially even less democratic than it is now. Still doesn’t quite eliminate the possibility of someone winning the popular vote and losing the election, but makes it less likely.
Section 7 – Lowers the stakes of supreme court appointments, hopefully preventing anything like the BK fiasco from happening again. Likely makes the supreme court less partisan.
Sections 8&9 – Make the Constitution easier to amend in the future. IMO inflexibility is the source of a lot of current problems.
Section 10 – self-explanatory.
—-
That’s all of my words, but if I had more I might do things like:
– The runner-up in presidential elections becomes the Attorney General
– Ex-presidents (and maybe attorney generals?) can become Senators for Life
– Split the office of President into two roles, making us a semi-presidential country
People whose career prospects are determined by election results will never be less concerned with elections. And it seems like it massively increases the opportunity for fraud.
I fail to see the point of a two year extension or how it might reduce partisanship.
If you want to repeal the EC, just repeal the EC. This seems unnecessarily complicated.
This is unclear to me. Do people stay in their SC seats after being appointed or do you pick the names out of the hat again at the next session? and where does the Chief get appointed from?
The whole point of the states convention is that it can’t be controlled by the feds.
To avoid the major institutional and social dislocations that a lot of the changes proposed so far would entail (as I am an incrementalist at heart), I’d propose something more modest, like changing the voting method for national elections to Condorcet, STV, or whatever, given that almost any alternative is better than FPTP.
A more ambitious goal would be to somehow extremely limit the power of the executive branch, although I don’t have any specific ideas.
An amendment to reign in the out of control growth in spending of the last few decades under both parties would cure a lot of other issues as well, because the government would finally have to prioritize between different spending, similar to how most State governments need to:
1. Total outlays for each fiscal year may not exceed total receipts for that fiscal year, unless four-fifths of the whole number of each House of Congress shall provide by law for a specific excess of outlays over receipts by a roll-call vote.
2. Total inflation-adjusted per capita outlays for each fiscal year may not exceed 98% of the total inflation-adjusted per capita outlays for the previous year until the total inflation-adjusted per capita outlays for a year equal those of 1950, after which they may not exceed the previous fiscal year total.
3. Prior to each fiscal year, the President shall transmit to the Congress a proposed budget for the United States Government for that fiscal year which complies with this amendment. Until such a proposed budget is transmitted by the President to Congress and a budget complying with this amendment adopted by Congress, no law appropriating funds may be approved by Congress.
3. Total receipts shall include all receipts of the United States Government except those derived from borrowing. Total outlays shall include all outlays of the United States Government except for those for repayment of debt principal. Annual inflation adjustments shall be made using the current CPI methodology.
4. The provisions of this article may be waived for any fiscal year in which the United States is engaged in military conflict which causes an imminent and serious military threat to national security and is so declared by a joint resolution, adopted by a three-fifths majority of the whole number of each House. Any such waiver must identify and be limited to the specific excess or increase for that fiscal year made necessary by the identified military conflict. Any such increase via waiver shall not be counted for the purposes of determining the limits under this article for future year outlays. Regardless of whether a proposed waiver under this article passes or not, the salary of any member of Congress voting for a proposed waiver shall be reduced for that fiscal year by the percentage the waiver amount causes the regular outlay maximum to be exceeded.
5. The Congress shall enforce and implement this article by appropriate legislation, which may rely on estimates of outlays and receipts. Before appropriating funds for the next fiscal year, Congress must publish a summary of the receipts and outlays of the previous fiscal year. Any outlays during a fiscal year in excess of the requirements of this article shall be collected in the following fiscal year by a direct tax proportionally paid by every adult resident of the United States equally.
Abandon this absurd “republicanism” idea, and give the US a proper monarch with powers modelled after those of the princes of Liechtenstein. Allow him to grant titles of nobility.
Or, if that’s too radical, enshrine something like the Sherbet Test into the Constitution.
Just for the meta value, repeal the twenty-first amendment.
My amendment would ban any future referendums at either the federal or state level.
Eliminate all re-elections. President, senator and representatives all serve one six year term (staggered like the senate is now). Currently every decision that anyone makes is made to maximize chances of re-election. Decisions would change dramatically if the maker was not primarily concerned with re-election. Knowing what the right decision is is seldom difficult. What is difficult is making the right decision when doing so hurts your chance for re-election.
Long time reader, first time poster. I’ve had this idea kicking around for a while and was wondering what people thought:
Republican ability to “push back” at racially or culturally insensitive members of their political coalition is greater than that of Democrats because of the relative demographic homogeneity of their coalition (white, Christian, etc.). The example that comes to mind is the treatment of Steve King by GOP members of congress, specifically the more open censure his racial comments receive versus the vacillating response to some recent Democratic house members’ anti-Semitic or “extreme” statements. This to me seems similar to an idea of Stratechery’s Ben Thompson, that of the “strategy credit.” This describes an action that a firm in some broad sector can take that will redound positively upon them, but is to them a less costly choice than for other competitors in the same space. The example he uses is Apple’s focus on privacy, which while certainly superior to other tech companies’, is not as costly to Apple because of the way Apple derives its profits and its use of the data. Browsing habits and personal information, which are critical for Facebook and Google to better serve ads, are less important to a hardware and services company like Apple, whose profits are derived directly from consumers.
In a similar vein, the costs of criticizing a fellow member of your political coalition is unequally felt among the major American political parties because of demographic differences within and between parties. When Mitch McConnell (older, white) criticizes Steve King (same), the resulting exchange takes the form of a dispute within a specific subgroup. Democratic leadership is demographically similar to that of Republicans (predominantly white and elite-educated), but the rank-and-file is much more diverse. Thus, Democrats, in addition to the natural dangers of interparty dispute (particularly, the necessary erosion of the public perception of party unity), must also contend with the optics and genuine asymmetry of a dominant social group criticizing the behavior of a subordinate social group. In political capital terms, it is a good deal costlier for Pelosi/Schumer to censure Ilhan Omar than it is for McCarthy/McConnell to censure King.
I do not intend this to mean that all controversial comments made by politicians are equally bad and equally deserving of response. Obviously, the nature of an individual statement or sentiment matters greatly when responding. But when I read National Review or other conservative publications, a great deal is made over the relative haranguing of Steve King and David Duke vs that received by Democratic-aligned controversial figures like Omar & Louis Farrakhan. While their incentive is not to mitigate Democratic hypocrisy, I don’t think I’ve ever heard a left-aligned individual make this claim either, by way of explanation for the disparity.
(as an aside, I leave out the GOP criticisms of Roy Moore (and the post-Access Hollywood statements on Trump) for the same reason I leave out the Democratic criticisms of exposed Hollywood predators. Sexual assault seems thankfully to be viewed with broad apolitical disgust, though the incidence of punishment seems politically mediated)
Is this just an obvious thing that no one talks about? Like, the voting decisions of Mnuchin and Murkowski are often analyzed in terms of their electorate’s preferences, but I don’t believe I’ve ever seen a similar analysis in a mainstream source that does the same for non-voting decisions like this.
I wonder if Bill Clinton could get away with a “Sista Soulja” moment today. Punching down on at least 2 axes?
Sure, plenty of–
oh, never mind.
There haven’t been any extreme anti-Semitic statements made by Democratic house members lately – full stop. Anyone pretending differently is being intellectually dishonest.
I don’t think it’s the homogeneity of the group that makes pushback easier, but the axis of criticism. Democrats, I think, tend to go for a “I support X because I am Y” (or, “because I have been through Z”) angle, which lets them interpret an attack on X as an attack on Y or Z and makes them toxic to attack. I think that’s regrettable, but I don’t think it’s inevitable. They just need to do better.
The nice thing about being a diversity coalition is that being that places limiters on the degree of “help I’m being hated” that’s possible that weren’t really there during the Great Evangelical Fundamentalization (for example). It’s messier and uglier, but it does seem to be helping the democrats avoid that sort of wild swing to an extremely different political positon. Mostly. Reparations, for example, are fucking dumb. But the fact that the Democrats aren’t the Palestinian Liberation Party is a good thing IMO. (And no, they’re not, even if you think that “not having a buffer zone is an existential threat to Israel.” This is about messaging.)
Farrakhan is democrat-aligned? He hasn’t played any role that I can recall since Jesse Jackson’s campaign for the nomination, back in… 87/88 I think? And his involvement was pretty much the nail in the coffin for that.
(Oddly enough, despite the fact that the Nation of Islam is ragingly anti-semitic, which is quite easy to demonstrate, the specific quotations that B’Nai Brith used in their full page ads against him were blatantly used to mean the exact opposite of what they meant in context. I promise this is not special pleading, it really is as simple as them quoting him saying “Hitler was a good man”, which was used as the shocking introduction to a segment of his speech where he explained precisely why he thought Hitler was not, in fact, a good man.)
Anyways, I’m incredibly partisan about these things, but the reason why there isn’t an equivalency between the Democrats and the Republicans on these things is that there is no equivalent to Steve King or David Duke in the Democratic Party, not since the 1960’s.
Farrakhan was invited to the ladies march or whatever. In my home city of Chicago he’s probably the 5th most important Democrat after Obama, Rahm, Lightfoot, and Pritzker. Even the Trib has noticed.
Sarsour is his female, super racist doppleganger and she also is fully ensconced in Dem politics including, again, the womans march. Hell, there is a David Duke of the left, hes called David Duke, you know, the guy who just endorsed Omar’s thoughts on Jews.
So… Farrakhan isn’t a Democrat. In order to be the “fifth most important democrat”, you actually have to be, you know, a democrat. As for Duke being left-wing, really? Like you’re not just trolling when you say this? This is a thing you actually believe?
Eh, what the hell. Omar never said anything at all about Jews writ large. You provided some links a couple of threads back which showed that, among other things, several years ago she had stood on the same stage as someone else who had, several years prior to that, said something about “from the river to the sea” (which said person claimed was meant to refer to something other than the destruction of Israel, for what it’s worth). If this is the level you have to dig for to find supposed anti-semitism, I don’t think it’s possible to have a grown-up conversation about it. I’d be intrigued to know what you think is evidence of Sarsour’s “super racist” views, but given the quality of evidence you’ve presented in the past, I’m not holding my breath.
It’s really easy to find actual anti-semites. Farrakhan is one. David Duke is another. Neither are democrats, neither are left-wing.
I don’t thing it’s possible for me to be so utterly smug and condescending, but in the interest of fairness I’ll try.
This is such bullshit</. For one, David Duke himself was a democrat until 1988(he also recently called Ilhan Omar the "most important Member of the US Congress". Second the reason why there isn’t an equivalency between the Democrats and the Republicans is that the Democrats are an openly racialist party that campaigns on racial resentment and supports policies of racial preference and discrimination such as affirmative action and reparations. Republicans don't.
As for Farrakhan not being left-wing, really? Like you’re not just trolling when you say this? This is a thing you actually believe? I suspect you are at least partly trolling, because that seems to be your main method of interacting on this site, and a guess you did a good enough job since you got me to respond, so you do you I guess.
As an outsider to American politics, to me you seem to be exercising charity to someone on your side (“she only stood on the same stage as someone who might have said something and besides it was years ago”) that you wouldn’t extend to someone on the other side – or if you personally would, I doubt many who support Omar because she’s One of Our Politicians would be as forebearing about “He only stood on the same stage as someone who said something and besides it was years ago” from the opposition camp.
That’s the problem with all two-party systems (and I include my own in this) or indeed politics/life in general: My guy’s case deserves nuance and the benefit of the doubt, your guy’s case is cut-and-dried.
An apology:
That’s a fair criticism. I clearly am not acting in line with what this site is trying to be when I respond to people like that, and it says a lot more about me than it does about them. I have no desire to be the one who turns this place into scorched earth.
So, apologies to Clutzy, and others who were annoyed by the unnecessary bullshit, for all of that. This is the second time I’ve apologized for something along these lines [EDIT] in less than a week. So after this post I’ll withdraw for a little while, I’m clearly not being helpful.
An attempt to resurrect the point:
Duke was a Democrat until 30 years ago, yes. But he was one of the last holdouts of white supremacism in the party. They all left, starting in the 60’s, and joined one of the other major US parties (as Douglas Knight points out below, I was wrong about the timeline). They have, so far as I’m aware, no influence of any kind in the modern Democratic Party, and even when Duke was a member it was an embarrassment. Claiming he, and people like him, somehow represent the values or goals of the party, or have influence over it, is simply dishonest.
In terms of his (unwanted) endorsement of Omar… to a first approximation, all anti-semites and white supremacists are against Israeli government policies and against those who support the Israeli government. The inverse, however, does not hold. Worrying about AIPAC’s influence on the US government does not make one an anti-semite. As you are undoubtedly well aware, a significant fraction of American Jews feel the same way. Unconditional support for anything Israel does is the default position of both major US parties, which is not a healthy situation. Any attempt to point this out is immediately met with unjustified charges of anti-semitism, which is precisely what has happened to Omar.
Farrakhan… it’s more complicated than I was willing to acknowledge initially.
That’s it for now, I guess. I’ll be back in a couple of weeks, to your no-doubt unmitigated joy.
1984, not 1988, FWIW
Not that it is so important to your point, but your mention of the 60s seems to be an instance of a common misconception that the Democratic Solid South turned on a dime to become the Republican Solid South. But it was a much more drawn-out process and the timing varied from state to state. David Duke was a Democrat in Louisiana before he was a Republican in Louisiana. He did just as well (30%) running as a Democrat as he did running in Republican primaries or as a nominal Republican in non-partisan general elections. The difference was that the Democrats were a machine that he could only enter at a low level, while the Republicans were just getting started, so he was able to run state-wide races.
Thanks for the correction.
EDIT: both corrections.
The Solid South turned on a dime for presidential elections.
From 1948 forward it basically played ballerina, spinning on that civil rights dime. This is the fracturing of the FDR coalition, but parties aren’t nationalized yet. Many southern states continue to be one party “yellow dog” Democratic States, with NC as the the last holdout, basically surviving at the house legislative level until 2010. Not that the NC Democratic Party of 2008 looked like the one from 1948, mind you. There was a gradual bleed as both parties came into nationwide ideological conformity.
So yeah, much longer process to get to a nationwide party without holdover Democrats.
I don’t think that is so clear. Nixon won 49 states. That isn’t a turn for the south, that is just a whitewash. Reagan won 44 and 49 states. Again, that isn’t the south turning, its a whitewash.
From 1880 forward, after the end of Reconstruction, the solid south votes Democratic for President every year and never votes Republican. The interesting years in between are 1928 and 1968, where the Republican candidate was Catholic and lost some support in the South, and 1948 where some Southern states voted Dixiecrat, a party specifically created on a platform of support for segregation.
In 1964 Democrat LBJ wins in a landslide over Republican Barry Goldwater. The only states Goldwater wins are his home state of Arizona and the majority of Southern states.
That is what tuning on a dime looks like.
@HeelBearCub – yes, at the national level that is what happens. But institutional power is a complicated beast, and for various reasons more than a few of the southern racists stick around for a couple more decades. Including, as has been pointed out to me to my embarrassment, David Duke.
@HeelBearCub
“If you ignore all the times they voted republican before 1964 and all the times they voted democrat after, and call 5 states a majority of the south, the south turned on a dime!”
Technically true, I guess, but not exactly the most honest interpretation, especially when you consider how they immediately reverted in 1968. Eisenhower did well in the south, winning several states outright and coming very close (w/i a couple points) in several others. Nixon did a little worse in 1960, but he did a little worse everywhere. 1964 did not come out of left field, the republicans had been making southern inroads for a while, and post 1964, we see a reversion to the trend. 1964 is a fluke, but you’re counting it as a trend because it suits your ideological predispositions to do so.
Look at Nixon’s margin of victory: Wikipedia says that Nixon’s best states were:
Mississippi, Georgia, Oklahoma, Alabama, Florida, South Carolina before you hit a non-southern state, Nebraska. North Carolina, Arkansas, and non-southern Wyoming round out the top-ten. That’s 8 of 10 of Nixon’s best states coming from the South. The 11 former Confederate states are all in Nixon’s top 17 states. What’s more, by 1972 you should expect to see the effect of the Voting Rights Act (already by 1967 black voting registration in most southern states was higher than the highest registration rate in 1965), so this is almost certainly understating white southern support for Nixon. If you like, I can dig up the same data for Reagan, but we’ve had this discussion here before and the same pattern is broadly true: the South is by far Reagan’s best region in both 1980 and 1984.
So, to go from the Solid South with basically no Republican party to speak of to the vanguard of the emerging Reagan coalition seems like a pretty big switch to me. Especially since, as HBC points out, it was prefigured by votes for the Dixiecrats, Goldwater, and Wallace, none of whom had any meaningful success outside of the south electorally.
The South voting for Goldwater (to the extent it did) had more to do with LBJ backstabbing them on segregation than anything else, I expect. But as other folks already pointed out, that wasn’t a permanent shift, and the actual change happened over time.
@Eugene Dawn
Oklahoma isn’t traditionally considered southern and was nixon’s 3rd best state in 1960.
Quibbling aside though, in 1968, Nixon’s 5 worst states are Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, Georgia, and Arkansas. In 1976, Carter’s best states are Georgia, Arkansas, West Virginia, South Carolina, Massachusetts and in 1980, they’re Georgia, West Virginia, Tennessee, Mississippi, and South Carolina.
And the the southern states AREN’T the vanguard of the reagan coalition. No southern state is in the top 10 reagan states in either of his elections. Only 3 are there for bush in 88, and it’s not until 1992 that southern states dominate the republican slate. Even then things are little weird because Perot got 20% of the popular vote and every one of his worst 10 states was southern. This means that in 1992, the south was simultaneously both more democratic and more republican than the rest of the country by a substantial margin.
… and the fact that Goldwater supported the right for them to segregate. As did Wallace. As did Thurmond.
As far as Cassander chiming in, I really wish I had kept a link to the in detail fisking he got from, a poli-sci professor? Maybe? I would have thought he would stop with this argument after that.
I may have to resurrect the data analysis I was doing that showed the differential state by state popular vote totals and how they changed.
@cassander
I mean, Oklahoma obviously has some affinity for the south, and is counted as southern for some purposes. More importantly for the discussion here, Oklahoma had Jim Crow laws and disenfranchisement, including (I think?) the original grandfather clause.
But if you insist on this point, fine, only 7 of Nixon’s top ten states were southern.
I don’t see how the fact that five states from the solid south abandoned the Democrats for a segregationist in 1968 shows that the southern vote wasn’t “switching on a dime” on the issue of segregation.
I mean, I don’t want to press this point too much: “turning on a dime” isn’t my phrasing, and I’m happy to concede that the realignment didn’t happen over the course of literally one election.
I’m more interested here in countering that claim that the south’s support for Nixon and Reagan in ’72, ’80, and ’84 was simply a corollary of the fact that those elections were landslides: white southern support for Nixon and Reagan was greater than in any other part of the country, and going from the most Democratic-supporting region of the country to the most Republican-supporting region in a little over a decade is definitely “the south turning”.
Which brings us to
We’ve discussed this before, and as I pointed out then, this is only true if you ignore the fact that by the mid-’70s black voters are registered in large enough numbers in the south that even though southern whites were Reagan’s strongest supporters, the addition of a significant population of Democratic-voting blacks means that on net Reagan’s support in the south looks weak. Wikipedia says that Reagan won southern whites 60-35 in 1980; four years later the Atlantic implies that he won southern whites 72-28, well above his average margin. Continuing, this book lists Dukakis’s share among southern whites in different states; since there are no major 3rd party candidates we should expect Bush 88’s totals among southern whites to be pretty close to the complement; this suggests that Bush’s weakest state with southern whites was Texas, which he would have won 61-39. This is comparable to Bush’s 5th best total among all states (Florida, where he won 60.87% of the vote). Again, this is Bush’s worst result with southern whites, meaning that all 11 of the ex-confederate states were better for Bush than that, restricted to the white vote. In fact, five of those states are better than his best result state-by-state.
In summary then, the idea that southern white support for Nixon/Reagan/Bush is an artifact of strong support for these campaigns across the country is unfounded: southern whites were the strongest supporters of these campaigns, and going from a recent past where southern whites were the Democrats most reliable voting bloc, this is a real change with southern whites at the vanguard, not them meekly following along a path the rest of the country was beating ahead of them.
@heelbearcub
As I recall last time you did this analysis you were counting dixiecrats as republicans, and were comparing the southern vote to the total vote, not the non-southern vote. When you didn’t do that, your analysis didn’t back up your case.
@Eugene Dawn says:
Because the south had been doing for 2 decades prior to 1968?
Again, the south wasn’t solidly republican supporting until the 90s.
You can’t compare his southern white margin to his overall margin, you have to compare it to his non-southern white margin. in 1980, for example, reagan got >60% from Utah, Idaho, Nebraska, North Dakota, Wyoming, Nevada, Arizona, South Dakota, and oklahoma, most of which are substantially white today, and were moresoe back then.
This is missing the qualification “at the presidential level”, which I think is obvious from context, but fine.
As I say, the “turning on a dime” part isn’t something I’m interested in defending; I’m fine conceding that the switch happened over a period of time; but I am definitely defending that the magnitude of the turn was big: that southerners were not reluctant stragglers into the Republican coalition, they were trailblazers.
