U.S. Politics; Who Watches the Watchers?

[Altherion]

11 hours ago, Gertrude said:

And our culture is significantly different from other developed nations in which of these factors? That's right, none of them. Maybe we should look at the gun part of our culture, just a thought.

The attitude towards guns in the US certainly plays a part in this, but given that this aspect of our culture does a decent job of protecting itself, it might be worthwhile to look at other things. For example, rather than the place-based comparisons with the rest of the world (which is actually not that similar, although the differences are not in the quote you mention), we could look at our own country throughout time. Gun ownership rates today are lower than they have been in the past half century, but school shootings are much more common. It would almost certainly be more productive to focus on why such students do what they do rather than on guns.

[felice]

3 hours ago, Altherion said:

 Gun ownership rates today are lower than they have been in the past half century, but school shootings are much more common. It would almost certainly be more productive to focus on why such students do what they do rather than on guns.

That same article says gun purchases are at a historic high. And the distribution of guns is perhaps more interesting than an overall national average. Maybe the rural percentage of the total population dropping by more than a third in the past half century is significant? That sort of demographic shift could result the national average going down even if urban gun ownership rates were increasing. And those students certainly wouldn't have done what they did if they didn't have access to guns.

[Morpheus]

Rosenstein blinked. Trump steamrolled the DoJ and FBI, not only is he getting his “spy” investigation, John Kelly is coordinating between the intel community and congress to review classified information which Nunes has been after for weeks.

[OldGimletEye]

Okay, now probably not exactly related to US politics.

But, if you think international trade and cooperation has the potential, if it is not botched, to help most people on this planet, this is of interest.

Back around the late 1940s Bretton Woods was established, in part, because there was a feeling that the breakdown of the international trading system played no small part in setting of World War 2. I believe that was correct, even if there were other factors involved.

Globlization done badly.

If left wing parties or center left parties want globalization and international cooperation to work, then they must understand the specific sources of agitation.

Both racism and bad policy are the problem.

Normally, I’m a big fan of concentrating your schwerpunkt at the enemy center of gravity, as fighting a war on two fronts isn’t a desirable situation to be in.

But, left wing parties, will have to fight on two fronts.
 

https://voxeu.org/article/populism-backlash-economically-driven-backlash

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In a recent paper, we show how different exposure to economic shocks and different ability to react to them in different regions of Europe sheds light on these questions (Guiso et al. 2018). We study how the populist vote share1 across European regions responded to two major economic shocks: the globalisation shock (i.e. the ‘China Effect’) and the European financial crisis of 2008-2013. Both shocks, in principle, caused economic distress and insecurity, but not equally everywhere. The China Effect – the increased economic insecurity following the globalisation shocks – is known to have boosted populist support in Europe as much as in the US, but we provide two novel and perhaps unexpected findings.

 

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Second, the globalisation shock has a substantially larger effect on populist support in euro area countries than in other comparable Western countries. This finding may be puzzling as all Western European countries were similarly exposed to China import competition. However, euro area countries were not equally capable of reacting to this shock. Indeed, euro area countries were constrained in their policies by what we call a ‘policy strait jacket’: constraints imposed by the single currency which prevented adopting the ‘best’ domestic policies to counteract the shock, for instance through a devaluation of the currency.

I'll say it again. The Euro has proven to be a fuckin' disaster. And it badly needs to be reformed.

Meanwhile, the clowns in Davos run around giving each other hand jobs, signal their virtue by promoting their fake progressiveness, and talk about "multi-stake holder solutions".

I have no fuckin' idea what a multi stake holder solution is, as it sounds mainly like a bunch of corporate hipster garbage, but what I do know is the monetary problems caused by the Euro is an issue and solving it would help a lot of people.

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The financial crisis created populist consensus across the board, but its effects were most dramatic in the euro area and particularly in those countries, like Italy, where the strait jacket was particularly tight. This policy strait jacket amplified the effects of the shock, or at least created the perception that it was in part to blame for the lack of recovery. This, in turn, sparked frustration among voters and disappointment towards the domestic and European elites opening the ground to populist proposals.

Not surprising.

