Politics Discussion Thread December 2012

OrphanWilde

I skipped October and November owing to election season, but opening back up:

Top-level comments should introduce arguments; responses should be responses to those arguments.
Upvote and downvote based on whether or not you find an argument convincing in the context in which it was raised. This means if it's a good argument against the argument it is responding to, not whether or not there's a good/obvious counterargument to it; if you have a good counterargument, raise it. If it's a convincing argument, and the counterargument is also convincing, upvote both. If both arguments are unconvincing, downvote both.
A single argument per comment would be ideal; as MixedNuts points out here, it's otherwise hard to distinguish between one good and one bad argument, which makes the upvoting/downvoting difficult to evaluate.
In general try to avoid color politics; try to discuss political issues, rather than political parties, wherever possible.

As Multiheaded added, "Personal is Political" stuff like gender relations, etc also may belong here.

I skipped October and November owing to election season, but opening back up:

Top-level comments should introduce arguments; responses should be responses to those arguments.
Upvote and downvote based on whether or not you find an argument convincing in the context in which it was raised. This means if it's a good argument against the argument it is responding to, not whether or not there's a good/obvious counterargument to it; if you have a good counterargument, raise it. If it's a convincing argument, and the counterargument is also convincing, upvote both. If both arguments are unconvincing, downvote both.
A single argument per comment would be ideal; as MixedNuts points out here, it's otherwise hard to distinguish between one good and one bad argument, which makes the upvoting/downvoting difficult to evaluate.
In general try to avoid color politics; try to discuss political issues, rather than political parties, wherever possible.

As Multiheaded added, "Personal is Political" stuff like gender relations, etc also may belong here.

Its interesting that you mention Schelling and the fiscal cliff negotiations. I recently wrote a detailed blog post about this you may be interested in. I would love your feedback as well:

http://options-trading-notes.blogspot.com/2012/12/how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-love.html

Interesting post! I agree with much of your analysis but disagree with your main conclusion that:

Far from being undesirable, we actually need more “fiscal cliff” like deadlines in the future – because in Washington today that’s the only way the parties are going to get serious, put their cards on the table, get a partial solution, and (gasp!) realize that in the end, the compromise was mutually beneficial.

I think creating more scenarios like the fiscal cliff to force "compromise or else…" is a recipe for disaster: some time is bound to arriv... (read more)

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Politics Discussion Thread December 2012

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Politics Discussion Thread December 2012

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