GaBeRockKing
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User ID: 3255
GaBeRockKing
2d ago
The amount of ballots you can stuff (or otherwise compromise) is in either case proportional to what turnout "should" be for a given area. But the net effect is smaller if the race is decided by millions of voters versus thousands. Also, in a popular race you have to spread out the vote fixing over more overall states or people can catch your interference by looking for states where turnout is unusually high. Meanwhile in an EC race you can focus your operation on specifically the swing states, which have a built-in explanation for high turnout.
If you don't believe me, just look at the non-illegal "vote-fixing" measures the candidates have been using-- making all sorts of promises narrowly tailored toward swing state voter interests specifically.
GaBeRockKing
2d ago
All the incentives for rigging the vote already exist everywhere-- people want to win local elections too. But in truly national vote small state-level distortions have less effect on the overall total, and natiomal election-fixing rings have to deal with a fact that large secrets aare harder to keep.
GaBeRockKing
3d ago
especially since there is literally a non zero chance couple of hundred votes somewhere in Pennsylvania or the Midwest to swing the election one way or another.
This is one of the many reasons why the electoral college is so profoundly stupid.
GaBeRockKing
3d ago
The incentives faced by legislators at the municipal vs state vs national levels are different, and the incentives faced by blue politicians in a blue state are different than those faced by blue politicians in a red state.
My ideal political alignment is purple-purple-purple (municipal, national, state), but since it's impossible to live in a red city in a blue state I'm happy enough living in a blue city in a red state in a purple nation. I could probably tolerate living in a blue city in a blue state in a red nation. I would soon grow to despise living in a blue city in a red state in a red nation.
GaBeRockKing
4d ago
It looks like we've converged on the question of, "what would actually, practically stop migration." To restate-- criminalize hiring illegal immigrants, and deport any immigrant (legal or illegal) that commits crime a deportable crime*. (E). So if you'll permit me to, I'll address the the larger discussion ("Under what conditions is immigration good? Do we presently exist in those conditions?")
First, I do want to point out that the topline figure you posted (150,000 GBP) applies only to "low-wage" migrants.The article you linked is under a paywall so I can't argue specifics, but I'd wager there's some debate to be had over
- where they're drawing the "low-wage" line and whether that's useful to assess the net effect of immigration
- Whether this figure is useless because it fails to include how the the money saved by hiring an immigrant, and the recursive economic benefits, can also be taxed.
All that being said, I will admit that I'm largely ignorant of British immigration issues. I'm provisionally willing to take your word for its dangers. Instead of trying to convince you that your system is good, I'll try to convince you that the american system is better.
When I said, "immigration is good, as long as it's illegal," I wasn't joking. America's high rates of illegal immigration are an actual strength. Basically all of our legal immigrants are rich enough that we don't have to pay for their welfare, and then illegal immigrants work cheaply, contribute to our economy, don't drain the government purse, and stay terrified of committing crimes and getting deported. Sure, they also have anchor babies, which as you've pointed out would be/are threats to the cultural stability of european nations. But luckily america is blessed with an especially vigorous culture that's only gotten better at assimilating immigrants over time. The fact that the entire midwest is already populated by completely acculturated germans wasn't even our final form! Immigrants become culturally american extremely rapidly.
I understand why low-skill workers and people concerned with the maintenance of specifically white and/or protestant power don't want immigration, even despite the fact that culturally it's a nonissue and economically it's a benefit. And I wouldn't expect the arguments above to sway any of those people. (I have other arguments I could deploy, but they're admittedly much less convincing than the economic-cultural arguments.) But-- correct me if I'm wrong-- I suspect none of those things describe you.
* I'm being intentionally tautological here because it's a bit fiddly defining exactly what "deportable" means. Some crimes are major enough that we want the criminal kept around and punished. Some crimes should sensibly result in the deportation of any criminal that commits them, legal and illegal. Some crimes should be treated differentially-- legal immigrants get punished in-country, illegal immigrants get deported. And the smallest crimes (think, jaywalking) should mostly just result in fines for even illegal immigrants. I'm not a legal theorist so I wouldn't know whether to draw the lines, and thinking about how this could "really" be done probably makes you wary of too-lenient progressives ruining things. But I'd posit that that's more a crime-and-justice issue than an immigration issue... Barring weird edge cases like the nordics, you'll have a hard time finding people who want the justice system to be more lenient specifically against illegal immigrants rather than in general. So this fight boils down to the usual order vs. justice debate rather than any qualms you hold specifically about illegal immigrants.
