BF2S Forums Pandemic thread

KEN-JENNINGS wrote:

Jay wrote:

KEN-JENNINGS wrote:

I don't have any delusions about creating a utopia. I do think we can create a better functioning government that serves a larger chunk of society at a lower overall cost to the average person.

I'm not sure what you are talking about re: California. You still think I'm in lock step with the DNC despite spending close to 15 years here describing them as one of the heads of a two-headed dragon? It's like your default defense mechanism is to just call people liberals, or democrats or something. Very weird.

Why do we have one hundred thousand homeless? If you'd like to have this discussion, we can. I have spent a large chunk of time and energy helping out the homeless youth in orange county over the last 3 years, and can talk at length about it. There are far too many factors to discuss in one post.

Regarding our "state" utilities, you are aware that these are private enterprises with shareholders and everything, right? Why did PG&E elect to issue bonuses to their executives and shareholders instead of maintaining their systems? Seems like exactly the type of indictment against free-market capitalism. Sorry, maintenance and prolonged health are negative externalities in the marketplace, we can't properly account for them!  Are you aware that the state had to threaten to take over PG&E in order to get them to enter in to arbitration agreements to start paying into funds for the people who's homes and entire livelihoods were ruined? Do you actually have any clue what you are talking about here?

To be clear, you are NOT a capitalist. A capitalist has...capital! You are a worker. Just because you've graduated from lumpenprole to petit bourgeois doesn't mean you are a capitalist. You are a flag bearer for capitalists, but definitely are not one. Bootlicker!

I don't very much align with the whole kumbaya hippies, but yes, I do want to live in a society that looks to uplift the less fortunate, and punish people who take advantage of other people. I think you're actually the one that more closely aligns with the peace and brotherhood thing. NAP and all that, right? It's just that the NAP hasn't properly priced things like the environment or mental health, but once all those negative externalities are properly accounted for, the fREEEE market will win.

I will always live my life in a way that prioritizes helping people who are worse off than i am. I know that humanity can be vicious at times when reduced to person to person interactions - i've experienced it many times. My solution is to keep plodding forward, not curl up into a ball and say "fuck it, I'll make sure to get mine." And I will continue to advocate for a system of governance that prioritizes the same.

Who do you expect to staff your model government? Are positions earned on merit? Are they by lottery? Or do you maintain democratic elections? How do you prevent your expanded government from becoming corrupt? Are you not worried about concentrating all power in the hands of a small cadre? If not a cadre, do you do direct democratic voting? Representative democracy? What exactly does your ideal government and world look like? If you abolish private property and all profit, how do you deal with the tragedy of the commons? How do you prevent people from shirking? What is supposed to motivate people to go to work every day? How do you assign jobs?

It's easy to criticize and say what you don't want or like. Tell me what you do want.

Humans. Yes. No. Maybe. Enact checks and balances with clear, concise rules and constraints. Been spending years here arguing against the consolidation of power. Maybe. Maybe.

My ideal world is a series of decentralized states, representing exactly Dunbar's number of people, who then report into a structure that also mimics dunbar's number of decentralized states, so on and so on. From there it's (dunbar's) turtles all the way down.

I don't fully believe we need to reinvent the wheel. I think our system of governance can be modified without the need for revolutionary measures and a completely new form of government. Empower the people, empower the institutions, fight back at demagoguery.

Maybe we need a new Age of Enlightenment. One that holds to task the supposed liberal system of governance in it's current form. An acknowledgement that we've largely cast monarchy and totalitarianism, dictatorships and cult of personality to the wayside, only to fall in to a new sort of trap where the same key negative aspects of those systems are able to rear their ugly head, just in more subtle but more nefarious ways. Multiple blunt force blows as opposed to the swift chop of the guillotine.

What not to do: say the world is fucked, no reason to fix what's already broken, fuck everyone else because everyone else doesn't care about me, etc etc.

You do understand that aside from things like the NAP, libertarians also want a decentralized form of government, yes? There are capitalistic libertarians and there are socialistic libertarians, and in our utopia, everyone would be free to create as large or small a network as they wanted to live within, with many networks overlapping. It's not as rigid as a society formed on Dunbar's number, but it's in the same vein.

