[HN Gopher] Congress' push to regulate Big Tech is fizzling out
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Congress' push to regulate Big Tech is fizzling out
Author : samizdis
Score : 186 points
Date : 2022-07-21 10:52 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.axios.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.axios.com)
| TMWNN wrote:
| Harry Truman said in 1945 about the atomic bomb, "We thank God
| that it has come to us, instead of to our enemies". I feel the
| same way about FAANG and Silicon Valley as a whole (and Wall
| Street, and Hollywood, and SpaceX/Tesla, and the Ivy League),
| that they are in the United States.
|
| That doesn't mean I approve of everything they do. That doesn't
| mean I can't or won't decry their putting thumbs on scales toward
| a certain type of _bien-pensant_ ideology. That does mean that,
| overall, I am very, very glad that they are American instead of
| Russian, Chinese, or even British, French, or German.
| smt88 wrote:
| I think you may need to look outside your bubble. There are
| large, influential tech companies in China and Russia.
|
| Alibaba has dramatically transformed American commerce and is
| essentially the soul of Amazon's marketplace.
|
| TikTok is the most influential social media platform.
|
| You also seem to assume that having those companies in the US
| means they have some sort of freedom-minded ideology or are
| reluctant to harm Americans, and we have seen that neither is
| true. Are you also glad several opioid producers were American?
| verinus wrote:
| Actually one might think about the one beeing the result of the
| other ;)
| WORMS_EAT_WORMS wrote:
| There's plenty of competition IMO.
|
| This is a deflection of the real issue: people's data rights.
|
| Just transparency of how it's being used or opting out.
|
| - "Google showed me this ad or search because my data location
| has me at a political protest"
|
| - "Facebook shows me ad or post because I am under 18 black male
| but disguising it as an AI recommendation"
|
| - "TikTok shows me next video because my net worth is X and I am
| at a gay bar"
|
| - "YouTube showing me bitcoin scam ads because I'm from a college
| neighborhood and some biz geofenced us"
|
| Like the big creepy stuff.
| thereddaikon wrote:
| Data rights are important but not the only issue. We also have
| right to repair and the environmental concerns. As well as
| those of planned obsolescence. They go hand in hand.
|
| Then we also have the issues of closed systems, which is
| related to the data issue like the last two were related to
| each other.
| mdrzn wrote:
| 20 years ago I was amazed by US and wondered if I could ever move
| there.
|
| In the last 5-10 years my mind did a 180deg flip and now I'm more
| happy than ever being in EU.
| hourago wrote:
| USA is repeating the same mistake that with the car industry.
| Instead of a balanced legislation that allows for growth and keep
| citizens happy the USA went all in on car centric cities to
| please car manufacturers.
|
| The same history seems to repeat itself with the tech industry.
| Instead of balance it seems that the bet is all in on tech
| controlled society to please tech companies.
|
| The equivalent to non walkable cities and only poor people using
| public transport will happen with on-line life of nothing
| changes.
| jmeister wrote:
| How popular were the car companies?
|
| US big tech companies like amazon and Google enjoy more
| bipartisan support than practically any other institution,
| except maybe the military.
| kasey_junk wrote:
| https://news.gallup.com/poll/329666/views-big-tech-worsen-
| pu...
|
| It's been a story for a couple of years that big tech
| companies reputation in the US has tanked. There is
| bipartisan support for regulating them.
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| > The equivalent to non walkable cities and only poor people
| using public transport will happen with on-line life of nothing
| changes.
|
| Nice analogy and I agree with your take on the political
| weakness and abdication. But the analogy is not quite right.
| Real cities and roads are physical. If they're built wrong
| people are stuck and have to adapt over many decades or
| generations. Digital technology is ephemeral, all built on
| software. While the EU are going for government moderation the
| US will get sharp corrections in good time, in a de-facto,
| pragmatic fashion. Ultimately the US attitude is "leave it to
| the people".
| piva00 wrote:
| > Digital technology is ephemeral, all built on software.
|
| I agree with your take but I think you're underestimating
| network effects in this. Once a platform takes hold and grips
| people not through being the best product but the one with
| most reach it's very hard for a competitor to break that.
| Even more when competitors are simply bought and swallowed
| into the big corps.
| svnt wrote:
| Good points both; two more perspectives:
|
| 1) behavior change is generational, street layouts change
| all the time 2) in a healthy city, urban real estate is
| under extreme continuous pressure to be put to profitable
| use
|
| For an example look at the hidden total costs we pay to
| park cars in many cities. Look also how long something
| mostly pointless like lawns can persist culturally.
| refurb wrote:
| This is amazingly wrong.
|
| Car companies did well because people wanted cars.
|
| I mean, go to small, transit-centric places like Singapore and
| see what people want to spend their money on... it's cars.
| hourago wrote:
| Not just bikes: https://youtu.be/uxykI30fS54
|
| It's an example of what I'm referring to. Cities were
| designed to push for cars. People wanted cars because cities
| were designed to exclude people that didn't have one.
| avalys wrote:
| People wanted cars because, for most of the US, they are
| the only practical transportation method. And even the
| people who live in the few dense urban areas that could get
| by without cars don't want to cut themselves off from
| access to the rest of the country, so they invariably still
| owned one and wanted to use it.
| jason0597 wrote:
| > People wanted cars because, for most of the US, they
| are the only practical transportation method.
|
| And that's because government zoning at the time
| prioritised suburban single-family house zoning, which in
| turn created the car-dependent culture. It didn't have to
| be this way, Rotterdam isn't built this way for example.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > And that's because government zoning at the time
| prioritised suburban single-family house zoning, which in
| turn created the car-dependent culture. It didn't have to
| be this way, Rotterdam isn't built this way for example.
|
| Could that be because _the people actually wanted single-
| family homes_?
| avalys wrote:
| And that the US was a wealthy country with enormous
| amounts of undeveloped land?
| refurb wrote:
| Other way around. Cities were designed for people who had
| cars.
| washadjeffmad wrote:
| You can have cities designed for cars that aren't hostile
| to other modes of transport. It's just nonexistent in
| practice in the US.
|
| See anti-bike lane movements, lack of over and
| underpasses for pedestrians, sidewalks that quite
| literally connect nothing and go nowhere, local laws that
| prohibit walking on roads where there is no other access
| between locations, no crossings, signage, or road
| markings for pedestrians in commercial areas, etc.
|
| Go to a modern local shopping strip, park near the road,
| and walk the sidewalks. See if there's ramp or stair
| access between all parking lots and appropriate crossings
| between them. See if there are indicators before all
| curbs and paths for a blind person or someone in a wheel
| chair or with a stroller to travel.
|
| Being designed for cars only would imply useless designs
| wouldn't exist. They do, so we know that something is
| governing these things, just poorly and not in the favor
| of not-cars.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| yulaow wrote:
| Honestly big tech has got too big and too much lobbying power in
| USA and I believe at this point, unless something really
| revolutionary happens, they'll hold the whole executive and
| legislative branches by the balls for a very long time. Adding
| this to the hard political bipolarism in USA, the situation looks
| extremely grim in the future.
| encryptluks2 wrote:
| Probably because they are more interested in virtue signaling and
| have no understanding of technology. Rather than actually make
| broad anti-monopoly rules, which quite frankly would be targeted
| more at Apple, they instead go on witchunts cause of conservative
| "censorship".
| hash872 wrote:
| In the interests of trying to add something new to the
| conversation- I just finished a poly sci book called The Economic
| Effects of Constitutions, which argues that presidential systems
| in general are less regulated, have lower taxes, and have a
| smaller welfare state than parliamentary systems. As it relates
| to regulating Big Tech, we can compare the US and Europe here.
| The book says that the multiple centers of power in presidential
| systems, especially bicameral ones, means that there are many
| separate powerful groups that must be appeased to pass even
| popular legislation with a consensus behind it. Here, a
| separately elected President has to grapple with a separately
| elected House, plus a Senate where two-thirds of the members were
| elected at a completely different time. Plus, party discipline is
| weaker in presidential systems, so he can't just whip his party
| to fall in line (most famously with Sinemanchin recently). 3rd
| party lobbying is then more powerful with weaker parties and
| separately elected reps who must cater to the marginal voter or
| power group in their district. Powerful interest groups are more
| powerful in a presidency!
|
| Seeing as there's a broad but not ultra-strong consensus in both
| parties to Do Something with Big Tech, in a coalition
| parliamentary system a bill would've likely already passed.
| Whether you think that's good or bad is an exercise left up the
| reader, just wanted to introduce a new perspective :)
| pythonaut_16 wrote:
| There's a strong argument to be made that in the American
| system this is a feature and not a bug.
|
| The whole thing is designed to make it difficult to make big
| changes, especially unilaterally.
|
| Whether the system is serving us well or needs adjustments is a
| different matter.
| pfhayes wrote:
| But this isn't a big change? This is a bill with bipartisan
| support in congress, and it's my understanding that it has
| majority (but not 60%) support.
|
| If this is difficult, then everything is difficult. How can a
| governing body being impeded on its most fundamental duties
| be considered a feature?
| dane-pgp wrote:
| "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make
| violent revolution inevitable." - John F. Kennedy, 1962
|
| https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/89101-those-who-make-
| peacef...
| cato_the_elder wrote:
| One interpretation of Kennedy's quote is that it's
| essentially a threat to violence by those who want some
| kind of radical change.
|
| When made by the US president (to Latin America [1]),
| that probably needs to be taken seriously.
|
| [1]: https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/address-
| the-first-...
| gunapologist99 wrote:
| Even though I might be in favor of some variant of this bill,
| I'm really glad that it can't just be railroaded through
| without adequate debate. The "tyranny of the majority" can be
| a very real thing, and we need to be mindful that the tension
| between powers (separation of powers) was put there
| explicitly for this purpose -- to prevent a single powerful
| group from seizing control.
| RajuVarghese wrote:
| In contrast, the EU is moving boldly forward with the Digital
| Markets Act [1]. It looks good on paper but I wonder what it
| means in practice. I wonder if this legislation will fizzle out
| too.
|
| [1] https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/press/press-
| releases/2022...
| tyrfing wrote:
| > I wonder what it means in practice
|
| The requirements to provide data to business users and to
| advertisers are pretty interesting. Same for search engines
| having to sell all user data that they have.
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| I just hope it has spillover effects into the US. Platforms
| like this are the biggest trench of economic rent the world has
| ever seen.
| klipt wrote:
| If Europe wants these regulations and US doesn't, could it be
| because global rent seeking by US corporations ultimately
| benefits the US economy at the expense of other countries'
| economies?
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| Eh. It is the case that it benefits the US economy at the
| expense of others. I wouldn't go assuming that the
| difference in regulations is a precedent or primarily an
| effect of this. I think the US will catch up.
| permo-w wrote:
| it certainly benefits US corporations at the expense of
| other countries' economies
| freedomben wrote:
| I expect that when Apple complies, they will see huge market
| share gains, and they will realize that doing the same thing
| in the US is a good idea. People who already use Apple, are
| still going to use Apple, but people who don't because they
| want the freedom of Android might jump to Apple once that
| platform is more in line with their wants.
| KerrAvon wrote:
| But Apple doesn't care about market share. It is far more
| profitable now than it would be in a race to the bottom as
| a commodity hardware maker.
| freedomben wrote:
| > _But Apple doesn't care about market share._
|
| Are you sure? I distinctly remember them boasting in a
| keynote about how many Android users were using their app
| to switch to iOS. I could definitely believe that it's
| not a high strategic priority though.
|
| > _It is far more profitable now than it would be in a
| race to the bottom as a commodity hardware maker._
|
| Agreed, but I don't think it would have to turn into a
| race to the bottom. Apple is a luxury brand now, and I
| expect they would continue to maintain that. The Apple
| logo is very much a status symbol (particularly for the
| young. My teenagers are literally made fun of at school
| for having "Androids" instead of iPhones), and I wouldn't
| expect that to change much. In fact I think as more
| people adopt it, being an Android user would become more
| of an aberration from cultural expectations than it
| already is.
| newaccount2021 wrote:
| kmlx wrote:
| > I expect that when Apple complies, they will see huge
| market share gains
|
| > but people who don't because they want the freedom of
| Android might jump to Apple once that platform is more in
| line with their wants.
|
| i don't think so for two reasons:
|
| 1. people in europe have much less disposable income and as
| such prefer cheaper devices.
|
| 2. people don't really care about the so called "freedom of
| android"
|
| thus android has a steady 60 something percent in europe
| and as long as there are super cheap android devices, this
| will continue.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _hope it has spillover effects into the US_
|
| Probably not, and for good reason. If Europe is moving first,
| it makes sense to wait and see how their approach fairs.
| We've learned a lot about what works and more about what
| doesn't with GDPR, a bit more from v2 in California.
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| But at the same time I expect the iphones will all be usb-c
| compatible by 2024 globally, not just in the EU
|
| I'm not sure how much to expect in the US. Is a one time
| VPN connection all you'll need in order to get sideloading
| working?
| freedomben wrote:
| I agree, I think it will spill over. It may harm the app
| store revenue, but it's going to result in a big adoption
| of Apple hardware by people who previously wouldn't have.
| When Apple loosening the reins doesn't result in
| Armageddon like so many people here seem to think it
| will, US customers will also pressure Apple to similar
| policies, and they will do it.
|
| It probably will hurt app store revenues, but Apple makes
| such a premium on hardware that it may make up or even
| exceed the losses from software competition.
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| > It probably will hurt app store revenues, but Apple
| makes such a premium on hardware that it may make up or
| even exceed the losses from software competition.
|
| Seems very unlikely to me. the profit margin on app store
| tax is going to be extremely high. The expert witness at
| the epic games trial estimated an 80% profit margin on 20
| billion dollars of revenue. Comes out to $16B profit out
| of their total 25ish. That doesn't just disappear if
| apple allows sideloading, but it could easily shrink a
| great a deal. Even if apple somehow manages to gain
| greater market share, I just don't see it coming out as a
| net positive for them.
| freedomben wrote:
| > _Comes out to $16B profit out of their total 25ish_
|
| Oh man, that's a high percentage. I was under the
| impression it was closer to 50%. With those numbers, you
| may be right.
|
| Although, I assume they will heavily market their own
| store as the only "true" app store and only secure one,
| etc, and a large amount of customers will stick with just
| theirs, so I would expect it wouldn't take too major of a
| hit, although if big names like Epic boycott the App
| Store that could definitely mess up that strategy.
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| It's not that they need to boycott it. It's that they
| need to offer it from 30% less through their own
| channels. When there's real competition in the market,
| apple will likely need to adjust their fee strategy.
| kmlx wrote:
| > I expect the iphones will all be usb-c compatible by
| 2024 globally
|
| or maybe they just drop usbc altogether?
| Isinlor wrote:
| Digital Markets Act is done deal, only formalities left.
|
| It has support of the EU Council, Parliament and Commission.
|
| If you read DMA it gives quite a lot of executive powers to EU
| Commission, so that approach can be adjusted as needed.
|
| As long as there will be political points in bashing American
| big-tech, it will not fizzle out.
| thewarrior wrote:
| America has a lot more leverage over the EU now. I doubt it
| will be smooth sailing.
| nikanj wrote:
| No such thing as a done deal when all parties have billions
| to burn on lawyers & appeals
| [deleted]
| endisneigh wrote:
| The main difference is that the EU has no meaningful
| competition and so the only thing they really can do is
| legislate since innovation doesn't seem like an option for the
| EU.
|
| I remember when Nokia represented top tier consumer tech. Oh
| well.
| mrtksn wrote:
| EU is not one of the richest places on the planet thanks to
| the museum tickets, obviously there's lot's of innovation
| happening.
|
| In fact, EU is taking the lightweight and pro free market
| approach here. US tried to destroy TikTok instead of regulate
| it.
| YetAnotherNick wrote:
| There are are concerningly few tech companies in europe, at
| least compared to their GDP. Top European companies are
| mostly all fashion or oil and gases.
|
| [1]: https://companiesmarketcap.com/tech/largest-tech-
| companies-b... [2]:
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/546298/euronext-
| market-c...
| mrtksn wrote:
| Europe definitely missed out on computers but I suspect
| it's not that easy to judge if missing out on tech and
| does mostly textiles.
|
| Market cap doesn't mean people are making money or shows
| the economy it creates. Musk sends funny troll tweet or
| says something that will result in a fine few month down
| the road and instantly billions of dollars of market cap
| is destroyed or created. This doesn't exist in Europe or
| anywhere else, at least not at that scale. The amount of
| money in the USA is just on another level.
|
| Secondly, that crazy ecosystem in the US sucks all the
| high potential companies. It's very common for an EU
| startup to incorporate in the US to tap into that
| consumer market and that VC ecosystem. The work is done
| in NL, FR, RO, BG etc but it is a US company. As a
| result, you have a situation where the EU part of the
| operations doesn't make any money because it doesn't have
| to but does all the salary processing and the Silicon
| Valley HQ makes ridiculous trades and the EU part looks
| like a loss center. Lots of lots of games are Europe-
| made, like European talent created the concept, the
| graphics, the code but if the publisher is American on
| the books you'll see it as American success.
|
| Europe has this investment culture where investors invest
| into stuff that make profit, in US companies don't have
| to make a profit as long as the owners of the stocks can
| trade them and make profit.
|
| It's just different, I don't think it's fair to say that
| Europe does oil and textile and not much more. That
| wouldn't explain the living standards that are on par
| with the USA.
| delta_p_delta_x wrote:
| > Lots of games are Europe-made ... but if the publisher
| is American, you'll see it as an American success.
|
| Case in point: Microsoft Flight Simulator (the latest one
| released in 2020), developed by a French studio, Asobo
| (the same company also develops the _A Plague Tale_
| franchise). Of course, it was augmented by Microsoft
| technologies like Azure which hosts the cloud and servers
| for the streaming scenery, but even so, most of the
| development is European.
| endisneigh wrote:
| The EU is rich but it's not due to excellence in consumer
| tech. If anything TikTok is a great example since Shorts is
| catching up (albeit very slowly).
|
| What are the areas in consumer tech where Europe enjoys the
| worldwide advantage in sales and mindshare?
| poniko wrote:
| Spotify, Minecraft, Klarna and Skype are some from the
| top of my mind ..
| toyg wrote:
| Most UK-EU fintech B2C startups are also better than any
| US option, afaik.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| That's not _that_ hard because the foundation of banking
| here in Europe is so strong. We don 't run on physical
| checks here, we have working next-day inter-bank
| transfers and direct debits with more and more banks
| additionally supporting instant transfer, and most
| importantly we have _way_ less fraud because we have
| actual identity cards for everyone instead of allowing
| everyone knowing your SSN to use your data to create
| fraudulent accounts.
|
| The result is that European fintechs can skip a lot of
| groundwork that every US fintech has to deal with _and_
| we need less of them in the first place because stuff
| that needs fintechs in the US is available for everyone
| in the first place.
| sofixa wrote:
| > What are the areas in consumer tech where Europe enjoys
| the worldwide advantage in sales and mindshare
|
| Automobiles, video games off the top of my head. In any
| case, why does it matter? There are other things outside
| of consumer tech that are innovative and bring money.
| mrtksn wrote:
| There are other things in life and business than consumer
| tech and consumer tech is not only photo sharing.
| endisneigh wrote:
| I never claimed consumer tech is only photo sharing?
| You're the one who even brought up Tiktok to begin with,
| lol.
|
| Sad how it's so hard to give examples of the EUs
| excellence in mainstream consumer tech, I guess.
|
| There's nothing wrong with the EU legislating since they
| can't win the market share through traditional means.
| It's a valid strategy. Let's just not pretend, please.
| The restrictions that will be put in place may be what
| Europe needs to compete, but let's just act like Europe
| is already in a strong competitive position.
| atlasunshrugged wrote:
| Which ironically may slow things down in the U.S. even further
| (if the EU passes their legislation which seems very likely
| that they will)... many (American) policymakers might think,
| "why not sit for another year on domestic legislation and see
| if this ends up like GDPR with a bunch of unintended
| consequences before rolling it out in the U.S.?"
|
| edit in parenthesis for clarity
| yonaguska wrote:
| Missing from the comments here, Big Tech in many cases,
| especially as far as social media is concerned, acts as a private
| extension of our intelligence agencies. We wouldn't want to
| regulate our own intel assets into irrelevance.
| nxm wrote:
| When speaker of the house benefits personally from big tech, why
| would she bite the hand that feeds her?
