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Even if you vote for the democrats you should be looking to beat the poo poo out of them at every other time other than when you vote for them, because literally the only reason to vote for them is because they are the least bad option and not voting does nothing, there's nothing about them that would actually make me want to vote for them.
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Feb 18, 2018 02:32
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Ytlaya posted:This is another aspect. People referred to as technocrats sometimes attempt to force data-based solutions for problems where either the data (or methodology) doesn't exist to give the solution needed or they lack the expertise to actually do the analysis correctly (which is something the vast majority of people won't be able to identify). In practice, many issues must be dealt with using "soft-skills," and overvaluing "data-based solutions" can result in bad decisions and bad policy. Or outright buy data to support an ideological position and suppress anything that doesn't support it, to give the semblance of objective truth.
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Feb 18, 2018 02:52
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I mean while I agree that it is better to vote for the lesser evil despite the argument that doing so stifles the kind of political change people actually need and is an unsustainable policy because change will only ever be brought through force and that includes within lovely "left" parties, by forcing loss on them; the American democratic party is probably the worst example I can think of to actually support that belief. It does still support it, I think, but barely. Their policies aren't "incalculably" better they're "tolerably" better. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 03:22 on Feb 18, 2018 |
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Feb 18, 2018 03:19
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Are you sure you're not an ancap?
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Feb 18, 2018 03:26
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Yeah I really don't get how you get "leftist" from "I think it's better for individuals to absorb all the risk and take all the gains as free rugged individuals beholden to nothing and nobody" as opposed to "workers collectively hold employers to account via unionization and their collective work is used to guarantee the welfare of all members of the company as best as possible" The former is way more libertarian/ancap than anything I'd recognize as collectivist leftism.
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Feb 18, 2018 03:31
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:I mean that is why I said "Nothing else in the US social system or labor laws supports that model very well so generally the gig economy is pretty awful". But, the individual worker, though... As opposed to recognizing that the reason uber functions is because of the collective effort of the workforce, people wouldn't use it if it wasn't for that collective coverage provided by all its laborers working together, and thus all those workers should, really, have a share of the total income. Which would mean... *drumroll* that you give it to the company and it's paid out like a wage, so that if someone happens to have a good night, everyone shares it, and in turn when they have bad nights, they are supported, because that collective effort is what makes taxis viable. Even if you are envisaging some turbosocialist future, thinking the ideal model of work is the one that compensates people as individually as possible is really loving weird from an avowed "leftist". Like, the idea that we should have a social safety net but that encouraging individual wealth accumulation is good is, at best, middle of the road social democracy, and there's definitely ways to be on the left without being that. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 04:01 on Feb 18, 2018 |
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Feb 18, 2018 03:56
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I mean, like, it's pretty disingenuous to say that uber is good because, if you discount everything about it except for the fact that it pays via commission, it's actually giving more money to the worker. By that logic MLMs are good for the worker too.
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Feb 18, 2018 04:12
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:yeah "Nothing else in the US social system or labor laws supports that model very well so generally the gig economy is pretty awful". That's basically an admission that the claim is completely meaningless, though. "If society was completely different then the Uber model would be really cool!" does not translate to anything meaningful in reality. It's about as useful a statement as saying that if dragons were real it'd be awesome to start a taxi firm where you fly people around on them.
