Poli Sci, Econ and Game Theory Are VERY clear

rodoheel said:
This thread just further enforces my big-picture belief that our politics and society are going to continue to degrade unless and until we face a major internal or external crisis. "De-stating," as snoop says ,is not something that will ever be remotely feasible or acceptable as anything other than a crisis accelerant (rather than a solution) unless or until we pass a Civil War-esque crisis point. Other radical proposed solutions that could be argued as necessary (new constitutional convention, stripping the appellate jurisdiction of the supreme court, abolishing the electoral college, etc) fall into a similar boat. Similarly, people are not going to turn away from our slide into fascism and authoritarianism unless and until those things precipitate a crisis. That should have been abundantly clear after J6, the most shocking and transgressive political moment in our country in at least 150 years or so, did not result in a mass national reckoning with our political discourse and trajectory.

Everything is broken, but not broken enough that individual people's lives are being ruined in mass numbers. Sure, Americans in general are tending towards being unhappier and less satisfied, and the institutions that support our society are slowly being degraded or eliminated, but that's without the material circumstances and quality of life of most of us being immediately impacted.

The Great Depression and WWII caused national reckonings in a variety of ways, one that created or inspired many of the institutions and "rules" that formed the bedrock of American life for 6-7 decades. I don't wish harm on anyone, least of all ourselves, but I'm more certain than ever that most Americans simply can't be convinced that a radical solution is necessary unless and until we collectively live through something that horrifies and scars us. And given the perverse incentives towards extremism that modern media/internet have created, it's unclear whether there even is anything that can bring us materially closer together as a nation. 9/11 wasn't enough. The 2008 financial crisis, which everyone agreed was precipitated by the exact sort of reregulation and capitalistic greed that we're doing again barely 15 years later, wasn't enough. J6 wasn't enough. Short of someone launching a nuke at an American city, a natural disaster of a scale we've never before comprehended, or 3 million Chinese troops headed across the Pacific, I don't honestly know what will be enough.
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Unfortunately, I think you are right.
 
SnoopRob said:
I agree with you that, given where we are, it will likely take a fairly large exogenous event to bring us together with any hope of a solution, that that kind of event brings its own pain and suffering.
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Wasn't that Veidt's gambit in The Watchmen? Apropos, his superhero name is Ozymandias...
 
rodoheel said:
This thread just further enforces my big-picture belief that our politics and society are going to continue to degrade unless and until we face a major internal or external crisis. "De-stating," as snoop says ,is not something that will ever be remotely feasible or acceptable as anything other than a crisis accelerant (rather than a solution) unless or until we pass a Civil War-esque crisis point. Other radical proposed solutions that could be argued as necessary (new constitutional convention, stripping the appellate jurisdiction of the supreme court, abolishing the electoral college, etc) fall into a similar boat. Similarly, people are not going to turn away from our slide into fascism and authoritarianism unless and until those things precipitate a crisis. That should have been abundantly clear after J6, the most shocking and transgressive political moment in our country in at least 150 years or so, did not result in a mass national reckoning with our political discourse and trajectory.

Everything is broken,
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If it's broken and nothing will happen to fix it absent a crisis, then why is an accelerant bad?

Since we cannot really amend the constitution, and the constitution is broken, then there is a limited menu of choices. If not what I have variously suggested, then revolution. What other options are there?

Liberals instinctively don't like to rock the boat, or rather don't like to rock the boat outside of established channels like protests and litigation, but we have to mentally prepare that something more is going to be necessary. The sooner we can come to grips with that, the better. And maybe it doesn't come to anything. Maybe the Supreme Court will wake up and the Dems in Congress will take care of what needs to happen. But I think it's more likely that American politics is permanently killed without radical change.

Honestly I don't care about building a national consensus. It is far past time to fight fire with fire. Trump is cancelling billions of dollars worth of wind projects that are already underway. Businesses who did nothing wrong are going to fail, not to mention all the other environmental problems. To deter that, we have to be willing to cancel 10x as much of their shit. And why stop there?

It's true that any radical action -- save stripping the court -- would have to be styled as the last gasp of the dying republic and not the first gasp of the new. It's the construction of the new that matters. We will have to smash the corrupt status quo to make any progress, but once progress is made, I have a feeling that the red states will come along to negotiate and then accept a new constitution, so long as we bargain in good faith. Red state priorities can be incorporated or preserved in the constitution, but not the authoritarianism.

They are authoritarian because we let them be.
 
superrific said:
If it's broken and nothing will happen to fix it absent a crisis, then why is an accelerant bad?

Since we cannot really amend the constitution, and the constitution is broken, then there is a limited menu of choices. If not what I have variously suggested, then revolution. What other options are there?

