Hillary vs Bernie

[Eddie Teach]

you can pick any color you like as long as it is black or white.

That was Marco Rubio's problem.

[Valmy]

For the record, *I* was the one who got lectured for my "comfort" by DGuller!   I just can't win with you guys.  But you all obviously need a way of discharging the bad conscience you unconsciously feel about playing your appointed role in propping up the status quo as it takes us over a cliff, so I don't mind.

Why am I part of a DGuller hivemind? You talked about how you wanted to fight to change things. I was offering you advice. The solutions I tend to hear from the left strike me as more likely to throw us off cliffs more quickly than turn things around. And, again, I am not convinced that cliff falling is as inevitable as some of you political wonks seem to think it is so it takes a bit to convince me that we need to act in a radical manner. I think science and technology determine things more than political structures anyway and the changes coming are going to be so YUUGE that the results are unpredictable.

[The Minsky Moment]

Ludwig Von Mises wrote in 1947:

". .. In spite of the anti-capitalistic policies of all governments and of almost all political parties, the capitalist mode of production is in many countries still fulfilling its social function in supplying the consumers with more, better and cheaper goods.
. . .Not offices and bureaucrats, but big business deserves credit for the fact that most of the families in the United States own a motor car and a radio set. The increase in per capita consumption in America as compared with conditions a quarter of a century ago is not an achievement of laws and executive orders. It is an accomplishment of business men who enlarged the size of their factories or built new ones.
. . .But the spirit which raised these knaves to autocratic power survives. It permeates textbooks and periodicals, it speaks through the mouths of teachers and politicians, it manifests itself in party programmes and in plays and novels. As long as this spirit prevails there cannot be any hope of durable peace, of democracy, of the preservation of freedom or of a steady improvement in the nation's economic well-being." 

Donald Trump in 2016:

We're going to get Apple to start building their damn computers and things in this country instead of in other countries

Siege quotes von Mises but backs the most anti-capitalist candidate.

[Eddie Teach]

I thought Siege liked Cruz.

[The Minsky Moment]

I said she favored it.  Her words were that the Australian system was "worth looking at".  In politician speak, that means she favors it.

No it was very clear in context she was talking about a voluntary buyback program.  She compared it to cash for clunkers which was also voluntary.  You've been breitbarted.

[Capetan Mihali]

The introduction of "comfort" into the discussion was purely DGuller's, so I don't see how I can be chastised by you for chastisising people about it, that's how you joined his hivemind.

I have nothing to "sell" you, but it's clear that a lot of Americans right now are deeply unhappy with the political status quo -- "the way things are," "the breaks," "being realistic," etc. -- across the ideological spectrum. 

And the unexpected success of the Sanders campaign, which I will gladly admit is pretty "single-issue," shows that a lot of people, and a lot of Democrats, don't like living in a country reaching new extremes in first-world wealth inequality daily. 

I'm sure plenty of them will be "scared straight" by the type of thinking in this thread and vote Clinton, so don't worry.  But some of us just don't have the strong stomachs for holding back the nausea inspired by voting for a candidate who made $675,000 giving mysterious speeches to Goldman Sachs since "that's what they offered."  Was September 2008 really so long ago?  Jesus, Obama must be the greatest President of the last 100 years to make people forget what the investment banks did to this country and to the world seven years ago...

[The Minsky Moment]

2008 wasn't that long ago.  It followed 8 years of regulatory lenity for the financial industry.  8 years that might not have played out the same way had some people held their noses and voted for the "establishment" PAC-funded candidate Al Gore instead of Nader.   Is that something you are that eager to repeat?

[Berkut]

Mihali is exactly what I am talking about when I try to convince people that Trump (or rather the problem that he is a symptom of) is NOT a "Republican" problem.

The GOP has created the most fertile ground for someone like him to thrive in with their xenophobia and intolerance and embrace of the stupid, but Trump is getting votes from Republicans and a lot of independents who recognize that the system itself is broken, and people like Clinton cannot be a solution, since they are actually the problem.