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Feb 18, 2018 04:16
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Iron Twinkie posted:It's the only part that matters and why I can't support the lesser evil. The Democratic party as it exists instantly caves to Republicans now. What makes you think that will change when the white nationalists, literal Nazis, worming their way up the Republican party get in charge? They have a clear vision of how to deal with human rights and inequality. You change the definitions of human rights and who qualifies for them. If there is any hope of confronting that, there needs to be an equally clear vision of a better future to rally behind. If that means the Democratic party must be made to fear it's base more than it loves compromise then so be it. If it means they are out of national power for another 2, 4, or 8 years until they are something capable of confronting that, then so be it. We can't afford to support a party that only understands how to capitulate to the other side and sell out it's own base. This is true too, for all that I think it's better to vote for the lesser evil, you really are just perpetuating all the stuff they're complicit with, and it might turn out better that they were broken sooner, rather than far too late. It might be better now, but at some point without a drastic change, it's going to stop being so. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 04:32 on Feb 18, 2018 |
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Feb 18, 2018 04:30
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:Accelerationism is very dumb and you should vote for democrats in every election that they are even one centimeter better than the republicans. If you want them to be more than 1 centimeter there are primaries to vote in, there are candidates you can support or donate to, there are organizations you can work at, but when you go to vote if you ever think "maybe I should vote for the worse guy and hurt people to prove a point" it doesn't prove any point to anyone except that you are now a republican voter. Undirected accelerationism is generally unconstructive and requires you to be able to switch off your sense of empathy, but the concept itself is not simply "dumb". You should know full well that the powerful do not hand out anything voluntarily or through charity or from any concern for the welfare of others, they are only brought to heel through violence of some sort, either direct, personal, and physical, or material and financial. The democratic party is an industry in America and its function is to generate power and profit for its investors, and refusing ever to consider voting for anything else is handing it a blank cheque to do whatever it wants as long as it isn't the republican party. At some point, you will have to hurt it, particularly the people who run it, and badly, to force it to become something worthwhile. And every moment that is delayed is more ground ceded to the republicans and more suffering inflicted on people the world over as a result of their policy. You might believe that it can be hurt other than by taking votes from it, and I would like to hope that too. But I would suggest that is more based on blind optimism on both our parts, and speaking personally, an unwillingness to switch off my sense of short term empathy, rather than evidence. Nothing is won but through force of some kind, or the threat of it, and the amount you can threaten a politician while still handing them power is limited, particularly in the American political scene. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 05:42 on Feb 18, 2018 |
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Feb 18, 2018 05:38
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I have to say I'm not convinced by the political equivalent of human wave tactics. "It may at some point be necessary to change strategy but not if it means stopping this really terrible one." OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 21:55 on Feb 18, 2018 |
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Feb 18, 2018 21:43
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There is an argument to be made that expending political capital on insufficient measures is not really much better than not spending it on doing nothing. If you're dealing with someone who will raise the minimum wage to an insufficient amount and then turn around and use the fact they did that (with your support) to suppress further efforts to raise it, "all or nothing" is not really a bizarre position. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 23:19 on Feb 18, 2018 |
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Feb 18, 2018 23:17
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We've a nasty word for people who do things that help them but gently caress over the rest of the working class. So opposing a local candidate on the basis that their national party opposes a livable minimum wage is not particularly odd.
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Feb 19, 2018 01:01
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:hey poor people, I know you might like to have income above the poverty line but like, I'm sending a message, so hang in a few more years. hey poor people, I know you think it's worth fighting for a national minimum wage that's livable but you really should settle for a worse one or you're not true leftists.
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Feb 19, 2018 01:21
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The sign of a true leftist is that they immediately compromise with rich people to accept the barest minimum concessions to their survival.
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Feb 19, 2018 01:39
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:The people living in poverty probably like the idea of not living in poverty instead of your principled stand to have trump reduce the minimum wage in some convoluted unexplained plan how that somehow gets you 15 dollars an hour. He says to person living in poverty.
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Feb 19, 2018 02:59
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BENGHAZI 2 posted:Also I am not technically living in poverty but only because I work sixty hours a week,every week, including three fourteen hour days Technicality aside that seems like some kind of poverty given that I'd literally die if I had to do that.
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Feb 19, 2018 03:13
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:12 dollars would literally be the highest national minimum wage of any country on earth except australia or luxembourg. There are numbers higher than 12, and all of them would be even better, but I literally can not comprehend of voting republican or not voting based on using THIS as some hard line you won't budge on. And if the people advocating for better wages lived in other countries then I'm sure they'd find lower wages more livable and that argument would float. Did you know that different countries have different costs of living? The truth may surprise you. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 03:22 on Feb 19, 2018 |
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Feb 19, 2018 03:20
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A $12 minimum wage wouldn't make me feel very secure in a country where I can't even go to the doctor, lol. If I'm gonna die at age 40 might as well hold out for $15.
