The Next President is...

[Lord Ratner]

38 minutes ago, Swamp Yankee said:

That's a reasonable point...he may have started out that way.  The IDW-podcast left is much more willing to self-examine.  That imbalance is a problem because political discussion is rapidly moving to the podcast world.  It would be great if folks like Crowder, Shapiro, and Peterson truly cast a critical eye on the right. But that rarely, if ever, happens. I may be wrong on that; feel free to share examples to the contrary.  While they are fond of saying (correctly) that you can't ignore the 70+ million that voted for Trump, there are legitimate reasons Biden won the electoral college and received 80+ million votes. Georgia went blue. Texas was closer than expected. Those reasons should be discussed, not dismissed.  

You'd have to listen to Shapiro's podcast to know that. He regularly and repeatedly calls out the right. He's the most honest and consistent voice on the right by far, and if you only listened to one conservative, it should be him.

 

Tucker Carlson is second on the list, but a distant second. Not because he represents the intellectual justification for conservatism, but because he is the best voice for the populist/conservative hybrid that is growing within the right. Unfortunately most of his work is on cable news, which is a garbage format. But he does appear on podcasts where his views are far more digestible. Check out him and Shapiro talking about self driving trucks. It's an eye opening exchange to a self-driving-car-evangelist like myself.

[jazzdude]

So here’s my take on it.  If there are people far and above more qualified that would clearly do the job way better than those he has nominated it is incredibly bad and simple pandering.  If the people he’s nominated are close enough in quality/performance to those that are “better” than them, where’s the harm in giving those people that typically haven’t ever even been considered for those types of positions a shot?  
If there will be no discernible difference in how well the job is being done, I think it is beneficial to add some flavor to what is typically incredibly homogeneous.  I’m not married to this idea, and could be talked out of it by sound arguments, but I can see more benefits by going with different over same old, same old when the end product is so close that it doesn’t matter.  That other person is still going to be successful.  Commence spear throwing.

No spears here, agree with you.

"Best" is a nebulous term, especially with people, since you get there after trading off and considering several variables.

[FLEA]

1 hour ago, slackline said:

So here’s my take on it.  If there are people far and above more qualified that would clearly do the job way better than those he has nominated it is incredibly bad and simple pandering.  If the people he’s nominated are close enough in quality/performance to those that are “better” than them, where’s the harm in giving those people that typically haven’t ever even been considered for those types of positions a shot?  

If there will be no discernible difference in how well the job is being done, I think it is beneficial to add some flavor to what is typically incredibly homogeneous.  I’m not married to this idea, and could be talked out of it by sound arguments, but I can see more benefits by going with different over same old, same old when the end product is so close that it doesn’t matter.  That other person is still going to be successful.  Commence spear throwing.

This is the same shit logic that represents why the Air Force can't discern two officers apart. "Well, they both completed PME and got their masters done. How do we pick?" Honestly, your argument largely relies on the idea that there are non-discernable differences in candidates for these positions. The reality is in fact, especially at this level, there are heavily discernable characteristics. From the jobs they held prior to the approach they see on the world. This is in fact the wrong logic to go about appointments.

To that note though, the counter argument is also true. There is no such thing as "more qualified" as qualifications for these positions is largely the opinion of the POTUS to begin with. There is certainly a threshold of qualifications congress likes to see before making confirmations but the rest is largely discretionary. 

The reality is, the President should be picking the "best" people for the jobs but "best" might not mean "best" performing or most qualified. It means the most suited for that position, at that time, with the contemporary challenges that department faces and the particular skillset the President needs access to. This has a lot of connotations. If the President has certain knowledge gaps he may pick a person that fills them. If he recognizes there are certain challenges a less experienced candidate is better prepared for than a more experienced candidate, he may pick the less experienced candidate. Its largely discretionary. You could argue Gender/Race make an important part of that decision if you believe there is a significant challenge having to do with gender or race involved. But if you are making that challenge up in a vain effort to appease voters you are probably 1.) ignoring candidates that are better suits and 2.) being seen through by the voters who can smell bullshit. 

 

Edited January 22, 2021 by FLEA

[slackline]

7 minutes ago, FLEA said:

This is the same shit logic that represents why the Air Force can't discern two officers apart. "Well, they both completed PME and got their masters done. How do we pick?" Honestly, your argument largely relies on the idea that there are non-discernable differences in candidates for these positions. The reality is in fact, especially at this level, there are heavily discernable characteristics. From the jobs they held prior to the approach they see on the world. This is in fact the wrong logic to go about appointments.

