spiky_fungus
3mo ago
I am confused how it changes things. You listed bunch of possible beliefs and implied that there are no other options. I mentioned some other possibilities.
spiky_fungus
3mo ago
"most" is likely overstating things unless you count taxes as part of regulations. There are also other reasons.
40% for regulation, 30% for taxes, 30% for literally everything else is likely still giving too much credit for regulation.
spiky_fungus
3mo ago
Most regulations don't have obvious effects. But the cumulative effects are glaring. The living standards in Europe are lower than most US states. They have a permanent unemployment rate that is about double the US. European citizens that manage to move to the US can immediately get large increases in their effective base salaries. In addition to enjoying lower tax rates.
note that (over)regulation is not the only thing causing such results
spiky_fungus
3mo ago
Serious question: does Europe understand that regulations have costs?
European Union treats regulation like great adventure rather than necessary evil.
plus Europe tends to set fines at ruinously expensive levels
This one makes sense if you want regulation to be enforced. Alternatives are fining Microsoft less than they earn in one second.
spiky_fungus
3mo ago
I read it as a claim that includes at least typical modern men.
spiky_fungus
3mo ago
for me answer seems "both"
basically Russia found way to get their murders: just threaten to murder more people if you will not get them back! (see Navalny)
You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
is selectable field for 'Actually a quality contribution' some trap to filter out people not reading instructions? Or is this instruction outdated?
spiky_fungus
3mo ago
there are many other possibilities there:
- they may genuinely believe that MtF gives you female body and FtM gives you male body, and based strategy on that
- they may genuinely believe that woman and man are as strong among top performers
- supposed transsexual boxers are not actually transsexual
- they may consider it as acceptable side effect and do not care about woman sports
and so on
spiky_fungus
3mo ago
Oh, I do not worry about it at all.
It is more that I am poking at this as I am curious is there any self-consistent and reality-adjacent vision of world there.
As far as hot takes go "live as modern man is worse than living as a slave in some societies" is quite out there so I keep wondering how they managed to justify this.
But sadly*, it seems that even they do not really believe in this as they keep trying to backpedal and limit claim to lumpenproletariat at most.
*for the expected return on discussion, for themself and world in general it is a good thing that it was just shitposting.
spiky_fungus
3mo ago
So in
Some societies treated slaves with more decency than modern man commends in all areas that are not commodified material comfort.
by "modern man" you meant only not working lumpenproles on a dole?
spiky_fungus
3mo ago
But they don't strike me as less exploitative than the treatment of nominally free workers in the 1800s.
But for the lowest of the low
earlier you claimed that this was far more widely applicable and favourable also in comparison to modern people in general:
Some societies treated slaves with more decency than modern man commends in all areas that are not commodified material comfort.
are you withdrawing this claim and admit that no such society existed?
But for the lowest of the low, for those people for whom getting a meal is not a given
And for such people in past slavery could be preferable, before industrial society made everyone much richer. But is not applying anymore. So I am also confused why you think that slavery would be better for such people than their current life.
I admit that live of exploited slave could be better than life of a heroin addict. But it is pretty hard to find modern people for which being enslaved would increase their access to a food.
rights and dignity are not those prized treats
So for which areas "societies treated slaves with more decency than modern man commends"? You admit now that these are out. You yourself excluded "commodified material comfort" earlier. So, in which exactly areas slaves had supposedly a better life?
spiky_fungus
3mo ago
Before taking advise from you on this I await examples of societies that:
- had slaves
- treated them better (in your opinion) than societies treat modern people now
For best effect: in which society that existed in past you would prefer to be enslaved over living your current life?
mostly based on 1700 bourgeois propaganda
"slavery bad" is opinion fairly widely shared, if you want to argue that slavery is better than freedom then I await your examples
spiky_fungus
3mo ago
not beholden to a master usually has a lot to gain in feudal transitions
whole point of feudal societal setup is that basically everyone has feudal lord above them and they are beholden to someone (and in some cases have people beholden to them)
so I guess you argue that whoever ends being king would benefit? That is likely true, but it is remarkably small group of people, and given that others are going to lose, I have no idea who would prefer such setup
So you simply are unable to substantiate your bullshit and insane claim how supposedly slaves were better treated than people nowadays.
Even to let other people (not me) to judge it and potential admire your great examples.
For future: making less overly strong claims could be much better tactic and let you argue without blatant lying.
Also, not having delusions that specifically me would be lord and king that subjugated others is not the same as understanding only material comfort.
spiky_fungus
3mo ago
Unless you’re capable of sending in the troops and shooting to kill (like China or North Korea) no government has the ability to stop a riot when it gets large enough. 100 police cannot stop 1,000 rioters
nonsense
tear gas, water cannons, rubber bullets exists
you can arrest people
spiky_fungus
3mo ago
Some societies treated slaves with more decency than modern man commends in all areas that are not commodified material comfort.
I will ask again: can you list societies that had slaves treated better than modern man?
Are you aware about food production nowadays and how it compared to past? And how starvation used to be far more common?
You even claim that benefit of slavery is that you were more likely to eat.
Free men.
Who you count here? Noble elite class? Rampaging neovikings? Starving peasantry?
spiky_fungus
3mo ago
Free men are not guaranteed food and shelter.
