The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
No bio...
User ID: 174
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
4hr ago
Some grand global game of competition in which AMERICA NUMBA ONE just doesn’t really exist in the minds of most Americans in the way it does for the Chinese or even for, say, the French. American identity is tied to more amorphous things that don’t really have anything to do with global affairs like the Wild West and country music. A Dane or Swiss will gladly lecture you on why Denmark or Switzerland is the best country on earth (both would be mostly correct). Americans don’t really do that except in a very tongue in cheek Team America World Police way and even that is mostly limited to the middle class.
Americans don't do that because we don't need to. We know we're number one, we know everyone else (especially the French, who hate it, but excepting the Chinese) knows we're number one, and there's no point in arguing about it.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
4hr ago
Getting the New York AG to go after him would be one of the better things for Vivek's popularity.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
5hr ago
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
10hr ago
Obviously it’s unpopular, although there’s certain elite circles which like the idea. They are, however, not GOP elites.
Which American elite circles like it? Plenty of Democratic elites want to make us more like Europe. But "bring on the Asian grind" doesn't seem to be popular anywhere. I remember the "Homework Gap" (with Japan, not the modern DEI wikipedia version), but I'm pretty sure the most fervent supporters of more homework would recoil at modern South Korea.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
11hr ago
Right. However bad infinite Indians are, the "real engineering" gerontocracy is far worse.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
13hr ago
So master morality in the end optimizes for the things you own, which means celebrating actions that we consider immoral. Because that is often the fastest way to own as much stuff as possible. Fair enough.
That is not what I said. Certainly master morality is not mostly about "stuff"; even "resources" are not merely about "stuff" -- time is a pretty major one as well, for instance. And you can't define "master morality" in terms of "actions we consider immoral" because that implies a shared morality. You can say that master morality celebrates some actions slave moralities would consider immoral, but that's not very informative.
In that case, what is needed is for society to agree on a new moral system. One that incentivizes effort and celebrates success and beauty, while still punishing those who gain wealth by trampling others.
This is certainly a common ideal of a moral system. Doesn't seem to be very popular in the real world though. It's attacked on one end by those who think some trampling is fine, and far more successfully on the other by those who argue that all wealth and beauty and success is gained by trampling others, and therefore success itself is immoral. And of course the relativists who deny the existence of objective, or even common standards of, beauty.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
14hr ago
Worse, so many high-profile people pretending to straddle political aisles are very clearly not that there's less than zero trust, here.
This, I think, is a huge part of it. Calls for "deradicalization", "reducing polarization", or "moderation" are nearly always calls for the other side to surrender and disarm. Either there's no offer for the caller's side to give something up, or they obviously don't have the power to make it come about.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
1d ago
We had the discussion last time. Vivek was (and presumably is) just wrong. Zach on Saved by the Bell was all-around competent. He's not mediocre at all. Canonically he gets a 1502 on the SAT. He was almost as good at sports as Slater, almost as book smart as Screech, he had Tom Sawyer's social skills and business skills on top of that. And a rebellious streak a mile wide, which gives lie to Vivek's later complaint about "nerdiness over conformity". Perhaps Ramaswamy's own immigrant parents sheltered him too much from American culture, and he is criticizing that which he does not understand.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
1d ago
I don't follow. Why can't one say slave morality is stupid and disregard it and be a yeschad.jpg that tithes 10% to EA charities and selfishly spends the remaining 90% on themselves?
Because giving 10% to the enemy when you can give 0% to the enemy is stupid. Even where EA doesn't veer off to the left and go full woke, or waste money on a Berkeley Villian Lair, they miss the boat; there they were, buying mosquito nets, when they should have been put a lot more money into malaria vaccines.
Getting rich while building great things and doing noble deeds for status (which can be cashed in for hedonic utilons) still seems strictly better than doing ugly things just for money to cash in for hedonic utilons. The first one is more altruistic, even if it's just as selfish at its core.
