I've been reticent to leap angrily, ever since a wave of messages told me to look into the impressive new Kojima/Sony hit “Death Stranding” — likely to be Game of the Year -- commenting on its “obvious connection” to one of my most beloved works. Many - perhaps a third - of all major reviewers have also remarked on a family — or clone — resemblance, at the most basic levels of character, story arc and meaning. Not wanting to seem greedy, resentful or unfair, I chose to exercise some reserve. I haven't posted on my main blog about it.
But finally, the surge of references to my post-apocalyptic novel "The Postman" just got too massive. So I posted on my site for occasional reflections, on Medium. (https://tinyurl.com/KojimaPostman) Check out my history of not being litigious... plus enumerated reasons why - perhaps - I should make an exception this time.
Your thoughts are welcome.
== Fan-fic that’s worth something… even “canonical” ==
I finally got around to reading Stephen Collings’s fan-fic contribution to Isaac Asimov’s epic Foundation and Robots Universe -- Foundation's Resolve -- and I must say I was pleasantly surprised, all the more so reading further into the book, as SC’s authorial skills evidently improved. The plot is intricate and highly Asimovian-logical, offering up a Galaxy that’s riven by intrigue among many competing forces, most of them already present in Isaac’s cosmos, such as the ageless/powerful servant robot Daneel Olivaw and Hari Seldon’s beloved consort Dors Venabili. Central to the story is a 25,000 year collision of robot factions, between those who would ‘serve humanity’ by controlling Homo sapiens (for our own good) and others seeking to return mastery to the creator race.
Incorporated from Asimov’s final novels are the character Golan Trevize (“the Man Who Is Never Wrong”) and the macro-mind entity Gaia. Collings also strove — with much success — to continue forward the plot-propelling characters and development crafted by Gregory Benford, Greg Bear and myself, in the Second Foundation Trilogy. Especially significant — at least to me — was the way he heeded the fundamental logic that we related, following Isaac’s own explicit cues, for why Gaia/Galaxia cannot be “the” human end state, but merely one of many options in a diversity we’ll desperately need.’
There’s been no sign that the Asimov Estate will want more entries in the series… (before her passing. Janet Asimov expressed great pleasure in my own capstone contribution, Foundation's Triumph, which sought to tie together so many loose ends, even from obscure titles like Pebble in the Sky and The Currents of Space.) But if they ever do, I have notes that should be helpful. Moreover, I would not mind at all if Mr. Collings’s meticulously faithful and logical Foundation's Resolve were deemed “canonical,” helping guide future creators in this magnificent, sprawling playground.
== Miscellaneous News ==
An excellent profile of my colleague Ken Liu, who has been foremost in translating and discovering and bringing western awareness to the wave of fantastic Chinese science fiction authors who a boldly taking the genre in new directions.
"Author and futurist David Brin talks with Jim Rutt about optimism, ritualized combat,The Transparent Society, and the search for life in the universe. Beginning with the case for optimism, Brin takes on "Star Wars" and talks up "Star Trek" before dropping back to Adam Smith and Karl Popper. Those thinkers provided the intellectual framework for an "intensely regulated" capitalism that brought tremendous wealth increases for the middle class. He's wary that it could all be lost if people cling to righteous, divisive politics. Winner of Hugo Award and Nebula Awards, an acclaimed futurist, Brin advocates for compromise, cooperation and transparency that allows people to assess the data, participate in the discussion, and in processes for sustaining order. If that doesn't work, there's always outer space! Brin and Rutt end the interview with a discussion of SETI and the search for life in the universe."
A fun little essay on great old PS2 (or dreamcast) games that ought to be rebooted for PS4! And one favorite? ECCO THE DOLPHIN: DEFENDER OF THE FUTURE. Whose storyline and narration I wrote. "The story is dramatically narrated at key points and is brilliant in its absurdity. The alteration of the past and its gradual recovery by Ecco’s deeds make for some interesting world-building. Later stages feature abandoned underwater buildings and machinery in polluted waters. This is in stark contrast to the first chapter’s levels, where underwater exploration is tranquil and bursting with colour." Right on. Ecco forever!
The Science of Rick and Morty: The Unofficial Guide to Earth's Stupidest Show, by Matt Brady, is all about the real science in the most popular animated show on the planet (viewership may be inflated for dramatic purposes) - from the multiverse to cloning, living in a simulation to uplifting animals, including Snuffles and the other dogs of earth C-137. The series may play fast and loose with some (or a lot) of science, but it also gets some really big concepts into viewers heads – and how the show-runners are having fun messin’ with you!
Would be writers! Remember to have a look at my extensive essay of advice for new colleagues. Also, to do the workshopping you need, to get skills, well, you could do it the way I did and recruit a bunch of area locals to meet two Saturdays a month and critique each other’s works… or take a creative writing class where at least you’ll learn from the confusion of your classmates… and recruit the best ones for your private workshop.
Or else be modern and use Critters! A large number of writers get the workshopping they need via Critters, which is one of the groups that gets organized via critique.org.You earn the right to be critiqued by critiquing others.
148 comments:
From the last posting
The left tends to central authority
YES - but how else do you set up the Rules and Regulations??
In this I like the way the EU does it
The countries send teams to work out the agreed standards - they agree - and then send the "rules" back to the countries to vote on
This has one major advantage - it makes "Regulatory Capture" much more difficult
IMHO you need the "Central Authority" to SET the rules and Regulations - THEN you can have competition
But the "Competitors" should not be setting the rules
YES - but how else do you set up the Rules and Regulations??
NO - It's been done before where nation-states were too weak to enforce their rules at a distance. Look at the history for maritime trading empires before central authority became big enough to enforce much of anything. The merchants worked out systems capable of supporting contract enforcement and insurance. Those systems would largely be deemed illiberal by today's standards, but they demonstrate that most such systems EMERGE from competition in other arenas.
The error is to argue for DESIGN. That is one of the biggest, surest ways ensuring capture.
Hi Alfred
So we can "Design" and take a chance on it going wrong
Or just throw all of the bits in the air and hope that divine providence assembles them on the way down
The fact that on a tiny number of occasions in the past a system of sort has appeared does not give confidence when looking at all of the other side effects of the laissez faire experiments
Especially as the systems that did appear were "bloody awful" by today's standards
Design may not (will not be) perfect
But it's oceans better that "let god do it" - even (especially) when god is the god of free markets
Can't comment on the Medium posting, at least apparently not without letting them have access to my other social media, but...
Fallout New Vegas isn't such a ripoff; sure, your character is a Courier, but a) that's not seen as being at all special by anyone (you are, because you're the Courier who was shot in the head, buried in a shallow grave, and assumed to be dead at the beginning of the game, but there were at least six others hired for the exact same job you were on at the time). And the driver of the plot isn't really you delivering your package - do that and nothing else, and the only ending you can possibly strive for is the House ending, because you don't know anything else about the situation. No, it's what you do when you don't deliver the package that's really important. (And if you have the Lonesome Road DLC, that just drives home the importance of knowing what's in a package before you deliver it - the Divide happened because the Enclave has been obsessed with "finishing the Great War" by launching more nukes at China for two hundred years now, and they found some silos left over in Nevada. Unfortunately, those silos were damaged by the war and by subsequent seismic activity, so when the package you delivered attempted to launch those missiles, well... it didn't really work out that well.)
As for "uplift" in Mass Effect, it doesn't work like Uplifting in Brin's books. The salarians "uplifted" the krogan by giving them spaceflight and other technologies to help them fight the rachni, but the krogan had already developed sapience on their own. (They also fought a number of nuclear wars, because they were still at a tribal state of organization when they figured out how to split atoms.) Then the salarians repeated the trick with the turians, because after the krogan defeated the rachni, they began spreading out among all the worlds they could use - and their birthrate was something fearsome indeed. The turians managed to fight the krogan to a standstill, then a salarian science team managed to introduce a retrovirus that simulated the harsh environment of Tuchanka (the krogan homeworld) by rendering 99.9% of krogan eggs nonviable. This reduced krogan reproduction rates to something more sensible for such a long-lived species, although the krogan thought it was a natural syndrome and that it was going to utterly eliminate them as a race.
The minds of the Mass Effect universe, however, don't go around uplifting presapients - there are enough sapient species in the galaxy, and besides, Prothean technology, left behind by a race that filled the galaxy and then vanished 50,000 years ago, has strange and sometimes unpredictable effects, so both salarians and asari enforce a "go slow" policy. (Humans found the Charon Relay on their own, after learning about the mass effect from Prothean ruins on Mars, and started colonizing other stars almost immediately; they came to the attention of the Citadel Council, the organizing group of what passes for galactic government, when a turian patrol caught them trying to activate Relay 914 and opened fire because random Relay opening is what brought out the rachni threat.)
I can't speak to Death Stranding, as not only have I not played it, the descriptions of the game make it sound like one I'm unlikely to ever play.
As someone who worked with Matt Brady on The Daily Planet Guide to Gotham City nearly two decades ago(!), it is good to see him still getting writing done for fannish tastes!
David Brin wrote...
What they cannot do is refute the pragmatic outcomes justifications for liberal interventions - especially of the FDR era - and hence we can draw one conclusion.
Liberals are stoooopid. For not emphasizing the pragmatic outcomes justifications for liberal interventions.
I think part of the problem is that "moderates" (or 'liberals', if you will) have poisoned their own message over the last thirty years by engaging in too much "mee too" / "third way" embracing of right-wing positions. Such moderates have shared in the responsibility for the policies that have led to the decline of decent jobs, increasing inequality (within the USA), and the growing immiseration of the working class.
Too many of the moderates are only too happy to support cutting spending on the least well off and cutting taxes on the wealthiest. They need to be pushed hard actually to support things that help the fifty percent of the population that has lost ground, and tend to start their "negotiation" with the minimium - then bargain down from there.
I think that this is what Zepp is talking about: most on "the left" conclude (and not without reason) that unless 'the left' continues to hold liberals' feet to the fire, the only thing that will happen is further rightward shifting of the Overton Window.
And a bit of an addendum...
You talk about FDR, but which "liberal" (of the centrist/moderate variety) would give FDR's speech of October 31 1936:
We had to struggle with the old enemies of peace--business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, war profiteering.
They had begun to consider the Government of the United States as a mere appendage to their own affairs. We know now that Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob.
Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me--and I welcome their hatred.
Richard Harris was brilliant as Cromwell (1970). His son will play Hari Seldon in Apple's 10-part series. Kevin Costner was my choice for Seldon, based on his old Apple Mac commercial. Lee Pace (Halt and Catch Fire) as the Emperor is more of a crap shoot.
https://tvline.com/2019/10/22/foundation-tv-series-cast-lee-pace-jared-harris-apple-tv-plus/
Good comment on Rick and Morty. The show reminds me of Monty Python, in approach if not style, in that it was totally unafraid to have its humour depend from sophisticated and academically accurate concepts. First example that pops to mind is "The Drinking Song of the Philosophy Department at the Universe of Wallamalu". When it first came out, some 40 years ago, I hadn't heard of about half the philosophers mentioned, and it made me curious. So I began reading.
Hopefully Rick and Morty will have a similar affect on some.
Gregory wrote: "I think that this is what Zepp is talking about: most on "the left" conclude (and not without reason) that unless 'the left' continues to hold liberals' feet to the fire, the only thing that will happen is further rightward shifting of the Overton Window."
Thank you. A good summation.
Duncan: “The left tends to central authority” —>YES - but how else do you set up the Rules and Regulations??
Duncan there is a huge difference.
The liberal agenda consists of using cooperative politics to establish ARENA-flattening regulation to prevent cheating, taxation to prevent aristocracy and investment to raise up all children to become confident competitors. It is not required that all such efforts be centralized. Equalization of OPPORTUNITY.
The Leftist agenda may sometimes include much of that. but it is at-core SOCIETY leveling via centralized control of ALLOCATION of resources and economic activity. A lot of it is about Equalization of OUTCOMES.
A sane libertarianism would be compatible with liberalism - as I expressed it - with the proviso that it would constantly speak up for design elements that replace centralized-cooperative interventions with decentralized, market based solutions that would handle problems via distributed human volition. (Incentives that bias market forces to take into account externalities like the environment *should* be acceptable to libertarians, if not for Firedmanism,) Alas, of the three positive movements, libertarianism is lost. It has no awareness that its entire approach has been suborned via billions spent by Forbes/Koch etc, hence it is simply not part of the conversation in any useful way.
Naturally, in Social democracies, this gets murky with much overlap between liberalism and leftism.
The problem is that leftism is also easily suborned and fooled. Radical versions have ALWAYS been taken over by radical robspierres and Lenins who proceed to re-create pyramidal power structures of feudalism, only more fiercely deadly. In societies where that's been prevented, leftism can serve as a useful propelling force, expressing rage at injustices, for example.
Today, Putin has re-gathered all the old Soviet state enterprises under capitalist labels, with commissars replaced by “billionaire oligarchs” who are often exactly the same men.
It may surprise you all to learn that I agree with gregory (lower case, since I do that to jim, as well). Yes, Democrats were too willing to go along with the Reagan and post Reagan notions that Supply Side type stinmulus at the top would engender investments in productive capacity and R&D etc. It seemed a reasonable hypothesis in the beginning... though Adam Smith himself predicted what actually happened... 90% of the rich plowed their largesse into rentier asset bubbles, instead.
