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Shageletic
Jul 25, 2007

GreyjoyBastard posted:

we had a thing from attorneys posted that included some fort bliss stuff, but it was in usnews not here

this is a more thorough look at fort bliss and it seems rather worse than that reporting. where the really unpleasant poo poo was at a contractor and the fort bliss reporting was "kids are not provided with the resources they need and are bored and it's terrible for their formative years", which is Bad but not this

"average of 31 days" is also, while technically an improvement, still unacceptable

since pretty early on i've been beating the drum of reducing the length of stay - moderately trash conditions in, say, CBP/ICE camps can be remedied by getting people out within 24 hours

conversely, even mediocre conditions kinda suck if they're in them for 90+ days

edit: articlepost and discussion starts here in usnews https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?noseen=0&threadid=3965530&pagenumber=410&perpage=40#post515680624

Yikes. Thanks for the resources.

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PeterCat
Apr 8, 2020

Believe women.

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2...obox=1626721572

Common Dreams posted:

President Joe Biden said Monday that he would defer to the advice of the Senate parliamentarian regarding whether Democratic lawmakers can approve a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants using budget reconciliation, prompting outrage from immigrant rights advocates who argue that an unelected official should not be allowed to determine the fate of millions of people.

"That's for the parliamentarian to decide, not for Joe Biden to decide," the president told reporters when asked about Democrats' plans to include a pathway to citizenship for Dreamers and others in their forthcoming reconciliation package, which is expected to include trillions of dollars in spending on a range of priorities.

Also, the National Guard deployment to the border is going to be funded by CARES Act money, that is the soldiers will be deployed under the fig leaf of controlling the spread of covid by assisting CBP, BP, and ICE in their mission on the border.

PeterCat fucked around with this message at 19:05 on Jul 20, 2021

Thorn Wishes Talon
Oct 18, 2014

by Fluffdaddy

PeterCat posted:

quote:

prompting outrage from immigrant rights advocates who argue that an unelected official should not be allowed to determine the fate of millions of people.

Sounds like a dumb criticism. "Unelected officials" (e.g. judges, various federal agency personnel) determine the fates of millions of people and organizations every day. What makes this different?

Pentecoastal Elites
Feb 27, 2007

Thorn Wishes Talon posted:

Sounds like a dumb criticism. "Unelected officials" (e.g. judges, various federal agency personnel) determine the fates of millions of people and organizations every day. What makes this different?

Because it happens elsewhere, it's good? Is that what you're saying here?

Thorn Wishes Talon
Oct 18, 2014

by Fluffdaddy

Pentecoastal Elites posted:

Because it happens elsewhere, it's good? Is that what you're saying here?

:rolleyes:

No, I'm asking why it is different.

Why should "only elected officials should make decisions regarding other people's fate" an ideal we should strive for? And how do we work that into the contexts I provided?

Pentecoastal Elites
Feb 27, 2007

Why does it need to be any different? Why would this be an invalid criticism of something that's massively important. Unelected officials deciding peoples' fates is... fine? Morally neutral?

Elected officials means there's at least a chance that the people directly affected by their decisions might have a say in those decisions, unelected officials removes even that chance. This is an important thing that has a massive impact on so many lives. They should have more say in it.

I can't believe I have to explain this. Do you not think the people affected having even limited say in hugely life-changing decisions is not a good thing?

Thorn Wishes Talon
Oct 18, 2014

by Fluffdaddy

Pentecoastal Elites posted:

Elected officials means there's at least a chance that the people directly affected by their decisions might have a say in those decisions, unelected officials removes even that chance.

What kind of "say" would those who are directly affected by this have on this matter anyway? It's not like they can vote. And their friends and loved ones who can vote can do so in the next election if they don't like this decision.

Aside from that, I'm pushing back on it partly (but not only) because the whole "unelected officials are determining people's fate" thing has a very similar... smell... to conservatives complaining about "unelected judges" when those judges issue verdicts they don't like. But those same judges become "patriots" when the decision goes their way.

Pentecoastal Elites
Feb 27, 2007

Their friends, loved ones, and advocates, at the very least, are directly affected and should have a say. Asking them to wait until those officials end their terms, die, or retire and then vote in the next election is just breathtakingly cruel.

