cjet79
Anarcho Capitalist on moral grounds
Libertarian Minarchist on economic grounds
User ID: 124
cjet79
17hr ago
Oh no! Too much empathy! Too much due process! What horrific threats to the stability of the country! How pesky.
Knock off the sarcasm, its not conducive to discussion.
cjet79
1d ago
This is too low effort / antagonistic.
I'll only do a 5-day ban. I know you are capable of quality contributions. Try to do more like that rather than your 14 other warnings or bans for bad stuff. (jesus how fucking lenient have we become with shitty posters). I'm gonna suggest a more lengthy ban next time, maybe a few months or permanently.
https://www.themotte.org/post/3442/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/398451?context=8#context
https://www.themotte.org/post/3359/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/382800?context=8#context
https://www.themotte.org/post/2254/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/348024?context=8#context
https://www.themotte.org/post/2015/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/331751?context=8#context
https://www.themotte.org/post/1913/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/326801?context=8#context
https://www.themotte.org/post/1860/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/323664?context=8#context
https://www.themotte.org/post/1860/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/323664?context=8#context
etc.
cjet79
1d ago
I think many of the good things came from hope and misunderstandings. I'm atheist and I realize exactly how many of our founding fathers were christian in their beliefs and behavior (approximately 100%). I don't know why it is necessary to believe in a Christian god to value human life, but it seems to be an objective truth of reality for most people.
cjet79
1d ago
Report a post and move on if you think it breaks the rules. Do not respond in kind.
I'll give leniency in this situation because @EverythingIsFine did the same shit.
Your punishment (or reward if you choose to view it that way) is that you are not to engage with @EverythingIsFinein this subthread.
This will be mirrorred for @EverythingIsFine.
cjet79
1d ago
Report a post and move on if you think it breaks the rules. Do not respond in kind.
I'll give leniency in this situation because @theSinisterMushroom did the same shit.
Your punishment (or reward if you choose to view it that way) is that you are not to engage with @theSinisterMushroom in this subthread.
This will be mirrorred for @theSinisterMushroom.
cjet79
1d ago
Honestly, transcripts are annoying. They are not your words, and we can't speak directly to the person who said the words. I chose specifically not to address the transcript in my comments, and mostly just addressed your commentary.
cjet79
1d ago
Not if you split up the states!
I say that only semi-jokingly. But I'd love for an incentive to exist that splits up states into smaller entities. America is just getting too large to govern effectively.
cjet79
1d ago
:sadface:
Too true it hurts.
A few more months and this experiment will turn 250 years old. In terms of the age of nations, pretty young. Divine right of kinds definitely seems to have more longevity. I think the world has at least enjoyed some of the fruits of this experiment. Common law has had slightly more hold in this country than in others. Self defense is at least a legally defensible concept in the US, rather than an admission of guilt as it is in Europe.
cjet79
1d ago
Even the ultimate defensive weapon could easily be used to commit the very commonly recognized crime of false imprisonment.
occurs when one person intentionally restrains another in a way that confines the individual within a bounded area without consent or legal authority.
Imagine impenetrable shield. It cannot hurt anyone. But it also cannot be bypassed. A person with this this shield could surround another person and prevent them from going where they want. This would be textbook false imprisonment.
And it seems exactly what she intended to do to ICE agents. Physically confine them to a bounded area without consent or legal authority.
cjet79
1d ago
You are likely right that I'm underestimating the demographic impacts of the situation. I'm always looking at the actions of individuals. I did write a post a while back that I mostly ignore race as an information category.
I will say that there is some uniqueness in this ICE situation where people have been using vehicles to obstruct ICE. It's definitely not the first time people have tried to obstruct vehicles. But usually it's human bodies vs vehicles. Some exceptions I know of: during the Canadian COVID lockdown protests it was parked vehicles. During French farmer protests they took tractors into the city to block traffic.
