coffee_enjoyer
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User ID: 541
coffee_enjoyer
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25d 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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25d 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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25d 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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25d 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.
coffee_enjoyer
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26d ago
The free exercise of religion is thwarted when the state mandates that you cannot exercise religion in public school, because the exercise of religion necessitates regular practice and study, and this necessity conflicts with the time schedule and obligations of secular education. 8am to 3pm every day of the workweek, with extra-curriculars extending that to 5pm, effectively abolishes religion if religion is not included in the classroom. A good solution is to allow the taxes of religious people to go towards their own religious education which is to take place in public or private school. The “separation of church and state” is a succinct phrase which helps explain why the free exercise of religion can’t be prohibited, but it shouldn’t be misunderstood to mean that the state prohibits religious activity in state facilities — if anything it means that it must allow all kinds of religious activity in state facilities. This includes religious activity in schools.
coffee_enjoyer
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26d ago
There’s an interesting study which found that “postponing a desire” reduces temptation more than swearing it off altogether. The postponing must be unspecific to be most effective: “I will enjoy this later”, without specifying a date. There are other studies that claim this result. The mechanism is in dispute but I think it has to do with the perception of scarcity and the belief that the enjoyment is easily obtained in abundance (just, later. Not right now.). If so this has lots of fun implications for culture. When Muslims say that the afterlife is filled with sensual enjoyment, are they raising up the sensual to heavenly heights, as is argued? Maybe not. If they believe that at some unspecified future time, they will get to enjoy as much wine and food and women as they want, then this may paradoxically reduce their desire for these things in the world: it isn’t scarce or urgent, it will be enjoyed in abundance, so no need to desire it so much. There may be implications for the reduction of casual sex too, where the emphasis should be less on “don’t do this pleasurable thing ever”, and more on “you get to enjoy as much sex as you want at an unspecified future date, so don’t worry about it now”.
I think there’s something to this. I mean, when companies want to induce desire they increase the perception of scarcity and rarity and urgency, so to reduce desire you decrease these as well.
coffee_enjoyer
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26d ago
It makes sense that Hamas members would be found working at the organization, as the org employs 13k Palestinians. This says nothing about UNRWA really, only about the nature of secretive political movements. Literally any organization that employs 13k in Palestine will have some of its members go on to collude with Hamas. A radicalization rate of 9 out of 13k is insignificant, and actually tells us they UNRWA does a good job vetting its employees. “0.007% of UNRWA were determined by the UN to be working with Hamas”is another way to put this. None of them in leadership position at UNRWA but just working as drivers or teachers. So this seems more like casus belli for cutting aid.
coffee_enjoyer
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27d ago
Rape fetishes usually involve implied consent. The “rapist” is the most attractive person in the erotica’s universe, and the protagonist usually knows that he would stop if she didn’t enjoy it. We should probably just stop calling it rape fetish altogether and call it dominance fetish or something. The phenomenon of the fetish is totally distinct from the real world phenomenon of rape.
coffee_enjoyer
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27d ago
It’s about creating a strong unconscious distaste for Trump by associating him with the most universally distasteful political “thing”. Its Cue->Response, pure animal psychology. My dog doesn’t leave the yard because she will get zapped; my sibling gets nauseous smelling cinnamon rolls because it reminds them of long car rides; the subject doesn’t vote for Trump because when his name is said by the TV the tone gets grim and they hear the word Hitler. I think that’s it. Vance weird, Trump Hitler, say it over thousands of trials across different contexts and it will stick. There’s no thinking required at all. How did Voldemort and the N-word become verboten? The same process: the word is said (cue), there is an immediate stimuli associated to it (response, the verbal response of others), this occurs over iterations until you are now afraid to utter the word.
