The US government currently is inhabited by one political party whose goal is to hinder US interests in any way possible while complaining that the US doesn’t do enough to bolster said interests.

So yes, part of the government is serious, while another part is serious about doing the opposite, which does produce the intended effect: public perception that the US government is not serious about these things.

What it will take for all political interests to align for the sake of US interests? Probably turning off financial lobbying from shadow money groups.

Edit: I misread the comment

You read their comment wrong.

I'm honestly not sure which one you're referring to.

Must be the Republicans because they have been trying to strangle government for decades by making it look incompetent so they can point to it and say “see, I told you.”

Republicans have basically 0 to do with any of the reasons the Biden administration is struggling to implement the CHIPS act.

They’re struggling because

a) Industrial policy is hard enough in a federal system without …

b) A federal government inexperienced with implementing industrial policy and …

c) An administration that sees industrial policy as YA avenue to achieve its social objectives, so called “everything bagel liberalism” [1].

I think industrial policy is a terrible idea, so not too distressed to see it trip out of the starting gate.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/02/opinion/democrats-liberal...

The comment we're discussing just mentions “US interests”. So for example providing military support to Ukraine, which the republicans keep blocking, or establishing programs to manage the border, which Biden has proposed and Republicans now oppose because they don’t want that issue relieved before the election, so they can point at how bad Biden is with the border.

Supporting Ukraine isn’t in America’s interest. Stopping bankrolling random foreign wars was one thing republicans finally got right after decades of getting it wrong.

And the border proposal was a fake-out, just like Reagan’s amnesty, which was supposed to be combined with border controls but never was. The goal of the recent border legislation was to make 5,000 illegal crossings a day (5 times higher than under Obama) the “new normal.”

It is absolutely in America's interest. For less than 0.01% of the defense budget, the USA can disarm Russia as a threat for another 50 years, if not forever.

The ROI looks pretty good:

1. Bolster NATO (Sweden and Finland have joined already)

2. Bolster the EU (Ukraine and Turkey gaining membership would be interesting)

3. Revive EU self-interest in not relying on US military and cash. This directly results in less foreign random wars because more parties are stakeholders.

4. Diplomatic leverage against China. They are actively supplying manufacturing capacity for weapons to the Russians.

5. Transparency around for who is supplying who with what regarding weapons and Russia. This makes it easier to sanction people/companies that do things that are Bad For Business globally.

Republicans are completely irrelevant. They have accomplished nothing except skim some cream off Democrat initiatives.

What republicans are making the government in California and New York look incompetent?

The comment I was replying to was more general.

There are lots of examples of Republicans sabotaging government legislation. The most recent case is the immigration deal reached by Senate Democrats and Republicans. They did this to make the current administration look incompetent so they could allow Trump to "win" on the issue next year.

You would have a point if the border deal gave republicans what they wanted but they rejected it anyway. But the border deal is a compromise between Democrats and a minority faction of the Republican Party that wants cheap immigrant labor. It includes things like immediate work permits for illegal border crossers claiming asylum, and enforcement provisions that don’t kick in until 5,000 crossings per month (five times higher than the rate when Obama was President).

Rejecting a compromise bill is in no way “sabotage.” Republicans (probably correctly) perceive that public sentiment about immigration is such that they can hold out for a better deal.

A truer example of “sabotage” would be the immigration compromise under Reagan. There, the parties reached a deal to combine amnesty with stronger border protections. But the second half of that deal never happened.

Regardless, you dodged my point about blue states. If the US government was dysfunctional because of republicans, blue states should be like Denmark—at least within the spheres where the state governments have primacy. Maryland should have world-beating schools, transit, healthcare, compassionate policing, and etc. Almost all of those are domains that are almost exclusively within the province of the states. But as a Maryland resident I can assure you it’s nothing like Denmark. The American inability to operate government effectively and efficiently is a bipartisan issue.