Liberals instinctively don't like to rock the boat, or rather don't like to rock the boat outside of established channels like protests and litigation, but we have to mentally prepare that something more is going to be necessary. The sooner we can come to grips with that, the better. And maybe it doesn't come to anything. Maybe the Supreme Court will wake up and the Dems in Congress will take care of what needs to happen. But I think it's more likely that American politics is permanently killed without radical change.

Honestly I don't care about building a national consensus. It is far past time to fight fire with fire. Trump is cancelling billions of dollars worth of wind projects that are already underway. Businesses who did nothing wrong are going to fail, not to mention all the other environmental problems. To deter that, we have to be willing to cancel 10x as much of their shit. And why stop there?

It's true that any radical action -- save stripping the court -- would have to be styled as the last gasp of the dying republic and not the first gasp of the new. It's the construction of the new that matters. We will have to smash the corrupt status quo to make any progress, but once progress is made, I have a feeling that the red states will come along to negotiate and then accept a new constitution, so long as we bargain in good faith. Red state priorities can be incorporated or preserved in the constitution, but not the authoritarianism.

They are authoritarian because we let them be.
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From both a moral and a "game theory" standpoint, I think there is a clear difference between recognizing that it could take a major crisis to lead to major change, and intentionally precipitating or hastening that crisis in an effort to prompt that change. For at least three reasons I find what you suggest entirely unrealistic: (1) precipitating mass death, famine, and/or suffering is a moral evil no matter what your justifications are; (2) you are operating on the assumption that what will come out the other side is a stronger US democracy, when in fact there is a very good chance that what comes out the other side could be much worse than our current reality; and (3), from a game theory perspective, I find your idea (as I understand it) that the blue states can "out-authoritarian" the red states to such a degree that the red states beg to come to the negotiating table and work out friendly democracy with them to be completely and utterly unrealistic. You simply cannot terrorize your opponents into being in a democracy with you. You will just end up with with an even more intractable conflict than whatever we have now. And while I entirely sympathize with the idea that things can't be more intractable than they already are, I think that we'll quickly realize how wrong we are when Americans are killing each other in the streets.

I think the overall idea that liberals can be squeamish about real change is certainly true, but I also think there is a lot of wisdom in understanding that "revolution" as a solution carries much greater downsides than people like to admit; they often result in a lot of pain and misery and death for no actual improvement at all. That's one of the reasons why large-scale revolutions usually only come when people are truly desperate. And the reality right now is that the large majority of Americans are not "desperate" and honestly have no reason to be. For all the problems with our society - and they are real and numerous - most Americans still live, right this second, lives that are easier, more prosperous, healthier, safer, and less violent than not only, like, 99.99% of people who have ever lived, but also the vast majority of other people on the planet today. "Revolution" is immediately going to make tens or hundreds of millions of Americans' lives a lot worse. There is a lot in American life that upsets me right now but I'll damn sure choose my current life over one where we're in some sort of "Civil War 2.0" scenario. You can call that complacent or cowardly or lacking in resolve if you want, but that's the truth for me and I'm confident it's the truth for the vast majority of Americans. For all the problems we have I think it would be foolish for people not to acknowledge and realize that it could get a LOT worse, and that voluntarily choosing that path for the hopes of something better down the line is not something you're going to be able to convince many people to do.
 
rodoheel said:
From both a moral and a "game theory" standpoint, I think there is a clear difference between recognizing that it could take a major crisis to lead to major change, and intentionally precipitating or hastening that crisis in an effort to prompt that change. For at least three reasons I find what you suggest entirely unrealistic: (1) precipitating mass death, famine, and/or suffering is a moral evil no matter what your justifications are; (2) you are operating on the assumption that what will come out the other side is a stronger US democracy, when in fact there is a very good chance that what comes out the other side could be much worse than our current reality; and (3), from a game theory perspective, I find your idea (as I understand it) that the blue states can "out-authoritarian" the red states to such a degree that the red states beg to come to the negotiating table and work out friendly democracy with them to be completely and utterly unrealistic. You simply cannot terrorize your opponents into being in a democracy with you. You will just end up with with an even more intractable conflict than whatever we have now. And while I entirely sympathize with the idea that things can't be more intractable than they already are, I think that we'll quickly realize how wrong we are when Americans are killing each other in the streets.

I think the overall idea that liberals can be squeamish about real change is certainly true, but I also think there is a lot of wisdom in understanding that "revolution" as a solution carries much greater downsides than people like to admit; they often result in a lot of pain and misery and death for no actual improvement at all. That's one of the reasons why large-scale revolutions usually only come when people are truly desperate. And the reality right now is that the large majority of Americans are not "desperate" and honestly have no reason to be. For all the problems with our society - and they are real and numerous - most Americans still live, right this second, lives that are easier, more prosperous, healthier, safer, and less violent than not only, like, 99.99% of people who have ever lived, but also the vast majority of other people on the planet today. "Revolution" is immediately going to make tens or hundreds of millions of Americans' lives a lot worse. There is a lot in American life that upsets me right now but I'll damn sure choose my current life over one where we're in some sort of "Civil War 2.0" scenario. You can call that complacent or cowardly or lacking in resolve if you want, but that's the truth for me and I'm confident it's the truth for the vast majority of Americans. For all the problems we have I think it would be foolish for people not to acknowledge and realize that it could get a LOT worse, and that voluntarily choosing that path for the hopes of something better down the line is not something you're going to be able to convince many people to do.
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Those are all fair points. For the record, I am not advocating for mass death or famine. Let's be clear about that. My point is that revolution will come if the slide continues. And if we agree that nothing is going to happen organically, then which position is actually the one that will lead to mass death? But yes, that would be bad and I don't want to have anything to do with it.

