I don't really like either flag myself, but I'm afraid I'm one of those vexillologists: I aesthetically dislike the old one for pretty much exactly their reasons. But, alas, the Culture War has come for good flag design.
So, am I that anachronistic that I miss the era when flags were mostly logos on fields? plaster a coat of arms with a motto (over a cross, if we're feeling adventurous) on a field, that's a great flag. Those basic Tri-Color flags (Ireland, France, Russia, Germany, etc.) are boring.
Tricolor flags are CONFUSING. As in, actual people with jobs that require knowing this stuff keep on getting the flags confused (granted, they are dyslexic).
My province's flag is probably one of those that vexillologists would hate, but the only other design I'd favour changing it to would be just as hated by them, because I'd invert the two panels. That was the original design (with the sun over the waves on top and the Union flag on the bottom) but it was rejected and the panels reversed because "the sun never sets on the British Empire".
I would therefore support changing it to the intended design whenever sovereignty over the Chagos archipelago is handed to Mauritius (as it should have been when Mauritius became independent in 1968, but was not because the US wanted it as a naval base and preferred to deal with the friendly UK rather than the uncertain Mauritius. The issue currently is a matter of some relevance to US naval operations against Iran, along with other factors), because at that point (to my knowledge) there will be a time during the planet's rotation when no part of the remnants of the British Empire is in sunlight, and thus the sun has set on the British Empire.
As for the Minnesota debate, I will refrain from elaborating on how this once again demonstrates the superiority of parliamentary systems.
I don't really have a horse in this race, as I was raised in the state with the best State Flag (New Mexico) and it's all down hill from there. I think the old flag looks like a pain to embroider and the new flag has something wrong with the color saturation. I would have expected it to be somewhere in the realm of license plate design as far as how much the average person cared.
If we're naming flags we like, research for this post led me to fall in love with the current legal flag of Milwaukee (although I believe our tastes may differ on that).
I kinda like the new flag, and never cared for the old one, but your take on the vexillologists had me in stitches. My Grandma hates the new flag and loves the old one (she even wrote to her State Senator about it!); I had no idea how widespread her feelings were. I do not understand why a design with a loon was not chosen. I wouldn't mind if a loon flag was chosen as a new new flag. If that were to happen, whether legislatively or by referendum, I'd also like a clause in there about having to wait X amount of time before the flag could be changed a third time (although the idea of a new flag every four to eight years is also quite humorous!)
Hey that's what sports teams do right? Change jerseys often enough that everyone has to spend money buying new ones all the time? Seems like a strong revenue stream for the state! ;)
> Popular referenda reduce complex issues to sound bites and fundraising marketed to the lowest-common-denominator voter, and result in states adopting terrible, short-sighted, divisive policies, like California’s property-tax restrictions (which have helped lock young Californians out of the housing market), or Ohio’s abortion-to-birth amendment.
I'm no fan of popular referenda either, but...
You think California should have _higher_ property taxes? CA already has the highest sales and income taxes in the Nation. And you think a person should be forced to sell his home because some tech bro paid too much money for the house next door to you, raising your assessment to the point where you can't afford the property tax for your now-inflated property value?
I'm only tangentially aware of what happened there, but didn't CA try to do something altruistic by capping how much they could rise in a single year and end up choking out their funding as a result? Or make taxes on land so low that prospectors are happier to sit on land instead of develop it? Or some other unintended adverse effect?
Property taxes are set at 1.5% assessed value and go up 2%/year. Still California is just slightly lower than median on the property tax collected per capita, and is the highest in sales tax and income tax.
Bitter downwardly mobile kids who can't afford houses blame "Prop 13" (which capped property tax rates) and old boomers (like me) who won't die for the reason they can't afford houses. So they're bitter and want to overturn prop 13 (as if that would make the total montly nut for their house payments any cheaper.)
[Note: I left CA for MO just a few months ago after 37 years there--largely to save money on taxes. I still own commercial property in CA.]
The problem is that the property valuations have been going up by more than 2% for a very long time. If you buy a house, that resets the floor that the 2% can act on. That in turn means that if you bought property even a few years ago, moving to a different California house, even if it costs the same in sale price, might dramatically increase your cost of housing because you're paying taxes on the new valuation instead of dramatically cheaper older valuation.
This slows the circulation of housing. In other places, people buy cheap starter homes and can upgrade. In Cali, staying put can be the difference between a few thousand dollars of property taxes and a few tens of thousands.
It's part of the reason the California population is shrinking. (Not just failing to grow as fast as the rest of the country -- shrinking.) It's the land for the people who have made it big. You have to go elsewhere to make it big.
I think Californians who vote for every measure possible to keep their housing prices up (minimum lot sizes, no multifamily housing, etc.) should have to pay for that choice. Right now, y'all get all the upside (high sale prices) and none of the downside (correspondingly high property taxes). I believe that's called a moral hazard.
And then you sell your tiny houses to buy mansions in flyover country and Californicate the place up. (E.g. Washington, Montana, Colorado, New Mexico) Don't Californicate my home, please.
So you hate people who planned wisely and you want the Government to confiscate the hard-earned wealth from people who have more than you do. Sounds like you are the moral hazard.
I'm all for building more housing in California, more dense housing everywhere, even in my backyard.
If the taxes are too high, they're too high for everyone. Not just the people who bought earlier. Not just the people who've paid off their mortgage. Not just the people who are over 65.
If Californians can't afford the taxes they voted for, the solution is to lower them, not just exempt certain groups from paying "too much."
On the plus side, housing prices should start going down in California, given that the population is shrinking.
I also don't hate people who planned wisely. I despise people who make terrible choices and then exempt themselves from the consequences, or escape from the mess they made and then make all the same bad decisions to mess up their new home.
I should preface this by saying I am not an expert on California politics. It's possible that I'm wrong about this, and possible that I should not have used it as an example without knowing more about it.
However, my understanding is that California's sales and income taxes are stupidly high in part *because* of Prop 13. Prop 13 was passed in 1978, when California was still conservative, and California's taxation regime went insane partly in response to it. I mean, it cut property tax revenue by more than half overnight! The state had to look elsewhere for those revenues.
Would I vote to repeal it now? I don't know. California seems so close to being a failed state, and pulling out Prop 13 feels like pulling out that ugly piece in the Jenga tower that is both the source of many problems and nevertheless absolutely load-bearing. But I have come to the view that passing Prop 13 *in the first place* was a terrible, short-sighted idea that broke California's housing market (and. I suspect, more than that).
...but, also, contrary to popular belief, *broadly rising home valuations do not cause increases in property taxes*, so this phenomenon is quite rare. This runs counter to many people's intuitions, so I'll explain: if everyone's home valuation goes up by exactly 25%, everyone's property tax remains *exactly the same*, because overall property tax levels are actually determined by the *size of the levy*, with property value only determining what share of the levy each house must bear. (That was the real theme of the article I already linked: https://decivitate.jamesjheaney.com/p/explaining-your-west-saint-paul-dakota-county-property-tax-statement ) The tech bro overpaying for a home next door does increase your home value (along with all others in your neighborhood), but will generally *lower* your property tax burden... unless CA does property taxes completely differently from MN, which is possible!
" Ground-rents are a still more proper subject of taxation than the rent of houses. A tax upon ground-rents would not raise the rent of houses; it would fall altogether upon the owner of the ground-rent, who acts always as a monopolist, and exacts the greatest rent which can be got for the use of his ground. More or less can be got for it, according as the competitors happen to be richer or poorer, or can afford to gratify their fancy for a particular spot of ground at a greater or smaller expense. In every country, the greatest number of rich competitors is in the capital, and it is there accordingly that the highest ground-rents are always to be found. As the wealth of those competitors would in no respect be increased by a tax upon ground-rents, they would not probably be disposed to pay more for the use of the ground. Whether the tax was to be advanced by the inhabitant or by the owner of the ground, would be of little importance. The more the inhabitant was obliged to pay for the tax, the less he would incline to pay for the ground; so that the final payment of the tax would fall altogether upon the owner of the ground-rent. The ground-rents of uninhabited houses ought to pay no tax. Both ground-rents, and the ordinary rent of land, are a species of revenue which the owner, in many cases, enjoys without any care or attention of his own. Though a part of this revenue should be taken from him in order to defray the expenses of the state, no discouragement will thereby be given to any sort of industry. The annual produce of the land and labour of the society, the real wealth and revenue of the great body of the people, might be the same after such a tax as before. Ground-rents, and the ordinary rent of land, are therefore, perhaps, the species of revenue which can best bear to have a peculiar tax imposed upon them.