Your reply is disingenuous. The deal was between Senate Republicans and Democrats. They agreed fully. They only people that don't like the deal are the extreme House Republicans and they represent a powerful but minor of Republicans in the House. If you look at everyone in Congress, there is definitely general support for the failed bill. And, the failed bill is a step in the right direction. To say it was a compromise is absurd, unless you want every bill to be perfect when it is voted on. There can always be further refinement of the law, through future legislation.

On your other point about blue states. There are a lot of people who think blue states are much better places to live because of their legal/legislative climates. Ask people in Oklahoma who want IVF.

In general, governing is hard and I'm not about to say that Democrats have perfected it or are even doing it effectively, on an absolute scale. I am saying that the current Republican party is (other's said it here first) a cult with a criminal at the head of the ticket and a bunch of obstructionists in the House and Senate. They care nothing of the rule of law, when it is they who bend it, but they will scream bloody murder if the other side takes a tiny step in that direction.

> The deal was between Senate Republicans and Democrats. They agreed fully.

No it wasn’t. The bill was negotiated by three Senators (Murphy, Sinema, and Lankford). At no point did Senate Republicans as a whole endorse or vote for the bill.

> To say it was a compromise is absurd, unless you want every bill to be perfect when it is voted on.

Bills don’t have to be perfect, but there’s no reason to make major concessions to the other side when public opinion is on your side. Republicans have a historic opportunity to turn down the ratchet on immigration. Why would they blow it on a bill that gives immediate work permits to illegal border crossers?

> There can always be further refinement of the law, through future legislation.

If republicans agreed to make 5,000 illegal crossings a day—five times higher than the level under Obama—the new normal, it would be extremely difficult for them to later turn back that dial.

> There are a lot of people who think blue states are much better places to live because of their legal/legislative climates. Ask people in Oklahoma who want IVF.

In 2021/22, more people moved from California to Texas alone than the total number of IVF births nationwide. The purpose of government is to serve the overarching needs of the whole public: schools, transportation, safety, housing, healthcare, etc. Enacting policies that are arguably beneficial or more compassionate to this or that small minority of the population is not a replacement for good schools, efficient transit, affordable housing, and safe streets.

Europe actually heavily regulates IVF and surrogacy. For example, Germany and Norway ban egg donation. Those countries are still much better governed than any blue state because schools, transit, roads, and safety are far more important to the median person.

The reason the “culture war” rages in US politics is that neither party can offer effective governance to voters. The only way they can differentiate themselves is on this philosophical and moral issues.

Political influence isn’t going to align if two sides of the country are irrevocably misaligned on some fundamentals (racism, LGBT etc.). There’s no middle ground (mainly LGBT) on these issues so it’s going to have to come down to a pseudo civil war with one side prevailing.

There's definitely middle ground that could be negotiated if the will was there. For example, regarding the T (of LGBT), a liberal stance on people presenting how they want, and making it unlawful to discriminate against them for it. But at the same time, protecting single-sex spaces rather than redefining them in terms of "gender identity", and not punishing others for exercising freedom of speech and belief.

So if Bob wants to call himself Brenda, wear a frock and make-up, and take drugs to grow breasts, then that's fine and he shouldn't be fired from his job for doing so. But this doesn't give him access to women's spaces, and if any of his colleagues don't want to refer to him as "she" then they shouldn't be censured for doing so either.

This stance also protects LGB who may want to organize same-sex groups, such as lesbian speed dating or gay men's saunas, without having individuals of the opposite sex imposing themselves for self-identity reasons.

A serious question: Do you believe that this person https://www.instagram.com/laith_ashley/, who is a transgender man, should be made to stay in women's spaces and use womens' restrooms?

Yes I do. Part of the middle ground compromise on this issue would be for people in general to be more accepting of those who don't conform to traditional gender roles and presentations, such as the masculine-styled woman whose Instagram you linked.

Another potential middle-ground position on this issue is for third spaces to be made available to those individuals who don't feel comfortable in the spaces designated for their sex. For example, India has laws mandating this for their Hijra demographic.

Hijras are firmly men. They’ve been around forever but no one says they are women, just men dressed up as women. They have their own specific niche is society.

If the prevailing notion is Bob is playing dress up as a woman I don’t think there would ever be a problem with the right. The left would never agree with that.

