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Norway28600 Posts
On March 02 2023 16:47 plasmidghost wrote:
I will say for Sweden's decision to restrict transition stuff, their government is backed by the far-right and formerly Neo-Nazi Sweden Democrats so it's not a surprise there. Government guidance can't really be trusted either since governments like Florida's can bring in fake experts to state factually false info as a justification to ban transition healthcare
I understand that this is a convenient explanation but having just read up on it, it doesn't really seem to be that much of a political decision at all. I'm reading that it was more based around an explosion of a new group who wanted the treatment - girls who hadn't felt any gender dysphoria until their teenage years (whereas 10 years ago, virtually everyone who got medical treatment had experienced gender dysphoria since early childhood), and fear that this group would be more likely to seek future detransition. Furthermore, it seems to have been lead by an organ called 'the National Board of Health and Welfare' - and their leader is a former member of the Social Democrat party. In Scandinavian countries, there's no tradition for newly formed governments to quickly install 'their own people' in existing organs and institutions.
While the Norwegian medical community currently seems to disagree with the Swedish decision, I'm also reading that there's a lot of disagreement within the Norwegian medical community, and they openly state that they currently don't know enough about use of puberty blockers to have an informed opinion, consequently, that any current policy is potentially subject to change as the knowledge increases.
Note that I am not stating any personal opinion on this issue, because I don't have one. I'm merely stating that observing that Norway and Sweden arriving at different conclusions, to me, means that the science isn't settled, because both countries have traditions for observing the science and making decisions based on this, rather than making value-based judgments and then finding science to back it up.
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On March 02 2023 17:21 Liquid`Drone wrote:Show nested quote +On March 02 2023 16:47 plasmidghost wrote:
I will say for Sweden's decision to restrict transition stuff, their government is backed by the far-right and formerly Neo-Nazi Sweden Democrats so it's not a surprise there. Government guidance can't really be trusted either since governments like Florida's can bring in fake experts to state factually false info as a justification to ban transition healthcare I understand that this is a convenient explanation but having just read up on it, it doesn't really seem to be that much of a political decision at all. I'm reading that it was more based around an explosion of a new group who wanted the treatment - girls who hadn't felt any gender dysphoria until their teenage years (whereas 10 years ago, virtually everyone who got medical treatment had experienced gender dysphoria since early childhood), and fear that this group would be more likely to seek future detransition. Furthermore, it seems to have been lead by an organ called 'the National Board of Health and Welfare' - and their leader is a former member of the Social Democrat party. In Scandinavian countries, there's no tradition for newly formed governments to quickly install 'their own people' in existing organs and institutions. While the Norwegian medical community currently seems to disagree with the Swedish decision, I'm also reading that there's a lot of disagreement within the Norwegian medical community, and they openly state that they currently don't know enough about use of puberty blockers to have an informed opinion, consequently, that any current policy is potentially subject to change as the knowledge increases. Note that I am not stating any personal opinion on this issue, because I don't have one. I'm merely stating that observing that Norway and Sweden arriving at different conclusions, to me, means that the science isn't settled, because both countries have traditions for observing the science and making decisions based on this, rather than making value-based judgments and then finding science to back it up.
The thing about there being a huge increase in the number of trans teenagers is because we're finally at a point in society where people widely know what being trans is and feel comfortable to come out and have supportive friends and maybe family. The fear is unjustified. For instance, when people stopped being abused for something as now insignificant as being left-handed, the rates of it went from barely 3% in 1900 to about 12% today, and the latter number hasn't changed in over fifty years. The same thing is going to happen with being trans. Those numbers were taken from the Washington Post
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On March 02 2023 16:55 Mikau313 wrote:Show nested quote +On March 02 2023 15:02 Introvert wrote:On March 02 2023 00:07 ChristianS wrote:On March 01 2023 19:29 BlackJack wrote:On March 01 2023 16:06 ChristianS wrote:
There’s something so goofy about just responding to an opinion you disagree with saying “that’s an opinion born of ignorance, accidental or willful.” Presumably you’d say that about any opinion you disagree with? But whatever, I said I’m less interested in that subject and I meant it.
Are you familiar with some of Amazon’s more controversial business practices? I can try to enumerate some if that’s helpful, but I’m not sure if you’re saying you’re familiar and don’t think they qualify as “undue economic influence” or if you’re saying you’re not aware of the controversy. I mean, relatively mild example: there are whole industries that live and die by the Amazon search algorithm. They can have a great product that’s selling gangbusters and then some minor tweak to the algorithm and the product just never surfaces.
Another example: in order to participate in Amazon Prime (or at least some versions of it, it’s complicated) you have to basically provide Amazon with pretty involved details of your supply chain. Perhaps not coincidentally, Amazon is always looking for opportunities to introduce their own “Amazon Essentials” version of popular products, which (of course) is automatically included in Prime and gets favored in search results. So you’re basically forced to provide them with all the information they need to produce their own competitor and hide your product from customers.
That doesn’t sound like enormous economic power to you? All this “it’s a balance” talk sounds like you giving yourself permission to favor government taking a heavier hand if you decide something is a problem. So what would that take? And what would it look like, in your worldview, to do something? (Maybe break up Amazon? You brought that up, not me.) I feel like a company with a footprint the size of Amazon wouldn't have an issue of making a knock-off product and sourcing manufacturing for it regardless if they have some supply chain details from the 3rd party seller on their platform. Pretty much everything on Amazon has a thousand knock offs and "Amazon essentials" and "Amazon basics" are just one of many. The other 999 didn't seem to struggle even without the privileged information. Side note, I once got into the world of exchanging positive Amazon reviews for free products. I once bought an item and got an obscure email saying if I left a 5-star review they would refund my money. Then after that they told me more items to buy and leave reviews on for a full refund. Got like a free juicer, free vacuum food saver, etc. There's literally hundreds of listings for the same product all with different made up brand names. The person emailing me would try to be discrete and not tell me the brand name so they would say "when you search vacuum food saver it's the one on the 3rd page with the price of 54.99 and the coupon for 5% off" or something. Heh, that’s interesting. God, that whole ecosystem is such a nightmare. Hijacking listings is a bizarre hell, too. I mean, yeah, for any given product Amazon doesn’t need privileged information into their competitors’ processes to effectively produce a competing product and privilege it in search. But isn’t that another way of saying “they’ve got so much monopoly power already, this specific advantage they’re getting as platform-holders barely makes a difference?” I mean, owning a platform while competing on the platform and using their ownership as a huge advantage was the same shit Microsoft almost got broken up for in the 90s (probably should have been, but water under the bridge I guess). None of that’s even getting into treatment of workers, union-busting, or lobbying stuff; I figured for a free market guy like Intro, abusing their size and platform ownership to distort the market would be most relevant. But like, if a government agency trying to set emissions guidelines gives you visions of dystopia because “they’re restricting our economic freedom!” I just can’t see how the power accumulated by Amazon or Microsoft or Google doesn’t tickle a similar feeling. The EPA doesn’t have anybody peeing in bottles throughout their 12 hour shifts because a 2 minute bathroom break gets logged by the system as missing quota for those 2 minutes. Edit @Intro’s interim responses: I don’t actually think I ever said conservatives are peculiarly inconsistent in their beliefs, but maybe that doesn’t matter because I absolutely believe it’s true. Or at least, more how I would articulate it: I think the vast majority of right-wingers (who generally don the “conservative” label when it suits them) support policies completely inconsistent with the Reagan-era fusionism everybody associates with conservatism. The entire Trump administration was a long series of “Maybe this will be the thing that finally turns all those principled conservatives against him? …I guess not.” Famously I think Ann Coulter’s analysis was “he can betray us on literally any issue without losing any support. Except immigration.” Which looked pretty astute until it looked like he was betraying on immigration, and Ann Coulter freaked out but everyone else kept supporting him like every previous time. I might not say “peculiarly inconsistent” because the kind of political pragmatism you’re preaching here (no deciding based on ideological priors, we gotta look at each situation and consider the balance of interests on each side) is exactly what most Democrats seem to espouse. There’s not a lot of ideological through line to the party; maybe “incremental progress” and “reality-based communities” are pretty ubiquitous commitments. But otherwise they’re pretty open to free market or government solutions to problems, and in general aren’t very likely to reject a policy proposal because it’s anathema to some ideological commitment. They’ll cut taxes if they think it’ll help, for instance. Does that mean you could accuse Democrats of forming beliefs in a pretty politically motivated way, based on what suits them in a particular moment? …yes. I would, anyway. There’s certainly some miserable trends like smirking when some disaster impacts a red state and saying “lol shouldn’t have voted for Republicans” which is a pretty sharp contrast with the empathy they’d preach In a lot of other contexts. But that’s beside the point. My point is that if Hayek would despise the policies you’re proposing, you’re not actually a champion of Hayek. And modern conservative policy proposals certainly don’t seem like they would thrill Hayek or Burke or Buckley or any of the other supposed pillars of conservative thought. At this point, we should maybe (as Marco Rubio might say) dispense with the fiction that there’s a cadre of “principled conservatives” at places like National Review biding their time waiting to restore their ideology to the throne; either they don’t exist, or they’re too small in number and influence to be worth considering. I apologize for continuing this conversation still but I am trying to be clear. I'm sure at least some of the failure to understand is my fault. Hayek himself wasn't an absolutist, but that's besides the point. "Pragmatism" alone is not a philosophy, what I'm talking about is having a starting point or certain principles, like the ones i quoted, and trying to apply them to situations we find ourselves in. So I'm not saying there are no priors, but there is no one principle that is followed through on alone and at the expense of the others. I am NOT talking about some technocratic regime where we are just trying to optimize something, like tax revenue. What needs balance is in finding the best way to implement or preserve the exercise of those ideas. Everyone has priors. And every situation is different, which is why the conservatism of today is not the same as it was 60 years ago, although it's not as different as people think either (Buckley, after all wrote God and Man at Yale and was ranting about higher ed decades ago  ). Problems change, so solutions change. If the principles are good, they don't change much, hopefully. Anyways, that's a longer post than i intended already. On March 02 2023 07:49 NewSunshine wrote:On March 02 2023 07:33 BlackJack wrote:
It's hard to imagine that say 10 years from now people are still going to be ending their work emails with "she/her/hers" or "he/she/them" or "zee/zir/zirs" or we will still be arguing over whether or not men can birth children. I don't think both sides will just see eye to eye on these things, rather it will just no longer be the flavor of the month to bicker and virtue signal over. It's not as hard for me to imagine. People are expanding how they think and talk about gender because it's important to who we and they are. It's not some flavor of the month thing. This conversation has been building up and evolving for way longer than 10 years, so it's a bit ignorant of history to think it's just a flash in the pan that's soon to die out. I do also want to circle back on the discussion with Intro, and make one more point. On March 01 2023 23:56 Introvert wrote:On March 01 2023 20:49 Liquid`Drone wrote:On February 28 2023 10:24 Introvert wrote:On February 27 2023 17:29 ChristianS wrote:
Honestly not sure what you mean by “all those things are in fact part of free exchange.” Which things? Working less? You mean wages, benefits, etc.? Yeah, of course, you negotiate with employers what wages and benefits you get. Interestingly, working less. At least in most industries, you can ask for more money and such, but you really can’t negotiate to, say, work 4 days a week instead of five. It’s just not an acceptable bargaining parameter.
