promethea.incorporated

brave and steely-eyed and morally pure and a bit terrifying… /testimonials /evil /leet .ask? .ask_long?

michaelblume:

I’m starting to come around to something like anti-horseshoe theory, where the US is in an uncanny valley between two different ways of ordering a society and they’re both better than what we’ve got.

Take schools. In libertarian utopia, everybody pays whoever they want to to educate their kids. In socialist utopia, everybody in the state pays into a general fund, which funds a bunch of schools, with all of them receiving equal resources. In America, each school is funded by the property taxes of the people immediately surrounding it. People who can afford to pay lots of property tax don’t want to live in districts where other people can’t, so they set up lots of zoning barriers to turn “public” schools into effectively private schools. And in doing so, they don’t just fuck up schools, they fuck up the housing market, they fuck up ease of relocation, they fuck up the national economy.

Or take medicine. My girlfriend needs to get a doctor to blast ultrasound at her kidney stone, but she’s between jobs. In libertarian utopia, she goes to a urologist today, pays them some money, and the kidney stone goes away. In socialist utopia, she’s already gone to her doctor, been referred to a urologist, and had the kidney stone destroyed. But as it is, she has no coverage, and has to wait weeks to find a way to see a urologist.

The uncanny valley is really wide though, as even a “scandinavian socialist utopia” in which it’s supposed to be the latter of those two cases (with a strong emphasis on the ‘supposed’ because the de facto ends up being closer to the middle) falls deep into it when it comes to a lot of things.

Take my life situation. In socialist utopia, I’d be having a basic income I could easily live off while growing my skills, and when I’m making wicked $$$$ I’d pay taxes to fund the system. In libertarian utopia, I’d enter an agreement with my bank/insurance company that they lend me $600 a month to cover my basic living expenses and help me acquire marketable skills, and once I’m selling those the bank would be entitled to some fraction of my income, lessening over time and increasing as my income increases to incentivize them to train me to be really profitable really fast. In the social democratic mess of a means-tested illfare state, I’m literally told by the state to live off my friends or stop training my skills and get a bullshit mcjob instead because without the right paperwork and studying stuff the right and correct and Officially Approved™ and not-promethea-compatible way I’m ineligible for any support at all. Nonetheless I’m obligated to pay obscenely high taxes, to support a system that has mostly just thrown me under the bus repeatedly, unless I route around them which I’m technically not supposed to do even though the state is really wink-nudgeing when it says so.

In fact I suppose this describes my political leanings pretty well; my ideology is something like 90% either-of-those-instead-of-this-bullshit-we-have-now-ism.

4 months ago · tagged #this is a social democracy hateblog · 47 notes · source: michaelblume · .permalink

  1. daughter-of-adam reblogged this from michaelblume and added:
    Ah I thought it was meant more generally, if it’s about socialists vs. libertarians specifically the original post seem...
  2. realsuspiciouscargo reblogged this from femme-werewolf and added:
    Libertarian utopia would probably change that in that prices for medical procedures wouldn’t be artificially inflated...
  3. femme-werewolf reblogged this from michaelblume and added:
    You can go to the doctor and pay money to get a kidney stone destroyed right now. It’s just something very few people...
  4. lalaithion reblogged this from michaelblume
  5. michaelblume reblogged this from daughter-of-adam and added:
    Honestly I’m steel-manning the hell out of the right by making this about socialists vs. libertarians. Actual American...
  6. hpwot reblogged this from michaelblume
  7. nathanielbuildsatesseract reblogged this from michaelblume and added:
    I’m reminded of one of Scott’s older posts http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/03/13/valleys-have-two-sides/
  8. socialjusticemunchkin reblogged this from michaelblume and added:
    The uncanny valley is really wide though, as even a “scandinavian socialist utopia” in which it’s supposed to be the...
  9. crazyeddieme reblogged this from michaelblume
  10. coulsonnooo reblogged this from michaelblume
  11. umblrgumblr reblogged this from michaelblume