|
Now that we have a new thread, in order to ensure that this thread continues to meet TL standards and follows the proper guidelines, we will be enforcing the rules in the OP more strictly. Be sure to give them a complete and thorough read before posting! NOTE: When providing a source, please provide a very brief summary on what it's about and what purpose it adds to the discussion. The supporting statement should clearly explain why the subject is relevant and needs to be discussed. Please follow this rule especially for tweets.
Your supporting statement should always come BEFORE you provide the source.If you have any questions, comments, concern, or feedback regarding the USPMT, then please use this thread: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/website-feedback/510156-us-politics-thread |
On July 30 2020 10:57 JimmiC wrote:Show nested quote +On July 30 2020 09:16 GreenHorizons wrote:On July 30 2020 08:56 JimmiC wrote:On July 30 2020 07:02 GreenHorizons wrote:On July 30 2020 06:55 Belisarius wrote:
I mean if you want alternate centres of power, the way to do it is get rid of FPTP so multiple parties can exist.
The politicians would obviously fight it, but if you're talking about thousands of members of congress then we're not exactly dealing in political realities anyway.
It's remarkable how many of these things come down to "the system is bad, we all agree it needs to change, it's not possible because of how it is designed but I hope it gets better" Not enough agree on how it should be changed, so it is not. Enough of the 'right' people maybe? Part of the "system is bad" critique is that it's obviously apparent on things like background checks at gun shows that popularity of policy itself isn't what determines its enactment into law. You have to turn to a critique of the system itself and its failure to do the will of the people due to something beyond the popularity and practical soundness of the change. It is way easier to convince enough people for a minor change then a full system change.
I no longer believe this, unless it is a truly minor change like renaming a post office.
Not arguing for outside of system change, but that major changes are no more difficult to convince people of than mild ones, and have a better chance of standing the test of time. Obamacare's largest changes (Medicaid expansion) remain in place, while all its small ones got rolled back.
It is just as easy to convince a republican to raise taxes 1% as it is to convince them to raise them 10%, basically.
|
It hasn't really been mentioned too much here, but it looks like the expanded unemployment - one of the few things that seems to be keeping the economy alive on life support - is on track to expire with no replacement. Although it's always the case that they make an eleventh-hour deal, it looks a lot like a full deadlock right now.
White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows signalled late on Wednesday that negotiations with Democrats are falling apart for a new Covid-19 stimulus package before unemployment benefits expire and Congress' scheduled August recess, saying it's likely there will be "no deal" the longer talks go on.
...
While House Democrats passed a $3 trillion coronavirus relief bill called the HEROES Act in May, which included an extension of the unemployment benefits, but Senate Republicans refused to negotiate the bill and instead waited until Monday to introduce its splintered proposal, the $1 trillion HEALS Act which represents more than one bill.
...
"The main reason unemployment benefits are poised to expire on Friday is [because] Trump's White House and the GOP are refusing to extend them," Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) said on Twitter. "They seem to think people can be starved into taking 30 million jobs that don't exist."
Responding to a tweet from Sen. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) accusing Democrats of letting "relief run dry," Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) tweeted, "Why'd you keep telling Americans they needed to pause for 98 DAYS while they were suffering?"
Numerous Senate Republicans have voiced criticism for the bill. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) called the total price tag a "mistake." Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) wants to gradually phase out the $600 unemployment benefits while Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) wants a separate bill to temporarily extend the weekly checks. Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) knocked the bill for its lack of state and local aid, something provided in the House bill.
Source
It's hard to see how you find common ground between $1T and $3T of stimulus in just a week.
|
On July 30 2020 12:19 LegalLord wrote:It hasn't really been mentioned too much here, but it looks like the expanded unemployment - one of the few things that seems to be keeping the economy alive on life support - is on track to expire with no replacement. Although it's always the case that they make an eleventh-hour deal, it looks a lot like a full deadlock right now. Show nested quote +White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows signalled late on Wednesday that negotiations with Democrats are falling apart for a new Covid-19 stimulus package before unemployment benefits expire and Congress' scheduled August recess, saying it's likely there will be "no deal" the longer talks go on.
...
While House Democrats passed a $3 trillion coronavirus relief bill called the HEROES Act in May, which included an extension of the unemployment benefits, but Senate Republicans refused to negotiate the bill and instead waited until Monday to introduce its splintered proposal, the $1 trillion HEALS Act which represents more than one bill.
...
"The main reason unemployment benefits are poised to expire on Friday is [because] Trump's White House and the GOP are refusing to extend them," Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) said on Twitter. "They seem to think people can be starved into taking 30 million jobs that don't exist." while making sure people don't have time to read and oppose it.
Responding to a tweet from Sen. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) accusing Democrats of letting "relief run dry," Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) tweeted, "Why'd you keep telling Americans they needed to pause for 98 DAYS while they were suffering?"
Numerous Senate Republicans have voiced criticism for the bill. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) called the total price tag a "mistake." Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) wants to gradually phase out the $600 unemployment benefits while Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) wants a separate bill to temporarily extend the weekly checks. Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) knocked the bill for its lack of state and local aid, something provided in the House bill. SourceIt's hard to see how you find common ground between $1T and $3T of stimulus in just a week.
First proposals in response to covid were in the $1-10 billion range, then got bumped to $1-10 trillion (hard to really comprehend how much more that is) so it just means they're going to leverage the "the economy will implode if we don't give wall street another bailout with this relief package"
On the other hand, mortgage relief is also set to expire soon and 10's of millions of people are facing eviction if/when it does.
|
On July 30 2020 12:19 LegalLord wrote:It hasn't really been mentioned too much here, but it looks like the expanded unemployment - one of the few things that seems to be keeping the economy alive on life support - is on track to expire with no replacement. Although it's always the case that they make an eleventh-hour deal, it looks a lot like a full deadlock right now. Show nested quote +White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows signalled late on Wednesday that negotiations with Democrats are falling apart for a new Covid-19 stimulus package before unemployment benefits expire and Congress' scheduled August recess, saying it's likely there will be "no deal" the longer talks go on.
...
While House Democrats passed a $3 trillion coronavirus relief bill called the HEROES Act in May, which included an extension of the unemployment benefits, but Senate Republicans refused to negotiate the bill and instead waited until Monday to introduce its splintered proposal, the $1 trillion HEALS Act which represents more than one bill.
...
"The main reason unemployment benefits are poised to expire on Friday is [because] Trump's White House and the GOP are refusing to extend them," Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) said on Twitter. "They seem to think people can be starved into taking 30 million jobs that don't exist."
Responding to a tweet from Sen. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) accusing Democrats of letting "relief run dry," Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) tweeted, "Why'd you keep telling Americans they needed to pause for 98 DAYS while they were suffering?"
Numerous Senate Republicans have voiced criticism for the bill. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) called the total price tag a "mistake." Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) wants to gradually phase out the $600 unemployment benefits while Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) wants a separate bill to temporarily extend the weekly checks. Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) knocked the bill for its lack of state and local aid, something provided in the House bill. SourceIt's hard to see how you find common ground between $1T and $3T of stimulus in just a week.
It'll happen or they'll be dead in the streets. Revolutions happen overnight when a certain percentage of the populace starts being unable to feed itself. It isn't like one of the government shutdown deals where <1% of the populace is affected directly if they keep playing chicken.
This isn't the type of thing that even the dumbest politician fucks around with once they start to get talked to by those with even a modicum of awareness (ie, the Senate is probably going to cave. they have less room for error and are generally more intelligent than their house counterparts. Trump torpedoing it isn't out of the realm of possibility, but it's unlikely)
|
On July 30 2020 12:10 Nevuk wrote:Show nested quote +On July 30 2020 10:57 JimmiC wrote:On July 30 2020 09:16 GreenHorizons wrote:On July 30 2020 08:56 JimmiC wrote:On July 30 2020 07:02 GreenHorizons wrote:On July 30 2020 06:55 Belisarius wrote:
I mean if you want alternate centres of power, the way to do it is get rid of FPTP so multiple parties can exist.
The politicians would obviously fight it, but if you're talking about thousands of members of congress then we're not exactly dealing in political realities anyway.
It's remarkable how many of these things come down to "the system is bad, we all agree it needs to change, it's not possible because of how it is designed but I hope it gets better" Not enough agree on how it should be changed, so it is not. Enough of the 'right' people maybe? Part of the "system is bad" critique is that it's obviously apparent on things like background checks at gun shows that popularity of policy itself isn't what determines its enactment into law. You have to turn to a critique of the system itself and its failure to do the will of the people due to something beyond the popularity and practical soundness of the change. It is way easier to convince enough people for a minor change then a full system change. I no longer believe this, unless it is a truly minor change like renaming a post office. Not arguing for outside of system change, but that major changes are no more difficult to convince people of than mild ones, and have a better chance of standing the test of time. Obamacare's largest changes (Medicaid expansion) remain in place, while all its small ones got rolled back. It is just as easy to convince a republican to raise taxes 1% as it is to convince them to raise them 10%, basically.
The medicaid expansion change being large on one scale, but tiny on another. It did not raise conservatives hackles as much as the individual mandate and mandatory criteria for insurance officerings. If Obamacare was just a massive Medicaid expansion, it would've been massively bipartisan.
On July 30 2020 09:48 franzji wrote:Show nested quote +On July 30 2020 01:23 Wegandi wrote:
I give the US like...12-16 years max before the first state says fuck this shit and leaves. The partisan hysteria is only increasing at an exponential rate with no signs of abating. Our "mainstream" media outlets are no longer thinly veiled arms of either party, but actively reveling in it, stoking ever high tensions (of which we see in societal unrest). Very similar to the 1850s. At this point our bicameral legislature are actively antagonistic against each other and both parties salivate at the prospect of holding complete power to lord it over one another. What a fucking shit show. There's not even a pretense of running on policies outside of the extremes of the parties - living in wackadoo land of the SJW's or the conspiracy nuts of R/TheDonald. No one gives a shit about the hilarious debts. You even have Democrats saying spending trillions and trillions is not enough and still pushing their GOP want you to starve shtick. Blegh. OK, enough ranting. The federal government would have to completely fall before it would let any state leave the union.
Considering the current rhetoric on Trump, what makes this so insane (or is current rhetoric on Trump somehow inflated?)
|
|
|
On July 30 2020 13:21 Danglars wrote:Show nested quote +On July 30 2020 12:10 Nevuk wrote:On July 30 2020 10:57 JimmiC wrote:On July 30 2020 09:16 GreenHorizons wrote:On July 30 2020 08:56 JimmiC wrote:On July 30 2020 07:02 GreenHorizons wrote:On July 30 2020 06:55 Belisarius wrote:
I mean if you want alternate centres of power, the way to do it is get rid of FPTP so multiple parties can exist.
The politicians would obviously fight it, but if you're talking about thousands of members of congress then we're not exactly dealing in political realities anyway.
