(Part 2) Top products from r/NeutralPolitics

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Top comments that mention products on r/NeutralPolitics:

u/rynebrandon · 61 pointsr/NeutralPolitics

> As someone who is economically illiterate, I'd like to know if there is any value whatsoever to what I typically hear for the conservative talking points for helping the economy (aka de-regulation, lower barriers to entry, cut taxes, etc)

Yes. Absolutely, there are. Markets are widely agreed upon to be the most efficient way to allocate most products in a world of unlimited desires and very limited resources. The first chapter of any economics textbook will outline these benefits excellently.

But there are limits to what you can do with these tools since, despite what many people would tell you, it's actually quite difficult to lay the groundwork for a properly functioning market. Listen to the differences in the rhetoric used by mainstream Republicans like Marco Rubio and Mitt Romney and more libertarian-oriented politicians like Rand Paul and Gary Johnson. The former often talks about how praiseworthy American business is and the latter often talks about markets, that might seem like a fine distinction but it matters a lot.

Let me use an extended example to illustrate.

There are certain assumptions that economics relies upon: rational buyers and sellers looking to maximize their utility, with ordered preferences and an understanding of their limitations and needs, both sides have access to the information necessary to make an informed decision, the goods being sold must be rival and excludable.

Most importantly for this example, there must be competing buyers and competing sellers using price to signal their desire for a good or service.

Now, let's take a public utility like electricity. Where I live I only have one option for electricity, a company called AEP. I only have three market option I can exercise: to buy electricity from them, move at tremendous cost to myself or choose to go without electricity, also at tremendous cost to myself. Moving or not getting electricity hurts me a lot more than my lost revenue hurts AEP so they have way more market power than I do in the transaction and since they are my only option, they can set the price at whatever they want.

Now, the only way for me to have true options would be multiple companies building multiple electrical grids and my choosing which one I want to run to my house. Then there would be competition and by and by the competitors would drive the price down on each other. However, while that might be great for me, building an electric grid is very, very expensive. Electric companies build these grids initially at an enormous loss and they wouldn't take that risk if they don't have a reasonable expectation of recouping their investment.

So, let's say company A decides to build an electric grid in my city but any other company could use the grid once it was built and compete for my business. Well, that's no good because company A would be at a huge disadvantage since company B and C aren't in the hole for having built the infrastructure in the first place. Companies B and C could charge way less than company A. So, no company has any incentive to be the first mover - everyone waits for everyone else to build the grid first and, thus, no grid ever gets built.

Thus, you need the government to step in and say, "company A, if you build the electrical grid, you will have a monopoly on this area for X period of time, to guarantee you make your initial investment back." But, since company A is now a monopoly and can charge whatever they want, the government also steps in and regulates the amount charged.

The most efficient outcome is achieved only with government intervention in this case, and cases like this are not at all uncommon.

Now, since there's no real "market" for providing me electricity, I think most economists would agree it's a suitable place for government intervention. However, pro-business politicians will often push to have previously public enterprises (like my electricity) privatized in order to increase "efficiency." However, what they're really doing is providing a monopoly to a company who doesn't even need to make the initial infrastructure investment (since it's already built) and get huge profits simply for lying in the cut and providing no real value-added to their customers. A private company needs to turn a profit, the government doesn't. So, for public utilities you actually often end up paying less when it's run by government or at least through a public corporation than when the same is run by a private firm. Thus, pushing for a business to run such an enterprise isn't embracing the benefits of the market, it's corporate welfare.

Republicans often look to private contracts and business as inherently better and more efficient, almost as an article of faith. But very often, the most efficient outcome requires substantial government intervention. I would say that after 35 years of a broad program to deregulate business, cut taxes and devolve federal authority we have reached a saturation point of the benefits that can be derived that way.

u/bharder · 17 pointsr/NeutralPolitics

In Economics "investing" is investing in capital such as factories, equipment, or training. -- Basically, "new production".

---

edited to be more accurate:

From Principles of Macroeconomics by Robert Frank & Ben Bernanke.

>Investment is spending by firms on final goods and services, primarily capital goods. Investment is divided into three subcategories:

>* Business fixed investment is the purchase by firms of new capital goods such as machinery, factories, and office buildings. (Remember that for the purposes of calculating GDP, long-lived capital goods are treated as final goods rather than as intermediate goods.) Firms buy capital goods to increase their capacity to produce.

