crushedoranges
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User ID: 111
crushedoranges
2d ago
I'd be obliged if you wouldn't treat the Motte as some sort of twitter offshoot, where you pithily dismiss your opposition with short, one-line messages.
How do you think immigrant fruit pickers get so good at picking fruit, fast enough to do it for a living? They've been doing it since childhood. American children obviously can't do it (it's literally illegal for them to do so, child labor.) Why is a Mexican meatpacker hired over the American one? Is it because he is illegal and can't ask for breaks or agitate for a union because he'd be immediately turfed across the border?
You either are completely unaware of the reasons why illegal labor is hired, or you are aware, and are acting dumb. Either way, the manner of which you speak with such utter confidence on matters of which you know nothing is infuriating to an incredible degree. Your priors are wrong. The conclusions you derive from those priors are wrong. It's pointless to debate you because you utterly refuse to acknowledge anything that even resembles material reality.
An American worker cannot compete with a Mexican agricultural worker for the same reason he can't compete with a Chinese industrial factory worker: both work in conditions that are illegal in America! If your conclusion is 'let them work at the global median of worker's protection and compensation' then I would take a good look into a mirror and think on the morality of your politics: that is, if you still cast a reflection.
crushedoranges
2d ago
A lot of the current angst in the left is that a table with one communist and nine people remains a table with one communist and nine people, which drives them crazy.
crushedoranges
2d ago
Obviously the market is distorted by access to illegal labor, as much as a market would be distorted if people were allowed to own slaves. There is no inconsistency here. People want to compete in the legal framework of their country, under the same laws. An army of scabs willing to work for less in shittier conditions (that would be illegal for any citizen) would depress the labor market.
crushedoranges
2d ago
Let me demonstrate how irritating you're being.
"Did I strawman the Left? Let's ask Sam Brinton."
"Did I strawman the Left? Let's ask Anthony Weiner."
"Did I strawman the Left? Let's ask Jasmine Crockett."
"Did I strawman the Left? Let's ask AOC."
You are not strawmanning. You are weakmanning. You are not giving your political opposition the benefit of the doubt. I have a whole list of leftist politicians, intellectuals, and academics that have said embarrassing and stupid things I'd like you to defend, if you'd care to play at this particular joust.
crushedoranges
3d ago
You could make an argument where all laws, no matter how trivial, have a material impact on the nations of men unborn. So on one hand, it is you, who have the audacity to try and do anything, with only the minority of people who are actually living. And it is I, who have the legions of uncountable ranks of unborn humanity, have the sovereign interest to prevent you from doing that.
You're arguing about the moderation of the forum, and the Motte's very ethos as a forum. This is neither interesting or productive. I'm certainly not aligned with the moderators in everything, but I didn't come back guns blazing, hot off my ban with a chip on my shoulder. What are you trying to prove? That we're all a bunch of chuds?
Well, let's say you proved it. Do you have anything else left to say?
I do indeed want ideologically diverse discussion place, but I don't think you're the person that fits that bill. And that's okay. There's nothing wrong with that.
crushedoranges
4d ago
Hollywood was always a platform for activism but it was understood that it was ultimately a business at the end of the day. The people in charge of Hollywood don't want to be capitalists in the business of selling tickets and getting bums in seats. They want to be activists, full stop. Talent no longer cares about profitability or marketability and the executives no longer care about artistry or culture. End result: slop.
As a non-libtard who occupies a vague place somewhere in the reactionary spectrum, the main problem is that most liberals come in with the assumption that anyone who isn't a liberal is obviously some sort of underground cave creature who dropped out of primary school.
This is an exaggeration, of course, but not so much as to be uncharitable. I consider myself to be somewhat of a didact, albeit, not as well read as I could theoretically could be (No, I have not read most of the Greeks, or much of Continental philosophy.) But then again, most liberals don't, either. But what I do have is a high school education where I was brought up in to understand the liberal perspective. I grew up as a liberal. Indeed, for most of my life, I was the libtard.
I think I can say with some confidence that most people here are, in fact, former libtard, which is to say they are heretics to liberal orthodoxy. If we weren't, we wouldn't feel a need to be here.
It is a very predictable pattern. A libtard comes in. They snark. They snipe. They complain about downvotes. They write very big poasts on how We're All Chuds and Witches as they leave. I find it very foolish. I would not, say, go into /r/Atheism and complain that I am surrounded by godless euphorics. (I would be banned.) The atheists are armed with many rote arguments against standard Christian apologetics. Similarly, I am armed with many rote arguments against normie liberalism - as I suspect others on this forum have as well.
Getting past that is where the truly interesting conversations begin, but that requires knowledge of the rote arguments: which many drive-by liberals simply refuse to engage with.
