quiet_NaN
4d ago
The ratsphere is among the most vocal critics of the FDA. However, I perceive that the consensus is that it is too restrictive, not pushing towards minimizing health_costs - health_benefits, but instead minimizing health_costs - 0.01*health_benefits or something, because their incentives are bad: they will not be celebrated as heroes for certifying a drug which saves millions of lives, but they will be certainly be cast as villains if a drug they certified ends up killing a few 10k. "The FDA serves the commercial interests of the pharmaceuticals" is either orthogonal to that or even in contradiction.
French fries, various prescription medications, raw milk and psychedelics all have some risks. I am all for arguments that current legislation is not consistent with regard to the relative risks posed by them, and some should be regulated more harshly and some less harshly, but I would be surprised to see Trump basing his policies on a sciency risk analysis.
(The other thing to discuss is the debate what should be regulated by the federal government and what should be left to the states. However, I do not expect any consistency from either party here.)
quiet_NaN
4d ago
I do not think that you should update very heavily.
In one model, pandemics randomly happen with a certain rate, perhaps once every 50-100 years (though we might debate if the rate should scale linearly with the world population or not).
In another model, the deep state (or whomever) will engineer a pandemic timed to prevent Trump's re-election (not that he would be eligible again).
Both of these models explain the past data reasonably well. The deep state model might predict 50% for another pandemic (after all, they might try something different, nobody would claim that a lack of another Trump pandemic conclusively falsifies 'COVID was a CIA op'), while the natural rate model would give you a 4-10% chance, perhaps.
I have not calculated it, but I think that the update would increase the Bayesian probability of the deep state hypothesis by a factor of five or ten (if your prior was reasonably small).
If this is a 'heavy update' is debatable, the overall effect is largely dependent on your prior. If you have the deep state COVID hypothesis at 20%, then this observation will certainly push you over 50%. Personally, I have the probability that COVID was intentionally released by a state government (or a cabal of similar influence) at perhaps 0.3%. Most of that 0.3% are not linked to US federal politics at all, however. So even if I multiply the probability of the subhypothesis 'it was all done to thwart Trump' by a factor of ten, it will still be very low.
As an analogy, suppose someone claims to be able to predict dice rolls. I throw a 1d20, and it comes up at the predicted value. This will certainly favor the hypothesis 'that guy is a psychic' over the null hypothesis 'he is just guessing' by a factor of twenty. But this will certainly not be enough to convince me, because I started with a very low prior probability.
quiet_NaN
12d ago
I was merely disputing @Walterodim standard for banning international orgs.
I guess that the true grade of Hamas infiltration lies between nine out of 13k (or whatever the proven cases are) and 20% (because I think it very unlikely that Mossad would miss half the Hamas members). The 10% claim might well be correct.
I think Israel had solid reasons to turn Gaza into an open air prison pre-war, controlling what goods go into it (except for the stuff Hamas smuggles in). But I also claim that such a strategy imposes certain humanitarian obligations upon Israel. If people in Haiti are starving, Israel can wash their hands of it. For Gaza, not so much.
So you need organizations to go into Gaza and distribute humanitarian goods. In pre-war Gaza, any organization will need to find some understanding with Hamas, who will likely take a hefty cut for their protection.
Presumably, the UNWRA is paying Gazans to distribute humanitarian supplies within Gaza. For that part of their payroll, I am assuming that Hamas is heavily over-represented as compared to the Gazan population. Getting a low level job at an international humanitarian org is a nice gig for your goons, and once you put the word out that these jobs are for your people only (and perhaps shoot a few civilian applicants who did not get the message), you can easily force the org to hire your people.
However, I am not sure that this level of infiltration would be a big deal. Any aid sent to Gaza will feed Hamas first, but it does not follow that we should therefore let Gaza starve.
Beyond that baseline of inevitable Hamas infiltration, there could be more serious stuff going on. Some UNWRA staff can presumably cross the border, so they are in a position to gather intelligence, or perhaps smuggle goods. And the propaganda effort seems bad, sure.
Unlike Hezbollah, which is a militia which also runs some hospitals as a side project, UNWRA seems a humanitarian organisation which also cooperates with terrorists as a side project. Israel can not just ban the latter and wash their hands of the humanitarian consequences.
