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PaperclipPerfector  9d ago (text post)   32965 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 10, 2025

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It's Different When We Do It, Chapter 27

or

Did I Just Get Trolled?

tw: old news, unapologetic whataboutism

Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way have a free essay at the (reportedly centrist!) Foreign Affairs: "The Path to American Authoritarianism: What Comes After Democratic Breakdown." (Archive link.) You may notice the URL has "trump" in it, despite that word not appearing in the title. Curious.

But wait--who are Steve Levitsky and Lucan Way? After all, one can scarcely throw a cursor across a website these days without hitting, say, six or seven hyperlinks to "think pieces" about Trump, fascism, fascist Trumpism, or even Trumpist fascism. But never fear--this is no Average Andy/Joe Sixpack collaboration. This is professional work by a team of scholars whose most famous contribution to the canon of political scholarship is the term "competitive authoritarianism." What, you may ask, is competitive authoritarianism? Read on!

Steve Levitsky, according to his employer (Harvard University, naturally), is a

Professor of Latin American Studies and Professor of Government and Director of the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies at Harvard. He is Senior Fellow at the Kettering Foundation and a Senior Democracy Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. His research focuses on democratization and authoritarianism, political parties, and weak and informal institutions, with a focus on Latin America.

His focus is not exclusive--he also writes on Israel policy while calling himself a "lifelong Zionist" (admittedly, in an article endorsing something like BDS)--but his interest in Latin America is apparently more than skin-deep:

Levitsky is married to Liz Mineo, a Peruvian journalist with degrees from the National University of San Marcos and Columbia University who currently works at The Harvard Gazette.

Lucan Way is no less distinguished. Well, maybe a litte less--the University of Toronto is not even the Harvard of Canada, much less the Harvard of, well, Harvard. But his title--his title! He is literally a Distinguished Professor of Democracy. Where Levitsky's focus is Latin America, however, Way's might best be described as "Cold War and Cold War adjacent." He credits at least some of that interest to family ties to historical events:

My stepfather's family were Jewish socialists, and his grandfather, Henrik Ehrlich, was a Menshevik during the 1917 revolution. This familial link to such a pivotal historical moment gave the chapter on Russia a deeper, more personal resonance.

This is an academic power couple, right here. Get one expert on authoritarianism in the New World, one on authoritarianism in the Old World, and baby, you've got a stew going! A book stew. An article stew. A bottomless cornucopia of cosmopolitan political commentary and analysis. Their 2010 text, "Competitive Authoritarianism: Hybrid Regimes after the Cold War," focuses on democratization (or its lack) under authoritarian regimes. David Waldner gave a blurb:

Regimes that blend meaningful elections and illicit incumbent advantage are not merely resting points on the road to democracy; Levitsky and Way guide us along the multiple paths these regimes can take and provide powerful reasoning to explain why nations follow these distinct paths. This deeply insightful analysis of an important subset of post-Cold War regimes is conceptually innovative and precise, empirically ambitious, and theoretical agile, moving fluidly between international and domestic causes of regime dynamics. Read it to understand the dynamics of contemporary hybrid regimes; then read it again to appreciate its many lessons for our general understanding of regime change.

So: you've literally written the book on how democracies are (or are not) born. What are you going to do next? No, no, you're not going to Disneyland--you're going to witness the election of Donald Trump and stop telling people that you study the birth of democracies, but instead the death of democracies. From the Amazon page for Levitsky's (but not Way's) How Democracies Die:

Donald Trump's presidency has raised a question that many of us never thought we'd be asking: Is our democracy in danger? Harvard professors Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt have spent more than twenty years studying the breakdown of democracies in Europe and Latin America, and they believe the answer is yes.

That's the preliminaries. This week, Levitsky and Way published an article, and I have to say, I found it... kinda convincing? Except, I couldn't help but Notice some things that gave me pause. The thesis of the piece, as I mentioned, was that the United States is headed toward "competitive authoritarianism." The article provides a small explainer:

The breakdown of democracy in the United States will not give rise to a classic dictatorship in which elections are a sham and the opposition is locked up, exiled, or killed. Even in a worst-case scenario, Trump will not be able to rewrite the Constitution or overturn the constitutional order. He will be constrained by independent judges, federalism, the country's professionalized military, and high barriers to constitutional reform. There will be elections in 2028, and Republicans could lose them.

But authoritarianism does not require the destruction of the constitutional order. What lies ahead is not fascist or single-party dictatorship but competitive authoritarianism--a system in which parties compete in elections but the incumbent's abuse of power tilts the playing field against the opposition. Most autocracies that have emerged since the end of the Cold War fall into this category, including Alberto Fujimori's Peru, Hugo Chávez's Venezuela, and contemporary El Salvador, Hungary, India, Tunisia, and Turkey. Under competitive authoritarianism, the formal architecture of democracy, including multiparty elections, remains intact. Opposition forces are legal and aboveground, and they contest seriously for power. Elections are often fiercely contested battles in which incumbents have to sweat it out. And once in a while, incumbents lose, as they did in Malaysia in 2018 and in Poland in 2023. But the system is not democratic, because incumbents rig the game by deploying the machinery of government to attack opponents and co-opt critics. Competition is real but unfair.

(As an aside, Way seems to think India is doing alright, actually? Not sure where that fits in with the above but, co-authored pieces do sometimes result in these little puzzles.)

What actually struck me first about this description was my memory of posters here in the Motte discussing "Brazilification," the process by which the U.S. is, as a result of economics, immigration, and identity politics, gradually adopting the political norms of South and Central American nations. But my experience has been that it is usually more conservative, even arguably nationalist people expressing this concern. While Levitsky and Way do not use the term "Brazilification," they definitely seem to be placing the United States on that trajectory.

They elaborate on the problem at length:

Competitive authoritarianism will transform political life in the United States. As Trump's early flurry of dubiously constitutional executive orders made clear, the cost of public opposition will rise considerably: Democratic Party donors may be targeted by the IRS; businesses that fund civil rights groups may face heightened tax and legal scrutiny or find their ventures stymied by regulators. Critical media outlets will likely confront costly defamation suits or other legal actions as well as retaliatory policies against their parent companies. Americans will still be able to oppose the government, but opposition will be harder and riskier, leading many elites and citizens to decide that the fight is not worth it.

This is where I started to wonder, just a little, whether I was being trolled. While Trump's second term has indeed set a record pace for executive orders, Joe Biden's early flurry of dubiously constitutional executive orders was a greater departure from the norm. Most readers here will be well-acquainted with the IRS targeting of conservative groups. Many will also be aware of the time regulators inappropriately targeted the NRA. Conservative media outlets faced expensive defamation lawsuits (losing some, winning others). The fit with the Biden administration just seems too close in this paragraph, to be pure coincidence... but what am I supposed to conclude from that? Am I supposed to be doing a Straussian reading?

The piece continues:

[M]uch of the coming authoritarianism will take a less visible form: the politicization and weaponization of government bureaucracy. . . . Even in countries such as the United States that have relatively small, laissez-faire governments, this authority creates a plethora of opportunities for leaders to reward allies and punish opponents. No democracy is entirely free of such politicization. But when governments weaponize the state by using its power to systematically disadvantage and weaken the opposition, they undermine liberal democracy. Politics becomes like a soccer match in which the referees, the groundskeepers, and the scorekeepers work for one team to sabotage its rival.

Republicans have long complained against the weaponization of government against conservatives, and Democrats have long ignored those complaints. Whether it's a county clerk jailed for refusing to issue same-sex marriage licenses or the throw-the-book-at-them attitude toward January 6th protesters, conservatives regularly find the scales of justice thumbed against their interests. Similarly-situated Democrats need fear no prosecution at all.

Levitsky and Way have more to say about this sort of thing:

The most visible means of weaponizing the state is through targeted prosecution. Virtually all elected autocratic governments deploy justice ministries, public prosecutors' offices, and tax and intelligence agencies to investigate and prosecute rival politicians, media companies, editors, journalists, business leaders, universities, and other critics. In traditional dictatorships, critics are often charged with crimes such as sedition, treason, or plotting insurrection, but contemporary autocrats tend to prosecute critics for more mundane offenses, such as corruption, tax evasion, defamation, and even minor violations of arcane rules. If investigators look hard enough, they can usually find petty infractions such as unreported income on tax returns or noncompliance with rarely enforced regulations.

Tax evasion, you say? As for minor violations of arcane rules and rarely enforced regulations, well, the whole "Trump committed a felony" charade in New York was recognized well in advance as "novel" and "built on an untested legal theory."

The argument continues!

Moreover, much of the Republican Party now embraces the idea that America's institutions--from the federal bureaucracy and public schools to the media and private universities--have been corrupted by left-wing ideologies. Authoritarian movements commonly embrace the notion that their country's institutions have been subverted by enemies; autocratic leaders including Erdogan, Orban, and Venezuela's Nicolás Maduro routinely push such claims. Such a worldview tends to justify--even motivate--the kind of purging and packing that Trump promises.

