GBRK
11hr ago
Do you have evidence for this?
Beyond gut instinct fermi estimates, no. But I should clarify that I'm speaking of the net effect of voting for politicians that promote particular anti-abortion policies. If I had to choose between two buttons labeled "end climate change" and "prevent abortions in the US for a hundred years" I would pick the second, but I don't think any sort of federal ban is actually enforceable. I'm suprised and impressed that republicans actually managed to overturn roe-v-wade, but most estimates of that claim that it only saves about ~30,000 lives a year. Compared to the marginal effect of preventing ISIS-style wars I'm unimpressed. I'm aware that the comparison is a little unfair because I'm imagining an intervention that could singlehandedly halt climate change at some degree thresholds-- but at the same time, I think it's likely that the most deleterious effects of climate change are liable to happen at the margins, where it might be possible to just hold the breaks long enough to get to a tipping point.
(Also, as a Catholic you should know it's not about the effect of paying for an abortion, it's about the remote material cooperation with evil. Being made complicit in the murder of a baby is the thing that really upsets us and Congress explicitly tried to protect us from.)
I'm concerned primarily with the net loss of life. But if we're speaking in terms of remote material cooperation with evil without considering numbers, preventing immigrants from making better lives for themselves also qualified.
GBRK
11hr ago
What mechanism do you want? I vote in accordance with my conscience, and my conscious tells me I'm going to save more lives by voting for climate action than by voting for anti-abortion measures. I wish I could just concentrate my beliefs in a single party but unfortunately we don't live in a parliamentarian democracy.
GBRK
11hr ago
The democrats are definitely the progressive party. Their policy is progressive. The mechanism they arrive at their progressivism doesn't really concern my argument. But if we agree then I don't care to dispute it.
I know we're arguing about definitions, which is the lowest form of argument, but I still think it's worth trying to get you to see my side. When you say, "the democrats are... the progressive party," you're taking a descriptive view of the ways the democrats behave. And it's accurate! But it's also missing the point. It's like calling a motorcycle gang a "motorcycle helmet wearing gang". Democrats adopt progressivism because it is useful to them-- because they have particular common needs the ideology serves. They would still be (mostly) bound together if they found a different way of addressing the same needs. That's why I call democrats the urban party-- because their needs and desires are fundamentally a result of what urbanites need and want. Yes, there are non-urbanist democrats, just like there are urbanist republicans, because not all urbanites share the same needs. But serving urban environments is still fundamentally the core of what the party is and wants.
What evidence is there that indicates that the US is headed towards organized political violence?
Uh, the fact that we're already here? Two trump assasins and luigi. Unless the economy skyrockets and things start getting immediately better now we're already going through what later historians will probably call "the american troubles" or something alike.
GBRK
11hr ago
Progressivism is unpopular; a very tiny percentage of voters thought democrats were too far to the right.
I had this same mental model of the world, and then harris lost. Without changing how I personally feel about progressivism, I now have to concede that the left-populists were right about the electorate.
It's worth remembering that the last democrat with any sort of popular movement was Yang, and he's also strongly populist-progressive (though not so much left-progressive.)
GBRK
11hr ago
I don't mind if we eat the rich too, I just think it's infeasible. Slave revolutions basically never work-- you have to have some sort of elite buy-in.
That was a typo lol. I mean, "easier to destroy than to create." Actually that plays into why I believe trump is stupid-- it's really easy to see how the bulk of his success is just the short-term gains from looting complex systems he lacks the intelligence to create. I won't dispute calling him "canny" because he really does have an exceptionally refined sort of animal cunning where he understands what people want on an emotional level... but I would define intelligence as either the general intelligence score or the capacity for abstract thought, and trump's mode of speech alone disproves him possessing those.
GBRK
12hr ago
Then if you believe in election fraud anyways there's no point making the defense of "each state runs their own elections." In fact, you should probably accept that all elections are totally rigged, and take the sequence of events from 2016-2024 as evidence that the deep state was secretly on your side as part of a long-term plan to get trump in office.
GBRK
1d ago
In any case, the cumulative effect of this back-and-forth wrenching will not, I think, be a net increase in state capacity and control.
I think you're dramatically underestimating the bully power of a president with full regulatory authority over the corporations and therefore culture of the united states.
But oh well, at this point we're still discussing counterfactual. I wish I could just remindme! 8 years.
Unless-- do you have a manifold account? We could make some prediction markets to resolve this.
GBRK
1d ago
Maybe we can agree at this point to not delegate so much to the executive?