This is correct. According to the Rise of Southern Republicans, Nixon won 80% of the white southern vote in 1972. It confirms that Reagan won 61% of the white southern vote in 1980, and 72% in 1984.
In 1972, Nixon”s best majority-white states were Wyoming (69%), Utah (68%), Idaho (64%), and so on…all substantially lower than his 80% among southern whites, even before discounting for the fact that they were not 100% white.
In 1980, the states you list, after accounting for %-white are probably all in the neighbourhood of 60-68% (I used a 95% white assumption, which is true for Utah in 1980); so comparable to southern whites. On the other hand, the Wiki link I posted earlier states that Reagan won 55% of whites generally, suggesting that both the mountain west and the south were better regions for Reagan than the rest of the country. So it’s true, in this case the Republicans were not right at the front of the wave, but they were alongside or just behind Reagan’s leading edge.
In 1984, Reagan’s best majority-white state was again Utah, at 74%–after discounting for percent white, it’s clear that in 1984 southern whites were a better group for Reagan than even whites in the mountain west.
I can do 1988 later if you like, and 1964 is obviously Republicans ahead of the rest of the country. So, from 1964 – 1984 (and I suspect 1988 as well), with the exception of 1968, southern whites were the strongest or second-strongest group for Republicans, often by a dramatic amount.
In short then, the south was either far at the leading edge or near the leading edge alongside whites in the mountain west in Republican landslides, and still not stragglers or reluctantly pulled along with the tide.
I’m not sure what this is supposed to mean. There’s no doubt that the south is solidly democratic in 1920 and solidly republican by 2000. There’s no question about the magnitude of the change, the question is timing.
And what were their shares of the non-southern white vote? or even better, break out the west, mid-west, and northeast. Because if the white share of the vote is plummeting for ideological reasons in the northeast
There are only 9 states that were less than 70% white in 1990, and none of them are the states I mentioned. And reagan did get ~15% of the black vote and 1/3 of the hispanic, so the assumption that all non-whites didn’t vote for him is going to throw things off.
I don’t think we have established this. You’re claiming that Reagan won 61% of the white southern vote in 1980, and 72% in 1984. This is compared to an overall white vote of 56%, and 64%. That’s not a very large gap, especially when we consider that support for reagan among non-southern whites was far from uniform, and we could easily be seeing rising western numbers getting obscured by falling northeastern.
OK.
A while back I grabbed the state by state candidate popular vote total data for each presidential election. I had to do a little bit to it to get in a format that particularly usable.
Here is the first chart from the effort.
Here we see the percentage of total vote the Democratic candidate received from 1880 through 2016 in the Southern states and the non-Southern states. The Black Belt states, where slave concentrations were highest, are also broken out separately.
1948 is a clear trend point.
Black Belt – Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia
Additional Southern States – Florida, Tennessee, Texas, Kentucky*, Oklahoma*, West Virginia*
* – Not part of the Confederacy.
… and here is the chart of Republican Presidential Performance.
So, before 1964, Republicans had never over-performed in the South.
1964 is the first time Republicans over-perform in the South.
In 1968, Wallace runs as the 3rd party segregation candidate. Republicans under-perform in the South, but so do the Democrats, and by more. Republicans outperform Democrats in South.
In 1972, Republicans outperform in the South and win.
In 1976, Carter Carter is running as a favorite son of Georgia. And Republicans under-perform in the South and Democrats over-perform.
In 1980, Democrats over-perform in the South, but Republicans basically perform as well in the South as anywhere else.
From 1984 forward, Republicans over-perform in the South compared to everywhere else.
ETA:
It’s certainly possible I made a copy/paste or formula mistake at some point, so if someone sees something that looks off, please let me know.
I just mean that Clutzy’s original argument that white southerners switching to Republican is not merely an artifact of the Nixon/Reagan landslides: they were leading the curve.
I might try and find more info on this later, but the Reagan coalition link I put up earlier says far west was Reagan’s next best region at 53-35; this against 60-35 among white southerners. They don’t break out far west whites but I think there’s a lot of circumstantial evidence adding up that southern whites really were the vanguard here. Also worth noting the comparison with 1976–the only region with a major change from ’76 to ’80 is the south, which mostly seems driven by southern whites.
You’re welcome to find statistics that show that southern whites were not the strongest Nixon/Reagan supporters, but provisionally, all the evidence is pointing that direction. An 8% gap isn’t huge, but a) 1980 is the year with the smallest effect as far as I can tell, and b) white southerners make up that 55% as well–the gap ought to be between southern whites and non-southern whites. I can’t find this data, but again, all the evidence seems to bear out my argument. I agree it’s not ironclad, but I think it’s incumbent on those who disagree to find some statistics to show otherwise.
Anyways, I’m incredibly partisan about these things, but the reason why there isn’t an equivalency between the Democrats and the Republicans on these things is that there is no equivalent to Steve King or David Duke in the Democratic Party, not since the 1960’s
There’s a strong amount of circularity here, if the party agrees not to condemn the rhetoric of a particular person or a particular set of ideas, but the other *does*, then the party that doesn’t punch it’s radicals can say that it doesn’t have equivalents.
Letting the Overton window dictate what is and isn’t radical is a non-starter. Whoever compromises loses ground to maneuver intellectuals and whoever remains intransigent or even radicalizes gets the opposite.
I’m not implying that I have an methodology that’s flawless that can define what is and isn’t a radical. Whatever method I use will fail because the other side doesn’t see what I see. Only that, by virtue of the fact that the two tribes don’t merely have different priorities, they are living in fundamentally different moral and empirical realities. They can’t agree on what constitutes threats of violence, what constitutes harm, on the definition of genocide, on the definition of ‘power’ or ‘privilege’, etc.
The closest thing I can think of would be to judge a statement made by someone by flipping/inverting the nouns used, but even that is objected to on the grounds that differential treatment is a necessary component of the equalization process. So saying something about ‘males’ is not equally radical if the word ‘male’ is replaced with ‘female’ and so on.
Another approach is to simply look at the treatment of the most radical percentile of a party or organization through time, but again the counter argument might be that one side’s top percentile is qualitatively worse than another’s and so deserves that treatment.
What’s the difference between Steve King and Omar/Sarsour? Steve King was censured for palling around with unsavory types (Faith Goldy, European nationalist groups). And I think Paul Ryan was also mad about him criticizing George Soros, calling that “anti-semitic.” I think that’s an example of burning the Jewish commons. Criticism of George Soros for funding subversive groups happens because George Soros funds subversive groups, not because Soros is Jewish. If we’re going to extend charity to Omar, that her criticisms of AIPAC are because she’s super concerned about foreign influence and not “because Jews,” why not do the same for King? What’s the difference?
While criticizing Soros for his actual involvement in many other countries is legitimate, Soros is frequently criticized even in countries where he is not involved anymore.
They already kicked out Soros out of Hungary and Russia; why do they keep obsessing oven him?
Once the Americans kick out the AIPAC and stop the lobbying of the different pro-Israel groups, then criticizing those groups will be as ridiculous as criticizing Soros is.
Steve King is American, and Soros has not been kicked out of America.
What are Hungary and Russia’s criticisms?
I am not sure how American Soros-bashing works or what exactly the say; I just thought it would be similar to the Hungarian/Russian.
This article gives you an idea.
Hungary is still under foreign diplomatic pressure due to its immigration policies, As is Russia albeit for different reasons. Whether or not OS or related NGOs are a factor to why foreign governments act this way is an empirical question.
Also, Even if AIPAC lobbying were to cease (which for practical purposes is next to zero in probability) you would still likely get condemnation of the Israeli State as-such. (i.e. if it decided to annex the west bank, expel the people living there, etc.)
The “Soros-bashing” in the US is along the lines of “here’s some group agitating for progressive social/political causes. Let’s see if they’re funded in whole or part by George Soros. Oh look, they are.” MoveOn.org, BLM, various feminist and pro-immigration (legal or otherwise) groups.
The guy gives lots and lots of money to progressive causes. People get mad at him for giving lots and lots of money to progressive causes. Calling that “anti-semitism” is disingenuous. When somebody gets mad at the Koch brothers for funding libertarian/right stuff, nobody accuses of them of anti-Christian bias.
@Conrad
Are the Koch brothers gentiles?
To my knowledge, yes. I looked at some wikipedia pages for the Kochs and saw only references to episcopalian ancestors and nothing to do with a Jewish heritage. I could be wrong, I’m hardly an expert on them.
Except when they aren’t, but the fake conspiracies are still spread by people who go on to the commit the largest antisemitic murder in US history.
As ana says, criticising Soros is certainly legitimate, but spreading conspiracy theories in which he masterminds all the political causes you don’t like is not just run-of-the-mill criticism.
@RalMirrorAd
Yes, the Kochs are non-Jewish. If you want an analogy on the left, you’re better off trying Sheldon Adelson.
Criticising Soros can fall into the classic anti-semitic line of “Jews are subversive leftists” or the line “Jews are rich puppeteers” (or sometimes both, somehow). Certainly it doesn’t have to, and I expect there are cases of people being unjustifiably accused of anti-semitism for criticising Soros (symmetrical to accusations against people who are reasonably criticising Israel). But in this instance, King’s criticism seems to have involved answering “I guess Soros is part [of it]” to a question of who to blame for the “Great Replacement”, which seems pretty dubious to me.
Yes, exactly what I meant. It’s OK to criticize George Soros for supporting BDS, or for donating money to anti-Brexit campaigns, or for pushing for more sanctions against Russia. I don’t think any of these things are wrong, but if you, say, think that a foreigner should not give money to another country’s political campaign, that’s a perfectly legitimate criticism.
It doesn’t seem to me that Steve King was making concrete accusations against him, but was making up stuff about some “Great Replacement” craziness.
If accusations are concrete, refutable, and based on some fact, then it’s OK. If they are non-refutable (and conspiracy theories never are), then they are smears. Even if Soros opens the books of his foundation, these accusations will continue to pour in.
@RalMirrorAd
Sure, criticism against Israel would continue, until they solve the issues with Palestine. But if AIPAC and all Jewish lobbies disappear somehow, because lobbying is banned or whatever, and Sheldon Addelson is still accused of lobbying from abroad, without specifying how he does it, then you can equal that to the criticism of Steve King. I was just pointing out the difference between the two.
The criticism of Soros in Russia and Hungary are not just about his alleged influence on the EU or the US. They frequently make up stories about him somehow influencing and financing pro-refugee, pro-gay and all kind of other groups inside those countries through some mysterious, undocumented and unprovable ways.
Except when they are, though. That some wacky (or evil or crazy) people make exaggerated claims about Soros does not make the many, many legitimate criticisms of him false. The guy funds an awful lot of activist groups. It is not uncommon to see some protest, do some digging to find out what group the leaders are working for, and then find out some or much of their funding comes from Soros.
If the media mentions that these people are professional activists at all it’s buried deep in the article. Here’s the Guardian’s take.
Emotional headline, photo, emotional introductions. Four paragraphs later they say “oh by the way she works for some group that sounds nice.” And then it’s right back to another couple dozen paragraphs of emotional rhetoric. They’re not technically lying, though! But how many people reading the Guardian or watching the clip on CNN do you think understand this is an activist doing her activist job? Not very many, and that’s the whole point. Confuse theater for reality to mislead the public.
This is how the propaganda works. Soros finds crazies, pays them to be crazy, and then the media reports on the crazy as if it’s natural and organic. But it’s not. It’s all theater that probably wouldn’t exist if George weren’t paying for it. And he does this over and over and over again. If there’s somebody attacking the social fabric in some way, Soros will cut them a check.
And then when you point this out, they yell “antisemitism!” because why the hell not.
Of course not, but given that many (not some) wacky and evil and crazy people make exaggerated, antisemitic claims about Soros that have prompted in recent months both an assassination attempt on Soros and a massacre of Jews based on one of those false antisemitic theories, it is incumbent on those making legitimate criticisms to put in an effort to distinguish their criticisms from the antisemitic sludge.
Great, I expect that from now on every time you criticize Trump you will include several paragraphs of disclaimers distancing yourself from people who have made death threats against Trump or attempted to attack or kill him. If you don’t, you’re just as evil and crazy as they are.
@Conrad Honcho
You are being facetious. Disclaimers are not necessary; making sure to fact check and providing evidence that backs your assertions is enough.
Most of the whacky theories do neither of those things.
Except Eugene still lumps erroneous criticisms in with “antisemitic sludge.” The three Snopes articles he links are erroneously criticizing Soros for political stuff. None of them say anything about his ethnic heritage. Ctrl-F “Jew” turns up nothing.
The accurate criticisms of Soros are about his politics, not his Jewishness.
The vast, vast, vast, vast majority of erroneous criticisms of Soros are about his politics, not his Jewishness.
Insinuating (or rather, outright stating) that the political criticisms of Soros are antisemitic in nature is poisoning the well.
Conrad,
In the particular example you gave, your source’s source claims that Soros provided about 20% of the funding in 2016. That’s substantial, but it doesn’t justify your last phrasing, that they wouldn’t do it without him. And in 2017 he only gave 2%, which is typical of numbers I have seen in these contexts.
Agreed, Douglas, withdrawn.
Just to be clear, all of the conservatives I know who are older than say, 40 years old, hate George Soros but think that he [soros] is an Anti-semite, and to said conservatives being an anti-semite is a bad thing.
They say this on the grounds that he is anti-israel (by their estimation) and also because he worked at one of the concentration camps.
Said conservatives would still be labeled anti-semites because they most likely would agree that Soros is a “Rootless Cosmopolitan”; to a large extent because the label appears apt [to them] and because they were never taught or never internalized the meme/stereotype of ‘The wealthy jewish person financing political movements aimed at destabilizing gentile nations’.
A left winger looking at an older conservative probably thinks said conservative is playing some kind of trick. Take it from me that these people are both ignorantly sincere and sincerely ignorant.
However, younger more internet-savvy conservatives are likely aware of this phenomenon.
______________
@eugene
I know about Adelson, but I wasn’t sure one way or another about the Koch Brothers.
It should be clarified that of the various thing Soros has been accused of, “working at a concentration camp” is a new (false) escalation.
The issue is not that the criticisms are erroneous, as if someone just misread a footnote in the Encyclopedia Brittanica, it’s that they are completely invented out of nothing except re-used antisemitic stereotypes.
If you look at the caravan thing, for example, the entire basis for the claim is that someone was handing out money to the caravaners so they could “storm the border”. And who has lots of money? Why, famous Jew George Soros!
Note that Matt Gaetz Tweeted this completely baseless speculation out before “investigating the source”. He wasn’t making a mistake, he was deliberately making a spurious claim because Soros is a convenient villain. Ten days later, a synagogue was shot up by someone upset that Jewish groups were “bring[ing] in invaders”.
But yes, me saying temperate but negative things about Trump pseudonymously on a blog is the exact same as a sitting congressman inventing a conspiracy theory about a Jewish private citizen that mirrors antisemitic conspiracy theories that are literally inciting murders.
Famous open-borders supporting activist leftist billionaire George Soros. Calling that antisemitism is a stretch Reed Richards couldn’t make in a million years.
The allegation is that he was paying out individual caravan members to “storm the border” based literally only on the fact that money was being handed out. Does this sound like how you think George Soros supports open borders?
Is there some sort of standard anti-semitic libel about Jews that would result in accusations of paying migrants to storm the border? Certainly I don’t know any.
Soros is accused of funding the caravan because it is indeed the sort of thing his organizations would do. If he wasn’t actually involved, that’s error, but not anti-semitism. Erroneously criticizing a Jewish person does not come near the bar for anti-semitism.
If “funding the caravan” means paying people to join it (rather than e.g. general humanitarian efforts directed at migrants) then no it really isn’t. That’s a ludicrous conspiracy theory. Accusing Jews of being behind ludicrous conspiracies isn’t inherently anti-semitic, but it’s usually good evidence of it.
And falsely accusing Jews of being Nazi collaborators like someone upthread did is even stronger evidence.
That’s not evidence of anti-Semitism at all. That’s just calling any attack on a Jewish person evidence of anti-Semitism. When various people called Moldbug a Nazi, they were ridiculous, but they weren’t anti-Semitic
Criticizing Soros for spending his money on bad causes or in bad ways isn’t anti-Semitic, even if people get it wrong, especially since 1) the criticism would be leveled even if he was a practicing Catholic and 2) he does spend significant money in political causes in less than straight-forward manners.
We just had this argument about racism.
“If you do something that racists do, it’s racism”
vs
“An action needs to actually be racially discriminatory to be racist”
If you prove something is malicious slander, how does it make it worse if it is anti-x-ist malicious slander?
Conversely, if you show someone is loose with the truth in an unbigoted way, have you really absolved them of anything?
I don’t mean to pass judgment on the specific claims, but only to refute the accusation that the claims are anti-Semitic.
@Eugene – IMHO, the interesting thing about comparing Soros and the Kochs is specifically that the Kochs aren’t Jewish, not that they’re more right-ing/libertarian.
If the natural response of all idiots is to try to delegitimize opposition by arguing that it’s paid for by shadowy funders on the other side, and to try to silence the other side by cutting off their funding sources, then it may be relevant that Soros and the Kochs get treated the same.
I guess on the other side, you can argue that treating Soros the same as the Kochs is more harmful because accusing Soros of being a shadowy manipulator might encourage anti-Semitic stereotypes, and doing the same to the Kochs only encourages stereotypes against the rich, the oil industry, etc.
(And of course, putting a six pointed star on your Soros fliers is more offensive than putting an octopus on your Koch fliers, but I don’t think anyone disagrees with that.)
So the phrase “Jews will not replace us” rings no bells? The fact that someone shot up a synagogue ten days later to prevent Jews from bringing “invaders”?
it’s calling a baseless attack on a Jewish person that feeds into an antisemitic conspiracy theory antisemitism.
Again, the manner of criticism matters, and it's not that people "got it wrong" it's that they invented out if whole cloth. Also, what is less than straightforward about Soros's spending?
First of all, let’s get everyone on the same page that it’s malicious slander. Then, I’ll point out that spreading antisemitic conspiracy theories harms people other than the specific figure being targeted. Accusing Soros of importing immigrants to attack America lends weight to the more explicitly antisemitic conspiracies and endangers Jews more generally, not just Soros.
Calling Moldbug or another Jewish person a Nazi (as in a modern person the speaker claims shares relevant characters with the organisation lead by Hitler) isn’t anti-semitic in my opinion (although c.f. Ken Livingstone Hitler/Zionism). But falsely accusing a Jew of being a literal Nazi (as in a member of the National Socialist party lead by Adolf Hitler in the early 1940s) is different.
@Conrad Honcho
Steve King asked in an interview, “White nationalist, white supremacist, Western civilization — how did that language become offensive?”
Can you find me a similar question from either Omar or Sarsour? He explicitly did not get into trouble for the palling around. I would argue that his palling around is a lot more significant than Omar’s or Sarsour’s, but even if you reject that, palling around he got away with. It’s only saying something problematic on the record that gets you in trouble.
I actually agree that what Omar said was a problem, and it was right and proper for her to apologize for it. But it was well short of what King said. And if she were to ever say to an interviewer, “Anti-Semitism, what’s so wrong with that? Maybe the Jews should just be less greedy.” She’d be persona non grata, and rightly so.
King disputes that. It’s possible he was stumbling over words or a poor transcription in the interview making the statement worse than it is.
The original Times interview supports that, imo:
I’d like to know what was said by King immediately before the quoted section.
(If those were his unaltered, written remarks, that’s another story–but the Times interview says he “said” that, so I don’t think so).
Still, when you’re a controversial figure already, you should basically never say bad words related to that controversy if you don’t want them taken out of context, especially in an interview with your enemies.
@Randy M,
I mean, sure he disputes it, he crossed a line and got in trouble. To me, the two paragraph version you quoted doesn’t look much better than the bit I did, but more context is always good and he’s certainly in my outgroup, to use the local parlance.
It is possible he was misquoted to his detriment. And here, his long history of being provocative without quite hitting the line probably is coming into play. If he was a model of good behavior on these issues throughout his career, this happens, he says he was misquoted and didn’t mean it that way, and this likely blows over.
But he’s Steve King, who endorsed the Canadian who uses the 14 words and thinks it’s a hundred to one drug mules to valedictorians among the dreamers. Think pieces can (and did) pull out decades of quotes that look pretty racist, so leadership cuts him off hard.
It’s not getting censored by palling around with unsavory types, but it probably is getting censored for saying something ugly and then having that history to point at. And it is different from Omar or Sarsour. Sarsour in particular doesn’t seem to have even done much of anything as far as I can see. What has she done to be lumped in with Omar and King?
I quoted those two consecutive paragraphs to demonstrate that whatever King said in the run up to that quote was omitted, and it could very well be an explicit disavowal of what the Times purports it to be. The rest of the actually quoted lines is consistent with that interpretation, moreso than racism.
King is certainly a nationalist, which is beyond the pale in polite (ie, non-deplorable) society at this point. He may be a White supremecist, or he may be an idiot for doing an interview with the times.
But consider the hypothetical where an Islamic lawmaker in American talks about their support for capital punishment. (Not using names so this isn’t misconstrued as an accusation–hypothetical).
The article states “Rep. So-and-so has worked with a cross denominational group to advance criminal justice concerns. But she states:
‘Infidels, apostates, murderers–that’s who capital punishment should be for.'”
