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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   28737 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 13, 2025

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Strange Rumblings in Columbia: Inauguration Day Weirdness

Some odd news and sights coming out of Washington in the last few days. First, the public Inauguration Day ceremony on the National Mall was cancelled. Ostensibly due to poor weather (the forecasted high temperature for Inauguration Day is 28F/-2C), although other Presidents have had public ceremonies in cooler temperatures. President Trump would be sworn in the Congressional chamber of the Capitol building in front of the full Congress, similar to a state of the Union address.

Then a day or two ago ago, that plan was cancelled, and the ceremony is being moved to the White House. It will be much smaller and most of Congress will not be there.

When Trump arrived in Virginia yesterday, all the cars in the motorcade had an odd feature. A three foot tall pole-like device attached to the roof, around 4 inches wide. It is apparently some kind of anti-drone countermeasure. There are rumors spreading that the first two ceremony types were canceled due to intelligence reports of a credible threat of drone attack.

Adding to the already odd protocol, it appears that Vice-President elect JD Vance will not even be present in Washington DC for the inauguration and will be sworn in at an undisclosed location somewhere else. This harks back to the years after 9/11 when Vice President Cheney would spend State of the Union addresses in an undisclosed bunker in case of a massive attack.

Meanwhile, there are still several thousand troops in Washington DC, who were brought in to safeguard the election certification process.

This all seems very odd. If this is in response to a foreign threat of some kind it seems like a very credible and serious one indeed. It is also of course sending bolts of static electricity through the creases of my tinfoil hat, but I have no idea how to interpret them. I would appreciate hearing anyone’s thoughts on this.

Then a day or two ago ago, that plan was cancelled, and the ceremony is being moved to the White House. It will be much smaller and most of Congress will not be there.

If you are repeating rumours, add qualifiers or weasel words. Such as "I have heard that..." or "Rumour has it that...". As time has shown, Vance and Trump were sworn in the Capitol building.

Adding to the already odd protocol, it appears that Vice-President elect JD Vance will not even be present in Washington DC for the inauguration and will be sworn in at an undisclosed location somewhere else.

What are the chances that he does what he joked about?

"Hopefully everyone is cool with me skipping the inauguration so I can go to the national title game"

(For those unfamiliar or uninterested, the college football team of his undergrad alma mater Ohio State is facing Notre Dame roughly 7 hours after the inauguration)

I would appreciate hearing anyone’s thoughts on this.

As a conspiracy theorist, my belief is that this is Trump/his team discovering real, serious attempts on his life coming from within the government. The deep state likes to plan these things out in advance (to this date there is no non-conspiracy explanation for the January 6 pipe bomb affair), and suddenly shifting the location is going to throw a wrench into their plans.

The j6 pipe bombs could have been planted by a foreign adversary, couldn't they have?

That's still a conspiracy...

Who? Remember that whoever planted the pipe bombs had the ability to scramble and corrupt cellphone data after it was given to the FBI, and use magical powers to prevent the FBI from investigating further or getting the uncorrupted data from the telecom company by just asking them again. If you want to blame a foreign adversary, the US is completely owned and compromised.

https://cha.house.gov/2025/1/chairs-loudermilk-massie-release-january-6-2021-pipe-bomb-report

"The FBI’s Investigation into the Pipe Bomber: The FBI did not receive “corrupted data” from one of the major cell carriers in connection with its investigation into the pipe bomber. A former senior FBI official testified that the major cell carrier companies provided “corrupted” cell data to the FBI and suggested that that “corrupted” data may have contained the identity of the pipe bomber; however, in responses to letters from the Subcommittee, the major cell carriers confirmed that they did not provide corrupted data to the FBI and that the FBI never notified them of any issues with accessing the cellular data."

I'm not sure the corrupted cellphone data thing is as you're describing it.

Based on this report, it seems like either

  1. There was no corrupted data and the FBI guy just said something completely erroneous out of incompetence.

  2. The cellphone companies are not aware of the corrupted data, but it's real.

  3. Some sort of miscommunication based on different definitions of the term "corrupted data" between the FBI and cell phone companies.

I can understand not wanting to doubt the sterling moral character of the US intelligence agencies, but this explanation is actually less realistic than the conspiracy approach. The FBI failing to follow a lead on a person who was potentially trying to blow up the president/vice president) because of a miscommunication with a telecom company is a level of incompetence that beggars belief. This is the sort of excuse that would get someone fired from their job at a supermarket or furniture store, and yet there was no corrective action for an investigation into someone attempting to blow up the president during the inauguration? Every single one of the points you raised could have been corrected within a few minutes by someone who actually wanted to investigate the situation, and yet nothing of the sort has happened - this is substantially less realistic than the idea that the FBI is malicious.

I think one of us has misunderstood the other. I'm saying what if there never was any corrupted data and the FBI guy was just talking out of his ass?

That's the original conspiracy theory claim - the FBI lying to cover up something else (most likely that the person planting the pipe bomb was working for intelligence).

Possibly relevant concurrent events: DJI (the Chinese drone company) lifts geofencing restrictions in the US: https://viewpoints.dji.com/blog/geo-system-update

It lifted its own geofencing and is pulling in restriction data from a FAA API to populate US specific geofences. DJI used to just utilize NOTAM universal warning zones as first point of contact, but various ATCs around the world kept putting in requests for temporary geofences for special events that DJI just ended up witb different APIs to submit. Not sure what the latest firmware is like, but I hear its made things massively easier for a country to issue geofencing restrictions without any users, even DJI, knowing why.

it could also be massive case of ass covering. 4 years ago security was screwed up during the certification process and there have been multiple attempts on Trumps life. you don't want to be the person in charge if something goes wrong unless you have checked every box.

And also weird that it took so many attempts on the life of Trump to get them to try at all.

I’ll be honest, I think this is mostly theater, either for domestic audiences “see, we actually don’t want anything to happen to him”, or foreign audiences “we know, don’t try it.” It seems weird to make all of this public if the goal is to prevent an assassination. They know where he’ll be and when, and it would seem odd that they situation is serious enough that they have to change venues twice yet not serious enough that they aren’t worried about making the venue public information. Serious enough that you need anti drone tech, but not serious enough that you might do something like unmarked cars that an agent couldn’t locate.

Might they be covering their asses with, not foreigners, not the public, but a possible Trump appointee?

Yeah that's my assumption, the only reassurance I get from this is in my belief that the deep state tried to kill Trump. Oh oh now you're going to be president we'll do our jobs properly, look at all these very serious things we are doing! We didn't put a bunch of counter-snipers in your protection and tell them they were on crowd control, we didn't put a twenty year old who was so green he forgot his flipping radio in charge of them, hell we actually brought enough radios for everyone, so we also won't be partnering with local law enforcement then cutting them out of comms and putting them in charge of buildings they can't see! Don't just fire the lot of us and salt the earth behind you, we are actually capable of doing what we were hired to do!

This all seems very odd. If this is in response to a foreign threat of some kind it seems like a very credible and serious one indeed. It is also of course sending bolts of static electricity through the creases of my tinfoil hat, but I have no idea how to interpret them. I would appreciate hearing anyone’s thoughts on this.

I just want you to applaud you for the beautiful prose of this paragraph.

Where are you finding this information? CBS is still reporting, in an article updated 25 minutes ago, that everything will take place in the Rotunda and that Vance will be present.

the ceremony is being moved to the White House.

So I presume Capt. Michael Byrd of the US Capitol Police will not be there, packing heat. A sensible precaution.

Ostensibly due to poor weather (the forecasted high temperature for Inauguration Day is 28F/-2C), although other Presidents have had public ceremonies in cooler temperatures.

I’m sure there are many who would be happy to see Trump have his own William Henry Harrison moment.

I shudder to think what that would mean for Vance's actions, given that Harrison's successor, John Tyler, later became the only U. S. president to openly swear allegiance to a polity firing on U. S. troops....

That's a weird thing to worry about.

It could also be an over correction from the USSS. After two assassination attempts you can’t blame them.

After Jan. 6th and other incidents, no one taking any chances.

I just today learned of a subreddit called r/somethingiswrong2024, where the crowd of disappointed liberals have already spiralled to QAnon levels of theorizing how somehow the election will be annulled and Kamala will win, and naturally the irregulaties surrounding the swearing in have ended up throwing fuel to the fire by shovelful.

I think it’s perfectly predictable. When elections take on apocalyptic significance, it’s easy to convince people to believe in fraud when they don’t when.

I’ll be honest, politics is something that works best when people aren’t that interested. The people most likely to take it too seriously are the ones who know least about the issues and policies that they’re indirectly voting on. They’re watching it like wrestling fans, except that they believe that civilization itself hangs on the outcome.