I can't help being cynical. We live in a country with a government that is rotten from the top to the bottom. We have a media that ignores it and opts for trying to play kingmaker instead. I don't think supporting a fraud like Bernie Sanders is the way to get what you want. Nor is it supporting lightweights like AOC.

But you are right, I am your enemy. You want a revolution, and I benefit from the status quo. My perch is rather comfortable, and I have a family to support. Tipping the world into chaos because you think the 1 in a 1,000,000 chance you get some ideal outcome isn't a dice roll I'm willing to make.

me: I don't want a system of governance where the government is the only employer
jay: You want a nationalized economy with a single employer

me: I don't think a revolution is necessary
jay: you want a revolution


I feel like an idiot. I'm finally seeing where the disconnect is!

So, what? You just want everyone unionized? That's your solution?

I don't have any issue with private sector unions. As long as membership within the union is voluntary, and the employer/employee agreements are made without coercion, awesome. I only take issue with public sector unions. This is because they use their outsized political resources to directly influence the elections of the officials that will negotiate against them.

Last edited by Jay (2020-05-11 19:03:47)

KEN-JENNINGS wrote:

me: I don't want a system of governance where the government is the only employer
jay: You want a nationalized economy with a single employer

me: I don't think a revolution is necessary
jay: you want a revolution


I feel like an idiot. I'm finally seeing where the disconnect is!

Jay wrote:

So, what? You just want everyone unionized? That's your solution?

You just don't stop do you.

Do you know this catastrophising and reduction of everything to the absurd has its roots in infantilism?

Jay's Mom "Now then little Jay, I think you've had enough gummi-bears for today, lets put the lid on the jar and give them a rest for the time being"
Jay "You've taken away all my gummi-bears, there are none left in the world, I'll never be allowed to eat candy ever again! Waah waaah I'm going to sulk forever"

Most people get over it as part of growing up.

I don't have any issue with private sector unions. As long as membership within the union is voluntary, and the employer/employee agreements are made without coercion, awesome. I only take issue with public sector unions. This is because they use their outsized political resources to directly influence the elections of the officials that will negotiate against them.

Yet again:

Every four years or so you get to elect a federal government and state government and have your chance to push your interests ahead of everyone elses, but everyone else has the same opportunity to push theirs. Whoever has the numbers wins. Amazing.

If you don't like it you're free to get up and move, from the most heavily democratic and unionised part of the whole of america to somewhere more to your liking - which is pretty well anywhere else.
With a big country you don't need to spend thousands on visas, medical checks, documentation checks, wait for years and depend on being the sort of person they want in the first place and have space for - you can just pack your car and go.
If you choose any direction at all you're almost certain to wind up somewhere which more closely matches your ideology, chance barely comes into it.

Last edited by Dilbert_X (2020-05-12 04:42:44)

All this talk of decentralisation and more local/individual power and leeway is cute but that is diametrically opposed to the way the international order has shaped itself in the last X number of decades. The power of centralised government is increasing because it must. If decentralisation were a viable option, the EU & NATO and many other regional international organisations would either rescind power or cease to exist. Instead they are becoming ever more powerful and relevant on the world stage. That is barely a consequence of ideology, it's a result of globalised economies, increasing interdependence, the 'internal external security nexus', a balancing act against world heavyweights such as China & the US, the logic of which has been merciless to even the most staunch nationalist conservatives (given they're sane). There is no 'everyone should just do what they like' without that negatively impacting federal / regional positions of power and ultimately the local people. You can see this coming from a thousand km away.

The distribution of power to too many different channels, national, provincial, state, local power centres, interest groups or other organisations is the single greatest contributor to enormous kafkaesque bureaucracy and impossibly sluggish government. I know that none of you like to hear it but that's what you'll have to accept going into this century; it's a post-local and post-national world you're looking at. Even if the unthinkable happens and the morons of our time manage to reverse this trend, it can only be temporarily. Our conception of the world as little turfs no longer aligns with the increased mobility and connectivity that exist today. It's an antiquated idea and so are its ideals.

jay still fundamentally doesn't understand what 'academic' research even consists of. he thinks it's acquiring fashionable opinions and following others, uncreatively. he hasn't the foggiest. so of course he can dismiss a fucking clinician at a biomedical research lab as an 'academic'.

meanwhile he over-relies on the results of the antibody tests which said clinicians have developed. there is a total disconnect. another sign of his snout-to-the-ground hog intelligence.