  • Residential investment is construction of new homes and apartment buildings. Recall that homes and apartment buildings, sometimes called residential capital, are also capital goods. For GDP accounting purposes, residential investment is treated as an investment by the business sector, which then sells the homes to households.
  • Inventory investment is the addition of unsold goods to company inventories. In other words, the goods that a firm produces but doesn't sell during the current period are treated, for accounting purposes, as if the firm had bought those goods from itself. (This convention guarantees that production equals expenditure.) Inventory investment can be positive or negative, depending on whether the value of inventories rises or falls over the course of the year.

    ---

    > People often refer to purchases of financial assets, such as stocks or bonds, as "investment." That use of the term is different for the definition we give here. A person who buys a share of a company's stock acquires partial ownership of the existing physical and financial assets controlled by the company. A stock purchase does not usually correspond to the creation of new physical capital, however, and so is not investment in the sense we are using the term.
u/thirdfounder · -1 pointsr/NeutralPolitics

citations to papers by people you've never heard of and cannot read probably wouldn't change your mind. :)

it actually isn't at all difficult and what we know about psychology supports it fully -- and here's where i offer a citation that has little utility because you will not take it seriously and it offers little more than a chance for you to shift the debate away from the point and toward the validity of the source -- as there is ample science behind the how and why of persuasion in human cognition. whether we want to accept that science which conflicts with our existing cognitions regarding free will and personal autonomy is of course another matter.

and i'll even service you further by guessing your first objection ("a YouTube is not science!") by pointing out that Dr. Robert Cialdini literally wrote the book on persuasion. (there is my token appeal to authority.)

u/[deleted] · 7 pointsr/NeutralPolitics

I was recommended this book, Wilentz's "The Age of Reagan" by a poli-sci professor of mine. It goes in detail about the situations that surrounded Reagan's rise to power, and continues detailing his legacy until Barack Obama's election in 2008.

I am not a Reagan scholar, so I'm surprised by the 3/5 star rating it received on Amazon. I've enjoyed what I've read so far and it gives me a good grounding of information from that time period we are never taught in school. Feels pretty unbiased to me.

u/byrd_nick · 26 pointsr/NeutralPolitics

Your reading of the testimony (and opening statement) seems to disregard indirect speech.

  1. Comey said that he took Trump's request about "I hope you can see to ...letting Flynn go" was an attempt to "change the investigation". That's how indirect speech works. You make commands and threats indirectly. (E.g., "I hope you will be not be late to work again tomorrow.")

  2. "I need loyalty. l expect loyalty." Is a classic loyalty pledge. And it's pretty direct. I don't see how that's open to dispute. If it's indirect, it's barely indirect.

    For more on this kind of indirect speech, see chapter 8 of Stephen Pinker's The Stuff Of Thought.
u/DOZENS_OF_BUTTS · 109 pointsr/NeutralPolitics

In the book Everybody Lies: Big Data, New Data, and What the Internet Can Tell Us About Who We Really Are, Seth Stephens-Davidowitz uses Google Trends extensively to research social shifts. It's not a perfect method and it can't paint us a perfect picture, but it's generally a good indicator of how a social trend has progressed.

A search on Google Trends for "jewish jokes" shows a general downward trend since 2004. "jew jokes" went up around 2008-2012 but then fell and is currently at the lowest point recorded by Google. More blatantly anti-semitic searches like "jews in the media","jews control the media","jews did 9/11","jewish elite", and other similar searches are all on a steady downward trend as well.

I'm not an expert at this stuff but it seems to me that anti-semitism is on a general downward trend overall. There are alternative explanations for these trends, like anti-anti-semitism becoming more common and having a chilling effect on peoples' searches, but it seems to me that the simplest answer is the most likely.

u/sherlocksrobot · 7 pointsr/NeutralPolitics

For more on this topic, I highly recommend P. W. Singer's "Wired for War: The Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the 21st Century." It's a bit dated since the technology has come so far since 2009, but he does a good job of weighing the pros and cons of lethal technologies like robots and drones.

Two of his main points:

  1. Shouldn't we do everything we possibly can to protect the good guys?

  2. Is it too easy to go to war now that we don't have to risk human lives?

    I think the use of drones to defeat domestic bad guys still satisfies the first question, but I'm not sure how it relates to the second question, especially since we have a reason to use non-lethal force in domestic situations. I think it's a very valid discussion.
u/starbuck67 · 4 pointsr/NeutralPolitics

>Your argument seems to use Libya as a model of the way foreign intervention should be done. Is that what you believe?

