Politics Discussion Thread (Heated Arguing Warning)

[T-hawk]

Anecdotally the cases of migration out of CA that I've heard about are conservatives getting out of the liberal madness.

You're characterizing an entire state's attitude as madness for no reason other than you disagree with some unknown policies, and then you invent out of thin air a narrative on how it's so bad people are fleeing. And then you act shocked when people call you on it. What am I supposed to say? You did the same thing with this baby formula stuff.

OK, here's what happened.  I had no idea "madness" was the phrase you were complaining about, since you wouldn't say so until now.  It so entirely wasn't part of my point that it didn't even register on myself as something I had said.

You misparsed it.  (Understandably so.)  "Fleeing the liberal madness" was part of the anecdotes, the self-given description of those concerned.  It wasn't my narrative.  My point was that domestic migration out of CA is people who are conservative seeking a like-minded environment rather than liberalism expanding out of CA having proven its success there.  That is what I've seen supported but only anecdotally, so feel free to provide citations otherwise.

You will accuse me of "walking it back", but that is what I meant all along.

I do not characterize liberalism as madness.  Liberal voters and supporters mostly act rationally in their own self-interest.  I adhere to no ideology politically; as it came up in the metaphysics thread, I see no objective standard of morality, only a social contract.  In practical terms, I end up on the conservative side because that is where my self-interest correlates.

I characterize liberalism as not in my self-interest.  I don't need Obamacare, college subsidies, minimum wage, immigration, baby formula subsidies; such things only represent costs to me.  I agree with liberalism on things that represent no negative to me, like LGBT and abortion rights, and also on gun control since I have no plans to own one.  I cite no ideological reasons for any of those positions, merely my own self-interest.  Criticize that however you like, but any criticism that amounts to "you're selfish!" will be met with "yes, that's the point."

[Bacchus]

Remove this, give non-contributors free access to goods - and the entire system will collapse.

I don't think this bears out. It is true that if you provide some minimal subsistence, people will lose motivation to work. However there are other effects at play, which overwhelm this one. Firstly, very few people are actually satisfied with subsistence, even purely on a material interest basis they will still want to earn more and thus seek to allocate their labour in the most gainful way. Secondly, spending your time productively is in itself a motivator -- people not just like, they psychologically need to be engaged as a part of some meaningful a activity. Very few can comfortably live as patent parasites (albeit here a lot rides on how UBI is narratively embedded). Thirdly, being on a zero balance and living hand to mouth has a large cognitive cost -- it's very difficult to engage in explorative, risk-taking and long-range activities even when they make economic sense, when your thoughts are preoccupied with the fact you might not have something to eat. This preoccupation goes beyond rational, it becomes pathologic and drives people to all the many behaviours associated with poverty that poor people themselves judge as mistaken (after the fact). Removing this preoccupation would have a large positive effect on the amount of free enterprise, which fundamentally relies on risk-taking and exploration.

In any case, it's an empirical question -- there are countervailing trends, and we just need to.try and see what would happen to.the amount of layaboutness in fact and whether it would be compensated by other dynamics or not. My feeling is that it would be an irrelevancy.

[Gavagai]

Remove this, give non-contributors free access to goods - and the entire system will collapse.

I don't think this bears out. It is true that if you provide some minimal subsistence, people will lose motivation to work. However there are other effects at play, which overwhelm this one. Firstly, very few people are actually satisfied with subsistence, even purely on a material interest basis they will still want to earn more and thus seek to allocate their labour in the most gainful way. Secondly, spending your time productively is in itself a motivator -- people not just like, they psychologically need to be engaged as a part of some meaningful a activity. Very few can comfortably live as patent parasites (albeit here a lot rides on how UBI is narratively embedded). Thirdly, being on a zero balance and living hand to mouth has a large cognitive cost -- it's very difficult to engage in explorative, risk-taking and long-range activities even when they make economic sense, when your thoughts are preoccupied with the fact you might not have something to eat. This preoccupation goes beyond rational, it becomes pathologic and drives people to all the many behaviours associated with poverty that poor people themselves judge as mistaken (after the fact).  Removing this preoccupation would have a large positive effect on the amount of free enterprise, which fundamentally relies on risk-taking and exploration.

In any case, it's an empirical question -- there are countervailing trends, and we just need to.try and see what would happen to.the amount of layaboutness in fact and whether it would be compensated by other dynamics or not. My feeling is that it would be an irrelevancy.

