PC Principal VI: What The Fuck Am I Reading Part Deux

[Gredival]

I mean that's the point. Democracy IS bad. This has been said since the birth of democracy in Greece by people like Plato. Democracy has only been palatable thus far because elites that controlled institutions could save us from ourselves.

Trump and Brexit is what you get when the common man gets power. We are stupid and therefore susceptible to leaders who offer solutions that don't work as long as it is what we want to hear.

[Tyrath]

I think my eyes rolled into the back of my skull. I'll venmo you for the doctors bill.

Or perhaps I should crowdfund it through the systems our glorious elites have set up for us.

[Tyrath]

Trump and Brexit is what you get when the common man gets power. We are stupid and therefore susceptible to leaders who offer solutions that don't work as long as it is what we want to hear.

No, Trump and Brexit is what you get when one half of these elite saviors you keep espousing work for decades to erode our education system and cultivate an army of one issue voters and turn them into a cult.

[Thunder]

No, Trump and Brexit is what you get when one half of these elite saviors you keep espousing work for decades to erode our education system and cultivate an army of one issue voters and turn them into a cult.

he’s seemingly embraced a kind of reverence for elitism no longer fashionable in the academy. When challenged on this front, he quickly insisted he didn’t mean to exempt himself from the claim that people suffer from cognitive and emotional limitations. He conceded that the psychological research shows everybody’s irrational, professors included!

elites, ... senators, journalists, professors, judges and government administrators,

I think when pressed the shawn fellow would say that "half of these elite saviors ... erode our [institutions]" is correct. But I understand his point is that the majority of people are somewhat incapable of being anything but one issue voters and there's no "cultivating" necessary

You're saying the elites created the problem purposely so that the same elites can take advantage of it later, yeah? I think the research this guy is referencing would point to the problem being inherit in humanity and by way of natural selection (because it's the majority that effectively decides what's popular, what kind of debate formats we'll have, what sort of political messaging is effective, etc), we find dubious people taking significant market share of discourse through institutions like journalism and politics. Having more of an oligarchy and less social media allowed those elites to act as a barrier for what's even allowed to make it into discourse, which was good because it seems that most people can't actually parse through bullshit and even some that think they're good at it by focusing in on the bullshit and attacking it incessantly... are actually just signal boosting it to our detriment

Coincidentally, I thought some of BG was grappling with this sort of idea where some [ostensibly rational] people just can't help but engage with ideas and actors they find absolutely crazy and end up filling the room with the crazyness, when they could have just ignored it and engaged with more [rational] posters instead

[guartz]

Much ado about nothing. What are we in need of saving from? Good economy? Solid Border controls? Strong military?

I have not read the paper yet, but I bet it's a modern rehash of Locke and Hobbs.

[Zealot]

Much ado about nothing. What are we in need of saving from? Good economy? Solid Border controls? Strong military?

I have not read the paper yet, but I bet it's a modern rehash of Locke and Hobbs.

All of that shit is wrong or doesn't matter.

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[guartz]

extremely relevant

[Thunder]

Much ado about nothing. What are we in need of saving from? Good economy? Solid Border controls? Strong military?

I have not read the paper yet, but I bet it's a modern rehash of Locke and Hobbs.

Maybe

For you, I suggest imagining if bernie wins - or a few cycles later where someone like bernie wins
My favorite is that he wants a speculation tax and flatly multiplies the % tax across all trades and uses that $$ as a significant chunk of his budget. As if the tax isn't going to negatively affect trading which will lower the govt. revenue from that tax (as in, less trades will take place such that the US can tax them, much like it has every single other time a tax like this was tried; the only way this would work is if all other world markets also had a similar tax for themselves, but whichever one wouldn't would just get all the business themselves so too bad)
And recently he says he will flatly ban fracking because it dirties our water (which is true of course, but there's 0 discussion among his fans, or him afaik, to weigh that vs the value of the natural gas - or the extent of pollution from the fracking)
And of course dozens of other things which I suspect you disagree with and think is extremely poorly thought out

