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>Societies have gradually grown more unfair as the political system has strained under their growing complexity. Since when? Since the 60's? Perhaps. Since the

>Societies have gradually grown more unfair as the political system has strained under their growing complexity. Since when? Since the 60's? Perhaps. Since the rest of history? No. Every argument you make in the rest of your comment other than pure scope of surveillance doesn't apply if you aren't comparing in the short term, i.e. 1-2 generations. In 1903, the average voter didn't know what the government was doing. Their understanding of economics was extremely limited, as well. I wouldn't argue that US society is much more unfair than it was in 1903 - would you?

splintercell 9y ago
> Since the 60's? Perhaps. Since the rest of history? No. The thing he's experiencing which makes him say that we are growing more and more unfair, that's exactly what you're experiencing when you say that we've grown more unfair than 60's. But let's really see how things are today, in the 60s, there was no Internet, so majority of the opinions were dominated by what was in the mass media, so that served as a Schelling point of opinions. Today because of free exchange of ideas on the Internet, people are just holding more precise and wider set of opinions. Back in the day for a conservative to say that we should shut down the Dept of Education, would have met by resistance by most people around them and this opinion would be shut down. But now, you can just find people who believe exactly like you on the Internet. You can find a blogger who would talk about how eliminating DoE would work, and nurture this idea in your head, and once you have enough people, you can get politicians (who are playing a game of prisoner's dilemma) who are willing to represent your opinion in order to get an edge on their opponent. Similarly, it would and should be unimaginable and unfeasible for someone in the 60s to hold an opinion like an average Tumblr SJW holds, but today it's perfectly feasible. But is society really more unfair than 1960s? What about 1980s? What about 1990s? When you look from the perspective of minorities, it clearly isn't. However, a lot of young people have economic conditions in mind (which people on the left describe as 'rising economic inequality' and people on the right describe as "America losing it's place in the world"), but both these things are essentially the effect of increased globalization, observed differently, which has resulted in immense amount of prosperity for the poor people in the rest of the world. Now since the gates are open, an average American has to compete with a Chinese worker or an Indian software engineer, the true place of an American is being realized. Being the largest business in America is definitely worse than being the largest business in the world. If Facebook wasn't able to operate all over the world, then clearly Zuckerberg would be less richer than now. But at the end of the day, the world is moving towards a more fair place. Is China more fair now? Yes, but if you believe that the role of Chinese party is to facilitate the arrival of Communism via maintenance of Socialism then you would obviously think that China is growing more unfair.
- Jabanga 9y ago
  >Back in the day for a conservative to say that we should shut down the Dept of Education, would have met by resistance by most people around them and this opinion would be shut down. But now, you can just find people who believe exactly like you on the Internet. The federal Department of Education was created in 1980, so there was no DoE to eliminate in 1960. The growing centralization of education policy in the hands of ever-higher levels of government and ever more monopolistic public sectors has not worked. [1] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bill-gates/bill-gates-school-performance_b_829771.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bill-gates/bill-gates-school-p... [2] https://academic.oup.com/qje/article-abstract/111/3/671/1839935/How-Teachers-Unions-Affect-Education-Production https://academic.oup.com/qje/article-abstract/111/3/671/1839...
  - abritinthebay 9y ago
    Aside from in the rest of the developed world, where it has...?
    - Jabanga 9y ago
      I've seen no evidence of that. Pretty much the entire advanced world has seen its rate of progress slow since the late 1960s, in concurrence with growing public sectors.
      - nl 9y ago
        Pretty much the entire advanced world has seen its rate of progress slow since the late 1960s, in concurrence with growing public sectors How are you measuring progress there? If you mean economic growth then now might be a good time to point out that correlation does now imply causation. Otherwise perhaps increasing life expectancy also causes a larger public sector? ;)
        Jabanga 9y ago
        Correlation can be an indication of a causative association. I believe in that case of the growth in the public sector and the slowdown in GDP growth, it is.
kcanini 9y ago
I'm curious, how do you know what the average voter knew about the government in 1903?
Cpoll 9y ago
> In 1903, the average voter didn't know what the government was doing. In "Amusing Ourselves to Death," Neil Postman argued the opposite: In the 1800s, people would watch hours-long political debates for amusement and were much more politically literate (the book is more about the negative effects of telecommunication - most people know it as the inspiration for the famous Orwell vs. Huxley infographic).
- jcranberry 9y ago
  You may be right in this instance but there are plenty salient examples to illustrate his point. Current governments are much better than the mixed bag of monarchic/feudal societies that were in place for much longer than current systems.
- ameister14 9y ago
  As I recall, he was actually talking about the 1700's, not the 1800's, and said that by the mid 1800's, that had already changed, if in fact it was ever as rosy as he painted it to be (I doubt that, as I studied political discourse during the period of 1779-1860 fairly extensively). In that same book, he also argued that the telegraph enabled news without context. That hit most of the US market by the 1850's. Yellow journalism and the general sensationalist nature of news writing in the late 19th and early 20th century also don't support his argument about the written word's innate superiority to oral argument and television.
- justadeveloper2 9y ago
  Plus, back then, people weren't shy about tar and feathering ingrate politicians.
- erikpukinskis 9y ago
  > In the 1800s, people would watch hours-long political debates for amusement and were much more politically literate Isn't that what YouTube is?

