Axios poll: https://www.axios.com/socialism-capitalism-poll-generation-z-preference-1ffb8800-0ce5-4368-8a6f-de3b82662347.html

39% of Americans prefer something they can’t define to a status quo they also can’t define.

69% of Americans who don’t have to work think capitalism is great.

71% of American men don’t think much about political economy despite suffering the most structural unemployment over the last 40 years.

Actually, I hadn't even made it to the God stuff when I posted that. I just caught it now skimming back through this mess. Hell, I was probably a page or two back!

I wonder if book series like The Hunger Games and Maze Runner do so well because they tap into the fears of young people that life in America is an endless, viscous rat race and society just cheers you on or something. I might just be seeing patterns in a random walk but I like to infer meaning.

I doubt it. They like it because the make-believe kids in the story get to be important and do cool ****, while their real kid friends eat tide pods and post on instagram.

My favourite part of the Hunger Games was when a bunch of kids from the Capitol read it and idenitified with Katniss

Then why post-apocalyptic, rather than Nancy Drew? Do the books people read not reflect thoughts in the collective subconscious at all?

So, a treatise on why humans ****ing suck, but then why they don't:

So I play this game, Escape from Tarkov. It's possibly one of the most unique shooter concepts of this decade, basically it's a hardcore STALKER-esque online game. You shoot people, you take their stuff, they lose it. You die, you lose your stuff. Many more attempts at realism and a great atmosphere. Anyway, the game is still in active development. The developers communicate to the community and are responsive to ideas about when things are working or not working. I propose suggestions sometimes, and a couple of my ideas were even implemented.

This, in essence, becomes a public policy debate. The developers are kind of a government, the players are the subjects. Policy is decided through public discourse, in many respects. And this sucks.

People have a kind of problem dealing with any sort of effects that a change in-game might have. It's very, very hard to get anyone to see anything past the immediate effects of a change. Especially if the immediate effects are negative effects. Once that happens, reason is thrown out of the window and people become hostile, refusing to recognize the positive returns down the line.

Let me give you an example. In game, there's a secure container. What this means is, you have a small space to put items in, which you keep even when you die. This means that, whenever someone locates a valuable item, it immediately gets stowed away and no other player can touch it. This results in ways of playing the game that are toxic, namely deploying into the world with no gear, filling your secure container with as high value stuff as you can find until you either make it out or die. Since there's little consequence for doing this, it's considered kind of a scourge in the community.

What happens, though, if you suggest removing secure containers? How do people's minds process it? Well, they immediately hate the idea. Why? Because all that can be processed is the loss: "without my container, I will lose valuable items." But, what does reason suggest? Reason suggests that, actually, so long as you're an average player, the net effects of no containers will be nil. Because, just as often as you lose items which you would stow away, other players will lose items they would have stowed away as well. So you'll find more valuable items in addition to losing more, so it should average out.

But people can't reason this far to see how the long term effects of a policy would not actually effect this income. All they can see is the immediate loss, so their brain shuts off and they disagree.

It's the exact same with actual public policy, I feel. "Let's raise taxes to build up the infrastructure." Everyone says "**** no, I don't want to pay more". But what does "pay more" mean? I mean, if you piss the tax money away on funding the stock market, sure, you're paying more for nothing. But assuming the money is reasonably invested, do you really lose?

Possibly not. If the roads are more refined, you may get less wear on your car. More roads might mean commute times are shorter. Better infrastructure might mean more private investment, making your job more secure and bringing more business. Cleaner water and more diverse food access might mean less visits to the doctor later. Maybe you can't even explain exactly the causes, but maybe pure statistical reasoning shows the benefits either way.

But these things are an argument: they require reason, thought, something past first impulses. So long as people don't step back and reason through further consequences, such policies can't get off the ground. So humans ****ing suck.

But they don't. Humans in modern time have repeatedly educated themselves on economic issues and fought for them before. What's lacking is collective intellectual culture among common Americans. Such a thing has existed, in some places does exist, and in the future will exist. But what's required is the cultural backbone to grow this culture off of, in spite of efforts by some actors to defeat it.

Treatise done.

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/1/29/18200559/government-shutdown-contractors-back-pay

How to make everyone hate you 101

Did you read the article?

"Because they work for a third-party company that the government pays for its services, contractors don’t get paid when these services aren’t used."

They didn't work, they don't get paid. Simple. If they DID work, then by all means, give them what they're owed. But if they weren't working during the shutdown, how can they expect to be paid for staying home? I know it sucks, but it's just like getting your hours cut at any other job. No worky no money.

How to make everyone hate you 102

How to make federal contract bids price in shutdown risk

Yes, that is a valid, well-constructed argument that explains your position rationally and intelligently.

"why are our hours getting cut to zero? is it because of an economic downturn?"

"nah, some retarded guy who bleeds crisco is throwing a temper tantrum"

"damn, that guy sucks"

"no lol what if you got your hours cut at another job did you ever think of that?"

This is a better approach. Or maybe don't operate on such small margins that missing one month of income destroys your business.

Okay, fine. You were arguing against a phantom position nobody was making. Getting shafted is getting shafted, these people are struggling to make ends meet because Trump and his cronies are fighting for stupid ends. Pointing out the detail you did wouldn't change anything about the point I made, even if I didn't understand what was going on.