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Are you insinuating that Nancy Pelosi's husband committed
| insider trading and got away with it? If that is true then he
| can also get away with shorting these big companies. If you
| know what the market will do ahead of time you can make money
| whether it goes up or down.
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| Investing in companies has a lot more plausible deniability
| than shorting them. I don't know the specifics of her
| husband's case or what he does. Most funds have fairly
| specific strategies laid out though. It would raise a lot of
| eyebrows to do something wildly different.
| AlgorithmicTime wrote:
| Mtinie wrote:
| She has no compelling reason to, nor do her peers across the
| political spectrum.
|
| This type of regulation has to be one of the more challenging
| to implement. Global social engagement means that any attempt
| to adjust the status quo means pissed off constituencies.
|
| For every person who sees the legitimate societal dangers posed
| by unconstrained growth of Tech's influence, far more view that
| same growth as a positive and will actively resist curbing
| their personal freedoms.
|
| Soma is soma, whether it's provided physically or digitally.
| Spivak wrote:
| You're like one step away from getting to the heart of it. US
| regulators have a golden calf they need to not kill because
| these companies make fistfuls of money, provide stable gainful
| employment to a few million workers, and give the US broad
| global influence.
|
| It's way bigger than one representative.
| hunglee2 wrote:
| EU Digital Markets act will do the job of fighting for citizens
| rights. Even China is doing more - $1 billion fine for Didi for
| over collection of user data, this _on top_ of the app being
| suspended during the entirety of the investigation (over a year)
| dfadsadsf wrote:
| Xi wanted to punish Didi with $1B fine - the fact that it was
| for collection of user data was purely accidental. Could have
| been for having logo with too bright font color or some other
| random thing.
|
| I really really hope EU avoids writing regulation with specific
| goal of punishing specific big tech companies by disguising it
| with consumer protection. Every time ends up hurting broader
| ecosystem and making EU less competitive.
| kmlx wrote:
| > EU Digital Markets act will do the job of fighting for
| citizens rights.
|
| not sure we can say this without seeing the effects and
| considering the gdpr semi disaster.
| atlasunshrugged wrote:
| I'm not sure China's fine was about citizens rights rather than
| sending a message to tech companies and founders that started
| to have serious power that there's only one place in charge,
| and that's the government.
| criley2 wrote:
| What's the difference between "enforcing citizens rights" and
| "ensuring that the private org understands that the
| government of the people is in charge"
|
| Do you believe a private business will respect citizens if it
| does not respect their government?
|
| Perhaps the American system of letting corporations run
| totally wild while neutering all regulation and legislation
| isn't the best way to protect citizen rights or create
| company's that respect citizens by default. But hey the
| dividends are great
| hoseja wrote:
| The difference is one of those governments is actively
| running concentration camps.
| kingkawn wrote:
| I agree, American prisons are abhorrent slow-motion
| holocausts
| trasz wrote:
| Prisons are a different thing altogether; the
| "concentration camps" he's talking about look more like
| youth detention centers in some of Eastern Europe.
| kingkawn wrote:
| It sounds a whole lot like you've never been inside a US
| prison.
| atlasunshrugged wrote:
| I've never heard of youth detention centers in Eastern
| Europe. What is that? Any links?
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| I believe private business won't weld me into my own home
|
| Viewing this in isolation isn't particularly helpful. I
| support regulation on big tech. I think the digital markets
| act is great. I certainly wouldn't trade that for CCP
| authoritarianism.
| criley2 wrote:
| >I believe private business won't weld me into my own
| home
|
| Lol, you should look up mining towns and how corporations
| treated their miners in the 1800s.
|
| A corporation without a government to beat it into
| submission will treat you as a machine, to be used up and
| discarded and replaced. Come on! We've seen the bad side
| of unregulated business here in America, and it was
| extremely dark.
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| Well.. then its a good thing I said I support regulation
| on big tech.
|
| Living in a corporate mining town is basically just an
| authoritarian government on its own with extra steps imo.
| atrus wrote:
| Private businesses will (and have!) feed you poison and
| laugh all the way to the bank. If they could make money
| welding you into your home, you'd have already heard the
| crackle.
| Dracophoenix wrote:
| Governments are capable of poisoning their own citizens
| and have done so in the past.
|
| https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/06/30/
| fac...
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| Maybe. But they tend to make more money by not making a
| direct enemy of their customers though. Authoritarian
| governments have no accountability to anyone.
| xamolxix wrote:
| > What's the difference between "enforcing citizens rights"
| and "ensuring that the private org understands that the
| government of the people is in charge"
|
| The difference is that you can use "ensuring that the
| private org understands that the government of the people
| is in charge" for anything including abusing citizens
| rights
| trasz wrote:
| freedomben wrote:
| The USA has a major problem with prisons, no doubt. USA
| over prosecutes, criminalizes things that shouldn't be
| criminalized (eating plants that grow naturally,
| consensual adult sex work, and many other things), has
| sentencing and treatment inconsistencies and inequities
| that are wrong, but do you really think US is worse/less
| ethical than Chinese prisons, labor camps, and general
| disappearance of persons? (I'm genuinely asking, not
| trying to make a rhetorical point through questioning. If
| that's what you really think, I'd like to understand your
| perspective)
| [deleted]
| alaric410 wrote:
| Thankfully the EU is stepping up.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| There was never really one "push" on this, there were half a
| dozen different, often mutually exclusive pushes. Lots of people
| wanted more regulation, then it became clear some wanted more
| censorship and some less, some just wanted advertising to be
| cheaper etc. Also it was never clear to me that any of the
| demands were likely to be viable in a world where views are worth
| 1e-4 pence each or compatible with the US Constitution.
| DontchaKnowit wrote:
| firasd wrote:
| I always thought the 'techlash' was more of an elite discourse
| thing than a real grassroots thing. Elizabeth Warren launched her
| primary campaign with big billboards saying 'Break Up Big Tech'
| and that campaign wasn't very successful. To the extent that
| people were generally mad at Facebook a lot of it was a hangover
| from the 2016 election
| ch4s3 wrote:
| No only that, but I think journalists in elite publications
| feel threatened by the likes of Google and Facebook.
| fallingknife wrote:
| This is 100% correct. People love Amazon because it's super
| convenient. The "techlash" is astroturf from the media and
| politicians. https://reason.com/2021/07/06/poll-people-like-
| amazon-more-t...
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| Even if that wasn't the case yesterday it is today. The plumber
| doesn't have the luxury of caring WTF FB and Google are up to
| when his van eats $100 of gas every day.
|
| There's a baseline amount of economic stability in one's
| lifestyle that's needed before people care about fairly
| abstract and diffuse problems like big tech and the
| environment.
| dominotw wrote:
| True. Most of my working class mexican family don't know what
| exactly is Latinx or why they should be referring to
| themselves as latinx.
|
| Democratic party is dominated by "college educated females"
| and media pundits so much so they they have separated
| themselves into a safe space from people they are supposedly
| advocating for.
| svnt wrote:
| It is my understanding that this is basically how the
| dissemination of opinions and ideas work. The fact that at a
| frozen moment in history a leading edge opinion did not garner
| much popular support does not mean it will not be popular in
| the future. We are in the future.
| sk8terboi wrote:
| woevdbz wrote:
| And it's a good thing with the incoming recession. Good
| regulation should be countercyclical -- it's in times of plenty
| that society can bear the cost of reform and restructure.
| Besides, tech won't need government's help to become less
| dominant in the next 5-10 years. I think once we see a few of the
| big names in tech suffer the same fates as Yahoo or AOL before
| us, the push for regulation will soften even more.
| bastardoperator wrote:
| Yeah, I don't know. The lack of healthcare, kids getting shot in
| schools, homelessness, increased cost of nearly everything, and
| now forcing women to give birth are issues that are vastly more
| important than some stupid app store. Don't get me wrong, we
| should probably do something, but in terms of priority which
| everyone here should understand, it's lower on the list, which
| the article also mentions.
| felipellrocha wrote:
| This is just an argument to not do anything in disguise of
| being rational. (1) We can tackle multiple things at once, (2)
| some of those things are like the way they are because of the
| current state of tech: take a look at Amazon trying to buy One
| Medical as one such example.
| decebalus1 wrote:
| > The lack of healthcare, kids getting shot in schools,
| homelessness, increased cost of nearly everything, and now
| forcing women to give birth are issues
|
| .. that will also not be solved by the current administration.
| Or the following administration for that matter. It's not like
| the stupid app store has been deprioritized in order for
| congress to deeply lean into the stringent problems affecting
| America.
| bastardoperator wrote:
| No executive branch has ever solved a problem because that's
| not the job of the executive. They can only enforce solutions
| via legislation or say that the solution isn't viable through
| veto. I would argue anyone looking to any administration for
| solutions versus the legislators doesn't understand how the
| US government works.
| decebalus1 wrote:
| You're splitting hairs about the colloquial usage of the
| word 'administration' in the American context. I meant
| 'governing body' in general, including the executive, the
| legislative and the judicial. I understand it's usually
| meant to represent only the executive.
|
| > I would argue anyone looking to any administration for
| solutions versus the legislators doesn't understand how the
| US government works.
|
| You latest 2 comments are prime examples of fallacies.
| You've started with the `Fallacy of relative privation`
| about what the 'real' problems are, ending with some sort
| of 'Ad hominem'.
|
| To your point about what the executive can do (although
| that's not what I meant), the executive has influence. The
| executive doesn't function in an isolated bubble and can
| 'drive' a solution to any systemic problem through the
| branches of the government.
| bastardoperator wrote:
| Mean what you say. The term "the administration" is
| indicative of the executive branch. The "Obama
| Administration", "Trump Administration" or even the
| "Biden administration". Never has the term "the
| administration" referred to senators, house members, or
| the judicial branch. I would argue the President is the
| administrator when it comes to cabinets and other
| administrations like the FDA, FAA, and EPA. Yeah, I'm
| splitting hairs on comments that simply are not true, or
| need to be walked back and redefined.
| pessimizer wrote:
| No, you're splitting hairs on definitions that are
| irrelevant to any argument being made by anyone.
| dan_quixote wrote:
| It scares me that we all seem to agree that the federal (and
| state to a lesser degree) government model is no longer going
| to solve major/existential societal problems. I don't mean
| the current government - a.k.a. set of legislators - I mean
| the model will continue to fail after subsequent elections.
| How many steps away is civil war or revolution?
| jjk166 wrote:
| Well the reason we don't believe these issues will be
| solved soon is due to the fact that current beliefs on most
| of these issues are split almost perfectly 50-50. There's
| been 14 months in the past 42 years that one party had
| enough seats in the senate to defeat a filibuster.
| Eventually demographic and socioeconomic changes will shift
| the balance of power to one end or another and there will
| be a major realignment, at which point several of the
| current hot button issues will be dealt with and we'll get
| a whole new set of seemingly intractable problems.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Well the reason we don't believe these issues will be
| solved soon is due to the fact that current beliefs on
| most of these issues are split almost perfectly 50-50.
|
| They aren't, though.
|
| (Support in the least representative house of the federal
| legislature may be split almost exactly 50-50, but that's
| not the same as opinions on the substantive issues being
| split that way.)
| jjk166 wrote:
| I guess balance of power would be a better term to use,
| but the point is the same - for a generation the voices
| of those saying "A" have been cancelled out by those
| saying "B" such that neither A nor B is implemented.
| decebalus1 wrote:
| > most of these issues are split almost perfectly 50-50
|
| between the representatives, not between the people.
| Couple that with gerrymandering, vestiges of election
| laws back from the times when the red coats were still a
| threat and corporate money, it's no surprise that the
| people are disenfranchised when it comes to these issues.
|
| I would go and say this is all intentional, btw. The
| government is doing a great job at promoting the
| interests of the entities they're actually representing.
| jjk166 wrote:
| This has always been the case. There hasn't been a
| substantive change to how representatives are selected in
| our country in about a century, but for much of that time
| we were a functional democracy.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > There hasn't been a substantive change to how
| representatives are selected in our country in about a
| century,
|
| This is false, by the way; for one significant example
| the gradual elimination of multimember or overlapping
| house districts as a means of hyper-gerrymandering for
| partisan and/or racial purposes (including the law
| finally prohibiting it entirely) was well within the last
| century.
|
| > but for much of that time we were a functional
| democracy.
|
| Arguably, for much of the past centry even less of a
| "functional democracy" than today. The combination of the
| structural duopoly of the electoral system and the
| unusually long political realignment if the 1930s-1990s
| where the salient political divides didn't map to the
| divides between the two major parties-which produced a
| lot of bipartisan legislation and gets people to falsely
| describe it as a time of low political polarization, when
| it was in fact a time of very high polarization but where
| the polarization didn't map well to the major parties-
| also meant that it was often impossible to have a
| meaningful voice on salient issues by voting, which
| contributed to considerable political violence, that
| really dropped as the new political alignment solidified
| in the last couple decades of that period.
| jjk166 wrote:
| > The combination of the structural duopoly of the
| electoral system and the unusually long political
| realignment if the 1930s-1990s where the salient
| political divides didn't map to the divides between the
| two major parties-which produced a lot of bipartisan
| legislation and gets people to falsely describe it as a
| time of low political polarization, when it was in fact a
| time of very high polarization but where the polarization
| didn't map well to the major parties
|
| Call it whatever you like but this is what I am referring
| to. We are at a point unusual in history where the
| polarization of the electorate maps well to the
| polarization of the major parties, leading to coalitions
| of equal strength in government that can neither
| compromise nor overcome opposition.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > We are at a point unusual in history where the
| polarization of the electorate maps well to the
| polarization of the major parties
|
| No, that's normal, not unusual, and key to functional
| democracy (even with a multiparty system, you need the
| parties to each reflect coherent ideological positions
| and to critically represent the alternate positions on
| salient divides in the electorate.) The long 1930s-1990s
| realignment was a historical aberration, and neither a
| normal nor a desirable condition.
| decebalus1 wrote:
| > There hasn't been a substantive change to how
| representatives are selected in our country in about a
| century
|
| And the country and the demographics of the country
| stayed the same? It's probably easy to figure out what's
| wrong with this..
| jjk166 wrote:
| My whole argument is that the demographic change is the
| source of the issue
| MrZongle2 wrote:
| _"...we should probably do something, but in terms of priority
| which everyone here should understand, it 's lower on the
| list"_
|
| Spoiler alert: _nothing_ on the list will get addressed.
| Business as usual for DC.
| parkingrift wrote:
| You don't think all those other issues are related to the rise
| of the big tech industry in the US? Big tech has absolute
| control over messaging and distribution of messaging in the US.
| They are gatekeepers of information and dictators of what
| information you see. The rise of polarization in the United
| States is directly correlated with the rise of big tech.
|
| It's going to be hard to solve all the problems you mentioned
| while big tech continues to build platforms that are inherently
| designed to rip us apart. Engagement at all costs even if the
| cost is our basic ways of life.
| jjk166 wrote:
| > Big tech has absolute control over messaging and
| distribution of messaging in the US.
|
| If Fox Corporation wants to air something on its cable news
| station, or if Warner Bros Discovery wants to put something
| on CNN's website, or if the New York Times wants to print
| something on its front page, which big tech company can stop
| them? While a growing number of people get news from
| alternative sources enabled by some big tech companies, the
| traditional distribution channels still exist and are pretty
| much unpenetrated by these competitors.
|
| Meanwhile, the polarization we see now started developing
| long before any of the big tech players became powerful, and
| indeed before the internet even existed. There are numerous
| factors influencing the increase in polarizations, such as
| the decay of traditional social institutions that allowed
| people of varying beliefs to regularly interact with each
| other and give people something to talk about besides
| politics, a shift in political strategy in the late 20th
| century to make greater use of public opinion polling and
| focus on more devisive issues, socioeconomic changes that
| have shifted the balance of power between various groups
| meaning old political coalitions that maintained common
| ground have become unworkable, and a general stagnation in
| society that has driven many to anger and despair.
|
| Most tech giants don't particularly desire such polarization.
| Zuckerberg certainly didn't set out to build the optimal
| platform for middle aged women to share conspiracy theories.
| The fact that despite best efforts pretty much every internet
| platform's algorithm converges towards polarizing content
| means either no one knows how to make an internet platform
| that isn't toxic, or no one actually wants such a platform.
| Either way, any attempt to remedy polarization by regulating
| big tech is doomed to failure. If we can't find a way to
| solve the important problems while our society is polarized,
| they're not going to get solved at all.
| bastardoperator wrote:
| No, I don't think that at all. A lot of these issues pre-date
| big tech. I don't think you actually read the article.
| Explain to me how Apple is ripping us apart by not allowing
| other payment platforms on the App store and how being able
| to pay for in-app purchases through PayPal will make
| everything right again?
| Proven wrote:
| pessimizer wrote:
| Monopoly regulation is the only thing that is functioning
| reasonably well in the administration, because it was made a
| centerpiece by during the campaign and for a while after as a
| substitute for non-existent social democratic positions, in order
| to keep the Bernie voter on board.
|
| The disarray of this administration affects this process in
| opposing ways: because everything is so disorganized, it's very
| difficult for Democratic lobbyists and donors to penetrate the
| bubble around these early appointees and compromise their work or
| shut them down. But on the other hand, since this looks like a
| one-term presidency with the administration going Republican as
| soon as it gets a chance, everybody knows that all they have to
| do is delay, slow-play, and wait it out.