It matters if the original statement was”Unlike radical Imams in theocracies, I don’t support punishment of Infidels, apostates. Murderers–that’s who capital punishment should be for.”
And I don’t put it past the Times to mangle the quote intentionally. Not after Covington, etc.
@Milo Minderbinder,
Check thid out:
- Nancy PelosiAnd in response Ilhan Omar apologized
(Unfortunately “bubbles” do that, until your post I didn’t know King had been censured by fellow Republicans, I presume you’re a Republican, and I’m a Democrat, going outside “bubbles” is why spaces like this to communicate are good)
You would do well to see what happened after that. There was a vote to officially censor her in the House for antisemitic comments, but Pelosi couldn’t even get that to the floor for a vote. Instead Omar and her allies changed it into a nonspecific condemnation of all hate that somehow also included condemnation of anti-muslim bias.
TLDR, Pelosi ended up with her tail between her legs.
The nice thing about being a diversity coalition is that being that places limiters on the degree of “help I’m being hated” that’s possible that weren’t really there during the Great Evangelical Fundamentalization (for example).
Re: the above that Hoopyfreud wrote and what Clutzy said about Pelosi ended up with her tail between her legs”, I think the interesting thing going on in the Democratic Party right now is this re-alignment; the Old Guard (like Pelosi) do seem to be losing ground and influence, whether or not they’re currently still in possession of positions of power, and the future seems to belong to the Omars and Ocasio-Cortezes (whether that really shakes out in fact, who can forecast?)
So I’d be less sanguine about “diversity splintering means no one group in the herd of cats is strong enough to push the Oppression Olympics agenda” and more “the move and mood is tilting towards the progressives, and you’re going to get ‘asking me to debate is the same thing as catcalling’ victimisation politics happening as a strategy”.
Indeed, the “help I’m being hated” angle is being pushed right now – Ocasio-Cortez claiming Omar is in danger of her life due to death threats becuase of conservatives objecting to her characterising 9/11 as “someone did something” (and indeed that she herself is receiving death threats and is endangered due to her views):
My God, the Ohio Federation of College Republicans? Will no-one take a stand against these dangerous and likely gun-toting school-shooting fanatics? Where is the SPLC when you really need them?
EDIT: To make myself clear, I disagree with the Ohio Young Republicans – she’s not a terrorist domestic or otherwise, she’s a loudmouth politician who is working the particular angle that got her elected like any other ambitious politician. But because she’s a loudmouth, naturally she’s seizing on the opportunity to portray her opponents as motivating nutcases to try and kill her, so both sides should shut up and stop being so dramatic and over the top.
To be clear, I worry a lot about the structural instability this implies and I do my best to convince people that it’s Very Bad and that they should Stop Please for the Love of God.
I just also think that while this dynamic has alarming social implications, it doesn’t have alarming first-order policy implications, and that the infighting about policy makes a return to normalcy marginally more likely than a hard pivot, as long as there are people actively advocating for a return to normalcy.
In other words, I hope that the lack of a stable equilibrium makes it possible to put the genie back in the bottle.
@Clutzy,
That’s news to me.
Thanks.
No, your filter was working. The official House vote and the political jockeying surround it and the coverage of said and the coverage of the coverage was the most insipid round of political theater I’ve seen in a while. It’s rarely a good idea to trust people to summarize their opponent’s position, but in cases with that level of deliberately obtuse pontificating you couldn’t have even trusted people to relate their own position accurately.
Her “unequivocal apology” was immediately followed by equivocation.
Note that, without going into the details, the phenomenon you describe isn’t limited to party machines, it’s also present to some degree in think tanks and activist groups. Think national review.
So trying to explain the phenomenon in terms of electoral pressure probably is misplaced.
Study into multiculturalism found that emphasizing the value of racial differences causes an increased belief in race essentialism (that biological factors underpin the differences). Full study.
If you tell people that it’s important to bring in representatives of other races and that the same cannot be achieved by bringing in people of different backgrounds, but the same race as your own, you’ll end up with folks thinking that racial differences are a really big and important thing. Who’da thunk?
A lot of pixels have been spilled over whether fascists and Nazis were socialist. Perhaps a better way to describe them is anti-capitalist, where capitalism is a competitive model and anti-capitalists are united in a desire for a cooperative model. Collective ownership over the means of production is merely one such model, with corporatism being another. Corporatism is the organization of society along corporate groups. This is fundamentally a communitarian model, as opposed to individualism. People are expected to look out for each other, making ‘reasonable’ choices, rather than look out for number 1, making selfish choices.
I think that The Netherlands is especially communitarian, with a lot of focus on consensus decision making. For example, unions traditionally meet with corporate representatives to make plans about social policies, which the government then tends to facilitate with laws. In corporations with 50+ employees, it is mandatory to have an Employees Council whose members are elected by the employees and who have to be asked advice for large decisions about the direction of the company, who have a soft veto over personnel decisions (the company can go to a judge if they disagree with the veto), have the right to speak at shareholders’ meetings, etc.
If this model works reasonably well, decisions are made with support from all stakeholders. A typically Dutch word is ‘draagvlak,’ which literally means foundation or bearing surface. It refers to the existence of support from stakeholders for a decision. Dutch people love discussing whether a decision has ‘draagvlak’.
Perhaps the greatest strength of the communitarian model is that it allows more easily for grand collective and long-lasting initiatives. The reason why The Netherlands chose this model may be the common struggle against floods, where dike-based solutions don’t allow for individual solutions or strong resistance. The strong overarching interest means that there is a strong incentive to cooperate and find solutions for the lesser conflicts that pale in the face of death by drowning (yet are still important to people). This is also a weakness: you are expected to conform to the consensus and to merely ask for minor changes to it. Large disagreements are not accepted and people can thus feel stifled.
This is a very different model from the French one, which is way more antagonistic. The French people typically seem to feel quite angry at decisions of their companies & government, reacting with demonstrations and strikes to force change. In general, the French don’t love compromise, but desire perfection, which is why they have so many philosophers.
The American model is again different and much more accepting of the powerful & strong getting their way, as long as the power and strength comes from ‘merit’. It is very individualist.
—
One can then make a map of the political spectrum with four quadrants: communitarianism vs indivualism and egalitarian vs hierarchical.
Dutch culture would then be more toward the bottom right and Americans more towards the left (being centrist between hierarchy and egalitarianism). The French would then be extremely far towards egalitarianism, but centrist when it comes to communitarianism vs indivualism.
I placed these cultures on the map based on their predispositions, not outcome. An issue is that certain predispositions contain contradictions. For example, I think that America has moved towards greater individualism, which has resulted in more hierarchical outcomes, which go against the American self-image of how they should balance hierarchy and egalitarianism. For example, I would argue that the ‘American Dream’ is a synonym for social mobility, which has declined severely (and increased in much of Europe), to a point where the American Dream is less true in America than in Europe. So the American desire for a (meritorious) balance between egalitarianism and hierarchy is incompatible with great individualism & something has to give.
—
Communism is the desire for extreme egalitarianism and extreme communitarianism, to an extent that goes strongly against human nature. So any (sub) society that tries the actual communist ideal tends to either only work with a small group of weirdos, or will start moving to more individualism and hierarchy. Some communists then respond to this by very hierarchical and not very communitarian decision making and policing to try to force people to act very egalitarian and communitarian, with poor results. The people who are drawn to these very hierarchical and not very communitarian positions of power are not going to be very egalitarian and communitarian, so such a system has to become corrupted.
I think that fascism can be best seen as the desire for extreme communitarianism, where the people act with a common purpose, but with a moderate desire for egalitarianism. Just like communists, they can’t get anywhere by merely asking people to spontaneously act according to these extremist ideals, which results in frustration, which causes a desire for radical solutions. Both communism and fascism tended to blame the lack of success on subversive elements, which needed to be suppressed/eradicated to bring out the true nature of the people. Under communism, the ideology prescribes that this subversion is aligned by class, so the primary explanation of why the Utopia failed to emerge was that certain classes were sabotaging society. Fascism doesn’t have such a neat answer, which is probably why it is much more prone turn to turning to classic forms of tribalism, along the lines of ethnicity and race.
Interestingly, Stalin also employed a decent amount of ethnic and racial antagonism, even though the ideology rejects these. Perhaps ethnic and racial antagonism is so strong that when there is a desire for oppression to get people to do the ‘right thing’, these divisions almost offer themselves up to be used. So perhaps fascism then didn’t so much seek out ethnic and racial antagonism, but it left a huge gap in which these forms of antagonism, that come so easily to people, slotted themselves easily.
not only pixels
https://dchhaddendum.libsyn.com/ep7-hardcore-history-on-fire
Was the german economy under Hitler impressive? Or just a thing of them focusing on the war non stop?
Cause if so, efficiency may not be due to competition but to the relative freedom in how they ran the companies.
Otherwise it’s just business as usual. I assume that a non-warring Nazi Germany would have been left behind by economies that allowed heavy competition, tho.
@JPNunez
A major component of the actual policies of Mussolini and Hitler was a belief in a competition between nations, based in large part on who had the most, rather than just the best cooperating population. This in turn led to a belief that such a large population and a matching strong economy needed lots more resources than they had, leading to a demand for more lebensraum.
With the other strong nations already having taken almost all colonies, this then could only be achieved by taking land from other strong nations.
Arguably, the movements/regimes got so wrapped up in this, that the communitarian ideals fell by the wayside. Increasingly, everything was made subservient to conquering lots of land.
I’ve heard both that the recovery was genuine and that it was entirely fake.
It’s hard to argue about the effectiveness of the pre-war german economy when those arguing it was fake claim that all government statistics of the era were doctored.
I find it hard to believe that the explosive popularity of the nazi party from 33-35 was a result of merely fooling the public into thinking their lives were better than before. Obviously propaganda is important, but propaganda is most effective when there’s some fundamental reality backing it up, at least in part.
FYI i consider the argument about whether Natsocs are socialists to be largely semantic. People who dislike the socialism of the left will say it is and those that identify with socialism or democratic socialism in some form will say it isn’t.
There should not be much disagreement on the extent to which companies were nationalized or controlled, whether you call that extent socialism or not is either a naming preference and/or an attempt to play guilt by association. I say this as someone who is partial to the market economy so I don’t think I’m
It’s sort of an inversion of the brow-furrowing over whether a particular social convention is racist or not in light of the fact that being called a racist is extremely dangerous label to have affixed to oneself.
There was probably less control exercised in Nazi Germany then under the USSR at least prior to 39, perhaps a bit more than was exercised by the US/UK/France at this time depending on what you’re looking at. If there’s no disagreement about the low level facts, the high-level definitions become largely irrelevant.
The general sense I’ve got from reading about this is, there was a boost, but it was exaggerated, and the Nazis ended up taking credit for some things they hadn’t been responsible for. Some amount of the Nazis’ popularity was due less to material benefits for people, and more due to “national pride”, the sense that someone was doing something, and carefully coordinated propaganda with a touch of fear (most German gentiles wouldn’t see really major repression until the end of the war, but if you were a communist or a a social democrat of any importance, you’d be treated quite roughly, even early on).
Once the war started, the German war economy was one of their weak points. The degree to which this was mishandling versus an inherent inferiority to the US and USSR is debatable.
Is it possible the boost is just a recovery from a crisis, aka regression to the mean?
@dndnrsn
Brüning had very a austere economic policy, which probably contributed a lot to the economic problems.
I think that the Nazi policy probably did help a lot, because it was similar to the New Deal.
And the outcome of the New Deal was the worst depression in U.S. history, so obviously it must have helped a lot?
Er… the Great Depression was a result of the New Deal?
@dick:
This is David Friedman you are talking to. He has his arguments, but they aren’t the conventional ones AFAIK. Best to keep that in mind, as he might not even present a summary of the Keynesian argument.
@dick
My guess is that @DavidFriedman believes that without the New Deal the depression would’ve ended sooner and be less of a Great Depression.
@Plumber:
Given that it had already been a depression for over 3 years before FDR even took office, it was already pretty damn Great.
But, to be more charitable to what I understand his actual argument to be, he says that the Hoover administration had already engaged in stimulus and I believe his position is that this behavior is what started the depression, which FDR further exacerbated. Although, I haven’t heard his articulation of the precise nature of the stimulus Hoover took.
@HeelBearCub
I don’t disagree.
The usual narrative I read is that Keynesian stimulus worked, and when it was pulled back in ’37 to be “fiscally prudent” the Depression came roaring back, and that maybe if stimulus spending that was to the scale of the war had been tried earlier the Depression could have ended sooner.
I confess I didn’t understand the counter argument enough to remember it, something about stuff needing “to be worked out of the system”.
As it is, with the cold war coming right on the heels of WW2, and the “War on Terror” starting hardly a decade after the fall of the Soviet Union, the U.S.A. has never really ended the “weapimized Keynesism”.
The outcome of the Great Depression–the fact that it kept going long after first Hoover and then FDR adopted similar policies designed to end it—is evidence against the claim that those policies worked.
Two people get sick. One gets some medical treatment for his illness. He remains sick for ten years, then recovers. The other, with no treatment, recovers in three years. Wouldn’t it be odd to take that as evidence that the treatment worked?
For a real world comparison, not of the New Deal approach to nothing but to very nearly the opposite, take a look at the Great Depression that didn’t happen.
Dealing with the Great Depression by sharply expanding government spending didn’t start with FDR. In the final three years of Hoover’s term, Federal expenditure, measured in real terms, roughly doubled. Measured relative to GDP, it nearly tripled. FDR continued the same policies, with a brief excursion into ones aimed at government control along the lines of the contemporary Italian government, which FDR (and some other contemporary Americans)appears to have admired.
FWIW the British government of the time went in for fiscal retrenchment, and the Depression over here was a lot less severe and long-lasting than in the US.
@RalMirrorAd & dndnrsn
the nazis started spending a lot of money, running down capital stocks, and, and building up the army. This did have a sort of animal spirits effect, and created the appearance of prosperity, but it was all running on borrowed time and was totally unsustainable. The people running the show were aware of this, and it actually explains the extreme aggressiveness of nazi pre-war diplomacy. By the late 30s, they’re simply out of money and can only keep things going by seizing countries and their reserves of gold and hard currency to keep things going. Some of the anti-jewish legislation was also explicitly intended as a way to raise more money for the state.
Once the war starts, the plunder policies only get more explicit. Hitler is convinced that the failure of WW1 was in large part due to the government requiring too large a reduction in civilian living standards, and I don’t think he was entirely wrong in that assessment. It’s worth remembering that the germans fought longer and harder for Hitler than they did for the kaiser, and there was never a revolution despite far greater battlefield losses.
Ultimately, though, the germans were facing material balance of forces that was much worse than what the Kaiser was up against. They could have had a perfectly planned war economy, not wasted a single man hour, and they still been out-produced several to one in everything that mattered, and by an order of magnitude in some critical goods like oil, aircraft, trucks.
And that’s before you consider what was arguably the most critical good of all, nuclear weapons. After the US enters the war, all the germans are really capable of achieving is holding out long enough to ensure that little boy falls on berlin. Once that happens, the end of the war is at most months away regardless of the situation on the ground. Hitler would order the luftwaffe to engage in suicide attacks, they would fail to stop the bombs from dropping, Hitler would swear to fight forever, and his generals would kill him and sue for peace.
All more or less correct – although the second point, are you going by Aly? I think Evans has cast some doubt on his thesis. There’s competing explanations for why the Germans fought as late as they did.
And, yeah, the Germans were probably screwed from the start. Their only chance of winning after they declared war on the USSR and US was a really dramatic victory in ’41 or ’42 that would spook the leadership of their enemies, or the publics of the democracies. Which is a big if.
Declaring war on the USSR was a desperate gamble, but not an unnecessary mistake, and Hitler’s reasoning in declaring war on the United States (that he effectively already was at war with the U.S. anyway with the amount of help the Americans were providing to the British) was not actually that far wrong. Just to continue the fight against the American-backed U.K., the Germans desperately needed resources from the Soviet Union. Which the Soviets were providing to some degree, but the Soviets were increasingly using the situation as leverage to make demands on the Germans; the situation was not sustainable for Germany. The German position could only be prevented from deteriorating by the extremely long shot hope that they could quickly defeat the Soviet Union and seize the needed resources that way.
By the second point, you mean hitler propping up the home front? Then yes, Aly, at least as far as the regime’s motivation is concerned. What does Evans say?
On russia, I agree with Protagoras assessment of motives. On the question of how big an if it was, though, they wagered that they could advance 800 miles in 6 months. They made it about 750. Their reach exceeded their grasp, but only just barely. Had anyone other than Stalin been in charge of the USSR, it probably would have worked.
@Protagoras
It’s important to remember that the decision to attack the USSR, and the planning for the attack, were based on various assumptions and beliefs that the vast majority of people today don’t share. The invasion of the USSR wasn’t a response to the war situation in 1940, it was something Hitler had wanted to do for a while – expand east so as to become an empire. The planning, meanwhile, rested both on racist assumptions as to the military capabilities of Slavs, intelligence lowballing Soviet capabilities, etc.
@cassander
Evans takes issue with some of Aly’s… calculations? Was it calculations? I can’t remember. Hitler certainly was obsessed with the idea that there be no “repeat” of 1918.
Germany lost the war in large part because they got outproduced really badly by, of all people, the soviets. So, you know, no, that is not a good way to make general judgement.
The degree to which the soviets out-produced the Germans is debatable.
First, the soviets lied in their production figures, both to themselves and to the world, and the extent of their lying is impossible to sort out. But there are huge gaps, like how they claimed to have produced about the same number of aircraft as the Germans, with half as much aluminium.
Second, even if we take the soviet production numbers at face value, it’s important to remember that the soviets were doing those numbers with turbocharging from the western allies. The west supplied the soviets with large quantities of raw materials which made the use of large, efficient manufacturing plants possible. They also supplied lots of high tech goods that meant the soviets could focus their scarce engineering talent on improving production rates of other goods. The soviets could shift more of their automotive talent to tanks because the allies were supplying all of their trucks and almost all of their locomotives and rail cars.
Plus, if it wasn’t for the pressure the Western Allies were able to put on Germany in the air through superior aircraft production, they keep air superiority in the East longer.
How the War was Won overstates its case by leaving out food production, but goes into excellent detail about just how expensive the bombing campaign was for Germany not just in terms of outright destruction, the ways it reduced production efficiency and the resources diverted from other fronts to counter the bombing.
It was reading Evans that converted me to “as unpleasant as the bombing campaign was, it really helped win the war.” It also really damaged German morale – not enough to get them to rise up (Nazi control was just too strong, Germans were just too scared of the Soviets, etc) but enough that they had no stomach for postwar resistance.
Interesting model. You may be on to something.
I would further place Sweden in the bottom center – definitely egalitarian, but sort of wavering between individualism (“hey, don’t tell me what to do! Who do you think you are?”) and communitarian (“oh, just sit down and go along with the consensus! Who do you think you are?”).
I’ve heard that credited to the environment too, same as the Dutch with their dikes. The primordial Swede used to live on an isolated farmstead, which led to him getting set in his ways and unused to being contradicted. At the same time, long cold winters makes everyone tired a lot of the time and lacking the energy to argue. Thus, a culture that is simultaneously all about minding your own business and very eager to reach a compromise when two people’s business intersect (because the faster you can settle the matter, the faster you can get back to minding your own business!).
German national socialism was obsessed with two years: 1914 and 1918. In 1914, their narrative went, the class conflict within Germany was replaced with the conflict against external foes. In 1918, their narrative went, the undefeated military was stabbed in the back by internal subversion. Where international socialism tends to want all workers everywhere to unite, and abandon other wars in favour of class war – it was a real disappointment in 1914 that the workers mostly sided with their various nations, and that most of the softer socialist parties backed the war also – national socialism wants the opposite: for everyone in the nation/of the same race to stop fighting class wars against each other, and unite to fight national/racial enemies.
The degree to which we can talk about egalitarianism, levelling, etc in Nazi Germany is complicated by the fact that Nazi Germany, and especially the party itself, was quite corrupt. For example, the “Strength through Joy” program was supposed to make things like vacations available for people on lower incomes, but in practice, the nicer stuff often got snapped up by Party functionaries. The SS prided themselves on being less corrupt than the Party itself, but whether this is true or not, is open to debate – the camp system saw a great deal of corruption (for example, estimates on how much slave labourers needed to be fed didn’t match reality, because in reality, rations got sold off on the side, etc). Of course, the USSR was fairly corrupt too, and saw plenty of perks for those higher in the hierarchy – but I haven’t seen any direct comparisons of the same point in time.
Both Aapje’s post and this one strike me as very insightful, and help bridge the “were the national socialists, well, socialists” debate fairly well.
Pseudoerasmus is always worth reading, on this and on any other matter.
It’s a good piece, but it is an astonishing admission against interest to argue that fascists were right-wing because “no fascist in power even contemplated taking the Soviet route of destroying the capital- and land-owning classes.” 🙂
More generally, if you can come up with a list of bullet points in which the fascists held some views associated with modern left-wingers and some views associated with modern right-wingers, it might be helpful to say that they weren’t either modern left or right wingers, but were, well, fascists.
(That may not hold up – I’m not good at history, so it’s entirely possible that one side or the other has a better argument).
