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PaperclipPerfector  5mo ago (text post)   4001 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for June 23, 2024

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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Activity does seem to be declining, with 750 comments on the last CWR. Any idea why? This is, at least to me, the only place online that has good generalist discussion other than the posts (not comments though) of some substacks.

Hard to find this place.

Some low level recruiting would be interesting.

I don't know what it is, but I'm finding the subjects people choose to talk about here increasingly boring, to the point where often a whole week goes by with nothing interesting being discussed.

The discussion has largely been had. It will likely pick up around the election, but the long term trend is decline.

I think it's just natural churn. Life gets in the way, and long time users will eventually fall away. I know I've been purposely trying to reduce my 'arguing on the internet' time.

On Reddit, this wasn't a problem because there was a constant source of new users. On here that's not the case.

I guess the future of the forum is to decline to nothing or go back to Reddit (and maybe get banned for wrongthink there in a few years).

Reddit feels very hollow these days too

I may be overgeneralizing my own experience, but IMHO it's at least in part because while many people came together to discuss their apparently irreconcilable differences over the last 10-15 years, ultimately they found that their differences were indeed irreconcilable, and left disappointed and/or righteously angry. Most Mottizens, and I'd argue truth-seeking netizens in general, are now very familiar with the basic shapes of both sides' arguments, and so when CW issue de jour #2567 pops up they can usually predict with some accuracy what each side will say. The conversation is therefore mostly no longer interesting. Battle lines have been drawn in the wider culture, and now we're all just waiting for (or actively working towards) one of the factions to emerge victorious.

ultimately they found that their differences were indeed irreconcilable, and left disappointed and/or righteously angry

I mean if someone asserts (insert your demographic) here should be marginalized and stripped of rights for the good of society(read to advance my political agenda) There isn't really to much of a practical point in responding to that in anyway other that "May thy knife chip & shatter"

Well, occasionally, arguments have been known to work, if you think they're wrong. If you agree that they are in that person's interests, though, there isn't all that much to be said.

Yes?

I was voicing my support for your opinion and offering what I thought was a practical example of something like that playing out. Sorry If I was being obtuse.

No worries, maybe I misread. All good.

Yes, we’ve been in the unceasing trench warfare phase of the culture war for at least a couple years now. I think COVID / George Floyd was the last straw for a critical mass of people and the whole thing just became absolutely calcified.

2012-2016 was a war of maneuver, 2017-2020 was a war of position, now it’s just an endless knife fight. I’m not complaining, as I consider myself a part time culture warrior. That’s just how it shook out, and those still interested in the culture war like myself find it more useful to just knife our opponents in between the ribs, rhetorically speaking of course.

I’ve never felt the culture war is more important than now, but it’s also more boring than ever.

Honestly the whole period felt like nerds who didn't quite get it saying "what exactly do you mean by declaring all of us Moral Mutants to be Exterminated by Progress?"

I still hope something more productive things can be discussed now that everyone's finally realized. There's lots to talk about beyond litigating Current Thing attack #6836865 as if there's any questions about intent.

Good example: that Guardian journalist we talked about last week who was posting "hanging Mussolini" threats at people. Nobody said "oh wow you'd better not do that, people might think you're advocating violence", they just posted dead Che Guevara and Rosa Luxembourg's rotting corpse back at him, suggesting he'd enjoy the bottom of a canal so much he'd never want to leave.

There's a bracing level of mask-off bloodthirsty hatred that wasn't there even in 2020. Feels like living in the first chapter of a William Luther Pierce novel.

From my perspective, the bloodthirsty hatred is well earned. I’ve been meaning to write about this for a long time, I feel the siren song of a genuine FedPoasttm calling me.

I know a lot of digital ink has been spilled in this place accusing large amounts of people using civil war coded language as “LARPing”, or puffing their chest as keyboard warriors, but it seems to me something really has turned.

For me personally, I find myself relishing in the suffering of those who hold me and people like me in genuine disdain and act maliciously toward us. This is new, and it’s not just the product of some tweaked algorithm or exotic status game; I’ve never truly felt like this before, it feels true and I really gain nothing from it, in fact I’d be deeply penalized if I broadcast it widely.

Something interesting has happened in the few times I’ve expressed my genuine, undiluted desire for serious misfortune to befall members of the PMC that I blame for our current decadent state; at first, people are slightly alarmed. Then, utter relief that they aren’t crazy and someone else feels the same way as them.

rly makes u think

I'd be interested to hear your thoughts, if you can express them without breaking the rules. I think you've identified a real thing shared by an increasingly large number of people. I think about the issue frequently, but am not sure I have a full post worth of thoughts.

