There are ways to interpret the 2nd Amendment that go counter to yours and many people believe in those interpretations and many of those are more brilliant lawyers and constitutional scholars than either of us.
The Constitution is rather unclear and open to interpretation in many places and the Second Amendment is one of those places. Scalia's ideas not withstanding.
I think gun restrictions would ceases these types of shootings. There are many more gun deaths and mass shootings in the U.S. than in European countries and gun restrictions must play a role.
That being said, I realize that my position is probably a minority one right now and changes must be done in a way that goes for a long-game. This is going to be a decades-long battle.
As to your other question and in a completely unrelated tone, I thought it was really cute and sweet that the Czech delegation wore Wellies in tribute to their British hosts.
I agree that growth and sometimes very rapid growth can be good and that the trick is figuring out what is real growth vs. another bubble.
Humans seem to fall for a lot of bubbles or there is the real deal in growth (Goggle, Amazon, PayPal, Ebay) that can also be part of a bubble (a ton of other tech companies). Maybe a lot of us have trouble distinguishing between growth vs. the illusion of growth.
There are also non-economic considerations. There was another thread recently where someone mentioned that the meaning to life is more than economics. I think most people would agree. The problems seem to be that my version of "there is more to life than economics and growth" might be one where another person thinks that economics or growth are more important.
NIMBY v. Development seems to be the strongest area where this disagreement comes up. I agree that a lot of NIMBYism is very out of hand and can often go to far and there might be too many hoops for developers/builders/home owners to jump through before getting their permits. However, I also think that neighborhoods do have collective rights to retain the appearance of their neighborhoods. Maybe not in keeping single-family housing but certainly in preventing someone from just buying a lot, tearing down the existing structure(s) and building something that sticks out like a sore thumb.
There should be a middle ground option between Jane Jacobs and Robert Moses that can make most people happy or at least give each side some of what they want but not everything.*
*I'm a firm believer that political compromise of this sort. The problem is a lot of people are not. Look at Jim DeMint and the Club for Growth as a good example.
MFarmer strikes me as a very clever performance artist or as a variant of Poe's law in action.
Yes I know Poe's law only deals with religious extremism but I use it as a more broad thing like when I can't tell whether something seems like it belongs in the Onion or not.
What do you think is the line between economic freedom and consumer protection?
As an example:
I am considering trying to find a new gym. Preferably one that is closer to work. My current gym is near my apartment but I would rather not get up at 5:20 so I can be at the gym at 6 in the morning (I hate working out after work).
So I began searching on the net for gyms near my office. The problem is that very few (only one) gave prices for membership on the website. The rest of them either provided information on their types of membership (without price) or required you to fill out a personal information form so they could have you talk to a membership services person.
I'd rather not do this. All I want is the price and this seems very simple to put on a webpage. I'm very cranky about businesses that make me hand over data before getting information on prices or go through with being signed up.
Would you say it is against economic freedom to compel companies to list their prices in clear and visible language? Why should my only option as a consumer be to jump through hoops in under to get the information I need to make an informed decision?
How do you feel about binding arbitration clauses in consumer contracts between parties of uneven bargaining power?
How do you feel about people who argue for sustainable growth instead of just growth, growth, growth?
While I still support capitalism, this does not necessarily mean I think the preferred policies of business need to always be followed. My impression of Matt Y is that he is still a bit too innocent on how the neo-liberal mantra of growth, growth, growth has not translated into growth for everyone. I think there is something to be said about wage stagnation and how the 1 percent is capturing way too much of the wealth.
This gets into pesky and hard issues. We should reward innovation but by how much? Yes successful CEOs deserve a lot of money but they also seem to have created a world where they get a lot of money whether they do well or do piss poorly. This is a luxury that very few people have.
Good points and sorry for calling you a libertarian incorrectly.
Several years ago on NPR's Planet Money podcast, they were interviewing various economists to give people a sense of the various schools: Marxist, Chicago, Austrian, Kensyian, etc. They interviewed one libertarian professor out of George Mason University who came very close to arguing that if you lift all government restrictions, we would all be happy shiny rainbows. His honest and sincere example was that he thought corporations would have come up with some miracle drug that allowed people to eat whatever they want without getting fat. It was only but for the pesky FDA that this has not happened yet.
