Tod’s Life Lessons For You to Hate On #1 & 2: Size Really Does Matter
Note: I’ve decided to begin posting those life lessons I have crammed in my head that seem obvious to me, but which I know in advance others will push back hard against. More often than not, these posts will be very short. I am kicking off with two life lessons to begin with, partially because they are very much related and partially because Lesson #1 is likely going to get more traction on Jon’s post than here.
Life Lesson #1: People will condemn either terrible, invasive, and/or Byzantine practices by Large Corporations, or they will condemn terrible, invasive, and/or Byzantine practices by Large Government — but they will not do both.
I honestly do not know why this is. I really don’t. It may be the most counter-intuitive example of people-acting-against-their-own-self-interest phenomenas that I have ever witnessed. But it’s damn near close to universal.
Indeed, I believe that this “government/corporation forgiveness” contributes to neither large government nor large corporations ever needing to get significantly better at serving those they are charged to serve.
Life Lesson #2: With very few exceptions, private corporations do everything better than public corporations — because part of what a public corporation does is make their goods and services suck to cut costs.
Or more simply: No one thinks the Olive Garden is better than their locally-owned Italian restaurant, but only a dreamy-dreamer would invest in the latter over the former.
One of the inevitable negative outcomes of capitalism that people don’t often discuss is that even as it encourages smaller companies to make better mousetraps, it likewise encourages bigger compose to buy out or co-opt those mousetraps and make them suckier, or, alternatively, use their size to regulate those better mousetraps out of business.
If they didn’t do these things, we wouldn’t invest our retirement money in them.
Feel free to hate on these life lessons in the comment section below.
[Pictures: Youtube screenshots of Abe Simpson and Veridian Dynamics corporate video.]
Olive Garden is likely better than a lot of your locally-owned Italian Restaurants. Which you may not realize, because those aren’t the restaurants you go to. The thing about Olive Garden is that it is consistently decent. Never great, but not terrible either. Independent restaurants run a gamut. Some are great, some are pretty bad. That, more than anything, is the difference between Olive Garden and any given local restaurant.Report
It’s also run according to a formula, one learned through trial and error over time, and intelligently administered by subject matter experts. It is therefore profitable, and therefore durable. It is further supported by a relatively massive and continuous campaign of advertising in multiple media venues. To the extent that the quality of the food and the manner of preparation matters at Olive Garden at all (the thought process is that 99% of consumers are unable to discern the difference between the quality of food once the quality rises above a certain and rather low threshold), that too has been structured, systematized, and industrialized, with the result that there is scalability and the standardization of which @will-truman speaks.
Your local mom-and-pop Italian place is likely run by a family that possesses subject matter expertise in making really good (to them) Italian meals to be served to families. It’s not likely to have the buying power to leverage a supplier. It’s not likely to have a professional manager who has attended classes on controlling cost of food, cost of labor, and cost of insurance. The advertising campaign, to the extent there is one at all, is a yellow pages ad, front-of-the-store signage, and occasionally some coupons in the local newspaper — word of mouth is the principal way you learn about such places. And without the expertise in management it’s easy for people who think that their ability to make tasty food is sufficient to run a business, which is a very serious trap for such a business to run into.
This is, philosophically speaking, why the Olive Garden thrives while your local mom-and-pop Italian place struggles, notwithstanding that Olive Garden sells overboiled pasta-mush in goopy, flavorless salt sauce.Report
But has Olive Garden ever taken off in an area with a large number of Italian-Americans? This is a serious question.
A Google for Olive Garden NYC reveals that there are two and one of them is in Times Square. NYC offers an embarrassment of riches in terms of Italian food. This goes from Mario Batalli’s Babbo to some truly old-school places:
http://ny.eater.com/maps/15-classic-italian-restaurants-to-try-before-you-die
The old school places are quite possibly cheaper than Olive Garden as well but they require a bit of trek and a desire for adventure.
What places like Olive Garden do is keep things in the stile of aggressive okayness which is perfect if you don’t want to take the risk. I suspect that a lot of people would prefer always getting a B- or B to risking a D for the chance of an A.Report
Looks like in terms of distribution, NYC is pretty full of them.Report
I might have made a similar assumption, but a few seconds of digging says that this assumption is false. First, there’s actually 4 Olive Gardens within the NYC city limits – there’s one in Brooklyn and another in the Bronx that you missed. There’s another 14 in the state of New Jersey despite a heavy Italian-American population. By comparison, there’s only 10 in Virginia, and only 2(!) in all of Texas.
