coffee_enjoyer
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User ID: 541
coffee_enjoyer
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15d ago
I somewhat doubt that most voters are looking at objective metrics of inflation rather than “how am I doing financially”. The inflation theory also doesn’t hold true across demographics, I don’t think? Why would elderly women, a demographic which is keenly aware of shifting prices at stores, shift even further toward Kamala? But a “social media environment” can explain this shift, because they aren’t on the new environments but stuck in the old news cycle + newspaper environment.
coffee_enjoyer
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15d ago
Maybe, but at least one big study found that “declining assessments of personal economic well-being also failed to change voter preferences.” I’m wary of the typical explanations. Do we find that people whose economic position increased in recent years are more likely to vote for the incumbent, and those whose decreased are less likely? Eg, if we look at an industry that “randomly” got more earnings on average, are they more likely to vote for the incumbent?
and that their main tactic is randomly firing rockets into general area and suicide bombings
You think Hamas’ main tactic is suicide bombings? Not sure if I should even request a source at this point.
Why you think that pre-teen child soldiers would phase them of all things?
First, there is zero evidence that they are employing them (lol), and no one can find evidence of it stretching back one to two decades. Second, because of a mix of norms and international pressure. Employing your own children as child soldiers is much different than a bomb exploding which impacts a child.
Why using children as soldiers would be treated as worse than murdering children and celebrating it?
You have to look at the number of children killed on Oct 7 and then determine whether they died because of a conscious decision of a Hamas soldier or because Israel enacted a military protocol of blowing up every car and building if it contained a Hamas soldier and hostage.
coffee_enjoyer
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15d ago
What are some other factors that could explain Trump’s victory, besides “Kamala is unlikable”? It sucks that we can’t determine how Trump won as the pollsters are too inaccurate, but we can still make guesses.
I think that the rise in scrolling-based media (tik tok, reels) has made non-political social media content significantly more addicting than the political media of the 10s and news in general. This reduces the number of people engaging in online political content, and reduces the political engagement of those whose political information came via online spectacles. For a variety of reasons I think that Democrats have relied on more “addictive internet content” to recruit votes, as for instance the BLM / brutality / racism motif of Obama-Hillary-Biden campaigns. George Floyd can’t compete with Moo Deng. Consider that Northwestern study which found that BLM shifted swing state votes more than concern about the economy. If Dems rely on socially contagious hype more than Republicans then they need to fundamentally rethink their strategy in a post-2020 social media environment.
coffee_enjoyer
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15d ago
Counter-argument: make all political appointments for life and multiply the salary many times over. This way politicians can spend their life going after whatever entity they think does the most damage (whether big tech / Amazon, school unions, pharma, etc) without worrying how it affects the party or the next election.
coffee_enjoyer
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15d ago
Do you mean the favored house rep, Mid-Atlantic?
coffee_enjoyer
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16d ago
Many (most?) complex civilizations “believed in” personifications of bad behavioral inclinations and social forces, and they called them evil spirits or demons. IMO the utility of personifying invisible forces is that humans are excellent at memorizing characters with personalities, but not lists of assertions or principles. It’s easier to persuade oneself not to eat too much cake when it’s a question of obeying an ugly demon who tempts you with thoughts and who has tempted you before, versus some hazy self-negotiation involving delayed gratification and self-reward. Demons also center a person’s moral identity: your true identity always wants the longterm good, and the demons are what tempt you (not “another part of me wants…” which is sort of depersonalizing). If the intel community is religious and interested in civilization-crafting then maybe they want to bring back angels and demons? Linking UFOs to unknown forces takes the public’s interests away from futuristic cia crafts and onto spiritual concerns. Plausibly, the same org that is so high-tech that it can make UFOs is also so smart that they see no merit in a population overly concerned with mind-boggling military technology.
coffee_enjoyer
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17d ago
It’s interesting to consider the motivations and incentives of the state employees here. I doubt the people who wrote the laws and procedures would act similarly, so what went wrong? Some possibilities —
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The state hires people to euthanize animals. This may inadvertently select for people who enjoy euthanizing animals. The state should take steps to ensure that those they hire to commit necessary evils aren’t searching for evil thrills.
