anti_dan
17d ago
Building social cohesion is not stupid. When it works your community has virtually no transaction costs.
anti_dan
18d ago
A typical ballot contains anywhere from 15 to 25 positions/questions, and anywhere from 20 to 40 candidates (not exact, totally spitballing based on previous experience). That's a lot of names. Hard to keep them all straight, yes?
Not really if I care about them.
We had 3 statewide advisory questions. Easy enough to remember. 1 State and 2 federal. A few LE-related questions. A school board choice. And about 30 judges to vote on, all that I remembered. There were also 2 local advisory questions, again easy to remember. The remainder were niche like water reclamation.
Whether I am deliberately abstaining, or not bothering is kind of subjective. My opinion is its not worth my time to educate myself about water reclamation not just because its so niche a subject, but also because I don't think any of the sources will be particularly trustworthy. If you wanted to, of course, for most of these niche questions you can vote party line and expect a pretty average result from whatever party you favor.
In any case, if you want to you can always get a sample ballot at home, fill it out and copy it at the booth.
anti_dan
18d ago
What is particularly difficult for you? I understand that perhaps your referendum are poorly (perhaps intentionally) worded, but what else is so hard? It is perfectly fine to simply not vote in races where you dont know or dont care enough to know. I know most of the judges, so I vote on judges. I care about schools and law enforcement so I take time to make my choice. I don't particularly know about water reclamation so I tend to abstain. Perfectly acceptable.
anti_dan
18d ago
Voting this year was much less chaotic than 2020 and 2022. The polling place was actually clean and organized as opposed to there being boxes scattered everywhere. And the electioneering folks stayed behind the line for once.
Very improved. Visually. Now if only they could get the mechanics down. Still a seemingly 0% signature rejection rate. Chain of custody is better, but I saw at least 2 people have to spoil ballots and the COD on those was wonky, and they just sat out for far too long.
anti_dan
19d ago
Sure. Doesn't mean there were not religions they looked upon similarly. No reason to be pedantic when child sacrifice is involved.
anti_dan
19d ago
You don't think Jews colloquially referred to child sacrificing religions in their region as satanic? The Talmud discusses such a figure in several places as one who tempts to sin.
anti_dan
20d ago
There is a great cost to scammers utilizing ingroup signals though, it introduces friction akin to a transaction tax imposed by the government, except now it is imposed by lack of ability to trust. Sometimes transactions are so consequential it always makes sense to have vetting with insurance. Something like title insurance on a real estate property. But what about the special Best Buy warranties? What if it made sense to buy that crap for a $400 television because you dont know if you are getting a SONY or a SƠNY? This pretty quickly destroys your economy.
anti_dan
21d ago
Your point being that no soldier she has sent to war was ever outnumbered in a battlefield situation?
anti_dan
21d ago
TIL that religions abhorred by biblical religions and engaged in child sacrifice are not satanic because edgy atheists in the 1960s tried to coin the phrase.
anti_dan
22d ago
I mean. Its not really about the article itself, although the article is good. The point is true. Gay and transgender ideology have become akin to the pagan/satanic religions of old. Many people have noticed. Scott just figured out the best headline.
anti_dan
22d ago
Its quite obvious where I live that there is a gradient from one side of the neighborhood (which neighbors a primarily mexican one) to the other (which borders a primarily white yuppie one). You go from frequent corona and modelo bottles to fewer, to on the other side your problem being that the trash cans are overloaded by then end of a 3 day weekend because those people can't help but use the cans, and the city refuses to install enough cans. Also people write on their own private cans "private use only" because otherwise these litter-adverse folks will simply seek out the closest available can rather than utilize a sidewalk once the official cans are spent.
anti_dan
23d ago
Go on. Make the case for Puerto Rico being better than the mainland, and for those who come to the mainland being better than the ones already here with regards to litter.
anti_dan
23d ago
Well of course, because people's decisions are the reflection of their soul. These are not the same tired dad. One is on the path to evil and one on the past to good. The point is that perhaps those on the outside don't, and may never know the difference. One guy does a perfectly small and positive thing and really improves the kid's life. The rapist is too extreme a comparison on the other side of the ledger, but perhaps the bad tired dad gives the kid some booze and weed to go away.