Your language bakes the assumptions of slave morality into it. Building great things is ALREADY good; you don't need to take the money and do "noble" things with it.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
1d ago
There's also local issues like electricity, which has generally increased more in blue states than red.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
1d ago
I'm pretty sure Gates gives money away to strangers to control their lives. He says he "fights poverty and disease" but damnit the recipients will do it the Gates Foundation way. Nobel certainly seemed more guilt-ridden. A purer version of what I mean is those whose main business makes people's lives better; this applies to Musk and Bezos and Carnegie -- his steel business rather than his later philanthropy.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
1d ago
You are proposing a solution that ignores the tradeoffs. I cannot save the children and invest in people to watch the shores and so on, because I have limited resources. If I spend them saving the children I will never get to the point of having enough to hire other people to watch the shores. I could take something like Carnegie's view and let the kids drown until I'm rich enough to do something about it without destroying myself, but slave morality would reject that as "cruel".
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
1d ago
The oldest institutions that are currently universities were originally founded by churches (many by the Roman Catholic church, but others also). But aside from the regalia they mostly don't actually resemble the way they looked then.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
1d ago
It's weird to just make up imaginary services. There's no 'imputed rent' for those who own cars rather than renting them.
Use value of cars is sometimes imputed (for tax purposes), but not for GDP, probably because it wouldn't be enough to matter. They do impute the fees you don't pay on "free" checking and savings accounts, and it's a fairly large amount -- the difference between the interest rate you get (usually 0) and the interest rate on government securities (now around 3.5% I believe). Note that mortgage interest is deducted from imputed rent (or it would be double-counted), so "imputed car lease payments" would also deduct (actual) car financing costs, which reduces the significance.
It's definitely weird. It's weird that GDP goes up when property values go up despite no transaction happening. But it would be weirder if GDP went up when rented property increased in cost but not owned property. There's no perfect way to do it.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
1d ago
(from Scott's piece -- thanks for referencing it, it's nice to see he's still sometimes not completely pozzed -- by which I mean fully accepting of one particular form of slave morality)
Some right-wingers have responded to the piece, but their responses are mostly “but I like being bad and cruel” - which seems to prove Bulldog’s point.
I think we can do better - that it’s possible to make a case against “slave morality” that doesn’t rely on being pro-badness and cruelty.
You can't, though. Not with the slave morality definitions of badness and cruelty, which e.g. require that I bankrupt myself saving all of Pete Singer's drowning kids -- it's cruel for me to allow them to drown and bad for me to restrict them so they can't keep jumping in the lake. You either have to argue over the definitions of badness and cruelty, or yeschad.jpg. Guess which is master morality?
But also, don’t we like altruism? When we’re bestriding the Earth like colossi, working on our glorious rocket ships to colonize the universe, isn’t part of what we’re thinking “this is going to revolutionize humankind and make everybody better off?”
It becomes a lot less altruistic if you add in "...and I will be the one who did it", as the people who do that rather typically do. People with master morality will sometimes make everyone better off for their own glory. Elon Musk, yes, but also Andrew Carnegie and many others.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
2d ago
Unfortunately the household spending report doesn't come out until almost a year later, so most of these are not testable.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
2d ago
I'm pretty sure most people don't care that much about GDP. The directly important figures for the man on the street (Main Street, anyway) are the components of the old misery index -- inflation and unemployment. With job creation numbers basically at zero, unemployment seems likely to increase. Inflation is not great either. It's a jobless expansion.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
2d ago
As far as I can tell, some sectors, mainly tech (AI) and finserv, are carrying the rest, and recent economic gains haven't been felt by most consumers.
In terms of GDP, consumer spending has increased in both Q2 and Q3. In Q2 it was finance and tech at the top, but nondurable goods increased by quite a bit as did professional and technical services and durable goods. In Q3 the top was health care services and recreational goods and vehicles, mostly "information processing equipment", but the detailed info won't be out until mid-January.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
2d ago
No, you just wildly misunderstood[1] my point and think I (or rather my company) am too lazy to understand basic metrics.