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The state hires people to euthanize animals. Normal people do not like euthanizing animals. The state should ensure that they aren’t hiring morally-stunted people for the “do we kill the animal” job.
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The owners make money on OnlyFans and also by recording their pets. They make decent money. The employee in charge of euthanizing animals makes less money and in a decidedly less fun way. Killing the owner’s pet is a way to piss off the owner, and the employee may be pissed at the owner because he makes more money more easily. The State should ensure that petty employees can’t take out their grievances on the subject of complaints. I actually think this is a huge part of all sorts of police and bureaucratic misconduct. Rapper has a nice car from rapping about drugs -> I’m going to piss him off because I hate him. State employees are humans and humans act on grievances all the time.
coffee_enjoyer
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17d ago
I looked for UN / amnesty / HRW reports and whether there were reputable new reports on it. If Hamas were employing non-teenage children in a military capacity, it would be publicized widely and talked about regularly. It would be a huge deal and an important propaganda coup for Israel/America. It would also be Israel’s #1 talking point whenever the subject of casualties come up. Not even crazed academics would be able to defend Hamas at that point.
coffee_enjoyer
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18d ago
[re-quoting yourself] ”You seem to have misunderstood the point of the opening, which was to contest your characterization of the limit of child soldiers, which itself wasn't limited to Hamas. A child soldier is not a 16 year old. A child soldier is a child who is used in the function of war, regardless of their age, and as such age alone does not disprove someone from being a combatant unless the age is so low that they physically cannot.”
The definition of “child soldier” is <18, agreed. Ages lower than 18 do not preclude one from classification as a child soldier, agreed. But the NYT focuses on <13 children, and my original post specifies <13. This means we are not talking about legal definitions, but a specific cohort of <13 children. If Hamas is not employing <13 children, then the IDF is not expected to be killing <13 child soldiers. If the IDF is not expected to be killing <13 child soldiers, then we shouldn’t have loads of dead <13 children. Yet there’s evidence that we do have these dead <13 children (NYT+Guardian). So Hamas’ hypothetical employment of teenagers is an immaterial red herring to this topic.
The issue of child soldiers was raised as was a definitional dispute
I don’t see why a definitional dispute would be raised at all.
and as an omission not addressed by the NYT editorial that served as the OP's basis of posting
They did not need to address it, because it’s immaterial to their reporting.
Moreover, child soldiers had nothing to do with the majority of arguments in the post nominated for the AAQC
It was the quoted line and it was included in your post as an argument. It is what I find most disagreeable, and I don’t have to post everything I find disagreeable.
The concluding arguments didn't even raise child soldiers as a basis for the children being shot when listing a half dozen competing hypothesis.
Right but you included it and it was quoted in the award. Perhaps some other time we can discuss your other arguments if I don’t get banned for doing that.
Since this clarifying argument was not disputed, challenged, or otherwise responded to
This is too opaque for me to decipher exactly what you mean.
and the entire subject of child soldiers was only used in the AAQC as the introductory lead-in / hook and to establish a relevant topic missing from the NYT editorial
It was an assertion, and you didn’t prove it was a relevant topic to their reporting.
it is possible that the clarification has simply been ignored to further advance criticism of the position
Not sure what you mean.
just as the sources discussing to the Hamas youth wing child soldier activity within the last decade that was referenced within your article was also ignored
Now we are getting close to something. “Hamas youth wing child soldier activity within the last decade”. Wonderful. Is it <13 children and what’s the evidence?