You don’t owe me any hard rules, although I will say too much “forces in tension” and “there’s no perfect, it’s a balancing act” doesn’t make for a very coherent ideology. Critics might sometimes want to indict conservatives for a lack of internal consistency with their ideology, but is the defense going to be “we can’t be inconsistent with our ideology because our ideology is Calvinball”? If true, isn’t that… worse? Well obviously being able to negotiate and compromise isn't the same thing as getting exactly what you want. To your second paragraph, indeed there are those who contend that conservatism isn't really ideological in the sense that we normally use that word. And from many a leftist this is levied as a criticism. I can only speak for myself, but I think one of the best summaries of my conservative principles (as opposed to ideology) is in an updated form of the Sharon statement. + Show Spoiler +The Sharon Statement In this time of moral and political crises, it is the responsibility of the youth of America to affirm certain eternal truths. We, as young conservatives, believe: That foremost among the transcendent values is the individual’s use of his God-given free will, whence derives his right to be free from the restrictions of arbitrary force; That liberty is indivisible, and that political freedom cannot long exist without economic freedom; That the purpose of government is to protect those freedoms through the preservation of internal order, the provision of national defense, and the administration of justice; That when government ventures beyond these rightful functions, it accumulates power, which tends to diminish order and liberty; That the Constitution of the United States is the best arrangement yet devised for empowering government to fulfill its proper role, while restraining it from the concentration and abuse of power; That the genius of the Constitution—the division of powers—is summed up in the clause that reserves primacy to the several states, or to the people, in those spheres not specifically delegated to the Federal government; That the market economy, allocating resources by the free play of supply and demand, is the single economic system compatible with the requirements of personal freedom and constitutional government, and that it is at the same time the most productive supplier of human needs; That when government interferes with the work of the market economy, it tends to reduce the moral and physical strength of the nation; that when it takes from one man to bestow on another, it diminishes the incentive of the first, the integrity of the second, and the moral autonomy of both; That we will be free only so long as the national sovereignty of the United States is secure; that history shows periods of freedom are rare, and can exist only when free citizens concertedly defend their rights against all enemies; That the forces of international Communism are, at present, the greatest single threat to these liberties; That the United States should stress victory over, rather than coexistence with, this menace; and That American foreign policy must be judged by this criterion: does it serve the just interests of the United States? https://www.yaf.org/news/the-sharon-statement/It's obviously a little outdated but it gets to the core ideas. Shouldn't this - 'That foremost among the transcendent values is the individual’s use of his God-given free will, whence derives his right to be free from the restrictions of arbitrary force' be a ringing endorsement of say, trans rights, or that of immigrants to freely migrate? I'd include abortion but I can see how the administration of justice would be in conflict with that, assuming one has the pov many conservatives presumably have. But surely the poor Latin American has an equal amount of God-given free will and an equal right to use it, free from the restrictions of arbitrary force? Surely people choosing their own gender identity is not in conflict with this? What I'm obviously getting at is that, at least from my outsidery perspective, it seems like the current republican party, with its focus on immigration and culture war issues, does in no way concern itself with 'maximizing free-will utilization', but rather on cementing a certain social order found in the glorious yonderyears - but that social order would really only 'maximize free will' for groups of people that today will generally be considered 'privileged'. From a 'societal goals'-perspective, maximizing 'the ability of the individual to influence his or her own life' (a phrase I like more than 'god-given free will', but I'll happily consider them the same thing, effectively) is an admirable goal and one I am supportive of. However, what many, myself included believe, is that for this to actually be possible, the playing field must be level, and if it isn't, it must first be levelled. Hmm, you picked a touchy example lol. I will say this, most conservatives are ok letting adults, fully informed of what they are doing, make their own decisions. Children are another story and the desire to make everyone else recognize something that to them is self-evidently false is... problematic. ...and that would be the almost breathtaking irony and lack of self awareness required to unironically make this statement as a US conservative. Aside from my response on gender identity specifically, it takes some gall to insinuate that they have any value for letting other people have the right to make their own informed choices. If I'm going to give any weight or credence to this line of argument I expect to see accompanying arguments to not just restore but bolster the laws established by Roe v. Wade that they gutted. Then I'll cede that there is a principle at play and not just political pugilism. Who was it, after all, that successfully forced their viewpoint on the rest of the country instead of just keeping that viewpoint to themselves? Snarky? Maybe. But I just realized I don't care. I'd sooner expect Libertarians to successfully live and let live, because for some of them they sincerely believe in it when they say it. I find it more breathtaking you picked abortion as an example. It's so easy to see how there is no conflict there if you tried for even 10 seconds to understand the opposite point of view. Unfortunately, you have repeatedly demonstrated an implacable unwillingness to ever attempt such a thing, and therefore the example you thought was so great would completely neutered to a curious observer. This dogged determination to pretend there are no other good-faith views besides your own is probably also the reason you unironically talk about conservatives being culture warriors and things being forced down people's throats. edit: moreover, again for everyone else in the thread. Dobbs didn't "force their viewpoint." It was the opposite. Now, the decision belongs to the voters instead of judges. The Court returned power to the people, but again this is apparently hard to grasp. If we are going to complain about ulterior motives I might say the claimed love of "democracy" looks pretty thin on this one, a controversial and unsettled issue on which the Constitution is entirely silent. While I take those 10 seconds to understand the opposite point of view, why don't you take those same 10 seconds to look up the scientific consensus that makes it rather clear that "the opposite point of view" is simply factually incorrect. Or, take those same seconds and look at the other policies that Republicans enact or propose after a child is born and see how literally everything other than banning abortion in their platform is the exact opposite of being 'pro life'. Painting 'the opposite point of view' as being based on moral convictions about when life begins and the sanctity of life is both a) biologically incorrect and b) clearly not consistent with the rest of the position(s) on said 'sanctity of life'. In other words, it's bullshit, and both sides of the political spectrum know it's bullshit.
I don't want to get into the abortion debate again. I'll just point out that that is not what introvert said at all. I don't agree with him at all, but what he said is that Roe vs Wade was (1) unconstitutional and (2) he preferred this be decided more locally.
Anyway, what I find much more interesting than rehashing abortion, again, is how fast we pivoted from discussing the conservative liberal take on capitalism to the conservative position on social policies. What I take from that is that it's difficult to discuss the nuanced differences between a social democracy and a (neo)-liberal democracy, as it comes down to actual policy rather than some major ideological difference. And Introvert has avoided discussing actual economic policy he agrees with. However, we are happy to get dragged into another few pages of culture war stuff when someone mentions trans rights or abortion. Those are important issues, but they are also very "safe" territory for capitalists: they are a place where progressive capitalists and conservative capitalists disagree on basic ideology. I'm inclined to agree with GH that in this respect, progressive capitalists are NOT socialists' allies. They avoid discussing difficult policy details of moving toward a more social society and will impact 90% of society, in favor instead debating polemic issues that get lots of people riled up, but at the end of the day, affect a tiny portion of the population. Why are we discussing what bathrooms 1% of students can use when the school around those bathrooms is collapsing from a lack of funding for maintenance? Why do we let conservatives dictate the battleground issues? We should be fighting for reforming education and energy.
Lets discuss that. Introvert, we need policy to improve education standards throughout the nation. We need to impose a wealth tax (for all I care, it can be a death tax. Any wealth over N million is taxed at 100% rate. If I have no trust in Bezos or Gates, I have even less faith in their family, who didn't do anything other than happen to be born. The exact same arguments against monarchy apply here), and provide better funding for the IRS (they currently cannot do their job to adequately combat tax fraud, which you should agree with me, is bad). With the revenue from these actions, we double the education budget in order to fix schools up and provide a safe learning environment for ALL children. I'm not even discussing what they should learn, just the environment in which it happens! That includes existing schools, but also ensuring all children have reasonable access to a school: nobody should need to travel more than half an hour to school. It also means having enough teachers to actually fill the students' time at school, so we need to ensure teacher wages are competitive and hire more teachers to ensure class sizes are reasonable. I'm sure other people more familiar with the US education situation will have other ideas on what we can do to improve schooling without even discussing the curriculum itself.
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On March 02 2023 17:44 plasmidghost wrote:Show nested quote +On March 02 2023 17:21 Liquid`Drone wrote:On March 02 2023 16:47 plasmidghost wrote:
I will say for Sweden's decision to restrict transition stuff, their government is backed by the far-right and formerly Neo-Nazi Sweden Democrats so it's not a surprise there. Government guidance can't really be trusted either since governments like Florida's can bring in fake experts to state factually false info as a justification to ban transition healthcare I understand that this is a convenient explanation but having just read up on it, it doesn't really seem to be that much of a political decision at all. I'm reading that it was more based around an explosion of a new group who wanted the treatment - girls who hadn't felt any gender dysphoria until their teenage years (whereas 10 years ago, virtually everyone who got medical treatment had experienced gender dysphoria since early childhood), and fear that this group would be more likely to seek future detransition. Furthermore, it seems to have been lead by an organ called 'the National Board of Health and Welfare' - and their leader is a former member of the Social Democrat party. In Scandinavian countries, there's no tradition for newly formed governments to quickly install 'their own people' in existing organs and institutions. While the Norwegian medical community currently seems to disagree with the Swedish decision, I'm also reading that there's a lot of disagreement within the Norwegian medical community, and they openly state that they currently don't know enough about use of puberty blockers to have an informed opinion, consequently, that any current policy is potentially subject to change as the knowledge increases. Note that I am not stating any personal opinion on this issue, because I don't have one. I'm merely stating that observing that Norway and Sweden arriving at different conclusions, to me, means that the science isn't settled, because both countries have traditions for observing the science and making decisions based on this, rather than making value-based judgments and then finding science to back it up. The thing about there being a huge increase in the number of trans teenagers is because we're finally at a point in society where people widely know what being trans is and feel comfortable to come out and have supportive friends and maybe family. The fear is unjustified. For instance, when people stopped being abused for something as now insignificant as being left-handed, the rates of it went from barely 3% in 1900 to about 12% today, and the latter number hasn't changed in over fifty years. The same thing is going to happen with being trans. Those numbers were taken from the Washington Post
I wouldn't expect you to be making the point that we are seeing an explosion in the trans population because more people feel comfortable coming out just like we saw more left handed people after they stopped being abused. If memory serves me correct, you often post about how anti-trans hate and violence is at an all time high and will even use language that harkens to genocide or holocaust to describe the state of affairs for trans people in America. These two ideas seem at least slightly contradictory.
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Norway28600 Posts
Inheritance tax is the most sensible form of taxation there is. It's the one form of taxation where I feel the economic right is the least consistent. 'The self-made man is the ultimate being and we must not punish people for being successful' 'oh but also lets allow people to be born into so much wealth that they can spend a regular person's yearly salary every week without ever working an hour of their life'.
The arguments against are almost entirely dishonest - and ones that can easily be addressed through adjusting the cutoff level - if you're worried that people have to sell their family home to be able to pay for the inheritance tax, then make the cutoff $1-2 mill, depending on how costly property is in the state we're talking about. But above a certain level I'm entirely supportive of a 100% rate.