"Ground-rents seem, in this respect, a more proper subject of peculiar taxation, than even the ordinary rent of land. The ordinary rent of land is, in many cases, owing partly, at least, to the attention and good management of the landlord. A very heavy tax might discourage, too much, this attention and good management. Ground-rents, so far as they exceed the ordinary rent of land, are altogether owing to the good government of the sovereign, which, by protecting the industry either of the whole people or of the inhabitants of some particular place, enables them to pay so much more than its real value for the ground which they build their houses upon; or to make to its owner so much more than compensation for the loss which he might sustain by this use of it. Nothing can be more reasonable, than that a fund, which owes its existence to the good government of the state, should be taxed peculiarly, or should contribute something more than the greater part of other funds, towards the support of that government.
"Though, in many different countries of Europe, taxes have been imposed upon the rent of houses, I do not know of any in which ground-rents have been considered as a separate subject of taxation. The contrivers of taxes have, probably, found some difficulty in ascertaining what part of the rent ought to be considered as ground-rent, and what part ought to be considered as building-rent. It should not, however, seem very difficult to distinguish those two parts of the rent from one another."
(Adam Smith, "The Wealth of Nations"; note, I disagree with Smith's claim that if a house is uninhabited no tax should be paid on it, because if you want to get someone to do something productive with an asset, such as renting a house built on some land to which they hold title, tax them on the value they should be generating from it)
"Adam Smith speaks of incomes as 'enjoyed under the protection of the state;' and this is the ground upon which the equal taxation of all species of property is commonly insisted upon—that it is equally protected by the state. The basis of this idea is evidently that the enjoyment of property is made possible by the state—that there is a value created and maintained by the community, which is justly called upon to meet community expenses. Now, of what values is this true? Only of the value of land. This is a value that does not arise until a community is formed, and that, unlike other values, grows with the growth of the community. It exists only as the community exists. Scatter again the largest community, and land, now so valuable, would have no value at all. With every increase of population the value of land rises; with every decrease it falls. This is true of nothing else save of things which, like the ownership of land, are in their nature monopolies.
"The tax upon land values is, therefore, the most just and equal of all taxes. It falls only upon those who receive from society a peculiar and valuable benefit, and upon them in proportion to the benefit they receive. It is the taking by the community, for the use of the community, of that value which is the creation of the community. It is the application of the common property to common uses. When all rent is taken by taxation for the needs of the community, then will the equality ordained by nature be attained. No citizen will have an advantage over any other citizen save as is given by his industry, skill, and intelligence; and each will obtain what he fairly earns. Then, but not till then, will labor get its full reward, and capital its natural return."
(Henry George, "Progress and Poverty", Book VIII, Chapter III, Part IV)
I would submit, James, that property taxes are only bad insofar as they tax value created by the holder of the property. Property taxes are very good if they only tax value created by the community at large! (Other examples of property which can be taxed in this way are natural resource deposits--taxing the value of the extraction rights--electromagnetic spectrum, or geostationary orbits, because the value of those latter two depends on the population of the area in question.)
As for California, as I recall, an especially pernicious aspect of Prop 13 is that those low assessments can be inherited.
Why, Daniel! I never took you for a Georgist! (Not a bad thing, just a surprise!)
The problem I have with property tax is unchanged:
* when a tax is on income, you can always afford to pay it, since it's just taking a cut of income you just received (as long as the effective rate is below 100%)
* when a tax is on a purchase or other transaction, and you *can't* afford to pay it, you simply can't perform the transaction. That may be more painful or less painful, but the consequence is generally that you don't receive some additional good or benefit you wished for. You still have all the possessions you had before you attempted the transaction, and the size of the tax scales with the amount of money you're spending.
* when a tax is on property, and you can't afford to pay it, you lose perhaps your single most important asset. Your life is hugely updumped at least, ruined at worst. Worse: unlike transactional taxes, the tax owed on your property does not bear any necessary relation at all to the funds you have to pay them! If you lost your job this year and spent just a pittance because it was all you could do to keep food on the table, your income tax and sales tax plummet (income tax may go effectively negative!)... but you still owe the full property tax!
So, on the one hand, yes, property tax economically efficient (*if* you have the state capacity to manage assessment fairly and it's not too expensive to do so and so on) and it's relatively pro-natal to boot, but absurdly perilous in certain edge cases, and that's what I hate about it.
This is basically what has kept me from becoming a Georgist. Maybe the Georgists have responses to this! I dunno. I didn't look into it ALL that closely.
It is perilous in edge cases, I agree. (But there is a positive correlation between property ownership and income.) I would not necessarily mind a scheme of deferment with interest (still perilous, but not as much) but that too has to be carefully regulated to ensure that people aren't deferring to invest the tax they would've paid to get a higher return than the interest they'll owe. (My province recently changed property tax rules to close this loophole.) And to be sure I am not against charging an income tax or having consumption taxes; my view is that distortionary taxes shouldn't be used to fund general government operations but should be fully redistributed. (And then there's how I'd do fines and fees for government services, which would rely on the levying of an income tax.)
(Incidentally what you note about the effective rate of an income tax being under 100% is one reason for the SALT deduction; it was especially necessary when the US federal income tax had a top-bracket rate of 91%, because without SALT no state could've charged more than 9%! To my knowledge every significant US federal income tax law has contained the deduction in some form, as a concession to states' rights to levy taxes as they see fit. Even the most ardent "soak the rich" advocates out there, such as former Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura, who's proposed a maximum income of $12,000,000 per year and called for the abolition of the possibility of billionaires*, tacitly agree that you can't charge more than 100%.)
I will admit I'd have to look further into how dedicated Georgists answer the question of "what if you lose your job". (Especially given how it can just happen for reasons entirely outside your control, and in the worst cases can leave you unemployable in future.) I would note that part of the argument in favour of a land-value tax is that, if levied at a sufficiently high rate, it dissuades the accumulation of wealth in the form of land and provides a natural cap on the value of such, and thus a natural cap on the amount of the tax. (In other words, a large problem in implementing such a policy now is that it would go directly against decades of policies which pushed the accumulation of middle-class wealth into housing.) Some localities in Pennsylvania have implemented such a tax (whether only on the value of land or with a higher rate on land than on improvements): https://www.jstor.org/stable/3487258 Perhaps they came up with some answer to the question of which I'm unaware.
*Another commenter suggested that wealth be capped at $999,999,999 and that once you hit that, you get a "YOU WON AT CAPITALISM" plaque and the rest of your wealth confiscated. How this would work given that most such wealth is held in assets less liquid than cash generally goes unexplained in the top-line proposal.
First off: find me one of those red pillers that hates Fallingwater and the Empire State Building, and even the Statue of Liberty. I want to have words with them.
Second: STD did have a legitimate good season, the first one. It's worth a watch. No, the abbreviation is not a mistake, it's a prank. Go ahead and laugh at the idiots that greenlit it.
"The Minnesota Night Flag" is legitimately metal (and I love it).
I think, instead of flying either flag, if localities want to fly something, "Minnesota: Pick a Better Flag, Please" -- in bright blue letters on a darker blue background, would be fun. It's a way to signal "we're fed up with this whole issue" while reminding people which ambivalent state you're in.
Yeah. See, I have this funny idea that "form follows function" means that houses should be for living in. Craftsman bungalows are for living. Le Corbusier stack-a-prole apartment buildings (excuse me, *Unité d'habitation*) are for looking good in architecture magazines.
I quite liked his "phone call seat" (it was a bicycle seat). It quite eloquently said "this is my phone, and you're calling long distance. Get Off as soon as you can."
Even brutalism had a few good buildings (not the Hoover building though, FBI agents have deepsixed their careers to get out of there).
A vacation house, particularly one built for rich folks, was designed to show off. I've seen the Rookery in Chicago -- Wright was capable of not being a total ass and designing workable places for actual use. Then he let his ego take over, and that was part of what he was selling, "Look, we had a famous designer come build our stuff!"
