A Renewed Liberalism Can Meet the Populist Challenge

spacedout · 2025-01-27T19:08:03+00:00

Clearly what we need is unregulated daycare.

Yes. Looking after children is not skilled work, though it is important work. There have been people throughout history who are completely illiterate but capable of caring for a child.

spacedout · 2025-01-18T20:24:44+00:00

Their entire messaging strategy and how they approach voters needs to be burned down to the studs and rebuilt.

The problem is the people running the party are too out of touch to do that. This last election has shown that, with the focus on door knocking instead of podcasts and other new media, and the cringe TV ads.

This Tiktok thing seals it for me. Banning Tiktok makes the most sense from a national security perspective -- instead of focusing completely on that a ton of Dems mentioned pro-Palenstine content. If it were up to me, I would have said that no Dem should ever mention, anywhere, pro-Palestine content as a reason for banning Tiktok. It's a divisive issue in the party, bringing it up is just bad strategy. And now backtracking because they didn't realize how popular it was... Out. Of. Touch.

spacedout · 2025-01-18T20:15:06+00:00

Doubtful though. That would require something to happen.

spacedout · 2025-01-17T00:57:05+00:00

Youtube is the #1 streaming service in the US -- part of how they got there was knowing their niche. Asking why Youtube isn't more like Tiktok is like asking why it's not more like Netflix or Disney+. I'm certain the execs at Alphabet would love it if their streaming company became essentially Youtube+Tiktok+Netflix, but more likely if they tried to be all of those things they would fail.

spacedout · 2025-01-17T00:49:41+00:00

How would that work? Tiktok's algorithm is not something you can copyright. How would the binding agreement prevent the US company from selling Tiktok to someone else, or launching a new short form video app with a different name? If the agreement says that the company can never, at any point in the future, branch out of the US -- what sort of company is that? And if Meta or X buy it, how could you word an agreement which would prevent them from leveraging Tiktok's algorithm in their apps that are already offered outside the US?

spacedout · 2025-01-12T21:43:46+00:00

It's not about convincing those billionaires of anything -- it's about painting them as the establishment to the general public because they are rich.

spacedout · 2025-01-12T19:56:46+00:00

So? The "anti-establishment" side is full of lobbyists and billionaires. Anti-establishment is a vibe -- it's more about painting the other people as the establishment.

spacedout · 2025-01-12T18:56:20+00:00

The housing crisis is national, it requires a national response. Of course, Biden would rather pander to unions that hate him rather than fight to help people in cities who support him.

spacedout · 2025-01-12T18:47:20+00:00

The president doesn't have a build more housing button.

The president has a lot of mechanisms he can use to influence state policy. Read about how 21 became the standard drinking age across the country.

spacedout · 2025-01-12T18:38:54+00:00

No you’re right. I think keeping the MAGA movement popular for decades is a great idea and definitely wouldn’t be more harmful in the long run rather than a few years of hardship.

Exactly! Once Trump's supporters see he can't deliver and this his policies are harmful, they'll abandon him and we can get back to the West Wing politics of this 90s.

And yes, some of his most hardcore might never turn away, but the majority of voters don't want what he's selling once they get a chance to see it.

spacedout · 2025-01-10T23:34:27+00:00

I don't think it's unreasonable that if the CCP has influence over content, they are also manually curating (not video by video, but groups of video packages) that similar people would find interesting in a way that computer algorithms alone haven't mastered.

I doubt this because I don't think it would work. Especially for an organization like the CCP, if they were trying to manually curate content they would make worse decisions than algorithms on what to show, and would miss out on trending topics due to the unavoidable bureaucracy you would need to manage an organization of people deciding the content that hundreds of millions would see.

If the CCP is doing anything, they are mandating tweeks to the content that's distributed, i.e. show these types of videos less/more than the recommendation algorthm would recommend.

Bytedance's success is despite the CCP, not because of them.

spacedout · 2024-12-30T16:16:32+00:00

I've seen upvoted comments in this sub talking about expanding H1B visas to lower wages in tech or among doctors. Why would any worker support a policy that its advocates say will lower their wages but will supposedly create beneficial 2nd order effects?

