2020 US Election (Part Two)

[Ajidica]

I don’t miss it. Downtown Mpls. has turned into a craphole. What happened to City Center, and Dayton’s? Used to be such a nice place, especially the restaurants. IDS also had that Woolworth’s in it too.

Not sure when you left, but downtown Minneapolis has actually gotten better. There has been a massive effort to revitalize the area south of City Hall/Viking Stadium. What had been parking lots and half-abandoned warehouses are now nice apartments, restaurants, and trendy offices. Most of the actual problems were concentrated in Uptown/Lake where rents got turbocharged which were set to kill the whole area right before Covid struck.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

So, rather, is there evidence for a "Shy Biden" supporter ? I actually kinda expect the polls to be. Abit wrong afain, but this time in the other direction. And even a 2 point move can do a lot there.

I wouldn't go that far, but to me it seems that many Biden voters are not that enthusiastic about Biden but are extremely enthusiastic to cast anti-Trump ballots.

 

[mitsho]

I wouldn't go that far, but to me it seems that many Biden voters are not that enthusiastic about Biden but are extremely enthusiastic to cast anti-Trump ballots.

But we know of them. I'm talking of Trump2016-voters who will abstain or vote for Biden, but will not tell anyone about that, since they live in a very conservative area. How many of them are there?

 

[El_Machinae]

'Only when the last tree is felled, the last animal hunted, the last beach flooded, will you learn that mankind cannot live off money alone.'

Yes, but was a specific response to a libertarian who's participated in the downplaying of the risks. If more people felt responsible for offsetting their fungible damage, AGW would be less of an issue. AGW needs money to solve the problem and it needs money to compensate those damaged by the problem. These resources come from the profits of causing the damage in the first place (and if the profits from the enterprise cannot offset the damage, then they should actually be banned).

Just as the damage expresses itself in multitudinous ways, people's offsets can express themselves in multitudinous ways. It's a multi-factorial problem.

And, as I said upthread, people who argue about the the aggregate benefits while dismissing the individual harms implicitly consent to me peeing on their rosebushes. Because pee is fertilizer that will help that soil grow carrots someday.

Plus: millions of years ago, that same spot of land was regularly being peed on.

In other words, the same two justifications that they use while downplaying the damage they're doing to those who're currently making their best-efforts use of their property.

 

[Farm Boy]

Careful there, they might decide to shove lye up your dongle to make it able to grow corn.

If it's not profitable they won't do it, they can't. If they're not capital flush they can't donate, and if they are capital flush studies indicate they won't donate because the upper middle class sucks as people. So, it needs to be made profitable. We need thousands upon thousands of lives spent energetically making things better. Literally making a living. Otherwise you get a bunch of Assclownees and people wearing genital hats screaming at each other over surface virtues.

 

[El_Machinae]

Hmmmn, something can be 'profitable to do' without being sufficiently profitable to offset their negative externalities. The total profit has to encompass both. Right now, the street value of an air-bag torn from the passenger side of a car is about $40. And someone can make a reasonable income breaking into cars and liberating them. But it has to be banned, because the damages done to the victim overwhelm the total profits. Compare that to me driving for SkipTheDishes, where I can (let's pretend) earn a living that actually pays off the depreciation. BUT, I cannot afford to compensate any accident victim if I seriously damage them. So, I'm forced to buy insurance to (try to) cover my negative externalities. And because we have to pay the insurance, the game-winning move is to drive in ways that reduce its total cost (this is also best for everyone else), but to not limit driving to the point where you need social assistance.


BUT, it's not a 'donation' to offset ones damages, unless you're sociopathic! Sure, legally it might be because society doesn't force you to. But it's paying what's owed. To a libertarian, who doesn't believe in forced property theft (i.e., degrading their shoreline and ecology just so I can BBQ more), the only solution is to compensate. They leave the note on the window after they back the car into someone. The right to back up the car ends at the side-door of someone else's. Especially if they're 10 - 100x poorer, as the victims of AGW are. The right to raise sea level ends at someone else's shoreline.

Your point needs repeating: 'people need to make a living to make the world better'. That's why shifts in consumer spending are required, to replace the damaging jobs with less-damaging jobs. That's why people need to deliberately trim high-damage leisure consumption in order to create a savings pool to compensate their damage. The damage is so multi-factorial that it's best seen as fungible and the efforts to compensate are likewise. Voting patterns are part of this fungible effort, so is effective activism, but so are the literal dollars.