No, its not what I believe, I just use the two as a comparison because they are similar in so many ways (civilian rebellion, autocratic leader who threatens civilian population, both in the middle east) but also to show that despite the similarities it is the differences that are crucial in determining whether an intervention is possible and/or desirable.

>Getting the public on board wasn't really an issue

Admittedly so, I would suggest you read Samantha Powers (interestingly enough Obama's nominee to be the UN ambassador) A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide where she describes this exact problem in relation to Rwanda. Political leaders felt there was no public pressure or opinion behind intervention, however in order to create that public pressure congress and the president needed to make a case to the public to get them on board. Its a circular problem, to get public buy in you need to sell them on it and other than "people are dying", "Assad is bad" and "they want a democracy" there is no real selling point to the public to whom you have to explain why an intervention necessary to the national interest/security of the United States.

>So they chose instead to arm the unaccountable populace in Libya....It seems like an awful lot of calculus and pretending to do what is politically expedient even if hypocritical over what is responsible and difficult.

Politically I am left of centre but in international relations I would call my self a realist first and a liberal second. You cannot intervene everywhere all the time even in view of the human cost, you have to figure out what it will cost you first. As Robert Gilpin (a leading international relations scholar) said "states are primarily concerned with power and security and will tailor their policies to preserve or maximise these aspects." Humanitarian interventions such as those in Syria and Libya are subject to both these facets of the realist calculus, to explain the differing outcomes of both cases the context of the situation and its implications on the vital interests of the state have to be examined.

In relation to Libya this calculus was pretty clear.

Firstly, the concerns of the European members of NATO, Libya sits on their southern periphery and exports 83% of its oil to Europe the crisis in Libya threatened both the stability of the region and the oil exports to Europe.

Secondly Qadhaffi was an erratic leader having supported terrorists and pursued nuclear weapons at various points during his tenure, the possibility of having him replaced by a more predictable government that is less of an international security risk was compelling; this also meant that there was no widespread international opposition to intervention as Libya had few friends.

Thirdly, the crisis represented a unique prospect for the USA and the Obama administration; it presented the opportunity to mark a clear break from the Bush policy of unilateral intervention with a full-scale military incursion.

Furthermore, it allowed the US to intervene in a positive manner in the Middle East during the Arab spring, which was crucial as US support for the regimes in the region had been the source of condemnation from the Arab street.

Finally, the military intervention was low risk, with no need for boots on the ground and unchallenged air superiority, Libya’s proximity to Europe precluded the need for an expensive and complicated transfer of the strategic assets necessary for the operation from other areas of the globe.

Viewed from a realist perspective the intervention outcome in Libya had conformed to the two propositions of realism, it did not impose any undue costs in equipment, men, or money on NATO. Secondly, the intervention did advance the interests of NATO members, it removed what had been an unpredictable and at times dangerous leader from Europe’s periphery, installed a government, which views NATO positively, and provided a much needed boost to the prestige of member states such as the USA.

>It seems like an awful lot of calculus and pretending to do what is politically expedient even if hypocritical over what is responsible and difficult.

The national security and vital interest concerns of the intervening states were the most important factor. In the case of Libya, the strong intervention is justified by its potential benefits to the intervener's. In Syria, the hesitance is due to the potential massive costs it would involve. Examining humanitarian crises from a realist perspective can seem overly cynical, however it is in my view far superior to perspectives which over emphasise the moral imperative over the context of the crises, the interests and capabilities of states and the wider ramifications of intervention. Human rights do not exist in a vacuum or over and above other concerns in the international sphere, in my opinion, viewing it as such weakens its authority and effectiveness.

> It really feels to me that it must be impossible for the change to be anything other than a "Easy vs. Hard" political calculus and an abandonment of principle based on the equation they create in their heads.

We all want to do something, the death toll is awful and the humanitarian crisis is even worse. What is responsible and difficult can sometimes entail staying out of it, it may seem selfish and callous. But you have consider the costs to yourself of men, materiel and treasure against the beneficial outcome that you are looking for.

As I explained in my original post I don't see that calculus working out, unless you go for a full scale intervention. Unlike Germany, Japan, and South Korea which all involved a full scale intervention and investment for decades (which was in my view almost criminally avoided in Iraq) the costs outweigh the benefits. A democratic Syria will not necessarily be friendly, bring peace to the region or help smooth relations with Russia. So as I said in the first post humanitarian aid is really the best worst option at this point while pushing for a negotiated settlement.