Is your objection to it really "it feels like what conservatives do"? Because it sounds, superficially, like the same arguments that they make from time to time?

I feel like I'm losing my mind here. I don't understand how someone can advocate for such stark and obvious cruelty, manifestly against the ideals of democracy and self-governance, for... what end? Because it's The Rules? Because you remember conservatives saying the words "unelected judges"?

It really seems to me -- and I am being completely and utterly honest here -- that PeterCat's quote made you upset because it was a criticism of the Biden administration and you reflexively wanted to dismiss it without really thinking about who was saying it or why immigrant rights advocates might say it. I mean if that's not the case, my bad, but the reasons you're giving me are totally mind-boggling and really seem like you're scrambling to think of something smart to say that doesn't make you seem like a reactionary psychopath.

Thorn Wishes Talon
Oct 18, 2014

by Fluffdaddy

Pentecoastal Elites posted:

Their friends, loved ones, and advocates, at the very least, are directly affected and should have a say. Asking them to wait until those officials end their terms, die, or retire and then vote in the next election is just breathtakingly cruel.

As opposed to what? If Biden was not deferring to the parliamentarian, what would their recourse be, if not to wait until the next election?

Pentecoastal Elites posted:

Is your objection to it really "it feels like what conservatives do"? Because it sounds, superficially, like the same arguments that they make from time to time?

I feel like I'm losing my mind here. I don't understand how someone can advocate for such stark and obvious cruelty, manifestly against the ideals of democracy and self-governance, for... what end? Because it's The Rules? Because you remember conservatives saying the words "unelected judges"?

It really seems to me -- and I am being completely and utterly honest here -- that PeterCat's quote made you upset because it was a criticism of the Biden administration and you reflexively wanted to dismiss it without really thinking about who was saying it or why immigrant rights advocates might say it. I mean if that's not the case, my bad, but the reasons you're giving me are totally mind-boggling and really seem like you're scrambling to think of something smart to say that doesn't make you seem like a reactionary psychopath.

The only person I'm "upset" at is Joe Biden, who has fallen far short of his immigration promises. I'm pushing back on the activists' line of criticism of him deferring to the parliamentarian because... well, I already explained it. If you think this makes me "breathtakingly cruel" that's your prerogative. From your post it's clear to me that we aren't going to see eye to eye on it.

Goatse James Bond
Mar 28, 2010

If you see me posting please remind me that I have Charlie Work in the reports forum to do instead
There are a couple underlying principles for why the senate parliamentarian's office exists and is not especially elected.

- It's notionally supposed to be nonpartisan. As far as I can tell this works okay.
- It's notionally supposed to provide continuity and stability of rules policy between Senate terms. Current guy has been there nine years and also has a staff, so i guess that works.
- Individual senators, in addition to being the people the parliamentarian is supposed to keep following the rules, have a lot on their plate that isn't "keep track of the rules and bill analyses for the hundred member body".

None of these reasons strike me as especially evil or insane, so I'm not sure how big a fan i am of "just fire the guy and put in a drinky bird that always agrees with the Democrats". The other remedy is for fifty? senators to decide something is important enough to overrule him on, which seems to me like a fairly democratic outcome.

Given that the reasons aren't inherently evil or insane, it does not surprise me that our extremely Senator-brained president would apparently be in favor of the parliamentarian and senate rules existing.

Ytlaya
Nov 13, 2005

In this case the whole point is moot because Biden (and I guess other Democrats) is the one completely pointlessly deciding to "defer to the advice of the Parliamentarian."

They could do these things if they wanted to. I understand that the implications of this might be uncomfortable, but it doesn't change reality. It isn't because they're "Senator-brained"; it's that they just don't care. They aren't people with good intentions who are are simply misguided.

Thorn Wishes Talon
Oct 18, 2014

by Fluffdaddy

Ytlaya posted:

In this case the whole point is moot because Biden (and I guess other Democrats) is the one completely pointlessly deciding to "defer to the advice of the Parliamentarian."

They could do these things if they wanted to. I understand that the implications of this might be uncomfortable, but it doesn't change reality. It isn't because they're "Senator-brained"; it's that they just don't care. They aren't people with good intentions who are are simply misguided.

