and it's best to communicate with them using language they understand.
It's not just presidents and powerful senators and congressmen who speak in childish hyperbole these days. The rot has percolated down into, oh I don't know, the CDC whose director is crying about Impending Doom! while we are assured that Democrat administrations are run by cool analytical realists.
No, people are children, and politicians need to talk to them in a language they can understand, thus sounding themselves like children.
If you talk to the people who actually write the speeches politicians make on a regular basis, you'll find out that the golden rule those writers abide by is that they must assume that their audience has an average mental age of 11.
People who take time out of their day and go out of their way to listen to a politician give a speech don't have an *average* mental age of 11, they have a ceiling on their mental age of less than 11.
A properly functioning member of a properly functioning society shouldn't need to even think about government or politics. To the extent that I ever think of government or politics, it's almost always in the context of how they're stealing from me, how they're failing to perform one or more of the duties we by
No. I wish this was true, but no. The sad reality is that we have vested so much authority and control over our daily lives in government, that what they think or say impacts our lives. A lot. Amazon is a favorite punching bag of these progressive politicians, so why shouldnt it argue back? Amazon has a US-wide $15 minimum wage, and healthcare for all its employees. The proposals these senators make wouldnt change Amazons finances even a bit. It already meets or beats those metrics.
We will always need government for the same reason we'll always need police and courts. Humans are shitty and their behavior needs to be moderated. For that same reason, the masses will always need to be fully aware of what the government is doing, why it's doing that, etc. There really has never been a time without government - even paleolithic tribes had rulers. Likewise there will never be a time when government just disappears, or magically works perfectly, unless we figure out how to make a perfect machine to supersede human rule.
As far as Amazon goes, seems like it takes up a bigger space in many people's lives than the government does. Running their mail, providing their entertainment, their food, and half of everything else. Scary as it sounds, that's not even the problem, in and of itself. The problem is that Amazon being in this position encourages the breakdown of the capitalist system. It moves toward a future where companies aren't held accountable by "voting with your wallet", where 1000 janitors, workers, and owners of retail businesses are condensed into 200 overworked Amazon employees, leaving the rest jobless. Once the capitalist system as we know it is broken, there will be a reckoning at some point. One path is we see masses of homeless, life expectancy tanks, suicide rates climb (it seems we're already seeing this beginning) and society generally crumbles. Unless we're just going to accept that along with Jeff Bezoars & co becoming as big as any branch of government, your alternatives range from: something like the early Soviet system, to a level of Western welfare state never before seen, to UBI, which would let you keep a lot of the capitalist framework in place.
I don't think anyone expected Amazon not to argue with politicians. Just not for them to do it in such an open or unsophisticated way. The article supposes that Amazon is acting that way because they feel particularly vulnerable at this point in time. I think this is not because of a $15 minimum wage, which as you point out wouldn't affect them much. More because the general lack of understanding about what they do to society, and the FUD about the solutions, may be going on the defensive. They're worried because that line of thought eventually ends at Amazon paying at least a part of what they've taken out of society, back into it.
My gut reaction is their fear is overblown, the politicians have not shifted as far as the world has shifted beneath them. Then again, these are "interesting times". The government has already started issuing UBI checks... I mean, stimulus checks and extended unemployment benefits... and 5x that amount to small businesses. (Implemented like total crap, with tons of fraud, people and companies still falling through the gaps, but leave all that aside for now.) Someone's going to have to pay for it. The obvious answer is, Amazon.
Who was it that said: You don't have to make them believe the small lie, as long as they believe the big lie? That's why we see Amazon, today, accepting a loss on the small lie (that nobody pees in bottles) but they will never give up on the big lie (that Amazon operates according to a brand of capitalism they are destroying).
I did not suggest government itself was not necessary. I am suggesting it be confined to public safety and justice (police), adjudicating disputes (civil courts), and national defense (military for defensive purposes only), and basic infrastructure (roads and bridges and water pipes, though I think infrastructure should be 100% in the hands of local and state governments and not the fed).