The people most likely to take it too seriously are the ones who know least about the issues and policies that they’re indirectly voting on.

Parallel to this, the people most likely to engage in political activism are paradoxically the least likely to perform it effectively i.e. to successfully recruit new supporters to a political cause, as they tend to lack the necessary social skills etc. I remember this getting discussed multiple times on the old subreddit.

Note what the primary difference is between this and qanon, birthers, pizzagaters etc - media coverage.

Lots of people have reasons to kill DJT and a damn good amount of them are state actors or equivalent with the means to pull off sophisticated assassinations.

Ukraine, Iran, radical left groups, parts of USG afraid of retaliation, now even hardcore Zionists.

And that's the obvious ones, let's not count the parties that would lose from his economic policy enough to consider direct action. Or those accelerationists that know the chaos that the world would be plunged into if he was gunned down now.

I'm sure the Secret Service is tied into knots right now. But what this atmosphere of siege will mean politically, if anything, I don't know. Lots of people want to kill even a normal POTUS.

Uh, you kill Trump, you get president Vance(and while it’s an interesting legal question who technically assumes the presidency if you knock him off too, in practice the principle of party rule is too strong to be overcome, so it would be a Republican with a tough-as-nails reputation). I’m not sure the people who have an interest in averting a Trump presidency would find that preferable.

If Trump is somehow assassinated during his inaugural address, IMO that has a very good chance of kicking off a civil war.

Probably, yes. Particularly if the popular legitimacy answer(a hardline member of the same party succeeds) conflicts with the technical legal line of succession(which has never even gotten to Secretary of State).

A wave of terrorism, maybe. You need high-ranking officers to kick-off a proper civil war.

This is why there's a VPOTUS of course, but Vance may be more malleable to certain business and geopolitical interests without his boss, and the MAGA movement could dissolve without it's figurehead.

I agree it's unlikely to change that much, but if your back is against the wall and you can get a mulligan, you might want to take the risk.

Speaker of the House becomes president after Vance if both were taken out at once. If Vance gets assassinated a few days/weeks/months after Trump then it would just be whoever Vance's VP is

I'm sure the Secret Service is tied into knots right now. But what this atmosphere of siege will mean politically, if anything, I don't know.

I'm willing to predict "not much". Maybe public events will be smaller or more selective, but that doesn't matter much until 2026 anyway.

A pity that we're not making this public event "smaller" and "more selective" on the grounds that when your country is 36 trillion dollars in the hole, it's frankly obscene to be spending anything on a glorified public party. All that's needed for the inauguration is the President, the VP, and the Chief Justice to administer the oath, and maybe a BBC camera crew to show the rest of the world that the inauguration actually happened, plus the usual Secret Service security that'd be there anyway. Anything beyond that is frivolity.

How much of the budget is being footed by the taxpayer? Corporations, as we know, have pitched in millions for this particular party.

Donald Trump launched a shitcoin!. Trump Memes - $TRUMP - on Solana. It has a market cap of $5B, comparable to actual company $DJT, and a fully diluted value of $29B. For those who are unfamiliar, a 'shitcoin' or 'memecoin' is a term for a tradeable token that lives on a blockchain, like Ethereum or Solana, that doesn't make a claim to have value or future profits, and whose price relies on a large number of retail traders who think it'll go even higher, or that it's funny. Trump Memes joins coins like Shiba Inu, Fartcoin, Pepe, and Dogwifhat, and is now #4 for market cap. They function to redistribute huge amounts of wealth from gullible crypto enthusiasts to the token developers, smart traders, and people who happen to see it first. And, of course, 80% of all Trump tokens that exist were allocated to the coin's developers, locked up for some time period.

FT: The president-elect of the US is promoting a shitcoin?

Is this good for crypto? It doesn't hurt to have a friendly President - Trump and his team were embracing crypto, planning crypto-friendly executive orders, designating it as a 'national priority', and even seriously considering a 'strategic bitcoin reserve'. It might be bad, in the long run, though - it's the perfect setup for the next Dem administration to crack down on crypto. Or even a bipartisan crackdown, especially once Trump is too old to be politically relevant, or just dead from old age, and the grip of his personality over the Republican party is gone.

And, what a thing to do a few days before your inauguration. As much has people do irrationally hate Trump, I kind of buy the liberal claim that, because we all know Trump is corrupt and depraved, and the way in which he is so is incredibly funny, people don't hold him to the same standards they'd hold their political enemies, or anyone else. Joe Biden's done a lot of bad things, but if he blatantly scammed his supporters for tens or hundreds of millions of dollars, the response from his allies would be a lot stronger!

I don't like the impersonal process-oriented bureaucracy, the expert elite, the oligarchy behind democracy, whatever you call it. They are hypocritical, corrupt, dysfunctional, whatever else. But they're not infinitely that. Society still more or less works. If the alternative (whether that's just more MAGA candidates winning elections, or a moldbuggian new regime) is concentrating power in strong individuals, and this is the kind of individual that smart right-wingers - empirically - chose to concentrate power in, is that really better?

Apparently $MELANIA is live now too. There are like six different scam impersonation accounts in the replies, with hundreds of likes.

ETA:

To make this a bit more substantive, why assume the price action of $TRUMP is organic rather than wash trading in advance of a rug pull? It's not like Trump's previous crypto grift (anyone remember World Financial Liberty?) went all that well. Why do people want to buy this but not that?

News of great import: https://x.com/0xRenaissance/status/1881085743336181974

If you look at the memecoin's price chart on its side, it looks a bit like Trump's face.

The burnt Fool's bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire

That personalist politics are prone to corruption and abuse is well-known. Very occasionally you get Lee Kuan Yew, but mostly you get thugs and conmen.

The trouble is that personalist followers are really good at convincing themselves the vices of their big man are actually virtues.

Fuck $TRUMP, I'm buying $HANANIA.

It already has a market cap of $12 million and I trust Hanania an order of magnitude more than Trump to do what's best for everyone.

I think it's entirely plausible Hanania will pump and dump and have 0 guilt over it, because anyone who invests in a meme coin deserves what's coming to them

I'll be launching $NYBBLER next week. Its value is fixed at 0, but it'll get to be a deeper and deeper zero the longer it is held.

crazy how much this shit has gone up--even now $trump is higher than it was yesterday at this time.

Smart move by him. Anyone who is even internet-famous should launch their own coin like this. Free $ pretty much .

Calling it now, this is this liquidity cycle's dogcoin moment. Everyone conjuring value out of nothing as if by magic is a surprisingly consistent signal.

What do you mean?

The current economic system produces recurrent ~5 year cycles of growth and recession that map onto interest rate decisions from the Fed whose timing coincides with both POTUS terms and cryptocurrency market bubbles. The nature of the link and whether it's coincidental is debated, but I believe, alongside others, that much of these effects are downstream from monetary policy and psychological effects.

During the last cycle, the near-top of the cryptocurrency market was marked by a fad of people releasing or pumping dog themed coins trying to replicate the success of dogecoin, a good example of this is $SHIB.

Liquidity traders believe that you can observe the psychology of the market to time long term trading decisions and profit from the variations of the liquidity cycle.

What I'm saying is that this celebrity coin fad looks a lot like the fads of the past cycle, which may signify that we are close to the top. And that we may expect recession and/or a crash along with a yield curve reversion this year or the next.

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/b/boom-and-bust-cycle.asp

I'm thinking through ideas of what to do with this. No promises but there may be room for experimentation (this not how you hype crypto, but honesty matters to me).

My long-term interests are aligned with yours, Hanania Coin holders. We all rise or collapse together.

This is a public offering of unregistered securities. Hanania is in deep shit if this takes off and blows up.

no one cares. it's evident that when even celebrities can launch coins that crash and burn and not face the consequence that the threat of the law is a paper tiger. The worst worst thing that can happen is it's a civil matter and he pays a fine. afik no one has been prosecuted for promoting or launching a coin.

What scam? As you say

For those who are unfamiliar, a 'shitcoin' or 'memecoin' is a term for a tradeable token that lives on a blockchain, like Ethereum or Solana, that doesn't make a claim to have value or future profits

If they aren't making claims of value or profits, there's no scam. It's no different than selling Trump baseball cards.

In reality, it is very hard for the creators/holders to not make claims of value or profits. The incentive for them to hype their coin is too much.

To be fair, if the next President elect from the Democrats would sell baseball cards of herself the day before inauguration (and that money is not 100% going to charity), I would doom and gloom about the republic.

The claim here rings true:

because we all know Trump is corrupt and depraved, and the way in which he is so is incredibly funny, people don't hold him to the same standards they'd hold their political enemies, or anyone else.

