Nov 2023 Mod notice:
There may be other, more specific, threads about some aspects of US politics, but this one tends to act as a hub for all sorts of related news and information, so it's usually one of the busiest OTC threads.
If you're new to OTC, it's worth reading the Introduction to On-Topic Conversations
and the On-Topic Conversations debate guidelines
before posting here.
Rumor-based, fear-mongering and/or inflammatory statements that damage the quality of the thread will be thumped. Off-topic posts will also be thumped. Repeat offenders may be suspended.
If time spent moderating this thread remains a distraction from moderation of the wiki itself, the thread will need to be locked. We want to avoid that, so please follow the forum rules
when posting here.
In line with the general forum rules, 'gravedancing' is prohibited here. If you're celebrating someone's death or hoping that they die, your post will get thumped. This rule applies regardless of what the person you're discussing has said or done.
Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
I wonder when an opponent of his becomes President, a tiny, finger-high garden wall will be erected on the southern border as a Take That!. With glowing rainbow lights lighting up in the night like a Vegas show to practically advertise to immigrants.
ASAB: All Sponsors Are Bad.That's a very strange segue from talking about the welfare state.
Unless you are, for some reason, suggesting that a race to the bottom on living standards is acceptable just so everybody's on an even footing.
There's a view in the world that says we shouldn't be concerned with the poor and middle classes in the United States because even the poorest of us is better off compared to the poor in many other parts of the world. On the basis of per-capita income distribution, we're way off the charts.
Funny how people who advance that view as an excuse not to do anything to improve the lot of our own people seem to ignore how much better the wealthy have it in our country, too.
The way I choose to look at it is whether the individuals in question have any economic agency, and by quite a few measures, a person living in poverty in the U.S. has no more agency than a farmer in Africa.
A key attribute of all regressive ideologies is the desire to remove agency from the populace. You can see this in the form of dictators who jail their political opponents ("Lock her up!") and parties that attempt to deny voting rights, strip people from the rolls, and defund public education.
Edited by Fighteer on Jan 10th 2019 at 2:23:31 PM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"I'm a bit late to the party, apologies, but I thought something needed to be clarified.
How are we classifying populism anyway?
Because using Fighteer's definition, Left-Wing Populism is moving over into Socialism from Social Democracy. Which is not populism, that's just Socialism. Using another definition, its giving people policies that they like...and if giving people the policies they want is inherently negative, I think our Democracy is much closer to its grave than I suspected. If its campaigning against "the Establishment", that leaves issues of criticizing such being inherently negative, again not a great situation.
I dunno, a lot of these definitions seem too open-ended or designed to include just who the person wants them to, just like "Establishment". It feels utterly meaningless these days.
The awful things he says and does are burned into our cultural consciousness like a CRT display left on the same picture too long. -FighteerPopulism can be seen as appealing to rhetorical eloquence over substantive policy. One way of doing this is to adopt a slogan, like "break up the banks", or "build the wall", that can be easily understood and spreads memetically through a population. The slogan becomes a symbol for some ill that afflicts those people. Then you campaign on this slogan rather than on a real policy that would actually be effective at fixing whatever problem they have.
What you're doing is dumbing down the political process. You are simultaneously satisfying a need for scapegoats and simple solutions to problems and encouraging a mentality that responds to such things.
Edited by Fighteer on Jan 10th 2019 at 2:38:24 PM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"If you need any further proof that Republicans are ghouls, they are actively planning for Ruth Bader Ginsburg to die or retire:
The hardest thing in this world is to live in it.I mean, no lie, that's just common sense.
Huge fan of RBG but it would be wise for them to have a plan in case the 86 year old person who just had cancer surgery passes.
I honestly can't really fault them for that.
Found a Youtube Channel with political stances you want to share? Hop on over to this page and add them.Unless you are, for some reason, suggesting that a race to the bottom on living standards is acceptable just so everybody's on an even footing.
I'm suggesting that with current technologies, the standards of living enjoyed by the populations of wealthy countries would be completely and totally unsustainable for the entire population of the Earth. Even now we're dangerously close to an ecological collapse scenario that would result in the end of human civilization, so at least in the near term there there is fact a zero sum game between the standards of living in the developed and developing world.
Edited by CaptainCapsase on Jan 10th 2019 at 2:51:56 PM
x4 But that's the problem: most politicians have some sort of slogan that they use.
I'm With Her, Feel the Bern, MAGA, etc.
And so do policies: things like, "Tax the rich", or "Financial Responsibility".
"Break Up the Banks" is an actual policy, regardless if you like it or not. Same with "Build the Wall", its...technically a proposed policy, I guess, as bigoted and pointless as it is. Which is what I was getting at: "Populism" is a nebulous term, as shown by most people here defining it different ways, and it doesn't seem that particularly useful of a term nowadays.
