I think the left-wing position needs to reckon with the fact that some percentage of people have problems that can't easily be solved and, even worse, risk becoming disproportionate consumers (of welfare or police resources or park space, etc. ) whenever you liberalize controls on them or make systems more generous and less skeptical.
Yes, there are some people who are bad targets for the policy. That's the exact argument for making these programs less conditional-- ideally, not conditional whatsoever. ubi pilots consistently show improvements in welfare, and while GiveDirectly wastes effort trying to pick specifically extra-disadvantaged villages, it redeems itself by distributing payments to everyone within those villages.
Consider this simplified model of the economy:
- Group A, given money, will generally improve their lives and their community with it
- Group B, given money, will generally waste the money
After a decade, semi-random economic events will have sorted people into "poor" and "rich". The "rich" group is mostly composed of people form Group A, and the "poor" group is mostly composed of people from Group B. But you know in principle that there are still poor people who might improve their lives with more money, and that, meanwhile, the rich people have mostly hit diminishing utilitarian returns for improvement-by-money. Your first instinct-- well, not your first instinct, because you're a conservative, but the first instinct of someone further left than you-- will be to take money from the rich people and give it to the poor people. At first, you see the lives of people of the poor people rapidly improve-- because they're improvers, and using that money to take all the low-hanging-fruit they were previously unable to. But soon, most of the improvers move into the rich group, and now you're just giving money that the improvers could be using to improve things to wasters instead, and the program fails. The better option would have been to take more money from the rich, but pay it to everyone. The richest of the rich would suffer a little as they're paying disproportionately more, but they're far at the reducing-rate-of-utilitarian-returns section of the scale. So given that they're also recieving the UBI, the only way they move from rich to poor is if they're wasters... and if they are, then society should want them to be poor, to discourage waster behavior. Meanwhile, the improver poor become improver rich, and the improver rich maintain their position, while the waster poor get to control a proportionately smaller share of the economy than they would if they were receiving direct welfare and also aren't facing any incentive to remain poor.
Funny, I just saw a new left-wing outlet wrestling with research that hinted at weak results when people are given money.
The funny thing is, I've also seen that same article, and I consider it direct proof of my point-- even though the leftist writing it doesn't seem to understand that. For example, they say,
Homeless people, new mothers and low-income Americans all over the country received thousands of dollars. And it's practically invisible in the data.
but then turn around and say,
But I do think cash as an intervention is best used in emergencies, for pregnant women, domestic violence victims
completely ignoring the obvious conclusion that if all these targeted giving schemes are failing, they should stop advocating for targeted giving schemes. Just give the money to everyone. The pregnant women/domestic violence victims that will use the money productively will still get it-- and so will everyone else that actually needs the money, and would use it to improve their lives. Sure, plenty of people who won't use the money to improve their lives will also get it-- but at least they're not directly incentivized to not improve their lives, and also they're probably going to be paying their money to people who can make better use of it.
Using the meme definition of insanity, this "transfer money to particular poor households" scheme is definitely it. Wealth-transfer research has promising results. Wealth-transfer-to-poor-people research has less promising results. Why do these leftists keep insisting that we trying to find even worse-off people to give the money too? That's just going to result in even worse results. Just give the money to everyone! The trump stimmy checks were the right idea, only held back by the fact that they were unfunded and increased the deficit (because deficit-mediated inflation is effectively a regressive tax on poorer people, who hold more cash wealth and suffer more from sticky salaries.)
To sketch out an ideal tax + welfare system...