To that note though, the counter argument is also true. There is no such thing as "more qualified" as qualifications for these positions is largely the opinion of the POTUS to begin with. There is certainly a threshold of qualifications congress likes to see before making confirmations but the rest is largely discretionary. 

The reality is, the President should be picking the "best" people for the jobs but "best" might not mean "best" performing or most qualified. It means the most suited for that position, at that time, with the contemporary challenges that department faces and the particular skillset the President needs access to. This has a lot of connotations. If the President has certain knowledge gaps he may pick a person that fills them. If he recognizes there are certain challenges a less experienced candidate is better prepared for than a more experienced candidate, he may pick the less experienced candidate. Its largely discretionary. You could argue Gender/Race make an important part of that decision if you believe there is a significant challenge having to do with gender or race involved. But if you are making that challenge up in a vain effort to appease voters you are probably 1.) ignoring candidates that are better suits and 2.) being seen through by the voters who can smell bullshit. 

 

I think we’re on the same page, I just didn’t go into the detail you did.  You made the crazy apples to oranges comparison with the AF.  The military is 10x more cut and dry and measurable than political appointments.  I’ll disagree with you on the idea that “there are highly discernible characteristics” in that arena.  Basic qualifications are it, then it all goes into what you discussed, subjective decisions by the one making the call.  If it’s a choice between super awesome candidate a vs super awesome candidate b who would be the first whatever to do it, give yourself the win and the headline.  If it’s between the win/headline with a clearly less qualified candidate, you’re wrong.

BL: all things being equal (to the extent that there is no real difference in the quality of the candidate, the end-product you’ll get) I don’t see the harm in giving a group that has traditionally been excluded a shot over a group that is always in power.  

[Swamp Yankee]

42 minutes ago, Lord Ratner said:

A lot to cover, but a very good conversation.

 

GPS. The point stands, it was released in a way that was not exclusionary to certain players or industries. It's a delicate balance. If the government has instead given a bunch of money to Garmin, we'd have something closer to Tesla. If the government decided it liked a certain technology, let's say satellite radio, and started giving tax credits to anyone who buys a satellite radio, knowing damn well that only one satellite radio company stands to benefit, that would be even more like Tesla.

 

Now Tesla is an established giant, and the subsidies are going away… but those subsidies were necessary for the formation of a viable electric car maker, so how will the competition develop?

 

I agree with you in some ways, I love what Tesla is doing and I want that type of innovation supported and encouraged. But it has to be done in a way that doesn't undermine our belief in the fairness of the system. As you said, if the system no longer seems fair, "then the only alternative is a violent overthrowing of those that are controlling the market unfairly by the people oppressed by that market."

 

Even if you take Tesla as a .gov success story, let's look at some examples of the more likely outcome:

 

Affirmative action: Favoring black students provides limited benefit to some black students, but overall creates an even deeper divide in outcomes: https://www.nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/the-sad-irony-of-affirmative-action

 

Get more people into home ownership: Home owners are correlated with all sorts of desirable demographic outcomes, so let's promote it at the government level, right? Along comes 2008: https://www.forbes.com/sites/peterferrara/2011/05/19/how-the-government-created-a-financial-crisis/?sh=661ac0e821fb

 

Higher education costs: In a comically stupid misreading of cause and effect, the government decided that going to college meant more success later in life. Incorrect. Being smart and joining professions that required additional education meant higher success. But that detail was ignored, so the .gov has been pushing college, which has created a wildly unsustainable student debt crisis, and made college costlier than ever: https://www.mercatus.org/publications/government-spending/government-policy-and-tuition-higher-education

 

Not to mention the laundry list of failed companies that only lasted as long as they did based on infusions of government cheese.

 

These aren't just ideas that fail, they often cause devastating long-term effects that are completely opposed to the original goals. The tolerance and coddling of homelessness, to include building shelters and finding supplies that make the lifestyle possible, is going to suck when we end up paying for the lifetime institutionalization of tens of thousands of people whose brains are irreparably fried from years of drug abuse. The embrace of critical race theory has resulted in the predictable rebirth of white supremacy. The American role of world police has resulted in a Europe without any form of military defense, and thus they are helpless to make even token gestures against the aggressions of Russia and China.