Some genuine capitalists are too, to be fair. And I'm totally on board with discussing appropriate rates (I realize that a 100% rate at any point is unlikely to be implemented) and cutoff points and, in some cases, I can see the appeal of the generational company, so maybe some protection of that too, up to a certain size. But some proposals would basically affect the children of fewer than 1% of families, and then there's still this 'oh my god they're gonna take granny's home and all your childhood memories' uproar.
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On March 02 2023 18:11 BlackJack wrote:Show nested quote +On March 02 2023 17:44 plasmidghost wrote:On March 02 2023 17:21 Liquid`Drone wrote:On March 02 2023 16:47 plasmidghost wrote:
I will say for Sweden's decision to restrict transition stuff, their government is backed by the far-right and formerly Neo-Nazi Sweden Democrats so it's not a surprise there. Government guidance can't really be trusted either since governments like Florida's can bring in fake experts to state factually false info as a justification to ban transition healthcare I understand that this is a convenient explanation but having just read up on it, it doesn't really seem to be that much of a political decision at all. I'm reading that it was more based around an explosion of a new group who wanted the treatment - girls who hadn't felt any gender dysphoria until their teenage years (whereas 10 years ago, virtually everyone who got medical treatment had experienced gender dysphoria since early childhood), and fear that this group would be more likely to seek future detransition. Furthermore, it seems to have been lead by an organ called 'the National Board of Health and Welfare' - and their leader is a former member of the Social Democrat party. In Scandinavian countries, there's no tradition for newly formed governments to quickly install 'their own people' in existing organs and institutions. While the Norwegian medical community currently seems to disagree with the Swedish decision, I'm also reading that there's a lot of disagreement within the Norwegian medical community, and they openly state that they currently don't know enough about use of puberty blockers to have an informed opinion, consequently, that any current policy is potentially subject to change as the knowledge increases. Note that I am not stating any personal opinion on this issue, because I don't have one. I'm merely stating that observing that Norway and Sweden arriving at different conclusions, to me, means that the science isn't settled, because both countries have traditions for observing the science and making decisions based on this, rather than making value-based judgments and then finding science to back it up. The thing about there being a huge increase in the number of trans teenagers is because we're finally at a point in society where people widely know what being trans is and feel comfortable to come out and have supportive friends and maybe family. The fear is unjustified. For instance, when people stopped being abused for something as now insignificant as being left-handed, the rates of it went from barely 3% in 1900 to about 12% today, and the latter number hasn't changed in over fifty years. The same thing is going to happen with being trans. Those numbers were taken from the Washington Post I wouldn't expect you to be making the point that we are seeing an explosion in the trans population because more people feel comfortable coming out just like we saw more left handed people after they stopped being abused. If memory serves me correct, you often post about how anti-trans hate and violence is at an all time high and will even use language that harkens to genocide or holocaust to describe the state of affairs for trans people in America. These two ideas seem at least slightly contradictory.
I don't see it as contradictory, but the reason is rather abstract. Apologies if this is too off-topic.
One thing about being trans is, when you don't know outright you're trans, you know that something is deeply off about yourself. It oftentimes leads to a false personality being formed to get through life. It's not you, but you have to use it to get by, but it's extremely difficult to have true happiness and enjoyment out of life or have any sort of meaningful existence.
When you realize it, it's like the fake person you were before ceases to exist and you're free to actually live. You get to be true to yourself and to others. You get to have a meaningful life in your own skin and not the skin of someone else. It's liberating. It's a relief. And when you have people like you, who understand you and will support you, you feel like you're willing to risk literally everything to have an authentic life.
The laws being passed are terrifying, more than I could ever express, and I left the US because of it. However, I can safely say that even if I was stuck in Texas permanently, with the weight of their laws being inflicted on me, I would still come out because there is an entire community of people that I can freely be me with.
I would risk death if it means I get to be me, and nearly every trans person I know thinks the same.
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On March 02 2023 19:05 Liquid`Drone wrote:
Inheritance tax is the most sensible form of taxation there is. It's the one form of taxation where I feel the economic right is the least consistent. 'The self-made man is the ultimate being and we must not punish people for being successful' 'oh but also lets allow people to be born into so much wealth that they can spend a regular person's yearly salary every week without ever working an hour of their life'.
The arguments against are almost entirely dishonest - and ones that can easily be addressed through adjusting the cutoff level - if you're worried that people have to sell their family home to be able to pay for the inheritance tax, then make the cutoff $1-2 mill, depending on how costly property is in the state we're talking about. But above a certain level I'm entirely supportive of a 100% rate.
Some genuine capitalists are too, to be fair. And I'm totally on board with discussing appropriate rates (I realize that a 100% rate at any point is unlikely to be implemented) and cutoff points and, in some cases, I can see the appeal of the generational company, so maybe some protection of that too, up to a certain size. But some proposals would basically affect the children of fewer than 1% of families, and then there's still this 'oh my god they're gonna take granny's home and all your childhood memories' uproar.
We had a vote on a national inheritance tax a few years ago in Switzerland. It's allready possible on a cantonal level, but these tend to be low with plenty of excemptions for direct inheritants.
Iirc the bullet points were:
20% flat tax for inheritances above CHF 2'000'000.00. Special excemptions/rules for generational companies.
It got what we would call eviscrated in switzerland at the voting box with 71% no.
Something just deeply disturbs many people about it.
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On March 02 2023 17:59 Acrofales wrote:Show nested quote +On March 02 2023 16:55 Mikau313 wrote:On March 02 2023 15:02 Introvert wrote:On March 02 2023 00:07 ChristianS wrote:On March 01 2023 19:29 BlackJack wrote:On March 01 2023 16:06 ChristianS wrote:
There’s something so goofy about just responding to an opinion you disagree with saying “that’s an opinion born of ignorance, accidental or willful.” Presumably you’d say that about any opinion you disagree with? But whatever, I said I’m less interested in that subject and I meant it.
Are you familiar with some of Amazon’s more controversial business practices? I can try to enumerate some if that’s helpful, but I’m not sure if you’re saying you’re familiar and don’t think they qualify as “undue economic influence” or if you’re saying you’re not aware of the controversy. I mean, relatively mild example: there are whole industries that live and die by the Amazon search algorithm. They can have a great product that’s selling gangbusters and then some minor tweak to the algorithm and the product just never surfaces.
Another example: in order to participate in Amazon Prime (or at least some versions of it, it’s complicated) you have to basically provide Amazon with pretty involved details of your supply chain. Perhaps not coincidentally, Amazon is always looking for opportunities to introduce their own “Amazon Essentials” version of popular products, which (of course) is automatically included in Prime and gets favored in search results. So you’re basically forced to provide them with all the information they need to produce their own competitor and hide your product from customers.
That doesn’t sound like enormous economic power to you? All this “it’s a balance” talk sounds like you giving yourself permission to favor government taking a heavier hand if you decide something is a problem. So what would that take? And what would it look like, in your worldview, to do something? (Maybe break up Amazon? You brought that up, not me.) I feel like a company with a footprint the size of Amazon wouldn't have an issue of making a knock-off product and sourcing manufacturing for it regardless if they have some supply chain details from the 3rd party seller on their platform. Pretty much everything on Amazon has a thousand knock offs and "Amazon essentials" and "Amazon basics" are just one of many. The other 999 didn't seem to struggle even without the privileged information. Side note, I once got into the world of exchanging positive Amazon reviews for free products. I once bought an item and got an obscure email saying if I left a 5-star review they would refund my money. Then after that they told me more items to buy and leave reviews on for a full refund. Got like a free juicer, free vacuum food saver, etc. There's literally hundreds of listings for the same product all with different made up brand names. The person emailing me would try to be discrete and not tell me the brand name so they would say "when you search vacuum food saver it's the one on the 3rd page with the price of 54.99 and the coupon for 5% off" or something. Heh, that’s interesting. God, that whole ecosystem is such a nightmare. Hijacking listings is a bizarre hell, too. I mean, yeah, for any given product Amazon doesn’t need privileged information into their competitors’ processes to effectively produce a competing product and privilege it in search. But isn’t that another way of saying “they’ve got so much monopoly power already, this specific advantage they’re getting as platform-holders barely makes a difference?” I mean, owning a platform while competing on the platform and using their ownership as a huge advantage was the same shit Microsoft almost got broken up for in the 90s (probably should have been, but water under the bridge I guess). None of that’s even getting into treatment of workers, union-busting, or lobbying stuff; I figured for a free market guy like Intro, abusing their size and platform ownership to distort the market would be most relevant. But like, if a government agency trying to set emissions guidelines gives you visions of dystopia because “they’re restricting our economic freedom!” I just can’t see how the power accumulated by Amazon or Microsoft or Google doesn’t tickle a similar feeling. The EPA doesn’t have anybody peeing in bottles throughout their 12 hour shifts because a 2 minute bathroom break gets logged by the system as missing quota for those 2 minutes. Edit @Intro’s interim responses: I don’t actually think I ever said conservatives are peculiarly inconsistent in their beliefs, but maybe that doesn’t matter because I absolutely believe it’s true. Or at least, more how I would articulate it: I think the vast majority of right-wingers (who generally don the “conservative” label when it suits them) support policies completely inconsistent with the Reagan-era fusionism everybody associates with conservatism. The entire Trump administration was a long series of “Maybe this will be the thing that finally turns all those principled conservatives against him? …I guess not.” Famously I think Ann Coulter’s analysis was “he can betray us on literally any issue without losing any support. Except immigration.” Which looked pretty astute until it looked like he was betraying on immigration, and Ann Coulter freaked out but everyone else kept supporting him like every previous time. I might not say “peculiarly inconsistent” because the kind of political pragmatism you’re preaching here (no deciding based on ideological priors, we gotta look at each situation and consider the balance of interests on each side) is exactly what most Democrats seem to espouse. There’s not a lot of ideological through line to the party; maybe “incremental progress” and “reality-based communities” are pretty ubiquitous commitments. But otherwise they’re pretty open to free market or government solutions to problems, and in general aren’t very likely to reject a policy proposal because it’s anathema to some ideological commitment. They’ll cut taxes if they think it’ll help, for instance. Does that mean you could accuse Democrats of forming beliefs in a pretty politically motivated way, based on what suits them in a particular moment? …yes. I would, anyway. There’s certainly some miserable trends like smirking when some disaster impacts a red state and saying “lol shouldn’t have voted for Republicans” which is a pretty sharp contrast with the empathy they’d preach In a lot of other contexts. But that’s beside the point. My point is that if Hayek would despise the policies you’re proposing, you’re not actually a champion of Hayek. And modern conservative policy proposals certainly don’t seem like they would thrill Hayek or Burke or Buckley or any of the other supposed pillars of conservative thought. At this point, we should maybe (as Marco Rubio might say) dispense with the fiction that there’s a cadre of “principled conservatives” at places like National Review biding their time waiting to restore their ideology to the throne; either they don’t exist, or they’re too small in number and influence to be worth considering. I apologize for continuing this conversation still but I am trying to be clear. I'm sure at least some of the failure to understand is my fault. Hayek himself wasn't an absolutist, but that's besides the point. "Pragmatism" alone is not a philosophy, what I'm talking about is having a starting point or certain principles, like the ones i quoted, and trying to apply them to situations we find ourselves in. So I'm not saying there are no priors, but there is no one principle that is followed through on alone and at the expense of the others. I am NOT talking about some technocratic regime where we are just trying to optimize something, like tax revenue. What needs balance is in finding the best way to implement or preserve the exercise of those ideas. Everyone has priors. And every situation is different, which is why the conservatism of today is not the same as it was 60 years ago, although it's not as different as people think either (Buckley, after all wrote God and Man at Yale and was ranting about higher ed decades ago ). Problems change, so solutions change. If the principles are good, they don't change much, hopefully. Anyways, that's a longer post than i intended already. On March 02 2023 07:49 NewSunshine wrote:On March 02 2023 07:33 BlackJack wrote:
It's hard to imagine that say 10 years from now people are still going to be ending their work emails with "she/her/hers" or "he/she/them" or "zee/zir/zirs" or we will still be arguing over whether or not men can birth children. I don't think both sides will just see eye to eye on these things, rather it will just no longer be the flavor of the month to bicker and virtue signal over. It's not as hard for me to imagine. People are expanding how they think and talk about gender because it's important to who we and they are. It's not some flavor of the month thing. This conversation has been building up and evolving for way longer than 10 years, so it's a bit ignorant of history to think it's just a flash in the pan that's soon to die out. I do also want to circle back on the discussion with Intro, and make one more point. On March 01 2023 23:56 Introvert wrote:On March 01 2023 20:49 Liquid`Drone wrote:On February 28 2023 10:24 Introvert wrote:On February 27 2023 17:29 ChristianS wrote:
Honestly not sure what you mean by “all those things are in fact part of free exchange.” Which things? Working less? You mean wages, benefits, etc.? Yeah, of course, you negotiate with employers what wages and benefits you get. Interestingly, working less. At least in most industries, you can ask for more money and such, but you really can’t negotiate to, say, work 4 days a week instead of five. It’s just not an acceptable bargaining parameter.
