Quantumfreakonomics
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User ID: 324
Quantumfreakonomics
15hr ago
I am going to do the, “states rights to do what?”, thing and ask why Kuwait and Saudi Arabia are such close US allies?
Quantumfreakonomics
16hr ago
I don't think the ICC rules apply to the United States. (Isn't there an literal statute repudiating them?)
The Geneva Convention is your best bet, but it's pretty vague. I don't think anyone actually wants our armed forces interpreting it literally (okay, some people want that, but I'd wager most people don't, especially not if we were in a real war with enemies who shoot back.)
I never put much stock in the, "we would never follow illegal orders," shtick in the first place. If the military wants to do something in wartime, they'll do it.
Quantumfreakonomics
16hr ago
The stupider this becomes, the more likely it seems that this conflict is a result of Trump's fixation with spoils of war and that he actually thinks we can literally just "take the oil."
Now that the dust has settled, were the two Gulf Wars actually about oil all along? All the bullshit we learned in school about Kuwait and the Kurds feels like focusing on the logisical intricacies of the Danzig corridor. "Did people actually believe that?" future schoolchildren will ask.
Quantumfreakonomics
16hr ago
Interesting that the citation for that section is not to an actual law, but to a post-WWI German War Crimes trial of two U-boat gunners.
Is the DOD Law of War Manual itself a law? Does it get to issue binding commentary? Is something illegal just because the manual says it is?
Quantumfreakonomics
19hr ago
Do you think the drop in the number of bad-credit homeowners is because bad-credit people suddenly stopped wanting houses? I think the more-likely explaination is that lenders realized that these people were outside of their risk-tolerance, and thus stopped offering them mortgages. You could say that lenders stopped making mortgages available to prospective buyers because of their lack of appetite for risk.
Quantumfreakonomics
22hr ago
The availability of mortgages, as measured by lenders’ appetite for risk, is at its lowest in decades.
This particular sentence is reasonable. Appetite for risk is the factor driving demand for all financial assets (with the arguable exclusion of treasuries). If lenders have more appetite for risk, then it is easier to find a lender for your risky mortgage.
Quantumfreakonomics
1d ago
Contemporary fiction literature is female-dominated across the board. We have a few threads a year on this (which I don't usually pay much attention to, since I don't read contemporary fiction literature). Try typing "Hugo Awards" in the search box.
If I had to come up with a non-social-justice based explaination for why this happened, I would guess that the invention of video games provided a superior substitute to books for male entertainment demand, and that this caused a cultural vacuum which was filled by women.
Quantumfreakonomics
5d ago
nobody was opposed to the translators getting citizenship
I can guarantee you that there were people who were opposed to giving Afghan refugees citizenship.
a heroic effort by certain immigration bureaucrats
I guess this one is an opinion, but I would not classify the people who rushed immigration forms for nationals of a terror-stricken country as “heroic”. Over the course of the war, there was a constant stream of Afghans who we thought were on our side becoming terrorists. The people administering this program should have known that.
Quantumfreakonomics
5d ago
Quantumfreakonomics
6d ago
Marjorie Taylor Greene was brave. She was freethinking. She was also stupid.
There's a great Substack article that's been framing my thinking lately. One of the defining features of populism is revolt against cognitive elites.
The crucial feature of common sense, as Frank Luntz helpfully observed, is that it “doesn’t requires any fancy theories; it is self-evidently correct.” (One can think of this as the primary point of demarcation between the people and the elites – the people have “common sense,” whereas elites subscribe to “fancy theories.”) This distinction, in turn, does not arise from the ideological content of a belief system, but rather from the form of cognition employed in its production.
The problem is that one cannot run a modern government without "fancy theories" that conflict with "common sense". This creates a dynamic in which the easiest strategy for a politician is to:
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Campaign on red-meat populist issues: cheaper groceries, lower rent, fewer [immigrants/bigots] walking around on the streets, and then:
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Govern like a captured technocrat, because you don't actually want to destroy society.
You don't need an advanced degree in hyperbolic topology to notice the tension between the two points above. Frustrated voters respond by demanding candidates become even more populist, and populist politicians respond by focusing on certain key issues
This reservoir of discontent creates the opportunity that is exploited by populist politicians. Democratic political systems are fairly responsive to public opinion, but they are still systems of elite rule, and so there are specific issues on which the people genuinely have not been listened to, no matter how angry or upset they got. This creates an incentive to do an end-run around elites, and around institutions dominated by elites (e.g. traditional political parties), in order to tap into this fund of resentment, positioning oneself as the champion of the people. What is noteworthy about populists is that they do not champion all of the interests of the people, but instead focus on the specific issues where there is the greatest divergence between common sense and elite opinion, in order to champion the views of the people on these issues.
Right now, there is a vast gulf between popular opinion of neoclassical economics and Jews, and elite opinion of neoclassical economics and Jews. Solve for the equilibrium.
Quantumfreakonomics
7d ago
Government by social media strikes again.
