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FirmWeird

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joined 2022 September 05 23:38:51 UTC 

				
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FirmWeird


								

								

								
								
								

								
							
					
 
				


				
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				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 13, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Israel will no longer be fighting with one arm tied behind their back.




Israel was lining Palestinians up and then crushing them with bulldozers (see the story about the IDF soldier who killed himself because he couldn't live with being the driver), on top of torturing people with downs syndrome (Mohammad Bhar) and murdering small children (Hind Rajab). They deployed more explosive power relative to the size of their target than the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. If you think this is them being restrained, you're making the case that Israel needs to be removed from the Earth before they can do this to anyone else.


				

				

						

							

								
    
									
									
									
									
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				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 13, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Actually that person, Marwhan Bargouti, is currently in an Israeli prison being repeatedly tortured. The Palestinians keep trying to get him released and think that he'd be the best possible leader (he convincingly clears every poll for preferred leader), which is presumably why the Israelis are trying to make sure he will never get out.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 6, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


When someone dies, you don't blame the executor of their will.




If somebody gets murdered, with intent, then you actually do start looking extremely closely at the people who get to profit massively from their death. When the executor of a murder victim's will stands to gain vast sums of money from their will, people will absolutely and instinctively blame said executor - and in this specific case they're actually correct to do so given that the company was driven to the ground on purpose.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 6, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


He already has the downside risk of losing his job.




This isn't actually a downside risk - a lot of CEOs have incredibly lavish golden parachute pay clauses. If the company goes to shit and disintegrates because he outsourced the management to CEOgpt while fucking his secretaries and writing racist screeds on the internet he will be rewarded for causing immense damage to the lives of the people working there with financial compensation far in excess of what the average employee earns.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 6, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


In any case, I don’t understand why they should help. Help me or I’ll envy you and make things difficult sounds like extortion.




Because the obscene concentration of wealth that allows those elites to exist requires the existence of a coherent and functioning society. You can't have millionaire layabouts and the idle rich without somebody to actually do the work, and if those people believe that current social arrangements have lost their legitimacy then things can change very, very fast. The French aristocracy didn't give a shit about the concerns of smelly peasants and didn't want to help them out at all, but that famously did not end particularly well for the aristocracy.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 6, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
This is in no way a barrier to a competently written tax code. How, exactly, does the money get to said foreign subsidiary? There is always going to be a point at which the financial resources leave the country and that's where enforcement can happen.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 6, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


They exist elsewhere on the planet. It’s not like it’s impossible.




All of the resources required for me to build a new set of Great Pyramids exist elsewhere on the planet - it's not like it's impossible for me to build them. But it still won't happen.




Furthermore, the long term benefits of getting REE and bringing home the manufacturing of chips especially for defense are getting those critical components out from under the thumb of a geopolitical rival, creating jobs that would be decent paying manufacturing jobs, creating an industry with the potential for export. Those are not trivial wins, especially if China decides to wield its power in ways we oppose.




These are all incredibly good things, and you're right that this would be a huge win. In fact, there's actually a great case study for a country in a similar position - China's helium industry. Previously, China was utterly dependent upon the US for helium supply, because helium is used in a bunch of essential industrial/medical processes. Because they didn't want to be dependent upon a geopolitical rival for a vital resource, they invested heavily in alternative supply chains and alternative processes, discovering new ways to source and efficiently use helium. They now only get 5% of their helium from the US, which is why they're now in a position to start cutting the US off from vital industrial inputs without as much fear of retaliation. It took them several years, but it was a really worthwhile project - bit of a shame that the US doesn't have the several years required to reshore all this stuff.




If China makes a play for Taiwan, do you really think they’ll continue to sell us the material, let alone the chips themselves that we’d use to defeat them? Would any sane person in the Cold War feel comfortable sourcing critical components from Eastern Europe? That’s pretty much where we are, hoping that China will continue to sell us weapons that they know in a hot war we’re going to use on them.




Pretty much - except that they have just decided to not sell the US the weapons they know will be used against them. The US hasn't recovered their stocks of interceptors since they spent vast quantities of them against Russia and Iran, and now it looks like they won't be able to replenish those stocks until after they defeat China (good luck!).


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 6, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


If the defense industries can't function without Chinese support then they're useless and should be destroyed.




You're actually completely correct here, and the failure to actually do this is one of the reasons that the USA is experiencing so many problems due to obscenely bloated military budgets, corrupt government and deeply corrupt procurement practices.