Revenue:
-
LVT used almost exclusively as a revenue-generating tax
-
Pigouvian taxes applied in conditions of high economic certainty
-
Service charges for excludable use of sensibly government-provided services (e.g., getting your passport renewed, driving on a toll road)
Spending
-
Pigouvian subsidies applied in conditions of high economic certainty
-
security (including military)
-
contract enforcement (the courts, plus the parts of the regulatory state that do stuff like fine people for lying about the efficacy of medical treatments)
-
the strictly necessary parts of the administrative state (e.g., salaries for judges, lawmakers)
-
the parts of the regulatory state that exist to solve multipolar traps/tragedies of the commons/failure states of capitalism/etc. (e.g., climate change, national parks, trustbusting)
-
the parts of the regulatory state necessary for auditing the other parts
-
A UBI calculated to be the higher of {[enough so that almost* no one starves, dies of exposure, dies of easily treatable disease*, or otherwise lives considered strictly unacceptable for a citizen*], [Whatever figure maximizes the equation: RISE IN(MINIMUM OF(aggregate GDP, aggregate population utility*)) DUE TO PAYMENTS - FALL IN (MINIMUM OF(aggregate GDP, aggregate population utility*)) due to taxes]}
-
A service designed to care for people who are strictly unable to make economic choices (the mentally challenged, the insane, and the senile)
* I'm using fuzzy language in a few cases because some of these concepts/thresholds are strictly subjective... I concede that even in my "ideal" economic system there would be plenty for people to fight over and disagree about
GBRK
1mo ago
You're considering redistributive programs in a vacuum, but I contend that that's not the best way to understand my proposal. My position is that the best way to perform welfare is unconditional wealth transfers, and to various degrees UI, SS, and even GiveDirectly are all conditional. That naturally leads to problems, like your mention of the "repeat users" thing, but that's proof of the conditionality being the problem, not the nature of transferring cash. Consider if, alternatively, these programs were administered as deliveries of particular baskets of goods. Think of how much more room there would be for corruption and inefficiency. Cash is better than food stamps is better than a council of politicians getting bribed by ag lobbyists to buy specifically high fructose corn syrup and distribute it. Anti-welfare people look at poor people choosing to buy inefficient luxuries and claim that that's proof that programs should be reformed to give politicians more control over program administration... but the alternative isn't poor people getting a healthier diet, the alternative is financially motivated politicians forcing poor people to buy even more inefficient luxuries.
And yes, "giving people money to stay alive" does result in dependency, for the uncontreversial reason that if you pay someone to do something, they will keep doing it. If you only provide wealth transfers to poor people, they will remain poor. But if you pay people independent of their actions, their incentive is to put the money to the most personally productive use possible. And given that capitalism provides a network of incentives to align personal greed to societal benefit, that in turn funnels money toward what's better for society.
GBRK
1mo ago
Cash works because... everything is fungible to cash, but literal cash has higher liquidity and therefore fewer transaction costs than any other form of welfare. In any economy that is not a perfectly optimized free market, there will be some role for enforced wealth transfers. Unconditional cash payments are just the second-best way to do payments, after pigouvian subsidies.
GBRK
1mo ago
Who is the Pope (or Council, if you happen to be Conciliarist) who gets to decide what the Creed is?
The... the actual pope. The pope who is chosen by the holy, apostolic, catholic church. The pope who is chosen through the direct guidance of infallible God.
When the Creed changes, what should happen to Americans who do not get along fast enough, and to Americans who actively reject it?
Whatever the pope says. Probably some mix of compassionate incentives and stern-but-fair punishments ranging from financial inducements to banishment or life imprisonment (but strictly excluding execution.)
GBRK
1mo ago
But tell me, would handing out passports and giving full unconditional citizenship to every Chinese or Russian make a lot of sense to you in the current geopolitical situation?