I think you can use <sup></sup> to make the text suprescript. Like this: tm

Thanks, big dog.

Honestly the whole period felt like nerds who didn't quite get it saying "what exactly do you mean by declaring all of us Moral Mutants to be Exterminated by Progress?"

I don't think it's really accurate to analyze the Culture War as just "nerds and aspies who didn't get the memo". (At the very least, we can always ask, why this particular memo, with this particular content?)

I was around 20 when all this got started. That's really young! I was naive and I didn't know shit back then. (I still don't, but I hope that I've learned at least a few things since then). So I believed a lot of false/stupid things and I had to figure things out through trial and error.

People aren't born with an innate knowledge of history, politics, and philosophy. It has to be acquired - both on an individual level and a social collective level. Memes propagate through society and help people avoid the mistakes of the past. Social phenomena always happen for a reason - it's a mistake to think "well if people just did X Y Z then we could have avoided all that mess".

I don't think it's really accurate to analyze the Culture War as just "nerds and aspies who didn't get the memo.

There's something to it, but I agree ultimately it's a mischaracterization.

It's wrong because we didn't "not get the memo". Nerds and and aspies were the first to notice the changes in political discourse and culture. Normies were the ones insisting that nothing is happening, and if it is it's overblown, etc., etc. If anyone didn't get the memo, it was them, and all the old liberals getting canceled for not jumping on the train fast enough are proof of that.

It's correct in the sense that we obviously overanalyzed the whole phenomenon. Normies just assessed who is on which side, and stayed loyal to their tribe. We spent entire years debating if all this really means what we think it means, did we miss something, are we not being uncharitable, etc., etc., etc. With the end result being us just following in the steps of the normies, even though we realized first that something is changing.

You know, I'm no genius, but more and more I find that when I see a general culture war question I want to reply to, I end up linking back to or quoting a comment I made or someone else made years ago. My new posts tend to all be about books I've read or great movies I've watched recently.

Religious nonsense taking over. No one wants to post to a place that denies reality.

  • -25

This is a large component of why I've withdrawn from posting on a regular basis. Very boring and tiresome dynamic with Christians more and more spamming their respective sect's catechisms, constantly squeezing in extremely disrespectful shade towards atheists and secularists while advocating theocratic intrusion into government, then even mild atheist pushback or criticism of religion getting dogpiled and jannied. Cue an evaporative cooling effect. I encounter enough of that in daily life to be turned off by additional online exposure at the levels found here of late.

I tried checking your history to see what sorts of things you like to post about, and in what tone, but couldn't.

So, anyway, what sorts of things do you like to talk about?

No thanks, I keep private mode on to hinder profiling and dox attempts.

Well, if you won't explain or let me see examples, I have no way of knowing whether your own assessment is accurate in my view, or if the reaction is warranted or not. (Assuming things like that are what you like to talk about, which I did, because you describe it as a major factor.)

Of course, it doesn't really matter.

I'm fine with that. I spoke up to register that AhhTheFrench is not alone in his observations of increasing Christian preaching and having objections to that trend.

Fair enough.

Hey we agree on something! I think one should have their posting history open for assessment, we don't have much to go on during anonymous internet discussions, it is hard enough to know if someone is acting in good faith or worth responding to even with a post history. Without one, they can be as mercurial and changeable as they wish for good or (more often) ill.

Fwiw, posting history is always open to the mods. While I personally dislike it when people make their profiles private, I understand some people do have legitimate doxxing concerns. Also, it's really annoying when people do the reddit-style "I just searched your posting history and found you posted something months ago that I will now use as a stick to beat you with."

True, but you shouldn't have grown that stick off your branch if you were concerned about being beaten with it. (Has a more tortured metaphor ever been created?:)

My God™. Please, give the topic a rest.

The more you bang on this pulpit, the more you fall afoul of the rules on charity, consensus, and discussion. I know you think religion is wrong. Rumor has it some people disagree with you. We are not going to privilege your position just because you feel really, extra strong about it. I guarantee you: there are people who feel that strongly about things you think are even dumber.

So I beg you, kindly stop nailing your theses on every thread.

I’m a committed atheist, it’s incredibly obvious that this space is many times more secular than a typical space, especially on a global scale.

Although there does seem to be a bit of a teapot in a tempest purity spiral going on in the dissident right now about Vitalists vs Christians, although it has a whiff of fakery / enemy action to me.

It me.

