Quantumfreakonomics
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Quantumfreakonomics
17hr ago
Why aren’t Democrats physically occupying government buildings?
I’ve been reading and watching a lot of left-wing content lately. A big topic of conversation is what exactly Democrats could do to slow down or stop Trump. The “mainstream” opinion is that Democrats can’t really do anything except sue, since they control zero branches of federal government. I disagree.
DC voted 90% for Kamala. Pretty much every federal employee is in danger of losing their job if Trump successfully consolidates power. They could collectively decide to simply not comply with Trump’s orders. He would have to blow all of his political capital on calling in the national guard while his allegedly illegal orders get litigated.
Look at this video from the other week purporting to show Congressional Democrats being “physically blocked” from entering the Department of Education. They aren’t even really trying to get inside. They could totally storm in if they wanted!
Has anyone chained themselves to their desk? Or better yet, to one of these mystical “servers” containing so much sensitive personal data? We saw more effective civil disobedience over Gaza than we are seeing over our own government.
I have two theories for this incompetence, but am eager to hear more:
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All of the organizations and groups that typically organize and support these types of protests blew their entire budget on the presidential campaign. Then, money dried up as rich donors feared getting on Trump’s bad side.
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After January 6, the Democrats focused their self-image around the idea of “procedure” and “doing things the right way”. This calcified to such an extent that anyone in a position of leadership is now incapable of forming and executing plans which do not conform with the collective PMC understanding of what is allowed or “proper”.
Quantumfreakonomics
3d ago
I feel like NATO expansion was a complete own-goal. What does the United States get out of any NATO member state that joined after 1990? Are we really expecting the Polish winged hussars to open a second front on the Mongolian Steppes in response to a Chinese attack on the US? These states are a massive liability for no discernible benefit. I would support kicking Eastern Europe out of NATO. If Western Europe doesn’t agree to that, then they can start their own alliance with blackjack and hookers.
Quantumfreakonomics
4d ago
What do you guys make of the Elon - Ashley St. Claire babymama drama?
For context, Ashley St. Claire is a conservative Twitter personality who announced on Valentine's Day that Elon Musk has fathered a child with her. This was followed-up with a vaguely threatening statement from Ashley's lawyer. There are screenshots going around that suggest a less-than-cordial relationship between Ashley and Elon, though I can't verify these. There are also potential inconsistencies.
Quantumfreakonomics
4d ago
The army specifically? Doesn't strike me as particularly absurd. Their army is the largest in Europe (apart from Russia of course), has lots of great equipment thanks to Western aid, and most importantly, is battle-hardened.
Quantumfreakonomics
5d ago
And to think that this all happened because Scott platformed Mencius Moldbug back in 2013. Search your feelings. You know it to be true.
I wouldn’t really mind Elon becoming techno-monarch tbh, but I don’t trust Trump with absolute power.
Quantumfreakonomics
5d ago
Sure you can. One can wish certain events would occur, or have an emotional reaction to certain events, without threatening to take illegal action to cause those events to occur.
Surely there is at least one person somewhere whom you wish would die, such that you would feel happy if you heard the news that they had passed.
Quantumfreakonomics
6d ago
Oceania was not after all at war with Eric Adams. Oceania was at war with The Federalist Society. Eric Adams was an ally.
A few days ago, news broke that the DOJ ordered the federal corruption charges against New York City mayor Eric Adams dismissed. As of this writing, the charges have still not been formally dismissed. Apparently, the Attorney General's office can't find anyone willing to sign their name on the dismissal paperwork. The acting US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Danielle Sassoon, resigned yesterday after refusing to carry out the order. If the name sounds familiar, she was the lead prosecuter in the SBF case. She must be some typical big-city liberal lawyer right? Well, apparently not.
The Federalist Society: "She was a law clerk to Justice Antonin Scalia and Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III."
The gorgeous Miss Sassoon wasn't the only casualty. Reports are at least six people have resigned rather than sign-off on this.