I mean, if Bibi said "any NGO working in Gaza had to deal with Hamas, this is why henceforth, humanitarian aid will be given by IDF directly", that would be fine with me. I just don't think that it is politically possible.
quiet_NaN
13d ago
The result of this would be an extremely illiberal society.
The case for (a) being an international organization and (b) doubt about them being helpful to the citizens can be made for a lot of organisations, such as:
- Microsoft
- Any of FAANG
- Greenpeace
- Catholicism
- The Motte
- McDonalds
- Amnesty International
- FIFA (Soccer)
- Debian
- International Telecommunication Union
- Jehova's Witnesses
- Election observers
- Big Media
- IKEA
If you forbid by default, you get places like Iran or North Korea. In the free world, you have freedom of association, which includes citizens joining international organizations (plus there is a tendency to let foreigners visit, even if they are on business trips). Of course, you want to forbid some organisations for very good reasons (e.g. Daesh, the Mafia), but then it should be up to the state to demonstrate that they are dangerous, not going 'meh, they are probably net-negative for us, verboten!'
quiet_NaN
13d ago
I don't think that the quid-pro-quo works as you imagine. The people writing for the left-leaning newspapers are true believers. At least some of their readers are true believers as well.
Economically, I think that they would do much better under Trump. Not because of his policies, but because of the culture war. Every day they could lead with "You won't believe what Trump has Xeeted now". They would be an integral part of the people who style themselves la resistance.
Bezos messing with the editors is going to massively decrease the value of his newspapers. If people want to read what billionaires think, they can just use social media. I think that he has solid business reasons though. It is not about changing who is winning, a newspaper endorsement is unlikely to change that. It is about being seen as an ally by the winner.
What is more likely? President Harris going: "You prevented the editors from endorsing me. No more US government deals with AWS!" Or President Trump going: "Your newspaper endorsed my enemy! No more US gov deals with AWS, traitor!"
--
If you are certain about the election outcome, it should present an amazing opportunity for you to double your net worth, because 538 is still 53 vs 46. Just figure out how certain you are and what odds the prediction markets are giving you, and calculate your Kelly bet.
quiet_NaN
13d ago
Here in old Europe (Germany), almost no organisations endorse political candidates. Not newspapers (at least, not respectable ones, and even the tabloids endorse implicitly only), not churches, not unions. Even individual celebrities rarely canvas for a candidate (politicians non-withstanding, naturally).
I kind of like it this way, you Americans might want to try it some time.
I think that the timing is a bit suspicious. If Bezos had decided right after the 2020 election that going forward, his newspapers would not be endorsing candidates, that would be fine. Him taking this principled stand just before an election where one candidate is known to hold grudges and would likely influence government deals with Amazon just out of spite is an amazing coincidence.
It is like an recruit who has been ordered to storm a trench having a long look at the barbed wire and the enemy MGs, and then telling his sergeant that he can not follow the order because he has just discovered that he is a pacifist.
quiet_NaN
13d ago
the exercise of religion necessitates regular practice and study, and this necessity conflicts with the time schedule and obligations of secular education.
This argument would be stronger if school was monopolizing students time. From my understanding, the school is not. Plenty of kids have enough free time to learn an instrument, play a sport, get really good in some video game, become an expert of some nerdy lore like warhammer, baseball or LotR, etc. I am sure that there are religions who mandate that their followers study their scripture for at least five hours a day, but if you feel you need to accommodate these in public schools, then the next thing you will be someone saying that their religion requires them to loudly yell 'Blessed be His Noodly Appendages' every five minutes.
allow the taxes of religious people to go towards their own religious education
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?
Ideally, taxes are there for universal expenses. Almost all citizens use roads. Almost all citizens benefit from not being invaded. I will grant you that a lot of the sinks modern states pour taxes into are not that clear-cut public goods: public education, aircraft carriers (for the US) and welfare, preservation of the environment, cultural events and a zillion other things can be debated at length.