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Feb 19, 2018 03:48
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I don't get how you look at the history of labour relations and think "hmm yes what we need to do is expend all our energy on achieving the most meager possible improvements because those are never used as a cudgel against better ones"
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Feb 20, 2018 17:51
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Centrists telling leftists they need to support the status quo against the right, while the right in all parties push it further in their direction is politics.txt for the past several decades.
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Feb 20, 2018 17:58
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:So your super hyper left answer is states rights and that the government should set a minimum wage lower than the living wage because local state governments MIGHT raise it? I mean, that's kinda the position you were professing mr left man. When you've got people across the country wanting $15 an hour there's a difference between saying "sure let's help them out" and saying "hmm no actually $12 would be better now vote for your liberator you proley bastards" OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 19:44 on Feb 20, 2018 |
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Feb 20, 2018 19:41
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Intentional incrementalism is dumb says the person advocating for voting literally for the party that intentionally said 12 in response to 15 because they thought 15 was asking too much for labour, and failed even to achieve that because they lost the election to a loving idiot, with a loving idiot. At some point it becomes obvious that the democratic party does not represent the interests of labour and cannot convincingly command support as a result, why, then, should labour vote for or support a party that doesn't represent them and can't win? If they start voting for them do you think they're going to change as a result? Or do you think they're going to decide "well they're voting for us and that's what matters, they'd better keep doing it if they don't want things to get worse." Your attitude suggests the latter. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 20:43 on Feb 20, 2018 |
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Feb 20, 2018 20:36
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:Yeah okay? now trump is president and the whole country has moved to the right and odds are the next democratic platform is going to have to fight to get minimum wage back to 7.25. Instead of the next election being a minimum wage of 12 and someone being able to campaign in the primaries on 17. Or, alternatively, the abject failure of the democrats to do anything useful for anyone can be a catalyst for the destruction of either the entire party, if necessary, or at the very least its leadership, thus paving the way for it to become a party for the workers or to be supplanted by one. What does not elicit radical change in parties is them winning elections, o sensible realist.
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Feb 20, 2018 20:45
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The idea that the democratic party is owed support by people for just not being the republicans is really farcical. Perhaps it is their job to command that support through policy and if they cannot they ought to get off the pot and make way for someone who can?
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Feb 20, 2018 21:29
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:I literally can not imagine a conservative that wanted minimum wage to be zero seeing a candidate that promised to cut it by 65% saying "heh, no thanks centrist". This idea that we need to let republicans just win forever and ever to charge up the battery that will totally any second now bring forth the savior to save us all is a uniquely false "leftist" meme. (that I choose to think that republicans paid to spread because it's more comforting than the alternative that people really thought it on their own) OwlFancier posted:Perhaps it is their job to command that support through policy and if they cannot they ought to get off the pot and make way for someone who can? Or to spell it out more clearly, an alternative is unlikely to emerge as long as a) the democratic party continues to take up space on the political landscape advocating for worthless centrist rubbish, and b) people like you advocate that there can be no alternative, only forever service to the whims of the democratic leadership.
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Feb 20, 2018 21:38
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Turns out that the predominant effect of centrist nothing politics is to make people turn out for anybody who seems insane enough to do something different.
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Feb 20, 2018 22:39
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That's certainly a conception of how it went...
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Feb 20, 2018 22:53
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I think the idea that Donald Trump is a secret ploy laid decades in the making by the republican leadership is a bit far fetched. Like did you... not notice the response to him during the election campaign? What they got was absolutely not what they wanted.
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Feb 20, 2018 22:56
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Main Paineframe posted:Actually, what happened is that the GOP constantly nominated centrist morons, and then watched them constantly lose because the ideological right had no interest in voting for empty-suit centrist nobodies. Then a radical ran and easily overwhelmed all the party's carefully-groomed moderates, even as the party flailed helplessly to stop him, all because he told his base what they actually wanted to hear while everyone else tiptoed nervously around it. Exactly. Radicalism engages people, moderation does not. Even Obama ran on a platform of radical rhetoric even if his performance was shite. Of course the issue with not delivering on it means he also tanked the credibility of the democratic party even further. The message should be to promise the moon and work like hell to deliver it, not pander to the center. The only people who are engaged by "more of the same, please" are people whose lives are already good.