Which is to say, if you wish to make liberal arguments, you have to work for it. You cannot rely on logos and institutional credibility alone. You must establish your ethos to your audience, demonstrate credibility, and communicate to the vibe - the pathos - of the Motte. It is a muscle that liberals are flabby and out of shape, unused for so long. It will get stronger with use. Don't despair. Liberalism's ideals is worth defending. If you don't stand up for it, who will?
crushedoranges
6d ago
When the floodwaters surprise you it's generally a choice between bad and worse. If we were put in the position of those girls, I doubt we'd have great chances either, but the simple fact that we're adults would greatly improve our probability of survival.
crushedoranges
6d ago
The flooding happened quite late at night, when everyone was asleep: probably the first notice that anything was amiss was water intruding through the entrance and flooding the floor.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=NpG9cJTPf7I&ab_channel=KSAT12
This man survived by swimming out and standing on an electric meter box on a telephone pole - that's how high the water got. If I had to guess, the majority of these casualties happened because the girls panicked without an adult around: and in the dark and lacking the strength to swim, drowned. My intuition is that you're much better off climbing up to the roof with something that can float: remaining in the dwelling you are in for as long as possible rather than searching for higher ground on foot. (Unless it is immediately obvious, of course.) If your dwelling is knocked over by the floodwater you probably didn't have a high chance of finding high ground in time, in any case.
crushedoranges
8d ago
But you see, if I evinced a personal desire to kill you, that would swiftly earn me a ban: because the law of the land and the policies on the internet are very much against personal threats of murder. Laundering it through the guise of collective action at least has the plausible deniability of turbulent priests.
But make no mistake in that I have both the altered state of mind and the required blood alcohol level to personally take responsibility in killing you, if the opportunity should arise in a hypothetical: and do my duty as a Roman to destroy an enemy of the republic, if I am able. What I lose in moral terpitude, I gain in strength of conviction - and perhaps your respect.
crushedoranges
9d ago
I said no such thing, you set up a false dichotomy. Vegans can call slaughterhouses concentration camps and although there are superficial similarities it is ultimately not a true comparison. The same is true for libertarianism, because collective action in the form of violence (either directly through force or indirectly through coercion) is a normal and trivial thing.
And in a postmodern, Foucaultian sense, I suppose this is tyranny and murder and kidnapping. In this case, I will take personal responsibility, as a individual, to assert my social project of throwing people who assert naive libertarianism into the wood chipper: as a collection of pederasts, drug addicts, and tax evaders who do nothing but redefine perfectly normal things and call it injustice.
crushedoranges
9d ago
I was more objecting to the provocative terminology that libertarians use: that taxation is theft, that bans are imprisonment and murder, that many straightforward and inoffensive things are in fact statist violence to the individual. It is no more convincing to me than the vegan framing of an industrial concentration camp of imprisoned bovine lifeforms is, in fact, a cattle pen. It is a stupid way to argue and no one is actually convinced by that sort of rhetoric.
The sacral force of the law has always held the connotation of life or death consequence: since Roman times it was thus. Not everyone follows laws because of moral duty: justice carries both the scales and the sword! It is so obvious that only libertarians feel smug about stating the obvious. Yes, the state has the power to enforce its directives with force. That is a good thing. If it did not, then it would not have the power to make anyone heed it. And that threshold of necessary violence is decided by the people of the nation, not libertarians!
If you don't have that, you don't really have a society: only a collection of strangers in an economic zone.
Only a libertarian would believe that without a state, men would follow laws. Thousands of years of history have taught us this, that ambitious men who break weak states soon place themselves above it, to rule like tyrants. Similarly as you have encountered hundreds of critiques of libertarianism, I have read just as much apologia for it and have emerged thoroughly unconvinced of its merit and totally dumbfounded by its complete unseriousness.
crushedoranges
10d ago
I'm sorry, this is where I break with libertarians. What exactly do you think gives courts and contracts their teeth? Violence and kidnapping. Or sovereignty, as it is more commonly known. A monopoly on violence.
Suppose me and a few hundred thousand people came together and formed a corporation with salaried employees with the duties of ruling over contractual disputes, dealing with petty crime, and all issues related to security, and everyone involved agreed to defer to this body in binding arbitration and forgo their right to banditry and warlordism.
That corporation is a state. Congratulations, you've recreated statism with extra steps.
Libertarians aren't prophets in the wilderness screaming about the injustice of collective violence. Yes, it is worth killing people and imprisoning people over. People for thousands of years have valued law and order over the Hobbsian war of all against all and people are greatly relieved to have left the tribal experience of feuds and wergild.
crushedoranges
10d ago
The current Supreme Ayatollah declared a fatwa against nuclear weapons.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ali_Khamenei%27s_fatwa_against_nuclear_weapons
Now, obviously, the degree of adherence to this is obviously not strict (why else have such facilities capable of it?) but the Islamic clerics may not know to what precise degree their nuclear program is progressing, or have the technical know-how to really understand it. So it's hard to say if Iran 'knows' anything, or to ascribe rational-actor motives to them, if only because the right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing. How much information is the IRGC relaying to the clerics that supposedly rule the country?
I suppose only the Mossad really knows what is actually happening.
crushedoranges
11d ago
The Buddhist would, of course, be horrified.
The Christian could reason that, acting in the same way as a mother cat would for her kittens, the man is simply doing what a cat would be inclined to do in nature, which is to hunt. And God made his creatures to do what they do, and lacking volition are inherently blameless in deed.