Try to recall the 1980s. Proposition 13 showed a vast current in white America, where all the voting power lay. Trying to appease that current was a mistake... in hindsight. But opposing it would have accomplished little.
"Equalization of OUTCOMES" is silly right wing propaganda. Equal access is not the same thing. Nor is equal opportunity. Saying that everyone should have access to college is not the same as saying everyone should be awarded a doctorate in physics as a participation trophy. Organizing labour doesn't tilt the board in favour of labour--it simply evens it.
Democrats caved a lot during Reagan, but they also caved a lot during Obama: during the discussions on the ACA, the Democrats made over 300 concessions, the Republicans none. And since they knew the Republicans would never vote for it in any event (and only one in the House did) the concessions were for the crewcut Democrats you think are going to save us all.
Yes, Republican fascist authoritarianism has pushed the country to the extreme right, but it is Democratic unwilliness to stand for the beliefs they profess that made it possible. This has to stop, and liberals can't do that on their own.
Alfred, I do respect you, and like you a great deal. And when I say you are insane, I do not mean it as an insult, but as a critique of your unsafe,and wrong-headed ideas. I'm sorry if it comes off as insulting - that aspect is not intended. I respect you enough to get loud when I think you (my ally in many things) are deadly wrong.
But "taxation is theft" strikes at the heart of what makes democracy work. It is a stake through the heart of the idea that democracy can, through the wisdom of the crowd, achieve goals that are good governance. Taxation is theft is utterly incompatible with the ideals of our nation. I must resist it. It is antithetical to our system.
Furthermore, the idea that regulation of markets will spring forth as an emergent principle aspect of those markets is dangerous and wrong, wrong, wrong. Regulation must be planned, refined, changed, and planned again. The regulation of a market must be allowed to change and evolve every bit as much as the market itself. Competition and cooperation in dichotomy. Believing that a market will somehow magically come up with adequate regulation as an emergent property is foolish and deadly.
We are in extreme crony capitalism right now. Our regulations are *captured* at this time, more-so than at any time since the Guilded Age. To argue that the world markets will somehow self-regulate before utter catastrophe, is... insane. We see no signs that worldwide capitalism will be able to deal with climate catastrophe, or wealth inequality, or resource depletion before tipping points are reached.
I respect you very much, but the invisible hand is failing us all
Dr Brin:
Yes, Democrats were too willing to go along with the Reagan and post Reagan notions that Supply Side type stinmulus at the top would engender investments in productive capacity and R&D etc. It seemed a reasonable hypothesis in the beginning...
If I remember the period correctly, I think it was more along the lines of Democrats presuming that the voting public believed in the Republican framing, so the only way for Democrats to win at all was to be the "kinder, gentler" supply-siders.
Try to recall the 1980s. Proposition 13 showed a vast current in white America, where all the voting power lay. Trying to appease that current was a mistake... in hindsight. But opposing it would have accomplished little.
For much the same reason, Hillary and almost every Democrat in congress in 2003 voted for the war in Iraq.
matthew:
more-so than at any time since the Guilded Age.
Not exactly a pet peeve, but one that comes up enough (not just you) to remark on.
Gilded Age. Not Guilded Age.
I wouldn't make a thing over a mere spelling error, but a Guilded Age would be a different thing, in fact the opposite thing.
"Guilded Age would be a different thing, in fact the opposite thing."
Um not so sure about that. A shift of power from passive-rentier lords to actual producers. But guilds have a mixed history when it comes to repressing upstart competition.
matthew,
that aspect is not intended
Okay. I'm glad I stuffed my first response in a 'gotta cool off' folder. I'll defuse and delete it now. 8)
Parts of it are still needed, though. Your unsafe and wrong-headed ideas appear to confuse common law with legislated law. It's unfortunate we use the same word 'law' for both when it is obvious to many of us they can't be.
There are times when democracy and liberty are in conflict. A slight majority can vote to skew market rules against a group that has done no moral harm. In doing so, the rule of law gets broken even though the law doing it was passed using a legitimate process. This conflict doesn't happen often (at least in big ways) in the US, but it DOES happen often enough that we impose restrictions on what the majority can do. For example, immigrant children should not be put in cages even though the governing majority seems to tolerate it. We bring court cases to defend minorities and expect to defend the rule of law at the same time.
So… you can legitimately vote for a tax on a group of people and still accomplish something immoral. Which will you defend in a pinch? Democracy or Liberty?
The way out of this trap is to recognize two distinct classes of our 'law'. One emerges from us and mostly address 'justice'. The second is a designed product generated by the representatives of the governing majority and probably accretes through several governing majorities. The first probably should require super-majorities to accept new rules or change old ones. The second should require simple majorities except where they conflict with rules in the first set.
The phrase 'taxation is theft' has a dog whistle component to it, so let's look past that for a moment. A legit tax change is of the second type of law. Simple majority should do… until the tax revenues are used for purposes that some find morally objectionable. Consider my objection as just one example. I REALLY don't like the idea that a state or nation in which I am a citizen can execute its citizens. It's not that I want those convicted murderers to live, though. My issue is that a State should never have the power to execute its citizens. NEVER. Fortunately I live in California where we aren't doing that right now, but I also live in the US where we put immigrants seeking asylum in cages and let them die of neglect there. Should the US be able to take my money to do something I find morally despicable? Well… they certainly have the power to do it, but it feels like theft to me. I feel violated by the combination of the taking and the use to which they put it. If they asked for the money instead of taxing me for it, I'd decline to pay anything to help them do that. For other things, though, I'd likely help.
Furthermore, the idea that regulation of markets will spring forth as an emergent principle aspect of those markets is dangerous and wrong, wrong, wrong.
You are mistaken on this, but I'm not going to write the book necessary to explain it. History has way too many inconvenient examples of extra-legal processes that enabled market participants to trade that later became legal processes. I don't claim they were fair by modern standards (we are WAY nicer than our ancestors), but they DID emerge and they worked.
Fight the modern-day oligarchs and oppose crony capitalism all you want. I'm on your side for that. It's the belief that we have to plan it all like socialists that is deadly dangerous… and insulting. Seriously. You do your neighbors a serious insult in that belief. You argue that they can't be ethical people in a free, flat, fair market.
Alfred
You still appear to confuse the actual process of planning with some type of Plan every detail" "no sparrow shall fall"
You don't DO THAT
Planning is an iterative process
This is what you don't understand with the "Engine metaphor"
You don't make a master plan - or you do but you CHANGE it as you get more data
You make small changes - and then examine the results and make MORE changes
This is the method that we eliminate costs in manufacturing - thousands of small changes - and YES some of them go the wrong way and have to be reversed
But we don't wait for the "Market Forces" or "God Almighty" to fix things for us
I will also BET that all of the
"inconvenient examples of extra-legal processes that enabled market participants to trade that later became legal processes"
Were CREATED by people like me who get tore in there and change things - and NONE of them came from "Market Forces"
Market Forces are the "feedback" NOT NOT NOT the initiative
Or just throw all of the bits in the air and hope that divine providence assembles them on the way down
Heh. Spoken like an engineer. 8)
___________________________
Hmm…
A biologist, and engineer, and a physicist walk into a… chef school.
('Bar' would work too. Just vary the story a bit.)
Each says they want to learn to be a great chef.
The physicist ponders all the equipment and how to measure and predict the outcomes. He doesn't actually cook much of anything and winds up leaving school to become a food critic for the local paper.
The engineer works from known recipes and techniques and tinkers with them improving enough to become well liked by his customers, but he get type-cast after a while and then pushed aside by bean counters who turn his work into a profitable franchising business. They don't understand how he got it started… and don't care. Beans are beans.
The biologist knows to throw the non-poisonous ingredients in the air and hope for the best, but tends to start with the same recipes and techniques the engineer uses. She reproduces some of the ideas the engineer found, but it is hit or miss. Along the way, though, she finds unexpected results, gets blasted by the new food critic for some of them, but she's the one who tries mixing hot chilis with chocolate, making avocado ice cream, and deep-fat frying Snickers bars. She hires the engineer and together they beat the franchise op in the 'I want a new experience' niche. Both do well as a team.
___________________________
It isn't a choice between design and luck. There is a middle ground every biologist and honest economist knows. Our markets evolve. All of them. They do this because we are what we are and it is colossally stupid for us to reject our core nature.
Planning is an iterative process
Tell that to government bureaucrats who must explain the consequences to voters and donors when a previous plan proved to be less than stellar.
I have no issue with your engine metaphor being used for actual engines and other things that are… engineered. Designed things ARE designed. I get that. I do that for a living, though on the software side of the world.
I have an issue with the metaphor being extend to things that obviously aren't engines. Evolved things are NOT designed. That doesn't mean we can't tinker with them, but we should respect the rules of the game and the limits of our knowledge. Evolved things have no 'purpose' and it is sheer hubris to argue they do when we mis-apply the engine metaphor.
Market Forces are the "feedback" NOT NOT NOT the initiative
You'd be wrong, wrong, wrong. There was a brief (very unfair) time in California's early statehood history when there was no accepted property registration regime. Gold miners find their own way forward and eventually forced both the State and Feds to accept their solutions. Worked well for them, but not for the immigrant Chinese, native Indians, and former citizens of Mexico. Their property rights regime evolved and eventually won its niche.
Then there is the example of trade in the Med between eras involving strong empires. They worked out a lot of rules (that favored traders of course) and those evolved.
Humans are pretty good at this. So good I just roll my eyes at some of my nutty anarchy-loving libertarian friends. When they catch me at it, I point out that anarchy is inherently unstable. People organize almost as easily as they breath.
Alfred Differ:
There are times when democracy and liberty are in conflict. A slight majority can vote to skew market rules against a group that has done no moral harm. In doing so, the rule of law gets broken even though the law doing it was passed using a legitimate process
Pardon me for interrupting, but this demonstrates that you should be able to understand how I can believe that a lawful election can nevertheless install an illegitimate president.
I've mentioned here before that my wife and I are working through the entire Game of Thrones series. For anyone who doesn't know, this experience involves getting very involved in the socio-political aspects of a very feudal world.
Had I done so during the 20th century, I could enjoy the fiction, content in the security that real life has long passed such things by. In 2019, there's more of a sense that we'd better study the ways people function and get by in such a society lest we find ourselves in one.
I'm reminded of a bit of dialogue from Land of the Lost that impressed 14-year-old me enough to carve out a permanent place in my brain:
I have made a grave error.
I did not go backwards in time, but forward.
The sleestak are not my ancestors. They are the barbaric descendants of a race that could no longer keep its anger in check.
This...is not my past. This...is my future.
I'll not forgive the GoT folks for so blithely dismissing the Brothers Without Banners, whose dream of an end to aristocrats should have been the last bunch standing.
--
Trump fawns on Saudis after one of them is killed while murdering US servicemen.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/07/us/politics/trump-pensacola-saudi-arabia.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage
In fairness, this is not the 1st time. After 9/11, Bush Jr's first actions included gathering up every high status Saudi and flying them out of the US in private jet luxury before the FBI could question them. See pics of W holding hands with Saudi princes and kissing them on the mouth - literally. Back then Fox - partly owned by those princes, distract-protected them and I thought that was as far as GOP treason could go... till Putin became senior partner in the mafia gang owning/operating the Republican Party. (Macao gambling lord Sheldon Adelson handles things for the junior partners in the cabal.)
It's not that dems are perfect. There's some old-fashioned, satiable corruption, here and there that should be lanced and drained. But the comparison is between slightly smog-tainted fallen snow vs. raw sewage from an abattoir.
It's reached the point where one has to ask whether ANY actions - even anecdotal ones - by ANY Republicans aren't high treason. Any such assertion at-minimum bears a burden of proof, and should be subject to wagers.
Larry,
Pardon me for interrupting
Of course. I had no difficulty understanding what bothered you then.
My issue was more about strategy.
1) Arguing that the new President was illegitimate would cause confusion. Did you doubt the election process or the results? You've noticed, I'm sure, people still arguing that the impeachment is an attempt to overturn a valid election. How many? What fraction of our people still cling to this idea? I think it is lower, but most importantly it is lower among active duty military service members who we need not to split as happened in our Civil War.
2) Arguing that impeachment is an attempt to overturn a valid election NOW ignores the fact that we've had an intervening election (which they like to ignore) in which we swapped out a lot of GOP in the House (Orange County, CA went big blue!) to split government. Many of us can point out that The People have indeed spoken. We WANT the House to do its 'co-equal branch of government' thing... wherever that leads. And we know damn well where that leads.
3) The danger isn't really Trump. It's the oligarchs. Liberalism's old enemy. Beating them requires an object lesson for the forces of the Union. Were they really ready to fight this conflict in early 2017? Are they better understanding what is at stake now? Are they better prepared for 2020? What about the folks who don't normally vote? Can they be moved? How many will actually don the blue kepi?
Strategically speaking, the right way to fight this is one that leaves the Union forces ready to fight the actual opponent without toppling our institutions in a mad rush to the field of battle. We will survive Trump. The world will breathe a huge sigh of relief. Most importantly, our institutions will have faced a serious challenge that mobilized many of us to defend them in the next phase of this war.