Why would the Republican Party embrace the idea that America's institutions have been corrupted by left-wing ideologies? After all, just 63% of senior executives in government posts are Democrats; only 58% of public school teachers identify as Democrat; fully 3.4% of journalists identify as Republicans, and the ratio of liberal to conservative college professors is a measly 17 to 1!

I guess "believing facts about the ideological makeup of our country's institutions" qualifies as authoritarian, now?

There's more to the article--I invite you to read it. But maybe some of you want to ask, in total exasperation, "What difference, at this point, does it make?" Maybe none! I am not here to do apologetics for Trump. I was just really struck by the idea that this article could have been written, almost word for word, about Biden, or even Obama. Maybe Bush! Maybe others--FDR for sure, right? But I can find no evidency of Levitsky or Way ever actually noticing, or worrying, about American competitive authoritarianism, until Trump. They think he's special. I don't think he's special! I think that, so far, he has actually committed far fewer of the sins on their list, than Biden did. That doesn't mean I endorse Trump's actions, so much as I am confused that a couple of highly-credentialed experts on the matter only seem to recognize American authoritarianism when it is coming from their right (or, more accurately, even when it might eventually be coming from their right).

Aside from that, I don't see any obvious problems with the picture that they paint. Having pundits on both sides of the aisle say similar things about our nation's political trajectory serves to increase my worry that "Brazilification" might be a real thing, and makes me wonder how quickly it might happen, and how seriously I should take the possibility.

(Insert butterfly meme: is this authoritarianism? Insert spaceman meme: always has been.)

Lucan Way is no less distinguished. Well, maybe a litte less--the University of Toronto is not even the Harvard of Canada, much less the Harvard of, well, Harvard.

If anything is the Harvard of Canada it's the U of T, but perhaps you mean to suggest that's not saying much.

If anything is the Harvard of Canada it's the U of T, but perhaps you mean to suggest that's not saying much.

That was ever-so-slightly tongue-in-cheek bait for the enjoyment of McGill stans. Though my understanding is that they are close in many ways--U of T generally ranks higher in U.S. News, but McGill is both slightly older and generally held to have the finer medical school.

I'm reminded of two things here. First is the discussions about the supposed "democratic backsliding" into "electoral authoritarianism" in Hungary. When I've asked people just what's so "authoritarian" about Orbán, beyond him just winning massive electoral majorities as an unacceptably right-wing candidate, and I get vague handwaving about the media and him having an "unfair" advantage. Whereupon I make comparison's to the Time magazine "election fortification" article and ask what the difference is, beyond that Orbán's actions aren't even so much that sort of "fortifying" as they are preventing left-leaning media from doing so in Hungary. Mostly, the answer ends up in angry sputtering that reduces to "it's different when we do it." The more coherent defenses end up being about how 2020 "fortification" was different because it was the media putting their thumbs on the metaphorical scale to influence election outcomes of their own accord, which is perfectly democratic, and thus it's interfering with their ability to do so that is "authoritarian." Because it's long been the media's job to determine a candidate's "electability" — to enforce the limits of which candidates and positions are "acceptable," and which are too far to the right. Because we've long ago accepted that "democracy" does not mean unfettered majority rule, therefore we can limit the voters' choices as much as we want, let an unelected bureaucracy decide the vast majority of political issues, put as many popular positions "off limits" as we want, so long as you have two candidates who aren't literal clones (a la Futurama), and you can vote between a corporate tax rate of 25% and 30%, it's still fully democratic. And we're a representative democracy… which means our politicians are supposed to "represent" us the way a parent or guardian represents a small child, or a person with power of attorney represents a demented elder or a schizophrenic mental patient: by doing what the expert consensus says is in the people's best interest, whether the people like it or not.

Second, there's what someone on Tumblr pointed out about recent media articles, about how the USAID freeze is threatening various "independent media" organizations, because they "rely on" said funding to remain viable. As the Tumblrite noted, quite early in the thesaurus entry for synonyms to "rely" is "depend." And if you depend on USAID funding to keep operating, how are you "independent"? Which, of course, undermines the whole bit above about how 'it's different when the "independent media" does it,' and makes it very much more 'it's "democracy" when the left does it and "authoritarianism" when the right does it.' While I wouldn't go as far as Neema Parvini does in declaring he was "90% right" and Yarvin "100% wrong" on their respective models of the system, recent events do make the media institutions look less like they're purely ideologically captured, and more like they're downstream from various deep pockets. (Much like how I've seen academics argue that much of academia's political slant is driven by pursuit of grant money.) That this is less the leaderless, incentive-driven emergent behavior "prospiracy" that some would have it, and more a matter of old-fashioned top-down political coordination via patronage networks; which is a lot harder to defend, except by "we're the good guys, it's good when we do it" tribalist appeals.

It's interesting to see this written from the opposite perspective since it's a constant complaint on /r/politics that Republicans falsely accuse Democrats of doing $BAD_THING and then later actually do $BAD_THING themselves claiming they're just reacting. Of course, that interpretation relies on the belief that Republicans were actually lying.

To be concrete, you mention the example of the IRS targeting conservative organizations under Obama. The Democrats' narrative on that is that it's a misinterpretation of the facts: there was no targeting of conservative organizations, those organizations were just bad at doing their taxes due to a combination of the grassroots part of the Tea Party movement just legitimately being new to running organizations and getting things wrong and anti-tax advocates unsurprisingly not being the best at actually paying their taxes. I'm sure there's been plenty written about which side is right, but my point is that the author of the article probably actually believes that those examples are not symmetric.

What about debanking? Is there any symmetry there?

I'm sorry, I don't understand the question. Wikipedia tells me "debanking" in the United refers to banks freezing crypto assets dropping Muslim clients? Neither of these I'm familiar with and I'm not seeing them mentioned in the top-level comment I replied to, although there's a lot of links, so I may have missed something.

Obama's Operation Choke Point allegedly pressured banks to stop serving gun-related businesses.

Thanks. I do remember hearing about that now that you mention it. I don't have anything to add past the links you provided, though.

Also crypto. Sorry for the salon link but I wanted the bipartisan angle.

It's just one of those irregular verbs.

I am targeted, you are bad at filing taxes, he must explain how all his activities, including the prayer meetings are considered educational as defined under 501(c)(3), explain in detail the activities at these prayer meetings and provide the percentage of time his group spends on prayer groups as compared with other activities of the organization.

This is interesting because I think the government should influence the peoples political opinions. Democratic competition naturally encourages division. If the losing side gets to stick around and try again indefinitely, you quickly end up with a whole lot of people who are really angry about how at least half the decisions went. You want a population that mostly agrees with each other as a backdrop against which the current battles are fought, and unless you believe in the right side of history to a truely insane extent, thats not gonna happen on its own.

What distinguishes this from authoritarianism? Perhaps here we can steelman Levitsky and Way: The left, for all the questionable things they may have done, really have influenced public opinion to a great degree. By contrast, the measures that they worry about with Trump would attack relatively "late in the pipeline" - prosecuting rival candidates for example doesnt do a lot for public opinion, but its good at winning elections. Obviously, this kind of influence has failed eventually, as shown by Trump 2x (and maybe some of the more extreme measures against him are because of that), but maybe as an optimistic lefty you see this as an abberation - bad macroeconomic luck, or the left overplaying their hand, or something like that. Certainly it seems easier for the left to regain this influence, than for the right to build its own version in 4 years. So a republican competitive autocracy would look like those third-world examples, and a democrat one wouldnt necessarily. Here I go doomering again I guess.

See this is where I disagree vehemently. To have the government effectively decide where the Overton Window sits and basically indoctrinate its people into a set of beliefs and values in order to swing the elections is tyrannical. And at least in a bad old tyranny there was a limit to the things that a tyrannical regime would care about. The old tyrant wanted my loyalty, he wanted my obedience. He did not, however care if I agreed with trans ideology, if I agree with blank slatism, if I think that Israel or Palestinians are in the right. That is honestly something I’d rather like about a monarchy or something like that. Instead of having to teach everyone to agree that we need to support some side in a conflict, you just tell me we’re sending weapons to Kazakhstan and be done with it. Instead of teaching my kids to see trans as an option, just decide you’re allowing it and leave my kid alone.

I feel like no democratic society actually is allowed to have an organic culture because it’s all being manipulated all the time. You’re being told what you must think and believe by professional opinion shapers rather than allowing opinions to develop naturally.

I understand that you feel that way, but I think youre not engaging with my arguments at all. Im not saying the government should "decide what the overton window is". I think they should apply some effort to persuasion. The whole reason youre worried youd have to agree with trans ideology is that your country is already so divided that theres two diametrically opposed ideologies which can change places based on 2% fluctuations of the vote. Wouldnt it be great if you hadnt gotten into this situation to begin with?