 

Government, as a result of the perpetual change of power, must act quick, so instead of attacking the root causes of a problem, which is a slow process, they attack the manifestations/symptoms of the problem. Feels good, but doesn't help. Liberals are similar, but mostly because they are sensitive to the emotional toll of disparities and not inclined towards solutions that allow the impact to persist. They have almost no consideration for second and third order effects, and even less patience.

 

Sports Arenas: Completely against it. For all the reasons listed above. Business is not stupid, they don't build arenas where there is no profit. All the subsidies in the world will not bring an arena to Columbus, MS. I understand the intent, but how many times must an intent be abused before you see it for what it inevitably is? I think the stadium for the Seattle soccer team was denied government assistance by a very tenacious city council member. Surprise surprise, the stadium went up anyways. Here's something similar, and there are plenty of studies showing the questionable returns of stadiums: https://www.insidesources.com/seattles-tale-of-two-stadiums/

 

Greed and power: Government by a different name. The free market struggles with monopolies in the real world. The government is the ultimate monopoly. Using that extreme monopoly to pick winners is the antithesis to a free market, no matter how much you like the technology. The challenge isn't policing private monopolies, it's using the government to police its own power. The heavy regulation of chosen winners such as utilities is indeed an example. This type of regulation is not present on the new era of chosen winners. 

 

Your power company analogy is flawed. The second power company is restricted not because the first power company won't share their power lines, but because the city won't allow the second company to construct their own. That restriction on the second (and any other) company is why the first has an advantage. Heavily regulated, this arrangement can be made close to fair (including regular rebidding for which company gets the monopoly), but it is onerous, deleterious to innovation, and should be used sparingly. Electric cars do not meet the threshold IMO. Keeping the city free of a million power lines from a dozen competitors crossing every street does. 

 

Meritocracy: you can't argue that socialism benefits from meritocracy; the two concepts are literally opposed. Of course socialism benefits from not being socialistic. In fact, progressivism is even more opposite to meritocracy than socialism. In a theoretical perfect socialism, the most capable/merited are elevated to positions of power (though it never, ever happens that way). From each according to his abilities. With progressivism, positions of authority are selected based on group-identity-based disparities. You'll get no disagreement from me on nepotism. Bad for any system.

 

I think I hit everything. Great convo.

 

Interesting article on Affirmative Action in higher education.   It can be a lazy way of dealing with a very real problem of inequality.   Jordan Peterson talks about equality of opportunity vs equality of outcome.  The former is more important than the latter.  In fact, equality of outcome is irrelevant, since people make choices as individuals.  However, creating true equality of opportunity is really hard work.  Municipalities need to carefully examine the resources available to young students and try to level the playing field through careful investment and accountability.  That's often too hard so they just throw money at the school system and call it good.  By the end of secondary education, those from disadvantaged backgrounds are substantially behind academically.  Trying to correct the situation through favorable admissions can backfire.  It's often just too late to address the problem. 

However, favoritism in college admissions also includes athletes and legacies.  Legacies = "My granddad went to BC, my dad went to BC and I'm going to BC"  This often provides more of an advantage than affirmative action.  The only places where legacy status doesn't help are hardcore schools like MIT.  At D1 schools, the academic averages for athletes as a whole are often lower than the overall student body.  You have to confront all favorability factors, not just one. 

 

[ClearedHot]

 

And how nice that once the photo op was over Biden had the National Guard sent to sleep in a parking garage.

[SurelySerious]

https://www.wsj.com/articles/joe-bidens-first-day-began-the-end-of-girls-sports-11611341066

I don’t think this was a good move. There should probably be a separate category for trans, because biologically male to female transitions are still going to have a lot of the physiology of the biologically male body. 

[ClearedHot]

4 minutes ago, SurelySerious said:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/joe-bidens-first-day-began-the-end-of-girls-sports-11611341066

I don’t think this was a good move. There should probably be a separate category for trans, because biologically male to female transitions are still going to have a lot of the physiology of the biologically male body. 

[Lord Ratner]

3 minutes ago, SurelySerious said:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/joe-bidens-first-day-began-the-end-of-girls-sports-11611341066

I don’t think this was a good move. There should probably be a separate category for trans, because biologically male to female transitions are still going to have a lot of the physiology of the biologically male body. 

This problem will solve itself. It's a bridge too far for many, and will illicit a response from more people than there are trans athletes. Politicians take the path of least resistance. This move will flip the resistance equation. It's also an obvious States-rights domain.