Those factors you have described - they only motivate people to do work which does not intrinsically suck. No one will work 12 hours shift in McDonald's due to a desire to "spend time productively".
And I do not see making people more risk-friendly than they are now as beneficial at all

[Huinesoron]

In any case, it's an empirical question -- there are countervailing trends, and we just need to.try and see what would happen to.the amount of layaboutness in fact and whether it would be compensated by other dynamics or not. My feeling is that it would be an irrelevancy.

I think you run into a 'too many variables' problem here. Unemployment trends are driven by far larger factors than the amount of support you provide to the unemployed.

Comparing various pages on Wikipedia, I can tell you that in the UK, the introduction of the Dole in 1911 was followed by a period of low unemployment; the shift to requiring that applicants be actively seeking work (1922) was followed by 20 years of massive unemployment; and the period when National Assistance (described as this: 'It must meet those needs adequately up to subsistence level, but it must be felt to be something less desirable than insurance benefit; otherwise the insured persons get nothing for their contributions.') was in force, 1948-1966, was a period of low unemployment, after which it started to rise.

Does that mean 'better benefits = more motivation to find work'? Of course not (nor, obviously, does it mean the opposite)! It means that WWI employed absolutely everybody, and that the post-war period was an economic nightmare. I have no idea what was going on in the '50s and '60s, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't caused by slightly easier low-income support. :D

I think, like you say, there are going to be those who see the reduced burden of UBI and the like as an opportunity to move up in the world, and those who see it as an opportunity to just stop trying. Whether those two groups balance each other out is a tricky question; my feeling is they probably do, but I don't have data for it.

In the end, I think this discussion will founder in two irreconcilable worldviews. Some people are considering the proposition 'let's make sure everyone in the country is able to eat' through the lens of the market and the economy, and judging it based on whether it will have a positive effect on those; others see it as a direct extension of the 'right to life' listed (among other places) in the US Declaration of Independence and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. To the former, the latter are lunatics who will see the entire global economy crumble; to the latter, the former are lunatics who want poor people to starve to death.

hS

[Bacchus]

You would work shifts to achieve goals beyond subsistence. Most people would rather work shifts during the day, so they can then take a nice vacation, or put themselves through education, or upgrade their housing, rather than just eat through subsistence day after day and do nothing at all.

As for risk, perhaps greater risk-taking is not the right way to describe it, what susbsistence allows is an overall healthier approach to risk. Poverty forces both irrational risk-aversion (no confidence or ability to structure a life plan, hence avoidance of long-range commitments, like studying) and irrational risk-taking -- lotteries, crime, all sorts of things that promise a pay off here and now.

[Tasunke]

Lots of people are leaving here, lots of people are coming here.  There is a net loss in population according to these figures the Legislative Analyst's Office puts out.  The people who are coming here have higher incomes, people who are leaving generally do not and apparently are younger.

http://lao.ca.gov/LAOEconTax/Article/Detail/265

Edit: California has a net loss in population in domestic migration.  I have no idea if the population is rising significantly because of legal and illegal immigration.

California did start a a Mexican State and it might end up as one again, I suppose that is fair. From what I gather of the triple state solution of California, which does seem the most sensible, West California might eventually become its own nation like Monaco or Luxembourg, basically just propping up its own systems on donations, gambling, other forms of upper-tier wealth and so forth, while severely limiting its borders in order to make such things possible (borders as in the geographical size, I'm sure it will be as open borders as it possibly can be). 
Meanwhile Southern California will likely "initially" form its own nation as well, but with the ratio of 'La Raza' supporters and Mexican Flags in Southern and Western Mexico, I suspect that Once Southern California becomes its own nation it will inherently have a desire to join the nation of Mexico, as another Mexican state such as Sonora or Chihuahua, albeit with perhaps a bit more population.
Then Northern California can rejoin the rest of the USA as the only sane part of California. And anyone left that is Liberal can go pal around in San Francisco or something, the City where a man once declared himself as Emperor (of the city) and no one cared/ they went along with it.

[Tasunke]

You would work shifts to achieve goals beyond subsistence. Most people would rather work shifts during the day, so they can then take a nice vacation, or put themselves through education, or upgrade their housing, rather than just eat through subsistence day after day and do nothing at all.