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Can consensus towards populist forces persist even after economic insecurity has been reabsorbed? This is the key question today. While the documented culture backlash cannot be the root cause of populist success as it is itself borne out of economic insecurity, it may play a crucial role looking forward. If the new identity politics succeeds in reshaping peoples' beliefs and attitudes, sentiments can acquire an autonomous role and may continue to exert an effect even when their economic cause is gone.

Overall, I think the cultural versus economic debate that is being had on the left is really pretty silly. We'll probably never resolve the issue through empirical investigations alone. And I think they feed off one another. And as a practical matter most people on the left want better fairness both on the cultural front and on the economic front. Accordingly, it's best to treat them both as threats.

...............................................................................................................................................

More evidence on monopsony.

https://voxeu.org/article/monopsony-online-labour-markets

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The extent of monopsony – employer market power – in the labour market is an important economic question. Allowing for the possibility that firms have some ability to set wages has wide-ranging implications – from gaining a better understanding of wage differentials across similar workers to explaining how minimum wages can raise wages with limited impact on employment (Card and Krueger 1995, Manning 2003). While there is growing interest in the potential importance of monopsony power (e.g. Azar et al. 2018, Benmelech et al. 2018), we can benefit from a clear proof that labour market power exists, especially outside of ‘company towns’ or specific, highly concentrated markets.  

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Online labour markets represent a particularly compelling arena for such a demonstration. In many ways, they appear as frictionless settings with a large number of participants, where information about pay is easily observed and costs of switching across tasks seem to be low. While a number of prior studies have suggested that employers in online labour markets have a surprising degree of market power, they have stopped short of quantifying it. In our recent paper, we rigorously estimate the degree of requester market power in a widely used online labour market – Amazon Mechanical Turk, or MTurk (Dube et al. 2018). This is the most popular online micro-task platform, allowing requesters (employers) to post jobs which workers can complete for.

 

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We provide evidence on labour market power by measuring how sensitive workers’ willingness to work is to the reward offered. The labour supply elasticity facing a firm is a standard measure of wage-setting (monopsony) power. For example, if lowering wages by 10% leads to a 1% reduction in the workforce, this represents an elasticity of 0.1. While there is a large literature on the labour supply elasticity to the market, the evidence on the elasticity facing individual employers is much more limited.

 

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Together, these very different pieces of evidence provide a remarkably consistent estimate of the labour supply elasticity facing MTurk requesters. As shown in Figure 2, the precision-weighted average experimental requester’s labour supply elasticity is 0.13 – this means that if a requester paid a 10% lower reward, they’d only lose around 1% of workers willing to perform the task. This suggests a very high degree of market power. The experimental estimates are quite close to those produced using the machine-learning based approach using observational data, which also suggest around 1% reduction in the willing workforce from a 10% lower wage. To put this into perspective, if requesters are fully exploiting their market power, our evidence implies that they are paying workers less than 20% of the value added. This suggests that much of the surplus created by this online labour market platform is captured by employers. 

 

[Fez]

16 hours ago, lokisnow said:

The state legislatures have no independence, they’re all intimately and expertly coordinated by evil organizations like ALEC and they will do whatever evil ALEC tells them to do (hail hydra). 

That's really not the case for the most part though. In many states, the two chambers aren't even coordinated with each other (e.g. see how much the Florida House and Florida Senate, both Republican-controlled, hate each other). In some states, moderate Republicans still control the caucus and their main activity is in-fighting with the far-right. And in a few states, Republicans only nominally control the chamber and it is a coalition of moderate Republicans and the Democrats who are in charge (e.g. Alaska House, sometimes Kansas).

The only issues where all Republican state legislatures are basically in lockstep are abortion and guns, and even there not entirely; especially on something as big as a constitutional amendment (find me something about expanding the 2nd amendment that the Texas House and the Virginia Senate would both agree on). And on other issues, the big, fundamental issues (not relatively little things like rolling back some obscure kind of regulation), there really is a lot of disagreement. ALEC certainly exists, and is a serious problem in some states, but it is not an overwhelming evil that secretly coordinates everything.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

12 hours ago, Triskele said:

Man, reading up on this court decision...I've been saying for years that it's crazy how little attention the Supreme Court gets in the broader public discourse.  Sure, political junkies know all about it.  But when the average person is voting it seems like far too many of them just get caught up the narrative about the presidential candidate.  Think of many of these Obama-to-Trump voters in Ohio and Pennsylvania and Michigan and Wisconsin.  The Supreme Court just fucked them something proper.  And this was an utter certainty if Trump was elected.  How many of them considered that?  