Mind you, my Italian wife absolutely refuses to step foot in an Olive Garden ever again – she hated the place even when it was winning surveys for “America’s Favorite Chain Restaurant” or whatever. But its success doesn’t seem to have anything to do with a lack of “authentic” competition in a given area. If anything, it seems to do best in areas with plenty of competition.Report
@mark-thompson @chris
I think four for the entirety of NYC is pretty damn small and the two Manhattan ones are in super-tourist friendly areas. The Brooklyn one appears to be on the edge of Brooklyn.
My point was that they are concentrating on areas that are safe for tourists. I don’t think many locals are going to Oliver Garden in Times Square or 6th Avenue.Report
There are 5, which is a lot for any city (Mark missed the one in Queens), plus one near Yonkers and a handful across Long Island. You can get to an Olive Garden pretty easily from anywhere in and around the city.
Of course, there’s a McDonald’s on every block.Report
And four Starbucks.Report
There are a lot more than 2 in Texas. A few dozen. Four in the Austin area.Report
Huh. On the Olive Garden website, I only found two listed locations for TX. Apparently my query skills are failing me.Report
Google!Report
Dammit! I tried Olive Gardens site again, and it still only shows the two Texas locations. I suppose thats another piece of evidence for why I dislike the place.Report
Check the Google map of locations. At least a couple of dozen in Texas. A random sampling with street view shows the signs clearly.Report
I knew something was up when it didn’t have Olive Gardens I’ve been to.Report
I’m guessing you were using the Find Restaurant option – that just picks a particular spot within the location you enter and does a 50-mile-radius search. For “Texas” it apparently picks a spot around Sweetwater.Report
Gotcha. Well, that’s pretty dumb.Report
“America’s Favorite Chain Restaurant” is about the same sort of honor as “Best Subcompact Car” or winning a People’s Choice Award or “#1 daytime drama on CBS.” A mentor once described this sort of thing as damning with faint praise.Report
If Olive Garden is so decent, why the overproportion of them in Maine?
(Here’s a hint: what else does that corporation own?)Report
There are no Red Lobsters in Maine (for good reason) – as far as I can tell, there are none on the entire Gulf of Maine watershed.Report
There used to be at least one Red Lobster in Bangor, but it’s closed.
Stands to reason that a chain that’s not doing great would lose its stores in areas with the most competition.Report
Ahem. Red Lobster, the business, has nothing to do with Maine.
It was founded by a dude from FL, purchased by General Mills, and features a lot of sea food that’s not lobster but poses as lobster. They may buy lobsters from Maine fishermen, but I’ve never heard that they’ve cornered the lobster market in any way, shape, or form.
Instead of being of Maine, they poach the Maine brand, with their “Bar Harbor” themed storefronts. The company’s culturally appropriating Maine culture without a clue to Maine ethics and values.
And normal Mainiacs would not take you out to Red Lobster for a lobster dinner; they’d take you out to the nearest lobster hut with a decent lobster roll or lobster dinner or they’d buy the lobsters and cook them at home.
But I call foul on the association of Red Lobster and Maine; it’s not of Maine and it’s not the flavor of Maine and it’s total Mickey Rooney’s roll in Breakfast at Tiffany’s nutty. We’ll tolerate it while smirking at the silliness over a dinner of real lobster served right.Report
In Maine, I say skip all the lobster stuff and go to the french fry place downtown (I think it’s called Ducky Fat). Best poutine I’ve had in the States. Have the freshly made soda with the apple cider vinegar, too.Report
It’s Duck Fat.
One of my favorite Italian restaurants, Ribolita is next door. And around the corner, is Micucci’s, most amazing (and different) pizza ever. Go for lunch and get a slab and plan on sharing it with a friend, pref. down on the peer and watch the ferry’s.Report
Thanks, zic.
