EXTRY! EXTRY! IMPEACHMENT IMMINENT!

I do enjoy a good discussion.
To avoid a wall of text I'll rely on memory so apologies if old timers disease causes mistakes.
PeterZ I believe that you are making the same mistake that the alt right bloggers do in this country. Our alt righters are a surprisingly uniform bunch with very similar values, this leads them to talk about "the left" or as you would say the "progressives" as if they were as uniform. Just not so. I personally support gay and women's rights, a welfare and health net, worker's rights, and the narrowing of wealth equality. Yet at the same time I am a legal gun owner, strong on law and order, and a big supporter of our armed forces.
One area that I have come to understand over time is that the US conservatives do have a strong belief in the fixed value of their constitution and the bible. To most people elsewhere (even conservatives) that is strange, as both were written by men and men are fallible.
You have been told previously but I'll repeat that US conservatives are somewhat unique in this and many other things. Virtually the who developed world regards the US Democrats as a somewhat to the right party yet you see them as left.
Your argument as to societies to the left of yours inevitably sliding into totalitarian socialism is easily proved false. If that were the case all of western Europe, New Zealand, Australia, Canada and so on would have gone that way over the past century. Hasn't happened, and we could argue that in some ways we are freer than you.
I enjoy our discussions, so don't take this as an attack, just a talk.

PeterZ wrote:

biochem wrote:

Finally someone is doing the obvious and measuring this! So we may actually be getting some useful information for once

https://ballotpedia.org/Scott_Rasmussen ... h_20,_2017

Another take on this topic. Given the source, it's worth reading, Biochem.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2017/04/30/the-arrogance-of-blue-america.html

I've been out of town and am catching up. But yes it's an interesting take, especially coming from a source that is usually far left. Another commenter stated that he felt that this overstated the divide. I'm originally from a flyover state but currently reside in a coastal blue state. So in my experience most individuals born and raised in blue states aren't as arrogant as this article portrays, however often (not always) they are clueless. They don't understand the interior of the country and worse they don't know that they don't understand it. In general they live in an bubble situation.

However, the activists and the people who talk a lot i.e. those who dominate the conversations both publicly and privately are absolutely this arrogant. And that leads to the "voice" coming out of the blue states to be a very arrogant one.

And unless Democrats can fix this they will be in a permanent minority. Multiple prominent Democrats have tried to get this across, but have been run over by the arrogance freight train that seems to be dominant at the moment. Perhaps this very blunt attempt by the Daily Beast will be more successful.

Equality is best achieved with the free flow of capital and labor. Government governs best when it regulates capital and labor to flow at their freest. Of course a libertarian would insist that level be just above anarchy and a conservative would insist on enough government to be able to protect society from external hostile forces as well as prevent anarchy.

Free markets are efficient generators and distributors of resources but they do *not* trend to equality. Once certain actors in the market accumulate sufficient wealth it becomes a self reinforcing cycle where that wealth can be leveraged to acquire ever increasing shares of the total for the richest because they wield all the power in the market.

And when that happens the free flow has transitioned from free to not free.

High unemployment (in real life not the artificiality low government number) also leads to a not free situation with all of the power in the hands of the rich. For labor to flow freely, a person needs to have the option to walk out of one job and walk into another better job with minimal effort. High unemployment/underemployment leads to a situation where labor can't do that i.e. not a free flow.

Peter has a decent solution abit one that is harder to implement in practice than in theory.

Best practices are a government just powerful enough to counter the wealthy individuals and just weak enough that it cannot be coopted by those wealthy individuals to work for their oligarchy rather than the people's democratic republic.

It is very difficult to keep the level of government at that "just right" level.

One area that I have come to understand over time is that the US conservatives do have a strong belief in the fixed value of their constitution and the bible. To most people elsewhere (even conservatives) that is strange, as both were written by men and men are fallible.

Actually most US conservatives do not believe that the Bible was written by man, but either written by God or inspired by God. Either way God controlled the content and the Bible is the Word of God. However, the catch is that the "Word of God" is only true when interpreted in the manner in which God intended and that is where humans intervene to screw things up. None of us are perfect in our interpretations (although there are a few highly annoying people who think they are) and those differences in interpretation are where the challenges come in.

In the case of the constitution, we simply got lucky on our 2nd try. The first try was a disaster. We had a truly gifted set of founders (incidentally they did a lot of praying for God's guidance - could that be a factor in the outcome?). The second try successfully incorporated all of the lessons learned from the first try and they came up with a truly extraordinary document. Additionally, recognizing that they were men and not God, the founders also included a mechanism to change the constitution to address any of their mistakes (slavery was the worst one). This mechanism is deliberately challenging to keep the constitution from falling victim to the fads of the day but still allows changes supported by a wide margin of the American populace to be enacted. It's an amazing document that has stood the test of time - 230 years and counting.