I have ended the Culture War. The Roundup just hasn’t caught up yet. :)

/r/TheMotte or even the CWR thread in /r/ssc was a very lightning in a bottle thing. People can claim it was THAT attribute or THAT SET of attributes, but I don't think anyone really knows what they were. So by extension, I think it's also going to be pretty hard to dissect why themotte isn't being like it used to be.

I personally don't use the motte as much as I used to because:

  • I don't learn as much as I used to. If I have a burning cultural question in my head, more often than not, I can for the most part come up with an explanation that will be >90% complete of the aggregated motte response. I feel that I have outgrown the level of commentary here. And yes I do take more than I give, that's just how it be sometimes.
  • Overly US centric. CW discussions were for the most part more abstract back then. We discussed issues and ideas. Now we discuss the makeup and actions of the SCOTUS, BORING. Or some niche thing that happened in some irrelevant county in bumfuck flyover state. Like okay buddy, I'm sure you feel REALLY PASSIONATE about this one thing, but the world shut itself down for 3 years and we are still coming out of that, whatever this is, isn't even crossing the baseline level of crazy or unprecendented we are all accustomed to. So probably some information satiation/fatigue going on. I also DONT CARE, I have to either remmember this stupid event that happened in your stupid neighborhood or some stupid edge cases about some cursed yaml file at work, at least the second one makes me money.
  • I've also accepted the CW is a waste of time. I don't live in the US. And I am powerless against the stuff that leaks over anyways. Humans are stupid enough to shut down the world for 3 years straight, NO AMOUNT of modelling them is going to do me any good when the stupid simple model of "people be retarded" has so much explaining power for almost any and all CW issues.

I still find myself going back to hacker news and less wrong because there is new, useful and original content in both those places. I think the motte would benefit (ME) if there were more abstracted discussion on things as opposed to just what's happening.

Now we discuss the makeup and actions of the SCOTUS, BORING.

Sorry.

Evidently not boring to me, but fair enough, it makes sense that it is to those outside the United States, as well as to most in the country as well.

For what it’s worth, I find those discussions very interesting.

Now we discuss the makeup and actions of the SCOTUS, BORING

Maybe it's that we've (not just TheMotte - the ratsphere, the 'dissident right', the internet at large) have picked all of the intellectual low-hanging fruit, and only more specific, complicated things are left? I find SCOTUS discussion interesting and read all of it, though I don't have much to contribute.

That might also contribute to the feeling of wasted time - all the discourse happened, and what changed?

That might also contribute to the feeling of wasted time - all the discourse happened, and what changed?

Unsure about the direction of causality, but Elon Musk was two handshakes away, and he bought Twitter.

The people who participated or observed the proceeings have been thinking of different thoughts than they would've if the trousers of time had bifurcated differently and we'd gone down the right leg. Or perhaps this is the right left leg?

It’s not that it’s complicated, it’s just mostly irrelevant to people outside the USA. For better or worse, my country essentially banned guns fifty years ago, so the back and forth on the Second Amendment doesn’t really hold much interest.

Incidentally the reduction to legal battles is both the strong and weak point of constitutional government IMO: it sublimates important questions into legal ones. The important work of convincing people ‘guns are important weapons against tyranny’ vs ‘guns aren’t worth the extra murders’ has nothing to do with textual debates about what exactly an ‘arm’ can refer to.

Is there anything interesting happening out there in the world this week?

I probably wouldn't know, since I use this site for news.

The war in Ukraine drags on. The conflict in Gaza drags on. Pride month drags on. A few people were shot at Juneteenth celebrations, but not enough to invite a lot of attention. There are some marginal improvements in LLMs. The Supreme Court has ruled on some things, and some posters have done write ups for them. There were some blog posts put up as top level comments. They probably got more engagement than they would have on people's personal blogs, anyway. I vaguely remember some disgruntled writing about relationships.

Anyway, I'm not sure it's just the message board, so much as the actual world that's in a bit of a slump.

I probably wouldn't know, since I use this site for news.

Well that's certainly a news filter.

One of the things I use this site for is trying to find some balance to news that sounds really bad for the right when reported by mainstream/left-leaning sources. Very few such news items have gotten any discussion at all here in the past several months. Of course, I could write my own effortposts to try to get the discussion going and I don't, so this is partially my own fault.

What are some of the things you are thinking of? (No need to write at length, I'd give my thoughts on a short list.)

Hmm... I definitely remember thinking that multiple times, but I don't remember specifically about what. Some general categories:

  • Various bits of news from Trump's trials. There's been some discussion here, but not a lot.
  • Project 2025. Also has been mentioned here, but not taken seriously.
  • Aging-related gaffes. It seems like both sides think the other candidate is obviously senile and theirs is fine. I'm curious what the debate will look like, but it seems likely both sides will think the debate proved their candidate is great and the other is incompetent.