I’ve only been one time, but I’ll try to remember the Italian place next door and the pizza around the corner, if I go again.Report
A friend of mine managed to get Duckfat a cease and desist order from Disney. Disney, I have no words, where did you think the art was coming from??? Not Duckfat, that’s for sure!
[This wasn’t even for Donald Duck art, it was for Admiral Ackbar/trap art.]Report
Red Lobster was founded in my home town. They used to be really good. Quality gradually went down after the became a chain.
For a while after becoming a chain, the original restaurant was often used to try out new dishes, which was nice. Eventually it closed, and after a few failed restauarants, it is now home to a shitty bar.Report
What kills me is they tried to open Red Lobsters in Maine, and the natives ran ’em out. Hilarious.Report
Ran them out? Or just didn’t go there enough?Report
I’m assuming pitchforks laced with magical venom.Report
Passed a bill to shut them down, which the governor vetoed. Or thought he vetoed, anyway.Report
The point of Olive Gatden and similar chain restaurants is to provide an average but consistent experience at every one. The food will never reach the level of exquisitely gourmet but it will not go down to greasy spoon levels either.Report
Will’s got it exactly right: the big ones don’t make bad stuff, they just don’t make great stuff; they make consistently OK stuff. If they made really bad stuff, they’d fail. Like, say, Planet Hollywood or Hard Rock Cafe, both of which got by on their gimmicks, rather than their food, which was awful, but ultimately the shitty food meant they had a limited lifespan.
I’ve been to Olive Garden and had a reasonably good meal. I’ve never been to Olive Garden and had an awful meal. I’ve been to a local place that’s usually wonderful and had an awful meal because they were slammed or it was late or the ingredients weren’t that fresh or whatever. That’s how Olive Garden wins in the long run: you always know what you’re going to get, so if you’re not feeling like taking a chance, which is most of us most of the time, you go to Olive Garden.Report
I’ve never been to olive garden.Report
If they made really bad stuff, they’d fail
This isn’t true as stated. McD has had a long run and serves terrible food, with the exception of decent-good fries. Taco Bell? Yikes. Denny’s is pretty consistently bad diner food, too. These companies have all had success over long periods while serving really bad stuff.
There is some hope, though, that after a few decades big chains have to compete on producing good product (not just by advertising gimmicks, undercutting costs, etc.) KFC has been terrible for long enough that it is in trouble.Report
Good and bad are in the eye of the beholder, though. Taco Bell and McD’s serve crap, but it’s good crap, at least for my taste buds. Now, in Big City, there are so many tacquerias it’s hard to count, and almost all the ones I’ve been to are better (by my taste) than Taco Bell, but sometimes I still crave it. Hamburgers are a bit different–for my tastes at least, mom and pop hamburger stands are more expensive and a bit more of a gamble than mom and pop tacquerias, so I’ll often choose McD’s, or Wendy’s or BK, as a likelier better and cheaper choice. And a fresh sandwich from one of those places, in my opinion, tastes comparably good to a fresh one from a mom and pop.Report
That’s how Olive Garden wins in the long run: you always know what you’re going to get, so if you’re not feeling like taking a chance, which is most of us most of the time, you go to Olive Garden.
Like any chain, all the way down to McDonalds.Report
“Olive Garden is likely better than a lot of your locally-owned Italian Restaurants.”
this is mathematically impossible. also spiritually impossible.
the olive garden is a circus of degradation posing as a restaurant. it is positively de sadean. i wouldn’t be surprised if its strategic plan folder contained only a rag of ether, some duct tape, and a bullwhip.Report
Look, some people are into that. I don’t judge.
(Also, I don’t often wish for an “upvote” button here, but when I do, it’s because of phrases like “a circus of degradation posing as a restaurant”).Report
I’ll upvote for the use of the word ‘de sadean’.
That should be, like, the model name for a European SuperCar.Report
@dhex
We will always have Vinny’s!!!Report
@dhex !! You just popped into my mind the other day and I wondered where you’ve been.Report
Picketing Olive Garden for religious reasons.Report
@will-truman
Does a non-Italian making a comment about Italian food and somewhat defending Olive Garden constitute a violation of the commenting policy?Report
Olive Garden is the Italian version of asking white people to wear a kimono.Report
Olive Garden is the Italian equivalent of grocery store sushi.Report
It’s the Italian version of blueberry bagels.Report
Wait, blueberry bagels are a bad thing?Report
I won’t repeat the things Kossars says about cream cheese on a bagel.
