O'Reilly vs. Palin on Tea Party

Staats wrote:
Jolly Bill wrote:

There has been some discussion about how easy it is for grass roots organizations to form and affect politics on a national level... what would it take for such organizations to seriously threaten the major parties? Obviously a combination of factors, but maybe just to mention the things I've heard in this thread so far...

A move away from plurality voting would do it. Of course, you'd have to get that by Congress first, and that's something both Democrats and Republicans can agree won't happen.

But what would motivate a grass root organization to push for such a thing? Sadly, I think the chances of it happening just because 'it's the right thing' are pretty low.

Jolly Bill wrote:
Staats wrote:

A move away from plurality voting would do it. Of course, you'd have to get that by Congress first, and that's something both Democrats and Republicans can agree won't happen.

But what would motivate a grass root organization to push for such a thing? Sadly, I think the chances of it happening just because 'it's the right thing' are pretty low.

The obvious answer to that would be that it would be in their interest, enabling them to gain a foothold on power. The chances of it happening are zero, however, until the stranglehold of the current incumbents is broken, as they will never willingly allow any system that is not easily dominated by themselves. Historically, it's much more likely that one of the two parties implodes and is replaced by another party. Political scientists understand pretty well that systems like ours tend to devolve into two opposing parties.

Aetius wrote:
Jolly Bill wrote:
Staats wrote:

A move away from plurality voting would do it. Of course, you'd have to get that by Congress first, and that's something both Democrats and Republicans can agree won't happen.

But what would motivate a grass root organization to push for such a thing? Sadly, I think the chances of it happening just because 'it's the right thing' are pretty low.

The obvious answer to that would be that it would be in their interest, enabling them to gain a foothold on power. The chances of it happening are zero, however, until the stranglehold of the current incumbents is broken, as they will never willingly allow any system that is not easily dominated by themselves. Historically, it's much more likely that one of the two parties implodes and is replaced by another party. Political scientists understand pretty well that systems like ours tend to devolve into two opposing parties.

I'm going to quote Oso from way back on page 1:

Oso wrote:

The Tea Party may be a sign of things to come. At least if we can take a step back from the content of their platform and think of them as a new way of doing politics. Communications technology have changed, and I think politics are starting to reflect this.

If you've read Clay Shirky's Here Comes Everybody, you'll see that I'm basically parroting his ideas here. If you haven't read it, I suggest you do. He explains why social media is different in a way that is perceptive. He gets both the social aspects and the technology aspects.

So, while I'm still taking a step back from their platform, the Tea Party may be a real threat to established political powers because we reached a new era for organizations. Established political parties are successful because of their organization. They have roots at the National, State, County, City, Ward, and neighborhood levels of society. In the past, mass movements needed this kind of structure to function. Without established local party organization, it was just not possible to get out the vote.

Today, it is possible to quickly build a consensus on a smaller issue or platform without first building an organization on the local level. People can galvanize over a single issue or small set of issues. They can come together, lobby congress or vote, and then dissipate. That wasn't possible when the cutting edge grass-roots tools were phone banks and direct mail.

So, if we back up and look at how fast the Tea Party turned from a bunch of pissed-off voters into a political entity, how they bypassed the traditional steps for political organizing, its fascinating. When we focus back in on their platform, they make me nervous.

If we follow the theory that there is the potential for politically powerful entities to form quickly on shared interests using new social media... restating for clarity... The point seems to be that if people can get together, they are short circuiting the stranglehold the main political parties have on power. While to do so is in their own self interest, groups of people rarely, if ever, act in their own self interest just because they can. Usually they are acting for a particular purpose, often in defense of something. I'm asking what you consider that purpose will be.

Minarchist wrote:

Seriously, though, they've also prevented many lifesaving treatments from coming to market for more than a decade. They make food more expensive. How do you weigh those lives saved versus those lives lost? What about the voluntary gradings and inspections that pig farmers, among others, go through even though not mandated by the government? That's probably a tangent of a tangent of a tangent, though.