[slackline]

12 minutes ago, ClearedHot said:

 

And how nice that once the photo op was over Biden had the National Guard sent to sleep in a parking garage.

How sad that you believe Biden was involved in that call...

You keep coming with those catchy, but baseless memes though.

[slackline]

1 minute ago, Lord Ratner said:

This problem will solve itself. It's a bridge too far for many, and will illicit a response from more people than there are trans athletes. Politicians take the path of least resistance. This move will flip the resistance equation. It's also an obvious States-rights domain.

Agreed

[Swamp Yankee]

20 minutes ago, ClearedHot said:

 

And how nice that once the photo op was over Biden had the National Guard sent to sleep in a parking garage.

It was well-lit and clean for a parking garage.  Of course, in the Air Guard the worst I had to deal with was passing out in the old Balboa Yacht Club in Panama.  

[kaputt]

6 minutes ago, SurelySerious said:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/joe-bidens-first-day-began-the-end-of-girls-sports-11611341066

I don’t think this was a good move. There should probably be a separate category for trans, because biologically male to female transitions are still going to have a lot of the physiology of the biologically male body. 

I actually came here to post about this. As a former college athlete and someone who hopes to have kids that will participate in sports, this absolutely pisses me off to no end. “The party of science and women’s rights” conveniently ignores biological differences between men and women and then signs an EO allowing biological men to compete in women’s sports. What kind of message does that send to young women athletes in this country!?

Connecticut has actually already shown what a complete cluster this is. 15 girls state track titles have been won by biological boys. A large portion of the girls state records are owned by individuals with a penis. That’s up to a potential of 15 young women that have had their state championship dreams taken away from them by a man. 
 

“Guess what girls, yeah we fought for decades to even give you the chance to compete in athletics, but now we’re going to wipe our ass with the whole Title IX thing and let guys who feel like girls come beat you.” 

Does anyone with half a brain in the Democrat party think through this garbage before they move forward with it? Does anyone remember how angry the world got when the East Germans were sending roided out women who were basically men to the Olympics, because guess what, it was completely unfair to real female athletes.

Transgender athletes need to either compete within their biological gender (“follow the science”) or you need to create a transgender division for them to compete in. 

[ClearedHot]

29 minutes ago, slackline said:

How sad that you believe Biden was involved in that call...

You keep coming with those catchy, but baseless memes though.

Thank you, thank you, THANK YOU for taking the bait.  Of course Biden had nothing to with that decision.  However, for the last four years the left and the mainstream press blamed EVERY single thing that went wrong on Trump.  Have the intellectual honestly to apply the same standard to Biden... Oh I can hear you know...But But But.

Not my meme but it certainly holds true.  I have yet to see the grand reach across the political aisle, instead it has been a slew of executive orders and a complete dodge on the question of impeaching Trump.  He has the opportunity to push the Trump thing aside...appease and calm the GOP faithful and focus on COVID-19 relief, but he doesn't have the backbone to stand up to Pelosi and her requirement for revenge...he doesn't even have the stones to voice an opinion.  #Sad

[Lord Ratner]

21 minutes ago, kaputt said:

I actually came here to post about this. As a former college athlete and someone who hopes to have kids that will participate in sports, this absolutely pisses me off to no end. “The party of science and women’s rights” conveniently ignores biological differences between men and women and then signs an EO allowing biological men to compete in women’s sports. What kind of message does that send to young women athletes in this country!?

Connecticut has actually already shown what a complete cluster this is. 15 girls state track titles have been won by biological boys. A large portion of the girls state records are owned by individuals with a penis. That’s up to a potential of 15 young women that have had their state championship dreams taken away from them by a man. 
 

“Guess what girls, yeah we fought for decades to even give you the chance to compete in athletics, but now we’re going to wipe our ass with the whole Title IX thing and let guys who feel like girls come beat you.” 

Does anyone with half a brain in the Democrat party think through this garbage before they move forward with it? Does anyone remember how angry the world got when the East Germans were sending roided out women who were basically men to the Olympics, because guess what, it was completely unfair to real female athletes.

Transgender athletes need to either compete within their biological gender (“follow the science”) or you need to create a transgender division for them to compete in. 

This is what happens when the party, and to a large extent, the voters don't know what they believe anymore. The activists with very clear, but very niche goals take over.