An interesting piece, and largely correct in its main point – “fascism was left-wing” is exclusively the province of mainstream-right hacks. However, at least one or two of the points it uses to show that the fascists weren’t socialist also apply to the USSR…
I’d call fascism – or at least, national socialism; I’m considerably better read on Nazi Germany than fascist Italy – “racist/nationalist radical centrism” – I think that on the classic 2-axis political compass, it’s top centre or top-centre-right, not top-right-corner.
Pretty much everything else was subordinated to the nationalist/racist goals – the road to power for the Nazis was conservatives thinking that they could use the Nazis to deal with the threat of the communists and social democrats, while remaining in control themselves. So, of course, the Nazis couldn’t be seen as too threatening to the capitalists. Hitler was pretty adept at adjusting his message to his audience, too – he knew when to play up the anti-capitalist rhetoric and when to play up the anti-socialist rhetoric (plus, of course, the Nazi worldview was one in which socialists and capitalists were really on the same side, or at least, controlled by the same nefarious forces), when to be more anti-Semitic, when to talk less about the Jews.
The point I take him to be making is, in an era where socialism did in fact mean doing just that, and fascists never even contemplated doing it, that’s evidence that they weren’t socialists.
A few issues here: what does “held some views” mean? As Pseudoerasmus and others have pointed out, the fascist movements may have had origins in the socialist movement, but by the time they took power, they had left those origins behind. Last thread, Aapje posted…well, I don’t know if I can spoil the twist ending, but I assume you read his post and know what I’m referring to. But click on the Wikipedia pages of the authors of that document and see what happened later: it’s very Strasserite.
So, as with the Strassers, there were certainly early fascists who held socialist views, but who had very little effect on fascism as actually practiced in power. Should we attribute the views held by minor figures in the political development of fascism, but later mostly repudiated by actual fascist politicians, to fascism? I don’t want to argue there’s no case here, but I think it’s mostly pretty weak.
The political programs of actually existing fascist states have very little in common with modern left-wing programs, and much more commonality with (at least some) modern right-wing programs.
Just to make clear this isn’t an attempt to smear the right by association, I think a parallel argument ought to hold w.r.t. communism. You can look at Engels’s disgust at the idea of gay rights, or Stalin’s homophobia, and try and say that, ha! communism must really have been right-wing! And, sure there are some elements of communism that don’t fit well with the new left, or that are a lot more nationalist than most modern left movements are comfortable with–but it’s clear that the major political program of communism has much more in common with the political programs of modern left movements, that at the time communists and other leftists had more in common, and insofar as communists have ideological descendants today, they are mostly on the left and that this is dispositive. That doesn’t mean we have to be simplistic and that we can’t explore the right-wing elements of communism or the left-wing elements of fascism, but we should be honest that broadly speaking, fascism is an ideology of the right, albeit one that migrated over early in its history from the left, and communism a creature of the left.
To discuss how the socialists and the fascists did things differently, we must consider that they got into power in different ways: the Bolsheviks in Russia were far more able to make massive, sweeping changes, than the Nazis in Germany or the Fascists in Italy. In both of the latter, they basically got into power when conservatives made the mistake of bringing them in. What would the Nazis have done if they hadn’t had to compromise?
I will agree that the national socialists and the fascists were not socialists, by most coherent definitions of socialism. However, the Nazis at least, insisted that they were socialists of a new and different sort – national socialists. Their movement was very much anti-Marxist, focused on a “racial community” rather than a worldwide community of workers.
They represented the middle classes, especially the lower middle classes, and not the better-off. The richest members of German society would have had as their first choice what was probably the most likely outcome in Germany in the early 30s had the Nazis not come into power – some sort of authoritarian military dictatorship. They were more afraid of social democrats and communists than Nazis, though.
Sure, populist-right programs. Which the business-friendly-right has done as much as possible to coopt, redirect, and neuter. I think it all makes sense within the nationalist and/or racist worldviews – “subsidized vacations so everyone can have vacations” sounds left-wing, but it was intended to keep the people happy and unite them so they could fight a war.
If we define nationalism and racism as right-wing, then the Nazis were right-wing. However, one can find examples of left-wing nationalism and left-wing racism. I’d say the Nazis were “far centre” – everything else was a means to the end, their goal of a grand program of race war and imperial conquest. (Himmler, who admittedly was a bit of a fantasist, saw conquering the USSR up to the Urals as just the first step in a 50-100 year plan.)
I tend to think that comparing soviet communism or italian fascism to the modern left or right is always going to be a game played with malevolent spirit.
Like, the modern left & right are closer to one another than they are to any Hitler or Stalin’s regimes. Arguing about which dead state can be best compared to which present force in the world is just about dunking on the modern half of that comparison, and isn’t usually worth doing for the regular rationalist reason that arguing about labels is unproductive.
@walter
I’d have a much easier time with this notion if the left was 1/10th as interested in condemning communism and all its works as the right is in condemning fascism. Hell, or even just condemning Chavismo.
And I don’t mean this in a “it’s not fair everyone should be held to the same standard” sense, there’s just a huge difference in attitude. The right genuinely believes that fascism was doubleplus ungood, no ifs ands or buts. Anything they want to do has nothing to do with fascism because anything fascist is inherently bad, full stop.
The left, for the most part, seems to believe that the communists had their hearts in the right place and that they had a lot of good ideas, but they botched the execution (by adding in too much execution).
@Cassander:
Eh, I think that’s just how things go when you lose the culture war, right? Griping about it feels like taliban complaining that they never get to airstrike the US forces.
That is, fascists are voodoo dolls for republicans, communists for democrats. The reason the media at large dunks on fascists more is that they are democrats. Wondering about it feels like you’d need to put on blinders or something.
Like, ‘dunk on nazis time’ is always and ‘dunk on soviets time’ is never because the point of it is to hurt the right, and you do that by attacking fascists not communists.
Nobody actually cares about nazis or soviets, they are long gone. The point of talking about them is hurting your living enemies.
@walter
Well, the communists aren’t actually gone, though they are much reduced. And the number of fellow travelers is higher than ever, it seems. But I’m not really talking about media, more the internal attitude of right and left. The right loves dunking on commies, but it vigorously dunks on Nazis too. the right has internalized nazi hatred in a way that the left hasn’t internalized commie hatred. And frankly, I think internalized nazi hatred is good! I just would be a hell of a lot more comfortable with the left if they’d internalize commie hatred in the same way.
Yeah, I remember having a conversation about Ayn Rand, and someone was like, “I’m totally against burning books, of course, but maybe I have an exception for Atlas Shrugged.”
And I’m like, “Really? That’s your exception? Not Mein Kampf, not The Protocols of the Elders of Zion? Hey, how about the Communist Manifesto? Its kooky, obviously unworkable utopia was actually attempted to the death of tens of millions and the immiseration of hundreds of millions. How about that?”
And, like, this guy wasn’t a communist, but he also wasn’t comfortable with the idea that the Communist Manifesto (or Kapital) were, like… bad. Inherently flawed. He wasn’t going to defend Stalin or Mao or deny the awfulness of Communist China or the USSR (or Cambodia or so forth), but he wasn’t really willing to say, “Communism per se is inherently worse than other political/economic systems.”
I think that’s a fairly common take on the Left. It’s not that they’re communist, it’s definitely not that they’re Stalinist, it’s that they aren’t quite willing to blanket condemn the idea of communism. Not even with a caveat that says something like, “WELL, this is obviously kooky, but it does make a compelling case about a problem, even if its solution is nutso” (which is how I personally feel about Rand, and pretty much how I also feel about Marx).
@cassander
I’ve heard many times Democrats and other liberals and “leftists” speak of how extremely annoying the anarchist “black block” and the RCP are, but I’ve never heard any right-wing “nazi dunking”, so different bubbles, but here’s a quote for you:
"Socialism is a scare word they have hurled at every advance the people have made in the last 20 years. Socialism is what they called public power. Socialism is what they called social security. Socialism is what they called farm price supports. Socialism is what they called bank deposit insurance. Socialism is what they called the growth of free and independent labor organizations. Socialism is their name for almost anything that helps all the people."Pretty far left?
That was Harry S. Truman 10/10/1952 who y’know had U.S. troops fight a shoot bullets at communists.
Actions speak.
Of course that was before the New Left and the New Right together tag-teamed the post-war liberal consensus and ended the great society in the name of “liberation”.
The far-right (the Birchers) called President Eisenhower a “communist agent”, and a motion to have my local post office named after an old city council women was blocked by an out of state Republican congressman because allegedly “She’s clearly a communist” (by which he means Democrat), a similar slander to the ones that inspired author Ray Bradbury to post a newspaper ad in 1952 reading “Every attempt that you make to identify the Democratic Party as the party of Communism, as the ‘left-wing’ or ‘subversive’ party, I will attack with all my heart and soul.”, and now “commie” has no sting – as it’s been used too much, I imagine that “fascist” has no sting (or soon won’t) for the same reason – the way too often equating people with a different opinion of what the top marginal income tax rate should be to piles of skulls in the 20th century.
Mussolini is not a minor figure in the political development of fascism. Before inventing fascism he had been a prominent socialist.
@plumber
Well, one, he didn’t order that. Stalin order communists to shoot at his troops and he responded in kind, which is not exactly the same thing. And he spent most of his first term in office trying to make nice with Stalin, as did his predecessor. But I don’t see what you’re trying to prove here. I see what I usually see with the left, a lot of ideological sympathy with their own fringe of the sort you don’t see on the right. No one on the right would ever say that “fascism is what they call any sort of pride in your country.”
Witch hunts aren’t entirely irrational when you find that your town is infested with actual witches. The birchers overreached, sure, but the anti-communists were considerably closer to the truth than the anti-anti-communists were.
As I said, I would have much more sympathy for this position if people on the left would stop saying that the people who made the biggest pile of skulls in history had a lot of ideas that were good in theory.
There where socialists in the NSDAP, like the Strasser brothers and Ernst Röhm. In 1932 they lost the power struggle for control of the NSDAP against Hitler, Göring and Goebbels. Hitler’s wing of NSDAP did not care about the economy except as a tool for their hardcore nationalism. If you only look at the years 1933-1945, the name National Socialist German Labour Party makes no sense, but in the 20s, there where people in the NSDAP who did what the name said.
Goebbels was a socialist who reported being devastated when Hitler called him into his office and lectured him about how capitalists get where they are through selection pressure.
Given how loyally Goebbels stuck around, the most accurate description of Nazism would be “a cult of personality.”
Ad “whether and to what extent Nazism was Socialist”, I think George Orwell put it very well in 1941:
Orwell considered socialism to be capital-G Good, so anything that wasn’t good wasn’t socialism, Q.E.D.
Orwell’s analysis fits well with dndnrsn’s post above, and with the general observation that the fascists practiced national “socialism” and the socialists practices international socialism.
All socialism is international socialism: national socialism is heresy.
Now the question is what that makes Socialism in One Country.
@Le Maistre Chat,
During the brief Bavarian Soviet Republic Hitler was elected to be a delegate to a Soviet.
Mussolini supposedly said that “Stalin is my best student”, and “Stalin is now a Fascist”,
Socialists such as Norman Thomas noted that “communism, whatever it was originally, is today Red fascism”, the terms “Brown Communism” and “Red Fascism” were used – not just by socialists and Trotskyites, but by the editorial page of the New York Times which in September 18, 1939 said that said of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact that “Hitlerism is brown communism, Stalinism is red fascism” and that “The world will now understand that the only real ‘ideological’ issue is one between democracy, liberty and peace on the one hand anddespotism, terror and war on the other”.
Stalin himself joked that “The Soviet Union has joined the Anti-Communist League” with Italy and Germany, while at the same time purging those labelled “Fascists”.
After Hitler turned on Stalin, and the U.S.A. and U.S.S.R. became allies against the axis a U.S. piece approvingly described Stalin as having defeated the “international revolutionaries” to take power.
All of this Orwell mocked in 1984: “We have always been at war with….”
It seems apt to describe the “People’s Republic of China” today as “fascist”, and Mussolini and Hitler’s one party states as having a Leninist model of government.
The “Browns” described themselves as both “progressive” and “traditionalists”, and while the “Reds” described themselves as exclusively “progressive”, during World War 2 Slavic nationalism was re-invoked, and today’s Chinese Communist Party has made a 180 on the merits of Confucianism.
Communism and Fascism have been at the same time mortal foes, but also models for each other.
“Horseshoe” indeed.
Ooh! Ooh! I know this one!
I think fascism is a system that allows economic (but not political) freedom, while still being collectivist, that is, what’s good for society (or the People, or Nation, whatever) trumps the interests of any indivdual person or company.
A couple of thoughts.
1. Right-wing (or traditionalist, if we’re not going to call that right-wing) anti-capitalism is almost always aimed at what the more idealistic pro-capitalists like about capitalism: it increases certain forms of personal freedom, it links the world more tightly together, it promotes cosmopolitanism, it makes individual states and economies more dependent on each other. It’s not a coincidence that fascists tend to like autarky, at least as a concept. Capitalism destroys traditional ways of life – counter to this, for example, the Nazis proposed (and to a lesser extent did) all sorts of directly-counter-to-the-market things to preserve traditional smallish farms and so on.
2. It’s hard to ideologically define fascism because it’s so all over the place, which is in and of itself one of its defining features. In Germany, one appeal to many was that unlike conventional politicians, Hitler presented himself as having “no program but Germany” and similar ways of putting it. A big part of the appeal of fascism was the idea of a strong leader who didn’t follow the rules, and wouldn’t hinder himself by committing to a defined ideology – “we need someone who can cut through the BS and just do whatever works” isn’t a uniquely fascist sentiment, but it appealed to fascists.
Definitely not unique to fascism–that’s basically the progressive technocrat rallying cry.
Ehhh, don’t technocrats usually propose wonkish changes? Not “we need smarter leaders who can make better rules!” but “we need a leader with the force of will to ignore the rules!”
You picked a weird example of counter-to-the-market things. How many major political parties in the West don’t counter the market in order to prop up smallish farms?
I should have explained what I meant. Not the sort of thing that is pretty common now, like subsidies for farm products. They had some very weird rules about commercial transactions involving land that were intended to keep family farms from being sold to larger landowners. “Family farms” in North America (I don’t know what it’s like in Europe) tend to be pretty big and mechanized – the agrarian elements in the Nazi party wanted to preserve a pre-mechanization model of individual small farms worked by human and animal power.
ww2 era germany was basically a non-mechanized society. I don’t think they explicitly wanted to keep family farms non-mechanized, it was just that their family farms were (A) a lot smaller than american and so the returns to mechanization were less obvious (B) they were more interested in mechanizing other parts of the economy (C) general autarkic principles leading to efforts reduce the need for imports (in this case, oil consumption)
The agrarian elements in the Nazi party were on the loopy end of the spectrum, though – not just “keep it this way because we want to use the machines for something else” but mystical blood-and-soil stuff.
@Dndnrsn
Some of them definitely were, but there were also more hardheaded central planners, and people with very different economic visions. You might want to check out this. It’s been a long time since I read it, but it does a lot of work breaking down what the various players were trying to do prior to the war.
Sounds like Tolkien.
@Cassander – I believe I read that one, way back when. Can’t recall much of it but the name rings a bell. There definitely were less wacky guys on the agriculture side of things, and the wackier ones got pushed out in time. But it’s a good example of the Nazis being anti-capitalist in a really dramatic way – not “we need to shore up prices for cheese so our cheese farmers don’t go out of business” but “we must ensure the existence of a solid peasantry, the life blood of our race!”
Believing that farming is not merely important so people have jobs or so that food is produced, but that society needs to have a strong farming community, just like a strong military, a strong community of musicians, etc; all fits the corporatist model much better than the capitalist or socialist models, IMO.
Wouldn’t corporatists try to take the peasants land and make bigger more efficient farms?
Hell, for that matter, communists have.
On the other hand, keeping small farms in the peasants hands sounds a bit like some other socialist groups that focused on land reform. Although IIRC that was about breaking up big farms not keeping the small ones from merging into big ones.
It does sound quite a bit weirder than what I thought dndnrsn meant.
Corporatism is not about centralization, but about cooperation, rather than competition. The “corporate” in corporatism refers to groups working together, not a (big) (hierarchical) company.
The cooperation can be non-capitalist cooperatives like in Soviet Russia, but also small farms that are shielded from fierce competition, because the goal is to preserve family farmer culture. The latter is a fairly common desire, which is very strong in Japan and France, but seemingly quite a common sentiment even in countries like the US.
Ultimately, corporatism is more an attitude than a specific solution and it needs to be combined with actual goals before it can become policy. That’s probably why fascism is so hard to pin down (including for the fascists at the time). They had an attitude and knew that they didn’t like the old situation, but had a lot of problems coming up with policies that match their attitude and that people also thought would work.
A math problem:
You are multiplying two numbers, which between them contain all the digits 0-9 at least once. The product will have the digits rearranged in some way, maybe with repetitions or omissions. Do there exist any two pairs of numbers that will have the digits of the factors rearranged in the same way to get the product? Alternately, can it be proven that no such pairs of numbers exist?
For example, like this, but with all 9 digits instead of 4:
ABCD x BCDA = ABBCCAD
CDBA x DBAC = CDDBBCA
I guess you could check this by exhaustively multiplying every eligible pair of numbers and comparing all the answers to each other, but that sounds difficult and I’m wondering if there’s a more elegant way to resolve this. I would like to check the literature to see if anyone has already worked on something similar, but since I have not taken math beyond 2nd semester calculus I don’t know where to look and probably wouldn’t understand the answer. Anyone have any ideas?
Just off the top of my head, any number containing all
nineten digits will be divisible by nine, but not all multipliers and multiplicands will have the requisite factor of 9 or two factors of 3. That should reduce the candidates considerably.ETA: Oh, I misread; I thought the result was supposed to contain all the digits.
For this to work, there can’t be overflow in the leading position. That will eliminate quite a few possibilities for the first two digits in the factors.
Similarly, the lowest digit in the result will be the result of multiplying the lowest digits in the two factors, modulo 10. Again, that will eliminate quite a few possibilities.
I don’t see why there can’t be overflow in the leading position, although I gave an example that doesn’t have it. My only concern is if the digits are rearranged in the same manner to reach the product between the two cases. “Rearrange” can include having a digit added (or deleted I guess).
0 * 123456789
and
0 * 987654321
Yes, there is, with high probability. For simplicity, let’s allow our numbers to have leading zeroes. To specify two pairs of numbers (a, b) and (c,d), where the permutation changing a->b is the same as the permutation changing c->d, we can take a, b, and c to be arbitrary (10! ways for each) and calculate d from them, so there’s (10!)^3 ~= 4.78e19 such pairs of numbers. But these multiply to 18-digit numbers (allowing leading zeroes), and if we take the first 18-digit number and apply the transformation that changes (a,b) to (c,d), we should expect a chance of 1 in 1e18 that we’ll get the second number. Doing something with probability 1 in 1e18 4.78e19 times gives approximately a 1 in e^(-47.8) chance it will never happen, so odds of about 5.74e20 to 1.
(edited to add: we can also say, we expect there to be 47.8 such occurences. A brute force search seems the easiest way to find them that I can think of).
Here’s a simple algorithm:
Outer loop over permutations P
Inner loop over permutations Q
Compute R = Q^-1(Q x PQ)
Add the pair (R,Q) to your list
Sort your list by R and look for pairs where R matches
Clean out your list and move on to the next P
If R1 = R2 then let S = Q2 Q1^-1. We have S(Q1 x PQ1) = (SQ1) x (SPQ1), which I believe is what you are looking for (although you may have to tinker a little if I’ve misunderstood).
The key trick here is the all-against-all comparison made possible by storing and sorting – it means that you can effectively carry out 10!^2 comparisons for each 10! log(10!) work you do, and you’ll only have to do about D log(10!)/10! work, rather than D, where D is the number of possible values of R.
Alternatively, you could search the works of Henry Dudeny – I’m pretty sure he found some pairs of pairs of numbers with properties very similar to what you’re looking for.
Brute force worked well. There were 338 pairs that overlapped without leading zeroes and two 5-digit numbers. An example without a digit staying in the same place is
21367 * 90584 = 1935508328
64812 * 73905 = 4789930860
Cool. Thank you for doing the math 🙂
Is getting equity in exchange for working at an early stage startup….. kind of a scam? Are people like Paul Graham of Y Combinator who push working for early startups as the ‘best’ way to build wealth acting dishonestly/in bad faith? I feel like most evidence these days points to yes, but I wanted to give the idea a fair hearing.
Reasons early stage equity is a poor deal- extraordinarily high failure rate of startups means a very high chance they will be worth nothing. In most structures you are receiving ‘options’, not actual RSUs- so then the engineer must pay to exercise them. The tax code is very unforgiving, so the engineer may be stuck with a very high tax bill for their equity. For the vast majority of ‘successful’ startups (whatever to 10x return, say), the engineer’s ultimate payout simply equals what they would’ve made if they’d been with a FAANG the whole time. Many golden age startups IPOed within 7 years, but nowadays startups stay private for so long that the lockup period just doesn’t make financial sense for employees. The four year vesting period encourages an abusive work environment, as the engineer is incentivized not to leave early. Paul Graham is obviously not an objective source of information on the topic, he wants engineers to work for his early stage companies.
