Comment by WhompingWindows | Hacker News Reader

Comment by WhompingWindows | Hacker News Reader

WhompingWindows

Of course this is true. If anyone is naive enough to believe America is a hellish wasteland of terrible politics, and that that transfers to overall Quality of Life metrics for society as a whole, they might be surprised by this. Any honest look at data on employment, QoL, services available for free or very cheaply in the lives of the average citizen, there are many reasons for optimism.

Personally, I try to cut from my media diet any purely speculative or fear-driven content. Instead of telling us what might happen in the future if this policy comes down the pipe, maybe tell us about what's already happened recently, what the data shows us about the most important issues. To me, these are issues like the opioid epidemic, not what a politician wrote on Twitter recently. Another example would be focusing extensively on negative coverage, like opioids, and ignoring positive trends made in science, technology, and culture - who wants to read about the daily incremental improvements in life?

I look at the opioid epidemic as a symptom, not the problem itself. The broader problem is globalization and the local inequalities it's producing. The Heartland of the United States is being hollowed out and turned into a desolate wasteland, economically speaking. The steady advances in economic productivity are accruing to an ever-shrinking proportion of the population.

The media-political circus should also be taken seriously as a problem because it distracts people from focusing on the real issues. The recent focus on privacy on Facebook is a good example of that. The real problem with Facebook is that it's designed to be addictive, that it's making people depressed and angry, and that it's politically polarizing people who ought to have common interests.

> The broader problem is globalization

No it isn't.

>the local inequalities it's producing.

That's not caused by globalism.

Raising the specter of globalization ultimately is just hand-waving the problem away. For example, when are we determining that globalization began? If we claim in the 1990's than how does that explain a similar hollowing out effect suffered by urban black America in the previous decades? If we decide to go back to Columbus, well that certainly isn't going to explain anything.

Unfortunately many explanations look outward or cast blame on shadowy groups ("The Elites") and refuse to look at decisions made by Americans themselves. There is no consideration of voting against interests in favor of culture war issues. No discussion of the movement away from organized labor and activism. Refusal to evaluate the consequences of an "Every Day Low Price" consumerism that demands the lowest cost of products.

I'm not trying to absolve globalization of responsibility, rather I'm trying to say that it's not helpful to point the finger at it and refuse to look deeper.

Opioid addiction is because opioids make you feel really good and they are really addictive and they had a tendency to be overprescribed. Blaming the economy for opioids is like blaming airplanes for AIDS.

As far as the wasteland heartland, I am not sure if Texas is included in the heartland, but the Texas economy is one of the biggest in the world — about as large as the GDP of Canada and larger than that of South Korea. Basically Texas is the 9th or 10th largest economy in the world. California is 5th or 6th. The state of Ohio’s economy is only slightly smaller than the entire country of Belgium.

The desolate wastelands are in the non-major cities and towns of Europe. Avignon France, for example, in the city center, has blocks and blocks of boarded up storefronts. Unemployment in Avignon is over 15% and only 35% even earn enough to have to pay income tax. Gary, Indiana, about as heartland as it gets, has a 7.6% unemployment rate — a rate that is declining. By European standards of GDP, disposable income and unemployment, Gary is a boomtown.

Don’t just consume the NPR-worthy stories of the death of the US heartland. Remember, most media outlets in the vein of the Atlantic, NPR, etc., they are typically coastal elites who have barely ever visited the heartland, let alone actually lived or worked there. They are also an echo chamber pushing an when’d a of a certain political persuasion, so it helps their narrative when “fly-over country” isn’t doing well.

Its possible to use opioids safely with the correct social support structures in place. Rituals, best practices, etc.

Theres a difference between using a drug as part of a positive experience, and habitual constant use to numb pain (whether physical, psychological, or sociological.)

https://harvardmagazine.com/2000/03/deep-cravings.html

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1247121 >The authors present five case histories illustrating controlled use of opiates ("chipping"). Long-term chippers tend to develop consistent social use patterns that permit and also limit use. The authors conclude that controlled use of opiates is possible and that large numbers of people are involved in such use, although they are hard to locate and identify. Controlled users are differentiated from compulsive users more by their development and maintenance of social drug use rituals than by such variables as availability of the drug and personality and family background of the user.

What media outlets do you recommend that we look to for a more accurate assessment?

The local papers of the regions in question. Certainly not elitist echo-chambers like the Atlantic — a publication that preaches diversity but fires their only conservative writer before he spent five minutes working for them.

But coastal publications trying to write about the heartland is as absurd as a small town Texas paper writing about Brooklyn.

I agree that the Atlantic is left leaning, although I'm not sure I would call it an elitist echo chamber.

That said, I don't agree with your premise that coastal publications can't write about the heartland.

I can see why you might dismiss a local paper from a coastal city writing about what goes on in the heartland, as you like to call it, but the biggest national newspapers in our country happen to be coastal publications.

The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, USA Today, and LA times have been writing about the whole country (the whole world, actually) for many years. They can afford to send people anywhere in the world to research their stories. They can consult basically any expert they want on any subject. There's a reason local papers go out of business all of the time or get bought out by a larger paper.

It's absurd to compare a small town Texas paper writing about Brooklyn to papers like those I mention above. They have resources and experience that small town papers simply don't have.

I'm also not sure you know how NPR works. A lot of their coverage comes from the local member stations which seems to be exactly what you want, but you refer to NPR as coastal elites anyways.

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