I agree on this point, and that's exactly why I liked that these agencies were independent. The senate could have killed the filibuster instead and started passing laws to deal with the administrative state if they wanted to-- but they didn't because presumably the ability to loot the government and install bureacrats via a patronage system is more convenient. Oh well.
What do you think it's been like to be a Conservative this whole time? Do you think we like not having the Comstock Act enforced and have our taxes go to killing babies in their mother's womb? What are you worried about that tops that?
Climate change. I'm a catholic, and therefore anti-abortion, but the net effect of stuff like "not funding abortions" is dramatically outweighed by the net increase in deaths caused by droughts, floods, famines, and famine-related-instability.
But oh well, at least this power is symmetric. I hope the next democratic president just straight-up regulates carbon intensive industries out of existence.
GBRK
1d ago
These are reasons that do not support your position that it is easier to create than to destroy, they support the position that it is easier to destroy than to create.
Uh, I just realized I stupidly mistyped this in the first comment and then didn't pick up on it later. It's harder to create than to destroy; we agree on this point.
Helping people with the government is a pretty core belief of progressivism. If the democrats abandon that position, then to what extent are they democrats anymore?
The democrats aren't the "progressive" party. They're the urban party. Progressivism is highly adaptive for urbanites, so urbanites adopt progressivism and demand democratic leaders. It's not the other way around, where progressive leaders convert urbanites.
And in any case, progressivism isn't about "helping people" in general, it's about helping specific people, who by some calculus deserve that help. All the democrats have to do is change the calculus... drop the expensive, economically useless, socially conservative old people, pull in the technocratic, culturally liberal tech bros. I'm not saying they will do that, but it wouldn't be a huge ideological stretch if they did.
A man that owns an acre in the urban core is just as much a property owner as a man who owns 100 acres in Nebraska. Whose land is worth more? Where do the rich reside? In the urban core. Who has greater security needs - the property owner in the urban core, or the property owner in Nebraska?
You're probably thinking in terms of burglars and murder statistics. Start thinking in terms of organized political violence instead.
GBRK
1d ago
It's not about having a cult of personality-- it's about being able to reward favored underlings and protect them from retaliation. Basic feudal-contract type stuff. The more power a president has over their bureaucracy, the more loyalty they can engineer their bureaucracy to have.
The Democrats could also be described as making use of this tactic
Yes, to some extent-- both parties use a variety of electoral strategies, I'm just describing a tactic the democratic coalition relies on more.
One could argue, watching from another screen, that Manchin and Sinema were the last stalwarts keeping the Dem party from completely sabotaging itself and going full-lefty.
I can and did argue that. I'm a neoliberal, not a leftist. But 2024 proved me wrong-- evidently the democratic base really did want left-populists, and us "return to normalcy" folks were basically wrong.
Is the idea of "old = conservative" a given? I think a lot of your ideal vision rests a lot on this, among other things.
Yes. Not every old person is a religious conservative-- but old people are intrinsically more resistant to change. Culture isn't just what people think about the gays... it's how people want their cities laid out, how business owners treat their employees, and what segments of the population are given disproportionate amounts of respect. And over the total spectrum of subjects, the old people in my party are basically as bad as the old people outside of it-- they still want to drive cars, destroy the environment, prevent dense construction, and extract transfer payments from the young.
I won't claim that the democratic party will abandon old people. I just think they should.
GBRK
1d ago
We were staring down the barrel of it previously, and this was the best recourse we could find.
Republicans control all three branches of government. This was the best recourse you could find? Republicans could easily have looked for a solution that favored the power of the legislative branch (where they have a structural advantage) or the courts (where they'll soon have an incumbency advantage.) Instead, they gave the power to the presidency? Seriously?
The basic problem is that we can no longer agree on core values, on what the laws should be and how they should be enforced. Either someone has to win, or we have to have a divorce.
This part I agree with. That's why I'm so confused: why are the republicans giving the democrats the ammunition they need to win the divorce?
GBRK
1d ago
If the administrative state was unconstitutional the supreme court could have ruled it so.
But that's not really my point. I accept that no one gives a damn about the constitution. Rather, my point is that the cost of making a little more accountable is going to be an administrative state that is significantly more statist, and in the long-run probably more progressive and growth-stifling too. You can easily point at all the regulations you hate, but you're going to have much more trouble identifying all the bad regulations that never existed in the first place.
Now? well, it can take decades to grow a business... but only a few well-placed, well timed regulations and tarrifs to kill one. Making it easier to kill regulations by executive fiat is equivalent to making it easier to implement them. Trump is lubing up the levers of power, but one way or another, he's going to have to give up the stick.
GBRK
1d ago
where is the constitutional scheme whereby an independent agency can write regulations.
and I answered "in the bit where it gave that power to congress, and then congress gave it to the independent agency (and NOT the president.)"