Your point was that republicans are *******s because they won't pay people who didn't work. My point is that republicans are *******s, but not in this instance. This makes sense. Why pay someone who didn't work?

It depends on whether they’re contractors or “contractors”.

If they’re contractors, then they’re a business and no they should not be paid when their services aren’t used. You don’t pay Kinkos for copies you didn’t make this week. At the same time, Kinkos still has to pay their employees whether you make copies or not. The consulting firm should be pricing the risk into their contracts and paying their employees through the shutdown.

If they’re “contractors”, they are actually employees and should be paid. Making employees “contractors” is one of the more ducked up things about US companies and nobody should be fooled by it. Employees are paid for exclusive access, not for piecework. Employers don’t deserve to have it both ways.

No, point was that stunts like this make people hate you.

"Why pay people who don't work?" Because this isn't some 1980's anti-welfare propaganda. It's not as if these people are choosing not to work. Many of these people are and the lower end of the poverty scale, this much time without work could result in late fees, lack of food, other issues.

In case you weren't aware, they're the "contractors" sort Jon`C mentions:



So these aren't people who run a business and sell contracts - the people being effected are minimum wage workers "contracted" by an outside firm and who are essentially employees of the federal government. It's cafeteria workers who aren't getting paid. This is why people want to provide backpay, so that Sally Librarian doesn't get her car repo'd for missing a payment, not Big McCorporation.

In this case, the employees are regular employees, who work for a business/employer that contracts with the government. So the only real contractor is the business/employer these individuals work for. So in your example (Jonk), it's like someone single-handedly keeps a kinkos location open as their sole customer, then tells kinkos they will not be making any copies until further notice. The employees don't make any copies so they don't to come in to work and the location is temporarily closed until that one guy comes back. No one gets paid.

I worked for a contractor that did a certain service on air force bases. The base was closed to non-essential personnel for one week because of a sensitive rocket launch. I didn't work, and I didn't get paid. No one did. Not my coworkers, not the people at the base exchange or the Burger King or the gas station. That's the way it goes. They later extended our contract by one week so we could still compete the service. It sucked getting a half paycheck because I missed a week, but I didn't expect to get paid my normal amount.

And I agree, many employers shaft their employees and game the system by calling their employees "contractors" so they don't have to pay employment taxes or benefits etc etc but still dictate when they come in and what they do and how they do it. It's crooked.

Reid: I can empathize with the workers, but this isn't an emotional issue. Does it suck? Yes. Should it have happened? No. Should we take steps to prevent it? Yes. But we can't go around legislating out of emotion.

I mean that's why I loved Animorphs as a kid.

Hey you know maybe instead of concocting ways to make up for government shutdowns, you guys should do the reasonable thing and rewrite the constitution to use the Westminster system

Good idea, I'll get right on it

Well, for one, you had a good amount of forewarning and a guarantee of the temporary nature of the lack of pay. You could conceivably plan around it and it didn't last long. The circumstances causing it were understandable.

So yes, in this case your lack of pay is very reasonable.

There's obviously not parity between these situations. Republicans are, in effect, taking these people hostage to strongarm Democrats into giving into their demands. The reason for their lack of pay is arbitrary, on an arbitrary timescale, and the vast majority of people don't agree with the reasons and think it's completely stupid.

So it's an exceptional circumstance.



I don't believe it's at all "emotional" to believe these people should still receive backpay, like all regularly employed federal employees are. When they're essentially serving the same function, yeah it seems totally fine, moral, and right.

I know it's definitely going well for Westminster!

I've seen several people calling for an Animorphs film lately and I'd like to see stats on how many kids would realise they're into the idea of being a furry.

God damn you.

If you don’t want a government that fails a confidence motion, you at least have a lot of chances to get it right

No government will ever be perfect. They will make mistakes and bad choices, just like each of us individually. A good system of government is only one where mistakes have a low cost. The Westminster system is pretty good at balancing the costs of change against the cost of being stuck with a gangster president who got elected as a joke.

The United States of America has possibly the highest cost for mistakes out of all democracies in the entire world. Mostly because, contrary to American popular belief, the US constitution was an amateur hour ****show and did stuff that was well understood problematic even at the time (Americans generally pretend to believe their democracy was a great experiment, even though the Brits already had the House of Commons and one of the main objections leading to the revolution was the colonies’ lack of representation there... but whatever).

Black people had the right to vote in Britain in 1774:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignatius_Sancho

~but America invented democracy~

To be fair, I guess from an American revolutionary perspective the situation was pretty barbaric. Imagine an offshore territory that’s denied government representation even though most of the people who live there are citizens, saddled with debt for a foreign military that barely protects them. What kind of savages would do that to their own people?

We'll get there, after the next civil war.

Are you talking about PR or Guam?

I'm still waiting for the civil war furry anime.

Yep, the whole shutdown thing seems idiotic, but I'm mostly here for irreverence.

JK though, we need a new political system.

England isn't an island.







Why am I defending England?

Because you're English?

huehuehue

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/01/30/foxconn-was-major-con-backed-trump-promises-and-4-billion-subsidies-company-admits

#wrecked

England is the inferior half of an island.

They gave a fat stack of working class dollars to some rich dudes, seems to me like the plan went perfectly.