FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
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User ID: 1739
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
3d ago
While I agree with you about China and the dangers of a lopsided population pyramid, it's also true that we really don't want 8 billion people on a planet with limited temperate zones.
Why not? Even now Earth has plenty of habitable land. We’re nowhere near the carrying capacity of the planet. So what’s wrong with 8 billion people?
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
1mo ago
They’re paying a cost, but I would argue Ukraine is paying a much greater one and thus losing.
By that logic the Vietcong lost the Vietnam war.
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
1mo ago
According to the World Bank, Russia is now a high-income country. Real GDP per capita growth was at 3.6%!
The World Bank also says that the year before, 2022, saw real GDP per capita decline of -2.2 %. And that for 2023 total GDP and GDP per capita were both lower than in 2022.
https://data.worldbank.org/country/russian-federation?view=chart
If an Australian politician could deliver that kind of growth, they'd be heralded as a living god and probably get Putin-level approval ratings
According to the World Bank Australia saw real GDP per capita growth in 2023 at 3%, and in 2022 it was at 4.3%.
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
1mo ago
It would be great if it were true, but I think the end result of any peace talks would be Trump coming home in disgust and urging congress to send more military aid to Ukraine, possible including the kind of offensive weapons that Biden has been reluctant to give.
If you want peace, that would be a good result! I've never understood our constant policy of half-measures. If we're going to back Ukraine against Russia by providing weapons then we should be providing the best weapons and in quantity. Limiting our support just keeps the war going as long as possible. Do we want Ukraine to have a strong position or not? If not, then why supply weapons at all?
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
1mo ago
Its the best case scenario for him. He can go to his grave claiming that he would have won if they had let him race.
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
1mo ago
To answer your question: Christians prefer not to vote for the antichrist.
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
1mo ago
The greatest works of art bring us into communion with trauma, the uncanny, the abject
I disagree with this premise vehemently. The purpose of art is to communicate beauty and truth. Sometimes the truth communicated is about horror, inasmuch as it is a part of the greater truth of the human condition, but the things you describe are small subcategories of art. They are not foundational to what art is.
I don’t have time to defend that position, but it needs to be said. Defining art in the way you do is like defining marriage as a convenient way to save on rent: you’re missing 99% of the picture.
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
2mo ago
As Patton once said, "Americans love a winner and will not tolerate a loser. Americans play to win all the time." If you think your candidate is probably going to lose, then you're less likely to vote at all. There are a lot of people who would be motivated to vote if they thought their candidate had a good chance of winning. Who wants to be on the losing team?
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
3mo ago
On whether voting is a duty, I would first ask: does a sovereign have a duty to his nation? It seems yes, he has a duty to rule well.
I would ask second: who is sovereign in the United State of America? The answer to this is well known: the people are. "We the people of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."
So then, as one of the United States of America's many sovereigns, do I have a duty to rule well? Yes; and in this country the sovereigns rule by voting.
Therefore, voting is a duty.
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
3mo ago
Having read the link, the baby farmers neglecting or killing the children they adopted was not societally acceptable. That wasn't the point, the actual point was a decentralized societal foster care system. It certainly seems to be the case that the vast majority of children fostered this way were not deliberately killed or died of neglect.
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
3mo ago
You mean they believe the lack of policing and the lax standards the democrats are okay with are designed to keep them poor and clients and are harming the black communities
Yes
and that they believe a higher amount of paternalism would make the situation better ?
No, they generally believe that it's mostly welfare's fault that the poor black community is screwed up. The standard narrative is that blacks were doing well and making their way up in society before LBJ's Great Society ruined them by trapping them on the dole. So the general solution is to get rid of the dole; when they have to work for a living they'll actually have an incentive towards virtue.
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
3mo ago
I dunno, one of the main things that marked Christians out in the first and second centuries was that they took in babies left out to die. That's a long time before 1890.
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
3mo ago
I suppose I would agree with that!
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
3mo ago
True, but was there anywhere better to be poor in than London in 1900? I doubt Paris or New York was much better.
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
3mo ago
give them a job that's subsidized by the government so it's less brutal than most minimum-wage jobs, but still gives them some responsibility and spending money
Subsidization is not necessary. I started working part time minimum wage jobs when I was 14, high schoolers are more than capable of handling minimum wage work. It’s not like they’ll be sent to the salt mines (for one thing, salt mining pays a lot more than minimum wage).
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
3mo ago
Kamala is happy to fight in the dirt with Trump, because she too can have a full debate without saying anything substantial.
Then why hasn't she done any interviews, answered any questions from the media, or agreed to more debates? She's terrified of being put on the spot. Remember, this is the woman who was so nervous about having dinner with a big doner that she had her staff put on a practice dinner for her.
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
4mo ago
Cui bono? Who would benefit from orchestrating two assassinations in this case? I’m inclined to believe it’s coincidence without that.
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
4mo ago
Yeah, they’re notably aggressive about enforcing their copyright. The fact that most companies don’t have the resources or don’t prioritize enforcing their copyright as much has led to a lot of people underestimating how extensive copyright actually is.
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
4mo ago
Yes, it is.
Copyright literally is the right to make copies. If little Timmy draws a picture of Mario for his fridge, it’s within Nintendo’s legal rights to issue Timmy with a takedown notice and threats of legal action if he does not comply.
Now nobody does that, because you’d have to be nuts, but copyright law is way more extensive than you’d think.
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
4mo ago
Governments should be terrified of riots. Unless you’re capable of sending in the troops and shooting to kill (like China or North Korea) no government has the ability to stop a riot when it gets large enough. 100 police cannot stop 1,000 rioters, much less 10,000. I believe that many in government on the left treated left wing protests with kid gloves partly out of knowledge of how difficult it is to control riots, but mostly from ideological commitments that favored the rioters cause. Now those same officials think they can crack down on right wing rioters successfully, and they will find they’re sorely mistaken. The best way to stop rioters is to stop the riot from beginning in the first place: if you let it get this far, with this much built up resentment, and having shattered the cultural value that rioting is wrong (which might have otherwise kept normies from jointing in), there may be no way to put the genii back in the bottle. At this point there may be nothing they can do but hunker down and try to mitigate the damage until the riots burn themselves out.
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
4mo ago
Functor, by implication.
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
5mo ago
Oh please let it be Kamala. She’s a purely lateral move in terms of actually winning as far as I can see.
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
5mo ago
A party breaking with their own internal practices because they’re afraid they’ll lose is, again, the most legitimate action for a party to take because the entire purpose of political parties is to win. They only started doing “democratic” primaries like this since the fiasco with Hubert Humphrey, if they think going back to the smoke filled room this time around increases their odds of winning then why shouldn’t they?
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
5mo ago
Shoot, I was looking forward to winning. I really hoped the Democrats didn’t have the capacity to force Biden out.
I can only hope they lack the competence to choice a “generic Democrat” candidate who has a chance of winning.
Who is the government in this case? Because the policy under discussion was the Chinese government going into peoples homes and essentially saying “We’re at capacity, so you can only have one kid.”
When population rises the government doesn’t quarter them with you (if they did then I would be opposed to that). Instead they work and make money and use it to buy a place to live. If you don’t want to sell part of your decent sized place then don’t do that.
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