BinaryHobo
8mo ago
But, where are you seeing this idea the Democratic ground game in shambles? In reality, in basically every special election for the past few years, plus the midterms, the Democrat's have run past their prior margins, including just this past week, winning a Trump +1 state legislative seat in suburban Huntsville by twenty five points.
With the shift of college educated voters to the democrats, I expect this to be more common. The highly educated are much more likely to turn out for non-presidential elections (republicans benefited from this in previous elections as well). But there's a ton of voters that only show up every 4 years, and only vote for president, and those demographics seem to be sliding towards the GOP.
BinaryHobo
8mo ago
Sure, but there's a limit to that. McDonalds is available everywhere in the country.
BinaryHobo
8mo ago
If the government is powerful enough to stop people talking about shoplifting
I mean, I hate the analogy we're on, but given it, I don't think this is automatically true. Speech for 95%+ of the population goes through ~6 companies. Because of how centralized computer services end up being, this is the rough equivalent of all shopping happening in 6 physical stores.
I think the federal government could prevent shoplifting from 6 physical stores, but not thousands of them distributed across the country.
BinaryHobo
8mo ago
It gets a bit more complicated if you want autoupdates.
Put pacman -Syu in a cron job?
BinaryHobo
9mo ago
I think it's reasonable to expect that this God, who I heard of in sermons throughout my childhood, would put in slightly more effort to save the uncontacted heathens than "none at all".
Isn't there an entire strain of christian analysis of history that chalks the rising of the roman state and later the expansion of the european powers as this?
BinaryHobo
9mo ago
But all of them are punished in exactly the same way, according to traditional Christianity.
Maybe "traditional christianity" is doing some work here that I'm unaware of, but I'm going to assume that the text of the bible is still in play.
The bible does absolutely give us at least two classes of sin, with different punishments. For most sinners, once they have committed a sin, they are given a chance to repent and be forgiven. But for those that blaspheme against the holy spirit, this option is cut off (Matthew 12:31). It would seem to be a reasonable interpretation of the words of Christ here that at least 1 sin is viewed more harshly by the divine.
BinaryHobo
10mo ago
I see a difference in that. But that's not what we're talking about here, considering natural born citizenship generally passes from parents to children, not only to people that are born in a place. Being born in a place automatically conferring citizenship is kind of a new world thing, most places in the old world don't do that (source)
In the current world, you can be a citizen of a place you've never been to already. And you can be incapable of giving up that citizenship. And that doesn't seem to be an exception for you, so I'm not sure why it's an important difference here.
The relevant difference is:
- Place your family has history
- Place your family doesn't have history
If that's not the relevant difference, I think you need to start carving out some exemptions to your policy.
BinaryHobo
10mo ago
The bounds of this are interesting. Let's say I'm an absolute dictator in a brand new country in western asia (some breakaway province that it's convenient for the rest of the world to recognize), let's call it Trollistan. Can I keep people unfriendly to me out of your government by declaring them citizens and then not allowing them to revoke the citizenship?
If not, why? If it's because they didn't chose Trollistan, it doesn't seem that different than someone being born somewhere (which they don't chose), and then not being allowed to give the citizenship up later.
BinaryHobo
11mo ago
And they and their followers will always vote for the Democrat.
Yes, but what that means is changeable. I know the "democrats were the party of slavery" line is a little played out, but they were. And a fairly big shift happened within the party without the party ever having a clean break.
The parties in the US are more like coalitions elsewhere, the coalition building just happens before the election rather than after, as would happen in a parliamentary system. There's a ton of factionalism inside them. Democrats holding these views aren't useless to one who isn't a democrat. It means, eventually, democrats with those views running for office. And, at worst, a whole bunch of extra in-fighting happening before things that non-democrats don't like being voted on.
If you're not a progressive democrat, you should probably like what you've described. Control of a few senators and representatives is probably what's going to prevent really strong legislation you don't like from passing next time the democrats have the trifecta.
