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naraburns  nihil supernum  9d ago (text post)   26700 thread views

U.S. Election (Day?) 2024 Megathread

With apologies to our many friends and posters outside the United States... it's time for another one of these! Culture war thread rules apply, and you are permitted to openly advocate for or against an issue or candidate on the ballot (if you clearly identify which ballot, and can do so without knocking down any strawmen along the way). "Small-scale" questions and answers are also permitted if you refrain from shitposting or being otherwise insulting to others here. Please keep the spirit of the law--this is a discussion forum!--carefully in mind.

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The big thing Matt Yglesias leaves out of this list that makes him a Democrat is that he wants to expand social welfare programs and raise taxes.

Presumably he's not including parts where he thinks that the Dems are currently correct and should keep doing what they're doing (or where he thinks they should go left).

You know what, I for one am missing the Democrats that just want to expand social welfare programs and raise taxes. I mean, no open borders and putting thousands of migrants into hotels on taxpayer cost, no ban on combustion cars, no government censorship of speech, no taking kids from parents to change their gender, no males in woman sports, no pro-Hamas riots, no banning Jews from campuses, no camps for people who don't vaccinate, no DEI commissariat at every major institution, no calling me Nazi every time I disagree with them? I don't say I would agree with them, but that's certainly something I'd rather have in the opposing party. We could actually have an argument and see whether voters like more taxes in exchange for more services or not, and whatever would be the result, we could keep some respect for each other once we're done. Right now, it's like "I feel like I'm taking crazy pills".

Well, that and his whole "1 billion Americans" thing which would see the U.S. turned into India.

But I think there's still room for common ground here. If the government can be made more efficient, higher taxes would be justified. I think it would be awesome to spend money to build high speed rail like they have in China. The problem is that we spend money and get nothing in return, because our government is full of useless bureaucrats.

Fix the efficiency problem, and taxes become a lot more palatable.

But the strange part is that many of the items in his list undermine the justifications for raised taxes, etc.
If academics and nonprofits don't have a presumption of moral status, how do we justify taking people's money to fund them and using their judgements to rule the people?
If education should be run purely as a service to students and parents, what moral argument is left against school choice?
If "politeness" rules aren't supposed to be a political weapon to stifle debate, how is his preference that "bad left wing ideas should gain power" at the expense of the truth going to be enforced?

It's all self-defeating, and so I suspect a totally performative offering of peace from a position of weakness, with his fingers firmly crossed behind his back.

If academics and nonprofits don't have a presumption of moral status, how do we justify taking people's money to fund them and using their judgements to rule the people?

I mean, in the "fund" case, it's just "having people research this is diffusely positive for society, so funding it from the taxpayer internalises the externality".

Of course, there are departments whose output is negative for society (obvious nonpartisan example: marketing psychology), which that argument suggests should get no grants and should in fact have to pay the government to compensate society for their "pollution". One can question whether internalising this externality is worth the costs of implementing such a scheme, but the "axe funding" part I'm completely sold on.

how is his preference that "bad left wing ideas should gain power" at the expense of the truth

Where did he say this quote? I can't find it.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GXd0TunXoAASp0t?format=jpg one of his more famous quotes, but I forgot he said "wrong" instead of bad. It was a delightful preview of 2020.

That quote has lowered my opinion of him, although he didn't say he wanted it at the expense of the truth.

EDIT: With that said, he appears to have kinda contradicted this since, although AFAICT he hasn't specifically walked it back (besides deleting the Tweet).

I think he started walking it back with "correction: I do not want wrong left wing ideas such as 'Yglesias should be fired from Vox' to gain pow--wait no!"

Most of the worst nonprofits are funded more by wealthy donors than taxes.

True, but I've spent the last four years watching obscene amounts of government money go to them too. Over a quarter of national science grants are now for DEI programs now, for example.

And that's not counting the constant use of nonprofit propaganda as a moral bludgeon, which yglesias himself is often guilty of.

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