Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield (Post 516352)

But you know what? None of this will mean shit. Because his base is with him no matter what - even while he's shooting them on 5th Av-- err, Pennsylvania Avenue.

Originally Posted by ferrets_bueller (Post 516357)

Under the topic of "you learn something new every day", buried in the last phrase of Article 5 of the Constitution, that document can be amended any old way with the exception of the fact that "no State, without its Consent, shall be deprived of its equal Suffrage in the Senate."

The small states drove a hard bargain and wanted to make sure it was kept.

So lets try this instead:



The two men had played bridge with one another for many years. They had become fast friends. They were philosophically compatible, had a similar sense of humor, and shared the same general view of the world. In fact, they both thought the world was going to hell in a handbasket.
They were also rich beyond reason. Excluding a couple of oil sheiks, they were the two wealthiest men on the planet.

They had tried philanthropy, and had done good works all around the world. And still, the world seemed spinning out of control. When they discussed the federal government, it was all the two men could do not to rage at the absolute paralysis of the Executive and Legislative branches. One evening, they tried to figure out how to set things in Washington on a productive path. Beverages were involved, so the two men were simultaneously in their cups and "outside the box."

"So, Warren, here’s my plan. You get two Senate seats. I get two. Steve gets his two as well. Suddenly, we have a voting block of six seats that could swing any vote in the Senate, and therefore any piece of legislation in the country."

"Sounds fine, Bill, but the very act of campaigning turns you into one of the people we despise."

"I have no intention of campaigning."

"Makes it a bit tough to win the election, then, doesn’t it?"

"Not at all. I intend to buy the two seats, fair and square."

Warren sighed and rolled his eyes.

"I’m serious, Warren. Just do the math, and follow along. My net worth is pretty astronomical Therefore with two percent of my net worth. I am prepared to offer a two million dollars apiece to each of the 500,000 current residents of Wyoming if they will leave the state by September. That will cost me a small fraction of my wealth. Those people who move will not have to forfeit their property. They will merely have to establish a legal voting residence elsewhere."

"That’s preposterous, Bill. Who would take you up on this?"

"Who would be stupid enough NOT to take my money? I would write each person a check upon seeing proof that they had established a residence in a different state. Sure, not every single person would leave, but it would take an awful lot of willpower to resist a couple of million bucks apiece."
"You’re serious."

"Absolutely."
"I Want Everybody Out By Tuesday !" The headline on the Casper Star Tribune was accompanied by a cartoonish picture of the man who would pay every last one of them two million dollars apiece. The press conference had actually been calmer than Bill had expected. Doing his homework had paid off. Establishing a New Casper development in northern Arizona allowed neighbors to remain neighbors, and pictures of the first new transplanted inhabitants of New Casper lounging around their swimming pool was a stroke of genius. The brand new school building even had the same teachers the students had the previous year. The Arizona real estate market, which had cratered during the subprime mortgage disaster, rebounded sharply.

Using New Casper as a blueprint, Bill’s bridge partner Warren made the citizens of flood ravaged North Dakota an offer they couldn’t refuse. He developed the South Fargo Estates in New Mexico. The development was so successful that additional people wanted to live in South Fargo estates, and Warren accommodated them. He actually made a profit on the entire deal, taken as a package. Their colleague Steve had plans to established Sioux Falls South on the Texas Gulf Coast, but he passed away before he could implement the project. A preposterously young billionaire, Mark, and his wife, took over the project. The citizens of Montana and Idaho were actively entertaining similar bids. Law firms throughout the nation’s northern tier took up specialization in negotiating specific "diaspora agreements".
After the inevitable lawsuits were dismissed, the three new Senators, and their Senator spouses, were elected and sworn in over a six year period.. The blogosphere, the newspaper headlines, and the people of the other 47 states could speak of little else. Most people thought the concept was somehow wrong, but nobody could identify a victim. Politicians from the other states fell over each other to curry favor with the Six Oligarchs, given the financial benefits of being an Oligarch Friend.

Wyoming soon became the windmill capital of the world. North Dakota became a giant solar collector. South Dakota capitalized on both sources of clean power. The "temporary workers" in the three states established "formal" residences in other states with little or no state income tax, and were happier than ever before. Much of the farmland returned to nature; the idea of a "Great Commons" on the plains was taking hold. Ted, a wealthy friend of the Six Oligarchs, released 10,000 bison in the Dakotas. Although Ted was wealthy enough to join the program as a Senator-Investor, he declined to do so. His wife was considered unelectable.