We worry a lot about factions in power being corrupted by that power, but we should also worry about factions out of power developing unrealistic and insane standards because they can afford to. In your comment below, you like church, family, and community: do those work without something to pull the people in them towards agreement? No, but you arent paranoid about it there because youre not worried about the enemy tribe. Very well then: have a national divorce, once, and then run your government as I described. Dont raise paranoia into a general principle which would in the end tear down that new nation as well. The liberal principle of the separation of state and society that you want to use to protect traditional institutions, is the same principle by which the state thinks it needs to protect individuals from them.

But the thing is that you can only actually get there by manufacturing consent. The only way to get from a very divided situation of a 2% swing on a major issue like trans, and especially trans kids is to do exactly what was done (and had been done previously to normalize gayness and before that integration) take control of the education and mass media systems and pump the culture with pro trans content. Which is why kids are getting easy-read books in their schools so that five year olds can be taught tge wonders of grown men pretending to be women. And then when they turn on the TV every citizen will be given hours of such propaganda and every show must have a token gay, trans or bisexual character.

If people were honestly coming to the conclusion that such things were good, fine. But that’s not how most of this stuff happens. Most of the ideas that we have consensus on are not coming about from people in their own homes and communities wrestling with the issue and spontaneously deciding to go along. It’s people being subjected to propaganda, then eventually accepting that they have to go along because they don’t want to be seen as the bigot. And eventually they are made to understand that HR will be+displeased if they say such crimethink out loud.

The only way to get from a very divided situation

I agree, thats going to be diffcult to get out of either way. But if you could start out in a situation without problems like that, do you think theres no reliable way to prevent opinions from shifting too far apart other than evilbad propaganda?

Stop resting the legitimacy of government decisions on the backs of the peasants. When there was a monarchy, people didn’t try to convince the peasants, they tried to convince the king.

In particular there are always motives for a government in control of the Overton Window to push the window towards Big Government and away from checks & balances.

Not only that but weakening any competition. Churches and the family are competition for the loyalty and power of the state. A state full of strong families doesn’t need to provide nearly as many social services. Because the wife raises the kids, they grow up healthy and well adjusted, achieve more, and are less likely to engage in self-destructive or criminal behavior. But this leaves a lot less need for government intervention in social structures. A society of weak families needs government services: subsidized daycare, welfare, addiction counseling, abortion, etc. and to boot is less able to teach its children itself which means less competition for the tender minds of the youth. The same is true at larger scale of churches and communities. Yet, to listen to modern culture, none of that is true. The modern culture, through every organ teaches that parents are at best clueless, and at worst bigoted. Women must be protected from their husbands, schools must act bravely to protect kids who want to change their gender, etc. now abuse can and does happen, but it’s much much rarer than it’s held out to be by official organs. And again the same applies to churches and communities: the abuse and rabid fundamentalism the public is told to fear are rarer than advertised.

But all of those are competition. So the public must be taught to be selfish (to break community bonds), to fear religion (which provides help and might contradict the government on some issue), and to prioritize everything else over the family (and thus remove competition for values and services).

Congratulations: this is a point that makes considerable sense in retrospect that I hadn't seen before. Thank you!

For an extremely literal example, see kulturkampf- although the German state lost that time, this has been an enduring tendency of German centralization of power.

I’m going to steelman him a bit- the USA becoming a hybrid regime is indeed a specific danger of a Republican dynasty founded by a Trump successor winning in ‘28. Abbott/Vance/Desantis/Don jr are all probably more competent and ruthlessly power-hungry than Trump himself.

The main danger to democrats’ electoral prospects is their absolute and steadfast insistence on purging anyone who suggests moderating on issues in which they are unpopular. This is a limiting factor to their ability to have the kind of winning streak you need for a hybrid regime, especially if the civil service is going back to the spoils system, and it’s deeply structural to the party. The staffers and over educated progressive wing seriously expect to be in charge and the democrats have so far shown no interest in moving outside their bubbles.

By contrast the Orthodox Jews and conservative Catholics staffing the republican political machine understand they’re a junior coalition partner and settle for minor concessions. Republicans also tend to have a better farm team for recruiting good candidates.

The main danger to democrats’ electoral prospects is their absolute and steadfast insistence on purging anyone who suggests moderating on issues in which they are unpopular.

Can I make a counter argument for capital-D Democratic municipal government? Specifically, planning commissions/zoning boards, etc.

You cannot build housing in blue cities without a huge fight. Changes in density are opposed. New construction on vacant lots is opposed as gentrification. Construction that requires no zoning waivers makes the local busybodies angry if they can’t demand input for new housing that already meets all existing laws/requirements.

The amount of negotiation and community hearings drag out the process and developers have their capital tied up for additional months, so they can’t afford to build as much as they otherwise might.

Nationally, the number of units of housing per capita has declined, as housing stock hasn’t kept pace with population growth.

But red states have less regulation, and often laws that restrict the power of local planning commissions and zoning boards. We’re, nationally, in a supply-side housing affordability crisis. But it’s not as bad in red states. And while not mono-causal, it has been significantly shaping population growth.

Blue states like NY, CA, and IL are seeing their populations decline and housing costs are a huge driver. MN’s population is roughly stagnant. All four of these states are currently projected to lose seats in the U.S. House of Representatives, as well as electoral college votes if trends don’t reverse before the 2030 census. The reapportionment of house seats and EC votes will happen before the 2032 elections.

Red states like TX, FL, TN, MT are projected to be the recipients of those lost blu state house seats and EC votes.

Interest in politics in the social media age has collapsed focus onto national politics. But meanwhile, municipal Democratic politicians may have inadvertently given the Republicans a huge structural advantage set to kick in, in seven years.

I mean sure, but how is that a counter argument? If anything it reinforces my point.

If a mixture of R and D voters are leaving blue states, this dilutes red states - actually a substantial structural flaw in the Republican electoral map. Same is true if mostly D votes leave, until the incredibly unlikely scenario where enough D votes leave to change Senate elections in previously blue states.

If R-leaning voters are leaving blue states for red states, this only moves the house if the R-leaning voters are coming from House districts that weren't already R-leaning.

If R-leaning voters are leaving predominantly blue districts in predominantly blue states for predominantly red or purple states, that could create a House advantage - assuming it doesn't get gerrymandered away during redistricting.

There's a very narrow path to D municipal governance having any significant structural impact on elections. I think it's correct to suggest their greatest threat lies elsewhere.

It is, actually, more republicans than democrats moving out of blue states and into red ones, though. Texas’s transplants are the reason Ted Cruz is still a senator.

Again, this only matters if they're leaving D-leaning districts. If they're being chased out of the tiny handful of R-leaning districts, this is just changing the letters after the R in the House seat.

IIRC the average transplant to Texas comes from Las Angeles.

There's more to the article--I invite you to read it. But maybe some of you want to ask, in total exasperation, "What difference, at this point, does it make?" Maybe none! I am not here to do apologetics for Trump. I was just really struck by the idea that this article could have been written, almost word for word, about Biden, or even Obama. Maybe Bush! Maybe others--FDR for sure, right? But I can find no evidency of Levitsky or Way ever actually noticing, or worrying, about American competitive authoritarianism, until Trump. They think he's special. I don't think he's special! I think that, so far, he has actually committed far fewer of the sins on their list, than Biden did. That doesn't mean I endorse Trump's actions, so much as I am confused that a couple of highly-credentialed experts on the matter only seem to recognize American authoritarianism when it is coming from their right (or, more accurately, even when it might eventually be coming from their right).

In one of the last episodes of Breaking Points I could stomach, the hosts were arguing over whether Trump was an authoritarian fascist. And no matter what the right cohost pointed out that Biden had done too, the left cohost just said "But authoritarian fascism is by definition right wing, therefore nothing Biden did was authoritarian fascism because he's on the left". That was it. And it was more or less the moment I realized the show I'd been a patron of since it began wasn't worth watching anymore.

But that does seem to be how those people think. Whether something is authoritarian is not a matter of specific actions, but actions coupled with intent. If you assume your guys have good intent, they are never authoritarian. If you assume the other guys always have bad intent, everything they do is authoritarian.

There seems to be a strain of people who absolutely cannot look past labels in any way. I recently read a highly upvoted comment on Imgur (which is extremely left wing) which went something like:

"Remember when they tried to call Antifa a terrorist organization? It's proof they're fascists that they're so afraid of an antifacist idea!"

The people in question seem absolutely unable to see that you can make up your own names for things, and people are absolutely not bound to follow them.

To tie it into the point above - I'd argue that a salient comparison with Antifa would be the National Socialists Party of Germany's Brown shirts - but the sort of people who claim that all of their opponents are Nazis can't even see the comparison, because their opponents are the Nazis, not them, and Nazis used the brown shirts.

If you wanted to stir the pot, you could ask those folks how they feel about the demolition of the Anti-Fascist Protection Rampart (Antifaschistischer Schutzwall).