| freedomben wrote:
| I mostly agree with you, but I'm not so confident in a one-term
| presidency. It looks bad now, but there are still over two
| years to go and a lot can change. I expect after the mid-terms,
| we'll start to see some Democrat front-runners emerge and Biden
| will step aside to make way for them.
|
| Edit: After writing that above, I had another thought. I'm not
| so sure a Republican admin would be better. Republicans would
| normally (traditionally) be that way, but among the Republicans
| I've talked to there is extreme distaste for the power of big
| tech. I think it's very possible for a Republican to run
| against big tech and win with a mandate from their party to
| rein them in.
| jmyeet wrote:
| Of course it is. Why? Because both parties operate at the behest
| of the capital-owning class. The only bills that pass are
| performative, extend police power domestically (eg [1]) or extend
| military power internationally (which typically means a massive
| giveaway to the military-industrial complex anyway).
|
| Nothing curtails corporate power. It's also why the focus of
| politics is on being divisive on social issues. This is to
| distract the voters and prevent class solidarity of the working
| class.
|
| [1]: https://edition.cnn.com/2022/06/14/politics/house-vote-
| supre...
| carabiner wrote:
| In the US, there is basically one party - the business party.
| It has two factions, called Democrats and Republicans, which
| are somewhat different but carry out variations on the same
| policies.
| mike_hock wrote:
| Based and redpilled.
| Aunche wrote:
| Blaming the ineffectiveness of Congress on the "capital-owning
| class" is a convenient, but lazy way to defect the blame to a
| place where you can pretend you don't have any control. Did you
| forget our that the government gave trillions of dollars in
| stimulus/unemployment during the pandemic?
|
| The problem is that politicians act in ways that are more
| likely to be elected and voters are shallow. Throwing money at
| a problem is easy and creates good publicity, so that still
| gets done. Actual effective regulation is boring, so it's just
| as effective for politicians to simply grandstand against big
| tech companies.
|
| Corporations are powerful enough to convince politicians that a
| proposed bill will cost them votes in the long term, but not
| much else. For example, Facebook, despite being one of the most
| heavy lobbying spenders, has spent even more money establishing
| their content Oversight Board. If they could actually buy
| politicians, we'd have more regulation that happens to benefit
| big tech. Both the Republican solution of not allowing social
| media companies to censor content and the Democratic solution
| of creating more rules for moderate disinformation are
| beneficial to Facebook because they can offload some of the
| responsibility of moderation to the government.
| mberning wrote:
| We need a separation of money and state. Desperately. The fact
| that you can do the bidding of the donor class for years then
| leave office and immediately get placed in a cushy job is
| gross.
| daniel-cussen wrote:
| I wish. Extending police powers? Meaning refund the police?
| throwaway23234 wrote:
| No, they are still defunding in extreme left areas:
|
| https://lasd.org/effects-of-defunding-the-lasd-on-public-
| saf...
| claudiulodro wrote:
| The chart in that article shows LASD budged increased from
| $3.4b to $3.5b since last year, hardly defunding.
| kansface wrote:
| That's well under inflation.
| banannaise wrote:
| No it isn't. That's the change from FY 2020 to FY 2021,
| which was ratified in April 2021. Inflation for the prior
| year was well under 2%, and even a live chart would have
| given you less than 5%.
| happythebob wrote:
| I'm incredibly disappointed a Both Side's fallacy would appear
| at the top of a Hacker News post after all of the evidence we
| have all over the globe about both side's fallacies.
|
| This week the far left got arrested for protesting abortion
| rights, while the far right tried to block countries from
| joining NATO and it's the usual pro-Russian agenda GOP
| politicans.
|
| Also this week, the House voted to move forward with codifying
| marriage rights, and only Republicans voted no.
|
| We could go on all day. Both sides are not the same and even
| remotely implying otherwise is very ignorant and damaging.
| Didn't you learn anything after 2016? Even Hacker News is no
| longer safe for reasonable discourse?
| Bloating wrote:
| You're very useful
| aaaaaaaaata wrote:
| Their donor base is the same. So they stick together on the
| issues that are about value and money instead of values.
| happythebob wrote:
| We need a good examination on when and how so many people
| got tricked into thinking cynicism is the same thing as
| critical thinking. The conservatives dismantled your public
| education, not the liberals and progressives and social
| democrats. The conservatives are also organizing on
| discords and 4chans to upvote shitty Both Sides Fallacies
| on social media, such as yours.
|
| Feel free to provide voting records that show your theory.
| You will quickly move goalposts and start more clearing
| citing conspiracy theories, because Both Sides Are Nowhere
| Near The Fucking Same.
| koube wrote:
| Taking a position has a high social cost. Try defending
| any candidate and you'll get a 10 comment chain where you
| have to defend your position against multiple internet
| commenters who are arguing mutually exclusive positions
| against you but not against each other. These kind of
| comment chains generally devolve into the every issue and
| often touches on the history of mankind and the nature of
| government.
|
| Both sides-ism has a low social cost. Everyone is bad to
| some extent, this can always be true in a vacuous sense,
| nobody is offended. You are not partisan nor biased if
| everyone is bad. If someone questions you you can
| infinitely motte-bailey backwards into an agreeable
| position, just by saying you are actually taking no
| position.
| anonymouswacker wrote:
| ^ This person gets it. The "overton window" in American
| politics is narrow enough that we essentially have a de facto
| uniparty, that agrees on everything except what matters. About
| 40% of the country is Independent but we pretend that either of
| these parties represent us. Then we fight about which party is
| worse. I can't see any other way that this could have happened
| after the introduction of fiat currency and endless war budgets
| financed by fiat. Eisenhower was right about the Military
| Industrial Complex.
| smiddereens wrote:
| Frost1x wrote:
| Too many apologists keep totting the line that capitalism as
| practiced in the US is A-OK and then deflect with "what's the
| alternative?"
|
| The alternative is to fix rampant abuses we see with highly
| concentrated capital accumulation that results in a proxy of
| many unchecked powers in private and increasingly public
| spaces. There's lots of paths being pursued to curb this.
|
| Antitrust legislation and most business regulation exists
| because of abuses that naturally arise, I don't know why the
| narrative of continued deregulation solves these problems--
| regulation is pretty much the only way to leverage the benefits
| of capitalism without allowing it to become yet another
| oppressive system over the majority of society where the
| oppressors just become a class of the ultrawealthy. My opinion
| is that were well on our way down that path as we see
| increasingly less value add back to society and a lot more
| value capture strategies instead.
| drekipus wrote:
| > Too many apologists keep totting the line that capitalism
| as practiced in the US is A-OK and then deflect with "what's
| the alternative?"
|
| I don't think as many people say that as you think.
|
| I think most people want better regulation and control, but
| perhaps done incrementally (with haste) and with a feedback
| circuit.
|
| Most alternatives that have been "hard-stop" switched to lead
| to a lot more destruction and problems than we currently have
| now
| nathanaldensr wrote:
| Right, and the most frustrating thing is that _antitrust laws
| have been on the books since 1890_. We as a country and a
| people know how to stop unchecked corporate power, _and we
| already have laws to do so_. Unfortunately, lawlessness is
| much more of a problem than any one ideological position.
| fallingknife wrote:
| I would like to see some evidence for this "continued
| deregulation" I always hear about. Seems like everywhere I
| look regulation either has stayed the same or been tightened.
| chalst wrote:
| The hobbling of Dodd-Frank by Obama and its gutting by
| Trump, in each case at the behest of Wall Street, is an
| obvious example.
|
| Cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass%E2%80%93Steagall_in
| _post...
| Aunche wrote:
| Anyone in finance would tell you that Dodd Frank
| drastically changed how banks are run. Glass-Steagall was
| never reinstated because it had very little to do with
| the financial crisis. Many of the bigger players of the
| mortgage crisis never did anything related to commercial
| banking (e.g. Lehman Brothers, AIG).
| fallingknife wrote:
| Your linked source does not support the claim, but rather
| talks about efforts to restore Glass-Steagall in some
| form and their failure, which is not a loosening of
| regulations, but a continuation of the status quo. I do
| acknowledge that the repeal of Glass-Steagall itself was
| a loosening of regulation, but that was 25 years ago.
| chalst wrote:
| The link was 'Cf', meaning it gives background on the
| part of financial regulation I talk about, rather than
| being a direct source. It talks about the rationale for
| not adopting Glass-Steagall-strength measures during the
| Obama years. During the Trump years, most US banks were
| exempted from Dodd-Frank in 2018 via the Economic Growth,
| Regulatory Relief and Consumer Protection Act.
| thomassmith65 wrote:
| There's an article with examples here:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deregulation#United_States It
| doesn't seem like a comprehensive list. For example, I
| scanned the page for "Fairness Doctrine" and found nothing.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| Check out Uber/Lyft/AirBnB. All of them ignored regulations
| for long enough that the regulations eventually got
| removed.
|
| I'm not aware of many regulations that were tightened in
| the past 5 years. Changed sure, but usually aiming for
| fixing regulations that no longer properly applied.
|
| The regulations that "tightened" would be: FOSTA/SESTA
|
| It's possible I missed a lot, but please enlighten me.
| closewith wrote:
| Okay, so why is the EU seemingly able to regulate big tech?
| It's a capitalist continent.
| jltsiren wrote:
| The primary purpose of the EU is administering a common
| market that consists of a large number of sovereign states.
| Each state naturally wants to be protectionist and give
| domestic businesses advantages over those from other member
| states. The EU can't allow that, as it would destroy the
| common market.
|
| As a consequence, the EU has a lot of experience in pushing
| against powerful interests. It's doing that all the time, and
| it's also moderately successful at that. While many attempts
| at regulating giant businesses or forcing member states to do
| something they don't want ultimately fail, sometimes the EU
| manages to get things done.
| jmyeet wrote:
| There are several reasons.
|
| 1. Many parts of Europe still have a strong labor movement.
| This is the only effective counterbalance to corporate power
| in politics. The US has what may be the lowest rate of union
| coverage in the OECD (~10%) and most of that is police and
| teacher unions;
|
| 2. Europe by and large is not hypercapitalist like the US is.
| The normal is social democracy, which is still fundamentally
| capitalist but way less extreme;
|
| 3. Religion. Different European countries have more or less
| mostly Christian influence but that influence is way less
| militant. White evangelicalism and its effect ofn politics is
| more akin to wahhabism in Saudi Arabia. It's also hyper-
| capitalist;
|
| 4. The election process itself in European countries isn't
| generally political. US states often have the Secretary of
| State in charge of elections and that's a political office.
| Redistricting is inherently political. Other countries don't
| do this. Electoral boundaries are more often drawn by an
| independent organization;
|
| 5. Europe doesn't suffer from the "money = speech" falsehood;
| and
|
| 6. Europe still has the recent memory of two World Wars and
| the HOlocaust that favors cooperation over division.
| vannevar wrote:
| #5 here should be #1, by a mile. Here in Texas, Google is
| carpet-bombing local TV with ads blasting the bipartisan
| AIAOC as an attack on American technology by "tha
| lib'rals," cynically exploiting the political division to
| scare off Republican votes. They're laundering their money
| through the Koch brothers' Taxpayer's Protection Alliance.
| The ads might be a little less effective if they ended with
| a big "paid for by Google" banner and voice-over.
| kmeisthax wrote:
| For #1 an additional stumbling block for the labor movement
| is that it's rather difficult to create a limited-liability
| labor cooperative in the US. For-profit LLCs have legal
| advantages over other non-profit corporate forms. I suspect
| if someone tried to make something equivalent to Mondragon
| in the US, they'd have problems just maintaining the
| corporate veil and their workers would get crushed under
| the maddening hellscape that is consumer product liability.
|
| #3 doesn't pass the sniff test to me: Europe has it's
| Christian Wahhabists, too. Hungary and Poland broke the
| backs of their democracies even faster than the US is, in
| the name of banning gay people, and they've cooperated to
| break the EU sanctions mechanism that was supposed to keep
| them from doing this.
|
| Also #5 is wrong - or, at least, not properly root-caused.
| "Money-equals-speech" is itself a result of free-speech
| extremism. If we say the government can't regulate speech,
| then a way around that is to regulate money spent to speak.
| Let's say Ron DeSantis wants to ban gay advocacy - but the
| 1st Amendment says "hell no". Instead he gets a bill passed
| that bans spending money to purchase pride flags, buying
| paper to print books with gay characters in them, buying
| billboards with pro-LGBT messaging, or TV ad spots with the
| same. It's very difficult to _not_ read this as a speech-
| restricting bill.
|
| The argument in Citizens' United - _the_ money-equals-
| speech case - was that even a content-neutral funding cap
| was an infringement of free speech. The government can 't
| mandate that all politicians whisper, after all. Except now
| we have a fundraising war because every politician needs to
| shout as loudly as possible. And to do that you need lots
| of money. The US Supreme Court didn't invent "money-equals-
| speech", it's just a fact of how political speech works.
|
| Europe does not have this problem because Europe is willing
| to entertain restrictions on political speech that the US
| considers unconscionable. Several EU member states have
| constitutional bans on fascism and hate speech[0], for
| example. You could never get away with that in the US for
| any reason. Freedom of speech is not entirely _un_
| protected in the EU, of course - the protections are just
| more reasoned and considered than the blunt instrument of
| "Congress shall make no law".
|
| I'm not sure about #6 either. Did America not get involved
| in WWII? I mean, we _did_ try to cover up the Holocaust[1]
| early on and we got involved later than Europe, but it 's
| just as culturally engrained here as it presumably is over
| there.
|
| [0] Which, BTW, should be considered as censorious in and
| of themselves. Any political ideology which calls for the
| killing of specific groups of people is engaging in
| censorship.
|
| [1] Specifically: FDR knew about it early on; and the New
| York Times buried it many pages deep because they were shy
| about being a "Jewish newspaper".
| adrr wrote:
| Because they are US companies. Which is the main reason the
| US won't regulate them. EU is all about being anti-
| competitive, look at Airbus, InBev or LVMH. As long as it's
| their own companies being anti-competitive. Apple isn't even
| the market leader in EU, and EU is going to regulate them.
| That is anti-competitive. Let's go regulate the 2nd place
| company.
| closewith wrote:
| When I read comments like this on HN, I honestly wonder if
| the commenter believes this to be true, or if it's rhetoric
| or maybe trolling.
| leadingthenet wrote:
| I live in the EU (well, some of the time), and I honestly
| believe that what the above commenter says is at least
| partially true. The EU are being protectionist, and
| usually only pass these types of regulations in sectors
| they have little to offer in the way of competition. I
| eagerly await the moment they target Airbus or car
| manufacturers.
| closewith wrote:
| The EU is categorically less protectionist than the US,
| and is one of the most open economies in the world.
|
| If you honestly believe otherwise, you are intentionally
| misinformed.
| aantix wrote:
| Sample size of one.
|
| We hosted a German foreign exchange student.
|
| He was very aware of famous Youtubers, utilize Google for
| searches, watched Tiktok constantly. He owned the latest
| iPhone. His English was amazing.
|
| In certain respects, I wasn't sure if we ever offered him
| a radically different experience than when he experienced
| living in Hannover.
|
| Big (U.S.) Tech was very embedded in his life.
| onepointsixC wrote:
| It's blatantly true. Just compare the fines of VW who
| explicitly systematically cheated emissions tests on
| diesel vehicles to EU fines on Google... for recommending
| google products on google websites. Services are the one
| piece of trade between the US and EU which the US is a
| net exporter. Considering the number of fines and taxes
| which explicitly target those it's pretty clear what's
| going on.
| closewith wrote:
| Do you believe the EU is more protectionist than the US?
| If so, you are too biased to have a meaningful
| conversation with.
| onepointsixC wrote:
| What causes you to perceive the EU to be less
| protectionist?
|
| The EU precovid had a net positive trade balance with the
| rest of the world. [1].
|
| The US precovid had a net _negative_ trade balance of
| nearly $50 Bn a month. [2].
|
| The balance of trade between the US and EU is quite
| remarkably in the favor of the EU for trade with a
| "protectionist state ". How do you explain this
| discrepancy? If the US is so protectionist why are
| exports as a percentage of its GDP 1.58 times smaller
| than that of the EU [3][4]?
|
| [1]: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-eurostat-
| news/-/d... [2]: https://www.bea.gov/news/2020/us-
| international-trade-goods-a... [3]:
| https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-
| explained/index.php... [4]:
| https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/B020RE1Q156NBEA
| closewith wrote:
| As I replied to safety1st, a trade surplus is not
| evidence of protectionism. The EU has a comparable
| (slightly better) Weighted Mean Tariff Rate to the US,
| and both are the most open large economies in world.
|
| It's unsupportable nonsense to claim otherwise.
| onepointsixC wrote:
| Tariffs are only *one* means of trade policy. Pretending
| that they are the end all be all is nonsense. One quick
| example: France passed a Tax bill which targets only
| companies with revenues of more than 25 million euros
| there and 750 million globally. The catch? There's 30
| companies which it applies to, but only one which is
| French[1]. Thus it is officially classified as merely
| local tax and not a tariff but in effect is a tariff on
| large foreign companies to give pricing advantages to
| local French ones. But per your measurement is a zero
| percentage tariff.
|
| There are plenty of other subsidies and policy making
| ways to be protectionist.
|
| And if it really were such nonsense to suggest other
| wise, why can you not explain the discrepancy of the US -
| EU trade balance. It should be simple.
|
| [1]: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-48947922
| safety1st wrote:
| Wait what? The US runs a massive trade deficit with the
| world because it's extremely open about giving other
| countries access to its markets. The EU doesn't, in some
| years it actually runs a surplus. They're not ultra
| protectionist like China but I was certainly under the
| impression that they were more so than the US.
| safety1st wrote:
| See "Free Trade Rankings, 2019" here:
| https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/040115/which-
| countr...
| closewith wrote:
| A trade surplus is not evidence of protectionism. The
| most common metric to measure protectionism (in as far as
| it can be measured statistically) is the Weighted Mean
| Tariff Rate. Compare the EU at 1.48% to the US at 1.52% -
| the EU is slightly lower and both are among the lowest in
| the world, certainly of the large economies.
|
| It's literal misinformation to say that the EU is more
| protectionist than the US. It was a Trump talking point,
| and never based in fact.
|
| EU: https://tradingeconomics.com/european-union/tariff-
| rate-appl...
|
| US: https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/tariff-
| rate-appli...
| onepointsixC wrote:
| If Weighted Mean Tariff rates are the only measurement
| for trade that could be true. But it is not. You have
| subsidies and you have policy and regulations which can
| cause non market barriers to entry. Case & point: China
| doesn't have any tariff on American social media
| companies but simply bans American companies. Per your
| chosen measurement, that is simply not considered.
| distantsounds wrote:
| ah yes "anti-competitive" and not "pro consumer"
|
| nice choice of words
| adrr wrote:
| They are different things. Product dumping to get rid of
| your competition is anti-competitive even though lower
| priced is pro-consumer.