There is some question remaining of how the white mom demographic responds to this incident. If they never use this tactic again then maybe it shows it was a poorly thought out tactic and once the danger is apparent they abandon it en masse.
I think they perceived it as "using your body to block others" and they didn't realize they were doing the equivalent of waving a gun around. Their privilege and lack of experience with dangerous situations could probably excuse them for not thinking through the consequences of their actions. I've said elsewhere that I doubt Good fully thought through the consequences of using a vehicle to obstruct law enforcement. Typically the result of someone carelessly endangering other is that they injure others. In this case Good was shot dead. In an alternate reality she ran over an ICE officer and the news story is being buried like the one where ~15 people tried to shoot at ICE officers in an organized attack.
cjet79
1d ago
As I've said before I don't like litigating split second decision making. Most of your post is that.
The only real person with the ability to make decisions beforehand that could have prevented this is Good. She could have chosen to exit her vehicle at the protest or to turn off the engine. The other possibility that I just thought of is that ICE starts using armored vehicles and just starts ramming through obstructing vehicles. I don't want ICE to adopt that policy, do you?
She choose to use a vehicle to obstruct other vehicles and to drive in an area with pedestrians and people on foot. Her obstructing vehicles is part of the reason there were officers on foot in the first place. Unless she thought it would just be a perfect statement where she gets to obstruct a law she doesn't like and the result is that ICE just politely sits in their vehicles going no where and letting her obstruct them?
Your truck example is the false equivalence. Try using your truck to block the entrance to the police parking lot or your body to block the entrance of the front door. Those are equivalent.
Or line your truck up with the pedestrian exit to the police station and rev the engine like you are about to run them over. You will be treated like you are holding a shotgun. They will aim their guns at you and tell at you to get out. If you instead start moving the truck towards them they will unload as if you had lifted the shotgun into an aiming position.
In your example they get out of the truck. I suggested that was one of the things Good could have done to deescalate the situation. The equivalent would be leaving your shotgun in the trunk of your car. A weapon that you do not currently possess is of course far less threatening in the immediate situation.
If a policy relies on people making split second complex judgements then the policy sucks. I already put some fault on ice for being too willing to use deadly force. But that is because I hold agents of the government to a higher standard than I do individuals. And I think any individual would have been justified in using deadly force against a vehicle in this exact situation. In the US they'd also be legally in the clear, in Europe, which doesn't believe in self defense, probably not.
What policy changes would you suggest that could have prevented this? Being reasonable in the sense that any policy that amounts to "be ineffective anytime someone uses this tactic against you" is a non-starter.
I say this as someone that disagrees with the goals of ICE. But I do not see a policy that would have lead to a guaranteed better outcome here.
cjet79
1d ago
You are allowed to defend yourself and others in this country from threats of deadly harm with lethal force. A vehicle driving at someone is a deadly threat. This is already the law of the land.
cjet79
1d ago
Using a car as transportation is not something I'd say qualifies as intending to use a deadly weapon.
Using a car's physical mass, and the threat of that physical mass to intentionally obstruct others? That is definitely crossing into weaponization territory.
Also what happens when Good's obstruction is determined to be illegal? If she is on foot the authorities can use their bodies to arrest and restrain her. If she is in a vehicle they need her to cooperate and leave the vehicle. If she decides instead to flee in that vehicle she has now created a hazardous car chase scenario. Even if she had not nearly run someone over and no one had shot her, she still did the wrong thing by driving away.
I doubt she was thinking through any of these things, but thats exactly the problem she escalated the danger of the situation for others by adding her vehicle to it. The fact that she was ultimately the one to get killed feels a little harsh to me, but if anyone was going to die that day for what happened I'd have most preferred it to be Good.
cjet79
1d ago
This feels so very true and depressing. I am a fan of capitalism. But man can it suck in some ways.
