[Discussion] The government shutdown thread

If you're not playing the game, the only choices you have to change it are violent.

But moving, while a practical individual choice, does nothing to fix the situation for those who stay. Either the system changes from within, or from the outside. And history shows that changing the system from outside its rules (even if it is caused by internal factions which topple it and make a new system) is usually far less pleasant than change that occurs within the existing structure.

Of course, history also shows us that violent change is often the way countries and societies (and corrupt systems) are uprooted.

There's a dark part of me who wonders if a second revolution wouldn't in the long run be a bad thing. While I'm against violence, there would be some upsides - a lot of the alt-right gun sniffers would be the first to bite it, we could rebuild a lot of our infrastructure to be green and sustainable, and we could emerge as a far more equitable and just society in the same way Germany and Japan did after WW 2.

Regarding the shutdown, I wish there was some provision where Congress forfeit their salary during that time. No back pay.

Serious question - what's an acceptable number of dead Americans to achieve that end?

Not being a dick - I think that if you're looking at revolution and thinking "huh - why not?", then this right here is the question to have to ask yourself next.

Why are you not celebrating that? Their pay comes from money taken illegally at gunpoint, and they are inherently inefficient, since these employees don't have a profit margin to worry about.

It sounds good in theory, but that would only punish the minority who aren't independently wealthy at this point, and those individuals are probably already not keen on a shutdown.

8(

Also, you are answering a different question. Jonman and jdzappa are talking about the least costly way of permanent and good social and political reform. You are obviously talking about enormous human die-offs as an actual goal to allow ecological recovery (I'm not entirely sure how you think 160 million humans would be killed in America in a form that does not destroy most of the environment as well, but ok). That's an entirely different beast, deaths aren't an unpleasant necessity in the scenario you are advocating, it's the entire purpose.

Funded for a whole 3 weeks, so we get to look forward to this same mess in about a month.

I'm not exactly advocating it, but the question was "what's an acceptable number of dead Americans to achieve [green, sustainable infrastructure and a more equitable and just society]". At no point did I say that the point was ecological recovery (though I do think a vast reduction in population world-wide would help that end), nor did I say that I figured 160 million would die in The Revolution. I do think that reaching a green, sustainable, equitable, and just society is worth virtually any cost that will not utterly destroy said society.

With that in mind, off the top of my head, I think you could take pretty much any 1st world country, cut it's population in half, and still have a functional society. Such a cataclysm might also provide the opportunity to radically rethink things like equality and sustainable infrastructure.

Disagree. How do you have a functioning society when your economy will be in tatters? Because that's an inevitable byproduct of shrinking your population in half over a generation.

I wonder if that might actually help. (Note that I'm totally making this up as I go along.) Necessity being the mother of invention and all that, having something that catastrophic might be useful in forcing a population to accept radical change. We are well aware that as long as the majority is comfortable enough, major change won't happen. Maybe 1/2 is too much shrinkage (that's what he said :sadface:), but I suspect there is a suprisingly large number that is "enough to make major change possible" and also "not enough to completely destroy society".

That's exactly how I remember it, and, if that's the case, then the Dems have dropped the ball.

Again.

I feel like this is a very useful step in getting DACA actually voted on, as now far, far more people are paying attention to the really public promise to vote on DACA in the immediate future. Now if Trump/the GOP congress reneges on this deal many more people will know that and remember the promise being made. So if the government is shutdown again in three weeks because that didn't happen I don't think that the GOP will be able to make that argument anymore.

I feel like the central point is that since September CHIP has been expired, the Dems have been asking the GOP to put it up for a vote, and the GOP has said "sure, absolutely, CHIP is super important! Now if you excuse me we are very busy not putting CHIP funding up for a vote". The idea that if it actually, finally goes up for a vote immediately after the shutdown, that's somehow not related, that just seems ridiculous to me.

Similarly, lots and lots and lots of Republicans have said again and again "protecting the Dreamers is very important to us, we're definitely going to do that!" and have continued to do absolutely nothing of the sort. They are now promising, again, to vote for this within three weeks. If they actually live up to that promise, after breaking all the others, it's because of this shutdown, that's all there is to it. If they didn't need a shutdown to vote for the DACA then they would have done it before the shutdown.

This scenario is a whiny teenager refusing to take out the garbage. Eventually his parents kick him off the computer and send him to his room. When they let him out later he finally goes to the garbage can "You didn't need to send me to my room, I was going to take the trash out right now anyways!" Yeah, ok Paul Ryan, sure you were.

There is no way that a conflict that kills half of Americans will magically sort out and preserve the skills and abilities and inclinations we need to continue with our standard of living, or anything like it. Not to mention the infrastructure. Syria has lost about 20% of its population to the civil war; it's not anything like it was and fighting was not universal across the country, nor did its ecology, government or anything else improve by the forced demographic changes.

Killing half of Americans will simply invite dictatorship as people give up their rights for things like fresh water, a regular food supply and at least minimal defenses against the folks who were killing them off before. It will blast the economy, which depends complex and fragile infrastructures that will be the first things to go in a civil war. We'll lose the ability to move goods around the country at will, rendering most factories unusable for the purposes for which they were built. Electricity generation and transport will fail. The Internet will be a memory. Bank accounts will be gone. Cities will be rendered partially or fully uninhabitable by the fighting, or chemical/nuclear weapons, or (most likely) through severe attrition caused by siege and starvation. The rule of law will be long gone for years at a minimum.

This will cause people to revert to a subsistence agricultural level of survival (as indeed happens with refugee camps all over the world). Wildlife of every edible sort will quickly disappear; fuel in the form of trees and other plants will follow immediately. Large agribusiness will shut down due to a lack of seed stock and transport as well as labor, leaving at most truck farms to feed locals. Stock animals will die due to a lack of feed and care.

Here's the hairy part. With half the population gone, there's no reason to expect that the losses stabilize at that point. Even after the fighting stops, health care will be at a 19th century level for most of the country. As will nutrition. There will be a further winnowing that will take the population down to a point where everyone lives on the output of small farms, barely. And there are literally millions of Americans who believe that having enough weapons will give them the right to withdraw from society, hoarding their resources, or worse yet, set up as local rulers, using force of arms to justify what will be de facto chattel slavery.

JD, in that scenario or anything like it, what are the odds that Americans will turn out differently from Rwandans, from Chechnyans, from Iraqis and Syrians, or even from North Koreans? I don't see much hope in your vision. I see hundreds of millions of unnecessary deaths, that could be prevented in ways that don't turn our cities into Grozny.

This is not a good war to take that lesson from. The US was practically alone in leaving that War with almost no damage, and there is a good argument to be made that that fluke of luck is almost completely responsible for the next 70 years of US global supremacy. 95% of the countries involved in WW 2 would not say that it was a positive thing for their economy or people.