"The first season of STD is the legitimately good one" is a fresh take I've genuinely never heard! I commend the opinion because, if nothing else, it is definitely not being dictated to you by an egregore!
I mostly avoid essays on Star Trek at De Civ for complicated legal reasons, so I won't go to great lengths to articulate my view, but I found I mostly agree with @CZeke's take at FiveMinute.net (https://www.fiveminute.net/news/5mdvetc.html): Discovery was bad, through and through, but, looking back, it wasn't malicious. It didn't fail because it held its audience in contempt, like every season of Picard did; it failed because, like a five-year-old with a crayon, it didn't know how to succeed, and thought it was succeeding. There's a dignity in that. I can respect it.
And, as with every Star Trek: the cast was fantastic. The writers sometimes let down Star Trek casts, but whoever runs Star Trek casting departments is absolutely stellar. Really, THE single biggest mistake Discovery made was killing Prime Universe Georgiou in the first episode and making Captain Lorca a [REDACTED SPOILERS]. Both were genuinely interesting characters who could have carried a series as a captain/x.o. pair, and I was surprised by how much I enjoyed Michelle Yeoh's acting chops.
Lorca could certainly have been an amazing asset. I didn't see (or don't remember) enough of Michelle Yeoh to have an opinion, really. I agree that Michael Burnham was all over the map (but, if you're going to have a female character named Michael, why in hell aren't you going for the "tran" audience? particularly at that time? When you're being outdone in "pandering" ... or is it trolling, by Voltron...? Seriously, wasn't Star Trek progressive at one point? Yeah, it was. It broke some real science -- psychology, naturally. Remember the Broccoli episode?).
I have a bit more tolerance for "shaky Trek" when I rewatch TNG Season 1 (or a lot of Voyager). Sir Patrick Stewart saved the show, simply by sheer gravitas -- he's not a very smart guy, but he has a gift.
I'm curious: have you tried rewatching TNG S1 (or ENT S1, the other worst season of "classic" Trek) *after* watching some nuTrek?
To my very great surprise, I found TNG S1 (which I once derided as nearly unwatchable, commendable only to hardcore fans) quite enjoyable, with (often) many more layers and much more sophisticated storytelling than any given hour of, say, PIC S2. One of the things I'm most grateful for in nuTrek is increasing my appreciation for the dregs of old Trek.
(I will say, in the interest of positivity, that I enjoyed Lower Decks, and that I thought Prodigy was genuinely good and my kids and I were really excited about it.)
STD season 1 was the last I watched. In it, I got to see Bodum glassware (proof that if you do keep autistically talking about something amazing, eventually the set designers will use it). So, no, haven't really rewatched. Some of TNG S1 was really, really dire (the episode where Tasha Yar dies pointlessly, for example).
And gene's idea of the Ferengi as "The Big Bads of TNG" was just... hilariously not going to work. And you remember the brain-worms, which were supposed to be part of a bigger picture... that never panned out (the BORG were also part of that whole scrapped picture...)
YMMV, but you *may* find on next rewatch that a number of the episodes you once despised as trash are actually... fairly watchable! I mean, nothing's going to save "The Last Outpost" (the first Ferengi episode; Armin Shimerman felt so bad about that performance that he insisted on redeeming the entire race through Quark), but I found "Haven" and "Hide and Q" -- quite weak episodes by TNG standards -- to be quite enjoyable after Discovery episodes like "Despite Yourself" and "Lethe."
Great article, and I myself have had the thought that if I had to fly one, I would fly both.
I was really hoping the one that was the new one, but with a blue/white/green field on the right, to make it a little more complex and get it farther from the Somali flag (I anticipated that source of discontent).
I think the best option would have been a more abstract version of the old one honestly. Meet in the middle.
Vexillology is not silly, and makes a good point: a flag, like a corporate logo, ought to follow the KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid!) principle. You should not have to think about whose flag you’re looking at, it should be immediate and obvious. Granted, I don’t think much of the aesthetics of the new Minnesota flag, but it does the job.
1. It is a *personal aesthetic preference*, not an objective aesthetic principle, that flags ought to be simple.
I do think there are objective aesthetic rules in the world (please do not ask me for an account of them; I have not read enough of Aristotle's writing on this), but no one has given me a reason for thinking that "flags should be simple" is one of them. It's fine that many people have this preference, and it's fine that vexillologists created a little club for themselves to celebrate this preference, but it remains only a preference, and people with the other preference have exactly as good of a point.
2. For the sake of argument, let's say you're right and that flags *should* be easy to understand, like a corporate logo. If so, how do the "rules of vexillology" actually support that principle? One of the rules of vexillology is no words, ever. That's certainly not a rule corporate logos follow! Lots of corporate logos (I might say most) are just stylized versions of the firm's name, and most incorporate some element of the name, or are (at the very least) associated with the name (e.g. Steam's logo is an old-style gear of the sort that would have run on steam power). The old Minnesota flag said "MINNESOTA" on it. The new one is two blues and a star. What about that identifies it as "Minnesota" to someone not in the know?
I think what vexillologists are really trying to say is something like, "Your flag should be immediately identifiable even at a great distance and even *in a sea of other flags*," but... why? Outside of a civil war, the occasions where this is needed as a practical matter are few and far between indeed.
I say all this without rancor! I merely object to the vexillologists' claims that their preferences are anything more than their own personal preferences.
I was personally ready to be a hater, but when I saw what flags were ranked at the bottom I was mostly nodding my head in agreement. Though I do absolutely quibble with the precise ordering.
I think Belle Glade's flag is unironically great and Nitro's is at least ironically great. (It certainly has more CHARACTER than, say, the highly-ranked flag of Yorba Linda.
On the whole, though, I agree: most of these are really hideous flags, and most of the top-ranked ones are not as bad as, say, Overland Park's flag.
But I think this doesn't tell us that vexillology principles are correct, because I think most of these flags would fail by both Blue Tribe aesthetics *and* Red Tribe aesthetics.
For example: the flag of Franklin, Wisconsin fails for Blue Tribe because it has words, but it otherwise does a pretty good job of following the Five Principles: it is simple, it presumably has some symbolic meaning in the lore of Franklin (or some meaning can be retroactively imposed on it, like the meaning of the stars on the Chicago flag), it's *mostly* just three colors (with the text providing a couple accents), and, as for being distinctive... well, you could certainly tell it apart at a glance from every single flag in the Top 25, and that's not true of the flags in the Top 25 with themselves!
But the flag of Franklin fails for Red Tribe because it looks like something a soulless design consultant wrenched out of a corporate clip art file. It's a minimalist masterpiece, rejecting all baroque lines and ornament. It has no hint of tradition in it, no concession to the world that birthed Franklin. It's a very modernist flag.
So, yes, the vexillologists are right to hate this flag, but their reasons for hating the flag do not correspond all that well to their stated principles, and the anti-vexillologists will (I think) also hate this flag for their own reasons.
The interesting cases are not the ones the vexillologists hate, but the ones where they disagree with the anti-vexillologists. I realize it's harder to know where those are, since we don't have a survey of the latter group.
Hey, what's wrong with Miami Township's flag? It may not be my favorite flag I've lived under, but still, it's not nearly as bad as the new MN flag. It actually has some character...
> The old flag was a “seal on a bedsheet” that looks like a dozen other states.
And? There's nothing objectively wrong with so-called "seal on a bedsheet" design.
Many vexillologists believe that, just because they invented the term as an insult, and it sounds insulting, it's an unanswerable argument. But it's just an ad hominem. (Well, ad vexillum, anyway.)
> Conservative Republican Utah also redesigned their “seal on a bedsheet” flag at the same time.
Not to be repetitive, but: and? It's not obvious what conclusion we should draw from this. Are you saying that Mormons have a different aesthetic sense than the rest of the Red Tribe? That's plausible and interesting, but doesn't seem to have much bearing on Minnesota's flag.
With respect, I find it difficult to believe that you read the article, which discussed this at considerable length. The new flag is unpopular. Its popularity is intensely polarized along culture-war lines. It was adopted by an unaccountable committee stacked high with culture warriors, which was itself created on a party-line vote after that party spent a generation attacking the old flag for culture-war reasons. This lopsided process amplified the culture-war implications of the new flag.
“Sometimes people don’t like boring flags” is true, and it’s even true in Minnesota, but treating it as a remotely complete explanation of the Minnesota flag controversy evinces ignorance of almost any facts about that controversy — which is remarkable in the comment section of an article about the controversy.