I'd say that is a rather romantic view. And one I will call bullshit on or at least using very bad science and going to our basest desires to promote libertarianism.
The problem with terms like "romantic" and "utopian" is that like hypocrisy, it is very hard to see in your opponents or other people but extremely hard to see in yourself.
Libertarians and the Right always seem to like to accuse liberals of being nothing but dreamers with their heads in the clouds while painting themselves as the true realists on human nature. A quick look at the "non-fiction" best seller list of the NY Times reveals that there is quite a cottage industry in right-wing books making this exact message.
I call bullshit. There is just as much romanticism and utopian on the right especially in social politics. There is probably just as much utopianism and romanticism in libertarian politics.
I went to one of those colleges for undergrad. While I will never reach the upper-rungs of power, I have known more than my fair share of people to reach the wedding pages of the NYTimes. Also known as the merger and acquisitions page.
IIRC, meritocracy was not meant to be a good term. The original sociologist who coined the term imagined something like the present state happening. However, society ignored that.
So is there anything that can break a pseudo-meritocracy? Probably not completely. This is a wicked problem in that there are no full solutions. Only reforms that can make things better or worse.
As I said before, nepotism is a tricky issue. It is natural for people to want to help their off-spring in as many ways as possible. Though what counts as help differs wildly through culture or culture. A lot of cultures and people think you help your children by unceremoniously kicking them out at 18. When I lived in Japan, a lot of my UK housemates told me that they were required by their parents to pay "rent" while in high school. The sum was not high but it was not low either. I thought this was madness but I grew up in an area where parents could and did pay their children healthy allowances (again not too low or too high) because said parents wanted their children to concentrate on school and not be distracted by after-school jobs. This would continue until the grad school level for a sizable chunk of my classmates.
Both sides will go in circles about which helps children more and never reach a consensus.
Nepotism is also something that goes across socio-economic cultures in many ways. I know many people who would decry someone who went to work for their parent's law firm or financial firm as being a "little rich kid". They might even argue that if your dad was a lawyer, you should not become a lawyer and forge your own path. However, the same people would also be accepting of someone whose dad or mom got them a spot in the police or fire department because said kid "has been bred to be a policeman or a fireman"
I find it odd that it is acceptable to breed kids into some family professions but not others. As far as I can tell, the dividing line is on profitability. If the business needs to employ family members to survive, hiring your son and daughter is okay especially if it is a non-educated type of job like being a waitress or manning the front desk. If the job requires a degree or training, hiring your son and daughter is dirty, dirty nepotism. Same if it is a desirable career like art and media.
All of this adds to my belief that most human discourse is resentment and counter-resentment.
I would have much rather they saved the homeowners and innocent investors and let the banks fail personally.
That being said, I am not opposed to less regulation if it came hand in hand with a very robust welfare state and social safety nets. This was mentioned on a thread over the weekend. Sweden has a lot fewer economic regulations but they combine it with universal healthcare, good public transportation, and other aspects of the social contract.
This seems like a fair trade of to me. But there are many people in the US who find this trade-off unacceptable and want no or little regulation plus they think that the Government has no role in creating a welfare state with social safety nets. This to me is unacceptable and this is where political compromise should happen. The Libertarians get a bit of what they want and the liberals get a bit of what they want. No one gets everything.
We are all secret Jacobins and Marxists to the right-wing and to libertarians. We don't want the New Deal, we really want the Reign of Terror and Stalinist Show Trials.
I am not against rewarding success or innovation especially when it is good. I do not begrudge the Bill Gates, Warren Buffets, Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, or Mark Zuckerbergs of the world. Same with loads of other inventors. Nor am I against highly-specialized professionals making significant salaries because of their skill or education. Highly-skilled lawyers and doctors probably do deserve salaries in the high six or low seven figures. I would like to be one of those highly-skilled lawyers one day.