Ways in which early stage equity is actually kind of a scam- VCs have liquidation preferences and guaranteed returns that wipe out everyone else’s equity, unless the startup is a rare 20-100x hit. The entire structure is quite complex, and the sophisticated parties are on the other side of the transaction. Lots of stories of founders pulling the type of scams that were common in the US pre-SEC- setting up a shell company, transferring all IP, then bankrupting the main company to wipe out equity.
The best analogy I saw elsewhere was- go to work for a FAANG instead, and every month with your higher salary buy a lottery ticket or penny stock and see if it blows up- it makes more financial sense. (While not a penny stock, for some reason I feel obligated to mention that Monster’s stock has increased 60,000% over the past few years).
I dunno, anyone want to defend working for early stage startups? I thought this piece on it was excellent https://steveblank.com/2019/04/10/startup-stock-options-why-a-good-deal-has-gone-bad/
I work in software, and I’ve worked for a couple of startups over the years. My impression of the state of play is that you should not accept significantly less in base pay for working at a startup unless you are a founder or damn close, or you are riding an absolute rocketship. Employee 100, or even 30, should not expect a big payday from a company that gets sold in year 5 or fizzles into a stable SMB at 250 employees or so. Everyone other than the founders should treat a startup like an ordinary job with a small possibility of a substantial payday.
Working at startups does have its advantages. Things happen fast. You get a chance to build stuff from scratch and use the latest cool tech that everybody is talking about. You don’t need to worry about pissing off the legacy customers, because there are no legacy customers.
But on the money side, there’s the founders and there’s everybody else.
Accepting early stage options sounds like a terrible idea. I don’t know anyone who suggests it’s a good idea. I have had people suggest it and I’ve mostly told them to take a hike. I always thought they were idiots but maybe they’re actively malicious? I’m not sure exactly what the advice you’ve received is.
Owning equity in an early stage company is a great way to build wealth as even a modest success will net you a good return. Let’s say you start a company with a friend and get 20% of the equity with the associated vesting schedule/clawbacks. If the company sells for five million dollars (and that’s a tiny, tiny sale in the business world) you get a million dollars. Even if you pay maximum capital gains, that’s $800,000. If you worked two years on that (which is frankly a failed startup), you made about $400,000 a year.
Owning equity is not equivalent to owning options though. If you’re not early or important enough to take a decent chunk, then make sure you’re getting paid. Usually I see it broken down into roughly three groups: pure equity holders who often own most of the company (and rarely have less than 10% equity, usually more like 20-50). They are the earliest stage people. People who own a small portion of the company and also get a reduced salary, who are usually the next in line (for example, a compuer engineer who could command 150,000 at Google getting $50,000 and 1-5% equity or something). And people who get equity basically as a bonus and are effectively employees. These are the people who get options.
If the company gets really successful, the first group gets to be billionaires, the second group gets to be multimillionaires, and the third gets a nice downpayment for a house. If the company fails, though, the third group got basically their fair market salary minus a bonus, the second took a serious paycut, and the first lost a lot.
If someone tries to give you like .5% of their startup and expects you to work full time without pay, that’s a scam. Unless it’s Steve Jobs.
Agreed, though I think you’re leaving out the likely dilution from VCs when calculating how much a founder takes home from a sale. I personally know a guy who sold his startup to Extremely Well Known Tech Company for a billion dollars, and owned 5% or less by the time of the sale due to having other founders, four venture rounds plus a seed round, etc. And his startup was an absolute homerun, so the medium 2-10x returns can be (a lot) less for the founders.
If you IPO you have to wait out the whole lockup period and God knows what happens to your company’s valuation during that time period- if you were acquired, then you probably have a vesting period to get that money. Like Antonio Garcia Martinez, who ‘sold’ his startup to Facebook for a few million dollars but I believe got fired around the two year mark, so he got less than 50% of that. Ouch
5% of a billion is $50,000,000, which after capital gains is $40,000,000. I think that qualifies as building wealth.
I’ve never heard of a vesting period to get money after a buyout. Virtually every contract I’ve seen says that a change of control (which includes a buyout) means immediate vesting for precisely that reason. Perhaps hey were poorly advised?
Come come, Erusian, how can you expect someone to be satisifed with a piddling 40 million when all around them they are rubbing shoulders with billionaires and multi-billionaires?
By comparison with Jeff Bezos, they’re only a ragpicker! 😀
Hes responding to a person who claims the first group in a successful startup gets to be billionaires and the next level down multimillionaires. If the founder is getting 5% of the sale price then the next level down isn’t getting 4%, or 2%, they are probably talking about splitting a few percent. This shifts the risk/reward profile greatly.
Really. I get some people only get into startups because they want to be Zuckerburg, but even among people with few skills who are starting nail salons the entrepreneurs tend to make more than the rest of their cohort. It really is a good way to build wealth. It’s just not a guaranteed ticket to billionaire land.
Depends on where it went. But let’s say you got .1% equity. That’s a million dollars, after maximum capital gains $800,000. Plus at that level you were probably paid a salary. That’s still pretty nice. I certainly can’t think of many jobs that gives you full salary and a million dollars every five years. Even .01%, with $80,000, isn’t too shabby. It’s probably at least a significant portion of a year’s salary.
5% of a billion is still 50 million dollars, which is a lot more money than most people will ever see. And certainly more money than any employee of a BigCo will see, unless they make it to the C-suite.
Something that I want to point out, because a lot of people misunderstand it: If a company that took VC investment gets sold for an amount less than… probably less than $100M, certainly less than $50M, and you are an employee, then I don’t care what percentage of the company you think you own, you will get $0.
VCs are aiming at $1B companies, with like $500M being a decent consolation prize and $10B being the golden ticket. They arrange preference and other incentives to make it impossible for common stock holders (like the founders) to make money on sales that are substantially less than $500M, precisely because they don’t want founders to be like, “We could keep going for 3-5 more years and we have a 10% chance of making it to $1B, or we could bail out for $50M right now and take home $5M each, 100% chance.” Employees are casualties of that arrangement.
(There may be occasional weird exceptions to this rule, but they are occasional and weird. Do not imagine your company is an exception unless you have ironclad reasons to think so.)
We latest saw this with Eero, where people were outraged to find that employees got sweet fuck-all after a sale of around $100M. Well, yeah, no shit sherlock, investors lost money on the deal. If investors lose money, you get SFA. If investors basically get back their money, you get SFA. If investors get double their money, you get something between SFA and, like, Less Than You’d Imagine. If investors get 10x their money, then you should get your nominal percentage of the company’s worth.
EDIT: I mention this because you suggest a startup that was sold for $5M. I mean, in that case it’s probably something that took angel money and nothing else, but… selling for $5M with the founders owning 20% would be a very weird deal. Probably it wouldn’t happen.
Sure, if you presume you’re going to make a unicorn and give your investors assurances you don’t get paid unless you do… then yes, you won’t get paid unless you do.
However, that isn’t the entire market (outside perhaps the Silicon Valley bubble). It’s just the very, very top. There’s a wide variety of companies that get started at lower levels. Some of them have much better returns than the big SV types.
then yes, you won’t get paid unless you do.
I worked for a company that did not give out preferences to the VCs. Then they did. Without asking me. (Why would they? I was one of 30 or so peon employees.) Then the company got sold. I got $0.
Unless you have a time machine, assume equity will be worth zero. If the company wants you to value it more, make the company convince you that protections are in place. Unless you are special enough that company puts out a press release with your name on it when they hire you, they are not going to bother with this.
I thought this was only a strategy people employed if the already had sorta blown up at a different place, but were not quite billionaires yet? Like you weren’t Elon Musk or Peter Thiel at Paypal, but you did end up at like the $50 million mark so making a lot of money at Facebook for a lot of work isn’t really what you are into.
Paul Graham’s essay How To Make Wealth (opening lines “If you wanted to get rich, how would you do it? I think your best bet would be to start or join a startup.”) was from 2004, when Google etc. didn’t pay as much and therefore a startup was a relatively better option. On the other hand, he carries on with “That’s been a reliable way to get rich for hundreds of years”. On the gripping hand, it sounds to me like he’s recommending being a founder or maybe employee #5 somewhere you have inside-view reasons to believe will succeed, rather than employee #50 at some startup any startup.
I have complex feelings on this.
First of all, it is absolutely the case that being an employee at a startup is much less of a good financial deal now than it was 15 years ago. For a few reasons:
1. Companies take longer to go public now than they used to. This also means that they take more rounds of funding, and thus dilution, than they used to.
2. Big companies now pay better than they used to, expanding the difference between salaries you could expect from companies that pay top-of-market and those that pay significantly less.
3. Founders (much more so than investors, I think) have significantly increased in prestige in the years after Mark Zuckerberg was so dominantly in control of Facebook, and their increased financial power largely comes at the expense of employees, rather than investors.
That said, a few mitigating factors:
More companies are reaching multi-billion valuations, and they’re hiring more people pre-IPO. There are more absolute spots to get crazy rich than there used to be, though perhaps lower percentage chance.
Google, at least, is probably a lot less fun to work at now than it was 10 years ago. Facebook maybe. Netflix maybe. Apple, Amazon, and Microsoft were always kind of terrible.
Startups (at least for some value of startup) are waking up to their cash comp rates and are increasing them.
Also, it kind of depends on what you’re doing. Look, if you make $150k more per year at Google than you do somewhere else, you take home like $100k of that, you put it in the bank, and… yeah, after a career you have a few million in the bank. That’s great! But if you’re hoping to make $10M before you’re 40, Google probably won’t get you there. A startup probably won’t either, but it has a chance of it.
With these longer times pre-IPO, the definition of “startup” is expanding, too. I think that there is really not much of a case, financially, for working at a series A or seed-round company. Your salary differential will be bigger, and even if you have a lot of equity and the company does make it through the winnowing, it’s going to be so fucking long before your equity is worth anything that it’s almost impossible to monetize it. On the other hand, if you work for a series C company that has $100M in revenue (albeit negative profit margins) and years of steady growth, its timespan to make-or-break and its likelihood of “make” are much shorter and higher, respectively, than the classic startups that we think of. They won’t pay you that much worse than Google, either.
I’d say that right now, from a pure financial perspective, what you want to do is enter a company that has already gone through a few winnowing rounds at a fairly senior level. Then you either ride that out to a multi-million dollar payout, or else you try to see if you can get a FAANG to hire you at the kind of senior levels that make more than $500k total comp by having some kind of impressive experience on your resume and/or getting acquired (even if the acquisition zeros your equity).
Right now, though, as a junior engineer, if you can tolerate being a junior engineer at a FAANG, you’ll definitely make a very comfortable amount of money, but it’s a long road from there to fuck-off wealth. And it’s an even riskier path from junior engineer to fuck-off wealth in a startup than it used to be. What I’m saying is that, relative to when I started my career, this isn’t an amazing time to be a junior engineer.
Thanks for the response, but I do have a couple of points of disagreement:
Google (and probably the other FAANGs) do pay ultra-high salaries for engineers working on ‘special’ projects, like Waymo/one of their moonshots. A super-smart person AI specialist for one of the FAANGs, or self-driving engineer or whatever, could legitimately make several million over a period of time there. (Some of this was documented in the lawsuit over the guy who stole Waymo’s code for Uber’s self-driving project, whose name escapes me at the moment). Or just if they feel you made a huge contribution- like Larry & Sergey making sure that Andy Rubin, the guy who invented Android, got an extra $90 million in stock options or whatever- because they felt he was under-compensated for what he’d done.
I’d argue you probably have a better chance of making that life-changing money at a FAANG. Honestly, what % of early-stage startup engineers in the history of the valley really made $10m at their company? .01%? .001%?
I don’t think anyone, even Paul Graham, is arguing that getting in so late to a startup is particularly profitable. I’m sure you get some equity, but you are way way further down the line. Allegedly the real money is in being an early employee, not numbers 300-1000+
Those examples make Sandor’s point.
Andy Rubin was an executive because his startup was acquired (and because his batna was fuck you money from his first startup). The $90m was to buy his silence. It was probably already negotiated a long time ago; the scandal was just that they let him have it rather than fire him for cause.
Anthony Levandowski technically joined google and worked his way up, but he also has a bizarre story in which he repeatedly founded companies and sold them to google without ever leaving. It’s a crazy case of double-dealing, but they liked his initiative.
The thing to remember is that you won’t automatically do well at Google (or wherever) just because Google does well.
The ultra-high salaries that people talk about Google paying are mostly for “celebrity hires” like David Patterson or Rob Pike, or for careerists who have been there for many years and successfully climbed the career ladder. They have a really complex promotion system and people spend a huge amount of their time trying to game it.
You don’t get a high salary at a FAANG for sitting around and writing code. You have to basically get involved in the politics and steering the direction of various projects. Not to mention associating yourself with the successful ones and trying to avoid the failures. It’s not like you just check in and they say “here’s your 300k a year”.
I mean, the second and third paragraphs are simply incorrect. Google is absolutely paying extremely skilled software engineers in fields such as AI millions in total comp. We know from this documents made public in cases like the Levandowski lawsuit. They want to incentivize and retain talent that would go otherwise go to early stage startups. I agree it’s a very very small % of their workforce that gets that money, but no it’s certainly not a political thing.
Dude, Oracle (just to name a random shitty large company) is paying some people $300-400k+ to ‘just code’. Lots of companies do it for elite talent
I suspect Oracle has to pay that much because, reportedly, their codebase is such an absolute clusterfuck you have to be a genius to get anything done and it’s miserable work anyway.
Levandowski created startups and sold them to Google. You are not Levandowski. And I’m not sure Levandowski could get away with what he did at the 2019 version of Google, either.
AI researchers can and should take advantage of the current AI spring at Bigcos. Grab that big salary before winter sets in again. But if you don’t have a PhD you are nothing in that world.
People at the top of Bigcos are both very skilled and very political. I’ve worked at a few and never saw myself as upper management material.
If it’s money you want, forget FAANG and do finance.
I straight up don’t think that you can go from “getting a random entry level job in engineering at Google” to getting one of those gigantic payouts. Like, not, “It’s very hard,” or even “It’s a lottery that’s no better odds than cashing out a startup,” I think it’s straight-up impossible these days. It was probably possible back when they founded X, though still very unlikely.
Way more than 0.001% of early startup engineers in the history of the valley have made $10m. 0.001% is 1 in 100,000. Probably more people than that have become deca-millionaires just from Google’s IPO. And it’s not like this is an all-in bet where the only other outcome is poverty and immiseration. 10x that number of people have made single digit millions from startup equity. 10x that number again have made hundreds of thousands. And in general, people are still making plenty of money even if their equity is worthless.
Definitely the expected total value of being a junior eng at a FAANG for 5 years is higher than working at a startup for 5 years. No question at all. And the difference has grown in the last 5-10 years. But expected value isn’t the only thing in life.
Working at a later-stage company is just a different point in the risk-reward curve. You have less upside and less downside. Working at a FAANG is less upside again, but much better downside, to the point where that overwhelms the expected payout.
But, importantly, then you have to work at a FAANG. I was invited to an onsite at Google after a successful phone interview at my most recent job search. I turned them down after some soul searching because I could already feel myself dying just from hearing them talk about the job and going through their machine interview process. I very strongly expect that if they did hire me, my total comp would have been +/- $400k. The late-ish stage startups that I got offers from offered me cash comp in the $250k range and equity that might be worth zero, but could very plausibly be worth $300k, somewhat implausibly but not crazily $500k, and probably has an expected value of roughly $100k. So I probably left about $50k per year on the table by not going with Google (assuming they would have offered me a job, which obviously is not guaranteed). I mean, that’s a lot of money! But it’s not so much money that my life would be drastically different if I had it.
Can confirm, this is a good opportunity if you can get it. I actually applied to three such a few years ago. But it is still a lottery. You don’t know, when you apply, when or whether the companies will IPO and certainly not how good you’ll make out if they do. Of the three, one IPOed and took off, one IPOed and fell flat, and the third (Uber) has not yet IPOed.
Agree, did not mean that it’s guaranteed big money, just that it seems like one of the best options currently available.
I wouldn’t do it. I mean, uh, I did it, and it worked out, but I get that it’s not something that works out often, and I wouldn’t do it again.
The flip side of this is that early stage startups now pay real money. In dotcom 1.0 people made starvation wages (okay, not really but things like $30,000/yr for a top CS grad) for the first few years of a startup’s life.
If I knew a fresh software grad looking at his first job, I wouldn’t recommend being employee number 7 anywhere, but it is also not the worst idea in the world. At 22 he probably wasn’t going to save the extra money he’d make at FAANG anyway.
It’s also probably true that for some people, starting right off on a FAANG salary is a problem. Like, it’s generally harder to ratchet down your lifestyle than not to ratchet up your lifestyle to begin with. And there are a variety of reasons why you might want to work someplace besides a FAANG in your middle career, especially if you end up in a position at your FAANG that deadends your advancement prospects (which I understand can happen).
It’s a problem like the (mentioned upthread) taxation of the exercise of highly-appreciated NQOs is a problem: that is to say, the sort of problem you’re better off having. If you dead-end at a total comp of $400,000/year, you’ve long since paid off your student loans and if you’ve been at all frugal you’ve got enough money for a down payment on a house anywhere BUT the SF Bay area or the most expensive parts of NYC proper. The SF Bay cost of living is so high that if you move elsewhere you won’t have to ratchet down your lifestyle all that much.
Finding a tech job that is neither based in a high-COL area nor mind-numbing business programming is another problem, but it’s a separate one.
I mean, it’s certainly a first-world problem, but I think that there are people who would be:
a. Happier
b. More likely to do great/innovative things
or
c. Overall more compensated
If they moved away from a generic engineering role in a FAANG, but don’t feel like they can, having built their adult lives around their salaries and finding it too scary to contemplate a drop in comp even in the short term.
Not everyone, mind you. But some people.
It seems that different types of labor are complements on an economy wide scale and similar temperaments are replacements. Over the long term money obsessed ivy league grads in finance are in the same labor market as term money obsessed ivy league grads in law but not construction workers.
The supply of the elite ie overly ambitious, very smart people with high impulse control, who are inclined to work more than would be ideal for their objective flourishing is over the long term split among a range of industries and in the long run the expected wages for this type of people is determined by both the demand and supply. If supply drops, then compensation for these people will go up. By implication the real wages for other people will decline.
Thus it seems that a decline in elite fertility would cause an increase in inequality over the long term. Elites tend for a variety of reasons to have children who are elite. Thus in the next generation there will be fewer very smart workaholics. It might reduce the gini coefficient but it would make the highly paid even more highly paid and the poor paid less.
As the gini is rising, this is unlikely to be all of the explanation for rise in income inequality but does it seem plausible that part of it is a change in labor force composition has and will continue to exacerbate this kind of inequality. Does this seem likely to actually be part of the story?
Are you saying that entrepreneurs are complementary to society?
Baumol worried that an oversupply of entrepreneurs would cause them to create socially harmful industries. Whereas Peter Turchin believed that the excess from “elite overproduction” would enter a single high variance industry of revolution.
Hey hivemind, I have a Passover question that someone here might know the answer to. Anyone who has celebrated a Seder is likely familiar with the bizarre section in which three rabbis attempt to prove exegetically that the Egyptians were plagued by five times as many plagues at the Red Sea as they were in Egypt, and that the number of plagues in Egypt should either be 40 or 50 plagues, for a total of 200 or 250 at the Red Sea.
My question is: when did this section enter the Haggadah? The sages cited are Tannaim, meaning they are Mishnaic-era, and so are roughly contemporaneous with the emergence of the Seder, but from what I can tell, this particular discussion is not from the Mishnah, but from the Mekhilta d’Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, a now-lost work from the same era. Wikipedia suggests that most of what we know from the Mekhilta is actually by way of the Midrash haGadol, which itself was mostly overlooked until a little over a century ago; however fragments of the Mekhilta turn up in other places, and it seems scholars had access to copies until the 15th century or so.
So then, did this section enter the Haggadah directly from the Mekhilta some time in the distant past when the Mekhilta was not yet lost? Or did it enter by way of the Midrash ha-Gadol more recently? Or some other option? Do we know what the context of this exchange was in the original Mekhilta? And do we know what the scholars who used it for the Haggadah had in mind?
I’ve tried to look it up, but have struggled to find specific information so if anyone can suggest some resources that would be helpful.
I have no idea, but that’s my single favorite section of the entire haggadah.
The British library has a 14th century haggadah digitized here: http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/FullDisplay.aspx?ref=Add_MS_27210
Maybe someone with stronger Hebrew than me could check if it’s in there.
You have to be the only person in the world who feels this way.
Thanks for the link to the Haggadah, I’ll flip through it and see, but I think I mostly managed to answer my own question. First of all, I had the wrong Mekhilta; it’s from the Mekhilta d’Rabbi Ishmael, which is not lost. Second, the segment did appear in early Haggadas: the Sarajevo Haggadah for example has it, and Maimonides’s Haggadah does not, but explicitly on the grounds that it discusses events outside of Egypt and the Seder should focus only on the events in Egypt. So it was included in Haggadot at least prior to Maimonides.