You don’t owe me any hard rules, although I will say too much “forces in tension” and “there’s no perfect, it’s a balancing act” doesn’t make for a very coherent ideology. Critics might sometimes want to indict conservatives for a lack of internal consistency with their ideology, but is the defense going to be “we can’t be inconsistent with our ideology because our ideology is Calvinball”? If true, isn’t that… worse? Well obviously being able to negotiate and compromise isn't the same thing as getting exactly what you want. To your second paragraph, indeed there are those who contend that conservatism isn't really ideological in the sense that we normally use that word. And from many a leftist this is levied as a criticism. I can only speak for myself, but I think one of the best summaries of my conservative principles (as opposed to ideology) is in an updated form of the Sharon statement. + Show Spoiler +The Sharon Statement In this time of moral and political crises, it is the responsibility of the youth of America to affirm certain eternal truths. We, as young conservatives, believe: That foremost among the transcendent values is the individual’s use of his God-given free will, whence derives his right to be free from the restrictions of arbitrary force; That liberty is indivisible, and that political freedom cannot long exist without economic freedom; That the purpose of government is to protect those freedoms through the preservation of internal order, the provision of national defense, and the administration of justice; That when government ventures beyond these rightful functions, it accumulates power, which tends to diminish order and liberty; That the Constitution of the United States is the best arrangement yet devised for empowering government to fulfill its proper role, while restraining it from the concentration and abuse of power; That the genius of the Constitution—the division of powers—is summed up in the clause that reserves primacy to the several states, or to the people, in those spheres not specifically delegated to the Federal government; That the market economy, allocating resources by the free play of supply and demand, is the single economic system compatible with the requirements of personal freedom and constitutional government, and that it is at the same time the most productive supplier of human needs; That when government interferes with the work of the market economy, it tends to reduce the moral and physical strength of the nation; that when it takes from one man to bestow on another, it diminishes the incentive of the first, the integrity of the second, and the moral autonomy of both; That we will be free only so long as the national sovereignty of the United States is secure; that history shows periods of freedom are rare, and can exist only when free citizens concertedly defend their rights against all enemies; That the forces of international Communism are, at present, the greatest single threat to these liberties; That the United States should stress victory over, rather than coexistence with, this menace; and That American foreign policy must be judged by this criterion: does it serve the just interests of the United States? https://www.yaf.org/news/the-sharon-statement/It's obviously a little outdated but it gets to the core ideas. Shouldn't this - 'That foremost among the transcendent values is the individual’s use of his God-given free will, whence derives his right to be free from the restrictions of arbitrary force' be a ringing endorsement of say, trans rights, or that of immigrants to freely migrate? I'd include abortion but I can see how the administration of justice would be in conflict with that, assuming one has the pov many conservatives presumably have. But surely the poor Latin American has an equal amount of God-given free will and an equal right to use it, free from the restrictions of arbitrary force? Surely people choosing their own gender identity is not in conflict with this? What I'm obviously getting at is that, at least from my outsidery perspective, it seems like the current republican party, with its focus on immigration and culture war issues, does in no way concern itself with 'maximizing free-will utilization', but rather on cementing a certain social order found in the glorious yonderyears - but that social order would really only 'maximize free will' for groups of people that today will generally be considered 'privileged'. From a 'societal goals'-perspective, maximizing 'the ability of the individual to influence his or her own life' (a phrase I like more than 'god-given free will', but I'll happily consider them the same thing, effectively) is an admirable goal and one I am supportive of. However, what many, myself included believe, is that for this to actually be possible, the playing field must be level, and if it isn't, it must first be levelled. Hmm, you picked a touchy example lol. I will say this, most conservatives are ok letting adults, fully informed of what they are doing, make their own decisions. Children are another story and the desire to make everyone else recognize something that to them is self-evidently false is... problematic. ...and that would be the almost breathtaking irony and lack of self awareness required to unironically make this statement as a US conservative. Aside from my response on gender identity specifically, it takes some gall to insinuate that they have any value for letting other people have the right to make their own informed choices. If I'm going to give any weight or credence to this line of argument I expect to see accompanying arguments to not just restore but bolster the laws established by Roe v. Wade that they gutted. Then I'll cede that there is a principle at play and not just political pugilism. Who was it, after all, that successfully forced their viewpoint on the rest of the country instead of just keeping that viewpoint to themselves? Snarky? Maybe. But I just realized I don't care. I'd sooner expect Libertarians to successfully live and let live, because for some of them they sincerely believe in it when they say it. I find it more breathtaking you picked abortion as an example. It's so easy to see how there is no conflict there if you tried for even 10 seconds to understand the opposite point of view. Unfortunately, you have repeatedly demonstrated an implacable unwillingness to ever attempt such a thing, and therefore the example you thought was so great would completely neutered to a curious observer. This dogged determination to pretend there are no other good-faith views besides your own is probably also the reason you unironically talk about conservatives being culture warriors and things being forced down people's throats. edit: moreover, again for everyone else in the thread. Dobbs didn't "force their viewpoint." It was the opposite. Now, the decision belongs to the voters instead of judges. The Court returned power to the people, but again this is apparently hard to grasp. If we are going to complain about ulterior motives I might say the claimed love of "democracy" looks pretty thin on this one, a controversial and unsettled issue on which the Constitution is entirely silent. While I take those 10 seconds to understand the opposite point of view, why don't you take those same 10 seconds to look up the scientific consensus that makes it rather clear that "the opposite point of view" is simply factually incorrect. Or, take those same seconds and look at the other policies that Republicans enact or propose after a child is born and see how literally everything other than banning abortion in their platform is the exact opposite of being 'pro life'. Painting 'the opposite point of view' as being based on moral convictions about when life begins and the sanctity of life is both a) biologically incorrect and b) clearly not consistent with the rest of the position(s) on said 'sanctity of life'. In other words, it's bullshit, and both sides of the political spectrum know it's bullshit. I don't want to get into the abortion debate again. I'll just point out that that is not what introvert said at all. I don't agree with him at all, but what he said is that Roe vs Wade was (1) unconstitutional and (2) he preferred this be decided more locally. Anyway, what I find much more interesting than rehashing abortion, again, is how fast we pivoted from discussing the conservative liberal take on capitalism to the conservative position on social policies. What I take from that is that it's difficult to discuss the nuanced differences between a social democracy and a (neo)-liberal democracy, as it comes down to actual policy rather than some major ideological difference. And Introvert has avoided discussing actual economic policy he agrees with. However, we are happy to get dragged into another few pages of culture war stuff when someone mentions trans rights or abortion. Those are important issues, but they are also very "safe" territory for capitalists: they are a place where progressive capitalists and conservative capitalists disagree on basic ideology. I'm inclined to agree with GH that in this respect, progressive capitalists are NOT socialists' allies. They avoid discussing difficult policy details of moving toward a more social society and will impact 90% of society, in favor instead debating polemic issues that get lots of people riled up, but at the end of the day, affect a tiny portion of the population. Why are we discussing what bathrooms 1% of students can use when the school around those bathrooms is collapsing from a lack of funding for maintenance? Why do we let conservatives dictate the battleground issues? We should be fighting for reforming education and energy. Lets discuss that. Introvert, we need policy to improve education standards throughout the nation. We need to impose a wealth tax (for all I care, it can be a death tax. Any wealth over N million is taxed at 100% rate. If I have no trust in Bezos or Gates, I have even less faith in their family, who didn't do anything other than happen to be born. The exact same arguments against monarchy apply here), and provide better funding for the IRS (they currently cannot do their job to adequately combat tax fraud, which you should agree with me, is bad). With the revenue from these actions, we double the education budget in order to fix schools up and provide a safe learning environment for ALL children. I'm not even discussing what they should learn, just the environment in which it happens! That includes existing schools, but also ensuring all children have reasonable access to a school: nobody should need to travel more than half an hour to school. It also means having enough teachers to actually fill the students' time at school, so we need to ensure teacher wages are competitive and hire more teachers to ensure class sizes are reasonable. I'm sure other people more familiar with the US education situation will have other ideas on what we can do to improve schooling without even discussing the curriculum itself.
Tbf to everyone involved, I jumped into the conversation by saying we can defend capitalism without resorting to "it sucks less." Particularly when you look at who the posters involved were, I think it's easy to see how general arguments and principles were of more relevance than arguing over the tax rate or education funding levels. GH isn't going to change his perspective because we doubled per-pupil spending , he objects to something like what you said we could ignore, e.g. what is taught. But I quoted something I thought was a good summary and a post or two later Drone came in asking it's relevance to a different issue. I also think that's fine, there's a reason people on the left economically are to the left socially, going back to what I said it's about worldview or first principles.
Also, talking specifics on economics is more difficult because we aren't experts familiar with all the literature (that's not bad, but it makes things harder). And there are also a lot of numbers which take a lot of time to sift through, all so that we can argue at the margins. We could pick a single topic to discuss, like education, but the conversation started general and I was trying to keep it there. Nevermind the time commitment to talk about these things, though at this rate I suppose I've already invested significantly in this conversation lol.