BinaryHobo
11mo ago
Ahh, my apologies then, that did not come across in my reading of the comment. It came across as pretty standard concern for the welfare of your children. Which, fair, that's a pretty basic human emotion.
Either way. Happy new year. Hope your day is going well
BinaryHobo
11mo ago
This is a fair response, but taking the accelerationist argument seriously for a sec, the argument is generally that it will be better for your granddaughter, not your daughter.
Which, y'know, choosing between the two is one hell of a sophie's choice level decision, but I don't think it can be dismissed off hand that easily if what you value is the safety/comfort of your decedents. I feel like a better counterargument is that there's a decent chance we never get advanced civilization up and running again if the whole thing collapses.
BinaryHobo
1yr ago
Biology might be inescapable, but when you introduce testosterone into a system that may not have been designed to handle it, it's not that surprising that something like this happens a certain percentage of the time (no claims on what percentage).
But, like, testosterone is rough to deal with even for people who were introduced to it in the way nature intended.
BinaryHobo
1yr ago
I believe HBD is a worse explanation for persistent black underachievement than the lingering effect of centuries of cultural disruption under slavery combined with decades of further disruption under racist post-Civil-War legislation
I know this wasn't the point of your post, but the way you sorta phrased this as a binary made something click in my mind. I'm gonna be honest, I can't buy either of these explanations. And both, oddly enough, for the same reason, the Greenwood District in Tulsa (site of the famous race riot). Ok, so not just Greenwood, but there's plenty of examples of functioning black communities from that era.
Modern society is just straight up not as racist as 1920s Oklahoma. And black people were able to build functioning communities within 60 years of gaining their freedom. And by all accounts, communities that worked quite well. I'm aware of the highway system disrupting black communities, but it's been 60 years since that happened, and that can't be as big of a disruption as being enslaved. There has to be, at the very least, a confounding factor.
At the same HBD makes no sense. The argument is generally that black people have too low of an average IQ to succeed, but we have examples of functioning communities. Even if it were true, the most extreme claims of the HBD groups tend to put the average IQ at around 70, and that's roughly where the US as a whole was circa 1900, and there's plenty of examples from that time of people with this average IQ forming perfectly functional communities. That can't be the entire explanation either.
BinaryHobo
1yr ago
does this mean Jewish population goes up or down?
You need to define the term "Jewish population" for this question to make sense because the parent relies on an intermarriage rate.
People with Jewish ancestry? Probably up. People with Jewish ancestry >50%? Probably down. People who identify as Jews? Also probably down, unless it becomes trendy. That's the short term anyways, long term, the numbers could increase with the birth rates that the orthodox have.
BinaryHobo
1yr ago
I guess my impression is that state governments are nearly just as broken
I'm not going to argue that they aren't broken, but my understanding is that when they're broken, they're usually broken in a very different way. States tend to come under single-party rule for prolonged periods of time, which doesn't have the particular failing we're talking about, but comes with another host of problems.
BinaryHobo
1yr ago
To the extent that you want to argue that the gag orders are unconstitutional/unacceptable it seems to me that you need to argue that this is a longstanding and systemic violation of freedom of speech.
I would agree with this. I don't think it's ok, but I'm also pretty close to a free speech absolutist
BinaryHobo
1yr ago
The enforcement wing is sadly usually the last to break, so it can continue preventing action long after it has lost the capability to allow it.
We're talking about the feds here. The vast majority of things don't need federal approval. The state governments can approve things.
BinaryHobo
1yr ago
Appropriations bills haven't gone through the legislatively designated normal process of how they are supposed to be drafted and modified and on what schedule for decades.
Has it been decades? I seem to remember the process being roughly the normal appropriations process up until 2011 or 2012 (can't quite remember which), when they got rid of earmarks.
BinaryHobo
1yr ago
That doesn't automatically mean they can be used for any reason and still be legitimate.