Reconciliation bills have to be about items that are directly related to the budget: spending, revenues, deficits and debt limits. The Byrd Rule prohibits non-budgetary provisions, such as those related to immigration reform, from being shoved into reconciliation bills. From this perspective, proactively deferring to the Parliamentarian is the correct move, since deciding what can actually be included in reconciliation is literally their job. Biden likely does not want a repeat of the fiasco with the $15 minimum wage earlier this year.

But forget the facts. The disagreement here is rooted in the assumptions through which you view the world and interpret events. If you assume that Democrats are cruel and have bad intentions, then yes, Joe Biden deferring the question of "can pathway to citizenship be included in a reconciliation bill" to the Parliamentarian is going to appear pointless, and will look like yet another example of, at best, him not caring about the fates of these immigrants. And there isn't anything that anyone can say to reason with you on it.

Fuschia tude
Dec 26, 2004

THUNDERDOME LOSER 2019

Gal!

Pentecoastal Elites
Feb 27, 2007

Thorn Wishes Talon posted:

If you assume that Democrats are cruel and have bad intentions

No one is assuming anything. We are recognizing that Democrats, like Republicans, can only operate in the interests of capital and it is in the interests of capital to have a labor population that will work for next to nothing, has no rights, and can be deported at any time -- but -- this population can't be too big (it can't be normalized and allowed to organize in any meaningful way), nor can it be too small (companies depend on this labor for profit maximization). All illegal immigration issues in America today falls out of this.
Maintaining this balance is what is cruel. It's why there are kids in cages, it's why we have concentration camps on our southern border, it's why ICE can go grab someone out of their hospital bed and drop them off in a city they've never been to. These are all expressions of power meant to suppress (but not eliminate) illegal immigration and signal to a significant chunk of the American citizenry (whom they have convinced illegal immigration is an existential threat) that they are Doing Something.

No one can know what is in the heart of Democratic politicians (though I can guess), but it doesn't matter because we never need to look at it. We know what they're doing, we know why they're doing it, and it is -- in fact -- cruel.

This is why anyone in America knows what the parliamentarian is -- they can say whatever they want while campaigning. They can go look at the kids in cages and cry and cry and cry. They've got the votes but -- whoops! -- sorry pal can't do it. This person you've never heard of says we can't. Sorry jack. Maybe next time. Maybe if you vote hard enough in the midterms. Maybe during my second term.

Slow News Day
Jul 4, 2007

Pentecoastal Elites posted:

No one is assuming anything. We are recognizing that Democrats, like Republicans, can only operate in the interests of capital and it is in the interests of capital to have a labor population that will work for next to nothing, has no rights, and can be deported at any time -- but -- this population can't be too big (it can't be normalized and allowed to organize in any meaningful way), nor can it be too small (companies depend on this labor for profit maximization). All illegal immigration issues in America today falls out of this.
Maintaining this balance is what is cruel. It's why there are kids in cages, it's why we have concentration camps on our southern border, it's why ICE can go grab someone out of their hospital bed and drop them off in a city they've never been to. These are all expressions of power meant to suppress (but not eliminate) illegal immigration and signal to a significant chunk of the American citizenry (whom they have convinced illegal immigration is an existential threat) that they are Doing Something.

No one can know what is in the heart of Democratic politicians (though I can guess), but it doesn't matter because we never need to look at it. We know what they're doing, we know why they're doing it, and it is -- in fact -- cruel.

This is why anyone in America knows what the parliamentarian is -- they can say whatever they want while campaigning. They can go look at the kids in cages and cry and cry and cry. They've got the votes but -- whoops! -- sorry pal can't do it. This person you've never heard of says we can't. Sorry jack. Maybe next time. Maybe if you vote hard enough in the midterms. Maybe during my second term.

So basically, your interpretation of the Democratic Party's approach to immigration is this slightly modified dril tweet:



Got it. :rolleyes:

But no, the idea that Dems are making decisions on whether a pathway to citizenship should be provided for undocumented immigrants based on what "capital" feels about the size of the labor force is quite the unadulterated conspiracy theory. It also doesn't mesh with reality; in an age when people are quitting their service sector jobs in hordes, you'd think that business owners would want a larger labor pool so as to reduce the leverage of each individual worker. Based on your tinfoil-hat logic, Dems should be falling over each other to give every undocumented immigrant a green card tomorrow.