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield (Post 516358)

It holds no sway means it does not even come close to overcoming the sound and logical advice that one should never try to argue 10,000 issues at once, and it is wise to address the most acute issues first.

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop (Post 516360)

I wonder if a 25% tax increase on foreign cars will piss off his base.

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield (Post 516363)

No. That'll just piss me off.

I will never buy an American car. I drive my cars for 250k miles and throw them away. Save a Suburban, which is a truck too big for me, American cars do not last anywhere near that long.

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop (Post 516362)

It's hard to take you seriously on this point when you keep talking about college protestors and free speech.

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop (Post 516364)

With a 25% tariff on foreign cars, US carmakers would be fools not to raise their prices.

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield (Post 516363)

No. That'll just piss me off.

I will never buy an American car. I drive my cars for 250k miles and throw them away. Save a Suburban, which is a truck too big for me, American cars do not last anywhere near that long.

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop (Post 516361)

The remedy for problems with our democracy is enlightened rich people spending their money wisely. God save us.

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield (Post 516366)

Agreed. He's setting up a super-recession.

Dumbass probably thinks he's giving us a little necessary inflation.

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield (Post 516366)

Agreed. He's setting up a super-recession.

Dumbass probably thinks he's giving us a little necessary inflation.

Originally Posted by ThurgreedMarshall (Post 516354)

I'm sure you understand that that split benefits Dems more than the current system if you apply it across the board, correct? Maybe not.

TM

Originally Posted by Hank Chinaski (Post 516371)

Probably, but I thought the task was to get more representative, not benefit one party over the other.

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop (Post 516370)

So you do think he might piss off his base?

Tyler Cowen says he's setting up to blame the Fed. That seems right. He's going to need someone to blame.

Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy (Post 516369)

Yeah, dumbasses. Who could have foreseen them doing what they said they'd do.

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop (Post 516372)

Apropos of the Electoral College, it seems like people from California, Texas and New York should be able to agree that it sucks. The issue (in my mind) is not that it favors one party more than the other (suspect that could go either way), it's that it favors a small, essentially random set of swing states to the detriment of the states that predictably go to one party or the other. In the current system, why would a Republican candidate go to Texas? Or a Democrat to Los Angeles or NYC? Move to a popular vote, and that's where they'd go to drive turnout.

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield (Post 516347)

The serious grievances (police brutality, predatory racist laws, a racists court and justice system, etc.) should be clearly separated from the less-serious complaints (microaggressions, etc.). These things cannot be lumped together because doing so allows the latter to discredit the former. And no - the argument they are all inseparable threads of a cloth or part of a continuum of behavior that must be addressed in aggregate holds no sway.

Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy (Post 516348)

And it doesn't count the structural changes. If we turn someone away when they come to buy our stuff, and they have to guy buy it next door, they're going to start next door the next time they have to buy something.

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield (Post 516373)

Higher rates tend to benefit older people whose investments are heavily weighted to fixed income. I think he could actually alienate older voters, a large part of his base, by pushing the Fed to cease raising.

OTOH, higher rates tamp down home prices, which will annoy a lot of boomers looking to cash out and downsize in retirement.

But, then, higher rates haven't seemed to affect home prices much so far...

I think he's dumb enough to try to blame the fed. But even if energy price increases are not his fault,* that's going to get hung around his neck.

The next recession will be awful for his base, and whoever's in office gets blamed by Joe Sixpack. I previously stated his base would forgive lost Chinese infrastructure investment because they wouldn't understand it's a bad thing (they'd largely think it good... "Keep out them Chinese!"). But a recession that results in even further job losses to lower skilled workers? Trump could lose a chunk of his base following that.

Inevitably, however, as the 2020 race takes shape, Trumpkins will be faced with a choice between him and a Democrat who will be presented as liberal and pro-free trade. They'll be forced to pick, and there, any base lost due to an intervening recession is likely to come home to Trumpistan once more.

__________
* Friends who follow oil have called me illiterate for suggesting the oil increase is in any way attributable to Trump's scuttling of the Iran deal, advising that oil is rising exactly as expected at this point in the expansion/recession cycle.

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop (Post 516378)

You are way overthinking this. He needs someone to blame for bad economic news. Hillary isn't going to work. Obama won't work for much longer. He's not going to blame congressional Republicans, as much as he'd like to. The Fed will have to do (along with Angela Merkel).

Originally Posted by Replaced_Texan (Post 516376)

The latter lead to the former.