Based on my experience on Tumblr, they tend to be very unhappy about it, since it very much did what it's name said, and was about keeping fascists out, not East Germans in, because who would ever want to leave the socialist paradise of East Germany? Fascists resisting de-Nazification, that's who! Which is why, while some people did sneak out of East Berlin across the wall, we can thus know, with absolute logical certainty, that every single one of them was a Nazi.

Again, I've seen people literally argue this, and then proceed to call people's relatives Nazis (in that distinctly condescending "sorry to break it to you, sweetie" manner) when presented with counter-examples.

I've seen similar discussions about Cubans. Someone flees Cuba? That's an enemy of all good leftists.

Some time ago, I sat in on a tenure-track sociology job talk. The candidate researched something about "universal human rights" through examining UN declarations. I pay a lot of attention to definitions, and I remember that this candidate did not define "universal human rights" during the talk yet talked about the study of UN declarations through a framework that assumed that "universal human rights" had some particular meaning. During Q&A I tried to get some clarification on the matter:

"What, exactly, makes something a 'universal human right'?", I asked.

The candidate replied that a right is universal if it's applicable to everyone.

So I followed up, "For example, would it be a 'universal human right' to save one's soul through worship Jesus Christ in the one-true-way of Catholic faith?"

The candidate replied, "You mean the right to religion? Yes, the right to religion would be a universal human right."

And I said, "No, I mean specifically the right to save one's soul through, specifically, converting and adhering to Catholic faith."

The candidate, showing some confusion: "But that's specifically a Catholic perspective..."

And I replied, "But it's nonetheless universal. A devout Catholic truly believes that the only way for any human being to save their immortal soul from eternal damnation is by converting to Catholic faith, and, out of sheer compassion for all fellow human beings, declares the universal human right to convert and adhere to Catholicism."

"I'd have to think about that," said the candidate, but I have clearly monopolized enough of Q&A time, another colleague jumped in with a different question, and the discussion moved on.

Later, in a more informal setting and without the candidate, I was chatting with some of my colleagues about the job talk and my question. Some thought that it was indeed an interesting and important question, whether we can define 'universal human rights' without supposing a particular framework of values. But the most common response was: Look, we all know what he means by 'universal human rights', and editors in sociology journals know what he means, and reviewers know what he means, so it doesn't matter that he defined the terms so poorly as to include the Inquisition, because it will in no way impede his publication record.

(This was the tenure-track position where the sociology department deliberately cast a wide net to diversify the research within the department. I asked if that means they are looking for a conservative candidate, and we all had a laugh.)

To bring it back to "competitive authoritarianism": I am not at all surprised that two social scientists swimming in the liberal-left bubbles of Harvard and U-Toronto would fail to consider how their abstract terms for "competitive authoritarian" techniques instantiate from a conservative perspective. The specific examples you bring up may have not even crossed their path, like the IRS investigations into politically conservative non-profits a few years back, though more likely the authors don't feel like the examples fit their "competitive authoritarian" framework because the authors agree with the aims of those instances of techniques--they therefore feel simply like the correct application of law. Prosecution of J6 participants? Surely it's right and proper to prosecute insurrection. Same for that county clerk who refuses to follow the new marriage law. Same for going after conservative news--must stamp out misinformation. It takes someone outside of that bubble to notice the similarities.

A big part of The Motte's value is giving cross-bubble perspectives, a place where someone posts "Just keep swimming", someone else goes: "Running gets you further", and yet another pipes in: "Fly, you fools!!"

So I followed up, "For example, would it be a 'universal human right' to save one's soul through worship Jesus Christ in the one-true-way of Catholic faith?"

The candidate replied, "You mean the right to religion? Yes, the right to religion would be a universal human right."

And I said, "No, I mean specifically the right to save one's soul through, specifically, converting and adhering to Catholic faith."

"Yes, that is a subset of the right to one's religion. If you have come to the conclusion that Catholicism is true, wish to join the Catholic Church, and they wish to welcome you as a baptised and confirmed member, you have the right not to have that interfered with."

Catholic, quite literally, means universal in the sense that everyone ought to be a member, and to put aside other religions. Starting assumptions matter, that was the point of his example.

Now, you and I have quite different starting assumptions. But from my starting assumptions allowing other religions to proselytize undermines the universal human right to salvation through the Catholic church, and error does not have natural rights at all. It might incidentally be tolerated to avoid a worse evil(eg false conversions at gunpoint), but you simply happen to believe that Catholicism is not true and that the UN universal declaration of human rights are a reflection of natural law.

That's how the candidate first took it, too: if someone reaches a decision to convert to Catholicism, don't interfere.

But from a perspective of, say, a devout 16-century Catholic, the "if" part is not there: If you come to the conclusion that you don't need to convert to Catholicism, you are deeply mistaken (and probably being lied to by the devil), and your immortal soul is still in danger. That perspective is what drove so many missionaries to risk their lives in the Americas and Africa. That perspective stroke the fires of Inquisition: what matter a few minutes of physical agony if it helps you see the light?

But all I was trying to determine is whether this perspective fits the candidate's definition of "universal human right" as "a right that's applicable to any person". I think it does.

I think I see where you're coming from. I suspect that the candidate may have been grasping at the concept of universalisability, in the Kantian sense. (See "You Kant Dismiss Universalizability", Slate Star Codex, May 2014.)

Catholicism and Protestantism are the type specimens for freedom of religion in Western political thought, precisely because 16th- and 17th-century Catholics believed that 'everyone has the right to save their souls through converting to Catholicism, adhering to Catholic faith, and worshiping Jesus Christ according to the teachings of the Holy Roman Church', and 16th- and 17th-century Protestants believed, just as strongly, that 'everyone has the right to save their souls through converting to Protestantism, adhering to Protestant faith, and worshiping Jesus Christ according to the principle of sola scriptura'; they also both believed that they had the right to impose the true religion by force on those who did not accept it willingly.

This culminated in the Thirty Years' War, which caused a six-foot decrease in altitude for 4-12 million people; seeking to avoid further bloodshed, Europe and its descendants arrived at today's conventional understanding of religious freedom; that if Mary believes in Catholicism and Elizabeth believes in Protestantism, Mary has the right to be Catholic without interference from Elizabeth, and Elizabeth has the right to be Protestant without interference from Mary; each doing unto the other as she would have the other do unto her. (This is the 'reciprocal liberty' of the Quakers, described in Albion's Seed.)

Good point: at least, if I were to go back in time and steelman my own question, I would use 'universalizability' to convey my notion, despite the ugliness of the term. I mean, it has both the -alize suffix that turns a noun into a verb, and then the -ability suffix to turn it back to a noun.

But Catholicism is a monotheist faith, which denies that any other religion has validity and it is the one true path to salvation.

To get away from the analogy, it would be like say that Wokism is a tolerant and diverse sociological lense, but it doesn't consider any other interpretation to disparate impact other than racism.

It is trivially easy to assert that your parochial views are actually universal unpartisan principles. Or 'just being a good person', as I've heard it being told.

That was the idea behind the question. The catholic part was a proxy for the presuppositions of any world view. What happens when you give someone the right to choose but only if they accept the presuppositions that lead to that conclusion you want them to draw?

Look, we all know what he means by 'universal human rights', and editors in sociology journals know what he means, and reviewers know what he means

I feel like this is getting at why the political divide has become the way it is: a generation ago I suspect even lay members of the public would understand and (broadly, if not uniformly) agree on "universal human rights", for Americans probably citing either the Constitution or Declaration of Independence. Today, the ivory tower definition has moved on at least a bit, and while the academics probably agree with each other, the lay public has started noticing when The Powers That Be have tweaked the definitions to mismatch the populace and they don't feel like they've been consulted or heard on how it impacts them through issues like refugee status or (youth) gender medicine.

I obviously didn't sit in on this talk, but when someone says "Universal Human Rights" in reference to the UN, they probably specifically mean the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which is a specific document.

To bring it back to "competitive authoritarianism": I am not at all surprised that two social scientists swimming in the liberal-left bubbles of Harvard and U-Toronto would fail to consider how their abstract terms for "competitive authoritarian" techniques instantiate from a conservative perspective. The specific examples you bring up may have not even crossed their path

As always on the topic of authoritarianism, I have to beat my usual drum. It is unlikely for someone to swim in a bubble so enclosed that they wouldn't notice the covid-related authoritarianism. It is exceptionally unlikely if those bubbles are US academia rather than red state small towns or Sweden. More likely is that they agree with that particular kind of authoritarianism.

I'm a mathematician, so I get antsy when someone doesn't clarify their definitions of key terms. I would have accepted something like "By universal human rights I mean whatever was declared in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948". But no, this candidate was presenting a framework that (and I won't do it justice here) kind of assumes some platonic version of "universal human rights" that international bodies like UN can discover, even if imperfectly, and this framework was intended to model the process of such a discovery. So understanding what this Platonic stuff is was kind of important, I thought.