Truzman 2021 is supposed to be evidence that Hamas employs pre-teen child soldiers. Rather, it’s evidence that there is a military summer camp for teenagers run by Hamas. America also has military summer camps for teenagers. JROTC begins as young as 15, and there are military camps that begin as young as 8. “Hanover and the surrounding districts combine for Young Marines meetings, with a total of around 40 students. Nationwide, the youth group has around 300 clubs. The ages range from 8-18.” They do gymnastics, drills, maybe some shooting practice. Do the tens of thousands of children at American military summer camps constitute clear evidence that America employs child soldiers? No. Of course not. And that’s the same for Hamas. A Hamas summer camp is not the same as employing child soldiers, any more than an American military summer camp is the same as employing child soldiers. Israel has similar summer programs.
There is no military necessity argument for training children instead of adults if you want adult soldiers.
Why do both America and Israel do the same thing? From the New York Times
“They told us it was mandatory,” Ms. Thomas said. J.R.O.T.C. programs, taught by military veterans at some 3,500 high schools across the country, are supposed to be elective, and the Pentagon has said that requiring students to take them goes against its guidelines. But The New York Times found that thousands of public school students were being funneled into the classes without ever having chosen them, either as an explicit requirement or by being automatically enrolled. […] J.R.O.T.C. classes, which offer instruction in a wide range of topics, including leadership, civic values, weapons handling and financial literacy, have provided the military with a valuable way to interact with teenagers at a time when it is facing its most serious recruiting challenge since the end of the Vietnam War. While Pentagon officials have long insisted that J.R.O.T.C. is not a recruiting tool, they have openly discussed expanding the $400 million-a-year program, whose size has already tripled since the 1970s, as a way of drawing more young people into military service. The Army says 44 percent of all soldiers who entered its ranks in recent years came from a school that offered J.R.O.T.C.
Now you claim that at these camps the “children” (teens) are taught to take hostages. But when Israel takes back PoWs they also put cloth over their head, so you can’t allege allege from this they are being trained in atypical terrorism or something.
certainly a take for an ongoing practice in the current war.
This article specifically says that “as young as 14” are attending training, not that they are being employed by Hamas. If I attend JROTC, am I being employed as an American child soldier?
It is also not covering easily-findable but also easily-dismissed-on-account-of-(Israeli-)sourcing from the current war, which includes reports of children-sized explosive belts, children carrying explosives in vegetable bags to hamas ambush points
Correct, Israeli wartime propaganda can be dismissed in the same breath as Hamas wartime propaganda. We have third party observers: UN, Amnesty, journalists, doctors. Israel is trying to eradicate third party observers from Palestine, of course. Something Israel can do is take their abundant drone recordings and share to the world examples of child soldiers, right?
coffee_enjoyer
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18d ago
The only way that “Hamas has a sordid history of [preteen] child soldiers [including 10yo grenade lobbers]” has relevance to the topic is if it’s understood that Hamas is employing them today, or is probably employing them today. Because if Hamas employed them and then stopped, and there hasn’t been evidence of it for more than a decade (despite the eager wishes of Israel apologists), in fact possibly two decades, and the cases of their employ in the early 00s and earlier are sporadic and unusual, then their “sordid history” is immaterial. The normal way of reading Dean’s statement is that Hamas continues to employ these child soldiers, because otherwise there’s no reason to bring it up. Surely no one would allege that, because Israelis assassinated the UN security member Folke Bernadotte in 1948, that it’s now likely they are continuing to assassinate UN security members, and that every article about Israel must include their “sordid history of assassinating UN representatives”. Or because Israel assassinated European scientists in 1962 under Project Damocles, that Israel has a “sordid history of assassinating European civilians” that must be brought up in every news article. “NYT ought to report on Hamas’ history of child soldiers” only makes sense if child soldiers are employed today, because the article is about the killed kids of Gaza, and if they aren’t employed today then IDF units aren’t justified in killing kids under the assumption that they are child soldiers.
you cannot follow the comment to an AAQC roundup and start shitting on the process. It's obnoxious.
If that’s how you interpret criticism I don’t know what to say.
You even pulled the stupid language games trick here--"my last top-level post" throws in a completely unnecessary qualifier to determining whether you're a little too focused
Wow, so the ban on talking about Israel even includes sub-comments?
on something for the community's comfort
That’s an excellent idea actually, put it to the community in a poll — should we ban people who discuss Israel too much and what qualifies as too much. Or do you mean the mods?
