SophisticatedHillbilly
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User ID: 1964
SophisticatedHillbilly
10mo ago
almost every single one of those people have no qualms about picking up a $100 bill you just dropped
Speak for yourself and your own fucked up community. The people around me have gone a lot further for me than returning a $100, and I trust them deeply.
However, I understand your point, and the majority of the world's population is principle-less and incentive-driven. At the same time, I believe it is morally required to stand against incentives, and I think your way of thinking too often leads to a race-to-the-bottom mindset of "everyone else has no principles and follows incentives so I have to follow incentives too."
If you can resist that slide while maintaining your mindset, then frankly we're mostly in agreement.
SophisticatedHillbilly
10mo ago
The only human beings who have consistent principles are those you'd never want to live with or be governed by.
This honestly has not been my experience at all. Those with the strongest principles have consistently been the only people in my life worth keeping around. If someone doesn't have any values that they'll maintain when it's painful, then you're basically dealing with a particularly cunning animal.
SophisticatedHillbilly
10mo ago
Except the comparison point would have to be (welfare state with X GDP and Y demographics) vs (no welfare state with X GDP and Y demographics). Is there even a similar set of states we can compare? Given the impact of demographics and wealth on the type of state that the public builds, is it even possible to have one?
SophisticatedHillbilly
11mo ago
At this point no one is happy with what they have, but they don’t see eye-to-eye enough to agree on something new.
If this doesn't sum up the era we live in, I don't know what does.
SophisticatedHillbilly
11mo ago
Yes, all candidates have a portion of the base who is insufficiently motivated to get to the polls but can be convinced to do so.
SophisticatedHillbilly
11mo ago
From what I can find, tranq pistols can have an effective range up to 40 meters. That's firing an entire syringe. I wouldn't be surprised at being able to achieve 100 meters with a much, much smaller dart.
Also worth considering that range would likely be an engineering goal for a CIA heart attack gun. They aren't really focused on achieving range in typical dart pistols, because that would never be needed.
SophisticatedHillbilly
11mo ago
Not sure what meets @Questionmark's definition of "really furious, anxious progressive think piece," but there are a few I've seen around the net in the last week or so:
"The Case That Could Destroy the Government" https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/11/securities-and-exchange-commission-v-jarkesy-supreme-court/676059/
Then there's this one, which originally had the title "A new Supreme Court case threatens to sow chaos throughout the federal government" https://www.vox.com/politics/2023/5/2/23706535/supreme-court-chevron-deference-loper-bright-raimondo
Then there's another Vox masterpiece: "The Supreme Court seeks a middle path between following the law and blowing up the government" https://www.vox.com/scotus/2023/11/29/23980966/supreme-court-sec-jarkesy-administrative-law-judges
And more or less every respectable news outlet had some opinion piece along the lines of Washington Post's "A conservative court intent on arrogating power unto itself" https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/12/01/supreme-court-administrative-state/
For comparison, Reuter's most recent headline on the topic is "US Supreme Court signals it could limit SEC in-house enforcement," though I do think that undersells it somewhat.
SophisticatedHillbilly
11mo ago
Honestly, does this matter? If it takes 1000 years for a belief system to mature enough to perform well, then that's even more reason to stick to established systems.
SophisticatedHillbilly
1yr ago
Yeah I live on less than 20k a year at the moment and I'm very comfortable. I even eat out occasionally. Frankly I could cut costs a bit more if I wanted too.
SophisticatedHillbilly
1yr ago
As would I. Ping me if you post it please
SophisticatedHillbilly
1yr ago
In a democracy generally? I don't think so. In our current state? Probably yeah.
I guess I just don't move problems that are in the "We could solve this if the leadership actually attempted to solve it" bin over to the "Literally impossible to solve" bin just because there's currently no political will to solve it.
COVID didn't work because it didn't really threaten the people who mattered. There was a small chance of dying for many of them, sure, but no chance of losing their high positions (which is far worse.) A proper war would do it I think, or a real severe resource shortage. Maybe a civil war even.
SophisticatedHillbilly
1yr ago
I like the comparison to the rocket equation, but I still think the US is wealthy enough to make it work. US GDP works out to around 70k per person per year, which means it's a distribution and priority problem. The reality of the modern world is that one person putting in the effort can generate the resources to provide for 100 who hit defect. Is the problem easy to solve? No, but it's definitely possible (okay fine, maybe not to 100% completion, but 90% even would be fine.)
I would argue it shouldn't be solved, but that's a different matter.
SophisticatedHillbilly
1yr ago
While I agree with your point and generally am opposed to simply handwaving away all the details on how exactly we will par for things, I think the USA might actually be an example where this is true.
The state has immense resources at it's disposal, and almost certainly could give a comfortable life to everyone if it tried to do so without raising taxes or the like.. Of course, this would require cutting costs in other areas, and more importantly it would require cutting cost disease and corruption. Tough to provide for your citizens when the budget is stretched to its limit on $200 aspirins and $100,000 sinecures.
