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Our politicians live for today. They could care less about tomorrow. You can see this in all areas of “preparedness”, and it’s especially obvious in debt and pe

Our politicians live for today. They could care less about tomorrow. You can see this in all areas of “preparedness”, and it’s especially obvious in debt and pensions. No surprise here that our government was auctioning off ventilators and exhausting without replacing PPE gear stockpiles without a care in the world.

KMag 6y ago
I think politicians act the way they do because that's the way the populace incentivizes them to act. If anyone has good ideas for encouraging the types of societal/cultural changes necessary to (eventually) properly incentivize politicians, I'm all ears.
- viklove 6y ago
  > the populace incentivizes them to act It's not "the populace," it's lobbyists that are funded by massive corporations that are trying to protect their revenue streams. What's the solution? Get the money out of politics. Make it illegal for government officials to take comfy six-figure corporate jobs after they finish their term, overturn Citizens United, put a limit on campaign spending or at least try to level the playing field in some way. That would be a great start. Regulatory capture means all of this is borderline impossible, though. We live in a world where even 100M people will have a hard time fighting the collective power of billions and billions of dollars. Money makes the world go 'round baby.
  - ryankemper 6y ago
    > Get the money out of politics. Make it illegal for government officials to take comfy six-figure corporate jobs after they finish their term, overturn Citizens United, put a limit on campaign spending or at least try to level the playing field in some way. How do you feel about the citizens united ruling, which (I am paraphrasing, perhaps poorly) found that by disallowing one to spend money on poltiical speech, that freedom of speech was impacted? I think it's actually quite a sensible point. Speech costs money. Therefore limits on the money an organization can spend is necessarily a limit on speech. ("Overturn citizens united" is the classic liberal/democrat view, but I really question how many have thought deeply about the implications of what they are proposing). -- BTW, as you probably know, regulations quickly get co-opted by corporations/lobbyists for their own ends. So, if there is a true desire to funnel money to politicians, they will find a way. Now, that does not mean that we shouldn't try to make that harder, if that's what we think is the right move (I think Citizens United was a great ruling. I assume you disagree based off of the above)
  - KMag 6y ago
    Sure, money influences politics, but the politicians are still elected by voters, and if voters didn't incentivize short-term planning by re-electing politicians with short-term policies, we'd see more long-term policies. I think there are at least three partial solutions that need to be pushed simultaneously: * Reduce the amount of money in politics * Mechanisms to reduce the impact of the money that remains * Mechanisms to help voters see through short-term promises
  - pdonis 6y ago
    > It's not "the populace," it's lobbyists The populace casts the votes. We have corrupt politicians that can be bought by lobbyists because we vote for corrupt politicians that can be bought by lobbyists.
fatbird 6y ago
This is an absurd comment because just a couple years earlier, the Obama administration did a very effective job handling H1N1 without the amount of forewarning the Trump administration had. And that's not meant to be a partisan view of it: The Obama admin clearly took it seriously quite quickly, and by all indications (e.g., memos by Peter Navarro and Alex Azar in January), the key players in the Trump admin did too. It's that Trump himself, and maybe Kushner, had their own ideas, and actively thwarted an effective U.S. reponse. The damage here isn't about left/right. It's about a few people in a position to bungle it, doing so with grade B cinema effectiveness.
- ryankemper 6y ago
  H1N1 doesn't seem like a good comparison without spending a lot of time contextualizing the differences here. They are just such different magnitudes of mortality, and to a much lesser extent, transmissibility. -- I guess, my question is, can you point to some actions that the Obama administration took, relative to the timeline of when the WHO issued the warning, and compare that to the Trump administration's coronavirus response? (BTW, it's not relevant, but I will say that I do agree that Trump is a total idiot and will put his ego before...well, everything. He has completely mischaracterized our testing capacity, along with tons of other issues. But I'm suspicious of blanket claims that administration X did a better job without a little more substance than you provided)

KMag 6y ago

I think politicians act the way they do because that's the way the populace incentivizes them to act. If anyone has good ideas for encouraging the types of societal/cultural changes necessary to (eventually) properly incentivize politicians, I'm all ears.

viklove 6y ago
> the populace incentivizes them to act It's not "the populace," it's lobbyists that are funded by massive corporations that are trying to protect their revenue streams. What's the solution? Get the money out of politics. Make it illegal for government officials to take comfy six-figure corporate jobs after they finish their term, overturn Citizens United, put a limit on campaign spending or at least try to level the playing field in some way. That would be a great start. Regulatory capture means all of this is borderline impossible, though. We live in a world where even 100M people will have a hard time fighting the collective power of billions and billions of dollars. Money makes the world go 'round baby.
- ryankemper 6y ago
  > Get the money out of politics. Make it illegal for government officials to take comfy six-figure corporate jobs after they finish their term, overturn Citizens United, put a limit on campaign spending or at least try to level the playing field in some way. How do you feel about the citizens united ruling, which (I am paraphrasing, perhaps poorly) found that by disallowing one to spend money on poltiical speech, that freedom of speech was impacted? I think it's actually quite a sensible point. Speech costs money. Therefore limits on the money an organization can spend is necessarily a limit on speech. ("Overturn citizens united" is the classic liberal/democrat view, but I really question how many have thought deeply about the implications of what they are proposing). -- BTW, as you probably know, regulations quickly get co-opted by corporations/lobbyists for their own ends. So, if there is a true desire to funnel money to politicians, they will find a way. Now, that does not mean that we shouldn't try to make that harder, if that's what we think is the right move (I think Citizens United was a great ruling. I assume you disagree based off of the above)
- KMag 6y ago
  Sure, money influences politics, but the politicians are still elected by voters, and if voters didn't incentivize short-term planning by re-electing politicians with short-term policies, we'd see more long-term policies. I think there are at least three partial solutions that need to be pushed simultaneously: * Reduce the amount of money in politics * Mechanisms to reduce the impact of the money that remains * Mechanisms to help voters see through short-term promises
- pdonis 6y ago
  > It's not "the populace," it's lobbyists The populace casts the votes. We have corrupt politicians that can be bought by lobbyists because we vote for corrupt politicians that can be bought by lobbyists.

fatbird 6y ago

This is an absurd comment because just a couple years earlier, the Obama administration did a very effective job handling H1N1 without the amount of forewarning the Trump administration had. And that's not meant to be a partisan view of it: The Obama admin clearly took it seriously quite quickly, and by all indications (e.g., memos by Peter Navarro and Alex Azar in January), the key players in the Trump admin did too. It's that Trump himself, and maybe Kushner, had their own ideas, and actively thwarted an effective U.S. reponse. The damage here isn't about left/right. It's about a few people in a position to bungle it, doing so with grade B cinema effectiveness.

ryankemper 6y ago
H1N1 doesn't seem like a good comparison without spending a lot of time contextualizing the differences here. They are just such different magnitudes of mortality, and to a much lesser extent, transmissibility. -- I guess, my question is, can you point to some actions that the Obama administration took, relative to the timeline of when the WHO issued the warning, and compare that to the Trump administration's coronavirus response? (BTW, it's not relevant, but I will say that I do agree that Trump is a total idiot and will put his ego before...well, everything. He has completely mischaracterized our testing capacity, along with tons of other issues. But I'm suspicious of blanket claims that administration X did a better job without a little more substance than you provided)