I think we actually agree somewhat here, in that most outside the US conservatives have a different view of who wrote the bible, so there's the core reason for a different attitude, right or wrong. As to how it is interpreted, how can you misinterpret some of the stuff specifically relating to slavery, sexual discrimination and keeping women down?

We also have a constitution that has a complex and difficult path to modify, and it also works for us. The difference though is that we look at it as a document written in a different world by fallible men, and not semi sacred. Thus we openly discuss possible shortcomings, and people are not as defensive about possible changes.

biochem wrote:

One area that I have come to understand over time is that the US conservatives do have a strong belief in the fixed value of their constitution and the bible. To most people elsewhere (even conservatives) that is strange, as both were written by men and men are fallible.

Actually most US conservatives do not believe that the Bible was written by man, but either written by God or inspired by God. Either way God controlled the content and the Bible is the Word of God. However, the catch is that the "Word of God" is only true when interpreted in the manner in which God intended and that is where humans intervene to screw things up. None of us are perfect in our interpretations (although there are a few highly annoying people who think they are) and those differences in interpretation are where the challenges come in.

In the case of the constitution, we simply got lucky on our 2nd try. The first try was a disaster. We had a truly gifted set of founders (incidentally they did a lot of praying for God's guidance - could that be a factor in the outcome?). The second try successfully incorporated all of the lessons learned from the first try and they came up with a truly extraordinary document. Additionally, recognizing that they were men and not God, the founders also included a mechanism to change the constitution to address any of their mistakes (slavery was the worst one). This mechanism is deliberately challenging to keep the constitution from falling victim to the fads of the day but still allows changes supported by a wide margin of the American populace to be enacted. It's an amazing document that has stood the test of time - 230 years and counting.

Some other actually useful polling data which has popped up recently:

Virtually all of the people who voted for Trump in November would vote for him again today. This includes voters in the critical Rust Belt states.

Hilary would lose about 15% of her voters. However, they wouldn't go to Trump, rather they would stay home or vote 3rd party. Most likely this reflects those who hated her but voted for her anyway as an anti-Trump vote.

Roughly 70% of journalists live in counties Hillary won and approximately 50% of the news media lives in counties in which Hillary won by 30 points or more i.e. it's unlikely many of them actually know a Trump voter personally (or if they do that person may not admit it due to the mistreatment to which Trump voters in liberal enclaves can be subject to).

Less than 7% of journalists identify as Republicans (and most of those probably work for Fox). About 95% of the political donations from the media went to Hillary (note - the political reporters don't donate for ethics reasons but their colleagues not working the politics beat do).

On the donations thing.

Virtually all of those journalists who donated to Hillary Clinton were spirts or fashion editors, or food and TV critics.

Those actually covering politics tended not to donate.

It should also be noted that two of the main complainents about this, Fox and Breitbart, both had bosses that went to work for the Trump campaign.

Sent from my SM-G930F using Tapatalk

biochem wrote:

Equality is best achieved with the free flow of capital and labor. Government governs best when it regulates capital and labor to flow at their freest. Of course a libertarian would insist that level be just above anarchy and a conservative would insist on enough government to be able to protect society from external hostile forces as well as prevent anarchy.

Free markets are efficient generators and distributors of resources but they do *not* trend to equality. Once certain actors in the market accumulate sufficient wealth it becomes a self reinforcing cycle where that wealth can be leveraged to acquire ever increasing shares of the total for the richest because they wield all the power in the market.

And when that happens the free flow has transitioned from free to not free.

Which is the inevitable result of attempting to run a free market.

And there is no mechanism inherent to a free market to correct it.

So we arrive at the inescapable conclusion that far from being harmful... outside regulation is required for an economy that doesn't spiral uncontrollably into oligarchy.

biochem wrote:

Best practices are a government just powerful enough to counter the wealthy individuals and just weak enough that it cannot be coopted by those wealthy individuals to work for their oligarchy rather than the people's democratic republic.

It is very difficult to keep the level of government at that "just right" level.

When in doubt, prune it back, I say! Eventually it will be back far enough that enough people will be persuaded to allow it to grow back a little.

gcomeau wrote:

Equality is best achieved with the free flow of capital and labor. Government governs best when it regulates capital and labor to flow at their freest. Of course a libertarian would insist that level be just above anarchy and a conservative would insist on enough government to be able to protect society from external hostile forces as well as prevent anarchy.

Free markets are efficient generators and distributors of resources but they do *not* trend to equality. Once certain actors in the market accumulate sufficient wealth it becomes a self reinforcing cycle where that wealth can be leveraged to acquire ever increasing shares of the total for the richest because they wield all the power in the market.

biochem wrote:And when that happens the free flow has transitioned from free to not free.

Which is the inevitable result of attempting to run a free market.

And there is no mechanism inherent to a free market to correct it.

So we arrive at the inescapable conclusion that far from being harmful... outside regulation is required for an economy that doesn't spiral uncontrollably into oligarchy.

Dang it all! Seemingly wholehearted agreement breaks out in the Politics forum. I'm shocked, shocked, I say!