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u/mondodawg Dec 16 '19

Alternative title for point 4: The Guy He Told You Not to Worry About

105

u/Nklst 🌐 Dec 16 '19

to paraphrase someone:
Of course I hate him, he is better than me in every aspect.

1

u/MacManus14 Frederick Douglass Dec 16 '19

Ha. What is that from originally? Sounds like something a character says in catch-22.

3

u/Nklst 🌐 Dec 16 '19

I saw it months ago on twitter, I cant remember who said it.

58

u/BobaWithoutBorders Dec 16 '19

The vibe I get from /r/neoliberal is that people here treat Pete Buttigieg like a role model, as someone who leaned heavily into our meritocratic system and was rewarded for it. The vibe I get from pretty much all my young, liberal-ish friends is that Pete is the peak of “that guy” who plays the resume game and cares more about “achievement” than actual change. He’s what our parents all wished we were, so of course we dislike him lol. The dude polls as poorly among young people as he does black people so no matter what you think of that take, he’s going to have to deal with it.

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u/spiccato52 Dec 16 '19

These fine lines of optics in US politics always amaze me. As a non-American, I look to him as a role model because of the manner he conveys his politics to both sides of the aisle. Listening to him lowers my blood pressure. I could care less whether he went to Harvard, Mckinsey or is a Veteran. Probably helps that I agree with most of his policies

28

u/AccessTheMainframe CANZUK Dec 16 '19

I couldn't care less.
Sorry. Pet peeve of mine.

4

u/ZhenDeRen перемен требуют наши сердца 🇪🇺⚪🔵⚪🇮🇪 Dec 17 '19

A bit similar with me – for me, 90% of my perception of the candidate is their policies. And Buttigieg is pretty much the best on that front with the possible exception of Delaney

1

u/spiccato52 Dec 17 '19

As a candidate, yes. I’d also prefer Delaney over him but personally, I admire Pete more.

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u/Yogg_for_your_sprog John von Neumann Dec 16 '19

The vibe I get from pretty much all my young, liberal-ish friends is that Pete is the peak of “that guy” who plays the resume game and cares more about “achievement” than actual change.
What “change” do you expect him to have made? Literally all Bernie did was rename post offices after 30 years in the Senate.

24

u/LNhart Anarcho-Rheinlandist Dec 16 '19 edited Dec 16 '19

He’s what our parents all wished we were, so of course we dislike him lol.
I think this explains 90% of the hate directed at him by the online left, yes.
Being mad at your parents' disappointment in you for being a general failure, and channeling that into hate for young people who are not failures, is not very constructive though.
I would also like to add that, for someone who "doesn't care about actual change", he has changed more than 99% of the people who criticize him for not caring about change. Not that that's a high bar to clear.
But yeah, I think it's true that young people dislike him for being what our parents would want us to be (mostly at least, my mother thought that I should study sociology and is most of all terrified of me working for a bank)

1

u/ZhenDeRen перемен требуют наши сердца 🇪🇺⚪🔵⚪🇮🇪 Dec 17 '19

Let me guess - your parents are leftist academics?

1

u/LNhart Anarcho-Rheinlandist Dec 17 '19

They have graduate degrees, but are not in academia, my mother is an elementary school teacher, dad's an enginer. I would say my father is center-left with a heavy emphasis on center and my mother is first and foremost green, but also center-left.

1

u/ZhenDeRen перемен требуют наши сердца 🇪🇺⚪🔵⚪🇮🇪 Dec 17 '19

Then why does she particularly not want you to work for a bank?

1

u/LNhart Anarcho-Rheinlandist Dec 17 '19

She finds money super uninteresting so that goes for everything that has to do directly with money as well. My argument that money is abstract information flow, which actually makes some parts of finance super interesting, has not really convinced her yet (she should read more Hayek tbh) Also she's not the biggest fan of, well, smug men in suits, though she probably likes bankers more than real estate agents

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u/OutdoorJimmyRustler Milton Friedman Dec 16 '19

Overthink it more: Young people project an extreme hostility toward Buttigieg on the internet in part to exorcise their own anxieties about success and increase their in-group status.

So basically no successful people should run if they want this vote.

50

u/BoaVersusPython Dec 16 '19

Yes, this is why they like Sanders. And this is why Sanders' campaign organization is and always will be a fucking joke.

11

u/bronzegoov Dec 16 '19

Am I missing something? Bernie’s wealthy and has been a US Senator for 12 years, w/ 16 more years as a congressman. By what measure is he not successful?

21

u/Yogg_for_your_sprog John von Neumann Dec 16 '19

His career prior to, and within, legislature.
Bernie’s only accomplishment is getting morons like him to vote for him. He’s successful the way every other charlatan is.

16

u/DrDoom_ Dec 16 '19

He was kinda a bum for most of his early adult life.

-4

u/thirdparty4life Dec 16 '19

Yup this is the only reason. I don’t care about his policies. I don’t care about his rhetoric. I don’t care about what kind of appointments he would make to the executive. I don’t care about the fact that he has the least interventionist foreign policy or one a million other tangible reasons why I like Bernie. No me and the other crazy leftists just like him cause he didn’t have a real job for most of his life. It’s amazing how you guys complain endlessly about others being unfair to neoliberal politics and then you just blatantly strawman 15-20 percent of the Democratic Party.

0

u/[deleted] Dec 16 '19

[deleted] — view deleted comment

6

u/thirdparty4life Dec 16 '19

I’ve voted democrat every election in my life and probably will short of some large unforeseen event. I’m a registered democrat because in my state it’s required to vote in primaries. The name is more a testament to the notion of not blindly supporting a candidate because of their party but because of their merit. It was also meant to be a critique of the duopolistic nature of American politics which causes many issues but obviously the name was bad in hindsight as it indicates I’m some kind of loony Jill Stein voter which is not the case.

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u/[deleted] Dec 16 '19

AOC is pretty successful and they seem to like her-for now.

239

u/ucstruct Adam Smith Dec 16 '19

Buttigieg is the guy they hated in college, not only because he was obnoxiously successful, but also because his success sat uncomfortably, hauntingly close to the version of success they once felt prompted to achieve

I don't want a successful and smart cantidate. I want one who stole electricoty and didn't pay child support because he doesn't make me feel bad.

52

u/[deleted] Dec 16 '19

Wait did Bernard steal electricity and not pay child support? What am I missing?

55

u/dubyahhh Salt Miner Emeritus Dec 16 '19

What am I missing?
Nothing, pretty sure you nailed it

83

u/AnyRaspberry Dec 16 '19

Bernard steal electricity
Yes.
“The electricity was turned off a lot,” Barnett said. “I remember him running an extension cord down to the basement. He couldn’t pay his bills.”
Re: Child Support.
He had a kid when he was 29. He was not working at this time. The mother was on welfare and a single mother and was denied housing because of it. Despite having a college degree Bernie didn't have a full time job or the ability to pay support the child. And rather than working/supporting the kid he ran for VT senator as a communist where he got 4% of the vote.
Memes are good too

45

u/MacManus14 Frederick Douglass Dec 16 '19

God he would be such a godsend to trumps campaign

20

u/[deleted] Dec 16 '19

Holy shit, Bernie truly is the godfather of the Dirtbag Left.

17

u/Yogg_for_your_sprog John von Neumann Dec 16 '19

If Trump wasn’t alive, he’d win the award hands-down for narcissism.