Nucleic Acids
Apr 10, 2007

Slow News Day posted:

So basically, your interpretation of the Democratic Party's approach to immigration is this slightly modified dril tweet:



Got it. :rolleyes:

But no, the idea that Dems are making decisions on whether a pathway to citizenship should be provided for undocumented immigrants based on what "capital" feels about the size of the labor force is quite the unadulterated conspiracy theory. It also doesn't mesh with reality; in an age when people are quitting their service sector jobs in hordes, you'd think that business owners would want a larger labor pool so as to reduce the leverage of each individual worker. Based on your tinfoil-hat logic, Dems should be falling over each other to give every undocumented immigrant a green card tomorrow.

No, it’s just basic economically class based analysis.

Pentecoastal Elites
Feb 27, 2007

Slow News Day posted:

So basically, your interpretation of the Democratic Party's approach to immigration is this slightly modified dril tweet:



Got it. :rolleyes:

But no, the idea that Dems are making decisions on whether a pathway to citizenship should be provided for undocumented immigrants based on what "capital" feels about the size of the labor force is quite the unadulterated conspiracy theory. It also doesn't mesh with reality; in an age when people are quitting their service sector jobs in hordes, you'd think that business owners would want a larger labor pool so as to reduce the leverage of each individual worker. Based on your tinfoil-hat logic, Dems should be falling over each other to give every undocumented immigrant a green card tomorrow.

There is nothing conspiratorial about it, like Nucleic Acids said this is an extremely basic analysis. Even people who categorically reject Marxist class analysis understand the American government's relationship to illegal immigration as a function of the maintenance of a rightless labor pool and it's illegality on both sides (illegal for them to be here, illegal for firms to hire their labor)

There aren't any smoke-filled backroom meetings with comic book villains cackling evilly about how many kids to put in cages, this is just something that falls out of the economics of the situation. Firms require this labor to maximize profit, but this puts a pressure on legal labor. One of the political parties has tied themselves to explicit white ethnonationalism and can exploit that pressure for votes. The illegal immigrants' position is even more imperiled, allowing them to be further exploited. This is a positive feedback loop that results in the exact thing we've seen: incredibly precarious, exploited, and abused illegal immigrants as well as virulent anti-immigrant bigotry enshrined in the operation of our government.

The Democrats doing something to actually resolve the crisis (like green cards tomorrow) is totally prohibited: capital loses its cheapest, most-exploitable labor pool and the opposing political party would be able to capitalize on "letting them off easy" or the invading brown hordes, or MS-13, or whatever. It'd both go against capital (donor) interests as well as handing their opponents the keys.

No individual actor needs to do anything. The system is self-establishing and self-balancing. The cruelty is in knowing this is happening (the Democrats do) and refusing to stop it (like the Democrats are) because it might mean they don't get to keep their offices and future sinecures and invites to the fancy DC parties.

Ghost Leviathan
Mar 2, 2017

Exploration is ill-advised.
Keeping the labour class scared, cowed and disposable is far more important than increasing their numbers. That's what the saber-rattling and coups in Central and South America are for. They're looking at Cuba and salivating over all that potential disposable labour.

Shageletic
Jul 25, 2007

GreyjoyBastard posted:

There are a couple underlying principles for why the senate parliamentarian's office exists and is not especially elected.

- It's notionally supposed to be nonpartisan. As far as I can tell this works okay.
- It's notionally supposed to provide continuity and stability of rules policy between Senate terms. Current guy has been there nine years and also has a staff, so i guess that works.
- Individual senators, in addition to being the people the parliamentarian is supposed to keep following the rules, have a lot on their plate that isn't "keep track of the rules and bill analyses for the hundred member body".

None of these reasons strike me as especially evil or insane, so I'm not sure how big a fan i am of "just fire the guy and put in a drinky bird that always agrees with the Democrats". The other remedy is for fifty? senators to decide something is important enough to overrule him on, which seems to me like a fairly democratic outcome.

Given that the reasons aren't inherently evil or insane, it does not surprise me that our extremely Senator-brained president would apparently be in favor of the parliamentarian and senate rules existing.