See the laconic comment about that in the FT link:

Trump has sold sneakers, watches, jewellery and a $60 Bible in the months leading up to the election, as MainFT ably reported. He also promoted a platform called “World Liberty Financial” and its token.

Do we know how much of this coin Trump himself (or his company I guess) holds?

Assuming it is indeed a substantial money maker for him, and Trump-supporting "investors" do indeed end up losing whatever they put into it -- they might not care? Think of it as a "thank you" to the guy for breaking the previous (very bad) system. I guess it end-runs political fundraising law, but that seems kind of unconstitutional to me anyways -- so why fret? Democrats will seethe, of course -- but I don't think this is actually illegal?

There was a similar dynamic with the Canadian Convoy fundraising; Left Inc. promulgated a bunch of (probably fake) stories about how the main organizer was spending the funds (and later her legal defense donations) on designer dresses and whatnot, which they felt was some sort of knockout punch -- but the common response from actual donors was more like "So what? She fucking won, I don't care what she spends her money on."

agree. trump saw, correctly, there would be huge demand for this. he's not making any promises. The disclaimer on this thing is huge, which 99.999 percent of ppl who buy this will never see, let alone read in entirety. his bases are covered.

Politicians are corrupt. In the same way it’s not concerning behavior in a dog to fear the vacuum cleaner but it would be in a person, this kind of stuff just comes with the territory.

Trump is less tasteful, that’s it.

This line of reasoning seems like a bit of a cop-out and/or an excuse to suspend critical thinking. If all pols are secretly crooks, then I don't have to feel bad about supporting the guy who is openly a crook.

'Politicians' are not corrupt. Some politicians are corrupt, and not every corrupt politician is equally corrupt. If I see one guy doing lots of corruption, a second guy doing a little corruption, and another third not doing any corruption, "all three are doing similar amounts of corruption but the latter two are better at hiding it" is not the most parsimonious explanation.

Ok- Trump is somewhat less corrupt but much less tasteful about it than Biden. This does not make it more concerning. And it seems like the case that Trump is more corrupt than a typical presidential-level politician isn’t being made- instead the case being made is that his corruption is executed in ways different from the usual.

Trump is somewhat less corrupt but much less tasteful about it than Bide

That would require some substantiation, especially considering this might be the single most corrupt act by monetary value of any US president, ever.

Even adjusted for inflation?

I could be overlooking some incident, but I don't think anything even comes close.

It’s fair to call out that the media and the left have poisoned the well of useful conversation and nuance with their hysterics. But at the same time, I’m fucking tired of this fully generalizable hand wave.

This is not even a response, it relies on a series of logical leap that are entirely lazy deflections.

first it requires jumping from the truism that political corruption is inevitable on the whole, to the unfounded conclusion thus any given circumstance its therefore inevitable.

It’s no different than identity politics that jumps from a tenable claim that racism exists, to the ridiculous conclusion that any given scenario must have racism hiding in it, thus justifying any reaction.

It also requires treating all corruption as binary, then voila with a side of what aboutism,

Suddenly any concern about blatent corruption becomes dismissed as aesthetics, nativity, or even argued as actually virtuous since it above the board and therefore some kind of subversive transparency.

At the end of the day this schtick is played out. It’s just the opposite side of the coin as TDS, and just as brain rotted and empty rhetoric

There are degrees - Trump is in a particularly high-risk group for corruption because he doesn't really seem to believe anything particularly strongly except that he should be President. As OP says, there is no way mainstream Democrat (or moderate Republican) would do this kind of thing without getting an avalanche of shit from their allies as much as their opponents, but because it's Trump his opponents are past the point where his stock can go any lower and his allies would never dare criticise him.

I kind of buy the liberal claim that, because we all know Trump is corrupt and depraved, and the way in which he is so is incredibly funny, people don't hold him to the same standards they'd hold their political enemies, or anyone else.

Theres something to that, but its not everything. Cats try to steal your food, stay sitting on your legs when you want to get up, and scratch up your furniture. Do we accept this because "we all know they are selfish and incorrigable, and the way in which they are so is incredibly cute"? Again, thats part of it, but also, an adult human doing this would be a worrying sign, in a way its just not for the cat. Its not about a slice of ham, its about sending a message. In the other direction, you should be suspicious of a serious mormon who drinks like a normal person, even if normal drinking behaviour is not concerning per se.

Okay but we're putting the heavy drinker or the cat in the position of commander in chief of the United States military! That's bad. Like, if the surgeon operating on you is drinking a 'normal amount' at 2am the night before, you should be concerned about that whether or not he's a mormon.

Im saying it makes sense that people are less concerned when Trump does it, because the character implication is less. Im not saying what the right absolute level of concern is, because Im not sure how to think about that when the implication is gone.

Okay but we're putting the heavy drinker or the cat in the position of commander in chief of the United States military! That's bad.

Worked OK for Grant.

And Garfield.

Grant wasn’t an Ernest Hemingway-style persistent heavy drinker, glass of whisky always in hand. Grant was more of a “spend nine months teetotal and then go on a three day bender” kind of drinker. Also by the time he was President he had quit drinking for good. Now Lyndon Johnson on the other hand, was a persistent heavy drinker and say what you will about him it never diminished his effectiveness as President.

Grant was more of a spend nine months teetotal and then go on a three day bender kind of drinker.

In a nuclear world, this seems ... worse?

you should be suspicious of a serious mormon who drinks like a normal person, even if normal drinking behaviour is not concerning per se

Very much so. I am Muslim and am always slightly concerned when I see another Muslim-esque person drink in a way that I'm not if I see a white westerner drink.

Conversely, when I see Turks or balkan Muslims not drink when everyone else is, I become concerned in a way that I’m not when I see a white Christian turn down a beer.

I think this is a very interesting question. When I encounter someone who is nominally a religious trad drinking (in the case of Muslims or I guess Mormons), aborting, whoring etc, the deep hypocrisy this represents is the strongest characteristic of a certain type of chauvinism. It manifests itself in many ways, for example a liberal, promiscuous, immodestly dressing woman from an Islamic culture who identifies as a devout Muslim and argues against ‘white feminism’. The most common variant is typically the personally promiscuous and/or alcohol-drinking man from a chaste, sober religious subculture who nevertheless believes he is strongly following the rules he clearly does not care for, and yet judges those who also do not care for them as an outsider.

I don't buy into that standard but I do think there is a cult. It is just a general problem than only one that relates to Trump that applies to many politicians, or even broader political factions or groups.

Making it all about Trump makes it seem that politics is separated between the bad orange man and superior other elites, or Trump cultists and then people who care about expertise when actually politics and political discourse is full of fanatics, actual shills who actually get paid to promote certain agendas, and shit politicians. Politicians doing what people who pay for them want over what is good for their country is actually a worse form of corruption than this which it self is a bad thing.

When Trump's problem's are not unique that much and he exemplifies much of what is bad about politics as usual and the establishment right. Even if he has some areas that he is better and others like this which he might be worse than a Romney figure. This is to say, Trump is not the worst thing ever nor the savior.

I don't like the impersonal process-oriented bureaucracy, the expert elite, the oligarchy behind democracy, whatever you call it. They are hypocritical, corrupt, dysfunctional, whatever else. But they're not infinitely that. Society still more or less works. If

Acting as if this means that society no longer works and is worse than what other oligarchs do, well, you haven't really justified this.

Whether it is supporting BLM, their fanatical enormous nation destroying racism, their gigantic incompetence on issues relating to their generally culturally far left viewpoint and even outside of just that as it happened with California fires, mass migration, totalitarianism and making dissent to their false narratives (enabling further predation) a crime or censorship, promoting false views such as lab leak = conspiracy theory (which I believe you have also done and been highly critical of dissenters), oppressing opposition, enormous corruption, the take over of influence by far left NGOs, intelligence services, Jewish lobby which of course results in enormous corruption and redirection of resources and two tier society, and a lot other stuff. Neither California, nor Biden regime, not the neocon/liberal elites are representative of a less corrupt, more competent way to govern.

It isn't as if Trump is actually sufficiently good on any of these, but the "expert elite" do not exist. Corruption, stealing money, insane ideology. Any experts are not representative of elites and it devalues the concept of expertise to associate it with them.

Actually I don't see how this approach to praise the alternative as elite experts and take it as a given that this proves Trump is the epitome of corruption is any less cultist than the kind of Trump supporter who always supports Trump even if as he betrays the principles that would make him more enticing figure than establishment as usual. Trump is converging quite a lot with the neocon establishment in fact even if his domestic policy isn't going to be as bad as Kamala's.

