Re: Doesn’t Matter Who Wins the K Race; We’re All the Same
 

I can think of two presidential candidates who are saying exactly that. One of them also got a new consumer protection agency created more or less on her own.

Fondue
 

Is fucking bullshit.

Switzerland is expensive as fuck. Only good thing to come out of here was Deep Purple Machine Head.

Re: Doesn’t Matter Who Wins the K Race; We’re All the Same
 

True. True capitalism would say “Fuck your trademark. Fake Nike’s all the way”.

Re: Doesn’t Matter Who Wins the K Race; We’re All the Same
 

I, like you, am more interested in winning than anything else. But I am not high on Biden as a campaigner, and he's not doing much to dispel that.

My point was, don't count Harris out. Dealing with the bigotry, yes, is an electability issue, but so is having trouble your feet out of your mouth.

I would not presume Biden is the most electable candidate in the field right now.

Re: Doesn’t Matter Who Wins the K Race; We’re All the Same
 

You're generalizing a bit. I do not think the parties are the same in all or even most regards. I think they are the same in one enormous regard: Protecting the interests of capital and corporations above everything else.

Sure, Democrats regulate more aggressively, but that just serves corporations by creating compliance requirements that act as barriers to entry for smaller competitors. And Democrats talk a lot about the financial sector becoming too big and too powerful to the detriment of many other sectors. But do they really do anything about it? No. Their reaction to 2008 was near identical to that of Republicans: Protect the holders of capital at all costs. Labor? Main Street? You're on your own. (Some outliers like Warren and Bernie tried to rein in big finance, but Schumer and Co. blocked that. [The CFPB was a solid effort, but it was never gifted much power and was ultimately more symbolic, more placation of the angry, than anything else.]).

How have the Democrats been on globalization and automation? Crickets. Or they offer that old salve, education. TPP was intended to slow China's growing influence, but not do anything that would offend the capital holders here who profit from trade with China. On the adverse impacts of globalization, the Ds and Rs run roughly the same playbook: Shrug, say globalization is inevitable and with it many working and middle class Americans who don't have significant capital will be ruined, and mumble about "job retraining." The only difference between them is the Ds want to provide safety nets and the Rs simply don't give a fuck about people without capital. That's a huge difference, of course. But both positions are effectively distilled to:

We have decided to place the value of global trade above the interests of the workers displaced by it.

Both the Rs and the Ds don't really care much about the "forgotten people" (growth of whose ranks is going to accelerate even more in a Moore's Law fashion with AI advances).

You might say, "No party can cure the pain of job destruction occasioned by enhanced global trade and automation." And you might be right about that. But it is the most important issue in the world right now, and it will remain so for the duration of our lives. So when you ask me why I cite the similarities between the GOP and Democrats rather than the many areas in which they diverge, it's because on the most important issue - the one that eats all others - they aren't much different. They both serve corporate interests and capital first, at cost to all others.

ETA: I was with a friend in finance a while back and this issue came up. I always ask the question, "Where will all the unneeded people work?" The answer: "Wal Mart." (Democrat, by the way.) I've heard from other Democrats in that sector, "Well, look... inevitably, all societies wind up rigidly class based, like England was. That's what's happening to us." It'd probably be more productive for me to stop worrying about this stuff and just wallow in the luck of birth that put me in a safer position than these forgotten and soon to be forgotten people. But there's something deeply concerning about such attitudes. They sound a lot like this old "axiom": "Housing prices never fall." If there's Irrational Exuberance, there's certainly Irrational Complacency. I don't see Ds or Rs applying structural fixes. They're applying band aids to keep the market going and prop asset prices to ease the baby boomers to their graves -- to avoid a retirement crisis among our arguably Worst Generation. I don't know how long this can last. Trump's election should have been a warning that the problems we face are way more than political and cultural. The next recession could be cataclysmic. If we're lucky. If we're not lucky, it'll just accelerate the slow series of soft landings at lower qualities of life for more and more Americans we've been enduring since 2000. Both parties are hell bent on insuring the latter occurs.

Re: Doesn’t Matter Who Wins the K Race; We’re All the Same
 

No it doesn't "just" do that and if it did "just" do that, companies, trade groups and morons on the internet wouldn't lobby so hard for deregulation or view candidate Trump as being good for deregulation.

Tell that to the personal finance sector. The CFPB had teeth until the GOP removed them.

Yes, one side wants to get the gains of trade and innovation while mitigating the harms. The other doesn't care about mitigating the harms. Totes the same.