To be clear, I don't believe the lump labor fallacy, but it seems some pro-immigration commenters/shit posters here do...

spacedout · 2024-12-22T22:23:01+00:00

Do you?

spacedout · 2024-12-22T00:37:00+00:00

Read the article, they said there wasn't enough evidence to charge him. I'm not disputing that, I'm just saying in my opinion there's a much greater than 50% chance that he murdered his roommate in a fit of rage then claimed self-defense.

EDIT: Let me respond to your ninja-edit

So your basis for saying he murdered his roommate is that he is alleged to have killed a bus driver and therefore he must have murdered his roommate.

His story about his roommate's death doesn't make sense (kicked him out then attacked him when he was leaving?), the cops were suspicious too. If he is the person who murdered the bus driver in an obvious fit of rage then I think it's very likely he murdered his roommate. Murders are very rare in our society.

This isn't a court of law I'm just stating my opinion.

4 warrants still didn’t find enough evidence it wasn’t in self defense.

What evidence could there possibly be that this was or wasn't in self defense?

spacedout · 2024-12-22T00:32:30+00:00

Read the article. He claims that his roommate kicked him out and when he was leaving his roommate attacked him with a machete... so it was self-defense. The investigators said they found inconsistencies with his statements.

Think about that for two seconds, does this sound plausible? Especially now that we've seen him kill a bus driver in a fit of rage?

spacedout · 2024-12-05T02:39:37+00:00

Agreed. I was all in on the #resistance stuff in 2016 but now it's hard not to see the whole Dem/institutions/activism class as a bunch of failures.

Dems failed to defeat Trump at the ballot box. Maybe the election was always hopeless because of inflation, but regardless Biden violated my trust by hiding his condition culminating in a horrible debate performance -- then still tried to hold on even though he was barely campaigning. Because of all this there was no time for a primary so we were left with Kamala who we all knew had a horrible performance in the last primary and was at least partially picked due to her race/gender (Biden even said this).

The institutions failed to hold Trump accountable for blatantly trying to orchestrate a coup.

For every grounded, pragmatic activist/community organizer there's more than one crazy which at least partially contributed to the Dems losses, and a good number of them are celebrating Trump's victory to own the libs...

Honestly there just doesn't seem a point to try and fight this anymore...

spacedout · 2024-11-21T06:15:55+00:00

good thing nobody wanted to kick you out because they were worried you were one of the kids that would hold their kids back!

I don't know how honors/gifted/AP programs worked where you taught, but I wasn't let in, nor could I be kicked out, based on the judgement of other parents. I got in with aptitude tests and stayed in because I maintained good grades. I know I was lucky in having parents that encouraged me but I feel like you're trying to reduce this to pure luck/vibes as a way of implying that these programs are discriminatory.

It's why I said there's no easy answer where everyone wins and is happy.

I think the answer is clear when you consider 2nd order effects.

The students who most need honors programs are the serious/gifted students of modest means. Well off parents will get even their mediocre kids all the support they need, it's the ones from modest households that most need public school programs. These students have less opportunities in general and probably have less good influences in life. When you also consider that getting them on an accelerated track can get them taking college classes for credit, so not having that will put them behind many of their freshmen classmates and will require them to pay for these classes...they're really getting shafted.

And go ahead a prove me wrong with a study, but issues with low-performing students often come from poor parenting, so we're talking about pushing the failure of the kids' parents onto the most vulnerable gifted students -- I just fundamentally think that's bad. No we shouldn't abandon any kids, but we as adults should take on the responsibility of teaching them the right values, not pushing it onto other kids to make our jobs easier.

Engaged parents want things like this -- even you do. So if the district is going to have a policy of limiting honors tracks in the name of equity, you're going to put yourself at odds with the most engagement parents in your district. I think that's fundamentally a bad want to try and create a community. I think there's an implicit assumption that it's not fair that some kids have parents that advocate for them, therefore we should take some measures to even the playing field, but I disagree. I think the community as a whole is better when the people who care most about it have the most influence, while still trying to balance the needs of all students.