Since the Mekhilta d’Rabbi Ishmael is available online and in translation, one can easily check that it is a comment on the moment between the death of the Egyptians in the sea and the beginning of the Song of the Sea, as the Israelites marvel at the strength of the Lord in destroying the Egyptians. Interestingly, the Mekhilta seems to preserve only the initial statements of Akiva and Eliezer, but not their full reasoning.
There is something about it that just tickles my funny bone. Maybe a little like how someone might have reacted to the whole how many angels can dance on the head of a pin thing before it became a cliche. At least in me it evokes a mixture of humor and grudging admiration.
What are some aphorisms/pieces of advice that you find especially wise/memorable/virtuous but typically fail to follow in your own life?
One that I always remember too late is:
(The Analects, Book 17)
Great minds discuss ideas.
Average minds discuss events.
Small minds discuss people.
These days, that bit reads kind of like a prototype of the galaxy-brain meme.
“It’s better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid than open it and remove all doubt.”
I’m sure others here will verify both that the aphorism is wise/memorable/virtuous and that I typically fail to follow it.
*thinking* What does that mean? Better say something or they’ll think you’re stupid
*out loud* Takes one to know one!
*thinking* Swish!
Haha only serious response:
– Get good, noob!
– Find something to like about it!
https://yhlee.dreamwidth.org/2800991.html
This sounds like something rationalists might like.
“Maoyu is set in a medievalesque fantasy world where humans who follow a united church devoted to the Light Spirit (subtitles use she/her pronouns, I’m not sure about the actual Japanese) are at war with demons under a Demon King. In the very first episode, when the Hero goes to slay the Demon King, she (it’s a title; the current Demon King happens to be a woman) spends the entire episode explaining the economic foundations of the war and how she plans on stopping the war so that everyone in the world can find out what a world at peace looks like. I fell in love right there and then.”
The show is very uneven, and there’s annoying relationship shenanigans that distract from the good stuff.
Log Horizon is a better “medieval uplift” anime.
I’ll second AG’s description of it as ‘uneven’. Maoyuu (Maoyuu Maou Yuusha or Evil Overlord and Hero) is often cited as the macroeconomic counterpart to Spice and Wolf‘s microeconomic lessons hidden in an anime.
There’s an interesting design choice by the original author in that the characters and locations in the series aren’t identified with names, only titles, because the author didn’t want the names to distract from the characterization. There’s not so many characters and almost all of them have relatively unique jobs within the story, so referring to the most prominent member of the merchant’s guild as the Young Merchant works; there isn’t anyone else that could also be described with that title.
I also found it interesting that several of the usual tropes were subverted; for example, the merchant’s guild in the series is exclusively interested in making money, but they’re smart enough to realize that the war is probably not as profitable as peace could be.
Could also be a follow-the-leader thing. Goblin Slayer does that, and it’s very common for a characterization or setting trope in manga/anime/light novels to break out like a bad case of zits once someone proves it’s commercially viable. See for example how “trapped in an RPG universe” became not just an undistinguished subsegment of portal fantasy but a genre in its own right about six months after Sword Art Online and .hack came out.
I think Maoyuu’s the older series. I know they’re both web novels to start with, and it’s harder getting the dates on those. The anime, at least, dates back to 2013.
Speaking of genres, has the quasi-educational series become a genre yet?
Spice and Wolf is Microeconomics the Anime
Maoyuu is Macroeconomics the Anime
Hataraku Saibou (Cells at Work) is Human Biology the Anime
Moyashimon is Microbiology the Anime
If I had unlimited resources, I’d make an anime like this about how crops have all died out and humanity survive in city-mecha of varying size, controlled by single individuals or small councils, that go around harvesting from the environment and manufacturing things to trade in themselves, mecha abstractly representing firms.
The formula would be, we introduce some business management or microeconomic theory for ten to fifteen minutes or so at the beginning, then the rest of the episode demonstrates it. So we’d have the first few episodes introducing our viewpoint characters (a small corporation-mech with a few hundred people, led by a charismatic and slightly crazy founder) and the theory of the firm (“Mommy, why doesn’t everyone live in one HUGE mecha?” “Well, you see…”), with our small corporation narrowly dodging getting trampled by the lumbering giants, and occasionally carving off bits of market share for themselves by being faster and taking risks larger corporations won’t.
Later episodes focus on meeting other corporations that run things differently (i.e. we meet a co-op, we run in to a cartel and have to fight them for market share, we visit Silicon Valley where all the mechs are on life support connected to a few central VC firms) and the founder struggling to maintain control of the company as it grows.
The overall arc of the first series is the corporation’s relationship with government, represented by tentacles that pop out of the ground and take things or crush entire corp-mechas, realizing towards the end that they’re standing on the back of a titanic mecha representing the government itself. In the final episode they’re offered the chance to become a flunky of the government-mech… but they choose not to, and leap off in to the sea, because the entire show was secretly about anarcho-capitalism the whole time! Psych!
Spice and Wolf meets Mortal Engines?
@aphyer: Hah! Though they called it “municipal Darwinism” in the movie.
The quasi-educational series is already a thing, but not really a genre, because their genres are often determined by what they’re going to teach.
The most prominent are anime that are trying to promote the backwater regions of Japan. These have run the gamut of surreal family drama to lesbian subtext mecha action to zombie idols.
Silver Spoon is Modern Agriculture the Anime
Today’s Menu for the Emiya Family, and Food Wars! Shokugeki no Soma cover cooking
Tribe Cool Crew is a “how to dance” anime
Shirobako covers the nitty gritty of anime production
Holmes of Kyoto covers antique appraisal
Moshidora covers very basic management practices
“C: The Money of Soul and Possibility Control” is…weird and presumably about money, but I don’t remember any supposed lessons it taught
Oh, better than google…I need a new cell phone, and I’m looking for recommendations. I mostly use my phone for web browsing, reading email/texts, listing to audio books, and keeping my calendar. I’m looking for a relatively cheap android phone that’s compatible with verizon.
Things I care about:
relatively wide screen
Long battery life
24+gb storage
headphone jack
Things I don’t care about:
the camera
High performance for graphics or intensive games
slimness
Any suggestions?
GSM Arena is your friend.
This is helpful, thanks, though it’s way more technical than I can use effectively. I have no idea, for example, what chipset I need or what a camera F number is.
The ratio between the focal length of the lens and the diameter of the lens (aperture). The
twothree most important reasons to care are, in decreasing order of importance to most everyone:Smaller numbers are faster; i.e., the length of time necessary to properly expose a scene is smaller. Useful in low light to avoid motion blur. Always a good thing.
The ratio also determines the depth of focus, or the range of distances from the lens that are in acceptable focus at the same time. (Larger numbers mean more depth.) Useful for taking pictures that actually look good by making sure everything you care about is in focus and/or everything you don’t care about is out of focus to isolate your subject and let the viewer know what to look at. Caring about this this is probably most of the reason why professional photos look distinctly professional.
ETA: A number that is too large (the aperture is too small) degrades image quality through diffraction. Roughly speaking, any time light passes through a hole is produces diffraction effects and the smaller the hole, the more diffraction effects there are. (This is one of the reasons astronomers like huge telescopes.) If the aperture of a camera is too small, it will cause a single point in the scene to be smeared across multiple pixels. The resulting picture will be annoyingly blurry even when in focus. For well engineered cameras this usually only comes up in specialized use cases, but I wouldn’t discount the possibility in very cheap cameras.
Non cell phone cameras allow you (or most often the software in the camera) to select the aperture by using a shutter inside the lens to stop down to a smaller effective diameter (larger number) than that of the lens. Most (all?) cell phones do not. What you get is what you get. (Though I wouldn’t discount the possibility I am a decade out of date and everybody started doing this while I wasn’t looking.)
I’d ignore most of the parameters except for year, price, network (Verizon’s frequencies should be online), and the other things you mentioned caring about. The Show button updates as you change them to say how many meet the criteria, so adjust continuous variables (price, battery capacity) until you get a reasonably small number, then have a look at reviews for a random sample of the listed phones. Nowadays you can get very good value phones from Chinese brands if you’re willing to put a bit more time into looking at network compatibility, don’t care about customer service, and order from China. There are also a few brands that used to be in that position but have now broken into the Western market (and are still pretty good value). That’s probably not so relevant to you if you don’t care so much about performance, but it explains why GSM Arena might suggest extremely-cheap-seeming phones from brands you’ve never heard of.
The ASUS ZenFone 3 Zoom was the best budget smartphone battery life at the time I bought mine about a year ago. I don’t watch video or listen to audio on my phone, but I do use it for searches, maps, and email. I charge about once a week. 32 or 64 GB, supports SDcards.
I do miss being able to put my cell phone in my pants pockets, though. Now I have to always have a jacket or a bag.
How’s the durability? I drop my phone a lot.
I’ve dropped mine a couple of times, though not from really high heights. The phone comes with a case. I also got a pack of screen protectors for it. So far, the screen protector has some small ignore-able cracks, and the phone itself seems fine.
I had basically the same list of things I cared about last June, except I also wanted it international-friendly, and bought a Motorola Moto E4 Plus for $159.99. 32gb storage, much better battery than most phones on the market, headphone jack, and 5.5″ screen.
I bought it in gray, which looks to be hard to find now- but if you want it in gold, there are several sellers around the $130 mark now.
Side note- pay a LOT of attention to the mAh rating of the phone’s battery- it’s not foolproof, but it’s the best stat to watch to get an idea of which smartphones will have better battery life. The Moto E4 Plus I use is 5,000 mAh, for example, as is the ASUS phone AG recommended above me.
How’s the durability? I drop my phone a lot.
I don’t have an E4, but my Moto phone has survived a good amount of abuse. The screens are quite expensive to replace, though.
I have a Samsung Galaxy J7, which works well for most of those things and I haven’t used for the others (I don’t listen to audioboooks.) With no apps running in background and location turned off, the battery will last several days.
The fire at Notre Dame was obviously a tragedy but as a side note I have some questions about the cost stated to rebuild it. There have been figures in the billions of dollars range floating around in the public sphere. I’m not a general contractor or an art connoisseur by any means, but after doing some quick mental math they seem to be wanting in the range of tens of thousands of dollars per square foot if we were to liberally calculate by including the entirety of the building for renovations. I understand that the architecture was very complex and there were precious pieces of art work which could have been damaged. I assume the value of them could be written off as a loss but that does not mean paying the equivalent amount of money will bring them back. I feel like they would either be salvageable for a much lower price or would likely be lost forever. I just want to pose a question to anyone more knowledgeable on these kinds of things. What exactly would an itemized bill for this kind of salvage operation look like? Are these cost justified? I’m open minded because as I have stated I know little to nothing about the subject.
It’s not replacement driving the cost, it’s labor.
In your typical fire loss, let’s say a home, you pull out anything that’s smoke or water damaged and toss it. You then replace it with off-the-shelf materials. You clean and re-paint the remainder. And even that will run you a couple hundred thousand dollars for a typical residence after a bad fire. This place is fifty times more square footage, ten times taller, ten times harder to work in, and ten times more complicated. Take your $200K home bill, multiply it by that 50,000 times, and you’re around a $10 billion price tag.
As to labor complication, a lot of the material itself is unique and needs to be cleaned and restored to its original condition. If you have a smoke-damaged wall panel, you can’t replace it with new paneling because the whole value in the old panel is the antiquity and/or artwork. You have to painstakingly remove smoke particles from the original surface, in a completely non-destructive way, one square inch at a time. And you’re not hiring temps at $15 an hour for that work; you’re using skilled labor, with multiple PhD’s overseeing said skilled labor. Almost every surface and structure in that place will require that level of painstaking effort, and we’re talking about unionized French labor even for the most basic support. Billions for sure. $10 billion might be an underestimate.
One interesting thing that has already come up regarding restoration work is that there are not enough trees of sufficient size in France to rebuild the “forest” part of the roof structure as it was. The choice now would be whether to compromise and go with engineered built-up wooden members or import trees from some place where large enough ones can still be found (the Pacific Northwest, I’d guess, or possibly from Quebec if they wanted to get them from somewhere in La Francophonie).
You find yourself transported back to Italy, 132, BC. Happily, you also find yourself speaking fluent Latin and with a portfolio of estates with wealth sufficient to qualify you as a member of the Senatorial class. Otherwise, you have only your own skills and knowledge.
Your mission, should you choose to accept it: Achieving the total abolition of slavery within the borders of the Republic. How do you go about this?
[Metanote: The scenario is mostly because I’m curious if a powerful abolitionist movement was even possible before the late 18th century. Is a Roman abolitionist movement at all plausible? Where would it have come from?
If you have other interesting things you’d like to accomplish as a homo novus (or femina nova) in the time of the Gracchi, feel free].
My understanding is the Roman economy was way waaaay too dependent on slave labor for total abolition. Your best shot might be starting a movement around better treatment, but even then you’re up against a lot of momentum and incentives counter to it.
The legal theory behind Roman slavery was different from the more familiar 18th/19th century American slavery. The latter is known as “chattel slavery” because the slaves were classified as personal property of their owners, like a farm animal or even a piece of furniture. Roman slavery was a special case of the Patron/Client relationship that was the fundamental unit of Roman society: a slave was merely a client who didn’t chose his patron and whose clientage could be bought and sold. To oversimplify, Roman slavery was about half-way between chattel slavery and medieval serfdom.
For “visible” slaves, that distinction made a big difference in how they were treated. A slave’s owner still had enormous power over him, but that power was similar to the power the head of a household would have over his wife and children, and there were substantial reputational consequences for a slave-owner who became known for abusing his power as patron of his slaves or for failing his his duties to them as his clients. The story of Augustus Caesar censuring Vedius Pollio for ordering a slave executed over a petty offense is one indication of what this might look like.
Agricultural slaves seem to have been treated quite a bit more harshly as a matter of course, especially on large estates. They had the same legal status as household slaves, but out of sight, out of mind. Note that in the Vedius Pollio story, Augustus only took action when Vedius ordered an unreasonable execution in Augustus’s presence and the slave personally begged Augustus to intervene: previously, when Vedius had been cruel to his slaves (even his household slaves) privately out of Augustus’s sight, Augustus had been friendly towards Vedius and had appointed him to important government positions.
Slaves sent to the mines had it even worse, as they were generally worked to death. Their legal status was different from other slaves, and mining slaves were generally citizens who had been “condemned to the mines” as punishment for a crime.
Given this, I’d frame a campaign for better treatment of slaves as part of a broader campaign to uphold moral standards, enforcing the existing norms against mistreatment slaves more consistently and more broadly.The legal theory behind Roman slavery was different from the more familiar 18th/19th century American slavery. The latter is known as “chattel slavery” because the slaves were classified as personal property of their owners, like a farm animal or even a piece of furniture. Roman slavery was a special case of the Patron/Client relationship that was the fundamental unit of Roman society: a slave was merely a client who didn’t chose his patron and whose clientage could be bought and sold. To oversimplify, Roman slavery was about half-way between chattel slavery and medieval serfdom.
For “visible” slaves, that distinction made a big difference in how they were treated. A slave’s owner still had enormous power over him, but that power was similar to the power the head of a household would have over his wife and children, and there were substantial reputational consequences for a slave-owner who became known for abusing his power as patron of his slaves or for failing his his duties to them as his clients. The story of Augustus Caesar censuring Vedius Pollio for ordering a slave executed over a petty offense is one indication of what this might look like.
Agricultural slaves seem to have been treated quite a bit more harshly as a matter of course, especially on large estates. They had the same legal status as household slaves, but out of sight, out of mind. Note that in the Vedius Pollio story, Augustus only took action when Vedius ordered an unreasonable execution in Augustus’s presence and the slave personally begged Augustus to intervene: previously, when Vedius had been cruel to his slaves (even his household slaves) privately out of Augustus’s sight, Augustus had been friendly towards Vedius and had appointed him to important government positions.
Slaves sent to the mines had it even worse, as they were generally worked to death. Their legal status was different from other slaves, and mining slaves were generally citizens who had been “condemned to the mines” as punishment for a crime.
Given this, I’d frame a campaign for better treatment of slaves as part of a broader campaign to uphold moral standards, enforcing the existing norms against mistreatment slaves more consistently and more broadly.
(You copy-pasted your comment body twice)
Shit, and I missed the edit window to fix it 🙁
Why do you say that Roman slaves were not legally chattel?
Based on my recollections of descriptions of Roman slavery in this lecture series. It’s been a couple years, but I’m pretty sure the lecturer emphasized that Roman slavery was seen as a special case of a patron/client relationship.
It depends on the kind of slave. House slaves were often more like clients, but slaves in the mines or fields had a very different, and much worse, lot.
Those are two different statements. Maybe Roman slavery was seen as a special case of the patron/client relationship, but that says nothing about its legal status. I would be very interested in finding a single source that claimed that slaves were not chattel. (google will find you a hundred that say that they were chattel)
Also, the comment about pater familias is yet a third thing. Maybe the slaveowner had the same rights, since the father could execute his son on a whim, even though his son was not chattel.
There were probably more laws restricting American slaveowners, though they were vague, so they just gave tooth to social pressure.
Mr X,
sure, but there was diversity in America, too. I think that there’s a pretty solid analogy:
house:fields:mines::
house:fields:sugarcane fields
For any given amount of land and capital in the Roman Republic, is the landowner better off having it farmed by slaves he owns or by free tenant farmers?
Build a small private army with ferguson rifles. Use it to take over the state and enjoy being the first gunpowder emperor. Conquer everything the romans conquered while minimizing the amount of slaving going on and the number of ways people can become slaves. Die. Then hope that Tilly was right that the gunpowder revolution drove the formation of capitalism and modern states, and you’ll have your end of slavery in a few hundred years.
I’d start by inventing the steam engine a little early–I’m probably not mechanically-inclined enough to do it on my own, but I think if I provide the idea, the technical skill could be found. Then I’d try and convince the rest of the Senatorial class that public works projects and the like should make use of automated labour as much as possible, and argue against Vespasian-type “I must feed my poor commons”-type arguments.
Ideally, the use of automatic labour would eventually undermine the dependence on slave labour that ManyCookies mentions, allowing for the emergence of a real anti-slavery movement. Perhaps a Gracchian/free-soil type appeal that both slavery and automation undermine free mens’ labour could assemble the necessary political coalition, but this is probably the work of decades.
I don’t think ancient metallurgy was advanced enough to cope with the sorts of pressure an industrially-useful steam engine would involve.
You couldn’t build a locomotive, but Newcomben and Watt-style engines operated at fairly low pressures, near and below atmospheric. I’m pretty sure Roman metallurgy could handle that.
Wait 105 years for there to be no slaves anywhere in the republicNon-vacuuously, I’m guessing the answer involves shifting the relative labour vs land intensiveness of farming.
Kicking off the agricultural revolution 1800 years early might not be a bad start.
In terms of labour saving, Bermuda rigging, lenses (increases the usable lifespan of a scholar), algebra, the printing press and better windmills/clockwork seem like decent technologies to start with, seeing as they’re all medieval/renaissance anyway.
Also, I’d take a dump in a field and see whether any tomatoes or corn starts growing.
Approach it from a few angles simultaneously:
Introduce effective wind and water power to reduce the demand for muscle power.
Promote new contractual forms around labour that are more like an employer-employee relationship than owner-slave.
Commission plays etc that have slaves as sympathetic characters and emphasize their humanity.
Would yall actually know how to create the technologies you want to introduce off the top of your head? And I don’t think you could get away with making a prototype and expecting the Romans to “fill in the blanks”, like they did have a rudimentary steam engine but didn’t make the further leap into full steam power.
You get a lifetime to figure things out.
And also to hire/buy a team of researchers.
Technology is more complicated than “throw money at something and give it time”. You’re not going to singlehandedly cause an industrial revolution in your lifetime.
Years ago, some National Geographic writers asked the engineer at a glass factory how they could make their own glass using primitive methods. The instructions they received did not work, even after several tries; the engineer had a lot of theoretical knowledge of glass, and a lot of practical knowledge of glassmaking in a modern factory, but no practical knowledge of primitive methods. Instructions written in ancient Greece, on the other hand, worked on the first try.
My point is that theoretical knowledge of how something works and could be made is no substitute for actually knowing how to do it. I figure that engineer could probably, eventually, figure it out through trial and error, but a rando (even a very smart rando) trying to build something more complicated is a much steeper climb.
Now, the printing press does seem simple enough for me to work out. But mass production of books also requires reasonably priced paper, which the Romans didn’t have and I have no idea how to make.
Yeah, but in 132BC there’s already a textbook on steam engines, clear enough that Hero was able to build one hundreds of years later.
But it doesn’t seem to be used for any practical applications. We don’t know how useful it would be.
Clear glass is known to be really hard to make from scratch.
People like How to Make Everything on Youtube had real problems with it.
But if you get optical glass, that lets all your scholars get glasses, so they can still read in their fifties and sixties.
I cheated and skipped ahead to his success, and it appears he didn’t use lead, which was the 15th century “shortcut”.
My very rough impression is that they’d look at you blankly because duh, we’ve already got ways you can become a freedman/manumitted! Particularly as being the trusted slave of an important person gave you the opportunity to peddle influence and be quite wealthy yourself, once manumitted, see Narcissus (freedman of the Emperor Claudius). The notion of “no slaves at all ever anymore from anywhere” would not even be in the water then, because you could become a slave as a spoil of war (and thus conquered peoples sold off as slaves were a source of revenue for the Roman leader doing his military service as part of the cursus honorum) as well as for indebtedness, born into slavery, and other reasons.
