U.S. Politics: There's Identity Politics, On Many Sides

[Kalbear]

3 hours ago, OldGimletEye said:

On comparing “the market of ideas” with government interference into markets.

I’m not really aware of any fairly precise models of how to best “optimally” regulate truth. Nor am I really aware of how one would go about testing things empirically.

Your unawareness of it does not make it impossible, much less something that should be done. It is impossible to regulate with 100% certainty the amount of pollutants a factory produces; that does not mean nothing should be done, or that regulation is a bad idea.

Other countries have regulated certain behaviors with varying levels of success. At this point, the idea that free speech is such a special snowflake that it cannot be changed in the US is right up there with single payer healthcare never working in the US as an obvious fallacious argument. 

3 hours ago, OldGimletEye said:

When you’re talking about regulating markets, however, or government interference into markets at least we have all sorts of theory that suggest departure from your basic Econ 101 textbook. And we have some pretty strong empirical observations that overturn or question the "free market" fundamentalist story.

I'm not really sure if we have a model of optimal model of truth regulation, nor how we would go about testing that empirically.

Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. We may not have optimal models; we simply need two things: the ability to have a good model and the ability to modify that model if things aren't as good as we like.

Unfortunately, the US has neither. And yes, in theory one could modify the 1st amendment, but our system of government along with where the US is makes that essentially impossible at this time.

[Zorral]

Rebuilding Houston is going to take an enormous amount of labor as well as money.  Which means people able to fill those thousands and thousands of jobs.

What effect will this have on the deportation and immigration bans and restrictions?  As we saw in Katrina -- which was actually a smaller, more concentrated catastrophe footprint (at least in New Orleans) -- Texans came in hordes, with their crews, many of whom if not most, were undocumented workers from Mexico and Central America.

Of course, they could have hired local African Americans, but they would need to be actually paid with all kinds of documentation on their part and those who hired them, be covered by labor laws and need real places to sleep, etc.

Anybody else curious as to how this is gonna roll in Tejas, among the most, if not THE most, anti-immigrant and also the most anti-paying labor states?

Nor are other countries as anxious to help out Texas as they were New Orleans and the larger area of Katrina.

[Kalbear]

Another note: a professor of media today on NPR noted one big problem with the Democrats is precisely their adherence to the notion that the 'marketplace of ideas' will foster the truth, and that people once exposed to truth will come to the right conclusions. This, he argued, comes back to what democrats and republicans (especially in politics) tend to study in college. 

• Democrats study poli sci, policy planning, and law. All of these are ideologically suited to valuing things  like truth, treating people as rational actors, and valuing better information and data.
• Republicans study business. In particular, they study marketing. Marketing teaches how little rational thought goes into decision making, and how to tap into the emotional, experiential side of people. Marketing knows much more about cognitive science, propaganda, and the need to create desire and then rationalize it.

The end result is that Democrats are constantly doing things like refuting lies with truth, which ends up reinforcing the lie because the lie is repeated. Instead of reframing conversations based on what they want, they refute and continue the conversation based on the thread that started it, which only reinforces that message. Quick example: Republicans want to stop regulations. Regulations are a bad word. They sound bad. They sound expensive. Democrats talk about how regulations are actually useful and nice and important, but they've already lost that word use. What they need to do is instead frame it in another way: the US government has a ton of protections for your life. The government protects your air, your water, your land, your food, your drugs. And Republicans want to get rid of most of those protections to make your life unsafe. 

It's a simple thing, but all of a sudden the marketing changes dramatically. 

[OldGimletEye]

On 9/1/2017 at 3:04 PM, Kalbear said:

Your unawareness of it does not make it impossible, much less something that should be done. It is impossible to regulate with 100% certainty the amount of pollutants a factory produces; that does not mean nothing should be done, or that regulation is a bad idea.

Other countries have regulated certain behaviors with varying levels of success. At this point, the idea that free speech is such a special snowflake that it cannot be changed in the US is right up there with single payer healthcare never working in the US as an obvious fallacious argument. 

Actually, I think free speech is pretty damn important to free society.