And how many dangerous treatments have they prevented companies from selling to desperate people? I don't get the expensive food bit because food is dirty cheap, historically speaking. And the reason it is cheap is that federal government gives away tens of billions of dollars in farm subsidies every year.

Jolly Bill wrote:
Staats wrote:
Jolly Bill wrote:

There has been some discussion about how easy it is for grass roots organizations to form and affect politics on a national level... what would it take for such organizations to seriously threaten the major parties? Obviously a combination of factors, but maybe just to mention the things I've heard in this thread so far...

A move away from plurality voting would do it. Of course, you'd have to get that by Congress first, and that's something both Democrats and Republicans can agree won't happen.

But what would motivate a grass root organization to push for such a thing? Sadly, I think the chances of it happening just because 'it's the right thing' are pretty low.

You'd need to get a well-organized group together, elect a very large number of people to Congress (a Constitutional amendment would be needed) with everyone in the party knowing they're going to make political parties (and thus their own organization) considerably less powerful. It'd be a "boot 'em out" mentality to the 100^th degree. Extra-legal collusion of both political parties, maybe?

Jolly Bill wrote:

If we follow the theory that there is the potential for politically powerful entities to form quickly on shared interests using new social media... restating for clarity... The point seems to be that if people can get together, they are short circuiting the stranglehold the main political parties have on power. While to do so is in their own self interest, groups of people rarely, if ever, act in their own self interest just because they can. Usually they are acting for a particular purpose, often in defense of something. I'm asking what you consider that purpose will be.

People using social media can form large groups quickly, and organize quickly. However, such groups have not, generally, been opposed by entrenched oligarchies bent on maintaining their own power. It's an important distinction to make, because the "new group" will have to have staying power, major funding, and strong organization. It cannot be a flash mob or a single-issue group, as those will simply not survive the competition.

In an ideal world, the purpose I would like to see supported by such a group would be freedom. As I've discovered, however, that concept tends to scare and annoy people, so it's unlikely to be the subject of a mass movement unless things get much worse. I would settle for a purpose of inducing churn into Congress, based on a specific set of criteria. That, however, is not an ideal that people can really rally around (negative issues are rarely lasting). So the issue and purpose of the mass movement that changes our government is still nebulous. I think I can say, however, that the Tea Party groups are not it - I believe they will eventually be co-opted by the Republicans, because the Republicans can speak their language while stabbing them in the back. Palin's argument, while obviously bogus, is something that will resonate with people who feel that third party votes are wasted votes.

The point seems to be that if people can get together, they are short circuiting the stranglehold the main political parties have on power.

The only way that will happen, short of revolution, is if people vote out the incumbents and vote in new people who are more in line with their ideals. That could happen, though it would have to happen very quickly; however, based on the poll we're discussing in the other thread, it doesn't seem likely, as at least half of the respondents are willing to keep their own incumbent while simultaneously decrying the incumbency issue in Congress. Plus, as someone who has worked for years to break the incumbent lock on power, I would posit most of these people will not (at first) understand the enormous barriers placed in their way, and will quickly grow discouraged when they realize just how entrenched the Democrats and Republicans are and just how much effort it will take to oust them. They will be powerfully tempted to fall back on the time-honored "wasted vote" and "lesser of two evils" arguments about voting, overwhelmingly vote for the incumbents, and continue the status quo.

Jolly Bill wrote:

I'm asking what you consider that purpose will be.

I don't think I can predict what the context of this sort of micro-movement would be. The concept replaces planning with coordination, making something happen in the moment and then fading away to be replaced by the next flash-party.

The election of Jesse Ventura fits the description, sort of. He swept to power in Minnesota, not on the back of a deeply entrenched political organization, but on a temporarily coordinated movement fueled mostly by dissatisfaction w/ the traditional candidates.