It is ludicrous that the reason why we don't have a 15 dollar wage can be hanged on this position. But its actually pretty logical when you see that its just an excuse for our democratically elected representatives to not accede to the majority of ppl's wishes and what they campaigned on.

Its just another yet non democractic mechanism of our politics aimed at deflecting and minimizing popular policies and programs.

Shageletic
Jul 25, 2007

Slow News Day posted:

So basically, your interpretation of the Democratic Party's approach to immigration is this slightly modified dril tweet:



Got it. :rolleyes:

But no, the idea that Dems are making decisions on whether a pathway to citizenship should be provided for undocumented immigrants based on what "capital" feels about the size of the labor force is quite the unadulterated conspiracy theory. It also doesn't mesh with reality; in an age when people are quitting their service sector jobs in hordes, you'd think that business owners would want a larger labor pool so as to reduce the leverage of each individual worker. Based on your tinfoil-hat logic, Dems should be falling over each other to give every undocumented immigrant a green card tomorrow.

You're evincing a less than familiar knowlege about how immigration works with corporations and the undocumented. Companies love having undocumented workers because they can be fired and worked however these employers want and if there's any protest, a quick call to the ICE should sort that out.

First result on google shows food plants threatened by racial and sexual lawsuits and workplace accidents that dismembered workers afterwards suffering ICE raids https://www.npr.org/2019/08/09/749932968/chicken-plants-see-little-fallout-from-immigration-raids

Heres a couple articles on ICE specifically hitting unionizer undocumented and lawsuits https://www.workers.org/2019/08/43300/amp/

https://labornotes.org/2008/08/immigration-raid-breaks-organizing-drive-iowa-meatpacking-plant

Pentecoastal Elites
Feb 27, 2007

I said this in the voting thread but if you lack any sort of class-analytical framework I understand that all this stuff seems like reptile qanon conspiracy theory because you can't understand how people are making these assertions or why.

Thorn Wishes Talon
Oct 18, 2014

by Fluffdaddy

Pentecoastal Elites posted:

I said this in the voting thread but if you lack any sort of class-analytical framework I understand that all this stuff seems like reptile qanon conspiracy theory because you can't understand how people are making these assertions or why.

Counterpoint: if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

Ghost Leviathan
Mar 2, 2017

Exploration is ill-advised.

Thorn Wishes Talon posted:

Counterpoint: if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

What aspects of political policy and action do you think class analysis does not apply to?

Pentecoastal Elites
Feb 27, 2007

or if you have any reason why class analysis isn't applicable here or any sort of explanatory framework that's not just "good guys vs bad guys" I'm all ears.

evilweasel
Aug 24, 2002

Ghost Leviathan posted:

What aspects of political policy and action do you think class analysis does not apply to?

voting patterns and preferences in the united states, which show that people do not act based on class analysis

given that it is obvious beyond dispute huge numbers of people do not act based on class analysis (just look at republican poor white voters voting for upper-class tax cuts), it is useless as a way to explain people's actions

Thorn Wishes Talon
Oct 18, 2014

by Fluffdaddy

Ghost Leviathan posted:

What aspects of political policy and action do you think class analysis does not apply to?

Trick question because it assumes that "class analysis" is a useful framework that can predict or explain most people's actions with regards to politics, which is laughable.

(USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)

Pentecoastal Elites
Feb 27, 2007

evilweasel posted:

voting patterns and preferences in the united states, which show that people do not act based on class analysis

given that it is obvious beyond dispute huge numbers of people do not act based on class analysis (just look at republican poor white voters voting for upper-class tax cuts), it is useless as a way to explain people's actions

I wrote about exactly this in the other thread but you're looking at an alienated and unorganized working class and saying "class analysis doesn't make any sense or else they'd all be voting for socialists", but class analysis existing doesn't mean the working class is magically organized because of it.

It should be incredibly obvious people constantly vote against their class interests because capital has spent an astounding amount of resources convincing them that capital class interests are actually their personal interests.

Unless you want to tell me money and the political influence of the very rich have absolutely nothing to do with voting or the American political landscape.