But clearly some people really believe Trump is a Nazi
Truly believing Trump is Hitler would lead to the moral prerogative to commit illegal acts. Clearly, the vast majority of Dems do not believe he is Hitler, or even Hitler-lite, because they aren’t storing weapons and organizing resistance networks. “The resistance” political meme is like Star Wars cosplay, whereas if they really believed he was Hitlerly it would be like the IRA. You can draw a comparison to abortion. How many people really believe that abortion is murder? The same amount of people spending every weekend protesting it and being jailed in doing so. If the store down the street were massacring children by the dozens every month would you really be watching football on the weekends?
coffee_enjoyer
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27d ago
Young Latinos love KillTony and older Latinos from Puero Rico are probably critical of their home country. I doubt it changes their vote.
coffee_enjoyer
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27d ago
Well, do you think that Jeff Bezos would not have created Amazon if he didn’t expect to gain hundreds of billions of dollars? Do you think Bezos would not continue to run Amazon if a competitor popped up which reduced his profit by tens of billions of dollars? We would still have Amazon if we literally took billions of dollars from Bezos, so those billions are genuinely just wasted. Inefficiently allocated.
”People rationally decide things” is much better than “the whims of economic chance are magically right about how much profit the founder of Amazon should get”.
coffee_enjoyer
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27d ago
Tax deduction or credit to those earning less than 160k a year. Why not? I understand this is functionally just redistribution from wealthy to less, but if you call it a tariff more people will be supportive than “we are literally going to redistribute money now”. It has a nice conservative tinge. But also, this isn’t my steel-man of tariffs per the OP.
coffee_enjoyer
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27d ago
Which option are you talking about? I do not support a tariff where the revenue doesn’t go to those who have more use for the money. I don’t know the fine print of Trump’s “replace income tax with tariff plan”, but we can imagine a policy where the revenue of a tariff disproportionately benefits the lower through middle classes. Well, if everyone pays the tariff, and if wealthy people pay slightly more of the tariff because they import somewhat more goods, but if all the revenue goes to the lower and middle class, then the lower and middle class wind up having more money at the end of the day, implying that price increases pass on to all consumers equally and no American industry develops.
Unless I’m misreading you, then this doesn’t have to do with % income spent on tariff at all, so it’s simply a case of imported red herring to talk about % of income going to the tariff. Everyone pays tariff, and that total money goes to lower/middle class. I would support that. If that is what you were asking.
But the policy I support is a tariff so high that American industry develops. This has all the benefits of the aforementioned with one key difference: we now see wages rise because there is more middle class employment opportunity and employers must pay more to recruit workers.
The excess consumption of the wealthy is largely in the form of luxury services (personal cleaners, drivers, chefs, accountants, lawyers, etc.) or housing
Sadly it’s also in wasteful vacations, multiple cars, rolexes, foreign alcohol, cocaine, ayuahuasca retreats, multiple homes, homes that are too big, private jets and yachts, superfluous degrees. If we apply pressure on their finances they are likely to keep the stuff from your list but get rid of the truly crazy amount of inefficient resource waste from my list.
where most people are just unwilling/unable to buy that good any more
Before that happens the profit margin would evaporate, with the businesses owned by billionaires forced to cut into their profit margin.
coffee_enjoyer
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27d ago
I think so, yes, you need the tariff to be so high that it promotes American industry. Otherwise it depends what you do with the tariff revenue. If everyone pays the tariff but the revenue goes to the middle class, then it’s just a tax on wealthy people really.
coffee_enjoyer
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27d ago
I am alleging that this will increase purchasing power.
There is enormous economic efficiency in America because the super-wealthy have resources that they waste frivolously, when these resources would be better allocated to the lower-middle, middle, and upper-middle classes. These super wealthy people make money by selling people stuff made overseas. If you make them pay money to import their overseas stuff, they have two options: (1) reduce their profits and make their business more efficient; (2) attempt to raise the cost of their items. If they do (2), then things made in America can compete against them, which is great for all Americans but the super-wealthy, because your job’s wages are set according to the number of wage-competitive jobs available to you and your peers. Increasing the number of competitive middle class jobs increases all wages of the middle class, as well as the workers’ quality of life. Additionally, there’s a ceiling for the pricing of a lot of overseas items, because if a company like Nike prices them too high, fewer people will buy them and more will buy competitors. This means Nike, Nespresso, Shein, Temu, Alibaba, IKEA, and other sorts of businesses are not actually able to raise their prices in proportion to the tariff. Once their price is too high, people opt for a lower-cost competitor. Fast food is similar. We could tax the heck out of McDonald’s and they could never raise prices proportionately because once it reaches a certain high people will make their own food.