@Alfred Differ,
Yes, I tend to speak from the heart, not from strategy. I was never arguing about what assertions were best to make or withhold in service of some end. Just that some things, even before they have been proven to others, are true. Donald Trump was illegitimate from day 1, not because the election itself was tainted, but because he was in the active process of violating the Constitutional emoluments restrictions. He was also incompetent at carrying out the responsibilities of the office--an entirely separate point. To me, we were in the same situation as if a legal election had gone for someone younger than 35 years old, or someone who is not a natural born citizen. He might have won, but he was incapable of being president.
That's not something I was saying in order to win an impeachment. It's something I was saying because being expected not to see it was too insulting to swallow.
This article sums up nicely why I believe neoliberal capitalism as an economic guide for the Democratic party will fail us drastically.
https://www.alternet.org/2019/12/democrats-dont-want-to-serve-everyone-pie-they-want-us-to-fight-for-a-few-more-crumbs/
Alfred, and to a lesser degreee, Dr. Brin appear to think the only alternative to neoliberalism is a Stalinist hellscape. Alfred even argues that capitalism "raises all boats" in response to a study that shows it's actually sinking about half those 'boats'. The Doctor wants the Dems to assert credit for policies he considers leftist, such as social security, the VA, or tuition-free colleges.
If you want to beat the fascists in the next election, you HAVE to offer something more than that.
Zepp what a pile of tendentious-drivel strawmen. I am Waaaaaaay over here and you are firing at made-up targets that have little or no pertinence to me or my views.
Did you get a mysterious package of 'vitamins' from locumranch?
If you have no rebuttal, the wisest course is silence.
FDR supported all the platforms Bernie Sanders did, with the exception of universal healthcare, which wasn't necessary yet, and universal broadband, which didn't exist yet.
Eisenhower agreed with 95% of what remained of Sanders' stances.
Why can't a centrist Democrat be as liberal and leftist as a Republican president from the "conservative" 50s?
One leftist victory this week that WILL please you: Amazon meekly agreed to set up a second headquarters in NYC, minus the three billion in tax incentives they had originally demanded and which AOC successfully blocked. Big win for her!
Larry,
It's something I was saying because being expected not to see it was too insulting to swallow.
On that we are in complete agreement. While I was trying to think strategically, I was having to suppress a strong reaction to the feeling that I was being insulted by the deplorables. It's bad enough when Trump and his goons do the insulting, but when my neighbors try to pretend everything is fine, I risk grinding my teeth to dust.
I'd explain the metaphor for the position I felt we were in, but I think it goes beyond the social norms for this site. 8)
Again, flat out wheeeeeee!!! strawmen. You are an old man shouting at clouds while making up "argumants" that have nothing to do with any of my actual opinions. If you were an honest person, that assertion by me would be disturbing. You might respond by dissection your assertions and asking paraphrasing questions to narrow down the misunderstanding.
But go ahead. Masturbate to the strawmen. We were missing a locumranch.
Zepp,
I will vote for Sanders if he is the choice you all put on the ballot. I'd rather not, though, and hope y'all choose someone else. His heart is in the right place for wanting to help people, but his belief system enables a path I'd rather we did not walk. And Yes. I feel the same way about FDR's approach. Good man. Arrived when we needed him. On the continuum that enables fascists, though. So was his cousin.
Please DO try to avoid that fallacy where one reduces the options to 'this or that'. I argue socialism is on a dangerous continuum, not that it inevitably leads to hellscapes. That inevitability perception is the same crap leveled at Hayek's 'serfdom' book. It's BS. The danger is that there are no easily defendable boundaries in a progression from freedom to fascism on that path. On the old liberal terrain, there are.
I apologize for missing the reference to the study you think supports your contention that the lower half of society is losing ground. I'd be happy to go read it if you point it out again. I'm serious about that because I'd be happy to critique it too like I did with Hayek's material in my first exposure. I like learning this stuff.
" You are an old man shouting at clouds"
Well, I'm not that old. Certainly not as old as the cloud I was addressing.
Actually, I'm trying to find out what your opinions are. They seem rather metamorphic, with identical policy points being heralded as a great Democratic legacy in one breath, and derided as splitterism in the next.
"Actually, I'm trying to find out what your opinions are. " No you weren't.
Alfred: With the unlikely exception of Tulsi Gabbard, I will likely support any of the Democrats currently running, albeit reluctantly. I'm not eager to support any of the billionaires, or the centrists such as Biden, because they enable the nation's drift ever rightward.
On continuums, you seems to have the "if this goes on" fallacy. Democratic Socialism doesn't lead to communism, libertarianism doesn't lead to fascism, and marijuana doesn't lead to heroin.
The link to that study was in the same message you replied to originally, the one in which I said "This is why I'm a socialist". The great flaw in libertarianism (as opposed to the horrific flaws of Ayn Randism) is that it focusses on "liberty" for factory owners at the expense of factory workers, under the pretence that a major corporation and a barely-above-water worker can negotiate as equals.
Aaaaand the strawmanning has shifted to Alfred, cramming words and meanings into his mouth, as well. Guys, I think one of our traditional "slots" on this blog community didn't lie empty for very long.
Alfred, thanks for your explanation. I do still think you're incorrect in your attack on regulation and taxation, but you've given me a gift of understanding a little better a different worldview than my own. In this, I am richer. Again, thanks for your time and patience.
Larry, thanks for the Guilded versus Gilded correction. D'oh. (And now I need to think about Guilds in the Gilded Age).
In Zepp's defense, I will note that his "strawmanning" could be selective reading of a vast number of comments. Both our host and Alfred have said things in a similar vein to what Zepp clumsily paraphrased, just not consistently. Both of you tend to argue around an issue at times, which does lead to non-consistent arguments. Not trying to add fuel to the fire here, just trying to smooth out some rough comments.
Fascinating stuff: https://www.npr.org/2019/12/08/781640364/can-a-computer-catch-a-spy
Running against Lindsey Graham... seems impressive.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaime_Harrison
Zepp,
"if this goes on" fallacy
Slippery Slope. That's the counter-argument used against Hayek's serfdom book. It utterly misses the mark, though. I get why people accuse him of that (and me when I use his material), but it is a misreading. The truth of the actual position is fairly simple.
Imagine doing a medieval battle with an opponent across and open, flat field. No terrain advantages for either side. Figuring out the winner in advance is measured in muscle, weapons, skill, and will. Imagine the same battle, but with a hill to one side and a thick forest on the other. Chess has some of these aspects with the center having more value to certain pieces than an edge. A decent chess player thinks in terms of pieces AND space.
My beef with socialism is that the opponent we would all fight (fascists and other horrors) are on a level field with you. You might successfully fend them off by jailing young Hitlers, but you might not and then wind up fighting them later after they have amassed followers who are upset at not getting what they think they deserve. By occupying the flat field, you make it easier for horrible people to do horrible things. Every concentration of power, whether it belongs to government or corporations or churches, is a potential tool in the hands of horrible people who don't look so horrible in their early years.
Hayek explained the possible progression from well-meaning citizens to dictatorial hellscapes. The point of the serfdom book (c. 1945) was to be self-preventing prophecy. Pay attention to the flat landscape you occupy… near the center… and realize well-intentioned people CAN enable horrors. His book reads as though it was a description of what happened in Germany or Italy while many Americans took it as a warning about the USSR. Hayek actually intended his warning for the British contemplating keeping their war planning approach to economic prioritizations after WWII was over. Planning had 'saved' them during the war, so it seemed a useful and proven tool to keep. Keynes was supportive too and his earlier warnings right after WWI were ringing in their ears as prophecy ignored.
So, yes it can be a progression, but more importantly it is a poor choice of ground to occupy while still opposed. The wise thing is to plow up the ground, grade it to encourage marshes, or maybe just move over a bit to get mountains and sea on your flanks. Old school liberalism gets that without ever really stating it. Liberating people to create fair, flat, free markets tends to make for complex social terrain. Not even at all. More like a complexity power-law distribution with some very big players appearing to dominate the landscape. If the Rule of Law is enforced, though, those players will not be able to write rules that bias meta-rules in their favor. They might dominate in one market, but not in a related meta-market. It's a tricky thing for which there is no 'equilibrium'. Vigilance is required against cheaters and that is a healthy thing as long as one is free enough to be able to carry on the fight.
I'm no fan of slippery slopes, but neither am I a fan of occupying terrain in the center of the board to be attacked from all sides without a damn good plan of my own to divide opponent. Even then, the edge of the board has certain advantages as do mixed strategies (game theory sense) opponents can't predict. Classical liberalism IS a mixed strategy and is the only one proven effective against Oligarchs.
My answer is simpler. "Socialism" is almost a meaningless term, since it encompasses everything from
1- investment in children and infrastructure and universities and civil rights and impartial justiceand safety nets so that we maximize the pool of talent that can compete in flat-fair-creative markets, to
2- central planning of investments in areas where markets could theoretically provide solutions, but have not stepped up, either because of too short ROI horizons or a need for planned incentive/deterrence fators that will adjust market forces to satisy the need... or else where the markets have become predatory failures, as in US health care... to
3- Euro style application of large wealth surpluses to generous largesse that can either remain entrepreneurial friendly (Scandinavia) or often tips into foolish French-style entitlements for 6 week vacations and retirement at 50 and paternalistic rules making it impossible to fire anyone... to
4- state management of tightly controlled "capitalist" entities like national champion corporations in Japan and later China, to
5- state socialist control over the means of production via sincere committees... to...
6- communist hells.
Alas, #5 almost always turned into #6, because centralized power is taken over by monsters imposing feudalism pyramids.
#1 &2 should be acceptable to any sane libertarian, and the fact that they aren't means most of today's libertarianism is not sane.
To claim that #3 is the only definition of "socialism" is disingenuous. To ignore the problems even such well-meaning modernist versions can generate, is foolish.
matthew,
Thank YOU. 8)
I consider myself fortunate in that my preferred strategy doesn't require a lot of understanding from all the participants on the field. What I need is some inclination for us to grant each other basic dignity (even if we disagree) and enough freedom to try own own ideas and fail or succeed at them.
1) Granting dignity to another human being can be quite a challenge, but tolerance is a little easier and it smooths the path for later recognition.
2) Liberating each other is also a challenge, but in a culture dripping with SOA, none of us have a whole lot of power to enforce our will on each other anyway. Well... most of us. Most of us choosing not to own a gun and brandish it in public. Well... many of us. It IS a challenge. 8)
I also consider myself fortunate to have around me people who tell me I am mistaken about something. I KNOW I am mistaken about quite a few things, but I'm not convinced on any one particular thing until someone smacks me hard enough to get through. PaulSB managed to do that a while back and I'm better for it... or he convinced me to believe HIS mistake and I need another smack upside the head. Who knows? I think I do, but really... 8)
I am NOT inclined to think of Zepp as the new slot occupant. I think I caught him (and you?) by surprise a bit with my strongly worded statement blaming mass murders to a belief system near and dear to both of you. You should see the response I get when I do a similar calculation involving monotheistic faith systems. It's even more explosive and few people think rationally when told 'Belief in an omnipotent, omniscient God' is a damn dangerous thing. I'm fairly sure it is, though. Not 'toxic' in the memetic sense. Just too easily adapted to rationalizations of some horrific evils. I even have a nice, tidy little mathematical metaphor for it too. But no. Maybe another day. If I do, I won't blame anyone for reacting poorly to accusations that shock them.
1) Investment in children is generally a good thing up until education looks like propaganda and preaching. Even then, most of our neighbors will not label things that way and want them for their own children, so the issue comes down to finding a way to draw a line. Educated children=good. Indoctrinated children=mixed. If proponents can find a way to make some parts of the system funded voluntarily, no theft occurs and the market of ideas will work it all out.
2) I'm cautious about centrally planned investments. Again, a voluntary system for contributions would be ideal. My concern is a majoritarian method for deciding future winners and losers in markets where the usual rule involves customer service and profitability. The danger is often over-exaggerated by current players who might win or lose on majoritarian votes, but the danger is real enough. There are some obvious places where investments make sense, but choices for how the investments are made could mitigate the risks.
Consider prizes for space flight accomplishments. The X-Prize was won some time ago and people not paying attention to the undercurrents might think nothing useful came of it. They'd be wrong, though. Billionaires are in the field now and potentially threatening to embarrass the entire Senate Launch System program.
The definition for 'socialism' HAS been damaged much like 'liberalism' has. The one I tend to use is one that encourages us to go with our instincts to economize shared resources and plan for best possible allocations where resources impact large communities. It just feels right to argue for ethical choices regarding scarce but necessary resources. Those choices should involve sharing and consensus, right? Our nomadic, hunter-gatherer instincts already know how to do this. Plan. Share. Indirect Reciprocity. It's in our bones. Unfortunately, it doesn't scale up much beyond the size of our ancestral bands. We know what to do, but can't agree on goals in enough detail to solve what should just be a big linear algebra problem.
Let's look at (2)
central planning of investments in areas where markets could theoretically provide solutions, but have not stepped up
That covers 99% of all science and initial development - the "market" and capitalism starts to get involved at the "working model" stage
Don't get me wrong - at that point capitalism is great at doing all of the rest and running with it
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Entrepreneurial_State
Excellent book
As far as "Socialism" being dangerous - YES it COULD be - but the opposite - the concentration of wealth is NOT "it could be" - but it bloody well IS
We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both.
Louis D. Brandeis
amen LH...
