5 ms·

In the US, it seems these 13% receive outsize political attention as well. I recall at the run up to the 2016 election, one of the main issues was gender and pu

In the US, it seems these 13% receive outsize political attention as well. I recall at the run up to the 2016 election, one of the main issues was gender and public bathroom usage. I couldn't help wondering at the time why that issue received so much attention vs. the 42,000 opioid overdose fatalities that year alone, which got virtually zero attention.

kevindong 6y ago
Personally, I think the reason is just another take on the bike shed effect. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_triviality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_triviality
mobilejdral 6y ago
It wasn't about bathroom usage, but about getting a voting base to vote. Religious groups don't care about opioid issues, but they do like talking about and voting against LGBT+ issues. As for the issue itself, the wikipedia article has a pretty good overview of the whole thing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bathroom_bill https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bathroom_bill
rmrfstar 6y ago
If you started talking about deaths of despair, you'd have to start talking about de-industrialization and how the Fed lied about it to give Congress political cover [1]. Can't go there. [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-03-12/shares-of-real-gdp-don-t-give-the-real-story-of-manufacturing https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-03-12/shares...
- eli_gottlieb 6y ago
  Well in 2016, to talk about de-industrialization would have helped the designated "outsider" candidates, despite the fact that one of those, Bernie Sanders, was not Donald Trump.
  - rmrfstar 6y ago
    Aren't both political parties equally culpable for the destruction? A frank discussion about industrial policy would not inure to the benefit of any established political actor. It's a story of breathtaking incompetence, callousness, greed, and self-deception.
    - eli_gottlieb 6y ago
      > Aren't both political parties equally culpable for the destruction? Yes, they are, and in 2016, both political parties faced outsider candidates running surprisingly strong campaigns in their Presidential primaries on explicitly repudiating different aspects of neoliberalism, including deindustrialization. But one of those candidates was Donald Trump, and it was much more important to point out what a rude, crude bastard he was, 24/7, than to discuss the issues of political economy raised by the outsider populists. The point was to crush them, to avoid anyone in the political sphere questioning deindustrialization and financialization. Four years later, we know that trying to silence populism while also giving Trump, a populist, 24/7 earned-media coverage did not work. At the time, though, people expected it to work.
      - rmrfstar 6y ago
        Saying that a nation ought to manage its industrial capacity in a deliberate way isn't necessarily a populist position.
vharuck 6y ago
It's easy to take extreme positions on issues that likely won't bother your base no matter how they turn out. It's like international immigration: a life-or-death matter to some, but a distant matter to a vast majority. If a politician doesn't follow through with promises or bungles the execution, these matters won't cause enough of his base to turn on him. But his stances gives followers a clear flag to wave.
klipt 6y ago
The Google trends for "black lives matter" searches peak in 2016 and 2020. The media only brings it up in election years, even though police brutality happens every year.
- ardy42 6y ago
  > The Google trends for "black lives matter" searches peak in 2016 and 2020. The media only brings it up in election years, even though police brutality happens every year. That's correlation, not causation. Even if there's a connection to election years, the causality could very well be reversed (e.g. activists increase their efforts to get attention when it matters most). However, I'm inclined to think your observation is just coincidence or misses a critical factor.
  - klipt 6y ago
    Let's see if there's another peak in 2024 then.
- srtjstjsj 6y ago
  You should look up what 2 very specific events happened in July 2016 and July 2020 when "black lives matter" trended on Google.
  - klipt 6y ago
    If you mean people were killed by police, that happens every year, you just don't hear about it if the media doesn't hype it up. But the Washington Post has statistics that clearly show there's no four year cycle to police shootings: https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/investigations/police-shootings-database/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/investigations/polic... Just wait until 2024 and they'll pick another case to hype up. Despite the fact that police brutality happens every year and nothing gets done about it. It's all bread and circuses.
ardy42 6y ago
> In the US, it seems these 13% receive outsize political attention as well. I recall at the run up to the 2016 election, one of the main issues was gender and public bathroom usage. I couldn't help wondering at the time why that issue received so much attention vs. the 42,000 opioid overdose fatalities that year alone, which got virtually zero attention. One factor in that is America is a pretty unequal society, and problems the relatively wealthy [1] face receive disproportionate attention than those primarily confined to the less wealthy. Not saying that's the only factor, but it's definitely a major one. Ditto with de-industrialization, which a sibling comment mentioned. The relatively wealthy gain disproportionately from it in the short term, and those who are disproportionately hurt by it are less wealthy and typically live in unfashionable areas. Predictably, their problems get relatively less attention than they probably should (esp. since the relatively wealthy have the option of hand-waving those problems away with stuff like "Pareto efficiency," etc.). [1] I'd count software engineers and similar professionals as "relatively wealthy."
- sokoloff 6y ago
  Is bathroom choice a problem of the relatively wealthy? Because I sure don't see opiate abuse or ODs as a problem disproportionately affecting the poor. Sure, it affects a lot of poor people, but it also affects a fair number of the wealthy, quite possibly in numbers greater than their proportion in the population. (It's hard to judge because every celebrity overdose will be widely reported, so availability bias might be affecting my perception.)
  - ardy42 6y ago
    > Is bathroom choice a problem of the relatively wealthy? Your rephrase lost an important nuance. I said "problems the relatively wealthy face." Bathroom choice is a problem wealth can't really solve or mitigate, so it's one they still face (either directly or through their children or peers). > but it also affects a fair number of the wealthy, quite possibly in numbers greater than their proportion in the population. (It's hard to judge because every celebrity overdose will be widely reported, so availability bias might be affecting my perception.) IMO, celebrity drug abuse is kinda a different thing, because celebrities are a special, tiny class that's easy to hold yourself apart from.
tshaddox 6y ago
I don't think it's wise to make some guesstimates about the number of people who will be directly affected by each policy, then sort all policies by that number descending, and then expect or hope that only the top N policies on that list receive political attention. For one thing, guesstimating the number of affected people is pretty subjective. A policy can be important to me even though it does not nominally affect me directly. Secondly, this method doesn't even attempt to weigh policies by anything else, like the magnitude of benefits/downsides, budgetary concerns, civil rights implications, etc. For instance, in my view, it's fine for a political issue involving state-sanctioned persecution or bigotry of a very small minority to share political attention with a large public health crisis.
- 11thEarlOfMar 6y ago
  What is very interesting to me is that there are large groups that are underserved, even suffering, that have no voice. Yet the current administration identifies the situation and corrects it, winning over a significant number of voters. The first example that comes to mind is US armed service veterans. Apparently, the medical care they received from the Veteran's Administration was really terrible, with apocryphal stories of veterans dying while waiting for appointments to see Drs. There were many bad actors in the VA medical service who would have been fired in any other organization but due to VA policy, kept their jobs. Through programs such as VA Choice and VA Accountability[0], the approval rating of the VA jumped to 91%, a record. In the US, there are 17.4 million veterans, and as you indicated, they all have family and friends who are going to see these improvements in a positive light. It makes me wonder how many other situations there are like this that we don't hear about. On the other end, the president can pardon one person at a time. Perhaps that's the least number of people who can be positively affected by one act. [0] https://www.va.gov/opa/choiceact/documents/choice-act-summary.pdf https://www.va.gov/opa/choiceact/documents/choice-act-summar...
walshemj 6y ago
Energizes the right wing GOP base or strictly the entryist faction that has taken over.