Bernie's kind of the other side of the populist coin, and the guy is suggesting (as far as I can tell) that populism is the problem and that populism is inevitable without strong/trustworthy institutions (elites)

[Zealot]

By what measure is the economy good? The stock market jumps on news that unions lost court battles or trade deals geared towards concentrating more wealth at the upper crust have passed. The Republicans screamed for 6 years that job numbers were only improving because people were working two jobs or dropping out of the job market altogether, or working "underemployed," earning less than they could live off of. That shit went silent immediately when Trump became President and rode Obama's numbers straight to where they are now. He used it to pass a tax bill that's gotten us jack shit.

Borders are a joke, our military spending is out of control, these things are not positives.

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[Zealot]

Anyone who thinks things are good in this country right now is delusional.

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[guartz]

Maybe

For you, I suggest imagining if bernie wins - or a few cycles later where someone like bernie wins
My favorite is that he wants a speculation tax and flatly multiplies the % tax across all trades and uses that $$ as a significant chunk of his budget. As if the tax isn't going to negatively affect trading which will lower the govt. revenue from that tax (as in, less trades will take place such that the US can tax them, much like it has every single other time a tax like this was tried; the only way this would work is if all other world markets also had a similar tax for themselves, but whichever one wouldn't would just get all the business themselves so too bad)
And recently he says he will flatly ban fracking because it dirties our water (which is true of course, but there's 0 discussion among his fans, or him afaik, to weigh that vs the value of the natural gas - or the extent of pollution from the fracking)
And of course dozens of other things which I suspect you disagree with and think is extremely poorly thought out

Bernie's kind of the other side of the populist coin, and the guy is suggesting (as far as I can tell) that populism is the problem and that populism is inevitable without strong/trustworthy institutions (elites)

oh wow it really is rehashed Hobbes, elites = body politic

In your scenario, I'd imagine economy would tank and people would be quote peeved, what's stopping people from voting in somebody who promises to reverse all that? Sort of kindof like we have now, where we have candidates who primarily are "not trump"

[Thunder]

oh wow it really is rehashed Hobbes, elites = body politic

In your scenario, I'd imagine economy would tank and people would be quote peeved, what's stopping people from voting in somebody who promises to reverse all that? Sort of kindof like we have now, where we have candidates who primarily are "not trump"

In your imagined result of my scenario, what if the US shits the bad so badly that someone else out there tries to (not to mention their potential success) take away global hegemony from the US?

But beyond that (and more relevant to me, I thought the above would speak more to you), I'm imagining the "what's stopping people from voting in somebody who promise to reverse all that?" would be corrupt by virtue of most discourse being bloated by ill-thought out nonsense and we'd be swinging between bullshitters

[Andalusian girls]

I mean that's the point. Democracy IS bad. This has been said since the birth of democracy in Greece by people like Plato.

it's definitely the worst form of governance except for all the others

[guartz]

Thunder you should read Locke, because this argument is quite literally centuries old. I won't do it justice. But, for a sake of argument:
Western cultural and economic dominance derives from individual freedoms that are bestowed by restricting the authority of government. Walking Dead series had a good take on it back in season 7 with Negan who was the personification of the Leviathan, or the body politic. The reason why focus on individual freedoms is objectively better, is that central authority unless on a very small scale is always objectively worse. People in large numbers know better what they need then any disconnected leader would. That's why central planning always fails in large governments. Elite who "protect us" from ourselves operate on assumptions. Why communistic economies could focus on, say, wheat production and outpace capitalistic nations but end up with toilet paper shortage because a bureaucrat forgot to issue orders to some factory. Society is organized chaos, we may need a shepherd for some things but certainly not for all things and things tend to go better the less the elite stick their hands into the machine.

[Gredival]

it's definitely the worst form of governance except for all the others

The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.

[guartz]

I say thank god for Republics.


edit:
with division of powers.

