"Relative deprivation", why isn't it uniting outdoor SIGS?

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Rand Man
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Joined: January 4th, 2017, 11:09 am

"Relative deprivation", why isn't it uniting outdoor SIGS?

Post by Rand Man » February 7th, 2017, 1:40 pm

Yesterday, Feb. 6th, Danielle Kurtzleben wrote a piece on "relative deprivation". Kurtzleben is an political reporter for NPR, and data junkie who launched Data Mine" when she was at US News & World Report.

In the piece, Kurtzleben writes: "Relative deprivation describes being deprived of something a person feels entitled to. For example, they used to have it, expected to have it, or see that others have it."

She goes on to write: "The left isn't 100 percent unified, but the power of relative deprivation has helped more or less bridge what was one of the bitterest political divides"

That outdoor special interest groups are not united yet need to be united has been mentioned in other places on OH, the general point having been that extractive industries are dominating policy on public land management despite the economic size of the collective (often cited as $650 billion).

So what's up? It seems obvious that 'relative deprivation' is common here too. But the only unity seems to be coming from corporate dollars, aka OIA.

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sgyoung
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Joined: November 3rd, 2013, 7:30 pm
Location: Seattle

Re: "Relative deprivation", why isn't it uniting outdoor SIG

Post by sgyoung » February 11th, 2017, 3:43 pm

I wonder to what extent the "see others have it" part of the definition is at play here. To explain a bit, I suspect hunters, hikers, bikers, etc believe their interests are contradictory e.g., areas open to hikers being closed to the other groups and vice-versa. In such a case, getting these groups to work cooperatively against a collective threat to public land access is going to difficult (though not impossible - lots of good research on ways to foster intergroup cooperation) insofar as each party believe their efforts to save public lands won't necessarily grant them additional access.

There is probably some NIMBY-ism at play too, where lots of people don't get too worked up about parcels of far away federal lands getting sold off.

More optimistically, the protest in Utah at the Chaffetz town hall shows that people are acting to prevent the loss of public lands.

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BigBear
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Re: "Relative deprivation", why isn't it uniting outdoor SIG

Post by BigBear » February 21st, 2017, 12:28 pm

It seems that the intent of the story was not focusing on what used to be called "keeping up with the Jones" (or "I want what they have), but losing what you already have and took for granted. The erosion of the middle class worker since the so-called "Contract With America" has not produced the protests that have plagued the streets of the inner cities this past year.

Workers have lost their retirement (often used to pay executive bonuses), their overtime, and fully-paid medical benefits. The Affordable Care Act was far from the perfect solution, but it did do some important things such as (1) elimination of the pre-existing condition (which somehow could be used to deny medical coverage for people insured since birth) and (2) the $1M lifetime maximum for medical care (a threshold that gets 15-20% closer with every passing year). The GOP has had 8 years to but up a better plan, but all they seem to want to do is take away your medical benefits or call them a Cadillac package and tax people into dropping their coverage.

Its sad that the workers fought so hard in the 1930s and 40s to watch Congress eliminate benefit packages of the average worker without the media even raising an eyebrow. The Oregonian newspaper has been fighting a decade-long battle to get rid of PERS because they want to eliminate steady pay and benefits of their reporters, opting instead for a pay-per-story plan (the more sensational, the better...forget the news, just make it controversial).

Its your rights a s a worker and a consumer that should get you excited. The "wall" is already 700 miles built even before Trump scurried into office promising something "new". Last week, coal mining companies got a big Xmas present: pollute without limits. You may have missed that story because the magician flashed an Executive Order with his right hand and you didn't keep your eye on the ball.

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