Bernie Sanders accepts Joe Rogan’s endorsement
From Bernie Sanders on Twitter:
“I think I’ll probably vote for Bernie… He’s been insanely consistent his entire life. He’s basically been saying the same thing, been for the same thing his whole life. And that in and of itself is a very powerful structure to operate from.” -Joe Rogan pic.twitter.com/fuQP0KwGGI
— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) January 23, 2020
(Featured image is “Riot police in wait mode” by trexcali . Used under creative commons license.)
See, now this is a great example of how out of touch I am. My response was “Who is Joe Rogan?”Report
Joe Rogan has one of the most listened to podcasts in known human history. (Atlanteans might have had better podcast penetration, of course.)
In any case, he’s got a very popular podcast that covers pretty much everything. He has guests on and they talk about stuff and they wander through all kinds of topics, political, religion, sex, pop culture. Joe Rogan is affable and funny and gets his guests to do drugs on his show.
Anyway, he’s controversial. This is manifesting, currently, as people demanding Bernie not celebrate Joe Rogan’s endorsement.Report
He played himself on the TV show, News Radio.Report
That was mostly my reaction, although I think I have heard his name before.Report
From erstwhile Brother Doc Saunders:
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More people didn’t know who Joe Rogan was than I expected.
Fair enough. Here’s Reason Magazine doing their take on the kerfuffle. (Yes, it’s Reason. Please keep in mind that it’s Reason and that they have a Point of View while you are reading the story and you may be able to protect yourself from Libertarian Cooties.)Report
I’m also unaware of Rogan, but given his history and the statement he issued he sounds like one of those low info voters who will waver between positions that are diametrically opposed, like favoring small government and a UBI.
Steve M over at No More Mister Nice Blog describes one such voter thusly:
” It’s politics as lifehack. She’s looking for One Weird Trick that will solve all of America’s problems. Revolution! MAGA! A gay millennial! The only surprise is that she’s not supporting Andrew Yang, the ultimate lifehack candidate.”
https://nomoremister.blogspot.com/2020/01/new-improved.html
I remember hearing similar sentiments applied to Ross Perot voters or Nader voters who were just looking for Something Different and Novel which really is a way to avoid grappling with the difficult thinking that comes with being an engaged citizen.Report
Yeah, that sounds about right to me. This is a kind of voter that just wants someone to sweep in and fix everything. Of course, if it were that simple someone would have done it already.Report
The author of that post has chosen an only very slightly different way of avoiding grappling with the difficult thinking that comes with being an engaged citizen:
He’s not wrong about the simplistic thinking of the voter interviewed in that clip, but fails to realize that he’s looking into a mirror.Report
This is also true.Report
“…one of those low info voters who will waver between positions that are diametrically opposed, like favoring small government and a UBI. Steve M over at No More Mister Nice Blog…”
Milton Friedman, the father of modern economics and patron saint of small government, strongly advocated for UBI throughout his life: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YLt2X8ZybdsReport
I know. Friedman or his libertarian followers would be the perfect example of the One Weird Trick/ Lifehack voter.
Because Friedman didn’t advocate for a social welfare state, or a state in which equal citizens negotiated with each other over their needs and interests.
The UBI was essentially a tribute that he was willing to pay in exchange for all other government organs being stripped. It was his version of “Come The Revolution Skateboards Will Be Free”.Report
Your position is that Friedman didn’t advocate for a welfare state while we are discussing his advocacy of a UBI? that’s an interesting position to take.
Friedman had a fully consistent position here. For Friedman, the size of government wasn’t about taxes it was the amount of control the government exerted over people’s lives (he used the page count of the Federal Register as a proxy for government size, not tax rates or the Federal Budget). A UBI doesn’t require people to justify themselves to a government bureaucracy like existing welfare does, so that makes it a reduction in the size of government, even if it ends up costing more in taxes.
If you read Friedman’s writings you can see this theme in a lot of things he advocated for. He saw a role for government, but that role was about preventing individual people’s actions from unduly interference with each other rather than attempting to impose a view of The Good upon the world.Report
Correct, he was not advocating for a welfare state.
The UBI is a fixed-sum stipend which is given out regardless of need.
