100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
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User ID: 2039
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
8d ago
@Throwaway05 says that the doctor cartel limiting the number of residency slots is an urban legend. I'll live it to him/her to provide details.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
8d ago
A person choosing to have sex with 100 men in one day in a safe manner causes no harm to others that I can think of.
It causes harm to the self. That's the whole point. This was a bad decision by the lady in question and it was a bad decision that should be easy to avoid.
Again, utilitarianism and/or libertarianism congratulate themselves by saying "we have a hard line up against harming others" conveniently leaving out that all "others" are "selves" depending on reference point. While I definitely don't think the power of the State should be employed to inhibit people from doing things that may or may not be harmful to themselves, I do believe that a useful moral system must necessarily state that there are some actions and motivations that are harmful to the self (and do not offset this with noble and/or virtuous self-sacrifice ) and ought to be avoided for moral reasons ... not just in service of a self-preservation instinct.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
8d ago
You know what, fair. Thank you.
I'll pivot and, then, say that liberalism is a fantastic moral and political system for speedrunning towards the destruction of human integrity and the destruction of individual dignity. If such a path leads to such desolation, of what use is the path?
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
8d ago
I am a pretty moral person. I have a strong moral code. I am generally nice to others. I try to help people. I think that things like murder and rape are fundamentally wrong in an absolute way.
A self-referential argument from authority is a hell of way to make a point.
As for drugs, I would prefer that people not get addicted to them, but there is no moral dimension about it for me.
What, then, does have a "moral dimension" for you? Are you saying that many things in life are not only inherently ammoral, but immune to morality?
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
9d ago
No.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
9d ago
One thing we've seen from this stuff is the death of private practice
Why? Genuine question.
Did ACA regulations make it impossible to run a private practice?
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
9d ago
I am confident there are a lot of normal guys who do not care how many previous partners their partner has had.
That's what you said.
Both of my sources cast quite a bit of doubt on your assertion.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
9d ago
(see: the ACA)
Beyond healthcare, I firmly believe the ACA is a major reason for dampened growth. For most companies - and all without outside funding - it's not possible to start paying the Healthcare tax once you hit 50 employees. The only way to scale now is to have a VC or PE firm pay your employees costs for you.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
9d ago
Thank you for the high effort response. Upvote upvote'd.
I won't respond line for line because, frankly, you've made me think about multiple points and I haven't come up with a conclusion yet. So...thank you!
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
9d ago
because it's none of my business how they choose to live their lives.
I mean this is such a naive response. Of course no one should care how another person lives their own private life. But we live in a society. We interact with one another. If your horribly addicted to drugs, you might choose to "involve" yourself in my life in a drastic way.
Perhaps you'll say, "oh, sure, you can beat the crap out of an addict if they accost you" - but the median position in society is that we shouldn't let people become addicted (to at least the illegal substances) so that we can avoid the far more costly "beat up the zombies" method of social regulation.
Blind/naive libertarianism is just such a poor way of even approach the world. Complex system interact with one another. Unintended consequences are real. People's quality of life extends beyond the walls of their apartments.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
9d ago
A hasty google disagrees with you
Although I will admit this is an internet survey with n of 188. So, probably not super robust findings.
Edit 1
More evidence saying men do penalize past promiscuity, this time using prostitutes.
This one is interesting because of their proxy mechanism.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
9d ago
but if the people involved were happy about it I wouldn't see any problem.
Is this your only criteria? It isn't. Because if it were, you would have no problem with people becoming addicted to drugs and other substances.
Furthermore, let's get into temporal preferences and shifts in self-perspective over time. Maybe this woman can convince herself that she's "happy" with it for some amount of time. I'd argue, given the clip shared, that that amount of time was, at most, the time between the end of this sexual act and when that clip was filmed. Regret may have been forestalled, and it then arrives on camera.
(Interesting aside: this has a bizarre connection to false/not-false rape allegations. Two people are "happy about it" in the moment. The next day, one of them wakes up feeling less "happy about it" and files the allegation. A complex and high stakes legal process then ensues wherein both parties try to somehow prove how they felt about what at which times).
People are often flawed at judging what is good for them and what makes them truly happy. To combat this, we try to develop systems of normative thinking to assist. Some people call this morals, ethics, virtues etc.
Show me the moral/ethical/virtue system that says "Sex with 100 strangers in an hour" is permissible. Aside from moral relativism, out and out hedonism, or nihilism, it doesn't exist.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
9d ago
This is correct.