Honestly, I've hardly paid attention to all of those. My general perception of the trials was that the document one was real, but the others were mostly politically motivated, conviction notwithstanding.

I haven't looked at project 2025, really. I should. Any concerns you find particularly worrying? I know people are concerned about the one day dictator thing, but my read on that is that he's honest on that: he wants to do a lot on day one, not seize power.

I haven't seen the gaffes (except the shark vs. electrocution one, but that mostly just seemed like him rambling on with an idea that didn't make sense, not age issues). I'd guess that Trump is more competent than Biden, but that's purely vibes. I'm not a huge fan of 80-year-olds in the white house either way.

I'd be happy to be elucidated on any of these. I expect to vote Trump, but that's more just because I think Republicans will handle things better in office (student loans, affirmative action, general wokery, maybe foreign policy). I'd love if someone shrunk the government and put substantial effort into fixing the debt problem and reducing welfare, but it sounds like none of those will be happening any time soon (Republicans are slightly more likely, but really not very. It'd be unpopular and anger the old people, who vote red.). I know people are worried about Trump doing political prosecutions and lawfare, but I honestly think that's less likely when Republicans are in control, given the occurrences against Trump, Musk, Alex Jones, Bannon, etc. I do think the events surrounding January 6th (the Pence stuff, not the riot stuff) were pretty bad, though, and wouldn't have minded too much if the supreme court had ruled that he could be taken off the ballot for that under the 14th amendment, though I'm not quite convinced that it was an insurrection.

What are the reasons that you would point to voting for Biden/not voting for Trump?

My general perception of the trials was that the document one was real, but the others were mostly politically motivated, conviction notwithstanding.

The documents trial definitely seems like the most clear-cut case. And there's been drips of really bad-for-Trump-sounding headlines like yesterday "Special counsel probed Trump Mar-a-Lago trip that aides 'kept quiet' weeks before FBI search: Sources". The /r/politics commentariat is pretty convinced Trump and Kushner literally sold classified information to foreign adversaries, but I'd like to think if the government had anything resembling proof of a crime of that magnitude they'd actually indict them on it.

I haven't looked at project 2025, really. I should. Any concerns you find particularly worrying?

I'm not sure how much to read into it as really different from his first term, but it sounds like a more organized attempt to destroy the functioning of the federal government, so possibly even more effective at stopping a lot of important government functions. Not sure exactly how this interacts with the Chevron Deference case that presumably will get a Supreme Court opinion in the next day or two.

What are the reasons that you would point to voting for Biden/not voting for Trump?

The above bleeds into the general policy issues that are more Republican Party related than Trump-specific: a Republican Party controlled federal government effectively means a 4-year pause on any chance to make improvements in anti-trust, climate/energy, environmental regulations, transportation, voting, public health, healthcare, USPS, IRS (e.g. Direct File), and I'm sure more areas that didn't come to mind writing this list. I don't expect to fully agree with Democratic Party policies, but I can generally expect them to not be actively trying to make things worse and there's a possibility of convincing them to do things better.

Trump's foreign policy in practice didn't seem to be majorly different, but he seems a lot more likely to do something stupid. And with the active wars in Ukraine and Palestine there's more opportunities for him to do real damage.

There's also some culture war-y issues that I'm likely shielded from living a Blue state, although could cause problems if I ever travel to/through a Red state. But a Republican Department of Education following Florida's lead could make it difficult for many of my friends to keep their jobs as people who are both teachers and queer. And many Red states making it difficult for people trying to have children to access healthcare and some national level politicians talking about want to make federal laws along the same lines make me worry about friends who want to get pregnant in the next few years. Also, more Republican appointments to the Supreme Court, among other problems, possibly results in Obergefell being overturned, although I'm not sure how that interacts with the Respect for Marriage Act.

Republican Party controlled federal government effectively means a 4-year pause on any chance to make improvements in anti-trust, climate/energy, environmental regulations, transportation, voting, public health, healthcare, USPS, IRS (e.g. Direct File), and I'm sure more areas that didn't come to mind writing this list. I don't expect to fully agree with Democratic Party policies, but I can generally expect them to not be actively trying to make things worse and there's a possibility of convincing them to do things better.

It's good that someone is voting on national issues. I'd love to do so, but I think that would be naive of me.