A humanitarian basis for foreign policy is awfully complex and involved. If you believe in it then the USA and the west should not only be in Syria but be in the Congo, Somalia, Burma/Myanmar and North Korea. Furthermore Saudi Arabia should not be an ally and China and Russia should being pushed in every way possible to respect human rights more. As I said I am a liberal but a believe far more in the liberal post WWII project of creating international institutions and norms that push for human rights rather than putting out fires all over the globe

u/mleather925 · 2 pointsr/NeutralPolitics

Not a direct answer to your question, but related. In Fair Not Flat, the author proposes an alternate approach to executing a consumption tax. He states that:

Income = Consumption + Savings

So Consumption would be Income - Savings.

Essentially, you'd leverage the existing tax approach, and be taxed on everything that wasn't put into special savings accounts.

The book contains a lot of details about what deductions would be kept or gotten rid of, as well as some specific suggestions for rates, but the gist is that a consumption tax doesn't necessarily have to be a sales tax.

u/Jake_Al · 7 pointsr/NeutralPolitics

That may be true if you are simply looking at a brain, but if you look deeper there are differences. In the end it all comes down to sex-related hormones and their role in development, and differences in personality are related to the resulting brain chemistry whether or not it is enforced by culture or embraced by the individual.
https://www.amazon.com/Sex-Differences-Central-Nervous-System/dp/0128021144/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1540332134&sr=8-5&keywords=sex+differences+in+the+brain

u/iwouldnotdig · -1 pointsr/NeutralPolitics

one of the better written ones if you're willing to read something longer, but you can go here for something punchier.

u/mephistopheles2u · 1 pointr/NeutralPolitics

> know a bit about humanity

Have you read Pinker's or Armstrong's latest on human nature? They are both on my list, but so far, I have only read reviews.

u/COPCO2 · 2 pointsr/NeutralPolitics

https://www.amazon.com/Investments-10th-Zvi-Bodie/dp/0077861671

This is the textbook for the investments class I'm taking. We covered treasuries in weeks 1 and 2, bond pricing and risk in week 3.

u/joggle1 · 3 pointsr/NeutralPolitics

There isn't. If you have any doubts, I'd highly recommend the book At Dawn We Slept. It's by far the most detailed history of what led up to the attack on Pearl Harbor that I've ever read.

u/PepperoniFire · 11 pointsr/NeutralPolitics

Hm, I'm going to push back on this a bit. I work in regulatory law and risk management so Musk's comments about regulating AI piqued my curiosity of a possible future state in both of these areas.

I began reading. I'm still in the early stages, and thus I won't purport to be a specialist in AI (I'm not in computer science or an engineer) or wholly mired in this more theoretical conversation. Primarily, my exposure has been through What to Think About Machines That Think, as well as some exposure at work (tech company) that is flirting with more immediate applications of, at least, machine learning.

The book is a series of short essays about the topic of AI, machine learning, and the future. There are quite a few people who are, at least in this book, presented as experts who do think there is a possibility for machines to learn dangerous habits. One goes so far as to mention Roko's Basilisk, which posits even a benevolent AI might have some imperative to harm humans who were an obstacle to its creation precisely because that would delay its benevolence.

I don't personally subscribe to this, but there is an overarching concern of input/output where some regulation might be required to create parameters of what each iterated goal for AI is in order to ensure it remains constrained enough to avoid incidental harms for broader positive goals.

Anyway, I think there are two approaches to this question: short-term and long-term. From the short-term point of view, there's little evidence that we should fear much from AI short of unintentionally programming our current biases into it. In the long-term, however, (non-imminent) there appears to be a not-insignificant number of prominent AI thinkers mulling over more negative future states.

u/TheRealJohnAdams · 8 pointsr/NeutralPolitics

It is your position that roughly one percent of Native American DNA substantiates a claim to be Native American? This is exactly why many Native Americans are upset. They are tired of white people staking a claim on Native American identity based on the most tenuous familial connection.

>I consider that her business.

Many Native Americans disagree. Considering that white people have tried to eradicate their culture, (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_Dance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Indian_boarding_schools)

have stolen their land (https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2015/01/18/368559990/broken-promises-on-display-at-native-american-treaties-exhibit http://avalon.law.yale.edu/subject_menus/ntreaty.asp),

and have disrespected and commercialized their culture (https://www.amazon.com/Handmade-American-Catcher-Feathers-20-22inch/dp/B071ZNMFR2 https://www.costumesupercenter.com/categories/historical-native-americans),

I think they are well within their rights to take a position on this.

u/ayn_rands_trannydick · -5 pointsr/NeutralPolitics

One word.