Anyway, this is pretty scummy from Trump to do since the coin is eventually going to go down and is pure speculation at best, and the guy deserves a backlash for this.But your framing is making it to the benefit of something even worse. Is Biden's history of corruption and enrichment better? Not really. Is promoting crypto speculation and a coin of his own the kind of thing that is such a morally depraved act that puts the corrupt establishment as automatically superior as you present it? No, because even with Trump and certainly even with the corrupt establishment, there are worse things than this.

The cult that is in favor of the dominant faction of elites, ideologues that marched on institutions (which includes donors who by buying politicians get their agenda through) is not a superior alternative to Trump's cult. Actually there seems to be some crossover, I don't buy into the myth of Trump phenomenon being at least today completely separate. It would be better to reject both cults and to hold politicians accountable. Rejecting the myth of their good nature, expertise, and automatically correct instincts.

I don't really like "crypto" as a whole. Most of it is scammy. Like this pre-mined centralized shitcoin.

I thought a bitcoin reserve was a somewhat sensible idea (I'm biased as an owner) but of course with Trump this is what we're gonna get instead. Btc (no pre-mine) gets lumped in with the scams.

As you say this might be bad in the longer term - the next democratic admin will likely crack down on it. Btc will get regulated to hell with the rest of it, setting the stage for central bank digital currency to take over. A dystopian thing.

... look, if I wanted to see posts like this, there are hundreds of thousands of them on crypto twitter. I come here for a higher standard of quality, and your post probably breaks the 'low effort' rule.

Ok, removed.

put a small amount $ in. this way if it crashes you will feel good about not having put more, but if it goes up, all good.

I'm curious what strategy Trump is ultimately going for here. On the surface it looks like a power move to demonstrate that he is in charge and nobody can stop him from pulling off these types of shenanigans.

Is he really just after the money and/or getting revenge at people that have wronged him in the past?

Actions like these really decrease trust in the economic and political system. It fuels beliefs that there is no point in working hard to get ahead. Why should anyone work hard when you can make more money by monitoring social media and being early to the next viral momentum trade? It also causes you to lose trust in democracy. We are voting for people who are personally enriching themselves at our expense.

This also leads us to a slippery slope. If Trump is allowed to do this then what's stopping him from doing things like telling China he won't introduce new tariffs if they buy $1B of his memecoin?

There is probably some deeper lesson about how when social media content creators have a mechanism to monetize attention it results in unregulated negative externalities.

This also leads us to a slippery slope. If Trump is allowed to do this then what's stopping him from doing things like telling China he won't introduce new tariffs if they buy $1B of his memecoin?

Not much and his supporters would probably think that was the best thing ever. I also doubt he'd be impeached, he'd just say it was a joke.

If Trump is allowed to do this then what's stopping him from doing things like telling China he won't introduce new tariffs if they buy $1B of his memecoin?

Impeachment. That’s literally it. You can’t say the people didn’t vote for this. The opinion in Trump v United States came out well before the election.

Well, it was clearly correct to not be going after sitting presidents, at the very least, and he could pardon himself, so Trump v United States isn't all that relevant to this analysis.

After Trump University, Trump Coins (physical), Trump Trading Cards, Trump Media Stock, and whatever the hell this is, I would have expected Trump scam market saturation. At some point it becomes more useful to model it as a form of tithing than con artistry. The people buying this junk must be getting some form of utility out of it, even if it confounds the sophisticated mind.

At some point it becomes more useful to model it as a form of tithing than con artistry. The people buying this junk must be getting some form of utility out of it, even if it confounds the sophisticated mind.

During the 2021 short squeeze of GameStop, some people bought stock not caring whether they came out ahead, considering the entire amount they had spent on it to be a fair price to strike back at the Wall Street investors whom they blamed for 2008. ("It's not about the money; it's about sending a message.")

Someone who feels ill-used by the Very Serious People in establishment politics might very well purchase the items in question thinking not "This has a good chance of being profitable." so much as "You bastards ruined my life and then had the gall to blame me and say I deserved it. F%*# you, I'll give money to the guy you hate."

Fine but that can just as easily be achieved by donating to whatever Trump/Trumpian candidate or PAC.

crypto is $4 trillion total market cap. $5 billion market cap for $trump is still tiny. Rather than saturation, it's more like $ from other coins shifting into $Trump. You can see this by how altcoins have all fallen except $SOL and $Trump.

IMO memecoins are significantly worse than expensive collectibles because they allow, and the community encourages, normal people who aren't that smart or careful with their money to put in tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, even millions into these coins, and then to attempt to dump your bags on other people who are more gullible and less quick before the price drops. And the creator's taking a cut of all that.

I'm old enough to have watched women throw away many thousands of dollars of beanie babies and tens of thousands of dollars of llamas.
That reminds me, need to check if the alpaca bubble burst yet, or if the Tranch's alpacacaust was an isolated incident.

except for MTG cards, collectibles are probably worse due to carry costs. Crypto has no carry. But they both tend to be bad. There tons of stories of people who drudge up their collectibles only to learn they are appraised for nothing or are unable to sell them. With crypto at least there is a market where everyone gets the same price, and much better liquidity. That urn may have been appraised for $1000, but no one will buy it or you may only get $800 after fees. Many items at auction houses go unsold due to reserve not being met or no bidders.

As a straight investment, maybe, but who is buying this stuff as a straight investment? Collectibles have the advantage of having intrinsic utility that these meme coins don't. In the 1980s my mother was gifted a series of limited edition Norman Rockwell commemorative plates that would supposedly increase exponentially in value over the years. They didn't, but they were displayed in my parents' dining room for at least 30 years. I don't think Trump Coin or whatever has that kind of value.

Collectibles have the advantage of having intrinsic utility that these meme coins don't.

They don't have intrinsic utility, they have whatever utility is the the eye of the beholder. You can't display your weird crypto in the living room, but if it brings a smile to your face when you see it, is that not utility? Conversely, if you don't enjoy having some plates in the living room, do they actually have any utility? I think that this sort of thing is very much a matter of personal taste and perspective. I would get no pleasure whatsoever in owning Trump coin, but I can imagine that some people might.

If the plates cost $1000 and you can eat from them that is like $5 of utility vs. a $995 loss. The vast majority of collectibles have no utility, because to remain valuable they cannot be used. many cannot even be displayed for fear of being stolen or breaking. MTG cards again being a notable exception to this which offer gameplay utility.

Now I'm curious: do you think Trump MTG cards would be net-good or net-bad for Hasbro? A lot of MTG players would be quite angry, but it would also definitely attract new people.

I can't wait for the new mechanics.

Bluewalk -- creature is unblockable as long as defending player controls a blue state
"Viva la Raza!"

Teflon -- when this creature is the target of a spell or ability, nullify its effect and place a +0/+1 on this creature
"He can't keep getting away with it!"

Deep Statesmanship -- during your turn, when this creature would be destroyed, instead tap it, remove it from combat, and heal all damage to it
"They know. Shut it down."

In the age of custom card sites, proxy printers, and stable diffusion, we're long overdue for a spiritual successor to the Illuminati card game.

You missed a trick.

Trumple -- This creature can deal excess combat damage to a player, planeswalker or battle it's blocking.
"The Trump Curse claims another victim!"

...bonus points for the best design for a creature with Trample, Tromple and Trumple.

Dang, I was trying to think of a spin on Trample. Nice.

Teflon is very strong, it's like a better Shroud.

It depends on what "nullify" exactly means, rules-wise. It could be strictly better shroud, though the situations on which it's better are so narrow as to be basically the same, but if "nullify" means "counter" then it's a weird ward: very strong, but symmetrical.

Shroud is also symmetrical, hexproof is the non symmetrical version of that.

More comments

Please provide a pitch deck in next week's Tinker Tuesday.

I'm going to play the biggest creature. No one's ever had such big numbers before!

No one's ever had such big numbers before!

By magnitude, or by font size? (Late Show with Stephen Colbert, April 2016)

To toot my horn, it looks like my thesis from 2 months age was correct https://www.themotte.org/post/1215/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/260850?context=8#context

DJT stock stock being worth $4-7 billion despite meager earnings was not wholly irrational, as I had pointed out, due to the ability of Trump to leverage his branding in ways that short-sellers and other skeptics were overlooking, at virtually no cost to DJT. And now in the span of 4 hours Trump created $5+ billion out of thin air--just with a tweet (and a post on Truth Social) promoting his new coin. No $ spent on advertising.

Presumably, some of this $ will go to Trump Media. So in hindsight, DJT stock was not so overvalued. Trump can print money at will. His brand today is way bigger compared to in the '90s-2000s, when his companies regularly went bankrupt and his failures made for late night fodder. The assumption was DJT would be a repeat of that. You're not smarter than the market. Or at least to be smarter than the market, it cannot be obvious. A year ago it seemed so obvious that DJT was worthless or would be soon, and now this. If a narrative seems too obvious or easy, there is likely something you're missing. Wall St. does not like to give money away.