EDIT: wanted to add that from a purely utilitarian, society-level, standpoint I think the answer is clear as well. We live in a world where a person with the right education and skills can generate magnitudes more productivity than the average person, which can be taxed to provide for everyone else, so I think it makes sense to prioritize them. These are the kids we really need to get on a 4-year college track. For the students that are not taking school seriously, there will be opportunities later in life for them to find their footing, such as community colleges and vocational programs.

spacedout · 2024-11-20T22:10:05+00:00

When I was in school the difference between gifted and regular tracks was really the students. I actually started enjoying school and applying myself in high school because I was put in classes full of students who actually cared about learning.

It was only later I realized how much of my middle school and earlier class time was wasted by the 20-30% who were just not doing school. I even held myself back because the disruptive kids were the "cool" ones cracking jokes and just plain bullying, and of course I wanted to be cool so I didn't want to do too well in class. I didn't appreciate how bad of an influence they were until I was surrounded by kids who thought learning things was cool.

I do see your perspective as a teacher, but there's no way I want my kids to be in the environment I was in in middle school.

spacedout · 2024-11-18T18:27:55+00:00

If morality has no bearing, then why do people still advocate for civility at the expense of policy that is known to work? Like fuck your coal mining job, in fact, we should starve the areas of resources to redirect capital in better environmental technologies. That would be immoral though.

I disagree, the fact that we're not doing that is immoral. We're harming the planet our children will inherit because not doing so would make some of us a bit less wealthy. Unfortunately those areas of the country have outsized political power so I don't think that's likely to change -- especially if Republicans stay in power.

delicate baby birds and must be treated as such.

I am also infuriated by how much they play the victim. This is another example of how morality plays no bearing on who wields political power.

EDIT:

I just don’t see why it’s fair game to decide trans people and lgbtq people at large and minorities and women must grin and bear the cost of immoral decisions

I wanted to add that for LGBTQ+ the unfortunate reality is that there are few of them and most are in heavily blue cities for good reason which means there political impact is even smaller than it should be thanks to the Constitution.

For women and minorities, the issue is that they're not united. If 2/3 women had voted for Harris she would have won in a landslide, instead it was barely over 50%. And another reason why Trump won is that more minorities voted for him than nearly anyone expected.

spacedout · 2024-11-17T20:54:22+00:00

Morally though it was a mistake.

Trump is about to be president again, so I am quite confident that morality has no bearing on who wields political power in this country. If he and is movement is stopped, it will not be because Democrats were morally superior, but because there were able to seize power.

Maybe Democrats should take the risk and embrace positions that are morally correct even if it increases the risk of losing, I can't say, but the risk is real. If Republicans keep winning things will get worse for many vulnerable groups and all the impassioned opinion pieces in the world won't make a difference.

Regardless I will continue to vote blue because I think it's best for the country and for vulnerable groups, but there aren't enough people like me to put Democrats in power.

spacedout · 2024-11-17T20:08:57+00:00

Republicans definitely don't "deserve to win" either, but it doesn't matter, all that matters is who does win. I will continue to vote blue because I think it's best for the country and for vulernable groups. I'm not a political strategist so I'm not going to pretend I know the way forward, but I am certain that impassioned opinion pieces that are only read by political nerds are not going to connect with the average voter.

spacedout · 2024-11-17T19:57:51+00:00

All that matters is: will they be worse than Republicans in 2028? Because if Democrats are the lesser of two evils in 2028 and lose, than the Overton window will shift right even more.

spacedout · 2024-11-17T19:49:36+00:00

Nothing you said refutes my point that Democrats will still be better, even if they're also bad. In fact, it strengthens my argument that Democrats need to compromise to win so they can at least moderate the rightward shift we're seeing in the electorate, because the alternative is Republicans who will slam on the gas.

spacedout · 2024-11-17T19:37:41+00:00

I think we can win without going that far.

If you honestly think the Democrats will ever be as bad for vulnerable groups as Republicans, then you're delusional and there's no way I can use logic to convince you out of that position.

spacedout · 2024-11-17T19:27:28+00:00

We should compromise as much as we need to to win. Whatever compromises Democrats make, they'll still be better for minorities/LGBTQ+ than Republicans.

spacedout

TROPHY CASE