Anyways I consider this portion much more important:
What it means is your soul's fate will often not turn on the fact you've raised $1billion for charity or if you shoplift cigarettes to sell on street corners, rather it will often hinge on you coming across a person who's soul lies on the verge of two paths, on one path he becomes a healthy, relatively pious, member of the community, and on the other he becomes deranged and sinful.
anti_dan
23d ago
Exactly what context could that passage possibly have that would change its meaning to something other than "Don't treat human beings as disposable for the Greater Good just because you're not doing it to very many of them."‽
The full quote is, "Whosoever destroys one soul, it is as though he had destroyed the entire world. And whosoever saves a life, it is as though he had saved the entire world." It refers not to government policy or action but to individual wickedness and acts of grace. It is also Talmudic in origin so its persuasiveness will vary.
But generally the meaning is about pulling a person into sin or pulling them from sin. What it means is your soul's fate will often not turn on the fact you've raised $1billion for charity or if you shoplift cigarettes to sell on street corners, rather it will often hinge on you coming across a person who's soul lies on the verge of two paths, on one path he becomes a healthy, relatively pious, member of the community, and on the other he becomes deranged and sinful. Say you are a tired ass dad who was cajoled into being a camp counselor and there is a sad kid. You can, destroy his soul, by taking advantage and raping him and sending him onto the path of drugs, booze, and homosexuality. Or you could uplift him and take him to the fitness center and teach him lifts and cardio and a sport. Now he's into fitness, teamwork, etc and is on the path to a good life. That would be your classic such situation.
What have I misunderstood? One thing that those regimes had in common prior to the piles of skulls was that they were based on ideologies which held that the community is the moral patient and human beings only matter as far as they are useful to it, rather than human beings being moral patients and the community existing for their benefit.
Is there some other thing they have in common with each other and not with liberalism?
Yes, its the total command of people's lives and hostility to dissent. A policy that benefits the community because people are being useful, and excludes people who are not is the Earned Income Tax Credit, and various child tax credits. People who don earn income or don't have children cant benefit from those things. Many such policies in the modern liberal system.
Is there some relevant characteristic which is true of 100.000% of opposite-sex relationships but 0.000% of same-sex relationships? Then there is no reason not to judge directly on that.
Government programs are always both overbroad and underinclusive. This is because they have to apply to massive populations. There will always be some portion of rich people who can by some loophole get food stamps, and some portion of genuinely hungry people who cannot. Such is a government program.
There is no cosmic justice in a government program. So consider the government program of marriage. Why does it exist? To simplify family formation because the government has an interest in the future children of the country. MF couples spontaneously create children in the common scenario. So government marriage was constructed as a policy, often borrowing heavily from religious marriage, which also only at the time applied to MF couples. Now, obviously some MF couples are infertile and some homosexual couples adopt children. So its imperfect at both fringes. But as we see with welfare, that must necessarily apply to any government program.
I will tie this back to one of your other statements:
FOO and BAR are what are called metasyntactic variables, acting as a stand-in for anything different between the average man and the average woman which would affect the morality or immorality of their relationship. If you tell us what you believe the relevant differences between the genders are, I can explain how this applies to it specifically.
This formulation just almost never works with government policies. Take immigration. There is your classic FOOBAR situation here no? Why should we allow American descendants of slaves to remain in the US, while not admitting all SSAs who want to come? Their difference is one of FOOBAR. Some had ancestors that were sent over, the others did not. The ones that did not would be better if they had been. But that isn't what we do. We aren't sending them all back or letting them all in. Because this frame is just a sort of deck stacking for either side "ethnically cleanse" or side "open borders". Its impractical to think this way when we are talking about large scale solutions to social problems.
anti_dan
24d ago
Who saves one life, saves the world entire
Out of context religious doctrine just makes you sound stupid.