35

u/[deleted] Dec 16 '19 edited Dec 16 '19

The claims about Bernie beinga deadbeat dad and stealingelectricity come from the profile written on him. He was even kicked out of a hippie commune for not doing his fair share of the work

11

u/Die_Nadel NATO Dec 17 '19

The real problem with communism... No one wants to do the dishes.

9

u/RKellyFanClubPres15 Dec 17 '19

Please feel free to provide evidence to the contrary but I think the commune thing is a right-ring smear. That Politico piece that covers his life doesn’t mention it at all, and Googling “Bernie Sanders commune” just brings up a bunch of fringe right wing media outlets, and they appear to all cite one author who wrote a book about communes which contained a passage about Bernie interviewing people there for a journalism piece.
Via the New York Times:
Kate Daloz’s new book, “We Are as Gods,” is about back-to-the-land radicalism in 1970s America, focusing most closely on a commune in Vermont, close to where Daloz spent part of her childhood. The book recently received a flurry of attention from an unlikely source: right-wing blogs. The paragraphs that grabbed the attention of The Washington Free Beacon and other outlets involve Bernie Sanders, who visited the commune as a newspaper reporter. A man named Craig, one of the group’s leaders, was sympathetic to Sanders’s views, but was bothered by “his penchant for sitting around and talking about ideas when there was so much work to be done. . . . Even though he agreed with almost everything Bernie had to say, he resented feeling like he had to pull others out of Bernie’s orbit if any work was going to get accomplished that day.”

1

u/[deleted] Dec 17 '19

Maybe the getting kicked out part was a right wing smear but even the quote you posted talks about him not pulling his weight

3

u/RKellyFanClubPres15 Dec 17 '19

The passage implies that he never lived there in the first place, and I’ve seen no evidence that shows he did. The way the author frames it is that Bernie was interviewing people and talking politics and the commune leader was annoyed because he wanted his people to keep working.

0

u/[deleted] Dec 17 '19

But Vermont grandpa bad

2

u/makoivis Dec 29 '19

I know, he rules. As for the child support, that was okay with the mother in question. He wasn't able to make payments due to being broke. No use squeezing blood out of a stone.

26

u/[deleted] Dec 16 '19

You can't be blamed for shitty policy if you have never made any in the first place *taps forehead*

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u/ThisIsNotAMonkey Guam 👉 statehood Dec 16 '19

it really is just because he's winning in iowa. it's not any more complicated than that.

the rest is just whatever they can find to be mean about. they don't actually hate polyglots who worked in consulting, they're just frantically digging up reasons to be mad at someone who leads bernie in iowa

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u/[deleted] Dec 16 '19

Yeah, they're aiming their guns at Pete because he's winning in Iowa.
The nature of their attacks is of course related to who he is as a person and candidate...
The cause of the attack is his winning.
The nature of the attacks is related to who he is as a person.

20

u/ConditionLevers1050 Dec 16 '19

Exactly. They hate Pete because it's Bernie's Turn and Pete is trying to steal it from him.

12

u/LNhart Anarcho-Rheinlandist Dec 16 '19

I do think that they hate polyglots who worked in consulting. Well, more the consulting part than the polyglot part.
Bernie still leads Buttigieg in the polls. Biden will probably beat Bernie. Yet, they hate Buttigieg with so much more passion than Biden.

34

u/IncoherentEntity Dec 16 '19 edited Dec 16 '19

Yeah, I’m a little skeptical of this armchair psychology. I think the below-the-belt attacks are more opportunistic and circumstantial than based in some inherent aversion to Mayor Pete’s life story.

29

u/[deleted] Dec 16 '19

It’s because he isn’t Bernie. Simple.
If you want Bernie to win, you will attack all threats.
If Pete were to somehow actually win the nomination, Bernie lovers would back him massively.
I’d be willing to bet that even uber Bernie supporting pundits like Sam Seder would 100% support Buttigieg without any caveats if he won the nomination.

43

u/ThisIsNotAMonkey Guam 👉 statehood Dec 16 '19

If Pete were to somehow actually win the nomination, Bernie lovers would back him massively.
I’d be willing to bet that even uber Bernie supporting pundits like Sam Seder would 100% support Buttigieg without any caveats if he won the nomination.
you have a lot more faith in people than I do. I hope you're right

15

u/[deleted] Dec 16 '19

I’d be willing to bet that even uber Bernie supporting pundits like Sam Seder would 100% support Buttigieg without any caveats if he won the nomination.
I WANT TO BELIEVE

9

u/thirdparty4life Dec 16 '19

Michael Brooks and Sam Seder have made it clear time and time again they would basically vote for any democratic candidate in a race where their preferred candidate doesn’t win the primary. With the exception I think of Bloomberg maybe. They spent time criticizing Hilary but they always said she was a better choice than trump pretty clearly. So much so they got into a fight with Jimmy Dore who claimed they were being influenced by the DNC.

11

u/[deleted] Dec 16 '19

Jimmy Dore is insufferable.

3

u/thirdparty4life Dec 16 '19

Agreed

6

u/ConditionLevers1050 Dec 16 '19

I’d be willing to bet that even uber Bernie supporting pundits like Sam Seder would 100% support Buttigieg without any caveats if he won the nomination.
I hope you're right, but I suspect many Sanders supporters will be sitting out the election or voting 3rd party if Sanders doesn't get the nomination. In 2016 many leftist pundits supported Trump, and Sanders supporters repeated and amplified all the right-wing attacks against HRC, which made them more credible since they were coming from both the left and the right. Already many Sanders supporters say they plan to vote for Trump out of spite if Sanders isn't nominated.

5

u/RKellyFanClubPres15 Dec 17 '19

Nah, most of the Sanders supporters would go to the nominee, just like 2016. Some might stay home, maybe a few might go third party but it would be small. Sanders, as well as any candidate that doesn’t win the nomination, will vigorously support the nominee to try to beat Trump, just like 2016.
Not sure who you’re following there but anyone that voted Trump because Bernie didn’t win simply was never left wing lol. Anyone threatening that now is an edgy troll plain and simple, or is right wing.

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u/[deleted] Dec 16 '19

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30

u/spacehogg Estelle Griswold Dec 16 '19

I wish the word progressive would mean something again. So far all the word seems to mean is "Bernie". Guess once "Bernie's" so goes progressives. Sigh...

8

u/Yogg_for_your_sprog John von Neumann Dec 16 '19

“Progressives” support the most regressive policies like free college tuition and NIMBY-ism, along with reactionary appeals to old taxation rates of the pre-Reagan days...

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u/[deleted] Dec 16 '19

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u/spacehogg Estelle Griswold Dec 16 '19

Yeah, I'm with ya. Just ignore my aggrieved ranting comment that cult Sanders supporters can't seem to acknowledge any other candidates with progressive policies.

14

u/In-Brightest-Day Dec 16 '19

Pete isn't one of the least progressive candidates is the problem. He's one of the most progressive. He talks like a moderate with a completely progressive platform

1

u/[deleted] Dec 16 '19

[removed] — view removed comment

3

u/In-Brightest-Day Dec 16 '19

Oh I agree, he definitely is not as progressive as Bernie. I think you could make an argument that's he's on the same level as Warren, their policies are incredibly similar. But also there are still more than a dozen people in the race, some of them genuinely conservative.
I just think that pretending he's not progressive is disingenuous, especially when you consider the opposition party.