It's worth taking a step back here. Six months ago, anyone would have expected that a big-city Democrat mayor getting indicted on federal corruption charges would have been the reddest of red meat to the online right. How did we get to the point that right-wing law influencers are denouncing the Federalist Society for prosecuting Democrats for corruption? The monkey wrench thrown in the gears is Trump's decision to use the charges as leverage to extract concessions on immigration. A few offhand comments by Adams critical of mass immigration are retroactively cast as the Casus Belli for the initial investigation by Biden's DOJ. Am I missing something here? Why is this not an obvious quid pro quo? I can't tell whether the MAGA claim is that, "yes, this is a quid pro quo, and that's fine", or if the claim is that, "no, actually the corruption charges were themselves corruption. Dismissing the corruption charges is actually fighting corruption".
Quantumfreakonomics
7d ago
The simplest explanation in my eyes is:
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Male feminists, being feminists, tend to hang around with female feminists.
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Female feminists are more likely to make sexual misconduct accusations at any given level of sexual pestiness than are non-feminist women.
It’s Simpson’s Paradox all the way down.
Quantumfreakonomics
8d ago
This doesn’t even make sense from an antisemitic standpoint. If anything Jews want English-speaking nations to dominate geopolitics because they already have ready-made English-language propaganda infrastructure
There is a long history of government “efficiency” initiatives spinning up, wasting unimaginable gobs of taxpayer money, and ending up with nothing usable to show for it. Elon mentioned from the Oval Office yesterday that the government stores and processes retirement records on paper inside an underground mine. Here is an old GAO report detailing past attempts to modernize the process. The theme of the piece is repeated abject failure.
You can’t waste time on planning, outreach, and meetings. You either do the thing, or the thing never gets done. Existing governmental organizations are not going to give you what you need to do the thing. You have to make them accept a fait accompli
Quantumfreakonomics
9d ago
I've been digging into some of these laws and regulations. I'm coming away more convinced than ever that democratic governance is a myth. No regular person could possibly comprehend the byzantine labyrinth of rules, regulations, and case law required to competently evaluate government decision making.
Every spigot of federal funds grows into a hydrothermal vent of highly-specialized fauna perfectly adapted for siphoning-off those sweet sweet grants. Congress can't fix the problem, because all they are able or willing to do is appropriate more funding for things.
Quantumfreakonomics
9d ago
Eric Adams is the big one in the news lately. He instructed fire marshals to look the other way on Turkey's NYC skyscraper in exchange for free first-class Turkish Airlines flights. Trump told the Justice Department to drop the case.
There was also the first impeachment of Trump himself. If wikipedia is to be believed, Trump tried to exchange military aid for political favors from Ukraine.
Quantumfreakonomics
9d ago
It seems like there’s a pattern in what forms of corruption are acceptable on the right -
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Diverting taxpayer money to family members or pet causes: Evil, ought to get you thrown out of a helicopter.
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Selling the performance of official acts to private interests for money or other services: No big deal. Everybody does it. Just an excuse to railroad somebody like they did to Trump.
Quantumfreakonomics
10d ago
I assume you are referring to this order following up on the judge's temporary restraining order freezing (heh) the funding freeze. This is a bit of a strange situation. It's not entirely clear what specific action is being enjoined. They are prevented from... not funding things? Which things? Which specific transactions are required to go through? Which funding decisions are a result of following the president's executive order (forbidden by the court's order), and which funding decisions are simply government officials implementing what they consider to be the proper policy of the government? What even are the proper funding procedures in the absense of executive-directed policy? Are agency heads supposed to pretend that Biden is still president and fund whatever he would want instead?
Quantumfreakonomics
10d ago
As a thought experiment, what do you guys think it would take for Republicans in congress to impeach and convict Trump?
Like, suppose all those Reddit comments are right, and Elon really is looting billions of dollars from the treasury for his personal benefit. If Trump turns a blind eye, or even worse, pardons Elon, surely that would be enough right?