Though reading up on it, it looks like the influence of the Stoics over time did work on attitudes to improve the lot of slaves, so it seems like your best bet is to become the most Stoic of Stoics and work on hectoring society into treating their slaves better, which will in turn soften attitudes to the point where doing away with slavery altogether happens (then again, if I believe Wikipedia, by the third century slavery was replaced by serfdom which may not be much better).
I’d introduce as much modern mathematical and economic knowledge as I could (not an expert on those, but I know a huge amount of stuff people of that era didn’t, and arabic numerals make a lot of things vastly easier), as much as possible by the practical method of applying them myself to increase my own wealth (and so my influence). Then I’d start a campaign based on the economic arguments against the efficiency of slavery.
I think this depends on how much of practical economy you know. You probably know enough to spot obvious fallencies in the global economy (IIRC the romans were prone to fixing prices of food), but dunno how much that will help you run your terrains back then.
Arabic numerals would be huge, and you probably know enough math to get to publish logarithmic tables.
But if you are good at double entry bookkeeping, you probably can become an effective administrator. May get a lot of influence by becoming an auditor.
Destroy the republic. Then there is no slavery in the republic.
Go to Judea and somehow seed STRONG antislavery sentiment among the jews there, in the hopes that when Christianism is founded they inherit this sentiment instead of the meh attitude they carried on for centuries.
I guess that falls well into the Empire part. Dunno how to do it in less than 100 years without going to Marius and trying to make _him_ emperor, with the deal that slavery will be abolished.
Tough one.
It was the Christians who abolished slavery in the wider Roman empire, so maybe someone here saw your comment and decided to do so.
In the words of Dril: I am not owned.
I like Indian food a lot, but have failed at making good Indian curry. Instead, we buy at an overpriced restaurant for like $20 per dish.
What are some pro tips at making a creamy curry? (Ingredients and cooking method appreciated)
I am a fan of this recipe and have cooked it for a number of friends who have also started using it.
https://www.geniuskitchen.com/recipe/budget-bytes-chana-saag-513882
What have you tried to do that failed?
I’ve never been able to make Indian food that tastes exactly like it came from a restaurant, but I’ve refined a recipe for korma (a kind of creamy coconutmilk-based curry) that’s come pretty close. I make it with butternut squash and garbanzo beans but I suppose you could swap in other solid ingredients. The “curry sauce” part should stay the same (all amounts are eyeballed, so use your judgment):
1. Heat coconut oil in a pan on medium-high. Once it’s hot, add a cinnamon stick and a bunch of bay leaves, let that sautee for a minute or two. Then add mustard seed, ground cloves, cumin, and curry powder. Stir, then let that sautee for a couple more minutes. What you’re doing here is flavoring your oil.
2. Add finely diced onion, and garlic powder. Shake some salt over that, then stir. You can also add cayenne or other hot peppers if you like that and if none of your diners will complain too much.
3. Once the onions are very translucent, you can either dump the coconut milk* (and an additional can-full of water) directly over top of them or else use a rubber spatula to transfer them to another larger pot on high heat and dump the coconut milk & can of water over them there; it really depends if the pan you sauteed everything in so far is deep enough to accommodate your whole curry.
4. Add a couple chicken boullion cubes, more curry powder, some turmeric, and whatever solid ingredients you want to add. Like I said, I really like this with chickpeas and butternut squash. Let it come up to a boil, then simmer it on low. You can also add butter if you want, although lately I haven’t found it necessary.
5. Once it’s thickened up and your solid ingredients are cooked through (usually 45-60 minutes on a stove, or 4-6 hrs in a “high” slow cooker), you’re done. Salt to taste. Serve it over basmati.
*Make sure you don’t buy “lite” coconut milk. Shake it really well for an almost unreasonably long time before you open it, too; I’ve found that coconut milk tends to separate out while it’s sitting on the shelf in the store, so this step helps you avoid having to scoop coconut cream out of the can with a rubber spatula. It also works your arm muscles, like a shake weight!
Well….
Apparently I made a good thai curry out of a cast iron skillet, but proceeded to try and make curry out of a slow cooker four times before being told to stop and also being informed….dummy, curry isn’t made in a slow cooker.
“curry” was the store-bought curry powder plus coconut milk
FYI: I usually make the above recipe in a slow cooker, only I do steps 1 & 2 in a pan on the stove. It’s come out great every time lately.
But note, this is NOT a Thai curry.
I’m definitely going for Indian not Thai curry, so I’ll be on the right track
Not an expert or even a good amateur cook by any means, but I do know that standard “curry powder” is not going to get you anything like ‘real’ Indian curry. You do need to use the individual spices, or at least get a good blend for the particular dish (korma is not the same as dopiaza is not the same as madras and so on).
And if I believe the Madhur Jaffrey videos from the 80s, frying at each stage rather than stewing is the secret 🙂
I strongly endorse this message. 😛
The good news is the “real” spices are pretty simple and most recipes just use a subset of the ten or so standard spices, so you don’t need a big dedicated spice cupboard (unless you want to get all the esoteric rarely-used ones as well).
(Madhur Jaffrey’s books are also pretty good.)
I was going to suggest DragonMilk go to an Indian grocery store and buy the bags of whole spices like I normally do, but I didn’t think it was practical. Besides, the last few times I made this recipe I used the spices I mentioned plus the yellow curry powder available in any grocery store chain and it came out fine.
Getting some premixed spice packets is a good way to get part of the restaurant taste with at home prices. A few issues:
– It will not be quite as good as your local restaurant.
– You may have to experiment to get the proportions where you like them
– Even after you do that, the naan will not be nearly as good.
Hmm – so what should store bought curry powder be used for? Should I just not have bought it?
I’ve been surprised by how good some store-brand naan from a grocery store is, and how often actual Indian restaurants don’t produce very good naan. They might get lucky.
Our local Indian supermarket has lots of little boxes, each of which contains the spice mix for a particular dish. I’ve tried one or two of them, using the recipe on the back, but they come out too hot for the rest of my family.
Have a look on the back and see what’s actually in it. If it’s mostly standard spices (e.g. cumin, coriander, turmeric, chilli powder) it’s totally fine to use as a substitute for those spices. Powdered spices are generally all added at the same time anyway.
I liked store bought curry powder in egg salad. Maybe to give a bit more flavor to some ramen or another quick meal. It tastes good in split pea soup.
I also second the above that depending on the mix it still works for some curries. Store bought curry powder tastes like the Japanese versions of curry to me.
Some things that have worked for me:
– Spices for specific Indian dish, purchased at Indian grocery
– Cook meats in cast iron pan
– Cook onions and peppers in cast iron pan
– Add meats, onions, and spices to slow cooker
– Add cream, yogurt, butter, tomatoes, etc as time permits
-Experiment and adjust according to taste
– Don’t stop eating at Indian and Thai restaurants, because that will give you ideas for further experimentation.
This cookbook contains some really excellently tasty examples of Indian cooking, albeit probably not of the healthiest kind. I highly recommend it for parties in particular:
https://www.amazon.com/Prashad-Cookbook-Indian-Vegetarian-Cooking/dp/1444734717/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=prashad&qid=1555521135&s=gateway&sr=8-1
More generally, I’ve found it’s pretty easy to get good at Indian cooking compared to other Asian cuisines I’ve tried. A lot of really good recipes come down to (1) fry some standard mixture of spices and aromatics, (2) fry or otherwise cook some vegetables, (3) add some suitable liquid (e.g. chopped tomatoes, water, coconut milk) and simmer to thicken. This makes it pretty easy to learn separate modules of this process (e.g. groups of spices or aromatics that go well together) and mix and match them yourself.
Regarding making creamy currencies in particular, one trick I found in a different book is to get a tin of coconut milk and let it settle on a top shelf for a day or two, then open it carefully and spoon out the thick cream to separate it from the thin coconut water. Then you can cook your veg in the thick creamy part and add however much or little water you want to get the right consistency.
(Sorry, not a complete recipe, but hopefully helpful/encouraging nevertheless)
The middle path is to go to World Market (or some equiv.) and pick up some of their pre-done sauce jars.
Heat it up, add rice and chicken/tofu/whatever and you’re done.
Go to youtube and look up “BIR curry”. BIR stands for British Indian Restaurant and the style of cooking common in British and American Indian eateries. Most recipes involve a base gravy – which is kind of a vegetable soup that’s pureed, consisting of a lot of onions, that is “carmalized” and becomes the saucy base of the dish. There’s also a “mix powder” which is a common base of powdered spices used in the dishes. Other dish-specific spices are added along with pieces of pre-cooked meat or veggies. Cooking method involves high heat and only takes 5-10 minutes.
I love Indian food but found the cookbook recipes I had very labor intensive and although good, not like what I had at restaurants. They were “traditional style” Indian recipes. BIR style curries, like those presented by Misty Ricardo or Curry Shed on YouTube, are faster and easier to make once you’ve put together the base ingredients, and taste like the restaurants. I can thaw out some chicken and frozen base gravy while cooking rice and then make the curry (Vindaloo is my favorite) in about 10 minutes for a nice weeknight meal.
https://www.youtube.com/user/MistyRicardo
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCa_M1_lZjkxtOkoRcy3sbQw
Some cookbooks will recommend that you buy whole spices, replace them often, and then roast and grind them yourself before adding them. I’ve not done that, but Indian restaurants might. I dunno.
I’ve found that in most cooking applications, salt, fat, and cooking accuracy (tenderness/texture of the food) get you 90% of the way there. So, unless you’re on a low-sodium diet and/or are averse to milk products, cream and salt are your best friends. They’ll do much more for the flavor than perfecting the spice profile will.
Your mission is to travel back in time to 1720 and win the Longitude Prize. Your time travel machine is Terminator style, so you can’t bring anything back with you (unless it is a living thing, I suppose). How do you do it?
The key is a very accurate clock.
So you could spend a few decades perfecting your mechanical clockwork construction skills and then go back and get the jump on whoever ended up winning the prize.
Or for a quicker and more interesting solution, you introduce the quartz electric clock early. Perhaps tattoo a schematic onto yourself and/or an animal to bring it back with you.
Ryan North took up pretty much this exact problem in “How to Invent Everything.” His conclusion was: don’t bother with the clock, invent radio. If you know for certain that all these strange things you’re doing with cardboard and acid and zinc and carbon etc. are actually going somewhere useful, you have a much better chance at solving the longitude problem by building a very powerful AM station in London than by somehow being the finest clockmaker that ever lived.
Yeah, there are four basic approaches for the Longitude problem, and all of them are useable but not practical without some innovations beyond 1720s tech. They all boil down to “compare the reference time at a known longitude with the local time calculated from stellar observations”, and the difference is how you get the reference time. The chronometer method is well-known, and I dealt with two others in another comment. The fourth is to broadcast the reference time from shore. This was proposed at the time by means of signal rockets relayed between ships holding position at ~100 mile intervals, but that was deemed to be both too expensive and too imprecise. Inventing radio is a more practical implementation of the same concept.
The chronometer method is probably impractical: it’s primarily an engineering and precision manufacturing problem, so I wouldn’t have a huge comparative advantage over clockmakers of that era who historically took several decades after 1720 to get it right. And even then, marine chronometers were hideously expensive to manufacture for some time.
I’d go for either the lunar distances method or the Galilean moons method.
Lunar Distances involves a lookup table indicating the time based on the date, the angles from the horizon to the moon and a reference star, and the angle between the moon and the reference star. The hard parts are 1) a practical algorithm for calculating the lookup table (a low-error numerical solution to the differential equations of the three-body problem, with trigonometric transforms), and 2) actually crunching the numbers. #1 is a well-known algorithm (Euler’s method) that I expect could memorize given a few weeks to prepare. #2 could be done by hand (hiring clerks for the grunt work, perhaps), but I could improve on that by inventing some basic mechanical computers. Slide rules would be the easiest (log tables can be generated by hand, and that’s the hard part of making a slide rule).
Galilean moons works by noting which of Jupiter’s four major moons are transiting the planet’s disk or are eclipsed by Jupiter’s shadow. The transits start and stop at times that can easily calculated. The calculation is much easier (algorithm has already been solved for some time before 1720, and can be calculated on shipboard), but the observation is much harder (need to take detailed observations through a medium-powered telescope from a rolling deck). Galileo came up with a concept for a solution (mounting a telescope on a helmet rig, so it’s steady relative to the observer) a century or so previously, but couldn’t get it to work. Samuel Parlour tried revisiting the concept (using a shoulder rig instead of a helmet) in 1824, and had limited success but not enough to win the prize (at that point, lunar distances and chronometers were both solved, but expensive, so there was still a prize for further improvements but there was a pretty high bar for winning it). Matthew Dockrey revisited Parlour’s designs in 2013 and apparently got it working (although now with GPS and accurate electrical clocks, it’s a mere curiosity). If I chose to go that route, I’d practice building Dockrey’s design with period tools and materials until I was confident in my ability to build it from memory.
Wouldn’t either of those methods have a serious problem with cloudy nights?
Yes, but that’s a problem with just about any maritime navigation method other than dead reckoning, GPS, or the Viking sunstone (taking observations of the sun at noon to estimate latitude, and using a naturally-occurring polarizing filter (e.g. Icelandic Spar) to find the sun’s location behind the clouds).
In particular, cloudy nights defeat the chronometer method because while the chronometer tells you the time in Greenwich, you need to compare that to the directly-observed local time to compare with GMT to get your longitude. And you need to be able to see stars and the horizon to measure your local time.
I saw the point made that Notre Dame was in bad shape because it wasn’t clear how much responsibility the French government had for taking care of it vs. the responsibility of the Catholic Church. And rich people could have stepped up to help *before* there was a fire. There are people for whom giving a hundred million just isn’t a big deal.
The thing is, people do get more respect for doing dramatic things than for doing the maintenance which prevents the need for dealing with emergencies.
How can maintenance be better rewarded?
Private property. The clearest it is who has ownership and who derives benefits, the more that person/organization has incentive to keep the golden goose alive. See Hernando de Soto.
I used to live in some govt-owned apartments where the original contractors (in the 90s) did not put flashing above the windows. So every window in the entire complex leaked. I am convinced that if there had been an owner whose real estate was in danger from water damage, it would have been fixed in year one. I lived there around year 10, and if you complained about the leaks, the management firm that was ‘in charge’ would dutifully send a maintenance guy over to slap a useless bead of caulk around the windows.
In a similar vein, outside my office window in a govt building is a beautifully constructed artificial pond that is always green and gross with a fountain that was at one time inverted (turned over somehow at its mount so that it would stir the water but not spray into the air) because they were concerned it might give us all legionnaire’s disease. Lots of money for construction, no money for maintenance.
But the private property of sacred art is a very fraught issue. In Spain, sacred art can only be sold to religious organizations or to the government.
A church that was being renovated had some altar pieces that were in a very bad state. The church deemed that they had no artistic, historical or sacred value, so they decided to toss them in the bin. A contractor then asked for permission to take them, and in his free time he restored them. And when he tried to sell them, he was banned from doing it, because of the law.
This is probably a bit excessive. But having sacred art as private property is how we ended up with the Ayala altarpieces in Chicago, or the frescoes from Pyrinean churches end up stripped from walls and in private collection in the US or in a museum in Catalonia.
I think those frescoes would be best in the churches where they were conserved for almost a thousand years. But the current reality is, remote churches will be robbed, and precious art will be stolen, and the only way to protect it is to strip it from the walls and keep it safe in a museum with guards and CCTVs and all the rest of security paraphernalia.
Remote churches having no security is a big issue. In my hometown, church bells have been stolen from multiple churches. The sad thing is that they are not even going to end up in some private collection, but they will be sold for the bronze (there was probably 500-1000 euros worth of metal in a church bell). Our City Hall’s solution was to take all the bells from the churches, and they only get hanged up once per year at that church’s patron saint day. So we don’t get death bells anymore, and the churches look very sad without the bells.
I don’t see how keeping those churches in private property, would have helped keep the Ayala altarpiece in Ayala, or the Pyrenian frescoes in the churches they belong to.
Interesting- in England, theft of lead from church roofs for its scrap value is a widespread problem, but I have never heard of bells being stolen.
It seems to have happened in England multiple times.
There also seem to have been some Dutch thefts, including of a bell that the Nazis left behind out of respect for the age of the bell. So the thieves were literally worse than Nazis.
I guess criminal gangs specialize. Also, in Spain, churches have tile roofs.
In my hometown, one church had two bells, a big one and a smaller one. The smaller one was more valuable, because it had some inscriptions of historical significance. The bigger one got stolen first, though, because it had more metal. The town hall then promptly removed the other one.
They didn’t just steal the bell, though. They did it on Christmas eve (we woke up on Christmas day without a bell).
I see that the bell of the church in Shotwick also had inscriptions.
I’m not a pure libertarian – I’m in favor of regulation (but I do think that the bias and default should always be in favor of fewer laws). So it’s perfectly ok to treat monuments like monuments, while having them in private property. There are plenty of precedents – you can own forest, but usually you’re not allowed to clear it without replanting.
But I admit some problems are just hard, regardless of management. Can’t really think of how you could protect valuables in a remote location.
Theft of bells for scrap metal?? That’s crazy – almost as bad as the rhinoceros killed I a French zoo (!). It’s the kind of thing where you think “what? In a first world country? How?!”
Although I have also read about theft of copper wire and thr like for scrap metal from farms in Central California.
Yeah, in the US churches commonly have their copper waterspouts stolen.
Spain is full of churches in remote locations. Especially the Basque country, where they built many churches because of witches (or so says urban legend).
These are small, simple churches, and they don’t have gold, or precious art. They are very simple, rustical churches, and until they started to steal the bells, it was thought that they contained nothing worth stealing. These churches have no alarm, no CCTV, nothing. And being so remote, it’s not like that would help much, because nobody lives there.
In my hometown, they also stole the electric cables three times, and the telephone cables twice. These are people willing to risk their life stealing electric cables – what would stop them from stealing church bells?
And, obviously, they are not Spanish; all of the metal thieves tend to be Eastern European, most frequently Romanian.
Privatizing the benefits is essentially equivalent to letting it burn down. Defeats the purpose.
Not sure where to begin. Let’s take the most drastic scenario – it’s 100% private property, and closed to the public completely. It’s still a beautiful monument that can be admired from the outside – very much better than burned down. My personal “Notre Dame” moment is reading in the park behind it. Somehow I never really liked the inside – dark and churchy.
But most private property scenarios involve pretty much the same Notre Dame, with stuff like 3 eur per visit or 10 eur for the “hunchback view”. One could even argue a better experience overall, I don’t think you could climb any towers.
Well, for one thing, I’m speaking more to the abstract principle than Notre Dame specifically. The whole problem is how to coordinate the preservation of this kind of public good. The premise here does not allow you to “admire from the outside” as that is the conceptual opposite of privatizing the benefits to fund the maintenance. If the true public benefit is the outside of the place, then it has to be the outside that we’re fencing off from view in order to collect payment to pay the maintenance.
Concretely though, a financially self-interested actor is for sure going to sell off the art inside piece by piece, not pay millions on maintenance just to collect $4 per visit. A for-profit model doesn’t produce art museums, it produces art auctions.
The obvious way to reward maintenance better is to charge the real cost of admission—visiting was free, and you only had to pay to visit special locations like the tower, and I wonder whether this is the optimal price.
But is it a church or a tourist attraction?
In capitalist Tropico, they are one and the same!
It’s both. I’m not saying to charge admission for Mass, which is a violation of canon law and common decency, I’m saying to charge admission for tourists.
The Oxford college chapels (Anglican, of course) already do this; I got around paying the tourist entrance fee for one college by saying I was going to Evensong. (And then I actually went; if anything, the Evensong was even more beautiful than the college courtyard outside.)
There is no way to reward maintenance inside of the “We steal your buildings but let you keep using them…if you’re good” paradigm.
Or did you mean more generally?
I meant more generally.
I don’t particularly agree with Radu. Fuck, people don’t maintain vital infrastructure that they own. The problem is that, engineering-wise, we have no good way to estimate the benefits of maintenance and a very good way to estimate the costs. Worse, it’s a very slowly iterated game in which the players form habits long before they get feedback.
+1. My first thought reading that was “have you never rented from someone you didn’t know personally?” I haven’t even had particularly cruel or scheming landlords compared to accounts from my friends, but neglecting a non-trivial problem for months or years is well within the default set of things you can expect from private property owners
I wonder if that has to do with the relative value of buildings to land (in residential terms, not the Notre Dame), or if they discount the views of people who won’t directly pay for the repairs they request.
Or if it’s just CBA with possibly unwarranted discounting of future costs.
I actually think it’s more pernicious. I suspect that the first-order cost of maintenance is always greater than the marginal benefit because rents are sticky. A marginal degradation in quality is usually not going to prompt a renegotiation of rates, so the only relevant costs end up being the catastrophic ones… which may or may not get discounted. “Is $50 worth a 0.05% chance of catastrophic fire in the next 20 years?” is the sort of question people are bad at; “Is $50 worth 20 years of neatness and tidiness” is better. The latter strategy still has horrifying failure cases, though – see: California’s attempts to deal with the fact that the state aggressively prevented forest fires for way too long.