Re: Doesn’t Matter Who Wins the K Race; We’re All the Same
 

True capitalism allows the biggest holders of capital to suffer losses. We do not allow that anymore. (Unless you're the unfortunate Lehman of a crisis, sacrificed to sustain the fiction we have real capitalism.)

Re: Doesn’t Matter Who Wins the K Race; We’re All the Same
 

True, it doesn't "just" do that. But that's a huge impact of over-regulation.

It made a mess of home lending and wound up harming many consumers. Where it was needed, in unsecured consumer loans, it was weak.

That's an overly sunny take. Let's try it differently:

One side wants the gains of trade and innovation - the economic gains from which accrue most to educated, upper middle class to affluent people and multinational corporations - while mitigating, minimally, the harms to the working and middle class, which are enormous.

or

One side is willing to provide safety nets which pay X per worker to mitigate the losses to displaced workers which average XXXXX per worker.

or

One side is willing to arbitrage the futures of its lower skilled workers for enhancements to the futures of its higher skilled workers... and mitigate the losses to those on the bad end of the bargain with safety nets that provide for bare subsistence living.

As to Republicans, no need for adjustment of your statement of their position. They just don't give a fuck.

Let's be honest -- when you value globalization over domestic labor, you are making a choice. You are saying you are willing to allow fellow Americans in one part of the economy to suffer, badly, in order to reap gains from global trade that aren't going to trickle down to these suffering people to any extent approaching the measure of what they'll be losing.

When you say you're interested in mitigating the adverse impacts to domestic labor impacted by globalization, you're avoiding an uncomfortable fact: That mitigation will not replace - will not even come close to replacing - what these people will lose. It's more than what the GOP would give these "losers" in the global economy. But it's still just throwing tokens to people losing dollars, and dignity. And you're making the same calculation the GOP is making: Innovations that I want, and that primarily and initially benefit capital and multinational corporations are more important than the lives of working and middle class people who will be savaged as a result of this policy decision.

I think that's a defensible position. It's also much more honest. Why can't we just admit we are picking sides?

(Please don't reply with, "But globalization makes products much cheaper for these forgotten people." Telling a guy with no job future his TV is $40 cheaper than if it were built here isn't an argument. And regarding China, with the exception of the iPhone, their products fall apart at 1/2 to 2/3 of the lifespan of similar products made elsewhere, and their generic drugs are... well, god only knows what's in that shit.)

Re: Doesn’t Matter Who Wins the K Race; We’re All the Same
 

I suggest you ask the people who make those loans if they thought that before the GOP gutted it.

Sure, if you think the people buying cheap products from China aren't getting any benefit. Paying less for stuff is, indeed, an economic benefit.

Sure, as long as you argue from your gut and ignore actual evidence.

Except no one made that choice. Nearly everyone making policy believed there was no direct trade off, because every trade deal and all available evidence said there wasn't one.

Then China joined the WTO and we learned that if there's a big enough change in trade terms, you can't get the effects that you're focused on. But the thing is that was a one time event (and appears to be over) and not nearly as big of scale as you want to make it out to be.

The Dems could be advocating for a lot more help. Some of them are. That is very much a point of the Green New Deal. It's the other side that's for doing nothing.

You don't even try to not sound like you're full of shit.

Re: Fondue
 

At least it's not Norway. In Switzerland, if you have to pay $25 for a slice of pizza and a beer at least the pizza won't have the bad cheese/sweet sauce kind of Papa John flavor.

Re: Fondue
 

Depends. Oslo, yes. Kristiansand, Stavanger, not so expensive.

Quality of fish (fjord trout and salmon, quite similar to each other) makes pizza seem a strange order save by necessity. Reindeer sausage might be better quick eat.

Re: Doesn’t Matter Who Wins the K Race; We’re All the Same
 

You didn't have to type so much to ignore what I was saying to you.

Re: Doesn’t Matter Who Wins the K Race; We’re All the Same
 

You asserted my citing similarities between the parties was ill advised and counterproductive. I explained why I disagree. My response could not have been more on the nose. What you are actually having an issue with here, I suspect, is my refusal to accept the predicate that the parties are indeed materially different (in impact most notably) on the big economic issues.

They aren’t. And I since don’t accept that threshold argument, I certainly can’t agree that noting this huge similarity I did is cynical or counterproductive. I’d call it candor.

Re: Doesn’t Matter Who Wins the K Race; We’re All the Same
 

It’s crazy that Ty calls people a troll. Then in the next post he says trump is trying to deflect. Trump is trying to deflect, but ty is the troll. Sad ih8edjfkjr gave a troll the keys.