The aesthete would go: "Which is cuter and/or tastes better?"
I note that Bezos had a noted aversion to helicopter flight (perhaps a part a fear of flight, a part knowing the horrible safety record of personal helicopters) that he seems to have gotten over, just for this woman. To the point where he would go on longer helicopter rides just to hang out with her.
Placing your life in the hands of a woman is rare enough: placing it under IFR flight rules is singularly rare.
I don't know if you've ever been in a helicopter, but it's like putting your head next to a concert amp playing the sound of a chainsaw. No amount of plastic titties can overcome that. There are easier ways to get with a chick then that. I am inclined to believe that he is genuinely infatuated with her.
crushedoranges
16d ago
Life is absurd, so the base state of humanity is to be a clown.
crushedoranges
17d ago
We are three generations into the liberal experiment of the emancipation of women and the resulting sexual revolution and birth rates are already in the terminal phase. If you want an example of societies that are collapsing because of it, you just have to look out of the window.
Societies do not have to be healthy by liberal standards to be self replicating: see, all of history.
You think the Somali Muslims and Amish that will replace us will share our egalitarian ideals?
crushedoranges
17d ago
"Dad, I want to get married to a husband who takes marriage seriously and wants to start a family with me."
"Noooooo, my daughter, you need to ride the cock carousel from fifteen to thirty and waste your time with cads and fuckboys! How else are you going to become a bitter wine aunt? The world needs more girlbosses. Focus on your career and I'll pay for your IVF in your late forties with the finest Oxford sperm!"
crushedoranges
18d ago
Women laying with popular men is the feminine form of the 'nice guy' who orbits, hoping to transform a sexual relationship into an emotional one. Some of them do understand, eventually, that the sexual appeal is the stronger card they have to play (which is why they suddenly become frigid after a girlhood of being a slag) but a lifetime of using their strongest card has inflated their sense of self worth, and neglecting the other aspects of their personal lives hits home all at once.
crushedoranges
19d ago
I am constantly reminded day after day that although the right has a very good understanding of what the left wants and thinks, the opposite is not true.
Suppose I told you that Democrats want to make abortions of unrestricted term legal on the federal level. Then, you would say, that is not true: that only certain extreme activists would say so, that they are a minority within a minority: that democrats in general absolutely do not celebrate abortions or attempt to sacralize it as some sort of female right of passage.
But yet, knowing this, you apply the broad brush to Republicans without the nuances or the understanding. All of the logic and reason of the previous paragraph falls out of the back of your head, and you say: "Republicans want to ban abortion federally."
Be honest with yourself. Are you being generous with your political enemies, or are you close-minded and prejudiced?
(After writing this out, I realize you could be referring 'they' as evangelicals, but the basic observation still is the same. Which ones?)
crushedoranges
20d ago
You can't fight against a man who has the Mandate of Heaven: history bends to his whim, success manifests in his chamberpot. All that the hero king touches turns to gold before his manifest destiny.
crushedoranges
22d ago
the Ayatollah is hiding in some Persian bunker, wondering if the Americans or the Israelis will give him the martyrdom he's being hoping for.
Bibi is on Fox News, talking about his friend Trump.
I think Israel is winning.
Why do slaves pick cotton? It's obvious that they don't want to, and neither do white sharecroppers: but only the latter have the skills to do better jobs.
Answer: because slaves beat out sharecroppers because THEY HAVE A COMPARATIVE ADVANTAGE. THEIR LABOR IS CHEAPER. IT IS LITERALLY FREE.
YOU CANNOT COMPETE WITH FREE.
Do you know why American workers are paid more? It's because their aggregate productivity is higher. And because of this, the basket of goods they have to purchase to live makes WORKING AT SLAVE WAGES ECONOMICALLY UNTENABLE.
IF SOMEONE CAN WORK AT A TENTH OF YOUR WAGES, IT IS THE SAME THING AS COMPETING WITH FREE.
You know who picked the fruit before the influx of illegal immigrants? AMERICANS! Very poor Americans, but your countrymen (I'm assuming you are American). That an entire industry is sustained by the systematic violation of immigration law is no mere accident or economic inevitability. The only reason this perverse status quo exists is for the profit margins of corporations and the electoral schemes of bourgoise liberals.
Going back to having one's food picked by one's countrymen isn't the end of the world. The job isn't pleasant. But if it paid a livable wage, then Americans would do it. Americans will do many unpleasant things for the right kind of money. Just not for the pittance given to illegal aliens.
No doubt you have some sort of smart alecky answer to this post already prepared, but I will tell you now that you're not fooling anyone. You're being ratioed (a term that as a twitter addict, you are no doubt familiar with) into the ground because your arguments are bad. Whatever you're thinking you're gaining by pretending to be retarded is diminished by the fool you are making of yourself. Then, of course, is the retreat into sour grapes. You can tell yourself that we're all chuds and we're ganging up on you, that we're all woke rights no better than the ones on the left.
That isn't the case either. But believe what you want. It's a free country. People also believe in lizardmen and astrology. You do you.
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