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Comment by eat_veggies | Hacker News Reader

This is probably more of an indictment of electoral politics and the function of the state in general. Leftists (in their various strands of thought) have, for centuries, known and publicized the view that governments exist to dominate and to protect the interests of capital -- it's no secret. So yes, it's a football game, but one intended to distract us from attaining our material interests.

This takes us in the opposite direction from his conclusion for activists (essentially, give up because it doesn't matter) toward a more productive one that asks, if left/right party politics does not produce meaningful change, then what kind of politics can?

There's also a clever load-bearing phrase buried in here that sweeps the explanation for real variation in policy under the rug: "these governments followed the spirit of the age." Now, what is the spirit of the age but the movement of politics?

Of course, the author's motivations are clearer if you look at the other trash that they've written: an article about not being ideological (recently litigated on hacker news [1]), dozens of posts ragging about "the left," and a few articles about how much they hate trans people.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29957328

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It's telling that these pieces advocating political nihilism always come from the right. Probably because a politically disengaged populace puts more power in the hands of the elites.

Because the elites are a bunch of right-wingers, right?

Economically so, yes. They tend to want to entrench their wealth and not fetter it with taxes on programs that don’t benefit their interests.

What about axes other than economic and foreign policy? There are many government policies in effect that large parts of the right strenuously object to.

In fact, even on foreign policy, I'd be surprised if the forever wars in the middle east enjoy majority support among the right. Isn't isolationism also right-wing? If it's at all helpful to classify policies into 'left' and 'right'..

Social and cultural axes exist, yes. That’s why I specified economically right-wing.

Isolationism could be left wing or right wing.

so-called "left-wing elites" still favor privatization while public ownership is never in the conversation, so yes.

yes, but the "left-wing elites" aren't the ones pushing political nihilism. "Government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem" isn't something the left ever claims.

Anyone father left than "slightly more money for foodstamps" may be heard saying exactly that - with the caveat that they're talking about our government, not the idea of government generally.

Marxist here. Just like any libertarian, we acknowledge the capitalist state as a monopoly on violence, but we also acknowledge the capitalist state exists because capital maintains it. When you understand this, you quickly realize that fighting for something like a national universal healthcare program challenges the capitalist state more than anything libertarians want to do.

That's because we've seen where that brand of socialism (and anarchy) leads --> authoritarianism. It has never worked on anything bigger than the village level. You need abstract means of exchange (money) to get people on a large scale to cooperate. People in my village do not care about people two villages over who they only ever barely met let alone someone hundreds of miles away.

We have all heard the horror stories of those notorious authoritarian hellholes like Denmark and Canada and Italy and South Korea and…

Public ownership of certain systems does not imply abolishing money.

Yes. To be a wealthy left-winger, you have to condemn yourself. People sometimes get confused because they watch 24 hour news networks that think H. Clinton is a radical communist.

Our entire current wave is based in 90s tea party astroturfing by billionaires that got out of control when it encountered the militia movement.

That’s always going to be true. By definition elites are the people who have benefited most from things being the way they are. They may be socially somewhat liberal, if it makes them look good, but economically always conservative. Because being pro gay marriage doesn’t cost them anything. But universal health care would. Hence you people like Nancy pelosi who use socially progressive positions as a cover for deeply regressive and right wing economic and military policy. That’s also why you get the superficial lip service paid to Black Lives Matter, where they will paint a street or kneel in kente cloths while simultaneously doing nothing whatsoever to materially improve black peoples lives. One costs money, specifically costs the elites money, while the other is free.

given that the lead democrat, nancy pelosi, represents one of the wealthiest districts in america, this hardly seems believable at face value and rather falls in line with the article.

left vs right rather seems like a shell game to me where the dealer has the piece the whole time.

You almost had it when you said “electoral politics”. But then you missed the mark. The entire federal system in the US is built to favor rural areas. From the 2 Senators/state where CA only has the same number of Senators as the least populous states in US, the Electoral College method of presidential voting where twice since 2000 the person with the most popular votes lost the election, and gerrymandering where the party in congress doesn’t represent the popular vote in nearly the same proportion.

