[FRIAM] Biden beats Trump

Thu Nov 12 11:52:44 EST 2020

"But steeling yourself against WHAT?"

The impulse to do the same thing.  Being judgemental is so human that Jesus
warned against it.  I don't usually quote him but...

Judge not, that ye be not judged.

2 For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what
measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.

3 And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but
considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?

---
Frank C. Wimberly
140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
Santa Fe, NM 87505

505 670-9918
Santa Fe, NM

On Thu, Nov 12, 2020, 9:36 AM <thompnickson2 at gmail.com> wrote:

> EricS,
>
>
>
> Agreed,  99 and 44/100ths, except where you say,
>
>
>
> That’s where I attach to Marcus’s rebuttal that they can be understood for
> being angry and desperate, but they don’t get a pass for wallowing in it.
>
>
>
> At this point, any psychologist in the room will ask you (and/or Marcus),
> What is your moral judgment of THEM doing for YOU?
>
>
>
> That’s NOT a rhetorical question.  It has an answer. Presumably the answer
> has something to do with steeling yourself, not in Glen’s sense of that
> word. But steeling yourself against WHAT?  If I never thought or felt that
> particular WHAT, would I need to steel myself against it?
>
>
>
> n
>
>
>
> Nicholas Thompson
>
> Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
>
> Clark University
>
> ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com
>
> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
>
>
>
>
>
> *From:* Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> *On Behalf Of *David Eric Smith
> *Sent:* Thursday, November 12, 2020 6:59 AM
> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <
> friam at redfish.com>
> *Cc:* David Eric Smith <desmith at santafe.edu>
> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] Biden beats Trump
>
>
>
> All this, too, turns on things that are facts of the matter.
>
>
>
> Roger’s post is of course both excellent and empathetic, and when I read
> it I wanted to just say thanks for it.
>
>
>
> Marcus’s counterpoint I also agree with.
>
>
>
>
>
> But at the end of the day, whether your decision is good or bad turns on
> what it accomplishes in the actual world of events, relative to other
> decisions you could make.
>
>
>
> Fighting public health measures because you are bitter does not get you
> back to work sooner.  Indeed, it does nothing materially good for anybody.
> That seems to be a fairly easy fact from which to start.  Taiwan never had
> a shutdown.  Japan never had a lockdown, and even in metropolitan Tokyo,
> where infection density was probably one of the worst two areas (the other
> being up around Sapporo, per million), there was about a month of business
> shutdown.  One time.  I forget or didn’t learn details about S. Korea, but
> I think they never had a broad or ongoing lockdown; maybe short local ones
> at most, and some business suspensions.  Those countries will have public
> health costs, a period of broad-based business costs, and sector-specific
> longer-term severe business costs in areas like bars or nightclubs or
> karaoke parlors, etc.  It will be heavy but it need not lead to a
> depression.  If vaccines work, the duration of the really bad sector impact
> will be measured in years, but not be permanent.
>
>
>
> The US, by refusing to spend 10G$ in mitigation at the beginning, followed
> by wallowing in indulgence of wounded vanities, has now spent 2.4T$ in
> extra unemployment, and probably needs to spend something on that order
> more.  It will go on, in the best case, for a year from the start.  Plus
> they need to pay the public health support costs, which are much higher
> than they were at the start.  The ones with market power can push the
> exploitation curve harder and harder, so that the stock markets remain high
> while unemployment and all three of personal, business, and government debt
> climb and climb, but at some point no amount of market power will
> compensate for the reality that debt service has consumed all the income
> workers can generate, and they are not extended any more revolving credit.
> For the US government, I guess something like that will happen when foreign
> lenders compute that it will be mechanistically impossible for the US to
> repay any further loans they make to it by buying government debt.  I have
> in mind the picture of core collapse at the end of the red giant phase of
> stellar lifecycles, that leads to supernovae.  I don’t see anything that
> escapes from just these accounting identities, which turn on what has
> already been spent.
>
>
>
> To be sure, there are better and worse decisions going forward.  Money on
> testing is nearly money poured down a well when you have as many cases as
> we now do; the return is much less because you are dabbing your eyes with a
> hanky while standing out in a downpour.  So some strategic and focused use,
> with emphasis on very low-cost surveillance tests, combined with heavy
> public health behavior pressure, is probably all that pays.  All other
> money in public health goes into vaccine distribution supply chains, I
> guess.
>
>
>
> The other major area, I take from one of Shubik’s themes.  He always
> emphasized (as I have said on this list before) that the government has two
> roles in an economy.  One is as the setter of rules of the game; the other