So I'm actually gritting my teeth and being extra patient with you about this: stop it.
The threats or whatever are so lame.
coffee_enjoyer
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18d ago
The PDF I provided explicitly mentions children under 15
It’s a general article about all kinds of child soldiers in the history of Palestine, so naturally.
which Hamas has recruited in its history, in some cases quite recently
The article you cite has a paragraph on page 8 which mentions historic practices, linking to a publication from 2001 for the alleged recruitment of someone under 15. Then there’s reference to an Amnesty article from 2004. The amnesty article from 2004 does in fact mention an 11yo who regularly carried bags across the border and once carried a bag that had an explosive, but 2004 is in fact two decades ago. Do you believe that Amnesty has recently published findings about child soldier use by Hamas? Where can I read this?
But one of the reasons for me to not get into the substance with you is that you have shown no inclination to actually accept evidence when it is provided to you
This is a mediocre excuse. You have Amnesty, HRW, and the UN who have specific divisions involved in monitoring use of child soldiers in Palestine, and all over the world. Your paper just doesn’t seem to actually say that, except for an event two decades ago.
I anticipated you would do that, and now you have done it, so there is evidently no reason to continue to attempt to meet your demands
Just say “fine, there is no evidence of Hamas employing preteen soldiers in recent years. Dean lied.”
you are under no obligation to like Dean's post, or to accept his or my evidence of anything
I am under an obligation to accept your and Dean’s evidence. That evidence has not appeared on this forum, but I’m definitely obliged to accept it. To think that 10yos are lobbing grenades at the IDF and everyone is in a conspiracy to hide it…
It's clearly something you care about a lot, for reasons I cannot fathom
According to the NYT Opinion team, recently republished by those antisemites over at Haaretz, and reinforced by separate journalism at the Guardian, there’s compelling evidence that Israeli soldiers are shooting children in the head too much. This is generally considered to be a bad thing.
I should simply ban you from discussing Israel
There’s no easy way for me to check but I think my last top-level post on Israel was about a year ago. Just make a special rule on TheMotte that posters aren’t allowed to criticize Israel too much.
You are uncharitably characterizing my comment here. What I have asserted is that Dean refused to provide a source for his claim, the very claim that is quoted in the quality contribution, when pressed on the claim and asked to provide a source (both of which I linked). There’s a rule that someone should “proactively provide evidence in proportion to how partisan and inflammatory your claim might be”. The claim or implication that Hamas employs pre-teen child soldiers is partisan, and he didn’t even provide it when asked. Yet this earned him a quality contribution, which is surprising to me. (All of this you write off as “grumping because it doesn’t reinforce my preferred narrative”. Brother, I am writing on themotte in critique of Israel in the war, I am well aware that I won’t be finding much agreement. I have never cared about agreement here, but I do care if the standards for quality are reduced to rubble.)
emphasis on pre-teen
You need to understand the context of the original thread in order to understand this qualification. The NYT specifies pre-teen children being shot in their reporting, so we were never concerned with teen soldiers. Teen soldiers were never part of the conversation. Our only interest is pre-teen child soldiers because the children who were shot were all in that age cohort. This is obvious in the original back and forth which is quoted in the beginning of Dean’s reply
”I think this is a brilliant bit of journalism. First, they specify preteen children who are killed, a hugely important qualifier for a conflict which may see 16-year-old boys plant IEDS.” [quoting me] ...because the spiritual purity of 15-and-younger boys disarms explosives?”
That is the beginning of Dean’s comment. Now, it’s possible Dean simply misunderstood here, but 15-and-younger isn’t preteen. That would be 12 and under. The conflict may see 16yo plant IEDS, which is an example and not a limit case. In other words, because it may be that a 16yo plants IEDS, we look only total preteen dead. And it may even be that a 15yo plants an IED, or 14yo. Etc.
