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[McTraveller]

That https://www.theroot.com/democratic-debates-day-1-elizabeth-warren-came-to-det-1836851942:

Warren, one of the frontrunners for president of the United States, was supposed to tell Detroit how she would help breathe life into a city that so desperately needs the federal government to show its residents that America is here to help the country’s biggest black city rebound.

I think that quote describes some of my concern with a lot of the (US version of) left viewpoints:  it says the federal government is necessary to come in and solve our problems.  The specific observation is that large chunks of the population have lost the willpower, grit, or whatever to solve their own problems.  And instead of the (federal) government helping people git their grit back, the federal government instead is viewed as needing to just come in and dump money on the situation to solve problems and rescue them.

This is why people like me are concerned about the liberal branches - not because the left wants to solve problems but because the left wants the government to solve the problems, rather than helping the people be able to solve problems.  Back when the US started, people came over here and by sheer force of will made their way in the world.  So much of our population has lost that will... it's always up to someone else to fix the problems.

To be fair, I like Warren's anti-trust stance; the government should protect the people from big corporations.  What I don't like are the student debt plans, health care plans, etc. that are basically palliative care instead of fixing the disease.

I want leaders that inspire us, not leaders that vilify a group like "the rich" or "the corporations" or "the <Political Party>" - I want leaders that protect and inspire without vilification.

More than that: I want people to work along side the government, rather than look at the government like a sports team and just cheer and jeer from the bleachers.

[wierd]

Government coming in to fix things that have gotten WAAAAY out of hand has some history of success though.  See for instance, the public works projects in the New Deal.  Private enterprise was unable to bootstrap a recovery process from the stock market crash, and much of the population was unemployed and literally starving.  Public works employment permitted a bottom-up rebuilding of the economy, while providing a robust infrastructure that withstood the better part of a century of neglect in following administrations while serving faithfully.

I am not a fan of FEMA style intervention mind-- that's worthless, and gets in the way of people fixing their broken lives after a disaster.  However, providing aid programs (to cities) and direct employment to people, so that they are paid to fix their own city, has a track record of being successful-- it worked on a national scale.

Both are "The government fixing things";  One is useless, the other is useful.

No amount of willpower or moxxy is sufficient to tackle infrastructure deterioration, like Chicago suffers, when there is a total lack of materials to do the restructure, and a total lack of capital to get those materials.

[Frumple]

Dump money on it (or get people to leave the area) is literally the only viable solution in a lot of cases, yeah. No amount of grit is going to help in the face of wages that functionally or literally don't budge while costs rise, infrastructure crumbles, and malignant actors go out of their way to fuck with you in particular. It's not willpower that's missing, it's that all of it's getting sucked up by a cavalcade of shite before it can improve the situation.

Expecting people to grit their way out of massive systemic disadvantage while being regularly shat on from all directions is bloody asinine. It's not always up to someone else to fix problems, but there's a shitload of problems in this country that literally need someone else to help or the problem's not going to be fixed. The US isn't like it was when it started anymore. The challenges and opportunities are not terribly similar, and the same amount of effort and grit will not get you the same results (to the extent they ever did particularly guarantee them). I'm pretty sure we're no longer particularly comfortable with the amount of corpses it involved, either, for that matter.

E: In other news, Vegas is apparently getting a full up plague of locusts grasshoppers? Can't be arsed to link, but pictures of stuff like some pyramid structure with a beam of light coming out the top basically filled with grasshoppers is a helluva' thing.

[wierd]

The failure to pay livable wages, in order to sustain unreasonable investor expectations, has caused a panoply of negative consequences for our country.

Further, the refusal to admit that failure to pay livable wages is real, and instead that the issue is equivalent to a worker shortage, has led to some very dangerous policy decisions.