SophisticatedHillbilly
1yr ago
I have a story for this. I was a good but lazy student in primary school. I once received a report card in which, in the official "Absences" section, I was listed as having missed 5 days of school. Scrawled by hand on the back of the page was "SophisticatedHillbilly has missed over 3 weeks of school."
It was rather funny to see the contrast all in one place like that, though I appreciate their willingness to bend the rules for me. It definitely did me more good than sitting in school a bit longer.
SophisticatedHillbilly
1yr ago
Actually, sexuality as well I would think. Any time I've viewed a particular strain of porn over an extended period, it's certainly influenced my inclinations and attractions in the real world as well. I won't give specifics, but some of these went rather far. I believe the porn treadmill is a decently well-known phenomena.
SophisticatedHillbilly
1yr ago
To the former, so be it. To the latter: There is probably a non-zero number of parents who would push their children to do so I suppose, but any employer that allowed it would probably be being watched by the FBI pretty closely. And of course, so would be anyone who attended such a strip-club. I'm also 99% sure that the parents who would make their children work as strippers probably aren't raising their children very effectively in the counterfactual world where that's illegal, they're just doing other things that are in the privacy of their own homes. All rights will inevitably be abused. That does not make the rights bad or mean we shouldn't have them.
SophisticatedHillbilly
1yr ago
Yes, I would absolutely consider them illegitimate.
SophisticatedHillbilly
1yr ago
None, short of murder, violence that causes permanent or long-term physical harm, or selling them into slavery.
The breadth of parenting options should basically range from "take them to the drag show" to "don't even let them look at a person of the other gender"
This is a case where I actually genuinely believe that "Everyone gets to follow their own values" is actually legitimately superior to "everyone adheres to my values." I have parenting methods that I think are best. But those are methods for parenting MY children, made of MY genes. If everyone did them it would probably be a disaster.
SophisticatedHillbilly
1yr ago
Same, and it bothered me a bit because I was like "I don't even remember interacting with them! What could it mean?"
SophisticatedHillbilly
1yr ago
As mentioned in my other comment, the problem is that food, while a comparatively small portion of the budget, is one of the only parts that is highly flexible. This means that food, and a few other flexible spends, bear all the weight of the lost money from the inflexible spends increasing in price. This adds a sort of salt-in-the-wound effect when the food is more expensive as well. I think this is a big part of why people fixate on food prices in particular.
SophisticatedHillbilly
1yr ago
The other problem is that the job got a lot harder. We have basically invented entire new classes of food since then, and more importantly there's been a lot of population mixing. Given that the optimal diet for one group (not even race, much narrower genetic groups than that) can be completely opposite that of another, it's a damn hard nut to crack now.
SophisticatedHillbilly
1yr ago
Additionally, part of it for me is the expense breakdown and where the cuts have to be made. There are several unavoidable expenses, and a very small field of adjustable expenses. As such, all tightening of the belt has to be done out of a very small portion of the overall budget.
Heating, and gas cannot be adjusted. I already use them as little as possible, and any further reduction would be stupid and harmful. Any increase in heating or gas costs then, has to be cut out of something else. Hard goods (furniture, dishware, clothing, appliances etc) likewise cannot be adjusted, as I pay nothing for them (hooray Facebook Marketplace!)
Food and other consumables can be adjusted, but only by dropping in quality noticably. Because this is my only flex point, it is where almost all of the change in standard of living occurs. Say my overall spending power drops by 10%. That's not a lot, but this category makes up only 20% of my spending, and is the only area where change can occur, so I have to take a very large hit to the quality of consumables just to break even. This hurts a lot. Eating cheaper makes me feel worse, noticably, both physically and emotionally.
I think many experience a similar effect. If only 10% of your budget is discretionary spending and your real purchasing power drops by 10%, you now have no discretionary spending money at all. That is a massive hit to quality of life. Straight from "well I work a lot but I get fun outings and the occasional vacation," all the way to "I literally just work to live to continue working."
SophisticatedHillbilly
1yr ago
There are a lot of rules against building houses, and I don't consider building houses ever being a problem exactly. Wouldn't surprise me if Prohibition was similar, just one group pushing their strategically optimal set of values, damn the societal consequences.
SophisticatedHillbilly
1yr ago
This is absolutely true, and if for no other reasons it's because the major cities are so unbelievably undersupplied in housing. This estimate puts it at a need for over 4 million more housing units in San Francisco alone being needed: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/11/us-housing-gap-cost-affordability-big-cities/672184/
There are many people that I do in fact share sensitive information with. Those people are not you. I'm sorry if you have no one trustworthy in your life. I have many such people, who are trustworthy because of their commitment to principle.
I fully agree that most people are not principled. I do not expect them to be, but I do not think being principle-less is any more acceptable because the majority of people do it. I am happy to simply prune my own social circle of those I see lacking in principle. Even having done so, I am left with a much, much larger circle than the average person anyway.
The whole point of having principles is that by being unmoved by incentives, you open the possibility of changing the incentives themselves. If enough people hold that lying is evil, then you push the cost-benefit balance away from lying. To follow incentives, or design with them in mind, is to cede the power of incentive-setting to those who won't budge.
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