BF2S Forums Civil War Fall Out: National Identity versus State/Local Identity

Turquoise wrote:

North Florida is part of the South, and South Florida is Cuba a retirement home for Northerners.

rdx-fx wrote:

My main dislike of the urban sprawl locations is;

rdx-fx wrote:

The above problem areas, the local government treats the people as subjects  rather than citizens - as simpletons to be protected from themselves, rather than as responsible adults to be left alone and respected. 

Secondly;
Cram that many people into that small of an area, and they just seem to lose their humanity.
Crammed into such a densely populated environment, people stop relating to each other and start pretending everyone else is just some anonymous drone rather than an actual person.
I lived in Cook County, Illinois for close to 5 years - and I hated every day of it.
(Cook County - 2nd most populous county in the US, after LA county)

Contrast this to my current location where I personally know everyone that walks in the door of my favorite breakfast/lunch restauraunt, aside from the odd tourist stopping through. 
People say "Hi, how are you?" around here, and actually give a damn what the answer is.

JohnG@lt wrote:

Who cares? It doesn't matter what you personally can do, that's why we have a fucking economy in the first place. Some people do certain kinds of work, some do other kinds of work, when they need stuff from each other they trade money for the services. It's the entire foundation of a functioning economy. The goal in life shouldn't be to aspire to some hick scratch farming existence.

Yes, it does matter what you personally can do.

A degree of specialization is key to a modern western economy, true.
overspecialization (to the exclusion of other basic skills) is a weakness, however.
Overspecialization makes a system (economy, community, organism, whatever) that much more fragile.
Overspecialize, and the loss of one function can cripple the whole system.
(What happened to Detroit, when the manufacturing jobs went away?)

There are a few basic tasks that anyone should be able to take care of themselves. Urban life makes things so easy, and so overspecialized, that there is someone waiting to take your credit card to do the most trivial of things for you.
To be a smartass, what's next? have to hire someone to pump gas for you at the gas station?!  (oh, wait.. New Jersey)

A little flexibility goes a long way.

If you've been military, you've probably been to some country where the economy and infrastructure have been wrecked.
Bosnia, Baghdad, Kabul, Haiti - or, closer yet, Hurricane Katrina.
If mother nature, or the whims of international politics decide to shitcan the modern infrastructure near you, how screwed would you be?
Completely helpless?  manage to get by for a few days?  or able to actually help others survive and thrive until things get straightened out?

You don't have to go all wingnut apocalyptical survivalist, either.
Just don't be so overspecialized that you're completely useless to the world around you, except for being able to write a mean TPS report.

JohnG@lt wrote:

You've got a completely warped view of the skills that city dwellers possess. You do understand that we don't import people to build homes and buildings yes? Our construction workers aren't going to disappear so knowing how to lay concrete doesn't matter to the individual person. Being able to hunt and fish is completely irrelevant because if push came to shove, the city I live in would starve. The immediate surrounding area doesn't have nearly enough fish and game to feed everyone. Fixing a car? Sure, some people can't even change a tire but as with the construction workers, the mechanics aren't imported and they aren't going anywhere either.

Society is not going to collapse during our lifetimes so while it might make you feel more manly to possess the skills you do, they don't make you any more valuable to the society you live in or you'd be paid for them, which I assume you are not.

As far as your points about overspecialization, that only happens to stupid people or people unwilling to change. They are the people who stay in their town after the factory is gone and then whine and cry to politicians on national television that they have to bring the jobs to them instead of them going to look for the jobs themselves. I bet 99% of those people can hunt, fish, fix a car etc because they're all blue collar so there goes your theory eh? Modern life is all about adaptability and you are clearly an anachronism who'd rather live up in the woods of Montana building bombs and mailing them to people in the cities he despises.

Last edited by rdx-fx (2010-05-28 22:37:51)

Flaming_Maniac wrote:

p.s. maybe he did, but I dunno where rdx implied California itself was "leeching" off the feds.

burnzz wrote:

Flaming_Maniac wrote:

You could also mail bombs to people in California's government.

from a shack, in Montana


http://img88.imageshack.us/img88/1834/unabomberfbi.gif

JohnG@lt wrote:

Turquoise wrote:

Flaming_Maniac wrote:

I don't see what your point is about Connecticut.

My point is that Connecticut shows you can have high taxes, be productive, and not have massive debt issues or have businesses fleeing your state.

Connecticut sucks. The cities are utter shitholes and the rest of the state is confused about whether it wants to be suburban or rural. The overall feel is one of... neglect. It's also full of thousands of hippies turned yuppies who crave 'rural life' while driving their BMW and sipping their Grande Mocha Crappiato.

Flaming_Maniac wrote:

Their economic structure is there referendum system. Take out the referendum system, change the ridiculous economic structure, remove the "cheap" higher education, the low taxes, and you take out all the businesses that go to California to do business specifically because of these facts. California is a bubble. Wait for the bubble to burst, see how long it takes for all the companies that aren't rooted to the land to get up and leave.