When I talk about income inequality, I am not arguing that everyone should have their salaries capped at 100,000 USD a year. I once met a resident of the UK who moved to the United States. She was attending university later in life and explained that in the UK income discrimination is not allowed based on educational levels. I am not sure on the ins and outs of that particular law. At the least, I guess she means if two people have the same job, you cannot pay the one with more education a higher salary. She also seemed to imply that it covered promotions as well. She was angry at needing to go to university in the US.
I thought her stance was rather daft.
What am I against is the how the financial services industry has rigged itself with complex menchanisms which seem to be the equivalent of having your cake and eating it too. Or the general level of unaccountability from the so-called Masters of the Universe. Contrast what happened in the London Whale scandal v. The Barclays scandal. The CEO of Barclays was forced to step down, the CEO of Morgan Stanley was not. Did you see the e-mails from the LIBOR scandal which pretty much sounded like they were written by a 23-year old stoner? One that happens to have a very powerful job.
It is clear to me that something is rotten in the financial services industry and leaving them alone and to the magic of the market. As you said above, we punish murderers because we want less murder. I want bankers and investors to behave more like the fiduciaries they are. This means punishing the misbehaving ones.
Usually when people talk smack about fun degrees, they mean anything that is not a STEM, Business related, or otherwise vocational like Physical Therapy. Maybe economics is okay.
It is the lazy old stereotype of an English major and a $1.50 gets you a cup of coffee.
These are the people who would reduce universities to being nothing but engineers and are usually very dismissive of scholarship in the arts and humanities.
Everyone gives practical advice about going to CC and then a local state school but reality does not work this way.
Kids who went to Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, the Northeast liberal arts colleges, are largely doing fine probably. Why? Because people see the name of their alma mater and it is impressive to them, rightly or wrongly. Also those schools have very dedicated alumni networks.
In the long run and possibly even in the short run, a Renaissance studies major from Amherst or Brown is going to have better economic opportunities than the Marketing Major from Southwest North Dakota State.
This is the same as kids from Harvard Law having an easier time in the legal job market than the kids from local and less prestigious law schools.
A few years ago, there was an article about Finland in the NY Times. There was a conservative Finnish politician who was quoted as saying something like "Sure anyone can become a billionaire in America but most people won't".
There is also John Steinbeck's line explaining that socialism never took on in America because the poor just see themselves as "temporarily embarrassed millionaires."
My take on the myth of rugged individualism is that it is one of the most pernicious aspects of American culture and one that has truly impeded social welfare and progress from taking hold and always managed to revive a highly reactionary right. Rugged Individualism merely creates Calvinism that damns the poor for being poor. "You don't have health insurance. Why you lazy bum?"
As I have mentioned elsewhere, I reject Calvinism absolutely.
Rugged Individualism is the American Myth and it is just that, a myth. Maybe it existed when we were a largely an agricultural economy of yeoman farmers but I don't think Jefferson's vision held for very long.
There is unfortunately a lot that can be attributed to birth. Studies show that one the best indicators of what class you end up in is what class you were born in. Horatio Alger stories are largely stories.
I am not and all liberals are not talking about creating Harrison Bergeuron or getting rid of nepotism or think that there is no such thing as a hierarchy of talent. Yes life is unfair in the fact that there is almost always someone who will be more intelligent, better looking, more charming, more witty, more athletic, more stylish, etc than you.
You can still provide a basic life of dignity and decency via things like single-payer health insurance and other safety net, welfare state aspects while having a capitalist economy. But libertarians would be aghast at that because of silly notions on rugged individualism and a minimal state.
I have seen a lot of articles touch on this point.
The Meritocracy might have made the old-WASP rule more democratic and inclusive but it has largely stopped being a meritocracy. Now we have a possibly more horrible system: Something that has all the worst elements of the old-WASP system (rigged, did you attend the right schools? Do they right activities? etc) but with enough actual work thrown in* that the meritocracy can convince itself that it is all hard work.
This is not to say we should return to the old-WASP system though.
*The day of the Gentlemen C is over. Harvard, Yale, Stanford, etc still matter but you have to do well.
I don't know any liberal who would bemoan the success of Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Warren Buffet, or to go for non-Democratic types: Peter Thiel.
