anon_
1mo ago
This seems like a pretty good scenario to go back to the basics: ballots should be counted if the relevant authority can be assured they arrived on time should not be counted otherwise. The remaining effort is on how to ascertain that for a given set of facts.
If an early MIB arrived on October 15th and the relevant authority has strong assurance of that (it went into a chain-of-custody and blah blah blah) then not counting it because it was dated wrong seems unjustified. Other fact matters might lead to different conclusions.
anon_
1mo ago
I guess prior to recent decades, everyone occupying or campaigning for that office had the sense not to pull a political stunt on hallowed ground. That practice didn't spiral out of control.
anon_
1mo ago
I’m convinced that most politicians have no idea how to actually identify, study, and solve problems in the real world.
I don't think they ever should or did. Since you mention Moldbug, it's not like the King was meant to personally be an expert in infrastructure or coinage or agriculture. A few were, no doubt, but I think the job of politicians is largely to select the right folks to advise him, to choose wisely amongst their counsels and to mediate accountability to the public will.
the plucky Ukrainian military run by a former comedian can win a war against a former KGB agent
And yet.
anon_
1mo ago
Army regulations and DoD policies, which clearly prohibit political activities on cemetery grounds. An ANC employee who attempted to ensure adherence to these rules was abruptly pushed aside,”
Obviously the Army can regulate uniformed soldiers, but it does not seem that the statute (or any ensuing reg) can specifically single out political or campaign-related speech, since that would be a content-based restriction. Congress could (directly or through authorizing regulation) prohibit all speeches within the cemetery, since that would be a neutral time-place-manner restriction.
Of course the left "he broke the law" folks are just banging that drum without thinking through whether the law is even plausibly constitutional.
My take would probably be to ban all these shenanigans without distinction. For one, that's in line with our constitutional tradition of not distinguishing between speech on different topics, but also because none of that shit belongs in a cemetery for fallen soldiers.
anon_
1mo ago
People with depression should be encouraged to do normal person things. How far up the list would you put voting?
I would probably put it reasonably high given that they have to do it literally once in a year and then feel good they have performed their civic duty. Especially for people that likely feel significant sadness about not fulfilling many of their other duties.
There's plenty of functional, healthy people that don't find voting necessary or worth worrying about.
Traditionally we've described this as a minor abdication of duty.
yes we are a D political advocacy group that aims to register more Ds. We offer registration resources to other non-D voting demographics. As this allows us to call ourselves non-partisan and more effectively recruit potential doctors to help our political cause. We will not try nearly as hard to reach non-D voting demographics, either through resource allocation or messaging, but that is not our mission
Sure. That seems like bread and butter stuff in the advocacy world.
Maybe the disconnect is, I don't see non-partisan to be the same as non-political. Obviously any kind of GOTV is political in nature.
anon_
1mo ago
He didn't say it definitely wouldn't help.
For a college age kid with a vague complaint like "I feel disconnected from my life and don't take pleasure in a lot of things", it's completely sane advice. And, as you said, it's certainly lower on the scale of burden than "spend $$$ on in depth psychotherapy to discover what it is".
It's the mental health equivalent of "take two advil, get a good night sleep, and call me in the morning if it's not better". Treatment proceeds from least invasive to most, even if the former has somewhat lower probability of success (if only because many health issues, mental and physical, abate on their own anyway).
anon_
1mo ago
Notably, women's suffrage in most Western countries was not the result of women using violence to coerce men into accepting them as political equals. Rather, it was the result of successful ideological persuasion of male franchise-holders, achieved in no small part via the critical contributions of women to the collective industrial efforts in World War 1.
I think this explanation discounts a number of other critical aspects that ultimately resulted in suffrage.
One notable one is that the political foundation of the United States (consent of the governed, no taxation without representation) lends itself straightforwardly to universal suffrage. It is possible, temporary, to sustain contradictions in those foundations (consent of the male property holder) but, like putting epicycles onto the orbits, it eventually collapses.
anon_
1mo ago
When the program extends to mental health institutions and picks up a motto of Voting Is Great For You Actually Because Anecdote this seems like it should be made an issue.
I think the issue here is really just the honesty of presentation.
A while back, I was feeling a bit unmoored and ahedonic, a uni counselor said (among other advice) "drink lots of water and take a walk outside every day". I asked if that would really help and he said maybe not, but in any event it was a good idea to drink water and take a walk outside.
Encouraging patients to do the things they need to do even if (and I agree) it very likely won't help with their condition seems OK if done with candor.
anon_
1mo ago
I don't think anyone should hold Trump or Vance (or anyone else) to the wacky things they say that aren't realistic policy either.
I think it's bad to propose wacky things that aren't realistic policy for political points, but it's not the same as actually trying to do those things.
anon_
1mo ago
"Payments of the minimum tax would be treated as a prepayment available to be credited against subsequent taxes on realized capital gains to avoid taxing the same amount of gain more than once"
I have altered the deal. Pray that I do not alter it further.
anon_
1mo ago
As some detail, there is a proposed 25% tax on unrealized gains for the super wealthy coupled with a 44% tax on realized gains.