But the key point is that taxes go to what society has decided are collective needs. If you are proposing taxing religious people more so that their extra taxes can fund religious education (and the same for the admirers of scantly clad females and strip clubs), then I am ok with it. Of course, the easier system would be that the state does not collect these voluntary taxes, and people get to spend their money after taxes however they want.
quiet_NaN
14d ago
So, the Knesset has voted to ban the UNRWA from operating in Israel over claims that 10% of its staff have affiliations to terror organisations.
What is interesting here is the way the votes went.
One of the bills passed 92-10 (with eight MK missing or abstaining), the other 87-9.
The Knesset has ten members representing Israeli Arabs which I assume voted against the bills. Otherwise, it seems that most Israeli parties, even the ones much more moderate than Netanyahu's coalition, voted for it.
I find it a bit reminiscent of the post 9-11 unanimity towards GWB war on terror, were some bills were literally only being opposed by a single representative.
Personally, I think that it is likely that Hamas has infiltrated UNRWA. If your organisation worked in pre-war Gaza where Hamas ruled uncontested, you were not really in the position to tell them to go fuck themselves if they require that you extend paychecks and diplomatic privileges to a few jihadists.
However, I also think that this organisation plays an important role in securing basic humanitarian necessities to the people in Gaza.
The steelman might be that unlike other aid organisations (which will be infiltrated by Hamas in short order once they operate in Gaze), UNRWA has special privileges as a UN organisation. However, if this is the case, I don't get why it would not be sufficient to make a law to take away their privileges, making their activities in Israel fully subject to Israeli interventions (e.g. for passing propaganda material), instead of banning them outright.
quiet_NaN
15d ago
Don't forget that there are also people knocking on doors and people directing other people on which doors to knock.
In fascism, you can be on the one side of the door one day and on the other side the next day.
Take the fate of the SA leadership. They were Nazi through and though. They were the muscle of the NSDAP and instrumental in their rise to power. They ran the first 'wild' concentration camps and murdered political opponents. None of this saved them. The moment Hitler was in power, he threw them under the bus.
So if your plan for the fourth Reich is to be spared because you are helpful enough in their purges, I have every hope that you will join the rest of us after the first tiny internal power struggle hickup.
quiet_NaN
19d ago
I think that your comment would work equally well if one replaced 'trans' with 'gay', and I don't see the Dems rolling back gay rights so that the urbanites have more grandkids or something.
Personally, I think that we should treat gender dysphoria as a medical condition and leave the treatment options (from getting over it to full transition) up to the medical establishment. Kids should learn that the condition exists, just like other psychiatric conditions such as depression, but we should not bestow special status on trans kids. No 'she is so courageous for coming out', more 'I am sorry that she is suffering from GD'.
The woke victimhood totem pole is not helping here. Going from straight cis-male to lesbian trans-female turns you from the evil oppressor to the blameless victim.
quiet_NaN
21d ago
This does not matter as much as you think, because politics is not genetic.
The argument I have heard is that an effective administration requires skilled bureaucrats, i.e. university educated elites, and that the Trump administration had trouble attracting such people.
quiet_NaN
21d ago
The second part of the first question is literally "how much do you make?"
As far as the ad is concerned, personal romantic relationships and status games are literally the same thing.
quiet_NaN
21d ago
Approximately no one dates based on politics.
I think that this is an oversimplification.
I think most Americans would not date a KKK member, a Stalinist or a Taliban. There is a certain (subjective) Overton window. Personally, I would filter less on who a partner supports than on why a partner supports them. There is a big difference between supporting GWB despite gitmo and supporting him because of gitmo.
Some disagreements are more emotionally charged than others. I would totally date an anti-nuclear woman -- I may believe that she is mistaken about what we need to get rid of fossil fuels, but that is hardly a moral failing. (Perhaps being pro-nuclear feels less excusable from the other side, though.)
Other disagreements are the opposite: abortion is always a hot-button topic, "baby murderers" vs "handmaid's tale".
