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On September 30 2020 02:29 Nyxisto wrote: If there was an anti-abortion popular majority in the US, and they could go to the ballot box tomorrow, you think they'd stop to keep the spirit of the opposition in mind?
But there isn't an anti-abortion popular majority in the US. And the system where people don't have direct power over the direction of their country, like is the case in the US right now, appears to be just as likely to repeal abortion rights, arguably even more likely.
On September 30 2020 02:29 Nyxisto wrote: Switzerland is a small, coherent, high trust society.
But it isn't... There are clear differences in culture and in voting habits between the french side and the german side (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Röstigraben). This is honestly the same type of argumentation as the "Yeah but you guys in Norway are homogenous, so that's why you get to have a social democracy". Just lol.
Trust is important but trust is earned, we're not naturally more trusting for some obscure reason. When the system doesn't work in our interest, levels of trust in it decrease. Just like everywhere.
On September 30 2020 02:52 Nebuchad wrote: This is honestly the same type of argumentation as the "Yeah but you guys in Norway are homogenous, so that's why you get to have a social democracy". Just lol.
That's probably a true statement though. Reminds me of a good article on Denmark from a few years ago. Scandinavian political models or Swiss models or German models cannot be exported around the world at will, they're based on culture. There's a difference between politics in societies with strong civil trust and societies in countries with low civil trust.
In low-trust societies, political openness tends to lead towards capture by interest groups, because the well-being of the nation is less important than the well-being of the in-group. This can be seen in countries that democratize politically before they democratize culturally, see Latin America, or experiments in the ME. When you don't trust society at large, politics turns into trying to take over institutions for your ethnic or religious group because that's who you think is standing up for you, rather than impartial politicians. The situation after the fall of the Soviet Union in Eastern Europe is another obvious example.
I feel like in order to argue this you have to posit that trust is an inherent quality, am I missing something?
It seems much more logical to assume that the system of Denmark doing a perceived good job for the people of Denmark is what led them to consider it trustworthy, and oppositely that the systems of Latin America fucking the people over with frequent corruption and occasional authoritarianism is what would lead to low-trust societies.
If we view the situation under this framing, then the simplified argument is "The people in the bad systems can't develop a good system because when they're under a bad system they don't have trust in the bad system", which is flawed logic.
On September 30 2020 02:52 Nebuchad wrote: This is honestly the same type of argumentation as the "Yeah but you guys in Norway are homogenous, so that's why you get to have a social democracy". Just lol.
That's probably a true statement though. Reminds me of a good article on Denmark from a few years ago. Scandinavian political models or Swiss models or German models cannot be exported around the world at will, they're based on culture. There's a difference between politics in societies with strong civil trust and societies in countries with low civil trust.
In low-trust societies, political openness tends to lead towards capture by interest groups, because the well-being of the nation is less important than the well-being of the in-group. This can be seen in countries that democratize politically before they democratize culturally, see Latin America, or experiments in the ME. When you don't trust society at large, politics turns into trying to take over institutions for your ethnic or religious group because that's who you think is standing up for you, rather than impartial politicians. The situation after the fall of the Soviet Union in Eastern Europe is another obvious example.
I mean, it's a chicken or egg question. Do we trust our government because they are good, or is our government good because we trust them? I think these are self-reinforcing traits whichever way you go tbh. I certainly don't think Scandinavian social democracy can just be exported or adopted 'just like that', but I also don't see how size of country or diversity of population have to be important factors that either enable a country to go social democrat or make it impossible for them to do so. Rather I think it's like, the pendulum can be moved x distance in x period of time based on political actions taken. A corrupt government won't be trusted by the population, and if a corrupt and hated government suddenly supply a bunch of trust-based benefits to the population, then the population of said country is likely to exploit those trust-based benefits more so than the population of any scandinavian country would. But if a corrupt government is replaced by a non-corrupt government and they spend a decade working towards establishing a more trusting relationship, it can happen. It's not like Norway works because Norwegians are inherently exceptional, and there's something.. defeatist about this attitude that certain political options are only viable in certain political environments.
I don't see homogeneity as a defining trait though, or it at least would demand a fairly wide definition of homogeneity - I believe immigrants are somewhat more likely to vote social democrat (which in this context is what we consider 'Norwegian') than the 'ethnic norwegian' is anyway.
It's definitely not homogeneity in a narrow sense, but there does need to be a common identity of citizenship. A lot of egalitarian countries like Switzerland, Finland, also Israel have for example national defense, a standing citizen army, and belligerent large threats as a uniting factor. They're surrounded and are a little bit tribal in a positive sense of the term.