It's remarkable how many of these things come down to "the system is bad, we all agree it needs to change, it's not possible because of how it is designed but I hope it gets better" Not enough agree on how it should be changed, so it is not. Enough of the 'right' people maybe? Part of the "system is bad" critique is that it's obviously apparent on things like background checks at gun shows that popularity of policy itself isn't what determines its enactment into law. You have to turn to a critique of the system itself and its failure to do the will of the people due to something beyond the popularity and practical soundness of the change. It is way easier to convince enough people for a minor change then a full system change. I no longer believe this, unless it is a truly minor change like renaming a post office. Not arguing for outside of system change, but that major changes are no more difficult to convince people of than mild ones, and have a better chance of standing the test of time. Obamacare's largest changes (Medicaid expansion) remain in place, while all its small ones got rolled back. It is just as easy to convince a republican to raise taxes 1% as it is to convince them to raise them 10%, basically. The medicaid expansion change being large on one scale, but tiny on another. It did not raise conservatives hackles as much as the individual mandate and mandatory criteria for insurance officerings. If Obamacare was just a massive Medicaid expansion, it would've been massively bipartisan. Show nested quote +On July 30 2020 09:48 franzji wrote:On July 30 2020 01:23 Wegandi wrote:
I give the US like...12-16 years max before the first state says fuck this shit and leaves. The partisan hysteria is only increasing at an exponential rate with no signs of abating. Our "mainstream" media outlets are no longer thinly veiled arms of either party, but actively reveling in it, stoking ever high tensions (of which we see in societal unrest). Very similar to the 1850s. At this point our bicameral legislature are actively antagonistic against each other and both parties salivate at the prospect of holding complete power to lord it over one another. What a fucking shit show. There's not even a pretense of running on policies outside of the extremes of the parties - living in wackadoo land of the SJW's or the conspiracy nuts of R/TheDonald. No one gives a shit about the hilarious debts. You even have Democrats saying spending trillions and trillions is not enough and still pushing their GOP want you to starve shtick. Blegh. OK, enough ranting. The federal government would have to completely fall before it would let any state leave the union. Considering the current rhetoric on Trump, what makes this so insane (or is current rhetoric on Trump somehow inflated?)
On July 30 2020 13:21 Danglars wrote:Show nested quote +On July 30 2020 12:10 Nevuk wrote:On July 30 2020 10:57 JimmiC wrote:On July 30 2020 09:16 GreenHorizons wrote:On July 30 2020 08:56 JimmiC wrote:On July 30 2020 07:02 GreenHorizons wrote:On July 30 2020 06:55 Belisarius wrote:
I mean if you want alternate centres of power, the way to do it is get rid of FPTP so multiple parties can exist.
The politicians would obviously fight it, but if you're talking about thousands of members of congress then we're not exactly dealing in political realities anyway.
It's remarkable how many of these things come down to "the system is bad, we all agree it needs to change, it's not possible because of how it is designed but I hope it gets better" Not enough agree on how it should be changed, so it is not. Enough of the 'right' people maybe? Part of the "system is bad" critique is that it's obviously apparent on things like background checks at gun shows that popularity of policy itself isn't what determines its enactment into law. You have to turn to a critique of the system itself and its failure to do the will of the people due to something beyond the popularity and practical soundness of the change. It is way easier to convince enough people for a minor change then a full system change. I no longer believe this, unless it is a truly minor change like renaming a post office. Not arguing for outside of system change, but that major changes are no more difficult to convince people of than mild ones, and have a better chance of standing the test of time. Obamacare's largest changes (Medicaid expansion) remain in place, while all its small ones got rolled back. It is just as easy to convince a republican to raise taxes 1% as it is to convince them to raise them 10%, basically. The medicaid expansion change being large on one scale, but tiny on another. It did not raise conservatives hackles as much as the individual mandate and mandatory criteria for insurance officerings. If Obamacare was just a massive Medicaid expansion, it would've been massively bipartisan.
Ironically, those were also some of the far lefts criticisms of Obamacare (the individual mandate, that is. The mandatory criteria was fine with them).
(The individual mandate was originally the GOP alternative to increasing taxes for Hillarycare, I think).
From what I recall of 2009/10, most of the GOP criticism I saw was actually about the debt and the mandate was put into place to lower the CBO evaluation (ah, the days when people gave a shit about debt increase... feels nostalgic now as we stare down 13 trillion in bailouts with no funding on a bipartisan basis).
The point is, if it was a medicaid expansion to 400% (just making up a large number here) of the poverty line, then it would have solved a lot of the issues of the health insurance system - Obamacare fucked over the lower middle class heavily, didn't change things for the middle class, and greatly benefited lower and upper classes. (A public option was killed by Lieberman, no republican, of course).
That would have been a massive change in philosophy on health care that would have been easier to explain, but would have been much more expensive than Obamacare. Republican support would have been the same either way, I think.
On July 30 2020 14:16 JimmiC wrote:Show nested quote +On July 30 2020 12:10 Nevuk wrote:On July 30 2020 10:57 JimmiC wrote:On July 30 2020 09:16 GreenHorizons wrote:On July 30 2020 08:56 JimmiC wrote:On July 30 2020 07:02 GreenHorizons wrote:On July 30 2020 06:55 Belisarius wrote:
I mean if you want alternate centres of power, the way to do it is get rid of FPTP so multiple parties can exist.
The politicians would obviously fight it, but if you're talking about thousands of members of congress then we're not exactly dealing in political realities anyway.
It's remarkable how many of these things come down to "the system is bad, we all agree it needs to change, it's not possible because of how it is designed but I hope it gets better" Not enough agree on how it should be changed, so it is not. Enough of the 'right' people maybe? Part of the "system is bad" critique is that it's obviously apparent on things like background checks at gun shows that popularity of policy itself isn't what determines its enactment into law. You have to turn to a critique of the system itself and its failure to do the will of the people due to something beyond the popularity and practical soundness of the change. It is way easier to convince enough people for a minor change then a full system change. I no longer believe this, unless it is a truly minor change like renaming a post office. Not arguing for outside of system change, but that major changes are no more difficult to convince people of than mild ones, and have a better chance of standing the test of time. Obamacare's largest changes (Medicaid expansion) remain in place, while all its small ones got rolled back. It is just as easy to convince a republican to raise taxes 1% as it is to convince them to raise them 10%, basically. While working inside the system I would mostly agree. What I was trying to point out how much more difficult it is to do away with the system we have and take on a new one. And even more so when other countries attempting it have not work well. It is a lot to risk with very little chance of working.
There is a fair amount of academic thought going on about this issue.
Post-anarchism, which I did quite a bit of research on as an under-grad, is basically a melding of the anarchist critiques of Marxism with post-structural understandings of language, and winds up being a long examination of the nature of revolution. Anarchist critiques of Marxism in their basic form were that giving all power to the State would inevitably result in abuses. Basically, blindly replacing everything in a system is a naive and bad approach - but how to examine what to keep or replace? Of course, since it involves post-structuralism it can get a little absurd, but it's out there - academic leftists definitely are aware of the flaws of how Marxism has been implemented. I don't think academic leftists are the ones advocating for change of the kind GH is, though.
|
On July 30 2020 14:31 Nevuk wrote:Show nested quote +On July 30 2020 13:21 Danglars wrote:On July 30 2020 12:10 Nevuk wrote:On July 30 2020 10:57 JimmiC wrote:On July 30 2020 09:16 GreenHorizons wrote:On July 30 2020 08:56 JimmiC wrote:On July 30 2020 07:02 GreenHorizons wrote:On July 30 2020 06:55 Belisarius wrote:
I mean if you want alternate centres of power, the way to do it is get rid of FPTP so multiple parties can exist.
The politicians would obviously fight it, but if you're talking about thousands of members of congress then we're not exactly dealing in political realities anyway.
It's remarkable how many of these things come down to "the system is bad, we all agree it needs to change, it's not possible because of how it is designed but I hope it gets better" Not enough agree on how it should be changed, so it is not. Enough of the 'right' people maybe? Part of the "system is bad" critique is that it's obviously apparent on things like background checks at gun shows that popularity of policy itself isn't what determines its enactment into law. You have to turn to a critique of the system itself and its failure to do the will of the people due to something beyond the popularity and practical soundness of the change. It is way easier to convince enough people for a minor change then a full system change. I no longer believe this, unless it is a truly minor change like renaming a post office. Not arguing for outside of system change, but that major changes are no more difficult to convince people of than mild ones, and have a better chance of standing the test of time. Obamacare's largest changes (Medicaid expansion) remain in place, while all its small ones got rolled back. It is just as easy to convince a republican to raise taxes 1% as it is to convince them to raise them 10%, basically. The medicaid expansion change being large on one scale, but tiny on another. It did not raise conservatives hackles as much as the individual mandate and mandatory criteria for insurance officerings. If Obamacare was just a massive Medicaid expansion, it would've been massively bipartisan. On July 30 2020 09:48 franzji wrote:On July 30 2020 01:23 Wegandi wrote:
I give the US like...12-16 years max before the first state says fuck this shit and leaves. The partisan hysteria is only increasing at an exponential rate with no signs of abating. Our "mainstream" media outlets are no longer thinly veiled arms of either party, but actively reveling in it, stoking ever high tensions (of which we see in societal unrest). Very similar to the 1850s. At this point our bicameral legislature are actively antagonistic against each other and both parties salivate at the prospect of holding complete power to lord it over one another. What a fucking shit show. There's not even a pretense of running on policies outside of the extremes of the parties - living in wackadoo land of the SJW's or the conspiracy nuts of R/TheDonald. No one gives a shit about the hilarious debts. You even have Democrats saying spending trillions and trillions is not enough and still pushing their GOP want you to starve shtick. Blegh. OK, enough ranting. The federal government would have to completely fall before it would let any state leave the union. Considering the current rhetoric on Trump, what makes this so insane (or is current rhetoric on Trump somehow inflated?) Show nested quote +On July 30 2020 13:21 Danglars wrote:On July 30 2020 12:10 Nevuk wrote:On July 30 2020 10:57 JimmiC wrote:On July 30 2020 09:16 GreenHorizons wrote:On July 30 2020 08:56 JimmiC wrote:On July 30 2020 07:02 GreenHorizons wrote:On July 30 2020 06:55 Belisarius wrote:
I mean if you want alternate centres of power, the way to do it is get rid of FPTP so multiple parties can exist.
The politicians would obviously fight it, but if you're talking about thousands of members of congress then we're not exactly dealing in political realities anyway.