The problem for the thesis that Trump is going to usher in an era of “unfair elections” is that the system has worked this way from the literal inception of the American government. The electoral college has long overpowered urban areas in elections, to the point where California with 50+ electoral votes, alongside other large urban centers like New York, Pennsylvania, Florida, Texas, etc. are so important to the presidency that they spend most of their energy trying to win those states. The last election hinged on three states: Pennsylvania, Michigan, Georgia. If you live in Wyoming, your vote literally doesn’t matter. Your whole state gets three votes. If Pennsylvania and Michigan wanted to have Wyoming nuked as a major election issue, pack your bags, because you’re getting the bomb.

To be honest, this is the veneer rubbing off to the point that most people can now see what our Republic always was. We were always a nation ruled by the coastal elites, pushing those concerns and values. The question is what to do now with a brief window in which the peasant population in flyover states is given brief control over the levers of power. And this is where the “our democracy” rhetoric is coming from. Not because we are losing democracy, we never really had it. But now the left is on the side the right is usually on, and they don’t like it. They don’t like having alien values forced on them, or having their institutions disempowered. So this is the end of democracy.

Who is spending money on winning California or New York? Republicans haven't broken 40% in 20 years in California, and except for the last election, ny is the same.

In fact the classic criticism of the electoral college is that if you live in CA or NY then your vote doesn't matter. The ad spending bears this out. And this isn't a new trend - twenty years ago candidates were also focusing little on California and New York and way way more on Ohio.

It doesn’t matter if your a red tribe Californian as the state has three huge blue urban centers that outweigh the red vote, so the state is a lock for tge blues. The state isn’t competitive, but on a federal level, if you removed those few locked in states, the country is actually far redder than most people actually believe. Further, there are states that are only blue because of a huge blue city in an otherwise red state. Illinois has been this way for decades. 99% of tge state are red tribe. The state is solid blue because of Chicago.

New York State is the same way. Georgia is competitive for democrats for the same reason.

Yes, cities are blue, this is a fact.

Nevertheless, it's obviously false that presidential candidates are elected by the coastal elites or that candidates spend most of their energy on California and New York.

The majority of ad dollars and pandering do not go to convincing the coastal elites. The coastal elite vote is, as they say, priced in.

At best you can say that the coastal elite in California mean that the rest of the votes in the state don't matter. Of course, this is simply a popular vote, so it's a little strange to call them an elite when they apparently have the majority opinion in the state.

if you removed those few locked in states, the country is actually far redder than most people actually believe.

I agree, if you remove all the democrat voters the country would be red like you wouldn't believe.

As a point of fact, the state, like almost all states is winner take all, either by district or in the case of the president, the entire state. So the state goes democratic, and because of that, Democrats get an automatic 54 votes for president.

And the huge locked in states have basically kept democrats in the game much more than they would be if they weren’t guaranteed the entire state of California. Removing the large locked in states means Ds get something like 108 electoral votes in the presidential election rather than the close race we see. Now yes, some of this is organic but because those states are winner takes all, it’s a huge boost to blues to have 150 or more votes locked in before a vote even occurs.

Yes, by land area the US is more red, but deciding that land area is what matters is even more ridiculous than the people who think the popular vote is all that should matter. Chicago dominates Illinois because the population of Illinois is under 13 million people and the population of chicago and its suburbs is almost 10 million people.

You're justifying in terms of capital-centric paradigm that doesn't work at a continental scale.

One of the historical failing points of empires / large states is that the capital politics is going to prioritize the benefits of the capital region to the disadvantage of the peripheries. The periphery regions, in turn, begin to build up grievances and divisions against the capital regions, which- over time and exasperation- can lead to resistance / revolts / insurgencies that threaten the capital's ability to control the peripheries, particularly when the costs of trying to maintain control threaten the ability of the capital elites to maintain control. This elite capacity is further complicated by the willingness of elites to trade off elements of the periphery for personal advantage in control over the rest, or the ability of external states to support the periphery against the core.

Historically, there are three main outcomes of this: (a) the peripheries are lost until the capital reaches an equilibrium of being able to maintain control as a small-to-medium state, (b) an extensively resourced suppression state apparatus is built and maintained to suppress separation for as long as the means to do so are available, or (c), the core region's institutional powers are deliberately limited so as force greater consideration of the periphery territory's interests.

The US, as a federalist system, commits to (c), which in turn allows the periphery power centers to become miniature capital centers and dominate their peripheries... but only to the point within the system. The California elite can dominate California, but it can't dominate the power center of Nevada. The California elite can't in turn build their own suppression state, and so have to balance how they deal with people with the ability of people to migrate out. If California were to leave the protections of the federalist system, the capital-periphery dynamic of the state would change- not least because they could be supported by the now-external federalist state to break apart the California core zones against the periphery zones (see the prospect of California spin-off states).

The inverse of that federalist system, however, is the systemic protection of the voting power of the periphery states against capital-group interests. This means states who power is in a sense decided by land area (namely- they control an area of land sufficient to be a state, which has equal senate representation).

Rather than being a ridiculous way to allocate power in a system, this is the way to have a federal system in the first place once you hit a point where core centers of power can no longer maintain control of the peripheries. The alternatives are for a still-born system where periphery states wouldn't join in the first place, or a suppression-state system which the periphery states wouldn't willingly join in the first place and would have much higher tendencies to fight back against.

Systems where a populated core dominates the periphery aren't formed of willing members, they are conquered or converted from more restricted beginnings. There are reasons that even the EU has gotten less stable as it has tried to concentrate powers that functionally consolidate the influence of the core regions (Germany and France) at the expense of periphery regions.

If I were arguing for using the popular vote instead of the electoral college you might have a point but that's not my position. Neither is it my position that Chicago should be allowed to impose its culture and rules on wider Illinoisans. The capital of Illinois isn't even Chicago as a concession to this idea that the wider state ought not be totally dominated. What voting rule specifically do you even advocate here? That the ~20% of Illinoisans who don't live in Chicago but own a great deal of much cheaper land outside of the metropolitan area should dominate? It's going to be a hard sell to say that farmers are treated poorly by the federal government given how large farm subsidies are.

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One thing I think everyone forgets about the excesses of the early Soviet Union was that this was a polity that already had a long history of severe political repression and extreme political violence. It wasn’t some paradisal democratic wonderland that was suddenly plunged into horror after the revolution. The gulag archipelago, the secret police hauling people off in the middle of the night, the mass executions, the periodic famines— that already existed under the Tsar and had existed for hundreds of years. Stalin was definitely worse than the Tsar, but it was a difference in degree not a difference in kind.

Nazi Germany is bit closer than Russia to the nightmare scenario these people are contemplating, but they forget that Germany had been a monarchy until about 15 years before the Nazis took power, and had about as many internalized democratic norms as post-2003 invasion Iraq. Also the Weimar Republic had been constantly under siege from various stripes of illiberal movements since it’s inception, the first occurring in 1919.

Probably the closest actual analog for democratic backsliding in the US is ancient Republican Rome, but they intentionally don’t want to think about that one because it would require meditating on uncomfortable truths. Yes, Caesar killed the Republic in the end, but he was only able to do that because the Optimate oligarchs had been slowly strangling it for the last 150 years, and had been turfing out the native labor force in favor of foreigners that had fewer legal rights and therefore cost less to work.

Stalin was definitely worse than the Tsar, but it was a difference in degree not a difference in kind.

I disagree, I think there is a difference in kind between authoritarian and totalitarian governments, because they have different strategies of repression.

The ideal authoritarian regime has an ideal authoritarian citizen. One who is disinterested in politics, disinterested in ideology, disinterested in who rules them, and simply lives a normal, private life as a disengaged citizen. While those close to the regime, such as the military and bureaucracy, need to be kept specifically loyal, the wider public only needs to be kept not actively disloyal. They can even hate the regime if they want, as long as they don't actively threaten it.

The ideal totalitarian regime, however, has a different ideal totalitarian citizen. One who is actively interested in politics, ideology, and who rules them, all aligning with the current regime. It is not enough for you to be disinterested. You need to support the party. You need to actively promote it's beliefs. You need to hang the propaganda posters inside your home. And, eventually, you need to rearrange your entire private life in service to the regime and whatever ideals it believes in.

Probably the closest actual analog for democratic backsliding in the US is ancient Republican Rome,

Republican Rome had very weak democratic institutions because the narrow franchise of the Centuriate had more power than the broader franchises of the Tribune of the Plebs. There is no equivalent to this stratification in the US. It's never going to be a good analogue for the US backsliding because the starting points are so dramatically different.

As for the other examples.

Tsarist Russia was heavily authoritarian, and the Bolsheviks made it totalitarian. It was no longer enough to be a disinterested peasant doing your own thing.

The German Empire was a hybrid regime, authoritarian compared to France or the UK but not as authoritarian as Russia. The Nazis also went totalitarian. So there was democratic backsliding here (or really, more of a yoyo, as it went down during WWI as the country became a de facto military dictatorship, up during the "Golden Twenties", then down again before diving off a cliff).