Both are tied to the volatility increase that allowing rampant day trading and other spurious trading practices cause.  (EG, if a company comes out and says "No, we are gonna pay livable wages", the investors go "OH NOES! MY MONIES!" and short that company's stock. In fact, there is a perverse incentive to CUTTING wages below livable levels, because that causes a stock surge!)

https://www.forbes.com/sites/joshbersin/2018/10/31/why-arent-wages-keeping-up-its-not-the-economy-its-management/#803c5c9397ef


To fix this problem, you have to reduce market volatility, so that businesses can "safely" increase wages.  That means giving Wallstreet a black eye.  "Nanosecond trading" needs to be illegal, and long-term investment needs to return to being the main investment vehicle.  I would go so far as to say that the min turnaround time between a stock purchase and a stock sale should be a week, with severe penalties for doing so.

[McTraveller]

Sorry maybe I was too one-sided:  It's both - you need willpower/grit and in some cases assistance.

Yes - willpower alone won't help you rebuild a burnt-down house if there are no fresh trees nearby, you have no tools, or you aren't allowed to use resources you have available.  But where I see government's role is in ensuring that people can have access to resources around them.

The systemic issues we face I think are in the category of not allowing people use of what should otherwise be readily available resources.  This includes some tangible resources like "sorry, we allow these zoning laws to say you can't grow vegetables here" as well as things like regulatory capture, finance laws, loan policies, etc.  They are in perverse incentives that result in people not caring for their locales - infrastructure doesn't generally collapse due to malicious intent but rather neglect.

There may also be a role for government acting as a resource pool for disasters, but we have shifted from this as an emergency buffer to a "the federal government has lots of stuff so they should give it to us!"

Also - when the government does come in and help, it really just needs to be short-term help.  Not "we'll give you this money to rebuild in exchange for control or programs or whatever."


ALSO: There are some historians that suggest the decline of the US actually started with some of FDRs policies, because that's when the federal government really started expanding its power and reach and messing with "big" social programs.   Some of the reasons we have regulatory capture now are because of things decided in that era - for instance relating to how even personal farming can be considered to affect interstate commerce (Wikard v Filburn).

I think that's tied into the concept of "living wage" by the way - 120 years ago people didn't assume they would be employed by a company - they assumed they could work for themselves.  What is preventing all these people getting paid too low from starting their own enterprises?  I would rather see policies that address that, rather than increase minimum wage.

[wierd]

What is stopping--


See for instance, the issue FOSS has with patent and copyright trolls.  Intellectual property hoarding, with refusal to license in a nondiscriminatory fashion, is stifling the ability of ordinary people to extend and expand the state of the art in terms of technology.  This creates artificial barriers to entry that prevent otherwise skilled people from entering the system and providing new goods or services.

See also, the issue with how lopsided the rights management of community-building platforms for performers, like YouTube, are.  Combine that with the ever-increasing terms for copyright protections that these rights holders champion for.  (I would be much more supportive of say, Sony Music Group, if instead of going "MINE! *yoink*" with monetization of videos for any and all trumped up reasons, they went "Hey, would you like to buy a specific use license for that content for a one time, reasonable price?".  However, that does not make Sony Executives feel powerful and sexually virile.)


As for the "Dont grab available resources"-- this is to prevent a destruction of the commons.  If everyone went out and cut down local trees to rebuild their house, there would soon be no forest left; This would cause local climate changes for decades, that would have long reaching implications for the livability of the area. Simply because something is available does NOT mean you should be entitled to using it.  Preventing you from doing so, in order to prevent a major catastrophe from over-exploitation (See for instance, the clearcutting spin-cycle that happens in South America, and how it is destroying the rainforest there) is one of the functions a functioning government provides.

Everyone benefits from a functioning commons;  Destruction of that commons through shameless abuse is bad for everyone.

Securing resources in a fashion that does not cause such destruction is imperative; Expecting people who are strapped for resources IN GENERAL to respect the commons is absurdity. 

[Lord Shonus]

Starting your own business has massive barriers to entry, and pretty much every market niche would have you going up against supergiant corporations that could buy your shiny new business a thousand times over with their pocket change. People don't do it because it is literally impossible in most cases.

As for the "FDR ruined EVERYTHING" theorists, they're bunk. Their arguments ndo not hold up to scrutiny, and implementation of their proposals has always lead.directly to economic collapse.

