GBRK
5mo ago
It's not about having a cult of personality-- it's about being able to reward favored underlings and protect them from retaliation. Basic feudal-contract type stuff. The more power a president has over their bureaucracy, the more loyalty they can engineer their bureaucracy to have.
The Democrats could also be described as making use of this tactic
Yes, to some extent-- both parties use a variety of electoral strategies, I'm just describing a tactic the democratic coalition relies on more.
One could argue, watching from another screen, that Manchin and Sinema were the last stalwarts keeping the Dem party from completely sabotaging itself and going full-lefty.
I can and did argue that. I'm a neoliberal, not a leftist. But 2024 proved me wrong-- evidently the democratic base really did want left-populists, and us "return to normalcy" folks were basically wrong.
Is the idea of "old = conservative" a given? I think a lot of your ideal vision rests a lot on this, among other things.
Yes. Not every old person is a religious conservative-- but old people are intrinsically more resistant to change. Culture isn't just what people think about the gays... it's how people want their cities laid out, how business owners treat their employees, and what segments of the population are given disproportionate amounts of respect. And over the total spectrum of subjects, the old people in my party are basically as bad as the old people outside of it-- they still want to drive cars, destroy the environment, prevent dense construction, and extract transfer payments from the young.
I won't claim that the democratic party will abandon old people. I just think they should.
GBRK
5mo ago
We were staring down the barrel of it previously, and this was the best recourse we could find.
Republicans control all three branches of government. This was the best recourse you could find? Republicans could easily have looked for a solution that favored the power of the legislative branch (where they have a structural advantage) or the courts (where they'll soon have an incumbency advantage.) Instead, they gave the power to the presidency? Seriously?
The basic problem is that we can no longer agree on core values, on what the laws should be and how they should be enforced. Either someone has to win, or we have to have a divorce.
This part I agree with. That's why I'm so confused: why are the republicans giving the democrats the ammunition they need to win the divorce?
GBRK
5mo ago
If the administrative state was unconstitutional the supreme court could have ruled it so.
But that's not really my point. I accept that no one gives a damn about the constitution. Rather, my point is that the cost of making a little more accountable is going to be an administrative state that is significantly more statist, and in the long-run probably more progressive and growth-stifling too. You can easily point at all the regulations you hate, but you're going to have much more trouble identifying all the bad regulations that never existed in the first place.
Now? well, it can take decades to grow a business... but only a few well-placed, well timed regulations and tarrifs to kill one. Making it easier to kill regulations by executive fiat is equivalent to making it easier to implement them. Trump is lubing up the levers of power, but one way or another, he's going to have to give up the stick.
GBRK
5mo ago
where is the constitutional scheme whereby an independent agency can write regulations.
and I answered "in the bit where it gave that power to congress, and then congress gave it to the independent agency (and NOT the president.)"
And I’ve been very anti administrative state for years and years.
Okay well I hope you're ready to change tactics and start railing against the monarchial-presidential state. All the government's power is still there... it's just more strongly concentrated into a single person.
GBRK
5mo ago
By food i mean in general. Increased population leads to an increase in food demand, driving up prices.
The best nonviolent way to reduce global population is to get immigrants to move to countries with low-fertility norms.
GBRK
5mo ago
The constitution is just a piece of paper (although one that confers quite a bit of legitimacy if you observe the proper forms). Watch rules for rulers or play some Crusader Kings to understand the actual nature of power.
If you have enough loyal warriors, you can do whatever you want. Following democratic norms should be best understood as a method of ritualized warfare-- of both parties gathering and displaying the people under their banners, so that the other party might be intimidated by the size and strength of their army and let them take power without a fight.
GBRK
5mo ago
Governments require popular buy-in ("power") to function. Democracy is the idea that popular majorities confer such obvious power that it's pointless to oppose them. Republicanism is the idea that influential minority groups still need to be catered to.
The democratic party (as its name implies) typically follows a strategy of gathering together majorities and advocating for increasing their power. But the republican party has effectively made use of the complement strategy-- finding the most powerful minorities available and adhering them together. And the republican party's strategy has proven dominant, because it's harder to distribute power than it is to prevent the redistribution of power. Democrats have had to fold, over and over again, to moderates like Manchin and Sinema. That infuriated and demoralized the democratic base. Meanwhile, Democrats not only got blamed for government shutdowns, they got blamed for compromising to end government shutdowns.