Really? That is supposed to be benefit over modern citizen?
For start, slaves were not guaranteed food and shelter.
And maybe technically free men are not having such guarantees nowadays, but in practise they have them.
In functional modern societies free men get better food and shelter than slaves in past, even utterly useless ones and criminals. Maybe being slave in some societies was better than being beggar in modern Somalia and Syria but only for some of slave-owning societies.
Minimally competent free men get vastly better food and shelter.
Of all things, social support is not thing that was better for slaves than typical people nowadays. You even initially excluded "that are not commodified material comfort" from supposed benefits.
Worse for who? At cost to whom?
For anyone not preferring to risk dying from starvation or from raving bandits or being brutally oppressed by local lord.
For whom "post-industrial and back to virility and violence" would be better?
spiky_fungus
3mo ago
Not to get deeply entangled in this discussion, but I suppose the steelman to IGI is that the material improvements that we live under are far from permanent, and could well disappear before we realize it, and suddenly we find ourselves back to the brutal state of affairs known to the past.
And there are places where they mostly disappeared, for one reason or another.
And actually we are not so far away from crucial infrastructure being disrupted (one way or another - regulations, armed sabotage, outright war) and ending with no cheap electronics, power shortage, major famine.
To take extreme but possible example - nuclear war will not kill everyone (far from it) but would wreak things for survivors. Full scale exchange would have death toll in billions and would decisively disrupt pretty much anything.
Serious pandemics are possible and after COVID it seems clear that more lethal pathogen would be a massive problem.
And so on.
What is more cruel and violent than the plain imposition that you will never own your home, you will never have a loving wife, you will never have a loyal husband, you will never sire children and all you will ever do is pay for pensions working a job you hate while your black rectangle beams images of happier people into your mind as everything in your vicinity including your own life gets slowly but surely worse in every regard. Perhaps the threat of the punishment that awaits you if you dare to contest such a fate?
For example an armed mob* coming to your flat, stealing all your stuff, burning building where you lived, maybe also raping you and enslaving? Or just flat-out murdering you for one reason or another?
*with uniforms or not, there are variants of it from Hutu, Hitler and Pol-Pot through Red Army to basically all factions in Syrian War
Also, while you describe pretty fucked up society, basically nowhere situation is as bad or mandatory. And places where situation is worse - that is because they have far too much of virility and violence.
We do not live in peace, we do not live in civilization
Oh, go away with such redefinitions. Or at least propose new ones to allow distinguishing Los Angeles from what happened in Aleppo and Mariupol and Grozny.
And "civilization" surely includes polities where government did horrible things, if rulers decided to enslave/murder 10% of population it does not imply that we do not live in civilization. In fact civilization is needed for major projects, including "hey, lets murder 10 000 000 people".
You are complaining about badly setup civilisation, if someone promised you that civilisation is cuddly or nice to all population - then you should read something about world.
Some societies treated slaves with more decency than modern man commends in all areas that are not commodified material comfort.
Which ones you think that fit? For me at least "being enslaved" seems to make it basically impossible. And just lack of material comfort AKA starving to death if things went wrong is in a fact major issue to people. Maybe I am extrapolating too much, but I really appreciate that starving to death is not a real risk to me.
This is discounting the fact that we can totally be post-industrial and back to virility and violence.
Yes, we can. At cost of things getting far worse. No idea why this would be preferable - I would prefer neither, but I will take fucked up dating market over being murdered by rampaging vikings or starving to death or being oppressed by feudal lord worse than being oppressed now.
I guess that some people imagine themself to be doing the looting and raping or ruling as new lords. In such case, I wish them utter failure of all their plans and deranged imaginations.
All this has happened before, and will happen again.
I hope this will not happen in lifetime mine, my children or grandchildren - as plan minimum.
spiky_fungus
3mo ago
I wonder how hilariously one sided this one will be. Hopefully not as bad in terms of what is being encouraged and effects like Gilad Shalit prisoner exchange but I have no high hopes here.
spiky_fungus
3mo ago
they've tried to minimize civilian casualties
They have not tried to maximally maximize it, and they are not yet fully on Syrian bombing strategy but... They have not exactly tried to minimize them
It would be extremely easy for them to destroy power delivery infrastructure
We know that it is not extremely easy because they tried and succeeded only partially, that is why they now switched mostly to destruction of power stations. It is not clear how well they succeed but it seems to be going better for Russia. Still, far from "extremely easy".
(unless you claim that they kept attacking power infrastructure because they had too many rockets and no good use for them or something)
Russia isn't waging a total war of destruction with Ukraine
One notable reason is that it is hard for them to escalate further without use of nuclear weapons. They already using nearly full available resources (OK, not all forces were pulled from NATO and Chinese border - though very significant part was).
spiky_fungus
3mo ago
Well, Russians themselves and few people will disagree. But approval of Russian government and of Russia is remarkably low there (obviously, not 0 and for example in Slovakia it may be relatively high).
spiky_fungus
3mo ago
I refer to fact that this assassination has targeted leader of organisation that declared war against Israel and performed large attack in addition to continuous regular attacks with rockets.
And they assassinated them in country that was using them as proxies and supporting them, and recently performed quite large attack on Israel.
Note that it recently more-or-less happened in Poland.
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