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naraburns  nihil supernum  3yr ago (text post)   Edited 3yr ago   20118 thread views

USA Election Day 2022 Megathread

Tuesday November 8, 2022 is Election Day in the United States of America. In addition to Congressional "midterms" at the federal level, many state governors and other more local offices are up for grabs. Given how things shook out over Election Day 2020, things could get a little crazy.

...or, perhaps, not! But here's the Megathread for if they do. Talk about your local concerns, your national predictions, your suspicions re: election fraud and interference, how you plan to vote, anything election related is welcome here. Culture War thread rules apply, with the addition of Small-Scale Questions and election-related "Bare Links" allowed in this thread only (unfortunately, there will not be a subthread repository due to current technical limitations).

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goofy-ass Disney fight

I feel like this reflects a failure to grasp the best of what DeSantis represents. Now, the Martha's Vineyard thing was, I think, a mistake, most especially since the immigrants involved didn't even leave from Florida. But Disney came out swinging against DeSantis. It wasn't his "goofy-ass...fight," it was Disney's goofy-ass fight. DeSantis' only real choice there was to remind them that they are a corporation and tell them to get back in their lane. Anything else would have resulted in DeSantis looking like a bootlicker who caves to Woke Corporatism the moment his moneyed masters yank on the chain.

Disney owns (and tyrannically enforces) a lot of beloved IP, so there will always be some people who think "Disney hates DeSantis, so I hate DeSantis." But politically speaking, "there are consequences to getting politically involved" was exactly the right message to send to businesses in this case. As they say--if you're going to take a shot at the king, don't miss. Disney sticking its corporate neck out to object to a bill forbidding schools from exposing young children to sexually explicit pedagogy was a horrible, horrible choice. They missed their shot, and DeSantis had exactly the correct response: punish defectors.

My problem is that it still hasn't been demonstrated to me that the action abolishing Disney's local control benefits the taxpayers of Florida, rather than harming both Disney and Florida. Lose-lose governance by deterrence does not appeal to me. Sanctity of contract is also highly important to me, but I'm not sure that carries broadly beyond business-Rs. I'm open to evidence that it's good, but I haven't seen it.

But Disney came out swinging against DeSantis. It wasn't his "goofy-ass...fight," it was Disney's goofy-ass fight. DeSantis' only real choice there was to remind them that they are a corporation and tell them to get back in their lane. Anything else would have resulted in DeSantis looking like a bootlicker who caves to Woke Corporatism the moment his moneyed masters yank on the chain.

I think you're ignoring the "ignore it" option. DeSantis could have just said "You stick to cartoons, I'll run the state" and decried Disney's intrusion into politics, without wading into the muck with them. If you're wealthy, you probably own shares in many "woke corporations" and you don't want to get punished for what management does.

Where is the “breaking of a contract” angle?

Guessing something about changing self governance but Disney is a political entity in this case and insubordination by a political appointee is grounds for firing.

I want to note that I'm against things like RCID before they happen, I've opposed them locally and will continue to. But breaking the deal after it happens is another thing entirely. A bargain was made, if the government won't stand behind it then investment can't be done on solid ground.

The basics of these kind of deals are that a corporation lobbies the state for special treatment, which will enable the corporation to invest serious money in the community in a profitable way. Disney held up their end of the bargain, modern Orlando exists because of Disney world. Disney brings in billions in tourist dollars every year, habituates the entire East coast to vacationing in Florida, it's the crown jewel of Florida's tourist industry. And it's immovable, Disney cannot remove its investment at this stage.

I can't really parse the "Disney is a political appointee" thing. Is your theory that one loses the right to speak after accepting economic benefits from the government, else those deals may be revoked? That would vastly impact property developers across the country. And also make RCID type deals even more dystopian, with governments blatantly handing out favors to those who will back them and revoking them if they don't stick by the government line. That is not a box we want to open.

I'm not opposed to things like RCIDs as a general principle and support some actual ones; government can create significant benefits by setting them up. But if you think they are on net bad, isn't it good when a government creates substantial uncertainty for future ones and makes them much less enticing? There will now be fewer of them than there otherwise would have been.

But if you think they are on net bad, isn't it good when a government creates substantial uncertainty for future ones and makes them much less enticing?

Loyalty and paying one's debts are higher on my list of virtues than the principle that the government should not interfere in private markets. I'd place it higher than almost all other virtues. One stands by a deal, even a bad deal, even one in which one was tricked. Jacob served Laban, even though he was tricked into marrying the wrong daughter to double his time; Yudhishthira and the rest of the Pandavas stay in exile for 12 years despite the dice game being crooked. From Plutarch, quoting others:

And truly Antigonus, it would seem, was not solitary in saying, he loved betrayers, but hated those who had betrayed; nor Caesar, who told Rhymitalces the Thracian, that he loved the treason, but hated the traitor; but it is the general feeling of all who have occasion for wicked men's service, as people have for the poison of venomous beasts; they are glad of them while they are of use, and abhor their baseness when it is over. And so then did Tatius behave towards Tarpeia, for he commanded the Sabines, in regard to their contract, not to refuse her the least part of what they wore on their left arms; and he himself first took his bracelet of his arm, and threw that, together with his buckler, at her; and all the rest following, she, being borne down and quite buried with the multitude of gold and their shields, died under the weight and pressure of them;

The fact that I dislike RCID type deals doesn't excuse a government failing to stand by its predecessors statements. A government that doesn't stand by its deals makes business impossible, you can be most of the way through a huge project only to be told your approvals are revoked. The worst recent example being how the Keystone XL pipeline was jerked around for years by multiple administrations.

The fact that I dislike RCID type deals doesn't excuse a government failing to stand by its predecessors statements. A government that doesn't stand by its deals makes business impossible, you can be most of the way through a huge project only to be told your approvals are revoked.

"This pipeline, created under these conditions, is environmentally safe" is a factual determination. It is or it isn't. Of course, governments routinely fudge this and make "factual" decisions that are really political. But just because the government does that, I wouldn't give the government the same slack that I'd give them on decisions that are supposed to be political in the first place.

So I see no contradiction in saying that it's okay to take back deals like Disney's (if process is followed), yet it's not okay to take back a pipeline approval. The pipeline approval wasn't political, it's a factual thing that doesn't change. If you made it political anyway, well, tough luck, you weren't supposed to, so you don't get the benefit of being political.

A special economic district is created under equally factual determinations: that bending these laws will produce more benefit (in investment and jobs and economic development) than it will cost in bent laws. Its no different from a zoning approval, or an environmental approval, just bigger and moreso. It's no more political than the Keystone XL decision.

A special economic district is created under equally factual determinations: that bending these laws will produce more benefit (in investment and jobs and economic development) than it will cost in bent laws.

In some trivial sense, every decision is a factual decision. But what you describe is a tradeoff, which is inherently subjective unless you're trading off exact dollar amounts.

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