Those of you who have Polemical Judo (and have made Amazon reviews!) know I reprised my "Tytler Calumny" piece debunking the right's insane notion that democracies WILL self-destruct as citizens learn they can "vote themselves largesse." There are countless counter examples., especially in Athens and the US.
Still we do have Greece and France, where that did happen.
Still we do have Greece and France, where that did happen.
Do we??
When was that?
And was it the people voting themselves largess or the political leading class voting THEMSELVES largess
Dr Brin:
amen LH...
I'm not one to turn down a compliment, but I'm wondering which comment you are replying to.
This one?
To me, we were in the same situation as if a legal election had gone for someone younger than 35 years old, or someone who is not a natural born citizen. He might have won, but he was incapable of being president.
That's not something I was saying in order to win an impeachment. It's something I was saying because being expected not to see it was too insulting to swallow.
Thinking about that, what would happen if the election went to someone who fails to meet the express Constitutional requirements for the office. That's not something you would expect to impeach him for, is it? Impeachment is kind of analogous to a divorce. In the above example, using the same metaphor, I'd be looking for an annulment.
I admit that the argument that Trump was never qualified for the office is murkier than that example, but it does reflect my personal sensibility--not so much that Trump should be removed from office, but that he was never the legitimate president to begin with, and that his occupation of the office amounts to a sit-down strike.
At this late date, I don't expect there is any real-world way to follow up on that. To switch to a sports analogy, you can't reverse a bad call long after play has resumed, even if the call was obviously wrong and materially affected the outcome of the game. The team who wins still goes into the record books as the winner and still gains whatever ground that game gives them for post-season. Still, the fans know when an injustice has been done, and they don't forget the tainted call, even years or decades later.
Alfred Differ:
I am NOT inclined to think of Zepp as the new slot occupant. I think I caught him (and you?) by surprise a bit with my strongly worded statement blaming mass murders to a belief system near and dear to both of you.
I agree on both counts. I'm reluctant to argue with our host about whether or not he should take offense here in his own "home". But I did think equating Zepp with locumranch was a bit much. I also think you correctly describe the root cause of the argument--liberals already being sick to death of the assertion that (say) universal access to health care is what caused millions of deaths in the mid-twentieth century.
You should see the response I get when I do a similar calculation involving monotheistic faith systems.
I suspect you get reminded that Stalin was an atheist too.
Me, when I became old enough to question, I thought that people believed in God the way that they believe in Santa Claus--that is, that it's a social good to keep the story going and collectively pretend to believe, but that no one actually thinks there are supernatural entities mucking around with our destiny. I soon learned otherwise. Many if not most people really do fear getting onto God's bad side. Dave Sim went over that way toward the end of the "Cerebus" run. The former iconoclast became convinced that even thinking too much along certain lines imperiled his immortal soul.
It's even more explosive and few people think rationally when told 'Belief in an omnipotent, omniscient God' is a damn dangerous thing. I'm fairly sure it is, though. Not 'toxic' in the memetic sense. Just too easily adapted to rationalizations of some horrific evils.
It does also serve to keep a large segment of the population civilized. I mean, when someone asserts (as many do) that without God, everyone would be rapists and murderers, I take them at their word as pertains to their own selves, and I thank GOD that something is reining in their worst selves. I used to be more of a militantly evangelical atheist before I decided that talking people out of their belief might not end well.
I even have a nice, tidy little mathematical metaphor for it too. But no. Maybe another day.
I, for one, would be anxious to hear such a thing. And as you may guess, I would not be offended by it.
A view from the bleachers, as it were. My interpretation of the main arguers in this current discussion, based on what I've read of them over the years, is that while there are some differences in underlying biases that are not insignificant the general views and purposes are damn close. Even complimentary I'd say. Some problems in the discussion are straw-manning and arguing extremes. Standard stuff in any discussion among humans. It seems apparent to me that no one here thinks that unfettered capitalism OR pure socialism (WETFTI) would be a good way to order our societies. It seems pretty obvious to me that most here think that some of the concepts and ideas from both capitalism and social democracy, and other schools of thought too no doubt, should be used together because there is actual historical data that shows that they work.
Something common among humans is loyalty to an ideology. Over time many end up accepting views with little or no examination because the views are part & parcel of the ideology they are loyal to. And the same, only more so, with respect to ideologies we disagree with. People tend to automatically reject a concept or idea that is readily identifiable as being from an ideology they disagree with. We all do this to one extent or another.
But we need to set the labels aside and use the good concepts and ideas no matter where they come from. The primary criteria should be empirical evidence that they work to move in the direction we want to go. That's the hard part. Imagine trying to get the US Congress and Senate to make decisions not only for the good of the country (hah) but based on evidence.
I don't know that it's ever done me much good but I've always been loathe to say that "I am an 'X'." I have an instinctive aversion, no reasoning involved, to committing myself to ideological groups or heroes. Seems much more comfortable to stand back and observe.
From today's Guardian:
Biden now behind Trump in some vital swing states - poll
If you’re a Democratic operative or candidate battling in the parts of the midwest, the alarming headline from Axios today is: Poll finds impeachment helping Trump in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin.
Aren't those the same states some Democratic centrist lost in both the primaries and the general in 2016?
Duncan retirement at 50? 6 week vacations? Disallowing companies to fire workers unless they commit crimes? Those only slightly exaggerate the actual largesse some nations' socialists voted themselves. Greece, Spain, Italy & Portugals (GIPS or re-arrange letters) went on wild spending sprees by leveraging the ill-planned Euro and are paying for it now. Americans never had a taste for that and were maybe too slow with benefits. But note, those vacations and retirement ages are not INVESTMENTS. Rooseveltean socialism mostly invests in eliminating obstacles to rising competition.
LH I said amen to your expansion on my SocialismType2: “central planning of investments in areas where markets could theoretically provide solutions, but have not stepped up… That covers 99% of all science and initial development - the "market" and capitalism starts to get involved at the "working model" stage…Don't get me wrong - at that point capitalism is great at doing all of the rest and running with it ..,”
R&D is an example of failed corporate ROI (Bell Labs was a counter example, when engineers ran things.)
But others include “externalities” like environmental costs and burdens placed on grandchildren. The state - via cooperative-negotiated politics - must ensure those costs get incorporated.
“Dave Sim went over that way toward the end of the "Cerebus" run. The former iconoclast became convinced that even thinking too much along certain lines imperiled his immortal soul.”
To which I respond: “That may be the sick Orwellian way that YOU would be a god. But I do not believe this gorgeous cosmos was made or run by a sadistic lunatic. And if it is, what is my duty? To slavishly kowtow forever, in order to preserve myself to become no more than an eternal chanting worship machine, instead of an eternal screaming torture victim?
"What the heck is the point in giving in to such a horrible coercion? The sole righteous position that any righteous person can take is to oppose injustice - even in utter futility - and hope that someone even-higher will take notice. But even if not, there comes a time when resistance is the only option.”
BTW just finished watching THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE. One of the best things ever on TV. Rufus Sewell was amazing. But it ended just a tad lamely and hurriedly. And the final revelation was (I bet) not what the writers initially offered. While artistic, it made no sense. Still, it is about resistance to evil, even when hopeless.
BTW the theological riff above is one of the quandaries portrayed in my new sci-fi/theological PLAY.
Does anyone out there know a theater director looking for something original and interesting? It works as a lectern reading.
Dr Brin:
LH I said amen to your expansion on my SocialismType2:
Ok, but I think that was duncan, not me.
“Dave Sim went over that way toward the end of the "Cerebus" run. The former iconoclast became convinced that even thinking too much along certain lines imperiled his immortal soul.”
To which I respond: “That may be the sick Orwellian way that YOU would be a god. But I do not believe this gorgeous cosmos was made or run by a sadistic lunatic
I offer this by way of explanation rather than defense. Dave's worldview tried to marry theology with physics, to the extent that he considered himself to have solved the question of the Unified Field Theory when physicists had failed. If I was reading the last issues of "Cerebus" correctly, the unified field is that particles are all sexually attracted to each other.
Which leads to this--his notion of the afterlife was not one of reward and punishment, but of physical consequence. He thought that when souls no longer have bodies, they become particles which end up in the center of the earth, and will eventually end up in the sun, creating covective forces by alternately attempting escape and being dragged back to the center by gravity. He felt that souls became heavier particles by attaching more worldly things--beliefs and loyalties and hungers--to themselves. That by shedding as much of the outside world as he could, one could instead become a very light particle like a neutrino, and be free of gravitational traps like planets and suns.
I'm not evangelizing for that point of view, but it is interesting in its own way.
You've noticed, I'm sure, people still arguing that the impeachment is an attempt to overturn a valid election.
Reminds me of a couple of weekends ago when my wife and I went up to Ramona--a conservative country town near San Diego (see Duncan Hunter's congressional district)--and someone was gathering signatures in a petition to recall our liberal governor, Gavin Newsom.
I was SO tempted to go up to the table and say, "I don't believe in trying to overturn a valid election," but self-preservation got the better of me. :)
The "physics" theology arguments have been rampant since it became clear that classic heaven-hell portrays the creator as a psychopath. What I find amazing is that earlier generations accepted that as natural. Well, Jews utterly rejected it, one reason they were willing to suffer for 2000 years, rather than accept the sick theory of Original Sin.
But then, if you dismiss that and go for a weird "attachment" based notion of psychic-physics, then isn't Buddhism-detachment a better answer than Christian incantation-magic?
A.F.Rey:
I was SO tempted to go up to the table and say, "I don't believe in trying to overturn a valid election,"
I'm sure they have some rationale why the two cases are completely different, and that one has no bearing on the other. They'll note that recall is a perfectly acceptable option in California law, but not in federal law. Point out that impeachment is actually in the Constitution and they'll have some other rationale, like "Recall doesn't need a reason. Impeachment requires proving a crime, which hasn't been done."
Of course, they won't specify the real reason they consider the two cases different--because Republicans are meant to be protected but not bound by the law.
Dr Brin:
But then, if you dismiss that and go for a weird "attachment" based notion of psychic-physics, then isn't Buddhism-detachment a better answer than Christian incantation-magic?
For what it's worth, Dave Sim became a monotheist, but not particularly a Christian. Certainly, the idea that God had a son would be particularly repellent to him, as he considers merging and multiplying to be big mistakes, getting in the way of avoiding entanglements with the world.
If I read your Uplift novels correctly, the idea was that long-held Galactic assumptions were overturned by the discovery of the Progenitors in the Shallow Cluster--that Galactic society may have preached Logan's Run-like renewal through denser and denser gravity, but that the Progenitors had wanted no part, and stayed as far away as possible. That would not be compatible with Dave's way of thinking.
I meant, "That would not be INcompatible..."
(Stupid double-negatives!)
I always find it funny when people talk about the “beauty of the cosmos” or try to overlay morality plays upon it. It’s almost entirely a void, some is rather weird, awesome and scary, but how much is actually beautiful? And where are you finding “evil” in the cosmos, or this idea that it needs to be “fixed”? I tend to agree with Steven Weinberg when he said “the more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless”. I would add “horrific”, but that’s just me (being more of a Lovecraftian/Ligottian than a Clarkeian/Asimovian).
Alfred: Glad that you've realized I do not align myself with genocidal movements.
I wish I could see the expression on the Doctor's face when you characterize my position as being the centre of the field. He's got me pegged as a cross between locumranch and Myrna Minkoff.
Your mediaeval battle scenario contains several flaws, not the least of which is that the playing field is not level. Wealth begets power, and in the US, it has reached a stage where it is no longer a part of a healthy society, but has become a malignancy, metasticising rapidly. Gabriel Zucman, of Stanford, released a study today that including these horrifying stats:
"For top 1%, average income has risen by $800,000 since 1970.
For top 0.1%, it has risen by $4 million.
For top .01%, it has risen $20 million.
Bottom 50%? $8,000.
All this is *after taxes and transfers.*
Great work from @gabriel_zucman:https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/12/09/massive-triumph-rich-illustrated-by-stunning-new-data/ …"
Bernie Sanders is correct when he says that 3 individuals have amassed as much wealth as the bottom 50% of all Americans. That's not healthy, and it is extremely detrimental to freedom.
Now, I understand that "libertarianism" covers a wide spectrum of belief, and that you normally reside at one of the more rational edges. There's even a branch that includes my philosophy--left-libertarianism. I get along with those folks just fine. But I've said for years that libertarianism is just fascism in a new coat of paint. The Libertarian Party itself was formulated and heavily funded by the Kochs, who founded the John Birch Society and encouraged various extreme 'anti-communist' factions such as Franco, a host of south American dictators, Joe McCarthy and various other unsavoury types from the far right. They are the reason why when most libertarians talk about "freedom" they mean freedom for the monied class, and only lip service for the rest of us. A good example is that most libertarians love corporations, but hate unions, even though both are nothing more thant groups of people formally aligned for a common financial purpose. When you pretend that a worker, lacking financial resources and in need of work, is on an equal playing field with a major conglomerate staffed with many lawyers and most of the lawmakers, that's disingenuous. The playing field is not level, and it's libertarian policies, pushed by such fresh-water economists such as Hayak and made malign by Ayn Rand, that have pushed the country to where it is.
I do agree that political moderation in these heavily polarised times is an endangered commodity (cue up the Yeats poem here), but I'm not sure we agree on what 'moderation', the centre of your field, actually is.