And sure there's a cause and effect debate. Singapore where I live now is often taken as a model example of good governance, but it didn't really get to that point in a laissez-faire way. Lee Kuan Yew used to point out that they basically had to tell people how to speak, how to eat, and where to spit to turn villagers into urban citizens. They definitely didn't just introduce free-wheeling democracy and still haven't, always afraid of ethnic or religious conflict undermining harmony.
I wasn't also trying to be defeatist, I just think the order of things matters. HIgh trust societies can be made but not quickly, and not just by copying over formal political institutions, they've got to be build by the people themselves over generations.
On September 30 2020 07:42 Nebuchad wrote: (I'm not going to read Fukuyama fwiw)
He does make a few good points in his book on political decay though. He takes Greece as an example of a country that democratized before developing a strong sense of national citizenship, and as a result had a lot of what he called 'urban villagers'. People who are nominally democratic citizens, but still have a mindset of placing private interest about public interest. As a result, the very open political system is often used as a straight forward system to buy partisan favours, often literally, by say voting for who promises you the most benefits.
On October 01 2020 03:07 Nyxisto wrote: It's definitely not homogeneity in a narrow sense, but there does need to be a common identity of citizenship. A lot of egalitarian countries like Switzerland, Finland, also Israel have for example national defense, a standing citizen army, and belligerent large threats as a uniting factor. They're surrounded and are a little bit tribal in a positive sense of the term.
And sure there's a cause and effect debate. Singapore where I live now is often taken as a model example of good governance, but it didn't really get to that point in a laissez-faire way. Lee Kuan Yew used to point out that they basically had to tell people how to speak, how to eat, and where to spit to turn villagers into urban citizens. They definitely didn't just introduce free-wheeling democracy and still haven't, always afraid of ethnic or religious conflict undermining harmony.
I wasn't also trying to be defeatist, I just think the order of things matters. HIgh trust societies can be made but not quickly, and not just by copying over formal political institutions, they've got to be build by the people themselves over generations.
We don't have a belligerent large threat as a uniting factor. Romandy is pro-Europe. Some of the countries that have social democracies have these factors, and others don't (for example, Sweden doesn't have a unifying threat as far as I know), and there are countries who have those factors and still didn't develop social democracies, for example Estonia.
If you think about this logically, a unifying threat is actually an impediment to developing an egalitarian society, not an advantage. It creates a distinction between people who are human and people who are subhuman, or a distinction between friend and enemy, if you want to use Schmitt's terminology. A mindset that contains subhumans will be directly opposed to an egalitarian society, so at best you'll get some nazbol action. Having enemies also rises the insecurity level, which is known to increase the authoritarian sentiment in a population.
But I see we're using Israel as an egalitarian example, so clearly we aren't concerned with some people being subhumans.
If we're being real for a second, you are ideologically opposed to an increase in democracy, right? So it's not just that you think it's hard or impossible to replicate, you actively don't want it replicated.
The idea that scepticism of foreigners ties into a close-knit community at home exists since Rousseau (or maybe Ibn Khaldun?), cultures that have scepticism towards the outside usually have strong trust on the inside, and that's also true for Switzerland, historically speaking. The country is littered with WWII era bunkers and underground tunnels to prove that point, during the cold war bridges were rigged with explosives in case of a Soviet invasion. Crossings between German towns like Bad Säckingen into Switzerland were basically rigged even a while ago, I think in 2015 they were finally dismantling the last of the old cold-war defence systems, Switzerland was so afraid during much of the 20th century (rightfully so) that it was ready to pull the plug on its infrastructure.
And Israel is without a doubt one of the most egalitarian countries on the planet if you've ever been to Israel, regardless of business, or even the military, rank does not matter much in the country, women serve, men serve, there's a huge degree of autonomy, it's quite extraordinary compared to the surrounding countries, and it's also what makes Israel so effective in war. Taiwan, of course, is another example, it's no coincidence that the country has such strong cohesion.
And no I'm not ideologically opposed to an increase of democracy in principle, I'm opposed to it when the conditions for it to work don't exist.