The Democrats have made pleasant noises about high speed trains and carbon reduction, but in spite of the billions spent on CAHSR and Biden's electric charging stations, zero passengers have ridden CAHSR and only one charging station per billion dollars spent has been built. Millions of DEI hires have probably been made though.

Similarly, I'm sure pleasant noises will be made about anti-trust, but they will only go after political enemies, and big donors like Google will remain unscathed (if they don't actually get given a subsidy or tax break). "Health" funding will of course go to more DEI hiring. "Education" funding won't go to my kids, it will go to forgiving the student loans of AWFLs.

At this point the mask is off.

At this point, it's pretty obvious the Democrats will use the power of purse and prosecution to take from me and mine to benefit the PMC, so in spite of my agreement with their stated positions on so many things, I cannot vote for them.

Yeah, /r/politics is about the most biased pool you could think of.

I think it would be different from his first term, as he'll have way more buy-in. He's generally, through his generating a cult-following and way he handled that 2022 primaries, purged the party of people not willing to be pro-Trump. But I haven't looked at specific policies, to know whether they would be bad. What sorts of important government functions?

Now, my thoughts on your list:

Improvements on anti-trust: Probably a little more pro-corporation than under the democrats, but more hostile to them than Republicans ten years ago. I'm inclined to think people hate on corporations too much, so I don't know that I would be in favor of antagonism towards the largest and most successful companies.

Improvements on climate/energy: I'm really not sure how I feel about this. Our climate policy choices have not been ideal (like why are we not at least considering releasing aerosols into the stratosphere to reduce the greenhouse effect—it's way, way cheaper than reducing emissions). But it makes sense to be worry about contaminants.

Improvements on environmental regulations: I don't have a sense of how much the EPA is doing currently. I definitely appreciate keeping things clean, and the national parks and such. At the same time, I've heard that environmental regulations can be overly burdensome and make it considerably harder and more expensive to build things. Not sure how much of that is state vs. federal.

I don't have a good feel on either of the last two how much a president gets to set policy on those vs. it being mandated by Congress. I'm guessing the president can, with cooperative agencies, do a lot.

Improvements on transportation: Like, interstate highways? I have no sense as to whose administration spends more on them.

Improvements on voting: How exactly? I wouldn't mind requiring IDs. It'd be cool if we let children vote, and parents vote on their behalf, but no one serious would do that. Anyway, overall, how does the administration affect this?

Public health/healthcare: Yeah, our system isn't great. Not sure what's better. The most important thing, on this, though, is that we need to spend WAY less on this. Health care makes up almost a third of the entire federal budget. I'd prefer privatizing a lot more of that, in general, but we certainly shouldn't be spending that much when we're in as much debt as we are, and with as large of a deficit. But no one's going to touch this, because the old people will get mad. I trust Republicans better in a pandemic, given that there seems to be no course correction from the overreaction to 2020, and that Republicans would probably buy-in slightly more to Republican-given medical advice.

USPS: I don't see why you care about this much?

IRS: Is direct file a democrat thing? I hadn't realized it was polarized.

Foreign policy: I'm not sure. I agree that Trump is a little more likely to be unpredictable, but not terribly so. I think he's viewed as more competent, or at least as having more agency (which helps on some fronts), but is more hated by Europe (which hurts on those fronts). Biden doesn't always make good decisions, as seen in Afghanistan. It wouldn't surprise me if some of the ongoing foreign conflicts would have been less likely to take place if Trump were in the white house. At the same time, it wouldn't shock me if he just ceased support of Ukraine, which—I don't know that I'm a fan of, but I haven't thought about it sufficiently. He'd be more pro-Israel, I think. I don't know what even is a good resolution in Israel.

Oh, I'd love a Republican department of education. A significant reform in how universities are funded would be great. I have no interest in spending large amounts of federal money on a bunch of radicals. School choice probably is more a state thing, but that would be great too.

I don't expect any restrictions on IVF besides a few states. It's electoral suicide. Abortion restrictions are not nationally popular, and IVF restrictions less than that.

Supreme court is fair enough, though I wouldn't mind another conservative justice, except that that might make the democrats excessively mad and fuel polarization (but I'm not sure how much I should take that seriously, since they're already willing to slander the court as it stands currently). My sense was that Sotomayor's the only liberal who would have any real chance of dying? But she's not that old. Thomas and Alito are older, but they're the most conservative justices. I don't anticipate the court moving further right in the next few years, even if the law does, as a result of their actions. You're right that that could make a difference in overturning Obergefell, if they could convince Barrett they have standing and that stare decisis doesn't apply. Kavanaugh and Roberts don't like rocking the boat, and are enough of institutionalists that they wouldn't touch it, I imagine, but another conservative could make the difference. Not sure if that would happen, though, given Gorsuch's opinion in Bostock. But the marriage act you point to would suffice.