I will just point out that even deep blue states that spend through the nose have crappy schools, it's nor a question of money as the US spends a lot per student. The rot is elsewhere. I live in CA so my instinct is to say much of the problem lies with teachers themselves, or more accurately, their unions. Nonwtheless, If you like to discuss this then fine. I'm not sure though if you said that more to make a point lol
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@Intro: you seem eager to drop the conversation, so I’ll let you have the last word, other than to say that you’ve been trying to clarify some misunderstanding of your position, but to me it still seems like the same position in each post, just slightly differently worded. Is it possible it’s not a communication problem, that I’m understanding you and just don’t agree? Or maybe it’s my criticism, not your defense, that’s being misunderstood?
I appreciate the effort at clarity (even trying to “speak my language” with a chemistry analogy), I’m just not sure lack of clear expression is the issue. Or maybe it is, just on my end rather than yours.
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On March 02 2023 17:44 plasmidghost wrote:Show nested quote +On March 02 2023 17:21 Liquid`Drone wrote:On March 02 2023 16:47 plasmidghost wrote:
I will say for Sweden's decision to restrict transition stuff, their government is backed by the far-right and formerly Neo-Nazi Sweden Democrats so it's not a surprise there. Government guidance can't really be trusted either since governments like Florida's can bring in fake experts to state factually false info as a justification to ban transition healthcare I understand that this is a convenient explanation but having just read up on it, it doesn't really seem to be that much of a political decision at all. I'm reading that it was more based around an explosion of a new group who wanted the treatment - girls who hadn't felt any gender dysphoria until their teenage years (whereas 10 years ago, virtually everyone who got medical treatment had experienced gender dysphoria since early childhood), and fear that this group would be more likely to seek future detransition. Furthermore, it seems to have been lead by an organ called 'the National Board of Health and Welfare' - and their leader is a former member of the Social Democrat party. In Scandinavian countries, there's no tradition for newly formed governments to quickly install 'their own people' in existing organs and institutions. While the Norwegian medical community currently seems to disagree with the Swedish decision, I'm also reading that there's a lot of disagreement within the Norwegian medical community, and they openly state that they currently don't know enough about use of puberty blockers to have an informed opinion, consequently, that any current policy is potentially subject to change as the knowledge increases. Note that I am not stating any personal opinion on this issue, because I don't have one. I'm merely stating that observing that Norway and Sweden arriving at different conclusions, to me, means that the science isn't settled, because both countries have traditions for observing the science and making decisions based on this, rather than making value-based judgments and then finding science to back it up. The thing about there being a huge increase in the number of trans teenagers is because we're finally at a point in society where people widely know what being trans is and feel comfortable to come out and have supportive friends and maybe family. The fear is unjustified. For instance, when people stopped being abused for something as now insignificant as being left-handed, the rates of it went from barely 3% in 1900 to about 12% today, and the latter number hasn't changed in over fifty years. The same thing is going to happen with being trans. Those numbers were taken from the Washington Post
This is all true and good information. Cultural feedback has significantly reduced a lot of numbers artificially. Left handedness is a great example of this.
What is your take on what age its appropriate for someone to medically transition? My understanding is that puberty blockers are a good middle ground to prevent anything irreversible from happening before someone is older and more mature. I have a really hard time with the idea that surgery should occur before someone is legally considered an adult.
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On March 02 2023 18:11 BlackJack wrote:Show nested quote +On March 02 2023 17:44 plasmidghost wrote:On March 02 2023 17:21 Liquid`Drone wrote:On March 02 2023 16:47 plasmidghost wrote:
I will say for Sweden's decision to restrict transition stuff, their government is backed by the far-right and formerly Neo-Nazi Sweden Democrats so it's not a surprise there. Government guidance can't really be trusted either since governments like Florida's can bring in fake experts to state factually false info as a justification to ban transition healthcare I understand that this is a convenient explanation but having just read up on it, it doesn't really seem to be that much of a political decision at all. I'm reading that it was more based around an explosion of a new group who wanted the treatment - girls who hadn't felt any gender dysphoria until their teenage years (whereas 10 years ago, virtually everyone who got medical treatment had experienced gender dysphoria since early childhood), and fear that this group would be more likely to seek future detransition. Furthermore, it seems to have been lead by an organ called 'the National Board of Health and Welfare' - and their leader is a former member of the Social Democrat party. In Scandinavian countries, there's no tradition for newly formed governments to quickly install 'their own people' in existing organs and institutions. While the Norwegian medical community currently seems to disagree with the Swedish decision, I'm also reading that there's a lot of disagreement within the Norwegian medical community, and they openly state that they currently don't know enough about use of puberty blockers to have an informed opinion, consequently, that any current policy is potentially subject to change as the knowledge increases. Note that I am not stating any personal opinion on this issue, because I don't have one. I'm merely stating that observing that Norway and Sweden arriving at different conclusions, to me, means that the science isn't settled, because both countries have traditions for observing the science and making decisions based on this, rather than making value-based judgments and then finding science to back it up. The thing about there being a huge increase in the number of trans teenagers is because we're finally at a point in society where people widely know what being trans is and feel comfortable to come out and have supportive friends and maybe family. The fear is unjustified. For instance, when people stopped being abused for something as now insignificant as being left-handed, the rates of it went from barely 3% in 1900 to about 12% today, and the latter number hasn't changed in over fifty years. The same thing is going to happen with being trans. Those numbers were taken from the Washington Post I wouldn't expect you to be making the point that we are seeing an explosion in the trans population because more people feel comfortable coming out just like we saw more left handed people after they stopped being abused. If memory serves me correct, you often post about how anti-trans hate and violence is at an all time high and will even use language that harkens to genocide or holocaust to describe the state of affairs for trans people in America. These two ideas seem at least slightly contradictory.
You're obviously on the verge of spending more time thinking about it, why not do so?
A reframing of ideas (I.E. lefthandedness is fine) allows a 'type of person' to feel more free and able to be themselves, then subsequently causes them to feel pushback in the forms of hate, violence, and abuse because conservative minds are attempting to reject their 'change'. This feels entirely natural and not at all contradictory.
I think the part that's missing for you is positive/fair representation in media being the catalyst that pushes people to better explore themselves. This leads to an 'awakening' where more people feel comfortable publicly being lefthanded and willing to accept that as a part of themselves. It's also why pronouns are important and not just a fad... though at some point they will have served their purpose and just be part of common parlance.
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Yeah, I think most of the disparities between good schools and bad occurs along wealth lines moreso than party lines, it's part and parcel with the discussion on gentrification at large, as opposed to whether the rich people voted D or R.
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On March 02 2023 17:59 Acrofales wrote:Show nested quote +On March 02 2023 16:55 Mikau313 wrote:On March 02 2023 15:02 Introvert wrote:On March 02 2023 00:07 ChristianS wrote:On March 01 2023 19:29 BlackJack wrote:On March 01 2023 16:06 ChristianS wrote:
There’s something so goofy about just responding to an opinion you disagree with saying “that’s an opinion born of ignorance, accidental or willful.” Presumably you’d say that about any opinion you disagree with? But whatever, I said I’m less interested in that subject and I meant it.
Are you familiar with some of Amazon’s more controversial business practices? I can try to enumerate some if that’s helpful, but I’m not sure if you’re saying you’re familiar and don’t think they qualify as “undue economic influence” or if you’re saying you’re not aware of the controversy. I mean, relatively mild example: there are whole industries that live and die by the Amazon search algorithm. They can have a great product that’s selling gangbusters and then some minor tweak to the algorithm and the product just never surfaces.
Another example: in order to participate in Amazon Prime (or at least some versions of it, it’s complicated) you have to basically provide Amazon with pretty involved details of your supply chain. Perhaps not coincidentally, Amazon is always looking for opportunities to introduce their own “Amazon Essentials” version of popular products, which (of course) is automatically included in Prime and gets favored in search results. So you’re basically forced to provide them with all the information they need to produce their own competitor and hide your product from customers.
That doesn’t sound like enormous economic power to you? All this “it’s a balance” talk sounds like you giving yourself permission to favor government taking a heavier hand if you decide something is a problem. So what would that take? And what would it look like, in your worldview, to do something? (Maybe break up Amazon? You brought that up, not me.) I feel like a company with a footprint the size of Amazon wouldn't have an issue of making a knock-off product and sourcing manufacturing for it regardless if they have some supply chain details from the 3rd party seller on their platform. Pretty much everything on Amazon has a thousand knock offs and "Amazon essentials" and "Amazon basics" are just one of many. The other 999 didn't seem to struggle even without the privileged information. Side note, I once got into the world of exchanging positive Amazon reviews for free products. I once bought an item and got an obscure email saying if I left a 5-star review they would refund my money. Then after that they told me more items to buy and leave reviews on for a full refund. Got like a free juicer, free vacuum food saver, etc. There's literally hundreds of listings for the same product all with different made up brand names. The person emailing me would try to be discrete and not tell me the brand name so they would say "when you search vacuum food saver it's the one on the 3rd page with the price of 54.99 and the coupon for 5% off" or something. Heh, that’s interesting. God, that whole ecosystem is such a nightmare. Hijacking listings is a bizarre hell, too. I mean, yeah, for any given product Amazon doesn’t need privileged information into their competitors’ processes to effectively produce a competing product and privilege it in search. But isn’t that another way of saying “they’ve got so much monopoly power already, this specific advantage they’re getting as platform-holders barely makes a difference?” I mean, owning a platform while competing on the platform and using their ownership as a huge advantage was the same shit Microsoft almost got broken up for in the 90s (probably should have been, but water under the bridge I guess). None of that’s even getting into treatment of workers, union-busting, or lobbying stuff; I figured for a free market guy like Intro, abusing their size and platform ownership to distort the market would be most relevant. But like, if a government agency trying to set emissions guidelines gives you visions of dystopia because “they’re restricting our economic freedom!” I just can’t see how the power accumulated by Amazon or Microsoft or Google doesn’t tickle a similar feeling. The EPA doesn’t have anybody peeing in bottles throughout their 12 hour shifts because a 2 minute bathroom break gets logged by the system as missing quota for those 2 minutes. Edit @Intro’s interim responses: I don’t actually think I ever said conservatives are peculiarly inconsistent in their beliefs, but maybe that doesn’t matter because I absolutely believe it’s true. Or at least, more how I would articulate it: I think the vast majority of right-wingers (who generally don the “conservative” label when it suits them) support policies completely inconsistent with the Reagan-era fusionism everybody associates with conservatism. The entire Trump administration was a long series of “Maybe this will be the thing that finally turns all those principled conservatives against him? …I guess not.” Famously I think Ann Coulter’s analysis was “he can betray us on literally any issue without losing any support. Except immigration.” Which looked pretty astute until it looked like he was betraying on immigration, and Ann Coulter freaked out but everyone else kept supporting him like every previous time. I might not say “peculiarly inconsistent” because the kind of political pragmatism you’re preaching here (no deciding based on ideological priors, we gotta look at each situation and consider the balance of interests on each side) is exactly what most Democrats seem to espouse. There’s not a lot of ideological through line to the party; maybe “incremental progress” and “reality-based communities” are pretty ubiquitous commitments. But otherwise they’re pretty open to free market or government solutions to problems, and in general aren’t very likely to reject a policy proposal because it’s anathema to some ideological commitment. They’ll cut taxes if they think it’ll help, for instance. Does that mean you could accuse Democrats of forming beliefs in a pretty politically motivated way, based on what suits them in a particular moment? …yes. I would, anyway. There’s certainly some miserable trends like smirking when some disaster impacts a red state and saying “lol shouldn’t have voted for Republicans” which is a pretty sharp contrast with the empathy they’d preach In a lot of other contexts. But that’s beside the point. My point is that if Hayek would despise the policies you’re proposing, you’re not actually a champion of Hayek. And modern conservative policy proposals certainly don’t seem like they would thrill Hayek or Burke or Buckley or any of the other supposed pillars of conservative thought. At this point, we should maybe (as Marco Rubio might say) dispense with the fiction that there’s a cadre of “principled conservatives” at places like National Review biding their time waiting to restore their ideology to the throne; either they don’t exist, or they’re too small in number and influence to be worth considering. I apologize for continuing this conversation still but I am trying to be clear. I'm sure at least some of the failure to understand is my fault. Hayek himself wasn't an absolutist, but that's besides the point. "Pragmatism" alone is not a philosophy, what I'm talking about is having a starting point or certain principles, like the ones i quoted, and trying to apply them to situations we find ourselves in. So I'm not saying there are no priors, but there is no one principle that is followed through on alone and at the expense of the others. I am NOT talking about some technocratic regime where we are just trying to optimize something, like tax revenue. What needs balance is in finding the best way to implement or preserve the exercise of those ideas. Everyone has priors. And every situation is different, which is why the conservatism of today is not the same as it was 60 years ago, although it's not as different as people think either (Buckley, after all wrote God and Man at Yale and was ranting about higher ed decades ago ). Problems change, so solutions change. If the principles are good, they don't change much, hopefully. Anyways, that's a longer post than i intended already. On March 02 2023 07:49 NewSunshine wrote:On March 02 2023 07:33 BlackJack wrote:
It's hard to imagine that say 10 years from now people are still going to be ending their work emails with "she/her/hers" or "he/she/them" or "zee/zir/zirs" or we will still be arguing over whether or not men can birth children. I don't think both sides will just see eye to eye on these things, rather it will just no longer be the flavor of the month to bicker and virtue signal over. It's not as hard for me to imagine. People are expanding how they think and talk about gender because it's important to who we and they are. It's not some flavor of the month thing. This conversation has been building up and evolving for way longer than 10 years, so it's a bit ignorant of history to think it's just a flash in the pan that's soon to die out. I do also want to circle back on the discussion with Intro, and make one more point. On March 01 2023 23:56 Introvert wrote:On March 01 2023 20:49 Liquid`Drone wrote:On February 28 2023 10:24 Introvert wrote:On February 27 2023 17:29 ChristianS wrote:
Honestly not sure what you mean by “all those things are in fact part of free exchange.” Which things? Working less? You mean wages, benefits, etc.? Yeah, of course, you negotiate with employers what wages and benefits you get. Interestingly, working less. At least in most industries, you can ask for more money and such, but you really can’t negotiate to, say, work 4 days a week instead of five. It’s just not an acceptable bargaining parameter.