You are right that I am assuming that what comes out the other side will be better, and you are right that it might not be.

As for your point 3, that is what the game theory says. I mean, there are nuances (such as whether my plan exchanges one prisoners' dilemma for another, which I don't think is correct because it's ignoring the states' interests in stability), but in general, game theory says that defections can be prevented only with triggered punishments that have to be worse for the transgressor than the punisher. That's pretty much common sense, but that is also the math and the logic.

Now maybe game theory wouldn't work well in a super-charged political environment. I haven't thought through the game theory as applied to Gaza, but it wouldn't surprise me if both sides were acting irrationally from a game theoretic perspective.

Also, the more important part of the thread -- and I think people have rightly appreciated this -- isn't to pitch a specific plan, but rather a way of thinking about our politics. We have to be willing to be more radical. Maybe de-stating isn't right. Maybe a Dem president can impound all funds directed at any red states. Maybe we should close Hilldale and PragerU and all of that bullshit. I just want us being prepared to take radical action as needed. And a lot of it is needed.

Most of all, there have to be consequences for the Supreme Court justices who have put us into such a mess. If I were president (which I will never be, for many reasons including this thread), I would shoot personally shoot them in the face and say that I was doing my official duty of making sure the law is faithfully executed.
 
superrific said:
1. Reconstruction. Overall, if judged by the standards of morality, it was a failure. But as to the issues that the north really cared about -- slavery and secession -- it was worked perfectly. If the north didn't really care about racial equality (which it didn't, except for the progressives who quickly lost influence), then how could it have a punishment strategy to achieve that goal. Plus, we did some get some good statutes; it wasn't reconstruction's fault that the Supreme Court destroyed them.

2. WWII. We could have accepted conditional surrenders from both Germany and Japan. Especially Japan. It was contained, the Emperor was on shaky footing. We didn't need to invade and take over the whole island. We did anyway. We reconstructed it. Have we have had any problems with Japan since?

I don't know all the historical details about whether Germany or Japan would have accepted a conditional surrender, but the fact is that we were never going to offer it.

3. The EU has section 7, which allows it to suspend voting rights for any country that falls short of democratic norms. It hasn't been effective in Hungary because its procedural requirements are too onerous -- I think it requires unanimity, which isn't going to happen if there are two countries that kind of want to go fascist. But for the most part, the EU has not backslid on democracy.
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So, how about an example where this has happened without a destructive war? How do we solve this problem without extreme violence engulfing the country? I say extreme, because I believe violence is already baked in; it’s just the level of violence required to bring about requisite change isn’t known yet.
 
TarHeeledTexan said:
So, how about an example where this has happened without a destructive war? How do we solve this problem without extreme violence engulfing the country? I say extreme, because I believe violence is already baked in; it’s just the level of violence required to bring about requisite change isn’t known yet.
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MAGA started a fire. We can either let them burn everything down slowly or fight fire with fire. That's how I see it.
 
superrific said:
MAGA started a fire. We can either let them burn everything down slowly or fight fire with fire. That's how I see it.
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I think that's too simplistic. (And I say that as someone who basically said earlier "I don't think anything is going to improve unless we have a major crisis"). What I mean in this context is that our options are not just to wait for everything to be destroyed (which could take, like, hundreds of years - take the example of Rome, where the Republic fell before the year 0 but it took hundreds of years for authoritarian rule to inevitably degrade everything that was great about the society) or to destroy it ourselves. Instead, I think there are a number of ways in which we could get to a "crisis moment" without having to precipitate it; and I think that precipitating it could both avoid the possibility of a more "natural" crisis point and could make it less likely that what comes after the "crisis point" will be positive. The logic of "fight fire with fire" in this context sounds very much like the political game theory of Lenin and the Bolsheviks; who won in the sense that they seized power, and held it for a few decades, while saying all along that "after we do a little bit of authoritarianism ourselves just during the crisis period we can give power back to the people" but then of course they just kept doing authoritarianism forever. You could say the same about the course that led the French Revolution to Robespierre and then Napoleon. I just don't think you can "out-tyranny" your opponents into a situation where everyone decides to be friends and found (or re-found) a harmonious democratic republic again, whatever game theory says.
 
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