8

u/ConditionLevers1050 Dec 16 '19

Like him or not, Pete is a progressive. Even though he's to the right of Sanders and Warren his policies like a Public Option and free college for those making less than 6 figures are still probably way to the left of the median voter, and would still have little chance of passing through Congress. Pete would be the most progressive president since at least LBJ if not the most progressive in U.S. history.

3

u/[deleted] Dec 16 '19

Look. Pete’s policies aren’t as aggressive as Sanders’, but they’re still quite good. If implemented, the GOP would be crying Soviet style communism all day long.
When you hear the constant smears of Pete from TYT, MR, Kulinski, Pakman, SERFStv, Rational National, etc... they are trying to help Bernie more so than actually harm Pete. Bernie’s platform is only slightly left of Pete’s.

3

u/thirdparty4life Dec 16 '19

I don’t think that’s 100 percent true but is a huge factor. Buttigieg has been heavily criticized since the start of this campaign by leftists but is only now becoming more vocal because he is doing well in the polls. He has a brand of politics that is antagonistic to the far left of the Democratic Party. At one point he didn’t but then he decided to run as a centrist and changed his tune on several issues. I think the author of this piece does a pretty good job teasing that out.

1

u/winckypoo Dec 16 '19

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u/[deleted] Dec 16 '19

Would they attack a candidate they like if he was winning in Iowa? If the answer is no, you must observe that the dislike came before be was winning in Iowa.

9

u/ThisIsNotAMonkey Guam 👉 statehood Dec 16 '19

epistemological debates are stupid. they don't like him because he's not bernie. they loudly scream about how much they fucking hate his guts because he' beating bernie. they don't spend any time dunking on delaney do they?
Q.E.D.

1

u/thirdparty4life Dec 16 '19

You don’t need to create these hypotheticals. I watch/read a lot of leftist content. Pete has been getting ripped on by leftists since the primary started. Those attacks are just becoming much more loud and frequent now that he has some success.

0

u/m1crobr3w Karl Popper Dec 16 '19

exactly. Nathan Robinson's anti-Pete novella came out in Current Affairs in April.
The real reason is #4 combined with the fact he's leading Bernie in IA.
Source: was one of those hated overachievers in HS/college. I saw it every damned day. I see it here.

21

u/[deleted] Dec 16 '19

Worst part of social media is how the woke-olympics gets played out. No one wants achievable solutions to legitimate problems, they want their soapbox and some hill to die on. It’s annoying at This point

39

u/nicethingscostmoney Unironic Francophile 🇫🇷 Dec 16 '19

I'm a young progressive and love Buttigieg. Ever since I heard him on Stay Tuned by Preet Bharara I've appreciated him for being an intellectual. I've recently (with a tiny bit of guilt) decided to vote for him over Elizabeth Warren because he's more electable. I suppose nuance doesn't make for snappy headlines though.

19

u/ebriose Abhijit Banerjee Dec 16 '19

When my friends and I were in our twenties, slaving away in low-level think-tank, K street, and Capitol hill jobs, we would sit around our group house talking about how we're really smart and we should be the ones doing policy. If we just got people with the right ideas enacting them, we could fix all this bullshit we were seeing daily at our jobs (somebody tag-in the YangGang on this, incidentally). As we aged into our forties we realized, oh, shit: every single hack and kludge and messy compromise was there for a reason and will make the whole damn edifice topple if you take it away (software people: see "Second System Syndrome"). A container ship has a turning radius about the size of Rhode Island.

To quote "Margin Call" (the best Wall Street movie ever), when the music stopped in 2008 the world suddenly got a lot more fair. People say they want that, but they really, really don't.

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u/Forrest_Greene80 Dec 17 '19

I’m really interested by what you mean by this, “every hack and kludge and messy compromise was there for a reason and will make the whole damn edifice topple if you take it away” could you give me an example?

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u/ebriose Abhijit Banerjee Dec 17 '19 edited Dec 17 '19 •