Moreover, this is why you should never bet against Trump the person. Like DJT stock, $Trump has defied the typical 'pump and dump' trajectory seen in other meme coins, like Hawk Tuah's coin, which imploded to zero right from the gate. But $Trump went up 1000x steadily after it began trading--the opposite trajectory. Trump, like Elon, is truly the master of defying what is possible, or doing the impossible. The usual rules do not apply to them. Throw out your preconceived notions. No pump and dump when it comes to $Trump--the gains hold.

However, I predict his presidency will fall short of the expectations of some of his supporters, similar to his first term , such as no crypto reserve legislation, and being stonewalled by legal problems and Congress. So I am bearish on the Trump presidency, but bullish on Trump as a brand, the political ambitions of his children, and Trumpism as a force of politics even if it does not change society that much.

People that buy stocks, or coins, are motivated by psychological factors, or false conclusions and aren't necessarily buying based on accurate understanding of their value. Like the expectation that X will keep going up and fear of missing out. The market has always throughout history even as far as hundreds of years ago included speculation and bubbles in it. At any given point market gets some prices wrong. But on the long term the market is wiser. Unless the bubble will go on infinitely, which it won't, stocks and coins which have a grossly inflated value over their fundamentals will have their price go down. People have made plenty of money in bubbles while they have also lost plenty of money after it came crushing down.

If someone wants to get rich by engaging in speculation with DJT stock, or coins, it might even work for a time. But it is still speculation, and it is still the reasonable expectation that the price will crush down eventually. Who knows, like the Hawk Tua girl, with the coin it might even happen soon enough that you won't make money. Or it being DJT has more staying power and those who speculate might become rich if they leave after a point.

It is still speculation though and if anyone wants to do that then speculate away. Just accept the risks.

Moreover, this is why you should never bet against Trump the person. Like DJT stock, $Trump has defied the typical 'pump and dump' trajectory seen in other meme coins, like Hawk Tuah's coin, which imploded to zero right from the gate. But $Trump went up 1000x steadily after it began trading--the opposite trajectory. Trump, like Elon, is truly the master of defying what is possible, or doing the impossible. The usual rules do not apply to them. Throw out your preconceived notions. No pump and dump when it comes to $Trump--the gains hold.

Rules don't apply is just wishful thinking. It is possible that with Trump there might be a bigger speculation window. Plenty of bubbles have happened for years at times.

What you are saying about the market being wise based on current prices and rules not applying is really the philosophy of the greedy investor in a bubble and this perspective has always been proven to be wrong. This doesn't mean that someone who speculates with this coin will not make money for a time. It just means that what we know about markets tell us that the price will go down at some point. Predicting exactly when that will happen is pretty tough.

To the extend prices are mostly based on psychology, of course that can and will change. For various factors like the end of Trump's presidency or him actually dying. Or who knows, like with hawk tua coin, people might think to sell it because of these factors and the decline happens during Trump's presidency. Or maybe it happens sooner. Who even knows.

Yeah, this is really bad.

Is it though? His base will never leave him so long as he dunks on the libs, no matter how much he scams them.

I care about things besides his level of electoral support.

it makes him look worse to those who already didn't like him--so it's bad in that sense.

No, it's bad in the sense that it's evil to scam the people who trust you.

But if they kind of like being scammed and experience this interaction with Trump as enjoyable, is it really evil? I would describe it as totally cretinous myself.

the price keeps going up. the performance is better than 99% of 'legit' coins . sure it can crash, but this is true again of legit coins. Trump is savvy enough to play into this demand. he stuck to his pledge in 2024 of not selling DJT stock.

This is somewhat tangential but is now a good time to buy Sol then? If the president himself is shilling it, it seems like a good buy

no, too risky and missed the train. Crypto has very high beta with the stock market, no alpha anymore.

Bummer. I miss all the trains!

Consider any other altcoin, however- bitcoin, litecoin, ethereum, monero.

By the time you've heard of a memecoin, when you buy, you've probably already lost.

The price of the Trump shitcoin has doubled since you said this.

I already have FOMO

Looks like you gotta be very quick in and out of these scammy ponzis. Preferably in the first hour or two. 3 days later they've already crashed.

The minute, or hour, after he posted it was definitely a good time to buy SOL. Now ... probably still is a good time, but not necessarily because of Trump, more because the momentum in the crypto ecosystem seems to be behind it.

But this entire exercise illustrates how, IMO, speculative cryptocurrency trading is a negative sum, socially useless activity that should be at least shameful, if not illegal. Your profit on SOL or BTC isn't coming from 'transforming the financial system', it's coming from the kind of people who are buying Trumpcoin. That's not to say that cryptocurrency overall is bad, blockchains are cool and the current crypto financial system has a lot of advantages over tradfi by virtue of being native to modern tech, but that doesn't justify the speculation.

A good 2% of world GDP goes into negative sum, 'socially useless' military spending. Just because something is socially useless it doesn't follow that it's wise or practical to do away with it.

Military spending acts as a deterrent and to enforce American interests abroad, so it's worthwhile even if unused .

Actually you'll find that vast swathes of it just unaccountably vanish into the private pockets of well connected individuals. Not only is that spending not worthwhile, the beneficiaries of it often use their newfound wealth to ensure their continued access to the levers of power and ability to give themselves more. It's strictly socially negative and solely for the good of private interests who are actively looting societal commons. Plenty of it wouldn't be worthwhile even if it was used!

"Russian and Chinese military spending does the opposite" says the hippy "and all we get are these retarded wars and megadeaths that grind on for years where almost nobody gets what they want and everyone pays a shockingly high price. Why can't we all just get along?"

There are a bunch of complex reasons why we can't get along probably rooted in the human condition and likewise there are complex reasons why people want to speculate or do things that aren't strictly rational or productive. I feel no desire towards Bulgari handbags but I don't think 'these should be banned because they're socially useless moneysinks that unworthy organizations use to make money they shouldn't really have because they make these things high-status'. Let people enjoy things.

I don't understand your argument - military spending isn't socially useless because you'd get invaded if you didn't do it, it's directly useful for the security of the world. There's no action we could take to get to a 'better' world without military spending. (Also, power and the ability to use force are good.) Whereas you could just ban crypto.

Yes but in 'theory' everyone could cut military spending to zero and not have to worry about being invaded. But that's obviously not practical.

Likewise banning crypto would be impractical for the same reason that banning stocks in the 18th century was also impractical. Speculation occurred. There were dangerous bubbles that caused serious economic problems. But there were advantages in having liquidity and a developed financial system. Crypto also performs various important functions that aren't fully understood by anyone right now, like stocks back then. Fast global transactions, cheap and secure storage of wealth, recordkeeping, smart contracts...

Crypto as a currency? Cool. (But most are impractically slow and expensive for that).

Crypto as a tool? Cool. (Whatever Polymarket does)

Crypto as gambling/speculation? Very much a bad thing.

Of course, the whole space will fall apart when quantum computing is achieved, and the cryptograpy is broken. Who knows how long that will be, though.

At least investments, even shitty crypto ones, can go up. Better than 'all or nothing' things like sports betting.

So I just finished Michel Houellebecq's Platform and have written up my thoughts about it over on my blog. I thought I would cross-post here in text form to get some thoughts.

Short plot summary: Like most Houellebecq novels, the protagonist of Platform, Michel, is a middle-aged frenchman with little in the way of meaning to his life. He hates his bullshit job in the government, doesn’t have much in the way of a social network, and lacks hobbies except for perhaps a bit of cooking.1 At the start of the novel, Michel’s father dies, leaving him with an unexpected windfall. He uses this money to take a trip to Thailand, where he visits some “massage parlors” as well as engaging in the usual touristy pastimes of relaxing on the beach and visiting ancient ruins. His tour group consists of an eclectic group of other French people: the jaded Robert, the working class Lionel, a few couples of various ages, and the smoking hot Valerie. For some reason Valerie falls in love with our main character, and when they return to France the two begin a relationship.

Valerie works in the tourism industry, and upon her return to France she is put in charge of a series of failing hotel chains along with her coworker Jean-Yves. Michel has the bright idea to turn these hotels around by making sex tourism an implicit part of the vacation experience. This goes swimmingly: Valerie and Michel prepare to retire to one of their sex resorts in Thailand, until the usual suspects intervene and it all goes to shit.