I don't see why competition with local business is is bad, though admittedly I am a capitalist. That being said, my proposal still makes that effectively impossible. If they're offering services directly, they're employees, and you can sue anyone who hires them. If they're offering services through a company, then they're employees of that company, and you can sue the company. Maybe you're thinking of some loophole that lets companies break hiring laws without any individual in particular being liable, in which case I'd also support closing that on its own merits-- if a company refuses to abide by the civil rights act, somebody should be liable. I suppose illegal immigrants could technically sell items at a markdown vs. local shops... but that basically just covers dropshipping and the sort of handicrafts one person could make without employees. The former immigrants can also do from their home country, and the latter, well, I seriously doubt handicrafts are any major fraction of your local economy. Some people would still hire immigrants anyways, and they wouldn't all move out instantly. I guess they would be taking up local housing in the interim, until their money ran out. But I guarantee my proposal would solve 90%, probably even 99%, of the "problem."
GaBeRockKing
7d ago
Are you european? Our priors might differ due to differences in american vs european immigration patterns. I can't speake for housed but homeless people (e.g., the kind of people I see in shelters) because I don't see them. But all the unhoused people I see seem to be natives, and all the illegal immigrants I've met have been hardworking and gainfully employed.
Also, from my experience being in latin america-- while the quality of social services is lower, I would FAR prefer to be unhoused there than here (assuming my support system has already abandoned me, anyways.) The climate is better, there's much less enforcement against shantytowns, and the police don't hassle you for laying out a blanket and selling random trash on the street. Plus, everything is cheaper so what little money you make goes further.
And in any case, your average unhoused person is constantly breaking low-level laws. There's not much appetite for police enforcement because they won't pay fines and it costs money to keep them in jail, but illegal homeless people could just be deported.
GaBeRockKing
7d ago
You're looking at the real vs play money market. Trump has 60% on sweepcash but only 52% on the play money market. The real money market tracks the other real money markets because people do arbitrage, but the play money market is only partially correlated, either because people believe the real money markts are being manipulated (by the crypto investor or by people hedging bets on other classes of market), or because people who want to bet in the real money market bet against their intended position in an attempt to manipulate their entry price lower.
Like, my point is that Progressives 'win' mainly because they do have narrative control, and that narrative control allows them to actually write the widely believed account of history
"progressives" (and their alternative, "reactionaries") don't really exist. "Progressive" is really just the label used to describe the people with narrative control. If progressives ever lose in a more than temporary fashion, in short order they will be the ones harkening back to an idealized past while the former "reactionaries" will style themselves as the faction pushing ahead towards a glorious future.
"Accelerationists" and "conservatives" actually exist (relative to each other) but they can be anywhere on the political spectrum. It's just, "fast, reckless change" versus "slow, measured" change.
GaBeRockKing
7d ago
You'd have to criminalize renting to illegals, both residential and commercial. And selling property to them too. Setting up a business entity/LLC. They can and do just set up entire mini economies in some areas of cities. You'd have to criminalize so many different things to make moving here unappealing.
And? If murder and theft are bad, then it's completely sensible to criminalize assisting people to murder and thieve. If illegal immigration is bad...
Though regardless, it wouldn't even be necessary. If nobody was willing to hire illegal immigrants, they wouldn't have any money to pay rent, or buy property. If they make a shell and hire themselves... boom, illegal, you get to sue them directly and also deport them. (And also you get to sue anyone who hires such a shell company without doing their due diligence.)
And if someone really wants to come here to spend their own money, not take any local jobs, and not be eligible for welfare... Congratulations! You have a tourist industry.
GaBeRockKing
7d ago
but what happens when they refuse to go?
You're looking at this in completely the wrong way. Immigrants aren't "refusing to go." they're "deciding to stay." Illegal immigrants (unlike refugees) are ineligible for welfare and therefore pulled only by the prospect of relatively well-paying jobs at their destinations. Without those jobs, they don't have a reason to stick around. Yes, there would still be some need for traditional border security work: spot removals of immigrants that turn to crime would still be necessary. But mass deportation would require a draconian expansion of government power to work while at the same time just not being necessary. The vast majority of illegal immigrants would just leave if job opportunities dried up.
You're fixated on deportation as a solution, but deportation is build-the-wall style performative nonsense. It's like trying to catch-and-release house mice. All the incentives remain the same. As long as your trash is open and there's food on your floors, the mice come back. Republican political leaders don't support deportation because they think it'll work, they support it because they know it won't. People angry about immigration vote for them-- and the rich people that own the factories, meat packing plants, industrial farms, and hotels illegal immigrants work in vote for them too.
And besides-- you've heard about the difference between positive and negative rights, no? Turning "freedom from immigration" into a positive right requires government enforcement... and government enforcement requires sufficient political consensus that your enforcement apparatus can't be subverted by money-grubbing contractors or suborned by the opposition (i.e, me). That's why the only effective solution is the bounty system-- turning it into a negative right that citizens can largely enforce themselves by pointing out immigration-friendly businesses that "harmed" them.