It's remarkable how many of these things come down to "the system is bad, we all agree it needs to change, it's not possible because of how it is designed but I hope it gets better" Not enough agree on how it should be changed, so it is not. Enough of the 'right' people maybe? Part of the "system is bad" critique is that it's obviously apparent on things like background checks at gun shows that popularity of policy itself isn't what determines its enactment into law. You have to turn to a critique of the system itself and its failure to do the will of the people due to something beyond the popularity and practical soundness of the change. It is way easier to convince enough people for a minor change then a full system change. I no longer believe this, unless it is a truly minor change like renaming a post office. Not arguing for outside of system change, but that major changes are no more difficult to convince people of than mild ones, and have a better chance of standing the test of time. Obamacare's largest changes (Medicaid expansion) remain in place, while all its small ones got rolled back. It is just as easy to convince a republican to raise taxes 1% as it is to convince them to raise them 10%, basically. The medicaid expansion change being large on one scale, but tiny on another. It did not raise conservatives hackles as much as the individual mandate and mandatory criteria for insurance officerings. If Obamacare was just a massive Medicaid expansion, it would've been massively bipartisan. Ironically, those were also some of the far lefts criticisms of Obamacare (the individual mandate, that is. The mandatory criteria was fine with them). (The individual mandate was originally the GOP alternative to increasing taxes for Hillarycare, I think). From what I recall of 2009/10, most of the GOP criticism I saw was actually about the debt and the mandate was put into place to lower the CBO evaluation (ah, the days when people gave a shit about debt increase... feels nostalgic now as we stare down 13 trillion in bailouts with no funding on a bipartisan basis). The point is, if it was a medicaid expansion to 400% (just making up a large number here) of the poverty line, then it would have solved a lot of the issues of the health insurance system - Obamacare fucked over the lower middle class heavily, didn't change things for the middle class, and greatly benefited lower and upper classes. (A public option was killed by Lieberman, no republican, of course). That would have been a massive change in philosophy on health care that would have been easier to explain, but would have been much more expensive than Obamacare. Republican support would have been the same either way, I think. Show nested quote +On July 30 2020 14:16 JimmiC wrote:On July 30 2020 12:10 Nevuk wrote:On July 30 2020 10:57 JimmiC wrote:On July 30 2020 09:16 GreenHorizons wrote:On July 30 2020 08:56 JimmiC wrote:On July 30 2020 07:02 GreenHorizons wrote:On July 30 2020 06:55 Belisarius wrote:
I mean if you want alternate centres of power, the way to do it is get rid of FPTP so multiple parties can exist.
The politicians would obviously fight it, but if you're talking about thousands of members of congress then we're not exactly dealing in political realities anyway.
It's remarkable how many of these things come down to "the system is bad, we all agree it needs to change, it's not possible because of how it is designed but I hope it gets better" Not enough agree on how it should be changed, so it is not. Enough of the 'right' people maybe? Part of the "system is bad" critique is that it's obviously apparent on things like background checks at gun shows that popularity of policy itself isn't what determines its enactment into law. You have to turn to a critique of the system itself and its failure to do the will of the people due to something beyond the popularity and practical soundness of the change. It is way easier to convince enough people for a minor change then a full system change. I no longer believe this, unless it is a truly minor change like renaming a post office. Not arguing for outside of system change, but that major changes are no more difficult to convince people of than mild ones, and have a better chance of standing the test of time. Obamacare's largest changes (Medicaid expansion) remain in place, while all its small ones got rolled back. It is just as easy to convince a republican to raise taxes 1% as it is to convince them to raise them 10%, basically. While working inside the system I would mostly agree. What I was trying to point out how much more difficult it is to do away with the system we have and take on a new one. And even more so when other countries attempting it have not work well. It is a lot to risk with very little chance of working. There is a fair amount of academic thought going on about this issue. Post-anarchism, which I did quite a bit of research on as an under-grad, is basically a melding of the anarchist critiques of Marxism with post-structural understandings of language, and winds up being a long examination of the nature of revolution. Anarchist critiques of Marxism in their basic form were that giving all power to the State would inevitably result in abuses. Basically, blindly replacing everything in a system is a naive and bad approach - but how to examine what to keep or replace? Of course, since it involves post-structuralism it can get a little absurd, but it's out there - academic leftists definitely are aware of the flaws of how Marxism has been implemented. I don't think academic leftists are the ones advocating for change of the kind GH is, though.
Not sure which academic leftists you're referencing?
I wouldn't take my disinterest in engaging JimmiC or some others on critiques of various attempts at implementation of Marxist inspired/shaped systems throughout history or my support for Haitian or October type Revolutions as not having consideration for existing critiques of them or critiques of my own though.
When people don't understand something like abolition (be it slavery or police) one of the first things that happens is people accuse those putting it forward as having no idea what they are talking about (without doing any research of their own). Then comes accusations of petulant immaturity in their refusal to accept that society should continue under whatever condition (slavery, police, capitalism, etc). Once the veneer wears off that, it becomes a reluctant necessity to keep it with promises of placative modification. When the promises start failing it shifts to "we agree it must be changed but we can't do it at the pace you desire". When the patience has been exhausted there is an inflection point where one of two things happen (1 is usually prompted by the early stages of 2).
1. The placative promises are resurrected and implemented on a limited and temporary basis (often used to factionalize the masses by giving it to some and not others).
2. People burn shit down and replace the elites/foreign power with whatever manifests from the revolutionary movement (can be anything from fascist generals to spineless bureaucrats to people like Nguyễn Xuân Phúc)
|
On July 30 2020 09:44 franzji wrote:
Merkel must be freaking out.
Your well thought out post might require some additional explanations...
In case you are referring to the troop withdrawal of 12k troops from Germany (6k to the US, 6k to other, not yet decided locations), there are indeed a lot of words flying around:
Trump: We are punishing Germany, cause Germany isn't doing enough.
US Secretary of Defense: This is purely for strategic reasons, we are improving are abilities to react to the threat from Russia. [makes perfectly sense, when moving half the troops to the US]
Eastern European NATO nations: Even when some of those troops are deployed e.g. to Poland, US is letting down Europe, because less troops overall! Betrayal! Russia will invade us now.
German Left: Original quote: "When this is, how Trump punishes us, he may punish us every day", a troop withdrawal is always welcome
German Right: Finally the US is leaving! [given the general hate of the German Right for the West and their admiration of Russia...]
German Local politicians: Oh noes, there go all those soldiers who were effectively acting as day tourists. Now a ton of pubs and stores around those bases can't sell their overpriced beer and stuff to them anymore. Please come back, you are very important here!
German Defense Hawks: The US is leaving and proofing again as an unreliable partner for European defense. Therefore we need an EU Army + Euronukes (which would be basically just German nukes with a blue EU flag on it...)^
And sure, Merkel is somewhere between there... But freaking out? Hm... I can't imagine that she is freaking out over this issue. In fact, the eastern European nations might be way closer to freaking out, even if they get some of those troops.
In the end, it might indeed push the EU into another discussion about the necessity of an EU army, but last time this was discussed, Trump was the one freaking out...
Then again, as long as Corona is looming, nobody in Europe will even consider spending additionally on defense, as this would be political suicide, at least outside Eastern Europe. So probably nothing will happen at all.
|
On July 30 2020 13:21 Danglars wrote:Show nested quote +On July 30 2020 12:10 Nevuk wrote:On July 30 2020 10:57 JimmiC wrote:On July 30 2020 09:16 GreenHorizons wrote:On July 30 2020 08:56 JimmiC wrote:On July 30 2020 07:02 GreenHorizons wrote:On July 30 2020 06:55 Belisarius wrote:
I mean if you want alternate centres of power, the way to do it is get rid of FPTP so multiple parties can exist.
The politicians would obviously fight it, but if you're talking about thousands of members of congress then we're not exactly dealing in political realities anyway.
It's remarkable how many of these things come down to "the system is bad, we all agree it needs to change, it's not possible because of how it is designed but I hope it gets better" Not enough agree on how it should be changed, so it is not. Enough of the 'right' people maybe? Part of the "system is bad" critique is that it's obviously apparent on things like background checks at gun shows that popularity of policy itself isn't what determines its enactment into law. You have to turn to a critique of the system itself and its failure to do the will of the people due to something beyond the popularity and practical soundness of the change. It is way easier to convince enough people for a minor change then a full system change. I no longer believe this, unless it is a truly minor change like renaming a post office. Not arguing for outside of system change, but that major changes are no more difficult to convince people of than mild ones, and have a better chance of standing the test of time. Obamacare's largest changes (Medicaid expansion) remain in place, while all its small ones got rolled back. It is just as easy to convince a republican to raise taxes 1% as it is to convince them to raise them 10%, basically. The medicaid expansion change being large on one scale, but tiny on another. It did not raise conservatives hackles as much as the individual mandate and mandatory criteria for insurance officerings. If Obamacare was just a massive Medicaid expansion, it would've been massively bipartisan. Show nested quote +On July 30 2020 09:48 franzji wrote:On July 30 2020 01:23 Wegandi wrote:
I give the US like...12-16 years max before the first state says fuck this shit and leaves. The partisan hysteria is only increasing at an exponential rate with no signs of abating. Our "mainstream" media outlets are no longer thinly veiled arms of either party, but actively reveling in it, stoking ever high tensions (of which we see in societal unrest). Very similar to the 1850s. At this point our bicameral legislature are actively antagonistic against each other and both parties salivate at the prospect of holding complete power to lord it over one another. What a fucking shit show. There's not even a pretense of running on policies outside of the extremes of the parties - living in wackadoo land of the SJW's or the conspiracy nuts of R/TheDonald. No one gives a shit about the hilarious debts. You even have Democrats saying spending trillions and trillions is not enough and still pushing their GOP want you to starve shtick. Blegh. OK, enough ranting. The federal government would have to completely fall before it would let any state leave the union. Considering the current rhetoric on Trump, what makes this so insane (or is current rhetoric on Trump somehow inflated?) I'd be very hesitant to call anything getting massive bipartisan support, especially during the Obama years. There would have been a lot of Republican opposition simply because of it being an idea from Obama. Mitch was always going to say no to everything.
However in hindsight it would likely have produced a much more robust system that would be harder to opt out of for states and less prone to having pieces ripped out of it.
|
LegalLord
Profile Blog PM Joined April 2013
United Kingdom12322 Posts
A deal will come. Trump cant afford to not make a deal with the elections coming and the democrats cant afford either (then they will take the blame). I think in the end trump will mostly get what he wants from the upcoming relieve package
Its after the election that people have to worry about no matter who wins.
Safe as much money as you can in the time that is remaining would be my advice to all americans.
|
On July 30 2020 15:22 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On July 30 2020 14:31 Nevuk wrote:On July 30 2020 13:21 Danglars wrote:On July 30 2020 12:10 Nevuk wrote:On July 30 2020 10:57 JimmiC wrote:On July 30 2020 09:16 GreenHorizons wrote:On July 30 2020 08:56 JimmiC wrote:On July 30 2020 07:02 GreenHorizons wrote:On July 30 2020 06:55 Belisarius wrote:
I mean if you want alternate centres of power, the way to do it is get rid of FPTP so multiple parties can exist.
The politicians would obviously fight it, but if you're talking about thousands of members of congress then we're not exactly dealing in political realities anyway.
