FungiDebord [none/use name]

could be, could be that particular interests are intractable. but, fwiw, a trade publication i receive is forecasting that harris will continue biden’s regulatory regime (whether or not such a regime succeeds may be a different matter).

A “normie” repub would be winning right now, no?

no, no one wants a fusionist chamber of commerce republican.

Trump is presenting himself as the anti war candidate. If a war starts where America soldiers start coming back in coffins by the hundreds it’s Joever for Kamala.

That’s not his messaging on Israel. And frankly there’s no way that American boots are put on the ground unless a Navy ship is sunk or something, and two months of American caskets (dozens of dead?) is not enough time for antiwar sentiment to develop. Americans love a patriotic war.

turn back to neoliberalism

i think the neoliberalism consensus is dead. usa is lurching towards a Keynesian imperialism.

RE the trolly problem itself and the application in voting, the libs are probably correct that a less bad thing is worse than a worse thing (tautological correctness being the best kind of correctness).

The way to side step this argument, on a simple utilitarian account, and which I don’t really see articulated, is that we are not at the trolly switch. By arguing that the democrats should do more to reduce harm than just positioning themselves at 99pct of damage of the GOP, and aiming to create a block of constituents that could plausibly withhold support for the Dems unless they did better, you may create a world that presents fewer people tied on a proverbial trolly track, when you get to it in the voting booth. It’s just of no use affirmatively broadcasting that you will support whatever the Dems give you; this very plausibly contributes to worse aggregate outcomes.

I’ll spare a longer post, but it’s all analytical and under determined, and any criticism of a leftist project can and is attacked under other various ethical theories as well (what’shisname’s (good faith) post questioned if it was morally defensible to off the Romanov kids; he didn’t do this from a utilitarian perspective).

A more common experience imo is running into accusations that leftist policies fail because they wrongly let the ends justify the means, not that they are too unconcerned w aggregate happiness (see aforementioned post/argument (from a_blanqui_slate?)). This is because leftist policies are seen as departing from a baseline of the distributive status quo, such that these departures, because they are almost necessarily not-pareto superior (ie, require a redistribution where someone must be made worse off), can always be argued to infringe on some ex ante Right, and are thus unacceptable on some deontological theory; of course, one could rhetorically change the analytic baseline, and argue that the status quo of distribution already departs and infringes on a prior Right, and argue for amelioration from a Rights based perspective; and which is again to say, it’s all analytical and immaterial.