That's not what I got from the parent. Besides, everyone is dressing up one way or another depending on the situation. The problem is putting all your identity into it. And conversely also imposing on others that some characteristics you find important in your own belief system should be part of their identity. Extreme left and extreme right both have issues with that.

I think it depends on which factions of the right and the left. As I understand it, left-wing radical feminists mostly already hold that view. And some on the socially conservative right may still object to Bob/Brenda teaching their children, for example.

However I do believe this position, or one very similar to it, could be enough of a middle-ground compromise to satisfy most people.

As a gay person, this seems fundamentally wrong to me. There was even more distance among the parties on most LGBT issues 25 years ago, but the ability of the parties to compromise on anything is much, much worse now than it was then.

I also think there is much more "crossover" on LGBT issues than one may believe. Tons of Republicans are pro-gay marriage, and tons of Democrats have real concerns about allowing trans women to compete in women's divisions in sports.

The trans thing is the deal breaker when it comes to the right. We never saw massive resistance to gay anything for the last decade or so.

I think that the right lost the battle over gay rights as general attitudes had become accepting of them over the past 3-5 decades, but they don't want to lose the war so they are digging in over rights for transgender people.

I feel it’s a little more than that. The right have never accepted feminized men and trans is taking it to its furthest conclusion. I genuinely believe the right doesn’t care about manly men fucking each other.

That’s how they get us. Divide and conquer. The thing is that it’s really the politicians riling up the vocal members of their base. Surveys of most republicans show that they don’t like the extreme focus on trans people. There’s lots of common ground, if we cut away the ideology, on things like labor rights and jobs. The politicians amp up the rhetoric on LGBTQ issues because it gets people upset, but it’s really not an issue that affects most people’s lives outside of LGBTQ people directly.

How true is this? I thought that being openly racist or anti-gay is a political suicide for both sides of the US political spectrum.

Says you! I think it’s important for my political party to only a function when it has majority control over the executive, legislative, and judicial branches as well as majority control over provincial governance.

Once we have that we can show our voters how disappointment really feels. It needs to feel so soul crushing we completely implode our party and die out in irrelevance. That’s my thoughts on it anyways.

How dare you suggest a political party should offer some material benefit to its supporters in exchange for their effort and partisanship!

The US government is currently inhabited by one political Duopoly, the RepubliCrats, who cater to the interests of the 0.001%, who keep us divided. It's been that way since at least 1970, if this set of interviews from 1970 is to be believed[1]

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oeeA-IU45pc

I don’t love either party, but they are not the same. Might have been able to make that argument before 2016, definitely before 2000.

What we have today is an overtly fascist MAGA Republican party that calls openly for dictatorship. It’s opposed by the scraps of the old Republican Party and by a moribund centrist Democratic Party incapable of fielding appealing candidates. Within the latter there is also a populist left, but with little power.

The whole thing is a trash fire, but some of the trash is just regular trash and some is toxic waste drums in danger of exploding.

In terms of getting things done under dems environmental reviews can literally take decades. I donate to dems, but in many areas of development dems are focused on slowing / blocking for lots of reasons

The choice today is fascism or stagnation. Fairly awful choice. I am forced to pick the latter because I have friends who will be persecuted by the former, but they are both bad.

Edit: of course I’m being too charitable by assuming the fascists would not also lead to stagnation. They likely would, though perhaps in different ways.

While I totally agree with that, in present circumstances, that seems a bit to miss the point.

The Republican Party essentially doesn't exist anymore, it has been replaced lock, stock and barrel with a cult of personality. There are no longer any "Republican principles" or "conservative principles", whatever curries favor with the Party Leader is what goes.

To emphasize, I think there is plenty wrong with both parties, and I yearn for the days (long time gone I know) where you could at least sometimes have debates about policy, and not just about personalities or tribalism. But I think it's a huge mistake to "both sides" over policy differences when it's core things like peaceful transfer of power that are at stake.

The leader of the Republican Party, Ronna McDaniel?