I'll note that the conservative justices, having looked a whole lot at them the past few weeks, seem considerably more principled than the liberal ones. At least, they're less likely to vote as a bloc, and they are more likely to care about what is correct law than whether it has things they view as good or bad.

So I guess that explains why you would prefer to vote blue, but doesn't really work to motivate me.

Here's my best pitch for you:

In general, we need to be spending way less. Social security will run out within ten years, on current trends. [The federal government] is struggling to find lenders to pay off the current spending. This will eventually turn into a sovereign debt crisis, crashing the U.S. economy with presumably negative effects on the world, both economically, and as a result of reduced American influence leading to a resurgence in nations trying to be expansionary. I fully expect this to happen within the next few decades. Let's try to have less of that, and Republicans have a better chance of doing that, even if way less than ten years ago, and even if it's not that high of a chance that they do that, instead of sleepwalking off an abyss. Yes, that would involve reducing welfare, but that'll happen anyway soon, as it runs out of funding.

I really wish we had Milei.

Anyway, regarding foreign policy, our shipbuilding capacity is far, far, far, worse than china's. I expect Republicans better to handle that, but not much. (There's so much inefficiency throughout the entire department of defense.) I expect Republicans to be more willing to deter bad action by nations. Republicans are evidently the only ones who might go after the Houthis, which is definitely needed, because shipping lanes are extremely important (Economics matters. People struggling in life is bad.).

I get that that's only two things, but I think those two matter by far the most, as the economy and foreign policy are the things with the largest effects.

Four years ago, I thought Biden would make the country more united. That didn't work, so you shouldn't expect that. Rather, what you see is institutions spending social capital on leftist causes, leading to further-declining trust.

Are there major wins from Biden over the last four years that you could point to that are better than the pre-COVID state of things? (E.g. reducing inflation, crime, a better economy: those don't count unless they're better than 2019.)

As I said, I'm here to understand, not to win arguments. Not that I won't respond, just that my goal here is not to convince you that I am right and you are wrong.

Are there major wins from Biden over the last four years that you could point to that are better than the pre-COVID state of things? (E.g. reducing inflation, crime, a better economy: those don't count unless they're better than 2019.)

The short version is: of course there aren't any major wins. As long as the Democrats don't control Congress (and there's no realistic way of that happening in 2024; not sure what the 2026 Senate map looks like, but generally mid-terms aren't great for the president's party), they can't really pass any significant legislation outside of whatever they can squeeze into a budget reconciliation bill. The downside of a Republican presidency is much higher magnitude than the upside of a Democratic presidency because the Republicans have the goal of breaking things, which is a lot easier to do without legislation (the Republicans are also unlikely to get 60 votes in the Senate).

Improvements on anti-trust: [...]. I'm inclined to think people hate on corporations too much, so I don't know that I would be in favor of antagonism towards the largest and most successful companies.

... do you think anti-trust is just lawfare against entities the government doesn't like? Monopolies result in high prices and bad service for all of us. The government doing something about them makes life better for everyone except the monopolists. Goliath: The 100-Year War Between Monopoly Power and Democracy by Matt Stoller is a good book on the history of the politics around monopolies. The Biden administration is the first in a while to take monopolies at all seriously.

Somewhat related, Trump actively weakened the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which has been actually doing things under Biden. I'd rather the financial system actually be restructured around smaller banks, but I don't see any political appetite for that.

Improvements on climate/energy

Geo-engineering isn't a real solution to this problem. Even if we somehow knew how to do it and were confident we had all of the unintended consequences covered and well understood, the geo-political implications of fossil fuel dependence are still bad, as is the fact that fossil fuels getting increasing expensive to extract has been a drag on our economy for 50+ years and response for most of that time was to put our fingers over our ears and say "LA LA LA, I CAN'T HEAR YOU". The US government likes that they understand the geopolitical situation resulting from the importance of fossil fuels and the fact that the US has a lot, so they don't want to change, but that's playing with fire and it's stupid.

Improvements on environmental regulations

The only real headline here is the EPA press release "Biden-Harris Administration Announces $3 Billion for Lead Pipe Replacement". I don't have any other details here; mostly worried about a Republican president discouraging the EPA from enforcing existing regulations, but I assume there's always new things for the EPA to worry about.

Improvements on transportation: Like, interstate highways?

