Ecgtheow
1yr ago
But I would explain the tension between them, and I think people who believe in fusionism would explain it this way, by saying that for mainstream conservatives the social and economic spheres are different aspects of government policy that require very different solutions. They'd hold that government policy doing things like raising taxes on large businesses rarely produces good outcomes, while government policy providing tax cuts to incentivize marriage or religious practice or family formation often does.
The libertarian view of the government is a state that enforces economic contracts and the NAP; the conservative view of the government is a state that enforces contracts and the NAP and uses some level of power to incentivize or reinforce the importance of the family, the significance of religion to society, that sort of thing.
I would frame the fusionist consensus differently. Social conservatives and libertarians made common cause based on the belief that market forces foster traditional social norms and structures and that the breakdown of these norms and structures is driven by government interference in the market. Here's David Frum writing in 1994's "Dead Right":
If I am bearded, and I notice that my boss and the last four men in my section to win promotion are clean-shaven, I will find myself slowly nudged toward the barbershop. If the owner of the gas station across the road from mine smiles a lot, and I don’t, I will find myself forcing a cheerful manner myself, no matter how snarly I may inwardly feel. People who do not have to work for a living, however, can indulge themselves in a hundred little peculiarities of behavior – one reason that the English upper class is so famously odd. Millions of Americans now live as free from the pressure to conform as any English lord, thanks either to the direct receipt of welfare or to civil service employment where promotion is by seniority and firing is unheard of. The fact, as much as any fashion change, explains the sudden flaunting of ethnic difference in manner and dress that so distresses Patrick Buchanan in his native city. Relatively few vice presidents at Proctor & Gamble would dare wear a kente cloth or keffiyeh; nobody who intends to earn very much of a living in the polymer business can hope to get away with not learning English; but city hall employees and welfare mothers can do both.
So the cultural conservatives are simply deluding themselves when they hope for escape from the unpleasant task of resisting every enlargement of the ambit of government action and trying, when opportunity presents itself, to reduce that ambit.” (p. 196)
While Frum, like many fusionists, is now an anti-Trump exile, this idea that traditional values would win under market conditions and deviance is fostered outside of the market is still prevalent. Woke norms cannot be an effective social technology for managing large companies in an increasingly diverse and queer country, it must be a market failure driven by civil rights law, the tyranny of the managerial class, or indoctrination via academia. I'm not saying all those explanations are wrong, I'm just noting the tradition they're in and the unifying purpose they serve.
In the post-2016 breakdown of fusionism Conservative intellectuals have tried to push policies designed to subsidize the family such as Romney's Child Tax Credit or Oren Cass's wage subsidy. These have been met with tepid responses from the base. I don't think the issue is that Conservatives underestimate the size of the subsidy necessary it's that they still believe that the male breadwinner-led nuclear family would 'win' in the market if not for some sort of interference and balk at viewing it as a sort of endangered species requiring state protection. Trump has broken with libertarians by making the market interference trade policy rather than welfare, but this idea still upholds the male breadwinner family as something that would thrive if not for some form of state failure.
I was gonna write more but I ran out of time and didn't want to leave a high quality comment unanswered for >24hrs.
Ecgtheow
1yr ago
That's why there's overwhelming demand for takes on gay and trans movement are top-down indoctrination and not an aspect of the true dominant ideology of our time, individualist consumerism.
Ecgtheow
1yr ago
This is what SJW's mean when they say white isn't an ethnicity it's a 'constructed position of power'. The category of white people has expanded and can expand further because it's not defined by a skin tone it's a coalition of people who have a God given right to look down on black people.
I feel about this post the way I feel about articles that say wine or chocolate in moderation has mild health benefits. Maybe there are some people who would benefit from adding a small amount of dark chocolate to their diet and this is valuable information to them, but most people are going to use that information to justify excessive consumption. Maybe there are some people who are so devoted to steel manning that they're missing out on important insights because they accept too many bad-faith weakman objections, but most people need to be pushed to focus on their opponent's best arguments. There are many, many sites on the internet that can be described as a magnifying glass focused on the outgroup's crazies, and most of them produce circle-jerks and dunk contests rather than a burning pyre of illumination. There's no alpha left in trying to detect structural flaws in your opponent's position based on their dumbest arguments.
There might be a tiny tiny bit of alpha in trying to explain the outgroup's collective epistemological dynamics, but "my opponents say they believe this because of x, but they really are motivated by y" is not exactly an untapped field of inquiry online either.