Dean goes on to make clear he really believes that Hamas employs pre-teen child soldiers in his original reply:
You may feel this is brilliant journalism, but nothing in it really addresses child soldiers, which have a sordid history in islamic extremism even without touching on Hamas' deathcult tendencies. Child soldiers aren't merely 'are they big enough to carry a gun', which can be well below 10, but 'are they old enough to throw stone-heavy grenades,' which is even less. A preteen can easily be a child soldier, and even a cutoff of 6 is being arbitrary in terms of 'can they provide militarily-useful tasks.' [emphasis mine]
Dean implies two claims here: Hamas is employing those under the age of 10 to lob grenades; and Hamas is employing pre-teens as young as 6 in militarily-useful tasks. This is how it is read, surely, because Dean says the article doesn’t go into Hamas’ history of child soldiers. Now, the only reason to go into Hamas’ history of child soldiers is if there is some reason to believe they are currently in their employ, or recently in their employ. (Certainly, “Hamas used a child soldier once in 1988” would be an insane way to explain away why doctors in Gaza see dead preteen children daily). That is because we are talking about current dead preteen children, not any from decades ago.
— — —
Replying to the rest of your comment:
but Google gave me this (PDF warning) pretty readily
Again, we are focusing on preteen soldiers, the original subject matter. The only real evidence from this pdf is in the 2021 UN address where it is quoted
call upon the al-Qassam Brigades to cease the recruitment
And if you read the 2021 report (pdf) it identifies only one “child” (that is, under 18 with no specification of preteen) being “recruited”. This appears to be in reference to their summer camps and not a military use (?), so in other words training, but I’m not entirely sure because it doesn’t specify. This does not provide evidence of preteen soldiers, indeed the age isn’t mentioned, neither is the role of the recruit mentioned.
I'm not going to get into [sources] with you
Lmao of course. Well look, Dean provided an empirical claim, for which he received a quality contribution, which does not appear to be evidenced, which he flatly refused to provide evidence of. So, okay, don’t get into sources with me, but is this really the standard you want on themotte? You yourself googled it, and there’s no reference in it to preteen soldier in recent employ by Hamas, at least from my reading. So… yeah.
your emphasis on "pre-teen" and the way you referenced "the past decade" while quoting Dean referencing "the last few decades" suggest very strongly to my mind that you are not engaging charitably, or even just honestly.
Hilarious. The heart of Dean’s claim is that there is reason to believe Hamas is employing preteen soldiers. It actually matters if the evidence is from this decade or two decades ago. Is there any evidence from this decade? Or even since 2005?
coffee_enjoyer
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18d ago
Re Dean’s highlighted comment for
”but nothing in it really addresses child soldiers, which have a sordid history in islamic extremism even without touching on Hamas' deathcult tendencies."
Just for the record, @Dean was never able to provide any evidence that Hamas uses pre-teen child soldiers. In fact he refused to even supply a link. You can read the follow up exchange here where he writes —
If someone is actually interested in whether Hamas uses child soldiers, they can very trivially google "Hamas Child Soldiers" and find multiple reports on the history by organizations including Amnesty International, Child Soldiers International, and the United Nations, among others. This doesn't even include self-publicized material such as from the Hamas Youth Wing. These aren't even 'new' reporting- there are easily observable reports from the early 2000s during the tail end of the Intifada years to late last decade, well before the current conflict. Any observer of the conflict with any significant experience has read any one of these over the last few decades- they are old news, not particularly controversial, and numerous.
— after someone noted that he refused to post a source. He actually made me go looking for his own unevidenced allegation, yet I could find zero evidence from any organization that Hamas utilized pre-teen child soldiers in the past decade. The closest was:
that Hamas once used a 17yo but that they made commitments to not recruit below 18. That was back in 2004. Something similar was published by Amnesty in 2005.