I remember seeing this process at the company I worked at between 2013 and 2020. Trips to visit coworkers in other offices became harder to justify. Nights out with co-workers used to be expensed or paid for by higher ups, and they did that less and less over time. Some of the fun co-workers that weren't necessarily as productive got kind of pushed out. The way per-diem worked shifted from a flat amount to having to submit all your receipts of meals. Amenities in the kitchen area became slimmer. It felt like the company was nickel and diming us constantly. Which was saving them a bit of money, but was mostly just making us miserable.
It led me to a big realization about politics and management at the time. That a good manager has two competing priorities. The first priority, which is their job, is to save the company money, or make sure that the company resources are being used efficiently. But the second priority, which is never spoken of by the company, is that the manager needs to save their people from the grinding destruction of all that is human and fun for the sake of the first priority. Managing that second priority is called "politics". Its a dirty word for the company and those who lose out by having a manager that sucks at it.
Politics is the desire to place the preferences of humans over the preferences of inhuman competitive forces.
The extent to how much an organization can get away with diverting resources to politics is a sign of how rich the organization is. An organization that is perfectly efficient with no waste or politics is probably a miserable place to work. I imagine Amazon warehouses are somewhat like this, where they have optimized things such as bathroom break frequency. An organization that is all politics can also be a miserable place to work, or an amazing place depending on whether you are on the winning side of the politics. Non-profits and some government organizations are both a bit closer to being 'all politics'.
cjet79
1d ago
The equal blame incident.
I'm libertarian. I'm pro immigration. I'm generally not a fan of the institution of policing and think it is run badly in many ways. I also think the average protestor belongs in a mental institution.
All of that to say I think this is generally a no one is at fault incident. Or at least one where everyone's culpability balances out in ways that they are all equally to blame.
Good went to a protest with the intent to use a deadly weapon (a car) to obstruct police officers in their duty. This is a risky thing to do. It endangers yourself and endangers others. Cars are not toys. They are about equal with guns in terms of killing people in the US each year Source. And the same holds true for police officers, where gun and car deaths in the line of duty are about equal Source.
I hate litigating specific incidents, because 99% of the time the main "this could have been prevented" turning points happen before the incident. I can think of at least two major ways Good could have prevented this (not going to the protest, or getting out of her vehicle to protest). I cannot think of any specific policy that police or ICE could have that would have prevented this. Officers are allowed to defend themselves from bodily harm or attacks on their person. Just like people in general are allowed to defend themselves from bodily harm or attacks on their person. The officer was not trying to create a situation, they were moving around the vehicle not trying to stay in front of it. If you are around police officers you should be aware that they have a heightened sense of "someone is going to attack me". Don't pretend like you are going to pull a gun on them, or pretend to charge them like you are going to beat them up. Don't nearly run into them with your vehicle. Unless you want to get shot. All of these things are also advice for how to treat a member of the public that might be carrying a firearm. People dying is a tragedy. But doing something dangerous towards someone carrying a gun and then getting shot is what I consider "accidental suicide". Its a tragedy if someone runs out into a street at a not-crosswalk and gets killed by a vehicle, no one is really at fault. Its an accidental suicide.
I've mostly been describing why Good is to blame. So why do I call it an equal blame incident? Well police and law enforcement still have some level of duty to exercise restraint in the use of deadly force. I do think the officer could have exercised that restraint here. I do not like that we have to treat police officers like wild animals or rabid dogs that might attack at the slightest provocation. Its not true for most officers, but its true for enough of them that I feel comfortable invoking the "accidental suicide".
To summarize, Good placed herself in a dangerous situation, and then did something that could be perceived as attacking an officer. The officer could have exercised restraint, but I would not expect that restraint of a private citizen.
Longevity and scissor statements
I have been surprised by the longevity of this incident in the news cycle. I mostly consider it a boring incident. As I said above I hate litigating specific incidents and asking could have been done in a split second of thinking for things to turn out differently. My rule of thumb is that something always went wrong long before someone had to make a split second life or death decision. In this case it doesn't seem like either side is strongly to blame. Good made more bad decisions leading up to the incident, but she died as a consequence which feels a little too heavy for her level of bad decision making. If the officer had died instead I'd say it was clearly Good's fault.