| the_cramer wrote:
| How does Tesla fit in this, building a factory in
| Brandenburg against "some" public resistance? This case did
| not seem anti-competitive at all.
| ls15 wrote:
| > Apple isn't even the market leader in EU, and EU is going
| to regulate them.
|
| They have a monopoly on iphones.
| seneca wrote:
| By this logic every company is a monopoly, as they have a
| monopoly on their own product.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| > Courts do not require a literal monopoly before
| applying rules for single firm conduct; that term is used
| as shorthand for a firm with significant and durable
| market power -- that is, the long term ability to raise
| price or exclude competitors. That is how that term is
| used here: a "monopolist" is a firm with significant and
| durable market power. Courts look at the firm's market
| share, but typically do not find monopoly power if the
| firm (or a group of firms acting in concert) has less
| than 50 percent of the sales of a particular product or
| service within a certain geographic area. Some courts
| have required much higher percentages. In addition, that
| leading position must be sustainable over time: if
| competitive forces or the entry of new firms could
| discipline the conduct of the leading firm, courts are
| unlikely to find that the firm has lasting market power.
|
| > Obtaining a monopoly by superior products, innovation,
| or business acumen is legal; however, the same result
| achieved by exclusionary or predatory acts may raise
| antitrust concerns.
|
| https://www.ftc.gov/advice-guidance/competition-
| guidance/gui...
| ls15 wrote:
| Most other products cannot run apps. There is no
| alternative supplier of iOS devices so that people can
| run the apps that they bought from other companies via
| the Appstore.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| What difference does them being a US company make? They're
| listed on the NASDAQ? The CEO lives in the US? Seriously,
| what does it mean to be a US company?
|
| > look at Airbus, InBev or LVMH.
|
| I did. Google's EU division had more revenue than any of
| those companies worldwide. It seems like Google's EU
| division (which is an EU company owned entirely by Google)
| is a bigger EU company than any of those three.
| hpkuarg wrote:
| > what does it mean to be a US company?
|
| Easy enough question to answer by looking at the
| beneficial owners of a company's stock. I'd wager every
| "US company" as commonly understood is, in addition to
| being listed on US stock exchanges, headquartered in the
| US, and having significant operations in the US, is also
| majority-owned by American citizens.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| Interesting distinction. I'm not sure it's possible to
| confirm this, but I would be interested in the different
| firms that were listed.
|
| Specifically, I don't know about AirBus and LVMH, but
| InBev seems to be primarily owned by American based
| mutual funds.
| onepointsixC wrote:
| Because big tech is overwhelmingly not European, thus there's
| little blow back to trade actions. Suggest a policy that may
| harm the balance sheet of the German Automotive sector and
| you'll see it killed on the spot.
| malermeister wrote:
| That's demonstrably wrong:
| https://www.motor1.com/news/595006/european-union-agrees-
| com...
| ls15 wrote:
| Does banning new combustion engines after 2035 really
| harm the manufacturers? To me it looks like they are all
| moving to electric.
| malermeister wrote:
| A lot of the industry is suppliers to manufacturers, not
| just manufacturers themselves. Those will be hurt for
| sure as their whole business model is being the best at
| some specialized part of a combustion car.
| schumpeter wrote:
| To the parent's point, VW was saying for recent years
| they were going fully electric. This EU bill doesn't harm
| them. In fact, it likely helps them against slower-moving
| competitors.
| malermeister wrote:
| It might not hurt VW, but the EUs automotive industry is
| more than just VW. A lot of it is very specialized
| suppliers to bigger companies that do stuff like the best
| gear box etc. Those will be hurt for sure.
| truckerbill wrote:
| Less lobbying focus (though probably still a lot)?
|
| Protectionism (big tech is USA born)?
|
| Elites are old money not new?
|
| No tax income (probably this)?
| fallingknife wrote:
| > Elites are old money not new
|
| This is the big one right here. Europe has pretty much
| missed the boat on tech so its elites are from older
| industries that tech is starting to compete with. You can
| see this same dynamic here in the US as the legacy media
| has declared war on the tech industry for threatening its
| power.
| Cipater wrote:
| Because big tech is mainly foreign (American) companies to
| them.
| [deleted]
| refurb wrote:
| Because it's politically expedient for them?
|
| Notice how China has no trouble regulating US tech either?
| mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote:
| Generally because the EU Parliament is far less corrupt than
| the US Congress.
|
| The US is more of a "corporatocracy" than a real democracy
| these days.
|
| Congress is even incapable of impeaching a president that
| tried to overturn an election by force. That's a pretty
| embarassing state of affairs for American democracy.
| satyrnein wrote:
| What's the corporate interest in impeaching Trump or not? I
| think that has less to do with corporations and more to do
| with Republican politicians (correctly) concluding that
| their Republican voters don't want Trump impeached.
| mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote:
| That is also a form of corruption though. Voter sentiment
| shouldn't be prioritised over protecting democracy and
| the constitution.
| mythrwy wrote:
| I'm always confused when I see people say (to paraphrase)
| "We need to protect democracy so the hell with what the
| voters think!".
|
| How exactly does that logic work?
| mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote:
| It's called representative democracy. The job of
| representatives is to know what they're doing on the
| behalf of voters, not to cater to their every whim.
| cnelsenmilt wrote:
| In the same way when you sit down to play a boardgame
| with someone and they draw extra cards, fudge die rolls,
| and flip over the table when a turn goes against them:
| they're no longer playing the agreed-on game at that
| point, and you and the other players don't have to accept
| their behavior as part of the play.
|
| There is a baseline set of rules (in the USA we have the
| Constitution) for how the game works. Like a person's
| freedom to swing their arm, a voter's freedom on what to
| vote for must stop at the limit of the other voters'
| rights. The "Tyranny of the Majority" is a related
| concept as well.
| mythrwy wrote:
| Well, yes that is why the US is a constitutional
| republic.
|
| It's just that phrasing seems hilariously and ironically
| out of wack.
|
| It's as if some people think they know better then
| unwashed masses so they should be in charge regardless of
| sentiment. Ok, fine, maybe they do, but that isn't called
| "democracy".
| onepointsixC wrote:
| The EU is _more_ corrupt. All China needed to stop EU
| statements on Human rights was some investments into Greece
| and making a few calls[1].
|
| [1]: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-eu-un-
| rights/greece-block...
| closewith wrote:
| The EU is not a monolith. Its constituent countries are
| both more and less corrupt than the US, but the EU
| requires unanimity for foreign policy decisions, unlike
| the US enchi isn't beholden to reach State.
|
| https://www.transparency.org/en/cpi/2021
| PontifexMinimus wrote:
| > This is to distract the voters and prevent class solidarity
| of the working class.
|
| You are very cynical. Note: I did not say you are wrong.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| I would much rather curtail government power than corporate
| power. I can much easier get away from a corporation than a
| government. Government has a "monopoly on violence". They can
| take away my rights much easier than corporations.
| Bloating wrote:
| Large corporations are enabled by big government, not limited
| by government. Monopolies do not withstand competitive forces
| for the long run, unless propped up by government privilege.
| This symbiotic relationship creates cronyism
| krapp wrote:
| You just want to trade a monopoly on violence for a market of
| violence, and for some reason you believe that would make you
| safer. But you're making the common mistake of assuming that
| corporations won't simply fill the power vacuum themselves in
| the absence of a government capable of stopping them.
|
| Government power is the only thing stopping corporations from
| exercising violence against you or take away your rights.
| Look at the way corporations operated in the 19th and early
| 20th centuries, when they had company towns and private
| armies coercing votes and killing strikers, or corporations'
| support for coups and cartels in foreign markets, or just the
| East India Trading Company, which was a de facto superpower
| of its time.
| jmyeet wrote:
| 100% this.
|
| I heard it said that the only things Americans know about
| is World war Two and they don't know that much about that.
| It's a sobering thought.
|
| To your point, if anyone wants to see the effects of
| unchecked corporate power, just look at the 19th century
| and the robber barons. most notably, look at the history of
| the Pinkerton Detective Agency [1].
|
| "Detective agency" is an inocuous sounding name but at its
| peak the Pinkertons outnumbered the US Army. Pinkertons
| were frequently used as striker breakers and to quash any
| form of labor movement. They did so with the blessing of
| the US government.
|
| [1]:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinkerton_(detective_agency)
| livueta wrote:
| While you and the parent are totally correct about the
| dynamics of power vacuums, I think it's also relevant to
| note that the robber-baron stuff wasn't exactly happening
| in some kind of Hobbesian state of nature - it's right
| there at the end of your quote: "They did so with the
| blessing of the US government". This was an environment
| where centralized authority was weakened to the point
| that private armies were worthwhile, yet still strong
| enough to engage in selective enforcement on behalf of
| corporate powers. Hence, the dynamic where you'd get
| beaten up by the Pinkertons and then arrested for
| fighting back. This sort of halfway environment is the
| worst possible case: in a more total vacuum, opposing
| corporate power via collective action is more viable; in
| a society with a stronger grip on a monopoly on violence,
| corporate abuses are (theoretically) restrained.
|
| While untrammeled corporate power and untrammeled
| government power are both scary, the effective fusion of
| the two via state capture is the real nightmare. I think
| that sort of halfway environment, where there's enough
| state to be worth capturing but not enough to be an
| effective counterweight, is the default in a lot of the
| particularly cursed post-colonial nations - Angola and
| Burma spring to mind - where traditional means of social
| organization were sublimated into the colonial state,
| leaving a vacuum when the colonial state itself began to
| molder.
| jjk166 wrote:
| The government is the only entity that can use violence
| legally, but it's also the only entity that cares about
| whether something is legal. Any idiot with a baseball bat can
| break your kneecaps for doing something they don't want. If
| you have a strong government, the threat that they will use
| force deters the vast majority of would-be kneecap breakers,
| and gives you some recourse against the few that remain.
|
| The idea that corporations are escapable is merely a product
| of living your whole life in a society where governments are
| strong and reliable. If google started sending out henchmen
| to break peoples kneecaps, it wouldn't take long for them to
| be shut down and any of their leadership involved to be
| arrested, and the idea that kneecapping me is worth that risk
| to Google is laughable. But realistically google knows no
| borders, they have direct access to an ungodly amount of
| information, and the cost of hiring an armed thug would be
| infinitesimally small compared to their operating budget - if
| hurting me ever does become a priority for them where could I
| possibly escape to?
|
| You go to some third world countries with sufficiently weak
| governments, you'll see plenty of corporations who have no
| difficulty taking people's rights away.
| rayiner wrote:
| > Nothing curtails corporate power. It's also why the focus of
| politics is on being divisive on social issues. This is to
| distract the voters and prevent class solidarity of the working
| class.
|
| I think you're misdiagnosing the cause. Nearly everyone I know
| --my circle skews highly educated and well compensated--cares
| more about social issues than economic ones. It's telling that,
| in this crowd, Clarence Thomas gets exponentially more _hate_
| for the ways in which he's a typical older Black man from a
| working class background (his views on social issues) than for
| the ways in which he starkly departs from that background (his
| economic libertarianism).
|
| While these folks would deny they're acting in their class
| interest, the effect is identical. Working class people, being
| less educated and less cosmopolitan, are naturally going to be
| more socially conservative. By making politics more about
| "rights" and "justice" than "wages" and "government services"
| you're naturally going to divide the working class and have a
| powerful club to use against them.
| feet wrote:
| The more well compensated you are, the more disconnected you
| are from the perils of working class poverty. Most people I
| know who are well compensated don't see an issue with the
| system simply because it has worked for them
|
| I should note that these people are well compensated workers,
| and they are not capital owners even if they aspire to be one
| some day which helps solidify the ideals of capitalism
| working for them
| noobker wrote:
| > The more well compensated you are, the more disconnected
| you are from the perils of working class poverty.
|
| For sure, but there's a type of blindness that comes from
| our culture and class expectations too.
|
| I know many service workers who make more than white collar
| workers. But -- critically -- the white collar workers are
| unaware of it. You could say the white collar workers are
| banking on social clout for why they feel better than the
| service workers they utilize, but I don't think so. It
| looks like straight up ignorance and willful projection.
|
| The service workers are happy to let the white-collar-fools
| carry on with the delusions --> it leads to big tips when
| the white collars need to show off and there's a payoff for
| workers who can put on a show of subservience while
| ultimately enjoying more freedom.
| wyre wrote:
| I learned the word for this recently is called
| Embourgeoisement. It's at least a very similar phenomenon.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embourgeoisement
| nradov wrote:
| Many educated and well compensated people have adopted
| "luxury beliefs" as a form of virtue signaling, even though
| putting those beliefs into policy tends to harm the working
| class.
|
| https://nypost.com/2019/08/17/luxury-beliefs-are-the-
| latest-...
| jmyeet wrote:
| These are often called "champagne liberals" or even
| "champagne socialists" and is very much true.
|
| I saw this in the 2016 election. What Demorats failed to
| understand was the groundswell against the status quo. This
| is why Trump won and Hilary lost. Hilary was very much a
| vote for the status quo and an increasingly large number of
| people are angry about the status quo. To be clear, Trump
| didn't deliver on any of his promises (other than on
| judges) but it explained a lot of his support, particularly
| in the Rust Belt. It's also why Bernie Sanders nearly
| clinched the nomination.
|
| Hilary apologists like to blame her loss on any number of
| things (eg Bernie spoilers, Russia) but ignore the
| compltely obvious and actual reason: she was a terrible
| candidate. No one made her choose an anti-choice running
| mate. No one made her no campaign in Wisconsin.
|
| I remember having a conversation with someone who is
| liberal about the estate tax. He opposed Bernie because
| Bernie wanted to lower the estate tax from _$10 million_.
| Huh? Clearly that affected him and this is of course an
| encdote but I found in illuminating as an example of how
| much momentum for Hilary was about protecting the status
| quo.
| krapp wrote:
| > What Demorats failed to understand was the groundswell
| against the status quo. This is why Trump won and Hilary
| lost. Hilary was very much a vote for the status quo and
| an increasingly large number of people are angry about
| the status quo.
|
| I mean, Trump won with several million _fewer_ votes than
| Clinton. The common narrative around Hillary Clinton and
| the Democrats is, as you mention, the failure to tap into
| an anti-establishment zeitgeist that Trump did more
| successfully. But the numbers alone (apart from electoral
| votes, obviously) show the Democrats were at least as
| successful, if not technically _more_ successful, than
| Trump at messaging. The Democrats ' failure was one of
| tactics, not strategy.
| ipaddr wrote:
| Having more votes does not make Hillary's run successful.
| Getting millions of extra votes in California but losing
| in other parts of the country was a poor tradeoff and the
| opposite of a good campaign. She gerrymandered her own
| voter base.
|
| Poor strategy killed her campaign. Poor tactics doubled
| down her poor strategy. Poor decisions (remember when she
| decided to self host email), poor judgement when in power
| followed her entire public life. Look for a demoralizing
| 2024 run if Biden doesn't run or crown someone.
| nradov wrote:
| It's kind of meaningless to look at popular vote numbers
| because presidential campaigns are explicitly planned to
| maximize _electoral college_ votes. Hypothetically, if we
| picked presidents by popular vote then campaigns would
| look completely different. For example, there would be a
| much greater effort to get out the vote in states like
| Oklahoma and Maryland, which are currently non-
| competitive.
|
| In the 2016 race, the Clinton campaign spent about twice
| as much per popular vote received than the Trump
| campaign. So by that metric, Democrat messaging wasn't
| successful.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > presidential campaigns are explicitly planned to
| maximize electoral college votes.
|
| Well, no, they have numerous objectives, many of which
| are in tension. In rough order of priority for a typical
| Presidential general election campaign, though there is
| considerable variation from campaign to campaign:
|
| (1) Maximizing the _probability of at least 270 EC votes_
| (this can be quite different, and conflict with,
| maximizing the expected _total number_ of EC votes),
| because that's how you win,
|
| (2) Maximizing downballot coattails, because that's how
| you get people in position to pass your agenda into
| place, and get the people that are in that position to
| see you as important to their position,
|
| (3) Maximizing EC and Popular vote totals, both of which
| are important to the perception of a mandate, which helps
| your agenda.
| jason0597 wrote:
| > I think you're misdiagnosing the cause. Nearly everyone I
| know--my circle skews highly educated and well compensated--
| cares more about social issues than economic ones.
|
| Of course they would. They are very well educated and very
| well compensated. Their needs are taken care of, economics
| isn't at the top of their political concerns list. However,
| they do not represent the majority of the US, they only
| represent a tiny minority.
|
| https://www.legalreader.com/low-wage-jobs-are-the-new-
| americ...
| jmyeet wrote:
| > I think you're misdiagnosing the cause. Nearly everyone I
| know--my circle skews highly educated and well compensated--
| cares more about social issues than economic ones.
|
| That's because they're liberals (or, worse, neoliberals) and
| liberalism is about aesthetics. It's about appearing to do
| something without actually doing anything. I don't mean this
| is any kind of perjorative sense by the way. I know many
| people like this too.
|
| Take the Democratic Party. In response to the Dobbs leak the
| Demorats did... nothing. When the decision was handed down
| they sent a bunch of fundraising emails and texts and did...
| nothing. Well, other than "vote harder" messaging. The
| leadership has decided an issue with 75% public support is
| "too controversial" to tackle.
|
| Why is the Democratic Party in this situation? Because there
| is always a rotating villain that blocks any action.
| Currently that's Senators Manchin and Sinema. In past years
| it was Joe Lieberman. This is by design. Everyone else gets
| to point at the rotating villain and say they tried but they
| got blocked and then fundraise off [insert blocked issue
| here].
|
| Now look at an issue like homelessness. The most important
| factor that leads to homelessness is cost of housing. The one
| thing that would help above anything else is a housing-first
| policy, meaning giving homeless people somewhere to live. But
| rampant NIMBYism, even in heavily blue states like
| California, means that's a nonstarter. This is why you'll see
| people fund raise for homelessness without tackling the root
| causes.
|
| This is what I mean by aesthetics.
| rayiner wrote:
| You can't overlook the deliberate prioritization of certain
| issues over other issues.
|
| The Democratic Party is a coalition of people who agree on
| "bigger government offering more services" and little else.
| Obama as a populist and social moderate in 2008 and got
| Obamacare with several Senate votes in socially
| conservative Midwestern states. Since then Democrats tacked
| left on social issues and kicked the "deplorables" out of
| the coalition. They're mad at Sinema and Manchin, who are
| holding onto seats deep in GOP territory, but should be mad
| at the party that lost labor and agriculture voters in
| South Dakota, Iowa, etc.
|
| Folks I know were talking about kicking Joe Manchin out of
| the coalition for being pro life before the 2020 election.
| About 1/4 of the Democratic Party identified as "pro life."
