In a repeated game, where the same people play the same game over and over, cooperation can more easily arise than in a one-shot version of the game, where such people play only once and then never interact again. This sort of cooperation gets easier the more that players care about the many future iterations of the game, compared to the current iteration.
"Many of our institutions function well because most participants set aside immediate selfish aims in order to conform to social norms"
Again with the disregard of history, in this case, that the Electoral College was set up by slavers for slavers to have presidency: http://time.com/4558510/ele...
There are factors why the Electoral College is doomed to further decreasing voting power of some citizens, thereby violating Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, the prohibition of unequal vote dilution: https://www.washingtonpost....
Sure. But there's a vast difference between not following particular laws - speeding on the highway, not turning in friends who use drugs, or are "dreamers", or cheat on their taxes, etc. - and overthrowing the basic foundations of our society.
Elections, constitutional rights and separation of powers, the rule of law, respecting the decisions of courts are fundamental to the way our society is organized.
To reject those is to start a civil war, because without them we have no peaceful way to resolve disputes.
There is certainly room for civil disobedience and various other forms of "illegal" resistance. Especially when it comes to issues involving human rights. If it's your mother or wife being deported, I suspect you would agree.
You may have covered this already somewhere else, but refusing to even have a hearing on the President's SCOTUS pick for the whole final year of his presidency seems to many of us to be flouting institutional norms, and they'll quite likely be rewarded for it. Had HRC been elected, Ted Cruz was ready to lead the Senate to refuse any and all of her SCOTUS picks for her entire presidency.
Still, I agree and advocate not flouting institutional norms ourselves.
EDIT: I see now that you addressed this in another comment. I would only add that legislative norms can't disintegrate into a kind of rival gang form of legitimacy w/o harming a large swatch of our other societal norms.
Speaking of con men, I wonder why more isn't being made of Trump settling in the Trump "U." case? There's been discussion of "unsavory views." TU is truly unsavory.
It seems to me that the threat of deportation is always present. Trump increased their risk, but nobody is actually proposing that their risk be eliminated. To tell the truth, I think all the major factions like having the "undocumented" for their cheap labor and easy exploitability, which requires that some but not all be deported.
Civilization works and chaos and civil war are avoided when we have rules that determine, peacefully, how disagreements will be resolved.
That works only if people accept the results even when they lose.
There is a vast gulf between enforcement of existing legislation and policy, even if that policy is unwise, unfair, and not what it *ought* to be, and ignoring or overthrowing settled law.
Yes, some laws are better than others, and many of our laws are bad, even horrible.
But unless we want society to break down into anarchy and civil war, we can't fix that by ignoring the rules, but only by changing them in accordance with the rules of the larger system - elections, legislation, court judgments, etc.
I agree that would be terrible and personally I would oppose it. (For one thing, my wife is not an American citizen!)
But it does strike me as more of an example of democracy-as-usual rather than collapse-of-democracy. That's because it would be legal, so it's not a failure of rule of law.
However, I'd also agree it's a mistake to say that legality alone is enough to show something is democracy-as-usual.
If one party passed a constitutional amendment that eliminated elections, then that'd legal but I wouldn't call it democracy-as-usual.
Another example would be if faithless electors vote a majority of EC votes for Clinton. My understanding is that this would be constitutional and legal. But it's such a strong violation of existing norms, that I am sure Trump supporters would regard it as evidence of collapse-of-democracy rather than democracy-as-usual (or maybe, rigged-as-usual).
the internment of American citizens, in violation of our current understanding of civil rights
What about people who *ought to be* citizens? As in illegal aliens who cannot get legal status because current immigration law would require them to return to their home country for up to 10 years? Note that this includes "dreamers", people brought here as children, and adults who are now married to Americans and have US citizen children. (Hardly anyone is going to abandon their kids for 10 years to get legal status).