As far as public property goes, I’m strongly in favor of allocating a generous discretionary maintenence budget to whoever is in a position to notice that maintenence is required. This seems to work decently well for parks in the US. I have no idea how to make it work well for structural integrity of civil infrastructure. Anyway, the happy coincidence that marginal QoL improvements often have good long-run side effects should be milked for all it’s worth as far as I’m concerned.
My local power company declared bankruptcy as a semi-direct result of cutting costs by skipping maintenance. (A large multi-fatality fire occured, seemingly as a result, and the bankruptcy was a reaction to the wrongful death lawsuits.)
Note that the folks who made those decisions are probably still being paid while the courts sort out the bankruptcy, and will doubtless fall into similarly paid jobs if eventually cost cut out of their current ones. Plus they’d be of a level likely to received large contract severance payments when dismissed (as in, $ millions).
Where was their incentive to do maintenance?
On the other hand, since the company is publically traded, I am one of its many owners. (I own some index fund shares.) Where was my ability to even become aware of these decisions (before the fire) let alone to influence them – realistically speaking.
Privatisation is no panacea.
First, the renters argument is actually pro private property. Rented apartments are compared by default with the owned ones, so they have bad maintenance because they’re not used by the owners. The more you separate the usage from the property, the worse it gets.
About infrastructure, this week our metropolitan heating company in Bucharest finally went bankrupt, and they’re doing some brazenly illegal things to keep things running. So there are many examples of bad infrastructure – this one public, but probably plenty of private as well. But overall, I’m betting the public ones fare worse.
Think of the incentives. You own a piece of very expensive stuff, like a gas pipe. As a private owner, you expect either to use it for a very long time (in which case you want it well maintained) or to sell it some day – in which case there is a piece of math which says how much you should spend to maintain it in order to get the most profit in the end, but that amount is definitely not zero – you can’t sell something that is obviously in bad shape, plus you bear yourself the risks of it breaking down.
For the public manager however, the incentives are … well, actually exactly the incentives of a private manager without the owner looking over his shoulder. He’s hired to do a job, likely for a much shorter duration than the life of the infrastructure. If he’s a politician, that’s even less – 10% of the lifetime is very common. You’re definitely not evaluated on spending money in order to make life easier for the next guy – but you are evaluated on current profits, or for politicians on the money you’re spending on more visible things, like events or welfare. So really, we’re not even talking about a “problem” per se, the incentives are crystal clear.
I think English (Welsh/Scottish) Heritage is a model to follow.
They seem to be revenue-neutral, and they maintain their sites in very good condition. Of course, the issue with cathedrals such as the Notre Dame is also the use you can make of them.
Let’s take the Cordoba Mosque/Cathedral. Spanish muslims have been campaigning for a long time to use it as a dual worship place, and they’ve been denied. I am pretty sure you could find some rich Muslim organization* that would be willing to pay for any restoration and any maintenance cost of the Cathedral if we reconverted it to a Mosque, just for the symbolic victory for Islam that would be. It’s a very politically problematic issue.
I am sure there are many other uses and ways you could find to finance the restoration of churches, but they would involve offending Catholics and the Church.
So, if we are going to put limits onto the uses that would limit the profitability/viability of restoration, public money will have to be used.
*The Turkish government sends a lot of its politicians on a tour of Spain to see all the al-Andalous places.
@Nancy Lebovitz
The French state owns the Notre Dame and they are responsible for the maintenance of the building itself. The Catholic Church has the usufruct.
Interestingly, in my country the churches are owned by the Church, but quite a few bell towers of old churches are owned by the local government, because of a 1798 law from Napoleon, during the French occupation of The Netherlands. The government wanted to be able to use the towers for military reasons (lookouts) and because the clock served an important public function.
I recall hearing that, though the state owns it, the state had said the church was responsible for paying for the renovation and that the church was in fact paying for it. The church tried to get the state to pay for it but failed, so raised money themselves. I can’t find a source on that right now though. Anyway ownership doesn’t necessarily imply responsibility for maintenance costs.
As others have said, it’s hard to reward maintenance, because it can be difficult to articulate the benefits. To give you an example from work, we’ve been debating some repairs to trashracks for a power plant (screens that prevent ingestion of debris from the river). We generally rank these by benefit-to-cost ratio (BCR) for funding priority. It’s (relatively) easy to calculate the cost of various options–replacement with new, or rehabilitation of the old racks (blasting off the paint, fixing any cracks you see, and repainting). However, what’s the number for the benefit?
The usual way is to calculate the probability of failure occurring in a year, and multiplying that by the value lost in a failure. The problem is that both of these are very, very difficult to articulate. I mean, I don’t know what the fuck the chance of failure of these racks are. The best way to figure that out is to do statistical analysis of failures of in-service components, but these (like many structural designs) are one-off, so the only examples are the ones we’re looking at, which haven’t had a major failure yet. I don’t see any visible distress, so when I’m asked if any of them will fail in the next 10 years I can’t say that they will, but then again these things are 80 years old and they stopped doing any substantial maintenance 40 years ago, so I wouldn’t be completely shocked if one caved in in 8 years either.
However, the only way to be sure is to strip the paint off so we can inspect the bare metal. The problem with that is that the largest fraction of the cost for replacement is physically removing them and removing the paint; by the time you’ve actually done that, you’re practically 80% of the way to completing the job. They used to do this up until 40 years ago on a routine basis, but shrinking budgets reduced headcount so that went by the wayside. So we’re left with trying to guess the life remaining by 1) using a Remotely Operated Vehicle to do a swim-by with a camera and see if anything jumps out at us 2) swapping out racks with on-hand spares, but that’s labor intensive for anything but the top rack and requires (expensive on an opportunity cost basis) unit downtime. Any probability of failure numbers are very speculative.
Similarly, it’s hard to say what the cost of a failure is. If one rack caved in, you’d send a bunch of metal and trash into the unit. This could end up being anything from a small issue (debris misses everything important and there’s no cost other than replacing the rack) to catastrophic (jamming open the wicket gates, having a unit run away, losing the headcover, and flooding the powerhouse)*.
Technically, each of these has its own probability of failure given the probability of a trashrack failure, and just like the trashrack failure it’s tough to articulate exactly what they are. The catastrophic is pretty unlikely, as we’ve had plenty of examples of ingested trash not causing major issues, or just jamming a single wicket gate which is easily handled by braking the unit to zero speed and then using the headgates to close the penstock. You then dewater the turbine, pull out the rootball or whatever, fix the shear pin that it broke, and return to service–expensive, but most of the cost is forgone power production.
At the end of this, you have a very uncertain BCR. These get ranked, but there’s a further detail: the first funding priority goes to things that require emergency repair, because they’re in an active state of failure. So even if you have a positive BCR, to fix things on a scheduled maintenance basis, you might sit somewhere in the middle of the list until you fail, at which point it costs 5 times as much because you’re paying to get it done right now, rather than being able to take your time to do the design, bid the job on a routine basis, and sequence the work to minimize disruption. That then means that other jobs that have a positive BCR don’t get funded because of all the money getting sucked up by emergency work. It’s difficult to break out of this spiral.
This also doesn’t account for the fact that there’s stuff that may not have a positive BCR, but once it actually fails it turns out that people don’t actually care about the cost. I’ve got a hypothesis that I haven’t had time to work out the numbers for, but much of the repairs to the Oroville emergency spillway conducted in the aftermath of the incident there may not actually have a positive BCR. If a high-water event or a failure similar to the one in 2017 occurs, you’re going to have a few days to evacuate people downstream, which means you’re going to have basically no deaths** from an emergency spillway failure. If the emergency spillway repairs were on the order of $500mm (about half of the $1bb I recall the repairs), I’m not sure that costs less than just cutting everybody in the town of Oroville a check in the unlikely event they have to evacuate. However, not rebuilding that emergency spillway hell-for-stout would have been absolutely unacceptable politically, no matter what the economics are.
*For an example of “catastrophic” though caused by factors other than trashracks, you can see Sayano-Shushenskaya in Russia.
** Just to make it clear, if you have a possibility of killing people with a failure at a dam, then you fix that without fretting about BCR, but pool elevations are forecast with enough time to allow evacuations.
Sobs in engineer
“Well we did it until we didn’t, and now that we don’t we can’t just throw money away by going back to the maintenance plan we pre-committed to.”
To be fair to the managers who cut the paint shop, it turns out that you can run for a long time without it. When I inspect these things and don’t find major corrosion issues I kind of feel like the exterminator in the Onion article “Exterminator Kind Of Surprised Apartment Doesn’t Have Roaches:”
I do note that I try to design things to not require maintenance when I can get away with it. I’ve had an argument with another engineer along the lines of “Yeah, I get that paying less up-front with a stream of payments for over 50 years for yearly maintenance costs less on a life-cycle basis, but that stream of payments always seems to disappear around year 11.“
That’s a thing in academia, too. We had 7 old growth chambers that had to be replaced, so money was allocated to replace them one by one, every year. But once two of them were replaced, and the absolute minimum need covered, that allocated money keeps getting raided for other stuff. Allocated money is very convenient.
Which is why I also believe it’s better to spend all the money you are allocated all at once, even if it ends up costing you more, and buy as much of what you want as possible, because if you do split it into different payments, the money won’t keep flowing.
It does create perverse incentives, but that’s how public funding works.
I mean sure, but for me it’s fine because we design for minimal/zero maintenance over a lifetime, and all parties accept that once the lifetime limit is reached they should expect to eat the cost of replacement. I can’t imagine that, “and then we eat the cost of replacement” is commonly proposed when it comes to the kind of stuff you guys build. Either way, I feel like lifecycles are terrifyingly underconsidered (possibly because as far as I can tell reliability engineering is magic numbers + voodoo).
Almost everything is magic numbers+voodoo. From the accounting perspective, you eliminated the prior maintenance routine 40 years ago without the predicted black swan. I don’t know how much money that saved, but it might be a hell of a lot.
My bigger concern with maintenance are the things Clutzy highlighted with ignoring BCR, which is all too common when you have pressure getting applied somewhere else. Like, right now I have someone asking me, in order to hit their attainment numbers, if they can hire some additional full-time employees instead of temps.
Fuck no you can’t. All-in cost for a FTE is literally 4x the cost of a temp. There needs to be an actual demonstrated business case that you can’t hit your number, not a vague feeling, if you wanted to effectively double the labor cost.
Also, generally speaking, the only person I trust if he gives me a number is the guy who is known as a gigantic asshole but still hits his timelines and budgets. Everyone else is sand-bagging.
Cries harder in engineer
Like I get it, but this is how you get burning buildings. Unless you pick up the obsidian knife, perform the ritual dictated by the reliability guy’s spreadsheets, and accept the costs, it’ll happen eventually. Alternatively, 10 years later you spend 2 years and hundreds of thousands of dollars to find out if you can anchor a giant block of concrete to 100-foot steel rods. Then you spend millions to anchor a giant block of concrete to 100-foot steel rods. It might be voodoo magic that isn’t right per se, but it’s also never wrong. It’s gri-gri for engineers.
We can’t tell you the BCR because we can’t tell you the failure mode or the cost to repair/halt it. We can only guess at the maintenance requirement, because the best way we have to determine the need is to build 20 and wait 20 years for them to fail. And we definitely can’t tell you how badly missing maintenance has fucked anything because we’d need to do maintenance to find out. Anyone who tells you otherwise, asshole or not, is lying.
Anybody here who can give us the inside scoop on the Israeli elections? I’m seeing headlines like “there is no more Israeli left,” but I don’t trust reporting on foreign politics, and I don’t know what “left” and “right” even mean in Israel.
(Not to mention that I’ve seen headlines declare the same thing domestically about the left and right in the past few decades, and they were dead wrong.)
Isn’t left vs right relative anyways?
As far as I’m concerned, this is dispositive. Others may feel differently because identifying the center is always a subjective judgement, but it’s undeniable that the center-left Labor got slaughtered, and the socialist/communist/Arab parties even counted collectively can barely match the numbers of the parties to the right of Netanyahu.
I don’t think the left has been killed economically (that actually happened most significantly long ago with the reforms), but the economic left foolishly allied itself with the American pro-Palestine coalitions, which simply does not sell right now to people on the ground. That is why you get a range of opinions that appear to foreigners to range from “hawk” to “ultra hawk”, because anything that would look dovish to an American looks like suicide to an Israeli.
Up through at least the 1990s socialism (not the Nordic kind either) was a still a powerful force in Israeli politics. That’s gone now. The economic debate still isn’t like the US, but even the social-democrats are on the run.
The other big axis over there is Palestinian issues. In the last election Arab parties won 10 seats. Labor and Meretz another 10. (Labor is the traditional big left wing party, akin to Labour in the UK or Democrats in the US. Meretz is to their left.) That’s it for the “peace left”, out of 120 seats. To contrast, parties to the right of Likud on these issues (Likud is the traditional right-wing party, akin to conservatives in the UK or republicans in the US), not including the ultra-orthodox parties (i.e. the United Right and Yisrael Beiteinu) got as many seats as Labor and Meretz. The new party that did well (Blue and White) is explicitly centrist. Their slogan in the election was something like “strong but not crazy”.
It’s as if a new party arose in the US co-founded by Mitt Romney and Joe Lieberman and took away 85% of the political support from the Democratic Party. In that case I think it would be fair to say the left was dead.
You are invited to give us a tiny taste of your profession, in a single sentence.
An example, for software development:
Dunno if you’d call clerical work/administration a profession as such, but here goes:
(Still doesn’t get you any respect, though).
Relevant to johan’s post and yours.
As a software developer, you spend a disturbing amount of time hoping that the broken thing is really badly broken, because then it will dependably reproduce.
There are two states for programmers: “my code isn’t working, and I don’t know why” and “my code is working, and I don’t know why.”
The second one makes me so much more nervous, because I start to lose faith in everything I thought I knew about programming generally and the software I’m working on specifically.
“We are hoping to finish building this large, million dollar piece of equipment roughly the length of a football field sometime this afternoon, and it must be delivered to our client in Russian Siberia tomorrow morning.”*
*I guess I should clarify this is an American company, the problem would be a bit different if we were, say, based in Russia.
We try to make your science-fiction fantasies into the most boring possible reality, by ensuring that whatever the Space Hero Astronaut has to do he has an exhaustively detailed and validated procedure or checklist for.
Would you like to know whether, if management slept in their offices all day rather than trying to do things, and the economy stayed exactly the same, we’d be a viable company in a decade?
OR would you rather that I write down the 3 variants of the reserve formula from memory, and then explain them in detail?
I’m not sure I understand this one at all, Sam. People keep asking you to quantify impossibly unlikely scenarios?
I mostly support long-term strategic planning, on questions like “what if we focused on growing product line X.” But most of the company’s profit is driven by other things, like the interest rate environment.
So I’m normally answering “we only change X, and everything else stays the same–how does that work out over time.”
Plumbing:
!
Does waiting and doing nothing also tend to make things go wrong?
The worst kind of wrong – it means your client has no operating business.
What is your profession?
Attorney.
@johan_larson
Spartans: Oohrah! Oohrah! shake spears
@Le Maistre Chat
I believe I have found my people.
@johan_larson and @Le Maistre Chat:
In the modern world, it seems like “security contractors” are the equivalent of Spartans.
Industrial Ultrasonic Imaging: If our black magic can’t see it, you don’t need to know about it.
Yes, I know that writing it that way sounds like a good idea, but if you do, it will come back to haunt all of us when it gets onto the airplane, if not before.
A geologist is someone who sees the eternal hills as temporary surface phenomena.
I’m not a geologist (more like a very slight geology buff, or a layman who’s enthusiastic about geology) but that’s how I see it too.
“After years of grueling work using extremely precise machines we can prove definitively that nobody has any idea what they’re talking about when it comes to biology and medicine, including ourselves.”
I can’t say any specifics without doxxing myself, but a talk I heard recently made a very convincing case that many if not most of the targeted drugs in clinical trials today act through entirely different mechanisms than they’re supposed to. My own thesis project is based on the fact that a central hypothesis in my field, which is literally older than I am, has never been directly tested. It’s a very exciting time for biomedical science but there’s a lot of garbage in the literature that needs to be sorted through.
This is for my previous profession:
Was there a reason you couldn’t apply make up to the dog?
My guess off the top of my head is that it would take an incredibly tolerant and well-trained dog to 1) hold still while the makeup is being applied, and 2) not mess up the makeup before the director gets the shot. But then, I have cats rather than dogs, so I may be underestimating how tolerant a dog would be of makeup.
Applying makeup to the dog definitely would have been the smarter way to go. But not every opportunity is seized on set. Plans change, scripts change, things get overlooked, there are mistakes. (The dog itself is rarely the issue; serious dog actors are extremely well trained and are accustomed to putting up with all sorts of weird stuff that comes with the territory of filmmaking. Their trainers are always close by, just off camera.) The saying goes, “‘Fix it in post‘ are the four most expensive words in filmmaking”, but sometimes it’s still the only way to get the best story told in the end.
Thus I was able to eke out a living for several years by digitally painting blood onto fur, erasing errant light stands and cables from the frame, replacing clear skies with more picturesque partly cloudy ones, etc.
Either the saying is wrong, or you did more than eke, or you should have been better at capturing your value 😉
Some work can be very expensive compared to alternatives and yet offer only low salaries. For example, when productivity is very low.
My experience in Hollywood was that success is highly dependent on your network. At the time I suspect I was worse-than-average at developing my professional network. So, I moved out there, made a small number of strong connections, got work trickling in from them, but it wasn’t enough to allow me to do much more than pay my rent. And eventually barely even that, which is one of the reasons I got out.
In retrospect, I’d say those people feeding me work had limited networks of their own.
(OTOH I was just about to get a job at Sony when I left. So who knows what would have happened, maybe in the end I wouldn’t have been eking. But I’m glad I left.)
Note: there are kinda 2 Hollywoods. There’s the big-budget Hollywood that makes the stuff you see on TV/in theaters/on Netflix, and the small-budget Hollywood that makes the stuff you see on websites like CollegeHumor.com and at small art theaters. The former operates largely on union labor; the latter doesn’t. I was never in a union.
ALSO: the saying about “fix it in post” tends to refer to when people hire the big visual effects companies like Digital Domain, which charge a fortune for every second of footage and employ tons of people. Employees at those companies are largely overworked and underpaid, based on reports I heard from friends who worked there. (DD, I think, was involved in a scandal where they were using unpaid interns to produce for-profit work that normally employees would have been paid to do.) So even outside of my personal experience, the pattern holds.
I translate a business problem into math, solve the math problem, then translate the solution back into business.
Legal assistant/paralegal work:
Go ahead and do this two hour project that the client might want but hasn’t actually instructed and will surely say they don’t need after the work is done.
Is the client still on the hook for the bill for those two hours of make-work?
Alternatively
This sounds a lot like our customers talking to us.
The first is what we say to ourselves. The second is what Sales says we sold.
Yeah, for us it’s more “What Sales agreed for us to make; reality be damned”
All numbers about aircraft are lies; I collect them.
Everybody knows that the universal quantifier is normally restricted to a domain determined by context.
I see what you did there.
I heard a philosopher of language (I think Nathan Salmon) say this; he was quoting another philosopher of language (maybe Keith Donnellan?) not merely because it seemed relevant at the time but because it seemed like such a philosopher of language thing to say. I provided it as an example sentence here for the same reason.
Thousands of very talented people over dozens of years have written hundreds of billions of dollars worth of software, which everyone is allowed to use for free, but only as long as you give them credit and occasionally share your work when you fix what they wrote. This turns out to be more expensive than you would first guess.
I don’t care if you think your code works perfectly: you changed something, so we have to retest all the pieces it touched.
And my previous profession, just for fun:
It’s nice to pretend that you’re contributing to the education of the next generation, but in reality, 3/4 of your work is teaching old people how to attach files to an email and listening patiently as customers give you way too much information about their personal lives.
Next open thread, can we call out people to expand on these? They all sound like they have lots of good stories.
I have no objection. You want to run with it?
“Yes the interfaces have to change, you tried to build the vehicle while the engines were still being designed”
Or
“That is technically a way to build that, but there are consequences”
I’m about to swap companies, and I very much expect the latter of the two to be more common in my next role, though number one will still apply
“Big sky, little airplanes.” Or else, “Visual separation existed up to the moment of impact.”
(yes, there’s already a few quotes about programming here…)
Preventing the lions from eating the wizards keeping the chaos of change from disrupting our pocket of the catallaxy.
If I do my job wrong, the product will be buggy and slow. If I do my job perfectly, the product will be buggy and slow.
Or,
Test failed? Great, now I have to fix the test too.
Profession1:
“We try to understand behavior on the assumption that individual actors have objectives and tend to choose the correct way of achieving them. That assumption need not be limited to humans.”
Profession2:
“No plot survives contact with the characters.”
Sorry, that’s two sentences.
There are many facets to the task of telling a computer to do something useful for non-computer-savvy folk. I think we’ve seen lots of descriptions of that kind of work in this thread.
I’m a tax accountant who has been shanghaied into making the VAT systems work for Canada for the last few years. I have two ironic comments on this.
As an IT person, I’m a pretty darn good tax accountant.
Making systems work flawlessly to save the user time usually takes more time by IT than it would be to do all the work manually.