Alfred wrote: "It's even more explosive and few people think rationally when told 'Belief in an omnipotent, omniscient God' is a damn dangerous thing. I'm fairly sure it is, though. Not 'toxic' in the memetic sense. Just too easily adapted to rationalizations of some horrific evils. "
Voltaire said it best: "He who you can made to believe absurdities you can get to commit atrocities."
Zepp Jamieson:
Voltaire said it best: "He who you can made to believe absurdities you can get to commit atrocities."
Well, the entire Trump campaign seems to be designed around the first phrase, so maybe the second is the real agenda.
Larry,
I think it unlikely, though far from impossible, that the second is the real agenda of anyone involved in the Trump campaign, Republican Party leadership or any power's behind the throne. But I think we are witnessing a demonstration of exactly how people that in most other circumstances would be considered reasonably decent folk can rather quickly be inspired to do, or go along with, surprisingly nasty shit.
retirement at 50? 6 week vacations? Disallowing companies to fire workers unless they commit crimes? Those only slightly exaggerate the actual largesse some nations' socialists voted themselves. Greece, Spain, Italy & Portugals (GIPS or re-arrange letters) went on wild spending sprees by leveraging the ill-planned Euro and are paying for it now
The Tytler Calumny was that the Democracies FAILED - not hiccupped
Let's unpack
retirement at 50 - that could be an issue IF IF IF we were at 100% employment - but we are nowhere near that
6 week vacations - there are several studies that show that you get MORE out of the workers with European style working hours and vacations
Allowing companies to fire workers unless they commit crimes? - it's not like that - you CAN fire a worker if they don't do the job - but you can't fire them because you don't like them - and the USA is an exception a BAD exception in allowing companies to fire at will
The countries that hit those problems
(1) The main issue was not "Spending" it was in getting the taxes from the better off - in Greece only the normal low paid worker paid taxes - all of the professionals and businesses simply cheated
(2) Even with that Greece was NOT in very big trouble until the Bank Crisis - when the Greek Government bailed out the banksters
So it was NOT the government finances that were the problem - it was the finance sector and the decision to bail them out
(3) The big disadvantage of the Euro - the normal fix would have been the currency dropping
Overall they are NOT examples of the Tytler Calumny
The ONLY country that handled the Bank Crisis correctly was Iceland
Zepp,
Your mediaeval battle scenario contains several flaws, not the least of which is that the playing field is not level. Wealth begets power…
You are confusing the field with the players on the field. The power each of us wields is far from level, but the field itself is. Shoot any one of us and we are just as dead whether we are rich, poor, allied with many, or alone. Obviously, we aren’t all equally powerful, but the power we DO wield isn’t negligible.
If you don’t like the medieval battle field in the analogy, let me try something more modern. Your forces are effectively saying they intend to defend a bright future for our civilization while occupying a lovely part of Belgium knowing full well the French and Germans are very upset at each other. Buffer states survive by playing one side off against the other. Do it right and we maintain an uneasy status quo. Do it wrong and you get squashed and your fields poisoned. Neither option leads to success at lifting humanity to a brighter future.
Maybe you’ll field a large enough army to defend Belgium. Maybe, but I think you’d be better off making a stand on more complex terrain with a much wider variety of forces to bring to the field.
For an example of how this works using classical liberalism, look to how the British managed to make slavery illegal at home without experiencing a Civil War to do it. Abolitionists tried earlier and met with failure in Parliament when some MP’s who might have otherwise been sympathetic had to respect the economic interests of those who put them there. After Napoleon’s defeat, though, the economic landscape had changed noticeably… and NOT because of Napoleon’s defeat. What changes? How did they come about? How did they matter? Fossil fuel use was just a symptom of the underlying phase change that made the position occupied by the slavers much more difficult to defend.
Zepp,
Now for Jake Johnson’s article. I paraphrase it thusly.
_________________
Progressive think tank founder parses new data available from Federal Reserve.
https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/dataviz/dfa/
Founder finds alarming evidence of wealth inequality that shows the situation has worsened for “The Bottom 50%” and offers a simple two-series bar chart showing the situation.
Very progressive member of the House tweets his support of the analysis calling it an ‘enormous crisis’ and ‘the worst inequality since the 1920’s’
_________________
The first order of business in reviewing articles like this is to retrieve the dataset and reproduce the results. The article says nothing about how this was done and doesn’t make it clear whether the founder or the article’s author produced the bar chart.
https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/dataviz/download/zips/dfa.zip
The second order of business is to reproduce the results. [One can try that from the data, but the Federal Reserve also provides an interactive charting component at the site.] At first glance, it looks like the bottom 50% data is being drawn from dfa-networth-levels.csv.
Quoted in $Millions
1989:Q3 | Net worth for bottom50 =757048
But 2019:Q2 | Net worth for bottom50 =2020789
Hmm… that doesn’t agree with the chart. What about dfa-networth-shares.csv?
Quoted in %
1989:Q3 | Net worth for Bottom50 =3.7
2019:Q2 | Net worth for Bottom50 =1.9
Ah. Closer, but with one glaring problem. The last percentage isn’t negative as the article claims. The bottom 50% HAVE lost ground RELATIVE to others, but they have a positive net worth. That’s not what the article claims, though.
I’ve looked at a few other differences. I’ve looked at dfa-data-definitions.txt. I don’t see the way the author or founder could have produced the bar chart. In fact, I think they monkeyed with some of the liability columns and wound up doing a double subtraction to get their negative net worth number.
So, I’m casting this article in the propaganda pile on the suspicion the author doesn’t want us to do the math. Just look at the bar chart and FEEL the need to vote like a good progressive. That’s my suspicion, but I’m willing to be corrected if you can find how the data was actually used to produce the charted results.
"retirement at 50? 6 week vacations? Disallowing companies to fire workers unless they commit crimes?"
Compare with America. Retirement at 65, if you're lucky. Most people aren't lucky. 0 week vacation. In most states, workers can be fired without warning and without cause.
See any room for improvement there?
Alfred, your complaints about the above article feel like nit-picking the data and missing the big picture. Do you dispute that extreme wealth inequality exists in the world right now? Do you dispute that this inequality leads us to a crisis where many who have *not* created the crisis will suffer?
Quibbling at the methodology behind the graph feels like desperation and not analysis.
Big picture.
Yes, treebeard, we get that you are dyspeptic and despise the universe. And this lends you credibility where? Oh, yeah, on a Junior HS playground. Grow up.
LH: The dems are yet again missing the best talking points.
1) EVERY attempted Republican defense against impeachment amounts to “Don’t Look! We don’t want to know and no one should find out anything about our leaders!”
But more significant:
2) The parallel is not with a criminal trial, since no one’s life or liberty are in jeopardy. The EXACT parallel is a company’s borad of directors investigating and voting whether to remove an out-of-control CEO. Did I say the parallel is exact? No, it is “perfect” because that’s precisely what impeachment is.
Even more significant: alas. I have only once seen a dem point this out.
Zepp: “He's got me pegged as a cross between locumranch and Myrna Minkoff.”
No, I see you as a strawmanning liar who is too dishonest or incurious top even re-examine statements that an honest interlocutor asked you to reconsider as misrepresentations. Instead, like locum, you double down and then double down again.
“Your mediaeval battle scenario contains several flaws, not the least of which is that the playing field is not level.”
There you go again, stating the obvious then claiming I disagree. You are a liar. You are a knowing and deliberate and repeated liar.
AF Rey: The Clinton impeachment keeps biting them on the butts, doesn't it? "You can't overturn a valid election!" At least Clinton's actually WAS valid. 2016--there's sizeable room for doubt in the validity of that election. "You can't indict on hearsay evidence!" Did Ken Starr ask Linda Tripp if she personally smoked any of Bill's cigars? And my favourite: "You can't impeach now and ruin people's Christmas!" Clinton was impeached on 12-9, on the day he was lighting the national Christmas tree.
[“Your mediaeval battle scenario contains several flaws, not the least of which is that the playing field is not level.”
There you go again, stating the obvious then claiming I disagree. You are a liar. You are a knowing and deliberate and repeated liar.]
Um, Doctor, I was responding to a point Alfred made. I was expressing an opinion, disagreeing with his opinion. I did not attribute it to you, and did not mention you.
If you're going to call me a liar, could you at least find a sane rationalisation for doing so?
LH: Yes, translating absurdities to atrocities is a common theme in most propagandistic efforts, whether intentionally or not. Dictators normally lean heavily on religion. Even the Soviets used Marxism as a religion.
From an Aussie aggregator last month:
https://www.news.com.au/technology/home-entertainment/gaming/game-reviews/death-stranding-review-an-experience-unlike-anything-else-ive-played-in-a-long-time/news-story/b43a6ad231466b6035c4cac2cb497cc2
In essence, it’s the same premise as David Brin’s excellent 1985 science fiction book The Postman (a personal favourite of mine) and the 1997 Kevin Costner film based on it.
Not trying to stoke trouble, just interested cross pollination and massive attractors like hit games. The sociology/psychology is very Asimovian.
Oh, sorry. I just read the Medium piece and saw you already found Wilson's review.
Alfred wrote: "You are confusing the field with the players on the field."
It's the players that weild the power. If one side has clubs and knives, and the other side has modern military weapons, it's common to say the playing field isn't level.
The power of the working class was negligible throughout much of history, and changed only with the rise of guilds (which became corrupt and decayed after a few centuries( and unions in the industrial age. Now we're in the post-industrial age, and that power is, once again, becoming negligible. But with the vastly increased productivity and ease of living available, it doesn't have to be that way. We don't need to revert to feudalism.
Playing off superior powers against one another is a viable, indeed utterly necessary tactic if you happen to be a nation-state. For the average line cook, the tactic of playing off McDonalds against Burger King just simply doesn't work.
If you want equilateral forces leading to a more equitable society, then there must be a reasonably equitable distribution of power. Labor without unions is powerless. The founders were aware of this, and not only (eventually) devised a government with three separate powers that could play off one another, but put them in a position where they had enough power to play off religion and the aristocracy against one another.
When I say "level playing field" I'm not referring to some literal soccer pitch: I'm talking about a balance of power amidst the factions that are upon the field. You need roughly equal power, pervasiveness, and a way of adjudicating the conflicts.
matthew,
your complaints about the above article feel like nit-picking the data and missing the big picture
1) They are much worse than nit-picking. I'm asking people to speak the truth about the evidence they propose in support of their case. I don't expect people to get everything right the first time they think they find evidence, but they should be able to push it forward, let us critique it, and not take it too personal if the evidence isn't quite good enough. No harm, no foul. Just go get more evidence while the strength of your faith continues.
2) I'm aware of the inequality. It is huge and growing and a serious problem. The problem is I think some of the proposed remedies are worse. Imagine a scenario where I perform an electronic break-in and steal the money in your bank accounts. Suppose I am pretty good at this and manage to make it difficult to prove. I might get away with the theft in that case because we assume innocence and require a lot to prove guilt. If you were really certain, though, you might be tempted to steal the money back in a similarly careful way. Accounts even, right? You could even steal a bit more as a punishment. Even better, right? Monetarily, you might have your revenge, but in doing it that way you've re-enforced my breach of the Rule of Law. If enough of us resolve difference that way, the Rule of Law dies. I argue 'Tit for Tat' is often a terrible remedy. Got a better idea?
I don't quibble over graphs. I challenge evidence and harm remediation techniques. I encourage you to try to resolve what that article was addressing in the data. If you can find what I missed, I promise to be more accepting of it all AS EVIDENCE. Until then, it isn't because I HAVE tried and come to the belief that their analysis was incorrect. [I read Piketty's big book too. Remember why? I accepted it as a challenge.]
Zepp,
If one side has clubs and knives, and the other side has modern military weapons, it's common to say the playing field isn't level.
That's a big part of the point I'm trying to make to you. Take a moment and imagine that field of battle. Your folks have pointed sticks while the other guys have laser rifles. Is there nothing you can do… in choosing WHERE you make a defensive stand… that mitigates their strengths?
I argue you can and it's dumb not to try for every such advantage. The terrain is about a lot more than the political and economic powers you bring to it. It's a force of its own. Imagine your fight taking place on the wide US prairie back when the bison herds were thick. Only a fool would start a noisy firefight with someone else while standing among them. They'd trample both sides.
The power of the working class was negligible throughout much of history, and changed only with the rise of guilds (which became corrupt and decayed after a few centuries( and unions in the industrial age…
Your history-fu is weak.
We don't need to revert to feudalism.
Complete agreement here, but not because of our modern ease of living and vastly increased productivity. We've never needed to revert to feudalism, but modern tools give us more options to complicate the terrain in ways that actually makes it harder on the folks who WANT to revert to feudalism.
For the average line cook, the tactic of playing off McDonalds against Burger King just simply doesn't work.
Not true. The actual issue the line cook faces is both employers can't make much money from his skill. Seriously. Look at the profit margins for food service companies. Damn slim most of the time. Don't believe me? Try opening a burger joint and employ yourself as a line cook. See if you can pay the rent/mortgage. It isn't easy.
more equitable society
What's that? What I want is an end to poverty, starvation, disease, and all that. I want to kill the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. If re-enforcements show up for them, I want to kill them too. I don't know how to do all that, but I have a pretty good idea about how we've been managing it so far.
"The actual issue the line cook faces is both employers can't make much money from his skill."
Then how is it that the Big Mac standard shows the same price or LOWER in countries with much much higher minimum wages ?
