[gruez]

>But...you titled the post "NO BAILOUTS", not "Bailout WORKERS AND SMALL BUSINESSES ONLY". This is like "defund the police" and "dissolve ICE": the underlying motive is genuinely great, but the messaging is terrible.

I'm convinced that the reason this stuff happens time and time again is that within activist circles, everyone is trying to outdo each other in terms of ideological fervor, leading to the most extremist policies being put out.

[anigbrowl]

Not really. Policy doesn't make good headlines. Everyone understands that in 2008, investors received significant bailouts. 'Bailouts' are synonymous with people receiving help for investment losees. Depositors, workers, etc. are creditors who did not agree to shoulder investment risk.

'NO BAILOUTS' is an unsubtle slogan, but we're talking about a headline. Headlines are not meant to be nuanced case-switch statements, they serve the same role as function identifiers and need to be maximally concise to get attention. Your suggestion ignores the point above that the person who coined this headline made distinctly non-extremist policy suggestions.

You might say 'well people should never use inflammatory language to make their point.' But if so, you need to consider that all kinds of bad policies can be put onto the books while being couched in very bland-sounding terms to get past people's filters.

[armchairhacker]

> 'NO BAILOUTS' is an unsubtle slogan, but we're talking about a headline. Headlines are not meant to be nuanced case-switch statements, they serve the same role as function identifiers and need to be maximally concise to get attention.

Just want to say, I've had bugs caused by misleading function identifiers which do something very similar to what they say, but not quite. Developers take the name literally and won't even bother to read their documentation.

And it's the same thing with slogans like "no bailouts" or "defund the police". These slogans do get more attention, but your actual nuanced argument doesn't. That's a problem, because many people who would agree with the actual argument are immediately turned off by the slogan, including the people who need to hear your message the most: those who are unsure and who you're trying to convince to join your side. These unsure people will hear the most adversarial version of your words, like how a customer will read the critical reviews on a sponsored product (not the positive ones), or a jury will pick apart the testimony of the accused.

This is what people (read: Democrats and Republicans) do in today's society: they preach to those who are already on their side and will already vote for them and their proposals. They don't preach to the other side, and presumably think everyone there is a lost cause, because they themselves are hearing the other side's most radical voices. But despite what mass media would make you believe, most people are actually very rational and understanding: and I still believe that when you present your argument more nuanced and reasonable, even though less people hear it, more end up joining your cause.

[anigbrowl]

I agree with all of that. But the reality is that if you are the low-key, thoughtful nuanced person all the time, you will get ignored and/or steamrollered a lot, because humans are at least as emotional/instinctual as they are rational.

Intergroup conflict is a fact of social life, and resources coalesce around symbols, rallying cries, and so on as well as around negotiated policy, scientific methodology, and so on. If you are very patient or diligent, then you can help good ideas to succeed on their merits - but it's a slow and painstaking process. Strategic opportunism is how a lot of things 'go viral', and it's a skill that can be learned - and must be, if you wish to act as well to be acted upon. Distasteful in some ways, but such is life.

[gruez]

>'NO BAILOUTS' is an unsubtle slogan, but we're talking about a headline. Headlines are not meant to be nuanced case-switch statements, they serve the same role as function identifiers and need to be maximally concise to get attention.

Contrary to the adage, I don't think all attention is good attention. If you're drawing attention to your movement by making everyone think you're radical leftists, you're going to put off all of the moderates.

>You might say 'well people should never use inflammatory language to make their point.' But if so, you need to consider that all kinds of bad policies can be put onto the books while being couched in very bland-sounding terms to get past people's filters.

But you could do that right now. See: PATRIOT act.

[anigbrowl]

That is a risk, yes. But consider three things: moderates' differing reasons for moderation, how that has been working out, and what difference their agreement actually makes.

On the first, some moderates are prudent and thoughtful, looking at all sides of the problem, conscious of sustainability - conservative in the good (non-partisan) way. Certainly, those are people we'd like to persuade toward any big decisions by consensus, both because of their wisdom and the political and economic capital it has allowed them to amass. Many other moderates are just timorous; the more partisan conservatives are rather expert at stampeding them with culture war issues and so forth. That is definitely problematic; while individual sheep are mostly not threatening animals, a herd of them could be quite dangerous. As something of a radical leftist myself (albeit an ideologically agnostic one), I think the superior messaging and information warfare skills of rightists to move moderates around is a Big Problem.

But on the other hand, moderates can be appealed to very clearly. How has the deregulatory free-market ideology actually panned out for them, either across successive Administrations and Congresses (assuming they're older and in the US) or over the 15 year echo of the 2008 financial crisis, which includes the coming-of-age for millenials and affected most of the developed world? If you've been fairly solidly in favor of the status quo most of that time, you have to acknowledge that there have been massive concentrations of wealth in some sectors and widely distributed losses of purchasing power - eg the housing market. Likewise you have to observe that the pandemic and even the recent-current inflationary spiral has been absolute gangbusters for a lot of corporate profits. I was startled myself to observe a month or so ago that the egg industry profits went up ~600% over the last year. I know enough markets to think that some profit-taking and consolidation would be normal and even good following the shocks that hit that industry, but a 6-fold increase in profits suggests market failure rather than necessary correction.

I'm handwaving a lot here, in the interests of brevity. But my basic point is that while moderates have good reason to uphold the status quo, they also have good reasons to notice that has in many ways become a constrictive ceiling, and to question how well The Very Serious People have actually delivered for the economy as a whole.

Lastly, you would generally want the support of the moderate majority (or at least plurality) in a conventional political context. But we are not in such a time. Part of why we bounce from one phenomenon of polarization to another, and so much energy is poured into culture war that are of little inherent importance, is because we are at a tipping point, or rather a confluence of them; and when a system is unstable, a relatively small push can result in a disproportionately large tilt. That's why the more radical types are constantly jockeying for position, hoping to be well-situated to tilt things in a direction that's favorable to them and exploit an availability cascade. In very rapidly unfolding situations, it doesn't matter too much what the moderates want, because they are inclined deliberate (if they're wise) or dither (if they're timorous) while strategists and hotheads act.

Moderates ultimately want everything to go back to normal (most of the time for eminently good reasons). But while some some shocks are transitory, others are transitional. I anticipate that the next ~12 months will basically be a period of about-quarterly dislocations and dampings, and that 2024 is going to look like 2020 on steroids.

[bombcar]

Pensions were mentioned.

But almost all pensions just are investors.

[krapp]

>I'm convinced that the reason this stuff happens time and time again is that within activist circles, everyone is trying to outdo each other in terms of ideological fervor, leading to the most extremist policies being put out. T he people who originally professed this messaging legitimately believed these systems (ICE, the police) to be irreparably corrupt and that mere reform was impossible, and their message was coming from a place of rage, alienation and frustration.

That message inevitably got co-opted by the mainstream and watered down into something palatable, and thus ineffectual and easily ignored, but its adherents were (and remain) sincere. Not everyone is LARPing or trying to out virtue-signal each other.

[flangola7]

"Defund the police" and "dissolve ICE" are literal expressions. They are literally what we want. We didn't burn down an entire police station for fun - it is a primary objective.