So yeah, I’d call it a little bit of a “special snowflake”. Even the countries that do regulate it more than we do, seemingly recognize that.

So, tell me how much do you think we should regulate and how much that would accomplish? Because I think your expecting real big gains here. And I doubt it. And is there any solid data how well these regulations have really done?

As far as your single payer/free speech analogy. You know though there is a solid case that healthcare in this country is really bad. And that is not based in some kind of wishful thinking. But, you know in actual data between countries. And there is are good reasons to think single payer probably does best in lowering healthcare cost.

On 9/1/2017 at 3:04 PM, Kalbear said:

Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. We may not have optimal models; we simply need two things: the ability to have a good model and the ability to modify that model if things aren't as good as we like.

Unfortunately, the US has neither. And yes, in theory one could modify the 1st amendment, but our system of government along with where the US is makes that essentially impossible at this time.

Well I'm certainly not going allow people to "modify" the law with regard to Free Speech as they please. I mean individuals laws from time to time okay, but not the actual constitutional constraints that put a bound on those laws.

And you know if you want to ban the Nazis and the KKK, fine.

But, what other optimal improvements do you have in mind? Anything else? 

[drawkcabi]

48 minutes ago, Manhole Eunuchsbane said:

 In an Effort to Relieve Tensions North Korea Challenges U.S. to a Dance Off

 http://gizmodo.com/north-korea-appears-to-challenge-the-us-to-a-dance-off-1798690750?utm_source=fark&utm_medium=website&utm_content=link&ICID=ref_fark

 

/Gangam style

 

[Kalbear]

5 minutes ago, OldGimletEye said:

Actually, I think free speech is pretty damn important to free society.

And yet the US has the most freedom of speech and is the least free Democracy in the world. 

5 minutes ago, OldGimletEye said:

So yeah, I’d call it a little bit of a “special snowflake”. Even the countries that do regulate it more than we do, seemingly recognize that.

So, tell me how much do you think we should regulate and how much that would accomplish? Because I think your expecting real big gains here. And I doubt it. And is there any solid data how well these regulations have really done?

Let's see. We have many governments who protect heavily corporations from buying advertising (such as, say, medicines), politicians buying advertising, TV news shows talking about politics endlessly, various hate speech laws, various racism laws. The end result is that these countries have freer, more participatory elections, fewer lobbyists in their governments, fewer special interests, fewer insanely long-term election cycles, much less politicized corruption, and less hate crimes. 

How about you tell me what the value of a corporation being able to sell viagra on TV is? How about you tell me what the value of treating corporations as people for the purpose of free speech is? Any data on that?

5 minutes ago, OldGimletEye said:

As far as your single payer/free speech analogy. You know though there is a solid case that healthcare in this country is really bad. And that is not based in some kind of wishful thinking. But, you know in actual data between countries. And there is are good reasons to think single payer probably does best in lowering healthcare cost.

Well I'm certainly not going allow people to "modify" the law with regard to Free Speech as they please. I mean individuals laws from time to time okay, but not the actual constitutional constraints that put a bound on those laws.

The constitutional constraints are bound by 9 people who are not elected and are at this moment heavily decided on based on partisanship. I will trust almost any representative system over that to make decisions. If you want to actually have codified what are and are not restraints for free speech, cool beans. That ain't remotely what we have. 

There are a lot of good reasons to think that our laws on free speech are really bad. We have the world's largest prison population. We have the world's worst behavior towards ethnic minorities as a developed nation. Our ethnic minorities suffer significantly worse health, mental health, and socioeconomic backgrounds even compared to others in the same socioeconomic and geographic climate. We have actual data that indicates that racism is a direct cause of health-based issues, just by itself. 

5 minutes ago, OldGimletEye said:

And you know if you want to ban the Nazis and the KKK, fine.

But, what other optimal improvements do you have in mind? Anything else? 

The biggest off the top of my head is heavily regulating campaign contributions, airtime, and other donations from corporations, with very strict and punishing sentencing requirements if they are found to be in breach. The other would be the massive regulation of the drug industry's ability to do commercials. 