Japan is also an example worth listing, with the Taisho Democracy being undone mostly by the May 15 incident.

I disagree, I think there is a difference in kind between authoritarian and totalitarian governments, because they have different strategies of repression.

I agree this is important. For example, german and italian (and as far as I can tell, british) fascism were totalitarian, the hispanic and the austrian intermediary fascism were authoritarian. I disagree with your assesment of Soviet Russia as totalitarian, they never had the state capacity to do that. Unless youre counting land collectivisation per se, most peasants didnt have to actively participate. As far as I know, only the east german communism really was totalitarian.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_15_incident

Prime Minister Inukai Tsuyoshi was shot by eleven young naval officers (most were just turning twenty years of age) in the prime minister's residence. Inukai's last words were roughly "If I could speak, you would understand" (話せば分かる, hanaseba wakaru) to which his killers replied "Dialogue is useless" (問答無用, mondō muyō).[1][better source needed] The original assassination plan had included killing the English film star Charlie Chaplin who had arrived in Japan on May 14, 1932 […] Chaplin's murder would facilitate war with the U.S., and anxiety in Japan, and lead to "restoration" in the name of the emperor.[3] When the prime minister was killed, his son Inukai Takeru was watching a sumo wrestling match with Charlie Chaplin, which probably saved both their lives.

Crazy.

Man, I kinda want an alt-historical fiction movie made out of this, where Charlie Chaplin has to outrun a bunch of assassins.

話せば分かる

Nitpick, this can be translated as 'if we talk (for a while), you'll understand'. It's not necessarily super-profound. It's basically just "listen to me, idiots!" to which the reply is "too late". This is why translating is hard.

(The absolutely literal meaning is "if speak, understand". Everything else is context.)

Inukai's last words were roughly "If I could speak, you would understand" (話せば分かる, hanaseba wakaru) to which his killers replied "Dialogue is useless" (問答無用, mondō muyō).[1][better source needed]

...That will stick with me for a while.

One thing I think everyone forgets

One of the things that really struck me about the article was that the authors introduced the concept of "competitive democracy" in a book that explained how, to the best of my understanding, Western ties and influence were a major distinguisher between autocracies that "fully" democratized, and autocracies that did not. Way in particular seems to have in mind exactly your points about Russian history. It was weird to read an article that appeared to be written by two scholars who knew substantially more about the 20th century history of other nations, than about the 21st century history of the nation they were writing about.

Probably the closest actual analog for democratic backsliding in the US is ancient Republican Rome, but they intentionally don’t want to think about that one because it would require meditating on uncomfortable truths. Yes, Caesar killed the Republic in the end, but he was only able to do that because the Optimate oligarchs had been slowly strangling it for the last 150 years, and had been turfing out the native labor force in favor of foreigners that had fewer legal rights and therefore cost less to work.

The truth really isn't that uncomfortable. If the problem is underpaid foreigners who have no rights... why not just grant them rights so they can't be paid less?

Open the borders! Stop having them be closed!

...I admit that I'm biased as a software engineer though. I'm not afraid of globalization because my field is already near-perfectly globalized. Anyone who wants software cheaper can already buy labor from the third world (aside from national-security sensitive domains, but natsec-relevant software engineering is only a tiny fraction of the market.) I don't see why I should be forced to pay for american carpenters if they're not going to be forced to pay for american software.

(Not that I want carpenters being forced to pay for american software. IP law is bullshit and knowledge should be free, etcetera etcetera.)

Also as a software engineer, I take the exact opposite approach; close the borders right up. Importing lots of people puts a strain on resources in the host country, and counteracts the will of the native population in favour of "GDP line go up" type thinking.

Indians in Canada are willing to live in situations that are a massive downgrade in QOL to the non-immigrant population - Brampton is famous for having slums with 20+ Indian individuals packed into a tiny apartment. It isn't rights that prevents them from doing better - it's that it is still an upgrade for them.

and counteracts the will of the native population in favour of "GDP line go up"

I know the will of the population isn't "open borders." But still-- the will of at least ~half the citizen (i.e., native) voting population is that "lots of people" should come in. There are some quibbles about the exact rates, and which immigrants are acceptable, but I don't think the median position is, "everyone except O-1A visas can fuck right off."

The example you give me about the Indians is illustrative. You mean to tell me that there's an entire population of hard workers who don't demand much in the way of resources and you want to keep them out? In the old days we used to have to round these people up with wooden ships! I can see how certain low-skilled segments of the populations are threatened by immigrant labor, but I'm not part of those segments. I'm sympathetic to appeals about helping the cultural ingroup-- but I'm catholic, and an urbanite, so rural southern heretics aren't really any culturally more similar to me than rural latin catholics or urban indian hindus. There's the issue of language barrier, but I find it non-salient. Our modern media environment is more effective at acculturating immigrants than at any prior point in history.

Finally, as per the question of resources: America has no shortage of land. We do have a shortage of buildings (houses), and services (healthcare, childcare)... but just take a guess at what I think the best way to remedy that is.

You mean to tell me that there's an entire population of hard workers who don't demand much in the way of resources and you want to keep them out? In the old days we used to have to round these people up with wooden ships! I can see how certain low-skilled segments of the populations are threatened by immigrant labor, but I'm not part of those segments.

You are quite literally wrong about this. Looking at Canada, even the middle and upper classes are struggling, primarily because of a real estate bubble that is continously being inflated with a stream of as you would say "low-skilled" workers. Furthermore, wages in Canada are aenemic, partly because the bottom quartile drags compensation down. You are mistaken in assuming that changes in the "low-skilled" segment of the population do not propgate to the "higher-skilled" segment.

They're struggling because of anticonstruction nimbies. Their wages are anemic because they're unproductive lazy canadians. (\s a little bit but not really. I know the full explanation for the low wage growth is complex, but also canadian productivity growth is really not very high)

I can't rule out that immigration has an effect on high-skilled labor in general but I'm speaking for me, personally, as a software engineer. I personally am not threatened by immigration because my job is already perfectly globalized. If you actually want me to have an interest in supporting anti-immigration policies you're going to have to add "ban the use of foreign software" as a policy plank because otherwise its just a conspiracy to force me to pay more for lazy american carpenters while you all enjoy using cheap or free linux distros built partially by government-subsidized europeans.

The canadian construction sector is a greater proportion of its gdp than the US construction sector is. They are literally building as fast as possible.

Furthermore, the reason productivity growth is so bad is because of the complex interaction between the real eastate bubble and indian immigration. Why invest in capital when you can invest in the real state bubble? Why try to be more productive when you can import more low-wage low-skilled immigrants, who coincidentally also inflate the real estate bubble?

I can accept that your job is globalized. But everything else in your life isn't. Your house, your food, your health care, your social services, your assabiyah are all local; they aren't competing on a global level, with a global population. Your job might be fine despite it being globalized, but I can almost guarantee it that if everything else was globalized, you wouldn't enjoy it.

My food is imported from across the world, and I definitely don't want to pay a 25% tarriff on Columbian coffee because some Hawaiian producers wanted to rent-seek.

As for services-- if I concede that immigration depresses wages in the long run (and so far, I don't) then for that exact reason I want my services to be more global. I don't want a tyrranical government forcing me to pay more for american services.

Housing is the closest you get to a winning argument, but only in the short run. Cheap labor leads to more construction in the long run. And in particular, it leads to denser construction, and as someone that likes living in a city I view that as intrinsically desirable. Kowloon walled city WAS real neoliberalism and it was a GOOD THING.

I can understand all the americans making a cynical, oppressive power-grab by forcing me to buy their goods and services. That doesn't mean I have to like it-- and it definitely doesn't mean I have to shut up and take it like a good little paypig. I WILL use cryptocurrency to dodge tariffs. I WILL fly to latin america to buy over-the-counter drugs and get elective medical procedures done. I WILL hire illegal immigrants to get construction work done. (In minecraft.) And no lazy, blood-sucking protectionists are going to stop me.

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(Writing carefully here. I do have an opinion on this topic; this post is intended to be about understanding the conflict as opposed to my particular view.)

You may make better progress if you understand the other side's actual typical arguments more. Let me lay out the more common complaints I have heard:

There are some quibbles about the exact rates, and which immigrants are acceptable, but I don't think the median position is, "everyone except O-1A visas can fuck right off."

Said side sees ~all discussion along these lines as a motte-and-bailey argument:

Motte -> "unrestricted immigration prioritizing other places undesirables"
Bailey -> "restricted immigration of skilled workers we cannot get replacements for at any price"

Convince them otherwise and you'd make far more progress.

There's the issue of language barrier, but I find it non-salient.

Initial language barrier is not the issue here! Said side sees a perceived trend of immigrants that make no attempt to integrate, instead forming and maintaining foreign-language & foreign-culture clumps.

America has no shortage of land.

