Ill-fed people probably have access to food but just don't procure it. — ZzzoneiroCosm

This would take us back into discussing what's really going on with nutrition assistance in the US.

Why don't you research that topic?

Exactly. It treats adults as unweened. — NOS4A2

It's just nutrition assistance. Nothing drastic.

Only insofar as I think the state should defend human rights, which you just claimed yourself right before you implied it should offer people food and a living. — NOS4A2

The US state does give food to kids. So do state governments and city and county governments.

My advice is to use words that can't be interpreted as expressing a lack of empathy. — ZzzoneiroCosm

Or you could look within yourself for why you read a lack of empathy into the things people say.

If you express a paucity of empathy, I'm justified in calling you sociopathic no matter how much you dislike it. — ZzzoneiroCosm

Actually I was just asking for your argument. You interpreted that as a lack of empathy.

Shadow.

I’ll look into it. — NOS4A2

:up:

So they can continue to do nothing about it themselves. It achieves the greatest effect with the least possible exertion, no matter if it is an unjust relationship. — NOS4A2

Moral hazard, NOS. That's the argument you're missing.

More likely it's because their parents didn't apply for the federal, state, or local government nutrition aid available.

You see, for most Americans, there are government agencies on three levels that provide money for food. How is it that you don't know that?

Is it your argument that there are 17 million children going hungry in the US every day because their caretakers choose not to pick up some groceries at the food bank? — ZzzoneiroCosm

I already gave NOS my own brickhouse of an argument for government intervention. I just noticed you were continuing to rag NOS, so I wondered what your argument is.

You don't appear to have thought one through. And instead of taking the opportunity to put your ideas in a form that makes sense, you just resorted to calling me a sociopath.

Good grief.

. The state (in my case, the USA) has undertaken to safeguard some set of human rights
2. These human rights include the right to life — ZzzoneiroCosm

The right to life is mentioned in the Declaration of Independence. I don't think it shows up anywhere in the Constitution. We would need a group of judges to rule on what it means, but that probably won't happen because though the Declaration is definitely an expression of American ideals, it's not a law. It was just a notification to the British that they could shove it.

There's a passage in the Bible somewhere that says if a person doesn't work, he shouldn't be allotted food. I'd say that expresses a common and customary attitude in the US. "Get a job."

But as it happens, if a person is starving there are numerous options. There's probably a local food bank, probably run privately.

And even if the state did start giving out bread to everybody, that doesn't argue for taxation for other things. Or regulation of the economy. Or things like the EPA, OSHA, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, the Dept of the Interior, etc.

Why should the state do any of that?

What was your argument for why the state should intervene in the economy?

Not in terms of hyper inflation. These trends will stabilise and the economies in question are quite healthy. — Punshhh

Ok :up:

Do you believe the United States had a laissez-faire system until the 2008 crisis? — NOS4A2

I don't think the United States would exist if it had earlier had a laissez-faire "system"

I gave you evidence that there is no such thing as a "lack of regulation", and in fact there is a massive accumulation of regulation over time. The causes of the crisis were myriad, but to pin it on a system of laissez-faire when it has occurred in a highly-regulated mixed-economy is a bit out of bounds. — NOS4A2

This argument is just a denial of facts that are readily available.

You need to try the moral hazard argument.

All economic catastrophes since then have occurred under the supervision and regulation of the US government. — NOS4A2

Well, no. I just gave you an example of how a lack of regulation creates chaos which requires state intervention. The Great Depression is obviously another case of that.

Better if the state had taken a more direct role in helping her. — Banno

Why?

Despite the accumulation of regulation, they failed at their one duty, and then used the public purse to bail out their friends. — NOS4A2

No. There was no regulation of derivatives.

The story is that Greenspan was warned that this pocket of confusion was brewing and he refused to do anything about it based on his belief in the virtues of laissez-faire.

He later admitted to Congress that he was wrong. Laissez-faire is dangerous. It causes catastrophes. That's why we don't do it.

Yep — Banno

Ok. So the state, just by allowing people to help one another, is actually doing the helping.

:up:

No policy of laissez-faire has existed in the United States. — NOS4A2

The 2008 crisis is widely known to have resulted from a gap in regulation of the financial industry.