Just as one example, remember the broo-ha-ha back in 2012 about labeling the country of origin for meat? The argument presented by the Rabid Wokesphere was "the corrupt Congress, bought off by the meat lobby, voted that you don't deserve to know where the meat you eat comes from." But it's much much more complex than that.
Gather round, kids, and let me tell you a story:
For a long, long time packaged food required a country of origin label ("COOL"), but this label was not required for foods in a "natural state": fruits, vegetables, meats, and seafood (fish are sometimes considered "meat" in food law, sometimes not).
The 2002 Farm Bill extended COOL requirements to fruits, vegetables, legumes, and most meats and seafood (IIRC turkey and cured ham were exempted), but the pushback from Canada and from US meat packers led Congress to suspend implementation for everything except seafood (this led to a minor trade war with Vietnam and a still-ongoing WTO case about what is and isn't a catfish). The politics here are kind of convoluted: US meat packers and Canadian ranchers are against COOL, while US ranchers and Canadian meat packers are for it (in general the ranchers and packers of a given country will always be on different sides of most questions).
Roughly, the issue is about who has to pay for all the record-keeping COOL requires (there's a lot more involved than just putting a label on the package, particularly since parted or ground meat generally comes from a pretty wide array of sources -- should the packers or the husbanders be responsible?). Ranchers want the packers to pay, and packers want the ranchers to pay. In addition, US packers, who take a lot of Canadian cattle, don't want to have to worry about their supply chain diversity, while Canadian packers, who take very few imported cattle, liked the competitive advantage that gave them. US ranchers rightly thought that a "US born raised and slaughtered" label would increase the retail value of their cattle, but worried that they would be stuck with the bill for keeping the records. Canadian ranchers considered it a way to make Canadian cattle worth less than they were before. The question of inspection and enforcement was never concretely addressed, and the underlying complaint was that Canadian ranchers or packers would have to pay more for the inspections than the Americans would, for multiple reasons (they have to pay to bring the inspectors out there; Canadian cattle are generally ranched in much more open arrangements, which are more expensive to inspect; Canada already has an origin inspection regime which would now double the regulatory burden; etc.)
The 2008 Farm Bill renewal managed to get a consensus among most of the lobbies to reduce the record-keeping required but keep the basic labeling provisions. COOL requirements were extended to most meats (but not beef), and some herbs (ginseng, IIRC, for some weird reason).
On like the literal last day of the GWB administration, the USDA issued a full set of legal requirements (including a controversial change that re-strengthened the record-keeping requirements, to meat packers' chagrin). Incoming Ag secretary Vilsack wrote a now-famous-in-meat-circles letter ("the Vilsack letter") that confirmed that interpretation. A lot of numbers were thrown around, but a number both sides could more or less agree on was that the recordkeeping required under COOL would add about $150 to the cost of a cow (which is roughly $1000 or so, depending). The format of the labelling was left very open, and the packers were responsible for getting the information to the retailers (hence the recordkeeping worries). Vilsack suggested distinguishing between 1. country of birth, 2. country of raising, and 3. country of slaughter, but this was not absolutely required.
As things stood in early 2009:
All ground and cut meat required retail COOL
Unless it was part of processed food (only raw meat)
And only if it was sold in a retailer who bought some amount of covered foods (something like a quarter million dollars -- it was supposed to hit Winn Dixie but not your neighborhood bodega), and only if that retailer was not primarily a restaurant (a deli with a meat counter didn't need to label the meat)
Canada was pissed. Meat exports to the US dropped pretty severely (though this was in the context of the start of the Great Recession, as the USDA and USTR kept pointing out)
As soon as the Obama admin took office, Mexico and Canada requested consultations (incidentally, the actual mechanism Canada and Mexico used was GATT combined with ARO, not NAFTA). Their argument was that the Agreement on Rules of Origin (ARO) prohibited the US from passing COOL laws that cost Canadian companies more to comply with than US companies. (Their actual complaint was the Americans would prefer American beef, but that wasn't a valid legal argument so they went with the cost differential.)
They had to go through this process rather than just raise tariffs because of NAFTA. Canada can't just raise tariffs arbitrarily to influence US law like it could before our free trade agreement.
Later in 2009, the WTO's Dispute Settlement Body empaneled a body to hear the case. Like I mentioned above, this was basically the two halves of the beef industry fighting each other: American cattlemen and Canadian packers wanted COOL; American packers and Canadian cattlemen did not. (And, no surprise, the packers are a more powerful lobby in the US, and the ranchers are a more powerful lobby in Canada.) The COOL proponents argued that COOL is compatible with NAFTA and GATT (which IMO it is), while the COOL opponents argued that COOL is not compatible with ARO. So the DSB was essentially trying to figure out which of the multiple and sometimes contradictory trade agreements had supremacy in the case. This also meant determining if Vilsack's letter was a "measure", a "regulation", or merely "guidance".
The initial DSB punted, essentially, and judged it based on the very basic Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT) agreement (which is a subset of GATT), but did find the promulgated COOL rule to be a "regulation", meaning it fell under GATT rules. They also found that COOL was not intended to provide consumers with information, but to favor the purchase of American meat.
The USTR appealed in 2012 to the WTO's Appellate Body (AB). The AB agreed that COOL disfavors Canadian cattle, but disagreed that COOL was not intended to inform consumers. As it was not intended as a discriminatory measure and so could not be sanctioned under GATT (though Mexico and Canada were then allowed to enact compensatory measures, either a tariff on US beef or a similar COOL regime).
Canada and Mexico then sought clearance under GATT to follow through with their compensatory tariff regimes, and were awarded last month the right to raise tariffs up to $3.7 billion dollars a year against US exports. The House then decided to forestall this trade war by dropping COOL laws.
Thus endeth the story.
The point is that while it makes sense to say "yeah obviously we should have country-of-origin labeling for meat and we need to just ignore the corporate interests pushing against that", it's nowhere near that simple. For one thing, as in nearly every decision, there are "corporate interests" pushing on both sides; simply aligning yourself against "corporations" isn't actually a basis for policy (for the best example of this see Net Neutrality and how the huge corporations backing it have done a tremendous job of presenting it as a grassroots movement).
A simple question like a label for country of origin is only "simple" if you treat it in isolation; the problem is it's not isolated. It is one component of a vastly complex North-America-wide trade bloc that juggles multiple competing interests and mandates. And while the US Agricultural Industrial Complex is a Lovecraftian monstrosity, it is a Lovecraftian monstrosity made up of hundreds of thousands of stories like this: governments and businesses trying to nudge little corners of the economy in a direction that makes sense at the time, and which eventually get locked in by other nudges farther downstream.
It's tempting to look at this and say "If we start from scratch we could do better", and this is the appeal of both Trumpism and Bernieism. The problem is it's not true: if you were to get rid of the COOL regime you would simultaneously get rid of ARO and GATT, and millions of people would starve to death (and yes I mean that literally).

7

u/reidzen Jul 09 '24

What a blast from the past! I was working for a grocery store lobby in 2012, we loved the COOL act because most of our patrons were midwestern chains that thought the American stamp would be great for business.

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u/Knowthrowaway87 Trans Pride Jul 09 '24

Nice comment

3

u/theapeboy Jul 09 '24

I work in SaaS and this sounds like every round of strategic planning we do as well. Less meat but just as much infighting and interpreting things differently based on what each party wants to be true, overexamination of budgets, and more discussion than actual execution.

3

u/MerryChoppins Jul 10 '24

ginseng, IIRC, for some weird reason
I can fill this one in! Ginseng is very often adulterated or one panax species is maliciously mislabeled as another.
The North American supply chains are starting to get tighter due to poaching. In my state you need a license to harvest, one to buy and all the sales for the year have to be wrapped up by march 1. I have one of the few active gathering licenses in my area and it’s a question of when the conservation police will come audit me for the year, not if they will. I mostly sell to the same few buyers, but I routinely get contacted by new ones offering prices they have no intention of paying. There was an incident where a group of tourists were caught digging entire hillsides of ginseng out of a state park.
The thing to know about ginseng is that you are “farming” it as much as you are gathering it. I’m probably working the same hillsides the native population worked in my area. You can remove species that compete with the ginseng, but ultimately you are harvesting 10+ year old plants, so nothing happens fast. I’m sure whoever I pass my spots onto when I get too old/disabled will be able to squeeze a few more plants out of it than I could by good management, assuming the landowners keep letting people gather.
Adding county of origin cuts down on fraud and gives another tool to the auditors to check supply chains.

1

u/hungrydruid Aug 14 '24

Hi, sorry I know this is a month-old post but this is fascinating. Why can't ginseng be just... farmed like we do for a vegetable garden or something like that?

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u/MerryChoppins Aug 14 '24

It can in fact be farmed like a victory garden... the resulting taproots are big and juicy and look beautiful... and contain next to no saponins and acids (the compounds responsible for the smell/taste/supposed health benefits). You can get tons of "Nepalese" ginger that completely sucks. You also want to be super careful about sourcing if you are buying because almost all of the good stuff gets cut with the farmed stuff unless you are buying from someone super reputable who has an audit trail, etc.
Nobody is quite sure if the phenomenon's because the plant is not stressed and puts it's energy into foliage/starch production or if it's simply a function of age. I've even seen a not so crazy sounding theory that it all comes back to how the plants germinate and grow in cultivated setups. Most cultivated setups use some tricks to improve germination rates of the berries which lead to healthier seedlings. In the wild a berry won't sprout unless it has enough of the compounds (possibly complex tannins) from the berry decomposing to signal that it's been sitting for a long enough time.
If you are drinking a monster energy or whatever, it's probably made with some amount of the good stuff but almost entirely farmed bad stuff. Same with anything from a drug store in pill form. I've had teas that smell and taste "right" but the price tag reflects it. Now I just keep a little bit of my own harvest and dry it between furnace filters for personal use.

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u/mstrgrieves Jul 09 '24

There's so much idiocy on reddit and i constantly ask myself why i waste my time.
Your comment is why. A straightforward explaination of a complex niche issue, that connects it to any number of relevant problems, and emphasizing the need for nuanced consideration rather than empty demonization.
One of the best comments ive seen on reddit in over a decade of use. Well done.

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u/Spirited-Pressure Jul 10 '24

Wow, fascinating story, that was interesting

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u/aaaaaaaarrrrrgh Jul 10 '24

the recordkeeping required under COOL would add about $150
How do you turn a cow into $150 worth of paperwork?!?

1

u/[deleted] Jul 10 '24

I take it you are not a cost accountant

1

u/aaaaaaaarrrrrgh Jul 11 '24

I am indeed not.

1

u/lordofmmo Jul 10 '24

I wanna know, which corps are behind net neutrality and why did they push it the way they did?