 

I'm amazed by how many democrat voters I talk to don't know what their party is pushing. This topic is literally one of the examples I'm thinking of.

Americans are spending more time than ever attacking their political opponents and defending their allies, yet almost no time thinking and discussing what they actually believe. This is not by happenstance.

 

[jazzdude]

A lot to cover, but a very good conversation.

 

GPS. The point stands, it was released in a way that was not exclusionary to certain players or industries. It's a delicate balance. If the government has instead given a bunch of money to Garmin, we'd have something closer to Tesla. If the government decided it liked a certain technology, let's say satellite radio, and started giving tax credits to anyone who buys a satellite radio, knowing damn well that only one satellite radio company stands to benefit, that would be even more like Tesla.

 

Now Tesla is an established giant, and the subsidies are going away… but those subsidies were necessary for the formation of a viable electric car maker, so how will the competition develop?

 

I agree with you in some ways, I love what Tesla is doing and I want that type of innovation supported and encouraged. But it has to be done in a way that doesn't undermine our belief in the fairness of the system. As you said, if the system no longer seems fair, "then the only alternative is a violent overthrowing of those that are controlling the market unfairly by the people oppressed by that market."

 

Even if you take Tesla as a .gov success story, let's look at some examples of the more likely outcome:

 

Affirmative action: Favoring black students provides limited benefit to some black students, but overall creates an even deeper divide in outcomes: https://www.nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/the-sad-irony-of-affirmative-action

 

Get more people into home ownership: Home owners are correlated with all sorts of desirable demographic outcomes, so let's promote it at the government level, right? Along comes 2008: https://www.forbes.com/sites/peterferrara/2011/05/19/how-the-government-created-a-financial-crisis/?sh=661ac0e821fb

 

Higher education costs: In a comically stupid misreading of cause and effect, the government decided that going to college meant more success later in life. Incorrect. Being smart and joining professions that required additional education meant higher success. But that detail was ignored, so the .gov has been pushing college, which has created a wildly unsustainable student debt crisis, and made college costlier than ever: https://www.mercatus.org/publications/government-spending/government-policy-and-tuition-higher-education

 

Not to mention the laundry list of failed companies that only lasted as long as they did based on infusions of government cheese.

 

These aren't just ideas that fail, they often cause devastating long-term effects that are completely opposed to the original goals. The tolerance and coddling of homelessness, to include building shelters and finding supplies that make the lifestyle possible, is going to suck when we end up paying for the lifetime institutionalization of tens of thousands of people whose brains are irreparably fried from years of drug abuse. The embrace of critical race theory has resulted in the predictable rebirth of white supremacy. The American role of world police has resulted in a Europe without any form of military defense, and thus they are helpless to make even token gestures against the aggressions of Russia and China.

 

Government, as a result of the perpetual change of power, must act quick, so instead of attacking the root causes of a problem, which is a slow process, they attack the manifestations/symptoms of the problem. Feels good, but doesn't help. Liberals are similar, but mostly because they are sensitive to the emotional toll of disparities and not inclined towards solutions that allow the impact to persist. They have almost no consideration for second and third order effects, and even less patience.

 

Sports Arenas: Completely against it. For all the reasons listed above. Business is not stupid, they don't build arenas where there is no profit. All the subsidies in the world will not bring an arena to Columbus, MS. I understand the intent, but how many times must an intent be abused before you see it for what it inevitably is? I think the stadium for the Seattle soccer team was denied government assistance by a very tenacious city council member. Surprise surprise, the stadium went up anyways. Here's something similar, and there are plenty of studies showing the questionable returns of stadiums: https://www.insidesources.com/seattles-tale-of-two-stadiums/

 

Greed and power: Government by a different name. The free market struggles with monopolies in the real world. The government is the ultimate monopoly. Using that extreme monopoly to pick winners is the antithesis to a free market, no matter how much you like the technology. The challenge isn't policing private monopolies, it's using the government to police its own power. The heavy regulation of chosen winners such as utilities is indeed an example. This type of regulation is not present on the new era of chosen winners. 

 

Your power company analogy is flawed. The second power company is restricted not because the first power company won't share their power lines, but because the city won't allow the second company to construct their own. That restriction on the second (and any other) company is why the first has an advantage. Heavily regulated, this arrangement can be made close to fair (including regular rebidding for which company gets the monopoly), but it is onerous, deleterious to innovation, and should be used sparingly. Electric cars do not meet the threshold IMO. Keeping the city free of a million power lines from a dozen competitors crossing every street does. 