I first found out about Houellebecq on the subreddit /r/stupidpol circa 2020. Stupidpol is a forum dedicated to a Marxist/Leninist critique of identity politics: the userbase loved Houellebecq’s irreverence for contemporary “woke” sacred cows like Islam and Feminism, as well as his extension of Marx’s analysis to the arena of romantic relationships highly relevant to our times.2 I didn’t get around to reading any of his books until 2023, where I read The Elementary Particles, which I enjoyed other than the stupid sci-fi subplot. Last year I read three more of his books: Submission, Whatever, and Annihilation. Although he can get a bit repetitive, Houellebecq perfectly captures my own frustrations with dating, and with lack of meaning in the modern world. Platform was no exception to this pattern. Here Houellebecq focuses on our troubled relationship with the Third World and on romance as the meaning of life.

A quick note on translation: This was my first Houellebecq book in Spanish. While my reading experience was probably slightly worse than it would have been in English, as my Spanish is not as good, there were two aspects of the Spanish edition that I liked more than its English equivalent. First: Houellebecq actually includes phrases in English in the parts of the book taking place in Thailand, highlighting the unequal relationship between the languages of the West and the East (and even French and English). Without another language to compare to, you would completely miss this. Secondly, the Spanish translation includes footnotes about the translation itself, and for identifying French celebrities and politicians an international reader might not be familiar with. I certainly appreciated these, and I hope future English editions include them.

So, tourism: It’s not a very controversial position to disapprove of sex tourism, especially in America, where prostitution itself is illegal, and puritanism still holds some cultural sway. Sex tourism is obviously exploitative and coercive of young women: they trade their beauty and their best years of their life for money in a manner that we would never allow here.

Yet even in an era before OnlyFans, this attitude is highly hypocritical in a number of ways.

To start with, all our relationships with the Global South are like this. Our cheap raw materials and manufactured goods all rely on unsafe, exploitative labor performed in the Third World. Is there really such a big difference between selling your body directly to an overweight German, or selling your body to the factory that makes his BMW? The more family-friendly aspects of tourism in dining, beaches and hotels are not really much better. Houellebecq uses the example of Cuba, which after the spent fury of the few years after the revolution siphoned labor off of essential agricultural and industrial work (which it would have needed to become self-sufficient and truly free from the American embargo) to the tourism industry to make a quick buck, leaving the country dependent on the West once again. Even the most benign form of tourism, that which encourages the preservation of historical sites, art, and artifacts has damaging effects on the coherence of a local culture. No longer are those artifacts for the culture itself to enjoy, but a product to marketed towards Americans.3

Secondly, as my Spanish tutor Rafa pointed out, we have no problem with other types of sexual tourism that don’t involve money. Rafa told me a story of one of his German friends who used Tinder Plus as an alternative to hostels in Latin America. Although all these women were consenting to this German man sleeping over and presumably having sex with them, the relationship was no less exploitative than if cash was used. Dreams of being taken away to the West, higher status in one’s local community (for bagging a Blanco), are two big non-amorous factors at play in this situation that many would find just as damaging to the individual women and the local community than if cash was exchanged.

Finally, sex tourism is the natural result of a refusal to deal with the incel-problem. The sexual revolution, and its far more damaging digital counterpart, created a “sexual marketplace”. Like other markets, this created a range of outcomes. Certain men enjoyed a very large amount of sexual success, due to their physical appearance and “rizz”, while others were completely locked out of the market. Most women did fairly well until their mid-thirties when their physical appearance began to decline. Without the marriage and traditional family formation, these two demographic groups (low-status, ugly men and older women) have had to resort to other ways to satisfy their desire for sex and personal connection. One solution is internet pornography, which is obviously bad and frowned upon, but covertly permitted. Another is sex tourism and mail-order brides.

Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t think sex tourism is good. But it’s incredibly frustrating to hear people condemn the practice (and things like it like OnlyFans) without acknowledging what the root of the problem is. Young men don’t want to be alone in their room jerking off to a computer screen, but society doesn’t present them with many other options for romantic connection. And the problem is getting worse.

This brings me to my final point about this book, and Houellebecq in general. Contrary to what many think, the man is not a nihilist. Rather, I think he believes that we derive most of our meaning in life from our personal relationships, and from Romance in particular. You can see this in the way the Michel and Valerie’s relationship4 just lightens up the tone of this book. Their once-every-ten-pages sex scenes and other tender moments seem like something that Houellebecq is happy to be writing, especially when contrasted to the rather grim tone of the rest of the book. Houellebecq is a Romantic with a capital R. Yet he also recognizes that even in the best of times that these relationships are only temporary. We no longer even live in the best of times. Hence the accusations of nihilism.

Personally I am 100% on board with Houellebecq on this. I have never been happier than when I have been in love, both romantically, and in a more general sense with the community I am surrounded by. But those kind of connections are becoming harder and harder to find in a world that is increasingly split into its Elementary Particles.

  1. Although he also spends quite a bit of time throughout the novel reading Auguste Comte, the father of positivism. Perhaps the French really are much more literate/cultured than we are, but I always find Houellebecq’s everyman constructions a little bit unbelievable. If you’re fairly obscure philosophy, you’ve got a bit more going on than the average dude who just likes sportsball.

  2. The title of Houellebecq’s first book in French translates as “the Extension of the Domain of the Struggle”, referring quite literally to Marx. Why the English translator decided to use the title “Whatever” instead I could not tell you.

  3. I think I understand a little better why Palestinians don’t want non-Muslims going up to the Dome of the Rock

  4. This is apparent in Houellebecq's other works as well.

Is there really such a big difference between selling your body directly to an overweight German, or selling your body to the factory that makes his BMW?

Yes, the former is degenerate and immoral behavior, while the later is virtuous and praiseworthy. This is very easy to discern to anybody who adheres to any form of virtue ethics, such as let's say stoics, who praised temperance, justice, prudence and fortitude. This is similar to Christian virtue ethics which praises chastity, temperance, charity, diligence, kindness, patience, and humility while abhors pride, greed, wrath, envy, lust, gluttony, and sloth.

Contrary to what many think, the man is not a nihilist. Rather, I think he believes that we derive most of our meaning in life from our personal relationships, and from Romance in particular.

Interesting take. But just a couple of sentences above you wrote that:

Young men don’t want to be alone in their room jerking off to a computer screen, but society doesn’t present them with many other options for romantic connection. And the problem is getting worse.

The ultimate "meaning" can be found in Romance with big R, but society™ gets in the way. Which calls for even greater meaning, the greater utilitarian socialist good - we need The Revolution and rework the society so everybody can find their own meaning. How surprising.

Finally, sex tourism is the natural result of a refusal to deal with the incel-problem.

I find this statement amusing, because it's still ignoring the one elephant caterwauling in the corner. That being; Money.

If I want to indulge in some sex tourism in Thailand(or Japan), I'm still going to be throwing down a few thousand dollars just to travel there. And while staying(in Japan, atleast, I know nothing of Thailand) there is surprisingly cheap(going by a friend of mine who enjoys his trips to Japan), and supposedly white men receive alot more sexual attention in Thailand and the like than elsewhere(I'm taking this with a grain of salt), there's still that massive wall of roughly a few thousand dollars worth of buy in for getting a two week experience. And I'm not sure that's something that's worth it.

(I understand the Motte is weird, and some posters would see a few thousand as chump change, this is not the case for me.)

Now, I think the entire phenomena of and reaction to Passport Bros says alot about the current state of relationships between men and women, and might certainly be valid for some people as a solution to their relationship ills and woes, I wouldn't call this a result of refusal to deal with the 'incel problem'.

Oh yea I really don't think it's worth it either. And yes it's only a partial solution to the Incel problem. Sex tourism doesn't help the NEET in his mom's basement, or the man who really wants to start a family. But it does like you said, directly make sex interchangeable with everything else through the medium of money. This was the natural result of the sexual revolution, but certain people (mainly women) don't want to hear it.

Good review. I'm also a big fan of that book, and of Houllebecq in general.

Worth noting that the book came out in 2001, presumably based on what it was like in the 90s (I'm very curious how much of this he experienced directly and how much was just his imagination or interviews with other people). I went there a couple years ago, so I can speak to what it's like. In some ways things are still the same, but in some ways things are different:

  • onlike ticket sales, no need for a travel agency. Not a lot of people doing prepackage travel tours, at least not from Western countries.
  • online dating is a thing. In Thailand a lot of the female profiles are either obviously prostitutes or blatantly looking for a rich husband. But brothels and streetwalkers are still a thing there
  • The Thai economy has developed a lot, going from roughly $2000 per capita in 2000 to $7000 now. Still a rather poor country, but a lot less of the desperate poverty it used to have. The average Thai girl has a lot more options now, and there's an upper-middle class who are on par with the poorer foreign tourists who go there. The girls who still do it there now are usually either from Isaan (by far the poorest, most rural part of Thailand) or from Laos or Cambodia. So it's a bet less normalized there than it used to be.
  • Prostitution in the tourist areas is mostly focused on "short time". It's harder now to find the "long-long time" that used to be common there, where you basically hire a girl to be your girlfriend for the week or whatever and show you around. Still exists, but you have to look outside of the main tourist areas. And that's a shame, because I think that sort of thing does a better job giving tourists the "Romance" experience the way Houllebecq showed it in the book.
  • Bangkok is weirdly segregated by race. There are different bars for whites, chinese, japanese, indians, arabs, and probably other types of people too, but those were all the ones I saw directly. They might or might not ban you directly, but they'll look at you funny for being the wrong race when you go in there.
  • Most bars are run by a "mamasan" who's MTF trans. They sort of act as a third gender, helping men and women connect with each other despite limited English and general awkwardness. They're really good at it! I wish the LBGTQ community in the west could taken more of that role to bridge the gender divide.