[McTraveller]

Destruction of that commons through shameless abuse is bad for everyone.

Securing resources in a fashion that does not cause such destruction is imperative; Expecting people who are strapped for resources IN GENERAL to respect the commons is absurdity. 

Right but it's about balance, isn't it? If you have so many rules about not using resources that people can't start their own businesses or even offset their costs by local produce, that conflicts with the wage thing.  So maybe we need better zoning rules, not no zoning rules.

In my neighborhood, we have a prohibition on livestock or even chickens.  Instead of a ban, why not allow it but say "you have to follow the guidelines for noise and hygiene."

I guess what I'm saying is you can't just blame "the corporations" for the wages they pay - you also have to blame the regulatory agencies that make it hard to start a business.

I suspect we are actually in agreement, but using different words... 

EDIT: Yes, barriers to entry are too high.  We need protections for that - not just "aw crap barriers are high, therefore force companies to pay higher wages, making the barriers even higher...".  Basically this makes it so that you must work for a giant company. I want rules that make it so we don't need to work for companies, not rules that make it harder to live without a company that can pay a wage.

[wierd]

The regulatory agencies you are blaming (rightly!), are the sock puppets of said corporations.  It gets right to the point to say the corporations are responsible.

See for instance, the shamelessly transparent sockpuppetry of the Pai FCC, in relation to big telecom.  Verizon have their hands so far up Pai's ass, they can make him do just about anything.


Agencies that are SUPPOSED to work in the public interest are now actively working against it. (EPA, FCC, Copyright Office, etc.)


Your view is also naive of the impact of globalization.  It is not efficient nor desirable to pay people to make widgets locally, if workers in another region are able to make those same widgets cheaper.(Say for example, if country A has a wealth of easily collected rare earth metal salts it can scoop up inexpensively, and then use to make computer equipment. It makes no sense for country B to deny country A's less expensive end product, and instead tear up half its real-estate trying to refine enough rare earths to make domestic supplies of the same product.)  This causes the market to have these less expensively made widgets in it, which local startups cannot even match on price, let alone undercut.  This is a barrier to entry.  Theoretically, Tariffs can help with this, but like any self-serving agency, national governments tent to go straight for vengeance porn when the topic is brought up.  (See for instance-- China, and technology.  They have a massive deployment of factories, refineries, and a strong availability of tech workers, at a bargain basement price to market. (partly due to their Communist top-down control wages model, which holds the prices low, and a command economy which can ensure resource distribution to sustain this reality, even if it is inefficient.) They are able to undercut anything made elsewhere that is tech.  The only way to make sure that local producers can compete in the market is to artificially add cost to the chinese made offering-- EG, a tariff.  China responds to such a tariff, by imposing its own on what the US does make in abundance and exports-- Software, copyrighted content, and foodstuffs. 

This tit for tat in response to rent-seeking is called a trade war, and it has many negative consequences.  (See the current shitstorm Trump has stirred up.)

Not all vocations are easy to get a start in, especially when the things that are profitable are naturally expensive to get a start in.  (Software development runs foul of copyright and patent protections; There are too many extensions and too many patent/copyright trolls out there to be able to successfully start up an enterprise without sinking the costs of an on-staff legal counsel for this very purpose to ensure compliance. This is outside the feasibility of most ordinary people.)

The current exports of the US are, again, mostly services based (Software, Copyrighted content like movies and music), but agriculture still has a strong presence.

The former requires cost centers that are outside the reach of most people, (and the people who can afford the necessary specialists tend to be predatory, and seek to find ways to procure new content, whether they are actually legally entitled to it or not, and thus rip it out of the hands of the people who try.) and the latter has a natural barrier to entry of requiring equipment and land investment that is prohibitively expensive.