So the lesson is: if you have one side that promises to do things, and one side that promises to not do things, the latter faction is structurally advantaged. The only way to change the equilibrium is for the democrats to realign-- to drop some of their most vulnerable constituents and attract some of their least vulnerable opponents. I think the most effective way to do that would be to give up on social security. It's already beginning to fail, and no one under thirty expects to receive it. Meanwhile, it's catnip for the social-economic liberals on the republican side... the people who want to have sex, do drugs, and dodge taxes.
Plus, in an accelerationist sense, social security saps popular impetus for a UBI in the same way that medicare/medicaid sap the will for universal healthcare.
GBRK
5mo ago
Previously, a congressional party with 51% majorities in the senate and house could refuse to confirm presidential appointments, and therefore limit the ability of the president to interfere with independent agencies. Previously, a president faced the threat of legal action after their term if they violated the law.
These were powers that congress and the judicial system had-- even if they rarely chose to exercise them.
Now, presidents can do what they want w.r.t independent agencies, and to interfere congress needs a 51% majority in the house and a 60% majority in the senate to impeach and remove. Now, presidents have permanent immunity against prosecution.
Conrgess has lost a portion of its power over the president, dramatically and permanently.
GBRK
5mo ago
While there is some discretion, I would not go that far. I actually really hate it when a president deliberately refuses to enforce a law. There is a problem of enforcement - the president cannot dedicate 100% of resources to enforce 100% of laws 100% of the time. But a president explicitly setting a policy where they refuse to enforce a law should be an impeachable offense.
Impeachment is worthless without removal. Given the immunity ruling, the president has the unilateral power to do whatever they want so long as less than 60 people will vote for their removal.
Democrats are staring down the barrel of that right now and believe me, it is terrifying. You better hope republicans have a plan to rig every future election because otherwise that gun will be turned on you.
If Congress wants to make another Legislative Agency, that's fine to do so.
If congress wants to not have independent agencies, it's within their power to legislate that. They didn't. Trump seized control of the independent agencies away from them by fiat. If they don't do anything about it... well, for now they'll get some easy policy wins. But in the long term, I don't think they're going to enjoy what happens.
GBRK
5mo ago
And yet every self-described conservative I know about it more-or-less happy with it. I assume that they think they're getting something out of it, but I suspect they're engaging in motivated reasoning about the likely strength of the backlash.
GBRK
5mo ago
And they thought the best way to do that wasn't through an act of congress (which they control), or through an act of the supreme court (which they also control), but by massively expanding the scope of presidential power?
You do know that trump is already on his second term, right? You have coinflip odds of winning the presidency in 2028 before taking into account any incumbent-destroying black swans.
GBRK
5mo ago
Before I say anything else, what was your opinion on the election fraud allegations between 2020 and election day?
GBRK
5mo ago
Well as a member of said neoliberal order, it really feels like you're feeding neoliberal prisoners to the chestburster nest instead of bringing out the flamethrowers.
GBRK
5mo ago
Ok, but you haven't actually given a reason why your rule works everywhere, in particular for the president. I do agree the rule holds for congress, but you aren't arguing in OP that "create-vs-destroy rule works everywhere", you are arguing it specifically for the president without any support. Why exactly does it hold for the president? Your justification given for the "create-vs-destroy rule" clearly does not apply to the president - the president is one person. There is no barrier of consensus to for one person.
Presidents need congress to fund their projects and the courts to prosecute people acting against them.
Republicans can target these priorities because, if it holds up in court, a president can now just fire anyone who works at a government agency. That clearly structurally favors those who do not like government agencies, the GOP. The president cannot just create a new government agency, not to the extent he can just destroy one. The president still needs congress for funding of that agency.
Yes, and that's a structural weakness of the democratic party that can only be solved via completely changing their electoral coalition. The democrats need to abandon some group of people that relies on the government to the republicans, while pulling in an anti-government faction. My personal preference would be for democrats to totally abandon old people in favor of a stronger appeal to young people. Then democrats would be able to hold social security and medicare hostage against fulfilling priorities like student loan forgiveness and climate action. And the more power gets taken away from old people, the less their cultural conservatism would hold sway over the american public.
There isn't a meaningful difference in voting patterns for landowners or people with money and people without. Suburban voters were split almost 50:50 between trump and kamala.