The received wisdom on transit blogs is that a Republican administration probably kills, or at least significantly reduces, federal grants on bus/rail improvements. And probably kills any meaningful discussion on improving passenger rail in general. Inter-state rail seems more obviously the federal government's purview, but in practice a lot of projects that stay within a state are partially funded by federal grants.

Improvements on voting: How exactly? I wouldn't mind requiring IDs. It'd be cool if we let children vote, and parents vote on their behalf, but no one serious would do that. Anyway, overall, how does the administration affect this?

If the Democrats could pass legislation, they could at least try to reinstate the Voting Rights Act. There's the For the People Act, although, of course, what politicians are willing to put in a bill they know will never pass may be different than what do would do once in power. I'd like to go further and uncap the House (perhaps with multi-member districts to have easier minority party representation), but I don't really see that happening, especially as it would likely be seen as a power grab by the Democrats since it would make winning the presidency without the popular vote basically impossible in practice.

Public health/healthcare: Yeah, our system isn't great. Not sure what's better.

Uh, single payer? Privatized medical billing is incredibly expensive and a complete waste of everyone's time. Everyone I know in health care complains that so much of their time is spent on billing instead of actually helping patients, and it's completely unnecessary except to employ a bunch of clerical workers doing nothing useful and funneling cash away from actually providing health care.

I trust Republicans better in a pandemic

Don't get me wrong, Biden's handling of COVID (and H5N1 for that matter) has been awful. But his policy has been to do nothing while Trump's COVID policy was to actively sabotage everything except funding the vaccine development. Trump's pandemic plan is to disband the Office of Pandemic Preparedness and Response Policy (Biden's plan seems to be to shrug his shoulders and say testing cows for H5N1 is too hard, so not a lot better). A sensible COVID policy would have involved prioritizing research on transmission (after vaccines and treatments, of course, but it's not like the same scientists would be studying all of those) and what it's effected by and both communicating that information clearly (e.g. "gathering inside/inside with HEPA filters/outside is fine without masks is fine a X density, with N95s that are actually available at Y density") and providing the relevant equipment (HEPA filters, N95s, etc.). Instead we are watching another possible respiratory pandemic develop and no one's bothered to so much as put some HEPA filters in our germ factories schools.

USPS: I don't see why you care about this much?

I'm not sure where you got the idea that I care about this much. It's one of several items that get mentioned in news articles regularly. There's the obvious problem of it looking a lot like a plot to make mail-in voting work worse to reduce turnout and possibly swing elections. But also, it's an example of Republicans trying to destroy a cheap public sector solution so they can replace it with an expensive private sector one, costing everyone more money.

IRS: Is direct file a democrat thing? I hadn't realized it was polarized.

This is the point in reading your reply that I'm pretty convinced I'm just being trolled, but I'll respond with charity.

Yes, Republicans have proposed defunding Direct File. They didn't want it funded in the first place: the IRS creatively interpreted the funding bill letting them "study" the possibility to run a functional, albeit very limited, pilot program. Republicans are consistently against anything that makes filing taxes easier. They have openly stated their goal is to make the process of paying taxes painful to garner political support for reducing taxes. This makes them a political ally in Intuit and H&R Block who want paying taxes to be painful so they can sell you their products that should be unnecessary.

Also, the Republicans are consistently against funding for the IRS to actually be able to enforce tax law, which in practice results in rich people paying significantly less in tax than even what they are legally obligated to pay. Which is good evidence that they don't actually want to reduce the deficit because actually collecting taxes owed would help there.

Foreign policy: I'm not sure. I agree that Trump is a little more likely to be unpredictable, but not terribly so. I think he's viewed as more competent

Wait, what?! What possible evidence do you have that anyone thinks Trump is competent in foreign policy? The fact that his acting like an idiot didn't accidentally start any wars, so it must have been more calculated than it looked?

Oh, I'd love a Republican department of education. A significant reform in how universities are funded would be great. I have no interest in spending large amounts of federal money on a bunch of radicals.

Really not sure how to respond to that. College has clearly gotten too expensive. The Democrats don't seem to really be trying to address the root causes and the Republicans just want to reduce the public funding to make it even more expensive.

School choice probably is more a state thing, but that would be great too.

School choice is a scam. Private schools that are better than public schools may exist, but they're the really expensive ones that school vouchers won't meaningfully cover, so they'd effectively be bleeding public school budgets to subsidize sending upper-middle-/upper-class children to private school. For the most part, private/charter schools are worse than public schools and the rare statistics showing otherwise are misleading because they're choosing their students. An important part of the scam is that school funding per student is not actually the marginal cost to educate a student in such a way that the funding for gen-ed students effectively subsidizes the much more expensive per-student special-ed programs. Charter schools don't accept special-ed students, so school voucher programs effectively defund special-ed through subtle accounting.