But even they had an incredible amount of luck. None of them were exactly Horatio Alger stories. Everyone likes to use Gates and Jobs as examples of not needing to go to college to be successful. However, this ignores the fact that they were both smart enough to get into very excellent (but radically different) colleges. They also had the luck of being at the right moment and time for the computer industry. My uncle had similar luck on a smaller scale. He was a grad student at Cal in the 1970s but decided that academia was not for him and we wanted to stay in the area. As a smart guy (PhD in psycho-linguistics) he was able to teach himself computer programming and get hired by PacBell. This was before many universities had serious computer science departments so there was less credentialism in the field.
There are also a lot of people who do play by the rules, work hard, and then discover that everything is fucked. I think a lot of the OWS anger and 20-something anger is directed at this aspect of the recession. There are a lot of OWS supporters who are not natural radicals and are not calling for a revival of the Paris commune. Rather they are suburban kids who always worked hard at school and ended up having the poor luck of graduating into one of the worst economic situations since the Great Depression. Possibly one that has been thirty or so years in the making if you look at the stagnate wages of most of the country as compared to the top ten or one percent.
Did these kids make any risks? No. Well possibly taking out a lot of student loans because they were told (and told correctly at the time) that college education is the best way to join the middle class.
It seems to me that the financial services industries have largely caused the current recession and they have not suffered like the rest of us. They still make massive profits and massive pay and no one really gets punished for things like the London Whale or LIBOR scandals.
Yes no one there is no guarantee for any job but a lot of people did work hard and did study hard and now are facing long-term unemployment and/or underemployment. And the reaction to this has been underwhelming and in the case of the Tea Party don't right disgusting. A basic "FU, I've got mine"
Law school is a good example. I graduated in 2011 and am one of the lucky ones because I have a job at good pay that requires bar passage. It is still an independent contractor job though without benefits or vacation. Perhaps this will change or perhaps I am part of a new demographic of people who are basic permanent temp employees.
Excellent post and I agree that this is a strong component of liberal thought.
One can find variants of life as chaos through out human literature and philosophy. From Shakespeare (Hamlet railing against "the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune") to the Enlightenment (IIRC there was a concept similar in Montisqieu's The Spirit of Laws) to John Rawls (The Veil of Ignorance) or if we want to get more dark, Beckett.
I would say that a basic concept of center-left government is that no one can control the circumstances of their birth and that the moral role of civil government is to correct this as much as possible. I.e. we should have welfare the insures a basic standard of dignity and decency and institutions that help promote more mobility. The reactionary is of course against this.
All of this does bring up the wicked problems of nepotism and how to solve them or whether they are even solvable.
The art world is a good place to look because there is nothing fair or democratic about the art world. I say this as a former participant. There are a lot of people who can afford to be independently employed in the arts because of being trust fund kids. There is also the cases of Lena Dunham and Zoe Kazan.
Both are from art families. Lena Dunham's parents are famous in the NYC contemporary art scene, Zoe Kazan is the granddaughter and daughter of Hollywood royalty. Both are considered very hot actor-writers. How much did their family backgrounds open doors that would not be open for other young artists? Some or a lot but it is hard to quantify. Do they have people who are detractors who ignore their talents because of their backgrounds? Yes. How about fawning admirers who are too uncritical? Also yes.
The question is how do we solve this problem of nepotism. I think it certainly need solving or some reforms to limit the influence of nepotism but am stumped as to how to say how. This also goes with the abuse of unpaid internships which generally can only go to the wealthy.
On “Where Are the Gun Protests?”
There are ways to interpret the 2nd Amendment that go counter to yours and many people believe in those interpretations and many of those are more brilliant lawyers and constitutional scholars than either of us.
The Constitution is rather unclear and open to interpretation in many places and the Second Amendment is one of those places. Scalia's ideas not withstanding.
"
Yeah. I see gun control as more of an urban/some-suburbs issue vs. rural issue/other suburbs issue than a liberal/conservative one.
"
I think gun restrictions would ceases these types of shootings. There are many more gun deaths and mass shootings in the U.S. than in European countries and gun restrictions must play a role.
That being said, I realize that my position is probably a minority one right now and changes must be done in a way that goes for a long-game. This is going to be a decades-long battle.
