sportsification of politics

4.13: co.apt/pol/purges/reaganomics/
sportsification of politics:

(I heard someone lamenting the Bush deficits,
and I thought their reason was so gamy;
we certainly are credit worthy eno' to receive
any amount of debt;
so let's get to the real problem here!)

. they are not even trying to be reasonable;
this is just sportsification of politics;
the main game lately has been to
keep the liberals away from
redistributing the wealthy's money .
. the repub's might say they want the chinese to
stop manipulating their currency
because it worsens the trade deficit,
but did you notice how the chinese were
doing that currency manipulation?
they are buying dollars with their savings,
which means that whenever the fed's need a loan,
the chinese are right there giving us that loan!
[5.17:
. yet the during the previous decade
it was a republican presidency saying to us,
that we didn't need to pay our taxes,
we'll just borrow from the Chinese!
. don't worry about funding the War on Terroism,
the Chinese are happy manipulating their currency,
thank god .]

[4.15: remember how this started:
. if you're a capitalist looking the world's opportunities,
everything about american employees is overpriced .
. it's not just the labor unions
demanding an equal place at the table;
every single citizen is part of virtual labor union
that is heavily taxing employers
to pay for pensions (social security)
and senior medical care (medicare).
. then if they are competitively expected to
subsidize employee heath insurance,
then they are also subsidizing medicaid
-- tax payers and employers split the bill on that one .
. if, on the other hand,
they can get their employees from out of country,
either by exporting jobs, or importing workers,
then they can pass on that healthcare tab
to other countries who are
not so confused about living standards .
. how are americans acting confused?
they keep defending their right to expand the population,
and they also demand that capitalists or the fed
should be finding them jobs that pay more and more
in order to cover increases in cost of living
that are due primarily to their own population growth .

. it's fine to say that families need to be
learning to fend for themselves,
but the problem is that
this degenerates into child abuse
-- having kids with no job, and no welfare backup .
. so the capitalists demanded the right to
export jobs and import labor,
and working for temp'agencies became common
but there were still many fluff jobs:
these are the jobs that the company would rather shed,
but it would be bad for public relations
unless there was some really good excuse for a layoff .
. that excuse came with the housing bonds crisis
that was busting the banks,
interfering with business's short-term loan cycles,
and causing a temporary lack of jobs
that caused a temporary shortage of customers .
. but this would not be fixed with bank regulation,
because they were fluff jobs,
and that's why they are still not back .
. so the next play in the policy sportsification game
is how to keep public sentiment from
grumbling about the need for more welfare .
. the first thing to do is make it appear as if
they just don't have the money!
]-4.15
. they took out huge loans for wars
when they could have paid cash
just so they can build this sense of urgency:
"( I'd like to help out the liberals with their
bottomless social welfare programs
but did you see this deficit?!
-- we don't have the money!! )
. then they have the gall to point at the chinese, [4.15:
as if the chinese had actually cheated the capitalists
when in fact the capitalists used globalization
to cheat the labor unions and american standards,
and couldn't care less about global deficits .]

. and they don't even care if they get caught,
it's all just sports !

. the Bush deficit made sense then because
we could still believe at that time
that reaganomics might work for us
(if you don't tax the rich
then they have more to invest with,
creating operations that need employees);
what the republicans are doing now however,
is pure sports:
it's obvious from the combination of
continuing high unemployment
and very profitable companies,
that what the economic collapse did
was give employers an excuse to dump the fluff jobs;
they've been waiting for the next bad economy
ever since globalization really accelerated after 2003 .
. now it is obvious that
reaganomics could never cure unemployment
because expanding the economy now means
investing in more automation and globalization,
not jobs .
. reaganomics now simply means
let the rich do the breeding
because there are no more handouts:
no welfare, and no jobs for strangers .

. the only rational excuse republicans have now,
is that it makes little sense to pay for welfare
when it'll only be feeding the overpopulation problem:
like Rush said: the sign says don't feed the animals!
. the repub' plan is to make families be responsible
for housing their excess family members,
and then people will really feel
the overpopulation they are causing .
. people need to wrap their head around
a new pardigm:
tech definitely expands the economy
but it won't involve
expanding the employment market;
capitalism makes money from
being increasingly efficient;
and, in the golden age of automation,
the greatest efficiency comes from
reducing employment .

how to reach consensus:

. pay people to not have children;
use a cap & trade system,
where each adult can be a parent for 1 kid per lifetime,
(child's birth uses a half a right from each parent,
then trading means you can sell your right,
or give it to someone else).
. if they have an expensive genetic disorder,
or a history of mental illness,
pay them even more .

[4.15: american standards revisited:

. we are making this far more expensive than need be:
there are too many of us too far apart,
and our medical needs are ludicrous!
. we have cars that weight 2000lb,
and we use them all the time!
. if you kept the weight of single-passenger car
under 250lb including passenger,
you could have a gas mileage of over 300miles per gallon .
. if you want to be safe in your 70lb car,
try outfitting 2000lb cars with
collision detection override systems;
or, design smarter cities
that have 2 divided lanes for the
heavy and lightweight vehicle classes .

. if we would encourage people to sleep in
 van-sized mobilehomes,
and play in lifestyle-specific community centers,
many people who are now
homeless or crowded with relatives
would be safe and yet feeling uncramped .

. pay people to reduce their medical expenses;
if you think you know how to care for yourself,
you can buy a much cheaper health plan
that excludes services for
cancer, heart disease, kidney disease, and diabetes
unless they were caused by things out of your control:
# some environmental contaminant
(eg, you don't smoke but got lung cancer from radon)
# an cancer-causing infection that was
not sexually transmitted,
or was transmitted by a spouse that cheated,
or by a spouse that had a pre-existing infection
that was not detectable at the time of marriage .

. convince everyone that
allowing death is not against god's plan;
we are here to maximize quality of life,
not maximize a life sentence!
. convince everyone that
god warned us many times to prepare:
if your religious goal in life
is to make sure that all available medical tech
gets applied to every single person,
then you need to consider how we can pay for that .
. the more people there are,
the larger the task is
of medicalizing every one of them .

. prisons are ridiculously expensive,
and some of the reasons for being there are ridiculous:
. replace drug wars with gated communities
that can have more surveillance
to spot the use of drugs by those you care about,
and then do your own policing;
if people are not cooperative,
then your gated community can expel them .
. to avoid child abuse, we should require that
active parents join a gated community,
or we should fund boarding schools,
where kids are parented by teams of volunteers
that are managed by professionals . ]
. we should pay people to not do drugs,
and for those that still want to,
we should allow drug use in special places,
where the out-of-control can  be contained,
and where drugs like meth and angel dust
can have the dose controlled .