8 ms·

Very true. Coming from Quebec, Canada, I actually say that. It's more ingrained in our culture that what we are taxed for is services that benefit us all and th

by didibus 10y ago

Very true. Coming from Quebec, Canada, I actually say that. It's more ingrained in our culture that what we are taxed for is services that benefit us all and that makes our societal environment more enjoyable. Now in the US, I can't seem to find anyone who think this. My biggest issue is that I can't even find anyone who thinks that the government is the people. Everyone seems to think of the government as this black box that has a mind of its own and inflict laws and rules upon us. While I'm much more used to the common thinking that the people rule, and the government simply enact our rule. We elect it, we pay for it, and therefore it simply does what we elected and paid for it to do. I'm not sure what makes up that difference, but it could be the bi-partisanery. It's a shame too, because it often fails to capture fine grain requirements. Like say I wanted a very liberal economy, while keeping gun rights strong and conservative norms in place? Or the other way around? There's no kind of choice like that. So you lysine end up for choosing based on your top issue only.

kristopolous 10y ago
It's a pro-private, anti-democratic push by chicago school, objectivists, and other groups, to essentially slander civic institutions as terrible and "privatize" them with capital extracting robber barons. "Government" is a 4 letter word and some people are insufferable in their hatred for it - thinking that some private selfish interest of people would magically make the world ... look, it's all preposterous ... it's apologetics and denialism wrapped in the religious fervor of a mythical free market.
- lacampbell 10y ago
  The issue is states trending towards the "mythical" free market have a track record of prosperity, while states tending towards mythical communism have a disastrous and bloody track record. East and West Germany, North and South Korea, Maoist Guangzhou and Unregulated Hong Kong. Time and time again it has been shown that a large collectivist state does not deliver on any of its promises, but instead creates poverty and misery. Now social democratic states can be relatively effective with a smaller population, and when administered by efficient, civic minded and hard-working people. The US Federal Government does not qualify.
  - kristopolous 10y ago
    That analysis ignores imperialism, transnational capitalism, colonialism, different signifiers of progress, and cherry-picks evidence from random points of history without doing any type of rigorous analysis. It ignores the vast majority of history with no functional government, no taxes, and free markets such as say, 3000BC in Moscow --- take your pick. Was there technological advancements, well maintained cities, and a prosperous middle class of entrepreneurs and innovators in societies free of coercion? Where were the emergent social orders which arose as an inherent stochastic process from individual capital pursuit in say, 600AD in Berlin? These only started happening after the rise of civic society and only in places with well-organized, democratically run institutions. These apologists also choose to ignore any counter evidence. There's over twice as many doctors per 1,000 people in Cuba than the US, however those facts are dismissed. When people talk about how decrease in things like open sewage, food-borne disease and other civic advancements lead to increase in longevity, those facts are dismissed. When people talk about how there's more affordability and more equitable medical care under democratically administered health systems, those facts are dismissed. When people talk about what Nestle has done to privatized water, what the diamond industry has done to Africa, how the market-based oil system has kept the middle east in 21st century monarchies, those facts are dismissed. Such claims as miraculous progress due to privatization are absurdist fantasies and easily refuted without even having to bring up their abysmal failures such as Puerto Rico, Enron, Pinochet's Chile.
    - lacampbell 10y ago
      It's dishonest to accuse me of cherry picking statistics - particularly when I never claimed my short post was a rigorous statistical analysis - then reply to me with your own cherry picked statistics. Nevertheless... There's over twice as many doctors per 1,000 people in Cuba than the US, however those facts are dismissed. And how does this effect the quality of life in Cuba? Life expectancy is the same [0]. Are working class Americans creating makeshift boats to sail to Cuba in order to benefit from the superior conditions? When people talk about how decrease in things like open sewage, food-borne disease and other civic advancements lead to increase in longevity, those facts are dismissed. Those are good things. Low tax, high income places tend to have these features as well, strangely enough. I recommend visiting Hong Kong or Singapore. When people talk about how there's more affordability and more equitable medical care under democratically administered health systems, those facts are dismissed. Those aren't facts. Those are vague hand waves. When people talk about what Nestle has done to privatized water, what the diamond industry has done to Africa, how the market-based oil system has kept the middle east in 21st century monarchies, those facts are dismissed. I never claimed markets were always benevolent. Simply that they tend towards more prosperity than collectivism. Also none of what you pointed to is particularly free of state involvement - states are all complicit. You can "cherry pick" the worst examples of what corporations have done all you like, they pale into comparison to the cherry pickings of the worst thing public institutions like states have done (famines, genocides, world wars). Such claims as miraculous progress due to privatization are absurdist fantasies and easily refuted. And yet you have failed to do so. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expectancy#List_by_the_World_Health_Organization_.282015.29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expe...
