Comment by topspin
8 days ago
> They've benefitted from it.
They benefitted from it so hard they voted for the exact opposite with eyes wide open. Twice.
> Because now most Americans don't slave away in unsafe factories 7 days/week for dollars an hour.
Now they're collecting disability in their unsafe neighborhoods, getting morbidly obese while their substance abusing kids play vidya games in the basement into their 30s.
Yes, it's really like that. People want their factories and incomes back. I don't claim that anything happening here is going to deliver that, but that's the pitch they're voting for. To their credit, at least they're pursuing that in lieu of some UBI ideocracy made of fantasy money.
As for you: it's fine to point out all the ways they may be misguided and/or misled, but unless you have an alternative that doesn't amount to expecting everyone to somehow earn an advanced degree, and then discover it's next to worthless (even before "AI",) your really not contributing much. So what do you have?
Anything?
People who voted that wouldn't want to work at factories with working conditions and salaries Chinese factories make everything they consume. They also don't support the unions that would make working bearable in factories. Even if somehow factories would return and pay reasonable compensation, that would make the products so expensive most Americans couldn't afford them. People would have to consume a lot less. Which may be a good thing for the planet, but I doubt that's what the voters are prepared for.
Have you considered the platform that the Republicans have actually been running on? Was it one of economic policy? Did you consider why they attacked DEI and minority groups (including LGBTQ)? Because they would not have won on this roughshod economic policy.
> People want their factories and incomes back
But are they willing to work for below minimum wage for ridiculously long hours ?
Because otherwise that factory will be uncompetitive against China, Vietnam, India etc.
Unless of course you want to resort to tariffs which will instead transfer that cost onto everyone.
> They benefitted from it so hard they voted for the exact opposite with eyes wide open. Twice.
This conundrum, like so many others in public discourse, is downstream of the widespread but fundamentally incorrect belief in free will (which in turn is downstream of belief in supernatural powers, because free will sure as hell isn't explained by anything in nature).
Nothing is in anyone's control. There's no such thing as "eyes wide open". People's behaviors are 100% downstream of genetics and environment. Some people behave rationally some of the time, and to the extent they do so it is because the environment set them up to do that. There is absolutely no coherent reason to generalize that into the idea that most people vote (or do anything else) rationally.
You shoe-horned two things together - free will and rationality.
Just because free will doesn't exist, doesn't mean they didn't act "rationally" (whatever that even means in this case).
Deindustrialization and Nikefication in the past several decades isn't "rational" long-term behavior either.
I mean in their actual self-interest rather than, say, what they have been made to believe is in their self-interest.
> Deindustrialization and Nikefication in the past several decades isn't "rational" long-term behavior either.
Maybe, but I was responding to "They benefitted from it so hard they voted for the exact opposite with eyes wide open. Twice."
There's an implication here, and in a subsequent reply that people voting against their interests is "[t]he go to midwit rationalization for every electoral loss", that people exercised free will when they voted.
This is plainly incorrect, because free will quite clearly does not exist. No one has ever shown the kinds of violations in the laws of physics that would be required for free will to exist.
Since free will does not exist, there is simply no a priori reason to believe that people voted in their interests. People's voting decisions, like everything else they do, are out of their control. To the extent that they vote in a particular way that's good or bad for them, it's driven purely by luck and circumstances.
It is this a priori belief that people vote or act in their own interests that's the real "midwit rationalization".
13 replies →
>>People want their factories back.
Did you ever work at a factory? I did. I would most certainly prefer to collect a pension and play video games (which I do now in retirement). Anyone would.
> They benefitted from it so hard they voted for the exact opposite with eyes wide open. Twice.
People vote against their own interests constantly. This is literally evidence of that.
> vote against their own interests
The go to midwit rationalization for every electoral loss.
Note the abject lack of anything resembling an alternative.
> Now they're collecting disability in their unsafe neighborhoods, getting morbidly obese while their substance abusing kids play vidya games in the basement into their 30s.
> People want their factories and incomes back
Sounds like what they really want is safety and hope for their futures. I'm not sure going back to the way things were - good or bad - is the way for society to move forward though.
Doomsaying prognostications, odd questions, free will talk for some reason, evidence free assertions about voters and their interests, doubts and fears...
And precisely 0.0 alternatives offered.
I can't imagine anyone being surprised that we've ended up with Trump et al. When all you offer is un-actionable thoughts and cowardly status quo, no one will listen to you. Meanwhile, the cohort of disenfranchised, disposable people grows around you until they fear the status quo more than they fear change.
Congratulations!
The richest country in the world cannot save their own citizens from poverty. Not to mention most number of millionaires and billionaires. Obviously the solution is to impose tariffs based on some made up numbers. Wonderful idea!