I think you've lost the thread. Rural vs. urban is just one facet of how our system pits the many against each other while the few benefit. Have you been to rural parts of the country? Most urbanites wouldn't consider the average boonie to be any better than their neighborhood in a city. You know which places are really doing better, certainly better than they actually need? Those with huge average salaries relative to CoL, like Potomac or the Hamptons.

It doesn’t matter about rural vs urban. It’s a matter of rule if the minority - population wise not “minority people”

> The entire federal system in the US is built to favor rural areas

That’s because those who choose not to live in filthy crime ridden cities shouldn’t have to suffer from the lowest common denominator laws and high taxes said cities “require” to not fall apart since people aren’t meant to live that close together.

Yet snd still it’s rural America that’s subsidized by those “filthy cities” where all of the economic activity is taking place.

I’m not going to even mention the opioid epidemic in rural America is killing far more people than in the inner city.

But why should the minority get to dictate policies if the majority? Is rural America willing to get rid of all of the farm subsidies? The unneeded military bases that the military is trying to close but politicians don’t let them?

Most rural Americans would be willing to get rid of subsidies if the government was also willing to control inflation, pass right to repair so that equipment costs for farmers weren’t so high, and if government didn’t put quotas on the production of other crops. This before getting into monopolies that exist in the agricultural sector who lobby to keep the government from changing things and in many cases those companies have engaged in regulatory capture.

People love to be pro-whatever but unless you’ve lived among the farmers and heard the crap they put up with you shouldn’t really be mouthing off on the topic. It’s complex with good and bad from corporate interest and government. This isn’t a matter of more or less government involvement, or of more or less market freedom… it’s fundamentally about a need for all of these interests to actually take the time to see the struggles farmers face before taking more action. The right to repair is a great example of this working well, where people did listen and John Deere may get a good come-uppance.

One last thing, the way you worded that first part of your comment makes you sound like someone prejudiced against the rural poor. Nice and classist style. That is precisely why the majority of rural Americans hate urban Americans so much.

No, they wouldn't be. I don't think you understand the full extent of subsidies that rural areas receive. Even with right to repair, and perpetual 2% inflation, the entire agricultural lifestyle in the US would crumble.

There are no production quotas in the US, except on sugar. There are limits to subsidies, however.

I know how the life of farmers goes, and not just in the US. You just have no idea what it looks like when what you're asking for happens. There is a reason that no major economy doesn't have agricultural subsidies.

If those went away, US exports of agricultural products would essentially go to zero.

But agricultural subsidies are far from the only, and perhaps not even the largest, type of subsidy that farmers receive.

Indeed, farms in the US are greatly under-taxed. Despite the median farm household income being much higher than the overall median household income, farming households on average pay around 14% in income taxes, around 4900$ in property taxes.

This is is much lower than the tax load of the average US household, and much lower still than the tax load of the average US household of the same income.

Thus, if you wanted to actually end the support that farms are getting, you would also need to raise taxes on farms significantly, and cut subsidies. Then you'd also have the fact that the average farmer requires much costlier infrastructure than the average city dweller in per-capita equivalents.

Would it really be possible for US farms to make a living if their taxes were almost doubled, if all subsidies were ended, and if prices were allowed to fluctuate? The answer is, definitely, absolutely, not at all.

> Yet snd still it’s rural America that’s subsidized by those “filthy cities” where all of the economic activity is taking place.

If you don't think rural America would trade those subsidies in the blink of an eye for the dissolution of those cities into their own separate union or something, you really don't know rural America.

> But why should the minority get to dictate policies if the majority?

Because a few pinprick-sized geographical locations overflowing with millions of people who think that's how everyone should live / does live (it's not) shouldn't get to dictate the policies of the entire rest of the country that is living in relative peace and comfort away from such overpopulated, crime-ridden areas with extremely high costs of living and an overall terrible QoL. Look at any US-wide election map, by county; see how few areas are truly blue. The homogeneous state of southern California should not get to decide how the rest of us live/suffer.

The founders knew what they were doing.

Whatever they would do is irrelevant. If those things did happen, farmers would go into bankruptcy en masse and be utterly financially ruined. Whether they know this or not isn't relevant.