 

Meritocracy: you can't argue that socialism benefits from meritocracy; the two concepts are literally opposed. Of course socialism benefits from not being socialistic. In fact, progressivism is even more opposite to meritocracy than socialism. In a theoretical perfect socialism, the most capable/merited are elevated to positions of power (though it never, ever happens that way). From each according to his abilities. With progressivism, positions of authority are selected based on group-identity-based disparities. You'll get no disagreement from me on nepotism. Bad for any system.

 

I think I hit everything. Great convo.

 

I think we're taking a bit last each other with the GPS example, and I'm too lazy to do some more digging (this has been a pleasant distraction from both work and homework). But I think we both agree that there a delicate balance, and it can be hard to draw the line.

I also don't think Tesla meets the threshold to hold a monopoly on EVs or their charging infrastructure either, and wasn't my intent. But they were also not the only ones to receive tax credits: several other car manufacturers also received tax credits, though the other manufacturers elected not to pursue EVs (and associated tax credits available to them) as aggressively as Tesla. A startup would struggle to get those tax credits though, as car manufacturing (even in gas cars) has a pretty high bar for entry (lots of capital up front).

I think your new examples and arguments are valid shots. It's generally easy to fix symptoms, or make changes to make the short term metrics look good (any of this sound familiar in our AF careers?...). It's hard, and can be uncomfortable, to get after the root causes of the bad metrics or symptoms. If you get a chance to take a statistical modeling class, one thing they harp on is be very careful about extrapolating data to make predictions outside the observed data set.

I don't think the government making an investment and it failing is necessarily a bad thing on smaller projects. Cast a wide net on completing ideas, invest in the promising ones, and see what happens (think of it as a public venture capital fund investing in things that benefit society). It's that fear of failure that often paralyzes government, and makes every decision very risk adverse and overly conservative to a fault. Obviously, risks have to be managed appropriately, and not carelessly disregarded.

Meritocracy and socialism or communism aren't opposed, at least in theory. You're right, it often suffers from personal greed or ambition in practice. But at the same time, meritocracy and capitalism are not synonymous. My view of meritocracy is a way to manage *power*, and not products, where capitalism/socialism/communism all manage resources. It's easy in capitalism to say it's the same as a meritocracy, but only because in capitalism, money (proxy for resources) can (and often does) buy power.

There are other ways to manage power besides a meritocracy ("best" person to wield power based on some measure). Democracies (direct votes), republics (representatives), dictatorships/monarchies (consolidation of power in an individual/family), nepotism (I guess this is the same as a monarchy, but without the "divine right to rule"), anarchy (no management of power). All of those types of government also have some way of determining who is "best" to wield power, whether it's popular vote, bloodline, violence, family/friends, and reflect different underlying cause and norms of that society. And any of those could be fine for an individual living under that form of government, so long as your interests align with the government's interests. At least with a form of democracy you get a say in the decision in the event interests don't align, but even that is no guarantee of fairness, and it's near impossible, especially in our current world, to remove yourself from the jurisdiction of any government.

The free market doesn't really exist-it's an ideal that doesn't exist anywhere in practice, at least not at a nation state level. As long as there's an inequality of power between people (or organizations), there will be an influence on the market, whether it's formal or not. So in a sense, government is a monopoly, because the market must adapt and be limited by the rules of the society it operates in, with those rules being enforced by the government. On the other hand, government is not a monopoly because it is how society has agreed/consented/accepted to structure itself, and society also creates the market because people have needs and wants they can not procure/produce on their own, especially if people specialize in their work. So it goes hand in hand, groups of people will organize themselves in some manner, and that same group creates a market for goods/services within itself.

Government won't police it's own power, unless those in power do so based on their values/principles. Democracies in theory allow the citizens to be the check on government authority through their vote, but it can lead to mob rule of the government divides the citizenry to maintain it's power.

I guess I have to take a stance though after being wishy washy for way too long on the post. Democratic republic seems to be the best balance for a large country like ours, balancing direct votes and the time and logistics to do that for every matter. Meritocracy with caveats (ability to do the job based on technical skills and social/leadership skills). Caveat being that sometimes you don't select the best person in order to give that experience to someone else so they can learn. This encourages cross-functional learning, and prevents job stove pipes due to being locked into one career path, especially when the scope of responsibility requires knowledge and skills across multiple domains. The incentive for moving up is not necessarily more money or power, but to do apply your experiences and skills to do the most good, though admittedly there's some amount of money that does make it easier to embrace that position (not going to do it for free and not meet needs or "reasonable" wants).