| 1/6 (mostly Black and Hispanic people) oppose same sex
| marriage. 1/10 want to restrict immigrant (and that's after
| Trump converted a bunch of those voters in 2016). Kick all
| those people out of the party and give capital owners
| exactly what they want.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > Since then Democrats tacked left on social issues and
| kicked the "deplorables" out of the coalition. They're
| mad at Sinema and Manchin, who are holding onto seats
| deep in GOP territory, but should be mad at the party
| that lost labor and agriculture voters in South Dakota,
| Iowa, etc.
|
| Case in point: not too long ago they used to control the
| _entire congressional delegations_ of deep-red North
| Dakota and South Dakota. Now they 're all red. That's two
| reps and _four_ senators, which I 'm sure the Democrats
| _theoretically_ wish they had right now.
|
| IIRC, the last Democratic senator from those states lost
| because she was boxed into to unelectable social policy
| positions by out-of-state donors.
| jen20 wrote:
| > coalition of people who agree on "bigger government
| offering more services" and little else.
|
| If I could vote in the US I'd vote democrat (and likely
| join them) because I don't want Christian fundamentalists
| to be in power, not because I believe in their policies
| and especially not in their abilities.
|
| There may be a coalition of people who believe in what
| you think, but I'd wager the vast majority of support
| comes from those who simply think they're less bad than
| the alternative.
| rayiner wrote:
| > I don't want Christian fundamentalists to be in power
|
| America is as religious, in terms of percentage of people
| praying daily, as Bangladesh:
| https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/05/01/with-
| high-l.... That includes core Democrat constituencies,
| like Black people. 76% of Black Protestants, who
| overwhelmingly vote Democrat, think the Bible should have
| at least some influence on US laws:
| https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/04/13/half-of-
| ame....
|
| Most atheists and agnostics are Democrats, but they're a
| pretty niche constituency within the party.
| jmyeet wrote:
| > 76% of Black Protestants, who overwhelmingly vote
| Democrat, think the Bible should have at least some
| influence on US laws
|
| This is kind of a vague opinion. The Bible says many
| things, many of them contradictory and some of them just
| outright ridiculous. Let's just pick one gem, Exodus
| 21:7-11 [1]:
|
| > When a man sells his daughter as a slave, she will not
| be freed at the end of six years as the men are. If she
| does not satisfy her owner, he must allow her to be
| bought back again. But he is not allowed to sell her to
| foreigners, since he is the one who broke the contract
| with her. But if the slave's owner arranges for her to
| marry his son, he may no longer treat her as a slave but
| as a daughter.
|
| > If a man who has married a slave wife takes another
| wife for himself, he must not neglect the rights of the
| first wife to food, clothing, and sexual intimacy. If he
| fails in any of these three obligations, she may leave as
| a free woman without making any payment.
|
| Here we have slavery, selling your daughter into slavery
| and polygamy all in one. Should this influence the law?
|
| If the answer is "yes", well you're crazy. If the answer
| is "no" then you've conceded the Bible isn't an authority
| and you can freely choose to ignore what pats of it you
| want.
|
| There are others such as putting people to death who work
| on the Sabbath.
|
| The issue of the Bible is most brought up when it comes
| to abortion (and gay marriage). The Bible is in fact
| silent on the issue. Up until the 1970s, white
| evangelicals didn't actually care about abortion [2].
| Catholics had some opposition but it wasn't front and
| center.
|
| What mobilized evangelicals against abortion was actually
| a deliberate political movement to opposed racial
| desegregation, as sparked by whites-only schools in
| Mississippi and Bob Jones University.
|
| So my point is that I don't put a lot of stock on
| statements like "the Bible should have at least some
| influence" on US laws because it doesn't mean anything.
| The question itself is a form of manipulation. I mean the
| Bible says "Thou shalt not kill" and murder is a crime.
| Does that meet the standard of "some influence?"
|
| [1]: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Exodus%
| 2021%3A7...
|
| [2]: https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/05/10/ab
| ortion-h...
| dane-pgp wrote:
| To be fair, when people answer yes to "should the Bible
| have some influence on US laws" what they mean is "the
| Bible, as interpreted by my particular sect". Fortunately
| the number of members of the Republican party who belong
| to sects that approve of selling your own daughter into
| slavery is approximately zero, so it is possible to
| support Biblical influence without being "crazy" or
| "freely choos[ing] to ignore what pa[r]ts of it you
| want".
|
| Actually a more neutrally phrased question to ask people
| would be "Does your opinion of the Bible have at least
| some influence on how you vote?", although there would be
| no point running that poll as the only possible answer to
| that question is "Yes". Either you think the Bible is a
| valid source of moral wisdom, in which case you are more
| likely to vote for policies which support that morality;
| or you think it isn't a valid source, in which case you
| vote for policies which (in at least some cases) oppose
| that morality. In both cases, the person is voting
| consistently with their opinion of the Bible, which means
| believers and non-believers aren't so different after
| all.
| Clubber wrote:
| >Does that meet the standard of "some influence?"
|
| I would argue that all of western culture and
| civilization has been influenced _heavily_ , almost
| exclusively by Christianity (including the Hebrew Bible),
| at least since Constantine.
| Karunamon wrote:
| _If the answer is "no" then you've conceded the Bible
| isn't an authority and you can freely choose to ignore
| what pats of it you want._
|
| That is not how the Bible works. It is a book of history,
| stories, laws, information, and other things. No
| Christian denomination on the planet, not even the most
| straw fundamentalist fringe sect you can imagine, takes
| this reductive view that because it is in the text it is
| automatically a command to be followed by the modern day
| reader.
|
| Failure to make that distinction when interpreting a
| volume of such history absent its context does not mean
| that distinction is nonexistent or arbitrary.
| jen20 wrote:
| I don't care - I still don't want them in power any more
| than I would want to live in Afghanistan with the Taliban
| in power as a non-Muslim, and consequently would vote to
| keep them out, almost regardless of other policy.
|
| Furthermore, those who think the Bible should have
| influence on US laws fundamentally fail to understand the
| very basics of the first amendment of the constitution:
| "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment
| of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof."
|
| Allowing influence of a particular religious sect over
| laws is exactly akin to a state religion, which is
| expressly unconstitutional.
| nathanaldensr wrote:
| You are aware that Christian morals and ethics explicitly
| were sources of inspiration, energy, and direction for
| the country's founding--both as an event and its
| documents--right? You are aware that those principles are
| largely responsible for you being able to freely type
| your message on Hacker News, right?
| cheese_it wrote:
| Do you have any sources for that claim? Because I've
| heard the argument that it was actually the
| Enlightenment, and the removal of religion from
| government (e.g. separation of church and state, reason
| and science in place of dogmatism), that was the primary
| source of inspiration for the country's founding. A
| search for "Declaration of Independence" with
| "Enlightenment" provides many references for this.
| dane-pgp wrote:
| > Allowing influence of a particular religious sect over
| laws is exactly akin to a state religion, which is
| expressly unconstitutional.
|
| But doesn't this argument also mean "Allowing influence
| of religious people over laws (e.g. allowing them to
| vote) is unconstitutional"?
|
| You might think that you're being completely neutral when
| you apply your atheist worldview to political questions,
| and that it is only those weird out-groups that are
| biased with their desire for laws that your in-group
| opposes, but from their perspective you are being just as
| biased by your religious beliefs (i.e. your beliefs about
| religions).
|
| If you really think that the First Amendment was written
| with the intent to invalidate any policy which can be
| supported by some interpretation of the Bible, then you
| haven't thought through the consequences of that.
| rayiner wrote:
| > I don't care - I still don't want them in power
|
| That's fine but it's not what we're talking about, which
| is what keeps the democratic coalition together.
| Opposition to Christianity having a public role isn't it.
| welshwelsh wrote:
| The Democratic Party becoming liberal is a recent
| development.
|
| In 2006, 32% of Democrats identified as liberal. 23% were
| conservative (the rest identified as moderate). In 2018
| it's 46% liberal/35% moderate/17% conservative.
|
| That means that even today, a _minority_ of Democrats are
| liberals. An even smaller minority are progressives. The
| Democrats _are not_ and have never been a majority liberal
| party, although that is rapidly changing.
|
| The reason democrats like Manchin and Sinema block liberal
| policies is that they are conservatives. Both parties have
| traditionally had sizable liberal and conservative wings,
| but they are rapidly polarizing and Democrats are pushing
| out the conservatives. In the 90s there would be about 20
| Democratic senators like Manchin, now we only have a
| couple.
|
| >In response to the Dobbs leak the Democrats did...
| nothing.
|
| Everyone who follows politics knew that when Hillary lost
| in 2016, Roe v. Wade would inevitably be overturned.
| There's nothing we can do about this in the short term,
| especially when we don't have liberal majorities.
|
| I'm going to disagree on your main point- social issues
| _are_ the main problem in the US and they cannot be
| distinguished from economic ones.
|
| Abortion, for example, is an economic issue. Allowing women
| to control their reproduction is, by far, the most
| effective way to combat poverty. A child costs over
| $250,000 to raise on average, and that's the type of burden
| that keeps people in poverty. Abortion rights have strong
| support among the wealthy; this is not a case of the
| "elites" dividing the working class, it's the working class
| that supports regressive policies.
|
| Also, wealthy countries that are ethnically and culturally
| homogenous generally have much stronger social support
| systems than the US. This is, again, a social issue.
| Americans don't want their taxpayer money helping people
| who they see as "different" so they vote against welfare
| programs. And again, the wealthier and better educated
| someone is the more progressive they are in this regard,
| this is another example of working class people shooting
| themselves in the foot.
| rayiner wrote:
| > Abortion, for example, is an economic issue. Allowing
| women to control their reproduction is, by far, the most
| effective way to combat poverty. A child costs over
| $250,000 to raise on average, and that's the type of
| burden that keeps people in poverty. Abortion rights have
| strong support among the wealthy; this is not a case of
| the "elites" dividing the working class, it's the working
| class that supports regressive policies.
|
| Meanwhile, just 29% of folks who primarily speak Spanish
| at home, and 41% of first generation Hispanic immigrants,
| think abortion should be legal. If Democrats want to be
| the party of telling working class Hispanics that their
| views are "regressive" and the most important problem is
| that they can't or won't abort enough of their babies,
| that's a dream come true for the GOP.
|
| Bonus points for "[a]bortion rights have strong support
| among the wealthy." The attack ads write themselves.
| "Wall Street bankers and Silicon Valley engineers think
| that their maids and gardeners are having too many kids
| and should abort more of them."
| Bloating wrote:
| We got Obamacare passed, but not a law codifing Row vs
| Wade. Its almost like its about money and power, and not
| personal freedom
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > We got Obamacare passed, but not a law codifing Row vs
| Wade.
|
| Codifying _Roe v. Wade_ only makes sense as a symbolic
| act of protest against a court ruling against it when you
| lack the votes to do anything meaningful. Preemptively,
| it makes no sense, since a court that would reject the
| right held to exist in _Roe_ as a 14th Amendment right is
| also sure to rule that no power granted to Congress
| allows it to curtail the powers reserved to states by
| codifying _Roe_.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| I have no idea what people expect dems to do about
| abortion. They cannot pass a national law without the
| senate. Most blue states already put in protections.
|
| It's not like they can just trot down to the court house
| and change the judges mind.
| jmyeet wrote:
| That's a great question ("What can they do?") and the
| answer is a lot.
|
| As you may or may not know, legislative bodies have a
| whip. The current Democratic Senate whip is Senator Dick
| Durbin (D-IL). The job of a whip is quite literally to
| whip votes. It is to get legislation passed. Betwen the
| whip and the Senate Majority Leader, Chuck Schumer
| (D-NY), they could:
|
| 1. Remove Manchin and Sinema from committee chairs;
|
| 2. Remove them from committees completely (eg Dianne
| Feinstein was effectively removed because she's basically
| a billion years old and senile);
|
| 3. Investigate the links between Manchin, his actions on
| the Energy Committee and his brother's coal company in
| West Virginia from which he personally profits.
|
| The counterargument is that they'll switch sides and
| either join the Republicans or simply caucus with them to
| retake the majority (eg like Tom Daschle did with Jim
| Jeffords). Let them. You cannot allow people to hold you
| hostage like that. They probably won't either because
| currently they enjoy a disproportionate amount of power.
| As soon as the GOP doesn't need them, they'll just be
| relegated to being junior Senators with little to no
| power.
|
| The Republicans unlike the Democrats know how to whip
| votes. Take the fascinating case of Madison Cawthorn who
| found himself the subject of an organized hit campaign
| after making off-the-cuff remarks about Republican sex
| parties (seriously). He got dragged into Kevin McCarthy's
| office and came out looking like he'd been physically
| beaten. The GOP primaried him and he lost. That's how you
| get your caucus to toe the line.
|
| So Manchin and Sinema could (and should) be primaried.
|
| Biden could create executive orders to advance his
| agenda. He's too much of an institutionalist to worry
| about separation of powers and doing anything "too
| divisive". You know who doesn't worry about that?
| Republicans. Republicans care about winning. Democrats
| care about fundraising off how terrible Republicans are.
|
| Even if such executive orders are struck down by the
| Supreme Court as overreach then at least you tried.
|
| Example: The Senate could raised the minimum wage to $15
| as a budget reconciliation process. They didn't. Why?
| Respect for some outdated notion of norms, rules and
| procedures. You know what the Republicans did when faced
| with pushback from the Senate parliamentarian on passing
| Bush's tax cuts? They fired him and found someone else
| [1].
|
| Remember that keeping Roe v. Wade enjoyed wide public
| support (eg 64% according to [2]; I've seen other figures
| as high as 70-75%). Even if legislation cannot pass you
| force politicians to put their vote on the record. Votes
| on the record matter. Hilary's support for the Iraq War
| came back to haunt her (in 2008, mostly).
|
| [1]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/2001
| /05/08/k...
|
| [2]: https://www.npr.org/2022/05/19/1099844097/abortion-
| polling-r...
| rayiner wrote:
| > The counterargument is that they'll switch sides and
| either join the Republicans or simply caucus with them to
| retake the majority (eg like Tom Daschle did with Jim
| Jeffords). Let them.
|
| When Tom Daschle was Senate majority leader, Democrats
| held both Senate seats in South Dakota. Virtually all of
| Democrats' economic achievements of the 20th century were
| built with a coalition including socially conservative
| midwestern and southern voters. Obamacare was passed with
| the support of voters that went over to Trump in 2016
| over social issues. If you kick those people out of the
| coalition, as Democrats have been doing, you're left with
| a party that can't actually muster the votes to deliver
| on their economic promises to working class voters.
|
| > Remember that keeping Roe v. Wade enjoyed wide public
| support (eg 64% according to [2]; I've seen other figures
| as high as 70-75%).
|
| The majority of Americans don't understand the actual
| legal effect of _Roe._ They also support a 15-week ban on
| elective abortions--like the Mississippi law in _Dobbs_
| --which was prohibited under _Roe_.
| https://www.wsj.com/articles/support-for-15-week-
| abortion-ba....
|
| More importantly to this conversation, a big chunk of the
| people who support legalized abortion are _Republicans._
| https://news.gallup.com/poll/246278/abortion-trends-
| party.as.... The 2010 Democratic coalition that enacted
| Obamacare included about 30% folks who identify as "pro
| life." Continuing to kick those folks out of the
| coalition is a great way to do exactly what Mitch
| McConnell wants.
| the_lonely_road wrote:
| Trying to engage with this comment in good faith is very
| difficult. The best case I can come up with is you are engaging
| in significant hyperbole to push forward some point you are
| passionate about. Congress has passed nearly a hundred bills in
| the last year alone. We don't hear about them because Congress
| agrees and does it job is not interesting or newsworthy. We do
| hear nonstop about the divisive issues that the parties are
| split on and can't find common ground. There is no half
| abortion or half gun seizure. I quickly glanced at those
| hundred bills and didn't see much in the way of expanding
| police power or military conquest of Europe and Asia.
| glenstein wrote:
| Right. This is boring, and therefore not fun to talk about.
| But it's extremely clear that there are substantial
| differences between the parties to the point that I don't
| know how to have a conversation with someone who wants to
| deny this, and talking about the No Surprises Act (for
| instance) won't lead to a flamewar, so you won't hear about
| it.
| rayiner wrote:
| I don't think OP is denying that there are differences
| between the parties. But the first two years of Biden's
| administration was a win for the McConnell wing of the
| Republican Party. The only significant economic measure
| that was passed was covid relief, which republicans were
| for (because Trump did it) before they were against it.
| There were no tax hikes and no expanded social programs
| (apart from temporary expansion of the child tax credit).
|
| It's hard to deny that the result of the current democratic
| strategy is not meaningfully different from what Mitch
| McConnell wants, whether it's deliberate or not.
|
| And I do think it's deliberate to a significant extent. The
| current Democratic coalition has a lot of people,
| especially in the donor base, that are basically socially
| liberal Republicans. If forced to choose between issues,
| they care more about legalized abortion than labor unions.
| Of course these folks avoid any acknowledgement that these
| goals are in conflict, but that's obviously wrong. Politics
| is about assembling a coalition that can command a voting
| majority. Political capital is a finite resource. Obviously
| spending significant political capital on an issue like
| abortion--where about 1 out of 5 democrats disagrees with
| the rest of the party--will mean less political capital
| available for making the child tax credit permanent. It's
| math.
| enraged_camel wrote:
| >> It's hard to deny that the result of the current
| democratic strategy is not meaningfully different from
| what Mitch McConnell wants, whether it's deliberate or
| not.
|
| The result you are talking about is not the result of
| Democratic strategy, but of Manchin's (and to a lesser
| extent, Sinema's) blocking of anything meaningful and
| impactful.
| megaman821 wrote:
| This is unknowable. There could be 5 other Democrats that
| agree with Manchin but why voice it when Manchin can take
| the heat with no political consequences.
| cycrutchfield wrote:
| The current composition of the senate, 50-50, and the
| antiquated filibuster process, mean that the senate
| cannot do anything without bipartisan consensus. Not sure
| why you are railing about democrats that are secretly
| republicans when that is clearly not the issue.
| res0nat0r wrote:
| Eh I mean some of them are though. Manchin and Sinema get
| the biggest hate, but there are others who agree with him
| who are just not as obvious or loud about it.
|
| I mean abortion rights which were settled for 50 years
| just got completely destroyed, and if the entire
| Democratic party actually cared about this issue, they'd
| enshrine it as a right in law with 51 votes, but they
| won't because a handful secretly agree that abortion
| should be illegal.
| vkou wrote:
| > they'd enshrine it as a right in law with 51 votes
|
| That enshrinement will last ~6 months. A supreme court
| decision on the subject of body autonomy was a _far
| stronger form of protection_ than legislature ever could
| have been.
|
| I'm not sure why people keep repeating the falsehood that
| claims the contrary (other than to repeat the both-sides
| meme).