On October 01 2020 12:00 Nyxisto wrote: The idea that scepticism of foreigners ties into a close-knit community at home exists since Rousseau (or maybe Ibn Khaldun?), cultures that have scepticism towards the outside usually have strong trust on the inside, and that's also true for Switzerland, historically speaking. The country is littered with WWII era bunkers and underground tunnels to prove that point, during the cold war bridges were rigged with explosives in case of a Soviet invasion. Crossings between German towns like Bad Säckingen into Switzerland were basically rigged even a while ago, I think in 2015 they were finally dismantling the last of the old cold-war defence systems, Switzerland was so afraid during much of the 20th century (rightfully so) that it was ready to pull the plug on its infrastructure.
And Israel is without a doubt one of the most egalitarian countries on the planet if you've ever been to Israel, regardless of business, or even the military, rank does not matter much in the country, women serve, men serve, there's a huge degree of autonomy, it's quite extraordinary compared to the surrounding countries, and it's also what makes Israel so effective in war. Taiwan, of course, is another example, it's no coincidence that the country has such strong cohesion.
And no I'm not ideologically opposed to an increase of democracy in principle, I'm opposed to it when the conditions for it to work don't exist.
You're not running into an issue with tying scepticism of foreigners and close-knit community, you're running into an issue with tying that to improving the chances of developing a social democracy. It's extremely easy to attack that tie. I provided some attacks earlier based on specific countries, but probably the easiest one is one that Drone hinted at earlier, which is simply that the areas of a country that tend to vote social democrat and generally on the left are large cities, where trust is lower, where multiculturalism is more prominent, and where most people don't know each other or feel strong connexions to each other; as opposed to villages and rural areas, where people will know each other, trust each other, live in close-knit communities, and vote for the far right.
Why aren't you ideologically opposed to an increase of democracy? That seems weird. I would think you favor meritocratic systems over ideas where everyone gets the same weight regardless of their merit. You also support a form of capitalism where people get increasingly atomized.
I wouldn't characterize cities as Social Democratic. Cities tend to be liberal with a socially left bend (which is what most nominally SD parties are now), but organized labour in the traditional Social Democratic sense is pretty absent from cities, which is dominated by white collar, unorganised work. In a city you're more likely to find a software developer and an Uber driver rather than a unionised steel worker these days.
The rise of the multicultural cities corresponds to a rise of Green parties, which aren't actually very left-wing per se, who favour economic dynamism and social mobility over community. You actually see it in the dynamics of right-wing politics, with large parts of the traditional Social-Democratic base switching to reactionary right-wing parties, clashing with young progressive activists over cultural values. In the US there is now a revival of 'national conservatism', essentially what we've had in Europe for a long time in Christian Democratic parties.
The traditional autoworker is a 50-year-old guy who is now more likely to vote Trump or LePen than vote for the urban Social Democrats. I think this contradiction, between the reliance of Social Democracy on cultural cohesion and the nation-state, and progressive multiculturalism literally is what has been tearing the left and center-left apart in country after country, very visibly.
On October 01 2020 12:41 Nebuchad wrote: Why aren't you ideologically opposed to an increase of democracy? That seems weird. I would think you favor meritocratic systems over ideas where everyone gets the same weight regardless of their merit. You also support a form of capitalism where people get increasingly atomized.
Because in practice I don't see democracy and meritocracy as opposing forces. Within reasonable limits and checks, democracy prevents corruption, allows people to speak and is better than anything else we have to let capable people advance, as long as it doesn't turn into a screaming fest. I'm also not the biggest fan of extreme forms of capitalism, but I think what holds for democracy also holds for 'small c' capitalism, in reality it's the least bad system we have. Everything else, regardless how well intentioned, never ended with more meritocracy.
On October 01 2020 14:39 Nyxisto wrote: I wouldn't characterize cities as Social Democratic. Cities tend to be liberal with a socially left bend (which is what most nominally SD parties are now), but organized labour in the traditional Social Democratic sense is pretty absent from cities, which is dominated by white collar, unorganised work. In a city you're more likely to find a software developer and an Uber driver rather than a unionised steel worker these days.
The rise of the multicultural cities corresponds to a rise of Green parties, which aren't actually very left-wing per se, who favour economic dynamism and social mobility over community. You actually see it in the dynamics of right-wing politics, with large parts of the traditional Social-Democratic base switching to reactionary right-wing parties, clashing with young progressive activists over cultural values. In the US there is now a revival of 'national conservatism', essentially what we've had in Europe for a long time in Christian Democratic parties.
The traditional autoworker is a 50-year-old guy who is now more likely to vote Trump or LePen than vote for the urban Social Democrats. I think this contradiction, between the reliance of Social Democracy on cultural cohesion and the nation-state, and progressive multiculturalism literally is what has been tearing the left and center-left apart in country after country, very visibly.