I've been reading a book that comments on The Wealth of Nations in the context of the contemporary international economy, with all of the various tariffs and spaghetti regulations. The author makes a recurring drumbeat point that price information must be at the center of any market for it to function as a market at all. Without prices being totally "open source" (for lack of a better term) as well as able to change in a time frame that's short enough to accurately reflect supply, demand and baseline cost, the market will not function as a market is intended.
I do like Noah's characterization that insurers are pretty much paid a small fee to be the fall guys. They have very little control over the market for medicine. Those that do - doctors and patients, also known as producers and consumers - lack that price information component so utterly, that you can't even really call it a market. It's a weird for-profit-not-for-profit-emotion-based "exchange" of services.
My two-cents prescriptions:
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Price transparency everywhere. The IT solution already exists to make it trivially easy to see "cost of MRI in USA" instantaneously everywhere.
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Invent "Uber for treatment' - you can book a course of treatment at any provider within whatever geography you want. You should be able to book an appointment on your phone in a few seconds.
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More doctors. We had a thread earlier this year about the number of doctors in the USA being essentially a cartel operation. Limited residency spots set by the AMA and not updated for 20 years and all that.
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More doctor-by-LLM for routine stuff. 50% of "disease" in America is diet, exercise, lifestyle. I'd venture a wild guess that another 10-20% is real but routine stuff; pneumonia, flu, skin stuff, broken bones without life threatening complications etc.
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People get to see and own their electronic health records. This feeds into the doctor-by-LLM. In fact, I could see a really awesome scenario in which people could (voluntarily) plug their electronic health records into a service, much like credit monitoring, that is always analyzing your data for deeper problems. And/or offering nudges for better health lifestyle choices.
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Pharmacy-by-mail for a lot more stuff. I can see this not being allowed for drugs that can have really bad interactions with other stuff, or painkillers because *gestures to opioid crisis*
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Break down state-by-state insurance fences. People aren't magically more or less healthy in Colorado, Minnesota, Georgia, or Maine.
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Auto insurance considers your make and model and year. Medical insurance should do the same. Check-ups (for insurance purposes) annually. No survey or self-reporting. Height, weight, blood work, treadmill or other cardio fitness measurement. If you can't run, walk. If you can't walk (and aren't a paraplegic etc.) stand for as long as you can, or shuffle. Whatever. These reports go back to the insurance machine learning model to give you a quote. You pay it or you don't. If you can't afford insurance, you still know the price of the procedure down the road (see point 1)
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
9d ago
Tagging @Nerd as well.
Understood, and thanks for the elucidation. But, as @mrvanillasky says, this isn't prostitution not only because of the semantic or technical arguments on frequency, solicitation, clearly stated exchange of services for money etc, but because the way in which these women think about themselves is different and, yes, that does matter.
This behavior is probably anti-social. It is definitely extremely poor mate selection followed by even worse "relationship" management. It's trying to paste over some very real material needs with a cheap concept of a relationship.
But it is categorically different than intentionally selling one's body and sexual services. When this occurs, things get even darker and less likely to be recoverable. In this case, a person has made a commodity of themselves physically (and, some of us would say, spiritually as well. Let's leave that aside for now, however). It's a de-agency-ification of the self and that turns into a permission slip for all sorts of destructive and anti-social behavior. Often, the psychic strain creates deep substance abuse issues. There's an increasingly likelihood of involvement with a grey-market economy and the many sleazy characters who involve themselves with it and, sometimes, even outright integration with organized crime (old school biker gangs still "run girls").
Again, all of this isn't to say that your girlfriend's sisters are "doing just fine." This is bad, anti-social behavior and I hope they change their ways.
Still, I'll fight the fight about the specific use of the word "prostitution" which, in my opinion, needs to be treated very differently and very severely. The "two consenting adults" midwit argument papers over the fact that to the extent current day slavery exists, it's largely sex trafficking for purposes of prostitution.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
9d ago
God can neither deceive nor be deceived. He loves us and wants us to be happy.
You are disordered. You seek that which will not fulfill you, but will only bring forth more sorrow to your life.
Yea, I say unto you, repent! And know the Lord is your God.
Be an Ass man.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
9d ago
Her sisters constantly engage in borderline prostitution.
I am not trying to be salacious here, but can you go into more detail? I'm wondering what you mean exactly.