I’ve seen this cited in a few different places:

Even if the numbers aren’t exact, it falls in line with statistics I’ve heard over the years. How exactly can you expect more Americans to talk about important Supreme Court decisions when they can’t even name what branch of government it is?

[Martell Spy]

Arms Control, Trump-Style

The president’s last foray into international negotiations doesn’t bode well for his Kim meeting.

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/05/trumps-last-foray-into-arms-control-negotiations-doesnt-bode-well-for-his-kim-meeting.html

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Now, meeting the man who got the job, Trump told him how to get a “terrific” deal: Arrive late at your first session; walk up to your Russian counterpart, who will have been sitting impatiently; look down at him, stick your finger in his chest, and say, “Fuck you!”

 

[Relic]

11 hours ago, Altherion said:

but school shootings are much more common. It would almost certainly be more productive to focus on why such students do what they do rather than on guns.

Fixed that for you.

Anyway, it would certainly behoove us to look at the factors within our society that seemingly suck empathy out of people and create raging narcissists. I think a deep study of American psychology will reveal a massive break (for lack of a better word) from reality in a shockingly large number of children and adults, a result of a culture that worships entertainment above just about anything else. However, removing the role that access to weapons of mass murder plays from the discussion is just as foolish as ignoring the psychology behind the violence within this so called civilized country. 

Also, im sure it doesn't help matters that the political figurehead of the country (and your hero) dehumanizes others publically, and makes statements about murdering people on 5th ave. Just putting that out there. 

[Rippounet]

8 minutes ago, Relic said:

Anyway, it would certainly behoove us to look at the factors within our society that seemingly suck empathy out of people and creates raging narcissists. I think a deep study of American psychology will reveal a massive break (for lack of a better word) from reality in a shockingly large number of children and adults, a result of a culture that worships entertainment above just about anything else. However, removing the role that access to weapons of mass murder plays from the discussion is just as foolish as ignoring the psychology behind the violence within this so called civilized country.

I signed in just to like your post. ^^

Entertainment, individualism, materialism, consumerism... There are many ways to explain why an abnormal number of young American men suddenly feel the urge to kill their fellows. But it's difficult to divorce this from the guns themselves because gun culture is part of it all: with the right to own a gun comes the possibility of murdering your neighbor.

However, one might say that investing in education, school psychologists and public healthcare (i.e. mental health care in these cases) wouldn't hurt.

[Week]

Some levity some of the few Trump topics that I can laugh at.

https://resistancehole.clickhole.com/bad-news-for-the-resistance-sources-close-to-mueller-1826194497

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Bad News For The #Resistance: Sources Close To Mueller Are Suggesting The Pee Tape Is Real, But It Is Hot As Hell, Maybe The Sexiest Event Ever Caught On Camera[..]

“It transcends pornography, really,” he continued. “If this thing ever leaks, people aren’t gonna be able to stop watching it. It’s that hot. No matter where you align politically, you will come away from watching this believing Trump is the greatest president in U.S. history.”

Resistors, this news is truly our 9/11.[..]

Also, their response (many years late) to Michael Cohen

https://www.theonion.com/the-onion-has-finally-read-michael-cohen-s-2013-email-1826197533

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‘The Onion’ Has Finally Read Michael Cohen’s 2013 Email Regarding His Client Donald Trump And Would Like To Discuss The Matter Further At His Convenience [..]

As Mr. Trump is now the leader of the free world, now is clearly the best time to resume our discussion. While it is generally not our policy to let outside forces affect our editorial decisions, the opportunity to gain a direct line to the president clearly presents a special case. We would be more than willing to accommodate Mr. Cohen’s wishes—provided we get something in return, of course. A quid pro quo, if you will.