I'm failing to find the example that comes to mind, I believe it was an FCC hearing on limits to ownership in broadcast markets, but an odd group of lefties (ACLU) and righties (the Dobson/Robertson crowd) came together to argue against a policy and then went their separate ways. "Flash mob politics" have the potential to change our political structures by creating mass political will without creating mass political movements.

If I had to pull something out of my, er, elbow, I'd hazard debt, medicare, war, or taxes as possible rallying points. We don't have to agree on much to agree that some of these things are huge issues.

Aetius wrote:

The only way that will happen, short of revolution, is if people vote out the incumbents and vote in new people who are more in line with their ideals. That could happen, though it would have to happen very quickly; however, based on the poll we're discussing in the other thread, it doesn't seem likely, as at least half of the respondents are willing to keep their own incumbent while simultaneously decrying the incumbency issue in Congress. Plus, as someone who has worked for years to break the incumbent lock on power, I would posit most of these people will not (at first) understand the enormous barriers placed in their way, and will quickly grow discouraged when they realize just how entrenched the Democrats and Republicans are and just how much effort it will take to oust them. They will be powerfully tempted to fall back on the time-honored "wasted vote" and "lesser of two evils" arguments about voting, overwhelmingly vote for the incumbents, and continue the status quo.

For the short or intermediate term, I think this is a wise analysis. My crystal ball says that technology has the capacity to make an end run around the incumbent's advantages: party and money. If they can coordinate without an organization and reach an audience without a huge media budget, there may be fewer *structural* reasons for incumbents to be reelected.

Oso wrote:

If I had to pull something out of my, er, elbow, I'd hazard debt, medicare, war, or taxes as possible rallying points. We don't have to agree on much to agree that some of these things are huge issues.

I agree with most of what you said but those four topics are probably the most divisive possible topics I could imagine, other than abortion.

Oso wrote:

For the short or intermediate term, I think this is a wise analysis. My crystal ball says that technology has the capacity to make an end run around the incumbent's advantages: party and money. If they can coordinate without an organization and reach an audience without a huge media budget, there may be fewer *structural* reasons for incumbents to be reelected.

Perhaps, but consider this: by far, the largest voting block in America doesn't use Facebook and Twitter, doesn't care about social networking, and is deeply embedded in the left-vs-right worldview. You'd have to beat them to get anywhere.

NathanialG wrote:
Oso wrote:

If I had to pull something out of my, er, elbow, I'd hazard debt, medicare, war, or taxes as possible rallying points. We don't have to agree on much to agree that some of these things are huge issues.

I agree with most of what you said but those four topics are probably the most divisive possible topics I could imagine, other than abortion.

Yes, but there are strategic moments when public opinion surges toward one end of the spectrum. We aren't talking about a sustainable platform but a momentary tsunami of public opinion. Think about the time in 1971 right after the Pentagon Papers hit the New York Times, or October 2001.

I list those items because people CARE about them, not because they agree. If unemployment spike, inflation takes off, or gas hits $5 per gallon, I think we could see a powerful, if short-lived consensus on a limited issue that shakes the established infrastructure.

A Ron Paul/Ross Perot/John B. Anderson type candidate could sweep to power given an appropriately time/serendipitous surge of voter outrage. Y'all are right, of course, that this type of political movement can't govern, given the committee structure and rules of Congress. On a state level, though, especially in a state with loose voter initiative rules, I think we may see the established two party structure take some hits.

Seriously, though, they've also prevented many lifesaving treatments from coming to market for more than a decade. They make food more expensive.

The first is ironic, because that's mostly due to testing backlogs, due to cuts in funding for years by politicians who agree with you that they should be cut. The latter, I'm curious, how much more expensive? The greatly expanded food inspection budget this year is $260M - less than a dollar a person per year. Maybe you don't like things like cleaning food production equipment every shift, or ensuring that plants are clean and free of vermin, but I do, and I can't believe that that adds tremendously to food costs, given the cheap food prices we have here compared to other parts of the developed world. Even with food inspections, we see millions of pounds of meat recalled every month or two. What would be the cost of treating people who become ill through contaminated food?