If you sincerely believe that the motive for the flag change was purely aesthetic, that aesthetic decisions are inherently not culture-war issues, and that the Right was therefore the sole aggressor in this conflict, the world you live in must be very interesting indeed, and I would like to understand it better:
What do you make of the comments of Rep. Frieberg, who called the old flag "genocidal"?
Does your answer change when you learn that Frieberg authored the legislation creating the flag-change committee?
Why was the flag-change committee stacked with members of only one party, representing only one ideology?
Why was the flag-change committee stacked high with representatives of racial interest groups, including several racial interest groups with no discernible grievance against the old flag? Are racial interest groups especially skilled at forming aesthetic judgments?
What do you make of Frieberg's subsequent attempts to cut funding to cities that fly the old flag?
What do you make of the typical public comment I noted, "Wherever I see the old flag flying, I know to avoid it because holding on to a racist past means that space is likely unsafe for minorities (including me). I will feel less safe and welcome [if you fly the old flag]"? What do you make of all similar comments made throughout the state by supporters of the new flag?
Why is the new flag 20 points underwater with voters as a whole, and underwater with independent voters?
Do you believe the new flag would win a statewide referendum in this D+5 state?
I don't claim that the Right is blameless in this. Nor have I claimed, at any point, that the new flag is objectively *bad* (much less that it's bad "because a lib likes it"), only that, while I personally don't care for it, there's no disputing subjective tastes. My claims seem pretty modest. Your claims seem, frankly, like you started out with a conclusion ("the majority of Minnesota merely thought the old flag was ugly, no ulterior motives at all") and then found some way to ignore overwhelming evidence to the contrary (and I can't figure out what that way is, hence my questions above).
The lesson I take from it is that changing flags is inherently political and attracts a lot more attention than you think. Even in Utah's supermajority environment when the flag basically strengthens every symbol that people wanted to keep.
I grew up in utah. My family is still there. They are deeply embedded in local politics. When we discussed the flag I was shocked to find out that my family members who lived in Utah did not like the new flag. Me and my brothers who had moved out of the state thought it was a great flag. Strengthen the beehive, add skiing and Red Rock references. They even kept star representing our particularly difficult fight for statehood. I love the new flag.
But no, somehow the flag had gotten mixed up in some local inter-Republican party fight, and so my in-state family doesn't like it
Changing flags seems to attract political controversy.
"I hate popular referenda. Popular referenda reduce complex issues to sound bites and fundraising marketed to the lowest-common-denominator voter, and result in states adopting terrible, short-sighted, divisive policies, like California’s property-tax restrictions (which have helped lock young Californians out of the housing market), or Ohio’s abortion-to-birth amendment. We have a republic, not a democracy, precisely because our elected representatives are better able to hone complex policy, considering long-term trade-offs and making appropriate compromises to win broad support. Voters are okay at picking candidates;10 they are terrible at deciding policy. If I could revise every state constitution, I would eliminate citizen-initiated referenda of all kinds, and I would require a supermajority to approve any state constitutional amendment."
While I have sympathy for this in regards to policy changes, the problem is that citizen-initiated referendums are right now just about the only way to enact fixes to our voting systems, because those elected representatives are, due to knowing how to hone policy, are very good at keeping in place rules to keep themselves in power, even if it means the continuance of our broken voting systems.
Anti-gerrymandering initiatives are things legislatures are clearly not particularly interested in, given that all the ones I can think of were done by referendum (granted, more recently we've seen referendums about allowing for more gerrymandering, though I think those were legislative initiated that then went to the citizens afterwards, and thus not a citizen-initiated one). Ranked choice voting, while not without its own issues, is certainly an upgrade to first-past-the-post, and it only got implemented in Maine and Alaska because of referendums that were opposed by their legislatures. And while no states have proportional representation yet--which would be another considerable improvement over our current system, at least if it's mixed member--I don't see any legislature passing those, but a referendum could.
When the rules of the voting empower those in power, there seems very little recourse to fixing it. Of course they're not going to vote to do something that could cost them their seats. And voting them out doesn't work, because thanks to those very broken voting systems that's very difficult to do. The only places I'm aware of in the US where states moved away from the broken first-past-the-post voting system were ones that were done by citizen-initiated referendum. I could possibly see legislatures starting to change things if under enough pressure, but for that to happen I think we'd need to see more states doing it. And yeah, sure, letting voters via referendums change that can have some not great consequences (California's jungle primary system seems like it only exacerbates the vote-splitting issues, they'd be better off switching to Alaska's as it lowers the effect of that), but I still think I'd trust referendums on those things more than I would the legislatures to fix up the voting systems.
So I think citizen-initiated referendum are important in cases of stuff like this, because to trust legislatures to do anything that might be in the public interest but against their own self-interest in regards to voting systems clearly isn't working and the minor steps taken to fix it seem like they've all been via referendums.
I'm going to think about this. My first-blush thought is, "Okay, I could be cool with an exception for referenda about voting systems specifically." But then my second-blush thought is, "Oh no imagine the damage they'd wreak."
I prefer the new one and am fully on the side of people who make fun of the old style by calling it a seal on a bedsheet. That style of flag is hideous. Boring and grating to the eye. The new one is much better and more pleasing to look at.
That's cool, and I can't really take serious exception to anyone whose username is a reference to koon-ut-kal-if-fee, but I think the state is past the point where it our individual opinions on the flag matter all that much.
I wrote these lines about the old flag, but they apply to the new as well:
> Moreover, the truth is that, as much as I liked the old flag (and I really did), I was aware that the flag made some Minnesotans feel sad or angry. This was a small minority, and their reasons were, I thought, bad reasons, but, nevertheless, this minority largely refused to fly the state flag or show it respect. A symbol of state unity, an expression of our shared republic, was instead a source of division. ...A state’s flag should not be divisive among people who live in that state. Granted, there will always be a fraction who will hate any flag, whether because they’re oikophobes or just obstreperous, but our old flag was undeniably more controversial than it needed to be.
...but now those words apply much more strongly! Only a third of the state says they like the new flag! Lots of people are really angry about it! Whether or not their reasons are good, it still defeats the purpose of a flag.
I am a fan of Saul Bass-style minimalism and midcentury modern aesthetics (I guess the early 1960s vexillology founding doesn't surprise me). But the new flag is just bland? Even though there were some legitimately beautiful entries submitted for the new design that could have been used instead.
FWIW I thought the new flag looked like a fish (closeup on its head, with its mouth open).
I am a democrat. I think the new flag sucks hard. We exist. You know who got a good new flag? Utah. I like that one! Great flag! It's actually got shit on it! It doesn't look like you asked a five year old whose favorite color is blue to make a flag!
Huh!
I really like the Night Flag myself.
I'm surprised.
I don't really like either flag myself, but I'm afraid I'm one of those vexillologists: I aesthetically dislike the old one for pretty much exactly their reasons. But, alas, the Culture War has come for good flag design.
So, am I that anachronistic that I miss the era when flags were mostly logos on fields? plaster a coat of arms with a motto (over a cross, if we're feeling adventurous) on a field, that's a great flag. Those basic Tri-Color flags (Ireland, France, Russia, Germany, etc.) are boring.
Tricolor flags are CONFUSING. As in, actual people with jobs that require knowing this stuff keep on getting the flags confused (granted, they are dyslexic).
I agree the tri color flags are bonkers as a national symbol. You have to spice it up a LITTLE beyond that.
But the insignias were associated with monarchy so people wanted to ditch them.
And they wanted to adopt the tricolor, because that was the symbol of the French Revolution.
My province's flag is probably one of those that vexillologists would hate, but the only other design I'd favour changing it to would be just as hated by them, because I'd invert the two panels. That was the original design (with the sun over the waves on top and the Union flag on the bottom) but it was rejected and the panels reversed because "the sun never sets on the British Empire".
I would therefore support changing it to the intended design whenever sovereignty over the Chagos archipelago is handed to Mauritius (as it should have been when Mauritius became independent in 1968, but was not because the US wanted it as a naval base and preferred to deal with the friendly UK rather than the uncertain Mauritius. The issue currently is a matter of some relevance to US naval operations against Iran, along with other factors), because at that point (to my knowledge) there will be a time during the planet's rotation when no part of the remnants of the British Empire is in sunlight, and thus the sun has set on the British Empire.