- AnthonyMouse 10y ago
  A huge part of the problem is that people think one system is better than the other when it's really a spectrum where both extremes are absurd. Suppose you want to have some roads, how do you do it? a) Pure Communism. The state builds the roads. The state needs road workers and workers need food so the state grows food. The workers need steamrollers so the state manufactures steamrollers. The workers need asphalt so the state mines gravel. The entire economy is centrally planned and collapses like the USSR. b) Pure Capitalism. A private company owns the road. You need their permission to leave your house, take deliveries, receive an ambulance, connect to the power grid, etc. They charge what the market will bear. Everyone becomes a serf of the road company. c) Capitalist Social Democracy. The state collects taxes and takes bids for private contractors to build the roads, which the state then owns and allows all people to use at no charge. Only one of those actually works.
  - trome 10y ago
    Eh, c in many cases includes govt built & maintained toll roads, cause as it turns out roadways can cost tens of billions to build. Makes rail look cheap in comparison!
    - AnthonyMouse 10y ago
      Toll roads are very stupid. The cost of the road is building the road, not driving on it. Even the maintenance cost is predominantly weather-related. A toll road pays the same construction cost and then gets less use out of it because the tolls discourage people from using the road. Tolls have the pricing wrong. There is no unit cost so the problem is apportioning the fixed cost. A platinum mine clearly derives more profit from the road than a potato farmer, so why should we charge per truck (tolls) rather than per dollar of profit (taxes)? All that does is price low-profit (i.e. more efficient) enterprises out of the market, which is exactly what we don't want. In addition to that we already have a tax collection infrastructure which is not going away, but collecting tolls would require a redundant toll collection infrastructure on top of that.
      - smallnamespace 10y ago
- hoorayimhelping 10y ago
  "People think differently than me cause they're brainwashed by charlatans." Don't try to give any benefit of the doubt to the people you disagree with on this. Don't try to see things from their perspective, and whatever you do, don't assume they have good intentions - you might just end up understanding someone else a little better and be forced to change your world view.
  - kristopolous 10y ago
    That's not it at all. AEI, Heritage, Cato, Hoover, Heartland, these are real groups putting out literature advocating these actual positions. They receive multi-million dollar contributions from organizations whose riches were made from things like defense contracts, for-profit education and for-profit prisons. You are advocating to what? Ignore that? Beyond that their claims are faulty and not reflective of reality. I used to have a facebook group where I'd take the AEI posts and dissect them. They'd do something like have two circles representing values, but the values are actually the radius of the circles ... so they are off by 3.14*r^2 in representation of the differences. There were many other things where they would do something like float some chart so the bottom value is only 5% less than the top, and then zoom in so it covers a very small time period, and then purport it as being significant. Literally every day. It was amazing. I went there right now, second post, comparing planets to GDP (http://9ol.es/planet.png http://9ol.es/planet.png) using inaccurate metrics of planet size and inaccurate calculations with relative mass along with depicting 3d objects as 2d... it's wildly inaccurate.
nerfhammer 10y ago
> Everyone seems to think of the government as this black box that has a mind of its own and inflict laws and rules upon us. This 1000x. This or something like it has been called the "paranoid style in american politics" as early as 50 years ago: http://harpers.org/archive/1964/11/the-paranoid-style-in-american-politics/ http://harpers.org/archive/1964/11/the-paranoid-style-in-ame...
- smallnamespace 10y ago
  As an American myself, I've always wondered whether there was something in the culture/genes of Americans that predisposed people towards paranoia towards all forms of external authority. I mean, American immigrants are literally a self-selected population of people who found their home societies chafing and restrictive enough that they were willing to migrate thousands of miles at great risk to build a new life. And this migration was repeated time and again within the US -- as each part of the country was populated, waves of Americans decided to strike out West and get out from underneath the bankers, politicians, and other elites that would take over. I think paranoia about government will always be the flip side to wanting to be fully free and independent (whether or not that is achievable in reality).
ksenzee 10y ago
I would submit that the difference you describe is partly because the US is so much bigger that each person has proportionally less control, and partly because Quebec is more socially cohesive than the US. The state of Oregon has a similar pro-government, pro-social welfare mentality. In their case, it's for kind of a dark reason; Oregon's historical racism makes for a more socially cohesive polity[1]. But in Quebec's case I think it's just a sense that other Québécois are family, and so services that only benefit other people still benefit everyone. [1] http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/05/welfare-utopia/484607/ http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/05/welfare-...