As to your other question and in a completely unrelated tone, I thought it was really cute and sweet that the Czech delegation wore Wellies in tribute to their British hosts.
On “A Romantic, a Monk, and a Neoliberal Walk Into a Bar…”
I agree that growth and sometimes very rapid growth can be good and that the trick is figuring out what is real growth vs. another bubble.
Humans seem to fall for a lot of bubbles or there is the real deal in growth (Goggle, Amazon, PayPal, Ebay) that can also be part of a bubble (a ton of other tech companies). Maybe a lot of us have trouble distinguishing between growth vs. the illusion of growth.
There are also non-economic considerations. There was another thread recently where someone mentioned that the meaning to life is more than economics. I think most people would agree. The problems seem to be that my version of "there is more to life than economics and growth" might be one where another person thinks that economics or growth are more important.
NIMBY v. Development seems to be the strongest area where this disagreement comes up. I agree that a lot of NIMBYism is very out of hand and can often go to far and there might be too many hoops for developers/builders/home owners to jump through before getting their permits. However, I also think that neighborhoods do have collective rights to retain the appearance of their neighborhoods. Maybe not in keeping single-family housing but certainly in preventing someone from just buying a lot, tearing down the existing structure(s) and building something that sticks out like a sore thumb.
There should be a middle ground option between Jane Jacobs and Robert Moses that can make most people happy or at least give each side some of what they want but not everything.*
*I'm a firm believer that political compromise of this sort. The problem is a lot of people are not. Look at Jim DeMint and the Club for Growth as a good example.
"
MFarmer strikes me as a very clever performance artist or as a variant of Poe's law in action.
Yes I know Poe's law only deals with religious extremism but I use it as a more broad thing like when I can't tell whether something seems like it belongs in the Onion or not.
"
What do you think is the line between economic freedom and consumer protection?
As an example:
I am considering trying to find a new gym. Preferably one that is closer to work. My current gym is near my apartment but I would rather not get up at 5:20 so I can be at the gym at 6 in the morning (I hate working out after work).
So I began searching on the net for gyms near my office. The problem is that very few (only one) gave prices for membership on the website. The rest of them either provided information on their types of membership (without price) or required you to fill out a personal information form so they could have you talk to a membership services person.
I'd rather not do this. All I want is the price and this seems very simple to put on a webpage. I'm very cranky about businesses that make me hand over data before getting information on prices or go through with being signed up.
Would you say it is against economic freedom to compel companies to list their prices in clear and visible language? Why should my only option as a consumer be to jump through hoops in under to get the information I need to make an informed decision?
How do you feel about binding arbitration clauses in consumer contracts between parties of uneven bargaining power?
"
How do you feel about people who argue for sustainable growth instead of just growth, growth, growth?
While I still support capitalism, this does not necessarily mean I think the preferred policies of business need to always be followed. My impression of Matt Y is that he is still a bit too innocent on how the neo-liberal mantra of growth, growth, growth has not translated into growth for everyone. I think there is something to be said about wage stagnation and how the 1 percent is capturing way too much of the wealth.
This gets into pesky and hard issues. We should reward innovation but by how much? Yes successful CEOs deserve a lot of money but they also seem to have created a world where they get a lot of money whether they do well or do piss poorly. This is a luxury that very few people have.
"
Now I can see that you are not a libertarian
:)
My point on right-wingers still being hypocritical for calling liberals and people on the left utopians still stands.
"
Good points and sorry for calling you a libertarian incorrectly.
Several years ago on NPR's Planet Money podcast, they were interviewing various economists to give people a sense of the various schools: Marxist, Chicago, Austrian, Kensyian, etc. They interviewed one libertarian professor out of George Mason University who came very close to arguing that if you lift all government restrictions, we would all be happy shiny rainbows. His honest and sincere example was that he thought corporations would have come up with some miracle drug that allowed people to eat whatever they want without getting fat. It was only but for the pesky FDA that this has not happened yet.
I'd say that is a rather romantic view. And one I will call bullshit on or at least using very bad science and going to our basest desires to promote libertarianism.