We've had systems of little or no regulation before, and they were terrible. Self-monitoring is no more productive in industry that it is in government; that is, it varies entirely based on the desires and motivations of the vendor, and overall effects are as bad as the worst of them.

Aetius wrote:
Oso wrote:

For the short or intermediate term, I think this is a wise analysis. My crystal ball says that technology has the capacity to make an end run around the incumbent's advantages: party and money. If they can coordinate without an organization and reach an audience without a huge media budget, there may be fewer *structural* reasons for incumbents to be reelected.

Perhaps, but consider this: by far, the largest voting block in America doesn't use Facebook and Twitter, doesn't care about social networking, and is deeply embedded in the left-vs-right worldview. You'd have to beat them to get anywhere.

You referring to evangelists or old people? Cause there are a lootttttt of the former on facebook. Grandma not so much

Robear, since this thread has gotten back on track, I'm hesitant to continue our discussion here. PM me if you'd like to keep on keepin' on.

No worries. Wasn't trying to derail. FDA is a customer of mine, that's all.

mooosicle wrote:
Aetius wrote:
Oso wrote:

For the short or intermediate term, I think this is a wise analysis. My crystal ball says that technology has the capacity to make an end run around the incumbent's advantages: party and money. If they can coordinate without an organization and reach an audience without a huge media budget, there may be fewer *structural* reasons for incumbents to be reelected.

Perhaps, but consider this: by far, the largest voting block in America doesn't use Facebook and Twitter, doesn't care about social networking, and is deeply embedded in the left-vs-right worldview. You'd have to beat them to get anywhere.

You referring to evangelists or old people? Cause there are a lootttttt of the former on facebook. Grandma not so much

He's talking about the old people. Don't forget the boomers. Anyone who tells you they are going to cut spending on Medicare and SS in an environment where the largest population bloc in the country needs those spending programs is either lying to you or should be checked into a padded room. You are going to have to think of other ways to cut the budget besides touching those programs.

Mayfield wrote:
mooosicle wrote:
Aetius wrote:
Oso wrote:

For the short or intermediate term, I think this is a wise analysis. My crystal ball says that technology has the capacity to make an end run around the incumbent's advantages: party and money. If they can coordinate without an organization and reach an audience without a huge media budget, there may be fewer *structural* reasons for incumbents to be reelected.

Perhaps, but consider this: by far, the largest voting block in America doesn't use Facebook and Twitter, doesn't care about social networking, and is deeply embedded in the left-vs-right worldview. You'd have to beat them to get anywhere.

You referring to evangelists or old people? Cause there are a lootttttt of the former on facebook. Grandma not so much

He's talking about the old people. Don't forget the boomers. Anyone who tells you they are going to cut spending on Medicare and SS in an environment where the largest population bloc in the country needs those spending programs is either lying to you or should be checked into a padded room. You are going to have to think of other ways to cut the budget besides touching those programs.

The same goes double for a bloated defense budget when folks are screaming about "turrists".

Robear wrote:

Maybe you don't like things like cleaning food production equipment every shift, or ensuring that plants are clean and free of vermin, but I do, and I can't believe that that adds tremendously to food costs, given the cheap food prices we have here compared to other parts of the developed world.

It also avoids the costs involved with recalls, encourages higher sales of the product, and allows clean companies to compete on an even playing field with dirty ones. I'm always surprised that people don't understand that regulations are generally part of a healthy market and that government intervention in markets goes all the way back to, well, the first markets.

Stupid regulations? Yes, those are bad. But to hear the republicans talk, any kind of regulation is inefficient, and that's just not true.

They complain about unemployment, but want to reduce spending.

Government employment is, typically, 'bad' employment -- it's consumptive. It's MUCH better to have people working in the private sector, because the private sector generates the real wealth that makes everything happen.