kevindong 6y ago

Personally, I think the reason is just another take on the bike shed effect. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_triviality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_triviality

mobilejdral 6y ago

It wasn't about bathroom usage, but about getting a voting base to vote. Religious groups don't care about opioid issues, but they do like talking about and voting against LGBT+ issues. As for the issue itself, the wikipedia article has a pretty good overview of the whole thing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bathroom_bill https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bathroom_bill

rmrfstar 6y ago

If you started talking about deaths of despair, you'd have to start talking about de-industrialization and how the Fed lied about it to give Congress political cover [1]. Can't go there. [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-03-12/shares-of-real-gdp-don-t-give-the-real-story-of-manufacturing https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-03-12/shares...

eli_gottlieb 6y ago
Well in 2016, to talk about de-industrialization would have helped the designated "outsider" candidates, despite the fact that one of those, Bernie Sanders, was not Donald Trump.
- rmrfstar 6y ago
  Aren't both political parties equally culpable for the destruction? A frank discussion about industrial policy would not inure to the benefit of any established political actor. It's a story of breathtaking incompetence, callousness, greed, and self-deception.
  - eli_gottlieb 6y ago
    > Aren't both political parties equally culpable for the destruction? Yes, they are, and in 2016, both political parties faced outsider candidates running surprisingly strong campaigns in their Presidential primaries on explicitly repudiating different aspects of neoliberalism, including deindustrialization. But one of those candidates was Donald Trump, and it was much more important to point out what a rude, crude bastard he was, 24/7, than to discuss the issues of political economy raised by the outsider populists. The point was to crush them, to avoid anyone in the political sphere questioning deindustrialization and financialization. Four years later, we know that trying to silence populism while also giving Trump, a populist, 24/7 earned-media coverage did not work. At the time, though, people expected it to work.
    - rmrfstar 6y ago
      Saying that a nation ought to manage its industrial capacity in a deliberate way isn't necessarily a populist position.

vharuck 6y ago

It's easy to take extreme positions on issues that likely won't bother your base no matter how they turn out. It's like international immigration: a life-or-death matter to some, but a distant matter to a vast majority. If a politician doesn't follow through with promises or bungles the execution, these matters won't cause enough of his base to turn on him. But his stances gives followers a clear flag to wave.

