The different political labels are interesting but also deeply frustrating because it paints people at odds when they're not.
There's two baskets: one is a "centrally planned" economy led by government spending. One is "free market" economy led by market forces. You can't leave either basket empty or your economy crashes. The government spending keeps money moving during the busts. All we're arguing about how full each basket should be and which sectors of the economy go where. This shouldn't be some us vs them thing dammit, we all have the same vision for the economy and arguing over the details—because they are details—ought to be civil rather than territory grabbing and flag planting.
> The different political labels are interesting but also deeply frustrating because it paints people at odds when they're not.
I agree.
I don't necessarily think the two baskets analogy is even the right framework tbh. The important issues imho are transparency, corruption, incentive alignment, feedback loops, it doesn't really matter to me - and I think probably most people - if its in the government or business space.
What matters, at least to me, is how decisions are made, how information flows, and how citizens (or employees) can see whats going on, influence and hold accountable the decision-makers.
Further, it seems to me there are forces at play recently trying to put people at odds with each other over as many dimensions as possible.
What I'm not sure about is whether this is some sort of organic mitosis like force that naturally oscilates over time, an unfortunate accident (e.g. side effects of attention economy) or if it's a conspiracy (e.g. most advertising dollars are spent trying to drive division).
Either way, everyone's constantly being influenced into a victim mentality with boogymen galore.
> This shouldn't be some us vs them thing dammit, we all have the same vision for the economy and arguing over the details—because they are details—ought to be civil rather than territory grabbing and flag planting.
You can't kumbaya your way to peace with Nazis. Black people have been trying to explain this forever. Look at how Germany does it: Speech and expression related to Nazism is heavily regulated and subjects you to imprisonment. Demonstrations/rallies are often banned. The Nazi party itself is banned. AfD is being monitored by intelligence agencies and might be banned in the future, etc. They do this defensively when groups demonstrate an "actively belligerent, aggressive stance" towards the democratic order. Because it's like pointing a gun at people in public - it's already violent even if you don't pull the trigger. Eventually America will have to learn this.
- The German penal code prohibits publicly denying the Holocaust and disseminating Nazi propaganda, both off- and online. This includes sharing images such as swastikas, wearing an SS uniform and making statements in support of Hitler.
- It also places strict rules on how social media companies must moderate and report hate speech and threats. These hate-speech laws were tightened last year, after three far-right terror attacks in 2019 and early 2020 prompted German authorities to warn of increasing extremism.
But I think there is plenty of debate possible on free market vs. centrally managed market, tax rates, immigration policies, etc. that can be fact based and is with people who do have the same vision (a free prosperous society) but disagree on how we do it.
In my reading, I came across the term "Mixed economy" which I think aligns with what you're saying. Nobody is arguing in good faith that socialism/communism would have 100% coverage of the economic system. There would be room for luxury goods to operate under roughly the same economic conditions. The key difference being that basic needs like food housing and Healthcare would operate under state control for the benefit of all citizens. We would have some vote in their operation via representatives, unlike now where we have 0 say in private operations unless we pay to play. And some people don't have the means to pay, so they don't get to play.
Pretty much yeah, I wouldn't put as much in the state controlled basket as you but like that's a policy discussion—I don't think we have some fundamental disagreement that means we couldn't work together and be pragmatic. One of us doesn't have to "win" control of the government to make progress.
Yeah, this is ultimately why I don't love the idea of single payer. But honestly I'm (slowly) warming up to it as the fears of government controlling healthcare in the way you describe are starting to happen anyway. I guess we'll see how bad it gets and how successful government is at sticking their fingers in private healthcare.
Before the ACA, there were dozens of reasons for which you could be deemed uninsurable, not the least of which is that you had a "pre-existing condition" (i.e., you were unlikely to be profitable enough). North of 15% of the US population lacked health insurance as a result. Even after ACA's passage, we straddle 10% uninsured, rising above some years and falling below in others.
When we have regular, required medication like insulin costing tens or hundreds of times more here than anywhere else on the planet, being uninsured can be a particularly cruel, slow death sentence.
Still, the joke's on GP: he/she still is relying on Trump not to take away healthcare and housing from people he doesn't like (re: poor people, i.e., nearly everyone). The BBB guts medicaid and ACA subsidies, which will ultimately remove health insurance from millions either directly or pricing it out of reach, and his combination of tariffs and deportations of (often times not-so-)illegal immigrants make building more housing difficult and significantly more expensive.
Expect even harsher austerity measures and/or batshit insane policies the next time the Republican party wants to shake the tax cut for billionaires tree or perhaps even just for shits and giggles since many of the cruel policies are there to put the rabble in their place.
It's crazy to me that many of the people who are so proud to be American don't seem to realize that they are actually at odds with the spirit of America. They latch onto superficial anti-gubbermint thinking while surrendering their rights to billionaires. Being an American is supposed to be about telling powerful people to go fuck themselves, standing up for inclusive equality and reckoning with our slights against what we claim to believe. It's supposed to be about modeling democratic ideals to show the world there's a better way. It's supposed to be about being so morally righteous that others come to their own conclusion that we're worthy of emulation, and not because we regime changed them. Somehow we let all of that get away from us.
If you watch modern American politics, the President has vastly more power than he was ever meant to be, combined with a house and senate that follow his wishes to the T.
Why would we allow the president to do that? Because at some point in the last 300 years we decided it was a necessary power for him to get past some crisis, and no President ever relinquishes power.
No disagreement from me. I just think that the argument that the state shouldn't offer Healthcare because the president could cancel it is interesting to think about. Maybe I misunderstood you, but that's how I interpreted it. As the other poster said, he's basically canceling it now anyway for millions of people so it seems to me that presidentual power is irrelevant to the concept of state run Healthcare. Sent from my bidet.
I kept it pretty vague intentionally because I was simply complaining about how dangerous that one particular thing would be right now. I'm undecided on how the overall healthcare issue should be attacked.
I just want people to be open to try things. One thing that this administration has proved is that you can actually make parts of the government move faster, for better or for worse. We stopped innovating on democratic ideals, and the world is starting to lose faith in us. I think we all feel that on some level.
Agreed, but change is very scary to many, many people. It's hard to convince them to try new things. It might be less frictional to simply explain how "actually new thing" is pretty much the same as "old broken thing".
With that being said, the major problem I have with pretty much all candidates is that they just campaign on an end goal, rather than a process. Yes, we all want to "tax the rich", but what does that look like in reality? Are we sending out wealth assessors? Are we requiring new reporting? Are we doing something else? (this is just an example that can be applied to just about any major political platform today)
There's two baskets: one is a "centrally planned" economy led by government spending. One is "free market" economy led by market forces. You can't leave either basket empty or your economy crashes. The government spending keeps money moving during the busts. All we're arguing about how full each basket should be and which sectors of the economy go where. This shouldn't be some us vs them thing dammit, we all have the same vision for the economy and arguing over the details—because they are details—ought to be civil rather than territory grabbing and flag planting.