Low activity

[beechnut79]

(04-23-2017, 01:31 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: I would suspect that one of the most radicalizing effect upon society is the perception of mass hardship in juxtaposition with conspicuous indulgence by economic elites. This is especially so when economic rent is a big chunk of economic activity. People paying heavily for the privilege of coexisting with economic elites are unlikely to like the reality. Economic rent includes organized crime, political corruption that enriches corrupt officials,  monopolistic profits, and a bulk of payments (above maintenance costs and a normal rate of return of investment costs) of rural magnates and urban landlords.

Urban California is very left wing because people are being gouged for rent. See also the Acela corridor, the Three C's of Ohio, Greater Chicago, and South Florida. Even in Texas, the liberal areas are the more expensive urban areas (Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, Austin, and El Paso).  Such is not a big problem in rural areas. If a big chunk of your income is not going to rent, then you might be a conservative unless your living depends upon the welfare state for a big chunk of your pay.

To most tenants rent looks like a reward for a passive investment. Whether that is a fair assessment of reality may be a different matter. But as a rule, people who make huge incomes off passive investments defend their incomes as fervently as people who make their income in more difficult ways, like owning and operating manufacturing or retail/ food service business.  

If you are money ahead to leave California with what looks like a well-paying job for retail sales or restaurant work in Nebraska -- we obviously have a gross imbalance of costs and pay.

Woody Guthrie made mention of California's high costs in his classic song "If you ain't got the do-re-mi". If not, look in less expensive places such as those he mentioned in that song.

[Mikebert]

(04-23-2017, 12:35 PM)ChrisP Wrote:

(04-23-2017, 05:41 AM)Mikebert Wrote: I have tried to interest some of the other folks in posting here since this site is better for serious posts, threads don't get buried for instance.  Also it is better from presenting data. People keep saying they want more theory.  Well here's a theory post I just made at the other site. Let's see if it gets any engagement over here.



Now this is not a turning model.  It is a model designed to fit the empirical instability data which shows that the last 4T was not a period with a lot of unrest. Thus, the fact that the model forecasts no period of instability for the last 4T. The period around 1920 had lots of unrest and the model predicts peak unrest in 1922.  The model explains low levels of violence during the Depression by suppression of radicalization by moderates, who peaked in the mid 1930's.). These moderates were Lost radicals of the teens and early 1920's who had become disenchanted with radicalism. This might be why we avoided fascism last time.

Does this model interact with his/your inequality model?  It doesn't appear to, as 20s and 60s saw rising inequality.

No it doesn't, as you correctly noted.  Turchin has a version in which the propensity to radicalize is proportional in inequality.  But he didn't try to fit it to data, perhaps for the very reason you noted.

[Mikebert]

(04-23-2017, 01:31 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: I would suspect that one of the most radicalizing effect upon society is the perception of mass hardship in juxtaposition with conspicuous indulgence by economic elites.

Yes and no.  Yes in that several of the periods of relatively high instability do correlate with periods of relatively high inequality (civil war, 1910's and maybe the Revolutionary period).  No in that others do not (ca. 1830 and 1960's).  And then there is the period of high inequality in the late 1920's and early stages of the Depression in which instability was relatively low.

[luschen]

(04-23-2017, 01:26 PM)taramarie Wrote:

(04-23-2017, 12:36 PM)ChrisP Wrote:

(04-23-2017, 03:32 AM)taramarie Wrote: and they play nicer over there than here hence why i have all but left this place as well as why others left long ago....

Can anyone advise on how to join the Facebook group?  Thanks.

It is not an open group for obvious reasons. The only way to join is to know someone in the group.

Hi, Is there anyone who would care to invite me to this Facebook group?  I have been a lurker on this site since 9/11 and would love to expand to Facebook, where I am more active.

[pbrower2a]

(04-23-2017, 03:11 PM)Mikebert Wrote:

(04-23-2017, 01:31 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: I would suspect that one of the most radicalizing effect upon society is the perception of mass hardship in juxtaposition with conspicuous indulgence by economic elites.

Yes and no.  Yes in that several of the periods of relatively high instability do correlate with periods of relatively high inequality (civil war, 1910's and maybe the Revolutionary period).  No in that others do not (ca. 1830 and 1960's).  And then there is the period of high inequality in the late 1920's and early stages of the Depression in which instability was relatively low.