Any honest and rational believer needs to grapple for an explanation for how the crazies managed to all be accidentally right despite outfitted — by definition — with erroneous arguments. Such a scenario is so implausible that it commands a curious inquiry about its origin.
I don't think this is as unlikely as you say. Many political issues are directional in the near term (e.g. should taxes/welfare/prison sentence length go slightly up or down relative to status quo). Many crazies who you disagree with about the optimal tax level are going to end up on your side of the "should taxes go up or down' debate. Your opponents and engagement-driven social media have strong incentives to emphasize the crazies on your side, and you have a strong incentive to downplay their extremity by sane-washing them.
Ecgtheow
1yr ago
The Total solar eclipse in 2017 was absolutely worth it to me and I have plans for the 2024 one. If you're actually under the center of it you get a sunset effect in every direction, the birds go crazy, and the temperature suddenly drops. The whole thing feels like a rare moment of awe at the natural world that ends quickly enough that you never get a sort of hedonic treadmill effect where you get used to it and it loses its magic. It's not something I'd fly across the country for, but if you're an hour or two from the path of the 2024 total eclipse I highly recommend it.
Ecgtheow
1yr ago
One of the big aspects of a Post-Elon Blue Check for a while, was that blue check replies would automatically get listed at the top of replies to a tweet. This significantly degraded user experience because instead of the top replies being whoever got the most likes it would be whoever paid $8. This is part of what sparked the mass blocking of blue checks because if you actually wanted to see the top replies without scrolling for a while it's what you had to do. Blue Checks now seem like a signal of a low-quality engagement bait, or someone who is trying to commercialize their content.
The original blue check system existed to solve the problem of people impersonating brands. celebrities and major newscasters, but the marginal journalist who got certified enjoyed an unearned credibility boost over random bloggers and posters which led to a lot of animosity towards blue checks from right-wing posters. Elon tried to turn the mild status boost into a subscription service, maybe it'll work out, but now we're in a period of weird experiments where it seems to have mostly damaged the average user experience while benefitting opportunistic engagement-baiters.
I'm not a lawyer and I've been trying to figure out exactly what the standard is for using force in self defense. I read some FAQ from law firm websites and a lot of the issue comes down to whether the threat is 'imminent'. In clarifying whether a threat is imminent these blogs usually focus on timing. If a guy with a knife says "I'm going to stab you", that is an imminent threat you can defend yourself against. A guy without a knife saying "I'm gonna go get a knife come back here and stab you" does not constitute an imminent threat and you have no right to use force until he actually gets the knife and comes back. I haven't found anything on conditionals like "I don't care if I have to kill a F, I will" where it's not clear what he is about to do, or when he will do it, since we don't know what he 'has' to do.
I'm also not clear what the exact duration on 'imminent' is since most of the examples given involve very obvious immeadiete threats like someone running at another person with a knife or baseball bat. If Neely is issuing general threats and a reasonable person might fear that he will assault someone in the near future, but he hasn't threatened a specific person or moved to begin the act of assault does that constitute an 'imminent' threat?
Ecgtheow
1yr ago
Yeah I don't think this interview added much evidence other than that other people on the car were scared. The fact that she brought up him throwing his jacket and not any other instance of trash throwing may suggest he wasn't throwing anything particularly injurious.
Ecgtheow
1yr ago
Of the OECD countries America has the third fewest doctors per Capita. U.S. Doctors have the highest average pay and average net worth. Med Schools began to limit the number of graduates in 1980 leading to the number of med school graduates shrinking relative to the population from 1980 to 2005 (figure 4). The U.S. government also ceased giving grants for the construction of new med schools under Reagan. The 1997 budget act limited residency slots as a cost-saving measure though that was repealed under Obama.
The AMA and the Graduate Medical Education National Advisory Committee predicted that there would be a physician oversupply in 1980, this could be just bad demography or you could note that restricting the supply of future physicians helps keep wages for current physicians high and current physicians are the membership of the AMA. A lot of it is also penny-wise pound foolish thinking from the government. Cutting residency slots and not building new med schools saves money in the short term, but as long as you're committed to paying for the medical care of the poor and elderly you're going to have to purchase doctors labor so you want to keep the supply of doctors high.
Doctors' salaries aren't the main cause of healthcare spending, it's maybe 8-10% of the overall costs. But increasing the number of residency slots and the supply of doctors seems like the low-hanging fruit of health care reform that avoids major ideological schisms.
