Morning Ed: Politics {2018.05.24.Th}
[Po1] For good reasons (regulatory certainty) and bad (regulatory capture), sometimes industry welcomes regulation.
[Po2] Now this is an interesting idea. Sounds like it would be bad for porn customers at first glance, but it could spread access.
[Po3] Joseph Heath is worried about anti-racism activism in Canada taking on an American flavor, to its detriment.
[Po4] In abortion as with drugs (to an extent), those that would have it illegal are almost always more interested in going after suppliers than their clients.
[Po5] If the US wants more educated immigrants, it needs to take a look at Africa. While I have a lot of faith in our ability to assimilate and integrate succeeding generations, knowing English when you get here is a big plus.
[Po6] It isn’t just us: European populism is either economic or it isn’t. Depending on who you ask.
[Po7] The Communist Party of the USA is taking a stand on free speech.
[Po8] The mysterious disappearance of former Australian Prime Minister Harold Holt.
[Po0] Leftwards in the US often have this belief that systems elsewhere are flawless, and that flaws in our system are unique to us and most likely on account of our backwards ways.
This is a foundational design flaw of plurality-winner single-member-district electoral systems https://t.co/VfkmJSL7mD
— Lee Drutman (@leedrutman) May 18, 2018
Better systems are possible, but I wish people would own up to these kind of outcomes being very common, arguably more common than in the US, in non-FPTP systems
— David Shor (@davidshor) May 18, 2018
It's a solvable problem! I just wish advocates were more honest about it. The German left getting 51% of the seats with 43% of the vote in 2013 is actually a much discrepancy than has ever happened in America.
— David Shor (@davidshor) May 19, 2018
This is my frustration. I could imagine hypothetical PR systems that wouldn't produce left vs right condorcet failures. But actual existing PR systems generate left vs right condorcet failures way more frequently than the US!
— David Shor (@davidshor) May 19, 2018
Po7: Did we expect anything different from the communist party?Report
Yeah, that devolved quickly into an “I’ll know it when I see it” justification.Report
This was kind of surprising though. Or is the current CPUSA decended from one of the pre-WW2 splits where collaboration was allowed?Report
Which other party would work together with the CPUSA to build socialism? If no other party would, then its still effectively a single party state.Report
No. The comments section was also unsurprising. Many ideologues have problems with democracy because it might mean that people with policies you hate could get elected at times. The more vehement Libertarians also look for ways to get rid of anybody that might argue for the least bit of government regulation or social services.Report
What, are they fining communists who disrespect the red flag?Report
I’m not saying that you don’t like free speech only if you’r e a communist. I’m saying that if you’re a communist you probably don’t like free speech. As it turns out, if you’re the NFL, you probably don’t like free speech either.Report
Po3: I found this article unconvincing for many reasons. It read more like why won’t you talk about these issues in the way I want them to be talked about. If all politics used to be local, the Internet and globalization are making all local politics international. His argument that when Americans talk about race, they really mean Whites and African-Americans is also unconvincing. There is a small element of truth but Hispanics and Muslims, who are yes a religious group but tend to be people of color, also get included. Asians and Jews are in the mix in a confused way.
Po6 relates to Po3. Whether the resurgence of populism in Europe or America is going to be economic or not depends on your politics. Its most likely a complicated combination of both. What I found remarkable was that Po3 doesn’t exactly let the center-left parties in Europe off the hook for the resurgence of populism.Report
Po3 – I’m with you there. The questions of slavery reparations and of aboriginal self governance add nuance, but do not fundamentally change the issues like
– our children are bullied at school as “dirty (name of race)”
– cops keep murdering our young men
– employers won’t hire us because they think we’re lazy, and take our unemployment levels as evidence of our laziness
– our communities don’t have safe drinking water, when much more minor water problems in white communities are treated as huge emergenciesReport
Trump canceled the North Korean summit. Color me unsurprised.Report
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/05/the-lil-tay-saga-reaches-its-logical-conclusion/561116/
Might be more society but this is an area where my liberalism sounds a lot like cultural conservatism. I don’t get the whole Instagram culture of flashing luxury goods and egging on jealous haters or whoever. And I am far from hating nice things. Part of me does blame declining standards of decency on what is happening to this girl.Report
Part of me is with you on the declining standards of decency but another part of me wonders if there were ever standards of decency. Human history is filled with people who will do anything for fame and fortune including some very young people. While lots of actresses hated the casting coach culture and wished they could get by an ordinary additions, others saw it as part of the system and were able to live with it fine. If that is what they needed to do to get ahead, so be it. The Internet is just a broadcast amplifier, allowing more people like this to do whatever to get fame and fortune.Report
Po1 – It boggles the mind that people don’t readily conceive of regulatory capture. Of course industry welcomes regulation: they write the regulations themselves to hurt disruptive competitors. See, for instance, every industry. I feel the linked article would be better if it were: “Industry doesn’t always support regulation”.
Po4 – I’m not sure there is a compelling moral argument to be made for going after suppliers of drugs or abortion services, but it is certainly an effect multiplier if one is seeking to eliminate the practice.
Po5 – Ahhhhhh, economic planning. That works well. (See below.)
Po7 – I have a socialist friend who is fond of telling me that Marx said that we all need to be socialists now so we can be anarchists in the future or some such. I think this story is a classic example of how that thinking is flawed to say the least. What we should do if we really want more equitable opportunities for the labor classes is start by eliminating some of the artificial protections for the managerial classes, such as risk-free incorporation, tax incentives, subsidies, licensing, privatization, bailouts, and state-sanctioned rent-seeking.Report
People who enjoy Louis Farrakhan will enjoy this clip.
If you don’t want to listen to it, a short summary is that Minister Farrakhan is acknowledging that Trump is the enemy of his enemies.
I don’t think that the African-American vote is going to return to the high numbers seen during the Obama administration. I mean, assuming Farrakhan is a bellwether. Maybe he’s just a crank.Report
I think Farrakhan is that King of The Negroes that white supremacists listen to, and nod to each other knowingly, believing that they are tuned into the Secret Black Consciousness.Report
Let’s just hope that nobody else listens to him, then.
Or the radio station in Chicago that was interviewing him.Report
Right, like imagine if some alien race were to have this conversation about Pat Robertson, the Voice of White America, or Milo, King of the Homosexuals.Report
“Pat Robertson, the Voice of White America”
FWIW there was a time when you wouldn’t have to find an alien to have that conversation. Around the time of 9/11, you could’ve just crossed the border to Canada to have it… or called some of my Canadian relatives :D.Report
Just checked. Looks like WGCI is the #14 radio station in Chicago.Report
@chip-daniels I understand what you’re going for, but you are not exactly well-positioned to use the phrase “King of The Negroes.”
Any one of my non-white student workers (and for that matter most of the white ones) who heard you say that would have exactly one first impression of the old white guy saying it, whether they agreed with your assessment or not.
And it wouldn’t be a good one.Report
(Sorry for the weird way of phrasing that, btw. It came out that way because I specifically frequently have the experience of hearing about “Dumb things old white guys feel entitled to say,” because they have to listen to their professors, then they come straight to work, and I’m not a prof, so I’m a safe person to vent to… I hear a lot about such things.)Report