Yet in 2019 we broke 50 year old records of unemployment. Why? Because in a capitalist society, when resources like labor are freed by failing businesses, it makes it cheaper to start new businesses with new ideas. Not only might Amazon be disrupted, but for sure it will one day. Capitalism works, has worked for millennia, and always will work. Capitalism is the most efficient economic structure there is. Also, when capitalism increases efficiency, it means making the whole as productive as possible by opti
My idea of roughing it turning the air conditioner too low.
Because politicians are children (Score:4, Insightful)
and it's best to communicate with them using language they understand.
It's not just presidents and powerful senators and congressmen who speak in childish hyperbole these days. The rot has percolated down into, oh I don't know, the CDC whose director is crying about Impending Doom! while we are assured that Democrat administrations are run by cool analytical realists.
Re: (Score:5, Insightful)
No, people are children, and politicians need to talk to them in a language they can understand, thus sounding themselves like children.
If you talk to the people who actually write the speeches politicians make on a regular basis, you'll find out that the golden rule those writers abide by is that they must assume that their audience has an average mental age of 11.
Re: Because politicians are children (Score:2, Interesting)
People who take time out of their day and go out of their way to listen to a politician give a speech don't have an *average* mental age of 11, they have a ceiling on their mental age of less than 11.
A properly functioning member of a properly functioning society shouldn't need to even think about government or politics. To the extent that I ever think of government or politics, it's almost always in the context of how they're stealing from me, how they're failing to perform one or more of the duties we by
Re: Because politicians are children (Score:2)
Politicians rail agains
Re: Because politicians are children (Score:3)
We will always need government for the same reason we'll always need police and courts. Humans are shitty and their behavior needs to be moderated. For that same reason, the masses will always need to be fully aware of what the government is doing, why it's doing that, etc. There really has never been a time without government - even paleolithic tribes had rulers. Likewise there will never be a time when government just disappears, or magically works perfectly, unless we figure out how to make a perfect machine to supersede human rule.
As far as Amazon goes, seems like it takes up a bigger space in many people's lives than the government does. Running their mail, providing their entertainment, their food, and half of everything else. Scary as it sounds, that's not even the problem, in and of itself. The problem is that Amazon being in this position encourages the breakdown of the capitalist system. It moves toward a future where companies aren't held accountable by "voting with your wallet", where 1000 janitors, workers, and owners of retail businesses are condensed into 200 overworked Amazon employees, leaving the rest jobless. Once the capitalist system as we know it is broken, there will be a reckoning at some point. One path is we see masses of homeless, life expectancy tanks, suicide rates climb (it seems we're already seeing this beginning) and society generally crumbles. Unless we're just going to accept that along with Jeff Bezoars & co becoming as big as any branch of government, your alternatives range from: something like the early Soviet system, to a level of Western welfare state never before seen, to UBI, which would let you keep a lot of the capitalist framework in place.
I don't think anyone expected Amazon not to argue with politicians. Just not for them to do it in such an open or unsophisticated way. The article supposes that Amazon is acting that way because they feel particularly vulnerable at this point in time. I think this is not because of a $15 minimum wage, which as you point out wouldn't affect them much. More because the general lack of understanding about what they do to society, and the FUD about the solutions, may be going on the defensive. They're worried because that line of thought eventually ends at Amazon paying at least a part of what they've taken out of society, back into it.
My gut reaction is their fear is overblown, the politicians have not shifted as far as the world has shifted beneath them. Then again, these are "interesting times". The government has already started issuing UBI checks... I mean, stimulus checks and extended unemployment benefits... and 5x that amount to small businesses. (Implemented like total crap, with tons of fraud, people and companies still falling through the gaps, but leave all that aside for now.) Someone's going to have to pay for it. The obvious answer is, Amazon.
Who was it that said: You don't have to make them believe the small lie, as long as they believe the big lie? That's why we see Amazon, today, accepting a loss on the small lie (that nobody pees in bottles) but they will never give up on the big lie (that Amazon operates according to a brand of capitalism they are destroying).
Re: Because politicians are children (Score:1)
Re: Because politicians are children (Score:1)