Some beliefs, political or otherwise, indicate an epistemological incompatibility. Or, phrased less politely, I basically consider some beliefs crazy. Believing in Nazism is excusable if you are a kid raised in the third Reich, but if you were raised in post-WW2 USA, it is a red flag. Likewise, if you believe that Trump, once elected, will succeed in turning the US into a Fuehrerstaat, that would be a red flag. Likewise, if you believe that Trump won the 2020 election, and the deep state conspired to steal it from him.
quiet_NaN
22d ago
Your description should mention that both the man and a plurality of women in the video likely qualify as black. (You might not care about that, but the target audience will.)
I agree that it the spot does not work targeting men. The message is basically: to get a girlfriend, you need to (1) make 100k$ a year, (2) be tall, (3) be athletic, and (4) vote Harris. The number of men who fit 1-3, but still don't get laid and can be convinced that this is because of their lack of voting should be basically nil.
Also, I find that spot incredibly cringe. I am aware that income and hotness are influential for partner selection, but starting with 'how much do you make?' as an icebreaker question seems incredible vulgar. The way these things normally work (afaik) is that both sides have plausible deniability. There are whole brands surviving wholly on their value as an income signal. If a woman shows interest in a man wearing expensive, tasteful stuff, there is that veneer of deniability: there is always some probability that she does not care about his wealth at all, but just is interested in his charming personality or whatever. If you ask explicitly, that creates common knowledge of the transactional nature of the relationship, at which point the man might ask himself if he would not be better served by an escort. The male version of 'how much do you make?' might be 'I will pay you 500$ for a blowjob', which likewise highlights the transactional nature of the relationship. From my understanding, this is a big no-no when flirting with women who don't consider themselves sex workers.
Even for hotness, some people might feel offended if it is implied that their physical characteristics will get them the relationship. Invert the genders, and instead of height and athleticism, the suitors might ask the woman about her breast size or hotness on a scale of 1-10. The Harris campaign would be the first to decry this as demeaning the woman by reducing her to a sex object. (Aside, the lack of a screen between the man and the women makes the questions about his physique bizarre: presumably, the women can see how he looks.)
Also, there are unfortunate implications about the women who are so interested in their suitor's finances. Are these not supposed to be strong independent women, who have their own six figure jobs, and could well support a stay-at-home dad? The vibes I get from this clip are "I am looking for a hot, rich guy to earn my Mrs degree."
It makes more sense as a power fantasy targeting women ("of course I am so hot/charming that hot rich guys will want to date me, but I can be picky enough to just date Harris voters"). Still, the fact that the ad did apparently well on A/B testing is kind of scathing for the target audience.
quiet_NaN
23d ago
Personally, I think selecting for intelligence is a non-brainer and should not be controversial. Being smarter is good for the kid in the same way that not being blind or not being psychotic is.
The slippery slope would be parents (or states) selecting on criteria which are not in the interests of the kid to have.
Selecting superficial criteria like eye color is already a bit icky. Green eyes work just as well as blue eyes, so it is not directly against the interests of the kid if it is picked by eye color, especially if it's parents really have a strong preference for an eye color. In a world in which not everything can be optimized simultaneously, one could however argue that that kid would have benefited more from being selected for an additional IQ point.
And then you have myriad selection criteria where the interests of the kid and the parents diverge. For now, these seem to be far beyond what current genetics can predict. If kids will keep near their place of birth, will keep following their religion and will end up with a sexual orientation and life style their parent approve is not very predictable from genetics, even though these certainly have a genetic component.
Optimizing for professional sports likewise could likewise easily be detrimental to a kid. Most things which influence sport performance come with trade-offs. Being the tallest person on earth will really help in basketball, but also comes with severe health drawbacks. Likewise for high testosterone. Anyone selecting an XY fetus with androgen insensitivity syndrome in the hope that her kid can perform at an Olympic level is likely not doing their kid any favors.
Sex selection (which only requires an ultrasound, no fancy genetics) is another thing which can often be detrimental to the kid. I mean, if a couple uses it for their second kid to balance their family gender ratio, I have no issue with it -- the prevalence of families with unbalanced gender ratios does not seem especially important to preserve. On the other hand, some societies will have a general preference, which will lead to skewed ratios, which is likely not in the kids best interests.