In much the same sense as the world has no shortage of water.

I don't think I can convince Zephr (or the median trump voter) that immigration isn't against their interests. Frankly, I agree with them that it probably is. It's just that by the same token, there's no way that they can convince me (or the median Harris voter) that immigration is against our interests. That's why I'm speaking in terms of the median american here-- or rather, of the compromise position that we get when we calculate a weighted average of every american's preferences via democracy. Some of the immigrants some of the time makes everyone unhappy, but it's worth recognizing that neither extreme is ever going to be a viable option (though of course us radicals will keep pulling on our end of the overton window.)

If it helps, I'm Canadian, and the Indians we get are not considered to be very hard workers.

https://www.indiatoday.in/world/indians-abroad/story/indian-origin-canada-td-bank-free-food-data-scientist-video-fired-students-food-bank-university-2531178-2024-04-24

I'm not gonna lie, that sounds like a skill issue on the part of the canadian culture and government. I mean, it definitely confirms my priors to hear about canadians failing at things because I'm convinced that you're a fake country, to the point where it's the one thing I agree with donald trump on. (That and the need to annex greenland and panama). But anglophones have been successfully exploiting immigrant labor for literally a thousand years. Fix your shit, canada, or we'll come in and fix it for you.

I'm being a little facetious here. Not entirely facetious, but I can see how america is vulnerable to similar attacks. That being said, the very article you linked is an example of a culture successfully punishing someone who's violated a social norm. I know you're making a point along the lines of, "this is the one we caught-- just think about all the other fish out there!" But my response is still going to be, "then make a better net instead of nuking the pond."

I don't disagree with you in that it is definitely a skill issue; I just don't trust a government to ever do better.

Since when does anglophone society have any tradition of immigrant labour whatsoever? Britain had no significant (relative to population) immigration until the latter half of the 1900s, which coincided with our total collapse as a world power. Australia and NZ didn't have immigration until the same period, they just had transfers from the homeland. And America's endless racial struggle with the black labourers they imported and then the Ellis Islanders and the resultant machine politics forms a cautionary tale for the rest of the world. Canada I'm not sure about.

(Colonising foreign countries is not the same thing, and doesn't produce the same issues, since you don't have to interact with your labourers and their native taskmasters except to extract money and resources from them.)

Since when does anglophone society have any tradition of immigrant labour whatsoever? Britain had no significant (relative to population) immigration until the latter half of the 1900s, which coincided with our total collapse as a world power.

If you don't count Irish workers in the mainland as immigrants, this turns into an argument about the definition of "significant" (Hugenots were something like 2% of the population of England in 1700, more in London) - clearly the immigrant percentage now is an order of magnitude higher than any of the precedents wokists love to point to. But if we arguing about the social consequences of immigration, I don't see why the Irish don't count. They had a wildly unpopular foreign religion that made them hard to assimilate, were generally considered to be prone to drunkenness and criminality, and were openly and notoriously used by employers to bid down wages.

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Canada I'm not sure about.

Canada’s population was 10% of Ukrainian descent before the recent immigration wave. They definitely had mass immigration before the iron curtain.

In a perfect world a commoner of one ethnicity wouldn't even know about the existence of other ethnicities at all.

In a perfect world a commoner of one ethnicity wouldn't even know about the existence of other ethnicities at all.

I see no way to accomplish this other than restricting people to never contact or travel beyond their immediate physical neighborhood. Is that what you consider a perfect world, or are you intending a different method of accomplishing this? If so, what?

I don't understand the thrust of this comment. And anyways, groups divide fractally so I disagree that it's even possible to create a society without cultural-linguistic-historical divisions.

Little pupil: But Mrs. Teacher, what is there beyond the borders of our $ethnostate? Whom do we trade with?
Mrs. Teacher: An excellent question, please see the headmaster after hours.
Headmaster: *loads his shotgun*

I would have been so much happier without any contact with other races and ethnicities and the other sex.

I would have been so much happier without any contact with other races and ethnicities and the other sex.

Wait are you an actual honest-to-god homofascist?

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Okay, you seem to be on some kind of spree with this comment and this one and this one. All of which seem to be testing the limits of what you can get away with. Given that the common theme is "I hate a lot of people (and fantasize about violence a lot)" paired with the obvious fact that you are a returning alt who we probably banned not long ago, and I would suggest you cool it.

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turfing out the native labor force in favor of foreigners that had fewer legal rights and therefore cost less to work

A common complaint about illegal immigration today. Who will our Caesar be?

Tiberius Gracchus

Giaus Gracchus <——— you are here

Marius

Sulla

Pompey

Caesar

Who is the Tiberius Gracchus here? First term Trump?

Trump 45, yes. Pre assassination attempt.

Tiberius Gracchus was the one they killed/tried to prosecute, for disturbing their hold on the levers of powers. I think he most maps to Trump.

Just a random thing, Pompey has to be one of the most egregious exonyms ever. We are talking about Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus, one of the most powerful and famous Romans in history. Pompey sounds more like a name of your neighbor's chihuahua.

I think of Pompeii, the city that got burned and buried under ash by Mount Vesuvius.

I mean, anglophone people used to call Marcus Tullius Cicero "Tully" - leading to his most famous book, De Officiis, being known as "Tully's Offices", so there's plenty of underwhelming exonyms to go around.

We still do it with Mark Antony (Marcus Antonius), Livy (Titus Livius), and Pliny (Gaius Plinius Secundus).

It sounds even more like a football team. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portsmouth_F.C.

I think the critics from the right are at least partially correct that Donald Trump wasn't "supposed" to win, that after eight years of Obama and nearly unmitigated cultural Ws many on the left had convinced themselves that the pendulum would not swing back, that they would never have to live through eight years of George W. Bush again, and then...

There's obviously a danger that the pendulum will swing back on the righties, but if Elon keeps going like this for four years it will take more than four years to rebuild the absolutely gutted institutions. And it's quite possible (looking at Trump's favorability ratings, the meh Democratic slate, and the popularity of downsizing measures) that the GOP will get another four years or more.

Which is why I think people on the left and the right should be careful about memeing "Brazilification" into being. Maybe instead lefties should take this opportunity to consider the many benefits of federalism that righties have been screaming about for literal centuries and maybe righties should let them beat a graceful retreat back to California instead of fighting to the death over the scepter of federal power that was never meant to be.

Which is why I think people on the left and the right should be careful about memeing "Brazilification" into being. Maybe instead lefties should take this opportunity to consider the many benefits of federalism that righties have been screaming about for literal centuries and maybe righties should let them beat a graceful retreat back to California instead of fighting to the death over the scepter of federal power that was never meant to be.

I'm not exactly pro-abortion but trans-border abortion bounty laws are sort of proof for why that won't work out. That, and the fact that states can't tax nonresidents to prevent people from taking advantage of their services but living in a lower-tax jurisdiction. (America as a whole can tax nonresidents, and that's a good thing-- citizenship has privileges and duties.)

That being said, as a thought experiment, I do actually wonder how a truly federalized america would actually work out. I imagine the federal government would tax states by their land value to fund nationally-relevant institutions like the military, NASA, and NOAA, but leave control of welfare and commerce to the states. Probably there would be pretty complicated internal politics as states take competition-over-industry to the next level, with the larger states involved in dirigiste intervention to make sure the businesses providing services are headquartered within them. California could tariff texan companies as a retaliation for Ted Cruz existing, for example, while floridian anti-trust law could force google to operate a local subsidiary with partial state ownership and knowledge transfer.

I'm not exactly pro-abortion but trans-border abortion bounty laws are sort of proof for why that won't work out.

Mmm yes this reminds me of fugitive slave laws in some ways.

That, and the fact that states can't tax nonresidents to prevent people from taking advantage of their services but living in a lower-tax jurisdiction.

Arguably this is a feature. But states can tax nonresidents. For instance, if you aren't a resident of a state, but you keep a car there, you are supposed to register the car in that state.

California could tariff texan companies as a retaliation for Ted Cruz existing, for example, while floridian anti-trust law could force google to operate a local subsidiary with partial state ownership and knowledge transfer.

Well part of the point of the OG Constitution was specifically to prevent this by gently removing commerce from the hands of the states, while letting them retain power over most local regulatory and criminal law. Nowadays the federal government has a lot of say about that!

Arguably this is a feature. But states can tax nonresidents. For instance, if you aren't a resident of a state, but you keep a car there, you are supposed to register the car in that state.

Let's be real here: the vast majority of these laws are toothless. I guess at least in theory states could mandate the tracking and taxing of out-of-staters at all times, but that doesn't remove the concern of sick people demanding residency so they can access services... unless, I guess, we make state residency requirements as onerous as federal nationalization requirements. I can kind of see how that system would work-- after all, I'm in favor of open national borders so people can come to live and work here without restriction, but see the utility behind withholding, e.g. SS, medicare, medicaid, etc. until after the ~10 year naturalization process. (Birthright citizenship should stay, but that's because babies are power. If you have your kid in on american soil they belong to uncle sam now.)