This may have something to do with the generational constellation of the time. In the 1920s and 1930s the rising adults were the GI Generation, and GIs showed their willingness to work within the system, whether with the corporate New Era politics of the Harding-Coolidge-Hoover era until the economy broke down -- before becoming enthusiastic supporters of the New Deal after the economy melted down and as it started to recover. GI's were not flaming radicals other than the Communists, and even those on the Right knew enough to give up on AmeriKKKlan (get it?) fascism as it discredited itself. Remember -- during the 1920s the KKK in America was much bigger both in absolute and relative numbers, and even had more political power, than the Nazis in Germany at the same time. The 1915 Klan was not a particularly GI phenomenon.

The Millennial Generation is not revolutionary. It is conformist. Obama is not a Millennial,  but he is a good match for a Civic culture. He tried to achieve it, but he didn't quite succeed. As the Tea Party protests showed, America was not quite ready for that. But give rational conformists a good reason to reject the leadership of the time, and they will do so. Just watch history unfold.

Millennial adults did not vote for Donald Trump. Unlike other generations they could see through him and see him as trouble. Millennial adults might support a New Era-style political norm so long as it brings them enough prosperity to raise their children adequately. But they are becoming the dominant generation in raising very-young children. The oldest half of Generation X  have completely left child-bearing years, and Millennial adults (now up to age 35) fully fill the prime years of childbirth. Civic parents are protective parents, and they will protect their children even against political ideologies. GI's could deal with the politics of an America that was much more reliant upon small business and family farms. Whether they can tolerate a plutocratic ideology that ravages children for the maximization of elite profit and gain  is another matter altogether. They can suffer for bosses and ownership. They might not tolerate demands that their children go ragged, cold, ignorant, and hungry.

I consider Donald Trump the antithesis of Civic values. He exemplifies the "every-man-for-himself" ideology that the GI generation would have never tolerated as public policy. In New Era politics and economics of the 1920s, the economy was still competitive (which prevented some excesses) and Big Business did not yet have the large bureaucratic elites that they now have. Today the economy is anything but competitive, and the economic elites insist on getting what they want first, the rest of us being obliged to endure severe privations in the event that something goes wrong. The elites are exempt from any personal sacrifice as if nobility in the worst sense of the word.

...So far I see Donald Trump as a one-term President, and not only due to his age. He offended enough constituencies that even facing a weak campaigner he fell short of even a plurality of the Presidential vote. He has done nothing to attract those who voted against him except for the tiny sliver of Americans in the economic elites who saw him as a dangerous demagogue and would have rather had some other conservative Republican as President. He has used Executive Orders to bypass Congress (even if he has a Congress that might concur so long as it votes strictly on Party lines) that have proved shady upon judicial rules. His economic policies are simply to enrich elites and promise pie-in-the-sky-when-you-die to the common man despite showing a complete lack of religious piety. He offends a coalition of feminists, environmentalists, the minority poor, the middle class of minorities of all kinds, unionized labor, government employees, people on the extreme high end of formal education, and clean-government types; it is easy to see such people as a majority coalition in the 2020s. Should global warming case a crop failure or two he could lose the farm vote and make rural interests part of the late-Crisis-era coalition. President Trump coulod be creating the American political norm of the 2020s, but a norm that rejects his ideology and priorities.

The geriatric quality of America's current political leadership will create a vacuum -- and Millennial figures will fill that vacuum as elected officials and political advisers, whether the first president of the 2020s is a late-wave Boomer or an early-wave X. Even the GI's faced limits on their political tenure. At one time I expected to see the scene in which someone like Dan Inouye or Frank Lautenberg as the last GI retiring from the Senate would greet the first Millennial entering the Senate. That did not happen. The Millennial generation is largely smart, pleasant, rational, and competent; by 2020 that will be much of the solution, even in places in which Boom and X reactionaries seem most entrenched.

Millennial adults have even more at stake with the rejection of a new feudalism that Donald Trump exemplifies, a feudalism that takes the inequity of the feudal era and melds it with the exploitation of a Soviet-style nomenklatura in commercial and administrative bureaucracies. Such elites can thrive in a climate of fear and superstition while all others suffer. But even Millennial adults have their limits. I can see them as revolutionaries of the amoral, anti-religious, iconoclastic French Revolution. They might even introduce their 21st-century equivalent of the guillotine for use against those who insisted upon extreme indulgence for themselves to be paid for with great suffering for others.

We Americans really messed up in the most important election since the Civil War. FDR and perhaps Obama were so obvious that people didn't have to think much. Many other elections weren't so severe in their consequences. The generational constellation made such turkeys as Harding and Dubya inevitable. The Gilded Age offered little worth writing about, but government was practically insignificant in those days except to the grafters. Reagan is understandable; someone had to cut American expectations down from the extravagant hopes of the Boom Awakening. Donald Trump is the worst President since at least Buchanan. If the core principles of good government are kindness, caution, and compassion, then Donald Trump lacks all three. So do his political allies who have shut out the rest of us for at least two years and probably four.