In general I agree with your review. Houllebecq holds up a magnifying lens at the ugly warts of modern society, forcing us to confront some of the things we'd rather not think about. The sexual revolution idea of "free love" isn't going to work for everyone, it can't work for everyone because there's not enough attractive peole to go around and western society is still kind of awkward and cold about sex. One obvious solution is to solve that problem like we do everything else in capitalism- hiring poor people to do it with money.

And sure, in principle it's not that different paying a poor 3rd-world person for sex just like we pay them to sew garments or grow fruit. But it does feel different when you experience it directly. Most of us are never going to run a 3rd-world sweatshop, we just buy the t-shirts and don't think about it much. But when you go to Thailand, and some woman quote you a price for sex that you know is too high, and you don't want to get taken advantage of like a sucker, but it's still not that high and you know how poor this woman is, but then you look around and see so many other women around who look hotter and are offering it for cheaper... you feel a little piece of your soul die.

On the other hand, it was an interesting experience to see capitalism "solve" sex, the way it solves everything else. Unlimited liquor, junk food, and sex, all for sale in the same place and for basically the same price. Whatever you want, you got it. Now with legal marijuana, too!

Nice book review.

I too wonder why prostitution or sex tourism is still so shunned. It's clear why the far left and far right hate it: the Fascist-Feminist Synthesis holds that women have no agency in such a situation, and that they must be protected from their own decision to offer themselves to beastly men.

But why does the center go along with this still? Residual Puritanism might explain some part, but I doubt it's the whole answer.

The same cast of Baptists and Bootleggers hates prostitution and sex tourism, and related things like porn and men traveling for geographical dating arbitrage. The Baptists are social conservatives who hate those things for the usual reasons; the Bootleggers are women in general who hate those things because more sexual outlets for men means less leverage and bargaining power for women. There is tremendous compass unity when it comes to blaming men for women’s coffee decisions.

Unlike drugs where the suppliers are blamed more than the consumers of drugs, the consumers of sex (men) receive all of the blame while the suppliers of sex (women) are absolved. You fucking donkey vs. oh dear, oh dear, gorgeous. The exploitation narrative is an alibi for Western women to signal and protect their Wonderfulness and cover-up their own self-interest, one that Just so Happens to paint men as villains and women the victims. Sex Work is Real Work and sex workers are Stunning, Brave, and Empowered victims of capitalist, patriarchal societies that oppress and objectify women; men who use prostitutes or consume pornography are disgusting perverts and exploiters of women just trying to make ends meet.

Everyone who’s not an incel or misogynist knows women don’t care about height or wealth, and that hypergamy is a redpill myth. So if Western men find greater dating success by traveling, it must be because they’re exploiting foreign women or doing something else nefarious. The modal secular Western woman hates sexual/romantic offshoring—the idea that she could be a Replaceable commodity in the global marketplace, that she might have to compete with foreign women for Western men—lest she has to work on keeping herself thin and making herself pleasant to be around. After all, she’s not some sort of pathetic Pick Me with internalized misogyny.

It's bad enough that some unattractive Western men cheat their rightfully deserved fates in eternal sexual/romantic purgatory by going abroad, leaving fewer simps, orbiters, and monkey-dancers for Western women. Ugh, gross. What if a substantial number of attractive men start doing so, as well? "Are we dating the same man?" Facebook groups would need to expand to be global in scope. A city-level problem turns into a planetary one; you're already struggling with the Penguin and then one day Doomsday shows up.

In general, it appears many Western women have a haunting fear that somewhere, a Western man might be happy without it actively benefitting Western women. Sometimes that somewhere is right in front of them. Hence the occasional, amusing thread in FIRE- or AITA-adjacent subreddits to the tune of “Sold my company and happily fatFIRE’d, but now my wife wants me to get a job—what do I do?” or “My husband retired and now I resent him, AITA?” where she then goes on to talk about him like Tony Soprano talking about his son.

Western women like to portray foreign women who date or prostitute themselves to Western men as the victims of poverty and exploitation, that women in regions such as Southeast Asia or Latin America have no other choice if they want to put food on the table or have a roof over their heads. It certainly couldn’t be that, for the most part, such women prostitute themselves primarily for the same reasons Western women do, the same reasons Instathots flyout to Dubai to serve as human toilets: buy the latest phone, get their nails done, buy more makeup, expand their shoe collection, buy more expensive clothes, travel to exotic places and take photos of themselves. And sure, it makes paying rent and buying food easier too because money is fungible. In any case, spreading one’s legs is easier and faster than slowly saving up from working a 9-5 job like some regular schmuck. Then when she's ready to settle down after having had her fun and marry a Western or local man, she can just pretend she was an angel all along.

When it to comes to the topic of men dating abroad or foreign prostitution, it’s like the sudden view of Western women that the default lifestyle of regions of the world such as Southeast Asia is to live in mudshacks or underground tunnels, akin to the Vietcong in a ‘Nam war movie. If foreign women are as desperate and destitute as Western women claim, then shouldn’t the Western men who date or use the services of foreign women be praised for stimulating the local economy and lifting women out of poverty? Or maybe Western men should just Be Decent People and give foreign (and Western) women money for free.

Plus, what happens to foreign men in such supposedly destitute regions? Do they just go, “guess I’ll die” since they don’t have quite the same dating and prostitution options as women do? I suppose one could tack on an epicycle by saying: Due to lingering patriarchal oppression from Western colonization and cultural imperialism, foreign women don’t have nearly the same opportunities as their countrymen do, thus have no choice but to do sex work.

You mentioned once that you have many female relatives who waited until marriage for sex. Given that this is practically unheard of among the native Angloid population, you must be a foreigner, but from where? The Balkans? South Asia?

What does that have anything to do with his arguments?

Then when she's ready to settle down after having had her fun and marry a Western or local man, she can just pretend she was an angel all along.

You do realize sex workers are capable of having relationships while also being sex workers, right?

In all seriousness, this doesn't work out. I know a guy who married a prostitute made good (not as a client, they met elsewhere). The problem with marrying someone who has sex for money is that the mercenary attitude to sex tends to leak into their relationships. She ended up treating the guy as a sort of long-term john, cheating on him when she wanted more spending money or when his salary was too low for her liking. Also, of course, all the original problems that led her to prostitution were still there: awful criminal family, drugs, low motivation etc. The guy was far from perfect but this isn't a dynamic you want.

I read an interview once with a prostitute who also had a boyfriend. She said she loved him very much, but it caused problems all around. When she was with him she was tired from having sex in her job and just wanted to take a break. When she went back to work, she felt like she was cheating on her boyfriend. Not sure if she was telling her boyfriend the truth about her job, but it caused problems all around.

I know a guy who married a prostitute made good

That wording makes it sound like a relationship with an ex-sex-worker, not a current sex-worker. Or at least the guy thought they were no longer a sex-worker and turned out to be wrong about that.

If the guy believed being "good" requires not being a sex worker, then I can see how the relationship went poorly.

"Made good" is a turn of phrase. He married her. They were (supposed to be) in a committed, monogamous relationship for several years. There was some tension there, it's true, but he also did his level best to get her back on her feet and help her build the financial independence and social life she'd never been able to achieve on her own.

I think you have a very idealised view of 'sex workers'. This particular girl wasn't a free spirit being imprisoned by her awful sex-negative husband, she was a sweet, lonely girl who lacked the innate sense of self to turn down anything that made her feel good in the moment. She had been doing this since she left school, and it had left her physically broken and worn out in certain important ways. The cosmetic alterations she got, or had been encouraged to get by her pimp, had long term consequences that ruined her health. I can't say for sure, but I think she realised that she was rapidly running out of road, tried to escape, and kept getting dragged back in by drug addiction, criminal family members and chronically low time-preference.

Or at least the guy thought they were no longer a sex-worker and turned out to be wrong about that.