Totally sick of hearing about them and their media saturation. /s

>What we have today is an overtly fascist MAGA Republican party that calls openly for dictatorship.

This is UFO level conspiratorial thinking, but it's however encouraged by the established press.

What exactly happened in 4 years of Trump? Basically more of the same.

The idea that it represents some kind of fascist danger or whatever is oversold for partisan gains by the other party.

You left out the part where the President tried to persuade the Vice President not to ratify the election based on manufactured false pretense of election fraud.

Or that same President trying to persuade another State’s elected officials to “find votes” so he could win.

Sorry but complaining about things like this and calling it fascism or end of the world or whatever looks like a joke or someone doing hysterics and not remotely anything to be taken seriously.

They didn't call it an end to the world; they claimed that attempts to subvert democracy are fascistic.

Where's the hyperbole?

> they claimed that attempts to subvert democracy are fascistic

> Where's the hyperbole?

Fascism was highly ideological – Mussolini wrote a whole book explaining his ideology – The Doctrine of Fascism - partially ghostwritten by the Italian philosopher Giovanni Gentile. It contained specific doctrines, such as the primacy of the State.

While Nazism is often equated with fascism, it had a different ideological flavour, with a much heavier emphasis on race. Still, while the ideology was different, the strong emphasis on ideology remained – you can read all about it in Mein Kampf (I tried to read it once, it was so boring I fell asleep), in Hitler's speeches, in the works of his various acolytes.

Trump's ideology isn't fascism. Trump doesn't have an ideology. All he really believes in is his own personal power. Ideas aren't really that important to him. So, I'm not saying that various things he did weren't bad, but they weren't fascist. Calling them fascist is definitely inaccurate, and maybe even hyperbolic.

Instead of making up your own strict, carefully selected, and historically inaccurate definition (no historic fascists ever cared about ideology as anything other than a pretext for their authoritarianism.) I'd recommend reading up on this, just making things up as you go along isn't a great way to approach this particular topic. There's plenty you could read, though I'd recommend starting with Eco's Ur-Fascism as a bridge to start learning about the topic. There's more current work that's worth reading, but since you aren't familiar with any of it I'd recommend starting with the light material, it's more approachable.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ur-Fascism

This list not much better than citing some 60s revolutionary group about how "society/schools/corporations/media/religion/academia are all fascist, man".

> no historic fascists ever cared about ideology as anything other than a pretext for their authoritarianism

On the contrary, Hitler's ideology of racist nationalism and antisemitism wasn't just some "pretext for authoritarianism"–he had convinced himself it was the truth.

> I'd recommend reading up on this, just making things up as you go along isn't a great way to approach this particular topic

I don't think this response is really in the spirit of the HN guidelines, [0] especially the part which says "Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes."

> Eco's Ur-Fascism

That's just one scholar's opinions among many. There is a lack of scholarly consensus on how to define "fascism"–as the noted historian of Nazi Germany Ian Kershaw once wrote, "trying to define 'fascism' is like trying to nail jelly to the wall".

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

One of the Nazi slogans was "we think with our blood," and while Mussolini wrote ideological tracts when he was transitioning from being a young socialist, that ideology was immediately discarded once he took power. Right-wing authoritarian movements aren't ideological, and especially not the fascists. The fact that you tried to claim that fascism was ideological made me assume you had very limited knowledge. our response confirms that you aren't as familiar as you imagine, I'd really recommend you read up a lot more, especially in a time of rising global right-wing authoritarianism.

> made me assume you had very limited knowledge. our response confirms that you aren't as familiar as you imagine, I'd really recommend you read up a lot more

Do you realise how condescending you sound? You aren’t trying to have a conversation, you are just lecturing. No thank you

Well, calling complaints about the legitimacy of election results "attempts to subvert democracy" is hyperbole.

Aren't those the very opposite - attempts to uphold democracy? (even if misguided and there was no fraud)?

In general, anybody that believes that somebody like Trump would have subverted democracy and established some authoritarian rule, is beyond hyperbole.

Attempting to subvert democracy would not look like asking legitimate questions about the election results.