Uh...what? What "Zero-sum game"? Are you seriously trying to justify people having lower standards of living than eachother?
Edited by AzurePaladin on Jan 10th 2019 at 2:53:05 PM
The awful things he says and does are burned into our cultural consciousness like a CRT display left on the same picture too long. -Fighteer
No, the opposite; I'm saying that, given the finite carrying capacity of the Earth which, under current technological paradigms we are already way past, the developing world cannot be allowed to have the same standards of living that the developed world currently enjoys; either the developing world needs to stay poor, or the developed world needs to cut back. I'm advocating the latter, as the former would be both flagrantly unethical and counterproductive to the goal of sustainable growth given the strong correlation between poverty and fertility rates.
Edited by CaptainCapsase on Jan 10th 2019 at 2:57:58 PM
: This is just another version of Malthusian economics, something that technology rendered obsolete a long time ago. While it is certainly true that First World nations need to improve their per-capita environmental footprint, we have every reason to believe that this is possible without sacrificing standards of living. If that is true, then we can reasonably hope to raise most people around the globe to similar standards.
This will require revolutionizing our efficiencies in a number of areas, though, which will encounter substantial resistance from those whose livelihoods and financial interests would be impacted.
Frankly, if we need to soak anyone to equalize our use of resources, let's take it from those who don't need it to be economically competitive: i.e., the wealthy.
Edited by Fighteer on Jan 10th 2019 at 2:58:34 PM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"I think everyone being so afraid for the Democrats being treated as "The Establishment" and being mean to more or less is a major sign people have their priorities vexed.
The Democrats aren't the Establishment, not even close, but they keep trying to defend the Establishment because they think it's worth saving despite their moving left shows they want to change it fundamentally.
Its the master of the mixed message. They should be the ones who at the forefront of demanding change and hard.
Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.![]()
![]()
![]()
No its not, I fully concede that technological capacity will eventually allow higher standards of living than what we currently enjoy, but I'm also realistic about the possibility that the tech fix you're hoping for may not necessarily arrive in time to avert disaster, as currently appears to be the case with climate change. Incidentally, had the major technological changes associated with the green revolution failed to materialize when they did, Malthus's collapse would absolutely have come to pass.
I agree; global output distributed in a more equitable fashion would allow for a universal upper-middle income standard of living across the globe under current technological paradigms, but that's only responsible in the near term if the developed world "cuts back."
Edited by CaptainCapsase on Jan 10th 2019 at 3:04:10 PM
Trump once suggested his sister for the Supreme Court Justice position.
She is, by the way, a liberal civil rights minded judge.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maryanne_Trump_Barry
People assume there's ideology to Trump's picks. There's not.
Edited by CharlesPhipps on Jan 10th 2019 at 12:00:52 PM
Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.The Earth currently provides enough food for 10 billion people. The Earth has a lot of untapped resources and could support about 500 billion hypothetically
Leviticus 19:34
It has the capacity for around 10 billion people if we can become carbon neutral as a civilization within 10 years, which has a nearly 0% chance of actually happening, meaning we're likely on a 2+ degrees C warming trajectory if not 3+.
Given sophisticated enough technology, the Earth could support closer to a trillion people, which is the point at which heat rejection becomes a limiting factor, but that technology does not exist today, and planning as if it will emerge and become sufficiently widespread in the near future is grossly irresponsible.
Edited by CaptainCapsase on Jan 10th 2019 at 3:07:38 PM
...let me get this straight: you're saying that either First World countries have to become poorer or Third World countries have to become richer because the Earth can't handle both being wealthy at the same time?
i'm tired, my friendOverpopulation discussion is outside the scope of this thread, but I’m gonna link these two articles
on the topic because there’s a lot of gross racist undertones
to “overpopulation” concerns. We could basically fix global warming by forcing about 2,000 people and 20 companies to change their ways. Poor brown people having children isn’t the goddamn problem.
I agree; White folks (and some east Asians) soaking up a hugely disproportionate amount of the currently accessible resources to sustain first world standards of living is the problem.
![]()
Without technology that doesn't currently exist and is not guaranteed to exist in time to avert disaster, yes, as depressing as that sounds.
Edited by CaptainCapsase on Jan 13th 2019 at 11:25:04 AM
And we have been saying continually that the primary obstacle to this is political, not technological. Green energy continues to improve in quality and efficiency and has been outstripping fossil fuels in many areas. There is no reason to believe that we will run into any fundamental barriers here. The critical problem in the United States is that one (and only one) political party has obsessively attempted to block, curtail, and obfuscate any/all progress for utterly selfish reasons.
Before you ask the poor to give up their First-World standards of living, you should consider actually trying some of these solutions, which means voting for Democrats.
Edited by Fighteer on Jan 10th 2019 at 3:11:17 PM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

At this point he might as well promise to build a wall made of red jello.