(All in US dollars)
France ---- Min Wage $12.35 - Big Mac $4.84
Australia - Min Wage $14.80 - Big Mac $4.71
America - Min Wage $7.25 - Big Mac $5.82
Capitalism always leads to wealth concentration and then to the wealthy “buying the levels of power” and turning it into Feudalism
If we want to retain capitalism we MUST regulate
Today US Capitalism is well into “Crony Capitalism” and is approaching an Oligarchy
Back in the 50,s and 60,s the USA had Capitalism and a level of regulation that maintained a fair and competitive economy
This means ;
High top Tax Rates (90+%)
Trust Busting
Financial Regulation (for instance Stock Buybacks were illegal)
And then all of that was reversed in the 70’s - and American Capitalism began it’s slide into Crony Capitalism
Capitalism is one of the most important tools in any societies toolbox - but it needs to be looked after
Crony Capitalism as is common or even prevalent in the USA today is NOT a “useful tool”
Strange as it seems the best places today to look at Capitalism operating the way it should are the Scandinavian countries
Paul Krugman understands the obvious, that white nationalism is bad for Jews, irrespective of tax cuts, deregulation, and judges:
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/09/opinion/donald-trump-jews.html
...
In all of this, Republicans — not just Trump, but his whole party — are reaping what they sowed. Their strategy for decades has been to win votes from working-class whites, despite an anti-worker agenda, by appealing to racial resentment. Trump has just made that racial appeal cruder and louder. And one has to admit that this strategy has been quite successful.
But it takes, well, chutzpah, a truly striking level of contempt for your audience, to foment hatred-laced identity politics, then turn to members of minority groups and say, in effect, “Ignore the bigotry and look at the taxes you’re saving!”
And some of the audience deserves that contempt. As I said, people are pretty much the same whatever their background. There are wealthy Jews who are sufficiently shortsighted, ignorant or arrogant enough to imagine that they can continue to prosper under a white nationalist government.
But most of my ethnic group, I believe, understands that Trump is bad for the Jews, whatever tax bracket we happen to be in.
#ThereAreTooFewGoodRepublicansToBotherMentioning
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/09/opinion/inspector-general-report.html
...
The emptiness of the Republicans’ case was exemplified in an interruption by Representative Mike Johnson of Louisiana, who stopped the morning’s proceedings after Barry Berke, the Judiciary Committee’s Democratic counsel, testified that President Trump had committed impeachable acts. “The witness has used language which impugns the motives of the president and suggests he’s disloyal to his country, and those words should be stricken from the record and taken down,” Mr. Johnson said. He was referring to a House rule that applies only to members of Congress, not witnesses. But consider the message he was sending: In the face of the most damning facts brought forward about a president in more than a generation, Mr. Johnson’s instinct was to say, in effect, How dare you speak the truth about our dear leader?
...
This sort of brazen misrepresentation of facts is par for Mr. Trump’s course, and while it is sadly effective, it shouldn’t distract Americans from the emergency at hand: Whether Mr. Trump played footsie with Russians to win in 2016 or strong-armed a vulnerable new leader who is at war with Russia to win in 2020, he did exactly what the nation’s framers feared an unprincipled, power-hungry executive might do to hold onto his office. That’s why they put the impeachment power in the Constitution, and it’s why lawmakers who care about the Republic and its survival must use it.
What the "won't support a centrist Dem" people are up against...
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/10/opinion/Democratic-candidates.html
...
Gail: We’ll get over our hostilities when it’s down to Trump vs. X. Don’t you think? I predict even your worse-case-scenario Elizabeth Warren would start looking good to you if she’s the only alternative.
Bret: Not to me! And I’m the kind of reasonable (well, semi-reasonable) party-switching voter the Democratic nominee, whoever it ends up being, is going to need to attract in order to beat Trump. Please, Democrats, don’t make me wind up voting for Bill Weld just to salve my conscience and save my wallet. Nominate a moderate!
I live in Cincinnati Ohio and I was out doing some Christmas shopping this last weekend. While I was out, I saw about 15 Trump 2020 Bumper stickers and 1 Bernie Sanders bumper sticker.
Now that is a super informal indicator of excitement about a candidate, but the results are really lopsided.
And weirdly enough a lot of the Anti Trump intensity that was here before the 2016 election has seemed to have died down quite a bit. If the economy is good next November Trump will be very hard to beat.
For a bit of levity, check out this ad for GRIFTERS--Get Rich Instantly Following Trump's Evangelical Republican Supports. You too can get rich ripping off Conservative Christians! :)
(Care of P.Z. Myers.)
https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2019/12/10/who-do-you-worship/
From A.F. Rey's link above:
"Now that GRIFTERS has replaced poor, peacenik-lovin' Jesus with ostentatious, loud, bullying Donald, we are called to preach an Even Newer Testament that is...Whatever Donald Wants To Hear."
Sounds like she's already got a jump on my "I'd rather follow Trump than Jesus" t-shirt idea.
Ah, P.Z.
As sarcastic and direct as Richard Dawkins.
As erudite and wordcrafty as Christopher Hitchens.
Imagine if he had the citizen science chops of Hans Bethe.
6 week of vacation !!!!
Retire at 50 !!!!
Those dang splitter / slackers need to get to work, because you know the biosphere will not destroy itself. Do you think we can change the climate if people don’t work full time bullshit jobs and then spend their income on useless disposable crap ? Get to work you young slackers, the old baby boomers need your taxes to fund their jet setting retirement!
(serious level 2 on a 10 point scale )
https://www.low-carbonlife.org/home/retire-early-to-save-the-planet
The above link is to a very good article. An example:
“Who would ever choose to cut their spending in half, just to save the earth? We’re told over and over that’s the sort of hardship and misery that the public will never swallow. But thousands of people are doing exactly that, and many of them aren’t even thinking of the environment.
Minimalists are cutting their spending because they want to be able to (gasp) park in their garages, and enjoy their weekends doing anything other than dealing with stuff. Tiny house dwellers are cutting their spending because they don’t have space for a 15th accent pillow from Target. And FIREs (Financial Independence/Retire Early) are cutting their spending by 50 or 80% to ultimately take control of their time. Not to save the planet, but to save themselves.
None of these people think reducing their consumption harms their quality of life. Just the opposite. All of these people are reducing their consumption to increase their quality of life. We find this in our family all the time: we make some conscious decision that improves our lives in three different ways, and discover that the fourth thing it does is to also reduce our environmental impact.”
"Ah. Closer, but with one glaring problem. The last percentage isn’t negative as the article claims."
And there's the discrepancy laid bare. The charts you reference don't factor in debt, particularly consumer debt. Half of America aren't just broke; they're in the hole. And it's getting worse.
Economic servitude is just as inimical and corrosive to freedom as any other form of slavery. But libertarians refuse to acknowledge that the invisible hand hurts many and helps only a few.
AD writes: "Is there nothing you can do… in choosing WHERE you make a defensive stand… that mitigates their strengths?"
All other things being equal, no. The guys with the clubs are going to be butchered. You state that any effort to give them any sort of mitigation is socialism and destroys the freedom of the superior force to annihilate the inferior force.
My 'history-fu' is quite adequate to the task.
"Carbonlife" eh? Gee, I wonder who sponsors them.
Yes, we will face some unpalatable choices regarding climate change. I don't recall seeing anyone calling for cutting spending in half, but it sure sounds like a scary option, doesn't it?
But here's the thing: the coming crisis is now irreversible. Actions we take now can mitigate massive disasters down the road, but we're feeling effects now because we failed to take any meaningful actions 30 years ago, and we have done far too little since. Which means we have a backlog of warming that is going to cost us trillions of dollars and countless lives. We've already reached a point where just holding on to our technological society may become a struggle.
If we don't make hard choices, mother nature will make them for us: and we won't like the answers she has.
Zep
It is low-carbonlife. And I would be surprised if any corporation would support their mission.
and Zep also said
" don't recall seeing anyone calling for cutting spending in half, but it sure sounds like a scary option, doesn't it?"
That is just it, there is a movement going on in the US that has being frugal as its central idea. And now lots of people are finding out that living on a lot less is not a sacrifice at all. It actually improves the quality of their lives, more freedom, more free time, more creativity, higher quality social relationships, and more savings. This is a real and radical movement that makes the Extinction Rebellion looks like the street theater it is.
Zepp Jamieson:
I don't recall seeing anyone calling for cutting spending in half, but it sure sounds like a scary option, doesn't it?
Well, when you put it that way, maybe. If it sounds like "Having only half as much to spend", then certainly. If you phrase it as "Saving half of what you spend", then less so.
"50% off! Everything must go!" starts to sound like a positive boon.
jim, Ohio and Indiana have betrayed their g-g-grandfathers who fought and died for the Union. You live in the Confederacy… while Virginia, North Carolina and possibly even Georgia might turn blue.
LH those “moderates” who threaten to sit out need to be gone-after hammer and tongs, even more than the splitter leftists. Dare them to tabulate how much was given to the 0.001% by every Supply Side gift since Reagan, and ask him to find where Weld opposed any of that. Now measure Liz’s proposals (the most extreme would NEVER pass, so a moderate version) against all that oligarch klepto largesse. Ask him then whom he should dread.
jim I got nothing against lefty guilt trips aiming to get us to conserve in the better sense. Our kids had a teacher who said" If it's yellow, let it mellow, if it's brown flush it down." Heading down the right path? Sure says this 60 year Sierra Club member and author of EARTH. And thus and yes jetting to give speeches, I do vastl;y more good than harm.
Because puritanism will tweak things maybe 5%, while R&D that produced cheap, white-light LED bulbs truly was game-changing.
I stand corrected, Jim. I probably should have gone and taken a look at the site first before popping off.
Saying Ohio has joined the confederacy is both very insulting and very wrong.
I am starting to realize you don’t really have any idea of what we have been going through.
Literally everyone I work with, everyone I am friends with, everybody in my family and all of my neighbors personally knows at least one (many know several) person middle aged or younger that has died a death of despair. With the opioid epidemic, the poor medical care, depression and suicide our life expectancy has been falling year after year.
Please look at this map.
https://www.minnpost.com/second-opinion/2019/12/an-emergent-crisis-u-s-life-expectancy-falls-for-third-year-in-a-row/
Oh and you totally missed the point about frugality.
It is not about laying a guilt trip on anyone.
It is about empowering people to gain greater control over their own lives.
Voting and marching for oligarchic klepto plantation lords who economically oppress you, because they rile you up to hate some minority less-well off than you...
... that is the absolute essence of being "confederate." You are the clueless one, fellah.
Still trying (and failing) to grok the Civil War.
"I hope to live long enough to see my surviving comrades march side by side with the Union veterans along Pennsylvania Avenue, and then I will die happy."
- James Longstreet
"Name me someone that's not a parasite and I'll go out and say a prayer for him."
- Bob Dylan
Jim said: "I am starting to realize you don’t really have any idea of what we have been going through."
It is a blind spot, one common amongst centrist Democrats. Most of them are comfortable, and don't suffer from ongoing job anxiety. Most people in Ohio, along with nearly all of the rest of the country, are at the mercy of bosses to can lay them off at will, or how devastating even just a few weeks "between jobs" can make paying the rent or mortgage impossible, that or let the kids go without food. Instead, you have Brin sneering that libruls "want to make it impossible to fire anyone unless they commit a crime" That not only is false, but it sends a message: Comfortable centrists don't understand your job anxiety, have no interest in address it, so start looking for some who promises to do something about it. Trump won in 2016 in part because he went to places like Ohio and Pennsylvania and Michigan and saying the things to workers about job security and pay that the Democrats should have been saying, only Hillary couldn't be arsed. And that's human nature: an unresponsive government opens the door for demagogues when times are tough.
I live in timber country, an area that until the 60s was staunchly Democrat but has been bright red for at least 30 years because Republicans seized the lies that 'enviros' and "gummint mismanagement" were the reasons why so many faller jobs had vanished. I worked for a while for a timber magazine, and at a time when it was the spotted owl that was killing logging in California because it was impossible to cut anywhere. The editor wanted a story on it, and being somewhat consciencious, I decided to see how much board feet was lost since 1970. Imagine my surprise when I learned extraction had actually risen during the 80s. The reason jobs were vanishing was automation and the fact that the lower demand sent wages plummeting to the point where loggers--most of whome were independent contractors--were doing good if they cleared $50 a day in the woods, and cutting season is only 150 days here between snow and fire season. I went to my boss and told him what I had found. He immediately spiked the story. Wanted an article blaming the owl and enviros, which I refused to do.
Good for you.
Back to Alfred's point about rising wages
Two graphs in this article
One shows that blue collar wages have risen considerably - 600% overall!!
The second one is corrected for inflation - and shows a 13% DECLINE overall
Damn - just realised I forgot the link to the article
Duhhh
https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2019/12/did-workers-wages-skyrocket-during-the-70s-not-when-you-figure-in-inflation/
The short answer to the question you pose in your headline is No. Death Stranding is not a rip off in any way of The Postman.
I don't think any of the articles you point to are from dedicated Gaming Sites, and I am afraid the reviewers have skewed views based on probably watching far more Kevin Costner films(or films in general. It does seem that many journalists are considered by their publications as "entertainment" reviewers rather than the mostly film and TV critics thy really are) than they have played games.