Why I ask is that I am concerned this behavior pattern will become psuedo-normal across all of society and, to some extent, already is.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
10d ago
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
13d ago
right, now follow the thread further.
If you don't want to be beholden to the whims of Current Hegemon, the only way to guarantee that is to be roughly equivalent in overall power and capability to Current Hegemon. If you grow to that size, however, Current Hegemon will suspect you're a rival - which you are.
That precarious balance of power creates a tension that can go cold to hot very quickly.
China having a "history of peaceful behavior" (I would contest this assertion) does nothing to resolve this.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
13d ago
Wasn't the idea behind No Man's Sky that it was open-beyond-open in that it was procedurally generated. The game would actually shift and expand its world in a pseudo-random way based off of player actions?
IIRC, it was too successful at this and players never go to do ... anything. There was a lot of wandering around planets and zipping around space without much contact. In order to generate meaningful action, you have to have some sort of fixed and directing game mechanic. Help me out of I'm remembering this wrong.
P.S. something something we accidentally proved the existence of God through experimental video game design.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
13d ago
I like the end of your post the most.
Noah Smith can admire the problem all he wants, but his solutions have a big problem; they're Government operated or implemented solutions.
Philosophical questions about the role of the Government aside, pretty much all the literature I can find clearly demonstrates that state capacity and ability are utter dogshit, and have been trending that way since the 1970s. It's largely a regulation problem, but, more deeply, a matter of difficulty in managing complexity. Market systems manage complexity much better because there is "skin the game" and cost-benefit is more well informed. Market participants crash towards an equilibrium in a way that a central planning authority simply cannot.
I am not only suspicious, but highly doubtful that any sort of Federal level industrial policy will bear fruit. The CHIPS act is a great case in point.
So let's tag in free markets and de-regulate, right? Well, first, absolutely yes! But there's also the unfortunate reality that one of the byproducts of this is unpopular at the moment; a very small number of people will get incredibly rich.
We can set Wall Street and the Tech Bros loose on re-building American industrial capability and they will do it faster, better, and cheaper than the government. Jobs with good salaries will be created (though I am suspicious enough of those jobs will be created). And something like 100 new billionaries could be minted, with even more money being chopped up between VC/PE investors, banks, etc. I think this creates a cultural problem where people will want the good jobs, but hate the New Elons that emerge from the new companies.
This is the cultural tradeoff for economic growth; for the median to do better (much better) you have to allow for the fact that a tiny minority will do astronomically better.
Right now, there are major parts of both American political parties that look at wealth as inherently unearned at the best or morally wrong at the worst. If that attitude doesnt' change, a return to growth ethos is inherently limited.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
13d ago
I don't care .... I don't really care
I care .... I really, really care.
the Great Man theory of history really is some midwit shit. This isn't about Xi or Putin, this is about large scale economic-military-political spheres of control and influence that will outlive both of these men. The post WW2 world order was started by a bunch of Americans that are now very dead and has been sustained for going on 80 years because of a system maintained and reinforced by cultural, political, economic, and military forces.
China is not seeking Taiwan as an end state. They are seeking to create a Chinese system (of cultural, political, economic, and military means) that similarly self-sustains and self-supports for centuries. That can only come with a reduction in both the relative and absolute power of the West, especially the United States. Such a drastic shift in power will necessarily alter our cultural values and operation. I don't want Beijing's incredibly global presence to dictate cultural norms to any extent (aside: Ban TikTok).
The world hasn't gotten any smaller, but nations (in the conceptual sense) have become larger and can move faster and further. There is no "over there" any more.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
13d ago
China does not seem to want more than taiwan and access to the ocean
Dude ... why do they want access to the ocean? You're answering your own implied question here.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
13d ago
A failure to adopt a pro-social care and concern for others is why they locked up the toothpaste.
You're talking about being anti-social on a global scale.
You can absolutely be 100% "America First" without being "America Only"
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
13d ago
You're much smarter and better than this.
"They've all got a chronic case of the Stupids!" is some reddit level shit.
You know the answer. You actually said it in your original jeremiad in this thread. San Franciscan and Chicagoan political elites have a relative value preference that prioritizes fealty to their political orthodoxy over real-world solutions. Why? Because it sustains and supports their status within their political groups, thus growing their access to power and resources. It is an elite circle cannabalizing the plight of normies for their own game. This is actually one of the closest things to consensus on The Motte - the ways to deal with it are the sources of argument.
I can't make heads or tails of what you're saying.
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