> is as large coordinated player in the game.  So, e.g. monetary versus
> fiscal policy.  Monetary is setting the rate of interest for central-bank
> borrowing, which doesn’t set the money in the society but affects the rates
> at which private actors can choose to change it.  Fiscal is government
> spending, “quantitative easing” by buying troubled debt, issuing government
> bonds, and so forth.
>
>
>
> Similarly, Shubik used to say repeatedly that there should be a Federal
> Jobs Program, which is not equally activated all the time, but is a source
> of emergency employment stability during down-cycles.  One could pick
> things like discretionary infrastructure repair, which is not the highest
> priority during boom times, when some of that can be done through private
> companies, but is a useful thing to pay people to do during employment
> crises because it gives predictable income and gets something done that was
> needed anyway.  I would put retooling to non-fossil energy storage and
> distribution systems, with worker re-training to do it, in that category
> too.  Two birds with one stone.
>
>
>
> To me, where that fits in is in parallel to the rules/player distinction.
> Supporting re-formation of collective bargaining to try to rein in the
> productivity-pay gap, or minimum wage laws, are regulatory roles.  On the
> long term, they are necessary, but they are too slow to save this
> administration from being swamped again in a backlash midterm, and then
> getting replaced by the true antichrist in the next presidential.  Direct
> hiring with a federal jobs program is the only thing I can see where the
> government can act fast enough, on large enough scale, to deliver to the
> blue-collar formerly-democratic voting bloc a real reason to support that
> administration.
>
>
>
> Similarly, I have head complaining, but not done the work to know how much
> of it is true, that business loan-support is getting in significant part
> siphoned off by people who don’t really need it, to the exclusion of many
> who do.  There is some new micro-data modeling consortium involving some
> Harvard professors and somebody else (heard in a snippet on NPR) to try to
> micro-target the next round of bailout money (unemployment and business
> support) to where it is really needed.  But one could say that one way to
> avoid the overhead of skimming that comes with giving it to the private
> sector, is to try to identify areas where the government can just directly
> employ the privately unemployed.  It then controls the wages and is sue
> they end up with the workers.  That’s not a great solution, because it
> leaves the private business that employed them in the lurch, so some other
> layer would be needed to tide those people over in a sort of dormant or tun
> state.  But in terms of cost per output, it seems that it recovers certain
> losses that have been major leakages in the style of spending done so far.
>
>
>
> Not to claim that any of this is easy or that I see what should be done (I
> don’t have either the knowledge or the expertise).  But it does seem that
> there are more mechanisms available than those being used.  It also seems
> that distinguishing the timescales between the government’s impact as
> setter of rules of the game, versus as player in the game, gives a starting
> point when trying to figure out how to regain some electoral stability and
> give the Dems enough of a footprint in rural areas to be allowed to
> actually do work that would help anybody.
>
>
>
> What I say above may or may not be correct.  I put it forth as an example
> of a kind of argument that one can try to make, because SOMETHING is
> actually correct, and one can try to figure out what that is.
>
>
>
> If the battleground or red-stater’s way of life is to be permanently
> angry, support the abusers who make their situations even worse, then get
> angrier as a result and support even worse abusers, they may be sincere,
> but I think it is a completely non-ideological thing to argue that they are
> not pursuing the best course of action that exists.  And the existence of
> other countries (which one can read about on the internet!) is sufficient
> evidence that something is possible, that an ordinary person ought to be
> capable of knowing it is not a law of physics that things have to be
> exactly as bad as they currently are here.  That’s where I attach to
> Marcus’s rebuttal that they can be understood for being angry and
> desperate, but they don’t get a pass for wallowing in it.
>
>
>
> Anyway,
>
>
>
> Eric
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Nov 11, 2020, at 1:35 PM, Marcus Daniels <marcus at snoutfarm.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> Roger writes:
>
>
>
> < These people weren't voting for rascism, misogyny, narcissism,
> authoritarianism, xenophobia, gimp shaming, science denialism, or all that
> other baggage, they were overlooking it for reasons. >
>
>
>
> Many of those that could not work due to COVID restrictions are often in
> battleground or red states.   That’s the only way I can possibly begin to
> rationalize the 71 million.  To me, overlooking those things is
> unacceptable.   It’s not useful to exercise any empathy for them.   They
> made a deal with the devil.   It should have been a win by 50 million, not
> 5 million.
>
>
>
> Marcus
>
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