splintercell 9y ago

> Since the 60's? Perhaps. Since the rest of history? No. The thing he's experiencing which makes him say that we are growing more and more unfair, that's exactly what you're experiencing when you say that we've grown more unfair than 60's. But let's really see how things are today, in the 60s, there was no Internet, so majority of the opinions were dominated by what was in the mass media, so that served as a Schelling point of opinions. Today because of free exchange of ideas on the Internet, people are just holding more precise and wider set of opinions. Back in the day for a conservative to say that we should shut down the Dept of Education, would have met by resistance by most people around them and this opinion would be shut down. But now, you can just find people who believe exactly like you on the Internet. You can find a blogger who would talk about how eliminating DoE would work, and nurture this idea in your head, and once you have enough people, you can get politicians (who are playing a game of prisoner's dilemma) who are willing to represent your opinion in order to get an edge on their opponent. Similarly, it would and should be unimaginable and unfeasible for someone in the 60s to hold an opinion like an average Tumblr SJW holds, but today it's perfectly feasible. But is society really more unfair than 1960s? What about 1980s? What about 1990s? When you look from the perspective of minorities, it clearly isn't. However, a lot of young people have economic conditions in mind (which people on the left describe as 'rising economic inequality' and people on the right describe as "America losing it's place in the world"), but both these things are essentially the effect of increased globalization, observed differently, which has resulted in immense amount of prosperity for the poor people in the rest of the world. Now since the gates are open, an average American has to compete with a Chinese worker or an Indian software engineer, the true place of an American is being realized. Being the largest business in America is definitely worse than being the largest business in the world. If Facebook wasn't able to operate all over the world, then clearly Zuckerberg would be less richer than now. But at the end of the day, the world is moving towards a more fair place. Is China more fair now? Yes, but if you believe that the role of Chinese party is to facilitate the arrival of Communism via maintenance of Socialism then you would obviously think that China is growing more unfair.

Jabanga 9y ago
>Back in the day for a conservative to say that we should shut down the Dept of Education, would have met by resistance by most people around them and this opinion would be shut down. But now, you can just find people who believe exactly like you on the Internet. The federal Department of Education was created in 1980, so there was no DoE to eliminate in 1960. The growing centralization of education policy in the hands of ever-higher levels of government and ever more monopolistic public sectors has not worked. [1] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bill-gates/bill-gates-school-performance_b_829771.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bill-gates/bill-gates-school-p... [2] https://academic.oup.com/qje/article-abstract/111/3/671/1839935/How-Teachers-Unions-Affect-Education-Production https://academic.oup.com/qje/article-abstract/111/3/671/1839...
- abritinthebay 9y ago
  Aside from in the rest of the developed world, where it has...?
  - Jabanga 9y ago
    I've seen no evidence of that. Pretty much the entire advanced world has seen its rate of progress slow since the late 1960s, in concurrence with growing public sectors.
    - nl 9y ago
      Pretty much the entire advanced world has seen its rate of progress slow since the late 1960s, in concurrence with growing public sectors How are you measuring progress there? If you mean economic growth then now might be a good time to point out that correlation does now imply causation. Otherwise perhaps increasing life expectancy also causes a larger public sector? ;)
      - Jabanga 9y ago
        Correlation can be an indication of a causative association. I believe in that case of the growth in the public sector and the slowdown in GDP growth, it is.

kcanini 9y ago

I'm curious, how do you know what the average voter knew about the government in 1903?

Cpoll 9y ago

> In 1903, the average voter didn't know what the government was doing. In "Amusing Ourselves to Death," Neil Postman argued the opposite: In the 1800s, people would watch hours-long political debates for amusement and were much more politically literate (the book is more about the negative effects of telecommunication - most people know it as the inspiration for the famous Orwell vs. Huxley infographic).

jcranberry 9y ago
You may be right in this instance but there are plenty salient examples to illustrate his point. Current governments are much better than the mixed bag of monarchic/feudal societies that were in place for much longer than current systems.
ameister14 9y ago
As I recall, he was actually talking about the 1700's, not the 1800's, and said that by the mid 1800's, that had already changed, if in fact it was ever as rosy as he painted it to be (I doubt that, as I studied political discourse during the period of 1779-1860 fairly extensively). In that same book, he also argued that the telegraph enabled news without context. That hit most of the US market by the 1850's. Yellow journalism and the general sensationalist nature of news writing in the late 19th and early 20th century also don't support his argument about the written word's innate superiority to oral argument and television.
justadeveloper2 9y ago
Plus, back then, people weren't shy about tar and feathering ingrate politicians.
erikpukinskis 9y ago
> In the 1800s, people would watch hours-long political debates for amusement and were much more politically literate Isn't that what YouTube is?