It's remarkable how many of these things come down to "the system is bad, we all agree it needs to change, it's not possible because of how it is designed but I hope it gets better" Not enough agree on how it should be changed, so it is not. Enough of the 'right' people maybe? Part of the "system is bad" critique is that it's obviously apparent on things like background checks at gun shows that popularity of policy itself isn't what determines its enactment into law. You have to turn to a critique of the system itself and its failure to do the will of the people due to something beyond the popularity and practical soundness of the change. It is way easier to convince enough people for a minor change then a full system change. I no longer believe this, unless it is a truly minor change like renaming a post office. Not arguing for outside of system change, but that major changes are no more difficult to convince people of than mild ones, and have a better chance of standing the test of time. Obamacare's largest changes (Medicaid expansion) remain in place, while all its small ones got rolled back. It is just as easy to convince a republican to raise taxes 1% as it is to convince them to raise them 10%, basically. The medicaid expansion change being large on one scale, but tiny on another. It did not raise conservatives hackles as much as the individual mandate and mandatory criteria for insurance officerings. If Obamacare was just a massive Medicaid expansion, it would've been massively bipartisan. On July 30 2020 09:48 franzji wrote:On July 30 2020 01:23 Wegandi wrote:
I give the US like...12-16 years max before the first state says fuck this shit and leaves. The partisan hysteria is only increasing at an exponential rate with no signs of abating. Our "mainstream" media outlets are no longer thinly veiled arms of either party, but actively reveling in it, stoking ever high tensions (of which we see in societal unrest). Very similar to the 1850s. At this point our bicameral legislature are actively antagonistic against each other and both parties salivate at the prospect of holding complete power to lord it over one another. What a fucking shit show. There's not even a pretense of running on policies outside of the extremes of the parties - living in wackadoo land of the SJW's or the conspiracy nuts of R/TheDonald. No one gives a shit about the hilarious debts. You even have Democrats saying spending trillions and trillions is not enough and still pushing their GOP want you to starve shtick. Blegh. OK, enough ranting. The federal government would have to completely fall before it would let any state leave the union. Considering the current rhetoric on Trump, what makes this so insane (or is current rhetoric on Trump somehow inflated?) On July 30 2020 13:21 Danglars wrote:On July 30 2020 12:10 Nevuk wrote:On July 30 2020 10:57 JimmiC wrote:On July 30 2020 09:16 GreenHorizons wrote:On July 30 2020 08:56 JimmiC wrote:On July 30 2020 07:02 GreenHorizons wrote:On July 30 2020 06:55 Belisarius wrote:
I mean if you want alternate centres of power, the way to do it is get rid of FPTP so multiple parties can exist.
The politicians would obviously fight it, but if you're talking about thousands of members of congress then we're not exactly dealing in political realities anyway.
It's remarkable how many of these things come down to "the system is bad, we all agree it needs to change, it's not possible because of how it is designed but I hope it gets better" Not enough agree on how it should be changed, so it is not. Enough of the 'right' people maybe? Part of the "system is bad" critique is that it's obviously apparent on things like background checks at gun shows that popularity of policy itself isn't what determines its enactment into law. You have to turn to a critique of the system itself and its failure to do the will of the people due to something beyond the popularity and practical soundness of the change. It is way easier to convince enough people for a minor change then a full system change. I no longer believe this, unless it is a truly minor change like renaming a post office. Not arguing for outside of system change, but that major changes are no more difficult to convince people of than mild ones, and have a better chance of standing the test of time. Obamacare's largest changes (Medicaid expansion) remain in place, while all its small ones got rolled back. It is just as easy to convince a republican to raise taxes 1% as it is to convince them to raise them 10%, basically. The medicaid expansion change being large on one scale, but tiny on another. It did not raise conservatives hackles as much as the individual mandate and mandatory criteria for insurance officerings. If Obamacare was just a massive Medicaid expansion, it would've been massively bipartisan. Ironically, those were also some of the far lefts criticisms of Obamacare (the individual mandate, that is. The mandatory criteria was fine with them). (The individual mandate was originally the GOP alternative to increasing taxes for Hillarycare, I think). From what I recall of 2009/10, most of the GOP criticism I saw was actually about the debt and the mandate was put into place to lower the CBO evaluation (ah, the days when people gave a shit about debt increase... feels nostalgic now as we stare down 13 trillion in bailouts with no funding on a bipartisan basis). The point is, if it was a medicaid expansion to 400% (just making up a large number here) of the poverty line, then it would have solved a lot of the issues of the health insurance system - Obamacare fucked over the lower middle class heavily, didn't change things for the middle class, and greatly benefited lower and upper classes. (A public option was killed by Lieberman, no republican, of course). That would have been a massive change in philosophy on health care that would have been easier to explain, but would have been much more expensive than Obamacare. Republican support would have been the same either way, I think. On July 30 2020 14:16 JimmiC wrote:On July 30 2020 12:10 Nevuk wrote:On July 30 2020 10:57 JimmiC wrote:On July 30 2020 09:16 GreenHorizons wrote:On July 30 2020 08:56 JimmiC wrote:On July 30 2020 07:02 GreenHorizons wrote:On July 30 2020 06:55 Belisarius wrote:
I mean if you want alternate centres of power, the way to do it is get rid of FPTP so multiple parties can exist.
The politicians would obviously fight it, but if you're talking about thousands of members of congress then we're not exactly dealing in political realities anyway.
It's remarkable how many of these things come down to "the system is bad, we all agree it needs to change, it's not possible because of how it is designed but I hope it gets better" Not enough agree on how it should be changed, so it is not. Enough of the 'right' people maybe? Part of the "system is bad" critique is that it's obviously apparent on things like background checks at gun shows that popularity of policy itself isn't what determines its enactment into law. You have to turn to a critique of the system itself and its failure to do the will of the people due to something beyond the popularity and practical soundness of the change. It is way easier to convince enough people for a minor change then a full system change. I no longer believe this, unless it is a truly minor change like renaming a post office. Not arguing for outside of system change, but that major changes are no more difficult to convince people of than mild ones, and have a better chance of standing the test of time. Obamacare's largest changes (Medicaid expansion) remain in place, while all its small ones got rolled back. It is just as easy to convince a republican to raise taxes 1% as it is to convince them to raise them 10%, basically. While working inside the system I would mostly agree. What I was trying to point out how much more difficult it is to do away with the system we have and take on a new one. And even more so when other countries attempting it have not work well. It is a lot to risk with very little chance of working. There is a fair amount of academic thought going on about this issue. Post-anarchism, which I did quite a bit of research on as an under-grad, is basically a melding of the anarchist critiques of Marxism with post-structural understandings of language, and winds up being a long examination of the nature of revolution. Anarchist critiques of Marxism in their basic form were that giving all power to the State would inevitably result in abuses. Basically, blindly replacing everything in a system is a naive and bad approach - but how to examine what to keep or replace? Of course, since it involves post-structuralism it can get a little absurd, but it's out there - academic leftists definitely are aware of the flaws of how Marxism has been implemented. I don't think academic leftists are the ones advocating for change of the kind GH is, though. Not sure which academic leftists you're referencing? I wouldn't take my disinterest in engaging JimmiC or some others on critiques of various attempts at implementation of Marxist inspired/shaped systems throughout history or my support for Haitian or October type Revolutions as not having consideration for existing critiques of them or critiques of my own though. When people don't understand something like abolition (be it slavery or police) one of the first things that happens is people accuse those putting it forward as having no idea what they are talking about (without doing any research of their own). Then comes accusations of petulant immaturity in their refusal to accept that society should continue under whatever condition (slavery, police, capitalism, etc). Once the veneer wears off that, it becomes a reluctant necessity to keep it with promises of placative modification. When the promises start failing it shifts to "we agree it must be changed but we can't do it at the pace you desire". When the patience has been exhausted there is an inflection point where one of two things happen (1 is usually prompted by the early stages of 2). 1. The placative promises are resurrected and implemented on a limited and temporary basis (often used to factionalize the masses by giving it to some and not others). 2. People burn shit down and replace the elites/foreign power with whatever manifests from the revolutionary movement (can be anything from fascist generals to spineless bureaucrats to people like Nguyễn Xuân Phúc)
That's all very nice, but we are all still waiting for your explanation of how a society without law enforcement is going to work. Could it be that you can't provide this explanation because it's not our understanding that is lacking, but yours?
|
On July 30 2020 19:13 Sr18 wrote:Show nested quote +On July 30 2020 15:22 GreenHorizons wrote:On July 30 2020 14:31 Nevuk wrote:On July 30 2020 13:21 Danglars wrote:On July 30 2020 12:10 Nevuk wrote:On July 30 2020 10:57 JimmiC wrote:On July 30 2020 09:16 GreenHorizons wrote:On July 30 2020 08:56 JimmiC wrote:On July 30 2020 07:02 GreenHorizons wrote:On July 30 2020 06:55 Belisarius wrote:
I mean if you want alternate centres of power, the way to do it is get rid of FPTP so multiple parties can exist.
The politicians would obviously fight it, but if you're talking about thousands of members of congress then we're not exactly dealing in political realities anyway.
It's remarkable how many of these things come down to "the system is bad, we all agree it needs to change, it's not possible because of how it is designed but I hope it gets better" Not enough agree on how it should be changed, so it is not. Enough of the 'right' people maybe? Part of the "system is bad" critique is that it's obviously apparent on things like background checks at gun shows that popularity of policy itself isn't what determines its enactment into law. You have to turn to a critique of the system itself and its failure to do the will of the people due to something beyond the popularity and practical soundness of the change. It is way easier to convince enough people for a minor change then a full system change. I no longer believe this, unless it is a truly minor change like renaming a post office. Not arguing for outside of system change, but that major changes are no more difficult to convince people of than mild ones, and have a better chance of standing the test of time. Obamacare's largest changes (Medicaid expansion) remain in place, while all its small ones got rolled back. It is just as easy to convince a republican to raise taxes 1% as it is to convince them to raise them 10%, basically. The medicaid expansion change being large on one scale, but tiny on another. It did not raise conservatives hackles as much as the individual mandate and mandatory criteria for insurance officerings. If Obamacare was just a massive Medicaid expansion, it would've been massively bipartisan. On July 30 2020 09:48 franzji wrote:On July 30 2020 01:23 Wegandi wrote:
I give the US like...12-16 years max before the first state says fuck this shit and leaves. The partisan hysteria is only increasing at an exponential rate with no signs of abating. Our "mainstream" media outlets are no longer thinly veiled arms of either party, but actively reveling in it, stoking ever high tensions (of which we see in societal unrest). Very similar to the 1850s. At this point our bicameral legislature are actively antagonistic against each other and both parties salivate at the prospect of holding complete power to lord it over one another. What a fucking shit show. There's not even a pretense of running on policies outside of the extremes of the parties - living in wackadoo land of the SJW's or the conspiracy nuts of R/TheDonald. No one gives a shit about the hilarious debts. You even have Democrats saying spending trillions and trillions is not enough and still pushing their GOP want you to starve shtick. Blegh. OK, enough ranting. The federal government would have to completely fall before it would let any state leave the union. Considering the current rhetoric on Trump, what makes this so insane (or is current rhetoric on Trump somehow inflated?) On July 30 2020 13:21 Danglars wrote:On July 30 2020 12:10 Nevuk wrote:On July 30 2020 10:57 JimmiC wrote:On July 30 2020 09:16 GreenHorizons wrote:On July 30 2020 08:56 JimmiC wrote:On July 30 2020 07:02 GreenHorizons wrote:On July 30 2020 06:55 Belisarius wrote:
I mean if you want alternate centres of power, the way to do it is get rid of FPTP so multiple parties can exist.
The politicians would obviously fight it, but if you're talking about thousands of members of congress then we're not exactly dealing in political realities anyway.