As for risk, perhaps greater risk-taking is not the right way to describe it, what susbsistence allows is an overall healthier approach to risk. Poverty forces both irrational risk-aversion (no confidence or ability to structure a life plan, hence avoidance of long-range commitments, like studying) and irrational risk-taking -- lotteries, crime, all sorts of things that promise a pay off here and now.

I will agree that random Inputs (part time/ job loss etc), of non subsistence, with stop gaps from either relatives, the Government, or Crime, is not a long term solution. When a person's needs are met (and actually met) then they seek for self improvement, etc ... but instead when needs are either not met, or are met (randomly depending on the week), well then ... the results are a bit unpredictable, although there have been and are existing some studies to consider the phenomenon. Some studies with chicken, lab rats, and monkeys etc ... do incorporate elements of steady vs random, to various results tbh. In chickens and rats, it seems that random results seem to encourage superstition et al, *however* these animals have no long term planning and overall their needs are getting met, it is only to *what extent* is random.
In Monkeys meanwhile, one of the only groups of species that *might* have long term planning potentials, they will often choose the random vs the steady. They will choose randomized food amounts over a steady amount of Cocaine, as well as randomized Cocaine amounts over a steady amount of food. This seems to indicate some sort of level of gambling behavior, but further studies will need to be done before results can be confirmed/ extrapolated to humans.

[AdrienIer]

Then Northern California can rejoin the rest of the USA as the only sane part of California.

You sound a lot like that Pinochet fanboy on CFC who started of by calling liberals insane, then calling the fact of being left wing a mental disorder, then made threats to people who disagreed with the various stuff that he posted.

I'm not sure why Mexicans would illegally enter the US to then secede back to Mexico, but I'm sure you have a logical explanation.

[Tasunke]

People often say, "vote with your wallet" in response to poor products or poor treatment. But when your wallet is empty because you've had to spend everything on what you need to survive, you have no vote.

But this is an entire point of free market, the reason why this system is so beautiful and works so amazingly well. Empty wallet means that you are not contributing anything into the system and, as a consequence, you do not get anything from the system. In that way, everyone is forced to contribute something. Remove this, give non-contributors free access to goods - and the entire system will collapse.
Your argument is built around a premise that free market is uncomfortable for those unadapted to it. But this is a feature, not a bug: it gives them a strong enough incentive to adapt and become productive contributors to the system of division of labor. Also, you seem to confuse freedom with comfort but "free choice" does not mean "pleasant choice".

I will heartily agree with this. Welfare encourages separation and isolation on multiple levels, whereas an actual free market without such safety nets encourages cooperation. Now, whether in economic extremis this results in some sort of gangland paradisio a la CyberPunk 2020, who knows ... but IDEALLY, and at least in American past, the free market allowed for English, Irish, Scottish, German, Italian, French, and Polish people to set aside their differences and to work together. If we had welfare back then there would probably still be Italian and Polish and maybe even Irish or French Ghettos, and all of the Germans would still live in Philidelphia and Minnesota, and there would be inner city Italian and Irish crime.
It is the ease of separation, given to welfare recipients, which allows for the so-called No-Go Zones of Europe, however because Muslims have increased cultural in-group integrity compared to most other migrant groups, instead of actual Single Motherhood, what welfare gives them is instead extra Income for multi-wife families, encouraging the wealth and influence of Polygamist lifestyles among the Muslims and increasing the incentives/ motivations for those "extra Muslim men" without Wives in such a polygamous society to enter other spaces for other reasons, and to do things that those with no wives and no future prospects are sometimes wont to do.
Meanwhile in USA welfare encourages single motherhood in most if not all cases (at least the non Muslim ones).
Singlemotherhood has been on the massive increase in America in both Black and White populations, all due to welfare/ golden civilization doctrines introduced by LBJ and others.

[Tasunke]

Then Northern California can rejoin the rest of the USA as the only sane part of California.

You sound a lot like that Pinochet fanboy on CFC who started of by calling liberals insane, then calling the fact of being left wing a mental disorder, then made threats to people who disagreed with the various stuff that he posted.

I'm not sure why Mexicans would illegally enter the US to then secede back to Mexico, but I'm sure you have a logical explanation.

CFC is civfanatics central yes? I'm Tasunke on there as well. A) The Pinochet government was good, B) the migrants from Mexico are, for the vast majority, only here for the Jobs and the money. If this land (and its Jobs) were returned to Mexico, it would be a win-win for them.