| jmyeet wrote:
| There is no constitutional basis for the filibuster. It's
| just a rule the Senate invented. And they can un-invent
| it. Whenever the new Congress forms, the Senate Majority
| Leader sets the rules for that Congress. This includes
| the number of seats on committees and so forth.
|
| What you have is Democrats who hide behind "institutions"
| as an excuse to do nothing and Republicans who quite
| literally will change the rules whenever it suits them.
| Examples include:
|
| 1. Firing the Senate parliamentarian when he blocked the
| Senate from advancing Bush tax cuts;
|
| 2. Deciding completely without basis that with 11 months
| left of Obama's term, it somehow wasn't proper to hold a
| hearing or a vote on Garland's nomination to the Supreme
| Court; and
|
| 3. Deciding that any nomination (not just judicial)
| couldn't be filibustered (Harry Reid had previously
| changed the rules to make Supreme Court nominations
| filibuster-proof).
|
| But what is the filibuster? Up until I believe the 1970s
| it was a process where a Senator who had the floor could
| refuse to yield and keep talking to block a vlote as long
| as they could keep standing. This is real "Mr Smith Goes
| to Washington" type stuff [1].
|
| This Senate refused to change the rules on this so here
| we are. Two proposals have been made:
|
| 1. Eliminate the filibuster entirely. It's pretty much
| only ever used to block progress (eg by blocking civil
| rights legislation in the 1960s); or
|
| 2. Require a Senator to _actually_ filibuster by going
| back to the old system of holding the floor and refusing
| to yield.
|
| Both of course failed. Why? Because the corporate
| interests that own Manchin and Sinema don't want that
| because that might allow some form of progress, all under
| the guise of institutionalism. But this is a post-facto
| justification. I guarantee you the second the next
| Republican president holds office and the Republicans
| hold a majority in the Senate, the filibuster is gone.
|
| The current rotating villains of the Democratic Party
| couldn't even bring themselves to bypass the filibuster
| to pass legislation to protect voting rights, which
| shouldn't even be controversial. But of course it is
| controversial because voting rights might endanger the
| red wave of voter suppression.
|
| None of this has to be the case. Schumer won't go nuclear
| on this either because Schumer represents the interests
| of Wall Street.
|
| [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPv0S1-ETdI
| jibe wrote:
| "Firing the Senate parliamentarian when he blocked the
| Senate from advancing Bush tax cuts"
|
| Not a great example. Democrats and Republicans have both
| switched up the parliamentarian when they've taken
| control of the Senate.
|
| Democrats fired Alan Frumin in 1987 when they won a
| majority and appointed Robert Dove.
|
| In 2001 (your example), four years after winning the
| majority back, Republicans fired Dove and reappointed
| Alan Frumin. Frumin went on to be a key figure in helping
| Obama with passage of elements of the ACA, so not exactly
| a hardcore partisan.
|
| The parliamentarian has hardly been a nexus of cutthroat
| politics, just the normal ebb and flow of power and
| control in the Senate.
| jmyeet wrote:
| To be clear, my argument isn't firing him was right or
| wrong. My argument was that Republicans are willing to
| bend, change or just completely ignore rules when it
| suits them. Republicans talk about institutions when it
| suits them and don't when it doesn't. Democrats largely
| are LARPing in a world that doesn't exist of civilized
| debate.
|
| My argument more simply is that Democrats should be more
| like Republicans. Not in policy issues but in terms of
| effectiveness: whipping votes, advancing an agenda and
| punishing dissent.
| acheron wrote:
| If you talk to a Republican supporter they will say the
| same thing about their side, that the useless Republican
| politicians in Congress won't stand up to the Democrats
| and actually accomplish anything, and the Democrats are
| full of dirty tricks that the Republicans just roll over
| for, and so on.
|
| For both parties it's partially right and partially
| wrong, but what it's not is anything unique or inherent
| to one side.
| GeekyBear wrote:
| > The current composition of the senate, 50-50, and the
| antiquated filibuster process, mean that the senate
| cannot do anything without bipartisan consensus. Not sure
| why you are railing about democrats that are secretly
| republicans when that is clearly not the issue.
|
| When Trump wanted to kill the remaining bits of Obama era
| banking reform, he didn't have 60 votes in the Senate,
| which didn't matter because the Centrist Democrats voted
| with him.
|
| >The "Crapo bill," a bank deregulation measure co-
| authored by Senate Banking Committee chair Mike Crapo,
| R-Idaho, and several centrist Democrats, passed Congress
| this spring with the help of 17 members of the Senate
| Democratic Caucus and 33 House Democrats.
|
| https://theintercept.com/2018/11/10/dodd-frank-
| deregulation-...
|
| In the same manner, the Centrist Democrats saved the Bush
| era tax cuts for the rich from automatically expiring
| during the Obama years despite the fact that the party
| had control of the House, Senate, and White House at the
| time.
|
| The Bush era Republicans had passed those tax cuts under
| Senate reconciliation rules requiring only 50 votes in
| the Senate which placed a time limit after which they
| would automatically expire with no action needed.
|
| The Centrist Democrats voted, repeatedly, with the
| Republicans to make sure they wouldn't expire.
|
| Then, of course, history repeated itself with the Trump
| tax cuts, which ALL the Democrats claimed to find
| abhorrent (yes, even Manchin), until it became possible
| to do something about them.
|
| https://prospect.org/economy/the-impossible-inevitable-
| survi...
| rayiner wrote:
| The current composition of the Senate is the product of a
| deliberate choice by socially liberal pro-business
| democrats (i.e. Rockefeller republicans) to prioritize
| social issues such as abortion and immigration over
| economic ones.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| I really just think the issue is the senate. Look at all
| the bills that passed the house. They passed a bill that
| try's to solve gerrymandering. They passed abortion
| legislation. They passed all the economic stuff Biden
| wanted, including his signature legislation universal pre
| k. But the senate needs 60 votes to pass anything other
| than a budget, which no one will ever have. I'm inclined
| to agree that the filibuster is mostly an excuse to not
| vote for things manchin and sinema wouldn't vote for
| either way, but at that point it's hard to say democrats
| have a majority in the senate.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > But the senate needs 60 votes to pass anything other
| than a budget
|
| Incorrect.
|
| One of the other things it can do with a simple majority
| is alter or eliminate the 60 vote requirement.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| Right but it's pretty clear that there isn't a majority
| willing to do that.
| rayiner wrote:
| Being able to pass a budget with a bare majority is a lot
| of power! They could raise taxes and increase funding for
| existing programs with that power. You know, the stuff
| people vote in Democrats to do.
| zzzeek wrote:
| you went from accusing the parent of "you are engaging in
| significant hyperbole" to making the statement "There is no
| half gun seizure". There's lots and lots of gun control
| legislation people would like to enact, can you show the ones
| that indicate the "seizure" of any existing weapons at all?
| The nature of gun control legislation, whether one is in
| favor or not, is extremely incremental, and all of the
| legislation that aims to restrict certain kinds of weapons
| always applies to the manufacture and sale, never existing
| legal ownership. Not sure where you got the term "gun
| seizure" from but that is beyond "hyperbole" because it's not
| even true in any sense.
| diogenescynic wrote:
| Then why has Pelosi stalled passing a bill to restrict
| members of Congress from trading stock using insider
| information? Democrats are barely any better than republicans
| and comparably corrupt--they just offer better lip service.
| trasz wrote:
| >We don't hear about them because Congress agrees and does it
| job is not interesting or newsworthy.
|
| Well, yes, that's the point - given that both parties
| represent the capital-owning class, no wonder they mostly
| agree.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| Parties literally never do anything: they must be owned by
| the capital-owning class
|
| Parties always agree: they must be owned by the capital-
| owning class
|
| My pizza is late: they must be owned by the capital owning
| class
|
| If your explanation works to explain everything, you've
| just found a very long synonym for "magic" and you don't
| actually have an explanation.
| nemothekid wrote:
| I don't see how your 3rd point tracks; it doesn't work
| for why the pizza is late. Why would the pizza being late
| be caused by the pizza being owned by the capital class?
| What motivation does the capital class have in my pizza
| being late?
|
| You are trying to gish gallop the argument with a
| completely unfounded quip about "magic".
| vorpalhex wrote:
| That's not a gish gallop, I only made one argument. A
| gish gallop is when you throw out a bunch of arguments at
| once, hope your opponent misses one in their reply and
| then call out their failure to respond.
|
| If you're going to call a fallacy, please do so
| correctly.
|
| It makes exactly as much sense for all three cases.
| "Capital Owners" have no desire for price transparency
| (2019), Covid stimulus (2020) or most other things
| congress does. Certainly not supporting sanctions that
| torch the oil and fuel needing industries in Europe.
|
| If being beholden to the capital owners can be used as an
| excuse for anything congress does that you don't like, I
| can also use it as an excuse for my pizza being late.
| nemothekid wrote:
| > _It makes exactly as much sense for all three cases.
| "Capital Owners" have no desire for price transparency
| (2019), Covid stimulus (2020) or most other things
| congress does_
|
| You are still assigning unfounded assertions to the
| capital class? The capital class has no desire for COVID
| stimulus? Why? Did you not see the stock market
| completely shit itself in September - and every economist
| saying the only way out was a stimulus? Likewise price
| transparency? I assume you are talking about healthcare;
| but corporations also have an interest in reducing
| healthcare costs as for most of the Forbes 500, health
| insurance is a massive HR cost. "Price transparency" is
| the same neoliberal concession for a country who's
| working class desperately needs public healthcare. It
| doesn't meaningfully change the situation for working
| class individuals
|
| What you are doing is treating the capital class like
| some evil boogeyman instead of a motivated class of
| individuals looking to protect their wealth from
| institutional redistribution. I'm talking about corporate
| regulation, protections for unions, and most well funded
| social programs. Reducing a well researched phenomenon to
| "blaming capital owners that my pizza is late" is
| profoundly myopic
| mindslight wrote:
| > _a motivated class of individuals looking to protect
| their wealth from institutional redistribution_
|
| You are giving way too much credit. They're not on the
| defensive of protecting their wealth from
| "redistribution", but rather on the offensive of
| extracting ever more wealth away from those in the
| productive economy. Economically, this is done via
| printing new money and financializing the lives of the
| plebs.
|
| _" A democracy will continue to exist up until the time
| that voters discover that they can vote themselves
| generous gifts from the public treasury."_
|
| This quote is usually levied at voters personally, as a
| condemnation of social programs - the same induced
| "culture war" to distract from the grownups' looting. The
| quote is actually much more applicable to politicians (of
| both costumes) promoting the policies paid for by big
| capital, which has consistently succeeded at getting
| itself ever more corporate welfare - stock market bubble,
| housing bubble, healthcare trainwreck, defense spending,
| covid giveaways, etc.
| dane-pgp wrote:
| > What motivation does the capital class have in my pizza
| being late?
|
| You're asking what motivation do businesses have for
| taking your money and not investing enough to provide the
| service that customers want in return?
| turns0ut wrote:
| [deleted]
| horsawlarway wrote:
| > Congress has passed nearly a hundred bills in the last year
| alone.
|
| Honest question - Have you read most of the descriptions?
| Because I have (literally every single one) and with
| exception for a few aimed at Russia, the _vast_ majority of
| them are the equivalent of legislative bookkeeping. They are
| nothing of substance.
|
| The most common are simple names changes of federal
| properties, or grants of federal properties to cities nearby
| so they can assume management.
|
| Then come the "award" bills, that grant a medal to someone,
| or put a statue somewhere.
|
| Then we have a few relatively minor infrastructure funding
| bills, and a couple changes to how the federal military
| programs handle training. A couple of these are simple
| extensions of existing programs (ex: SB4119/SB2102)
|
| Then a few "planning" bills - which basically outline that
| "something bad" is happening and we should probably attempt
| to figure out why (ex: SB66). Or the "something bad happened,
| we know why, it's mostly been addressed, but congress will
| pass a bill anyway to look good" (ex: HB3182)
|
| -----
|
| Basically, I take away from your comment that you're actually
| _agreeing_ with the top poster, and you simply don 't know
| it.
|
| > We don't hear about them because Congress agrees and does
| it job is not interesting or newsworthy.
|
| Yes - they passed a bunch of bills that are not interesting
| because there is nothing substantial in them - they mostly
| just don't matter. They are _COMPLETELY_ business as usual.
| No attempt to address the more critical issues that we face.
|
| Conspicuously absent? Climate action, Tech regulation, Energy
| funding and independence (again - outside of the context of
| russia). Basically - few of these bills have ANY impact on
| 99% of us.
|
| They definitely did pass SB4160 though - have to make sure
| the supreme court is protected in case their decisions blow
| up in their face.
| themacguffinman wrote:
| It seems kind of disingenuous to dismiss useful bills like
| infrastructure ones as "minor" and "few". A single bill can
| contain many changes and carry huge amounts of funding,
| like HR3684 or perhaps better known as the "Infrastructure
| Investment and Jobs Act". Seems like a pretty major
| omission from your bill summary.
|
| I'm not sure what you're expecting, The US Congress doesn't
| and shouldn't be passing a lot of huge sweeping changes
| every single year. When it's not passing huge sweeping
| economic changes, legislative bookkeeping is another
| critical job. It's not "nothing substantial". Planning
| bills, department/agency confirmations, and grant renewals
| are all important duties that keep the country running
| which does impact 99% of us.
|
| The OP's comment did not say "Congress doesn't move fast
| enough", it said Congress doesn't do anything beyond expand
| police/military and social issues. That's evidently not
| true.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > It seems kind of disingenuous to dismiss useful bills
| like infrastructure ones as "minor" and "few".
|
| This is a dishonest summary. The person you replied to
| dismissed "relatively minor infrastructure bills," they
| did not dismiss all infrastructure bills as minor.
| themacguffinman wrote:
| They said "Then we have a few relatively minor
| infrastructure funding bills" after summarising
| categories of bills in the past year as if there weren't
| other non-minor infrastructure bills like the whopper of
| HR3684. There's no mention of any non-minor
| infrastructure bills. The clear implication is that after
| reading the 100+ bills in the past year, the only
| infrastructure bills worth mentioning/summarising are
| relatively minor ones.
| autoexec wrote:
| > The US Congress doesn't and shouldn't be passing a lot
| of huge sweeping changes every single year.
|
| If everything were going great I'd agree with you, but "a
| lot of huge sweeping changes" is what we need and it's
| exactly what the American people have been asking for.
| Where's the federal law America wants to end prohibition
| on marijuana? Campaign finance reform? Internet privacy?
| Gerrymandering? Immigration? Consumer protections?
| Healthcare? Domestic Surveillance? Mass incarceration?
| Climate change? Education?
|
| Congress isn't doing just fine, it isn't "not moving fast
| enough", it's broken. It's failing to serve the interests
| of the American people year after year after year. There
| is so much that needs done and so many people being hurt
| because none of it is getting addressed.
| themacguffinman wrote:
| The American people ask for conflicting things. Marijuana
| is a partisan issue, campaign finance reform,
| gerrymandering, immigration, healthcare, education,
| climate change, mass incarceration etc are intensely
| partisan issues. Polarization rightfully makes change
| slow in a representative democracy. No matter how you as
| an individual feels about the urgency or necessity of
| your favorite causes, there are people who feel just as
| strongly about doing something different or not doing
| things at all.
| autoexec wrote:
| > Marijuana is a partisan issue
|
| Every topic will have people on both (or many) sides, but
| the majority of both democrats and republicans want
| legalization with only 1 in 10 of all Americans opposing
| legalizing it for both medical and recreational use.
| Polarization isn't the problem. There is common ground
| and wide agreement on various aspects of these issues
| which are actionable even if it doesn't solve the
| entirety of the problem.
|
| While of course there will be people who want to argue
| over specifics that's congresses entire job. To represent
| our disagreeing perspectives on how a problem should be
| addressed, work out solutions collectively, and put those
| solutions in place. No party is going to get everything
| done in the exact manner they want it, but as long as the
| issues do get addressed (one way, the other, or by some
| compromise) the system works. If nothing substantive can
| be done about the issues that the vast majority of the
| country agree we need to act on because of partisan
| bickering than the system is broken and broken systems
| should be replaced with something that is capable of
| actually working for Americans.
|
| "people disagree so nothing can be done!" is not
| acceptable.
| jtbayly wrote:
| Yeah, who would want to protect government officials? /s
| horsawlarway wrote:
| They already have it in copious forms from other laws. So
| basically - it's another showboat law, which is the point
| of the whole comment.
|
| Seems you missed the point.
| jonhohle wrote:
| I remember the hearings around MLB steroid use and
| discussions on whether new federal laws should be written
| to "prevent" drugs that were already illegal (or in
| breach of contract) from being used by an entertainment
| industry. If the executive branch wasn't investigating
| existing laws That already applied, what effect would new
| laws that were more narrowly defined provide?
|
| It seemed so stupid until considered from the perspective
| that MLB superstars were getting a lot of media time and
| politicians weren't. Now they had a chance to butt in and
| spend the majority of the time in front of the camera on
| a subject they were likely briefed on moments before any
| "hearings".
|
| After participating (very briefly) in a local precinct
| political process within a single party a few years
| later, I've effectively lost hope in the political
| process. There are self-serving, narcissistic sociopaths
| who will do anything for perceived power and well funded
| entities who will prevent anything truly populist from
| gaining traction. I feel like the disillusionment it
| breeds is intentional.
| rjbwork wrote:
| >I feel like the disillusionment it breeds is
| intentional.
|
| Absolutely. Demoralization of the proletariat is priority
| number one for the bourgeoisie. You don't have to spend
| huge amounts of resources fighting them if there is no
| one to fight in the first place.
| jtbayly wrote:
| The point seemed clear to me that Supreme Court deserved
| what it had coming to it if they did stuff that "blew up
| in their faces."
| [deleted]
| least wrote:
| > Basically - few of these bills have ANY impact on 99% of
| us.
|
| That does not mean they are a waste of time, however. There
| are a lot of impactful bills. Just because they don't
| personally affect or benefit you does not mean that they're
| not doing anything.
|
| It's not even really much of congress' fault. The power in
| both houses (especially the House of Representatives) has
| become very top heavy. That is not an indication that
| representatives aren't trying to do things, just that they
| are getting stonewalled by leaders like Nancy Pelosi.
| horsawlarway wrote:
| You could have stopped at the first half and had a mostly
| coherent point that I would agree with.
|
| Some of these bills do indeed matter, in the sense that
| someone has to deal with them at some point, and I expect
| many bills in most sessions to appear somewhat similiar.
|
| But they are hardly real attempts to tackle the problems
| we're facing, and I'd argue we're not even treading water
| on serious, serious issues we're facing as a country.
|
| It's like watering your house plants while the house
| burns down. Technically - someone should be watering the
| plants. Is it really the right priority at the moment?
| least wrote:
| > You could have stopped at the first half and had a
| mostly coherent point that I would agree with.