You don’t owe me any hard rules, although I will say too much “forces in tension” and “there’s no perfect, it’s a balancing act” doesn’t make for a very coherent ideology. Critics might sometimes want to indict conservatives for a lack of internal consistency with their ideology, but is the defense going to be “we can’t be inconsistent with our ideology because our ideology is Calvinball”? If true, isn’t that… worse? Well obviously being able to negotiate and compromise isn't the same thing as getting exactly what you want. To your second paragraph, indeed there are those who contend that conservatism isn't really ideological in the sense that we normally use that word. And from many a leftist this is levied as a criticism. I can only speak for myself, but I think one of the best summaries of my conservative principles (as opposed to ideology) is in an updated form of the Sharon statement. + Show Spoiler +The Sharon Statement In this time of moral and political crises, it is the responsibility of the youth of America to affirm certain eternal truths. We, as young conservatives, believe: That foremost among the transcendent values is the individual’s use of his God-given free will, whence derives his right to be free from the restrictions of arbitrary force; That liberty is indivisible, and that political freedom cannot long exist without economic freedom; That the purpose of government is to protect those freedoms through the preservation of internal order, the provision of national defense, and the administration of justice; That when government ventures beyond these rightful functions, it accumulates power, which tends to diminish order and liberty; That the Constitution of the United States is the best arrangement yet devised for empowering government to fulfill its proper role, while restraining it from the concentration and abuse of power; That the genius of the Constitution—the division of powers—is summed up in the clause that reserves primacy to the several states, or to the people, in those spheres not specifically delegated to the Federal government; That the market economy, allocating resources by the free play of supply and demand, is the single economic system compatible with the requirements of personal freedom and constitutional government, and that it is at the same time the most productive supplier of human needs; That when government interferes with the work of the market economy, it tends to reduce the moral and physical strength of the nation; that when it takes from one man to bestow on another, it diminishes the incentive of the first, the integrity of the second, and the moral autonomy of both; That we will be free only so long as the national sovereignty of the United States is secure; that history shows periods of freedom are rare, and can exist only when free citizens concertedly defend their rights against all enemies; That the forces of international Communism are, at present, the greatest single threat to these liberties; That the United States should stress victory over, rather than coexistence with, this menace; and That American foreign policy must be judged by this criterion: does it serve the just interests of the United States? https://www.yaf.org/news/the-sharon-statement/It's obviously a little outdated but it gets to the core ideas. Shouldn't this - 'That foremost among the transcendent values is the individual’s use of his God-given free will, whence derives his right to be free from the restrictions of arbitrary force' be a ringing endorsement of say, trans rights, or that of immigrants to freely migrate? I'd include abortion but I can see how the administration of justice would be in conflict with that, assuming one has the pov many conservatives presumably have. But surely the poor Latin American has an equal amount of God-given free will and an equal right to use it, free from the restrictions of arbitrary force? Surely people choosing their own gender identity is not in conflict with this? What I'm obviously getting at is that, at least from my outsidery perspective, it seems like the current republican party, with its focus on immigration and culture war issues, does in no way concern itself with 'maximizing free-will utilization', but rather on cementing a certain social order found in the glorious yonderyears - but that social order would really only 'maximize free will' for groups of people that today will generally be considered 'privileged'. From a 'societal goals'-perspective, maximizing 'the ability of the individual to influence his or her own life' (a phrase I like more than 'god-given free will', but I'll happily consider them the same thing, effectively) is an admirable goal and one I am supportive of. However, what many, myself included believe, is that for this to actually be possible, the playing field must be level, and if it isn't, it must first be levelled. Hmm, you picked a touchy example lol. I will say this, most conservatives are ok letting adults, fully informed of what they are doing, make their own decisions. Children are another story and the desire to make everyone else recognize something that to them is self-evidently false is... problematic. ...and that would be the almost breathtaking irony and lack of self awareness required to unironically make this statement as a US conservative. Aside from my response on gender identity specifically, it takes some gall to insinuate that they have any value for letting other people have the right to make their own informed choices. If I'm going to give any weight or credence to this line of argument I expect to see accompanying arguments to not just restore but bolster the laws established by Roe v. Wade that they gutted. Then I'll cede that there is a principle at play and not just political pugilism. Who was it, after all, that successfully forced their viewpoint on the rest of the country instead of just keeping that viewpoint to themselves? Snarky? Maybe. But I just realized I don't care. I'd sooner expect Libertarians to successfully live and let live, because for some of them they sincerely believe in it when they say it. I find it more breathtaking you picked abortion as an example. It's so easy to see how there is no conflict there if you tried for even 10 seconds to understand the opposite point of view. Unfortunately, you have repeatedly demonstrated an implacable unwillingness to ever attempt such a thing, and therefore the example you thought was so great would completely neutered to a curious observer. This dogged determination to pretend there are no other good-faith views besides your own is probably also the reason you unironically talk about conservatives being culture warriors and things being forced down people's throats. edit: moreover, again for everyone else in the thread. Dobbs didn't "force their viewpoint." It was the opposite. Now, the decision belongs to the voters instead of judges. The Court returned power to the people, but again this is apparently hard to grasp. If we are going to complain about ulterior motives I might say the claimed love of "democracy" looks pretty thin on this one, a controversial and unsettled issue on which the Constitution is entirely silent. While I take those 10 seconds to understand the opposite point of view, why don't you take those same 10 seconds to look up the scientific consensus that makes it rather clear that "the opposite point of view" is simply factually incorrect. Or, take those same seconds and look at the other policies that Republicans enact or propose after a child is born and see how literally everything other than banning abortion in their platform is the exact opposite of being 'pro life'. Painting 'the opposite point of view' as being based on moral convictions about when life begins and the sanctity of life is both a) biologically incorrect and b) clearly not consistent with the rest of the position(s) on said 'sanctity of life'. In other words, it's bullshit, and both sides of the political spectrum know it's bullshit. I don't want to get into the abortion debate again. I'll just point out that that is not what introvert said at all. I don't agree with him at all, but what he said is that Roe vs Wade was (1) unconstitutional and (2) he preferred this be decided more locally. Anyway, what I find much more interesting than rehashing abortion, again, is how fast we pivoted from discussing the conservative liberal take on capitalism to the conservative position on social policies. What I take from that is that it's difficult to discuss the nuanced differences between a social democracy and a (neo)-liberal democracy, as it comes down to actual policy rather than some major ideological difference. And Introvert has avoided discussing actual economic policy he agrees with. However, we are happy to get dragged into another few pages of culture war stuff when someone mentions trans rights or abortion. Those are important issues, but they are also very "safe" territory for capitalists: they are a place where progressive capitalists and conservative capitalists disagree on basic ideology. I'm inclined to agree with GH that in this respect, progressive capitalists are NOT socialists' allies. They avoid discussing difficult policy details of moving toward a more social society and will impact 90% of society, in favor instead debating polemic issues that get lots of people riled up, but at the end of the day, affect a tiny portion of the population. Why are we discussing what bathrooms 1% of students can use when the school around those bathrooms is collapsing from a lack of funding for maintenance? Why do we let conservatives dictate the battleground issues? We should be fighting for reforming education and energy. Lets discuss that. Introvert, we need policy to improve education standards throughout the nation. We need to impose a wealth tax (for all I care, it can be a death tax. Any wealth over N million is taxed at 100% rate. If I have no trust in Bezos or Gates, I have even less faith in their family, who didn't do anything other than happen to be born. The exact same arguments against monarchy apply here), and provide better funding for the IRS (they currently cannot do their job to adequately combat tax fraud, which you should agree with me, is bad). With the revenue from these actions, we double the education budget in order to fix schools up and provide a safe learning environment for ALL children. I'm not even discussing what they should learn, just the environment in which it happens! That includes existing schools, but also ensuring all children have reasonable access to a school: nobody should need to travel more than half an hour to school. It also means having enough teachers to actually fill the students' time at school, so we need to ensure teacher wages are competitive and hire more teachers to ensure class sizes are reasonable. I'm sure other people more familiar with the US education situation will have other ideas on what we can do to improve schooling without even discussing the curriculum itself.