I don't expect any restrictions on IVF besides a few states. It's electoral suicide. Abortion restrictions are not nationally popular, and IVF restrictions less than that.

Not popular, and yet they happen anyway. Maybe the Republicans would keep their religious extremists from passing such policies if they ended up with a trifecta, but it's definitely something I worry about.

Social security will run out within ten years, on current trends.

And Biden wants to raise cap on the payroll tax that is causing this problem.

This will eventually turn into a sovereign debt crisis[...]

The debt crisis is entirely artificial and it has been Republican policy to intensify it for decades because they want an excuse to kill welfare and other government spending. We could just not cut taxes and fund the IRS enough to collect the taxes that are officially owed.

More comments

There's a presidential debate on Thursday; there's two effort posts in the back on my head, neither of them particularly time-sensitive. There's a brewing potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan. South Africa's coalition government continues to take shape following their general election. Milei in Argentina claims to have officially solved the persistent inflation problem.

There's a brewing potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan.

I mean, yes, there is, and I post about it often enough (to the point that I sometimes worry I'm being a broken record/single-issue poster, though that's probably just unfounded anxiety), but to a fair extent we're all just reading tea leaves on the biggest question i.e. "will they do it?". Nobody knows for sure except maybe the CPC and the Five Eyes, and not even necessarily them if the CPC's plan is the highly-sensible "have it ready to go, but call GO or NO-GO based on exactly how much of a shitstorm the US election is" (which in turn means the Five Eyes can't know - "you can't know what I'm going to do if I don't know it myself", or as Sun Tzu put it, "the pinnacle of military deployment approaches the formless: if it is formless, then even the deepest spy cannot discern it nor the wise make plans against it.").

I mean, I suppose I could bang on more about my advice regarding this i.e. "the chance is high enough that mild prep vs. nuclear war is extremely, obviously justified; extreme prep may be worth it if you have the means, but moderate prep outside of special cases like 'if you live in an obvious nuke target, you might want to either stop doing that or pre-arrange somewhere else to go' is usually merely an error that doesn't engage a plausible worldline". But, again, I don't like to be a broken record.

have it ready to go, but call GO or NO-GO based on exactly how much of a shitstorm the US election is"

Doesn’t the invasion window end before the election?

Yes, but it's not like there can't be shit flying before the actual vote.

I might agree; we’re in a lull right now.

Shortly before Trump is elected, the culture war is heating up. Ferguson, I Can’t Breathe, They’re Not Bringing Their Best, Lock Her Up, “this is why Trump won,” Russian collusion, Mueller report, MetToo, BAM Covid, everyone goes retarded and forgets that the original deal was just two weeks at home, masks, no masks, masks again, lab leak conspiracy, BAM The Floydenning, cities burning everywhere, He Crossed State Lines, Get The Jab, where’s your vaxpass? Trump dethroned, Jan6 unarmed rioters incriminate themselves as to their whereabouts at the time, Russia does an actual invasion and the resulting war is actually incredibly boring, Hamas gives things a go and it confuses US Jewish interests only slightly.

It’s been a veritable marathon. But now Trump is perhaps once again going to reclaim the throne, and the vibe seems to be shrugs. I’ve seen this movie before, and it was way more shrill the last time. Unless China does something, or some justice dies, I can’t see where the next topic is supposed to come from.

Ferguson, I Can’t Breathe, They’re Not Bringing Their Best, Lock Her Up, “this is why Trump won,” Russian collusion, Mueller report, MetToo, BAM Covid, everyone goes retarded and forgets that the original deal was just two weeks at home, masks, no masks, masks again, lab leak conspiracy, BAM The Floydenning, cities burning everywhere, He Crossed State Lines, Get The Jab, where’s your vaxpass? Trump dethroned, Jan6 unarmed rioters incriminate themselves as to their whereabouts at the time, Russia does an actual invasion and the resulting war is actually incredibly boring, Hamas gives things a go and it confuses US Jewish interests only slightly.

♪♫ We didn't start the fire! ♫♪

Activity does seem to be declining

evaporative cooling?

Last week was a weird week. I can’t be too harsh because I’ve never topposted, but even though more people than ever are complaining about comment length, every toppost was a writing/research project. Also there was much, much more SCOTUSposting than normal. I saw some discussion of US tax law in there.

Looking at it now, it looks like we had 2 more effortposts made in the literal final hour of the thread’s life?

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