The rise of American authoritarianism

[mongers]

How did this work in practice?

In terms of Germany, they weren't content to simply nationalize industries. They took complete command of entire sectors of the economy at once. Imagine Joe Biden sitting down in a conference room with the CEOs of every auto manufacturer in America and telling each one how much product to produce, how many employees each would be allotted, how much they were to pay them, where their raw materials would come from and how much of them they would be rationed, to whom they would sell their final product and for what price, etc. And then doing it again with mining, energy, railways, etc. I think literally all foreign exchange went through the state.

And that is before the war.

In many ways, they made the Soviets look like amateurs at the whole state control of the economy thing.

We had that too.  It was called WWII.

Yes and the Americans, Brits and Soviet were a bit more efficient at it than the Axis countries.

Plus, perhaps largely due to control of the seas, they co-ordinated their wartime economies far better than the axis partners did.

[jimmy olsen]

An excellent article by David Frum on what's gone wrong with American politics.

Too long to post here on my phone, but well worth a look.
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/05/the-seven-broken-guardrails-of-democracy/484829/

[Razgovory]

Yes and the Americans, Brits and Soviet were a bit more efficient at it than the Axis countries.

Plus, perhaps largely due to control of the seas, they co-ordinated their wartime economies far better than the axis partners did.

My point is that the Germany existed in only two states, gearing up for war and total war.  Pretty much all governments are going to have a very large hand in private business in that case.

[mongers]

Yes and the Americans, Brits and Soviet were a bit more efficient at it than the Axis countries.

Plus, perhaps largely due to control of the seas, they co-ordinated their wartime economies far better than the axis partners did.

My point is that the Germany existed in only two states, gearing up for war and total war.  Pretty much all governments are going to have a very large hand in private business in that case.

In that case you should have said, besides I don't think thats a good characterisation.

From when Hitler came to power, what about; 33-38 Gearing up for war (building up a wealth of military resources and well trained personnel), 39-42 Confused mess of short/long term planning and production. 43-45 Total war effort.

[Syt]

Was searching the forum for something and this thread popped up from the run-up to the 2016 election. With 9 years of hindsight, skimming through the comments with the benefits of hindsight was interesting what expectations and fears we had at the time about Trump possibly being elected and what damage (if any) he could do.

[The Minsky Moment]

Who's more authoritarian than Zerobama who rules by decree without congressional approval.

 

Hmm, yeah, that's a tough one to answer . . .

[crazy canuck]

Who's more authoritarian than Zerobama who rules by decree without congressional approval.

Now that's just silly.

I guess from your perspective, it's easy to laugh off Obama's power grab via executive orders as "silly".  Here in the US we have to live under it.

It got better

[Oexmelin]

Turns out there was a lot of unwarranted optimism about checks and balances...

[The Minsky Moment]

I was amused to see that I mocked Ryan for being a weak speaker presiding over a fractious caucus.  Compared to Johnson, 2016-era Ryan was the second coming of Thomas Reed.

[Razgovory]

Somewhere, probably in the Trump thread, there is me freaking out that Trump wouldn't leave office if he wasn't reelected and a several people telling me how stupid I was to believe that.

[crazy canuck]

Turns out there was a lot of unwarranted optimism about checks and balances...

I don't think it was unwarranted in the first term.  Their system worked during the first term.  You don't see anyone here saying they are optimistic it will work this time.

[crazy canuck]

Somewhere, probably in the Trump thread, there is me freaking out that Trump wouldn't leave office if he wasn't reelected and a several people telling me how stupid I was to believe that.

Well, it was.  But again, nobody is saying that is a stupid claim to make this time around.