A related scissor statement would be "parents should prefer socially favored phenotype embryos in bigot societies". For example, if I had to chose between being born as a boy missing a foot or a healthy girl in Afghanistan, I would much rather be the cripple. It is uncontroversial that the quality of life impact on a disability depends on society (like the presence or absence of wheelchair ramps), but likewise one could postulate 'pseudo-disabilities' which are entirely caused by societies reaction to a phenotype. One might argue that if QALY's and the like are supposed to track utility, one should indeed treat 'living under the Taliban as a women' as a disability.
Of course, for the Afghan example, this point is largely moot, most couples living in Afghanistan do not have access to sex-selective abortion.
quiet_NaN
24d ago
As @aardvark2 points out, artificial sperm creation could fix the destructiveness. If you create a pair of haploid cells through meiosis, you will have a pretty good idea what is in cell A from the PCR of cell B and diploid cells.
Of course, another point is costs. The company in the article seems to bill 50k$ for analyzing 100 embryos, which would come to 500$ per analysis. While doing the analysis on (artificially created) sperm cells would definitely get you more dakka, it would also greatly increase costs.
quiet_NaN
27d ago
Setting up a protocol to verify which language an asylum seeker can understand does not seem so difficult. Tape recorders should be a sufficient tech level for that.
Edit: Having read the other comments, especially the discussion of military rounds that fail to penetrate a kid's skull and are thus conveniently visible on x-ray, my money is on the NYT falling for fakes created by motivated people. The doctors would not even have to be die-hard Hamas supporters bent on the destruction of Israel. If I had had the misfortune of spending months working in a wartime hospital, I might also consider telling a 'little white lie' about the fraction of dead kids who were shot to the head, if I thought that this is the best way to stop the killing.
Shame on me for believing that the NYT would consult with experts to check the plausibility of their reporting and thereby ruin a great story.
End of edit.
Overall, civilian casualties in Gaza remain within reasonable bounds for an intense war against an entrenched guerrilla force that doesn’t wear uniforms in an extremely dense urban environment.
The claim by the NYT is not that deliberately targeted kids amount to a large fraction of war victims, the claim is that such targeting happens and is tolerated to some degree.
I have previously defended the IDF against people comparing the civilian death tolls of their war against Hamas to the death toll of Oct 7. My argument was that the Hamas attacks were worse not in their death tolls, but in their malicious intent. Everyone fighting a war accepts some civilian casualties. Israel went further than most belligerents regarding the amount of collateral deaths they would stomach, especially when targeting senior commanders, but I would still argue that blowing up 50 Palestinians in a refugee camp to get one bad guy is different from Hamas executing civilians one by one.
People, states and causes are in part not judged by their median action, but by their worst action. As the joke goes, "But just one little sheep!". A doctor who saves the life a thousand patients and murders and eats three others would not be judged by his average or median impact, but by his worst deeds. Likewise, anyone arguing that the Nazis were not as evil as generally depicted because only 0.9% of the German population was Jewish would totally fail to convince any audience. The reason that Abu Ghraib turned into a scandal was because it was the median case.
Headshot six-year-olds are both unmistakably non-combatants and also unmistakably the results of deliberate targeting. I would expect dead six-year-olds, and perhaps headshot 15-yo (unless Hamas happens to abide by the conventions against child soldiers, which seems unlikely). Perhaps a hand full of headshot 6-yo could be attributed to bad luck but any more than that would suggest deliberate targeting of kids.
While I did not much care for the IDF's tactics before, I was willing to cut them some slack as their goal to wipe Hamas from the face of the Earth seemed worthy. If further evidence confirms that parts of the IDF were able to conspire to shoot small kids, then I would become indifferent between them and Hamas, as in 'they are both evil and I hope they both succeed in destroying the other, too bad about the decent people caught in their fight'.
At the moment, I am noticing that I am confused. Even if the IDF was full of people who thought that killing Palestinian kids was virtuous, neither the rank and file nor especially the command would be oblivious about the fact that the rest of the world does not share that value judgement. An IDF sniper killing a small child would bring the destruction if Israel closer in a second than a hundred Hamas fighters could do in their lifetime. Nor do I find it plausible that the command would remain unaware of unauthorized past-times of their sniper teams, we are talking about a digital age state known for its intelligence services here. On the other hand, if large parts of the IDF had a collective fetish for child murder, why would they not pick a more deniable way to accomplish that? They could just bomb a school (or wherever kids gather in wars) and claim that it was used as a base to shoot missiles into Israel, the NYT would be very unlikely to prove them wrong.