[Skabungus]

Yea, this discussion board is waning. I was an active member for a few years back. I left because the personal axe grinding between a good number of the members seemed to occupy most of the threads, as opposed to posts containing real content. While I do see insightful stuff here, it is still heavily laden with adolescent tit-for-tat flame wars.

I check in from time to time and there is one thing I have noticed...........nothing changes. This is the forum that time forgot! I still check in because I value some of what I see here. Yet, I find more vibrant and informed discussion on a number of other forums. T4T isn't as culty as it once was. Many people out there are familiar with the concepts and are in many cases less dogmatic about them.

I'll continue to check in, and may even post, but there is a reason these rooms are empty and it has very little to do with the subject matter.

[David Horn]

(05-05-2017, 09:42 AM)Skabungus Wrote: Yea, this discussion board is waning.  I was an active member for a few years back.  I left because the personal axe grinding between a good number of the members seemed to occupy most of the threads, as opposed to posts containing real content.  While I do see insightful stuff here, it is still heavily laden with adolescent tit-for-tat flame wars.

I check in from time to time and there is one thing I have noticed...........nothing changes.  This is the forum that time forgot!  I still check in because I value some of what I see here.  Yet, I find more vibrant and informed discussion on a number of other forums.  T4T isn't as culty as it once was.  Many people out there are familiar with the concepts and are in many cases less dogmatic about them.  

I'll continue to check in, and may even post, but there is a reason these rooms are empty and it has very little to do with the subject matter.

I have to agree in full.  The serious discussion is gone, or nearly so.  I don't see it returning.

[Mikebert]

(04-23-2017, 12:35 PM)ChrisP Wrote:

(04-23-2017, 05:41 AM)Mikebert Wrote: I have tried to interest some of the other folks in posting here since this site is better for serious posts, threads don't get buried for instance.  Also it is better from presenting data. People keep saying they want more theory.  Well here's a theory post I just made at the other site. Let's see if it gets any engagement over here.



Now this is not a turning model.  It is a model designed to fit the empirical instability data which shows that the last 4T was not a period with a lot of unrest. Thus, the fact that the model forecasts no period of instability for the last 4T. The period around 1920 had lots of unrest and the model predicts peak unrest in 1922.  The model explains low levels of violence during the Depression by suppression of radicalization by moderates, who peaked in the mid 1930's.). These moderates were Lost radicals of the teens and early 1920's who had become disenchanted with radicalism. This might be why we avoided fascism last time.

Does this model interact with his/your inequality model?  It doesn't appear to, as 20s and 60s saw rising inequality.

I have added an interaction between inequality and social contagion.  It uses a concept invented by Jack Goldstone to model the forces leading to state breakdown called the political stress index (PSI). Turchin developed a version of it for America and I simplified his model

PSI =e^2 / [INEQ(1-INEQ)]

where e is elites as a fraction of the population and INEQ in inequality as given in the figure below:



The elite number is derived from inequality through a differential equation.  The figure above shows inequality and PSI.  Now I took the basic social contagion model described above and I spiked the radicalization parameter to a higher value at the beginning of a secular crisis, which was defined as a political moment which begins at a time when PSI is in the top quartile of its values over a secular cycle. Spikes were added in only two years, 1861 and 1932.  Shown below is the effect of the spikes.



The new model shows how adding a spike in 1861, caused by the coming to power of a dominant generation during a time of high PSI, led to a very large spike in radicalization, implying a great deal of violence, which is what happened.  Another spike was added in 1932, for the exact same reasons as in 1861. But this spike fizzled, producing a little uptick which then degraded. The reason why (according to the model) it did not catch hold was that there were too many moderates in the population--burnt out former radicals left over from the violence of a dozen years earlier.  And this is what happened.  Huge changes occurring in political and economic institutions, and yet these were accompanied by little violence.

This brings us to the present political moment.  The political cycle model forecasts the start of a political moment in 2008.  PSI was not in the top quartile of values in 3008 and no spike was added. This makes 2008 like 1965, 1897, and 1829, all starts of political moments in which PSI was not high.  These last three are 2T-type political moments, implying that the moment beginning in 2008 is one also.  A later start for the political moment would put it into the 4T category.  But this would be contrary to the generational model that says when the grey champions arrive, the 4T begins.