Well part of the point of the OG Constitution was specifically to prevent this by gently removing commerce from the hands of the states, while letting them retain power over most local regulatory and criminal law. Nowadays the federal government has a lot of say about that!

You have to remember that the "OG" wasn't the constitution, it was the articles of confederation. The constitution was a reaction to the articles being too weak. To the extent that the federal government is too strong, the constitution is to blame, because it was developed with the specific purpose of forcing the states to cooperate. Maybe the supreme court could have interpreted specific clauses differently, but in the end, it wouldn't have mattered-- the constitution can be amended, or worked around. Neither of those things are trivial, but they're bound to happen when the structural incentives are strong enough. Just look at the department of education, for example. Countries that require and encourage a high level of trans-regional political-economic-cultural unity are inevitably bound to develop some sort of centralized control apparatus for education. The fact that "regulating education" isn't one of the enumerated powers doesn't matter, because it's not strictly illegal for congress to fund educational institutions, and large carrots are isomorphic to sticks.

The only way to make america permanently less unitary would be to give states back the instruments of economic belligerence-- border controls, tarriffs, their own coinage, etcetera. Not that I think that's a good idea, of course. (Ref: constant EU dysfunction.)

I guess at least in theory states could mandate the tracking and taxing of out-of-staters at all times

I mean - it's not really practical to bar out-of-staters from enjoying your parks and highways, I agree. If you want out of staters not to access your schools or disability benefits you can simply require a state-issued ID or other proof of residency. I think this is probably typical, actually, although I haven't tried to access anything along those lines for a while and therefore can't speak to it.

Maybe the supreme court could have interpreted specific clauses differently

I mean I do think they could have decided what constituted interstate commerce in a...more restrained fashion, yes.

The only way to make america permanently less unitary would be to give states back the instruments of economic belligerence-- border controls, tarriffs, their own coinage, etcetera.

I think there are other, less forceful ways to do it! America is permanently(?) less unitary because the Obama administration decided not to enforce federal drug law, and by the way that the Supreme Court ruled in Dobbs, for instance. You could likely continue to make America less unitary by removing direct election of Senators, by (to take your example, and something that plausibly may happen soon) trimming the Department of Education into a machine for distributing block-grant funding and administering student loans, by shredding federal firearms regulations, etc.

Now, you might object that these changes can be rolled back - and fair - but that's also true (as you point out) of giving states back the instruments of economic belligerence. I'm not sure that making America less unitary is by itself a laudable goal, though - but what I do think is laudable is ensuring that the states can function as "laboratories of democracy." This requires the federal government to do some things (protect them from invasion), permits the federal government to do others (highways I guess) and I think should discourage the federal government from doing others (e.g. writing a federal housing code).

but that's also true (as you point out) of giving states back the instruments of economic belligerence.

I think either I misspoke, or you misinterpreted what I wrote. If the government gave the states back their commerce power that would permanently increase federalization because it would dramatically change the incentives available to the states and their citizens. But short of that, not much would change. I think across the multiverse that most versions of america would convergently evolve something like the department of education, even if it had a slightly different role or function in response to the initial conditions of its creation.

Now, there is a caveat to all this. Though many aspects of the federal bureacracy serve a real purpose, that doesn't mean that they're destined to grow indefinitely. For that reason, I suspect that trump will manage to-- in the medium term-- cut the DOE back. In fact, I think the very existence of trump is proof that there's a sort of logistic growth curve for federal agencies. Agencies start small, grow rapidly as they become popular for solving the lowest-hanging problems, then exceed their carrying capacity and become bloated and therefore unpopular and subject to cuts. And we're obviously in an "exceeded the carrying capacity" era, vis-a-vis deficit spending.

But in the longest term, I think the DOE is more-or-less guaranteed to bounce back. The state apparatus is something darwinistically selected for the ability to increase its own carrying capacity. If we were at the knife-point of optimization where no additional changes could be made to the government to increase its absolute ability to generate revenue then it would be permanently doomed, but we're far from fully-optimized in terms for taxation. Even ignoring the possibility for technological economic growth, we're quite far from the bureaucratic state-of-the-art. Switching to the land value taxe, for example, would permanently move the laffer curve to the right-- governments could extract a higher total share of taxes for any given level of free-market economic performance.

Meanwhile, the "federal housing code" thing you mention would be, I think, destined to fail for essentially the same reason the current "federal drug code" is failing. That being, that housing-- and drugs-- are locally and culturally specific in a way that doesn't benefit from the federal government trying to enforce nationwide uniformity.

Putting that all together:

I think there are other, less forceful ways to do it! America is permanently(?) less unitary because the Obama administration decided not to enforce federal drug law, and by the way that the Supreme Court ruled in Dobbs, for instance. You could likely continue to make America less unitary by removing direct election of Senators, by (to take your example, and something that plausibly may happen soon) trimming the Department of Education into a machine for distributing block-grant funding and administering student loans, by shredding federal firearms regulations, etc.

Removing direct election of Senators would plausibly alter the power calculus, but trimming the DOE is either structurally predetermined or guaranteed to fail.

If the government gave the states back their commerce power that would permanently increase federalization because it would dramatically change the incentives available to the states and their citizens.

Or people wouldn't like it and would return the commerce power to the feds, just like they did last time – that's what I meant.

That being, that housing-- and drugs-- are locally and culturally specific in a way that doesn't benefit from the federal government trying to enforce nationwide uniformity.

This is also true of education! Which, to sort of play in to your point – it is possible that the path that worked in the past, or that we took in the past, was not guaranteed to be the best path forward, or the best path now. Even if, as your suggest, certain outcomes in the past were predetermined, that does not necessarily imply the same thing in the future. If Team Trump transforms the Department of Education into a block grant funding machine, it's possible that will work considerably better than the prior department and nobody will want to change it back.

Removing direct election of Senators would plausibly alter the power calculus, but trimming the DOE is either structurally predetermined or guaranteed to fail.

I am not convinced history is quite this inflexible.

Obama staffers read and evangelized The Emerging Democratic Majority. A book fantasizing that changing demographics would make future national Republican electoral wins impossible. They thought they were approaching an era of total victory. At least in the sense of congressional majorities and winning every presidential election and then those presidents appointing federal judges. Which is a clear path to total federal control.

But it just didn't work. Trump won Hispanic men 3 months ago ago. The more Hispanics are eligible to vote, the more they vote like white people. I see a future in which a significant minority of Americans are Hispanic, and when they fill out government forms they check the "Hispanic (and white)" box, then vote accordingly. And as of 8 years ago, 1/3 of American Hispanics married non-Hispanics. They are assimilating into American white culture in a rather literal sense. Barely behind American Asians in interracial marriage rates.

Yes, I think this is correct. From what I can see, Hispanics often aspire to become American, and that means owning a small business, getting married, sending kids to school, having enough money to have a nice house...all the things that make you a quintessential GOP voter.

I'm reminded often of the fact one of the first, if not THE first, official Presidential campaign ads in Spanish was from the Bush 2000 campaign. The fact that hispanic voters are by every metric natural GOP voters (religious, family-oriented, anti-socialist, pro-immigration control) yet continued to vote Democrat was one of the great political headscratchers of the 00s-10s. It's been surprisingly vindicating to watch that vote trend in the way I long believed it "should" trend.

Hispanics aren't that religious(less so than blacks) or socially conservative(again, less so than blacks, muslims, or republicans). Notably up until recently church attending white Catholics were far more likely to vote D than church attending white protestants, too, and we can probably expect that to generalize.

Hispanics are normies with some quirks. When the democrats are wedded to insane ideas about gender and an anti-growth mindset, that makes them natural republicans, but in 2010 democrats were not, so hispanics voted mostly D because they're poorer than average. Assimilation(and red tribe culture is much easier for poor second gen immigrants to grok- football might not be their sport but they understand the concept of sports pretty easily, country music might not be their genre but it's closer than rap, upward mobility as a good thing even if it isn't huge status boost, suburban lifestyles are popular with anyone who has access to them, etc), the move of church attending Catholics towards the republicans(driven by social issues polarization changing from 'one party is mostly liberal and one party is mostly conservative, with considerable exceptions' to 'one party wants to make social conservatism illegal or at least officially frowned upon and one party wants to enshrine protections for social conservatism'), and the recent insanity of the democrats are the main factors. Add in racial/ethnic tensions between blacks and hispanics(seriously, the two groups do not like each other) that don't exist between hispanics and whites, and upwards mobility which makes the GOP more appealing, and you've got a formula for hispanics moving towards the right.

Unapologetic whataboutism is the best kind. It's no good when people say 'I decided the subject of discussion will be something that paints me in a good light and you in a bad light. No it's actually a fallacy if you try and do the reverse'. The rhetorical tool of whataboutism favours those with the bigger megaphone, those with agenda-setting power.

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