"
The problem with terms like "romantic" and "utopian" is that like hypocrisy, it is very hard to see in your opponents or other people but extremely hard to see in yourself.
Libertarians and the Right always seem to like to accuse liberals of being nothing but dreamers with their heads in the clouds while painting themselves as the true realists on human nature. A quick look at the "non-fiction" best seller list of the NY Times reveals that there is quite a cottage industry in right-wing books making this exact message.
I call bullshit. There is just as much romanticism and utopian on the right especially in social politics. There is probably just as much utopianism and romanticism in libertarian politics.
On “Mitt Romney, Celery, And A Whole Bunch Of Monkeys”
I went to one of those colleges for undergrad. While I will never reach the upper-rungs of power, I have known more than my fair share of people to reach the wedding pages of the NYTimes. Also known as the merger and acquisitions page.
IIRC, meritocracy was not meant to be a good term. The original sociologist who coined the term imagined something like the present state happening. However, society ignored that.
So is there anything that can break a pseudo-meritocracy? Probably not completely. This is a wicked problem in that there are no full solutions. Only reforms that can make things better or worse.
As I said before, nepotism is a tricky issue. It is natural for people to want to help their off-spring in as many ways as possible. Though what counts as help differs wildly through culture or culture. A lot of cultures and people think you help your children by unceremoniously kicking them out at 18. When I lived in Japan, a lot of my UK housemates told me that they were required by their parents to pay "rent" while in high school. The sum was not high but it was not low either. I thought this was madness but I grew up in an area where parents could and did pay their children healthy allowances (again not too low or too high) because said parents wanted their children to concentrate on school and not be distracted by after-school jobs. This would continue until the grad school level for a sizable chunk of my classmates.
Both sides will go in circles about which helps children more and never reach a consensus.
Nepotism is also something that goes across socio-economic cultures in many ways. I know many people who would decry someone who went to work for their parent's law firm or financial firm as being a "little rich kid". They might even argue that if your dad was a lawyer, you should not become a lawyer and forge your own path. However, the same people would also be accepting of someone whose dad or mom got them a spot in the police or fire department because said kid "has been bred to be a policeman or a fireman"
I find it odd that it is acceptable to breed kids into some family professions but not others. As far as I can tell, the dividing line is on profitability. If the business needs to employ family members to survive, hiring your son and daughter is okay especially if it is a non-educated type of job like being a waitress or manning the front desk. If the job requires a degree or training, hiring your son and daughter is dirty, dirty nepotism. Same if it is a desirable career like art and media.
All of this adds to my belief that most human discourse is resentment and counter-resentment.
On “Capitalism and the Monkey Cage”
I would have much rather they saved the homeowners and innocent investors and let the banks fail personally.
That being said, I am not opposed to less regulation if it came hand in hand with a very robust welfare state and social safety nets. This was mentioned on a thread over the weekend. Sweden has a lot fewer economic regulations but they combine it with universal healthcare, good public transportation, and other aspects of the social contract.
This seems like a fair trade of to me. But there are many people in the US who find this trade-off unacceptable and want no or little regulation plus they think that the Government has no role in creating a welfare state with social safety nets. This to me is unacceptable and this is where political compromise should happen. The Libertarians get a bit of what they want and the liberals get a bit of what they want. No one gets everything.
"
We seemed to remember things for about two or three generations.
Then we promptly forget them and need to relearn the hard way.
Though there is always that group that likes to be bloody Bourbons who "remember everything and learn nothing."
On “Mitt Romney, Celery, And A Whole Bunch Of Monkeys”
Did you get the memo?
We are all secret Jacobins and Marxists to the right-wing and to libertarians. We don't want the New Deal, we really want the Reign of Terror and Stalinist Show Trials.
/sarcasm
On “Capitalism and the Monkey Cage”
I am not against rewarding success or innovation especially when it is good. I do not begrudge the Bill Gates, Warren Buffets, Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, or Mark Zuckerbergs of the world. Same with loads of other inventors. Nor am I against highly-specialized professionals making significant salaries because of their skill or education. Highly-skilled lawyers and doctors probably do deserve salaries in the high six or low seven figures. I would like to be one of those highly-skilled lawyers one day.