by didibus 10y ago

kristopolous 10y ago

It's a pro-private, anti-democratic push by chicago school, objectivists, and other groups, to essentially slander civic institutions as terrible and "privatize" them with capital extracting robber barons. "Government" is a 4 letter word and some people are insufferable in their hatred for it - thinking that some private selfish interest of people would magically make the world ... look, it's all preposterous ... it's apologetics and denialism wrapped in the religious fervor of a mythical free market.

lacampbell 10y ago
The issue is states trending towards the "mythical" free market have a track record of prosperity, while states tending towards mythical communism have a disastrous and bloody track record. East and West Germany, North and South Korea, Maoist Guangzhou and Unregulated Hong Kong. Time and time again it has been shown that a large collectivist state does not deliver on any of its promises, but instead creates poverty and misery. Now social democratic states can be relatively effective with a smaller population, and when administered by efficient, civic minded and hard-working people. The US Federal Government does not qualify.
- kristopolous 10y ago
  That analysis ignores imperialism, transnational capitalism, colonialism, different signifiers of progress, and cherry-picks evidence from random points of history without doing any type of rigorous analysis. It ignores the vast majority of history with no functional government, no taxes, and free markets such as say, 3000BC in Moscow --- take your pick. Was there technological advancements, well maintained cities, and a prosperous middle class of entrepreneurs and innovators in societies free of coercion? Where were the emergent social orders which arose as an inherent stochastic process from individual capital pursuit in say, 600AD in Berlin? These only started happening after the rise of civic society and only in places with well-organized, democratically run institutions. These apologists also choose to ignore any counter evidence. There's over twice as many doctors per 1,000 people in Cuba than the US, however those facts are dismissed. When people talk about how decrease in things like open sewage, food-borne disease and other civic advancements lead to increase in longevity, those facts are dismissed. When people talk about how there's more affordability and more equitable medical care under democratically administered health systems, those facts are dismissed. When people talk about what Nestle has done to privatized water, what the diamond industry has done to Africa, how the market-based oil system has kept the middle east in 21st century monarchies, those facts are dismissed. Such claims as miraculous progress due to privatization are absurdist fantasies and easily refuted without even having to bring up their abysmal failures such as Puerto Rico, Enron, Pinochet's Chile.
  - lacampbell 10y ago
    It's dishonest to accuse me of cherry picking statistics - particularly when I never claimed my short post was a rigorous statistical analysis - then reply to me with your own cherry picked statistics. Nevertheless... There's over twice as many doctors per 1,000 people in Cuba than the US, however those facts are dismissed. And how does this effect the quality of life in Cuba? Life expectancy is the same [0]. Are working class Americans creating makeshift boats to sail to Cuba in order to benefit from the superior conditions? When people talk about how decrease in things like open sewage, food-borne disease and other civic advancements lead to increase in longevity, those facts are dismissed. Those are good things. Low tax, high income places tend to have these features as well, strangely enough. I recommend visiting Hong Kong or Singapore. When people talk about how there's more affordability and more equitable medical care under democratically administered health systems, those facts are dismissed. Those aren't facts. Those are vague hand waves. When people talk about what Nestle has done to privatized water, what the diamond industry has done to Africa, how the market-based oil system has kept the middle east in 21st century monarchies, those facts are dismissed. I never claimed markets were always benevolent. Simply that they tend towards more prosperity than collectivism. Also none of what you pointed to is particularly free of state involvement - states are all complicit. You can "cherry pick" the worst examples of what corporations have done all you like, they pale into comparison to the cherry pickings of the worst thing public institutions like states have done (famines, genocides, world wars). Such claims as miraculous progress due to privatization are absurdist fantasies and easily refuted. And yet you have failed to do so. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expectancy#List_by_the_World_Health_Organization_.282015.29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expe...
AnthonyMouse 10y ago
A huge part of the problem is that people think one system is better than the other when it's really a spectrum where both extremes are absurd. Suppose you want to have some roads, how do you do it? a) Pure Communism. The state builds the roads. The state needs road workers and workers need food so the state grows food. The workers need steamrollers so the state manufactures steamrollers. The workers need asphalt so the state mines gravel. The entire economy is centrally planned and collapses like the USSR. b) Pure Capitalism. A private company owns the road. You need their permission to leave your house, take deliveries, receive an ambulance, connect to the power grid, etc. They charge what the market will bear. Everyone becomes a serf of the road company. c) Capitalist Social Democracy. The state collects taxes and takes bids for private contractors to build the roads, which the state then owns and allows all people to use at no charge. Only one of those actually works.
- trome 10y ago
  Eh, c in many cases includes govt built & maintained toll roads, cause as it turns out roadways can cost tens of billions to build. Makes rail look cheap in comparison!
  - AnthonyMouse 10y ago
    Toll roads are very stupid. The cost of the road is building the road, not driving on it. Even the maintenance cost is predominantly weather-related. A toll road pays the same construction cost and then gets less use out of it because the tolls discourage people from using the road. Tolls have the pricing wrong. There is no unit cost so the problem is apportioning the fixed cost. A platinum mine clearly derives more profit from the road than a potato farmer, so why should we charge per truck (tolls) rather than per dollar of profit (taxes)? All that does is price low-profit (i.e. more efficient) enterprises out of the market, which is exactly what we don't want. In addition to that we already have a tax collection infrastructure which is not going away, but collecting tolls would require a redundant toll collection infrastructure on top of that.
    - smallnamespace 10y ago
hoorayimhelping 10y ago
"People think differently than me cause they're brainwashed by charlatans." Don't try to give any benefit of the doubt to the people you disagree with on this. Don't try to see things from their perspective, and whatever you do, don't assume they have good intentions - you might just end up understanding someone else a little better and be forced to change your world view.
- kristopolous 10y ago
  That's not it at all. AEI, Heritage, Cato, Hoover, Heartland, these are real groups putting out literature advocating these actual positions. They receive multi-million dollar contributions from organizations whose riches were made from things like defense contracts, for-profit education and for-profit prisons. You are advocating to what? Ignore that? Beyond that their claims are faulty and not reflective of reality. I used to have a facebook group where I'd take the AEI posts and dissect them. They'd do something like have two circles representing values, but the values are actually the radius of the circles ... so they are off by 3.14*r^2 in representation of the differences. There were many other things where they would do something like float some chart so the bottom value is only 5% less than the top, and then zoom in so it covers a very small time period, and then purport it as being significant. Literally every day. It was amazing. I went there right now, second post, comparing planets to GDP (http://9ol.es/planet.png http://9ol.es/planet.png) using inaccurate metrics of planet size and inaccurate calculations with relative mass along with depicting 3d objects as 2d... it's wildly inaccurate.

