My biggest problem with Kate Bolick's piece was not that she has no intention of getting married. It was largely being very dense around the issue of her class privilege. There was one section where she talked about borrowing a house in the Hamptons. I think the friend was another single lady who spent most of her time in London. My immediate thought upon reading this sentence or hearing about it was:
"Really? How many people have the time for all that?"
My inner socialist kicks a lot at trend pieces about the 1 percent or close to 1 percent. There is a big difference between being a single woman who can borrow a house in the Hamptons and a single woman struggling via low-wage jobs!
I would welcome the end to at least one stupid aspect of the Culture Wars though.
I am still economically on the left and believe in the welfare state, unions, single payer-healthcare, and end to our draconian prison system, and many other issues. The entire economic message of the Republican Party seems rooted in a protestantism that is alien to me.
All this being said, I never understood why 24/7 news is a viable market. It is true that only a small handful of people watch each station but they seem to do so constantly. All three repeat stories numerous times a day and this makes it kind of dull.
CNN is absolutely worthless as far as I am concerned. They are the feather-weights of Cable News.
MSNBC is left-leaning but there is a big difference in the books that Rachel Maddow and Chris Hayes writes and the books written by Hannity and company. Maddow and Hayes write about actual serious issues and put forward policy changes like restoring Congress in their war-making powers. Hannity writes a book long elementary-school bully taunt that roughly translates as "Look at those dumb libruls"
I somewhat agree. There are a lot of young conservatives. They are just largely invisible from my urban core of people who are largely college and grad school educated.
However, do you think we could be entering a cycle where power switches every two years or so?
2008: Democratic Party sweeps the election
2010: Tea Party/Republicans gain control of the House by huge numbers. They also gain control of many state legislatures including a super-majority in New Hampshire.
2012: Obama wins reelection pretty easily despite some strum und drang. The Democrats increase their majority in the Senate. They gain a super-majority (or near) in California and retake the Minnesota and New Hampshire legislators. New Hampshire seems to be an especially strong showing of Tea Party overreach.
I spend a lot of time arguing with more ardent Dawkinites that Judaism is distinct from Right-wing Evangelical Christianity. Interestingly most of my Christian friends are on the left (as are most of my friends). They are largely of Jesuit-Catholic, Quaker, and Unitarian backgrounds.
Prosperity Doctrine/Gospel of Wealth goes back way before Ayn Rand was even born. I think it always existed in one form or another but largely kicked into full gear during the Gilded Age.
William Jennings Bryan was the Christian Left of his day. It is too bad we remember him for his downfall during the Monkey Trials. It would be good to remember him for his beliefs in dignity and decency for workers and farmers, his Pacifism (he resigned as Secretary in State because he thought Wilson was gunning up for War with Germany. One can't imagine something like this happening today.)
As I have said in other Internet communities, I don't get the conservative complaints or boasts about being "anti-PC". What conservatives decry as being politically correct, I just consider treating people with dignity and decency.
Yes, conservatives are people who just don't get it often. The world has changed and they don't want to deal.
People are simply really good at compartmenalizing and holding wildly contradictory beliefs without a second thought. I do this, other people on the League do this, you do this, everyone does it. The problem is that we are really good at catching these contradictions in others but not in ourselves. We need to be called out to see our own contradictions.
I know a woman who belongs to a facebook community with a name like "Peaceloving Hippie Freaks". She shares memes from this group fairly often and it is fairly typical hippie-liberal stuff. One shared meme was a picture of someone from a third-world country who was using crushed soda bottles as impromptou footwear because he could not afford shoes with a message on shutting up about your first-world problems. A few weeks ago facebook informed me that said woman also "liked" Mitt Romney. Then I would see her gush about Mitt and wonder if he saw an astrologer because Mitt was a Pieces III like her.
Needless to say this caused me to scratch my head a bit. However, it probably did not cause her the same kind of perplexity.
How about the Papa John's Pizza CEO? He is going around very cynically claiming that he will need to raise pizza prices by a pittance (50 cents or so) or lower employee hours at some stores as to comply with Obamacare or make his employees ineligible for Obamacare.
Can we call this guy a major asshole? He seems to think his customers are so craven (and/or poor) that they will rebel at a minor increase in prices or that he is so against providing some healthcare that he is willing to further drive his employees into poverty by reducing their hours.