It would probably look something more like calling a Secretary of State to get them to change the election results.

Or to ask the Vice President to count the electoral votes incorrectly. You know. Things that we know actually happened.

1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump%E2%80%93Raffensperger_ph...

2 - https://www.factcheck.org/2023/08/what-trump-asked-of-pence/

If Trump had simply called for investigations into the legitimacy of the election or requested recounts then yes I'd agree.

Putting together a slate of false electors, asking the VP to certify them, or calling states and asking them to find more votes however is not that.

> Sorry but complaining about things like this and calling it fascism

Complaining about the president trying to prevent the peaceful transfer of power by getting his vice president to block the results "looks like a joke" to you???

I really hope that you can only say that because his plan failed.

>Sorry but complaining about things like this and calling it fascism or end of the world or whatever looks like a joke

Sorry but denying the reality of the current GOP's open efforts to subvert democracy while they speak openly of sedition and overthrowing democracy really makes you look like a fascist apologist. At CPAC ending democracy was the buzz among attendant, Posobiec got applause for saying it was time to end democracy in America.

The slate of false electors is UFO level conspiracy thinking?

If Obama had lost in 2012 and had pulled exactly what Trump pulled on January 6th using anarchists, BLM, and the Nation of Islam as soldiers, would you have called that a coup attempt?

Now imagine that months earlier a member of one of those groups had asked him what to do and he’d said “stand back, and stand by.”

I can't imagine anarchists thinking Obama would have been any better than Romney, and as for the Nation of Islam, in 2011 Farrakhan called Obama an assassin and a murder.

Your challenge to the premises isn't helpful. Sure, the parent comment poses a hypothetical question (and perhaps counterfactual), but it's clearly designed to probe the GP comment's reasoning.

> What exactly happened in 4 years of Trump? Basically more of the same.

It was histrorically bad corruption and abuse of power, honestly. I mean, lots and lots of people curated lists. Here's a quick one from the weeks before the 2020 election:

https://www.citizensforethics.org/news/analysis/president-tr...

Now I know you'll want to argue specifics for every element and that the source is partisan or suspect, etc... and I'm not going to get involved. But suffice it to say that any one of those items would have been enough to sink any other administration. It's the authoritarian tilt of the modern GOP that led it to green light all this, and that is only going to get worse with a more ambitious candidate.

Never seen this list before... But holy cow, it's actually insane when you compile it all like that. This election cycle is going to be madness.

No, it was the same shit in another term. The only reason people noticed or cared was because the press hated Trump with the passion of a thousand fiery suns, so they actually did their jobs and held his feet to the fire (unlike with Obama).

As stated, I'm not going to argue specifics and really don't think anyone should try. But I will say that if you want to argue against a list like this, posting a similar one from a similarly non-partisan source about your target administration might be a better technique than invoking conspiracies about the media (which CREW is not, btw).

You had the Capitol attack on the Trump administration's watch, so I wouldn't say it's oversold.

Meanwhile the others are too busy showing off PC and LGBT progressivism, to the point that it just creates too much needless tension in American society and the conservative reactions to this are discussions about criminalizing abortion.

Amen. Both parties are equally hostile to my freedom and well being. I would love to have another option, but Americans have been brainwashed by the parties in power to think that they are "wasting" their vote if they vote for anyone else. I have voted third party in every election since I turned 18, but as long as that pernicious lie continues to spread nothing will change. It's a dumpster fire and I don't expect it'll ever be fixed in my lifetime.

They are wasting their vote and actively vote against their interests by voting third-party.

This is a well established fact and the main reason why the voting system needs an overhaul to allow for ranked choice or something similar.

Chances of Duopoly parties doing that by their own are 0% - so it has to be the people.

No they’re not. If a third party gets 5% of the vote, they receive federal funding during the next election which could be enough to make them go mainstream. Also every vote is tallied so your vote is more visible when you vote for a 3rd party. Anonymously of course.

>So yes, part of the government is serious, while another part is serious about doing the opposite, which does produce the intended effect: public perception that the US government is not serious about these things.