Be wary of talk about “economic efficiency”. If profits go to people who don’t need them then those profits don’t matter.
coffee_enjoyer
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28d ago
Torba is an OG alt-right influencer, founded Gab and is openly anti-Semitic. He’s like a slightly more refined Nick Fuentes. Chris Brunet is a former conservative think tanker who is now talking about too much Jewish influence at conservative think tanks.
Jared is, of course, orthodox Jewish, and he also has a hand in picking Trump’s cabinet, so that he followed these accounts around the same time is bizarre.
coffee_enjoyer
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28d ago
Why did Jared Kushner start following Andrew Torba and Chris Brunet on Twitter? Any theories?
coffee_enjoyer
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28d ago
Joe asked Trump how he felt when he entered the White House on his first day. Trump tells a story about seeing the Lincoln Room and having the reality of the presidency set in. He saw all the details of Lincoln’s real life, like the bed that was custom-made because he was too tall, and the small photo he kept of his son who tragically died. Lincoln was no longer a mythical figure but a real person, who lived in this real room, occupying the same job as himself.
I guess this is rambling but at what point is rambling just good story-telling? I mean, Homer rambled. Trump talks like a wise old East Coast relative who has lots of good stories. I also think there’s an element of Irish American conversational style he inherited from his mother’s side. Trump’s mom was born in the Outer Hebrides in a Gaelic speaking household, people forget this.
coffee_enjoyer
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30d ago
If they can be persuaded that what the founders intended precluded the children of non citizen fathers, then maybe all of them, why not?
coffee_enjoyer
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30d ago
The viable plan to ending birthright citizenship is to reexamine the legal definition of natural born citizen in light of earlier British jurisprudence which, in some cases, mentiins that the father must also be a natural born citizen. This is the kind of originalist legal argumentation that we find among Heritage Foundation guys and their SC picks.
We can do that, and then we can just restrict how many people can come in. Do a pregnancy test on women who come in. Lots of simple stuff. This issue is a failure of political will, not political thought.
coffee_enjoyer
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30d ago
“your town is unpopular” may mean that the quality of life of your family is negatively affected, as there is fewer investment in your town. It may also mean you’re individually doing something wrong, because you could be part of the problem of your town. But this doesn’t apply cross-nationally. Countries that are regionally unpopular (Israel) may still have high QoL. It’s only an issue if their safety is affected, which is distinct from whether the proles of Honduras have a distaste for your country.
coffee_enjoyer
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30d ago
Why would you consider voting for him if he 100% ended illegal immigration, but not if he merely increased the chance of ending it? This applies to your other issue (ending war in Ukraine).
coffee_enjoyer
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30d ago
epically fuck up what's left of America's standing in the world.
I don’t get this. I’ve heard people repeat it a lot. People respect and like countries that have a high quality of life. They want to move to countries that have high earnings potential and safety. They also like cultural products. America’s cultural products aren’t going away, so what we are left with is QoL, earnings, and safety. Is the candidate who supports DEI and more immigration going to increase QoL and safety?
But also, why the hell would you even care about what someone in Kurdistan, or China, or Bangladesh thinks about you? During the Cold War, much of the world hated America for propaganda reasons, and who cares? Lots of the Middle East hated us because of our wars, and yet… it doesn’t matter. I don’t think people should care about how “popular” their country is on the world stage. We should care about how popular it is among our citizens, which would involve not incessantly telling about racism, slavery, and oppressive institutions.
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?
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