|
| You could have also just stated that the legislature has
| been ineffective at passing legislation that is important
| to _you,_ and you 'd have had a mostly coherent point.
| Instead you went out of your way to diminish what did
| pass as unimportant.
|
| Juneteenth maybe isn't important to you but it certainly
| _is important_ to a lot of people and naming it a
| national public holiday is seen as a significant gesture
| by many. Naming a memorial site for the victims of the
| Pulse nightclub shooting is important. Increasing access
| to mental health services for veterans in rural areas is
| important. Banning crib bumpers is important to... anyone
| that may have a child or already has a baby?
|
| There's plenty of examples like this that you deemed
| unimportant.
|
| > But [there] are hardly real attempts to tackle the
| problems we're facing, and I'd argue we're not even
| treading water on serious, serious issues we're facing as
| a country.
|
| There are actually a lot of real attempts, but, as I
| already mentioned, legislators get stonewalled by the
| leaders in their respective houses. It's very hard to
| introduce legislation and have it go _anywhere_ because
| the power resides mostly within the leadership.
| Individual congresspeople have very little power. If you
| don 't understand how the legislative process _actually_
| works _of course_ it 'll seem like they're simply not
| doing anything.
|
| > It's like watering your house plants while the house
| burns down. Technically - someone should be watering the
| plants. Is it really the right priority at the moment?
|
| It's more like eating or taking a shit; they're necessary
| and important even if they're mundane and there are "more
| important" matters to attend to. They take up time but
| they don't prevent you from accomplishing other things in
| your day.
|
| While I can appreciate that you characterize your agenda
| as super important stuff that absolutely needs to be
| addressed yesterday, you're not the only one that feels
| that way and what's super important to you is probably
| not the same as someone else.
| atwood22 wrote:
| Responding to this comment in good faith is easy: just
| examine legislation that was split along party lines and show
| that there are substantial differences between the parties on
| non-social issues. That would be a very convincing argument
| grounded in fact rather than impressions.
| yucky wrote:
| >Congress has passed nearly a hundred bills in the last year
| alone.
|
| What does that _mean_ though? Where is the anti trust
| legislation?
| colinmhayes wrote:
| Stuck in the senate where it needs 60 votes
| bparsons wrote:
| Yeah man, everything is going great in the US. Extremely
| functional government.
| feet wrote:
| Have you heard of think tanks? There are groups like ALECS
| that literally write legislation at the behest of
| corporations, it's been a problem for a long time.
|
| The reason you think it isn't in good faith is likely due to
| corporate owned media pushing specific narratives to keep
| workers placated
| boppo1 wrote:
| What media do you get your information from?
| feet wrote:
| While it is American-centric, PBS news hour is one
| decently solid option
|
| I also get information from corporate media but I always
| keep in mind the purpose of the angle of their reporting
| and always ignore _all_ opinion pieces. Opinion pieces
| are always trash
| User23 wrote:
| With minor exceptions like grandstanding bills that are
| never meant to make it to a vote let alone pass, no federal
| legislation is written by legislators or even their staffs.
|
| I can't find it, but there was a case not so long ago when
| the senate accidentally voted for one of those
| grandstanding bills. Maybe somebody else recalls the
| particulars.
|
| In any event it's clear to any intelligent observer that
| the actual dynamics of governance put a lie to the fiction
| that our system functions as a representative republic.
| diogenescynic wrote:
| >I can't find it, but there was a case not so long ago
| when the senate accidentally voted for one of those
| grandstanding bills. Maybe somebody else recalls the
| particulars.
|
| The last example I recall was when republicans passed an
| over-ride of Obama's veto on the bill to allow victims of
| 9/11 to sue Saudi Arabia then once it passed were worried
| about the actual consequences.
| mbesto wrote:
| > Congress has passed nearly a hundred bills in the last year
| alone.
|
| A patent troll can create hundreds of patents per year and
| never release a single product. The quantitative aspect is
| meaningless without the qualitative.
|
| > I quickly glanced at those hundred bills and didn't see
| much in the way of expanding police power or military
| conquest of Europe and Asia.
|
| Bills regularly get stuffed with unrelated compromises. I
| can't totally refute the idea that there are police power
| expansions on this bills or not, HOWEVER nor can you with
| your rudimentary analysis.
| refurb wrote:
| Not really. They only support the capital-owning class when the
| capital-owning class supports them in return.
|
| And that's how this will turn out. If Big Tech decides to back
| the current politicians? They'll go easy on them.
| smt88 wrote:
| Big Tech already backs current politicians.
|
| https://www.politico.com/newsletters/morning-
| tech/2022/01/24...
| nemo44x wrote:
| Occupy Wall St had a huge impact on the culture war and it's no
| coincidence that todays intense culture war began after it.
| Occupy failed for many reasons but primarily it failed because
| it couldn't get funded. Donor class and corporate sponsorship
| are required for progressives to attain the power they want.
| Class warfare - the traditional progressive cause - died and
| gave birth to a new identity politics (we call it Woke today)
| that could get funded.
|
| Donors and businesses (the same thing) can get behind a
| movement that centers group identity so long as it isn't class
| because it's useful. It's why you didn't see any corporations
| updating their logo for Occupy or speaking out in favor and why
| mainstream media did its best to paint it as a rudderless,
| leaderless collective that didn't have clear messaging or
| requests.
|
| People ask how wokeness became such a big thing so fast and
| it's because it has been extremely useful in crushing class
| solidarity after the collapse of the financial system.
| xnx wrote:
| This is an interesting opinion. My opinion is that Occupy
| Wall St is a tiny footnote to a culture war that goes back to
| Rush Limbaugh in the 90's and then Glen Beck, Bill O'Reilly,
| Alex Jones, and Tucker Carlson today.
| ndesaulniers wrote:
| I feel like I'm reading the plot of a Metal Gear Solid game.
| What will the Patriots do next? So intriguing!
| jonathankoren wrote:
| Occupy certainly brought wealth inequality to more of a
| forefront of the conversation, but I wouldn't say it began
| the culture war. I'm old enough to remember the early 90s and
| the start of the permanent campaign and professional outrage
| of media. But the culture war has been going on since at
| least the mid 50s with desegregation.
|
| Even in 1954, comedians were complaining about not being able
| to make a joke anymore.[0]
|
| [0] https://www.truthorfiction.com/june-1954-jack-albertson-
| lame...
| lettergram wrote:
| > Occupy failed for many reasons but primarily it failed
| because it couldn't get funded. Donor class and corporate
| sponsorship are required for progressives to attain the power
| they want. Class warfare - the traditional progressive cause
| - died and gave birth to a new identity politics (we call it
| Woke today) that could get funded.
|
| Yup, my interpretation was the corporations / government
| funded the woke politics to divide. If you review the old
| Soviet era plans to bring down America it was effectively to
| focus on inflaming racial tension. That's effectively what
| critical race theory is, instead of class dynamics you have
| racial dynamics; the end goal is the same. Gain power through
| a divide and conquer strategy to bring in an era where all
| are "equal", some are just more equal than others.
| greedo wrote:
| This displays a fundamental misunderstanding of CRT.
| lettergram wrote:
| I've read a few books on the subject. They explain that
| as the objective in the early work. So no don't really
| think so, I think most people don't take the time to
| understand / read context.
| kwere wrote:
| are the results different? i cant believe in usa the
| divide between black and white are bigger than being poor
| or middle class. certantly there are certain big picture
| "identity" dinamics (or the remaints) at plays, but to
| solve social issues the solution are simple and proven
| across countries and time. lift the poor out of poverty
| with economic and social chances (effective education is
| a simple solution) and control the problems originated by
| poverty in those communities by law and by "social"
| investments. the CRT discourse looks, behave? and talks
| like a divide et impera
| rayiner wrote:
| I don't think it's a conspiracy theory, but it reads like
| one. Obama ran as a populist and won Iowa by almost 10 points
| in 2008, Wisconsin by 14 points, Michigan by almost 17
| points, etc. With nearly 60 Senate votes, he was able to
| permanently expand the social safety net through Obamacare.
| And how did Wall Street respond? They rebranded themselves as
| the good guys for their George W. Bush views on immigration,
| and helped pain Democrats' blue wall voters in the midwest as
| "deplorables" for not having progressive views on
| immigration, sexuality, etc. The Democratic Party happily
| joined them in blowing off one of its own legs, and the
| resulting party is one that owes its slim electoral majority
| to Arizona, the home of Barry Goldwater and Regan suburbs in
| Atlanta and can't do anything.
| joshuamorton wrote:
| This doesn't hold up given that in 2012, Wisconsin was only
| +7.5, Iowa was +6, and Michigan was +10, an across the
| board drop of 5-8 points in those states over 4 years for
| the same guy when, by all accounts as in incumbent, he
| should have done better.
|
| This line of conspiracy only works if you pretend that
| Democrats are the only people with agency, and that there
| wasn't active and successful work in the Republican arena
| to appeal to voters "racial anxieties". The party was
| actively being racist, but apparently saying that is
| unacceptable.
|
| > Regan suburbs in Atlanta
|
| Cobb county is majority minority as of the 2020 census. It
| was 75% white in 2000, probably like 80 or 85 for Reagan.
| Dems appeal among actual working class people (read:
| usually minorities who don't own quarter million dollar
| trucks) remains extremely strong.
| hpkuarg wrote:
| > Dems appeal among actual working class people (read:
| usually minorities who don't own quarter million dollar
| trucks) remains extremely strong.
|
| The latest NYT/Siena poll suggests exactly otherwise for
| the coming midterms. Dems carry the white college-
| educated vote by a substantial margin and lose all
| working-class groups (non-college-degree, lower income)
| to Reps.
|
| The message is that the Democratic Party as of now caters
| to those who are financially well enough off that social
| ("woke") issues matter more than economic issues.
| joshuamorton wrote:
| the poll you're referencing
| (https://int.nyt.com/data/documenttools/us0722-crosstabs-
| nyt0...) doesn't check income anywhere.
|
| Dems fail to win the non-college _white_ vote, but carry
| the non-college educated vote for other ethnic groups,
| which is the same way its always been.
| rayiner wrote:
| College education is not only a strong proxy for income,
| but an even better proxy for working class status than
| income. The guy who redid my bathroom probably makes more
| than some of my lawyer friends doing government work. But
| he still removes and replaces toilets for a living and
| they don't and that's a form of privilege in and of
| itself.
|
| And the current poll does not reflect the "way it's
| always been." Democrats were competitive for white voters
| with just a college degree as recently as 2008:
| https://www.npr.org/2016/09/13/493763493/charts-see-how-
| quic.... In 2016 they lost that group by almost 30
| points.
|
| They've replaced those folks with a coalition of Silicon
| Valley engineers and Wall Streets bankers who used to
| vote Republican, and racial minorities. Good for fund
| raising, but results in a party that cannot effectively
| advocate for the working class.
| joshuamorton wrote:
| > And the current poll does not reflect the "way it's
| always been." Democrats were competitive for white voters
| with just a college degree as recently as 2008:
| https://www.npr.org/2016/09/13/493763493/charts-see-how-
| quic.... In 2016 they lost that group by almost 30
| points.
|
| In a parallel thread about Obama's performance in 2012,
| you said
|
| > The recovery from the 2008 recession was very slow, and
| the unemployment rate for most of 2012 was over 8%.
| George H.W. Bush lost reelection with an unemployment
| rate that was less than that.
|
| Can you explain to me how it is that the economic
| recovery anxiety affected precisely one group of people,
| white voters without a college degree, and why their
| support continued bottoming out in Obama's second term
| even post-recovery?
|
| Like my thesis here is "The Republicans, as early as
| 2009, adopted a strategy to appeal to the racial
| anxieties of less-educated white voters, which pulled
| support from those groups to republicans".
|
| Yours appears to be "Until around 2013, support among
| _only_ less-educated white voters dropped due to economic
| recovery concerns, but all other groups were unconcerned
| with the economy, and, just as the economy began to
| improve, the dem party decided to switch strategies
| specifically to not appeal to those voters ".
|
| Like for all the weird bad pundit takes that exist, I
| don't even think this take exists on the spectrum. Pretty
| much everyone agrees that there was concerted effort by
| Republicans to stoke racial anxiety and appeal to white
| voters. Like, that was the entire way Trump got his
| initial boost onto the scene (Obama's birth certificate
| nonsense). Why are you pretending that's not the case?
|
| > College education is not only a strong proxy for
| income, but an even better proxy for working class status
| than income.
|
| What does "working class" mean here? Like, if you're
| going to say that working class isn't income-driven but
| perception driven, ok sure, but then the existence of
| concepts like "driving while black" suggest that the US's
| class system also includes race, which means that
| policies that help minorities _are_ class based! You can
| 't have it both ways.
|
| And keep in mind that the whole income v. education thing
| is highly impacted by race (https://nces.ed.gov/programs/
| raceindicators/indicator_rfd.as...). A white voter who
| didn't complete high school has the same income, on
| average, as a black voter who has completed some college,
| and for all races _except whites_ , the difference
| between no high school and a BA is more than 2x, but for
| white people it's only around 1.86x. That is, correlation
| between income and education is significantly weaker for
| white people than for any other race.
| rayiner wrote:
| > Pretty much everyone agrees that there was concerted
| effort by Republicans to stoke racial anxiety and appeal
| to white voters.
|
| Everyone does not agree on that. The period leading to
| Obama's second term coincides with a period during which
| white Democrats got significantly more liberal, to the
| point where they had moved to the left of Black Democrats
| on race issues:
| https://www.vox.com/2019/3/22/18259865/great-awokening-
| white.... Part of that was redefining "racism" to mean
| things other than personal prejudice. Positions that
| working class Democrats had previously embraced, such as
| Bernie Sanders' opposition to immigration, became
| "racist" under the new definitions.
|
| But minorities themselves largely do not accept these
| theories, and most do not hear the "dog whistles" that
| white liberals claim to hear:
| https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/18/opinion/biden-latino-
| vote... ("We began by asking eligible voters how
| 'convincing' they found a dog-whistle message lifted from
| Republican talking points. Among other elements, the
| message condemned 'illegal immigration from places
| overrun with drugs and criminal gangs' and called for
| 'fully funding the police, so our communities are not
| threatened by people who refuse to follow our laws.'
| Almost three out of five white respondents judged the
| message convincing. More surprising, exactly the same
| percentage of African-Americans agreed, as did an even
| higher percentage of Latinos.").
|
| Democrats during that period also rediscovered policies
| regarding racial preferences in education and hiring that
| remain wildly unpopular among minorities themselves, not
| to mention working class white people:
| https://www.pewresearch.org/social-
| trends/2019/05/08/america...
|
| > Why are you pretending that's not the case?
|
| Because it's self-serving nonsense. Your theory is that
| folks in Iowa soured on Obama because Republicans pointed
| out that he was Black, and not because he appointed a
| former Goldman Sachs executive to Treasury and doubled
| down on globalization after having run as a populist.
|
| It's also an attitude that is terribly counterproductive
| for Democrats (but great for Republicans). America is far
| less "racist" than my native Bangladesh. But some degree
| of "racism" is inevitable in any society. It's inevitable
| that working class people are going to have less racially
| progressive views than elites who learned elaborate
| social-science theories in college. If it becomes
| politically acceptable to hold that against them, then
| that becomes a powerful club for elites to use against
| the working class. Which is what's happened.
|
| > A white voter who didn't complete high school has the
| same income, on average, as a black voter who has
| completed some college
|
| That's an interesting social science fact, but you can't
| build a politics for a working class party around that.
| The 90% white county where my wife's family is from has a
| median household income lower than the median for Black
| households nationally. Folks in that county do not care
| if you tell them that 2/3s of white people are richer
| than them, but only 1/2 of Black people. And they
| correctly perceive that policies that focus on
| redistributing opportunities based on race--policies that
| accord more preferences to affluent immigrants from
| Africa than first generation college students from the
| Oregon coast--are contrary to their personal interests.
| wil421 wrote:
| Cobb county is not becoming blue because of demographics.
| As another poster pointed out it's likely the college
| educated younger people like myself.
| joshuamorton wrote:
| It can be both.
|
| (If you overlay the precinct-level results from
| https://s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/cobbcounty.org.if-us-
| west... on a demographic map, it becomes apparent that
| the more educated parts of Cobb are redder than the less
| educated parts. This correlates basically perfectly with
| the less white vs. whiter parts.
|
| I'm from Smyrna originally and lived there for the
| majority of my life. East Cobb (although it is purpleish,
| not just red, and that _is_ due to college education) is
| redder than Smyrna /Marietta, despite being much more
| educated.
| rayiner wrote:
| > This doesn't hold up given that in 2012, Wisconsin was
| only +7.5, Iowa was +6, and Michigan was +10, an across
| the board drop of 5-8 points in those states over 4 years
| for the same guy when, by all accounts as in incumbent,
| he should have done better.
|
| The recovery from the 2008 recession was very slow, and
| the unemployment rate for most of 2012 was over 8%.
| George H.W. Bush lost reelection with an unemployment
| rate that was less than that.
|
| > Dems appeal among actual working class people (read:
| usually minorities who don't own quarter million dollar
| trucks) remains extremely strong.
|
| White non-college graduates made up 43% of the electorate
| in 2018. Non-whites made up only 24%.
|
| Restructuring the Democratic Party around graduate-school
| level race theory was an excellent way to destroy its
| ability to advocate for the working class. At best,
| working class white people don't get the rhetoric. At
| worst, they correctly perceive that it's not in their
| interest to support Democratic policies that redistribute
| opportunities along racial lines: https://www.forbes.com/
| sites/evangerstmann/2021/06/12/yet-an.... Such policies
| deliberately avoid redistribution across class lines.
| I.e. if you spend political capital fighting to
| redistribute funds amongst small businesses based on
| race, you have less political capital to spend
| redistributing from big businesses to small businesses.
|
| Democrats have already lost working class people. They're
| 11 points behind among non-college graduates overall
| according to recent New York Times polling:
| https://theliberalpatriot.substack.com/p/working-class-
| and-h.... Currently, what's keeping them afloat is a
| supermajority among minorities. But that's eroding as
| well, as working class Hispanics start trending the same
| way as other working class people. Biden won just 55% of
| non-college Hispanics in 2020. In the latest NYT poll,
| the parties are tied among non-college Hispanics in terms
| of which party they want to control Congress in 2022.
| Democrats' long-term hope long term is that Hispanics
| vote the way Black people do, rather than the way
| Italians and Irish did. (The latter were key Democratic
| constituencies until they went for the GOP under Reagan.)
| The math on that isn't looking good.
|
| Democrats cannot be the party of racial gerrymandering
| and critical race theory and also the party of the
| working class. That's not mathematically possible.
| cbozeman wrote:
| This is one of the best socio-political analyses I've
| seen on Hacker News. Thank you for writing it.
| joshuamorton wrote:
| > Restructuring the Democratic Party around graduate-
| school level race theory was an excellent way to destroy
| its ability to advocate for the working class. At best,
| working class white people don't get the rhetoric.