[Manhole Eunuchsbane]

32 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

Other countries have regulated certain behaviors with varying levels of success. At this point, the idea that free speech is such a special snowflake that it cannot be changed in the US is right up there with single payer healthcare never working in the US as an obvious fallacious argument. 

FREEZE PEACH demands a SAFE SPACE.

[Kalbear]

3 minutes ago, Manhole Eunuchsbane said:

FREEZE PEACH demands a SAFE SPACE.

Apparently it does. Honestly, I'm not even sure you know what side you're arguing for.

[Manhole Eunuchsbane]

Just now, Kalbear said:

Apparently it does. Honestly, I'm not even sure you know what side you're arguing for.

You're the one using anti-SJW jargon to describe it. May as well flip the script, eh? I'm with you on the Corporate angle. And that's a clever point for you to adopt, especially when appealing to the left. I don't buy into the "money is speech, corporations are people" bullshit in any case. To be fair though, we do limit advertising in this way in some cases. Liquor billboards in low income areas, tobacco ads in almost every form at this point, liquor print ads being limited to adult themed magazines and the like. 

[Kalbear]

2 minutes ago, Manhole Eunuchsbane said:

You're the one using anti-SJW jargon to describe it.

The special snowflake comment about healthcare and the US has been in long use before the SJW bullshit came about. It took me a couple of minutes to figure out what you were even talking about. 

2 minutes ago, Manhole Eunuchsbane said:

May as well flip the script, eh? I'm with you on the Corporate angle. And that's a clever point for you to adopt, especially when appealing to the left. I don't buy into the "money is speech, corporations are people" bullshit in any case. To be fair though, we do limit advertising in this way in some cases. Liquor billboards in low income areas, tobacco ads in almost every form at this point, liquor print ads being limited to adult themed magazines and the like. 

We limit speech all over the place, all the time. We limit what can be shown on TV at certain hours, we limit nudity entirely on public channels, we limit certain kinds of ads, etc. Again, the notion that the US doesn't have limitations on speech can be shown to be categorically false, and the notion that these derive from something that is actually written down as a law or amendment is also categorically false. 

So as the old joke goes, we are haggling over the price. We've demonstrated several ways in which very democratic countries have successfully stopped Nazism and Fascism while retaining their speech laws; can someone demonstrate how restricting them in the US in the same way would result in something bad? As an example, let's say the US adopted the German restriction on free speech, which is I believe reliant heavily on not using any non-Democratic German government. What harm would be caused? Is it a bad thing for society at large that the US could not advocate having a dictatorship or monarchy?

[Rippounet]

1 hour ago, OldGimletEye said:

I don’t think he is taking corporate money. He’s just a person with some right wing beliefs. So right wing in fact it leads him to making some basic errors. He might make fewer errors but his errors, if taken at face value, would have been extremely costly. And he might even get believed more because he was an "expert".

And, yes, his mistake did get called out by Krugman and others. And yes pointing out other people’s intellectual gaffes and errors is extremely important.

So far, so good then. Someone makes a big mistake and gets called out on it. I'm more concerned by the fact that the mistake might stick around and be used by others. That's happened a lot in economics.

1 hour ago, OldGimletEye said:

By most people’s standards Harvard University is an excellent institution. But, is also the home of people like Robert Barro (Josh Barro’s dad) and Martin Feldstein.

And I believe that both Barro and Feldstein are wrong often. In their case, the wrongness isn't like the blatant gaffe that Cochrane made, but has more to do with the many of the assumptions of the models they like to work in ie walrasian market clearing, strong assumptions about Rational Expectations, etc.

Also George Borjas works at Harvard and has written a lot about how immigrants affect native wages. He finds a significant impact. But, most of the profession that has studied this issue disagrees with Borjas. They don't find much of an impact at all.

So a lot of not very left friendly opinion gets in.

I don't see this as a problem though. I'm not saying right-wing thought should be constrained.

Economists supposedly make mistakes in good faith. Supposedly they get called out on it by peers. That's part of the public debate, and it's healthy. But there's another, darker side of the public debate were lots of people spew bullshit and don't get called out on it. Pseudo-experts whose purpose is to influence public opinion. Politicians beholden to private interest groups. Journalists obeying orders from high above to spin the news a certain way. The list goes on. And these people work together. By comparison, right-wing economists almost look like good guys here.