Ghost Leviathan
Mar 2, 2017

Exploration is ill-advised.

evilweasel posted:

voting patterns and preferences in the united states, which show that people do not act based on class analysis

given that it is obvious beyond dispute huge numbers of people do not act based on class analysis (just look at republican poor white voters voting for upper-class tax cuts), it is useless as a way to explain people's actions

It's not actually poor people voting for these tax cuts, by and large poor Americans do not vote at all for either party, both because of voter suppression and because they accurately recognise neither parties sufficiently serve their interests. Please stop buying into Republican frameworks.

evilweasel
Aug 24, 2002

Pentecoastal Elites posted:

I said this in the voting thread but if you lack any sort of class-analytical framework I understand that all this stuff seems like reptile qanon conspiracy theory because you can't understand how people are making these assertions or why.

in the voting rights thread you make the concession (that you must) that destroys your argument: people do not act in accordance with their class interests. the working class clearly doesn't.

given that, we have falsified the "people act purely in accordance with their class interests" which is a simple change to the libertarian Rational Actor theorem of behavior. now, you sort of try to rescue it by claiming that only the wealthy act in their class interests - and nothing but. but that has a problem: what makes those wealthy people so much clearer-eyed, superior, and able to act exclusively in their class interests like a Rational Actor libertarian, but who someone has taught the value of cooperation, when poor people can't manage it? why are we assuming the rich are a class above, superior to the poor? instead of, say, just the same as any other dumb person, but with more money?

Pentecoastal Elites
Feb 27, 2007

I literally wrote about exactly that in the other forum. I know you're reading it so if you want answers you can reference the posts I just made or ask for clarification there.

Thorn Wishes Talon posted:

Trick question because it assumes that "class analysis" is a useful framework that can predict or explain most people's actions with regards to politics, which is laughable.

How is this an acceptable D&D post?

I mean this honestly -- how can moderation, or anyone for that matter, take this subforum seriously for a second when an earnest response is met with a "nuh-uh"?

Nucleic Acids
Apr 10, 2007

Thorn Wishes Talon posted:

Trick question because it assumes that "class analysis" is a useful framework that can predict or explain most people's actions with regards to politics, which is laughable.

Yeah, you're going to need to go into more detail here.

evilweasel
Aug 24, 2002

Ghost Leviathan posted:

It's not actually poor people voting for these tax cuts, by and large poor Americans do not vote at all for either party, both because of voter suppression and because they accurately recognise neither parties sufficiently serve their interests. Please stop buying into Republican frameworks.

it is beyond dispute that many poor white people actually vote republican. pentecoastal elites has recognized (correctly) that you absolutely cannot make the claim the working class operates in its self-interest, because it self-evidently does not.

Pentecoastal Elites posted:

I wrote about exactly this in the other thread but you're looking at an alienated and unorganized working class and saying "class analysis doesn't make any sense or else they'd all be voting for socialists", but class analysis existing doesn't mean the working class is magically organized because of it.

It should be incredibly obvious people constantly vote against their class interests because capital has spent an astounding amount of resources convincing them that capital class interests are actually their personal interests.

Unless you want to tell me money and the political influence of the very rich have absolutely nothing to do with voting or the American political landscape.

the key element you are missing is social policy: there are scads of republican voters who don't like lower taxes on the rich, but vote republican anyway because of social issues. they make a choice knowing its against their economic interests because it is in their perceived social interests. it's not like republican voters are too stupid to know they're not paying upper-class tax cuts and polling is pretty consistent about that (as is trump's 2016 primary win renouncing republican economics). they just swallow their annoyance at that to stick it to liberals on guns, abortion, church, racism, etc.

you can use class analysis as a tool to argue how people should act. it is plain it is useless as a tool to explain how working class people do act. at that point, you need rich people to be somehow superior and able to more clearly act in their economic self-interest (something that can easily be disproven by a five-minute conversation with a rich person), or recognize they don't act purely in their economic self-interest either and they're also dumb monkeys. dumb monkeys who get their way on economic issues more often - but that does not mean that pure economic analysis is effective at explaining their behavior.

Nucleic Acids
Apr 10, 2007

evilweasel posted:

in the voting rights thread you make the concession (that you must) that destroys your argument: people do not act in accordance with their class interests. the working class clearly doesn't.

given that, we have falsified the "people act purely in accordance with their class interests" which is a simple change to the libertarian Rational Actor theorem of behavior. now, you sort of try to rescue it by claiming that only the wealthy act in their class interests - and nothing but. but that has a problem: what makes those wealthy people so much clearer-eyed, superior, and able to act exclusively in their class interests like a Rational Actor libertarian, but who someone has taught the value of cooperation, when poor people can't manage it? why are we assuming the rich are a class above, superior to the poor? instead of, say, just the same as any other dumb person, but with more money?