I disagree with your conclusion. My conclusion is that, yes, the US government really is not serious about these things. It's not just a "public perception", it's reality. It's reality because half the people in that government act this way and make it reality, and because those half the people in government are voted into their positions by half the voters in the population.

>What it will take for all political interests to align for the sake of US interests? Probably turning off financial lobbying from shadow money groups.

Financial lobbying isn't the reason that half the people are voting for a party that works against US's best interests. Those voters really do believe in the people they're voting for, and think that they really can make America like the 1950s again somehow.

You're right. The government is only as serious about this as the people are who elect our leaders.

> Financial lobbying isn't the reason that half the people are voting for a party that works against US's best interests. Those voters really do believe in the people they're voting for, and think that they really can make America like the 1950s again somehow.

If the financial lobbying machine was turned off tomorrow, most of the money for the culture war goes away on mass media.

I do agree said voters think they can "roll back the clock," to to speak, but it is an erroneous belief. 1950s USA had much more of that socialism thing that resulted in technological advancements and super-power-ness.

One thing about the 1950s those people have right is that median income back then was closely tied to productivity, whereas today it just isn't, which is shafting everyone except the ultra wealthy (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_inequality_in_the_Unite...)

> one political party whose goal is to hinder US interests in any way possible while complaining that the US doesn’t do enough to bolster said interests.

I’m really amused because I genuinely can’t tell which of our useless “parties” you’re referring to!

Relevant meme: https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/002/233/325/33a

What states in the US should do is create a special economic zone where foreign companies can have have more freedoms with respect to labor relations initially.

Then slowly convert those special economic zone into a normal commercial zone once critical mass has relocated to that location.

I think the technical prowess w.r.t. semiconductor development and fab building probably exists in the US but its spread across the country in random locations.

I think the issue in Arizona is you have a bunch of non-semiconductor construction companies attempting to bid on very specialized construction projects. As such they include a bunch of overhead in putting together the teams and ramping up on the technology.

I propose a name for your "special economic zone" could be "Galt's Gulch".

Who is John Galt.

No. They shouldn’t.

I can’t think of a worse American policy idea than giving preferential treatment letting companies exploit American workers more aggressively, but only if the owners of the company who will profit from this are not American.

This is about temporarily allowing companies such as TSMC to bring in their specialized fab building construction companies to get these mega projects built on time instead of insisting on fully local non-specialized labor.

I think the key part of the proposal that you are missing is that it eventually (i.e. after a decade) gets rolled back to a normal economic zone and the special foreign privileges get rolled back.

What you want is just insist that a small contingent of local specialized project teams be allowed to shadow the foreign teams. Its a bit of a marshmallow test for unions.

That kind of thing already exists. It’s trivial for large and well resourced foreign companies to bring in specialized foreign teams to work alongside American workers.

What’s happening here is TSMC just wants to undercut local wages.

There are actually people who have gone in and done real reporting in the situation beyond reading press releases.

https://prospect.org/labor/2023-08-11-econ-commentators-tsmc...

I don’t think the exception would be just for foreign companies. It could be a geography set aside for free trade and no tariffs. This kind of thing worked very well in Shenzhen, Hong Kong, and (the entire country of) Singapore for example.

We don't need to eat the whole pie! We'd still get the taxes, wages, institutional training to develop skilled labor, and onshoring. Let them keep their IP and profit from their evolution.

I’m sure the point about labor unions is true in this case, but I did a quick search and it seems labor union participation is even higher in Japan. 17% in the Japan and 10% in the USA.

I think in many ways we do labor unions wrong in the US, and from my cursory knowledge it seems like the Taft-Hartley act has a lot to do with it. That concentrated union power in the leadership which created an opportunity for more corruption, and also weakened certain powers that would make labor struggles more useful. Of course in Japan, they would likely use Japanese workers due to strong nationalist sentiment so this particular issue wouldn’t occur.