Guys like him are why we need Single Payer and not Obama's mandates. Obamacare is better than nothing but still allows jerks to play politics.
I somewhat agree with DRS that the timing is awfully suspicious and paints the guy being an asshole and sore loser. The timing is also helped because he is part of a trend of business people doing such. I can't find the list now for somereason.
The right-wing meltdown over Obama's reelection is a bit fascinating to watch. A lot of liberals did threaten "to move to Canada" if Bush one in 2004 but this seems closer to what is unjustly described as the Pauline Kael problem. A lot of Romney supporters just seem to not understand or know anyone who could vote for Obama. They drunk their own kool-aid on him being a radical, Socialist, Kenyan anti-Colonialist, fraud, and not very intelligent person. How did they do this? Why wasn't enough for them to accept you don't get into Harvard Law or become editor of the Harvard Law Review by being a slouch? Psychologists could have a field day exploring this. I wonder what Jonathan Haidt will say.
That being said, 2012 is probably much more of a social media election than other and lots of people are letting their unrestrained Ids loose. The sad version of this are the high school students with shockingly racist tweets:
I liked your paragraph on objectivism but that it also described exactly why I am against Randianism. These business CEOs in the thrall of Rand are arrogant and seem to see themselves as Masters of the Universe. You are right that it is a combination of Rand and Calvin that creates the beast.
This raises the question of why do people want to live in and/or visit a particular area.
I think lifestyle/aesthetics are often factors that come in. This creates a condrumn doesn't it. Some cities have very iconic looks and cultures (I don't think DC is one of these cities) that is part of their appeal in an unquantifiable way. Would people still want to move/live in those cities if their looks changed?
I don't have an answer to this question but I think it is worth raising. I imagine San Francisco would take a hit if it lost its iconic housing look.
Lots of things are illegal and still happen. Though I admit that we can have constant back and forth debates about this sort of stuff. Drugs and Prostitution and Gambling will happen whether legal or not but there are still many people against those things (on all sides of the political spectrum) even if they happen.
I don't know if faith is the right word but I prefer systems that acknowledge the vast compexities of the human brain and society. Many (but not all) economists seem to have trouble with incorporating emotions and psychology into their concepts.
I agree that these thoughts can very well be irrational and might often be bad but they also exist and need to be accounted for.
This goes beyond the unacceptable bigotry and racism mentioned by North above but to the simple fact that people don't like feeling cheated or bilked or that someone is taking advantage of an unfair situation/need.
With the exception of close to the Financial District, there are not really many (or any) high rise residential buildings. I think there would be a revolt if a developer tried to tear down low-level apartment buildings in a neighborhood like mine and build a high rise.
I think a little (just a little) Nimbyism is always going to be around and this is largely okay.
In short, not every city in New York needs to be Manhattan. In fact, most people move to cities like Boston, San Francisco, Portland, Seattle (or even into Brooklyn) because they are not Manhattan and filled with high-rises.
What people want and aesthetics are also important.
Who are these people on the left who think that economic liberty is only an illusion?
I don't think that economic liberty is an illusion but I think it means something different than Republicans/conservatives think it means.
When I listen to conservatives/Republicans talk about freedom and liberty, it seems to be the same message that they have been sprouting since The New Deal with the Liberty League. They are against any form of welfare state/safety net. Any sort of safety net feature was a march towards tyranny.
This is bullshit. I see no reason, nor has anyone ever pro-offered to give me one about why you can't have a capitalist economy and a strong welfare state. I think Google and Universal Healthcare can exist in the same nation.
I am more interested in arguments like the one you made about building height restrictions. Presuming it is safe, I have no problem with allowing taller buildings. But I would like the right to shut up about how decency and social welfare is a march towards chain and oppression. It really isn't.
True but I don't believe in humans as economical or rational actors.
I believe that humans are social, emotional, and largely irrational actors and will always inject things where they don't make sense.
One of my biggest problems with Matt Y (and most traditional economists) is that they are thinking in pure hypothetical land of pure rationalism. People are not rational. We can be from time to time but largely we are emotional. Poets know more about how humans act than economists. And I would trust a poet more to come up with an accurate hypothetical on what would happen if a certain policy were introduced.
As a completely unrelated example, let's use Hurricane Sandy and Price Gouging. Matt came out with a series of articles that allowing price gouging would solve the shortage problem. When people dissented, he doubled down.