Okay yeah let's just throw out evidence from across human history.

evilweasel
Aug 24, 2002

class analysis is probably useful to explain wealthy economic policy. not because the rich are Ubermen who are able to be homo economicus, but because when it comes to actual economic policy they're going to have the ability to push buttons and get their way better.

but when you start talking about social issues, you will generally do a very bad job assuming all social issues are actually economic issues. immigration is, in part, an economic issue - but that economic issue is generally overwhelmed by the social aspect. the pro-business wing of the republican party has been immigration reform for decades. they keep losing out on it, because the deciding factor is the social aspect of it and the "but they're not white" reaction from their base. the idea that immigration policy is determined by class analysis is just nonsensical when you look at how the issue has actually played out, and anyone telling you that "no, it actually is just the wealthy elites trying to maximize their money!!!" is trying to do the same thing that causes the whole homo economicus nonsense - wanting simple explanations for the world with no reference to if they actually work.

Thorn Wishes Talon
Oct 18, 2014

by Fluffdaddy

Pentecoastal Elites posted:

How is this an acceptable D&D post?

I mean this honestly -- how can moderation, or anyone for that matter, take this subforum seriously for a second when an earnest response is met with a "nuh-uh"?

The same way this is an acceptable D&D post:

Nucleic Acids posted:

No, it’s just basic economically class based analysis.

Nucleic Acids posted:

Okay yeah let's just throw out evidence from across human history.

I mean, if we're talking about earnest posts being met with a low effort response, let's try to be a little fair, yeah?

evilweasel
Aug 24, 2002

Nucleic Acids posted:

Okay yeah let's just throw out evidence from across human history.

i can see how that bolded section could be misinterpreted if you ignored the rest of the post. to be clear, i'm saying in the bolded section that you need to assume the rich are genetically or intrinsically superior to the poor to make the claims being made; that rich people are inherently superior in some inherent way, in the same way that's often implied when people say rich people worked harder or smarter and that's why they're rich. you need to assume the rich are capable of a method of thinking and acting you have conceded is beyond the capabilities of the working class.

needless to say, i disagree with that idea

Slow News Day
Jul 4, 2007

Can we talk about the ridiculousness of this headline for a second?



The author browsed Twitter and found tweets by three people, Christina Jiménez (immigration rights organizer), Robert Cruickshank (campaign director at Demand Progress, an NGO that focuses on civil liberties) and Sawyer Hackett (executive director of People First Future, a PAC launched by Julián Castro). And then wrote a story on it in a way that is designed to elicit a certain type of reaction from the target audience. This was quite successful, judging by the latest series of posts from Biden detractors in this last page.

Y'all love to talk about manufacturing consent, but perhaps you should be talking about manufacturing outrage instead.

Pentecoastal Elites
Feb 27, 2007

evilweasel posted:

it is beyond dispute that many poor white people actually vote republican. pentecoastal elites has recognized (correctly) that you absolutely cannot make the claim the working class operates in its self-interest, because it self-evidently does not.

the key element you are missing is social policy: there are scads of republican voters who don't like lower taxes on the rich, but vote republican anyway because of social issues. they make a choice knowing its against their economic interests because it is in their perceived social interests. it's not like republican voters are too stupid to know they're not paying upper-class tax cuts and polling is pretty consistent about that (as is trump's 2016 primary win renouncing republican economics). they just swallow their annoyance at that to stick it to liberals on guns, abortion, church, racism, etc.

you can use class analysis as a tool to argue how people should act. it is plain it is useless as a tool to explain how working class people do act. at that point, you need rich people to be somehow superior and able to more clearly act in their economic self-interest (something that can easily be disproven by a five-minute conversation with a rich person), or recognize they don't act purely in their economic self-interest either and they're also dumb monkeys. dumb monkeys who get their way on economic issues more often - but that does not mean that pure economic analysis is effective at explaining their behavior.