Ecgtheow
1yr ago
Was there a time in history when the art that was championed by elites was also popular with the masses? I genuinely don't know. Renaissance artists never had the chance for economic reasons. Picasso and Monet were successful in their time but were they successful among non-art snobs of their time? Was there some period where the mass public and the art establishment agreed or has the mass public just accepted the past judgement of art establishments from centuries ago because old things are classy.
I don't think the issue with the MLK sculpture is that it's meant to be transgressive or groundbreaking. It's Martin and Coretta embracing, it has a straightforward meaning. The artists just did a bad job of considering what their sculpture would look like from all angles and the people involved in the procurement process didn't push back. That one seems like more of an indictment of city purchasing processes than the art establishment.
Ecgtheow
1yr ago
If you go to your random local downtown art scene or art galleries in a resort town you can find lots of beautiful landscape paintings. It's not that the sort of technically proficient but not novel 'engineer' art isn't being done it's just not high status and not advanced by big time museums and institutions. Look at paintings in the 4-7k range in online marketplaces, there's lots of people still doing beautiful representational art.
Ecgtheow
1yr ago
If you look at produce in grocery stores, they tolerate some spoilage in order to make sure that they don't completely run out of any particular vegetable. It's difficult to predict exact sales of any particular fruit or vegetable and inconveniencing the consumer by running out loses more customers than passing on the cost savings of lower spoilage gains.
For some industries there could be a similar effect with labor, where having some slack in the system increases your ability to reliably meet tight deadlines and match peak demand. That reliability may be more valuable than the labor cost savings.
Ecgtheow
1yr ago
Norway does outstrip the U.S. in GDP/hours worked because of oil, at least in the 2016 data.
If Danish Americans have higher productivity than Danes it could be due to American institutions and increasing marginal returns on hours worked. It could also be that Danish Americans, as members of a much larger society with a wider range of IQ's can primarily occupy managerial and technical roles, where a larger share of Danes in Denmark end up mopping floors, waiting tables and taking care of kids because there isn't a population of low IQ people to do it for them.
I'll grant the Nordics aren't a perfect comparison class but what country that has achieved a major reduction in hours per worker is? Just going off Wikipedia's Labor Productivity & average hours worked list Germany has a GDP per hour of 68.85 vs. the US's 73 but 1300 hours per worker vs. America's 1,765. The UK has a much lower GDP per capita 54.35 but much closer hours worked, 1670. France has 68.63 GDP/hour and 1514 Hours worked.
OP is proposing a highly non linear relationship between hours workers and productivity. No one has reduced hours worked to the 20 hour work week (~1000/year) but within the range of hours per worker we see internationally the countries with the fewest hours worked have pretty high productivity. If you assume there is even a linear relationship than Europe is a bunch of sleeping giants economically that could increase their GDP by 20% overnight by skipping summer vacation.
Ecgtheow
1yr ago
This isn't entirely theoretical, there are European countries with more generous paid leave and lower unemployment rates that have much lower hours worked per worker. You can look at GDP per Capita per Hour Worked per worker and see how that correlates with productivity. Matt Brunieg has an old blog post comparing U.S. and the Nordics that suggests the relationship is relatively linear and they at least are able to work less hours per work and maintain comparable GDP/hour, and obviously there are tons of confounding variables. They do this by giving people long summer vacations rather than shorter work weeks
https://www.peoplespolicyproject.org/2018/05/31/work-levels-in-the-us-and-nordic-countries/
Ecgtheow
1yr ago
Eh, I have the opposite aesthetic preference. I wasn't raised on the KJV so when I hear verses I know with the Ye's it feels kind of cringe and ren faire-y.
Ecgtheow
1yr ago
Matthew 25:34 NIV
"Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’
“Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’
“The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’
I can see there being a theological implication of a homeless criminal saying he had nothing to eat or drink and being publicly strangled to death by a former soldier. He may have posed such an imminent threat to others that his killing was justified self defense but that wasn't in the viral video that provoked the response.
Ecgtheow
1yr ago
Neely ran away from a residential care facility he was placed in as part of a plea deal and there was a warrant for his arrest at the time of his killing. He's a shining example of someone who should be institutionalized, but lowering barriers to instituionalization involves complex trade offs and reasoning about them from viral news clips seems like a bad idea.
It comes up a lot in discussions of homelessness that there are lots of low visibility functional temporarily homeless people, and then a smaller number of high visibility dysfunctional long term homeless people. I briefly worked with an otherwise functional middle aged adult who had been homeless for a couple months. Cheap flophouses would be a huge benefit to people who are temporarily in between relatives with couches to crash on, but it wouldn't do much for the guys screaming on the subway.