The rationalist/economist variant on price gouging seems to be that by allowing price gouging, these results would happen:
1. People would only take as much as they need and this will free up resources.
2. People will see that there is money to be had and rush in with the necessary items and this will decrease the price
Never mind that NJ had plenty of gas, the problem was a lack of electricity and ability to get the pumps working.
You need to inject the human and psychological element to understand that items one and two will probably not happen. People might rush in with the desired resources but the prices would remain high and I would bet good money that people would still horde if they could afford it, and those that could not afford the high prices will still suffer. Also price gouging can cause damage in the long term for a business. People will remember being bilked and probably stop going to said business when the crisis time is over.
It also doesn't help as Felix Salmon points out that most arguments for price-gouging come from wealthy people to afford it.
In short, most economists seems perfect for Vulcans but not people. I am a bit amazed that economists still feel largely uncomfortable with acknowledging that people are not rational. Behavorial economists excluded of course.
Somewhat, I think that private credentialism can be more exclusionary along racist, homophobic, sexist, religious bigotry lines.
The original ABA code of ethics was largely designed to keep poor immigrants (especially "Russian Jewboys") from competing with older and established WASPs. Some of the prohibitions included no advertising about rates. It took until the 1970s for the Supreme Court to say that this violated the First Amendment.
Public/Government credentialism at least provides avenues for challenges along equal protection lines in court.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
On “Numeracy, Hedonism and Journalism: A Place-Holder”
My biggest problem with Kate Bolick's piece was not that she has no intention of getting married. It was largely being very dense around the issue of her class privilege. There was one section where she talked about borrowing a house in the Hamptons. I think the friend was another single lady who spent most of her time in London. My immediate thought upon reading this sentence or hearing about it was:
"Really? How many people have the time for all that?"
My inner socialist kicks a lot at trend pieces about the 1 percent or close to 1 percent. There is a big difference between being a single woman who can borrow a house in the Hamptons and a single woman struggling via low-wage jobs!
On “A Question About Same Sex Marriage”
Probably not.
I would welcome the end to at least one stupid aspect of the Culture Wars though.
I am still economically on the left and believe in the welfare state, unions, single payer-healthcare, and end to our draconian prison system, and many other issues. The entire economic message of the Republican Party seems rooted in a protestantism that is alien to me.
On “Sailing Away to Irrelevance, Part II”
All this being said, I never understood why 24/7 news is a viable market. It is true that only a small handful of people watch each station but they seem to do so constantly. All three repeat stories numerous times a day and this makes it kind of dull.
Do people just like it as background noise?
"
CNN is absolutely worthless as far as I am concerned. They are the feather-weights of Cable News.
MSNBC is left-leaning but there is a big difference in the books that Rachel Maddow and Chris Hayes writes and the books written by Hannity and company. Maddow and Hayes write about actual serious issues and put forward policy changes like restoring Congress in their war-making powers. Hannity writes a book long elementary-school bully taunt that roughly translates as "Look at those dumb libruls"
"
I somewhat agree. There are a lot of young conservatives. They are just largely invisible from my urban core of people who are largely college and grad school educated.
However, do you think we could be entering a cycle where power switches every two years or so?
2008: Democratic Party sweeps the election
2010: Tea Party/Republicans gain control of the House by huge numbers. They also gain control of many state legislatures including a super-majority in New Hampshire.
2012: Obama wins reelection pretty easily despite some strum und drang. The Democrats increase their majority in the Senate. They gain a super-majority (or near) in California and retake the Minnesota and New Hampshire legislators. New Hampshire seems to be an especially strong showing of Tea Party overreach.
On “A Lump of Coal”
Maybe originally. This was certainly true for Byron. He loathed Social Darwinism.
Now many of them seem to be social darwinists in their own right.
"
Don't forget Jews.
I spend a lot of time arguing with more ardent Dawkinites that Judaism is distinct from Right-wing Evangelical Christianity. Interestingly most of my Christian friends are on the left (as are most of my friends). They are largely of Jesuit-Catholic, Quaker, and Unitarian backgrounds.
"
Prosperity Doctrine/Gospel of Wealth goes back way before Ayn Rand was even born. I think it always existed in one form or another but largely kicked into full gear during the Gilded Age.