What were they planning to do if war with China ever came?




They either underestimated the Chinese and believed the world would stay the same as it was forever, or they simply assumed that they would have left the country and already made their fortune by the time their shitty decisions came home to roost. It sounds like an incredibly stupid and shortsighted decision, but military corruption doesn't go away even when you're several years into an active conflict - see https://news.liga.net/en/all/news/sbi-officer-sent-to-spin-shawarma-in-pokrovskyi-district-instead-of-service for a recent case.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 6, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Yet another huge environmentalist error:




I don't think you can actually blame the environmentalists for a corporate executive deciding to cash out and make vast profits in exchange for fucking over his workers and the country he lives in over the long term, or the government failing to protect and nurture critically important businesses. In China, strategically important industries are protected by the government in recognition of how important they are - letting this industry get sold off to China is the equivalent of the CCCP deciding to save on costs by outsourcing all their internal communication infrastructure to Google and Microsoft.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 6, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Obviously the best solution for the US is to bring all of these capabilities in-house




Actually, the best solution would be for the US to perform a magic ritual, invoking Moloch and begging him to supply them with rare earth metals in exchange for sacrificed children - which is more likely to succeed than your proposal. The USA isn't actually capable of replacing China's role in the productive economy in any timeframe that's actually relevant. Do you think the tech and defence industries can sustain a complete pause in production for the 10-15 years it'll take to onshore this stuff? This means no more harddrives, no more lithium batteries etc.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 6, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


I don't follow Klein enough to say definitively, but I'd say that something that explicitly disavows identity politics as having negative value both for humanity and for the Democrats, while explicitly praising enemies on the right such as Trump for helping to fight against it, in a way that shows that he believes that right-wing electoral gain is a worthy cost to pay for excising this cancer from the left-wing - even when some (or a lot) of the healthy cells around the cancer are excised - would probably meet the bar for me.




Just for the record, this is actually my personal position - though I'd actually go further. Yes, Trump destroying the flows of government money that propped up "left wing" activists might impact dems at the polling booth, but it is ultimately better for the left wing that all this propaganda is shut down. The left wing that USAID/NED/USGOV money has created and fed is choking out the birth of an actual authentic left political movement. Trump, to the extent that he is destroying the DNC and the infrastructure that keeps bloated slugs like Pelosi and Schumer well fed with donor/insider trading money, is doing actual left wing politics a service.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 6, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Again, 2 million immigrants are gone in the last 9 months. Where price doubling?




The price doubling will happen when the illegal immigrant laborers and workers are actually removed. The Trump administration just isn't doing anything about the immigrant workforce because keeping the costs of basic staples down is a higher priority than actually delivering on removing immigrants - remove the migrant workers and prices will increase because the jobs currently being performed by illegal immigrants will have to be done legally, which means paying at the very least minimum wage and respecting basic workplace health and safety laws. If an American breaks their back working on your farm, you're actually responsible. If an illegal immigrant breaks their back working on your farm they're fucked and you don't have to pay anything, which keeps costs down.


Look, I'm extremely pro deportation of illegal immigrants and foreign workers/scabs - but you actually have to do it! Trump just isn't removing the illegal immigrants who are the biggest problem because the entire American domestic economy is resting on their backs. The "deal" that society accepted with regards to illegal immigrants in the past was that they would dramatically drive down labor costs by being exempt from employment law/minimum wages etc, which would in turn make all sorts of things less expensive. It was a bad dead, it was always a bad deal, but you're just being dishonest if you don't think there are real tradeoffs involved here. In order for the working class and heritage Americans to have good jobs picking fruit, that fruit is going to have to cost more than when it was picked by an imported serf.


(edited for clarity)


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 6, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
That article seems to suggest that I'm correct.




Across the nation today, about 70% of workers in the U.S. farm sector are foreign born, according to the Federal Reserve of Kansas City. The National Milk Producers Federation says milk prices could nearly double if the U.S. dairy industry loses its foreign-born workforce, the group said.




70% of all your farm workers are foreign born and I have zero doubt that the vast majority of those would be illegal immigrants, because the entire reason they can get those jobs is their lack of labor protection and inability to protest terrible conditions. Remove them and the price of staples like milk will double - which is why I believe Trump and ICE are focusing on getting deportations into the news rather than actually fixing the problem.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 6, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


We might be seeing the first signs of it, with Bari Weiss taking over CBS.