Quantumfreakonomics
10d ago
All of the ads I ever see are tiny companies I’ve never heard of. Actually, “companies” might be a bit generous. Most of them seem like outright scams.
Quantumfreakonomics
10d ago
I sort of agree with you. But I think this would fall under the funding freeze issued by President Trump. This isn’t a brand new program. There are migrants in New York hotel rooms right now. It’s not like Concentration Camps Incorporated has the tent cities in Nevada ready to go. If the funding gets stopped, then the migrants get kicked out onto the streets of New York with nowhere to eat, shit, or sleep.
It’s sort of a hard sell to say, “oh yeah, we had money appropriated to shelter these migrants, but the hotels they were at didn’t fit the president’s criteria, so we let manhattan turn into a biohazard slum instead. No impoundment act implications here.”
Quantumfreakonomics
10d ago
I totally believe that FEMA sent this money, but it doesn’t actually violate law.
Do you know of any non-federal entities that are equipped to relieve overcrowding in holding facilities? I can think of two: state holding facilities, and hotels.
One might reasonably assume that the proper response to overcrowding at immigrant detention facilities is to change the law to make deportations happen faster and raise throughput. What our congress actually does is give out money to NGOs to put detained illegals up in hotels instead.
Quantumfreakonomics
11d ago
Thirding this. I've been hungry for podcasts covering the DOGE story (preferrably not slop. There's lots of slop out there).
Quantumfreakonomics
11d ago
It's helpful to try thinking about it from the air-traffic controlers' perspective. Last year, the ATC scandal was a purely academic dispute. There was still pending litigation, but nothing that would affect the typical already-hired air-traffic controller either way.
Right now by contrast, federal employees are on a wartime footing. Subreddits like /r/fednews are almost certainly unrepresentative of the median federal worker's opinion, but there is good reason to be on edge if one is on Uncle Sam's payroll. Everyone hired before January 20, 2025, including able-bodied white males, is a presumed DEI hire until proven otherwise. Trace's ATC scandal going viral is a direct threat to their jobs. It puts a bullseye on the FAA. Is anyone surprised that the reaction is different?
Quantumfreakonomics
12d ago
Talk to some lawyers and see if you still think the LSAT weeds out bad-faith political arguments. Lawyers seem especially prone to bad-faith argument
That's the beauty of arguments. It doesn't matter whether they're bad-faith. It only matters whether they're valid.
Quantumfreakonomics
12d ago
do some short test-prep site quiz like this.
Is the 5-question pop quiz the same for everyone? If so, can someone post the answers (spoilered for politeness of course)? I'm not going to give them my data.
Also, is that results graph accurate? I got 4/5. Is this really 94th percentile? The questions weren't obvious, but they didn't seem particularly difficult. I feel dumb for missing one tbh.
Quantumfreakonomics
12d ago
The plaintiffs’ memorandum of law in support of the injunction is here. I can’t evaluate all of the claims in it (partly because I don’t see a memorandum of law from the defendants. Were they not allowed to submit one? Were they too busy? Did it just not get uploaded?). The Administrative Procedure Act is the big statute in these sort of cases, but it looks like they also cite some privacy statutes that I’m not familiar with. Ironically, the Administrative Procedure Act was passed to shrink the size of the administrative state, but its procedural safeguards are also held to slow down the pace of deregulation as well.
Quantumfreakonomics
12d ago
It's not that these kind of complaints are invalid, but they miss the true utility of liscensing regimes.
One might even say that this is yet another workaround that society has settled on for distinguishing the people who suck from the people who don't suck. The set of people with six-figures of capital to throw around is just better in almost every way from the set of people who don't have six-figures of capital to throw around.
Throw in The State Department, The Department of Education, Health and Human Services, The National Science Foundation, The National Endowment for the Arts, plus all the other grantmaking institutions in the federal government I can’t think of, and you can start to see how the power brokering and control of elite opinion might suddenly become a lot less lucrative once the money spigot shuts off.
I’m still surprised they aren’t fighting harder to keep the spigot on.
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