When I talk about income inequality, I am not arguing that everyone should have their salaries capped at 100,000 USD a year. I once met a resident of the UK who moved to the United States. She was attending university later in life and explained that in the UK income discrimination is not allowed based on educational levels. I am not sure on the ins and outs of that particular law. At the least, I guess she means if two people have the same job, you cannot pay the one with more education a higher salary. She also seemed to imply that it covered promotions as well. She was angry at needing to go to university in the US.
I thought her stance was rather daft.
What am I against is the how the financial services industry has rigged itself with complex menchanisms which seem to be the equivalent of having your cake and eating it too. Or the general level of unaccountability from the so-called Masters of the Universe. Contrast what happened in the London Whale scandal v. The Barclays scandal. The CEO of Barclays was forced to step down, the CEO of Morgan Stanley was not. Did you see the e-mails from the LIBOR scandal which pretty much sounded like they were written by a 23-year old stoner? One that happens to have a very powerful job.
It is clear to me that something is rotten in the financial services industry and leaving them alone and to the magic of the market. As you said above, we punish murderers because we want less murder. I want bankers and investors to behave more like the fiduciaries they are. This means punishing the misbehaving ones.
On “Mitt Romney, Celery, And A Whole Bunch Of Monkeys”
Usually when people talk smack about fun degrees, they mean anything that is not a STEM, Business related, or otherwise vocational like Physical Therapy. Maybe economics is okay.
It is the lazy old stereotype of an English major and a $1.50 gets you a cup of coffee.
These are the people who would reduce universities to being nothing but engineers and are usually very dismissive of scholarship in the arts and humanities.
"
This is another strawman.
Everyone gives practical advice about going to CC and then a local state school but reality does not work this way.
Kids who went to Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, the Northeast liberal arts colleges, are largely doing fine probably. Why? Because people see the name of their alma mater and it is impressive to them, rightly or wrongly. Also those schools have very dedicated alumni networks.
In the long run and possibly even in the short run, a Renaissance studies major from Amherst or Brown is going to have better economic opportunities than the Marketing Major from Southwest North Dakota State.
This is the same as kids from Harvard Law having an easier time in the legal job market than the kids from local and less prestigious law schools.
"
As mentioned below, I am not advocating for that despite what strawmen you are setting up.
"
Interestingly I see it differently.
Your idea makes me think of two quotes:
A few years ago, there was an article about Finland in the NY Times. There was a conservative Finnish politician who was quoted as saying something like "Sure anyone can become a billionaire in America but most people won't".
There is also John Steinbeck's line explaining that socialism never took on in America because the poor just see themselves as "temporarily embarrassed millionaires."
My take on the myth of rugged individualism is that it is one of the most pernicious aspects of American culture and one that has truly impeded social welfare and progress from taking hold and always managed to revive a highly reactionary right. Rugged Individualism merely creates Calvinism that damns the poor for being poor. "You don't have health insurance. Why you lazy bum?"
As I have mentioned elsewhere, I reject Calvinism absolutely.
"
Rugged Individualism is the American Myth and it is just that, a myth. Maybe it existed when we were a largely an agricultural economy of yeoman farmers but I don't think Jefferson's vision held for very long.
There is unfortunately a lot that can be attributed to birth. Studies show that one the best indicators of what class you end up in is what class you were born in. Horatio Alger stories are largely stories.
"
Oh get off it.
I am not and all liberals are not talking about creating Harrison Bergeuron or getting rid of nepotism or think that there is no such thing as a hierarchy of talent. Yes life is unfair in the fact that there is almost always someone who will be more intelligent, better looking, more charming, more witty, more athletic, more stylish, etc than you.
You can still provide a basic life of dignity and decency via things like single-payer health insurance and other safety net, welfare state aspects while having a capitalist economy. But libertarians would be aghast at that because of silly notions on rugged individualism and a minimal state.
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I have seen a lot of articles touch on this point.