This has nothing at all to do with woke - this is very explicitly to deal with growing anti-Israel sentiment rather than the culture war.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 6, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Is there actually real, serious and muscular enforcement of immigration law against migrant workers? I was under the impression that Trump was explicitly preventing this from happening because illegal immigrants can be treated badly and help keep the costs of produce down.




Trump, who has appeared sympathetic to both farmers and immigration hawks, said Tuesday that the farm laborers aren’t easy to replace — an argument that runs up against critics’ argument that native-born workers could fill the jobs. The president said that “people that live in the inner city” won’t do the work.






“They’ve tried. We’ve tried, Everybody’s tried. They don’t do it. These people do it naturally. Naturally,” Trump said. “I said ‘what happens’ — to a farmer the other day — ’what happens if they get a bad back?’ He said, ‘They don’t get a bad back, sir, because if they get a bad back, they die.’ I said, ‘That’s interesting.’ In many ways, they’re very, very special people.”




If I'm wrong and Trump has been aggressively enforcing the laws against the employment of illegal immigrants I'd be happy to hear it.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 6, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


I don't know why they're doing it that way. My only guess is that it feels good to them and it delivers quick cheap optics wins to serve to their base, because it feels good to many in the base as well.




My personal theory is that while the Trump base legitimately wants to put an end to illegal immigration due in large part to the economic consequences, those economic consequences are actually extremely beneficial to a lot of republican donors. When you remove illegal immigrant labor and force the farmers to hire Americans (legally) the price of everything goes up. Ultimately society and the economy would be healthier after this gets done, but the political consequences for Trump in the short term would be disastrous. "All basic staples are now twice as expensive, but in exchange your wages will improve permanently in 9 months" might be a great deal for his base in the long run, but it is suicidal for someone who has to care about daily opinion polls and work around congressmen and senators who are taking vast sums of money from the people who benefit from illegal labour.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 29, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


I don't really buy this framing. I know unions love to claim credit for it and maybe they have some path dependent reason for why compensation grew in that particular shape rather than 9 hours and higher pay, but firms were always going to have to compete for labor as capital built up and this necessarily leads to higher compensation one way or the other.




I live in Australia where this framing is unambiguously true. They were directly involved in getting this turned into law, and the big businesses/firms you talk about here were fighting them every step of the way. This isn't really a topic for debate so much as a settled question in my home country, but I feel like pointing out that those firms fought against these changes every step of the way even when it turned out to be against their own self interest.




And no one ever seems to talk about the other end of the ledger for these special interest lobby groups we call unions. They don't represent the interests of everyone, only their members and do so almost always at the cost of everyone else. They hollowed out the competitiveness of our auto industry and after doing so simply banned outside competition so they could collect rents from everyone who wants a car.




How is any of this less socially destructive than the mass immigration and outsourcing that big business and capital has wrought using their outsized influence? American unions, from what I can see, have behaved pretty badly in the past - but you don't get to pin the blame for this on unions specifically when the other side of the ledger has done far worse. It wasn't unions who sold your country's industrial base to the third world, and that was a far more destructive change to society than demanding higher wages for workers and safe working environment laws (as in no mandatory carcinogen exposure or dangerous equipment with no safety precautions).




Behold Europe and it's pathetic nongrowth for a vision of what a union dominated society looks like.




It wasn't unions that blew up Nordstream and cut off Europe from cheap energy, and it wasn't unions demanding vast floods of foreign labour and immigrants to help devalue their bargaining ability compared to capital. To claim that unions are responsible for the EU's current ills I think you would need to bring a lot more evidence to bear - it seems transparently obvious that the PMC is in charge of the EU. Can you honestly look at EU policies and say they were implemented to help out workers and labour movements as opposed to capital or existing elites?




This is literally just a publicly traded company that the state owns a lot of shares in and doesn't have any real impact on whether it would succeed or fail.




Singtel's majority owner is Temasek Holdings, which requires the direct approval of the President of Singapore to do anything which could involve drawing down on cash reserves, and the entire board can be fired or replaced at the President's whim as well. The current chairperson is a former trade unionist and politician, and his incoming replacement is also a former politician. If the government having the ability to fire or appoint members of the board and decide whether or not cash reserves can be used doesn't count as "real impact" I have trouble imagining what would.




There is no support the state can give to the people that can't be categorized indirectly as subsidizing employers.