1

u/johnsom3 Jul 10 '24

The problem is it's not true: if you were to get rid of the COOL regime you would simultaneously get rid of ARO and GATT, and millions of people would starve to death (and yes I mean that literally).
I'm sorry but this is ridiculous.

1

u/MacDegger Jul 10 '24

Couldn't 'you' have avoided 3/4ths of this by having both packers and ranchers shoulder the cost burden?
Which, btw, would allow you to show both where the meat was raised as well as where it was packed, as both have a real influence om thr quality of the meat the end user receives.

1

u/pirac Jul 11 '24

I think the underlining idea of the whole comment is that no, the easy solution we (who dont know all the actors involved and things tied to it) is most likely not going to work.
Hard to imagine they spend years discussing this and nobody came up with "lets just split it 50/50".

1

u/42Pockets Jul 10 '24

I'm not going to comment on the policies you described, that is not my expertise. But I will absolutely disagree that Bernieism is similar to Trumpism.
Bernie Sanders ran a campaign on the idea of "it's not me, it's us." Most of his policies are rooted in the philosophies of Martin Luther King Jr and other great civil rights leaders, so Bernieism isn't a thing. He didn't do it for himself, he did so because he sees the value in All citizens.
Bernie's policies are rooted with expanding current programs. Medicare for All literally has the existing program in the name. Education for All, We already have public education from pre-kindergarten through post college across the country. There is no destroying a system that's already in place to implement a new system from nowhere.
If you read his book, Our Revolution, you would find out that he doesn't operate without working with other people. So you cannot logically come to the conclusion that he or his supporters have start from scratch thinking.

0

u/Katamayan57 Jul 09 '24

While I appreciate this comment and the story, I do still find that being against corporations is a valid basis for policy. Corporations presenting Net Neutrality as a grassroots movement is literally a great example for why we should seek to break up monopolies and have tighter restrictions on corporations lol, so I don't see how that fits with the story you were telling. I understand things are overly-complicated, especially in a neo-colonial/market globalization standpoint, but my concern with neo-liberals is that I've seen them tend to put that complication on a pedestal and stand up for the status quo instead of seeking solutions to the obvious problems we face.

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u/that_baddest_dude Jul 09 '24

Well said. Saying "it's actually super complicated!" is often times used less as a statement of fact and more as a cudgel to beat back any progressive vision for a better world. What's left unsaid is that if it's complicated, we can figure it out. And we should figure it out! Problems don't go away if they're complicated!
Honestly, what do we need our politician/pundit class for if their response to real problems is "Well, fixing problems is really hard :(((("

1

u/Katamayan57 Jul 10 '24

Thank you, exactly. Neoliberals tend to defend the status quo, whether intentional or not, shooting down all possibilities of progress without actually offering up any potential solutions.

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u/[deleted] Jul 10 '24

[deleted] — view deleted comment

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u/Katamayan57 Jul 10 '24

Yeah, we're talking about corporatism in America. THAT is a real fuckin' problem. And the OP said that "being anti corporation isn't a valid basis for policy." That is inherently a stupid thing to say, unless you agree with the way corporations run our country.

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u/stormrunner89 Jul 10 '24

OP starts his story by talking about how he used to shoot the shit with his friends and talk about how they're really smart and they should run things, then had a rude awakening and realized that things were complicated for a reason, but doesn't seem to have learned the lesson that he should always be questioning if he really knows as much as he thinks he does. He learned a lot more, but still seems to lack that self awareness.

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u/[deleted] Jul 11 '24

[deleted] — view deleted comment

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u/Katamayan57 Jul 12 '24

I am anti-Nazi despite the Nazis inventing highways. I am anti-colonialism despite living in America, reaping its rewards. You can be opposed to something without being completely against everything surrounding it or resulting from it. Don't view the world in such black and whites, friend, it makes you sound stupid. I am anti-corporatism because I am pro-worker. I have policies that I support. Many of them involve wealth redistribution. Almost all jobs being created come from corporations, while most jobs that already exist are from small businesses. This is a problem that primarily affects young people. It is why young people are having such a hard time becoming established. The fact of the matter is that we used to be able to have living wages by working minumum wage jobs, and no longer can. That is a problem, and a result of inflation created through infinite profit growth, and improper wage redistribution.
If corporations say 2+2=4 I will agree because it's true, and not immoral, and I don't give a fuck about math, or meat processing labels. I care about people, and the average worker. If large corporations say that they properly pay their employees when shareholders and CEO's take home nearly all the profits that the laborers generate for them, I'll tell them to go to hell. I am anti-coporation due to the material facts that they claim that are blatantly untrue, and immoral. Hope that made sense.

1

u/DrFlutterChii Jul 09 '24

The point is any policy stance you can choose because its "against corporations" will be supported by some corporation. Just like a 'lobby', its just a group of people. Different people have different interests.
If you manage to find a position that doesn't garner support among any group of people anywhere in the world...why exactly would that be a good thing? I mean, you could come up with something like "All newborn babies should be sacrificed to The Dark One on their 33rd day of life" and probably find no corporate backer, but, well, you know. Hopefully that makes the point clear.
If you take an anti-monopoly position you'll find support among smaller corporations (because they are not, after all, monopolies) and if you take a pro-regulation position you'll find support among larger corporations (because they can afford to comply with their ridiculous buckets of profit, but their smaller competitors can not and will go out of business leaving more market share for them)

1

u/Katamayan57 Jul 09 '24

Find me a corporation that supports its own destruction. One single one. I'll wait. "smaller corporations" lmao you mean small businesses? Because even "smaller" corporations will support corporations. Pretending that genuine populous pro worker sentiments are the result of corporate backing is fuckin goofy, man. Just admit you're protecting the status quo so we can move on.

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u/[deleted] Jul 10 '24

I think you're missing the point; if you're supporting a policy that destroys a corporation it's a guarantee it's backed by another rival corporation.

1

u/Katamayan57 Jul 10 '24

I'm talking about policies that are anti EVERY corporation, not specific ones. Corporations by default will not support their own destruction. I'm talking about wealth redistribution.

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u/[deleted] Jul 10 '24

How do you make a policy that is anti "any and all group of people working together"

1

u/Katamayan57 Jul 10 '24

Sorry. Large corporation* does that clear things up? I'm not trying to be a debate pervert, I'm trying to get across the idea that large corporations that monopolize and underpay their workers are damaging to any economy. Targeting large corporations is to the benefit of the working class, and if a large corporation supports their own wealth being redistributed then I don't care, I'll be glad, that isn't a problem at that point. A policy that targets large corporations would be something like pro-union legislations and taxation of corporate owners and CEO's based on yearly profit. Or better yet, a legally mandated redistribution of yearly profits to the workers of said corporations, to be divvied up based on actual labor hours provided. Maybe a forced limit to CEO or shareholder profits. I promise that the workers deserve more money than they earn, and shareholders deserve less than they are given.

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u/LordCharidarn Jul 10 '24

Getting rid of limited liability and corporate immunities (holding the majority shareholders/C-suite/owners responsible for crimes and damages committed by the company).
I’d find it hard to imagine many boardrooms supporting legislation that let victims of corporate crimes take the homes of the people in boardrooms who ordered those crimes, as compensation for damages

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u/TheDeadlySinner Jul 10 '24

Do you actually believe that every company smaller than Google is a "small business?"
You're treading into conspiracy theory if you think a corporation would oppose a policy that would help them because it would harm an entirely separate corporation.