Re: Doesn’t Matter Who Wins the K Race; We’re All the Same
 

When did you become against trolls?

Re: Doesn’t Matter Who Wins the K Race; We’re All the Same
 

I’ve had it. Williamson 2020!

Re: Doesn’t Matter Who Wins the K Race; We’re All the Same
 

I’m just trying to protect my territory.

Re: Fondue
 

In Zurich, the pizza was good but the beer was very meh. On to Italy where me thinks it should be better.

Re: Doesn’t Matter Who Wins the K Race; We’re All the Same
 

What about the woman who “has to go” on Nat Guard duty? What if she gets called up when there is a crisis? Actually she will?

Re: Fondue
 

Where you going?

Re: Doesn’t Matter Who Wins the K Race; We’re All the Same
 

2. Williamson/Gabbard 2020!

(Ty’s in tight with Sauron. Tread lightly.)

Re: Doesn’t Matter Who Wins the K Race; We’re All the Same
 

This is pretty much what I expected you'd do.

White Fragility
 

So I finished the book. I was sidetracked by three others I'm also reading, the best of which is Michael Pollan's awesome How to Change Your Mind. (Best argument for why one must eat psychedelics, even into middle age and beyond, to keep the software in the mind nimble, and avoid falling into rote, repetitive thinking many of us mistake for "wisdom of experience." Highly recommended.)

But as to WF, I quite enjoyed the book. From a technical perspective, the argument is well delivered and well organized. There is some repetition, but I think it might be by design, given she's writing to a probably defensive audience that may need the points made reinforced a few times.

On substance, she explains institutional racism so well I don't think anyone could argue against its existence. Anyone raising the argument that we are a post-racial society should be given a copy of the book.

There were a lot of great insights, but if I had to pick one chapter that distilled them all to the best example of fragility, it'd be the white women's tears chapter. That captured the narcissism that underpins institutional racism. And the cluelessness. It's an amazing phenomenon -- a white person becoming upset and elevating their emotional state over the person actually experiencing the racism. We typically think of minorities being compelled to stay quiet by force. In reality, they're probably more dissuaded from doing so because they're usually ignored, or have the conversation hijacked to a discussion about the white person's response to their raising the issue of racism. This could be called "black exhaustion at white narcissism." I found this to be almost comedic in an absurd and macabre sense. "Enough about how this racism is impacting you... Let's talk about how talking about it impacts me." Larry David could write that line.

Another point I really enjoyed was the argument against our meritocratic myth. That moronic fairy tale precludes us from having frank discussions about everything from racism to inequality. Anyone raising that should be given this book along with a copy of Fooled by Randomness.

My takeaway from the book is that, for a lazy sort such as myself, the least one can do is speak frankly about racism when talking to other whites and shut up and listen if a black person is talking about racism. Don't preclude enlightenment on the subject from someone facing it directly. You'll never have the same angle on it, or anywhere near the same level of experience with it, as will he. To have that back and forth, however, whites are going to have to drop the habit of avoiding discussions of racism because they are uncomfortable, which in turn causes blacks to avoid discussing it with whites with the necessary level of candor.

I liked the book. Technically and substantively. Well done.

Re: Doesn’t Matter Who Wins the K Race; We’re All the Same
 

They're just greedy. Any regulation is too much regulation. And when you have the White House, you can't let the opportunity to stack the deck as much in your favor as possible lapse.

"Sorry you've been rendered obsolete and will only earn 1/2 to 2/3 of what you did before (and work like a dog for it). But look on the bright side. Your appliances and video game consoles are 20% cheaper!

...Sorry. Good food's still expensive. But then, you can always eat the processed crap. It'll give you high blood pressure or cancer, which will free you from this merry-go-round sooner."

What have people done to address this policy error? Nothing serious. The unspoken reality we all know is: Globalization and automation are inevitable, and they're going to savage a majority of workers in developed nations first, then less developed nation later. Labor is an endangered species -- a cost sought to be eliminated by all means available.

Now sing me a song about how new jobs will be created in amounts and at pay far in excess of the old jobs. I need some of that Classic Adder Econ 101 Bullshit.

A New New Deal of which the Green New Deal (modified to remove AOC's insane mandates) is a small component, is needed. The Green New Deal alone is a joke.

Builders don't use "Chinese steel" as a pejorative for no reason. I recently had an HVAC unit replaced for one zone. I wanted to buy the big one, but was advised against it on the grounds, "It's all Chinese shit that'll break in ten years... don't waste the money." The unit in the other zone, made by Trane, with non-Chinese parts: 27 years old and still running. We just bought new clothes washers and dryers. People at Home Depot said the same thing. "Chinese shit." A very close friend and a family member are interior designers. Ask them about new furnishings made in China. You guessed it: "Chinese shit." Ask your mechanic. "Shit."