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Feb 20, 2018 23:18
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Ytlaya posted:Since people often try to argue against the idea of Obama's rhetoric was radical, I think it's important to explain that from the perspective of a voter who isn't particularly engaged/experienced (in the sense of having paid attention to politics for a long time prior) he just strongly gave that impression. I was a relatively politically ignorant 22/23 year old when Obama first ran in 2008, and I remember strongly getting the general impression that he would do things differently. Sure, you can go back and find his speeches and they mostly don't sound particularly radical, but a combination of factors just gave that impression to voters (the fact he was running as a black man against Hillary, who was more or less the avatar of the mainstream, certainly helped him give this impression). I mean coming from Bush he's a handsome, vocally charismatic black man whose slogan was about the empowerment of people to effect change and win victories over the establishment. That's remarkably radical sounding and looking for someone who wasn't particularly so politically. He looked like a change, he sounded like a change, and he told people that we could have a change. Trump did much the same in a rather nastier way. Hillary... what? What even was her platform anyway other than "well we've had a democrat for eight years and he's pretty alright also I've been a politician for ages I'm clearly much better than this outsider who sounds angry all the time and slings blame around for the problems in our society, really we don't have many problems and everything's pretty alright so don't vote for him vote for me!" It really is a shame that he pissed away the votes he got because I doubt there'll be another politician as good at campaigning as he was for some time. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 01:43 on Feb 22, 2018 |
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Feb 22, 2018 01:40
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In the immediate term, however it is arguably counterproductive to the goal of overthrowing the democrats and replacing them with a better alternative, so it is at best questionable as to whether it does so in the long run. Also obviously there's the implicit suggestion that human only includes Americans in that instance given the democrats are just as fond of blowing up people overseas.
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Feb 27, 2018 23:35
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Beause supporting the status quo and looking to overthrow the status quo are mutually exclusive goals. You either strengthen it or weaken it, to overthrow it you need to weaken it.
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Feb 27, 2018 23:40
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Potato Salad posted:Not in a two party system. What about that magically breaks basic logic? If your goal is to get rid of Clinton et al. Then voting for them is counterproductive to that goal, because if they win elections they're going to keep getting support and keep running and keep doing nothing.
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Feb 27, 2018 23:42
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Potato Salad posted:In the US, I can't vote far left within a coalition that will ultimately lock horns to protect the poor , discriminated, and disenfranchised. Coalition building in the US takes place, sorta-kinda-not-really in the primaries, and the constraints of two parties are so hosed up that you can't refuse participation without ceding power to the right. Again, yes, taking away support from the marginally-less-bad option allows the more bad option to win immediately, however taking away that support is a component of replacing the less bad option with a good option. It has to happen at some point. You can't get lovely politicians out of power if you keep voting for them, because all you are doing is supporting the mill of lovely politicians that rely on "well the republicans are worse" as their only selling point.
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Feb 27, 2018 23:59
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Potato Salad posted:Never in history, people tell me never in history has a party realignment or severe shift ever happened. I would suggest that they probably haven't happened as a result of people invariably supporting the status quo of said party, no.
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Feb 28, 2018 00:14
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A slippery slope argument isn't fallacious when you've clear evidence of the existence of the slope, the slipperiness of it, and the glee with which the objects in question seem keen to throw themselves down it entirely independently of the force of gravity.
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Mar 3, 2018 08:10
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Cerebral Bore posted:Thing is that it doesn't. There's nothing in Duverger's law that requires both parties to be lovely, that's just a result of the choices that bad dems have been making for the past few decades. That comparison is a good one also in terms of how the two parties are structured, which is very different.
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Mar 3, 2018 09:30
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Even if you don't believe that the democrats would shut down intra party democracy in the event that it threatened the establishment (and they likely would, the Labour right tried to do this when they lost) you have to at least acknowledge that moneyed interests will always have a drastic advantage over the left in the democratic party because they simply have more resources available to them, and can buy the primaries as easily as any election is bought.
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Mar 4, 2018 14:40
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You can't compare mass donations to support of the rich, they have far more money to throw around.
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Mar 4, 2018 15:04
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