It's remarkable how many of these things come down to "the system is bad, we all agree it needs to change, it's not possible because of how it is designed but I hope it gets better" Not enough agree on how it should be changed, so it is not. Enough of the 'right' people maybe? Part of the "system is bad" critique is that it's obviously apparent on things like background checks at gun shows that popularity of policy itself isn't what determines its enactment into law. You have to turn to a critique of the system itself and its failure to do the will of the people due to something beyond the popularity and practical soundness of the change. It is way easier to convince enough people for a minor change then a full system change. I no longer believe this, unless it is a truly minor change like renaming a post office. Not arguing for outside of system change, but that major changes are no more difficult to convince people of than mild ones, and have a better chance of standing the test of time. Obamacare's largest changes (Medicaid expansion) remain in place, while all its small ones got rolled back. It is just as easy to convince a republican to raise taxes 1% as it is to convince them to raise them 10%, basically. The medicaid expansion change being large on one scale, but tiny on another. It did not raise conservatives hackles as much as the individual mandate and mandatory criteria for insurance officerings. If Obamacare was just a massive Medicaid expansion, it would've been massively bipartisan. Ironically, those were also some of the far lefts criticisms of Obamacare (the individual mandate, that is. The mandatory criteria was fine with them). (The individual mandate was originally the GOP alternative to increasing taxes for Hillarycare, I think). From what I recall of 2009/10, most of the GOP criticism I saw was actually about the debt and the mandate was put into place to lower the CBO evaluation (ah, the days when people gave a shit about debt increase... feels nostalgic now as we stare down 13 trillion in bailouts with no funding on a bipartisan basis). The point is, if it was a medicaid expansion to 400% (just making up a large number here) of the poverty line, then it would have solved a lot of the issues of the health insurance system - Obamacare fucked over the lower middle class heavily, didn't change things for the middle class, and greatly benefited lower and upper classes. (A public option was killed by Lieberman, no republican, of course). That would have been a massive change in philosophy on health care that would have been easier to explain, but would have been much more expensive than Obamacare. Republican support would have been the same either way, I think. On July 30 2020 14:16 JimmiC wrote:On July 30 2020 12:10 Nevuk wrote:On July 30 2020 10:57 JimmiC wrote:On July 30 2020 09:16 GreenHorizons wrote:On July 30 2020 08:56 JimmiC wrote:On July 30 2020 07:02 GreenHorizons wrote:On July 30 2020 06:55 Belisarius wrote:
I mean if you want alternate centres of power, the way to do it is get rid of FPTP so multiple parties can exist.
The politicians would obviously fight it, but if you're talking about thousands of members of congress then we're not exactly dealing in political realities anyway.
It's remarkable how many of these things come down to "the system is bad, we all agree it needs to change, it's not possible because of how it is designed but I hope it gets better" Not enough agree on how it should be changed, so it is not. Enough of the 'right' people maybe? Part of the "system is bad" critique is that it's obviously apparent on things like background checks at gun shows that popularity of policy itself isn't what determines its enactment into law. You have to turn to a critique of the system itself and its failure to do the will of the people due to something beyond the popularity and practical soundness of the change. It is way easier to convince enough people for a minor change then a full system change. I no longer believe this, unless it is a truly minor change like renaming a post office. Not arguing for outside of system change, but that major changes are no more difficult to convince people of than mild ones, and have a better chance of standing the test of time. Obamacare's largest changes (Medicaid expansion) remain in place, while all its small ones got rolled back. It is just as easy to convince a republican to raise taxes 1% as it is to convince them to raise them 10%, basically. While working inside the system I would mostly agree. What I was trying to point out how much more difficult it is to do away with the system we have and take on a new one. And even more so when other countries attempting it have not work well. It is a lot to risk with very little chance of working. There is a fair amount of academic thought going on about this issue. Post-anarchism, which I did quite a bit of research on as an under-grad, is basically a melding of the anarchist critiques of Marxism with post-structural understandings of language, and winds up being a long examination of the nature of revolution. Anarchist critiques of Marxism in their basic form were that giving all power to the State would inevitably result in abuses. Basically, blindly replacing everything in a system is a naive and bad approach - but how to examine what to keep or replace? Of course, since it involves post-structuralism it can get a little absurd, but it's out there - academic leftists definitely are aware of the flaws of how Marxism has been implemented. I don't think academic leftists are the ones advocating for change of the kind GH is, though. Not sure which academic leftists you're referencing? I wouldn't take my disinterest in engaging JimmiC or some others on critiques of various attempts at implementation of Marxist inspired/shaped systems throughout history or my support for Haitian or October type Revolutions as not having consideration for existing critiques of them or critiques of my own though. When people don't understand something like abolition (be it slavery or police) one of the first things that happens is people accuse those putting it forward as having no idea what they are talking about (without doing any research of their own). Then comes accusations of petulant immaturity in their refusal to accept that society should continue under whatever condition (slavery, police, capitalism, etc). Once the veneer wears off that, it becomes a reluctant necessity to keep it with promises of placative modification. When the promises start failing it shifts to "we agree it must be changed but we can't do it at the pace you desire". When the patience has been exhausted there is an inflection point where one of two things happen (1 is usually prompted by the early stages of 2). 1. The placative promises are resurrected and implemented on a limited and temporary basis (often used to factionalize the masses by giving it to some and not others). 2. People burn shit down and replace the elites/foreign power with whatever manifests from the revolutionary movement (can be anything from fascist generals to spineless bureaucrats to people like Nguyễn Xuân Phúc) That's all very nice, but we are all still waiting for your explanation of how a society without law enforcement is going to work. Could it be that you can't provide this explanation because it's not our understanding that is lacking, but yours?
No. If that were the case you wouldn't ask me as if "law enforcement" and "police" are exclusively synonymous. As in, any entity that enforces the law is equivalent to "police".
There are lots of laws that are enforced without involvement of the police. There are many laws that are enforced for which the police are ill suited. There are laws that shouldn't exist. The police shouldn't enforce those laws. After that there's not a lot that police actually do. The investigating murders, stopping bank robberies, tracking down rapists,or whatever type stuff is a very small amount of their job. Unsurprisingly, they aren't very good at that stuff either and should probably be replaced with professionals to the degree we find them necessary (if we do) as we shift to a more equitable post-scarcity society.
|
On July 30 2020 20:07 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On July 30 2020 19:13 Sr18 wrote:On July 30 2020 15:22 GreenHorizons wrote:On July 30 2020 14:31 Nevuk wrote:On July 30 2020 13:21 Danglars wrote:On July 30 2020 12:10 Nevuk wrote:On July 30 2020 10:57 JimmiC wrote:On July 30 2020 09:16 GreenHorizons wrote:On July 30 2020 08:56 JimmiC wrote:On July 30 2020 07:02 GreenHorizons wrote:
[quote]
It's remarkable how many of these things come down to "the system is bad, we all agree it needs to change, it's not possible because of how it is designed but I hope it gets better" Not enough agree on how it should be changed, so it is not. Enough of the 'right' people maybe? Part of the "system is bad" critique is that it's obviously apparent on things like background checks at gun shows that popularity of policy itself isn't what determines its enactment into law. You have to turn to a critique of the system itself and its failure to do the will of the people due to something beyond the popularity and practical soundness of the change. It is way easier to convince enough people for a minor change then a full system change. I no longer believe this, unless it is a truly minor change like renaming a post office. Not arguing for outside of system change, but that major changes are no more difficult to convince people of than mild ones, and have a better chance of standing the test of time. Obamacare's largest changes (Medicaid expansion) remain in place, while all its small ones got rolled back. It is just as easy to convince a republican to raise taxes 1% as it is to convince them to raise them 10%, basically. The medicaid expansion change being large on one scale, but tiny on another. It did not raise conservatives hackles as much as the individual mandate and mandatory criteria for insurance officerings. If Obamacare was just a massive Medicaid expansion, it would've been massively bipartisan. On July 30 2020 09:48 franzji wrote:On July 30 2020 01:23 Wegandi wrote:
I give the US like...12-16 years max before the first state says fuck this shit and leaves. The partisan hysteria is only increasing at an exponential rate with no signs of abating. Our "mainstream" media outlets are no longer thinly veiled arms of either party, but actively reveling in it, stoking ever high tensions (of which we see in societal unrest). Very similar to the 1850s. At this point our bicameral legislature are actively antagonistic against each other and both parties salivate at the prospect of holding complete power to lord it over one another. What a fucking shit show. There's not even a pretense of running on policies outside of the extremes of the parties - living in wackadoo land of the SJW's or the conspiracy nuts of R/TheDonald. No one gives a shit about the hilarious debts. You even have Democrats saying spending trillions and trillions is not enough and still pushing their GOP want you to starve shtick. Blegh. OK, enough ranting. The federal government would have to completely fall before it would let any state leave the union. Considering the current rhetoric on Trump, what makes this so insane (or is current rhetoric on Trump somehow inflated?) On July 30 2020 13:21 Danglars wrote:On July 30 2020 12:10 Nevuk wrote:On July 30 2020 10:57 JimmiC wrote:On July 30 2020 09:16 GreenHorizons wrote:On July 30 2020 08:56 JimmiC wrote:On July 30 2020 07:02 GreenHorizons wrote:
[quote]
It's remarkable how many of these things come down to "the system is bad, we all agree it needs to change, it's not possible because of how it is designed but I hope it gets better" Not enough agree on how it should be changed, so it is not. Enough of the 'right' people maybe? Part of the "system is bad" critique is that it's obviously apparent on things like background checks at gun shows that popularity of policy itself isn't what determines its enactment into law. You have to turn to a critique of the system itself and its failure to do the will of the people due to something beyond the popularity and practical soundness of the change. It is way easier to convince enough people for a minor change then a full system change. I no longer believe this, unless it is a truly minor change like renaming a post office. Not arguing for outside of system change, but that major changes are no more difficult to convince people of than mild ones, and have a better chance of standing the test of time. Obamacare's largest changes (Medicaid expansion) remain in place, while all its small ones got rolled back. It is just as easy to convince a republican to raise taxes 1% as it is to convince them to raise them 10%, basically. The medicaid expansion change being large on one scale, but tiny on another. It did not raise conservatives hackles as much as the individual mandate and mandatory criteria for insurance officerings. If Obamacare was just a massive Medicaid expansion, it would've been massively bipartisan. Ironically, those were also some of the far lefts criticisms of Obamacare (the individual mandate, that is. The mandatory criteria was fine with them). (The individual mandate was originally the GOP alternative to increasing taxes for Hillarycare, I think). From what I recall of 2009/10, most of the GOP criticism I saw was actually about the debt and the mandate was put into place to lower the CBO evaluation (ah, the days when people gave a shit about debt increase... feels nostalgic now as we stare down 13 trillion in bailouts with no funding on a bipartisan basis). The point is, if it was a medicaid expansion to 400% (just making up a large number here) of the poverty line, then it would have solved a lot of the issues of the health insurance system - Obamacare fucked over the lower middle class heavily, didn't change things for the middle class, and greatly benefited lower and upper classes. (A public option was killed by Lieberman, no republican, of course). That would have been a massive change in philosophy on health care that would have been easier to explain, but would have been much more expensive than Obamacare. Republican support would have been the same either way, I think. On July 30 2020 14:16 JimmiC wrote:On July 30 2020 12:10 Nevuk wrote:On July 30 2020 10:57 JimmiC wrote:On July 30 2020 09:16 GreenHorizons wrote:On July 30 2020 08:56 JimmiC wrote:On July 30 2020 07:02 GreenHorizons wrote:
[quote]
