Reading @doctorow https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/30/military-industrial-park-service/#booz-allen the agency issues with uncapped contingent contracting by the state are obvious. No one has an incentive to care how much the broad public pays in nickels and dimes for state-provided goods that don't rise to political prominence. Rather than whack-a-mole-ing fees, should agencies simply be forbidden from this form of contracting without literally a presidential waiver?
ht @Montag
if you let trade run imbalanced, a correlation between surplus and autocracy is predictable... https://twitter.com/interfluidity/status/1598033533800714241
(i'm still experimenting with how to manage the relationship between this new place and the old one. sorry!)
@chrisp I have come to agree that in practice evolution is usually better than revolution. The successful "revolutions" of the 1990s were mostly velvet, there was lots of continuity between the governments prior and post. constitutions, ideology, and policy direction changed but the state apparatus evolved rather than being replaced. More wholesale "debaathifications" seem not to have worked as well.
These feel like revolutionary times, but there is no revolutionary model. In the early postwar years, revolution often meant joining an international communist future. In the post-Cold-War years, it meant joining the liberal democratic end of history. Now? The arc of history doesn't know where it's going, so however inspiring the protest, it traces the trajectory of a boomerang.
@akhilrao "sample size" is a bit grand, since the "sample" begins biased and then is self-selected. but 84 accounts responded.
"On the Chinese web, searches for ‘A4’ and ‘white paper’ have been censored" ~Alec Ash https://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2022/november/blank-sheets-of-paper ht @heidilifeldman @Cyberflaneurs
Now would be a great time to call your representative and urge them to vote for including seven paid sick days in the deal Congress is likely to impose on railroad workers. It’s really the least they can do in exchange for taking away workers’ right to strike for a better bargain.
see @ddayen https://twitter.com/ddayen/status/1597780273470414848
screw the ferrari, what i’m jealous of is your tax system.
@ryanlcooper on “butter-smooth” taxation in the Faroe Islands. https://www.peoplespolicyproject.org/2022/11/30/the-best-tax-system-on-earth/
@hcetamd addresses can be masked, require some formality or cause to get at. but names should be public
Bernie Sanders perhaps saving Democrats from the absolute catastrophe that just throwing labor under the bus would be.
see birdsite https://twitter.com/MorePerfectUS/status/1597752246564843520
@make_murder_legal @djc i think (could be wrong!) people could quit as they please, but “sicking out” (not showing for work) might be recognized by a court as a form of illegal strike, putting people participating (and certainly anyone openly organizing it) at risk.
@djc So I’m no authority on this, but here’s my (perhaps flawed) understanding. Unions and labor actions aren’t just choices of private individuals. Unions, strikes, collective bargaining are activities foreseen, protected, but also defined, regulated, and circumscribed by law.
@djc There’s a law specifically pertaining to railroads that empowers Congress to impose an agreement and forbid a strike, on the grounds that the national interest in transportation is too strong to unconditionally allow the disruption that attends hardball labor negotiation. The law can’t enslave people. Anyone can quit their job. But it can forbid actions short of quitting that courts would recognize as attempts by labor to strike or exert pressure.
@djc So, people could be in jeopardy (criminal? civil? i don’t know) if a court finds them to be engaging in labor action. And legal strikes have state protection. Despite some interference and perhaps trespass, cops don’t break them up and businesses can’t go old-school with private security cracking heads. With an illegal strike, that protection would be gone, and the legalized, ritualized events we’re accustomed to could devolve to uglier forms of confrontation.
A thread on the birdsite worth reading, a huge regression in public transparency. A world in which everywhere is the Cook Islands or the Caymans or Delaware or South Dakota is not a better world. https://twitter.com/pevchikh/status/1597588203439284225
@vbuterin (i'm glad to find you here!)
Since it's "Giving Tuesday" here's my philanthropic advice: help people you know. 501(c)3 status doesn't make a recipient more worthy. Give to people and organizations that are a part of your life, to whom and from whom your relationship is more than just financial, about whom you will naturally remain informed. I won't say that giving money to arms-length philanthropies with professional fundraising staff is necessarily bad. I won't say it's good though.
if Congress imposes a deal upon them, would you support railroad workers if they chose to strike illegally?
(on birdsite the same poll from me came out 76.2% Yes, 23.8% No.)
the exercise of power can be embedded in what you seem to be ignoring (the supreme court does not hear the appeal) but that as a matter of obscure legal procedure you are actually undoing. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/29/opinion/supreme-court-decisions-vacated.html
“Here’s why I will never buy an HP printer again (this time for sure)” by Kevin Drum https://jabberwocking.com/heres-why-i-will-never-buy-an-hp-printer-again-this-time-for-sure/ // all the companies i loved in the nineties turned themselves into predators
@phillmv i think that’s right, compared to the quality of conversation we used to have through blogs. but it was better than nothing (and did have some novel virtues, especially with respect to serendipity and diversity). maybe this nascent brave new world will prove much better! i hope so.