The Meritocracy might have made the old-WASP rule more democratic and inclusive but it has largely stopped being a meritocracy. Now we have a possibly more horrible system: Something that has all the worst elements of the old-WASP system (rigged, did you attend the right schools? Do they right activities? etc) but with enough actual work thrown in* that the meritocracy can convince itself that it is all hard work.
This is not to say we should return to the old-WASP system though.
*The day of the Gentlemen C is over. Harvard, Yale, Stanford, etc still matter but you have to do well.
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I disagree with some of your assertions.
I don't know any liberal who would bemoan the success of Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Warren Buffet, or to go for non-Democratic types: Peter Thiel.
But even they had an incredible amount of luck. None of them were exactly Horatio Alger stories. Everyone likes to use Gates and Jobs as examples of not needing to go to college to be successful. However, this ignores the fact that they were both smart enough to get into very excellent (but radically different) colleges. They also had the luck of being at the right moment and time for the computer industry. My uncle had similar luck on a smaller scale. He was a grad student at Cal in the 1970s but decided that academia was not for him and we wanted to stay in the area. As a smart guy (PhD in psycho-linguistics) he was able to teach himself computer programming and get hired by PacBell. This was before many universities had serious computer science departments so there was less credentialism in the field.
There are also a lot of people who do play by the rules, work hard, and then discover that everything is fucked. I think a lot of the OWS anger and 20-something anger is directed at this aspect of the recession. There are a lot of OWS supporters who are not natural radicals and are not calling for a revival of the Paris commune. Rather they are suburban kids who always worked hard at school and ended up having the poor luck of graduating into one of the worst economic situations since the Great Depression. Possibly one that has been thirty or so years in the making if you look at the stagnate wages of most of the country as compared to the top ten or one percent.
Did these kids make any risks? No. Well possibly taking out a lot of student loans because they were told (and told correctly at the time) that college education is the best way to join the middle class.
It seems to me that the financial services industries have largely caused the current recession and they have not suffered like the rest of us. They still make massive profits and massive pay and no one really gets punished for things like the London Whale or LIBOR scandals.
Yes no one there is no guarantee for any job but a lot of people did work hard and did study hard and now are facing long-term unemployment and/or underemployment. And the reaction to this has been underwhelming and in the case of the Tea Party don't right disgusting. A basic "FU, I've got mine"
Law school is a good example. I graduated in 2011 and am one of the lucky ones because I have a job at good pay that requires bar passage. It is still an independent contractor job though without benefits or vacation. Perhaps this will change or perhaps I am part of a new demographic of people who are basic permanent temp employees.
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Excellent post and I agree that this is a strong component of liberal thought.
One can find variants of life as chaos through out human literature and philosophy. From Shakespeare (Hamlet railing against "the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune") to the Enlightenment (IIRC there was a concept similar in Montisqieu's The Spirit of Laws) to John Rawls (The Veil of Ignorance) or if we want to get more dark, Beckett.
I would say that a basic concept of center-left government is that no one can control the circumstances of their birth and that the moral role of civil government is to correct this as much as possible. I.e. we should have welfare the insures a basic standard of dignity and decency and institutions that help promote more mobility. The reactionary is of course against this.
All of this does bring up the wicked problems of nepotism and how to solve them or whether they are even solvable.
The art world is a good place to look because there is nothing fair or democratic about the art world. I say this as a former participant. There are a lot of people who can afford to be independently employed in the arts because of being trust fund kids. There is also the cases of Lena Dunham and Zoe Kazan.
Both are from art families. Lena Dunham's parents are famous in the NYC contemporary art scene, Zoe Kazan is the granddaughter and daughter of Hollywood royalty. Both are considered very hot actor-writers. How much did their family backgrounds open doors that would not be open for other young artists? Some or a lot but it is hard to quantify. Do they have people who are detractors who ignore their talents because of their backgrounds? Yes. How about fawning admirers who are too uncritical? Also yes.
The question is how do we solve this problem of nepotism. I think it certainly need solving or some reforms to limit the influence of nepotism but am stumped as to how to say how. This also goes with the abuse of unpaid internships which generally can only go to the wealthy.
On “A Partial Mea Culpa”
Plus the left has the best Marxists
Harpo and Groucho. Chico and Zeppo aren't bad either.
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