[Thunder]

Thunder you should read Locke, because this argument is quite literally centuries old. I won't do it justice. But, for a sake of argument:
Western cultural and economic dominance derives from individual freedoms that are bestowed by restricting the authority of government. Walking Dead series had a good take on it back in season 7 with Negan who was the personification of the Leviathan, or the body politic. The reason why focus on individual freedoms is objectively better, is that central authority unless on a very small scale is always objectively worse. People in large numbers know better what they need then any disconnected leader would. That's why central planning always fails in large governments. Elite who "protect us" from ourselves operate on assumptions. Why communistic economies could focus on, say, wheat production and outpace capitalistic nations but end up with toilet paper shortage because a bureaucrat forgot to issue orders to some factory. Society is organized chaos, we may need a shepherd for some things but certainly not for all things and things tend to go better the less the elite stick their hands into the machine.

I'm no stranger to "people > disconnected single leader", reason for central planning always failing (markets = all individuals deciding which is > some individuals deciding what all need). I'm a big believer in markets and decentralized information. I watched the video you posted and I reject your implied characterization that strong institutions = monarchy. Strong institutions would be just a few, maybe two or three?, orders of magnitude more centralized than literally everyone

Editted to add: The "elite" would just be tasked, essentially, to protect us from the inane ever reaching public discourse (which is impossible with the way social media works atm) because the elite would never touch it. Like, for example this developing story where warren says bernie told her a woman can't win; what an absolute bullshit story and what an absolute shame that we have someone's running for president who would willingly mischaracterize bernie absolutely knowing the kind of reaction it would draw from the people. I believe at the very least we wouldn't have our elites (warren) engage in this sort of behavior if the masses didn't have the outlet of social media to have this much power to draw from (what she did is rhetorically very powerful) OR we wouldn't have shit ass people who can't help but engage in behavior like that around because elites would laugh them away

Society is organized chaos, we may need a shepherd for some things but certainly not for all things and things tend to go better the less the elite stick their hands into the machine.

Yeah, but it seems the guy (and I'm inclined to agree) is saying that shepherding what gets to the news, academia, and politics, to then be digested by the population, is a better idea than letting the masses decide wholesale

Like, for example, there's 0 chance we'll see in any way shape or form information on a side-by-side comparison of nuclear vs natural gas (the dominant form atm)
1, in terms of economics (which reveals why no private enterprise would undertake a nuclear project currently - need to shoulder debt for long time),
2, return on investment (nuclear way higher than gas over its lifetime of even conservatively 40yrs),
3, waste (nuclear waste is completely manageable whereas we still have not even good theoretical ideas on sequestering co2),
4, and safety (people believe chernobyl could have blown up with a force of several megatons which would have razed cities 350kms away, which is complete bullshit, thanks HBO)
any reasonable person would conclude we should have the govt. fund nuclear energy projects but instead political discourse has been decided by people to be all the fossil fuels vs wind/solar.

edit; added more in response to first quote

[Gredival]

No, Trump and Brexit is what you get when one half of these elite saviors you keep espousing work for decades to erode our education system and cultivate an army of one issue voters and turn them into a cult.

Higher education correlates with left ideology and we have more people with Bachelor's degrees now than ever, yet the electorate is sliding right if anything. Many kids come into high school already brain washed by Ben Shapiro and are immune to the supposed educational system's leftist indoctrination.

[archibaldcrane]

https://twitter.com/washingtonpost/s...783645699?s=19

[6souls]

https://twitter.com/washingtonpost/s...783645699?s=19

https://www.nbc4i.com/news/u-s-world...-cake-t-shirt/ - video

The school calls the colorful birthday cake and rainbow on her shirt the latest in two years worth of ‘lifestyle violations.’ In the email, Dr. Jacobson said the picture ‘demonstrates a posture of morality and cultural acceptance contrary to that of Whitefield Academy’s beliefs.’

The code of conduct does address sexual orientation and says if a student’s off-campus behavior isn’t in line with the school’s beliefs, they can be disciplined.