Hey Darth, I really appreciate you posting your thoughts on what the political right in America should be doing - that's an interesting topic at any time, and doubly so now, as the party foundation that has existed for the last 30 years begins to fall apart beneath our feet.Darth Wedgius wrote:I doubt this thread will go far down the direction I'd hoped, so I'll give my thoughts.
I sympathize with this, but I don't know what that translates to in terms of actual policy. What kinds of legislation do you think would help emphasize the individual?I'd like the right to emphasize what I see as its best feature -- support of the individual.
I'm not trying to put you on the spot, I'm just genuinely at a loss. It seems to me that one of the big problems we're encountering today is that automation and globalization are rapidly diminishing the economic power of the individual. Let's face it...the only thing 99% of us have to offer the world is our labor, and economic forces are making that less valuable every day. I can imagine government policies that attempt to reverse this trend by economically empowering the individual...but I have a hard time labeling any of them as 'conservative,' and I have an even harder time imagining very many on the right adopting them.
Again, I sympathize with the sentiment, but I'm worried about the actual policy. Federalism worked pretty well when the world was less integrated, but that time has long since passed. The things that affect Americans today are BIG. Healthcare has grown to ~18% of our economy. That's trillions of dollars. Multinational corporations with asset chests bigger than many nations GDPs move hundreds of billions across borders with the tap of a keyboard. Facebook, Fox and CNN mean there are no 'local' movements anymore; everyone gets a front row seat for Charlottesville and people living in Maine are super vocal about what should be happening in Georgia. (and vice versa!)I'd also like the right to move toward devolving more powers to the states.
How can Federalism possibly thrive in that environment? States simply don't have the resources to fight any of these trends on their own, and even if they tried, a fragmented approach is going to prove so inefficient in terms of scale that it will fail even if it's a good idea. Sure, states can tinker around on the margins....Texas can ban cities from banning plastic bags, while California bans them statewide, but neither Texas or California can realistically replace the Federal government's role in health care. It's just too big.
Well, here you're in luck, because people are already doing that. And fairly successfully too, at least as far as we can tell from testing. But alternative forms of education probably aren't going to help with the university problems, because that's not really an issue of education so much as it an issue of credentials. People are desperate to have their children go to college not because they want them to learn but because they know that potential employers are going to want them to have a college degree. And because labor is constantly being devalued, there is a never ending stream of potential employees for employers to choose from, so they get to demand whatever they want. Breaking that negative cycle will involve convincing employers that a college degree is not something they should demand from their employees...and that's going to be hard. I'm skeptical that we could get there before automation makes the whole employment equation kind of moot anyway.I'd like to come up with an alternative to universities, which have suffered from serious inflation for some time now.
Since you were good enough to include your thoughts on the right, I may as well respond with some of my thoughts on the left.
I think the left is being horribly blind to the economic tsunami that will engulf our nation in the coming decade. The machines are coming and nobody in the Democratic Party seems to have the faintest clue about how we’re supposed to deal with them.
The Democratic leadership is much, much too old. I like Biden as much as the next guy, but the man is seventy four years old. And people are talking about him running in 2020? Insanity. Pelosi is damn near 80. Schumer is the baby of the bunch at a mere 66. They desperately need some young blood in there. I realize there are a few whippersnappers trying to bust into the inner circle, and some of them have promise, but nobody is there yet.
And finally, there is a small but growing trend among the extreme left to try to shut down speakers that they find offensive or distasteful. This is terrible, terrible idea, and the mainstream left needs to push back hard against it. To the Democrat’s credit, they have largely done just that - most of these protests have been led by students that are still in the young and stupid phase of life, and their actions have found relatively little support outside of that bubble. But it’s best to nip such movements in the bud – the Republicans are getting an object lesson in what happens when you give your extremists too much room to run. We don’t want the left to make the same mistake.
Wow, that went on longer than expected. I appreciated the discussion, Darth.