One little gap led to the disappearance of 55 trillion dollars and an impending global economic catastrophe that was forestalled by a handful of states.

You were able to do so because your state permits the existence of religious institutions. If they were persecuted into obscurity you would not have been able to make use of them. — Banno

So the fact that the state forebears waging war on religious organizations means the state helped that woman?

Any other "entities" that you might site may take on that role only as sanctioned by the state — Banno

What do you mean? As an example, I recently had peripheral dealings with a woman who was homeless and apparently suicidal. I knew of three entities in the community that could help. It was a matter of determining which one could do it immediately. All three are religiously-based groups.

What kind of sanctioning does the state do for these kinds of organizations?

But if it be granted then you are right that NOS4A2's econ — Banno

I don't think so. The state isn't the only entity that can guarantee the community's moral expectations. If you think the state has to take that role, you need to explain why. And that's not a moral question.

I found the source on Google images. That's why I know that graph needs more explanation.

Oh oh, my out of depth alert just went off. — Bitter Crank

Mine too. :grimace:

discuss the merits and demerits of laissez-faire. — NOS4A2

The main problem is that it tends to fail. 2008 is an example. A lack of regulation leads to the explosion of a speculative bubble and everyone suffers.

So what we did there with the "real GDP" graph was subtract out the price portion of the value of goods. That graph basically shows that America makes cheaper stuff than it used to. It says nothing about what we make.

So could it be that instead of making 1000 high tech jobbies, we make 1000 packs of chewing gum?

Please explain so I'm not totally sunk in utter bullshit.

Jesus, you're in a lot of pain, aren't you?

Yes, but I don’t see a route to hyper inflation in NATO countries. — Punshhh

You don't? The US is at full employment. As labor demands higher wages, capital has a choice: raise prices or take a hit. So they raise prices.

That was already happening before the oil shock. Doesn't that situation look unstable to you?

I think in this World many countries can be "nationalist", but yet participate in international cooperation. It doesn't have to go in hand in hand with American liberalism (free markets, individual freedom etc.) — ssu

Sure. And in general, he wasn't saying that all countries are headed to being post-modern, although he says America will tend to influence some countries in that direction.

But he says that when Britain became post-agricultural, it had the effect of increasing the agricultural output of the countries that hadn't industrialized, because Britain became a bigger consumer of their products.

In the same way, the US, by being post-industrial, increases the production of cou tries that are still industrial. In 1992, he was thinking of Japan and Germany. Obviously China is in that role now.

So a country doesn't have to fit the American model to participate in the UN or the IMF, but American liberalism is the platform for those entities.

I guess I'm left wondering if China will eventually embrace liberalism enough to take on that central role in the global economy, or if it's native nationalism will make it turn more inward.

Agreed, like the high inflation in Russia in the late 1990’s to bring it back on topic. — Punshhh

It already was on topic Punshhh. The oil shock is expected to continue and worsen. This means the West is hurting Russia at the cost of hurting itself, which is something Putin spoke of.

So he knows, even if some of us are clueless.

The radical right isn't new. They have phased in and out of importance ever since Reconstruction. Think of the KKK and the late 19th century authors of the Jim Crow laws; think of the violent reaction to the labor movement; think of Father Coughlin (an odd-ball fascist in the 1930s), think of Joseph McCarthy, the John Birch Society, and so on and so forth. They tend to be hateful bastards, and they have a much larger base than the sad left, which might fill up a good sized church if they all got together in one place. — Bitter Crank

So they aren't a sign of national disintegration. Kurth might have been exaggerating.

Forgive me, then. As your OP was called 'the post-modern state', I thought it might have been. — Wayfarer

The OP references an article written by a professor of political science. I mentioned that in the OP.

It's not about postmodernism, and television has been central to American politics since Kennedy.

Well this is one of various 'official stories' available about geopolitics that you can accept or reject, — Tom Storm

Well I've never heard it before, so I guess I'm out of the loop.

Wasn't Trump ultimately good for corporations? — Tom Storm

I honestly don't understand why everybody on this forum is fixated on corporations. Corporations are for raiding. It's all about finance now.

We have a highly cohesive political class which reinforces the power of the bureaucracy — Bitter Crank

Is it cohesive? Maybe it depends on how you assess Trump. Is he an anomaly? Or a representative of the part of America that truly believes Democrats have been infiltrated by baby eating alien reptiles?