(Partially because I can’t read eastern european languages — but I assure you they’re unprintable if translated).Report
They’re inferior as pastry and not in any way bagels.
Otherwise, I have no problem with them.Report
Everything is better with blueberries.Report
Disagree with 1. I certainly try to do both. And while sober conservatives are better at criticizing government than sober liberals, the latter still do so because you can’t make something better without understanding its flaws.
Agree with 2.Report
Not sure about 1. I’m fine with criticizing both because, as i stated in the other thread, all human orgs are prone of screwing up. People screw up, its what we do.Report
Likewise, I’ll happily criticize both. My (very marginal) preference for corporate vs. government is stated here & here.
In short, I don’t get nervous when Republic Parking sends me a parking ticket, I do when the City of Bellevue sends me the same thing for the same amount.Report
Anchorage sold or contracted out their parking ticket enforcement to private collection agencies. Given the choice between a gov functionary and collection agency i’d choose the gov employee. Doesn’t mean it wouldn’t be a pain but better then collection agency blood suckers.
But my preferences depend on the situation and the service. I just can’t see any one size fits all solution. Sort of like unisex jumpsuits. They work great for some, but less well for others.Report
Bellevue has a few red light cameras about. I ran afoul of one right after I moved. I hadn’t gotten my address changed everywhere yet, and the notice that I should not have turned right on red went to the wrong address. For some reason, the post office did not forward that particular bit of mail. Luckily by the time the second notice went out, I had changed my address & I got it. In that notice was instructions to pay, a clear message that I missed the window by which I could contest the ticket, and that if I failed to pay, a warrant would be issued for my arrest.
All over a photo ticket that was worth $112, and would not even be reported to my insurance agent.
This is something no private company can do (without specific permission from the government).Report
Life Lesson #1: People will condemn either terrible, invasive, and/or Byzantine practices by Large Corporations, or they will condemn terrible, invasive, and/or Byzantine practices by Large Government — but they will not do both.
Not true, at least for me.
The government is run by rich white people for other rich white people. Large corporations are run by rich white people for other rich white people. Often, they are the same white people.
I know plenty of people who complain about both. Maybe you need
betterdifferent friends.ReportI’m told friends with a little black book tend to know exactly who the rich white people are.
Might make valuable acquaintances…Report
I live in Texas: criticizing the government and criticizing private corporations is often the same thing.Report
I’m not sure you said what you meant in #2; private vs. public or profit vs. non-profit? I’m guessing the latter; and even there, I’d suggest it’s all over the map; Harvard and MIT are non-profits; and most government bodies are incorporated at some level — town/city, county, state, etc..Report
I think he means privately held vs publicly tradedReport
So Hobby Lobby vs. JoAnne’s?
If the Christian theme-park atmosphere of HL doesn’t bug you, they’ve got it all over JoAnne’s as a source for craft supplies. And the small, mom&pop shops typically are even better, though you’d seek out a shop catering to your particular interests, not general.Report
That’s how I read it.
Agree, HL is great when you don’t know what you need, or you need some ideas & browsing the aisles is helpful.Report
And I would wager that there are a lot of mom and pop places that are not better than HL. I think we should not extrapolate based on private places we like versus public ones generally.Report
Agreed.Report
The Mom & Pop’s that are viable businesses specialize, @will-truman and mostly have high-end stuff; so the yarn shop, quilt shop, fabric shop, wood-working shop. We have all those around here that thrive. Up through the 1980’s, the mom & pops with crappy products did okay, but they generally didn’t survive the internet. It’s specialty knowledge and customer service that makes a private business like that thrive; and many thrive, in part, due to an internet presence bolstering shop sales.
This is, in part, why I don’t understand the public/private distinction. Public companies generally seem to trade in mediocre denominators; not the worst, but not the best; as has been pointed out, they survive on general availability of consistency; and that consistency often grates on the dedicated customer with refined aesthetics; even if that person is just a granny making a quilt for her first great-grandchild.Report
Further complicating the distinction is that in addition to being a public corporation, McDonald’s is thousands of small private businesses.Report
The weeds are why I questioned public/private.
It’s size, more than anything. Large corporations have efficiencies of scale but sacrifice some amount of quality in detail. Franchises seem to float between the two extremes. Cargill, Koch, Dell, Bechtel, Price Waterhouse Cooper, Mars (M&M’s), Enterprise, Cumberland Farms, Hobby Lobby, Fidelity are all privately-owned companies.
Tod’s post confuses because he’s sort-of suggesting large = publicly traded instead of closely held or even privately held and not listed on a public stock exchange; and then comparing this to small corporations.Report
As Tod predicted, everyone is hating on #1, but outside of our enlightened commentariat, I think there is some truth to it. It seems like a special case of arguments as soldiers. If you are on the team that fights against bad government, then saying something bad about corporations is an own-goal. And vice versa for the other team. Avoiding own-goals is worse than sometimes embracing falsehoods because the stakes are too important.Report
I would add to what @vikram-bath says that despite everyone’s objections, if I look at the last two posts here that noted really poor (for lack of a better phrase) “customer service” by government agencies — one by me, one by J’Rowe — there is considerable pushback from the quarters one would expect that these government agencies are in fact doing everything very well, and it is the “customers” with their flawed expectations that are the real problem.Report
Since I assume I’m the “considerable pushback” on the latter, I’ll note my view as concisely as I can: no one was wrong to contact him, he’s not a victim of anything, it’s bad customer service to have failed to immediately correct the (proper) initial charge, but the cost was only a couple more phone calls and/or emails. I think PA should have more streamlined title transfer rules (compliance with which would obviate everything that came later) and that NJ should be more like CA in dealing with these issues by not setting a muni court date but instead just taking the car. I just disagree with him about what flows from the fact these changes aren’t currently in place.Report
Would he have been as well off as he is if he weren’t as well off as he is?
I mean, I can understand the argument “what are you manscomplaining about? You’re fine!” to him *PERSONALLY*, but if a poor black guy had the same encounter, said poor black guy would have been jacked by the system.
And ignoring that part of the problem is racist (in the structural sense of the term, not the how you personally feel about minorities sense of the term).Report
Meh. I think it’s mostly team signaling. If you listen to two liberals or two conservatives debate, the liberals will complain about crappy and intrusive government, the conservatives will complain about corporate cronyism. But when they talk together, they each have to defend a right to speak from their side of the fence and we forget the shades of gray in the middle.Report
I think #1 depends on whether people are thinking they are inside the arena of political argument or not. Republicans bitch about Comcast with regularity. Democrats about the DMV. They only stop when political implications are in play.
FTR, I’m with Jon Rowe today. I can point to something I wrote about Blockbuster on Hit Coffee last week wherein I am critical.
So I think I’m on pretty solid ground here.Report
This is imprecisely written. Are we defining “better” as up-market or high-quality?Report
Yeah, it is imprecise — and perhaps necessarily so, as it depends on the product or service.
Don’t know any car person that wouldn’t agree that a Picchio is a better can than, say, a Kia. Don’t know any foodies that wouldn’t agree that a Clyde Commons burger in PDX wasn’t a better hamburger than you would get at McDs. Don’t know any accountant that wouldn’t agree that you could get better tax work for your NYC business done by Deloitte than H&R Block — or if that tax return got you in hot water with the IRS. don’t know any attorneys that wouldn’t say you’d have better representation from Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz than you would from Slater & Gordon.
All of these people are using the word “better” slightly differently, I think. Yet there’s still no question that no one who really knows about X won’t tell you that that a private corp known for doing/making X well isn’t world’s better than a public corp known for doing/making X. The only industry I can think of off the top of my head where this isn’t the case is the aerospace industry, and I think that’s just because there really aren’t any private aerospace companies out there. (And I will say I know so little about the industry that either my assumed exception to the rule or my presumed lack of private companies could each be wrong.)
Despite this, is our capitalist model, we still think of those companies above as being “less successful” than the ones that do what they do “better.” And I think that is an inherent flaw in our system. Not a “we’re all doomed and will soon be living in a post-apcolytic world” flaw, but a flaw nonetheless.Report
You’re comparing the best of private businesses to all public ones. Private entities don’t consist only of those that come t9 mind because they’re good. They also include that restaurant my wife ate at in Bellevue, Texas, that we still talk about seven years as the epitome of terrible.Report
He’s also comparing businesses that aren’t in the same markets. Picchio vs Kia isn’t the right comparison, Picchio vs Ferrari is. Clyde Commons doesn’t compete with McDonalds, they compete with Applebee’s (to be fair, CC wins that comparison hands down). But as you say Will, you have to average the CCs of the world with the places which are prone to multiple health code violations.Report
This is why Yelp is so great. If I’m on the road I’d be inclined to default to something I know won’t suck with low transaction costs.
Before, that was chain name-recognition. Now, it’s wherever Yelp sends me. I eat much better on the road now.Report
This. Yelp has freed me from the chains, at least when I’m in an urban area.Report
Beware trolls in most major urban areas (*cough* not pittsburgh *cough* think NYC)
Paid trolls.Report
I’ve used Yelp only a few times and while I’m sure it works for some people, I just haven’t gotten around to trusting it yet. I’m still much more inclined to go to chains.
/my mileage variesReport
I use Tripadvisor for the same thing, and I’ve found it fairly reliable, provided there is a certain volume of reviews. Especially if you read the reviews rather than just looking at the ratings (e.g., how someone rates a hostel depends on what they want from it. If they want drinking and partying, and don’t get it, and give the place a bad review, that’s a point in the place’s favour if you just want a quiet place to sleep).Report
That said, I think that the general observation about the quality of goods/services offered by public vs private businesses may hold some water if you assume that the privately held businesses have lower profit margins (per Tod’s original point re: optimizing costs).
Let’s take a hypothetical example where a unit of “burrito flavor” costs 5 cents. Chipotle charges me $7 for a 100BF burrito (cost to Chipotle: $5) and makes $2. My local burrito stand also charges me $7, but I get a burrito worth 120BF. Cost to local stand: $6; profit of $1. Clearly the private business is better for me as a consumer in this instance.
However, I don’t think that this necessarily generalizes to all businesses. If a publicly held corporation decreases its costs while simultaneously maintaining a comparable profit margin to the private businesses, it may very well offer a better value. Think WalMart vs Mom & Pop’s grocery. If the same box of mac & cheese is priced lower at WM than it is at M&P’s, I’d say that WM is doing better if we assume equal levels of service, store cleanliness, etc.Report
@bert-the-turtle
Does Clyde Common compete with Applebees or does it compete with Pundah’s Pit or Pok Pok?Report
It depends what you mean by compete. Clyde Common doesn’t directly compete with chain sit down restaurants. They are ion competition in that they are both going for the sit down trade among tourists.Report
@saul-degraw I’ve only been there once and it was more for the cocktails than the food. And I’m sure they don’t really “compete” with chain restaurantsin the sense that diners are thinking: “hmmm…should we go to Olive Garden or Clyde Commons tonight?” However, the pricing and fare is similar to mid-range chains like TGIFridays, Applebees, etc. ($12-$20 entrees like burgers, pasta, poultry, steaks, seafood, etc) In that sense it’s not in as cheap a class as a McD’s nor in as expensive a class as an Alinea.Report
There are lots of private aerospace companies, but they are small, and either exist to supply parts to their larger brethren, or they do niche work.
Usually, when an aerospace company grows to the point that they want to start producing major assemblies or whole vehicles, they almost have to do an IPO to raise the necessary capital.Report
Back when I lived in Florida I did some contracting work for this little machine shop that made small runs of part for (among other customers) NASA. I think that counts.
(Which, funny story, when I was assembling one of their servers I lost this little tiny screw. And so I told the guy, “Hey I lost this little tiny screw.” And he said, “Got any others just like it?”
Turns out a machine shop that makes parts for spaceships can quickly whip up a tiny screw.)Report
Old-school precision machine shops are so cool. Shortly after I started at Bell Labs I snapped off one of the nose pieces on my wire rim glasses. I was bitching about what it was going to cost to get new frames and/or glasses made when my mentor said, “First take it down to the machine shop and ask if they can do anything.” The old guy there said sure, and let me watch while he put on his 20-power surgical loupes, arranged the parts in a jig with seven or so hands, then soldered the break with some exotic alloy and what had to be the world’s tiniest torch.