There has never been a "rural" empire. You're basically advocating a return to serfdom. Breaking the links between cities and rural areas will just strand people in rural areas. Cities will get fed, they have the people and the might. The current system is way more beneficial to rural people then any alternative.

By whom will they get fed?

Take a look at the Irish potato famine for a good example.

I'm sorry I don't follow. Could you be more specific?

Rural America gets far more from the federal government than their taxes pay for. Heck the only reason rural America has internet or before that phone lines is because of government mandates and taxes added on to phone bills Z

How close are people meant to live to each other? Source?

> Source?

Every single violent and property crime statistic ever.

What do you think is the causality?

The problem is that people for some reason are living in cities for thousands of years and this helped in progres of science/technology/art. It's a symbiotic, not parasitic relationship.

It's both as there are good things and bad things about living in cities and it certainly isn't for everyone.

Perhaps state/federal assistance, benefits, and investment should also be proportional to tax revenue as well.

Don't want to pay taxes? Fine, you're on your own. Rural areas receive all kinds of investment and subsidies that far exceed their contribution in taxes. Fortunately for everybody, things don't work that way.

Consider California, who's GDP would rank it among most countries. Most of the economic activity in the state is concentrated in the large, coastal cities. This generates massive amounts of state and federal taxes that rural areas ultimately benefit from.

Cities pay for your rural lifestyle. You're welcome. No need to thank us, we're all in this together.

If you really want to see it in a zero sum way, which I disagree with, you need to realize that those living in suburbia or in rural areas are the lowest common denominators. Paying for their lifestyle is why taxes in cities are so high and why laws in cities are so harsh.

It is logistically impossible for the people that live outside cities to have anywhere near the quality of life they currently enjoy without the existence of people living in cities.

Indeed, without subsidies paid for by city folk, agricultural prices would plummet and become unstable, which would greatly hamper the prosperity of anyone related to the agricultural sector.

Without cities, it would also be impossible to pay for the infrastructure enjoyed by suburbia and rural areas. The amount and quality of roads would have to decrease drastically, and suburbs would have to pay multiple times more for running water, electricity infrastructure, wastewater management (you would have to move to a septic tank with all of the costs those entail). This would have knock-on effects increasing the prices of all goods and it would make transportation either very expensive or impossible.

This would lead to a complete collapse of rural and suburban life in North America.

If you want to know what that would look like, you can envision life in rural China, or somewhat worse even.

Urbanisation is absolutely necessary for the quality of life you enjoy. In the relationship, despite it being mutually beneficial, those who live in rural areas are the ones who are moreso compensated. As for suburbia, it's not clear that it is beneficial at all to those who live in cities.

I ask the following to hopefully promote discussion, I don't necessarily espouse the opinion.

With most of the US critically thinking about the electoral / senatorial systems, and how the scales do tip towards rural states..

What concessions, if any, should rural states / areas be entitled to, given that they are the food producers for our country? On paper, that could provide leverage / a "bargaining chip" in this discussion.

The flip-side to this coin is that the more urban states / areas are the economic drivers of the country, which is clearly a source of leverage as well.

I feel like most people don't think about it in these terms, and I'm curious how it would impact their opinions when adding the dimension of leverage / "social value" to population.

Perhaps these should have no weight on a discussion of representation?

None. One person. One vote. Rural America wouldn’t survive without farm subsidies and protectionist trade policies. If they had to sell at cost without subsidies, it would be cheaper to import food. How much are farm subsidies just for corn?

If you have to import food to feed your people, you are not an independent nation. You are a vassal state of whoever is feeding you. That's why countries protect their agricultural sector. It's why when you cross over into Canada from the US, the landscape quickly changes to agricultural as what's often considered marginal to poor farmland in the US is considered prime ag land in Canada since they want to grow as much of their own food as possible. Agriculture is what makes civilization possible, not the other way around. Farmers can exist just fine if cities disappeared. Cities cannot say the inverse.

How well will farmers survive without the infrastructure that is provided by modern cities? Hospitals? The years when they have poor yields?

How is the quality of life of more agrarian societies compared to more industrial nations?

When a worldwide pandemic happens, how is rural America going to do? How are poorer more agrarian countries now doing in the midst of Covid compared to the industries countries?