So I’m still waiting on Hamas’ “sordid history of child soldiers”. I’m surprised you can get a quality contribution for an empirical claim that you flatly refuse to supply evidence for.
coffee_enjoyer
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18d ago
Is the visual experience at a movie theater noticeably greater than the experience with the highest end of smaller screens?
coffee_enjoyer
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19d ago
This Is England (2006) is a fun movie about that. Green Street is also a fun but different movie. The Brits need to keep their white working class around just so that we get more of these movies, IQ be damned.
coffee_enjoyer
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20d ago
JD Vance comes off as a normal guy. More normal than Kamala, Trump, Joe, Pence IMO. Obama had charisma, but his artifice was obvious in longer conversations — too effortful. Vance is so normal that if you removed the political parts and told someone Joe picked a random guy off the street, it would be believable. And his audience isn’t some biased conservative audience, it’s about as average Joe as you can get, and the conclusion in the comments is that Vance is just a normal dude. This isn’t always the case — comments often criticize guests for being blowhards or criticize Joe for not letting guests finish.
This cements my thought that the “Vance is weird” campaign is a fully enclosed propaganda ecosystem, as in, it isn’t exaggerating some aspect of Vance (eg “Trump lies”), it is just totally made up. And that’s really spooky, because there’s a section of the public that will believe whatever the DNC wants them to believe. If they can make you believe Vance is weird they can make you believe anything.
coffee_enjoyer
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22d ago
But why should the reader trust you in your descriptions of art?
the greatest works of art are the ones that induce the most trauma
[art is] wasteful, irrational, even to the point of being actively detrimental; but that's what makes it beautiful.
The way you define art is probably not what most people mean by art. It’s also not how art was understood for centuries in both the West and East. Worse yet, it doesn’t predict a subset of art that people love, like Da Vinci and Wes Anderson movies and Miyazaki movies.
Why shouldn’t utilitarianism (or approximately that) inform us about good art? For instance, we can say that good art benefits us. This includes sorrowful art where that sorrow aids in our adaption to reality. It includes horrific art, where that horror aids in our cultural wisdom. It includes architecture we intuitively find beautiful, because the experience of beauty is pleasant and healing. And it excludes art that many people find mediocre, like Michael Bay and abstract modern art. This definition would also exclude pornography, because there is little benefit to art that includes pornography, because pornography is immediately distracting due to human nature.
The only “traumatic” art I can think of for centuries of European history is the crucifixion. I’ve written about this enough on themotte, but traumatically bonding with the Christ is a way to effect beneficial personal and social change. It’s not trauma for trauma’s sake, it’s participating in a traumatic death to enjoy a dramatic rebirth.
coffee_enjoyer
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22d ago
You are welcome to practice Bogomilism, but because the movement already died out it’s improbable that it contains beneficial features that haven’t already been incorporated by mainstream orthodoxy. With tradition, what is beneficial is kept and what is harmful is culled over generations. Whichever group utilizes the best traditions is the group that has the healthiest families, the best social order, and the most industrious members. It’s for this reason that atheism is an infertile abnormality in the history of mankind, why a great atheist nation never developed, and why the cultures that went full atheism inevitably rediscover religion (France, Buddhism). Instead of the humble acknowldgement that “my eyes are not raised too high; I do not occupy myself with things too great and too marvelous for me”, the atheist believes that all he should believe is all that he knows. Illogical, given the limitations of the human mind.
But anyway, I think atheists should be allowed to spend their school credits however they wish. They should be happy about that — wouldn’t they get an advantage from 8 extra secular non-religious credits?
coffee_enjoyer
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22d ago
There’s no reason to believe that religions which perished in the past are going to be as competitive as new and evolving religions. It’s a theological survival of the fittest; you wouldn’t think business practices in 1600 were better than today, right?
coffee_enjoyer
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22d ago
Puerto Rico is a political entity; supporters are human beings. Puerto Rico has so much corruption that its anti-corruption laws created new industries of corruption. Its former governor was arrested on bribery recently, and in only six months, 10% of all mayors were arrested for corruption. Calling the place garbage is a normal way of describing such a cesspool of corruption. Let’s also dwell on that last phrase: a cesspool is for storing sewage, the worst kind of garbage. Trump himself has called America a “cesspool of ruin” due to crime, and DC a cesspool of corruption — was he being racist against Americans here? Obviously not.