Flaming_Maniac wrote:

p.s. maybe he did, but I dunno where rdx implied California itself was "leeching" off the feds.

rdx-fx wrote:

We have to keep those boat-anchor states, even if they're going to sink the country.

Flaming_Maniac wrote:

edit: So I read back, and I finally realized what is so stupid about your graph. That is not a measure of how "productive" a state is as you implied in the post with the picture, GDP has nothing to do with it. That graph is a measure of how federal dollars get spent per state - and probably not just federal dollars spent, but federal dollars moved to include transfer payments. If you live in a relatively poor state, you are going to have a lot more money coming in through federal welfare than other states. If you live in a more liberal state, your population is going to have fewer lows and fewer highs as far as wealth, but since welfare is done on a national standard people from those states are going to be further up towards the median. The graph is an extremely rough measure of median income in ascending order. Now look at the picture with that in mind.

Flaming_Maniac wrote:

You point to another state that is doing just fine in order to debunk the theory that low taxes aren't good for business/the economy of a state?

Texas is economically exemplary.

Last edited by Turquoise (2010-05-28 23:42:37)

LostFate wrote:

Turquoise wrote:

Nah, I'd say LostFate makes an extra effort to troll as much as possible.  It's funny, because ruis typically gets labeled as hating America, but I don't think he does.  I can't always agree with his reasoning, but he at least provides an explanation for his statements.

As for Lost...  well, it would seem he takes every opportunity possible to complain about the U.S.  There's really not much of a context for it half of the time.  Normally, I don't like calling people out like this, but I'll make an exception for him.

Anyway, I feel more in tune with my state than my country.  I really don't like how we're so large.  There seems to be a lot of psychological distance between D.C. and much of the country.  I think this is inevitable no matter who enters power, because it's not really possible to reflect the interests of all 50 states under one government.  At the very best, we just fluctuate between different states getting more represented than others at any given time.

I don't know why you think i was trolling because i wasn't.

This thread is about loyalty to your state and to your country something which I'm very proud of, now if you guys even gave a fuck about you're country as much as you make out on here, then the North American Union wouldn't fucking exist.

The North American Union (NAU) is a theoretical economic union, in some instances also a political union, of Canada, Mexico, and the United States. It is loosely based on the European Union, occasionally including a common currency called the Amero or the North American Dollar.

While the idea for some form of union has been discussed or proposed[1] in academic, business and political circles for many decades,[2] government officials from all three nations say there are no plans to create such a union and no agreement to do so has been signed.[3][4][5] The formation of a North American Union has been the subject of various conspiracy theories.

Last edited by JohnG@lt (2010-05-29 08:02:06)

Turquoise wrote:

We agree that it's a bubble, but the referendum system is not the same thing as the economic system.  It does affect their economics quite a bit, but if you got rid of the referendum system, then the economic structure of California would function far better.  It's not a matter of taxes as much as it is a matter of making sure you don't run huge debts from a lot of entitlements without the proper taxes.

Turquoise wrote:

Cost of living/median income is irrelevant in this, except with regard to poverty.  As you said, poorer states do receive more welfare than other states, but since a lot of red states have more poverty, they are literally going to have more money going back to them than they put in.  Also, the most populated states usually have the most industry -- therefore, they do contribute more to the system than the less populated ones, on average.

Granted, some smaller states like Connecticut still contribute a lot to the system for their size because of the inherent wealth there.

Still, this doesn't invalidate the graph at all.  The only real counter to this measure is that some states, like mine, do have a lot of military installations, so they do receive a lot of federal money to keep them running.  Military expenditures are much more useful than welfare payments, so I would suggest that this graph could be made more accurate if those expenditures were left out of the ratios.

Turquoise wrote:

Again, you're putting words in my mouth.  All I'm saying is that high taxes don't automatically = bad for business/economy.  There are a combination of factors that can lead to economic growth, and while low taxes often help, they aren't mandatory.

Turquoise wrote:

First, let me get this straight.  You're saying that a referendum system defines the economic structure?  See, I look at it more like the industries themselves define the economic structure, along with the tax scheme.  The referendum system would be more typically defined as the governmental structure -- at least in terms of actual policy passage.

Second, rdx's logic is pretty flawed if he's still suggesting that the states he listed out are "anchors" on our economy.  Yes, they have debt issues, but again, they each make up a large part of the GDP in productivity.

Turquoise wrote:

Generally speaking, most of this country's productive capacity is concentrated in the Northeast, California, Texas, and the Chicago area.  It's more than a coincidence that most of these areas contribute more than they receive back.

The only major exception to the rule is Northern Virginia, which also contributes a lot, but its contributions are heavily dependent on government spending.

Turquoise wrote:

Texas certainly isn't exemplary when it comes to crime.