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The greatest thing about tight, upcoming elections is that governments actually start to do a tiny bit of what people want. Great result.
by starspangled 2y ago
The greatest thing about tight, upcoming elections is that governments actually start to do a tiny bit of what people want. Great result.
- eru 2y agoGovernments actually do a lot of what people want, alas. See https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691138732/the-myth-of-the-rational-voter https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691138732/th...
- pomtato 2y agohaha that reminded of a quote Osho. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5AeO-dKGBLs https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5AeO-dKGBLs
- stavros 2y agoInteresting quote, but why does he take one minute to say two sentences?
- komali2 2y agoExcept that author argues for "the market" to be more in charge than governments, which baffles me because the market is also people. I'd be surprised if people pretend the market is still rational: see nfts. Or the modern stock market. Not to mention the market irrationally rewards short term good (or even bad) and long term bad behavior, but it does it consistently, so no long term good behavior can ever win out. See: oil and gas industry. All solutions that try to handwave people out of the equation, which includes market based ones, are the wrong path imo. The author was heading in the right direction when writing about economic education and fighting misinformation, imo that's the correct path, we can't permanently fix stupid since our brains are all basically completely broken, but we can mitigate. Utopia may be unreachable but I think we can improve.
- eru 2y ago> I'd be surprised if people pretend the market is still rational: see nfts. Or the modern stock market. NFTs are an entertainment / art product. Them having non-zero value is the same as the original Mona Lisa selling for more than a perfect replica. What about the stock market are you darkly hinting at? > Not to mention the market irrationally rewards short term good (or even bad) and long term bad behavior, but it does it consistently, so no long term good behavior can ever win out. See: oil and gas industry. I'm not sure what you are talking about. Could you be more explicit, please? > All solutions that try to handwave people out of the equation, which includes market based ones, are the wrong path imo. Sounds like a straw man? Who is waving people out of the equation and how?
- komali2 2y ago> NFTs are an entertainment / art product. Them having non-zero value is the same as the original Mona Lisa selling for more than a perfect replica. Well, sort of, except that "added ownership value" is a scam - links to an image are encoded on-chain, not the image or even a hash of an image. People think they're buying art when instead they're buying a URL. > What about the stock market are you darkly hinting at? > I'm not sure what you are talking about. Could you be more explicit, please? Sure thing. The current organization of capitalist society rewards actions that increase profit short-term, such as stock buybacks at the expense of layoffs, and not actions that increase profit long-term, such as sustaining a labor force that maintains and builds upon institutional knowledge. Institutions "get away with this" by leveraging the coercive nature of capitalist society (work, often in bad conditions, or die), but because the coercive short term actions are the ones that are rewarded, this will probably lead to total systemic collapse, like when the British pushed the American colonies too far and completely lost control and their entire colonial investment... and again in India, some Caribbean islands, etc. Not to mention all the slave revolts throughout history. Extractive, compulsory, coercive capitalism is only ever a short-term gains focused mechanism. The greater example for our era though is climate change. There simply aren't "market forces" that can punish extractive behavior and reward sustainable behavior. Because it's cheaper to mine and burn coal in the short term than it is to do material science research and build good solar panels, the coal burning companies win out. Under capitalism, where political power correlates to capital, this means they can leverage the State to give them even greater incentives, and throttle the last remaining channel for long-term good-for-humanity projects that might not necessarily be profitable anytime soon: government sponsored research. See: exxon promoting climate misinformation despite being totally aware of climate change in the 70s: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/exxon-knew-about-climate-change-almost-40-years-ago/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/exxon-knew-about-... Under capitalism, long term gain requires high short term capital investment, which of course comes with risk, and the risk is too great to invest in sustainable technologies when you can keep burning oil. The collapse will come with environmental collapse, or, even if we invent incredible carbon-sequestering technologies, when the oil and coal simply run out. That won't matter though, because the political power of coal-burners will have become so great that they can just leverage the State and its monopoly on violence to continue to serve their needs as they see fit. So TLDR capitalism rewards things that are bad for the earth and the people trying to live on it. > Sounds like a straw man? Who is waving people out of the equation and how? George W. Bush https://www.bushcenter.org/catalyst/environment/stefanik-market-solutions https://www.bushcenter.org/catalyst/environment/stefanik-mar...
- psychoslave 2y agoLOL, the wisdom of the market mechanism to the rescue of the irrational voters.
- p1esk 2y agoUnfortunately different people often want different things.
- m463 2y agoDoesn't everyone want freedom, justice, fairness, etc. (unfortunately everyone doesn't agree on the definition of these terms) (also: "But apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?")
