a thoughtful web.
Good ideas and conversation. No ads, no tracking.   Login or Take a Tour!
comment
kleinbl00  ·  3770 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Theopolitics in Amurica

WOW.

So this is going to take some effort to unpack. You have a lot of assumptions stacked on top of each other and some inferences that become full-blown self-evident conclusions without pausing for introspection. I think this is a valuable discussion to have, but I think we need to start off with the acknowledgement that I disagree with your assertions and I disagree with your conclusions.

The flow of your argument seems to be this:

1) Left and Right are both so ideologically driven that they are immune to pragmatism, much like the devoutly religious.

2) Conservative governance will cause a complete collapse of government due to technological advancement that leaves no place for the underclass.

3) But government in general is an outdated idea because the Internet will permit an altruistic, decentralized system of wealth and goods distribution to create a Utopia if only liberals recognize that conservatives will bring about their doom.

I looked up "theopolitics" just to be sure. It doesn't seem to be an agreed-upon term. I think you intend it as "rule by ideology" which would allow you to call the USSR a "theopolitical entity." Even there, though, you'd be mistaken - The Soviet Union was ruled by apparatchiks and the nomenklatura, professional and hereditary bureaucrats and intelligentsia whose social structure had far more in common with czarist Russia than the collectives that replaced it. Attaturk banned Islam and islamic affectations because he saw the European way as the way forward, but most Turks under him maintained their culture on the sly. You could perhaps argue that the United States theopolitically "worships" free trade, but Chief Justice Roberts upheld Obamacare on the basis of the federal government being constitutionally entitled to regulate free trade.

Your statements for authoritarianism and idealism are assertions, not arguments, and I don't think you can state them as unassailable facts. If the Right and the Left were so ideologically driven, why was voter turnout the lowest it's been since 1940? And you can't argue that the election didn't matter to both sides, as it was one of the most expensive in history - $3.67b on house and senate races alone (India's last election - India's - cost $5b). It's easier to argue that our current political state has more to do with apathy than ideology.

But enough of that. Republicans took the House, the Senate and the Presidency in 2004 and while it was a shitty, shitty time, the country recovered enough to elect a black man four years later. Let's suppose they don't, though - you want to argue that automation will replace unskilled labor leading to widespread poverty. China, however, has risen from widespread poverty to a burgeoning middle class, largely through automation. There's an optimization here - at what point does handwork become cheaper than letting the robot do it? Because if the robot costs you $4 a day to operate but you can get 2 laborers for $1.50, it starts looking attractive to hire grunts. And even if you don't, because you can afford robots, you'll find yourself competing with opportunistic handworkers. That's pretty much the essence of trade and labor - I have a Roomba, but I also have a couple nice ladies who come by every six months. And you know what? They cost more to hire now than they did before the invention of Roombas. Market forces.

So in the end, it doesn't come down to ideology - it doesn't even come down to pragmatism. It comes down to "the free market" which, at its most unregulated, creates some pretty heinous dystopias. The test question is then whether the Conservatives would rather roll in their own filth or start talking about the Tragedy of the Commons and the need for "compassionate conservatism" - Ayn Rand was on food stamps and Rush Limbaugh is a big tipper.

Then, the leap to "annihilate the government." And I'm sorry, I just don't see how you got there. I don't see how you can defend it, and I don't see any systems-level analysis as to how to get from here to there, let alone why. Contrary to your experience, one in four Americans don't have a computer or internet-connected device at home. Are they going to do stuff at the library? Who controls the library? Who controls their access? I've been giving money to Black Box Voting since 2001; if it's taught me one thing, it's that you don't want to give over the reigns of your freedom to the guys who thought Bitcoin was a good idea. One thing about bureaucracies is they're nearly impossible to knock over. I'm not at all comfortable with the idea of a flash crash in my electoral process.

I admire your passion. I even admire your vision. But I find neither compelling. Conservatives are people, too, and while they may not want the world to run the same way you do, they most assuredly want the world to run. I'm not predicting great things from the next two years but I'm also not predicting doom'n'gloom. You might still convince me but you'll need to take smaller steps.