But I'm realizing now why I should not be as surprised by the longevity. You don't go to battle over a culture war incident if you feel like it is a losing ground. In an alternate world where Good had struck and killed a police officer with her vehicle I'd bet the story would be buried. Or at least no more talked about than the incident where 15 armed people tried to shoot and attack ICE agents (its still insane to me that this happened).
In all battles you only want to commit when you feel you can win. In the culture war winning means being morally right. Battles take two to tango though. So major controversies spring up when both sides feel like they are in the right. In this theoretical model the most battled over topics will always be scissor statements. The likelihood of "battles" is also helped along by however distorted the view of reality is by the partisans. If partisans had perfect perceptions of reality then only truly 50-50 incidents would spark up any controversy. But if they have something like a 5% bias for their side then incidents that are 45-55 would also spark up battles. The wider the gap in perception the more things become battles.
But I think reality can still partially penetrate partisan perceptions, so even when they have noticeable bias towards their own side they can notice a slightly losing argument. So they'll drop the topics where they feel that they are losing. Meaning that even if with partisan perceptions distorting reality a 50-50 incident is going to stick around much longer.
cjet79
2d ago
The AI songs are fun for like five minutes and then they cause the same glaze over effect I get with text AIs.
cjet79
2d ago
This feels close enough to trolling and one of your few previous posts was also trolling. And this gives off alt account vibes. Permaban, unless other mods care to speak on your behalf.
cjet79
2d ago
I enjoyed Graveyard keeper as well. I can't remember now if I finished it though.
Travellers Rest is still in early access, my gut was saying to wait for more updates and stories, but it fit my gaming needs at the time so I purchased anyways. I think waiting if you can would be a good idea.
cjet79
4d ago
I got travellers rest. It's a top down game where you own and manage a little tavern.
You grow crops, make beer, wine, spirits, and food. You can build guest rooms for people to stay in.
It's got stardew valley vibes all over. It's a nice relaxing game while I'm trying to get through an awful string of sicknesses.
cjet79
5d ago
Glad your Tolkein comment got nominated, I wouldn't have seen it otherwise. I do really like Tolkein's approach to writing fantasy / fiction. "No this is not a complex metaphor for the real world. I wrote a different world and I tried to make it internally consistent."
People who don't believe him on this point confound me. Most authors that write in metaphor whack you over the head with it. And if they don't whack you enough within the chapters of the book, they certainly do afterwards in their interviews and explanations. The most straightforward clue that Tolkein was not writing in metaphor was that he says he was not writing in metaphor.
cjet79
5d ago
Your perspective is missing "I placed myself with a deadly weapon (a car) in a situation where it could be used as a deadly weapon"
Without that caveat I'd say both Fields and this lady have much more defensible reactions with their vehicles.
But vehicles are shitty deadly weapons. They are endangered by people to the sides of the vehicle, but they are deadly against people in front of and behind the vehicle. So self defense is much harder to justify.
Kyle Rittenhouse brought a deadly weapon to a protest and then managed to kill three people only in self defense. Ironically if he had been in a vehicle his body count likely would have been higher and against people in front of the vehicle and not his direct aggressors to the sides of the vehicle.
cjet79
5d ago
I remember analyzing that at the time. I know those streets in cville. GPS would never take you that way. He chose to drive down that street.
I think if she had hit and killed the officer instead of getting shot and killed shed be getting a murder charge like James Fields.
And if someone had shot James Fields on that street as he was accelerating down it towards a crowd they would have been in the right.
So the policy suggestion you have is "never be vaguely in front of a vehicle with its engine on"
That is too restrictive and I can't imagine trying to follow that rule in practice without basically giving up anytime anyone brings a car to disrupt your operations.
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