While, yes, you do play a character that goes from settlement to settlement delivering things, and yes the game is set in the US, really this is as far as similarities go.
To start off with, although there has been a disaster cutting off communities from each other, the enclaves themselves have not sunk to near barbarism. They have limited high tech manufacturing, and one of the player's roles as courier is to transport essential commodities between them to keep the high tech wold alive(ie Fetch Quests). They also have not lost the ability to communicate with each other over distances. You are more like an Amazon courier than a postman.
The fact you are not the only courier is an important aspect of the game. In it's essentials it is a Survival Game. As you go from place to place, you have to manage your health, stamina, supplies and so on with the need to constantly balance your style of play based on objectives and resources. You may get to a steep rocky slope, and have to make a decision. Do you slowly climb down the slope, risking a fall that could damage your goods or cause injury where you will need to travel lighter, abandoning some items, or do you tie off your only rope, making the climb easier, but losing the rope in the process? May you not need the rope more later on?
But sometimes, you don't have to make that decision. You will get to the slope and find a rope already there! A fellow player you will never meet has already made the decision, making everyone's lives easier(while the rope lasts). Can you imagine the feeling that this discovery brings? while you will never meet another courier, when you find their works, you know you are not alone. You will also find there are times you can help others. Do you find a partially constructed bridge? Perhaps you can finish it(bridges are handy since one available mode of travel is motorbike, and there are places you need a bridge for them to get over).
To be brutally honest, I doubt Hideo Kojima(a Japanese game maker) has even heard of The Postman, book or film. The book is now 30 years old, and the film 20. And frankly, outside the US, the film bombed hard, only managing to make International world-wide box-office earnings equivalent to what it made in the US. While US figures would be expected to be per-capita higher, there is no way of looking at the non-US figures as anything but abysmal.
There are more similarities to the games DayZ or Dark Souls, or even Journey than there are to The Postman, and it isn't really like any of them.
It would seem that if there's a debt owed between "Death Stranding" and "The Postman" it might be in favor of the former because of creating a renewed interest in the latter. Perhaps offer to buy Hideo Kojima a beer if he's ever around Southern California?
Zepp Jamieson said...
"Trump won in 2016 in part because he went to places like Ohio and Pennsylvania and Michigan and saying the things to workers about job security and pay that the Democrats should have been saying, only Hillary couldn't be arsed."
I don't deny this. My problem is, what in the actual fuck were these people thinking? This isn't a matter of different points of view, this is a matter of being credulous fools. The politicians certainly share some of the blame for not figuring out how to manipulate the credulous fools better than the other side, but the fools share at least equal blame. There is not a single valid excuse for any adult human that falls within the normal range of cognitive function to have failed to see that Trump has always been a failure as a business person and as a human being in general. Sure, some people may have seen that and decided that Hillary was worse. Those people are also credulous fools. In any case I'm talking about the majority of Trump supporters that still believe to this day that Trump was a superman business person, is an awesome president, really believe that all the ridiculous lies Trump tweets are righteous and true and that all of the testimonies and court cases against he and his people are a giant conspiracy of fake news orchestrated by the Demoncrats.
Zepp Jamieson:
Jim said: "I am starting to realize you don’t really have any idea of what we have been going through."
It is a blind spot, one common amongst centrist Democrats. Most of them are comfortable, and don't suffer from ongoing job anxiety. Most people in Ohio, along with nearly all of the rest of the country, are at the mercy of bosses to can lay them off at will...
I do understand job anxiety. I have often maintained that when certain people describe certain other people as "too lazy to work", the phenomenon they are really describing is "too unwilling to submit to the unreasonable demands of a boss".
Another side of that coin, though, is that for decades now, the attitude on the right toward people left behind by the economy has been essentially "too bad for you." There's something disingenuous about those same people going, "Well, now that it's affecting me, I'm owed a solution." I would even have more sympathy if their personal plight opened their eyes to what other people have been suffering for many years. Without that, my heart does tend to harden. I don't mean that I wish them harm, but I do wish they'd be part of the solution for everyone rather than treating their own plight as somehow qualitatively different from everyone else's.
I also realize that saying so is bad politics, as the people in question are well situated enough to elect a demagogue for the express purpose of upending the entire chessboard.
Duncan, Brad DeLong has something of interest concerning inflation here:
/Users/timharness/Desktop/Links/j-bradford-delong.net:tceh:Slouch_Inflation23.html.webloc
Possibly the most relevant information there is the inadvisability of a President using the federal government to optimize reelection chances, which is a bit of Deja Vu these days...
Darrell E said...
Zepp Jamieson said...
"Trump won in 2016 in part because he went to places like Ohio and Pennsylvania and Michigan and saying the things to workers about job security and pay that the Democrats should have been saying, only Hillary couldn't be arsed."
I don't deny this.
I will, though.
Let's not forget that Hillary Clinton did campaign in Ohio and Pennsylvania (and I think Michigan, though I don't recall for sure), and also had a plan that was (at least arguably) better as a jobs and growth plan than that of Trump.
What she did not do was tell a whole collection of blatant lies about what her plans were and what they would do, the way that Trump did.
Yes, of course Clinton could have campaigned more in the rust belt states, and maybe that would have made a difference, but maybe not - unless the argument is that she should have been more of a con artist.
WTF?
WASHINGTON — President Trump plans to sign an executive order on Wednesday targeting what he sees as anti-Semitism on college campuses by threatening to withhold federal money from educational institutions that fail to combat discrimination, three administration officials said on Tuesday.
The order will effectively interpret Judaism as a race or nationality, not just a religion, to prompt a federal law penalizing colleges and universities deemed to be shirking their responsibility to foster an open climate for minority students. In recent years, the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions — or B.D.S. — movement against Israel has roiled some campuses, leaving some Jewish students feeling unwelcome or attacked.
In signing the order, Mr. Trump will use his executive power to take action where Congress has not, essentially replicating bipartisan legislation that has stalled on Capitol Hill for several years. Prominent Democrats have joined Republicans in promoting such a policy change to combat anti-Semitism as well as the boycott-Israel movement.
...
How many things are wrong with this?
First of all, I don't get how interpreting Judaism as a nationality is a requirement for combating anti-Israel sentiments on campuses. "Israeli" is already a nationality.
More to the point, though, does this mean that Jews are to be considered something other than American nationals? Or, to be a true American citizen, am I supposed to renounce my Jewishness?
Echoing Paul Krugman from yesterday, I don't see how this seems like a good thing to American Jews, nor do I see how any American Jews can be supportive of the direction of this administration.
Zep said
“It is a blind spot, one common amongst centrist Democrats. Most of them are comfortable, and don't suffer from ongoing job anxiety. “
It is actually much worse than that Zep, many of those centrist Democrats actually helped the oligarchs with their most important project over the last 30 years, globalization.
You know the process that allows the oligarchs to engage in wage, regulatory and tax arbitrage.
Attacking the wages of blue color works in America (The fat part of the “diamond” distribution of wages)
Weakening the ability of the state to democratically regulate corporations. (if those regulations go into effect we will move our production overseas)
And sense the job losses due to globalization tend to be concentrated in particular places entire communities get their tax revenues slashed and ability to provide for the common good greatly reduced.
But the worst part is when these boot licking lackeys of the oligarchs preen and prance around about how great they are because now a whole bunch of subsistence farmers have been turned into third world wage slaves living a precarious existence in a mega slum. Did you know many of these third world mega slum dwelling wage slaves are making as much as 2 dollars a day??? Isn’t that awesome??
Blogger gregory byshenk said...
"I will, though.
Let's not forget that Hillary Clinton did campaign in Ohio and Pennsylvania (and I think Michigan, though I don't recall for sure), and also had a plan that was (at least arguably) better as a jobs and growth plan than that of Trump.
What she did not do was tell a whole collection of blatant lies about what her plans were and what they would do, the way that Trump did.
Yes, of course Clinton could have campaigned more in the rust belt states, and maybe that would have made a difference, but maybe not - unless the argument is that she should have been more of a con artist."
You know what? I think you are 100% right. I sort of wrote too fast there. What I don't deny was the first part of what I quoted, that Trump told the people in question what they wanted to hear and the people were convinced.
I remember a discussion I had with another liberal / progressive type just after one of the Trump / Clinton debates. This person was leveling just this type of criticism at Hillary, claiming that Hillary had never, and did not in the debate, address the concerns of the working class, particularly in the Rust Belt. I pointed out that though this was indeed a standard talking point of Hillary opponents on both right and left that it simply wasn't true, and by the way are you sure you watched the debate last night? Because in that debate Hillary spent about half of her time talking about just those people. She talked about many specific policy plans she and her team had devised to benefit just those people, explaining the basics of them and, over and over again, urging people to go to her website for further details on all of the policies she was relating to them.
I have never been particularly in favor of or against Hillary. But, fuck me, the degree to which people on the conservative side and especially on the liberal-to-left side have allowed themselves to become so conditioned by decades of concerted propaganda to simply deny all facts, even about stuff that happened right in front of the entire world less than 24 hours ago, to keep on hating and thinking the worst about Hillary both boggles my mind and tempts me to despair for the future of our species.
Oops, that Brad DeLong link was damaged,
http://www.bradford-delong.net:tceh:Slouch_Inflation23.html.webloc may work better
I'm surprised that nobody has called out jim for selection bias. After all, Cincinnati has always been the blue-nose capital of Ohio (and the "blue" in blue-nose does NOT refer to Democrats). After all, John Boehner is from the Cincinnati area.
I live in the Columbus area (admittedly a whole lot less reactionary--that'll happen when a city contains a major university and state government), and I see bumper stickers of both flavors. And I live in a (surrounding) county that regularly goes 60%/40% R/D.
I suspect we ought to be a bit more circumspect about drawing such sweeping conclusions in general.
Bob Neinast
(My usual nom de toile has been "Ahcuah" for a long time; with the Google login defaulting to my real name, it's just taken me this long to switch it over/back.)
Darrell: I'm sure at least some of the voters know what a scumbag Trump was--and is. But he also appealed to bigotry, racism, xenophobia and the same sort of unreasoning resentment that allowed timber companies to foist blame for their job cuts on a defenceless owl.
Hillary DID spot that, and realized Trump was targeting deplorables, along with a lot of people who were frightened and desperate. She addressed the deplorable aspect, but ignored the rest, a fatal mistake on her part.
Tim H.
The DeLong link is still borked. Try this
http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/tceh/Slouch_Inflation23.html
Note: it's a link from 1997.
Bob Neinast
Ahcuah: REgional fervour can to a metric in determining what the voters decide. I live in deep blue California, but I remember when I took many commutes between Southern California and the Jefferson area the signs along I-5.
In late '15 and early '16 there were only a couple of Trump signs along the 400 mile stretch, and those were mostly on the property of outraged fanatics who routine accused the federal government of "stealing their water". Noisy crackpots in other words, perpetually aggrieved that they couldn't steal to their hearts' content. But by early fall of '16, I was seeing dozens of such signs and knew that while California would remain Democratic, he had full control of the deep red enclaves all up and down the 5. And if he had won there, what about places like the prairies, or the rust belt?
This won't pertain to Trump in 2020: either he'll be in prison, or dead, or America will have stopped having meaningful elections. But if we do manage to get rid of this mad gangster and save the country, you can bet that a lot of the groups such as the farmers and ranchers, badly burned by Trump, will think twice about supporting the party that spawned him. They won't vote for the Democratic candidate because Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity have promised them liberal socialist eat babies, but they may just stay home or waste their vote on the libertarian candidate.
Jim: I'm always amused by the wild-eyed sorts on both the left and the right who scream about globalism, usually attributing it to the deep state or Zionism or some damn thing. The real globalist threat, as you say, is multinational corporations and banks, who want to make the entire planet a feudal estate. And yes, after 1980, Democrats embraced "third way" neoliberal policies, and meaningful opposition to the corporate and bank driven power grab in America collapsed.
"Jim said: "I am starting to realize you don’t really have any idea of what we have been going through.""
Well, your confession of mental derangement is refreshing. Though I'd replace "realize" with "sanctimoniously fever-fantasizing."
Ah, back with "globalization" chanting. Funny how he never answers the blatant fact that since 1947 the fraction of children who have never seen war, never had long stretched of hunger and come home to (perhaps hovels) with electricity, sanitation and lights to study by has gone up from around 10% to around 90%. A decent, liberalk or even 'lefty' person would care about that.
But clearly jim is a patriot! Only Americans matter! Never mind that automation has cost US workers vastly more jobs than foreign competition. In fact we replaced old industries with NEW ones quite successfully until China began stealing our IP and inventions before we can benefit from them. Where'e the rage at Beijing? Or at robots! The damn robots.
"Globalization is a magic chant incantation that ignores the difference between international-klepto-mafia-secret-banking global crime -- denounce more effectively in EARTH than any ten-thousand "Jims" will across several centuries...
...and the globalization that has uplifted nearly all of the world within striking distance of a decent life.
Brendan thanks for your perspective. But blatantly you never read The Postman or you'd recognize whole swathes of barely altered language and dialogue. Nor would you have shrugged saying it's just about "delivering" stuff.
Larry: The Brits even have a phrase to describe that phenomenon: "I'm alright, Jack". PF went on to sing, "Keep your hands off of my stack,"
I don't expect the right, now adversely affected by this new economy, to suddenly grow a sense of empathy. It's not in their basic nature. But they may realize they need allies now.