Originally Posted by Replaced_Texan (Post 516377)

Mexico and China have been talking quite a bit over the last 18 months. That should scare the crap out of us.

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop (Post 516353)

You gave the article very high praise. I don't get it. I agree with a lot of it. I have seen white people talk and act in the way described and I think it's a real and important thing. What did I say that is "dismissive"? I suspect you are right that if we were talking in person we wouldn't be talking past each other.

To be clear, I completely get what you are saying about D&I efforts and white people. I have been involved in those efforts too, though not to the extent you have. I have heard white people say those things. Some of my friends are black. (That was a joke.) I'm in a somewhat different position vis-a-vis my current employer than you are, but this topic is something I'm working on. I am with you on everything you say in this paragraph except that while I found the piece good and right, I didn't think it was so eloquently set forth. And I say that not in the spirit of trying to crap on good work -- yours, the reviewer's, the author's. I agree that most white people want to think of racism as something that other, bad people do, not as something in which they are complicit and from which they benefit. I think that's absolutely a thing. But that idea is not new to me, and I can't believe it was new to you.

No damage at all, but nor does it add anything.

What specifics? I would like to see more specifics. That would be interesting.

And I in my response to GGG.

And yet that's what the author said, comparing it to a pathogen. I'm not saying I reject the whole article, I just said that it was an idea in the piece that I didn't like.

Agree. White people have agency, and make choices, and are responsible for their choices, such as avoiding dealing with uncomfortable truths and doing nothing.

The problem I have with the "racism as pathogen" idea -- not with the larger piece -- is that it diminishes that agency. You seem to think I'm saying white people should be let off the hook. I'm saying the opposite.

Allport describes prejudice as a product of the way ordinary people think, not as something external and anomalous (a "pathogen"). If you want people to accept how pervasive prejudice, it seems to me a better path is to explain how it is integral to everyone's psychology.

My thesis was about the post-war occupation of Japan, so that would be a good trick. Come to SF for a beer and I will tell you about it.

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop (Post 516359)

Maybe we should ban cars to protect the jobs of people who clean manure off the streets every day.

Information technology means that you can buy stuff and have it delivered instead of having to go to a store. Or for that matter, a restaurant. This is causing all sorts of changes in the economy, and I wouldn't invest in retail space, which is not as valuable when people don't need it as much.

Originally Posted by Hank Chinaski (Post 516371)

Probably, but I thought the task was to get more representative, not benefit one party over the other.

Originally Posted by ThurgreedMarshall (Post 516382)

progressives

TM

Originally Posted by ThurgreedMarshall (Post 516383)

If companies weren't gifted bajillions of dollars worth of tax incentives you might have me. But if you're talking about the benefits you're going to provide to a local economy and then create a capsule to which employees travel to avoid anyone who actually lives and works in the area while driving up the cost of living to unsustainable levels, it would seem this is a small fix that harms neither the company nor the workers.

Originally Posted by ThurgreedMarshall (Post 516384)

Oh my god. You're the one accusing everyone of trying to enact policies that benefit Dems. That was a response to you after other people (including me), said that our current system is no longer appropriately representative. I feel like I'm talking to a monkey in the first ever inter-species discussion.

TM

Originally Posted by Replaced_Texan (Post 516376)

The latter lead to the former.

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop (Post 516380)

Relatedly, every law is violent.

Originally Posted by Hank Chinaski (Post 516385)

(if I posted this before apologies) my Next Door webpage had a thread- the local High school football team is 50/50 white and black- my tiny suburb is part of that school, but 95% white. 3 black players were going door to door selling coupons for the season. An old woman started the thread- "there are 3 black kids knocking on my door. anybody know if they mean bad, I pretended not to be home?" or some such nonsense-

my suburb is 70% liberals- they took up the thread, "They're from the football team. I was happy to meet them, bought tickets, Joe is a d tackle and frank is a safety and ......." 2 dozens similar replies. The replies read to me as "I was brave and opened my door..., here let me brag." That is those well-intended replies seemed harmful- any high school kid who read it would know the entire fucking suburb was afraid. You were bragging about opening your door to a high school kid and talking to him as if he were a person, really?

My response,
"can someone please delete this whole thread before any kids, white or black read it?"

I knew the dozen braggers, all good people, no one intended to do anything but positive thoughts. if I told them how the posts, especially the volume of the same thought, could be taken as implying something harmful, I'd be told I was nuts. but these people all took a deep breath before they opened the door to black people they didn't know, they won't admit it, even to themselves, but I think their words show it.