William Jennings Bryan was the Christian Left of his day. It is too bad we remember him for his downfall during the Monkey Trials. It would be good to remember him for his beliefs in dignity and decency for workers and farmers, his Pacifism (he resigned as Secretary in State because he thought Wilson was gunning up for War with Germany. One can't imagine something like this happening today.)
"
As I have said in other Internet communities, I don't get the conservative complaints or boasts about being "anti-PC". What conservatives decry as being politically correct, I just consider treating people with dignity and decency.
Yes, conservatives are people who just don't get it often. The world has changed and they don't want to deal.
"
And on the combination:
People are simply really good at compartmenalizing and holding wildly contradictory beliefs without a second thought. I do this, other people on the League do this, you do this, everyone does it. The problem is that we are really good at catching these contradictions in others but not in ourselves. We need to be called out to see our own contradictions.
I know a woman who belongs to a facebook community with a name like "Peaceloving Hippie Freaks". She shares memes from this group fairly often and it is fairly typical hippie-liberal stuff. One shared meme was a picture of someone from a third-world country who was using crushed soda bottles as impromptou footwear because he could not afford shoes with a message on shutting up about your first-world problems. A few weeks ago facebook informed me that said woman also "liked" Mitt Romney. Then I would see her gush about Mitt and wonder if he saw an astrologer because Mitt was a Pieces III like her.
Needless to say this caused me to scratch my head a bit. However, it probably did not cause her the same kind of perplexity.
"
How about the Papa John's Pizza CEO? He is going around very cynically claiming that he will need to raise pizza prices by a pittance (50 cents or so) or lower employee hours at some stores as to comply with Obamacare or make his employees ineligible for Obamacare.
Can we call this guy a major asshole? He seems to think his customers are so craven (and/or poor) that they will rebel at a minor increase in prices or that he is so against providing some healthcare that he is willing to further drive his employees into poverty by reducing their hours.
Guys like him are why we need Single Payer and not Obama's mandates. Obamacare is better than nothing but still allows jerks to play politics.
"
I somewhat agree with DRS that the timing is awfully suspicious and paints the guy being an asshole and sore loser. The timing is also helped because he is part of a trend of business people doing such. I can't find the list now for somereason.
The right-wing meltdown over Obama's reelection is a bit fascinating to watch. A lot of liberals did threaten "to move to Canada" if Bush one in 2004 but this seems closer to what is unjustly described as the Pauline Kael problem. A lot of Romney supporters just seem to not understand or know anyone who could vote for Obama. They drunk their own kool-aid on him being a radical, Socialist, Kenyan anti-Colonialist, fraud, and not very intelligent person. How did they do this? Why wasn't enough for them to accept you don't get into Harvard Law or become editor of the Harvard Law Review by being a slouch? Psychologists could have a field day exploring this. I wonder what Jonathan Haidt will say.
That being said, 2012 is probably much more of a social media election than other and lots of people are letting their unrestrained Ids loose. The sad version of this are the high school students with shockingly racist tweets:
http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2012/11/09/jezebel_rats_out_racist_teen_tweeters_calling_the_kids_schools_is_crossing.html
I liked your paragraph on objectivism but that it also described exactly why I am against Randianism. These business CEOs in the thrall of Rand are arrogant and seem to see themselves as Masters of the Universe. You are right that it is a combination of Rand and Calvin that creates the beast.
On “Economic Liberty after Obama”
Good example.
"
This raises the question of why do people want to live in and/or visit a particular area.
I think lifestyle/aesthetics are often factors that come in. This creates a condrumn doesn't it. Some cities have very iconic looks and cultures (I don't think DC is one of these cities) that is part of their appeal in an unquantifiable way. Would people still want to move/live in those cities if their looks changed?
I don't have an answer to this question but I think it is worth raising. I imagine San Francisco would take a hit if it lost its iconic housing look.
On “It’s the Party, Stupid, Ctd. : How we deal with the peccadillos is actually pretty important, too”
Well you post made me laugh.
"
Concurred.
Really, I don't understand is view at all. He needs some therapy.
On “Trade Sequence Part 2 – They Took Our Jobs!”
at North:
Lots of things are illegal and still happen. Though I admit that we can have constant back and forth debates about this sort of stuff. Drugs and Prostitution and Gambling will happen whether legal or not but there are still many people against those things (on all sides of the political spectrum) even if they happen.