As for the Minnesota debate, I will refrain from elaborating on how this once again demonstrates the superiority of parliamentary systems.
I don't really have a horse in this race, as I was raised in the state with the best State Flag (New Mexico) and it's all down hill from there. I think the old flag looks like a pain to embroider and the new flag has something wrong with the color saturation. I would have expected it to be somewhere in the realm of license plate design as far as how much the average person cared.
I insist Texas and Maryland are still better than New Mexico! My birth state, North Carolina, is also up there.
If we're naming flags we like, research for this post led me to fall in love with the current legal flag of Milwaukee (although I believe our tastes may differ on that).
They do indeed differ; I strongly prefer the flag of Chicago.
Though getting closer to your neck of the woods, the flag of St. Paul isn't that bad!
NM's flag is pure simple elegance.
I kinda like the new flag, and never cared for the old one, but your take on the vexillologists had me in stitches. My Grandma hates the new flag and loves the old one (she even wrote to her State Senator about it!); I had no idea how widespread her feelings were. I do not understand why a design with a loon was not chosen. I wouldn't mind if a loon flag was chosen as a new new flag. If that were to happen, whether legislatively or by referendum, I'd also like a clause in there about having to wait X amount of time before the flag could be changed a third time (although the idea of a new flag every four to eight years is also quite humorous!)
The loon is a great idea. Birds are almost universally liked.
I am fairly positive on the new flag, but there was a loon inspired by the Prussian coat of arms that I would have liked more.
Hey that's what sports teams do right? Change jerseys often enough that everyone has to spend money buying new ones all the time? Seems like a strong revenue stream for the state! ;)
Wait, what?
> Popular referenda reduce complex issues to sound bites and fundraising marketed to the lowest-common-denominator voter, and result in states adopting terrible, short-sighted, divisive policies, like California’s property-tax restrictions (which have helped lock young Californians out of the housing market), or Ohio’s abortion-to-birth amendment.
I'm no fan of popular referenda either, but...
You think California should have _higher_ property taxes? CA already has the highest sales and income taxes in the Nation. And you think a person should be forced to sell his home because some tech bro paid too much money for the house next door to you, raising your assessment to the point where you can't afford the property tax for your now-inflated property value?
I'm only tangentially aware of what happened there, but didn't CA try to do something altruistic by capping how much they could rise in a single year and end up choking out their funding as a result? Or make taxes on land so low that prospectors are happier to sit on land instead of develop it? Or some other unintended adverse effect?
Property taxes are set at 1.5% assessed value and go up 2%/year. Still California is just slightly lower than median on the property tax collected per capita, and is the highest in sales tax and income tax.
Bitter downwardly mobile kids who can't afford houses blame "Prop 13" (which capped property tax rates) and old boomers (like me) who won't die for the reason they can't afford houses. So they're bitter and want to overturn prop 13 (as if that would make the total montly nut for their house payments any cheaper.)
[Note: I left CA for MO just a few months ago after 37 years there--largely to save money on taxes. I still own commercial property in CA.]
The problem is that the property valuations have been going up by more than 2% for a very long time. If you buy a house, that resets the floor that the 2% can act on. That in turn means that if you bought property even a few years ago, moving to a different California house, even if it costs the same in sale price, might dramatically increase your cost of housing because you're paying taxes on the new valuation instead of dramatically cheaper older valuation.
This slows the circulation of housing. In other places, people buy cheap starter homes and can upgrade. In Cali, staying put can be the difference between a few thousand dollars of property taxes and a few tens of thousands.
It's part of the reason the California population is shrinking. (Not just failing to grow as fast as the rest of the country -- shrinking.) It's the land for the people who have made it big. You have to go elsewhere to make it big.
Do you really think California needs more tax revenue?
I think Californians who vote for every measure possible to keep their housing prices up (minimum lot sizes, no multifamily housing, etc.) should have to pay for that choice. Right now, y'all get all the upside (high sale prices) and none of the downside (correspondingly high property taxes). I believe that's called a moral hazard.
And then you sell your tiny houses to buy mansions in flyover country and Californicate the place up. (E.g. Washington, Montana, Colorado, New Mexico) Don't Californicate my home, please.
So you hate people who planned wisely and you want the Government to confiscate the hard-earned wealth from people who have more than you do. Sounds like you are the moral hazard.
I'm all for building more housing in California, more dense housing everywhere, even in my backyard.
If the taxes are too high, they're too high for everyone. Not just the people who bought earlier. Not just the people who've paid off their mortgage. Not just the people who are over 65.
If Californians can't afford the taxes they voted for, the solution is to lower them, not just exempt certain groups from paying "too much."
On the plus side, housing prices should start going down in California, given that the population is shrinking.
I also don't hate people who planned wisely. I despise people who make terrible choices and then exempt themselves from the consequences, or escape from the mess they made and then make all the same bad decisions to mess up their new home.
I should preface this by saying I am not an expert on California politics. It's possible that I'm wrong about this, and possible that I should not have used it as an example without knowing more about it.
However, my understanding is that California's sales and income taxes are stupidly high in part *because* of Prop 13. Prop 13 was passed in 1978, when California was still conservative, and California's taxation regime went insane partly in response to it. I mean, it cut property tax revenue by more than half overnight! The state had to look elsewhere for those revenues.
Would I vote to repeal it now? I don't know. California seems so close to being a failed state, and pulling out Prop 13 feels like pulling out that ugly piece in the Jenga tower that is both the source of many problems and nevertheless absolutely load-bearing. But I have come to the view that passing Prop 13 *in the first place* was a terrible, short-sighted idea that broke California's housing market (and. I suspect, more than that).
I'm very sympathetic to the anti-property tax movement, and even wrote against property tax four years ago (near the end of this article: https://decivitate.jamesjheaney.com/p/explaining-your-west-saint-paul-dakota-county-property-tax-statement ). However, I've regrettably come around to the view that property taxes are the least anti-natal tax, as argued here: https://ifstudies.org/blog/cutting-property-taxes-for-seniors-is-bad-for-american-families . I still hate the idea of people being forced to leave lifelong neighborhoods because assessments rise, and I like safeguards like the one suggested here: https://x.com/BCSWowbagger/status/2059744214032720060
...but, also, contrary to popular belief, *broadly rising home valuations do not cause increases in property taxes*, so this phenomenon is quite rare. This runs counter to many people's intuitions, so I'll explain: if everyone's home valuation goes up by exactly 25%, everyone's property tax remains *exactly the same*, because overall property tax levels are actually determined by the *size of the levy*, with property value only determining what share of the levy each house must bear. (That was the real theme of the article I already linked: https://decivitate.jamesjheaney.com/p/explaining-your-west-saint-paul-dakota-county-property-tax-statement ) The tech bro overpaying for a home next door does increase your home value (along with all others in your neighborhood), but will generally *lower* your property tax burden... unless CA does property taxes completely differently from MN, which is possible!
" Ground-rents are a still more proper subject of taxation than the rent of houses. A tax upon ground-rents would not raise the rent of houses; it would fall altogether upon the owner of the ground-rent, who acts always as a monopolist, and exacts the greatest rent which can be got for the use of his ground. More or less can be got for it, according as the competitors happen to be richer or poorer, or can afford to gratify their fancy for a particular spot of ground at a greater or smaller expense. In every country, the greatest number of rich competitors is in the capital, and it is there accordingly that the highest ground-rents are always to be found. As the wealth of those competitors would in no respect be increased by a tax upon ground-rents, they would not probably be disposed to pay more for the use of the ground. Whether the tax was to be advanced by the inhabitant or by the owner of the ground, would be of little importance. The more the inhabitant was obliged to pay for the tax, the less he would incline to pay for the ground; so that the final payment of the tax would fall altogether upon the owner of the ground-rent. The ground-rents of uninhabited houses ought to pay no tax. Both ground-rents, and the ordinary rent of land, are a species of revenue which the owner, in many cases, enjoys without any care or attention of his own. Though a part of this revenue should be taken from him in order to defray the expenses of the state, no discouragement will thereby be given to any sort of industry. The annual produce of the land and labour of the society, the real wealth and revenue of the great body of the people, might be the same after such a tax as before. Ground-rents, and the ordinary rent of land, are therefore, perhaps, the species of revenue which can best bear to have a peculiar tax imposed upon them.
