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Culture War Roundup for the week of November 11, 2024

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A focus on reducing obesity and preventing sickness would be a welcome change.

Reducing obesity is a goal, not a policy. Obama focused on reducing obesity. Didn't achieve much. What is the Trump administration and the GOP going to do? What policies that are both effective and palatable to a) Republican voters b) Republican elites do you expect them to pursue

What changes would you propose?

Tax sugar (or Ozempic4All, if you're feeling pro-injection and like free healthcare). Invest in public transit and rework urban planning (15min cities are back, baby) so people drive less (fewer car accidents) and have more active lives (-obesity, +basically every other aspect of human health).

Of course, these are already ballot box poison (and that's before we even try to do anything about suicide, where massive social engineering might be more politically viable than restricting access to guns). Which points back to what I was originally saying: low American life expectancy is revealed preference re: lifestyle. Policies to address these issues have been floated repeatedly and outside of a few locations they've been shot down.

(Not a clue, re: drugs. There's some proximate interventions you can do to reduce OD deaths, but that's just nibbling around the edges of the problem)

Cities like Chicago and DC have done literally everything that establishment figures say is good, and look at the results.

Can you be more specific? Which establishment figures, which policies?

Sidebar: I would note that the stereotypically very liberal states like CA and NY have the highest life expectancy; the worst states are in the ultraconservative Deep South. Again, I don't think this is really about policy (cf. Idaho, which is also extremely conservative), except perhaps insofar as state governments could spend money on ameliorating the consequences of Southerners' unusually unhealthy lifestyles but don't (generally with the support of their electorate).

I am not aware. Here in Seattle open air drug markets are tolerated and people who have been arrested for dozens of crimes (including violent crimes) are frequently released onto the streets without trial. It's hard to imagine a more lenient system.

Well I'm pleased to inform you that the world did not start three years ago, nor did America's durable problems with drug use and violent crime, nor its unusually harsh sentencing practices. The US has mass incarceration. It, rather notoriously, has more prisoners per capita than almost anywhere on Earth, including actual totalitarian regimes. It doesn't seem to have had the desired effect. Unless you can do something about the processes that produce new criminals, the problem isn't going to go away just by throwing more and more people in prison.

Invest in public transit and rework urban planning

I'm 100% with you. But first, we need the DOGE man to come and fix government.

Too many people think that dollars = progress. This is obviously false. California has spent on the order of $100 billion on high speed rail and has nothing to show for it. If we had the efficiency of Spain or China we could do stuff. Unfortunately we are hamstrung by a corrupt and incompetent government.

Until that is fixed, we could spend infinite dollars and get nothing for it.

So I assume that you agree with me that the best way to get car-free cities is to start by gutting the corrupt people who are preventing public money from being utilized.

Sidebar: I would note that the stereotypically very liberal states like CA and NY have the highest life expectancy; the worst states are in the ultraconservative Deep South.

Yes, rich people who benefit from our economic system have better life outcomes. How can we help disadvantaged people get the same thing? I don't think standard liberal politics have the answer. Look at Philly, DC, and Chicago.