It's remarkable how many of these things come down to "the system is bad, we all agree it needs to change, it's not possible because of how it is designed but I hope it gets better" Not enough agree on how it should be changed, so it is not. Enough of the 'right' people maybe? Part of the "system is bad" critique is that it's obviously apparent on things like background checks at gun shows that popularity of policy itself isn't what determines its enactment into law. You have to turn to a critique of the system itself and its failure to do the will of the people due to something beyond the popularity and practical soundness of the change. It is way easier to convince enough people for a minor change then a full system change. I no longer believe this, unless it is a truly minor change like renaming a post office. Not arguing for outside of system change, but that major changes are no more difficult to convince people of than mild ones, and have a better chance of standing the test of time. Obamacare's largest changes (Medicaid expansion) remain in place, while all its small ones got rolled back. It is just as easy to convince a republican to raise taxes 1% as it is to convince them to raise them 10%, basically. While working inside the system I would mostly agree. What I was trying to point out how much more difficult it is to do away with the system we have and take on a new one. And even more so when other countries attempting it have not work well. It is a lot to risk with very little chance of working. There is a fair amount of academic thought going on about this issue. Post-anarchism, which I did quite a bit of research on as an under-grad, is basically a melding of the anarchist critiques of Marxism with post-structural understandings of language, and winds up being a long examination of the nature of revolution. Anarchist critiques of Marxism in their basic form were that giving all power to the State would inevitably result in abuses. Basically, blindly replacing everything in a system is a naive and bad approach - but how to examine what to keep or replace? Of course, since it involves post-structuralism it can get a little absurd, but it's out there - academic leftists definitely are aware of the flaws of how Marxism has been implemented. I don't think academic leftists are the ones advocating for change of the kind GH is, though. Not sure which academic leftists you're referencing? I wouldn't take my disinterest in engaging JimmiC or some others on critiques of various attempts at implementation of Marxist inspired/shaped systems throughout history or my support for Haitian or October type Revolutions as not having consideration for existing critiques of them or critiques of my own though. When people don't understand something like abolition (be it slavery or police) one of the first things that happens is people accuse those putting it forward as having no idea what they are talking about (without doing any research of their own). Then comes accusations of petulant immaturity in their refusal to accept that society should continue under whatever condition (slavery, police, capitalism, etc). Once the veneer wears off that, it becomes a reluctant necessity to keep it with promises of placative modification. When the promises start failing it shifts to "we agree it must be changed but we can't do it at the pace you desire". When the patience has been exhausted there is an inflection point where one of two things happen (1 is usually prompted by the early stages of 2). 1. The placative promises are resurrected and implemented on a limited and temporary basis (often used to factionalize the masses by giving it to some and not others). 2. People burn shit down and replace the elites/foreign power with whatever manifests from the revolutionary movement (can be anything from fascist generals to spineless bureaucrats to people like Nguyễn Xuân Phúc) That's all very nice, but we are all still waiting for your explanation of how a society without law enforcement is going to work. Could it be that you can't provide this explanation because it's not our understanding that is lacking, but yours? No. If that were the case you wouldn't ask me as if "law enforcement" and "police" are exclusively synonymous. As in, any entity that enforces the law is equivalent to "police". There are lots of laws that are enforced without involvement of the police. There are many laws that are enforced for which the police are ill suited. There are laws that shouldn't exist. The police shouldn't enforce those laws. After that there's not a lot that police actually do. The investigating murders, stopping bank robberies, tracking down rapists,or whatever type stuff is a very small amount of their job. Unsurprisingly, they aren't very good at that stuff either and should probably be replaced with professionals to the degree we find them necessary (if we do) as we shift to a more equitable post-scarcity society.
Weeks ago we went through this dance and I pointed you to the wiki on the US law enforcement stating: Law enforcement operates primarily through governmental police agencies.. Maybe it doesn't work like that in your head, but it does in reality. Which is why in reality, abolishing the police would mean abolishing the body that is responsible for the vast majority of law enforcement. So either you come to terms with the fact that you need to explain how law enforcement would work without a police force, or you reconsider this notion that you understand this topic so much better than everyone else.
|
On July 30 2020 20:52 Sr18 wrote:Show nested quote +On July 30 2020 20:07 GreenHorizons wrote:On July 30 2020 19:13 Sr18 wrote:On July 30 2020 15:22 GreenHorizons wrote:On July 30 2020 14:31 Nevuk wrote:On July 30 2020 13:21 Danglars wrote:On July 30 2020 12:10 Nevuk wrote:On July 30 2020 10:57 JimmiC wrote:On July 30 2020 09:16 GreenHorizons wrote:On July 30 2020 08:56 JimmiC wrote:
[quote]
Not enough agree on how it should be changed, so it is not. Enough of the 'right' people maybe? Part of the "system is bad" critique is that it's obviously apparent on things like background checks at gun shows that popularity of policy itself isn't what determines its enactment into law. You have to turn to a critique of the system itself and its failure to do the will of the people due to something beyond the popularity and practical soundness of the change. It is way easier to convince enough people for a minor change then a full system change. I no longer believe this, unless it is a truly minor change like renaming a post office. Not arguing for outside of system change, but that major changes are no more difficult to convince people of than mild ones, and have a better chance of standing the test of time. Obamacare's largest changes (Medicaid expansion) remain in place, while all its small ones got rolled back. It is just as easy to convince a republican to raise taxes 1% as it is to convince them to raise them 10%, basically. The medicaid expansion change being large on one scale, but tiny on another. It did not raise conservatives hackles as much as the individual mandate and mandatory criteria for insurance officerings. If Obamacare was just a massive Medicaid expansion, it would've been massively bipartisan. On July 30 2020 09:48 franzji wrote:On July 30 2020 01:23 Wegandi wrote:
I give the US like...12-16 years max before the first state says fuck this shit and leaves. The partisan hysteria is only increasing at an exponential rate with no signs of abating. Our "mainstream" media outlets are no longer thinly veiled arms of either party, but actively reveling in it, stoking ever high tensions (of which we see in societal unrest). Very similar to the 1850s. At this point our bicameral legislature are actively antagonistic against each other and both parties salivate at the prospect of holding complete power to lord it over one another. What a fucking shit show. There's not even a pretense of running on policies outside of the extremes of the parties - living in wackadoo land of the SJW's or the conspiracy nuts of R/TheDonald. No one gives a shit about the hilarious debts. You even have Democrats saying spending trillions and trillions is not enough and still pushing their GOP want you to starve shtick. Blegh. OK, enough ranting. The federal government would have to completely fall before it would let any state leave the union. Considering the current rhetoric on Trump, what makes this so insane (or is current rhetoric on Trump somehow inflated?) On July 30 2020 13:21 Danglars wrote:On July 30 2020 12:10 Nevuk wrote:On July 30 2020 10:57 JimmiC wrote:On July 30 2020 09:16 GreenHorizons wrote:On July 30 2020 08:56 JimmiC wrote:
[quote]
Not enough agree on how it should be changed, so it is not. Enough of the 'right' people maybe? Part of the "system is bad" critique is that it's obviously apparent on things like background checks at gun shows that popularity of policy itself isn't what determines its enactment into law. You have to turn to a critique of the system itself and its failure to do the will of the people due to something beyond the popularity and practical soundness of the change. It is way easier to convince enough people for a minor change then a full system change. I no longer believe this, unless it is a truly minor change like renaming a post office. Not arguing for outside of system change, but that major changes are no more difficult to convince people of than mild ones, and have a better chance of standing the test of time. Obamacare's largest changes (Medicaid expansion) remain in place, while all its small ones got rolled back. It is just as easy to convince a republican to raise taxes 1% as it is to convince them to raise them 10%, basically. The medicaid expansion change being large on one scale, but tiny on another. It did not raise conservatives hackles as much as the individual mandate and mandatory criteria for insurance officerings. If Obamacare was just a massive Medicaid expansion, it would've been massively bipartisan. Ironically, those were also some of the far lefts criticisms of Obamacare (the individual mandate, that is. The mandatory criteria was fine with them). (The individual mandate was originally the GOP alternative to increasing taxes for Hillarycare, I think). From what I recall of 2009/10, most of the GOP criticism I saw was actually about the debt and the mandate was put into place to lower the CBO evaluation (ah, the days when people gave a shit about debt increase... feels nostalgic now as we stare down 13 trillion in bailouts with no funding on a bipartisan basis). The point is, if it was a medicaid expansion to 400% (just making up a large number here) of the poverty line, then it would have solved a lot of the issues of the health insurance system - Obamacare fucked over the lower middle class heavily, didn't change things for the middle class, and greatly benefited lower and upper classes. (A public option was killed by Lieberman, no republican, of course). That would have been a massive change in philosophy on health care that would have been easier to explain, but would have been much more expensive than Obamacare. Republican support would have been the same either way, I think. On July 30 2020 14:16 JimmiC wrote:On July 30 2020 12:10 Nevuk wrote:On July 30 2020 10:57 JimmiC wrote:On July 30 2020 09:16 GreenHorizons wrote:On July 30 2020 08:56 JimmiC wrote:
[quote]
Not enough agree on how it should be changed, so it is not. Enough of the 'right' people maybe? Part of the "system is bad" critique is that it's obviously apparent on things like background checks at gun shows that popularity of policy itself isn't what determines its enactment into law. You have to turn to a critique of the system itself and its failure to do the will of the people due to something beyond the popularity and practical soundness of the change. It is way easier to convince enough people for a minor change then a full system change. I no longer believe this, unless it is a truly minor change like renaming a post office. Not arguing for outside of system change, but that major changes are no more difficult to convince people of than mild ones, and have a better chance of standing the test of time. Obamacare's largest changes (Medicaid expansion) remain in place, while all its small ones got rolled back. It is just as easy to convince a republican to raise taxes 1% as it is to convince them to raise them 10%, basically. While working inside the system I would mostly agree. What I was trying to point out how much more difficult it is to do away with the system we have and take on a new one. And even more so when other countries attempting it have not work well. It is a lot to risk with very little chance of working. There is a fair amount of academic thought going on about this issue. Post-anarchism, which I did quite a bit of research on as an under-grad, is basically a melding of the anarchist critiques of Marxism with post-structural understandings of language, and winds up being a long examination of the nature of revolution. Anarchist critiques of Marxism in their basic form were that giving all power to the State would inevitably result in abuses. Basically, blindly replacing everything in a system is a naive and bad approach - but how to examine what to keep or replace? Of course, since it involves post-structuralism it can get a little absurd, but it's out there - academic leftists definitely are aware of the flaws of how Marxism has been implemented. I don't think academic leftists are the ones advocating for change of the kind GH is, though. Not sure which academic leftists you're referencing? I wouldn't take my disinterest in engaging JimmiC or some others on critiques of various attempts at implementation of Marxist inspired/shaped systems throughout history or my support for Haitian or October type Revolutions as not having consideration for existing critiques of them or critiques of my own though. When people don't understand something like abolition (be it slavery or police) one of the first things that happens is people accuse those putting it forward as having no idea what they are talking about (without doing any research of their own). Then comes accusations of petulant immaturity in their refusal to accept that society should continue under whatever condition (slavery, police, capitalism, etc). Once the veneer wears off that, it becomes a reluctant necessity to keep it with promises of placative modification. When the promises start failing it shifts to "we agree it must be changed but we can't do it at the pace you desire". When the patience has been exhausted there is an inflection point where one of two things happen (1 is usually prompted by the early stages of 2). 1. The placative promises are resurrected and implemented on a limited and temporary basis (often used to factionalize the masses by giving it to some and not others). 2. People burn shit down and replace the elites/foreign power with whatever manifests from the revolutionary movement (can be anything from fascist generals to spineless bureaucrats to people like Nguyễn Xuân Phúc) That's all very nice, but we are all still waiting for your explanation of how a society without law enforcement is going to work. Could it be that you can't provide this explanation because it's not our understanding that is lacking, but yours? No. If that were the case you wouldn't ask me as if "law enforcement" and "police" are exclusively synonymous. As in, any entity that enforces the law is equivalent to "police". There are lots of laws that are enforced without involvement of the police. There are many laws that are enforced for which the police are ill suited. There are laws that shouldn't exist. The police shouldn't enforce those laws. After that there's not a lot that police actually do. The investigating murders, stopping bank robberies, tracking down rapists,or whatever type stuff is a very small amount of their job. Unsurprisingly, they aren't very good at that stuff either and should probably be replaced with professionals to the degree we find them necessary (if we do) as we shift to a more equitable post-scarcity society. Weeks ago we went through this dance and I pointed you to the wiki on the US law enforcement stating: Law enforcement operates primarily through governmental police agencies.. Maybe it doesn't work like that in your head, but it does in reality. Which is why in reality, abolishing the police would mean abolishing the body that is responsible for the vast majority of law enforcement. So either you come to terms with the fact that you need to explain how law enforcement would work without a police force, or you reconsider this notion that you understand this topic so much better than everyone else.
