cjet79
Anarcho Capitalist on moral grounds
Libertarian Minarchist on economic grounds
User ID: 124
cjet79
19hr ago
How badly the author is getting pilloried on the internet for this? You maybe mentioned some twitter reaction, but I don't think you linked it. I am mostly just curious. I shared the bare details of this story with my wife and she immediately had a WTF reaction to the author. Especially the "your not in trouble" line. Also turned out that line was a lie anyways given how things ended.
cjet79
19hr ago
Senators shouldn't represent people anyways. They should represent state governments like they were supposed to. And California should split into multiple states if it wants better representation in the senate. But they'd be dumb to do so because they get far more government control of the country by just having their state legislature act like a mini-national government and pass a bunch of regulations. Corporations/manufacturers are basically forced to comply because of the size of the California market. I'm unsympathetic to these complaints. On paper they have less representation, in reality they have an outsized influence.
cjet79
23hr ago
I'd be happy with structural changes. I hope if this passes it makes certain structural changes more likely as they are seen as one of the few workable ways to prevent this kind of bullshit.
cjet79
1d ago
You must write with way more tells than me. I've tried this before, multiple times, it never identified me. Just tried with Gemini. It thought my recent Virginia election day post was by the user @Tailsteak. There is no user with that name on the site. That is the screen name of a web cartoonist, and maybe a furry as well. Oh and that is after I gave it the website and when I posted it. Prior to those hints it thought the post was by The_Clash_of_Paper on lesswrong (a user that also doesn't exist I think) back in 2020.
cjet79
1d ago
Despite sharing it and finding it interesting I'm against it. I think the actual result of this would be to weaken congress and strengthen the president/bureaucracy/supreme court/main parties. Congress is already weak enough.
It would be more difficult to gerrymander all of these districts.
cjet79
1d ago
There were lots of articles saying that Trump said Republicans were "entitled" to 5 more districts in Texas. Which is why I blamed him in the first place. Your comment got me to go research it more.
I place less blame on Trump now. This seems like a fight the Democrats were itching for and they picked up on a minor interview thing.
Virginia is voting on redrawing their congressional districts today. Here is the Wikipedia entry.
The main highlight is that it would change Virginia from 6-5 democrat-republican split to a 10-1 split. It is being sold by Democrats as an effort to counter Republican gerrymandering in other states. It is being panned by Republicans as unfair representation, and an election map that looks like Fairfax county (rich county in northern Virginia) gets to elect about half of the state's representatives.
I'm a Virginia resident. So I've been getting lots of mailers about the issue and simple vote "yes" or "no" signs are everywhere.
I'm very frustrated with the whole thing. First for Trump kicking off this fight. Second with the Democrats in Virginia that have made a ridiculously bullshit map. I still have yet to hear anyone from the "yes" side explain how this is good for Virginia other than "fight Trump". I even read one article that had a title implying it would be about voters not feeling represented, and it turns out the content of the article was about democratic leaders addressing the democrat voters in the now single solitary red district. No content about how Republican voters might feel in the 10 other districts.
If this level of bullshit is on the table I feel like other proposals that get shot down for being "crazy" in normal times might end up back on the table. Like a bunch of Virginia counties seceding and joining West Virginia. Or the right to giant congress
- edit - it appears the redistricting effort has passed.
cjet79
1d ago
I wish there was an equivalent on the anti-Zionist side, but aside from people like Norman Finkelstein, there aren't many who aren't just antisemites with a coat of paint.
Its this sort of statement I responded to above and what kind of bothers me. There are definitely moderates on this issue. I just get the sense that you don't get to be both a moderate and get any air time in the debate. Its a toxoplasma issue and both sides spend a lot of effort amplifying the crazies on the other side, and there is plenty of crazy to go around.
I actually am not particularly invested in Israel. I wish them well but I also wish the Palestinians well - my preference would be for an impossible peace. I blame the impossibility mostly on the Palestinians, but not entirely. I also don't think the US should be so heavily invested in Israel. What do they do for us, really?
This seems pretty close to the same position as all the moderate secular Jews i know. And pretty close to my position, with the added caveat that I blame more than just Israel's immediate neighbor. The Arab states in general seem like bad neighbors. Like maybe only above "african warlord" and "USSR" as a category of bad neighbor.
cjet79
1d ago
Definitely a funny option. Though if they had somehow ended up in Taiwan as a result of this, and been right on top of computer chip production. Oy vey, imagine those rumors of Jewish control.
cjet79
1d ago
Yeah I also had the thought of something akin to the Indian reservation system that US has for old tribes. They get their land, they are a semi sovereign entity within US territory. And their people can choose integration or separation. The Amish and Mennonites also are able to maintain extreme religious beliefs and a separate society within America. Orthodox Judaism seems to also have thriving communities in New York city.
cjet79
1d ago
In all seriousness, read a few books on the topic. (I recommend reading both pro- and anti-Israel historians.) It might not convince you the Israel project was a good idea, but there are definitely reasons that made sense at the time, both ethno-religious and otherwise. Of course there were many alternative plans besides Israel itself; Uganda, Madagascar, Venezuela, and Alaska were among the proposals. It was both practical and historical reasons that lead to Israel proper being the location chosen. It may well be that it was doomed from the beginning, but for example, "Let all the Jews who want their own state move to America" was definitely not an option when the Zionist movement began in the 19th century, and it wasn't even an option for all the Jews to flee to the US after WWII.