BinaryHobo
1yr ago
But yes, words can certainly be used to intimidate, threaten, or encourage violence.
Those first two are fair, but silencing someone to prevent that last one is, generally speaking, beyond the pale in the US.
The right to advocate for violence, in the abstract, especially at a later date, has been ruled to be constitutionally protected speech in both Brandenburg v Ohio and Hess v Indiana.
And all of those things can make it quite difficult to run a trial.
I mean, yeah? But we, as a country, haven't generally been optimizing for ease of running a trial. We have, generally, been optimizing for not allowing speech to be suppressed. Do you have an argument for why now is the time to pivot?
BinaryHobo
1yr ago
Your strategy doesn’t sound too different from the steelman for intervention in Afghanistan. Roll in, fuck up the Taliban, set up a functional government, roll out. There may have been something about hearts and minds in there, too. But instead, we exchanged munitions for 20 years and barely changed anything. If we’d skipped those 20 years, and didn’t even try to fill the power vacuum, would an agreeable Afghan government have materialized?
I mean the difference is that, in the hypothetical provided, Israel expends roughly the same resources, gets attacked roughly the same amount, and uses roughly the same force in both scenarios, but they get significantly less international flak for one of them.
As opposed to the US Invasion of Afghanistan, where the option was between a costly invasion and occupation and a ton of international flak, and expending roughly nothing because Afghanistan wasn't exactly a threat (possibly some assassinations and drone strikes still happen in this scenario).
BinaryHobo
1yr ago
If you do (e.g. the way DeSantis is trying with New College) , they will be cut out of the art world as a whole.
I might be missing something here, but wouldn't that be the point? To create a completely separate status hierarchy?
I mean, yeah, the existing artistic elite isn't going to jump ship. Do you want them to? That sounds like you're asking for your new institution to be marched through all over again. Plus, these aren't the natural members you're looking for in your new institution. This is a high risk/high reward venture and you don't want a bunch of established people with baggage from the old institution. But do you know who totally goes for high risk/high reward strategies with a very high chance of death (social in this case) in exchange for a chance at status?
Young men with no prospects. In every age, in every nation, there are young, low status men looking for a way to take big risks to jump up the status hierarchy. Whether it be a colonial expedition, the rap scene in the Bronx, or a Somalian pirate joint-stock venture, there's always takers. As a bonus, this is a decent chunk of the art world's demographic, this lets you sap your opponent of the natural energy that comes with an influx of youth.
BinaryHobo
1yr ago
A plausible consequence of increased tax would be for landlords to sell up and the available housing stock to rise, thus lowering house prices.
This is explicitly what the OP said was happening several times during their post, except according to them it makes the shortage worse because the former renters buy more rooms than they were previously renting.
This may lower housing prices, but it seems like it would, paradoxically, raise rental prices for those that can't buy for some reason (don't make enough money/make money irregularly, can't get a loan, lack of documentation, need to move frequently, etc).
BinaryHobo
1yr ago
but you can't live in both worlds
Of course you can. One obvious scenario would be if some dirtbag looked kind of like Hyde (it helps that the character kind of looks like a dirtbag), and got close to several women by convincing them he was famous. Then he raped them. This presents us with a situation where Danny Masterson is completely innocent, and yet leave the women with the internal experience of having been raped by Danny Masterson.
I'm not saying the above happened, or that I even believe the above happened. But it's a very easy position to take if you want to defend your friend and you're also a celebrity that needs to be careful not to get torn apart by the me too crowd. You just start the letter like: "I feel for these women, and I believe their trauma is real, but this has to be a case of mistaken identity because {insert character witness and trauma memory formation points here}"
Only if moral truth rests upon democratic majority, in which case, I have several questions. Chiefly, do different things become good depending on where you are and local sentiments, or do we need to take the majority of the global population? Or do we need to go even further and take the opinion of all people that ever lived? Does ultimate truth require us to know the opinions of all future people as well?
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