The scary aspect of Trump's program is the threat to do things to long-term US residents and their families - Muslims who immigrated 20 years ago, undocumented aliens who came here as children and/or are now married and have children and established lives in the US. When someone says things like they're going to round up all 11 million illegals and deport them, that affects millions of people, along with their families and friends. I can tell you, if I was married to an illegal alien and had children, I would be justifiably terrified. It's not all hyperbole, there are legimitately people who have reason to fear, and people who know those people and are legitimately concerned for their welfare. Unsurprisingly, most of those people are Democrats.
Reagan wasn't anti-immigration. The thing about Trump that people consider racist is the alt-right, keep out the Hispanics, keep America white, anti-immigrationist part.
The best way end cooperation is to defect. The only worse strategy is to pre-announce your plan to defect openly. You don't even get the 1 win before descending into anarchy. Lol.
We're not necessarily in a prisoner's dillemma tho. We could be in a dictator game. In which case, the goal is to make your opponent think you're insane in order to get him to cooperate.
I agree. IMO the "circumstances" that would justify some sort of extreme resistance would be if he started actually rounding up and deporting certain classes of undocumented aliens - childhood arrivals, parents and spouses of US citizens, especially those who received protection under DACA/DAPA. Or if he actually started requiring Muslims to register with the government or something to that effect.Just blowing a ton of money on infrastructure spending and getting into trade wars is not sufficient.
This is a good list, in the sense that it should serve to forestall hysteria.
It's important to understand, though, that for many Americans, #s 1, 2 and 7 already happened under Obama.
1. Obama completely disregarded bankruptcy court rulings to award UAW preferred status in the auto bailouts.2. Selected "waivers" of Obamacare requirements to specific favored companies7. Selective auditing and enforcement of conservative groups by the IRS.
Understand this is not an anti-Obama or pro-Trump observation. Simply that the rule of law has been shaky for a while, and "politics-as-usual" is already unimpressive.
A statistically significant number of inconvienient people or their loved ones meeting with accidents or suddenly retiring and being replaced with convienient people.
"Many of our institutions function well because most participants set aside immediate selfish aims in order to conform to social norms"
Again with the disregard of history, in this case, that the Electoral College was set up by slavers for slavers to have presidency: http://time.com/4558510/ele...
There are factors why the Electoral College is doomed to further decreasing voting power of some citizens, thereby violating Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, the prohibition of unequal vote dilution: https://www.washingtonpost....
Sure. But there's a vast difference between not following particular laws - speeding on the highway, not turning in friends who use drugs, or are "dreamers", or cheat on their taxes, etc. - and overthrowing the basic foundations of our society.
Elections, constitutional rights and separation of powers, the rule of law, respecting the decisions of courts are fundamental to the way our society is organized.
To reject those is to start a civil war, because without them we have no peaceful way to resolve disputes.
It's not the same as double-parking.
There is certainly room for civil disobedience and various other forms of "illegal" resistance. Especially when it comes to issues involving human rights. If it's your mother or wife being deported, I suspect you would agree.
Do you have an example of anyone saying "Make American Great Again," aside from all the context of Trump's campaign, is hate speech?
Hi Robin,
You may have covered this already somewhere else, but refusing to even have a hearing on the President's SCOTUS pick for the whole final year of his presidency seems to many of us to be flouting institutional norms, and they'll quite likely be rewarded for it. Had HRC been elected, Ted Cruz was ready to lead the Senate to refuse any and all of her SCOTUS picks for her entire presidency.
Still, I agree and advocate not flouting institutional norms ourselves.
EDIT: I see now that you addressed this in another comment. I would only add that legislative norms can't disintegrate into a kind of rival gang form of legitimacy w/o harming a large swatch of our other societal norms.
Speaking of con men, I wonder why more isn't being made of Trump settling in the Trump "U." case? There's been discussion of "unsavory views." TU is truly unsavory.