Social welfare is variable sum based on need.
There are a lot of good arguments for a UBI, but it shouldn’t be confused with social welfare.Report
For Friedman, the size of government wasn’t about taxes it was the amount of control the government exerted over people’s lives…
A lot of the people I’ve met over the years complaining that government should be smaller actually want government to be simpler. This is particularly a problem, for example, for a small businessman in the US. In some cases, they have to deal with all of city, county, state, and federal regulations/agencies in order to do something.
One of the interesting things I found during my time as a state legislative staffer was that all of the staff, regardless of their personal politics, was in favor of simplicity. It was literally a real question that got asked all the time: “Can we make this simpler?” It could put us at odds with some of the special interests, for whom complexity is often a feature rather than a bug.Report
The Building Code is a perfect example.
Most sections start with a broad sweeping statement e.g., “All parts of a building must be accessible to the handicapped”; Then followed by multiple paragraphs of exceptions and provisos with Byzantine detail and loopholes.
Why? Because various interested parties lobbied the code-writing entity to insert sections which allowed them to skirt of avoid the difficulty of the simpler language.
Complexity is the result of negotiations between interested parties.Report
“building codes are a government handout to rich contractors” is an interesting takeReport
No, it would be a stupid take, which is why nobody here is making it.Report
what the hell is “Complexity is the result of negotiations between interested parties” supposed to mean, then?
Like, do you believe that there actually exists some already-defined and easily-verified standard for what constitutes an “accessible building” and that builders insist on complexity because it somehow allows them to skirt laws by confusing people?Report
George actually explains it below, but I will elaborate.
Building codes are written by an independent entity, The International Code Congress, which is made up of people from any interested party- Fire Chiefs, City building officials, engineers, architects, advocacy groups, real estate developers. Anyone can join- you can if you wanted to.
They form teams to work on each section, and literally gather together in meetings where new code sections are proposed, argued vociferously then voted on.
The model code language is then published and all cities choose whether to adopt it or not, or in part and make addendums and so on.
So the sections on handicapped accessibility, like all the others are negotiated between all the different parties.
Which is why it applies here but not there, to this sort of building, but not that one.
There actually IS a set of regulations promulgated by independent agencies as to what constitutes an “accessible building” but to follow them strictly, like hospitals and government offices do, would be expensive for private developers.
For example: A new apartment has a bathroom which is large enough for a wheelchair bound person to enter and turn around. But it doesn’t have grab bars!
The code has a section requiring developers to only install grab bars at the request of a tenant who requests them.
This adds complexity to the code, but satisfies both the developers and disabled rights activists.
I can’t help but suspect that most regulations are a bit like this; Where the rules requiring taillights are hashed out between lobbyists for competing interests.Report
“This adds complexity to the code”
uh-huh. “A bathroom must be so-many feet wide and long and have so-many feet separation between toilet and sink, and toilet must be minimum so-many inches high and sink maximum so-many inches, with the toilet-paper holder at least this-many and no more than that-many inches above and ahead of the toilet, and the mirror is required to be no more than so-many inches off the ground, and the faucet must have individual handles of the grab-lever type rather than a knob or spigot, and the light switch must have an occupancy sensor and a timer which can be operated with a push on an area of no fewer than so-many square inches and include a lighted feature of at least so-many lumens brightness.”
“That’s not too complex?”
“No, clearly not!”
“Can I get an exception on installing grab bars?”
“OH MY GOD, you want to COMPLICATE EVERYTHING, you abelist pile of GARBAGE”Report
Complexity is also the result of reality, where the people enforcing the code encounter a situation in which the code mandates something that would be absolutely stupid or unworkable.
“All workplaces must be handicap accessible.”
“Does that apply to a ditch for a water line?”
“There are no exceptions.”
“This guy is going to be pissed when I bulldoze a ramp in his front lawn.”
Or
“All storage buildings this size must have a sprinkler system.”
“It stores sodium. Sodium and water explode.”
And thus the code books get filled with exceptions because simple rules don’t adequately describe a complex world.
It’s similar to the way common law accumulates complexity based on thousands of cases heard by thousands of juries, each deciding a particular case.Report
Vox provides a valuable explainer:
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