This is all a very normal way of talking about things, and the distinction between entity and ethnicity is important. If Puerto Rico wants to be part of America then it needs to handle the bants — calling New Jersey trash or an “armpit” has been common for decades. It’s shocking to me that some people care more about how we describe a horrible place than that this horrible place is within the domain of America. Why not acknowledge it is garbage and focus on how to fix it up?
coffee_enjoyer
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22d ago
If we’re arguing outside the premise of the First Amendment then there are valuable reasons for why a State would wish to permit the exercise of religion. (1) It’s a social technology that increases fertility, wellbeing, and civic engagement. (2) Ethics as a discipline lacks the moral force of religious language and ritual in promoting behavior and community, because religion involves personification and story and metaphor (and what you call myths). Ethics is to ethical behavior what “learning about oxytocin” is to experiencing love; religion is the beautiful woman. (3) The State should allow for competing forms of religious and ethical thought because humans have yet to determine the best one, and diversity will increase competition so we can judge them by their fruits.
coffee_enjoyer
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22d ago
Israel says Unrwa staff have colluded with Hamas in Gaza, and claimed 19 Unrwa workers took part in the Hamas attacks of 7 October 2023.
The UN investigated Israel’s claim and fired nine of those accused, but it said Israel had not provided evidence for broader allegations. Unrwa insists that dealings with Hamas are purely to enable the agency to do its job.
According to the UN, there’s only evidence to warrant the firing of nine UNRWA staff.
coffee_enjoyer
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22d ago
What you’ve listed are leisure activities. Video games, fantasies, sports, and playing an instrument are for leisure. (Unless a student is exceptional, they have just one hour a week of a violin teacher or something which may constitute non-leisure education, I suppose). The fact that students do not typically learn from books/teachers in an organized setting away from their school system strongly indicates that school has a monopoly on non-leisure learning. What we can call “book learning”. But book learning is an essential part of religious indoctrination, which means it is an essential part of the exercise of religion. A human is simply not able to absorb “book learning” after ~6 hours of secular education with 1-2 hours of at-home work. To me this means that we have thwarted the free exercise of religion. We have overburdened the right.
I am sure that there are religions who mandate that their followers study their scripture for at least five hours a day
One hour is more reasonable, but adding an hour of book-learning on top of the modern school curriculum is an unreasonable burden. I think up to two hours is acceptable.
Do you generally propose a system where the general taxes of people in some special interest groups are used for the goals of these groups? So the religious taxpayers get to fund religious education, while the taxes paid by of fans of adult entertainment go to fund state-run strip clubs?
Category error. Religion is not mere special interest or mere hobby. Religion is a special protected activity for a reason: it encompasses urgent, existential and totalizing moral concerns. It’s its own category of human activity. And the believer necessarily believes that the education in his religion is urgent and essential.
Ideally, taxes are there for universal expenses […] But the key point is that taxes go to what society has decided are collective needs
Your theory of taxation is not an enshrined right. But freedom of religion is such a right. It’s both more logical and more just for the tax revenue from a religious group to go toward that group’s religious education — not with extra money, because that overburdens their right to religious exercise. If they are paying for 18 “credits” of high school, then allow them to substitute 8 of these credits for up to “8” religious credits. This way the school is not funding religious education except with the funds of those who desire to practice their right to pursue religious education.
Isn’t the more direct causation that big tech has replaced you with cheaper foreign workers? Workers who are habituated to a lower quality of life and who may intend to return home with greater purchasing power than you possess with the same wage? Who sometimes live illegally in shared accommodations to reduce the housing burden and who don’t mind being overworked because of cultural differences and who sometimes practice nepotism at your expense? Who may not have the same college debt because they fib about their education? Not that this doesn’t absolve Biden, but the reason (say) FAANG doesn’t pay more is because they don’t have to. We could have had an upper middle class utopia where FAANG sponsors high school and college programming courses and recruits homegrown talent while increasing wages but… no.
I blame the free market fetishists.
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