And I’ve been very anti administrative state for years and years.
Okay well I hope you're ready to change tactics and start railing against the monarchial-presidential state. All the government's power is still there... it's just more strongly concentrated into a single person.
GBRK
1d ago
By food i mean in general. Increased population leads to an increase in food demand, driving up prices.
The best nonviolent way to reduce global population is to get immigrants to move to countries with low-fertility norms.
GBRK
1d ago
The constitution is just a piece of paper (although one that confers quite a bit of legitimacy if you observe the proper forms). Watch rules for rulers or play some Crusader Kings to understand the actual nature of power.
If you have enough loyal warriors, you can do whatever you want. Following democratic norms should be best understood as a method of ritualized warfare-- of both parties gathering and displaying the people under their banners, so that the other party might be intimidated by the size and strength of their army and let them take power without a fight.
GBRK
1d ago
Governments require popular buy-in ("power") to function. Democracy is the idea that popular majorities confer such obvious power that it's pointless to oppose them. Republicanism is the idea that influential minority groups still need to be catered to.
The democratic party (as its name implies) typically follows a strategy of gathering together majorities and advocating for increasing their power. But the republican party has effectively made use of the complement strategy-- finding the most powerful minorities available and adhering them together. And the republican party's strategy has proven dominant, because it's harder to distribute power than it is to prevent the redistribution of power. Democrats have had to fold, over and over again, to moderates like Manchin and Sinema. That infuriated and demoralized the democratic base. Meanwhile, Democrats not only got blamed for government shutdowns, they got blamed for compromising to end government shutdowns.
So the lesson is: if you have one side that promises to do things, and one side that promises to not do things, the latter faction is structurally advantaged. The only way to change the equilibrium is for the democrats to realign-- to drop some of their most vulnerable constituents and attract some of their least vulnerable opponents. I think the most effective way to do that would be to give up on social security. It's already beginning to fail, and no one under thirty expects to receive it. Meanwhile, it's catnip for the social-economic liberals on the republican side... the people who want to have sex, do drugs, and dodge taxes.
Plus, in an accelerationist sense, social security saps popular impetus for a UBI in the same way that medicare/medicaid sap the will for universal healthcare.
GBRK
1d ago
Previously, a congressional party with 51% majorities in the senate and house could refuse to confirm presidential appointments, and therefore limit the ability of the president to interfere with independent agencies. Previously, a president faced the threat of legal action after their term if they violated the law.
These were powers that congress and the judicial system had-- even if they rarely chose to exercise them.
Now, presidents can do what they want w.r.t independent agencies, and to interfere congress needs a 51% majority in the house and a 60% majority in the senate to impeach and remove. Now, presidents have permanent immunity against prosecution.
Conrgess has lost a portion of its power over the president, dramatically and permanently.
GBRK
1d ago
While there is some discretion, I would not go that far. I actually really hate it when a president deliberately refuses to enforce a law. There is a problem of enforcement - the president cannot dedicate 100% of resources to enforce 100% of laws 100% of the time. But a president explicitly setting a policy where they refuse to enforce a law should be an impeachable offense.
Impeachment is worthless without removal. Given the immunity ruling, the president has the unilateral power to do whatever they want so long as less than 60 people will vote for their removal.
Democrats are staring down the barrel of that right now and believe me, it is terrifying. You better hope republicans have a plan to rig every future election because otherwise that gun will be turned on you.
If Congress wants to make another Legislative Agency, that's fine to do so.
If congress wants to not have independent agencies, it's within their power to legislate that. They didn't. Trump seized control of the independent agencies away from them by fiat. If they don't do anything about it... well, for now they'll get some easy policy wins. But in the long term, I don't think they're going to enjoy what happens.
GBRK
1d ago
And yet every self-described conservative I know about it more-or-less happy with it. I assume that they think they're getting something out of it, but I suspect they're engaging in motivated reasoning about the likely strength of the backlash.
GBRK
1d ago
And they thought the best way to do that wasn't through an act of congress (which they control), or through an act of the supreme court (which they also control), but by massively expanding the scope of presidential power?
You do know that trump is already on his second term, right? You have coinflip odds of winning the presidency in 2028 before taking into account any incumbent-destroying black swans.
Nah, "interim" appointments just last forever now.
Everything is an official act if the president wants it to be. Everything else gets done by underlings and receives pardons. The idea that presidents were liable to state law provided a check on that-- but now it's gone. I won't pretend like republicans are fully to blame for that-- I'm not a fan of biden's blanket pardons. But this is one more, massive, crack in the dam.
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