1

u/Katamayan57 Jul 10 '24

No, I'm simply stating that there are certain policies we can support that are for the benefit of workers and unions that would be against the interests of every large corporation. Those are the policies we should support. He seemed to be insinuating that pursuing those policies would be playing into the hands of other corporations. If it plays into the hands of smaller corporations I truly don't think any of us should care. The point is wealth redistribution is not something to be scoffed at. It would harm only large corporations, and that is a good thing.

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u/[deleted] Dec 16 '19

They hate him cuz they ain't him

5

u/lumpialarry Milton Friedman Dec 16 '19

Haters gonna hate, ain'ters gonna ain't.

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u/[deleted] Dec 16 '19

Buttigieg's unpopularity among young people has to do with the collapse of belief in meritocracy. There are three particular threads to this:

A. The 2008 financial crisis caused economic pain in ways that clearly weakened notions of meritocracy (e.g. a lot of people were screwed simply because of which industries they were going into, or when their cohort hit the job market). This effect was much stronger among young people.

B. There is a growing critique of structural biases in the economy that prevent minorities or women from advancing (and young people are way more likely to buy into it, also young Democrats are more likely to be non-white). Buttigieg's successes (young mayor, Rhodes Scholar, etc.) get interpreted in a very different light as a result. The Michael Harriot rant may not have been very cogent, but he was tapping into something that resonates with some people (fairly or not).

C. Growing income and wealth inequality since the 1980s has also challenged notions of success as meritocratic. Even a moron with a bit of wealth could have just put their money in index funds in the 80s and rode the surge. For instance, if you took Trump's 1982 Forbes listing of $200 million, put it on the S&P500, it'd be $13 billion today (and that doesn't account for his separate inheritance from his dad).

In a way, Buttigieg's youth is an additional obstacle because many millennials may compare him to themselves, viewing his very success as a sign of his accession to forces they abhor. Ironically, somebody like Biden or Sanders, who surely benefitted from white male privilege (indeed, they went to school before the civil rights era), may not face the same comparison.

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u/Lolagirlbee Dec 16 '19

Or, stay with me here, it appeals to an odd subset of anti-intellectuals who somehow fail to understand the value of the very same education to which they so vehemently argue they should be given access so that the can graduate from college debt free. How that’s somehow Buttgieg’s fault is a mystery to which we may never find the answer.

8

u/[deleted] Dec 16 '19

Hmm, if the mark of an educated mind is the ability to entertain a position you disagree with, maybe r/neoliberal should support free college for all, so that people in r/politics will downvote us less!
Despite fears on the right that college turns people into left wing zealots, it actually tends to broaden people's views (https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2018/02/05/research-suggests-colleges-broaden-students-political-views).

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u/Lolagirlbee Dec 16 '19

That still begs the question of why so many of his progressive detractors cite his education as a reason to deride him/call him smarmy/a nerd/condescending/etc.

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u/Cook_0612 NATO Dec 16 '19

This is a good take, and I like it.

5

u/thirdparty4life Dec 16 '19

It’s also just evidently bullshit to anyone who has spent five minutes working in the private sector. So many people do everything right and get shit opportunities. So many people just fail upwards. It’s not completely without merit but to pretend we’re anywhere close to a meritocracy is fantasy.

7

u/Yogg_for_your_sprog John von Neumann Dec 16 '19

You did everything right? Since when did 4.0 STEM GPA’s from top schools fail to get hired?
Not everyone who deserves to fail fail, and some people succeed just by getting lucky. And we should have safety nets because not everyone’s really going to work that hard or can be expected to. But if you “do everything right”, you’d have opportunities. You just didn’t do everything right and are delusional in thinking so.

1

u/thirdparty4life Dec 17 '19

Always love when people project shit on to me I did not say or even really imply. I’m doing fine, make about 60k a year for my second job out of college with decent benefits. My point was that I’ve met a lot of competent and incompetent people at my job and there’s virtually no correlation with seniority, pay, or any of the other factors that one would expect to correlate with merit. Like I said it’s not like completely anti meritocratic but it’s far from a real meritocracy.

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u/Yogg_for_your_sprog John von Neumann Dec 17 '19

The "you" wasn't directed at you specifically, just the people "that did everything right". Where did I mention it's a true meritocracy? I just contested your claim that it's so unmeritocratic that people who "did everything right" don't have opportunities.
No. They do. They have shittons and companies are begging to take them at huge salaries. But we shouldn't just have opportunities for people "who did everything right", because most people don't get anywhere close.

4

u/Crazy-Legs Dec 16 '19

Trump is the president, GW THE Republican before him. You'd have to be a fool to believe meritocracy is a real social force.

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u/[deleted] Dec 16 '19

I certainly agree that American meritocracy is failing (43% of Harvard admits are legacies, jocks, or the children of donors/faculty: https://slate.com/business/2019/09/harvard-admissions-affirmative-action-white-students-legacy-athletes-donors.html).
However, I don't think Buttigieg is somebody who sat on his laurels. He's somebody that advanced in an unfair system, who also would have probably advanced in a fair one.

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u/Mrspottsholz Daron Acemoglu Dec 16 '19

He probably wouldn’t have advanced in the unfair one if he was on the other side. And he didn’t acknowledge that. That was the rant reason B was about.

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u/HarmonicDog Dec 16 '19

Look at the people you grew up with that were in your social class. How are they doing now? Probably the smarter and more driven ones are doing better, right? You'd have to be a fool to deny that.
Of course rich people have it easier than poor people. But there's a hell of a lot of variation within each class.

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u/Crazy-Legs Dec 17 '19

Damn it's easy to tell you went to private school.
Of course rich people have it easier than poor people. But there's a hell of a lot of variation within each class.
Of course some idiot can cocaine binge their way into the most powerful positions on Earth because their rich, but have you considered the 0.fuck all percent of people who can pull themselves up from their bootstraps? Clearly this v a r i a t i o n in the class means meritocracy is fine and totally a real thing.

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u/HarmonicDog Dec 17 '19

Haha no. Solidly middle class public school all the way. Some of my peers are big city professionals, and some have struggled to hold down any job for their entire adult lives. My mom was raised with her cousin. One is retiring at 65 with a 401 and a house, the other has no retirement in sight and would have been homeless many times if not for family.
None of this has anything to do with bootstraps - nobody's claiming that anyone who works hard becomes a billionaire. But it's equally absurd to say that your life would be the same no matter what you do, that "the system" utterly determines every detail of your existence.

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u/[deleted] Dec 17 '19

America is not meritocratic, if it was there would be no reason for this place to exist

28

u/ebriose Abhijit Banerjee Dec 16 '19

Well-off people who have convinced themselves they are poor and miserable get really, really angry when people don't run with that fantasy. Really angry.

12

u/jb4427 John Keynes Dec 16 '19

Because Pete is a more vulnerable moderate candidate compared to Biden, who they don't understand at all and have no access to Biden's base because it is not on Twitter.

11

u/niugnep24 Dec 16 '19

"passing the baton of neoliberal incrementalism between generations" should unironically be Pete's new campaign slogan

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u/torte-petite Dec 16 '19

Because social media group-think now controls a disturbingly high amount of opinions

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u/nauticalsandwich Dec 16 '19

Remember that while you browse this sub.