You two need to stop talking past one another, if you want to have a conversation rather than a shouting match. What you are saying is:
Most of current laws are enforced by the police. Therefore abolishing the police abolishes law enforcement.
What GH is saying is:
While most of current laws are enforced by the police, most shouldn't be. Therefore we need to:
(1) Address what government bodies are in charge of enforcing what laws. E.g. the FDA can already fine or shut down restaurants if they don't comply with food safety laws. That is law enforcement done by someone other than the police. Perhaps drug enforcement should be done by ATF rather than local police. Or maybe that should also be done by the FDA, I don't know. But either way, these agencies would probably focus on the enforcement of drug laws in a very different way than driving around the block arresting random black dudes for dealing. Similarly, traffic authorities (Department of Transportation, or National Highway Safety Administration or the local equivalents) could be in charge of enforcing traffic laws, rather than heaping everything into the police's task list.
(2) Scrap laws that are bad. If you scrap a whole load of laws because they are bad, then you don't need people enforcing them.
(3) Establish new agencies (local, state, federal?) to deal with law enforcement of the type we usually think about when discussing the police, ad cannot be dealt with by point (1) or (2). These agencies should have clear tasks and minimize mission creep.
Now, rather than yelling at each other, it might be more interesting to pick something specific that you think the police is essential for, and discuss what should be done with that task, because you are both basically right, but are talking about different things.
|
EDIT:
Now, rather than yelling at each other, it might be more interesting to pick something specific that you think the police is essential for, and discuss what should be done with that task, because you are both basically right, but are talking about different things.
I doubt I have much interest in discussing it with sr18 in particular, but establishing how much of police's current activities and resources go toward the proposed essential tasks is something that has to be established before discussing if and how to replace it.
Important to know how we measure success at those tasks too if we're to know whether their replacement is performing better or worse than they do/did.
|
No one is really worried about traffic tickets or other small stuff when it come to abolishing the police, other organisations could indeed take up those tasks, like the Department of Transportation.
The crux of the issue is more dangerous crimes, and cases that might require the use of force to resolve/prevent.
Breaking and entering, grand theft auto, assault and battery to name just a few. How would those be handled without the police and would whoever handles them not be simply the new police under a different name?
|
On July 30 2020 21:13 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On July 30 2020 20:52 Sr18 wrote:On July 30 2020 20:07 GreenHorizons wrote:On July 30 2020 19:13 Sr18 wrote:On July 30 2020 15:22 GreenHorizons wrote:On July 30 2020 14:31 Nevuk wrote:On July 30 2020 13:21 Danglars wrote:On July 30 2020 12:10 Nevuk wrote:On July 30 2020 10:57 JimmiC wrote:On July 30 2020 09:16 GreenHorizons wrote:
[quote]
Enough of the 'right' people maybe? Part of the "system is bad" critique is that it's obviously apparent on things like background checks at gun shows that popularity of policy itself isn't what determines its enactment into law.
You have to turn to a critique of the system itself and its failure to do the will of the people due to something beyond the popularity and practical soundness of the change. It is way easier to convince enough people for a minor change then a full system change. I no longer believe this, unless it is a truly minor change like renaming a post office. Not arguing for outside of system change, but that major changes are no more difficult to convince people of than mild ones, and have a better chance of standing the test of time. Obamacare's largest changes (Medicaid expansion) remain in place, while all its small ones got rolled back. It is just as easy to convince a republican to raise taxes 1% as it is to convince them to raise them 10%, basically. The medicaid expansion change being large on one scale, but tiny on another. It did not raise conservatives hackles as much as the individual mandate and mandatory criteria for insurance officerings. If Obamacare was just a massive Medicaid expansion, it would've been massively bipartisan. On July 30 2020 09:48 franzji wrote:On July 30 2020 01:23 Wegandi wrote:
I give the US like...12-16 years max before the first state says fuck this shit and leaves. The partisan hysteria is only increasing at an exponential rate with no signs of abating. Our "mainstream" media outlets are no longer thinly veiled arms of either party, but actively reveling in it, stoking ever high tensions (of which we see in societal unrest). Very similar to the 1850s. At this point our bicameral legislature are actively antagonistic against each other and both parties salivate at the prospect of holding complete power to lord it over one another. What a fucking shit show. There's not even a pretense of running on policies outside of the extremes of the parties - living in wackadoo land of the SJW's or the conspiracy nuts of R/TheDonald. No one gives a shit about the hilarious debts. You even have Democrats saying spending trillions and trillions is not enough and still pushing their GOP want you to starve shtick. Blegh. OK, enough ranting. The federal government would have to completely fall before it would let any state leave the union. Considering the current rhetoric on Trump, what makes this so insane (or is current rhetoric on Trump somehow inflated?) On July 30 2020 13:21 Danglars wrote:On July 30 2020 12:10 Nevuk wrote:On July 30 2020 10:57 JimmiC wrote:On July 30 2020 09:16 GreenHorizons wrote:
[quote]
Enough of the 'right' people maybe? Part of the "system is bad" critique is that it's obviously apparent on things like background checks at gun shows that popularity of policy itself isn't what determines its enactment into law.
You have to turn to a critique of the system itself and its failure to do the will of the people due to something beyond the popularity and practical soundness of the change. It is way easier to convince enough people for a minor change then a full system change. I no longer believe this, unless it is a truly minor change like renaming a post office. Not arguing for outside of system change, but that major changes are no more difficult to convince people of than mild ones, and have a better chance of standing the test of time. Obamacare's largest changes (Medicaid expansion) remain in place, while all its small ones got rolled back. It is just as easy to convince a republican to raise taxes 1% as it is to convince them to raise them 10%, basically. The medicaid expansion change being large on one scale, but tiny on another. It did not raise conservatives hackles as much as the individual mandate and mandatory criteria for insurance officerings. If Obamacare was just a massive Medicaid expansion, it would've been massively bipartisan. Ironically, those were also some of the far lefts criticisms of Obamacare (the individual mandate, that is. The mandatory criteria was fine with them). (The individual mandate was originally the GOP alternative to increasing taxes for Hillarycare, I think). From what I recall of 2009/10, most of the GOP criticism I saw was actually about the debt and the mandate was put into place to lower the CBO evaluation (ah, the days when people gave a shit about debt increase... feels nostalgic now as we stare down 13 trillion in bailouts with no funding on a bipartisan basis). The point is, if it was a medicaid expansion to 400% (just making up a large number here) of the poverty line, then it would have solved a lot of the issues of the health insurance system - Obamacare fucked over the lower middle class heavily, didn't change things for the middle class, and greatly benefited lower and upper classes. (A public option was killed by Lieberman, no republican, of course). That would have been a massive change in philosophy on health care that would have been easier to explain, but would have been much more expensive than Obamacare. Republican support would have been the same either way, I think. On July 30 2020 14:16 JimmiC wrote:On July 30 2020 12:10 Nevuk wrote:On July 30 2020 10:57 JimmiC wrote:On July 30 2020 09:16 GreenHorizons wrote:
[quote]
Enough of the 'right' people maybe? Part of the "system is bad" critique is that it's obviously apparent on things like background checks at gun shows that popularity of policy itself isn't what determines its enactment into law.
You have to turn to a critique of the system itself and its failure to do the will of the people due to something beyond the popularity and practical soundness of the change. It is way easier to convince enough people for a minor change then a full system change. I no longer believe this, unless it is a truly minor change like renaming a post office. Not arguing for outside of system change, but that major changes are no more difficult to convince people of than mild ones, and have a better chance of standing the test of time. Obamacare's largest changes (Medicaid expansion) remain in place, while all its small ones got rolled back. It is just as easy to convince a republican to raise taxes 1% as it is to convince them to raise them 10%, basically. While working inside the system I would mostly agree. What I was trying to point out how much more difficult it is to do away with the system we have and take on a new one. And even more so when other countries attempting it have not work well. It is a lot to risk with very little chance of working. There is a fair amount of academic thought going on about this issue. Post-anarchism, which I did quite a bit of research on as an under-grad, is basically a melding of the anarchist critiques of Marxism with post-structural understandings of language, and winds up being a long examination of the nature of revolution. Anarchist critiques of Marxism in their basic form were that giving all power to the State would inevitably result in abuses. Basically, blindly replacing everything in a system is a naive and bad approach - but how to examine what to keep or replace? Of course, since it involves post-structuralism it can get a little absurd, but it's out there - academic leftists definitely are aware of the flaws of how Marxism has been implemented. I don't think academic leftists are the ones advocating for change of the kind GH is, though. Not sure which academic leftists you're referencing? I wouldn't take my disinterest in engaging JimmiC or some others on critiques of various attempts at implementation of Marxist inspired/shaped systems throughout history or my support for Haitian or October type Revolutions as not having consideration for existing critiques of them or critiques of my own though. When people don't understand something like abolition (be it slavery or police) one of the first things that happens is people accuse those putting it forward as having no idea what they are talking about (without doing any research of their own). Then comes accusations of petulant immaturity in their refusal to accept that society should continue under whatever condition (slavery, police, capitalism, etc). Once the veneer wears off that, it becomes a reluctant necessity to keep it with promises of placative modification. When the promises start failing it shifts to "we agree it must be changed but we can't do it at the pace you desire". When the patience has been exhausted there is an inflection point where one of two things happen (1 is usually prompted by the early stages of 2). 1. The placative promises are resurrected and implemented on a limited and temporary basis (often used to factionalize the masses by giving it to some and not others). 2. People burn shit down and replace the elites/foreign power with whatever manifests from the revolutionary movement (can be anything from fascist generals to spineless bureaucrats to people like Nguyễn Xuân Phúc) That's all very nice, but we are all still waiting for your explanation of how a society without law enforcement is going to work. Could it be that you can't provide this explanation because it's not our understanding that is lacking, but yours? No. If that were the case you wouldn't ask me as if "law enforcement" and "police" are exclusively synonymous. As in, any entity that enforces the law is equivalent to "police". There are lots of laws that are enforced without involvement of the police. There are many laws that are enforced for which the police are ill suited. There are laws that shouldn't exist. The police shouldn't enforce those laws. After that there's not a lot that police actually do. The investigating murders, stopping bank robberies, tracking down rapists,or whatever type stuff is a very small amount of their job. Unsurprisingly, they aren't very good at that stuff either and should probably be replaced with professionals to the degree we find them necessary (if we do) as we shift to a more equitable post-scarcity society. Weeks ago we went through this dance and I pointed you to the wiki on the US law enforcement stating: Law enforcement operates primarily through governmental police agencies.. Maybe it doesn't work like that in your head, but it does in reality. Which is why in reality, abolishing the police would mean abolishing the body that is responsible for the vast majority of law enforcement. So either you come to terms with the fact that you need to explain how law enforcement would work without a police force, or you reconsider this notion that you understand this topic so much better than everyone else. "vast majority of law enforcement" being what? your avoiding the point but pointing to minutia. Either don't have the conversation or actually make an effort to answer questions.