It seems to me that the threat of deportation is always present. Trump increased their risk, but nobody is actually proposing that their risk be eliminated. To tell the truth, I think all the major factions like having the "undocumented" for their cheap labor and easy exploitability, which requires that some but not all be deported.
Civilization works and chaos and civil war are avoided when we have rules that determine, peacefully, how disagreements will be resolved.
That works only if people accept the results even when they lose.
There is a vast gulf between enforcement of existing legislation and policy, even if that policy is unwise, unfair, and not what it *ought* to be, and ignoring or overthrowing settled law.
Yes, some laws are better than others, and many of our laws are bad, even horrible.
But unless we want society to break down into anarchy and civil war, we can't fix that by ignoring the rules, but only by changing them in accordance with the rules of the larger system - elections, legislation, court judgments, etc.
I agree that would be terrible and personally I would oppose it. (For one thing, my wife is not an American citizen!)
But it does strike me as more of an example of democracy-as-usual rather than collapse-of-democracy. That's because it would be legal, so it's not a failure of rule of law.
However, I'd also agree it's a mistake to say that legality alone is enough to show something is democracy-as-usual.
If one party passed a constitutional amendment that eliminated elections, then that'd legal but I wouldn't call it democracy-as-usual.
Another example would be if faithless electors vote a majority of EC votes for Clinton. My understanding is that this would be constitutional and legal. But it's such a strong violation of existing norms, that I am sure Trump supporters would regard it as evidence of collapse-of-democracy rather than democracy-as-usual (or maybe, rigged-as-usual).
the internment of American citizens, in violation of our current understanding of civil rights
What about people who *ought to be* citizens? As in illegal aliens who cannot get legal status because current immigration law would require them to return to their home country for up to 10 years? Note that this includes "dreamers", people brought here as children, and adults who are now married to Americans and have US citizen children. (Hardly anyone is going to abandon their kids for 10 years to get legal status).
There is a real threat of that happening.
The scary aspect of Trump's program is the threat to do things to long-term US residents and their families - Muslims who immigrated 20 years ago, undocumented aliens who came here as children and/or are now married and have children and established lives in the US. When someone says things like they're going to round up all 11 million illegals and deport them, that affects millions of people, along with their families and friends. I can tell you, if I was married to an illegal alien and had children, I would be justifiably terrified. It's not all hyperbole, there are legimitately people who have reason to fear, and people who know those people and are legitimately concerned for their welfare. Unsurprisingly, most of those people are Democrats.
Reagan wasn't anti-immigration. The thing about Trump that people consider racist is the alt-right, keep out the Hispanics, keep America white, anti-immigrationist part.
The best way end cooperation is to defect. The only worse strategy is to pre-announce your plan to defect openly. You don't even get the 1 win before descending into anarchy. Lol.
We're not necessarily in a prisoner's dillemma tho. We could be in a dictator game. In which case, the goal is to make your opponent think you're insane in order to get him to cooperate.
I agree. IMO the "circumstances" that would justify some sort of extreme resistance would be if he started actually rounding up and deporting certain classes of undocumented aliens - childhood arrivals, parents and spouses of US citizens, especially those who received protection under DACA/DAPA. Or if he actually started requiring Muslims to register with the government or something to that effect.Just blowing a ton of money on infrastructure spending and getting into trade wars is not sufficient.
This is a good list, in the sense that it should serve to forestall hysteria.
It's important to understand, though, that for many Americans, #s 1, 2 and 7 already happened under Obama.
1. Obama completely disregarded bankruptcy court rulings to award UAW preferred status in the auto bailouts.2. Selected "waivers" of Obamacare requirements to specific favored companies7. Selective auditing and enforcement of conservative groups by the IRS.
Understand this is not an anti-Obama or pro-Trump observation. Simply that the rule of law has been shaky for a while, and "politics-as-usual" is already unimpressive.
A statistically significant number of inconvienient people or their loved ones meeting with accidents or suddenly retiring and being replaced with convienient people.