Now, IMO here the solution is considerably worse than the problem. Or rather, the solution cannot solve the problem anyway, and hence all the incredibly negative baggage he carries with him cannot possibly be worth it.

But I completely understand where he is coming from, and fundamentally agree with his stance - at least in theory.

[Josquius]

I specifically said he seemed good for America.

And unsure if his stance of promoting domestic industries would be good for the world.  Hence the analogy to the situation of British coal industry in the 70s-80s: protecting the mines was good for Britain but it wasn't clear that it was good for the world, especially the other coal-producing parts of the world...

No doubt.
But britain didn't control the world economy (and thus the flow of jobs) the way the us does.
If the us wanted to it could really do a lot of damage to others.

[Baron von Schtinkenbutt]

I think Jill Stein would make a great alternative to Hillary in the general.  She's not owned by Wall Street, won't let Bibi dictate our foreign policy, and was a physician. 

I may send her a few bucks this summer.  I admire her moxie.

I looked the other day at Stein's ideas and it reminded me why America is only a two party system. Chicken and egg problem but a third party really needs to not be batshit insane to garner support.

The catch-22 is that due to the structural issues of first-past-the-post voting combined with a winner-take-all electoral college a third party needs to be batshit insane to get attention in the first place.  In order to get attention as a sane person you basically have to stick a "D" or "R" after your name.

The US is a two-party system because it is structured that way, not because the alternatives are insane.

[Capetan Mihali]

2008 wasn't that long ago.  It followed 8 years of regulatory lenity for the financial industry.  8 years that might not have played out the same way had some people held their noses and voted for the "establishment" PAC-funded candidate Al Gore instead of Nader.   Is that something you are that eager to repeat?

Or perhaps the last eight years, to the extent they evinced any real desire to introduce regulatory restraint in the financial industry, were only so because enough voters in 2000 showed the Democratic Party that it cannot take its left wing for granted and the newly-elected President acted with this in mind? 

And the eight years before that, the ones with a Democrat at the helm and the current candidate at his side influencing policy decisions, maybe they only repealed the Glass-Steagal Act because of all the anti-"establishment" voters who went for Perot? 

Alt-history is fun, but it does have its limitations.

[The Minsky Moment]

Alt-history is fun, but it does have its limitations.

Agreed.  That's why I am talking history.  We did get 8 years of George Bush, and Nader voters were what swung that.  That actually happened.

[garbon]

I think Jill Stein would make a great alternative to Hillary in the general.  She's not owned by Wall Street, won't let Bibi dictate our foreign policy, and was a physician. 

I may send her a few bucks this summer.  I admire her moxie.

I looked the other day at Stein's ideas and it reminded me why America is only a two party system. Chicken and egg problem but a third party really needs to not be batshit insane to garner support.

The catch-22 is that due to the structural issues of first-past-the-post voting combined with a winner-take-all electoral college a third party needs to be batshit insane to get attention in the first place.  In order to get attention as a sane person you basically have to stick a "D" or "R" after your name.

The US is a two-party system because it is structured that way, not because the alternatives are insane.

I said chicken and egg.

[derspiess]

No it was very clear in context she was talking about a voluntary buyback program.  She compared it to cash for clunkers which was also voluntary.

The Australian "buyback" program was mandatory (basically the Australian government was compensating you for seized property) and I don't see how it was analogous to Cash for Clunkers.  Unless I totally misunderstood what Cash for Clunkers was all about.

Now if she wants to do a gun version of Cash for Clunkers I'll happily participate.  $4,500 toward an ammo-efficient rifle for trading in one of my beat-up old Mosin Nagants?  IN

You've been breitbarted.

And you've been motherjonesed?

[grumbler]

Why should I vote for a candidate I don't want to be President?  Why is it my responsibility to use my vote to help the Democratic Party candidate win when they don't put forward a candidate I support? 

So long as you really cannot see a difference between a President Trump and a President Clinton, your reasoning is fine; neither party has earned your vote, and both have earned your abstinence.

If you are not indifferent to the result, though, and are merely expressing a fit of pique that your Quixote didn't knock down the windmill, then i hope you grow up before November, or you'll be doing yourself a serious disservice.