Another explanation would be that it is some kind of Hamas op. While Hamas path to victory is paved with the murders of Palestinian kids (because Israel can not be defeated while it is backed by the US, and the best way to turn the US from Israel are dead kids for which IDF can be blamed), it very much does not sound like their usual MO. "Climb on some rooftop and shoot some random kids in Gazan streets" does not seem like an order the median Hamas member would follow.
Slightly more plausible would be that they shot kids who had just of whatever 'natural causes' will kill you in a warzone post mortem, and then carried them to the hospital. Still does not seem very likely.
If IDF is targeting small kids, the obvious move on Hamas part would be to smuggle out their corpses and pass them to governments for forensic analysis. If ten different countries go 'yup, they died because of wounds inflicted with calibers used by IDF' that would likely be the beginning of the end of Israel as Harris and Trump race to the microphones to promise and end of all weapon shipments.
quiet_NaN
28d ago
material that is likely to incite violence or hatred against a person or a group of persons on account of their protected characteristics
This would seem to criminalize truthfully reporting on a person with a protected characteristic doing something which some members of the general public might find bad, which is vaguely linked to their characteristic.
Say you run some venue which is recorded by CCTV, and a member of a minority assaults another person. In the progress of their investigation into the assault, the police learn that you are in possession of video material which would likely incite hate against members of that minority. This is trivially true, post a video of someone doing something bad online and people will display hate towards them clearly linked to their protected status, like "$MINORITY are violent thugs and we should kick them out of the country".
Of course, this is unlikely. No cops will go to jail over a truthful police report which might incite hatred either. But to have a broad criminal law and trust the state that they will only selectively enforce that law against 'bad people' (perhaps someone who collects 'assaults by $MINORITY' videos for some political agenda) is a fucking stupid idea.
quiet_NaN
28d ago
Your view of a sovereign state is antiquated, it seems to stem from the days of Lois XIV.
Modern states are very much limited in what they can do. Internally by these pesky little things called constitutions (some of which give rights even to non-citizens!), and externally by international laws and treaties.
If Poland wants to exit the EU and renounce the 1951 refugee convention along with all other international laws, there is a process for that.
quiet_NaN
28d ago
as they're not trying to enter legally via the border crossing, but run through the woods to cross illegally, without getting involved in the asylum process?
Ideally, people could just apply for asylum in EU embassies worldwide, and would be sheltered in there until their claim is processed, with a plane ticket to EU for anyone whose application has been granted. In that case, entering illegally would be frowned upon.
Realistically, we don't do that because it would make it too easy to apply for asylum. Most asylum seekers can not simply board a plane to EU and make their request at the passport control, because we explicitly penalize airlines who transport such passengers. I am quite sure that if the migrants under discussion were walking to a border station on the Polish/Belarusian border and made their request for asylum there, they would not be let on EU soil.
If we close all legal pathways to the EU, and also say that people who have entered the EU illegally do not have a right to claim asylum, then we have de facto abolished asylum in the EU.
@MadMonzer referred to article 31 of the 1951 refugee convention:
- The Contracting States shall not impose penalties, on account of their illegal entry or presence, on refugees who, coming directly from a territory where their life or freedom was threatened in the sense of article i, enter or are present in their territory without authorization, provided they present themselves without delay to the authorities and show good cause for their illegal entry or presence. [...]
Granted, making the case that your life was in danger due to your protected status in Belarus will be a hard case to make, but it is not impossible.
quiet_NaN
28d ago
The right to asylum has already been suspended in the EU, the catch is that it is suspended in favor of the refugees. They get all the protections of the asylum laws, they follow none of the obligations.
Governments are vastly more powerful than most humans. This is why we limit what governments can do to people, even in contexts where the individuals often don't play by the rules. For example, even if most criminal defendants are guilty, we still want trials to follow due process.
Of course a lot of people claiming asylum in European countries are in fact economic migrants. And of course many of them will not be swiftly deported. But none of that affects the rights of people with a legitimate claim to asylum.