[Eric the Green]

We're Baaaaaaaaaaaackkk!

[Eric the Green]

Low activity on this site results in part from defects in the way the site is set up.

1. It often does not scan well on a phone. The type is too small to read.

2. To see the last post on a previous page, in order to follow a conversation, you have to hold down the scroll button down and go all the way down to the bottom of the previous page. It would be more convenient if when going back to a previous page, you could go to the bottom of the page. Also, even to see the actual subject matter and title of a thread, you have to scroll all the way up to the top of a page to see it. If it were more visible, people might be more inclined to stick more-closely to the original subject.

3. Every time I respond or reply to a post, only a small portion of it can be seen, without taking your mouse and using the little square at the bottom right to expand the message space. That is very tedious. The previous forum would give someone more space to see a message.

4. After only 1 day, you can't edit a post. That is way too strict, without reason. This is new to this version of the forum too. We should be able to edit for a much longer time after posting. Otherwise we have to post the entire post again. People are not perfect and they make mistakes, and we should be able to correct them so that we say what we mean to say.

5. The search function is useless.

Well, that's enough for now. I wonder if anyone can do anything about these defects. Rather than blame what people post here, I think the mechanics of the site make it too difficult for some people to post here. Dedicated members like me can muddle through, but others may get tired of these defects and move on and not say anything.

[David Horn]

(12-03-2021, 08:20 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: Low activity on this site results in part from defects in the way the site is set up.

1. It often does not scan well on a phone. The type is too small to read.

2. To see the last post on a previous page, in order to follow a conversation, you have to hold down the scroll button down and go all the way down to the bottom of the previous page. It would be more convenient if when going back to a previous page, you could go to the bottom of the page. Also, even to see the actual subject matter and title of a thread, you have to scroll all the way up to the top of a page to see it. If it were more visible, people might be more inclined to stick more-closely to the original subject.

3. Every time I respond or reply to a post, only a small portion of it can be seen, without taking your mouse and using the little square at the bottom right to expand the message space. That is very tedious. The previous forum would give someone more space to see a message.

4. After only 1 day, you can't edit a post. That is way too strict, without reason. This is new to this version of the forum too. We should be able to edit for a much longer time after posting. Otherwise we have to post the entire post again. People are not perfect and they make mistakes, and we should be able to correct them so that we say what we mean to say.

5. The search function is useless.

Well, that's enough for now. I wonder if anyone can do anything about these defects. Rather than blame what people post here, I think the mechanics of the site make it too difficult for some people to post here. Dedicated members like me can muddle through, but others may get tired of these defects and move on and not say anything.

I guess we all get what we don't pay for.  Iit's either advertisement or minimal functionality.  Of the two, I take less function.

[Lemanic]

How about we all made a Discord server for these discussions? Those fall out well.

And how about a larger presence on TikTok? That would be swell.

[Eric the Green]

(12-07-2021, 12:34 PM)David Horn Wrote:

(12-03-2021, 08:20 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: Low activity on this site results in part from defects in the way the site is set up.

1. It often does not scan well on a phone. The type is too small to read.

2. To see the last post on a previous page, in order to follow a conversation, you have to hold down the scroll button down and go all the way down to the bottom of the previous page. It would be more convenient if when going back to a previous page, you could go to the bottom of the page. Also, even to see the actual subject matter and title of a thread, you have to scroll all the way up to the top of a page to see it. If it were more visible, people might be more inclined to stick more-closely to the original subject.

3. Every time I respond or reply to a post, only a small portion of it can be seen, without taking your mouse and using the little square at the bottom right to expand the message space. That is very tedious. The previous forum would give someone more space to see a message.

4. After only 1 day, you can't edit a post. That is way too strict, without reason. This is new to this version of the forum too. We should be able to edit for a much longer time after posting. Otherwise we have to post the entire post again. People are not perfect and they make mistakes, and we should be able to correct them so that we say what we mean to say.

5. The search function is useless.

Well, that's enough for now. I wonder if anyone can do anything about these defects. Rather than blame what people post here, I think the mechanics of the site make it too difficult for some people to post here. Dedicated members like me can muddle through, but others may get tired of these defects and move on and not say anything.

I guess we all get what we don't pay for.  It's either advertisement or minimal functionality.  Of the two, I take less function.

I suspect someone with knowledge of this program could make some of these changes, especially since the older version had fewer of these problems and yet had no ads.

I think there is some setting an admin could make that could permit longer time for editing, for example. Or allowing the screen to be larger when replying to a post. Etc. I think someone could change some settings back to like it was with the older program without having the program cost money. THat might not make the program more visible to people on phones, but it would correct most of the other defects.