On “It’s the Party, Stupid, Ctd. : How we deal with the peccadillos is actually pretty important, too”
This guy seems like a class act:
http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2012/11/eric-dondero-boycott-democrat-libertarian.html
Some of his answers were unintentionally funny though.
On “Trade Sequence Part 2 – They Took Our Jobs!”
I don't know if faith is the right word but I prefer systems that acknowledge the vast compexities of the human brain and society. Many (but not all) economists seem to have trouble with incorporating emotions and psychology into their concepts.
I agree that these thoughts can very well be irrational and might often be bad but they also exist and need to be accounted for.
This goes beyond the unacceptable bigotry and racism mentioned by North above but to the simple fact that people don't like feeling cheated or bilked or that someone is taking advantage of an unfair situation/need.
On “Economic Liberty after Obama”
True but mainly in the downtown/business area.
With the exception of close to the Financial District, there are not really many (or any) high rise residential buildings. I think there would be a revolt if a developer tried to tear down low-level apartment buildings in a neighborhood like mine and build a high rise.
"
I think a little (just a little) Nimbyism is always going to be around and this is largely okay.
In short, not every city in New York needs to be Manhattan. In fact, most people move to cities like Boston, San Francisco, Portland, Seattle (or even into Brooklyn) because they are not Manhattan and filled with high-rises.
What people want and aesthetics are also important.
"
Noted.
It doesn't answer my other question though. I just don't buy the Liberty League/Freedom Works logic.
"
Who are these people on the left who think that economic liberty is only an illusion?
I don't think that economic liberty is an illusion but I think it means something different than Republicans/conservatives think it means.
When I listen to conservatives/Republicans talk about freedom and liberty, it seems to be the same message that they have been sprouting since The New Deal with the Liberty League. They are against any form of welfare state/safety net. Any sort of safety net feature was a march towards tyranny.
This is bullshit. I see no reason, nor has anyone ever pro-offered to give me one about why you can't have a capitalist economy and a strong welfare state. I think Google and Universal Healthcare can exist in the same nation.
I am more interested in arguments like the one you made about building height restrictions. Presuming it is safe, I have no problem with allowing taller buildings. But I would like the right to shut up about how decency and social welfare is a march towards chain and oppression. It really isn't.
On “Trade Sequence Part 2 – They Took Our Jobs!”
True but I don't believe in humans as economical or rational actors.
I believe that humans are social, emotional, and largely irrational actors and will always inject things where they don't make sense.
One of my biggest problems with Matt Y (and most traditional economists) is that they are thinking in pure hypothetical land of pure rationalism. People are not rational. We can be from time to time but largely we are emotional. Poets know more about how humans act than economists. And I would trust a poet more to come up with an accurate hypothetical on what would happen if a certain policy were introduced.
As a completely unrelated example, let's use Hurricane Sandy and Price Gouging. Matt came out with a series of articles that allowing price gouging would solve the shortage problem. When people dissented, he doubled down.
The rationalist/economist variant on price gouging seems to be that by allowing price gouging, these results would happen:
1. People would only take as much as they need and this will free up resources.
2. People will see that there is money to be had and rush in with the necessary items and this will decrease the price
Never mind that NJ had plenty of gas, the problem was a lack of electricity and ability to get the pumps working.
You need to inject the human and psychological element to understand that items one and two will probably not happen. People might rush in with the desired resources but the prices would remain high and I would bet good money that people would still horde if they could afford it, and those that could not afford the high prices will still suffer. Also price gouging can cause damage in the long term for a business. People will remember being bilked and probably stop going to said business when the crisis time is over.
It also doesn't help as Felix Salmon points out that most arguments for price-gouging come from wealthy people to afford it.
In short, most economists seems perfect for Vulcans but not people. I am a bit amazed that economists still feel largely uncomfortable with acknowledging that people are not rational. Behavorial economists excluded of course.
"
Somewhat, I think that private credentialism can be more exclusionary along racist, homophobic, sexist, religious bigotry lines.
The original ABA code of ethics was largely designed to keep poor immigrants (especially "Russian Jewboys") from competing with older and established WASPs. Some of the prohibitions included no advertising about rates. It took until the 1970s for the Supreme Court to say that this violated the First Amendment.
Public/Government credentialism at least provides avenues for challenges along equal protection lines in court.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.