I believe you. I'm not gonna read books on the topic. My level of interest in foreign affairs tends to drop precipitously off of a cliff somewhere at the edge of my neighborhood. Its a benefit of living in the US that I dont have to understand foreign peoples and conflicts.
Im curious if you know if any of the architects of the Israel project ever expressed regret or a moment of 'whoopsie, that was the wrong place'?
cjet79
1d ago
I think DC would need a few hundred more incidents like that in a year to rival an israeli citizen's terrorism danger. I think I'd revise my position if these sorts of incidents became neighborhood awareness of threats rather than national news. Which would maybe be around a few dozen happening each year in most or all cities, and many more happening in Jewish centers like New York.
The perpetrators are also as far as I'm aware still treated like full criminals, with no chance of them being handed off to a neighboring nation in a hostage exchange.
cjet79
1d ago
I am sure there is someone out there who is opposed to the existence of Israel on philosophical grounds but legitimately harbours no animosity towards Jews on an interpersonal level and sincerely wishes them no harm.
I feel this describes most of the Jewish Americans that I knew in college and highschool. Especially the ethnically and culturally Jewish that did little of the actual religion part. I didn't get to poll many of them after the October 7th attack, but the few I did poll seemed to have shifted a bit after that. More pro Zionist obviously.
There is something to be said about the people harping on the Jewish state online the loudest are just generally not happy with Jewish people.
I sort of feel that the best solution would be for Jews to just all live in America. The middle east seems like a shit hole. The fact that they really want to stay there and make it work seems strange to me. I feel no animosity towards Jewish people, and I certainly tend to enjoy their comedy (ari schafir) and writing (scott Alexander). I'd be happy to have more of them as neighbors.
It just seems like a doomed project to have an ethnostate and religious minority in a third world area, and neighbors with one of the most war happy religions out there. I am confused how the Israel project seemed like a good idea ever. Unless it was a naked attempt to just kick the remaining Jews out of Europe and let the Muslims finish the ethnic cleansing that Hitler started.
cjet79
2d ago
Fair enough, if AI is merely a productivity enhancement tool we have nothing to worry about.
cjet79
2d ago
How does moral not come into tax questions?
It's one of the main ways that the government slams it's weight around in the economy. How it does so can impact everyone's livelihoods.
cjet79
2d ago
It was comparing token output of a knowledge worker making about 100k a year. Which it estimated at 15-20 million tokens of human output. And then taxes on that person being about 30k. So tokens being taxed at 30k per 20 million.
The approach is not necessarily good, it's just what I started with when I had this thought.
cjet79
3d ago
AI labor currently has a tax advantage over human labor. I ask an AI to spit out a tax proposal where AI tokens were taxed a similar rate to humans that make 100k in the US. It made AIs something like 18x-850x more expensive. Which would make AIs economically non viable.
I do still feel that the tax advantage for AI labor is still morally wrong, but I don't want to effectively ban them. Is that just me?
How would you try to structure taxes such that the advantage disappears, but the AIs remain viable?
cjet79
3d ago
Mining was also a pretty rough profession for a long time.
The word "necessary" might be doing a lot of the lifting either way. It definitely makes some industries more profitable for the owners, but how "necessary" is it for that industry to be more profitable?
For something like salt mines maybe it matters a lot since salt was used to preserve food, and food preservation was very important for armies and power projection.
But for something else like tobacco production in the Americas .. the industry wasn't necessary at all. It was a luxury good that caused long term medical problems. Sugar is probably similar as well.
cjet79
4d ago
Started TheMotte factorio server with krastorio and additional planets. Let me know if you want to join. Weird time zones welcome. We don't have to all play at the same time.
cjet79
5d ago
I'd go back in time to pre Disney acquisition of Star wars with all the scripts of the worst Disney era star wars movies.
I'd do something to try and stop them from getting made. I don't know enough about movie script copyright to know the exact details. Or maybe I just mail them to George Lucas.
cjet79
7d ago
To me, it seems wild to look at this and not want to shut all eonomic immigration down hard, (H1-Bs, etc).
Economics is often not intuitive, and this is not likely to actually help the situation.
There are basically two economic tracks that anyone can take. They can either offer services to the global market or the local market. The global market pays really well, but its also competitive as hell. The local market pay is dependent on how many rich global market people you have living nearby. Local market pay is often going to be heavily tied with local cost of living, but generally the local market pay outpaces the cost of living (or when it stops doing that people to leave).
An immigrant moving to your country can either work in the global market, in which case there is more money and resources flowing into your local area. Or they can work in the local market, in which case they are slightly lowering the cost of living for you. If they stay where they are they can still compete with you on the global market, its just that none of the money/resources is flowing to your area.
cjet79
7d ago
For sure, and for Eric Swalwell having someone interested in his political career was probably an important variable as well.
In that world Mao Zedong as supreme ruler is the same thing as democracy.
There obvious differences between direct democracy and representative democracy. Senate was supposed to be two layers removed from direct democracy, house and president just one layer.
I know why California regulations impact the whole US. If California was 1/50th of the US market it probably wouldn't be worth it. They are instead about 15% of the US economy. Which is enough that manufacturers will change to their requirements.
I'd be fine with Texas and Florida splitting up as states as well. New York should split. Virginia should split. Probably a few others.
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