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[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

The beliefs of economists are self-reinforcing. If enough believe in the half fictional laws of economics, actors will behave in a manner consistent with those half fictional laws and thus those laws will appear to be real. https://www.investopedia.com/terms/r/reflexivity.asp

That's not actually how the economy usually works. The bigger problem is that economists have a hard time predicting what will happen, which undermines their credibility. And....

And economists more often than not do what their corporate benefactors want them to do.

Yes, but...

Sure, Krugman bucks the system here and there. And Kreuger (sadly committed suicide last week) bucked it on minimum wage increases. But people like Larry Summers conveniently always find a business-friendly solution to every problem and magically advocate exclusively for neoliberal policies. I think Summers is so in the can for corporate benefactors that he'd argue that free trade helps manufacturing workers in the rust belt.

If you want to pick three economists not beholden to corporate benefactors, those are not the three to start with. Are you picking Democrats instead of Republicans just to troll me?

If A thinks B is ignoring him, why would A listen to B? That's not how people operate.

We were talking about race. You pivoted to right-wing grievances about the media. Do those ideas connect in some way in your brain?

The right and left do not understand why the other side feels aggrieved. What's behind the words is important.

Bullshit to the sentiment here, and bullshit to the notion that when I'm talking about what the right says (which you made the subject, not me), you need to point to the left. Enough whatabboutism. So tired.

No. That's not what that says at all. What that says is that racism becomes part of a discussion of a million other things, which causes it to get lost in the conversation. Some of that is unintentional (24/7 media flooding everyone), some of it is intentional (right wingers making race part of a broader conversation about less important topics).

We were talking about what they say about race. What they say about race, according to you, shows a repeated tendency to ascribe false consciousness to people talking about racism rather than to deal in any way with the fact that our country is, as you said recently, systematically discriminates.

http://achievethegreenberetway.com/d...ite-at-a-time/ The left will often bundle together a bunch of problems into a huge mass and raise them all at once, all at the same volume. "We need to fix X, XX, XXX, XXXX, and XXXXX" is overwhelming. If you instead say, "We need to fix X as a first priority, and secondarily, once that's being addressed, we need to address XX, then XXX, then XXXX," you've framed what you want in reasonable, digestible terms. You have a plan, as opposed to a drum circle.

I didn't read this paragraph either, for the same reason.

What I hoped to convey is that the right wing can be moved toward a more enlightened understanding of racism and the need to recognize and address it. As I said, this can be done through a door opened by libertarians and, oddly, the Kochs, and Rick Santorum (early advocate of letting ex-felons* vote).

Nothing about what you said about what the right actually says about race suggests there is any reason to think this. I admire your optimism, and I want to be an optimistic guy, but seriously?

The right wing has spent a decade moving in the opposite direction.

Comprehensive justice reform, and examination of out entire "penal culture" which jails a higher percentage of citizens than any other nation, necessarily includes a blunt and ugly conversation on systemic racism. And right now, there's an appetite for reform of this on the right. But if this issue is raised among a million others, if a candidate fails to state that this is the most important issue right next to our rapidly changing labor market and economy, and if it gets lumped into a broader conversation about valid but much less significant grievances, the opportunity will be missed.

Why? If people on the right think comprehensive justice reform is the right thing to do and have an appetite for it, why would the broader conversation derail it?

And white America had better wake up on this issue, because our penal industry, and our law n' order right wingers, are aiming their net at poor whites. There's a huge push to find ways to "control" the obsolete white people who commit a lot of petty crimes. The only reason "broken windows" isn't being applied in rural America is because additional law enforcement needed to implement it requires high tax increases. But the law n' order pricks will find a way around that. They always do.

Must every conversation with race move towards a discussing of addressing the feelings of white America? I guess so.