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop (Post 516390)

Not your main point, but while I'm sure that NextDoor was started with the best of intentions, as a practical matter its business model seems to be to monetize exactly this sort of bias. Half the board activity, from what I can tell, is neighbors worrying about the criminal threat posed by various darker-hued people in the neighborhood.

Originally Posted by ThurgreedMarshall (Post 516382)

I'm not going to go through and respond to all of this point-by-point. But there are two main points I would like to address.

1. Being a part of diversity issues from very early on when it was just lip service and experimenting and crafting different programming and training and approaches to try to deal with it, you get very close to it. Although white resistance was always front and center, you start to lose perspective as to why you first try this approach, then another, then another, again and again and again. We are now at a point where implicit bias and confirmation bias are front and center and is fairly effective because white people seem to understand (when given the proper examples) that the point of the drill is not how it makes them feel about themselves. That's the one thread that was always present--how to effectively send a message of inclusivity that would be heard. And to be heard, you had to find a way to navigate and manage the feelings of white people who do not want to confront what is inside them.

So, the reason why I thought it was so well handled in that piece is that it sheds these structures built to be successful based on how white people will react and just outright states the real problem. Although it's there, I know it, I have explained it here, I thought it was done much better in that piece than anywhere else I've seen it because it's not about protecting those feelings. It's saying, "Those feelings are the fucking problem."

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop (Post 516393)

And now for a different view:



That's an FT reporter, via Tyler Cowen.

Originally Posted by ferrets_bueller (Post 516395)

Quote:
I have just spent a week in Beijing talking to officials and intellectuals, many of whom are awed by his skill as a strategist and tactician…He [Yafei] worries that strategic competition has become the new normal and says that “trade wars are just the tip of the iceberg”.

…In Chinese eyes, Mr Trump’s response is a form of “creative destruction”. He is systematically destroying the existing institutions — from the World Trade Organization and the North American Free Trade Agreement to Nato and the Iran nuclear deal — as a first step towards renegotiating the world order on terms more favourable to Washington. Once the order is destroyed, the Chinese elite believes, Mr Trump will move to stage two: renegotiating America’s relationship with other powers. Because the US is still the most powerful country in the world, it will be able to negotiate with other countries from a position of strength if it deals with them one at a time rather than through multilateral institutions that empower the weak at the expense of the strong…

My interlocutors say that Mr Trump is the US first president for more than 40 years to bash China on three fronts simultaneously: trade, military and ideology. They describe him as a master tactician, focusing on one issue at a time, and extracting as many concessions as he can. They speak of the skillful way Mr Trump has treated President Xi Jinping. “Look at how he handled North Korea,” one says. “He got Xi Jinping to agree to UN sanctions [half a dozen] times, creating an economic stranglehold on the country. China almost turned North Korea into a sworn enemy of the country.” But they also see him as a strategist, willing to declare a truce in each area when there are no more concessions to be had, and then start again with a new front.
That's an FT reporter, via Tyler Cowen. __________________


Interesting, but I disagree. Trump has no strategy whatsoever. That gives him far too much credit. He takes random positions, reverses them, and then reverses the reversal when it is proven beyond the shadow of a doubt that his head is squarely up his posterior at all points of a particular issue.



I've been to China ten times in the last fifteen years. The Chinese really do have a long, long term outlook. Invest in Africa. Invest in infrastructure projects worldwide. Turn the South China Sea into a Chinese lake. Turn the outer provinces tame by infusing more Han people. Control the people with an internal intelligence apparatus that is extensive beyond anything Orwell could imagine.



Trump's long term strategy begins and ends with the question of whether a given policy leads to an opportunity for him to see that his actions...on any particular day...lead to praise from his base. He increases the possibility of praise by denying any previous position the base finds offensive, declaring it to be fake news. Change one's position and then excoriate anyone who points out that your position has changed.



In his own way, Trump is also Orwellian. Europe is now our enemy. Russia is now our friend. Except this week he claims he is harder on Russia than previous Presidents, and that Russia wants Democrats to win. And the EU and the USA will sing kumbaya on trade. If "random" is a strategy, Trump has one.

Originally Posted by ThurgreedMarshall (Post 516382)

Look at the neighborhoods and schools and opportunity for blacks where progressives live. Sure, an overtly racist policy in Alabama is horrible. But go to the projects which are always designed to be completely avoided by progressives.)

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield (Post 516398)

This isn't factual. The allegation that all white people fight to retain their advantages over non-whites cannot be supported with evidence. It can, however, be refuted with considerable evidence.