I’m only saying this because some will read your comment and take away “labor unions bad”. I suspect that the truth is we aren’t doing labor unions properly here, and also the desire to use Taiwanese workers suggests there is something lacking about the US education system. It is of course reasonable for US workers to want a chance, but we need to make sure they are worthy of that chance. You can leave it up to the market to let people find higher education, but that’s going to leave smaller numbers in the end due to how wealth is distributed in this country. If you want higher numbers of educated workers, more provisions for affordable education are required.

Labor unions in different countries are completely different. For example, China has almost 100% union participation but it isn’t very meaningful. In some countries, unions are merely fronts for organized crime, in Japan and Northern Europe they are more like active partners.

Sure. This reinforces the point that labor unions are not inherently a problem, but the way we do labor unions certainly can be. Most rhetoric I hear in the US is if the former type. I only know bits and pieces but it sounds like perhaps we could learn from how Germany does labor unions (and higher education and healthcare for that matter).

I don't know man, from what I have read the unions were instrumental to getting the former CEO of VW (Herbert Diess) removed. He was dragging the company kicking and screaming into a full EV strategy and I guess he got overpowered because next thing you know he was gone.

Now VW has gone from become a promising EV innovator to a laggard in this race (given what we see in their car tear downs and the reliability of their software). Maybe they were going to end up in this situation but it really seemed like they had a shot because the man at the top was trying.

Do we really want that kind of union? I don't know how we can reconcile the notion that to transition to an emissions free future, we must convert cars to EVs but at the same time, EVs will guarantee a result in job losses.

The empirical evidence consistently shows labor unions reducing productivity. The real problem is that a significant fraction of the population benefits from the economic rent extraction that unions engage in, so they have a strong motivation to argue that have some redeeming quality.

Do you have a link?

I.e. all the Nordic countries have a majority of the population of unionized labor

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1356735/labor-unions-mos...

If you search Google Scholar you can find numerous studies on the impact of unionization. Generally any non-market intervention is found to impede the efficiency of the economy.

As for the Nordic countries, they are a cautionary tale. Singapore now has a huge lead on Norway in per capita GDP, despite the latter having previously been far ahead of the former, and the latter having been one of the largest oil exporters in the world for several decades:

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/gdp-per-capita-worldbank?...

Sweden similarly has failed to maintain its world leading position in global rankings:

https://iea.org.uk/publications/research/scandinavian-unexce...

That was an interesting read. Thanks for sharing.

Personally I don’t care about a country productivity as much as I care about quality of life but I think that’s an entirely different discussion and it’s much more subjective as quality of life means different things for different people :)

Let’s say it were true that labor unions reduced productivity, but that they also increased quality of life for workers. I often think we need to stop focusing so much on productivity to the detriment of life and human well being. Or stated more directly, it is non obvious to me that reduced productivity is inherently bad.

Productivity growth is the overriding determinant of quality of life over any extended period of time.

Take two countries at the same starting level of per capita GDP, and give one a GDP growth rate of 2%, and the other a rate of 4%, and within 30 years the latter will have twice the per capita GDP of the former.

It's very hard for a country with half the per capita productivity of another country to match their quality of life.

Productivity has gone up while quality of life has gone down over the last half century. Yeah, we can get groceries delivered now but we're never not working or preparing for work. We have worse economic realities and the cost of living is sky rocketing.

Sure doesn't seem like that's holding these days.

Quality of life has seen huge gains according to studies on the matter.

It seems clear that if you achieve increased productivity by ensuring that 90% of the population worked, say, 60 hours a week, with no maternity leave or PTO, no large amount of time to spend outdoors or with loved ones, you could have a productive economy full of miserable people. You can have scenarios where the quality of life is very high for 10% of the people while it is very low for the vast majority.

> It's very hard for a country with half the per capita productivity of another country to match their quality of life.

A very easy thing to say, but unsupported by the facts. According to Wikipedia [1] the GDP per Capita for the USA is roughly double that of France ($80k vs $43k) but according to happiness index levels[2], France is at 97% the happiness of the USA.

Notably France’s culture focuses on time with people, which is free and makes people very happy.