Of course farmers would be worse off without cities. But cities would have simply ceased to exist all together without farmers.

Coastal cities can import food…

That implies that you still need farmers and you just outsourced them.

But we don’t subsidize them.

If I can’t find a job in my state based on my skillset, I can move to anywhere in the US. Heck, my company is on the opposite coast and I WFH. Knowledge workers have a lot more mobility and much less capital tied up in their labor.

In other words, if my state went to shit because CA is not subsidizing it, it wouldn’t affect me.

The country from where you'll be buying food from will and you can be sure you'll be paying for it.

>It's why when you cross over into Canada from the US, the landscape quickly changes to agricultural as what's often considered marginal to poor farmland in the US is considered prime ag land in Canada since they want to grow as much of their own food as possible.

Source? I inspected various parts of the canada-us border using google maps and can't find an example of this.

The system wasn’t built to favor rural areas, it was built to favor the sovereignty of the States, which are independent territories with their own systems of government, who specifically agreed to join the US in exchange for the representation they received in Congress and the Electoral process. Trying to walk back that compromise to let high population states dominate national politics is a violation of the social contract.

That’s why the States are referred to as experiments in democracy. It’s a decentralized form of government (With guardrails, written into the US Constitution). It doesn’t matter that there are millions of people in Los Angeles, their voice shouldn’t have a disproportionate say in how farmers in say, Iowa, run their government. The needs, economies, and demographics of different states are completely different and a using decentralized system of government is much more intuitive than trying to manage it from the top down.

Unless you’re gonna address how states were drafted and the politics behind that, this post is at best a credulous defense of federalism.

So in that case, shouldn’t voters in CA be able to refuse to subsidize rural states? We should have lower federal taxes and let each state fend for itself.

Then you should stop voting for people who want more taxes.

The people who want less taxes don’t want to cut spending, they increase deficits and they are damn sure not going yo cut subsidies to rural America. The people in CA have less voting power in the Senate than all of the states they are subsidizing.

The people in CA vote for one party, which is the party of redistribution on the national level. Would that party not bulge if it were punished by CA voters?

Both parties are the parties of redistribution. Republicans “redistribute” via farm subsidies, oil and gas subsidies, unneeded military bases to create jobs (bases that the military wants to close), “disability insurance” for people in rural America that are not disabled but don’t have the right kind of training to work the in demand jobs. Heck and lately unemployment insurance for people who lost their jobs because they refuse to get vaccinated.

But, the point is that people in CA can only elect two Senators while five or six states whose population doesn’t equal CA can elect 10 or 12.

California decided itself it wants be in a union with other states and accepted the conditions which enabled that union. I think it should be their right to secede from such a union if it is not in their interest anymore. I think you are also forgetting CA is also huge in agriculture and will certainly subsidize its farms even if it gets independent.

So how to fix this?

Remove states and all levels of local government? Just single voting area for entirely country where from pool of candidates those with most votes are elected? Just single federal level?

This is impossible in the USA without another civil war. The notion of states is a central part of our democratic republic, which was a compromise from the beginning. No matter how much anyone dislikes that opinion it is basically inarguable that states aren't going anywhere unless you plan on revolting and starting a new country.

Decrease federal taxes and spending to only the military and international affairs, cut out subsidies to states and let each state fend for themselves. Get rid of social security on the federal level and each state has their own pension that is transferable between states.

We will then find out how much red states truly miss “socialism” then.

It just seems like that since the rich currently use that to keep the status quo.

I'm reminded of the fact that whatever house of congress the republicans own all of a sudden become the most important legislative body. When the Dems had the house and the Reps had the senate, the house was an afterthought. When reversed, the house were the arbiters of final word on legislation (at least it was based on CNN's characterization for the last 20-odd years).

The state of gerrymandering also reflects this, to reduce the political power of democratic strength in populous cities.

If the rich had their power via cities, then districting would enforce this and the house would be the most powerful.

The federal government has inertia by design since the spoils system was removed. The rich have the means to influence this inertia over time.

Also, do you wonder why elections are so close? The rich pay only enough to form a coalition to maintain the status quo. They buy just enough to win some of the time, and even if they lose, they roadblock changes. They advance the agenda when they win, and resist when they don't.

