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Culture War Roundup for the week of July 29, 2024

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Same thing, though. His punishment was carried out. Presumably his country deemed that punishment sufficient for the nature of his crimes.

And that is their right. I tend to fall more on the American normie side of "maybe people who fuck 12 year-olds don't need to be around".

And no, I wouldn't apply it to marijuana. I'm not sure where the line is.

is a pretty simple rule and certainly isn't the worst way to govern these things, but preventing someone with actual skills from using those skills to their fullest extent also creates economic deadweight loss

We suffer this loss all the time. Plenty of people are talented. Kevin Spacey has literally been found innocent in multiple trials and will still likely not be allowed to climb back to anything like his peak status. Ryan Garcia is currently in the doghouse. Poor Kyrie Irving was suspended for moronic conspiracy theories of the sort you hear yelled in the subway, no threat to anyone. He wasn't even allowed to pay jizya at first because he was not sufficiently deferential in his apologies.

Most people don't really care about any of these things on a deep level (unless your team lost out), yet it's not in doubt that this is the status quo. We don't really need to craft some justification for it from first principles like it's novel.

None of these high status roles are pure meritocracies. There's always been a debate about just who deserves to get these benefits (enhanced by the stage and national quality of the Olympics). Perhaps the one bit of crystal clear consensus is that something like race shouldn't be a barrier. The rest is debated constantly.

And that is their right. I tend to fall more on the American normie side of "maybe people who fuck 12 year-olds don't need to be around".

Yes that's the easy rule. I somehow feel like nobody is quite prepared to apply it to every single imagineable case, however.

Plenty of people are talented. Kevin Spacey has literally been found innocent in multiple trials and will still likely not be allowed to climb back to anything like his peak status. Ryan Garcia is currently in the doghouse. Poor Kyrie Irving was suspended for moronic conspiracy theories of the sort you hear yelled in the subway, no threat to anyone. He wasn't even allowed to pay jizya at first because he was not sufficiently deferential in his apologies.

Yes so you see my point.

If the rule is "having sex with a 12 year old is an instant social death sentence, and maybe a literal death sentence" then there's some incentive to use this claim as a bludgeon and create false allegations.

I don't know if there's a better equilibrium achievable, but I'd perhaps like to search for it.