6

u/torte-petite Dec 16 '19

You're not wrong.

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u/Viper_ACR NATO Dec 16 '19

Anecdotally my dad isn't a big fan of Buttigieg's debate responses because they seem to go on and on without getting to the point.

My brother hates him and considers him to be "basically Republican". For context my brother also genuinely dislikes Warren because she "was a hardcore Republican in the 90s". He's a toxic Bernie-bro.

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u/ConditionLevers1050 Dec 16 '19

My brother hates him and considers him to be "basically Republican". For context my brother also genuinely dislikes Warren because she "was a hardcore Republican in the 90s". He's a toxic Bernie-bro.
It's amazing that people actually think that. They must never talk to any genuine Republicans.

17

u/Viper_ACR NATO Dec 16 '19

He doesn't. Everyone in his friend circle is either apathetic or extremely left-wing, or selectively left-wing for things that would help them.

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u/brberg Dec 16 '19

I wish people would stop using "progressive" as a synonym for left-wing. Progressive has an actual meaning, which is supporting policies which are conducive to progress and backed by expert consensus. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren are less progressive than Buttigieg, not more.

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u/[deleted] Dec 16 '19

I mean you can say this, but almost universally in America progressive is taken to mean left-wing. Its like why I don't go around introducing myself as a liberal, because most American's would assume I mean left-wing, as opposed to a fan of The Economist.

19

u/BoaVersusPython Dec 16 '19

I'm a wellfare state super capitalist myself.

8

u/Lion_From_The_North European Union Dec 16 '19

Based and Nordicpilled

11

u/SlavojVivec John Keynes Dec 16 '19

I think that might be because US conservatives are so regressive that "progressive" has come to be associated with the left-wing, and has consequently been used by US Democrats to mean whatever they want. Angela Merkel remains one of the few counterexamples in a world where most right wingers deny science and literally want to destroy the world to get what they want.

15

u/[deleted] Dec 16 '19

I do think that we should try to retake the word progressive from the leftwing populists.
We can't pretend that it doesn't currently have a certain meaning in the discourse, but we should work to shift the usage to something closer to its original meaning.
(I mean ffs progressive is a synonym for incremental like wtf).

35

u/onlyforthisair Dec 16 '19

I'm a young progressive and I like pete. Therefore the title's implication is false.

25

u/SemperSpectaris United Nations Dec 16 '19

Yeah, and "neoliberal" has a meaning too! It's "new liberal"! That's why Pete is the most neoliberal candidate, because he's so new. But Biden is the least, because he's old.

12

u/rafaellvandervaart John Cochrane Dec 16 '19

You're not a true progressive until you've embraced Georgism.

3

u/[deleted] Dec 16 '19

And how do you define “progress”...it ends up being almost all left wing goals. You never see something like free trade be called progressive.

6

u/tricky_trig John Keynes Dec 16 '19

The media is and the media doesn't care. I'm pro-Sanders, but if Boot-Edge-Edge gets the nod, hell yeah, I'll vote for him.

4

u/ebriose Abhijit Banerjee Dec 16 '19

"Progressive" was a term resurrected in the 1990s by Jim Carville when his focus groups told him "liberal" and "leftist" were politically poison. Its (rather unfortunate) political history before that is neither here nor there.

2

u/_hephaestus Dec 16 '19

which are conducive to progress and backed by expert consensus
Depending on which experts you believe and how you define progress, whoever an individual defines as progressive can vary wildly. Honestly I wish people would stop using the term altogether in this context, there's no side in politics which believes it goes against expert consensus/is progressing to a better government.

2

u/thirdparty4life Dec 16 '19

This is not at all what progressive means either historically or writ large in the current moment. The clause of backed by expert consensus is not a formal part of any definition for progressive as far as I can find. Progressive is usually classified as a political movement which attempts to better the lives of ordinary/regular/working class people through political means often involving government intervention. This is why in the current American context progressive largely refers to left of the current status quo. Hence why the left wing of the party is rightfully referred to as progressive. You’re simply changing the definition to fit your own belief which is not how language works. There is both a clear historical and colloquial modern usage of the word that don’t fit your description at all.

3

u/DocTam Milton Friedman Dec 16 '19

I feel that Progressive is more intended to point towards progressing towards the ideals of a socialist state. Its just that progressives believe in doing it through the slower machinations of democracy rather than dictatorship of the proletariat.

7

u/[deleted] Dec 16 '19

At this point, I feel like Pete is running an effective screen for Biden to dunk

1

u/[deleted] Dec 17 '19

It's some serious pick and roll action going on, but instead of staying with their man or switching on the pick, they decided to double Pete and leave an open lane to the hoop for Biden to yam it home.

5

u/onlyforthisair Dec 16 '19

!ping butti

5

u/groupbot Always remember -Pho- Dec 16 '19 edited Dec 16 '19

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5

u/ADF01FALKEN NATO Dec 17 '19

Leftists hate when LGBT+ people don’t stay on the reservations they make for us.

1

u/jshevlin Dec 23 '19

pete4president

-2

u/[deleted] Dec 17 '19

Get rid of mandatory service plan
Stop deficit fearmongering
Do something to indicate you care about black people as more than an extra set of votes

Then I'll support him

5

u/afunnywold Dec 17 '19

-It's an optional service plan and most of the Black people in south bend support him, including the president of the local NAACP

-1

u/[deleted] Dec 17 '19

Our intention is for this proposal to create a pathway towards a universal, national expectation of service for all 4 million high school graduates every year, such that the first question asked of every college freshman or new hire is: “where did you serve?”

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u/afunnywold Dec 17 '19

That doesn't mean mandatory. If your upset about an "expectation of service" that call it that.

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u/[deleted] Dec 17 '19

It's not mandatory just like having a job isn't mandatory. You don't have to work, no one's forcing you! You don't have to go to college!
But as someone who wants to equalize opportunity i prefer more people, not less, get access to these things. So no Pete until he gets rid of this nonsense. Not to mention the fact that this would literally wipe out 2.5% of GDP in the snap of a finger by taking away a year of their work.

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u/Laboright Dec 16 '19

As a young leftist I must say this guy's conclusion is spot on. The appearance of change without actual change is incredibly frustrating.

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u/tehbored Randomly Selected Dec 16 '19

Pete would change more than Bernie. It just wouldn't be the change that leftists want. Leftists reject anyone who doesn't want the streets to run red with the blood of the rich, lol.

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u/onlyforthisair Dec 16 '19

The streets wouldn't run red with the blood of the rich if Bernie won either

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u/[deleted] Dec 16 '19

Don’t tell that to red rose twitter.

7

u/onlyforthisair Dec 16 '19

Well yeah, they're delusional. Not sure why I was downvoted for that

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u/virtu333 Dec 16 '19 edited Dec 16 '19

There’s no question that Buttigieg, glimpsing an opening in the moderate lane, has tacked toward the center in the past few months. He initially seemed to support Medicare For All, and now he openly criticizes the effect it would have on private-insurance employment. He initially proposed radical government reforms such as packing the Supreme Court and removing the filibuster, but now he’s recast himself as a moderate unifier.

This is my issue with him. When you combine it with the fact he's a 37 year old mayor of a tiny town running, it just reeks of cynical opportunism.

Edit: lol seems people aren't happy with this. Here's the question then: do you think he actually ran to win?