nerfhammer 10y ago

> Everyone seems to think of the government as this black box that has a mind of its own and inflict laws and rules upon us. This 1000x. This or something like it has been called the "paranoid style in american politics" as early as 50 years ago: http://harpers.org/archive/1964/11/the-paranoid-style-in-american-politics/ http://harpers.org/archive/1964/11/the-paranoid-style-in-ame...

smallnamespace 10y ago
As an American myself, I've always wondered whether there was something in the culture/genes of Americans that predisposed people towards paranoia towards all forms of external authority. I mean, American immigrants are literally a self-selected population of people who found their home societies chafing and restrictive enough that they were willing to migrate thousands of miles at great risk to build a new life. And this migration was repeated time and again within the US -- as each part of the country was populated, waves of Americans decided to strike out West and get out from underneath the bankers, politicians, and other elites that would take over. I think paranoia about government will always be the flip side to wanting to be fully free and independent (whether or not that is achievable in reality).

ksenzee 10y ago

I would submit that the difference you describe is partly because the US is so much bigger that each person has proportionally less control, and partly because Quebec is more socially cohesive than the US. The state of Oregon has a similar pro-government, pro-social welfare mentality. In their case, it's for kind of a dark reason; Oregon's historical racism makes for a more socially cohesive polity[1]. But in Quebec's case I think it's just a sense that other Québécois are family, and so services that only benefit other people still benefit everyone. [1] http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/05/welfare-utopia/484607/ http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/05/welfare-...