There are certainly some things in the education system that have had bipartisan support (although, unfortunately, one of the most notorious examples of this is a general consensus on being pro- standardized testing through various initiatives like NCLB and ESSA, although I believe they were created with sincerely good intentions), so it wouldn't be unprecedented for Democrats and Republicans to come together. Being able to sufficiently fund schools should be the easiest thing to agree on, the lowest hanging fruit. Unfortunately, there are several reasons why Republicans won't play ball with your suggestions (which I think are great suggestions, for what it's worth):
-Increasing taxes on the rich would go against one of their most fundamental principles (which would be... umm... specifically not increasing taxes on the rich);
-Republicans are also committed to the "school choice" argument - which means not increasing the funding of public schools and specifically funneling the present money away to charter schools and any other alternatives that they can (and one of the reasons why they're committed to this is specifically because of public school curriculum, so it's impossible to truly separate curriculum from funding, in their eyes);
-They (or anyone) could try to dodge the entire conversation by stating that money alone won't solve all the issues that we have in our education system, from needing more teachers to needing better infrastructure, and they'd be correct, although the increase in funding is still a necessary component in the grand scheme of things.
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On March 02 2023 23:31 Introvert wrote:Show nested quote +On March 02 2023 17:59 Acrofales wrote:On March 02 2023 16:55 Mikau313 wrote:On March 02 2023 15:02 Introvert wrote:On March 02 2023 00:07 ChristianS wrote:On March 01 2023 19:29 BlackJack wrote:On March 01 2023 16:06 ChristianS wrote:
There’s something so goofy about just responding to an opinion you disagree with saying “that’s an opinion born of ignorance, accidental or willful.” Presumably you’d say that about any opinion you disagree with? But whatever, I said I’m less interested in that subject and I meant it.
Are you familiar with some of Amazon’s more controversial business practices? I can try to enumerate some if that’s helpful, but I’m not sure if you’re saying you’re familiar and don’t think they qualify as “undue economic influence” or if you’re saying you’re not aware of the controversy. I mean, relatively mild example: there are whole industries that live and die by the Amazon search algorithm. They can have a great product that’s selling gangbusters and then some minor tweak to the algorithm and the product just never surfaces.
Another example: in order to participate in Amazon Prime (or at least some versions of it, it’s complicated) you have to basically provide Amazon with pretty involved details of your supply chain. Perhaps not coincidentally, Amazon is always looking for opportunities to introduce their own “Amazon Essentials” version of popular products, which (of course) is automatically included in Prime and gets favored in search results. So you’re basically forced to provide them with all the information they need to produce their own competitor and hide your product from customers.
That doesn’t sound like enormous economic power to you? All this “it’s a balance” talk sounds like you giving yourself permission to favor government taking a heavier hand if you decide something is a problem. So what would that take? And what would it look like, in your worldview, to do something? (Maybe break up Amazon? You brought that up, not me.) I feel like a company with a footprint the size of Amazon wouldn't have an issue of making a knock-off product and sourcing manufacturing for it regardless if they have some supply chain details from the 3rd party seller on their platform. Pretty much everything on Amazon has a thousand knock offs and "Amazon essentials" and "Amazon basics" are just one of many. The other 999 didn't seem to struggle even without the privileged information. Side note, I once got into the world of exchanging positive Amazon reviews for free products. I once bought an item and got an obscure email saying if I left a 5-star review they would refund my money. Then after that they told me more items to buy and leave reviews on for a full refund. Got like a free juicer, free vacuum food saver, etc. There's literally hundreds of listings for the same product all with different made up brand names. The person emailing me would try to be discrete and not tell me the brand name so they would say "when you search vacuum food saver it's the one on the 3rd page with the price of 54.99 and the coupon for 5% off" or something. Heh, that’s interesting. God, that whole ecosystem is such a nightmare. Hijacking listings is a bizarre hell, too. I mean, yeah, for any given product Amazon doesn’t need privileged information into their competitors’ processes to effectively produce a competing product and privilege it in search. But isn’t that another way of saying “they’ve got so much monopoly power already, this specific advantage they’re getting as platform-holders barely makes a difference?” I mean, owning a platform while competing on the platform and using their ownership as a huge advantage was the same shit Microsoft almost got broken up for in the 90s (probably should have been, but water under the bridge I guess). None of that’s even getting into treatment of workers, union-busting, or lobbying stuff; I figured for a free market guy like Intro, abusing their size and platform ownership to distort the market would be most relevant. But like, if a government agency trying to set emissions guidelines gives you visions of dystopia because “they’re restricting our economic freedom!” I just can’t see how the power accumulated by Amazon or Microsoft or Google doesn’t tickle a similar feeling. The EPA doesn’t have anybody peeing in bottles throughout their 12 hour shifts because a 2 minute bathroom break gets logged by the system as missing quota for those 2 minutes. Edit @Intro’s interim responses: I don’t actually think I ever said conservatives are peculiarly inconsistent in their beliefs, but maybe that doesn’t matter because I absolutely believe it’s true. Or at least, more how I would articulate it: I think the vast majority of right-wingers (who generally don the “conservative” label when it suits them) support policies completely inconsistent with the Reagan-era fusionism everybody associates with conservatism. The entire Trump administration was a long series of “Maybe this will be the thing that finally turns all those principled conservatives against him? …I guess not.” Famously I think Ann Coulter’s analysis was “he can betray us on literally any issue without losing any support. Except immigration.” Which looked pretty astute until it looked like he was betraying on immigration, and Ann Coulter freaked out but everyone else kept supporting him like every previous time. I might not say “peculiarly inconsistent” because the kind of political pragmatism you’re preaching here (no deciding based on ideological priors, we gotta look at each situation and consider the balance of interests on each side) is exactly what most Democrats seem to espouse. There’s not a lot of ideological through line to the party; maybe “incremental progress” and “reality-based communities” are pretty ubiquitous commitments. But otherwise they’re pretty open to free market or government solutions to problems, and in general aren’t very likely to reject a policy proposal because it’s anathema to some ideological commitment. They’ll cut taxes if they think it’ll help, for instance. Does that mean you could accuse Democrats of forming beliefs in a pretty politically motivated way, based on what suits them in a particular moment? …yes. I would, anyway. There’s certainly some miserable trends like smirking when some disaster impacts a red state and saying “lol shouldn’t have voted for Republicans” which is a pretty sharp contrast with the empathy they’d preach In a lot of other contexts. But that’s beside the point. My point is that if Hayek would despise the policies you’re proposing, you’re not actually a champion of Hayek. And modern conservative policy proposals certainly don’t seem like they would thrill Hayek or Burke or Buckley or any of the other supposed pillars of conservative thought. At this point, we should maybe (as Marco Rubio might say) dispense with the fiction that there’s a cadre of “principled conservatives” at places like National Review biding their time waiting to restore their ideology to the throne; either they don’t exist, or they’re too small in number and influence to be worth considering. I apologize for continuing this conversation still but I am trying to be clear. I'm sure at least some of the failure to understand is my fault. Hayek himself wasn't an absolutist, but that's besides the point. "Pragmatism" alone is not a philosophy, what I'm talking about is having a starting point or certain principles, like the ones i quoted, and trying to apply them to situations we find ourselves in. So I'm not saying there are no priors, but there is no one principle that is followed through on alone and at the expense of the others. I am NOT talking about some technocratic regime where we are just trying to optimize something, like tax revenue. What needs balance is in finding the best way to implement or preserve the exercise of those ideas. Everyone has priors. And every situation is different, which is why the conservatism of today is not the same as it was 60 years ago, although it's not as different as people think either (Buckley, after all wrote God and Man at Yale and was ranting about higher ed decades ago ). Problems change, so solutions change. If the principles are good, they don't change much, hopefully. Anyways, that's a longer post than i intended already. On March 02 2023 07:49 NewSunshine wrote:On March 02 2023 07:33 BlackJack wrote:
It's hard to imagine that say 10 years from now people are still going to be ending their work emails with "she/her/hers" or "he/she/them" or "zee/zir/zirs" or we will still be arguing over whether or not men can birth children. I don't think both sides will just see eye to eye on these things, rather it will just no longer be the flavor of the month to bicker and virtue signal over. It's not as hard for me to imagine. People are expanding how they think and talk about gender because it's important to who we and they are. It's not some flavor of the month thing. This conversation has been building up and evolving for way longer than 10 years, so it's a bit ignorant of history to think it's just a flash in the pan that's soon to die out. I do also want to circle back on the discussion with Intro, and make one more point. On March 01 2023 23:56 Introvert wrote:On March 01 2023 20:49 Liquid`Drone wrote:On February 28 2023 10:24 Introvert wrote:On February 27 2023 17:29 ChristianS wrote:
Honestly not sure what you mean by “all those things are in fact part of free exchange.” Which things? Working less? You mean wages, benefits, etc.? Yeah, of course, you negotiate with employers what wages and benefits you get. Interestingly, working less. At least in most industries, you can ask for more money and such, but you really can’t negotiate to, say, work 4 days a week instead of five. It’s just not an acceptable bargaining parameter.