If you're going to ask me about implementation details given current political realities, I admit that I would have to moderate my position. I would still be happy to give citizenship to every chinaman and russian-- but only after they spent time living in america, working, without access to welfare, subject to assimilation and naturalization. While still holding onto the highest principles I laid out-- the bailey, if you will, I'll concede that an illiquid political/economic situation required adjustments to reality, and a retreat to the motte. For example, I'll concede that
because they were only effective at it back when they were a lot more forceful about assimilation
is a good point. We're insufficiently forceful about assimilation, and that makes it hard to be a credal nation. Opening the borders and becoming a fully credal without toughening up would probably be a disaster. But why would we consider a policy in isolation without considering every other self-consistent supporting policy? If we're assuming a massive, unlikely change, we don't need to limit that change to a single axis. If we're considering strictly limited interventions imaginable within the current system, again, those interventions can include compromise policies. My maximalist vision is "assimilationist credal nation." But it's not an all-or-nothing policy. I would still be happy to let in modestly more muslims, paired with child-protection-service and educational mandates designed to make it harder for them to isolate their female children and force them into wearing burkas. I would still let in more poor hispanic immigrants, paired with a reduction in the taxpayer-funded subsidies for the noncitizen poor.
if you're not enforcing a creed. ... but when I asked you about it before you started talking about property rights.
I don't understand this point. I consider a respect for property rights part of a specific creed. I consider education and police work as valid methods of enforcement for property rights. Therefore, I'm presenting them as a method of enforcing the creed.
Are you looking for a complete creed and list of enforcement mechanisms? If so, I'll concede that I haven't thought that deeply about it. But as a summary, I'd say, "I'm imperfect, so I'll just go with whatever the pope wants." (See also: Edict of Thessalonica)
Is communism more beneficial in North Korea and Cuba, than other economic systems?
North Korea and Cuba are both continuously reforming themselves to be less communistic (though understandably they're not very open about it.) See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jangmadang . And each of their individual citizens probably have (close to) the most beneficial ideas to hold for maximizing their performance within the systems they find themselves in.
There is absolutely no way that in practice America today is a creedal nation.
It's not a perfectly creedal nation, but it's far more creedal than the vast majority of the nations on the planet, and I would like it to be yet more creedal still.
GBRK
1mo ago
taking the easy way out
If it's the easy way out, that must be because of either or both of these factors:
- The demand (A.K.A. economic need, a.k.a. potential gains due to specialization and trade) for migrants is so large that we would be shooting ourselves in the foot to keep them out.
- The welfare state of the receiving country is too generous
If we fix #2 (which to be real, we should be doing regardless of the immigrant question) then there isn't any problem.
mostly in such societies that offer the most no-strings-attached public welfare.
That's a europe problem. Luckily, america is better than europe: we get way more illegal immigrants, which are the best kind, because they're ineligible for the most expensive forms of public welfare (in the non-stupid states) and therefore prove themselves to be the motivated kind by working hard for low pay.
America isn't the only country that sees immigrants.
You're right. Unfortunately, the whole world isn't america. That's their problem, and they should fix that. They can start by adopting our hyper-assimilationist culture and laws if they're leery of direct annexation, but I wouldn't hesitate to make the UK airstrip one if asked.
GBRK
1mo ago
I'd want some sort of mechanism to directly help him out over and above just me giving him cash
What if giving him cash is just mathematically the most effective option? I occasionally donate to GiveDirectly because I believe in their premise: that the administrative efficiency of just distributing cash directly is so high that enabling the occasional bad behavior is outweighed by all the good behavior it promotes and bureaucratic behavior it avoids. I'd concede that not every individual would benefit from the cash-- I don't give money to homeless people directly because I reasonably suspect they would misuse it-- but that's a rule-proving exception. Deciding which particular individual you want to give cash to re-introduces the hated administrative burden; better to do something like a UBI or the libertarian negative tax rate.
I think I agree, morally, that no amount of government spending can ever replace charity... but some amount of government spending is just sensible economics.
GBRK
1mo ago
Just dragging individuals out of one society to drop them into another
I agree that forcefully relocating people is unlikely to end well. The secret sauce is voluntary immigration. Immigrants are self-selected for motivation, risk-taking, ambition, intelligence, and willingness to assimilate. It's not a hard rule, I admit, but it holds extremely often. Isolated ethnic communities often manage to maintain a separate language and culture from their parent state for literally thousands of years (looking at you, Basque country)-- but immigrants to america lose everything except a surface veneer of their homeland within three generations, tops.
GBRK
1mo ago
The direct analogy to that would be a multiethnic empire promoting one ethnic group to the detriment of others, not one that attempts to merge multiple groups into a single one.
Okay, if merging multiple groups isn't overinclusion then let's just define ourselves to be part of a shared ethnic group containing everyone except the North Sentinelese islanders.
why the sudden switch to basic property rights?
You asked me for what I would put in a creed. I interpreted a "creed" as being a legally and culturally enforced set of beliefs. I would like to enforce a belief in basic property rights.
what is supposed to be the upside?
Converting the muslims by proximity and getting more people into heaven.
More importantly, how is it even a creedal nation if you don't exclude other creeds, and abandon the mechanism of enforcing your creed that you put forward yourself?
I think you're getting confused on my expected timeline. I think it would look something like this:
- (Where we are now.) Country has a creed (American civic religion) and enforces it (though not very well). The creed permits some catholics and some noncatholics entry.
- noncatholics gradually convert to catholicism or die out.
- Growing numbers of catholics push the creed, and enforcement thereof, to favor catholicism even more.
- Country now has a catholic creed
...or basically, what happened to the roman empire. We've done it before and we can do it again.
My point was that something can be true and beneficial, and lose to the false and detrimental.
If it lost then it must not have been so beneficial after all.
GBRK
1mo ago
are unfortunately necessary
Having them is necessary. Enforcing them isn't. At the very minimum Imagine a regulatory framework that has a shall-issue mandate on any kind of permit, but then your local community can sue you if you end up violating codes.
But consider this... [NIMBYism follows]
Consider this: if adding poor people makes things worse, why not take them away instead? Just bulldoze the houses of the poorest 10% and kick them out every year. With each decimation your schools and infrastructure would get even better!
Possible counterargument: the town is in a state of economic equilibrium, such that it can't spare even one garbage man without providing fewer services per dollar.
counter-counterargument: if the system is already in economic equilibrium, no one new will be incentivized to move in.
it is objectively unfair to American workers that we have the FDA, EPA, NLRB, OSHA, etc and then they have to compete against someone who can burn coal and dump arsenic into rivers.
I don't feel like it's unfair that my boss can't abuse me. If workers in other countries want to die on the job and deal with arsenic-rivers then more power to them, though. In fact I view it as pretty much a strict good that we've outsourced the most polluting industries to other nations. Why would I want a lithium mine poisoning our rivers, when with the magic of globalization I can get bolivians to poison their own rivers instead?
I'd be very interested in your patent law take.
All intellectual property law should be abolished with the exception of trademarks. If a sufficiently liquid free market demands a particular good, the free market will find a way to fund that good. Maybe at one point the market wasn't liquid enough, thanks to travel times and difficulty with communication, but thanks to modern technology we no longer live in such a benighted age. Intellectual property law doesn't encourage innovation, it just provides for a class of middlemen that can financialize and profit off of ideas. For example: The vast majority of J.K. Rowling's wealth doesn't come from sales of Harry Potter, it comes from her monopoly over the Harry Potter universe, which she uses to extract rent from the creative efforts of product designers, screenwriters, filmmakers, actors, cover-art designers, etcetera.
Trademarks are cool though.
GBRK
1mo ago
For example, looking specifically at that patent page, do you really believe that innovation from 2010 to 2020 was 2x or 3x the innovation between 1870 and 1990?
Plausibly yes. The impact of innovation might be on a logistic curve as we vacuum up all the low-hanging fruit, but the patent numbers are sufficient to demonstrate that immigration rates don't have an effect on people having ideas. I can anticipate your objections, but before making them first remember that the most important word in my argument was "anti-correlate". Even if patents granted becomes an increasingly-bad measure of what you would consider important about innovation, there should still be some identifiable correlation not lost in confounding because immigration rate isn't asymptotically increasing over the span of America's existence. Also, if you doubt America's numbers specifically, you can look elsewhere for confirmation-- we're both proposing general rules that should hold cross-culturally. You should be able to eyeball patent rates and immigration figures in any given country to see if rate of innovation (or rate of growth in innovation) falls after immigration spikes.
Your modus ponens is my modus tollens, though: if the vibes don't match the stats, then either the vibes are wrong or the stats are wrong/irrelevant.
Skill issue. Overcome your cognitive biases and find some better vibes. Or don't, I guess. I'm pretty convinced that relying on statistical techniques over faulty human wiring as a general principle overperforms in the aggregate, but maybe I'm wrong. If we're lucky we can compare life trajectories 50 years from now and hash it all out.
GBRK
1mo ago
GDP as an idea is like a belief that doesn't pay rent. It doesn't tell you whether a country is good, a benefit in raising it is not found in evidence. Given otherwise equal choices among westerners, >95% would rather spend their lives in #39 Switzerland or #105 Iceland over #1 China or #3 India.
I didn't cite GDP, I cited GDP per capita. Critical difference. And while I wouldn't use GDP per capita to prove that any particular country is good, but I can use it to make statements about the general trend of increased goodness because it's very strongly correlated with a lot of measure of goodness like e.g. life expectancy that everyone agrees on.
civilization development factor C
Not well defined. Give me empirical data or give me death.
Economics is a pseudoscience
You're using no science whatsoever. I'll take "psuedoscience" over that.
Abundant plastic garbage... Millions of foreigners
You're trying to make an a priori argument but I reject this comparison on it's face and also empirically. Go look at a graph of utility patents granted in the united states: https://patentlyo.com/patent/2023/08/utility-patents-granted-calendar.html . It doesn't anti-correlate with graphs of "immigrants as a share of US residents." so I'm pretty damn confident that if you want to track down a graph of "noneuropean immigrants as a share of US residents" it's not going to anticorrelate with that either. It just correlates to graphs of US population growth. More people means more innovation.
Your argument is entirely based on vibes. That's cool, but I've got statistics.
GBRK
1mo ago
What I said was that with "over-exclusion is worse then over-inclusion" approach, you will turn the category of the nation useless.
The irony of this is that the whole idea of a "nation" is an over-inclusion: an 18/19th century fabrication intended to artificially bond disparate ethnic-linguistic-cultural groups together. Before people were White they were French, German, British... they were Occitan, Cornish, Bavarian... they were loyal to their tribes, villages, clans...
Every framework to unite ingroups into outgroups makes the previous ingroup identities less powerful and useful. That's the whole point!
Well... do you mind providing some details? General rules as to what kind of transgressions would meet with what kind of sanctions? Examples?
General rule: people have the right to allocate the use of their excludable property
Weak sanction: if some dumb kids tresspass on your land to use your fishing hold it's fine to yell at them
Strong sanction: if someone steals your TV they go to prison.
You're really not making this easy... What is? My description of your views, or the statement that I misunderstood something? If the latter, could you put some effort into bridging the inferential gap? Where do you think I've gone wrong?
Sorry, I meant that your description of my views was accurate.
And if it can be shown that a mosque is a proper church, with similar advantages for individuals and their communities, you'd be ok with that, and you'd enforce your rule by forcing people to go to EITHER a mosque OR a Catholic church?
For someone to show that to me they would have to convince me that muslims have an equivalent chance of getting into heaven as catholics. If hypothetically I was ever convinced of that, then sure-- church, mosque, either is fine. Ceding that would basically require they convince me to stop being a catholic though.
What was the point of the "truth is an asymmetric weapon" thing then?
If it's true that my beliefs are beneficial, then that truth is asymmetric. Also some beliefs contain the sub-belief that they're guaranteed to be beneficial if [and sometimes only if] they're true. So long as I'm confident in the meta-belief that I'm maximising personal benefit, those beliefs have an asymmetric power over me (so long as they're true.)
GBRK
1mo ago
Zoning laws. I hate, hate, hate them. They're also mostly a Democrat thing, so there's an example of me being appropriately mad at "my side" for acting against my interests.
Aside from that--
Other tariffs. Excessive FDA regulatory burden. The existence of patent law. The Jones Act.
I could go on.
GBRK
1mo ago
Nah, they're 100% okay with it, they just use a distinction that's largely orthogonal to the conservative civic nationalist one. Look at the hysteria about "gentrifiers", for example.
GBRK
1mo ago
It's fair to identify particular values of particular creedal societies as being problematic. But as a trivial proof, an ideal creedal society is always better than an ideal ancestral society because the ideal creedal society can just capture whatever makes an ancestry "good" without the intermediary layer. It's like this: if you want the most law-abiding people in your society, you can admit people based on some proxy for law-abidingness, e.g., good SAT scores-- but that's always going to end up being less effective than just admitting them based on their actual history of abiding by the law. That applies ESPECIALLY if you take a strongly hereditarian position. If your entrance mechanism is looking for common descent, that actually relatively disadvantages the pro-social traits you assume are correlated with the descent.
GBRK
1mo ago
, we can begin right now
Unironically yes. Go for it. I don't think the net result is going to be any different from what's already happened. The Court's current disposition is a compromise between republicans, not a compromise with democrats.
GBRK
1mo ago
How's that relevant to anything I said?
Reference to the sororitas paradox. "Coherent" isn't a well-defined idea. You can come up with a definition to make anything coherent or incoherent. I'd rather speak in terms of degrees-- accepting that any social target is going to have to be fuzzy, and working to keep it useful over trying to define hard boundaries.
What happens to people who stray outside these overton windows?
The same thing that currently happens. Escalating levels of social sanctions followed by criminal punishments.
Have I misunderstood something?
That's accurate.
Correct. Catholics aren't known for just letting it go, because they're confident the truth will win out in the end. They are known for a highly organized church, a highly formalized dogma, and putting significant resources into their maintenance, and proselytization. It's like that quip from Star Control "peaceful missions through the cosmos rarely require weapons large enough to punch holes through a small moon".
Being confident in God isn't incompatible with working hard toward virtuous ends. "Faith without works..." etcetera etcetera.
Yes. It's not the only one though, and the other ones might have the advantage depending on the situation. You wouldn't be considering forcing people to go to church otherwise.
It's not about being afraid of muslims, it's about, it's that going to (a proper) church is a strictly good thing, for both the individual and the community. Rather than impose it because I'm afraid of an enemy group, I'd impose it because "getting people to do good things" is one of the main purposes of a community. And yes, as a consequence, it would keep out bad people and bring in good people. My beliefs are the best; that's exactly what I'd expect them to do.
Huh? If you're wrong about the truth winning out in the general cosmic sense, you should have no fear of being set right? Wouldn't that be your absolute worst case scenario? If you actually had the truth, but it lost, because you refused to fight for it?
If I'm wrong about having the best (most beneficial) beliefs, then I have no fear of adopting better beliefs. You're missing the point by focusing on "truth" here. Of course, I also believe that my beliefs are true, but that's noncentral.
GBRK
1mo ago
I don't see how I'm doing this
You're setting the threshold of "norm" precisely at, "taking control of the supreme court by refusing to confirm qualified appointees was Fine but taking control of the supreme court by adding more justices would be Bad." One heap is bigger than the other, but they're both heaps.
So let's a stop with this nonsense, because muh norms.
When did I start? Orange man bad (for me) because he opposes my interests and my ingroup. Whether or not he breaks norms doesn't matter.
GBRK
1mo ago
If extremely illiberal Muslims are supposed to be in our ingroup,
extremely illiberal muslims shouldn't be in our ingroup (by default; I'd make attempts to convert them and bring them in). I'm very pro-coherent-definition. I'm happy with making an us/them distinction. I just want to make it on the basis of adhering to a particular creed, rather than arbitrarily assigning it via ancestry.
GBRK
1mo ago
but the idea this was breaking some norm is absurd.
You're clearly defining "norm" in a way that benefits your political interests. Symmetrically, it should be fine for your enemies to do the same. That's why this whole "norms" business is pointless in the first place. It's just a useless definition game. Similarly, "court-packing" has no objective definition. Republicans have used purely legal means to ensure that the the court rules in their favor. Democrats aren't currently capable of doing the same-- but if they were to gain that capability, there's no objective reason they shouldn't do the same. There might be practical reasons, and I would encourage the democrats to consider them, but if they decide that swaying the supreme court to their side is a good idea, I don't see why "norms" should be any barrier.
GBRK
1mo ago
Okay, so your argument is that:
- I claim I don't like trump because I don't like his policies because I think his policies are bad.
- Obamacare is bad.
- ... consequently, I should dislike obamacare
- ... consequently, I should dislike the people who passed obamacare as much as I dislike trump
- But I don't.
- Therefore 1 is in contradiction with 4.
- Therefore I am not accurately representing why I dislike trump.
I have two counterarguments.
#1: Narrow
Point #2 is wrong. Obamacare is good. Therefore 3 and 4 are wrong, and there's no contradiction.
#2: Broad
Even if I were to admit that obamacare was bad, that would not be sufficient to demonstrate a contradiction in my position, because my position rests on the particular degree of trump's badness, and also on the utility of opposing him.
Consider this non-political example:
- Bob murders his family and then hangs himself. I find out about this only after it happens.
- My coworker, Jim, kicks puppies every chance he gets. Right now, he's winding up to hit a daschund.
Bob is clearly worse than Jim, no question. But it would be more rational for me to be emotionally motivated to oppose Jim. No amount of anger and hatred would reverse bob's actions, or even be particularly likely to deter future Bobs. But the right emotional reaction to seeing Jim about to kick a puppy might let me intervene in time to stop him, and perhaps even deter future puppy-kickers from doing what they want.
Consider this second example:
- Jim kicks puppies.
- Joe kicks babies.
Jim is clearly bad. But if Jim is willing to get angry with me about Joe, it's politically expedient for me to join Jim in his anger so we can intervene against Joe together than to be angry at Jim first.
GBRK
1mo ago
It's great in the aggregate, but not for every individual in particular. I recognize that there are people rationally opposed to immigration. But I have no reason to prioritize their interests over the interests of either myself or the (immigrant-inclusive) collective.
but there's no mechanism for excluding them or making them comply.
What makes you think I'm against compliance mechanisms? I believe the government has a duty and an interest in enforcing prosocial behavior. That's the entire point of creedal citizenship! You can say that it's a problem that people might defect against shared values and I'd agree with you, but it's crazy talk to identify the shared values as the problem, rather than the defection. A society built on-- for example-- shared ancestry, doesn't even get to the starting line!
Best as in most beneficial to hold, or best as in most able to propagate in a competitive environment? Because a belief that is the one may not also be the other.
For every belief I have, if I thought there was a more beneficial belief to posses, I would believe that instead. Therefore I can rationally conclude that I have the most-beneficial beliefs. My meta-confidence isn't 100%, since I could imagine learning reasons to swap out my beliefs again-- but for that exact reason it makes sense to bring in people with competing beliefs, so that I can either convert them, dominate them, or assimilate their more-adaptive traits.
I've been thinking of something similar... looking at royal road every popular webnovel has extremely obvious, in-your-face exposition, presumably because they don't expect anyone to slow down and take their reading seriously. (And also because of all the foreigners reading english language fiction by other foreigners.)
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