[M2]

Since we're discussing memes...

Bernie Sanders sitting at the Inauguration takes over internet

Two of my favorites...

[ClearedHot]

6 minutes ago, M2 said:

Since we're discussing memes...

Love these two...classic

 

[Sua Sponte]

[Negatory]

5 hours ago, slackline said:

So here’s my take on it.  If there are people far and above more qualified that would clearly do the job way better than those he has nominated it is incredibly bad and simple pandering.  If the people he’s nominated are close enough in quality/performance to those that are “better” than them, where’s the harm in giving those people that typically haven’t ever even been considered for those types of positions a shot?  

If there will be no discernible difference in how well the job is being done, I think it is beneficial to add some flavor to what is typically incredibly homogeneous.  I’m not married to this idea, and could be talked out of it by sound arguments, but I can see more benefits by going with different over same old, same old when the end product is so close that it doesn’t matter.  That other person is still going to be successful.  Commence spear throwing.

The blunt truth is it hurts non minorities. That’s the harm in affirmative action policies. It’s why white male pilots, for the most part, should go ahead and stop applying to be astronauts.

 

Edit: The sinister end result is the debasing of the meritocracy.

Edited January 22, 2021 by Negatory

[17D_guy]

7 minutes ago, Negatory said:

The blunt truth is it hurts non minorities. That’s the harm in affirmative action policies. It’s why white pilots, for the most part, should go ahead and stop applying to be astronauts.

 

Edit: The sinister end result is the debasing of the meritocracy.

Let me know when we find meritocracy.  Everything I've seen while in, and my brief time out, is who you know.

[Negatory]

2 minutes ago, 17D_guy said:

Let me know when we find meritocracy.  Everything I've seen while in, and my brief time out, is who you know.

Is your point that meritocracy shouldn’t exist or that it doesn’t?

[ClearedHot]

1 hour ago, Sua Sponte said:

Epic

[Lord Ratner]

6 minutes ago, 17D_guy said:

Let me know when we find meritocracy.  Everything I've seen while in, and my brief time out, is who you know.

Go spend some time in Mexico, South America, the Middle East (I'm assuming you have), Africa, or East Asia and tell me America isn't a meritocracy. 

 

I'm sure you're being somewhat hyperbolic, but the difference between the Western meritocracy and real nepotism, which most Americans have not experienced, is vast and shocking.

 

Ivanka Trump was an advisor, not the Secretary of State. Hunter Biden was just milking some spare change from his Dad's name, he wasn't the Secretary of Commerce. We are not nepotistic country.

[slackline]

4 hours ago, ClearedHot said:

Thank you, thank you, THANK YOU for taking the bait.  Of course Biden had nothing to with that decision.  However, for the last four years the left and the mainstream press blamed EVERY single thing that went wrong on Trump.  Have the intellectual honestly to apply the same standard to Biden... Oh I can hear you know...But But But.

Not my meme but it certainly holds true.  I have yet to see the grand reach across the political aisle, instead it has been a slew of executive orders and a complete dodge on the question of impeaching Trump.  He has the opportunity to push the Trump thing aside...appease and calm the GOP faithful and focus on COVID-19 relief, but he doesn't have the backbone to stand up to Pelosi and her requirement for revenge...he doesn't even have the stones to voice an opinion.  #Sad

Ok, I guess you think you got me?  He's been president for what, 2.69 days, I can't believe he hasn't fixed the decades of partisanship already!  I think you may be forgetting the 8 years of blaming Obama for every bad thing that happened.  Stop being a sore loser for long enough to realize that during Trump's presidency Democrats didn't invent blaming the president for crap that went wrong. 

Not much of a fake bait there hoss, the statement you made falls in line with 90% of the statements made by every Trump apologist on this forum.  This was the first election I've ever voted for a democratic candidate of any flavor. Thank the bang up job done by the QAnon savior for driving enough people like me away to lose him the election. 

I feel like you guys all band together at these pseudo zingers and upvote/like each other's posts that slam the supposed liberals.  #notsurewhywearehashtaggingthis

 

Edited January 23, 2021 by slackline