You don’t owe me any hard rules, although I will say too much “forces in tension” and “there’s no perfect, it’s a balancing act” doesn’t make for a very coherent ideology. Critics might sometimes want to indict conservatives for a lack of internal consistency with their ideology, but is the defense going to be “we can’t be inconsistent with our ideology because our ideology is Calvinball”? If true, isn’t that… worse? Well obviously being able to negotiate and compromise isn't the same thing as getting exactly what you want. To your second paragraph, indeed there are those who contend that conservatism isn't really ideological in the sense that we normally use that word. And from many a leftist this is levied as a criticism. I can only speak for myself, but I think one of the best summaries of my conservative principles (as opposed to ideology) is in an updated form of the Sharon statement. + Show Spoiler +The Sharon Statement In this time of moral and political crises, it is the responsibility of the youth of America to affirm certain eternal truths. We, as young conservatives, believe: That foremost among the transcendent values is the individual’s use of his God-given free will, whence derives his right to be free from the restrictions of arbitrary force; That liberty is indivisible, and that political freedom cannot long exist without economic freedom; That the purpose of government is to protect those freedoms through the preservation of internal order, the provision of national defense, and the administration of justice; That when government ventures beyond these rightful functions, it accumulates power, which tends to diminish order and liberty; That the Constitution of the United States is the best arrangement yet devised for empowering government to fulfill its proper role, while restraining it from the concentration and abuse of power; That the genius of the Constitution—the division of powers—is summed up in the clause that reserves primacy to the several states, or to the people, in those spheres not specifically delegated to the Federal government; That the market economy, allocating resources by the free play of supply and demand, is the single economic system compatible with the requirements of personal freedom and constitutional government, and that it is at the same time the most productive supplier of human needs; That when government interferes with the work of the market economy, it tends to reduce the moral and physical strength of the nation; that when it takes from one man to bestow on another, it diminishes the incentive of the first, the integrity of the second, and the moral autonomy of both; That we will be free only so long as the national sovereignty of the United States is secure; that history shows periods of freedom are rare, and can exist only when free citizens concertedly defend their rights against all enemies; That the forces of international Communism are, at present, the greatest single threat to these liberties; That the United States should stress victory over, rather than coexistence with, this menace; and That American foreign policy must be judged by this criterion: does it serve the just interests of the United States? https://www.yaf.org/news/the-sharon-statement/It's obviously a little outdated but it gets to the core ideas. Shouldn't this - 'That foremost among the transcendent values is the individual’s use of his God-given free will, whence derives his right to be free from the restrictions of arbitrary force' be a ringing endorsement of say, trans rights, or that of immigrants to freely migrate? I'd include abortion but I can see how the administration of justice would be in conflict with that, assuming one has the pov many conservatives presumably have. But surely the poor Latin American has an equal amount of God-given free will and an equal right to use it, free from the restrictions of arbitrary force? Surely people choosing their own gender identity is not in conflict with this? What I'm obviously getting at is that, at least from my outsidery perspective, it seems like the current republican party, with its focus on immigration and culture war issues, does in no way concern itself with 'maximizing free-will utilization', but rather on cementing a certain social order found in the glorious yonderyears - but that social order would really only 'maximize free will' for groups of people that today will generally be considered 'privileged'. From a 'societal goals'-perspective, maximizing 'the ability of the individual to influence his or her own life' (a phrase I like more than 'god-given free will', but I'll happily consider them the same thing, effectively) is an admirable goal and one I am supportive of. However, what many, myself included believe, is that for this to actually be possible, the playing field must be level, and if it isn't, it must first be levelled. Hmm, you picked a touchy example lol. I will say this, most conservatives are ok letting adults, fully informed of what they are doing, make their own decisions. Children are another story and the desire to make everyone else recognize something that to them is self-evidently false is... problematic. ...and that would be the almost breathtaking irony and lack of self awareness required to unironically make this statement as a US conservative. Aside from my response on gender identity specifically, it takes some gall to insinuate that they have any value for letting other people have the right to make their own informed choices. If I'm going to give any weight or credence to this line of argument I expect to see accompanying arguments to not just restore but bolster the laws established by Roe v. Wade that they gutted. Then I'll cede that there is a principle at play and not just political pugilism. Who was it, after all, that successfully forced their viewpoint on the rest of the country instead of just keeping that viewpoint to themselves? Snarky? Maybe. But I just realized I don't care. I'd sooner expect Libertarians to successfully live and let live, because for some of them they sincerely believe in it when they say it. I find it more breathtaking you picked abortion as an example. It's so easy to see how there is no conflict there if you tried for even 10 seconds to understand the opposite point of view. Unfortunately, you have repeatedly demonstrated an implacable unwillingness to ever attempt such a thing, and therefore the example you thought was so great would completely neutered to a curious observer. This dogged determination to pretend there are no other good-faith views besides your own is probably also the reason you unironically talk about conservatives being culture warriors and things being forced down people's throats. edit: moreover, again for everyone else in the thread. Dobbs didn't "force their viewpoint." It was the opposite. Now, the decision belongs to the voters instead of judges. The Court returned power to the people, but again this is apparently hard to grasp. If we are going to complain about ulterior motives I might say the claimed love of "democracy" looks pretty thin on this one, a controversial and unsettled issue on which the Constitution is entirely silent. While I take those 10 seconds to understand the opposite point of view, why don't you take those same 10 seconds to look up the scientific consensus that makes it rather clear that "the opposite point of view" is simply factually incorrect. Or, take those same seconds and look at the other policies that Republicans enact or propose after a child is born and see how literally everything other than banning abortion in their platform is the exact opposite of being 'pro life'. Painting 'the opposite point of view' as being based on moral convictions about when life begins and the sanctity of life is both a) biologically incorrect and b) clearly not consistent with the rest of the position(s) on said 'sanctity of life'. In other words, it's bullshit, and both sides of the political spectrum know it's bullshit. I don't want to get into the abortion debate again. I'll just point out that that is not what introvert said at all. I don't agree with him at all, but what he said is that Roe vs Wade was (1) unconstitutional and (2) he preferred this be decided more locally. Anyway, what I find much more interesting than rehashing abortion, again, is how fast we pivoted from discussing the conservative liberal take on capitalism to the conservative position on social policies. What I take from that is that it's difficult to discuss the nuanced differences between a social democracy and a (neo)-liberal democracy, as it comes down to actual policy rather than some major ideological difference. And Introvert has avoided discussing actual economic policy he agrees with. However, we are happy to get dragged into another few pages of culture war stuff when someone mentions trans rights or abortion. Those are important issues, but they are also very "safe" territory for capitalists: they are a place where progressive capitalists and conservative capitalists disagree on basic ideology. I'm inclined to agree with GH that in this respect, progressive capitalists are NOT socialists' allies. They avoid discussing difficult policy details of moving toward a more social society and will impact 90% of society, in favor instead debating polemic issues that get lots of people riled up, but at the end of the day, affect a tiny portion of the population. Why are we discussing what bathrooms 1% of students can use when the school around those bathrooms is collapsing from a lack of funding for maintenance? Why do we let conservatives dictate the battleground issues? We should be fighting for reforming education and energy. Lets discuss that. Introvert, we need policy to improve education standards throughout the nation. We need to impose a wealth tax (for all I care, it can be a death tax. Any wealth over N million is taxed at 100% rate. If I have no trust in Bezos or Gates, I have even less faith in their family, who didn't do anything other than happen to be born. The exact same arguments against monarchy apply here), and provide better funding for the IRS (they currently cannot do their job to adequately combat tax fraud, which you should agree with me, is bad). With the revenue from these actions, we double the education budget in order to fix schools up and provide a safe learning environment for ALL children. I'm not even discussing what they should learn, just the environment in which it happens! That includes existing schools, but also ensuring all children have reasonable access to a school: nobody should need to travel more than half an hour to school. It also means having enough teachers to actually fill the students' time at school, so we need to ensure teacher wages are competitive and hire more teachers to ensure class sizes are reasonable. I'm sure other people more familiar with the US education situation will have other ideas on what we can do to improve schooling without even discussing the curriculum itself. Tbf to everyone involved, I jumped into the conversation by saying we can defend capitalism without resorting to "it sucks less." Particularly when you look at who the posters involved were, I think it's easy to see how general arguments and principles were of more relevance than arguing over the tax rate or education funding levels. GH isn't going to change his perspective because we doubled per-pupil spending , he objects to something like what you said we could ignore, e.g. what is taught. But I quoted something I thought was a good summary and a post or two later Drone came in asking it's relevance to a different issue. I also think that's fine, there's a reason people on the left economically are to the left socially, going back to what I said it's about worldview or first principles. Also, talking specifics on economics is more difficult because we aren't experts familiar with all the literature (that's not bad, but it makes things harder). And there are also a lot of numbers which take a lot of time to sift through, all so that we can argue at the margins. We could pick a single topic to discuss, like education, but the conversation started general and I was trying to keep it there. Nevermind the time commitment to talk about these things, though at this rate I suppose I've already invested significantly in this conversation lol. I will just point out that even deep blue states that spend through the nose have crappy schools, it's nor a question of money as the US spends a lot per student. The rot is elsewhere. I live in CA so my instinct is to say much of the problem lies with teachers themselves, or more accurately, their unions. Nonwtheless, If you like to discuss this then fine. I'm not sure though if you said that more to make a point lol
Every school in every town in every state has their own issues, and the American education system as a whole has immense room for improvement. That being said, blue states are generally outperforming red states when it comes to K-12 educational factors like math scores, reading scores, high school graduation rate, and college readiness ( https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/rankings/education/prek-12 ). In fact, the best performing states are almost all blue (check out the top ranked 50% in that source), while the worst states are almost all red (check out the bottom ranked 50%), with the one significant exception being that California is ranked 40th out of 50. That source is using 2018-2019 data, and the trend that blue states outperform red states is consistent both before and after that pair of years. For example, here's another source, this time ranking states for 2023: https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/public-school-rankings-by-state (Same thing: Top half is generally blue, and bottom half is generally red + California.) That's not to say that simply voting for a Democrat means your state will automatically have better educational outcomes, but it could be useful (especially for red states and California, if they're interested in improving the quality of their K-12 public education) to study what the blue states are doing right.
I would be interested in learning more about why you think teachers are a significant problem. (I know you also said "or more accurately, their unions", but the members of the unions are the teachers.)
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i may reply to that over the weekend but in case i don't, my comment wasn't intended to say that blue states have crappy schools vs red states have good ones but that even in states where they spend more, there are still many crappy schools. I agree with both you and JimmiC that generalizing to all schools across a state is too broad for many metrics, locale is a very important factor. I am sure there are many fine schools in MA, just iirc they are not evenly distributed. we also have confounding factors like parental income which i think (?) has a correlation as well. And of course I have a bias because i am in CA. and finally i agree a good education is vitally important, and this something even the founders knew. i do also wonder if that New England ethos still has trailing effects. it's just not at all clear to me that what's needed is more money, as opposed to a systemic fix or reform of some kind.
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One thing that is just always going to be unfair and unfortunate about education is the role parents play. Studies show that kids raised in affluent families with lots of involvement, guidance, and support cost significantly less to educate. When the kid's mom smokes crack in the living room, the things you need to do to get that kid to graduate high school are extensive. Compare that to an affluent kid raised in an affluent family with a stay at home mom. Just being raised to value education, be shown the impact of a successful career, and then individually tutored to improve academic abilities is a big deal.
Lots of research also shows that being slightly behind when you start school has a huge, cascading effect. And the opposite is also true.
So because of this, if you were to look at actual school spending per kid at a rich school, you'd see a way better performance compared to a school in a bad neighborhood spending twice as much. Parenting is just such a big deal in this situation. It is cruel to children to not just give the poor area schools however much money they need. These kids are totally helpless. Its easy to look at what a failure the parents are, but its important to remember if we agree the parent is a shit head, that means there is a very unlucky kid who did nothing to draw the short straw parents.
If any of you ever find yourself confronted with a choice to increase or decrease school funding, please remember that it is the misfortunate kids who literally have no option for growth other than school because their parents are harming rather than accelerating their development. they are totally screwed without the extra help.
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On March 03 2023 15:25 Introvert wrote:
i may reply to that over the weekend but in case i don't, my comment wasn't intended to say that blue states have crappy schools vs red states have good ones but that even in states where they spend more, there are still many crappy schools. I agree with both you and JimmiC that generalizing to all schools across a state is too broad for many metrics, locale is a very important factor. I am sure there are many fine schools in MA, just iirc they are not evenly distributed. we also have confounding factors like parental income which i think (?) has a correlation as well. And of course I have a bias because i am in CA. and finally i agree a good education is vitally important, and this something even the founders knew. i do also wonder if that New England ethos still has trailing effects. it's just not at all clear to me that what's needed is more money, as opposed to a systemic fix or reform of some kind.
What I can't believe about the US is that property tax in the particular area is used to decide school funding.
Betsy was an absolute cancer to the education in the US, with the exception of for-profit religious schools.
Reforming schooling has never been a success afaik. What happens is that some idea of the time is forced upon the teachers, and implementing them sucks resources from educating the kids.
Finland has show the world how to do it: pay the teachers well and give them status and good work conditions. Then trust them to teach the way they think is best for the class. Well meaning politician will never know better than them.
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On March 03 2023 16:19 Mohdoo wrote:
It is cruel to children to not just give the poor area schools however much money they need. But no one ever will give any school "however much money they need" - it's not quantifiable amount, is it?
How do you measure this? How do you measurably justify why this school needs 1 million dollars and that one school of same size needs 3 or 5?
People might agree on something like "this school has 1.2x lower grades than average so they might need 1.2x more money that average per student to try and fix this". But not on "give however much money they need".
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EPT