Also, before you say something about how I like immigration and therefore am incentivized to propose a bullshit plan that wouldn't actually work, I'd like to point out that I'd take effectively the same approach to fighting climate change, and am in favor of the existing abortion bounty law and also in favor of the SEC whistleblower reward process that works similarly.. Getting citizens to inform on each other works. Imagine if your neighbors could sue you for getting your recycling wrong. You'd be a LOT more invested in separating the glass, paper, and aluminum, right? I'm pro-illegal-immigration, but this is genuinely how I'd try to stop it.
GaBeRockKing
8d ago
I indict the administration of elections at all levels
It sounds like you're assuming that democracy is and has always been a sham. (Or at least, has been a sham since some undeterminable point in the non-recent past.) But if democracy was merely a facade over authoritarianism, then we should expect there to be little difference in how "democratic" and "nondemocratic" states behave-- and little difference in their economic and military outcomes. But a cursory examination of history demonstrates exactly the opposite. If you compare european countries, the wealthy and prosperous ones are correspondingly less authoritarian, and while the authoritarian states pretend at democracy, they're transparently worse at in in various ways. If at some point the US stopped being democratic, we should expect some sort of regression towards an authoritarian mean-- except the US economy is one of the best-performing advanced economies worldwide.
There's still a lot of space for anti-democratic intervention; when it comes to elections "stolen" isn't a checkbox, it's a gradient. But self-evidently, whatever efforts the democrats have been making are on a lower order-of-magnitude scale of effect than the structural anti-democratic interventions of the electoral college and the fixed size of the house of representatives.
It is in the interest of the California Democratic Party to win California elections
Not exactly. The point of forming political parties is to acquire power and resources-- not for the party, but for the individual members of the party. In a competitive environment, yes, it's in the interests of the members to work together to defeat common enemies. But as a group eliminates its competitors, intra-group conflict rises in intensity... and many of those specific factions and people involved see that, toward the tail end, if the group finishes eliminating its competitors-- then suddenly they have no more bargaining power within the group. And all of this happens fractally.
So-- a member of the californian democratic party has incentives to force state elections to be as fair as possible, even at the expense of the CDP, because relative to their own state their greatest enemies are members of their own party.But they want national elections to be tilted as far towards the national democratic party as possible because "california" is one of the biggest factions in the democratic party, and can be confident that they can re-task federal resources toward themselves if only they can eliminate the republican party as a real competitor.
But a member of the Pennsylvania democratic party has exactly the opposite incentives-- they're in a fight for their life locally, but the national status quo (of getting money funneled toward them from the national organization that they can in term hand out through patronage networks to advertisers and campaign staff) heavily benefits them. If the national election was less fair, suddenly they would get a much smaller share of the democratic party's overall bucket of goodies.
And yes, presumably you have people who just want to win their city council seat at any cost... but they in turn rely on staff with unpredictable allegiances. Is that poll worker here because they feel a deep allegiance to the democratic party or to democratic ideals? Do my supporters vote for me because they genuinely like me or because they think I'm the least-worst option? Is any specific person in my hierarchy going to accept orders to fake ballots or are they going to rat me out to the media for a paycheck and (if they're lucky) a book deal?
I won't claim that no malfeasance goes on. But stealing an election and winning an election require a very similar set of skills and resources. Positioning yourself to do the former puts you most of the way toward doing the latter. And considering the existence of explicitly adversarial factions with difficult-to-gauge power and unity, it becomes very risky indeed to try and steal elections in any blatant way. That's why Obama gave up his position to trump in 2016 and why trump gave up his position to biden when he lost in 2020.
GaBeRockKing
8d ago
I'm uninformed, sorry. It's just something I've been noticing in news articles especially regarding LSD-- that some drugs increase various measures of neuroplasticity. [ex.] (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41386-022-01389-z). I don't know if I'd finger neurogenesis specifically, but I'm fairly confident something is going on.
GaBeRockKing
8d ago
The difference between teenage boys and black people is that teenage boys actually are disproportionately likely to be violent, irrational, and antisocial for unambiguously genetic reasons. Societies fall apart when they fail to take that into account.
Criminalize hiring illegal immigrants.
I'm pro-immigration (especially if it's illegal, since that means we don't need to pay for their welfare.) But that's legitimately the policy I would propose if somehow I was in charge and republicans offered to completely capitulate on climate change if I found a way to put illegal immigration near-zero.
You wouldn't even need to spend government funds to enforce it. Just copy that abortion bounty law-- let people sue anyone they point to that can't prove they only hired people with work authorization.
Without the "pull" factor of jobs, economic migrants just wouldn't come here.
GaBeRockKing
8d ago
What is the steelman for the establishment being unable to steal elections?