|
| > At worst, they correctly perceive that it's not in
| their interest to support Democratic policies that
| redistribute opportunities along racial lines
|
| This is only a correct perception _if_ they decide to
| make it a fight. There is nothing that implicitly
| prevents a big tent dem party from both advocating for
| working class and minority beneficial policies. It 's
| only zero sum because people like you claim it's zero sum
| and create the perception that it is so. Don't do that,
| and push back against others that do that, and the
| problem goes away.
|
| >Such policies deliberately avoid redistribution across
| class lines.
|
| No they don't (I mean even ignoring the extent that
| redistribution along racial lines usually correlates with
| class lines pretty well), there isn't anything that
| prevents you from doing both. It only costs political
| capital when _you_ make it a fight. If everyone in the
| dem party were like me, doing both wouldn 't cost any
| political capital!
|
| If you believe that such policies are bad, say that. If
| you think such policies are good, support them! Don't do
| this half-hearted thing where you just claim the policies
| are electorally untenable. That's self-fulfilling because
| saying it's zero sum drives the perception that it is so.
| rayiner wrote:
| "My strategy would work if voters all adopted my values
| and worldview" isn't a sensible political strategy. It's
| utopianism. Politics is about putting together a
| coalition with the voters you have, not daydreaming about
| what you could do if you had the voters you want.
|
| And the utopianism harms the very minorities you claim to
| advocate for. My parents, immigrants from Bangladesh,
| don't vote straight-ticket Democrat because they think
| you can achieve racial harmony. They do it because they
| think Obamacare is a good idea. You're not going to
| convince them that Bangladeshis have common cause with
| other minorities, or that police are bad, or that same-
| sex marriage is great, or that anyone should ever
| "celebrate their abortion." They will go along with those
| things, but they're voting for a political party to
| achieve tangible results, not bring about the Rapture.
| ceeplusplus wrote:
| > It's only zero sum because people like you claim it's
| zero sum and create the perception that it is so
|
| It is by definition zero sum. There are a fixed number of
| college acceptance spots at prestigious colleges each
| year and by the nature of prestige it must stay so for
| the colleges to continue being prestigious. There are
| (roughly) a fixed number of jobs in prestigious fields.
| There are a fixed number of C level positions in Fortune
| 500 companies. When you deliberately reallocate these
| spots on the basis of skin color instead of merit, you
| doom the nation to eventual failure as it's outcompeted
| by nations like China. Science does not care about your
| skin color, it only cares that you're right.
|
| You might notice that current Democratic policies only
| advocate for raising income taxes, and not substantially
| raising LT capital gains taxes. Not only that, but you
| can still deduct huge amounts for real estate ownership
| and business ownership.
| joshuamorton wrote:
| No one was talking about allocating headcount.
|
| > Science does not care about your skin color, it only
| cares that you're right.
|
| This begs the question.
|
| > You might notice that current Democratic policies only
| advocate for raising income taxes.
|
| Sanders and Warren both advocate for wealth taxes, and
| have higher support among the college educated cadre of
| the dem party!
| ceeplusplus wrote:
| You brought up "minority beneficial policies" in the
| context of the current left wing segment of the
| Democratic party. That means DEI programs and affirmative
| action to favor minorities, because that's what's being
| pushed by the left right now. Those policies do affect
| headcount and college admissions and are zero sum.
|
| I'm sure as an engineer at Google you would know that
| recruiters at your company will regularly favor racial
| minorities by prioritizing their resumes and promotions.
| Unsurprisingly, it was found that they were systemically
| underpaying men [1] and discriminating against Asian
| applicants [2].
|
| [1] https://www.npr.org/2019/03/05/700288695/google-pay-
| study-fi...
|
| [2] https://news.bloomberglaw.com/daily-labor-
| report/google-sett...
| joshuamorton wrote:
| > You brought up "minority beneficial policies" in the
| context of the current left wing segment of the
| Democratic party.
|
| Correct.
|
| > That means DEI programs
|
| Let me know where in the democratic party platform it
| says that colleges should use race based affirmative
| action policies. We were discussing a particular minority
| aware funding program. You decided to bring up headcount,
| something no one else was discussing.
|
| > I'm sure as an engineer at Google you would know that
| recruiters at your company will regularly favor racial
| minorities by prioritizing their resumes
|
| Sure, yes, this is fine.
|
| > and promotions.
|
| Interesting bit of made up nonsense there though.
|
| > Unsurprisingly, it was found that they were
| systemically underpaying men [1] and discriminating
| against Asian applicants [2].
|
| You should really read those links better. Your first
| showed that a particular crosstab of engineers (that I
| belonged to, in fact!) were being systemically underpaid
| (by, if I recall, something like .25%). Your second link
| notes that Google settled both against Asian applicants,
| _and_ against female applicants and employees. So, Google
| was, per your own source, systematically underpaying
| women (by a larger margin over a larger period) and their
| internal study failed to recognize that, and instead gave
| me a small bonus.
| rayiner wrote:
| > Sure, yes, this is fine.
|
| Most minorities themselves don't think it's fine:
| https://www.vox.com/2019/5/9/18538216/diversity-
| workplace-pe.... Hispanics oppose the practice 69-27, and
| Black people oppose it 54-37.
|
| To put that into context, Hispanics are more unified in
| opposing taking race into account in hiring than they are
| in supporting Joe Biden. White liberals are imposing this
| practice upon them.
| ceeplusplus wrote:
| > where in the democratic party platform it says that
| colleges should use race based affirmative action
| policies
|
| Well, the CA Democratic Party's official position is that
| you should have supported Prop 16, which would have
| unbanned race based affirmative action (racism) [1].
|
| > Sure, yes, this is fine.
|
| It is not fine. Myself and many others reject this sort
| of practice. California voters rejected Prop 16 by a 15
| pt margin. It is illegal under federal discrimination
| laws to discriminate on the basis of race or sex. It is
| racism, plain and simple. Just because you are (I
| presume) white and liberal and you aren't affected by
| such policies does not make them legal or moral.
| Pretending you are morally superior by discriminating
| against minorities through affirmative action is just as
| bad as white supremacy.
|
| This sort of "it's fine" attitude is why Trump got
| elected. And before you accuse me of being a white cis-
| male, I'm not white.
|
| > You should really read those links better
|
| > Interesting bit of made up nonsense there though.
|
| I quote from the article: "Managers had dipped into the
| discretionary funds more often for women engineers,
| creating a pay gap for men in the same job category".
| This is literally the sort of DEI affirmative action
| sexism I was mentioning. You also coincidentally ignore
| the fact that Asians were discriminated against because
| women being underpaid fits your political narrative
| better. One of these things is a direct result of
| Google's internal policy to discriminate against
| "overrepresented" minorities like Asians and one of these
| things is not.
|
| [1] https://cadem.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/State-
| Propositi...
| joshuamorton wrote:
| > "Managers had dipped into the discretionary funds more
| often for women engineers, creating a pay gap for men in
| the same job category".
|
| Right, so you lied when you said that they were
| prioritizing promoting women, which is false, and is
| completely unrelated to what you quoted in the article.
|
| > This sort of "it's fine" attitude is why Trump got
| elected.
|
| > It is illegal under federal discrimination laws to
| discriminate on the basis of race or sex.
|
| And yet race based affirmative action policies remain
| legal under those laws. Perhaps your definition of
| "racism" is misplaced.
|
| >You also coincidentally ignore the fact that Asians were
| discriminated against
|
| No I didn't. I literally mentioned them. Me pointing out
| that you _did_ entirely ignore the discrimination against
| women (because it does in fact completely invalidate the
| point you were going for) _isn 't_ ignoring Asians. Like
| I keep saying, its not zero sum. I am capable of
| believing that it is possible to dsciriminate against
| multiple groups.
|
| You however seem intent on ignoring discrimination
| against groups to which you don't belong.
| colpabar wrote:
| > Dems appeal among actual working class people (read:
| usually minorities who don't own quarter million dollar
| trucks) remains extremely strong.
|
| This is a _perfect_ example of why I cannot call myself a
| democrat anymore. Can you not see how an unemployed white
| person in the rust belt who lost his job because the
| factory he worked at was moved to China because of NAFTA
| may interpret this as extremely dismissive? Why should he
| vote for someone who claims that he isn 't a "real"
| working class person?
| joshuamorton wrote:
| I'm confused, are you saying this jobless rust belt
| person owns a quarter million dollar 18-wheeler?
|
| I'm certainly not saying that white people can't be
| working class. That'd be silly. What I am saying is that
| often, we pretend that very affluent rural whites are
| "working class" to the deficit of urban (and often
| minority) working class people.
| [deleted]
| antisthenes wrote:
| Sounds like Embrace, extend, and extinguish strategy in
| relation to a social movement.
|
| Corporations embraced identity politics, extended it to
| absurdity (peak wokeness), and are now extinguishing any hope
| of meaningful change, placating the plebes with meaningless
| virtue signaling and short-lived rage-machines like BLM.
| no-dr-onboard wrote:
| There is an old documentary out there that basically sums
| this strategy as:
|
| "Your movement dies in Target. Yes, Target. Corporate
| America will defang your movement, put it on a t-shirt,
| acid wash it and sell it to mindless, edgy teenagers who
| want to feel like they're doing something with their lives
| "by supporting" it."
| autoexec wrote:
| What's the documentary?
| thrashh wrote:
| Occupy Wall St failed because it had no agenda in my opinion.
|
| The agenda for LGBT rights movement? Marriage equality in
| law. You've got a clear goal.
|
| Civil rights movement? Equal suffrage, repeal of
| discriminatory laws.
|
| You can't take action when no one is asking for a specific
| action.
| canadiantim wrote:
| Occupy failed because it didn't have clearly defined goals.
|
| Ending capitalism isn't really a readily achievable goal;
| Occupy would have had more success if they broke down their
| broad sweeping goals into smaller more attainable goals.
| jonathankoren wrote:
| Famously, "What is our one demand?"
| nemo44x wrote:
| It did have clear goals - "we are the 99%". It addressed
| wealth and income inequality and money in politics and it
| didn't have a leadership head for the same reason Antifa
| doesn't - they are collectives against hierarchal
| societies. They operated on loose consensus and because of
| these principals I agree it was weak. But their message was
| clear.
|
| But they couldn't get donor class support because, well
| that is the 1%. The media painted it as a well meaning
| (they're progressives after all) thing that has no concrete
| goal. That was a lie.
|
| However, radical gender ideology doesn't address the 1%. If
| anything it's an attack on the working classes that tend to
| have traditional values. So here we are.
| bena wrote:
| To be fair. "Fix wealth and income inequality" as a goal
| is a bit like Michael Scott's 45 day-45 point plan to
| save Dunder Mifflin. "Ok, day 45 company saved. Day 44.
| Go."
|
| Yes, we need to do that. From here to there however, is a
| long and winding road with many obstacles.
| mise_en_place wrote:
| > It did have clear goals - "we are the 99%". It
| addressed wealth and income inequality and money in
| politics and it didn't have a leadership head for the
| same reason Antifa doesn't - they are collectives against
| hierarchal societies. They operated on loose consensus
| and because of these principals I agree it was weak. But
| their message was clear.
|
| While that may have been retroactively applied to it, I
| got the sense that it was a movement for college kids to
| cut class and get high all day, commingling with their
| female peers. Funnily enough, my economics professor at
| the time asked one of the protestors what their views on
| the macroeconomy were, and the dude was so stoned he
| launched into a tirade about aliens or something equally
| nonsensical. It was certainly a cultural movement, but
| let's not make it seem like it was some large grassroots
| movement that united Americans all across the country to
| take down government and corporate corruption.
| Aunche wrote:
| Reducing wealth and income inequality is an outcome, not
| a tangible goal. It's the same as ending police violence
| against black people. That is actually a more tangible
| goal because that can be directly controlled by the
| government. It also had no shortage of support for the
| "donor class." Yet BLM was still ineffective because it
| still lacked focus.
| makomk wrote:
| To the kind of left-wing populist involved in things like
| Occupy Wall Street, reducing wealth and income inequality
| is the tangible goal that they believe achieves the
| outcomes they want. Their thinking seems to be roughly
| like this: there is a fixed amount of wealth in the
| economy that is sufficient for all ordinary people to
| live a good life, but the super-wealthy have siphoned off
| much of that wealth due to their greed and that's why
| ordinary people are suffering, and the only solution to
| that is to forcibly redistribute that stolen wealth back
| to the people. Any attempts to make things more
| complicated than this, any talk about rising tides
| lifting all boats or suggestion it won't work, is just a
| propaganda trick from the super-rich.
| ryandrake wrote:
| The "rising tide" meme never made much sense to me. The
| economy is not like the ocean. A rising ocean affects all
| boats equally, but a rising economy does not affect all
| participants equally. The gains from rising economies
| tend to be disproportionately captured by the already-
| wealthy, and the losses from falling economies tend to be
| disproportionately borne by the poor.
| hobo_in_library wrote:
| Huh, that also explains how the trans movement grew so
| quickly out of nowhere.
|
| Regardless of whether you agree with it or not, pushing such
| a big change onto an entire country is a huge endeavor!
|
| Claims of trans pharma companies doing all the pushing seemed
| far fetched to me since it didn't seem like that would be
| enough to account for all the support it's gotten.
|
| But if this allows the culture warfare to continue while
| keeping the working class distracted away from the elite,
| suddenly you have many more donors who'd be happy to support
| your cause.
| banannaise wrote:
| Look, speaking as a trans person, I would love to ignore social
| issues and focus on economic ones, but I can't exactly do that
| when there's a growing movement to simply have me banned from
| society, and a smaller but also-growing movement to declare me
| a pedophile and have me executed. Class solidarity doesn't help
| me if I'm dead.
| blub wrote:
| It sounds like you live in a dictatorship or theocracy in
| which case the best approach would be to apply for asylum in
| the US, Canada, the UK or the EU.
|
| If your life is in danger (as it seems it is), it should be
| reasonably straightforward to be accepted.
| [deleted]
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > It sounds like you live in a dictatorship or theocracy in
| which case the best approach would be to apply for asylum
| in the US, Canada, the UK or the EU.
|
| They are describing the status quo in the US (and, though
| not having had the kind of success in actually writing
| preferences into law yet, the UK.)
| zwkrt wrote:
| As a femme gay myself I am feeling the heat, although not as
| much as my trans compatriots.
|
| I think GP is point stands though. The right is being told
| that a very important thing that they should be worried about
| is the existence of trans people. Which is ridiculous. But
| the reason the issue was brought up is because it's very
| emotional and very personal and has nothing at all to do with
| curtailing corporate power.
| banannaise wrote:
| Yeah. It's really frustrating to deal with. When anti-queer
| hate becomes a focal issue, many people treat the hate as
| half the problem and our existence as the other half of the
| problem. And it thus becomes untenable to simply move on to
| bigger issues, because the middle ground that this implies
| is _very dangerous to us_.
| jmyeet wrote:
| I just want to clarify that trans issues are important and we
| have had some progress here. I don't mean to diminish in any
| way the very real issues you and other trans people face.
| This is an example where the aesthetics of the Democrats
| actually achieves some good.
|
| Conservatives are using trans issues to create division for
| their own benefit. Red states are rushing to pass legislation
| on trans issues. Take, for example, Utah's ban on trans
| athletes. This is apparently an issue so important that it
| demands legislation even though it affects literally one
| person [1].
|
| You see closet (well not so much anymore) conservatives like
| Elon Musk tweeting dumb things about the "far left" [2]. When
| people complain about the "far left" what they really mean is
| they don't like trans people and they want them to go away.
| That's it.
|
| There is no "far left" in American politics and the fact that
| so many have bought into the idea there is shows you just how
| normative and effective right-wing propaganda has been and
| continues to be.
|
| [1]: https://www.npr.org/2022/03/25/1088908741/utah-
| transgender-a...
|
| [2]: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1519735033950470144?
| s=20...
| banannaise wrote:
| Thank you. I really do wish we could move on and focus on
| economics and corporatism and the like. It's nice to see
| people treating this as a coordinated attack rather than an
| issue with two sides, where me being allowed to exist in
| society is one of the sides.
| throwaway787544 wrote:
| I have a simpler explanation: boredom. Public opinion was
| probably getting bored of the big tech trials, which means they
| might not be fired up about voting for those politicians. So
| now politicians are pivoting to a different, more attractive
| cause. Votes are all that matter to politicians. It's
| unfortunate that the great unwashed still haven't realized
| this.
| wongarsu wrote:
| The UK has managed to keep people engaged over Brexit for
| seven years now. In the US abortion is an ancient topic, but
| has been a big topic since the supreme court nomination of
| 2016 and seems to keep people more engaged than ever.
|
| I don't really buy that the nation can't keep interest in big
| tech regulation for more than two years, if congress and the
| media wants them to.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| Big tech regulation: abstract thing.
|
| Abortion: talks about freedoms. close to peoples hearts.
|
| Brexit: talks about freedoms. close to peoples hearts.
|
| Is a 3 week old baby considered sacred ... vs ... someone
| sold some data or something.
| thrashh wrote:
| Disagree.
|
| I think we haven't curtailed big tech because we haven't
| figured out what that involves (without dire consequences).
| What does it exactly involve anyway?
| dekhn wrote:
| Well, I think it's more about the fact that the tech industry
| is the us's lifeline to long-term viability and that other
| country's tech industries (like china, russia) are far worse in
| terms of human rights. Why would congress attack the golden
| goose for class solidarity? That would help send the US to
| historical irrelevance.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| if you look at the quantitative reports on trade, you will
| quickly see that high tech is massive, but not the only
| category to have that title. You are arguing a perceived
| difference without quantitative grounding. In other words,
| the mind-share of tech is massive, and that certainly is part
| of the political gridlock here.
| dekhn wrote:
| Yes, we also make money via agriculture although often
| times it's really just contaminating our environment for
| short-term profits (almond growers in california). We also
| have a vibrant manufacturing sector, although most of it is
| in high-end costly items because we can't compete on price
| for the cheapest items. We also have a huge health sector
| which is based mainly around rent-seeking rather than
| quality of care, and its main contribution seems to be
| causing medical bankruptcies.
|
| Nor did I ever imply these other industries didn't exist.
| It's just that they aren't our lifeline to viability long-
| term because many countries could produce the food and
| physical products we can, but don't have the infrastructure
| to support high tech companies.
| olalonde wrote:
| There's a lot of evidence that regulations actually benefit the
| capital-owning class. Look at heavily regulated industries
| (insurance, pharma, banking, etc.) and how little competition
| the incumbents face. What most worries a big business is not
| whether they are allowed to do something or not, it is whether
| someone else will be able to do it better and hence, compete.
| It also doesn't help that large companies are the ones doing
| all the lobbying and practically end up writing the
| regulations[0].
|
| [0] https://reason.com/2021/07/07/how-big-business-uses-big-
| gove...
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