Another defect: The process of quoting a post in order to reply is not intuitive. Requiring people to click on quote, and THEN to scroll down to the pottom of the entire thread and click on "quote these posts," is probably beyond newer participants to realize. It used to be that clicking on "quote" as you see here below would enable someone to quote a post.

I assume there would be ads with discord, and I don't like their visual presentation in comparison with here. But it might be an alternative in other respects.

[David Horn]

(12-08-2021, 01:34 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: Another defect: The process of quoting a post in order to reply is not intuitive. Requiring people to click on quote, and THEN to scroll down to the pottom of the entire thread and click on "quote these posts," is probably beyond newer participants to realize. It used to be that clicking on "quote" as you see here below would enable someone to quote a post...

H-m-m-m. I just hit "Reply" and the quotes are all embedded. It's easier to delete than add, in my opinion.

[Eric the Green]

(12-08-2021, 12:31 PM)David Horn Wrote:

(12-08-2021, 01:34 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: Another defect: The process of quoting a post in order to reply is not intuitive. Requiring people to click on quote, and THEN to scroll down to the pottom of the entire thread and click on "quote these posts," is probably beyond newer participants to realize. It used to be that clicking on "quote" as you see here below would enable someone to quote a post...

H-m-m-m.  I just hit "Reply" and the quotes are all embedded.  It's easier to delete than add, in my opinion.

OK, it seems to be working that way. It is confusing to have a button marked "quote" and it doesn't quote. Hitting "reply" is the way to quote, if I can make replies after each line too.

[Eric the Green]

Actually no, we can't quote posts by hitting "reply" at all. You can only reply to an entire message, not portions of it within a new post. Again, requiring people to know, after clicking "quote," to also click on the small notice "quote these posts" at the bottom of the page, is not intuitive and was not required on the old version of this forum program.

[David Horn]

(12-12-2021, 07:56 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: Actually no, we can't quote posts by hitting "reply" at all. You can only reply to an entire message, not portions of it within a new post. Again, requiring people to know, after clicking "quote," to also click on the small notice "quote these posts" at the bottom of the page, is not intuitive and was not required on the old version of this forum program.

I use the 'view source' mode (bottom right icon in the editing row).  Once in that mode, you can use PHP scripts like

Code:

[quote='Name of Quoter']
and
[/quote]

to add text within the quoted material.   To see how it's done, reply to a post with embedded replies and select 'view source'.  The entire post will default to plain text and scripts.  Just manually do the same for posts you want to edit.  It's clunky, but it works.

[Eric the Green]

(12-13-2021, 01:25 PM)David Horn Wrote:

(12-12-2021, 07:56 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: Actually no, we can't quote posts by hitting "reply" at all. You can only reply to an entire message, not portions of it within a new post. Again, requiring people to know, after clicking "quote," to also click on the small notice "quote these posts" at the bottom of the page, is not intuitive and was not required on the old version of this forum program.

I use the 'view source' mode (bottom right icon in the editing row).  Once in that mode, you can use PHP scripts like

Code:

[quote='Name of Quoter']
and
[/quote]

to add text within the quoted material.   To see how it's done, reply to a post with embedded replies and select 'view source'.  The entire post will default to plain text and scripts.  Just manually do the same for posts you want to edit.  It's clunky, but it works.

The point being that this too is too esoteric for most posters. The old forum had it so that you just click "quote" and you could do all that. Is there a way to adjust this forum to that method?

[David Horn]

(12-14-2021, 02:22 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(12-13-2021, 01:25 PM)David Horn Wrote:

(12-12-2021, 07:56 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: Actually no, we can't quote posts by hitting "reply" at all. You can only reply to an entire message, not portions of it within a new post. Again, requiring people to know, after clicking "quote," to also click on the small notice "quote these posts" at the bottom of the page, is not intuitive and was not required on the old version of this forum program.

I use the 'view source' mode (bottom right icon in the editing row).  Once in that mode, you can use PHP scripts like

Code:

[quote='Name of Quoter']
and
[/quote]

to add text within the quoted material.   To see how it's done, reply to a post with embedded replies and select 'view source'.  The entire post will default to plain text and scripts.  Just manually do the same for posts you want to edit.  It's clunky, but it works.

The point being that this too is too esoteric for most posters. The old forum had it so that you just click "quote" and you could do all that. Is there a way to adjust this forum to that method?

I seriously doubt it, and it would be up to the Webmaster to do it if it can be done.