Zepp Jamieson:
Hillary DID spot that, and realized Trump was targeting deplorables, along with a lot of people who were frightened and desperate. She addressed the deplorable aspect, but ignored the rest, a fatal mistake on her part.
Actually, her fatal mistake was not realizing how her comment would be spun.
If you listen to her actual words, she was specifically addressing the rest, after first acknowledging that there was a large subset of Trump supporters who weren't going to be swayed no matter what she said. Her point was not to call all Trump supporters racists and such, but rather to address the ones who aren't.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2016-election/hillary-clinton-half-trump-supporters-belong-basket-deplorables-n646026
...
Addressing the issue of Trump’s popularity, Clinton said: “To just be grossly generalistic, you can put half of Trump supporters into what I call the ‘basket of deplorables.’ Right? Racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic, you name it.
“And unfortunately, there are people like that and he has lifted them up … he tweets and retweets offensive, hateful, mean-spirited rhetoric.”
She continued: “Now some of those folks, they are irredeemable, but they are not America but the other basket … are people who feel that government has let them down, the economy has let them down, nobody cares about them, nobody worries about what happens to their lives and their futures. They are just desperate for change … they don’t buy everything he says but he seems to hold out some hope that their lives will be different."
...
Oh, and she made a grevious math error by accusing half of Trump supporters of being deplorable when subsequent polling showed that only 42% of them fit the bill.
Gregory: Granted, there were a lot of other reasons Hillary lost. Russian interference. Voter suppression tactics. Many lies told by thee Republicans and Trump. Endless propaganda from Faux and the rest of the far right media. Evoting. Dodgy vote counting in many states. But not squarely addressing working class concerns and negating Trump's lies was a critical one.
What I point out in P.Judo is that we miss every opportunity to SPLIT the confederate coalition. And yes, sympathy for displaced workers is part of that.
One potentially fantastic political tactic that I bet no one has thought of would be POINT TO UTAH as an example of one kind of conservatism that could at least be negotiated with. One that's not kowtowing to foreign corruptor kleptocrats. Not waging open war on science and all fact-using professions. Where the local Republicans don't cheat like mad, just to stay in power, The one red state that can honestly claim to do better than blue America, when it comes to things like gambling, teen sex, domestic volence and other turpitudes.
How I wish some eminent Democrat would go to Utah and say: "We know you won't elect democrats. We disagree over many details and tactics and policies, while admitting that both of us want an America that's free of corruption, cheating, and religious or racial or economic bias. One where fair market competition delivers, because all children are raised up and encouraged to compete with confidence. Above all, you'd sit down and *negotiate* with us on the basis of a more-wholesome version of conservatism that's not anti-equality, anti-fact, or anti-honesty. A version that respects science and doesn't respect Nazis.
"Hence we invite Utahns to consider. Might you have a historic role, right now, to help rescue America and also to serve as a shining example? A nucleus for a reborn American conservatism that doesn't rely on cheating and lies and foreign mafias or cable hypnosis networks. If you offer that nucleus of wholesome conservatism, a healthy core that's carved away from today's Kremlin-bought "red" betrayal, might you attract millions to that banner?
"Think about it. Your ancestors fought for the blue, time and again. And "blue" doesn't mean "socialist." That's just some of us! Moreover, we are ready -- like FDR and the Greatest Generation -- to negotiate with you!
"Blue does stand for America, though. So please shake off the poison and stand with us."
That’s all, just a nation free of free of corruption, cheating, bias and inequality? Why not throw in an end to suffering, predation, death, entropy and gamma ray bursts while you’re at it? If you’re going to engage in fantasies, you might as well go all the way.
BTW, it looks to me like it's Adelson and Israel, not Putin and Russia, that are calling the shots with the Trump admin these days, so maybe it's time to retire that big lie.
Dr. Brin: we miss every opportunity to SPLIT the confederate coalition
One Enlightenment convert = -1enemy +1ally = +2
That's about as positive sum as it gets.
Scidata, the Enlightenment is not a religion dude. This seems to be a point of confusion with some people here. Also, "positive sum" = unscientific religious fantasy (just a reminder). The universe yawns at your positive sums, which aren't cosmically significant to any reasonable order of magnitude.
"the Enlightenment is not a religion"
Finally, something I agree 100% on.
That’s all, just a nation free of free of corruption, cheating, bias and inequality? Why not throw in an end to suffering, predation, death, entropy and gamma ray bursts while you’re at it?
Treebeard, they are aspirational goals. We will never achieve them so long as we're human, but they are worth working and fighting toward. Don't you want a nation free of corruption, cheating, bias and inequality? Or are you like Bill Cosby's tonsils, and become so worn down that you've gone over to the other side? ;)
Treebeard wrote: "Adelson and Israel, not Putin and Russia, that are calling the shots with the Trump admin these days, so maybe it's time to retire that big lie."
Hmm. Let's see. The other day Trump told a room full of Jewish supporters, "You're not nice people. But you'll vote for me anyway..." and went on to say he appealed to their sense of greed.
Trump's WH pastor yesterday declared that impeachment will be a "Jew coup against America".
And a pair of Trump supporters ambushed patrons at a Jewish Deli in Jersey yesterday.
So was Hitler part of some great Jewish conspiracy too?
It does look somewhat like such a coup, based on the people leading it. But looking at Trump's policies, it looks more Israel first than America first -- trying to criminalize criticism of Israel is just the latest of many such policies. As that great Enlightenment thinker Voltaire supposedly said: "To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize.”
Treebeard:
BTW, it looks to me like it's Adelson and Israel, not Putin and Russia, that are calling the shots with the Trump admin these days
I'm sure it does.
Treebeard quotes:
"To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize.”
White Christian males?
Police?
Our Troops?
Treebeard:
But looking at Trump's policies, it looks more Israel first than America first -
Wait...I thought you liked Trump.
And his best BFFs are Putin and Netenyahu. So do you even know who to root for?
Actually A. F. Rey, I think those things are aspects of being human. Crusading against them is a crusade against human nature, and no matter how many bodies pile up, that's a war you'll never win. Better to start with more achievable ideals, like having a livable planet and stable, pleasant societies rather than these destabilizing crusades based on impossible ideals.
Yeah Larry, nobody criticizes White Christian males these days. You immediately get drummed out of academia, the media, the corporate world and erased from the culture if you say anything anti-Whitechristianic. Hilarious. I didn't vote for Trump, I'm independent. Being a political partisan is a form of mental retardation, imo.
David Brin said
"jim is a patriot."
and you are a back stabbing, anti-American, class warrior for the oligarchs, who thinks it is just fine to help the oligarchs decrease working class wages, strip communities of tax dollars and undermine democratic regulation of businesses.
and you are just so hilariously clueless going on and on about Trump "treason" while ignoring your own back stabbing treason against American working men and women.
Treebeard:
Yeah Larry, nobody criticizes White Christian males these days. ...
And your contention is that no one criticizes Jews?
Israel is pulling Trump's strings, so Jews are staging a coup to remove him from office.
Seriously, that's the theory?
Treebeard:
Yeah Larry, nobody criticizes White Christian males these days. ...
Look what happens when someone correctly calls out a vast right-wing conspiracy or a basket of deplorables. You politically-correct snowflakes are all over them.
Couple of things
For Trump (and BREXIT) - we can blame lead in petrol - it's my generation who ARE brain damaged and we are the ones who voted for both
Globalisation
Globalisation overall was a major PLUS
The WAY that it was done (especially in the USA) was DESIGNED to break Union power
Globalisation does NOT destroy the power of the Unions - but in the USA it was distorted to destroy Union power
ooooh. Slagged from the nazi side and from the leninist side. Must be doing something right. See how they panic.
jim, seeing as how there are no overlaps between your shrieks and my beliefs for you to even have misconstrued or exaggerated, I think we can safely conclude you are a psychotic hallucinator.
I have fought against all the things YOU hate, far more effectively in any one week than you have, across your entire life. Moreover, you know that to be true. That must really irk. So all you can do is list all the things I fight against and howl "You want those!!!!" Um.... snore...
But again... the magical "globalism" incantation ignores the rise in the number of children, worldwide, who have never known extended hunger or war and who spent their entire youth in school with electricity, from around 10% to around 90%. You cannot evade that fact by screeching at me. Howling at 'globalization" (instead of demanding tweaks to fix its many faults) is the same thing as demanding a reversal of that progress and consigning 4 billions to grinding poverty and death. Nice ethics.
--
Ent, your grew up in a nation relatively and increasingly of free of corruption, cheating, bias and inequality, at least compared to all that came before. Your cult aims to end all that and return us to submission to lords and priest, proved idiots across 6000 years. (Bet you can't name many exceptions! Oh yeah, cowards don't bet.)
Enough said. You are the villains. You even admit it, from time to time. You would not only do all the typically nasty villain things... oppress, corrupt, cheat, and murder us all... but all the stooopid villainous things... like foul the comfy nest the enlightenment made for your pale, lazy, cynically-whining ass.
Ooog, the two of you wasted 5 minutes I could spend in the fight. Intentionally or not, you are kremlin agents. Back to work.
"srael is pulling Trump's strings, so Jews are staging a coup to remove him from office.
Seriously, that's the theory?"
Yes and Ukraine, which got its independence from 500 years of cruel Russian oppression thanks in part to Soros, Obama and Clinton, SIMULTANEOUSLY interfered in the 2016 election on her behalf (without a single US intel agen noticing a single clue) AND sabotaged the DNC and Clinton e systems in ways that cost her the election.
Wow.
==
Duncan "Globalisation does NOT destroy the power of the Unions - but in the USA it was distorted to destroy Union power"
That can be argued. There were many rightist endeavors in the 80s that had that effect, else by now union pension funds would have "owned the means of production" and the Marx dream would have happened smoothly in totally un-Marx ways. And yes, Dems of that time were too ready to compromise with the economic fads of those times, actually believing that largess for the aristocracy would be invested in R&D and jobs. They should have read Adam Smith better.
Larry I don't usually debate the identitarian stuff here, it's not really the place for it. And there's not much point, since people aren't going to rationally resolve it on a blog (or anywhere else). I'm a writer and a thinker, not a tweeter, and this is starting to resemble a stupid twitter fight.
One problem with your Ukraine theory is it ignores the half of the country that is strongly pro-Russian and didn’t support the coup. Sort of like your theory that half of the USA can be ignored, as long as a particular elite is calling the shots, with or without a coup.
Duncan,
Your price comparison of Big Mac’s is a decent start, but you’d have to consider some of the other factors too. Labor is a big piece of the cost of any business like theirs, but other contributions aren’t trivial. Real Estate, taxes, COG, and all that DO matter.
Back in the 50,s and 60,s the USA had Capitalism and a level of regulation that maintained a fair and competitive economy.
No. You make it sound idyllic. Golden age? Not so. The tax code had lots of loopholes back then that allowed for high rates on whatever remained after deductions. The US was a manufacturer economy for part of that time too and we aren’t now. And… the Republicans were liberals while the Democrats were infected with Jim Crowe.
Capitalism is one of the most important tools in any societies toolbox - but it needs to be looked after
On that we agree. We might not agree on exactly how to look after it, but we DO have to watch for the cheaters and smack them down. Occasionally, we might even agree on what constitutes cheating. 8)
Two probs with "ignoring the half".
1. GOP won the popular vote in just one of the last 6 presidential and two of the last 12 Congressional elections, barely. It defies vast majorities through cheating. Volcanic cheating... and now the ent whine that our motives MUST be the same that he sees in the mirror. No, we aren't evil villains.
2. In fact I can see demanding federated local autonomy for the Russo speaking Donbas and Crimea. They make us less than 25% and the majority had a right to elect government, which Putin howls they should not. All, to him, is "sphere of influence" and empire.
Minorities protect their rights by using politics, allying themselves with factions among the majority. treebeard asserts that small minorities have a duty to enslave and oppress majorities because clearly it's self-defense. Yep, even the rationalization is pure evil, let alone the underlying essence.
Zepp,
And there's the discrepancy laid bare. The charts you reference don't factor in debt, particularly consumer debt. Half of America aren't just broke; they're in the hole. And it's getting worse.
If so, the author of the article (or the founder of the think tank) was not telling the truth claimed in the article. In other words, that particular evidence doesn’t support the conclusion. That doesn’t make the conclusion false, though. It’s just that the evidence offered isn’t evidence.
Economic servitude is just as inimical and corrosive to freedom as any other form of slavery.
Agreed.
But libertarians refuse to acknowledge that the invisible hand hurts many and helps only a few.
Take it up with Adam Smith first and convince me you know what the invisible hand actually refers to. I already know many libertarians don’t and I’m suspicious the same is true of you. Many libertarians have this weird blind faith about the whole business and that’s not what Smith intended. Many socialists (and democratic socialists) I know think it is that ‘hand of God’ garbage and throw the idea out completely. Both utterly miss Smith’s point.
The guys with the clubs are going to be butchered.
Hmm… War game much?
I’ll let this go for now. When it comes to near-term tactics, you and I agree on more than enough to be decent allies. It would be nice to convert the unbelievers, but for now it is more important that we find ways to club our mutual opponents. You can meet them on the open field if you like, but I’ll wait over here behind this tree (of liberty… of course) and catch them when they think they’ve flanked you. 8)
onward
onward
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