If others can selectively apply the asylum laws why can't Poland? What justification does the EU have for enforcing this law when the EU itself doesn't follow it?
As an analogy, taxes are a legal way for a government to get funds from its citizens. Suppose that one European country refuses to collect taxes from someone. Should this give another EU country the licence to just confiscate property of some other party at gunpoint, because 'taxes are already suspended in the EU'? Clearly not.
This is a false dichotomy between "give migrants more money" and "shoot migrants". Might I humbly suggest a third option, which is to simply not offer rights and money to outsiders in the first place?
I was not saying 'give money to migrants'. I was saying 'spend money on migrants', which is different. At the end of the day, the migrants in Belarus were shipped there with the explicit goal of annoying the EU. Given the general regard for human rights in Belarus, it seems safe to assume that these migrants can be put under enough pressure that they believe that their lives will depend on reaching the EU, and risk their lives in the process. Under such circumstances, push-backs are ugly affairs.
quiet_NaN
29d ago
Do you remember when in December 2023, Poland finally voted out the the far-right PiS party and moderate Europeans rejoiced to see Tusk become the prime minister?
Well, it seems that this joy might have been a bit premature. You see, Poland is currently being flooded by migrants from Belarus. Per the BBC:
Dozens continue to attempt to cross the border daily.
Dozens a day might add up to ten or twenty thousand over a year. Of course, most of them don't want to stay in Poland in the first place:
Many of the migrants who cross into the country from Belarus do not stay, instead entering Germany.
The population of Poland is around 38M, and there a about 1M refugees from Ukraine in Poland without civilization ending, but the migrants via Belarus seem to tax the Polish state beyond the breaking limit.
Thus, the ultima ratio of a state fighting for its survival:
“One of the elements of the migration strategy will be the temporary territorial suspension of the right to asylum,” the prime minister said. “I will demand this, I will demand recognition in Europe for this decision,” he added.
There are some things a government or legislature can suspend at will. If Tusk decides to suspend a civil servant or a subsidiary for farmers, that is his prerogative.
The right to asylum is not something you can suspend at will. I mean, if you are in the middle of a zombie virus apocalypse, a case might be made, but Poland is very much not on the brink of collapse.
Obviously, I am not suggesting that all the refugees entering via Belarus should get asylum. Likely, almost none of them qualify. But they should have a right to make their request and get a speedy rejection, followed by an appeal speedily denied by a judge and a plane ticket back to their country of origin.
Yes, this will mean that for every plane ticket that Belarus buys (or makes some migrant pay for), the EU will also need to pay for a plane ticket, but realistically that is the only way out of the situation. We do not want to compete with Belarus in "who is better at terrorizing delusional migrants", because that game can only be won by shooting more unarmed civilians than Belarus is willing to shoot.
This is feasible because the GDP of the EU is much higher than that of Russia (which also likes to spent its income on other stuff, such as killing Ukrainians). We can match them plane ticket for plane ticket. There are places where the number of migrants/refugees/asylum seekers reaches numbers where one might discuss how one can handle all the people. The border between Poland and Belarus is not such a place.
quiet_NaN
1mo ago
A pyramid scheme is a system in which you convince people to pay you on the assumption that they will make their money back when other people will pay them in turn.
I don't think that the median twitter user is under the illusion that they should pay for premium in the expectation that they will become popular and make money from twitter, so I would not call it a pyramid scheme.
There have certainly been elections which were decided by tiny margins. They might well decided by the contrast in weather between the red and the blue part of the state. Now, you can say that Nate's model sucks because it does not sufficiently predict the weather months in advance.
We can score predictors against each other. A predictor who gives you a 50/50 on anything, like 'the sun will rise tomorrow' or 'Angela Merkel will be elected US president' will score rather poorly. ACX had a whole article on predictor scoring. If there is someone who outperforms Nate over sufficiently many elections, then we might listen to them instead. "I bet the farm on Trump, Biden, Trump and doubled my net worth each time" might be a good starting point, especially if their local election prediction results are as impressive.
Unfortunately, I have not encountered a lot of these people.
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