They make a lot of things well. But they make just many awfully, cheaply, and it's almost impossible not to conclude, designed to break, blow up, or otherwise require replacement within a short period of time.

Strangely, however, they seem to make clothes really well. I have a couple sportcoats made there, and they are really well stitched.

Re: Doesn’t Matter Who Wins the K Race; We’re All the Same
 

No, I quoted you suggesting that the parties are sometimes materially different. ("The losers get fucked by both parties. Worse by the GOP, of course.") If it really matters to you on some level that people are getting fucked, then the differences should matter too.

If you don't give a shit about what you're describing, just continue with the cheap cynicism. It's a schtick, and it's certainly easier than engaging.

Re: Doesn’t Matter Who Wins the K Race; We’re All the Same
 

What?

Re: Doesn’t Matter Who Wins the K Race; We’re All the Same
 

Oh, you're fixated on the delta between the levels of fucking. Got it. The GOP favors letting your job go abroad to serve their benefactors and gives you nothing. The Democrats favor letting your job go abroad to serve their benefactors and gives you a "safety net" worth 1/10th of the value of what you lost, enough to keep in subsistence living. If we continue along with the "fucking" analogy, I think you'd call the Democrat enhancement over what the GOP offers a "reacharound."

Re: White Fragility
 

I could swear that many years ago we had a prolonged argument about meritocracy with you insisting on it. Hm. Maybe it was someone else.

Surely there are ways of exposing people to the concept of randomness without subjecting anyone to Taleb. He is insufferable.

Re: Doesn’t Matter Who Wins the K Race; We’re All the Same
 

Well, if you've got the racism of people working in various industries backing you up...

Rome
 

Blows all these places out of the motherfracking water. They know how to do pasta, pizza. They do NOT PLAY.

Re: Rome
 

Best- except for the trash problems.

Re: Doesn’t Matter Who Wins the K Race; We’re All the Same
 

You're insufferable.

China makes a lot of lousy products, badly. That's a fact. Whether a racist says that or the most enlightened and tolerant person on earth says that, it's a fact. Just like this fact: The US made shitty cars in the 70s and 80s. Is one xenophobic toward Americans to note that? No.

Norwegians make lousy pizza. So do the Swiss.

You throw the racist card with too much abandon. And in doing so, you do a huge disservice to the causes you think you're assisting. Voters exposed to people like you develop a very jaundiced view of progressives as naive, clueless, self-righteous sorts. They assume anyone who charges bigotry as his first move in any discussion is half frivolous and half dangerous. And they're right. Your immediate rush to explain everything as a symptom of bigoted minds is a lazy cudgel. It's a cheap effort to avoid substance with a form of ad hominen shaming. It's also immune to reply. One can argue how many Chinese goods are poorly or cheaply made and how many are not, but no one can prove or disprove the dimwitted suggestion that people who deem certain Chinese products to be of poor quality are all racists.

Use the word where it fits and refrain where it doesn't. It has meaning. It's not a whack a mole hammer for a lazy sophomoric thinker to brandish for cheap points in almost every conversation.

Re: White Fragility
 

https://media2.giphy.com/media/8rbYChfZTh2XC/giphy.gif
https://media1.tenor.com/images/5c52...itemid=7425816
https://media1.tenor.com/images/5901...itemid=3536046

TM

Re: Doesn’t Matter Who Wins the K Race; We’re All the Same
 

China makes lots of stuff, including the cheapest stuff. They also make your iPhone, your Fire tablet, your Google phone and do final assembly on pretty much all of your consumer electronics. China makes everything. The cheap stuff is cheap. The expensive stuff is not. That you ignore those facts and generalize is racist, dude.

And go read White Fragility again bcs you’re a stereotype of what she’s talking about. Sheesh.

Re: Doesn’t Matter Who Wins the K Race; We’re All the Same
 

Bullshit. Your understanding of her book is warped. What she described is a phenomenon, a situation, a societal condition, that should never be used as a go to argument every time you don't have much of an argument on the substance. That's what you're doing here.

There isn't anything anyone says here that you will not immediately flag as accruing from bigotry in some regard. You attempt to grandstand in every conversation with this tactic. You're full of shit. A little kid looking to score points. Look at my virtue!

I said China makes a number of quality items. But it also makes a whole lotta junk. This isn't up for debate. And it has nothing to do with race. It has to do with economic and political factors within the country.