What I think, not to put too fine a point on it, is that you are claiming some sort of special expertise and knowledge you don't actually have in order to win an internet argument. It's one thing to not believe in the validity of the CPI or PCE or some other indicator. It's quite another to act as if there is some class of important people who are in the know about them being nonsense, and you are one of them. Particularly when you back that up with a rather confused notion of what's wrong with them.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
3d ago
Unfortunately your previous post is nonsense.
Quality adjustments and awkward exclusions make CPI almost irrelevant - not counting housing/rent at all (while it's imputed to 10% of GDP).
Rent is included and 7.5% of the index. Owner occupied housing -- represented as owners equivalent rent -- is 25% of the index.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
4d ago
Right. "We can add female-friendly elements without scaring the dudes" isn't a pants-on-head stupid plan. It might be hard and it might not work, but the idea isn't categorically dumb. "We can completely aim for a female audience and the dudes will have no choice but to stay and we'll get the women too" IS pants-on-head stupid.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
4d ago
· Edited 4d ago
They don't have to be the "big swinging dicks" to be covered under the charge. 18 USC 1071 states
Whoever harbors or conceals any person for whose arrest a warrant or process has been issued under the provisions of any law of the United States, so as to prevent his discovery and arrest, after notice or knowledge of the fact that a warrant or process has been issued for the apprehension of such person, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than one year, or both; except that if the warrant or process issued on a charge of felony, or after conviction of such person of any offense, the punishment shall be a fine under this title, or imprisonment for not more than five years, or both.
The Justice Department helpfully lays out the elements:
Under 18 U.S.C. § 1071, the government must establish the following four essential elements: (1) a federal warrant has been issued for the fugitive's arrest; (2) the defendant had knowledge that a warrant had been issued for the fugitive's arrest; (3) the defendant actually harbored or concealed the fugitive; and (4) the defendant intended to prevent the fugitive's discovery or arrest. United States v. Silva, 745 F.2d 840, 848 (4th Cir. 1984), cert. denied, 470 U.S. 1031 (1985). Accord, United States v. Udey, 748 F.2d 1231, 1235-36 (8th Cir. 1984), cert. denied, 472 U.S. 1017 (1985); United States v. Bissonette, 586 F.2d 73, 77 (8th Cir. 1978).
But I think she was convicted on the other charge, 18 USC 1505, which fits rather less well. It fits about as well as the obstruction charges from Sarbanes-Oxley fit the J6 cases; it has one section specifically concerned with obstructing the Antitrust Civil Process Act, and the second is
Whoever corruptly, or by threats or force, or by any threatening letter or communication influences, obstructs, or impedes or endeavors to influence, obstruct, or impede the due and proper administration of the law under which any pending proceeding is being had before any department or agency of the United States, or the due and proper exercise of the power of inquiry under which any inquiry or investigation is being had by either House, or any committee of either House or any joint committee of the Congress—
Seems to me under the J6 precedent, this should be thrown out. This is not the kind of obstruction 18 USC 1505 was meant for.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
4d ago
Eh, Picard was just older. We saw in "Tapestry" that young Picard was the kind of guy who would have totally decked Q.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
4d ago
There's been a concerted effort to create a female fandom for all the male oriented IPs to expand their TAM, especially in gaming where the average budgets keep ballooning every year. The rationale is that male gamers (existing fandom) will remain loyal to the IP and get incalculated into feminism. But females need to be interested. So do away with the fratboy culture! Let HR screen the environment, kick out the milquetoast Gen X techbros and onboard woke millennial women. Accommodate all of their favourite social justice causes (BLM, LGBTQ). Fight the male gaze!
This is not a rationale; this is a rationalization for what they wanted to do anyway. The idea of "let's alienate our existing customers because they'll buy anyway, so we can just cater to the new customers we want at no cost" is pants-on-head stupid to begin with. It'd be like cigarette companies trying to cater to the health-nut demographic... by removing the nicotine. When they do it and it DOESN'T WORK and they keep doing it, the already transparent rationalization just falls apart.
There were Catholics here from the start.
More options
Context Copy link