Obviously, you need some government employment or you don't have a government at all, but you want as few of those jobs as possible while still keeping the economy 'lubricated', as it were. Yes, that includes regulation... the fundamental drive of capitalism is to externalize all costs, so that others pay the price for your profit, and stopping that process is a fundamental goal of modern governments. Example: pollution and global warming.

Oh, and for the record, I suspect high marginal tax rates may, more or less, be required to keep the global system operational over the long haul. I've been thinking about this for a while, and we need fewer and fewer people to generate wealth, as things become increasingly roboticized and automated. That means that, ultimately, we'll end up with a small, massively wealthy elite, with virtually everyone else in poverty, unable to compete with automated systems. I'm not entirely sure what to do about that, but cutting taxes on the lower parts of the income spectrum, and shifting the tax burden to those actually generating wealth, would seem to be a good start.

A competing drive is to keep consumptive spending as low as possible, because resources we use there are resources we can't put to work building a better economy and standard of living for the next generation.

I suspect that the rest of the world catching up to the living standards will pose a problem before automation does. It used to be that China only made cheap toys and clothing, and India provided some butt of a joke for tech support. Now China, despite those safety issues, is a manufacturing giant (although China in particular would support your thesis of automation), and workers from India are continuing to be educated, and continue to provide a cheaper alternative, to a wider range of low-medium level professional skills

My bet is on future demand for more protectionism for both jobs and goods in the future, and that's not going to lead to nice places either.

I have my own thought experiments of the scale of workers against jobs that need to be done. It's pretty set that there are exponentially amount of skilled workers being trained. If there are 25x more software engineers, it's pretty hard to imagine a 25x fold increase in software development demand to match it. Let's say Windows gets double the customers, they definitely won't need double sales employees, management, or development

Edit: I thought of a shorter way to express this ramble. Economics of scale + increased skill labor = for my future career choices. Pretty similar to your idea

China has the second highest tax burdens in the world btw.

Malor wrote:

A competing drive is to keep consumptive spending as low as possible, because resources we use there are resources we can't put to work building a better economy and standard of living for the next generation.

Here's what bothers me with that statement. It ignores what the government has done to *really* create a better economy, generate more wealth, and a higher standard of living. The federal highway system, the Internet, the endless products and technologies that could only be created because the feds did the basic research no private company would ever do. What kind of economy would we have if we didn't even have highways, just a patchwork of toll roads?

Don't forget, OG. Austrian economics arose in contrast to Marxist theories, and so it's extremely suspicious of government economic actions. But you're about to find that out.

.

Funkenpants wrote:

I'm always surprised that people don't understand that regulations are generally part of a healthy market and that government intervention in markets goes all the way back to, well, the first markets.

What you're missing here is that regulations don't have to be government regulations. There are numerous examples of private-sector regulators that arguably work as good or better, and are certainly much cheaper, UL being the canonical example. Those of us who believe the free market is more efficient and effective are not opposed to regulation. We're just opposed to government regulation, such as the regulation that was in place around the meat industry in Chicago at the time Upton Sinclair wrote his not-entirely-true The Jungle. It's not that government regulation can be ineffective, but rather than it tends to be less effective ... and cost a lot more, in addition to often being arbitrary, unfair, co-opted by large industry players, and often downright intrusive.

OG_slinger wrote:
Malor wrote:

A competing drive is to keep consumptive spending as low as possible, because resources we use there are resources we can't put to work building a better economy and standard of living for the next generation.

Here's what bothers me with that statement. It ignores what the government has done to *really* create a better economy, generate more wealth, and a higher standard of living. The federal highway system, the Internet, the endless products and technologies that could only be created because the feds did the basic research no private company would ever do. What kind of economy would we have if we didn't even have highways, just a patchwork of toll roads?

It's certainly possible that we would have a much more effective, lower traffic, better designed, and much cheaper transit system. It's also possible that things would be worse. It's quite certain that the literally trillions of dollars (in today's dollars) that it took to build the Interstates would likely have been spent differently. It's impossible to predict what would have happened, of course, but it's also not fair to dismiss all alternative scenarios where the government doesn't spend any money on transit as belonging to the Stone Age of transportation.