The fact that they didn't in 2016. (Unless you believe trump and hillary were secretly on the same side.)
The establishment must be at least one of: {unwilling, unable}.
And anyways, every political faction is fractally composed of sub-factions feuding over electoral legitimacy. Ideological alliances can put aside power-grubbing for the common good, but if you're going to assume cynicism in the first place, history has endless examples of the aristocracy fighting against central tyrants because they'd rather do the tyrranizing themselves. If you give your king too much legitimacy he doesn't need to delegate to you anymore. Rigging swing state elections would benefit national parties, but destroy the outsize power and influence of the local parties.
GaBeRockKing
8d ago
There's probably no need to enact sweeping cultural changes to solve a problem that will soon be fixed or moot with technology. Hyperspecialize your kid if you want to, but we're already looking into pluripotent adult-derived stem cells and how to induce neuroplasticity with antidepressants. We'll be able to learn implicit skills like children at any age, while using ai and the internet as a source of arbitrary amounts of high-level insight. (Most of that insight will be bullshit, but massive redundant parallelism covereth many sins.)
GaBeRockKing
8d ago
It's scientifically engineered to be addictive, not good. There's a difference. McDonalds food near-universally tastes like salty cardboard. And it's that very addictiveness that makes it bad for you-- modern food is terrible not merely on some "heart disease % per gram" scale, but because its hyperpalatable nature goads your lizard brain into eating way too much of it.
And ironically it's not reasonably priced-- unless you're talking about the coffee specifically, maybe. McDonalds prices aare comparable to much better restaurants unless i go through the rigamarole of getting the app and buying their deals. And since time and not-being-advertised to both have value, on net McDonalds is a bad deal.
GaBeRockKing
9d ago
So, what's the path for DJT to 20x its revenue without any increase in operating cost?
Corruption. There are any number of ways a US president can use their office to make a corporation wealthy and powrrful. And-- it's also potentially a way to launder money into DJT's pocket. Much more efficient than the usual book deal/speaker fee shenanigans.
I predict that most serious presidential candiates, from this point on, will have suspiciously well-performing stock.
GaBeRockKing
9d ago
McDonalds IS trashy though. Literally bugman food.
I mean-- okay-- I grab 40 nuggets sometimes and devour them like a starving caveman introduced to high fructose corn syrup. But also I literally drink soylent so I think I know what I'm talking about here.
It is actually a scandal that a member of the elite should publicly prefer such garbage, low rent food. It would be fine if he just liked it, but it should be a dirty secret instead a publicity stunt.
GaBeRockKing
10d ago
Interesting. Though-- it looks like the big takeaway from that post (assuming it's true) is actually rather the opposite of the standard "dumber people breed more" line. Rather, it implies that the cultural value we've placed on phenotypic intelligence has increased to the point where convergence on intelligent behaviors is reducing the fitness of being genetically predisposed towards intelligence-- everyone trying to act smart makes it less efficient to actually be smart.
I say this because the other thing this paper points out as declining is a genetic predisposition towards being thin and tall, despite the fact that our culture obviously favors and provides reproductive success to people who embody those things. That would be in line with non-genetic causes of height and thinness (i.e., enough money and leisure time to be healthy and fashionable) becoming decisive over genetic causes (and therefore tradeoffs, like heart disease chances for height or digestive issues for thinness)
GaBeRockKing
11d ago
She gambled on the tech market going up, and also supported a lot of pro-tech-company legislation. I don't think pelosi is special, but that's definitely a conflict of interest. Politicians should be forced to put their assets in a trust like carter did, or better yet liquidate most of wha they own and dump all their money into an index fund.
GaBeRockKing
11d ago
Neocons jettisoned... Vance
Using a strict definition of neoconservative, Vance isn't. But he's exactly the kind of person who would have been a neocon during their era. It's why I actually kind of like him on a personal level, even though hypothetically I'd still vote in walz over him for president. Don't confuse paternalism for populism.
GaBeRockKing
11d ago
The current default is a reduction of IQ from generation to generation
Proof? The flynn effect strongly suggests otherwise.
I'll preface this by saying that I don't think statistically significant election fraud has ever happened for the presidential elections. For state elections I don't know. But in the counterfactual, isn't there a stronger incentive for precariously positioned swing state government officials to fix the vote in the hopes that the national party returns the favor through patronage than for a securely positioned official to risk their reputation?
Also, moving past the election security question and more directly addressing the "should we have an ec question"... If we're sticking to per-state voting and giving state governments even more power to shift things their way... Why not just return to the original way of doing things, where state governments selected electors directly? I'm strongly in favor of the popular vote because I don't think states are or should be discrete cultural-economic interests... But if we're going to treat them like they are, I would unironically prefer the old way of doing things because at least it forces people to care about local politics.
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