We believe the removal of the piece in exchange for influence over the president’s decision-making constitutes a more than reasonable deal, and we implore Mr. Cohen to meet with us without delay. We are happy to schedule around his upcoming court appearances. [..]

[Zorral]

1 hour ago, Relic said:

Fixed that for you.

Anyway, it would certainly behoove us to look at the factors within our society that seemingly suck empathy out of people and create raging narcissists. I think a deep study of American psychology will reveal a massive break (for lack of a better word) from reality in a shockingly large number of children and adults, a result of a culture that worships entertainment above just about anything else. However, removing the role that access to weapons of mass murder plays from the discussion is just as foolish as ignoring the psychology behind the violence within this so called civilized country. 

Also, im sure it doesn't help matters that the political figurehead of the country (and your hero) dehumanizes others publically, and makes statements about murdering people on 5th ave. Just putting that out there. 

To the bolded, I would add the word, "violent," to precede "entertainment."

As someone I know who works in the film industry put it, "How can you tell an actor?  It's a guy holding a gun."

 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

I wonder if celebrity and celebrity culture actually plays a bigger role than entertainment. I was fairly young at the time, but I remember seeing the Columbine shooters on a magazine cover in an airport and it felt like they were actually making them look cool. Since then I’ve always wondered why these mass shooters get so much media attention. Perhaps it motivates some of these individuals. I’m sure some of these people would prefer to be infamous than irrelevant and forgotten.

[Jace, Extat]

Fuck off with this anti-entertainment shit. It's a losers extension of anti-intellectualism. 

We have a crisis state because sick people have no access to medicine but easy access to weapons designed for murder.

I've yet to hear a story about the guy who killed a score of people with a hard drive containing the latest Call of Duty game.

[Lany Freelove Cassandra]

17 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said:

 

Surely the response to that is to unionise

My husband's workplace is discussing unionizing and it's not going well.  But then, it is is fairly rural PA (Hanover). I was pretty surprised to hear him repeating all the "bad" things about unions.  The bosses are letting it be known that they don't approve. (no threats or anything, but their displeasure has been made known)

It is a British owned company, and up until this past year or so, it has been great with the benefits. (I would have thought they would be ok with unions)

[Fez]

7 minutes ago, Pony Empress Jace said:

Fuck off with this anti-entertainment shit. It's a losers extension of anti-intellectualism. 

We have a crisis state because sick people have no access to medicine but easy access to weapons designed for murder.

I've yet to hear a story about the guy who killed a score of people with a hard drive containing the latest Call of Duty game.

There's two issues at play here.

There's lots of studies showing no relationship between violent entertainment and violent actions. And this easily passes the smell test by just looking at the fact that all Western countries have access to same violent entertainment we do but don't have our violence problem.

However, I don't know if there's been any studies of a possible relationship between modern entertainment (violent or otherwise) and the general lack of empathy/increase of narcissism in public life. I tend to think there isn't a relationship there either, but I don't know for sure. The thing I always come back to is how fundamentally decent the vast majority of people are at the individual level, including most Trump voters (obviously there are exceptions); including being decent on an individual basis to people different from them. The problem is when it gets above the individual level; both in what happens when they group up together (e.g. at Trump rallies during the campaign) and when they look at groups of people different from them. It's some sort of reverse sublimation, where decent impulses give way to groupthink'd anger and hatred.

I don't know if this increased lack of empathy in public life is then somehow connected to the increase in mass shootings, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was. 

[Kalbear]

2 hours ago, Rippounet said:

I signed in just to like your post. ^^

Entertainment, individualism, materialism, consumerism... There are many ways to explain why an abnormal number of young American men suddenly feel the urge to kill their fellows. But it's difficult to divorce this from the guns themselves because gun culture is part of it all: with the right to own a gun comes the possibility of murdering your neighbor.

However, one might say that investing in education, school psychologists and public healthcare (i.e. mental health care in these cases) wouldn't hurt.

How is this different from any of the other Western nations? 

Yes, all of these things are important to deal with, and should be dealt with. Good luck changing the entire culture of the Western world. 