Over time, that has resulted in the current state of wealth inequality.

Could you link to the articles about how much they hate trans people? I would see that as a strong indicator of hidden, ideological, partisanship — but I couldn’t find them.

I'm not familiar with this author at all, but from a search it looks like they wrote about the issue before moving to substack: https://thomasjprosser.wordpress.com/2021/02/22/whats-causin...

And a follow up post: https://thomasjprosser.wordpress.com/2021/02/25/why-speak-ou...

> if left/right party politics does not produce meaningful change, then what kind of politics can?

Try to raise awareness about issues that are roughly orthogonal to the main left-right divide. It's easy and can lead to major results and policy improvements over the status quo, precisely because very few people are interested in it.

Can you give some examples? I’m not arguing that they don’t exist, but I do think “easy” might be a stretch.

you've already lost when you buy into "left-right" bullshit, which is solely a gambit to coalesce and otherize in a way that maximizes power for party leaders.

the eternal struggle is between the populace and power-grubbers, because a little government in good hands is a net-good, while a lot of government (i.e., centralized power) or government in bad hands, is net-negative.

americans have completely lost this simple, eternal narrative in favor of just about anything spewing from democrats/republicans and their media surrogates. that's all bullshit. look past it and apply your own brains to figure out what you believe and want to support. forget parties, and especially forget any dipshit dichotomy like 'left-right'.

'other trash they have written' is a credibility disqualifier of the descriptor for me

Because there is no such thing as rational hatred?

I'm very sceptical of non specific hate hustlers. Character-conditioned or rational variants are peddled by academic observers who don't appear to have ever been threatened with life threatening hatred.

In the western world claims of being 'hated' are often a desperate cry for visibility and relevance in society.

Your comment sounds tribal.

US politics is increasingly tribal because of the realities described. The irony is the political landscape is controlled by the DNC & the RNC, who are effectively the political equivalent of Mastercard and Visa. No other parties can get on a debate stage or any airtime. The two political machines are partnered with huge corporate media companies to manipulate popular opinion, instill fear and rage and to destroy any coherent opposition, including within those two manufactured and manipulated tribes

I agree with what you're saying.

An important fact that has gone completely under the radar is the radically changing demographics of the media (both sides). The media used to be much more decentralized with a much greater diversity of views (rich and poor).

Now with increasing technology and centralization of distribution, the demographics of people in the media is largely that of the elites. Journalists working for CNN, Fox or MSNBC are paid very high wages, come from the best schools and according to all conventional markers are in the top 10% of society. And this is reflected in the content they put out which is to generate controversy, keep the plebs squabbling amongst themselves and divert attention way from wealthy elites.

This is their agenda and it's working fabulously.

We also live in an era of career politicians. Previously proven business and societal success was leveraged politically in campaigns by candidates becoming politicians.

Today we only have choices of mckinsey/academic/media/think tank generic empty suits to vote for. This is true all over the western world.

Example: DNC's chosen one Buttigieg cargo culting being a politician:

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politic...

I'm a registered Democrat FWIW in case this triggers someone

Sometimes I think democracy is like the human body. As it ages it becomes more frail and riddled with disease.

I've been reading 'Brave New World revisited' by Huxley..:

'Under the relentless thrust of accelerating over-population and increasing over-organization, and by means of ever more effective methods of mind-manipulation, the democracies will change their nature; the quaint old forms—elections, parliaments, Supreme Courts and all the rest—will remain. The underlying substance will be a new kind of non-violent totalitarianism. All the traditional names, all the hallowed slogans will remain exactly what they were in the good old days. Democracy and freedom will be the theme of every broadcast and editorial—but democracy and freedom in a strictly Pickwickian sense. Meanwhile the ruling oligarchy and its highly trained elite of soldiers, policemen, thought-manufacturers and mind-manipulators will quietly run the show as they see fit.'

https://gutenberg.ca/ebooks/huxleya-bravenewworldrevisited/h...

consider engaging with the content rather than the tone. you might learn something.

I was merely making the point that his post (unintentionally) confirmed the main thesis of the article.

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