The democrats win the urban core, while the republicans win the rural areas. That is to say: the people who literally own more land go for republicans.
You are not engaging with reality here, the world you are describing does not exist.
I know it doesn't exist-- yet. I'm speaking of the political moves the democrats should make in the next two and four years to take advantage of trump's double-edged sword.
GBRK
5mo ago
Congress delegating the power to regulate under specific constrained conditions (that the regulation take place in an independent agency) does not mean the president irrevocably has total power to write regulation.
Or, well, I guess now it does. Let's see how sanguine you are about all this the next time a non-republican president is in office.
GBRK
5mo ago
Why would you assume that the current iteration of soccer is the platonic ideal?
Because it's literally the most popular sport on the planet and has been for decades.
Look, we've tried smaller fields and more intense action... it's called "futsal," and it's great on its own merits, but it's just not as good as soccer. Soccer is damn close to a local maxima of entertainment.
GBRK
5mo ago
The cure for this is actual independent judges
Judges are structurally incapable of being independent. They're either appointed by a particular political party or (in rare cases) elected.
GBRK
5mo ago
Congress can say to the president "you are no longer president, we have impeached you"
That requires 60% of the senate. In the modern political context that's just not going to happen. That gives a president effectively total latitude for at least 4 years, even if midterms cut down their majority to 41%.
I do think the democrats are extremely lucky that trump is so old and already on his second term. That reduces his incentives to rig the election for a successor, and means the democrats still have a chance of controlling the first (and last) post-trump president.
GBRK
5mo ago
Maybe it is harder for congress to destroy than it is to create, but that is because congress needs a degree of consensus. The president does not.
No, unfortunately (for me) the create-vs-destroy rule works everywhere. Congress needs consensus between both houses to pass laws, but on the contrary either house can defect from equilibrium to shut down the government. That's a structural advantage for conservatives that can't be legislated or protested away.
I admit-- part of my frustration with my own party is that they seem completely ignorant of the fact that you need hard power to control the government. It's not enough to get 51% of the poorest people on your side when the 49% richest can take their ball and go home. That's why I'm in favor of completely abandoning the old as a voting block-- the only thing we need to do to kill social security is nothing. Then if republicans target democratic priorities (welfare for the poor, cultural projects) they can enforce MAD even with a minority government. Given trump's expansion of power, I think a future democratic president could also do a lot to obstruct efforts at combatting anti-rich and anti-old paramilitaries. Landowners fundamentally have higher security needs, which makes the greatest strength of the republican party also their Achilles heel.
GBRK
5mo ago
Where is it said that only Congress can do it, and only by passing a law?
In the part where the constitution gives the branches particular enumerated powers and "the power to regulate" isn't assigned to the president.
If literally no one who is bothered by this voiced their protest about the past abuses, how am I supposed to believe they consider it to be two wrongs?
This is a bullshit argument and you know it. People complain incessantly about the abuses of their own side-- particuarly with the technocrat and left-populist factions of the democrats having been at odds since 2016.
That doesn't make it different from past abuses.
There's a difference between killing one person and killing ten people, even if they're both murder. I'm still struggling to understand why you think the best remedy to presidential abuses of power is to cheer them on when they abrogate to themselves even more powers to abuse.
GBRK
5mo ago
I'd be happier with the Legislature passing actual laws instead of delegating regulations to the Executive.
The president doesn't have to enforce laws he doesn't want to, and removing the independence of independent agencies removes one of the levers by which to make a president want to enforce laws.
Uh, I just realized I stupidly mistyped this in the first comment and then didn't pick up on it later. It's harder to create than to destroy; we agree on this point.
The democrats aren't the "progressive" party. They're the urban party. Progressivism is highly adaptive for urbanites, so urbanites adopt progressivism and demand democratic leaders. It's not the other way around, where progressive leaders convert urbanites.
And in any case, progressivism isn't about "helping people" in general, it's about helping specific people, who by some calculus deserve that help. All the democrats have to do is change the calculus... drop the expensive, economically useless, socially conservative old people, pull in the technocratic, culturally liberal tech bros. I'm not saying they will do that, but it wouldn't be a huge ideological stretch if they did.
You're probably thinking in terms of burglars and murder statistics. Start thinking in terms of organized political violence instead.
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