There's a reason why I advocate for the breakup of all these large actors;  Once they reach a certain size, they are able to leverage their dominant positions to abuse the market in ways that distorts its natural form, in order to further increase their profits. (See for instance, how regional restrictions work, etc.) This keeps unit prices high, wages low, and profits in the stratosphere.   Forcing these actors to become a bevvy of smaller, and less powerful actors causes them to have to work against each other to curry marketshare, which lowers unit prices, increases wages, and lowers profits to modest levels. (the only people that would lose out on it are fatcat investors) It removes these agents from having sufficient monetary and economic power to dictate policies to government, and thus mitigates the power of their lobbying significantly.

AntiTrust needs to go into some serious overdrive in this country.  In a very bad way.

[SalmonGod]

I'm also tired of seeing this mythologization of the USA's past.

The specific observation is that large chunks of the population have lost the willpower, grit, or whatever to solve their own problems. 

Back when the US started, people came over here and by sheer force of will made their way in the world.

Back when the USA started... it was genocide and rape of lands.  Full stop.  "Came over here and by sheer force of will made their way in the world" literally means "Came over here, slaughtered lots of natives, and enjoyed rapid expansion over their territories full of unexploited resources."

You associate FDR's policies with the decline of this grit culture.  But let me point out a different association.  In 1912, contact was made in California with who is considered to be the last Native American to have grown up without any interaction with the western world.  That's a pretty solid landmark for expansion in the New World.  The New Deal was only about 20 years later.  I'm much more inclined to believe that hitting the limits of expansion into native territories has more to do with the decline of settler grit than FDR's policies did.

Today's situation is not at all comparable.  Human population has roughly quadrupled since 1912.  There are no more frontiers.  There is nowhere to expand for access to resources that are not already claimed.  There are wild places left, but they are protected for good reason.  The environment is collapsing in a dire way.  A third of all wildlife is in danger of extinction.  Insects as a global biomass have declined by 80% in the past 30 years, and the remainder is disappearing at a rate of 2.5% per year.  What's left must be carefully managed by collaborative agreement for collective interest.  If that's not the realm of government, then I don't know what is.

I also don't think the idea that everyone should just run their own businesses instead of complaining about wages is very practical.  I honestly don't understand the kind of world you envision by that logic.  There are too many goods/services that are better provided for by a large organization than a small one, or are beyond the reach of a small business completely.  And unless you imagine most of the working population running one man operations, the problem of wages is still there.  Just more of a nightmare, because there's many times more employers who need their asses kicked to pay their people.  Wages are a problem that has to be addressed no matter what, and they're only addressable by means associated almost exclusively with leftist politics -- unionization, strikes, government intervention, etc

[nenjin]

I feel like, given the numbers, telling people "tired of wages? Go start your own business!" translates to "join the 70% of people that take out huge loans to start their own business that folds in less than a year and leaves them in debt." Your first few years of owning almost any business is paying back what you took out to start it. The exception are those people that use generational wealth to start their businesses, by having "investors." If you've got 5k in your savings account, starting a business by taking out loans is a massive gamble. "Job market suck? Here, let me just play financial Russian Roulette, except there's five bullets instead of one."

[Doomblade187]

Just a general +1 to Salmon and nenjin.

[McTraveller]

So just to be clear - I don't think all of FDR's policies are bad. Just that there was a lot of stuff in that time period that impacts what we have today.  For instance, the SCOTUS case I referenced basically said that a farmer couldn't produce food to feed his own livestock, because it exceeded quotas so took away commerce from other producers.  That's basically saying "sorry you have to buy from someone else even though you could produce it yourself."

Also to be clear - I don't think everyone should go into business for themselves. What I advocate is some form of reduction in barriers to entry to markets, to make it easier for people to go into business for themselves if prevailing wages are too low.  That is the natural way to get wages to rise after all - reduce the available supply of labor at the low wages.  This is a different (or a partner) policy to organized labor.

[Gentlefish]

Er, this is sounding terrifyingly close to AnCapistan. That is a scary dark place with many bad things happening in it.

[Naturegirl1999]

Er, this is sounding terrifyingly close to AnCapistan. That is a scary dark place with many bad things happening in it.

Did you mean AnCapitalism? If not, what’s AnCapistan?