Incorrect - welfare to someone who is unemployed is very different to welfare provided because people work terrible jobs that cannot support their own existence. I personally think that any corporation whose employees are on welfare and receiving government benefits should receive an additional tax burden equal to 1.5x the cost of paying for their employees. Otherwise you're essentially just paying for Jeff Bezos' workforce to help him make private profits.




you mean besides the tax revenue of course.




Large corporations are far more successful at avoiding and minimising tax obligations than workers are. Shifting the balance of power such that workers get less and large corporations get more means that you're going to get less in tax because you're going after more sophisticated and powerful targets.




Charlie brown lining up for the 80th attempt at kicking the football of rent control and subsidized housing in the hopes that this time they'll prove the economists wrong.




I actually like some of Mamdani's ideas (haven't done too much research on him) and think that they're pretty good. Why is there an expensive licensing scheme for food carts that essentially doubles the price of street food in exchange for letting a few people make large profits selling licenses and adding no value? Cutting out expensive middlemen who produce nothing is actually a pretty good idea in my opinion. As for economists, I don't think I've ever seen them be correct on anything in my entire life, so proving them wrong isn't a particularly high bar.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 29, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Hey, I like them! I think he does in fact have a reason to favor dissident right science, because the political environment for the right becomes substantially better when HBD is the universally accepted wisdom with regards to differences in group achievement. The supporters of "woke" were incredibly unpopular with the general public too - that didn't stop them from using academia to change the world.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 29, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
There's actually an even bigger and much more interesting cohort of right wingers trying to do science - HBD, evo psych, etc. I'd put money on them getting in as representatives of the right rather than the creationists. Personally I'd be looking forward to mandatory "diversity" classes that are actually HBD rather than the regular tripe.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 29, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
It isn't as if "woke" is particularly distinct from creationism. Both ideologies essentially agree on the impact that evolution had on group differences and cognition after all.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 29, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I'm talking about Labour movements and politics (i.e. how the modern day Anglosphere Labour parties got started). Left wing populism gave us the 8 hour workday and 5 day workweek, and I'm personally glad that I don't work the 12-hour shifts and 6-7 day alternating workweek that private industry would prefer. As for state owned businesses I don't think that you can really say they all perform poorly - there are plenty of them that do incredibly well. Singtel has done so well that it has actually bought and acquired a decent portion of the private cell companies in other countries, for instance. And as for Bezos, isn't a large portion of his workforce reliant on welfare to survive anyway? Amazon is the worst of all worlds - the public purse is subsidising all their expenses in exchange for no return at all.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 29, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Where else? I suppose Australia technically has dangerous wild animals in great variety, but guns are tightly controlled there.




While this is strictly speaking true it is slightly (and inadvertently) misleading. Australia's most dangerous animals are not ones that you can stop with a gun - an assault rifle will do nothing to stop you from being bitten by a funnel web spider that had moved into your shoe, a perfectly camouflaged snake that you stepped on or a small, transparent jellyfish floating 30 metres away from you. People in rural areas still use them and don't have much difficulty getting them.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 29, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Except in this context Christianity directly opposes usury, the problematic and exploitative behavior in question. For some reason (I legitimately have no answer) most modern Christians have just completely ignored the teachings on usury and how bad it is. Even if you want the wretched to suffer, usury and issues like this cause problems that damage society as a whole - unless you have active sadism and want to make society and your own life worse to make the wretched suffer even more, preventing this kind of thing is to the advantage of the non-wretched as well.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 29, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


I can only imagine how poorly it goes when somebody who's barely scraping by gets screwed over by these people.




Why imagine? This happens every single day all over the western world. There are entire industries devoted specifically to screwing over the poor and struggling, and there's so much profit in payday loans and other loan-sharking behavior that criminal gangs fought violent conflicts over them in the not-so-distant past. It has been known as an incredibly pernicious social evil since at least the time of the old testament (see the biblical prohibitions on usury), and any society that cares for its people maintains those prohibitions because fucking over the lower classes like this is bad for the rest of society too - unethical exploiters get financially rewarded, and the desperate problems caused by the underclasses being in terrible financial situations leads to increased crime and anti-social behavior.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 29, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
As one of the ostensible leftists on here this just makes sense. Left wing populism is personally advantageous for everyone who does not have so much wealth they never need to work again. Wealth inequality is so high it is damaging almost every aspect of western societies and the conflict between the upper classes is at the heart of a vast number of culture war issues. The usual consensus here on a lot of issues, like whether we should import an infinite amount of indians to drive programming/IT wages as close to zero as possible, is actually isomorphic to the left populist position (i.e. infinity indians is not a good idea).