The term "proposed" here is giving it way too much credit. It's been proposed in the sense of "included in a campaign speech" and not "included in a budget sent to Congress" let alone "included in a bill actually sponsored in the House of Representatives".
anon_
1mo ago
I could be into a more narrow version of the 2nd Amendment that restricts gun ownership to only certain highly vetted groups.
As I'm fond of jesting at people with similar agendas: I completely agree and I graciously accept the responsibility of appointing and chairing the 7-member commission that is in charge of vetting.
anon_
1mo ago
That's true but if some percentage are coming over the border they must be doing so because it is easier than the visa-overstay method.
Moreover, anyone who overstays a visa has been processed & fingerprinted by USCIS on entry and so is at least partially a known quantity.
anon_
1mo ago
I'm confused. /u/gilmore606 was claiming that skimming the top off the rest of the world is immoral for other reasons. Your response is seemingly unrelated.
And surely the Chinese or Indian Silicon Valley bro is paying a bare minimum of $80K in fed taxes. More if you count various CA/local taxes in there.
anon_
1mo ago
Thanks for the insight here.
At best, Lynch as CEO and Chamberlain as VP of Finance managed to miss tens of millions of dollars in not-quite-honest claims by their CFO; more likely, they at least futzed with the truth, if not necessarily to the point of it being covered by a law.
That's a nuanced position. And I understand that one can conclude that even if they didn't (quite) break the law, they were less than honest in the commission of their legal obligations.
The driver of the car, a 49-year-old woman from Haddenham, remained at the scene and was assisting officers with their inquiries.
This does not sound like the behavior of a deep state super assassin. If true, this would update against foul play.
anon_
1mo ago
Yes, but even they are not permitted to make such policies explicit and legible.
An unevenly applied law that notionally applies to all is still better than different laws for me and thee.
anon_
1mo ago
The emperor or his governors are the most likely culprits to decide they need some extra grain so their army can conquer/defend.
anon_
1mo ago
If that foreign currency can be exchanged for goods and services that are useful here, that part is deflationary.
In the case of the Saudis, they already denominate oil in USD and there's nothing else to buy with the riyal so yeah. But for Euro or Yen ...
anon_
1mo ago
This surely can't be entirely true. It would be quite surprising if there were zero or negative returns to ingenuity and assiduousness.
Of course you might be ingenious on your own little farm and do things smarter than the next guy. But beyond a certain size/scale, there is certainly a negative return because your success attracts some bellend to come and take it.
To some extent, this is a circular problem. There's little protection against expropriation, so lots of it happens. Most wealth is therefore expropriated (at least once) and hence there is little social support protecting wealth from expropriation.
Look at the chart of global GDP.
anon_
1mo ago
The efforts necessary to secure the border and to police the presence of illegal immigrants in the country now would require abrogations of civil liberties that would be totally unacceptable.
There's a lot of weight resting on the and conjunction in that sentence. The first conjunct seems doable without much harm to civil liberties, and it seems like it is relying entirely on the second conjunct to support it.
FWIW: I do think that importing low-skill labor is important and generally a good idea within some bounds (and, equivalently, a bad idea if executed poorly).
anon_
1mo ago
Isn't this also true on the level of cities & states in the US? CA/NY/TX soak up the top talent, but even within each of the states, the directionality of it is pretty stark.
anon_
1mo ago
Fully agree. Americans will absolutely tolerate that Taylor Swift or Warren Buffett are totally unequal to them, but they will not tolerate a formal legal system that deems them so.
anon_
1mo ago
I understand acquittal as a legal concept but were they narrowly acquitted or was it a slam-dunk acquittal? And did that acquittal turn on factual or legal matters?
Also, what came of the motor vehicle accident? Did the car and driver just disappear into the ether (suspicious) or is there a legal docket somewhere in Cambridge where some old lady is gonna be tried for grossly negligent driving resulting in grave injury (or whatever the equivalent English charge is).
I feel otherwise you're handing us a tiny sliver of half-baked facts and just wanting people to run with it.
anon_
2mo ago
Someone who believes the lunch was misplaced is operating off mistake theory. Someone who thinks the lunch was stolen is operating off conflict theory. Neither is better than the other, both are appropriate in some situations and inappropriate in others. You can't simply discount either without crippling your ability to reason about the actions and motivations of others.
There's another analogous dimension -- tug of rope vs pulling the rope sideways.
Just as neither conflict/mistake is better than the other, so to is the distinction between shifting power/preference between parties vs pushing outwards towards the Pareto frontier.
I think the flip-side is, the lack of acknowledge of the frictions of voting are also frustrating.
Both are valid, IMHO. We have a system that manages to be both awful at integrity and awfully painful to use.
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