Am I bigoted? Yes. Against almost every form of Chinese appliance or home furnishing I've bought (save the antiques), I am. It's not well made.

Guess what else isn't well made: Mercedes. They used to be built like bank vaults. Now they're cheap plasticky shitboxes. Chalk me up as bigoted against the Germans for pumping out cheap shadows of their past vehicles.

A shit product is a shit product is a shit product, and I'm tired of buying so many shit products. I'd buy American in re appliances, but I can't even do that. Few are made here and those that are have fallen in quality because, well, Why make something well when you can half ass it, have it break sooner, and compel the customer to buy another? That's what the competition abroad does.

Shall we get into British cars next? Might my refusal to ever own one be evidence of xenophobia toward the Brits?

White Fragility made sense. You've no business citing that book. That you do is kind of an insult to it. A cogent and measured argument like hers shouldn't be shoehorned into your moralizing pronouncements.

ETA: You're exactly what'll get Trump re-elected.

Re: Doesn’t Matter Who Wins the K Race; We’re All the Same
 

This is self-parody, right?

Re: Doesn’t Matter Who Wins the K Race; We’re All the Same
 

You should learn how to manage these types of discussions. When Sebby posts something that shows his eyes have been opened to shit I've been hammering away at for years, why are pushing him on something that is most likely not meant to be racist. You know what he means.

I understand that you are an ally, but let me tell you, from a lifetime of experience when it comes to broaching this subject with white people, you need to pick your battles. If you point out everything, all the time, you will get tuned right the fuck out.

TM

Re: Doesn’t Matter Who Wins the K Race; We’re All the Same
 

I realized reading Diangelo’s direct, lucid, and dryly logical argument that I didn’t really have an issue with her positions. How could I? Logic is logic. Her analyses were laid out like mathematical proofs. Even if I suspected her of bias, which I didn’t, her points would nevertheless be largely irrefutable.

I realized I was arguing most with people like Adder. He’s not really an ally. He’s biased, extremely, toward appearing exceptionally virtuous in matters regarding race, sex, LGBTQ, etc. But unlike Diangelo, who carefully and rigorously explains her definition of racism in the United States, Adder offers no thinking. He just reflexively labels anything he can some form of bigotry or prejudice.

He’s the embodiment of the hammer seeing only nails analogy.

This is not thoughtful, nor is it rigorous. To immediately cite bigotry as the cause of all criticisms one hears about foreign products is lazy, and its grandstanding. And he should not be considered a credible ally because it is largely that affirmation that he seeks. He wants to be the dutiful finder of bigotry everywhere, and so his move, anytime he sees even the thinnest pretext to do so is to, in a Javert fashion, accuse the speaker of bigotry.

He means well, but in this regard he’s the chatboard equivalent of an “unreliable narrator.” And to the extent the behavior of him and the many like him offends an independent like me, well, imagine its impact on Biden voters, and Trump voters with some buyer’s remorse. “Allies” like Adder, behaving as they do en masse, are what can and indeed may likely lose the Ds the middle, and consequently lose them the election.

And it won’t be because the middle is fragile. Indeed, the whites in the middle are fragile. But they can also spot grandstanding. And that really turns off people.

I honestly don’t think Adder realizes how transparent he is. But he has no business claiming Diangelo as support. She wrote an argument. He’s entirely Pavlovian. Dangle an opening for his favorite accusation (pick whatever form of bigotry he can shoehorn into the facts at issue) and he never fails to provide it.

Re: Doesn’t Matter Who Wins the K Race; We’re All the Same
 

Dude, take a breath. Adder is too quick to blame him/us (he is where I coined the post summary “white people bad, black people good”) but he ain’t stupid and the point in this bit is, you quoting several people saying anything made in China is shit. Then you admit that only some is. But that means you gotta look at the thing in question? I’ve a client whose name everyone here respects, they make stuff in China. It’s good I believe- their name is too important not to watch that. So to quote someone saying “China shit is bad” isn’t too far from Adder’s “white people bad.*” An overly simplified view that boils a more nuanced q to race?


*Adder, first version equates it to “all blacks bad” but I thought this works better to my audience? No offense.

Re: Doesn’t Matter Who Wins the K Race; We’re All the Same
 

Ehh, at the risk of “whitesplainin” the main lesson of that book is don’t think you are in a position to “whitesplain,” to me at least, everything up to her getting called out was prologue- meaning it is all in the execution and day to day living.

book reviews are easy, let’s see how peeps move forward having read the book?