|
While most of current laws are enforced by the police, most shouldn't be. Therefore we need to:
Are you saying he's saying the police should be abolished partially? Why not just say the police should have its powers reduced? There has to be a reason why he insists on using the word "abolish" or on grouping the police with slavery and capitalism.
|
On July 30 2020 21:19 Gorsameth wrote:Show nested quote +On July 30 2020 21:13 GreenHorizons wrote:On July 30 2020 20:52 Sr18 wrote:On July 30 2020 20:07 GreenHorizons wrote:On July 30 2020 19:13 Sr18 wrote:On July 30 2020 15:22 GreenHorizons wrote:On July 30 2020 14:31 Nevuk wrote:On July 30 2020 13:21 Danglars wrote:On July 30 2020 12:10 Nevuk wrote:On July 30 2020 10:57 JimmiC wrote:
[quote]
It is way easier to convince enough people for a minor change then a full system change.
I no longer believe this, unless it is a truly minor change like renaming a post office. Not arguing for outside of system change, but that major changes are no more difficult to convince people of than mild ones, and have a better chance of standing the test of time. Obamacare's largest changes (Medicaid expansion) remain in place, while all its small ones got rolled back. It is just as easy to convince a republican to raise taxes 1% as it is to convince them to raise them 10%, basically. The medicaid expansion change being large on one scale, but tiny on another. It did not raise conservatives hackles as much as the individual mandate and mandatory criteria for insurance officerings. If Obamacare was just a massive Medicaid expansion, it would've been massively bipartisan. On July 30 2020 09:48 franzji wrote:On July 30 2020 01:23 Wegandi wrote:
I give the US like...12-16 years max before the first state says fuck this shit and leaves. The partisan hysteria is only increasing at an exponential rate with no signs of abating. Our "mainstream" media outlets are no longer thinly veiled arms of either party, but actively reveling in it, stoking ever high tensions (of which we see in societal unrest). Very similar to the 1850s. At this point our bicameral legislature are actively antagonistic against each other and both parties salivate at the prospect of holding complete power to lord it over one another. What a fucking shit show. There's not even a pretense of running on policies outside of the extremes of the parties - living in wackadoo land of the SJW's or the conspiracy nuts of R/TheDonald. No one gives a shit about the hilarious debts. You even have Democrats saying spending trillions and trillions is not enough and still pushing their GOP want you to starve shtick. Blegh. OK, enough ranting. The federal government would have to completely fall before it would let any state leave the union. Considering the current rhetoric on Trump, what makes this so insane (or is current rhetoric on Trump somehow inflated?) On July 30 2020 13:21 Danglars wrote:On July 30 2020 12:10 Nevuk wrote:On July 30 2020 10:57 JimmiC wrote:
[quote]
It is way easier to convince enough people for a minor change then a full system change.
I no longer believe this, unless it is a truly minor change like renaming a post office. Not arguing for outside of system change, but that major changes are no more difficult to convince people of than mild ones, and have a better chance of standing the test of time. Obamacare's largest changes (Medicaid expansion) remain in place, while all its small ones got rolled back. It is just as easy to convince a republican to raise taxes 1% as it is to convince them to raise them 10%, basically. The medicaid expansion change being large on one scale, but tiny on another. It did not raise conservatives hackles as much as the individual mandate and mandatory criteria for insurance officerings. If Obamacare was just a massive Medicaid expansion, it would've been massively bipartisan. Ironically, those were also some of the far lefts criticisms of Obamacare (the individual mandate, that is. The mandatory criteria was fine with them). (The individual mandate was originally the GOP alternative to increasing taxes for Hillarycare, I think). From what I recall of 2009/10, most of the GOP criticism I saw was actually about the debt and the mandate was put into place to lower the CBO evaluation (ah, the days when people gave a shit about debt increase... feels nostalgic now as we stare down 13 trillion in bailouts with no funding on a bipartisan basis). The point is, if it was a medicaid expansion to 400% (just making up a large number here) of the poverty line, then it would have solved a lot of the issues of the health insurance system - Obamacare fucked over the lower middle class heavily, didn't change things for the middle class, and greatly benefited lower and upper classes. (A public option was killed by Lieberman, no republican, of course). That would have been a massive change in philosophy on health care that would have been easier to explain, but would have been much more expensive than Obamacare. Republican support would have been the same either way, I think. On July 30 2020 14:16 JimmiC wrote:On July 30 2020 12:10 Nevuk wrote:On July 30 2020 10:57 JimmiC wrote:
[quote]
It is way easier to convince enough people for a minor change then a full system change.
I no longer believe this, unless it is a truly minor change like renaming a post office. Not arguing for outside of system change, but that major changes are no more difficult to convince people of than mild ones, and have a better chance of standing the test of time. Obamacare's largest changes (Medicaid expansion) remain in place, while all its small ones got rolled back. It is just as easy to convince a republican to raise taxes 1% as it is to convince them to raise them 10%, basically. While working inside the system I would mostly agree. What I was trying to point out how much more difficult it is to do away with the system we have and take on a new one. And even more so when other countries attempting it have not work well. It is a lot to risk with very little chance of working. There is a fair amount of academic thought going on about this issue. Post-anarchism, which I did quite a bit of research on as an under-grad, is basically a melding of the anarchist critiques of Marxism with post-structural understandings of language, and winds up being a long examination of the nature of revolution. Anarchist critiques of Marxism in their basic form were that giving all power to the State would inevitably result in abuses. Basically, blindly replacing everything in a system is a naive and bad approach - but how to examine what to keep or replace? Of course, since it involves post-structuralism it can get a little absurd, but it's out there - academic leftists definitely are aware of the flaws of how Marxism has been implemented. I don't think academic leftists are the ones advocating for change of the kind GH is, though. Not sure which academic leftists you're referencing? I wouldn't take my disinterest in engaging JimmiC or some others on critiques of various attempts at implementation of Marxist inspired/shaped systems throughout history or my support for Haitian or October type Revolutions as not having consideration for existing critiques of them or critiques of my own though. When people don't understand something like abolition (be it slavery or police) one of the first things that happens is people accuse those putting it forward as having no idea what they are talking about (without doing any research of their own). Then comes accusations of petulant immaturity in their refusal to accept that society should continue under whatever condition (slavery, police, capitalism, etc). Once the veneer wears off that, it becomes a reluctant necessity to keep it with promises of placative modification. When the promises start failing it shifts to "we agree it must be changed but we can't do it at the pace you desire". When the patience has been exhausted there is an inflection point where one of two things happen (1 is usually prompted by the early stages of 2). 1. The placative promises are resurrected and implemented on a limited and temporary basis (often used to factionalize the masses by giving it to some and not others). 2. People burn shit down and replace the elites/foreign power with whatever manifests from the revolutionary movement (can be anything from fascist generals to spineless bureaucrats to people like Nguyễn Xuân Phúc) That's all very nice, but we are all still waiting for your explanation of how a society without law enforcement is going to work. Could it be that you can't provide this explanation because it's not our understanding that is lacking, but yours? No. If that were the case you wouldn't ask me as if "law enforcement" and "police" are exclusively synonymous. As in, any entity that enforces the law is equivalent to "police". There are lots of laws that are enforced without involvement of the police. There are many laws that are enforced for which the police are ill suited. There are laws that shouldn't exist. The police shouldn't enforce those laws. After that there's not a lot that police actually do. The investigating murders, stopping bank robberies, tracking down rapists,or whatever type stuff is a very small amount of their job. Unsurprisingly, they aren't very good at that stuff either and should probably be replaced with professionals to the degree we find them necessary (if we do) as we shift to a more equitable post-scarcity society. Weeks ago we went through this dance and I pointed you to the wiki on the US law enforcement stating: Law enforcement operates primarily through governmental police agencies.. Maybe it doesn't work like that in your head, but it does in reality. Which is why in reality, abolishing the police would mean abolishing the body that is responsible for the vast majority of law enforcement. So either you come to terms with the fact that you need to explain how law enforcement would work without a police force, or you reconsider this notion that you understand this topic so much better than everyone else. "vast majority of law enforcement" being what? your avoiding the point but pointing to minutia. Either don't have the conversation or actually make an effort to answer questions.
I'm trying to pass along the idea that we can't productively talk about if/how to replace the "necessary" stuff until the person wishing to discuss it agrees that most of police's time is being spent on unnecessary jobs and/or ones they do poorly. Which should lead to wondering how we measure their performance and whether it accurately reflects the metrics society is concerned about regarding resolving aberrant behavior.
That should get them on board with eliminating/relocating most of police funding and function. I'm more open to discussing folks ideas on what to do with the 5-10% of police activity people more generally consider 'necessary' once we're over those first low hurdles.
+ Show Spoiler +EDIT: Honestly I've talked about this with a lot of people now (outside of here) and the absolute scariest thing I've encountered is people who genuinely believe the reason they and other people don't rape and kill is the threat of being beaten, caged, and or killed by the state (and/or condemned to hell).
I really don't like telling them how terrible the police are at preventing, investigating, or holding culprits accountable (or how terrible the penal system is at preventing that type of behavior before, during, or after incarceration). EDIT2: But Epstein should give people a clue (meaning if they can't monitor the highest profile prisoner since maybe OJ a lot is getting past them).
|
|
|
|
|
|
EPT