 

[Farm Boy]

It has to be profitable for them to do. They have to be able to make a living doing it. Paying the externalities can be shared, sure*. Food is undercheap, underinvested(seed corn, as you put it). The work red states do (aggregate) is undercheap, undercompensated. Which you know, that's how class develops. People doing necessary things get ****ed, as you've said before. If a thing is necessary, people need to not get ****ed for doing it. Otherwise, w/e man. Good luck?

*Has to be. Easy to make a regulation banning nitrogen fertilizers and let it stand alone. But in global trade, that just shifts where the nitrogen fertilizers get used. There's still rainforests around. Fungibility!

 

[El_Machinae]

It has to be profitable for them to do.

"That's why shifts in consumer spending are required, to replace the damaging jobs with less-damaging jobs."

I'm forced to work to earn a living, and I'll do what people pay me to do. I have much more discretion in my spending, and it's other people's spending that determine what I'll do. And if I have leanings in a specific direction, willing to take a pay-cut to make the world a better place, I still need that income.

Everyone I'm talking to has discretionary spending. The people who're 10x lower than them on the income scale don't. But for those who 'don't believe' that AGW will cause measurable damage to the poor, the only solution is to create an insurance pool to compensate from if they're wrong. "Worst case", they have future savings. "Worst, worst case" is that they didn't create a savings pool and just pooped on poor people for their own personal pleasure.

Look, if people cared more about their footprints, I'd lose my current job. BUT spending is zero-sum - I'd just work doing something else when they spent their discretionary dollars elsewhere.

 

[Farm Boy]

Well, I actually ate a steak this year. It's been a long time. She surprised me for the anniversary, it was already cooked, and it was very very yum. I'm in pig country and I mostly stick to chicken. Lent is fish/chicken once a week. So I think we're mostly on the same page.

 

[Birdjaguar]

From John Cleese:

A book I found fascinating was: “Hillbilly Elegy.” After J.D. Vance went to Harvard, he studied his hillbilly family and discovered that, more than anything, they didn’t want to be governed by anyone smarter than they were.

Trump supporters?

 

[Kaitzilla]

Wow, the early vote totals in 2020 are amazing!


Votes collected by Halloween - 90.48 Million.

Trump 2016 - 62.98 Million
Hillary 2016 - 65.85 Million

Early voting sure is convenient.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

But we know of them. I'm talking of Trump2016-voters who will abstain or vote for Biden, but will not tell anyone about that, since they live in a very conservative area. How many of them are there?

That's a good question and one I have no answer for. If I had to guess, I would say not many.

 

[Camikaze]

One thing I don't understand about the 'shy Trump voters' and 'shy Biden voters' takes is that they never seem to really be based on anything substantial. I mean it's possible that one of those takes is correct, but in the absence of conducting your own empirical research you would think the safest bet is to just go with the empirical research of people who do it for a living.

 

[stinkubus]

That's because unless there is a systematic effort to mislead pollsters "Shy Trump" voters is a euphemism for "sampling error".

 

[Berzerker]

I gotta go with Biden winning this election, thats based on the yard signs I've seen. Many Trump signs in 2016 and a handful of Clinton, but I've seen more Biden signs this time around. Not a lot more, but a noticeable difference.

 

[Gori the Grey]

Trump supporters?

Vance's book was written in large part to explain Trump supporters to the rest of America.

 

[Lexicus]

Vance's book was written in large part to explain Trump supporters to the rest of America.

https://thebaffler.com/latest/contra-vance-bryan

 

[Gori the Grey]

wasn't endorsing the book (haven't read it), just telling Bird that it's no accident that it describes Trump supporters; that was its intent.

 

[Lexicus]

wasn't endorsing the book (haven't read it), just telling Bird that it's no accident that it describes Trump supporters; that was its intent.

And I was simply offering a take on it, which also contains more information about the topic which Vance was mentioned as an authority on.

 

[Zardnaar]

3 days to go, Sunday here.

Probably won't know much until Thursday morning, polls close late Wednesday evening for us.

CNN or someone live stream it on YouTube?