(no subject)

[timelets]

Politics in a democracy is a combination of zero-sum and cooperative games (per Yglesias via rsokolov);
-- elections is a zero-sum game (win-lose);
-- policy is a cooperative game (win-win).

Currently, zero-sum games dominate American politics despite the times of economic prosperity. Why?

- in the absence of wars, politicians learned to frame basic socioeconomic issues as zero-sum games, e.g.
-- immigrants vs citizens ("НАШИ бедные. их именно мигранты опускают уже ниже некуда.");
-- trade disputes;
-- green energy vs fossil fuels ("wind turbines cause cancer.");
-- single-payer "socialist" vs employer-sponsored "capitalist" healthcare;
-- "elites vs the people";
-- urban vs rural.

Reality TV and social media stimulate zero-sum game framing:
-- always winners and losers;
-- trolling and ego maintenance;
-- direct appeal to emotions, e.g. measure engagement and likes;
-- no need to get anything done.

Major critical issues ignored by zero-sum framing:
-- the death of industrial employment;
-- budget deficits;
-- infrastructure deficiencies;
-- urban density and housing costs;
-- asset inequality;
-- aging (Medicare/Social Security);
-- military overspending.

Comments

[peristaltor]

When I said it wouldn't cost much at all, I meant much more. The money is there; all it needs is to be moved to where it can help solve the problem (rather, as it is, creating it).

Treat it like a problem of political economy instead of a hard-and-fast bookkeeping shortfall. Shift money currently propping up health care insurance company profits and direct it instead to propping up more centralized, more cost-controlling entities that can help at least start to bring down excess profits reaped by health providers (which often play private insurers against each other).

That, of course, would solve the problem. Your question as to the political situation that created it? Given the decades head start the movers on this corporate takeover have had, solving that takeover would take some time as well.

Sadly, things are getting so extreme the solution would either take as much time (as I prefer), or no time at all, once someone realizes the people are frustrated enough to take, shall we say, Second Amendment solutions in hand (which I do not relish).

The French Revolution should serve as a warning, and we're getting very close to pre-Revolution levels of inequity today.

[timelets]

Would you bet $1,000 that the US will start a transition to a single-payer system within the next 5 years?

[peristaltor]

I don't bet large sums on anything, especially things this turbulent. It could happen, but then I said the same damned thing back in the '90s, and that was killed dead as well.

Interesting times.