And that's not a joke.

It not only takes time to judge events, it takes time for events to happen. — Bitter Crank

:up:

Americans just assumed that this new prosperity would transform China also, just like the Fukuyama's argument wen — ssu

I also found this interesting in Kurt's article:

"Liberalism can provide a common ground, a least common denominator, for many states in one international organization in a way that nationalism, by its nature, cannot.“

Liberalism creates a motive for reaching out to the rest of the world with organizations like the UN and the IMF. Plus there's a moral imperative to spreading democracy from an American point of view. To admit that people in the middle east don't want or need democracy seems either insulting or it's a betrayal of middle eastern women, gays, etc.

And so there's an inevitable clash between a culture that isn't good at being a nation-state vs. cultures that know a kind of nationalism that Americans don't really have for lack of the religious, ethnic, or even linguistic unity to pass for a nation.

Is any of that true?

I meant high inflation.

Sure. He would say the ever-waning commitment of Americans to foreign wars is a side effect of diminished national cohesion.
— frank

Wouldn't that be due to an increased national cohesion? If a broken up cohesion, there would be too many counter parties that would disagree with foreign interventions. Its expensive and costly to the citizens. We were in Afghanistan for 20 years. I'm not sure a nation with low cohesion could continue to support such a foreign war with the changes in elected officials — Philosophim

Yes, but

"Observers have argued that the mission in Afghanistan was hampered by a lack of agreement on objectives, a lack of resources, lack of coordination, too much focus on the central government at the expense of local and provincial governments, and too much focus on the country instead of the region.[541]". - Here

This isn't how the British handled these things. Americans tend to go in clueless, win dramatically, commit a few war crimes, then it all falls apart. That's what Kursh means by "post-modern“

I'm quite sure I'm missing something or not understanding the full context. — Philosophim

I think he was ultimately just whining about American education. I love patterns, though, and the one he provided was intriguing.

As of the modern day, the United States aggressively uses its military for regime change as well as deterrence. Iraq and Afghanistan were not acts of deterrence. — Philosophim

Sure. He would say the ever-waning commitment of Americans to foreign wars is a side effect of diminished national cohesion.

would re-read the history of the founding of America. America was so divided and multi-cultural that we initially had the articles of confederation which granted extreme power to the states with an incredibly weak federal government. The reason for this was the identities between the states, (And the political elections within the states) were so different from one another. America has always been a multi-cultural and non-cohesive political entity. If you read history, there are constant struggles and debates on how the country should be run over time. — Philosophim

You're basically agreeing with Kurth that the US is an example of federalism. It's not much of a nation-state.

but the last two decades have shown something else. Americans loosing the war in Afghanistan shows the obvious limits of the tech approach to war and it's obvious perils, how it can all go wrong. — ssu

Right. Kurth would say that points to one of the many limitations of being post-modern. If you can't deal with a problem with missiles and drones, you may ultimately just give up and go home.

But I think you're right that his categories are kind of contrived. The perfect nation-state, always patriotically committed at the grass roots level to military endeavors, is an idealized figure. Even the British weren't always like that.

Now this is the more interesting line with Kurth. But let's start from the basics: Francis Fukuyama was (and still is) an idiot, so let's forget the "End of History" bullshit. — ssu

Why do you think that?

Kurth argues that the real fight will be inside America with "multiculturalism vs conservatism". — ssu

I don't think that's what he meant. I think he was saying that acting as a nation-state (so having a cohesive political class) has always been a challenge for America because it's so big and it's basically the world in microcosm.

He's saying the US was only a nation-state for a few decades, and it ended with WW2. Since then, he's saying it's been post-modern, which is clearly not a good thing in his view. He ends with the conclusion that the American education system needs to be improved to keep America from sinking further into illiteracy.

The reason this is interesting to me is that I accidentally saw a portion of a Fox News broadcast and it was a little shocking how stupid the comments being made were. It actually sounded a lot like the stupider streams of thought that get vomited up on this forum. I'd heard that Fox was getting worse, but I didn't realize how much.

I was interested in whether Kurth might be right: that the American culture is going through disintegration that can manifest as a lack of coherent foreign policy. What do you think?

:lol: