PurpleCy
2yr ago
But being quite loud and public about that sort of thing does give me a strong impression of rampant, unchecked narcissism, narcissism-adjacency, or some other idiopathic impairment of personal judgment.
Setting aside what personality traits may motivate it, isn’t it better for a high-level government staffer to be public about what many might consider embarrassing? No one can likely blackmail this fellow about being a kink enthusiast, or whatever.
PurpleCy
2yr ago
My state has open primaries. Given incumbents so often retain their party’s nomination, I often vote for people in the primaries that I don’t vote for in the general. In as much as my one vote matters (not much) this is not a bad strategy based on how primary ballots shake out.
When the SPAC fad happened, the question was which company taken public via a SPAC would be the first to see its share price implode via fraud. (A: Nikola.) SPACs have valid advantages over IPOs in terms of speed and cost, but they also have lower oversight. The latter was guaranteed to eventually attract someone like Trevor Milton.
I think about EA in the same way. In particular, encouraging massive wealth accumulation in the hands of a small few and prioritizing solutions for problems that might (AI) or won’t (the need to leave the solar system before the sun goes nova) threaten people in their lifetime was bound to attract a SBF eventually.
Edit: And, it’s dubious how sincere SBF was, so to qualify, attract as in entice some fraudster to espouse it.
PurpleCy
2yr ago
What I don't get is why Reds aren't better at punishing blue dominated industries when they get power, copyright reform that drastically shortened copyright terms would be a good way to threaten a rich industry dominated by the other sides donors, and could have made a lot of normies happy during the napster/you wouldn't download a car era.
The Republican Party would need to do this, and it is not a unified, populist party. And the Democrats would be of little help; Al Franken paid back his Hollywood donors by co-sponsoring SOPA/PIPA (I forget which, specifically).
Ron and Rand Paul aren’t particularly influential with the rest of the party when they (or at least Ron did?) speak Austrian about how intellectual property laws are the state asserting ownership over your private, real, physical property. The MAGA wing don’t hold any strong opinion on IP for its own sake.
A culture warrior like DeSantis would have to take this on not at a state level, where in Florida he’s benefited from political migration surrounding COVID and tax policy, but at a national level where both parties get donations from large corporations as the latter seek to prevent/influence/shape regulation that impacts them.
PurpleCy
2yr ago
This is a bit far afield, but Tate doesn’t exist as an online figure absent the blue tribe. He leaned all the way in to outrage farming in a no-publicity-is-bad-publicity approach. It all depends on how you feel about Wahhabism — it’s certainly traditional and opposed to globohomo — but is he actually helpful to the Western red tribe, as an ISIS-praising supposed Islam convert (who still likes alcohol)? Tate also started up his own MLM/affiliate-marketing program. At least Alex Jones just sells snake-oil supplements as a standard retail operation. I don’t think the enemy of your enemy is always your friend.
Ignoring the notable shift in the composition of America’s two major political parties that took place under the Southern strategy paints a very inaccurate picture. ”Has always been,” only works if you want to stop time before the middle of the 20th Century.
You mention Jim Crow, but fail to mention that Goldwater and Nixon deliberately made appeals to the southerners who wanted to retain it, and successfully brought a significant portion under the Republican tent.
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