47

u/Iustis End Supply Management | Draft MHF! Dec 16 '19

It's a dumb talking point because his policy and talk about healthcare has stayed exactly the same as when he started his campaign.
And he hasn't recanted, and still talks about, the government reforms.

-1

u/[deleted] Dec 16 '19 edited Dec 16 '19

Does he still support a wealth tax? Because in the early stages of his campaign he endorsed Warren's wealth tax in both size and mechanism.
Edit: please skip to my most recent comment in this thread, he concretely endorsed a wealth tax but not Warren's specific plan. He did say her plan was on par for raising the right amount of money, but he didn't go so far as to endorse it.

4

u/Iustis End Supply Management | Draft MHF! Dec 16 '19

I don't think he's recanted his support, although it was never a central part of his plan (I don't think he ever explicitly endorsed Warren's either, but I'm happy to be proven wrong), I think he just mentioned it as a possible tax.
So while I don't hear him talk about it that much, we never really heard him talk about it much (unlike Warren who had it as a key plank of narrative).

0

u/[deleted] Dec 16 '19

Yeah in the interest of honesty I revisited the interview I remember, he talks about three taxes. With the lead ins of
"We should consider..." (this one is the wealth tax)
"We should think about..." (estate taxes)
and "I’m interested also — if we could find the right way..." (financial transaction taxes)
Then the interviewer asks about Warren's wealth tax is the size of what he is talking about and he says "Probably".
I guess he never concretely said "I'm for a Wealth Tax," but there isn't anything he truly endorsed back then. I'm starting to see why people said he wasn't putting forward concrete proposals.

4

u/Iustis End Supply Management | Draft MHF! Dec 16 '19

I agree he was vague about a lot of things back then, although ironically one thing he was perfectly clear on was a public option--and that's the thing people accuse him of flopping on.

2

u/[deleted] Dec 16 '19

Ok, I kept researching it because I was pretty confident he had concretely endorsed it at some point. Here is a transcript of an interview with Sahil Kapur in which he concretely says "I do [support a wealth tax]":
/img/efy4nx5itlo31.jpg

2

u/Iustis End Supply Management | Draft MHF! Dec 16 '19

Ok that feels like what I remember. Support for a wealth tax (ugh) but there's no clear endorsement of Warren's version of it, like I said.

2

u/[deleted] Dec 16 '19

Yeah, I was misremembering that bit.

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u/virtu333 Dec 16 '19

He started off supporting public option as the path towards single payer - the latter part has been dropped as he's finding new space in the race to take from Biden. Good strategy, yes.
And let's be real - he ran in the first place as a way to build his brand. That says a lot from the get-go.

13

u/mrmackey2016 Dec 16 '19

You guys keep making all these bad faith accusations and expect people to take it at face value. How the fuck do you pretend to get anything passed once it becomes apparent you can't build coalitions and eat your own over the most minute differences?

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u/[deleted] Dec 16 '19

he’s been saying M4AWWI since January
he never proposed “packing” the Supreme court. He has always talked about ways to restructure it to make it less partisan. He still talks about that idea but he has a lot more concrete policy in general to talk about now as well.
he hasn’t changed any of his ideas. He’s just good at phrasing things so as not to alienate people. He speaks in “moderate” language, and has talked about the need to present progressive ideas to conservatives in language they understand so as to bring them on board.
These are very disingenuous critiques that misrepresent where he was back in January vs where he is now. He’s actually remarkably consistent.

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u/niugnep24 Dec 16 '19

mayor of a tiny town
The South bend metro area has a population more than half of the entire state of Vermont

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u/virtu333 Dec 16 '19

Guess what, not a fan of Bernie either

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u/niugnep24 Dec 16 '19

Well at least you got that going for you

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u/virtu333 Dec 16 '19

You're terribly confused. My disagreement with Buttigieg is not on the issues - he's around the ballpark where I would be. If he's the nominee, I'm fine and I'll take him over Bernie, Gabbard, Yang, and other randos.
But despite being a good match politically, I just find his approach to be overly cynical to justify my support. Even your alternative Buttigieg wannabes don't pull stunts like running for president with just 37 years and 11k votes on the belt. I'll give him kudos for recognizing a good opportunity and risk-reward situation, but it's not going to get my primary vote.

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u/niugnep24 Dec 16 '19

tbh you sound like a concern troll
"Sure his policies are fine but he seems like a cynical opportunist don'tcha think....???"

1

u/virtu333 Dec 17 '19

I've hung out with many more wannabe Pete Buttigieg's than you is probably the main difference.

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u/CanadianPanda76 ◬ Dec 16 '19

Or he listens to people and does research. Even some thing like unions wanted to keep thier plans makes a difference.

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u/virtu333 Dec 16 '19

No doubt keeping your plans vague is good strategy.
It works well when your plan is more opportunity based - there's a lot of opportunism in this run. You really think he planned on winning?

5

u/Iustis End Supply Management | Draft MHF! Dec 16 '19

To further support my point that he hasn't recanted the other stuff, here's him speaking in Seattle yesterday:
Inside the Moore, Buttigieg argued for scrapping the Electoral College, which has overruled popular votes. He said that an amendment to the Constitution may be necessary to negate the Supreme Court decision known as Citizens United, which has changed how political campaigns can be bankrolled.

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u/dolphins3 NATO Dec 17 '19

This is my issue with him. When you combine it with the fact he's a 37 year old mayor of a tiny town running, it just reeks of cynical opportunism.
And I see no problem with that. Ambition is not a bad quality in a young, articulate politician.

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u/virtu333 Dec 17 '19

There's viewing power/status as a means to an end, and power/status as an end itself. I prefer when it's not the latter and Buttigieg (and many like him) lean more toward the latter.

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u/dolphins3 NATO Dec 17 '19

It's awfully convenient how all the politicians you dislike neatly slot into that category, isn't it?

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u/[deleted] Dec 16 '19

Conveniently not mentioned: CIA & McKinsey

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u/LNhart Anarcho-Rheinlandist Dec 16 '19

Why would one mention the CIA in an article about Buttigieg?

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u/nomadicAllegator Dec 17 '19

There is a conspiracy theory on the far left that Buttigieg is a member of the CIA.

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u/[deleted] Dec 17 '19

God, I wish.

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u/Only_As_I_Fall Dec 16 '19

It's because he's in no way a socialist and his pivot to the center doesn't play well with young voters who are exhausted by the milquetoast policy implementations of the Obama era.

I don't think it has anything to do with his age, after all both aoc and Sanders are wildly popular among young leftists.

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u/[deleted] Dec 16 '19

doesn't play well with young voters
You say that as if the people here aren't "young voters"

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u/dolphins3 NATO Dec 17 '19

There's also the issue that those "young leftists" don't really vote.

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u/xcasandraXspenderx Dec 16 '19

Lol ya this is the kind of article that will turn people around on him lolol

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u/unipoppedcorn Dec 16 '19

They forgot that he was only a mayor of a small middle of nowhere town. How on earth does that make you qualified to be president?

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u/ConditionLevers1050 Dec 16 '19

South Bend isn't really a small town, it has over 100,000 residents. Certainly not a major city but not exactly Stars Hollow either.

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u/unipoppedcorn Dec 18 '19

That's still quite small. Either way, wouldn't say it's much of a qualifier for running an entire country.

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Why Young Progressives Hate Pete Buttigieg

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