Many societies have thought this way. They have tended to leave skulls.
Proudly misunderstanding the failure mode of communism and fascism also makes you sound stupid.
Except for the fact that other anti-social behaviour harms people....
We are talking about a specific arrangement where the state provides benefits to a sort of arrangement. Including and excluding different types of people is often necessary to preserve resources. There is no reason to extend marriage benefits to M-M or F-F relationships because they don't function similarly to M-F relationships.
anti_dan
24d ago
I think the pre-Trump Republican establishment has been caught up in respectability politics for most of my life and wining elections was considered non-important.
I think catching voter fraud, at the levels demanded by courts, would have required active sting operations. None were conducted. Such is the way the system is made. Ballots are instantly anonomized when cast.
Of course I prefer talking about making ongoing elections secure. Also I don't focus on 2020, as you can see, my concerns rely on things that happened before even 2016. That said, 2020 was particularly bad. Just look at signature rejection rates in major swing states. They were implausibly low.
anti_dan
24d ago
If women are, on average, disproportionally FOO, and men, on average, disproportionally BAR, then, in the hypothetical, Alice is more BAR than most women and/or Adam is more FOO than most men.
This is only relevant if you think ephemeral things like FOO and BAR are relevant, and if you think it is wise to make society-wide policy decisions for fringe cases. I, in particular, don't think the latter. You make policies for the 4 billion, and the couple thousand outliers conform, get outcast, or something different.
Its no different than dealing with other antisocial behavior like crime, just luckily most of these issues are rarer than retail theft of cigarettes and razor blades.
anti_dan
25d ago
The chance of anything meaningful happening relating to speech laws under a Democratic administration is zero. Even if they did control both chambers, which they won't, any national legislation on 'freedom of expression' would never get out of the starting blocks among swathes of Democratic congressmen and women.
This is strongly refuted by the facebook and twitter files wherein it is laid clear that intense backroom pressure was applied to suppress speech. Passing laws is hardly how the government works anymore. It is mostly about controlling the agencies, which it seems Trump is unable to do, particularly on this particular issue. The DOJ prosecuted him and his supporters more than Democrats when he was ostensibly in charge of it!
anti_dan
25d ago
Progressive implementation of the policies will not be as advertised however. You wont get new housing in the city or near the urban core, instead you will get subsidized housing foisted onto suburbs that are being made to heel ala the NJ Mt. Laurel doctrine (see Southern Burlington County N.A.A.C.P. v. Mount Laurel Township ). This pattern has been repeatedly seen in progressive states. The goal of such policies is to make the city itself expensive and rich and less violent while foisting the worst of it on people who explicitly moved away from the violence, thus ending those communities repeat as people flee.
anti_dan
25d ago
To me, 'equal rights for gay people' means that for a system of ethics to be valid, it must be invariant with regard to gender parity, i. e. the morality of an act or relationship is identical to that of an otherwise identical act or relationship, differing only in that the gender of one participant is reversed.
This seems a very odd and unique definition. The genders are not the same, so why would swapping them in any situation result in the same result?
anti_dan
25d ago
But how likely are we to find out who did it? 50/50 seems high odds. Throwing a molotov into a mountain of paper isn't exactly something that is all that easy to sleuth out. Unless the offender drove up with a license plate visible to nearby cameras or stared into one their ID is going to be pretty hard.
anti_dan
25d ago
How so? With the national popular vote you encourage such vote inflation practices nationwide. Engaging in election security would be gimping your own state's votes, better to just have the election security of a subway turnstile during rush hour. A city of 100k produces 200k votes? All the better for amplifying the will of your state citizens.
Maybe, but she's also just Kamala. One of the least relatable politicians of all time with a background of being the most left wing senator of the last decade.
If the Election was held August 1st, she probably would have won because no one knew anything about her. If it was held Jan 1, its possible she'd lose 45 states.
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