Ecgtheow
1yr ago
A lot depends on what exactly happened in that subway car and everyone has gotten way over their skis on this. If someone inadvertently chokes off the blood supply of someone who was throwing glass bottles or metal cans that's a very different act than gradually choking out someone who issues nonspecific verbal threats and flung some papers. Is Neely vaguely muttering threats or is he up in a specific person's face telling them he's about the punch them out? Penny's self defense case hinges on a lot of information we just don't have.
This is part of why I think using force in self defense in response to verbal threats (if that's what happened) is really bad. If you make threats and someone starts trying to restrain you in a chokehold are you expected to de-escelate and hope they stop when you're unconscious because you recognize you're in the wrong for issuing threats?
Ecgtheow
1yr ago
Unionization of Agricultural workers is really hard for a variety of structural reasons and at least in California the United Farm Workers is basically dead.
There are a range of employers who would love to have a large pool of low wage workers who aren't protected by labor laws, low taxes, and minimal environmental regulations. A de-facto guest worker situation where migrants can enter the country but have no political rights, no access to entitlements, and are subject to threat of deportation serves their interests. Agriculture, meat processing, and construction are all powerful economic interests capable of organizing and lobbying for their needs.
The usage of E-Verify is something of a proxy for the balance of power between anti-immigration Republicans and this sort of employer. Many states in the south have mandatory E-Verify but major border states like Texas and Florida do not, or did not until recently. When Florida tried to do Mandatory E-Verify in 2020 they originally amended it so that agricultural employers would be exempt. But as far as I can tell the 2023 bill mandating E-Verify that passed a few days ago does not exempt Agriculture.
It'll be interesting to see how that shakes out. There's already been substantial wage growth at the bottom of the labor market post-2020 so if farmer's have to start hiring legal workers it could drive up costs of fruit. Part of the case for immigration restrictions is that it would increase wages for native workers, but those costs would obviously be passed on to native consumers. I don't think it'll be a major issue for Republicans in 2024 because the President always gets the credit or the blame for economic conditions. But if Republicans ever did enact serious restrictions on the labor supply it'd be interesting to see how they'd handle the ensuing inflation.
Ecgtheow
1yr ago
Is being a lightweight or middleweight boxer instead of a heavyweight demeaning? Why would participating in the 5'9" and under Basketball Division be demeaning?
I don't expect it to be a commercial success. When they're not joined to nationalist competitions like the Olympics track, swimming and gymnastic events don't seem to draw large audiences either. Youth & College Sports are basically publicly funded programs outside of a few major sports like Division I Football & Basketball.
I don't think we fund them because it's extremely important to society to determine who the fastest 800m runner is, we do it to encourage athleticism broadly. Why not allow the bottom half of the male height distribution an opportunity to participate in the organized version of am enormously popular sport and get some degree of social status for fulfilling their athletic potential?
Ecgtheow
1yr ago
Only being able to pass a limited number of bills through the reconciliation process in the senate and avoid the filibuster probably adds to the incentive to compile everything into one or two laws.
I that scene it's not as if they're not prepared to enforce compliance and totally bluffing, they're just not prepared to enforce compliance on Marlo Stanfield. If Bubbles tried to steal something the security guard would have stopped him without a second thought.
Marlo takes two Lollipops he could easily pay for while looking the guard in the eyes. He's signalling his power and his ability to flaunt the rules and personally disrespecting the security guard. The security guard knows Marlo can have him killed on a whim, he's scared to look him in the eyes and says 'he's not stepping to" Marlo, but him having pride as a man means he can't let the slight to unanswered. He's not asking Marlo not to defect, he's not trying to get the lollipop's back, he just wants to be recognized as a working man outside "the game" who isn't going to interfere with the gangs but shouldn't have to tolerate such clear disrespect either. And Marlo of course says no, it's the other way.
One of the running themes in The Wire is that the code of honor that allows drug dealers to exist alongside the community is in decay. Omar takes pride in never robbing a citizen, he's gunned down by a child. They shoot at his mother on her way to church. Avon's generation might have stolen, but they wouldn't have personally humiliated the security guard in doing so. Marlo is the next generation, he's more ruthless and has people killed constantly for vague suspicions or minor slights. The system that no longer exists isn't state and federal law, it's the norm that people outside "the game", especially "citizens" are to be left alone and not really interfered with.
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