"Ground-rents seem, in this respect, a more proper subject of peculiar taxation, than even the ordinary rent of land. The ordinary rent of land is, in many cases, owing partly, at least, to the attention and good management of the landlord. A very heavy tax might discourage, too much, this attention and good management. Ground-rents, so far as they exceed the ordinary rent of land, are altogether owing to the good government of the sovereign, which, by protecting the industry either of the whole people or of the inhabitants of some particular place, enables them to pay so much more than its real value for the ground which they build their houses upon; or to make to its owner so much more than compensation for the loss which he might sustain by this use of it. Nothing can be more reasonable, than that a fund, which owes its existence to the good government of the state, should be taxed peculiarly, or should contribute something more than the greater part of other funds, towards the support of that government.
"Though, in many different countries of Europe, taxes have been imposed upon the rent of houses, I do not know of any in which ground-rents have been considered as a separate subject of taxation. The contrivers of taxes have, probably, found some difficulty in ascertaining what part of the rent ought to be considered as ground-rent, and what part ought to be considered as building-rent. It should not, however, seem very difficult to distinguish those two parts of the rent from one another."
(Adam Smith, "The Wealth of Nations"; note, I disagree with Smith's claim that if a house is uninhabited no tax should be paid on it, because if you want to get someone to do something productive with an asset, such as renting a house built on some land to which they hold title, tax them on the value they should be generating from it)
"Adam Smith speaks of incomes as 'enjoyed under the protection of the state;' and this is the ground upon which the equal taxation of all species of property is commonly insisted upon—that it is equally protected by the state. The basis of this idea is evidently that the enjoyment of property is made possible by the state—that there is a value created and maintained by the community, which is justly called upon to meet community expenses. Now, of what values is this true? Only of the value of land. This is a value that does not arise until a community is formed, and that, unlike other values, grows with the growth of the community. It exists only as the community exists. Scatter again the largest community, and land, now so valuable, would have no value at all. With every increase of population the value of land rises; with every decrease it falls. This is true of nothing else save of things which, like the ownership of land, are in their nature monopolies.
"The tax upon land values is, therefore, the most just and equal of all taxes. It falls only upon those who receive from society a peculiar and valuable benefit, and upon them in proportion to the benefit they receive. It is the taking by the community, for the use of the community, of that value which is the creation of the community. It is the application of the common property to common uses. When all rent is taken by taxation for the needs of the community, then will the equality ordained by nature be attained. No citizen will have an advantage over any other citizen save as is given by his industry, skill, and intelligence; and each will obtain what he fairly earns. Then, but not till then, will labor get its full reward, and capital its natural return."
(Henry George, "Progress and Poverty", Book VIII, Chapter III, Part IV)
I would submit, James, that property taxes are only bad insofar as they tax value created by the holder of the property. Property taxes are very good if they only tax value created by the community at large! (Other examples of property which can be taxed in this way are natural resource deposits--taxing the value of the extraction rights--electromagnetic spectrum, or geostationary orbits, because the value of those latter two depends on the population of the area in question.)
As for California, as I recall, an especially pernicious aspect of Prop 13 is that those low assessments can be inherited.
Why, Daniel! I never took you for a Georgist! (Not a bad thing, just a surprise!)
The problem I have with property tax is unchanged:
* when a tax is on income, you can always afford to pay it, since it's just taking a cut of income you just received (as long as the effective rate is below 100%)
* when a tax is on a purchase or other transaction, and you *can't* afford to pay it, you simply can't perform the transaction. That may be more painful or less painful, but the consequence is generally that you don't receive some additional good or benefit you wished for. You still have all the possessions you had before you attempted the transaction, and the size of the tax scales with the amount of money you're spending.
* when a tax is on property, and you can't afford to pay it, you lose perhaps your single most important asset. Your life is hugely updumped at least, ruined at worst. Worse: unlike transactional taxes, the tax owed on your property does not bear any necessary relation at all to the funds you have to pay them! If you lost your job this year and spent just a pittance because it was all you could do to keep food on the table, your income tax and sales tax plummet (income tax may go effectively negative!)... but you still owe the full property tax!
So, on the one hand, yes, property tax economically efficient (*if* you have the state capacity to manage assessment fairly and it's not too expensive to do so and so on) and it's relatively pro-natal to boot, but absurdly perilous in certain edge cases, and that's what I hate about it.
This is basically what has kept me from becoming a Georgist. Maybe the Georgists have responses to this! I dunno. I didn't look into it ALL that closely.
It is perilous in edge cases, I agree. (But there is a positive correlation between property ownership and income.) I would not necessarily mind a scheme of deferment with interest (still perilous, but not as much) but that too has to be carefully regulated to ensure that people aren't deferring to invest the tax they would've paid to get a higher return than the interest they'll owe. (My province recently changed property tax rules to close this loophole.) And to be sure I am not against charging an income tax or having consumption taxes; my view is that distortionary taxes shouldn't be used to fund general government operations but should be fully redistributed. (And then there's how I'd do fines and fees for government services, which would rely on the levying of an income tax.)
(Incidentally what you note about the effective rate of an income tax being under 100% is one reason for the SALT deduction; it was especially necessary when the US federal income tax had a top-bracket rate of 91%, because without SALT no state could've charged more than 9%! To my knowledge every significant US federal income tax law has contained the deduction in some form, as a concession to states' rights to levy taxes as they see fit. Even the most ardent "soak the rich" advocates out there, such as former Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura, who's proposed a maximum income of $12,000,000 per year and called for the abolition of the possibility of billionaires*, tacitly agree that you can't charge more than 100%.)
I will admit I'd have to look further into how dedicated Georgists answer the question of "what if you lose your job". (Especially given how it can just happen for reasons entirely outside your control, and in the worst cases can leave you unemployable in future.) I would note that part of the argument in favour of a land-value tax is that, if levied at a sufficiently high rate, it dissuades the accumulation of wealth in the form of land and provides a natural cap on the value of such, and thus a natural cap on the amount of the tax. (In other words, a large problem in implementing such a policy now is that it would go directly against decades of policies which pushed the accumulation of middle-class wealth into housing.) Some localities in Pennsylvania have implemented such a tax (whether only on the value of land or with a higher rate on land than on improvements): https://www.jstor.org/stable/3487258 Perhaps they came up with some answer to the question of which I'm unaware.
*Another commenter suggested that wealth be capped at $999,999,999 and that once you hit that, you get a "YOU WON AT CAPITALISM" plaque and the rest of your wealth confiscated. How this would work given that most such wealth is held in assets less liquid than cash generally goes unexplained in the top-line proposal.
lies! In addition to those two comments, you also placated my poor analogy in the MOMS case:
https://decivitate.jamesjheaney.com/p/imperial-repeal/comment/44860372
Ha ha! I forgot all about that!
Hopefully no other Flag Comments will surface to embarrass me and trap me in a Gaffe!
First off: find me one of those red pillers that hates Fallingwater and the Empire State Building, and even the Statue of Liberty. I want to have words with them.
Second: STD did have a legitimate good season, the first one. It's worth a watch. No, the abbreviation is not a mistake, it's a prank. Go ahead and laugh at the idiots that greenlit it.
"The Minnesota Night Flag" is legitimately metal (and I love it).
I think, instead of flying either flag, if localities want to fly something, "Minnesota: Pick a Better Flag, Please" -- in bright blue letters on a darker blue background, would be fun. It's a way to signal "we're fed up with this whole issue" while reminding people which ambivalent state you're in.
Ah, Falling Water. A house with 7' ceilings, no closets, and leaking concrete. It's a runway dress: pretty to look at, but terrible for living in.
Exactly. it's very pretty, and it was a vacation house anyway (for nudists!).
Yeah. See, I have this funny idea that "form follows function" means that houses should be for living in. Craftsman bungalows are for living. Le Corbusier stack-a-prole apartment buildings (excuse me, *Unité d'habitation*) are for looking good in architecture magazines.
I quite liked his "phone call seat" (it was a bicycle seat). It quite eloquently said "this is my phone, and you're calling long distance. Get Off as soon as you can."
Even brutalism had a few good buildings (not the Hoover building though, FBI agents have deepsixed their careers to get out of there).