Last edited by uziq (2020-05-12 05:09:54)

Jay wrote:

You wanna talk about the military industrial complex? I'm down. That was one of my big arguments back in the day, and I got shit on by uzique and dilbert for daring to reduce opportunities for the poor, because apparently the military is workfare or something.

No it was because you presented yourself as an Ayn Rand hero for signing up for a workfare program but couldn't see the dissonance.

I'm fine with workfare, its just a shame America has to start so many wars as part of the process.

Larssen wrote:

All this talk of decentralisation and more local/individual power and leeway is cute but that is diametrically opposed to the way the international order has shaped itself in the last X number of decades.

Yes, and it has given rise to reactionary groups that have continuously called for its destruction. You're familiar with entropy, yes? The natural state is chaos. In order for you to maintain your centralized grip, you're going to have to exert ever increasing power. People want to be free. They don't want their lives planned for them from afar in some capital city by technocrats.

The power of centralised government is increasing because it must.

No, it's increasing because some politician got his ego bruised because he got pushed around by someone from a larger bloc, and resented it.

If decentralisation were a viable option, the EU & NATO and many other regional international organisations would either rescind power or cease to exist. Instead they are becoming ever more powerful and relevant on the world stage.

Are they really? Most of the NATO nations don't contribute all that much to their military budgets. Most of Germany's military equipment is currently deadlined, for instance. Also, the EU has careened from crisis to crisis for the past decade. First you had the sovereign debt crisis and now it's been capped off with one of your core members voting to leave you. I mean, yeah, great, NATO picked up the former Eastern Bloc countries after the Soviet Union dissolved. They appear to be the only motivated members aside from the UK.

That is barely a consequence of ideology, it's a result of globalised economies, increasing interdependence, the 'internal external security nexus', a balancing act against world heavyweights such as China & the US, the logic of which has been merciless to even the most staunch nationalist conservatives (given they're sane). There is no 'everyone should just do what they like' without that negatively impacting federal / regional positions of power and ultimately the local people. You can see this coming from a thousand km away.

No, what I see is national governments becoming irrelevant, and not to be replaced by some overarching international order. If we're all globalized, and we're all connected, and free trade becomes the norm, then there's no reason for the world not to devolve into micro-states that better represent the will of the people. Why should people tolerate living in centralized bureaucracies? Should I have to petition Brussels or Washington when I wish to have the road in front of my house paved? Who understands the issues we have in my county with illegal immigrant gangs more than the county police and politicians? Scoff all you want at provincialism, but provincial problems are what people ultimately care about. They are the issues that impact people on a daily basis.

The distribution of power to too many different channels, national, provincial, state, local power centres, interest groups or other organisations is the single greatest contributor to enormous kafkaesque bureaucracy and impossibly sluggish government. I know that none of you like to hear it but that's what you'll have to accept going into this century; it's a post-local and post-national world you're looking at. Even if the unthinkable happens and the morons of our time manage to reverse this trend, it can only be temporarily. Our conception of the world as little turfs no longer aligns with the increased mobility and connectivity that exist today. It's an antiquated idea and so are its ideals.

You make me very happy that I live in America, and happy for the Brits for wising up and leaving the EU. Your hubris is amazing. You learned nothing from the failure of the Soviet Union. You learned nothing from their wild inefficiencies and the famines and shoddy equipment they caused. You've learned nothing from the Chinese either. You take their economic numbers at face value and ignore that provincial party members are disappeared if they give their bosses bad news. Every number they publish is fake.

So no, I don't think the world is trending towards authoritarianism. I think you would very much like it to. I think the arrogance of petty bureaucrats and their vision for the world, and their vision might be glorious and fully noble, blinds them to their very real limitations. People don't like feeling like marionettes. People don't like inefficiency and waste. They want the nuance and responsiveness of local government, not the one-size-fits-all, process focused, responses that centralized governments are only capable of.