1 hour ago, OldGimletEye said:

Also, I'm more fine with regulating how much airtime one can buy to promote their "truth". It's when the government gets into the business of saying what is or what isn't the truth is where I have a bit more of a problem.

But no one said the government should be the one deciding what is or isn't the truth.

 

[DanteGabriel]

5 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

The special snowflake comment about healthcare and the US has been in long use before the SJW bullshit came about. It took me a couple of minutes to figure out what you were even talking about. 

 

Heh, I bet the "USA is a unique snowflake so socialized medicine will never work here" probably predates the use of "snowflake" as the partisan insult of choice by at least a decade here, and that only reflects my time on the boards.

[Manhole Eunuchsbane]

14 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

The special snowflake comment about healthcare and the US has been in long use before the SJW bullshit came about. It took me a couple of minutes to figure out what you were even talking about. 

Eh, I think that's a bit of a stretch. The most common usage of that phrase near as i can tell is typically when a conservative argument is attempting to ridicule a liberal position. Maybe that's just my perception, but I don't think so.

 

16 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

So as the old joke goes, we are haggling over the price. 

Yeah, absolutely, that's been at the heart of my argument. Any sort of amendment you want to make to Free Speech has to be very narrow in focus for me to get behind it. Anything past that and I think you're treading on a very dangerous slippery slope.

[Manhole Eunuchsbane]

9 minutes ago, DanteGabriel said:

Heh, I bet the "USA is a unique snowflake so socialized medicine will never work here" probably predates the use of "snowflake" as the partisan insult of choice by at least a decade here, and that only reflects my time on the boards.

That's fair. Predates, perhaps, but how is it most commonly used today?

[Kalbear]

Just now, Manhole Eunuchsbane said:

That's fair. Predates, perhaps, but how is it most commonly used today?

I don't know, honestly, but I can tell you that the SJW bullshit wasn't remotely what I was thinking of when I said it like that. Sorry to confuse you. 

Just now, Manhole Eunuchsbane said:

Yeah, absolutely, that's been at the heart of my argument. Any sort of amendment you want to make to Free Speech has to be very narrow in focus for me to get behind it. Anything past that and I think you're treading on a very dangerous slippery slope.

Unfortunately things like 'narrow focus' are impossible in the US and the way the law and the court works.

[Kalbear]

And in good news, (and shocking to me), the senate parliamentarian has ruled that the current FY17 reconciliation deadline closes Sept 30th - which means if the ACA is not repealed by then, they can't do it without destroying their ability to reform taxes for FY18.

https://twitter.com/LauraLitvan/status/903676709706326016

[James Arryn]

You guys don't argue properly. Wtf. I've gone back like 2 pages and neither of you called the other a fascist, communist, or white guy that I can see. Anymore of this shit you might as well move up here. 

[Kalbear]

4 minutes ago, James Arryn said:

You guys don't argue properly. Wtf. I've gone back like 2 pages and neither of you called the other a fascist, communist, or white guy that I can see. Anymore of this shit you might as well move up here. 

It's because Manhole is a wild man, whose anger and fury can only be tamed by the loving touch of me. 

Also, I remind him of his pro-punching Ted Cruz position, and how confusing it is that he wants to punch Cruz but not Nazis. 

[A Horse Named Stranger]

1 minute ago, Kalbear said:

It's because Manhole is a wild man, whose anger and fury can only be tamed by the loving touch of me. 

Also, I remind him of his pro-punching Ted Cruz position, and how confusing it is that he wants to punch Cruz but not Nazis. 

Sins of the father. Afterall Ted's dad helped to shoot Kennedy.

[OldGimletEye]

On 9/1/2017 at 3:36 PM, Kalbear said:

And yet the US has the most freedom of speech and is the least free Democracy in the world. 

I’m not sure where your getting this. I’d assume you getting this from the Democracy Index published by the EIU.

It’s true we are behind several Northern European countries who presumably regulate speech more than we do. It’s also true we are still ahead of several southern European Countries, Israel, and France according to that, who presumably regulate speech more than we do.