Somewhat at the other end of the scale, across the way they were building some large new enclosures for the “artificial ocean” the Labs used to simulate conditions on the ocean floor under a few thousand feet of water.Report
In Sausalito, there’s a rather large building that holds a scale model of San Francisco Bay (1:1000 on the horizontal axes and 1:100 on the vertical axis). It’s no longer used for research (digital has taken over the world), but it’s open to the public as a museum.Report
our enlightened commentariat
Objection!
Sustained!
OG Exceptionalism has not been demonstrated sufficiently. These remarks shall be stricken from the record.Report
Brother John, please come with me to the Shed of Perspective for some Sufficient (although painful) Demonstrations of OG Exceptionalism.
One mustn’t stray from the agreed upon delusions.Report
Jokes about whipping, as funny as they might be, and as tongue-in-cheek as you might mean them, are not jokes that I find funny, Mr. Gordon.
You see, I’m Black. A Black American Male who uses the name of a White American Male Author on this site.
No blood, no foul, Mr. Gordon. I got thick skin. But, I thought you should know a little about me.Report
Your beard, sir, is a half foot too short to chop off and call a hate crime.
(Yes, Amish joke is on topic. The bloke sold bullwhips, for crying out loud).Report
@john-howard-griffin
Fair point Mr. Griffin, I’ll try to keep that in mind in the future.
Peace.Report
For comparison John I refer you to the commentariats of Nationalreview and Balloonjuice to contrast.Report
ITYM you take exception to that.Report
I am going to agree with #1, with the caveat that @will-truman places above. That both sides will complain about anything, until it enters the realm of Politic discussion. At that point it is a matter of blood libel to even think about straying from your rule.
As for #2, I would say that is trivially true.Report
@tod-kelly
I was going to push back on #1, but on reflection, and as others have pointed out, when it becomes a political argument, I do notice that I, for one, tend to observe #1 more than defy it. Back when I was a lefty Naderite, I used to complain a lot about “the corporations.” Now that I’m neo-liberal/libertarianish, I’m more likely to complain about the government or “the state.”
For #2, as someone mentioned above, it partially depends on what you mean by better. I used to work a bank that was privately held and for a bank that was publicly traded. They both had their advantages and disadvantages. For the record, I think the privately held one was better for my needs, but its geographic scope was limited primarily to one state, and there were some things it had a hard time doing for customers (e.g., expediting a new debit card to customers who really needed one quickly, if for example they lost it a couple days before going on vacation), whereas the larger, publicly traded bank not only had more branches outside the state, but it could handle emergency requests better (though for a hefty fee, of course).Report
#1 has a bit of BSDI going on.
The arguments of liberals are much more focused than conservative/ libertarians. The latter commonly make much more sweeping criticisms- its not THIS onerous regulation, or THAT intrusive agency, its regulations generally and bureaucracy generally, criticisms meant to support an argument for minarchism or wholesale privatization.
So the response has to be a generalized defense of government agency and legitimacy, even as we acknowledge their limitation and weaknesses.
I suppose the equivalent would be for me to complain about the Deepwater oil spill, then use that to prop up an argument for nationalizing the oil companies.
An argument which no liberals are making.Report
“An argument which no liberals are making.”
To be fair, a commenter on an Alternet story probably did call for that. And as we all know, random left-wing commenters on leftie websites are directly analogous to actual conservative elected officials.Report
And yet somehow still completely different from Libertarians…Report
I think this is another way of expressing my thought here; we spend so much time having to qualify our basic assumptions as liberals — that government is okay, and proof of bad over there doesn’t mean drown it — that we never get to actually discussing the nuance of any given thing, with the soul exception of cutting taxes. Conservatives are always willing to listen to tax-cut talk; and much of what does get accomplished gets done through tax code, hence it’s complexity.
One of my big gripes is that many benefits have to be applied for — home mortgage deduction, earned-income credit, even Obamacare subsidies. One solution might be to make them automatic.Report
I like the idea of chucking a ton of money at people. Here, gov’t says $40K dole. Deal, and leave.Report
Well, if you qualify for the earned-income tax credit, it should be obvious, no?Report