Racism.

I read this book just after 2008. It is very mathematical and simply goes through the psychological tests that measure racial resentment and watch how they correlate with people's views of Obama.

All of the studies in Political Psychology since seem to indicate that racial resentment has increased substantially since Obama was elected President.

The recent repealing of the Voting Rights Act didn't help.

This country is as racially polarized as it has been at any time since the Civil Rights Movement.

And those whites who score high on a racial resentment scale are statistically far more likely to be Conservative.

In fact, most (but not all) libertarians and conservatives score high on the racial resentment scale.

And I think it is this latent racial resentment that powers the split between liberals and conservatives on this case.

u/toryhistory · -1 pointsr/NeutralPolitics

> e number of troops in Iraq in 2001 was negligible, as this report from the Congressional Research Service shows.

Well, one, that report doesn't show that, it's from 2007 onward. Don't lie about what's in your sources. And two, the troops dealing with saddam weren't based in Iraq, they were based based in saudi arabia, bahrain, turkey etc. Several thousand of the and dozens of aircraft, not counting the carriers. That's two dishonesties.

>Gonna need a source for that, because the earliest mention I could find of Bush having an exit plan was from 2003, which mentioned keeping some troops in until 2006:

then you haven't looked. there are many good books on the subject. Moreover, it's quite obvious from the way that US troops immediately started leaving iraq as soon as the major combat operations were over. the plan was to pull a massive version of what was done in grenada. By the end of 2003, troop levels were down at least a quarter from their invasion peak, and since the british were pulling out even faster, the actual decline in overall strength was at least 1/3.

>You're basically saying the war had been won at that point. But that makes no sense: if the war had been won at that point, why should we have stayed?

The same reason we stayed in germany and Japan in 1945 and Korea in 1953. Staying brought several benefits. One, it let us protect the still fragile iraqi military we had built at such great cost from political meddling. malaki started firing generals and replacing them with his cronies literally the day we left. Two, it was a huge deterrent. Attacking american brigade is a much more daunting prospect than iraqi ones. Three, it would have kept senior american policy officials paying more attention to the region. Any of those three, on their own, might have prevented the rise of ISIS. All three put together almost certainly would have.

>You've also implied that had Obama not gone into Syria and Libya, or had done something differently, the Iraq war would have ended peacefully.

It makes no sense to say that any war "ends peacefully". Wars are about one side violently imposing its will on another. The iraq war did end. Obama's actions allowed a second one to start.

>That is speculation that can't be backed up by facts, but I personally doubt it because of Iraq's history.

When the US left, violence in iraq was minimal. it only started up again when a new invading force, one directly empowered by the obama administration, attacked an iraq weakened by that administration and not protected by US troops. these facts are not diputable.

u/grumpieroldman · 2 pointsr/NeutralPolitics

> There's actually a much better way to stop wars: global trade.

I will cite World War I as a glaring counterpoint to this demonstratively false notion.
I will concede that trade may reduce the likelihood of trivial skirmishes but it will not prevent war.
Prior to WWI the prevailing academic and economic thought was that Europe was now so intertwined with trade that they would never again see war waged like that of Napoleon.

> A country stops being a self-dependent, encapsulated entity once a lot of its economy is imports and exports.

Perhaps I mistake your meaning but this not a healthy concept.
Consider any relationship in which one party is dependent upon the other and it is almost always abusive. I can cite the psychology branch of Bowen Family System Theory as established evidence (and this book if you want specific reading material.)

On the global stage between nations you could describe this as the difference between vassalization and interdependent trade. Interdependent implying each nation is self-sufficient on its own and then willingly decides to engage in cooperative trade with one another. (This is closely tied to the ongoing political debate war between Transnationalism and Internationalism.)

Putting the two together, I assert that war is far less likely if both nations can stand on their own as opposed to a dependent, abusive relationship in which one or both cannot exist without the other. That makes their trade an existential issue which makes people desperate. That situation is begging for war to occur to end the lack of self-sufficiency in one nation at the expense of the destruction of the other. I think WW2 stands as an example of this as well as countless wars in antiquity.

I think I can even give a contemporary geopolitical example with the war in Syria and Libya et. al. is in large part due to Europe being dependent upon natural gas from Russia (a toxic relationship). This is even an example of triangulation (also from BFST) as the war is now in the middle-east instead of between Europe and Russia (which serves to superficially maintain the stability of the Europe-Russia relationship). If Europe can secure a pipeline path to the Middle-East they will no longer be dependent upon Russian natural gas.