A vacation house, particularly one built for rich folks, was designed to show off. I've seen the Rookery in Chicago -- Wright was capable of not being a total ass and designing workable places for actual use. Then he let his ego take over, and that was part of what he was selling, "Look, we had a famous designer come build our stuff!"
"The first season of STD is the legitimately good one" is a fresh take I've genuinely never heard! I commend the opinion because, if nothing else, it is definitely not being dictated to you by an egregore!
I mostly avoid essays on Star Trek at De Civ for complicated legal reasons, so I won't go to great lengths to articulate my view, but I found I mostly agree with @CZeke's take at FiveMinute.net (https://www.fiveminute.net/news/5mdvetc.html): Discovery was bad, through and through, but, looking back, it wasn't malicious. It didn't fail because it held its audience in contempt, like every season of Picard did; it failed because, like a five-year-old with a crayon, it didn't know how to succeed, and thought it was succeeding. There's a dignity in that. I can respect it.
And, as with every Star Trek: the cast was fantastic. The writers sometimes let down Star Trek casts, but whoever runs Star Trek casting departments is absolutely stellar. Really, THE single biggest mistake Discovery made was killing Prime Universe Georgiou in the first episode and making Captain Lorca a [REDACTED SPOILERS]. Both were genuinely interesting characters who could have carried a series as a captain/x.o. pair, and I was surprised by how much I enjoyed Michelle Yeoh's acting chops.
Lorca could certainly have been an amazing asset. I didn't see (or don't remember) enough of Michelle Yeoh to have an opinion, really. I agree that Michael Burnham was all over the map (but, if you're going to have a female character named Michael, why in hell aren't you going for the "tran" audience? particularly at that time? When you're being outdone in "pandering" ... or is it trolling, by Voltron...? Seriously, wasn't Star Trek progressive at one point? Yeah, it was. It broke some real science -- psychology, naturally. Remember the Broccoli episode?).
I have a bit more tolerance for "shaky Trek" when I rewatch TNG Season 1 (or a lot of Voyager). Sir Patrick Stewart saved the show, simply by sheer gravitas -- he's not a very smart guy, but he has a gift.
I'm curious: have you tried rewatching TNG S1 (or ENT S1, the other worst season of "classic" Trek) *after* watching some nuTrek?
To my very great surprise, I found TNG S1 (which I once derided as nearly unwatchable, commendable only to hardcore fans) quite enjoyable, with (often) many more layers and much more sophisticated storytelling than any given hour of, say, PIC S2. One of the things I'm most grateful for in nuTrek is increasing my appreciation for the dregs of old Trek.
(I will say, in the interest of positivity, that I enjoyed Lower Decks, and that I thought Prodigy was genuinely good and my kids and I were really excited about it.)
STD season 1 was the last I watched. In it, I got to see Bodum glassware (proof that if you do keep autistically talking about something amazing, eventually the set designers will use it). So, no, haven't really rewatched. Some of TNG S1 was really, really dire (the episode where Tasha Yar dies pointlessly, for example).
And gene's idea of the Ferengi as "The Big Bads of TNG" was just... hilariously not going to work. And you remember the brain-worms, which were supposed to be part of a bigger picture... that never panned out (the BORG were also part of that whole scrapped picture...)
YMMV, but you *may* find on next rewatch that a number of the episodes you once despised as trash are actually... fairly watchable! I mean, nothing's going to save "The Last Outpost" (the first Ferengi episode; Armin Shimerman felt so bad about that performance that he insisted on redeeming the entire race through Quark), but I found "Haven" and "Hide and Q" -- quite weak episodes by TNG standards -- to be quite enjoyable after Discovery episodes like "Despite Yourself" and "Lethe."
It's a possibility, anyway!
Great article, and I myself have had the thought that if I had to fly one, I would fly both.
I was really hoping the one that was the new one, but with a blue/white/green field on the right, to make it a little more complex and get it farther from the Somali flag (I anticipated that source of discontent).
I think the best option would have been a more abstract version of the old one honestly. Meet in the middle.
Vexillology is not silly, and makes a good point: a flag, like a corporate logo, ought to follow the KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid!) principle. You should not have to think about whose flag you’re looking at, it should be immediate and obvious. Granted, I don’t think much of the aesthetics of the new Minnesota flag, but it does the job.
I have two objections to this:
1. It is a *personal aesthetic preference*, not an objective aesthetic principle, that flags ought to be simple.
I do think there are objective aesthetic rules in the world (please do not ask me for an account of them; I have not read enough of Aristotle's writing on this), but no one has given me a reason for thinking that "flags should be simple" is one of them. It's fine that many people have this preference, and it's fine that vexillologists created a little club for themselves to celebrate this preference, but it remains only a preference, and people with the other preference have exactly as good of a point.
2. For the sake of argument, let's say you're right and that flags *should* be easy to understand, like a corporate logo. If so, how do the "rules of vexillology" actually support that principle? One of the rules of vexillology is no words, ever. That's certainly not a rule corporate logos follow! Lots of corporate logos (I might say most) are just stylized versions of the firm's name, and most incorporate some element of the name, or are (at the very least) associated with the name (e.g. Steam's logo is an old-style gear of the sort that would have run on steam power). The old Minnesota flag said "MINNESOTA" on it. The new one is two blues and a star. What about that identifies it as "Minnesota" to someone not in the know?
I think what vexillologists are really trying to say is something like, "Your flag should be immediately identifiable even at a great distance and even *in a sea of other flags*," but... why? Outside of a civil war, the occasions where this is needed as a practical matter are few and far between indeed.
I say all this without rancor! I merely object to the vexillologists' claims that their preferences are anything more than their own personal preferences.
I think it's worth ultimately seeing how much your subjective aesthetic sense lines up with the amateur flag-likers.
https://www.route-fifty.com/management/2023/02/ranking-best-and-worst-city-flags/382589/
I was personally ready to be a hater, but when I saw what flags were ranked at the bottom I was mostly nodding my head in agreement. Though I do absolutely quibble with the precise ordering.
I think Belle Glade's flag is unironically great and Nitro's is at least ironically great. (It certainly has more CHARACTER than, say, the highly-ranked flag of Yorba Linda.
On the whole, though, I agree: most of these are really hideous flags, and most of the top-ranked ones are not as bad as, say, Overland Park's flag.
But I think this doesn't tell us that vexillology principles are correct, because I think most of these flags would fail by both Blue Tribe aesthetics *and* Red Tribe aesthetics.
For example: the flag of Franklin, Wisconsin fails for Blue Tribe because it has words, but it otherwise does a pretty good job of following the Five Principles: it is simple, it presumably has some symbolic meaning in the lore of Franklin (or some meaning can be retroactively imposed on it, like the meaning of the stars on the Chicago flag), it's *mostly* just three colors (with the text providing a couple accents), and, as for being distinctive... well, you could certainly tell it apart at a glance from every single flag in the Top 25, and that's not true of the flags in the Top 25 with themselves!
But the flag of Franklin fails for Red Tribe because it looks like something a soulless design consultant wrenched out of a corporate clip art file. It's a minimalist masterpiece, rejecting all baroque lines and ornament. It has no hint of tradition in it, no concession to the world that birthed Franklin. It's a very modernist flag.
So, yes, the vexillologists are right to hate this flag, but their reasons for hating the flag do not correspond all that well to their stated principles, and the anti-vexillologists will (I think) also hate this flag for their own reasons.
The interesting cases are not the ones the vexillologists hate, but the ones where they disagree with the anti-vexillologists. I realize it's harder to know where those are, since we don't have a survey of the latter group.
Belle Glade's flag tragically lacks the "so heinous it's amazing" quality that Nitro's has.
Hey, what's wrong with Miami Township's flag? It may not be my favorite flag I've lived under, but still, it's not nearly as bad as the new MN flag. It actually has some character...
The old flag was a “seal on a bedsheet” that looks like a dozen other states.
Conservative Republican Utah also redesigned their “seal on a bedsheet” flag at the same time.
> The old flag was a “seal on a bedsheet” that looks like a dozen other states.
And? There's nothing objectively wrong with so-called "seal on a bedsheet" design.
Many vexillologists believe that, just because they invented the term as an insult, and it sounds insulting, it's an unanswerable argument. But it's just an ad hominem. (Well, ad vexillum, anyway.)
