Comment by tunesmith | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tunesmith | Hacker News Reader

I've always wondered exactly where the line is between ignorance and messaging for politicians. Like, when he says, "[Obama's] redistribution policies have led to rising income inequality and negative income gains for families."

He can't actually believe that is a strictly true statement. I'd think that any Republican politician with an understanding of economics would have to believe that a president's policies are at best contributory rather than a distinct cause. I get it as messaging; if one believes that progressive taxation has side effects that cause inequality, then they'd want to gloss over things to blame the presidency for it. So, I tend to believe that most politicians have private meetings where they talk about what they actually think is going on, and then translate it into brain-deadening messaging for the public. But sometimes I wonder if for a lot of these politicians, how much of what they say is actually because of willful ignorance rather than messaging.

Like that guy with the snowball that argued against global warming, that almost definitely has to be chutzpah rather than stupidity, right? Like, he would understand the concept that just because a stock price spikes down, it could still be true that the stock market is going up over time. So he has to secretly understand the argument about global warming, right? And then we waste our time trying to explain how a snowball doesn't disprove anything, and he doesn't care because he already knows that. There's got to be a term more accurate than chutzpah for someone that deliberately lies and plays dumb, knowing they can get away with it.

>most politicians have private meetings where they talk about what they actually think is going on, and then translate it into brain-deadening messaging for the public

Yes, sort of, but the reality of these things are so well understood all politicians that there's not often that much of a reason to discuss these things outright.

When a politician (and by "politician," I do not mean a single person. I mean an amalgam of the politician, their staffers, and their advisers) are weighing an issue, the actual merits of the arguments are just a part of the equation. They're weighing the interests of various groups and constituencies, they're considering coalitions and alliances and favors, and making a pragmatic decision. Usually a mix of their conscience, their constituents, their fundraisers, and their party.

Rand is a bit of an outlier on this front because he is a legitimate True Believer, but he's still a pragmatic true believer.

Then they hire someone like me to turn it into the soul deadening messaging.

But, yes, these people understand both sides of the issue. They are usually very smart. And if they don't understand the other side of the issue, their close advisers do.

Oh, so you're the problem. ;-)

It's too bad, really. The general public gets more engaged for presidential elections, and they start caring about the actual issues, but then there's no resource to allow the citizen to drill down into the actual argument as deeply as they'd like, so they can try to understand it to the depth that a close adviser would. So instead they hear a bunch of bull and they get disillusioned and go back to voting while uninformed. Which is really what the politicians want, anyway.

Ehhh gonna have to nitpick again

> there's no resource to allow the citizen to drill down into the actual argument as deeply as they'd like, so they can try to understand it to the depth that a close adviser would.

There are tons of resources [one example: http://www.vox.com/cards]. But the reason we have a republic is so that individuals don't need to become policy experts. They can rely on heuristics and the system is robust enough to handle it. This usually works pretty well

>go back to voting while uninformed. Which is really what the politicians want, anyway.

Most pols don't want this. Politicians want informed voters so people will be aware of the extreme efforts they go through to make their constituents happy. Election positions are determined based on polls, and extreme rigorous scientific effort goes into shaping candidates who are able and want to represent the policy desires of their constituents. (sure, the politicians might not actually believe these things, but to me that's usually irreverent. They want to be hired to do a job, which is representing the views of other people) The problem is, uninformed voters are more willing to switch sides based on emotion, ruining the math.

Informed citizens would be bad for some politicians (for example, blue state republicans who have to walk the line between the demands of their extremely conservative donors and their more moderate constituents). While some would do better with more informed voters (conservative red state democrats, for example, would be more able to shed the reputation of their national party and run on their conservative values if fewer people voted on policy as opposed to heuristics)

Basically, it's complicated

Maybe you could use the word "sophistry"? I don't agree for TFA, however. Paul didn't have much chance anyway, and in proposing this he pretty much drops out of the running completely. You can't get far without the corporate executive class bankrolling your superPAC. So, it's not perfect (he's keeping the mortgage deduction!), but relative to most politicians it's a good effort.

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