Last edited by Jay (2020-05-12 06:47:28)

Jay must be deeply resentful of the fact that he is only person here who got sick and also is the first to be forced back to work.

uziq wrote:

i think some supranational frameworks need to be in place, for e.g. to combat capital flight and systemic tax evasion. it’s just ridiculous that a corporation can take a 40% share of an industry like book selling in the UK, file billions of £ in sales in a year, and then offshore their operation and pay crumbs in tax. the system stinks. as for denigrating local politics and ‘horizontalism’ as antiquated: no. wrong. society needs to dust itself off and move on from this ‘there is no such thing as society’ technocratic neoliberalism. it has done untold harm to communities, not only in depriving them economically, but in destroying the social fabric of life. we do need to re-establish meaningful local politics and relations. the neoliberals are too quick to project as if we will soon be one world family under their benevolent form of administration.

The ethno-nationalist far-right wing are the people with the will to fix this.

uziq wrote:

larssen’s triumphalist neoliberal tone is more than a little irritating, considering indeed that almost every european state now has a resurgent right-wing, in some cases an ethno-nationalist far-right wing, who are no longer small fry in local and national elections. you’d think from his tone that it’s been one grand march of neoliberal progress to a wizened new world order.

i think some supranational frameworks need to be in place, for e.g. to combat capital flight and systemic tax evasion. it’s just ridiculous that a corporation can take a 40% share of an industry like book selling in the UK, file billions of £ in sales in a year, and then offshore their operation and pay crumbs in tax. the system stinks. as for denigrating local politics and ‘horizontalism’ as antiquated: no. wrong. society needs to dust itself off and move on from this ‘there is no such thing as society’ technocratic neoliberalism. it has done untold harm to communities, not only in depriving them economically, but in destroying the social fabric of life. we do need to re-establish meaningful local politics and relations. the neoliberals are too quick to project as if we will soon be one world family under their benevolent form of administration.

nope.

Hey, we agree

Jay wrote:

uziq wrote:

larssen’s triumphalist neoliberal tone is more than a little irritating, considering indeed that almost every european state now has a resurgent right-wing, in some cases an ethno-nationalist far-right wing, who are no longer small fry in local and national elections. you’d think from his tone that it’s been one grand march of neoliberal progress to a wizened new world order.

i think some supranational frameworks need to be in place, for e.g. to combat capital flight and systemic tax evasion. it’s just ridiculous that a corporation can take a 40% share of an industry like book selling in the UK, file billions of £ in sales in a year, and then offshore their operation and pay crumbs in tax. the system stinks. as for denigrating local politics and ‘horizontalism’ as antiquated: no. wrong. society needs to dust itself off and move on from this ‘there is no such thing as society’ technocratic neoliberalism. it has done untold harm to communities, not only in depriving them economically, but in destroying the social fabric of life. we do need to re-establish meaningful local politics and relations. the neoliberals are too quick to project as if we will soon be one world family under their benevolent form of administration.

nope.

Hey, we agree

except not really because i just pointed out fundamentally that a system which transfers wealth massively upwards into the hands of a few untaxed billionaires and mega-corporations is a rotten system. and you said a page ago 'i don't mind billionaires'. i do. there is no reason jeff bezos should be a billionaire whilst his corporation skips taxes in the UK (as elsewhere) and forces minimum wage workers to go work in warehouses during a pandemic. it is a totally avoidable social evil. you say a billionaire is just one person that doesn't affect you in any way; i say a billionaire is an overpaid cretin who could instead be 10,000 well-paid, well-pensioned staff.

you think the people succeeding in the current system have 'earned it'. i say: not really. for someone working full-time hours to make $30,000 a year and another person working full-time hours to make $30,000 a day is a totally avoidable social evil.

make no mistake about it, the inequality which you pay fealty to and the masters of the system whose boots you lick is a far bigger societal evil than the EU, or bureaucracy, or supranational bodies. inequality is the pus-filled abscess at the root of democracy's problems. most people know this, including economists from both sides of the political spectrum.

Last edited by uziq (2020-05-12 06:57:02)

i think we can do better in 2020 than to look to a bunch of frock-wearing pederasts for a solution.