> Conservative Republican Utah also redesigned their “seal on a bedsheet” flag at the same time.
Not to be repetitive, but: and? It's not obvious what conclusion we should draw from this. Are you saying that Mormons have a different aesthetic sense than the rest of the Red Tribe? That's plausible and interesting, but doesn't seem to have much bearing on Minnesota's flag.
I’m saying that sometimes people don’t like boring flags. It’s not a Culture War thing.
States with distinctive flags, like South Carolina, Texas, and New Mexico are rather proud of them and they get merchandised like crazy.
With respect, I find it difficult to believe that you read the article, which discussed this at considerable length. The new flag is unpopular. Its popularity is intensely polarized along culture-war lines. It was adopted by an unaccountable committee stacked high with culture warriors, which was itself created on a party-line vote after that party spent a generation attacking the old flag for culture-war reasons. This lopsided process amplified the culture-war implications of the new flag.
“Sometimes people don’t like boring flags” is true, and it’s even true in Minnesota, but treating it as a remotely complete explanation of the Minnesota flag controversy evinces ignorance of almost any facts about that controversy — which is remarkable in the comment section of an article about the controversy.
Yes, I read it, and I see the right making the defense of an ugly, unremarkable flag into a culture war issue.
If a a lib likes something, it must be bad.
If you sincerely believe that the motive for the flag change was purely aesthetic, that aesthetic decisions are inherently not culture-war issues, and that the Right was therefore the sole aggressor in this conflict, the world you live in must be very interesting indeed, and I would like to understand it better:
What do you make of the comments of Rep. Frieberg, who called the old flag "genocidal"?
Does your answer change when you learn that Frieberg authored the legislation creating the flag-change committee?
Why was the flag-change committee stacked with members of only one party, representing only one ideology?
Why was the flag-change committee stacked high with representatives of racial interest groups, including several racial interest groups with no discernible grievance against the old flag? Are racial interest groups especially skilled at forming aesthetic judgments?
What do you make of Frieberg's subsequent attempts to cut funding to cities that fly the old flag?
What do you make of the typical public comment I noted, "Wherever I see the old flag flying, I know to avoid it because holding on to a racist past means that space is likely unsafe for minorities (including me). I will feel less safe and welcome [if you fly the old flag]"? What do you make of all similar comments made throughout the state by supporters of the new flag?
Why is the new flag 20 points underwater with voters as a whole, and underwater with independent voters?
Do you believe the new flag would win a statewide referendum in this D+5 state?
I don't claim that the Right is blameless in this. Nor have I claimed, at any point, that the new flag is objectively *bad* (much less that it's bad "because a lib likes it"), only that, while I personally don't care for it, there's no disputing subjective tastes. My claims seem pretty modest. Your claims seem, frankly, like you started out with a conclusion ("the majority of Minnesota merely thought the old flag was ugly, no ulterior motives at all") and then found some way to ignore overwhelming evidence to the contrary (and I can't figure out what that way is, hence my questions above).
Why are you defending the unremarkable seal on a bedsheet?
Typical rightist: We must not improve anything because we might give the libs a Culture War win. God forbid the state do better.
Lefties make ugly flags too. See the 2001-03 Georgia flag. That got GA Dems a couple of decades in political exile.
Did you ever consider that the woke was an excuse to design a flag that was more marketable for Minnesota?
The lesson I take from it is that changing flags is inherently political and attracts a lot more attention than you think. Even in Utah's supermajority environment when the flag basically strengthens every symbol that people wanted to keep.
I grew up in utah. My family is still there. They are deeply embedded in local politics. When we discussed the flag I was shocked to find out that my family members who lived in Utah did not like the new flag. Me and my brothers who had moved out of the state thought it was a great flag. Strengthen the beehive, add skiing and Red Rock references. They even kept star representing our particularly difficult fight for statehood. I love the new flag.
But no, somehow the flag had gotten mixed up in some local inter-Republican party fight, and so my in-state family doesn't like it
Changing flags seems to attract political controversy.
"I hate popular referenda. Popular referenda reduce complex issues to sound bites and fundraising marketed to the lowest-common-denominator voter, and result in states adopting terrible, short-sighted, divisive policies, like California’s property-tax restrictions (which have helped lock young Californians out of the housing market), or Ohio’s abortion-to-birth amendment. We have a republic, not a democracy, precisely because our elected representatives are better able to hone complex policy, considering long-term trade-offs and making appropriate compromises to win broad support. Voters are okay at picking candidates;10 they are terrible at deciding policy. If I could revise every state constitution, I would eliminate citizen-initiated referenda of all kinds, and I would require a supermajority to approve any state constitutional amendment."
While I have sympathy for this in regards to policy changes, the problem is that citizen-initiated referendums are right now just about the only way to enact fixes to our voting systems, because those elected representatives are, due to knowing how to hone policy, are very good at keeping in place rules to keep themselves in power, even if it means the continuance of our broken voting systems.
Anti-gerrymandering initiatives are things legislatures are clearly not particularly interested in, given that all the ones I can think of were done by referendum (granted, more recently we've seen referendums about allowing for more gerrymandering, though I think those were legislative initiated that then went to the citizens afterwards, and thus not a citizen-initiated one). Ranked choice voting, while not without its own issues, is certainly an upgrade to first-past-the-post, and it only got implemented in Maine and Alaska because of referendums that were opposed by their legislatures. And while no states have proportional representation yet--which would be another considerable improvement over our current system, at least if it's mixed member--I don't see any legislature passing those, but a referendum could.
When the rules of the voting empower those in power, there seems very little recourse to fixing it. Of course they're not going to vote to do something that could cost them their seats. And voting them out doesn't work, because thanks to those very broken voting systems that's very difficult to do. The only places I'm aware of in the US where states moved away from the broken first-past-the-post voting system were ones that were done by citizen-initiated referendum. I could possibly see legislatures starting to change things if under enough pressure, but for that to happen I think we'd need to see more states doing it. And yeah, sure, letting voters via referendums change that can have some not great consequences (California's jungle primary system seems like it only exacerbates the vote-splitting issues, they'd be better off switching to Alaska's as it lowers the effect of that), but I still think I'd trust referendums on those things more than I would the legislatures to fix up the voting systems.
So I think citizen-initiated referendum are important in cases of stuff like this, because to trust legislatures to do anything that might be in the public interest but against their own self-interest in regards to voting systems clearly isn't working and the minor steps taken to fix it seem like they've all been via referendums.
I'm going to think about this. My first-blush thought is, "Okay, I could be cool with an exception for referenda about voting systems specifically." But then my second-blush thought is, "Oh no imagine the damage they'd wreak."
But it's a fair point.
I prefer the new one and am fully on the side of people who make fun of the old style by calling it a seal on a bedsheet. That style of flag is hideous. Boring and grating to the eye. The new one is much better and more pleasing to look at.
That's cool, and I can't really take serious exception to anyone whose username is a reference to koon-ut-kal-if-fee, but I think the state is past the point where it our individual opinions on the flag matter all that much.
I wrote these lines about the old flag, but they apply to the new as well:
> Moreover, the truth is that, as much as I liked the old flag (and I really did), I was aware that the flag made some Minnesotans feel sad or angry. This was a small minority, and their reasons were, I thought, bad reasons, but, nevertheless, this minority largely refused to fly the state flag or show it respect. A symbol of state unity, an expression of our shared republic, was instead a source of division. ...A state’s flag should not be divisive among people who live in that state. Granted, there will always be a fraction who will hate any flag, whether because they’re oikophobes or just obstreperous, but our old flag was undeniably more controversial than it needed to be.
...but now those words apply much more strongly! Only a third of the state says they like the new flag! Lots of people are really angry about it! Whether or not their reasons are good, it still defeats the purpose of a flag.
I am a fan of Saul Bass-style minimalism and midcentury modern aesthetics (I guess the early 1960s vexillology founding doesn't surprise me). But the new flag is just bland? Even though there were some legitimately beautiful entries submitted for the new design that could have been used instead.
FWIW I thought the new flag looked like a fish (closeup on its head, with its mouth open).
I am a democrat. I think the new flag sucks hard. We exist. You know who got a good new flag? Utah. I like that one! Great flag! It's actually got shit on it! It doesn't look like you asked a five year old whose favorite color is blue to make a flag!