klipt 6y ago

The Google trends for "black lives matter" searches peak in 2016 and 2020. The media only brings it up in election years, even though police brutality happens every year.

ardy42 6y ago
> The Google trends for "black lives matter" searches peak in 2016 and 2020. The media only brings it up in election years, even though police brutality happens every year. That's correlation, not causation. Even if there's a connection to election years, the causality could very well be reversed (e.g. activists increase their efforts to get attention when it matters most). However, I'm inclined to think your observation is just coincidence or misses a critical factor.
- klipt 6y ago
  Let's see if there's another peak in 2024 then.
srtjstjsj 6y ago
You should look up what 2 very specific events happened in July 2016 and July 2020 when "black lives matter" trended on Google.
- klipt 6y ago
  If you mean people were killed by police, that happens every year, you just don't hear about it if the media doesn't hype it up. But the Washington Post has statistics that clearly show there's no four year cycle to police shootings: https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/investigations/police-shootings-database/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/investigations/polic... Just wait until 2024 and they'll pick another case to hype up. Despite the fact that police brutality happens every year and nothing gets done about it. It's all bread and circuses.

ardy42 6y ago

> In the US, it seems these 13% receive outsize political attention as well. I recall at the run up to the 2016 election, one of the main issues was gender and public bathroom usage. I couldn't help wondering at the time why that issue received so much attention vs. the 42,000 opioid overdose fatalities that year alone, which got virtually zero attention. One factor in that is America is a pretty unequal society, and problems the relatively wealthy [1] face receive disproportionate attention than those primarily confined to the less wealthy. Not saying that's the only factor, but it's definitely a major one. Ditto with de-industrialization, which a sibling comment mentioned. The relatively wealthy gain disproportionately from it in the short term, and those who are disproportionately hurt by it are less wealthy and typically live in unfashionable areas. Predictably, their problems get relatively less attention than they probably should (esp. since the relatively wealthy have the option of hand-waving those problems away with stuff like "Pareto efficiency," etc.). [1] I'd count software engineers and similar professionals as "relatively wealthy."

sokoloff 6y ago
Is bathroom choice a problem of the relatively wealthy? Because I sure don't see opiate abuse or ODs as a problem disproportionately affecting the poor. Sure, it affects a lot of poor people, but it also affects a fair number of the wealthy, quite possibly in numbers greater than their proportion in the population. (It's hard to judge because every celebrity overdose will be widely reported, so availability bias might be affecting my perception.)
- ardy42 6y ago
  > Is bathroom choice a problem of the relatively wealthy? Your rephrase lost an important nuance. I said "problems the relatively wealthy face." Bathroom choice is a problem wealth can't really solve or mitigate, so it's one they still face (either directly or through their children or peers). > but it also affects a fair number of the wealthy, quite possibly in numbers greater than their proportion in the population. (It's hard to judge because every celebrity overdose will be widely reported, so availability bias might be affecting my perception.) IMO, celebrity drug abuse is kinda a different thing, because celebrities are a special, tiny class that's easy to hold yourself apart from.

tshaddox 6y ago

I don't think it's wise to make some guesstimates about the number of people who will be directly affected by each policy, then sort all policies by that number descending, and then expect or hope that only the top N policies on that list receive political attention. For one thing, guesstimating the number of affected people is pretty subjective. A policy can be important to me even though it does not nominally affect me directly. Secondly, this method doesn't even attempt to weigh policies by anything else, like the magnitude of benefits/downsides, budgetary concerns, civil rights implications, etc. For instance, in my view, it's fine for a political issue involving state-sanctioned persecution or bigotry of a very small minority to share political attention with a large public health crisis.

11thEarlOfMar 6y ago
What is very interesting to me is that there are large groups that are underserved, even suffering, that have no voice. Yet the current administration identifies the situation and corrects it, winning over a significant number of voters. The first example that comes to mind is US armed service veterans. Apparently, the medical care they received from the Veteran's Administration was really terrible, with apocryphal stories of veterans dying while waiting for appointments to see Drs. There were many bad actors in the VA medical service who would have been fired in any other organization but due to VA policy, kept their jobs. Through programs such as VA Choice and VA Accountability[0], the approval rating of the VA jumped to 91%, a record. In the US, there are 17.4 million veterans, and as you indicated, they all have family and friends who are going to see these improvements in a positive light. It makes me wonder how many other situations there are like this that we don't hear about. On the other end, the president can pardon one person at a time. Perhaps that's the least number of people who can be positively affected by one act. [0] https://www.va.gov/opa/choiceact/documents/choice-act-summary.pdf https://www.va.gov/opa/choiceact/documents/choice-act-summar...

walshemj 6y ago

Energizes the right wing GOP base or strictly the entryist faction that has taken over.