What you are missing is that these things aren't floating out there in the aether, totally independent from one another.

The working class does not vote in its best interest because it is not organized. Workers are alienated from an identity as class-actors. The do not evaluate anything in terms of class or their position in it! The don't vote as workers because they don't perceive themselves as workers and cannot perceive even what class interests might be. This is not because they are dumb, this is because the working class has had the class identity ground out of them, deliberately, by the capital class.

I am not missing social policy. Social policy is (one of the ways) how the capital class gets workers to operate against their class interests, and to obfuscate what working class interests might be and therefore make it impossible for a working class individual to perceive their class interests. Of course working class Republicans know that tax cuts for the ultra-wealthy aren't going to help them, but because they have no class identity they perceive their personal interests as aligning more with whatever reactionary cultural thing than being against tax cuts. They are operating in their perceived best interests, even if those interests are entirely nonsensical, cultural, and even contradictory.

The rich act in their own class interests because no one is obfuscating what those are. They know what those are. It's obvious to anyone: get richer. That's all they need to know. The capital class has been so dominant that their class goals are baked into every strata of American society.

This doesn't require anyone to be dumb. This doesn't require anyone to be smart. This is just what the system produces. All of this is phenomena that arises from material conditions and does not depend on the nature of somebody's heart or their IQ score.

Pentecoastal Elites
Feb 27, 2007

Thorn Wishes Talon posted:

The same way this is an acceptable D&D post:



I mean, if we're talking about earnest posts being met with a low effort response, let's try to be a little fair, yeah?

I am not responsible for anyone else's posts and I am trying to engage with you earnestly. If you don't want to follow suit then just close the browser window. This "but he gets to do it why can't I?" is pathetic.

(USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)

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evilweasel
Aug 24, 2002

Pentecoastal Elites posted:

What you are missing is that these things aren't floating out there in the aether, totally independent from one another.

The working class does not vote in its best interest because it is not organized. Workers are alienated from an identity as class-actors. The do not evaluate anything in terms of class or their position in it! The don't vote as workers because they don't perceive themselves as workers and cannot perceive even what class interests might be. This is not because they are dumb, this is because the working class has had the class identity ground out of them, deliberately, by the capital class.

I am not missing social policy. Social policy is (one of the ways) how the capital class gets workers to operate against their class interests, and to obfuscate what working class interests might be and therefore make it impossible for a working class individual to perceive their class interests. Of course working class Republicans know that tax cuts for the ultra-wealthy aren't going to help them, but because they have no class identity they perceive their personal interests as aligning more with whatever reactionary cultural thing than being against tax cuts. They are operating in their perceived best interests, even if those interests are entirely nonsensical, cultural, and even contradictory.

The rich act in their own class interests because no one is obfuscating what those are. They know what those are. It's obvious to anyone: get richer. That's all they need to know. The capital class has been so dominant that their class goals are baked into every strata of American society.

This doesn't require anyone to be dumb. This doesn't require anyone to be smart. This is just what the system produces. All of this is phenomena that arises from material conditions and does not depend on the nature of somebody's heart or their IQ score.

this does indeed boil down to "the rich are smarter." the key insight into people that economic analysis always leaves out is that people are tribal. it is an instinctive behavior that is generally helpful in a social animal (such as humans), but it specifically leads to you placing your tribal identity over your personal self-interest. sports teams being one of the silliest yet most obviously apparent one, where people will do stupid, stupid things to demonstrate their loyalty to their specific tribe of sports fans.

needless to say, when you discuss immigration, it should be obvious why tribal elements of the human psyche immediately come to the fore. there are few political issues that will more directly trigger tribal aspects of the human psyche than "what people count as inside our group vs outside our group"

you have this idea that rich people do not suffer from tribalism (nonsense) or have carefully aligned their tribal interests with their class interests in a way that is just beyond the ability of the working class. to the extent you are discussing purely economic issues you might have a point - capital gains taxes, etc. but you're not, you are claiming class interest is the driving explanation for human behavior in an intensely tribalistic area - immigration. it's not. wealthy business interests have tried, and failed, to grab the tiller on immigration for decades. economic analysis is not a useful way to explain activity on immigration, and trying to use a modified homo economicus as your way of explaining immigration policy in the united states is utterly doomed to failure.

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