Ran across this quote on my current lap through the Discworld books and thought of this thread:

Terry Pratchett's Night Watch wrote:

"People on the side of The People always ended up disappointed, in any case. They found that The People tended not to be grateful or appreciative or forward-thinking or obedient. The People tended to be small-minded and conservative and not very clever and were even distrustful of cleverness. And so, the children of the revolution were faced with the age-old problem: it wasn't that you had the wrong kind of government, which was obvious, but that you had the wrong kind of people.
As soon as you saw people as things to be measured, they didn't measure up."

Truth, Justice, Freedom, Reasonably Priced Love, and a Hard-Boiled Egg.

Underwriter's Laboratory is not part of the free market. It's a non-profit organization. (Well, two years ago it opened a for-profit certification arm, but that revenue goes back to the non-profit, and it's work is not the traditional standards-setting of the main corporation.) Non-profits exist in part because there are certain things that consumers don't trust to for-profit vendors, like safety standards. UL is much more like a government entity than a free-market entity, and is closely tied to government and international standards and safety organizations.

It also was not set up by a consortium of corporations, but rather independently. So it's not the product of industry concern for standards. Instead, it's motivation was to provide some level of surety to consumers that the products they purchased included parts that had been designed and built safely, and manufacturers found over time that selling non-UL parts was harder and harder. In other words, it's standards were imposed on industry rather than voluntarily sought; another way it's like government.

It ignores what the government has done to *really* create a better economy, generate more wealth, and a higher standard of living. The federal highway system, the Internet, the endless products and technologies that could only be created because the feds did the basic research no private company would ever do

That's not consumptive spending, that's investment. I'm actually a big fan of Federally-funded basic research. Our failure to fund basic research is a lot of why we don't get really major paradigm shifts anymore; corporations typically do only applied research for products a few years out.

During the 50s and 60s, we build up an enormous "library" of basic knowledge that we didn't really know what to do with yet, and things progressed very quickly. But then we stopped doing that, and we gradually 'mined out' the knowledge we accumulated in the era of research, and the truly major advances slowed down enormously. In some ways, we've actually lost knowledge, as our old experts have retired and eventually died off.

Consumptive spending is typically military and social programs. Money you spend making tanks is money you can't spend making bulldozers. Tanks just sit there; they take a huge amount of resources to build and maintain, and then it takes even more resources to train, feed, and house the crews. Bulldozers make other stuff. On the super-big-picture scale, you want just enough tanks to make sure that other entities won't try to steal your bulldozers.

Likewise, money you spend on social programs is also destroyed, instead of working for you. The appetite for health care is unlimited; people will spend any amount of money to stay alive, particularly when it's money they've taken from someone else. That's why government healthcare is so dangerous, because people will always, always, ALWAYS vote to live longer, no matter what it costs. And long-term social programs are an endless money sink. I really like short-term ones; I tend to think that welfare-type programs should exist, and should pay better than they do, but should only last maybe two years, which is enough time to retrain into something else. I don't think you should be able to live at government expense for more than maybe four years per lifetime.

You can get an amazing amount of leverage with a small amount of money at the right time, but you don't get increasing leverage with increased investment. Small programs can be powerfully revenue-positive; large ones simply cost more without returning much additional benefit.

Underwriter's Laboratory is not part of the free market. It's a non-profit organization. (Well, two years ago it opened a for-profit certification arm, but that revenue goes back to the non-profit, and it's work is not the traditional standards-setting of the main corporation.)

What the hell? That's about as free-market as you get. Consumers identified a need, organized themselves to serve that need, and did it explicitly not to make a profit, but rather to provide a service. The government was never involved.

'Free market' is not at ALL synonymous with 'for profit'. A much, much better synonym is 'voluntary participation'. Everyone who ever got involved with the UL did so voluntarily. No law was passed, no force of arms were used to demand participation. It's the benchmark for free-market regulation.