How much this is do to Free Speech regulations, seems to me a bit hard to say. There could be several other factors involved here.

On 9/1/2017 at 3:36 PM, Kalbear said:

Let's see. We have many governments who protect heavily corporations from buying advertising (such as, say, medicines), politicians buying advertising, TV news shows talking about politics endlessly, various hate speech laws, various racism laws. The end result is that these countries have freer, more participatory elections, fewer lobbyists in their governments, fewer special interests, fewer insanely long-term election cycles, much less politicized corruption, and less hate crimes. 

1. I tried to find data on your assertion that the US has the most violent hate crimes or at least more hate crimes than other countries. I don’t care to search around all day for this, but I did find:

http://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/stats/Crime/Fear-of-crime/Violent-hate-crime

According to this data, it’s not the case that the US has more hate crimes compared to other countries that presumably have more free speech regulation.

Now, I have no idea if this data is any good. And I have no idea whether the methodology to collect said data is any good. If you know of a source, then please direct me to it.

2. On corporations selling viagra. The Supreme Court has always recognized that commercial speech usually gets less protection than political speech. And I’m fine with that.

3. It’s my understanding that both Australia, Germany and Britain, countries that ranked higher on the 2016 Democracy Index, all allow unlimited campaign contributions.

4. Despite what Australia, Germany, and Britain, do with regard to campaign finance laws, I do think there is a question of whether giving money is an act of “speech”.

5. Whether all these problems are simply a function free of speech, well I’m not too sure about that. It seems there could be several issues in play here.

On 9/1/2017 at 3:36 PM, Kalbear said:

The constitutional constraints are bound by 9 people who are not elected and are at this moment heavily decided on based on partisanship. I will trust almost any representative system over that to make decisions. If you want to actually have codified what are and are not restraints for free speech, cool beans. That ain't remotely what we have. 

There are a lot of good reasons to think that our laws on free speech are really bad. We have the world's largest prison population. We have the world's worst behavior towards ethnic minorities as a developed nation. Our ethnic minorities suffer significantly worse health, mental health, and socioeconomic backgrounds even compared to others in the same socioeconomic and geographic climate. We have actual data that indicates that racism is a direct cause of health-based issues, just by itself. 

What other Civil Liberties would you just hand over Congress to change at will?

Perhaps:

1. The right not to have police barge into your home without a warrant.

2. The right not to be stopped or harassed by police without reasonable suspicion.

3.  The right to have favorable evidence handed over to you by the state if your are accused of a crime.

4. The right to have attorney if accused by the state of committing a crime? The right to have one if provided to you if you can’t afford one?

5. The right to file Habeas Corpus claims?

6. A strong presumptive right to Bail?

7. The right to not have the state discriminate against you based on your religion?

8. The right to use birth control if you so choose?

9. The right to have an abortion if you choose?

So tell me what other civil liberties would you just hand over to Congress?

Thanks, but I’ll take a pass on that. Also you know the Weimar Republic has been brought a lot of late, with an emphasis on how the lack of free speech restrictions helped the Nazi’s take complete power. What seemingly doesn’t get mentioned is that under the Weimar consitution, the President was able to suspend civil liberties. Fortunately under our system the the President can never suspend civil liberties and congress simply has no authority to allow him to do that. Whatever the flaws in our system, I still take the three branches of government rather than just having 2 as you seemingly want to do.

Also, I’m quite aware of the problems that racial minorities face. But, you claim that is all do to free speech is bit of a stretch.
 

On 9/1/2017 at 3:36 PM, Kalbear said:

The biggest off the top of my head is heavily regulating campaign contributions, airtime, and other donations from corporations, with very strict and punishing sentencing requirements if they are found to be in breach. The other would be the massive regulation of the drug industry's ability to do commercials. 

Quite frankly, I might be able to get on board with this. It’s when we get into giving the government a lot of authority to regulate “the truth” or give it too much power to regulate offensive speech in public spheres (again, I much more willing to see it regulated in Universities, Employment Situations, Schools, the Military Etc) is when I get worried.