- portaouflop 2y agoRomans have enslaved our children, raped our wives, desecrated our holy places and burned our priests. They razed our villages, slaughtered our herds, and forced our young men into their military service. So glad that they brought us civilisation!
- iancmceachern 2y agoFree will is fortunate, not unfortunate
- drusepth 2y agoInterestingly, different people often want different things (including free will and a lack of free will).
- romeros 2y agoIt leaves a bad taste in the mouth, doesn't it? Why haven't they taken action until now? People aren't children to be appeased by such gestures.
- metamet 2y agoWe all prioritize things differently and I believe this process was started on October 6th, 2022 [1]. This is just one of many things the current administration has done over the last 3 years, though. [1] https://www.politico.com/news/2022/10/07/biden-weed-executive-action-dea-00060978 https://www.politico.com/news/2022/10/07/biden-weed-executiv...
- somenameforme 2y agoSo one month before midterm elections.
- Garrrrrr 2y agoexactly
- atoav 2y agoStatistically I'd expect more things to be done towards the end of any administrative period. First there is no way to finish thing in the beginning of their period, because that is where you get started, sharpen the tools, get your people in order etc. Then you start all kind of projects which may or may not take their time due to the complexity of the topics at hand. Then you finish some of them but the long running ones go on. Then the end nears and everybody realizes: "shit we need to wrap things up for real" and then whatever concerns may have been left are either fixed or ignored. But the point is: if there are open concerns you would be stupid to finalize a project earlier than you would have to. On top of that comes political calculus, but I work in an european University where elections don't matter that much and our senate would also have a tendency to finish most things towards the end of an administrative period.
- jajko 2y ago
- refurb 2y agoDo you think that’s driving this decision? From what I gathered the DEA was looking at this over the past few years. It wasn’t a Presidential decision.
- starspangled 2y agoI think it is driving the decision yes, and I think bureaucracies are hopelessly politicized and corrupted.
- sph 2y agoThe saddest thing is that people rush to vote and be lied to by politicians that spend 3.5 years bickering, getting courted by lobbyists and ignoring all their pledges to the people. We call it democracy, proudly wear pins saying "I Voted!" and shame on you if you ever criticize it.
- ben_w 2y agoWhen I'm feeling cynical, I share the same view: If you voted for the winner, and you don't like what they're doing, it's your fault for voting for them. If you voted for the loser, and you don't like what the winner is doing, you need to shut up and accept the result of the vote. If you didn't vote, that's your own fault for not participating. -- The CGP Grey videos on The Rules for Rulers actually makes me less cynical about all of this.
- graphe 2y agoWhat would be the solution? More frequent elections are welcome to me, every 2 years or I'll take 3. That should hopefully lower the delaying strategy and easily sniff bribes since they don't have much time.
- komali2 2y agoAnarchists argue that dissolving permanent positions that have regular elections is a solution. Rather than have a predefined role such as "president" or "senator," political positions are invented on-the-fly on an as-needed basis. For a new harbor, you might elect a Harbormaster, who helps design the harbor to be useful and not harmful to the local ecology, organize usage agreements, processes, signage, infrastructure, etc. Then, when the harbor is built, the office of Harbormaster is dissolved, and things are set to run "automatically" based on prior agreements. Perhaps if there's a dispute, a new Harbormaster is elected, or perhaps simply a adjudicator, or mediator, etc. The same could be done for basically all political offices. Essentially, any person with any political power would need to be able to justify them holding that power for every second they hold it, and the moment they can't, or the people decide they can't, that office should be abolished. Many early human societies organized this way.
- rsingel 2y agoYou are underestimating the time it takes to get stuff done in a big bureaucracy AND the fear of the Congressional Review Act. It's the nuclear option where Congress not only reverses an agency decision but also ban the agency from ever doing that thing again in the future. But Congress can only go far back so agencies are racing to put out regulations now so that a potentially hostile Congress in 2024 can't undo what they did easily. See for example net neutrality from the FCC, FTC regs, airline refund regs from FAA and more. Yes, all of this might help in the election, but if this were really just about elections, you would see these announcements in September and October. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congressional_Review_Act https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congressional_Review_Act
- rsingel 2y agoOr shorter, given that this regulation is aimed at stoners who are notorious for having memory issues, you'd release this 6 days before an election, not six months before.
- starspangled 2y agoI'm not underestimating that, I think the timing of this approval was probably politically motivated. Sure things can take a long time when people want to slow them down or don't care about them. But things can move extraordinarily quickly when it comes to moving billions of dollars into the pockets of friends. That's basically my point.