The deliverable that Lindsey Halligan was tasked with producing was not, "putting Comey in jail". It was, "generate headlins about Comey going to jail". In that light, she did about as well as she could given the circumstances. You see the same thing with Hegseth posting about court-martialling Mark Kelly.
Quantumfreakonomics
8d ago
Seems like the kind of thing one would want to know. Do you have other objective biological indicia to support the assumption that your mother's husband is your father?
It was always incredibly obvious that my dad was my dad. It was like those, "don't talk to me or my son ever again" memes.
Quantumfreakonomics
8d ago
Play Half-Life 1/2
Quantumfreakonomics
9d ago
Single-family homes would get a lot smaller. Hard to tell what the effects on the financial system would be though.
The 30-year-mortgage is a tool for hiding the extent of government subsidization of the housing market. For all we know, it might be the only thing propping-up the economy. The buisiness model of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is offering "too-big-to-fail" government credit backstops to mortgage originators as a service.
Quantumfreakonomics
9d ago
How rad do you want to trad?
The main issue is that groyperism doesn't actually fix the problems. It feels fun and powerful to point out dual loyalists on Twitter, but this is a tertiary issue at best.
This individualist free market zionism stuff isn't working anymore.
It actually is though. Young white men are being taken advantage of because we aren't individualist and free-market enough. Working-age white men are the backbone of American industry. They are the ones who will rise to the top in the absense of government intervention. What is dragging them down is
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Taxes, to pay for redisributionist policies like social securty, medicare, and medicaid, and
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Degree inflation, which drives up the salary of female-dominated professions like education and health-care (which are themselves government-funded!), therefore driving down the demand for husbands.
Young white men do not benefit from socialized government services. It will also not help to drive all of the rich Jews and high-skill immigrants out of the country. That will reduce the number of high-paying jobs available to young white men.
Quantumfreakonomics
10d ago
Why would someone even lie about that? Their whole thing is pointing out Jewish influence. It completely defeats the whole point to not do that.
Quantumfreakonomics
10d ago
applying laws Europe officially supports
It doesn't matter whether Europe supports him. He issued an arrest warrent for the prime minister of a state which is not a party to the Rome Statute. He is acting ultra vires to overthrow the government of a US ally. If Europe supported Osama Bin Laden, and The Netherlands let him set-up a compound in The Hague, the US would still send in Seal Team Six.
To your other point, United States financial regulations are amongst the most powerful tools on the planet. Underestimate them at your peril.
Quantumfreakonomics
11d ago
Maybe I’ve been watching too much Vaush, but this is a pretty weak-sauce video from the Democrats. Why are they still appealing to people’s consciences? It’s pretty clear that isn’t a viable strategy for stopping this stuff. The baseline UCMJ statute of limitations is 5 years. Why not come out and say, “if you obey an unlawful order, we will remember and we will prosecute you.” Show that you take it seriously. Put your own liberty on the line before asking someone else to do it for you.
An entire party of massive pussies. Maybe they’re losing because it feels emasculating to vote for them.
Quantumfreakonomics
11d ago
But its also kinda incoherent to call for someone's arrest for Sedition while being the guy who is in charge of the agencies that would be arresting them.
I had this thought too, but there seems to be a general pattern in the Trump administration of government via social media. Tweeting this stuff out may be the most effective way Trump has of directly communicating with US Attorney for DC Jeanine Pirro.
Quantumfreakonomics
11d ago
Okay, I think I found the law that is supposed to deal with that, 18 U.S. Code § 2387
Whoever, with intent to interfere with, impair, or influence the loyalty, morale, or discipline of the military or naval forces of the United States:
(1) advises, counsels, urges, or in any manner causes or attempts to cause insubordination, disloyalty, mutiny, or refusal of duty by any member of the military or naval forces of the United States
Quantumfreakonomics
11d ago
If that's what they had actually said I think there would be a strong case against them
Do you mean this in a legal sense? Because I very much doubt that is true. Saying, “I think what these government agents are doing is bad and illegal,” is quite squarely within the core area of first-amendment protections for speech on matters of public concern. I’m not even sure what statute would plausibly cover this. Treason is defined in the literal constitution in a way which doesn’t seem to apply here (who are the enemies of the United States being given aid and comfort to?).
If your point is that, “Elissa Slotkin told me to do it,” wouldn’t be a valid defense in a court-martial, I would have to agree with that.
Quantumfreakonomics
13d ago
Their society experienced complete collapse a generation later.
This is not the point you think it is. The Soviet generation that fought WWII ended up with a 5:3 sex ratio in favor of women.
Quantumfreakonomics
13d ago
Juries will insert an arbitrary amount of zeros on the "damages" line of a verdict if the victim is sympathetic enough. The Supreme Court tried to tame the madness back in the 2000s, but in the absense of a bright-line standard lower courts (and especially state courts) continued to impose insane judgements. Philip Morris USA Inc. v. Williams is a good example of this.
Trump liked to watch him on Fox News.
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