On October 01 2020 12:41 Nebuchad wrote: Why aren't you ideologically opposed to an increase of democracy? That seems weird. I would think you favor meritocratic systems over ideas where everyone gets the same weight regardless of their merit. You also support a form of capitalism where people get increasingly atomized.
Because in practice I don't see democracy and meritocracy as opposing forces. Within reasonable limits and checks, democracy prevents corruption, allows people to speak and is better than anything else we have to let capable people advance, as long as it doesn't turn into a screaming fest. I'm also not the biggest fan of extreme forms of capitalism, but I think what holds for democracy also holds for 'small c' capitalism, in reality it's the least bad system we have. Everything else, regardless how well intentioned, never ended with more meritocracy.
I would just like to point out that while that would be true for a lot of countries, it is not for Scandinavia where most white collar work is unionized. Like me, who is a unionized software developer/data scientist. We don't have Uber in Norway, but we have Foodora which does food delivery which tried to do the same type of worker contracts as Uber. That didn't work because even those workers are unionized. So cities in Scandinavia can definitely be characterized as traditional Social Democratic.
On October 01 2020 14:39 Nyxisto wrote: I wouldn't characterize cities as Social Democratic. Cities tend to be liberal with a socially left bend (which is what most nominally SD parties are now), but organized labour in the traditional Social Democratic sense is pretty absent from cities, which is dominated by white collar, unorganised work. In a city you're more likely to find a software developer and an Uber driver rather than a unionised steel worker these days.
The rise of the multicultural cities corresponds to a rise of Green parties, which aren't actually very left-wing per se, who favour economic dynamism and social mobility over community. You actually see it in the dynamics of right-wing politics, with large parts of the traditional Social-Democratic base switching to reactionary right-wing parties, clashing with young progressive activists over cultural values. In the US there is now a revival of 'national conservatism', essentially what we've had in Europe for a long time in Christian Democratic parties.
The traditional autoworker is a 50-year-old guy who is now more likely to vote Trump or LePen than vote for the urban Social Democrats. I think this contradiction, between the reliance of Social Democracy on cultural cohesion and the nation-state, and progressive multiculturalism literally is what has been tearing the left and center-left apart in country after country, very visibly.
Isn't that entirely tangential? We were discussing if a close-knit community with a friend/enemy distinction was more or less likely to create a social democracy. Whether there are unions or not, we can still see who's voting further left (egalitarian) and who's voting further right (hierarchical). It's not like unions are florishing in villages in the places where they are weak in cities, so the argument stands.
Besides, didn't unions use to be strong just about everywhere?
I hope this doesn’t come across the wrong way: my experience talking with Europeans indicate that French people are the most proud/nationalist of their country when compared to other European countries. Is that considered true? Unique experience of mine? Haven’t spent any time in Europe, just talked to Europeans who immigrated here or here on business. They just seem to think France is absolutely amazing in a way other Europeans either don’t or don’t say as openly. Not criticizing or something, just curious how Europeans feel
On October 12 2020 15:25 Mohdoo wrote: I hope this doesn’t come across the wrong way: my experience talking with Europeans indicate that French people are the most proud/nationalist of their country when compared to other European countries. Is that considered true? Unique experience of mine? Haven’t spent any time in Europe, just talked to Europeans who immigrated here or here on business. They just seem to think France is absolutely amazing in a way other Europeans either don’t or don’t say as openly. Not criticizing or something, just curious how Europeans feel
I'd say the Dutch and people in Scandinavia are equally proud. The latter are just less open about it. For Brits, it depends on whether you lean left or right, I'd say. Italians are very proud of their culture and their heritage as well. And like mahrgell said, people in Central/Eastern Europe are even more proud/nationalist as far their heritage is concerned (although they may have a bad opinion of the state their country is in,depending on which country we're talking about).
French people have a tendency to think their country has the most history, are the most cultured and has contributed the most culturally to the world in the arts. But then again, so do the British, the Germans, the Italians. And in many ways they can all claim such. French people are just more open about it. They are just an easy target for stereotyping.
All countries in Europe are proud of their history and heritage. The French are just very French about it. But yeah, here's some English being very English about it
On October 13 2020 03:10 GreenHorizons wrote: Does France still have a ministry for coming up with new French words for tech so they don't adopt whatever the rest of the world calls something?
Are you talking about the Academie Francaise? It's not a ministry but an institution gathering all the greatest writers and "hommes de lettres", and it has been there since 1635. It's made french a remarkably stable - and rich - language.
EPT