Then again, that might be easier than changing the US love of guns. 

[A Horse Named Stranger]

11 minutes ago, Fez said:

There's two issues at play here.

There's lots of studies showing no relationship between violent entertainment and violent actions. And this easily passes the smell test by just looking at the fact that all Western countries have access to same violent entertainment we do but don't have our violence problem.

However, I don't know if there's been any studies of a possible relationship between modern entertainment (violent or otherwise) and the general lack of empathy/increase of narcissism in public life. I tend to think there isn't a relationship there either, but I don't know for sure. The thing I always come back to is how fundamentally decent the vast majority of people are at the individual level, including most Trump voters (obviously there are exceptions); including being decent on an individual basis to people different from them. The problem is when it gets above the individual level; both in what happens when they group up together (e.g. at Trump rallies during the campaign) and when they look at groups of people different from them. It's some sort of reverse sublimation, where decent impulses give way to groupthink'd anger and hatred. 

I don't know if this increased lack of empathy in public life is then somehow connected to the increase in mass shootings, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was. 

Even if, then you'd still figure out which came first. Chicken, egg, chicken. Are the more violent action movies the cause of the supposedly more narcissitic people void of empathy, or are more empathy deprived people the ones demanding the more violent stuff. Not to mention what else you'd need to control for. Parenting styles. Afterall, beating a child was more prevalent in the fifties, maybe beating empathy into a child would solve the issue.... (For those who didn't notice, that was sarcasm).

[Jace, Extat]

16 minutes ago, Fez said:

There's two issues at play here.

There's lots of studies showing no relationship between violent entertainment and violent actions. And this easily passes the smell test by just looking at the fact that all Western countries have access to same violent entertainment we do but don't have our violence problem.

However, I don't know if there's been any studies of a possible relationship between modern entertainment (violent or otherwise) and the general lack of empathy/increase of narcissism in public life. I tend to think there isn't a relationship there either, but I don't know for sure. The thing I always come back to is how fundamentally decent the vast majority of people are at the individual level, including most Trump voters (obviously there are exceptions); including being decent on an individual basis to people different from them. The problem is when it gets above the individual level; both in what happens when they group up together (e.g. at Trump rallies during the campaign) and when they look at groups of people different from them. It's some sort of reverse sublimation, where decent impulses give way to groupthink'd anger and hatred.

I don't know if this increased lack of empathy in public life is then somehow connected to the increase in mass shootings, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was. 

These freakshows who lack humanity are supposed to be peered out over the course of their developmental childhood. 

In America there is a sick intersection of refusal by society to either adaquetely neutralize these burgeoning threats to society or (preferably) treat them with appropriately compassionate care and the insane acceptance of clearly dangerous behaviors/beliefs without consideration for where they might lead.

And then there's the guns. It's not hard. 

[Kalbear]

Also, the idea that we somehow lost empathy along the way ignores a whole big chunk of US history happily. Think the Kent State Massacre was because of video games? How about the 4000 lynching victims that they recently put up a memorial to? 

The interesting unusual thing here is that a whole lot more people are finding themselves alienated from their own community. And when that happens, they are more likely to treat those people as the other. Prior to this, Americans were happily wiling to beat, kill, rape and steal from the others in their community, because they were so easily marked out as other - black people, Hispanics, native Americans, Asians. 

People as a rule don't have a whole lot of empathy for anyone outside of their group. But thanks to the internet, 'their group' is more likely to be a whole lot of random people who share values and ideology instead of location. Who will say that they like you because you hate black people or think Trump is awesome or horrible. And those people are your group, and the people who you hang out with all the time? Nope, they're the ones who aren't your tribe. 

[Rippounet]

30 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

How is this different from any of the other Western nations? 

Yes, all of these things are important to deal with, and should be dealt with. Good luck changing the entire culture of the Western world.

As a matter of fact, US culture is far more individualistic than that of most other Western countries. The individual right to bear arms is a testament to that - this is what I was underlining.

Though of course, people here will know this is a rather recent evolution. The individual right to self-defense only being a few decades old (and a single one as far as legal precedent goes), and the individualistic culture being due to the rather recent conservative "revolution."