Certainly productivity matters to a point. You can’t be happy if you can’t even eat. But beyond a certain point, grinding for additional productivity, especially when the gains are not going to those workers, does not increase happiness. And in fact it is clear that you can have half the GDP per capita and be just as happy.

I should note that “GDP Is Not a Measure of Human Well-Being” is such a well discussed topic that it is easy to find articles on this point [3] and Wikipedia has a section on this fact. [4]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nomi...

[2] https://www.theglobaleconomy.com/rankings/happiness/

[3] https://hbr.org/2019/10/gdp-is-not-a-measure-of-human-well-b...

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_domestic_product?wprov=s...

>>It seems clear that if you achieve increased productivity by ensuring that 90% of the population worked, say, 60 hours a week, with no maternity leave or PTO, no large amount of time to spend outdoors or with loved ones, you could have a productive economy full of miserable people.

In the absence of mandated benefits, working conditions still improve over time, just not via cookie cutter rules that regiment the employment terms that workers and employers are allowed to reach.

People being miserable is not good for long-term productivity so that is not the outcome we should seek.

But to address your underlying point, you cannot sacrifice everything for productivity, it's true, but giving up mandated collective bargaining — that puts existing employees at an enormous negotiating advantage over outside applicants, while severely limiting basic contract freedom — doesn't seem like it provides any obvious societal advantages, while it does clearly reduce productivity.

>A very easy thing to say, but unsupported by the facts. According to Wikipedia [1] the GDP per Capita for the USA is roughly double that of France ($80k vs $43k) but according to happiness index levels[2], France is at 97% the happiness of the USA.

A "happiness index" doesn't measure quality of life, and can be affected by far more than labor laws and per capita GDP.

There are of course outliers, but there is a strong correlation between per capita GDP and standard of living metrics like life expectancy:

https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Scatterplot-of-life-expe...

Then again on the same example, compare life expectancy in France and the USA, which is 4 years longer in France. Spain is doing even better with a lower GDP. There is correlation, but there are many other factors at play.

Yep, there are outliers, and the US is certainly one of them.

One of the major problems with US unions is a hangover from racism. Can’t remember the USSC decision off the top of my head, but the TL;DR is that there was a railroad union that wasn’t defending African-American members. The USSC essentially said that unions have to defend everyone. The downside to this is that it created an adversarial relationship between unions and management. If Joe Bag O’Donuts is a chucklehead, the US union still has to defend him. This leads to rubber rooms and job banks. In a German union, everyone can agree that Joe needs to go and that’s it.

Source? This sounds too insane to be true!

georgia rail strike of 1909

if you think that's insane, i'd recommend reading "who built america?" vol 1 and "artisans into workers"

Just an FYI, the acronym for the United States Supreme Court is SCOTUS. Supreme Court of the United States. POTUS is the president, as well.

You make a good point, but in the US I do think labor unions have become basically bad. They function more like organized crime than legal representation.

To the extent that this is true, I think the legal structures we have forced them in to, in particular changes due to the Taft-Hartley act, have led to this. For example it is illegal to strike without leadership approval, so the act forced more power in to the hands of leadership, thus making it more like organized crime.

And this is the point. Unions are not inherently bad, but the way we do them is.

To clarify, this wasn't even a spat over unionized labor at the factory, this was about who gets to build the factory.

TSMC wanted to bring some highly specialized labor from Taiwan (who presumably have experience with building this type of facilities) and Arizona Building and Construction Trades Council insisting their local dudes would do the job just fine.

12nm Vs 4nm seems like a big deal

Japan is just better at building stuff. They have very advanced industrial policy which ensures that they have the capacity to manufacture goods and build stuff better than anyone else in the world. Even if the US had a functioning political system, it would still take decades to catch up.

The IRA is a good first step, but it doesn't begin to address the underlying problems in the US economy. If you let the free market decide everything, it will always be more profitable to invest your money in a SAAS company or a suburban strip mall.

The two countries are optimizing for very different things, and are dealing with a very different set of conditions.

The US is serious, they are just incompetent.

US labor unions are communists where they are social democrats in Northern Europe and Japan. Extreme antagonists vs coorporating partners.