That's a rather strange reading of what he said. Nowhere in there was any mention of her returning to prostitution.

If the guy believed being "good" requires not being a sex worker, then I can see how the relationship went poorly.

You think she'd be showing him undying loyalty otherwise?

That's a rather strange reading of what he said. Nowhere in there was any mention of her returning to prostitution.

How did you interpret

cheating on him when she wanted more spending money

then?

You think she'd be showing him undying loyalty otherwise?

No, but believing your partner is fundamentally a bad person sounds like a poor basis for a trusting relationship.

How did you interpret

cheating on him when she wanted more spending money

then?

That she slept with other men, not because she returned to prostitution, but as some sort of act of petty revenge, or behavioral conditioning on her husband.

No, but believing your partner is fundamentally a bad person sounds like a poor basis for a trusting relationship.

You can believe someone did something bad in the past, but aren't fundamentally bad people. With prostitution in particular it's easy to believe the person was victimized into it, but when they're no longer doing it, it's still accurate to describe it as being "made good".

I too wonder why prostitution or sex tourism is still so shunned. It's clear why the far left and far right hate it

Does the far left hate it? Maybe I just don't have any exposure to the group you're calling "the far left". I understand it's not a normie view, but I somewhat often see pro-sex-worker sentiment in places as diverse as the leftist Tumblrs I follow, my IRL friends' Facebook posts, and Ars Technica comments (mostly when in comes up in the context of anti-sex-worker laws like FOSTA-SESTA).

The leftist take is generally that the female prostitutes are either empowered women or hopeless victims, and that the Johns should all burn in Hell. Some feminists prioritize the empowerment of women while mostly ignoring Johns (they still think they should probably burn in Hell), while other feminists think the presence of Johns is so terrible that the entire industry needs to be incinerated. Sometimes one or the other group will dominate. Other times there'll be compromises like in Sweden where prostitution is legal for women to sell, but illegal for men to buy. It's truly a shining model of feminist equality.

To the extent that I'm familiar with this political issue, I'd argue that the 'far left' in this case does claim to be pro-sex-worker in the sense that they advocate or at least claim to advocate for the protection of their rights as workers and see them as victims of an exploitative trade to be rescued. They see the entire industry as one manifestation of the horrors of late-stage capitalism and advocate for its eventual abolition.

I mean, there may be a platonic ideal of non-exploitative prostitution, but that’s certainly not what it looks like in practice. Centrists care more about that than they do lofty ideals.

There's plenty of non-exploitative prostitution where the woman comes in as an independent provider, works whenever she feels like it, and stops of her own accord at some point. There might be some abuse on the sides, but that'd be far more easily stopped with legalization + regulation than attempting total bans.

The elephant in the room is the association in the minds of many of prostitution with sex slavery. This is a perspective that people on the left, right and center share to a degree. With sex tourism an angle might be that some prostitution practices in third world might include coercion or underaged victims.

There are other reasons people have to dislike prostitution, but that is the biggest one.

Those include seeing it as a degrading practice for the people who engage it. For those of more conservative viewpoint, including centrists, seeing prostitution as having a negative influence on society which would be better off if people are having sex within their monogamous relationships and marriage.

It's a matter of supply and demand. No matter how much serious effort is made to normalize 'sex work', there will never be enough voluntary prostitutes among the native population of well-off Western countries to satisfy local demand. Prostitution and human trafficking necessarily go hand in hand.

I would argue that it should be in the interest of anyone who dislikes sex slavery to have legalized (and somewhat regulated) prostitution instead. In my opinion, the goal would be to treat sex work similar to tobacco. Sure, some people might smuggle in tobacco to avoid paying taxes, and some of the smugglers might rely on slave labor to increase their margin, but the average consumer of cigarettes or vapes is not going to go to the darknet to save a few bucks.

By contrast, there will always be some demand for sex work, and someone will be ready to supply it at a premium. Sometimes, this will be escorts, but sometimes it will be organized crime, which is typically bad for the sex workers.

Also, some men looking for sex behave quite immoral (and sometimes outright criminal) to get it. I think that is jurisdictions where sex as a commodity exists, they are at least somewhat less likely to spin an elaborate web of lies to get a woman to fall in love with them. (I am less sure about rape, likely for some men violent rape or roofies are a kink in itself, and they would still do it if they could just pay for sex instead.)

Regarding coercion, I think that all wage labor is at least somewhat coercive in a world without a solid UBI. Shelter and food cost money, and the labor market exploits that fact. I don't think that giving someone the option of earning their rent fucking people they would not otherwise fuck instead of flipping burgers for eight hours a day is a-ok. Obviously, more direct coercion is not okay.

Also, I think that a lot of relationships involve both sex and the transfer of material goods and can thus be seen at least as somewhat transactional. For one thing, rich people (especially men) are often able to attract partners who are physically hotter than they are, which clearly suggests that expected future material benefits play a role in evaluating partners. Nobody is talking about criminalizing that.

I would argue that it should be in the interest of anyone who dislikes sex slavery to have legalized (and somewhat regulated) prostitution instead.

By this reasoning pretty much everyone should be in favor of legalized-but-regulated rape too. (Or legalized, regulated, bank robbery.)

Say what?

So your position is that prostitution always implies sex slavery? Someone tell Aella that she self-enslaved when she worked as an escort.

Also, some libertarians might consider taxes legalized, regulated robberies, and yet taxes are quite instrumental in discouraging the unregulated kind.

I will grant you that likely, there are two effects from legalization which work in opposite direction. The one is the one I described, where the legal goods replace the illegal ones. The other is that legalization creates additional demand, and a part of that which will be filled by illegal channels. Think weed, once you legalize medical marijuana, sorting out which joints are legal and which ones are not becomes difficult.

However, in the case of prostitution, this would be solved easily enough. Issue government IDs for prostitutes and decriminalize only sex for pay with registered prostitutes, while keeping the Johns on the hook for rape if they fuck someone without such ID who was coerced by organized crime.

Say what?

So your position is that prostitution always implies sex slavery? Someone tell Aella that she self-enslaved when she worked as an escort.

I think he stated his position pretty clearly - it's the same one you outlined later about it being hard to sort out which goods are legal, and which ones are illegal. An example of any particular prostitute doing it willingly is irrelevant here.

Also Aella is hardly the most fortunate example for your case. She might not have a knife on her throat, but a common argument for the exploitation in prostitution, is that it's taking advantage of people who were messed up by rape and/or other forms of sexual assault, and I seem to remember her saying directly that it's what happened to her. If you get your "willing" prostitutes by raping them first, I don't know if you can call them "not-exploited".

However, in the case of prostitution, this would be solved easily enough. Issue government IDs for prostitutes and decriminalize only sex for pay with registered prostitutes, while keeping the Johns on the hook for rape if they fuck someone without such ID who was coerced by organized crime.

There's a number of countries that have legal prostitution, and I don't think either of them decided to have such a restrictive system, and I don't think you will ever have one. With the incentive structure stemming from legal prostitution, you will always have a tonne of money backing the "legal, and not very tightly controlled" position.

I observe those things are called "work" and "taxes", respectively.

Damn, what do you do for a living?

I can't snap my fingers and get everything my heart desires without having to work for it; rather, if I don't work, I don't eat, and I die.

In that sense, I am raped by reality.

If being mugged by reality turns a liberal into a conservative, what does being raped by reality do?

Anyway, if you want to get all metaphysical about it, I'd say the state of being raped is less about not getting what you want, and more about someone else taking something from you against your will. That something also probably needs to be very intimate, since mere material deprivation would fall under the above-mentioned being mugged.

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In my opinion, the goal would be to treat sex work similar to tobacco. Sure, some people might smuggle in tobacco to avoid paying taxes, and some of the smugglers might rely on slave labor to increase their margin, but the average consumer of cigarettes or vapes is not going to go to the darknet to save a few bucks.

Article: There are ten US states where more than a quarter of all cigarettes consumed are smuggled. In New York, more than half of all cigarettes are smuggled, so "the average consumer of cigarettes" does "go to the darknet to save a few bucks" (tax of 4.35 $/pack, plus another 1.5 $/pack in New York City).

I think I also read an article a while ago about how cigarette smuggling is a major business in Europe (maybe in Sweden or Poland).

I feel like there'd still be a lot of pushback to sex tourism in a relatively wealthy country like Japan or South Korea or Taiwan, which would presumably be at the same level of concern in regards to "sex slavery". With the contempt I've seen, it seems more like an ugly guy in the US shouldn't be able to just go to another country to have sex, as that's cheating!

Few people who are in a decent sexual relationship visit prostitutes.

"Women have no agency" may be fringe, but "the poor have no agency" is fairly mainstream. (I would reckon that acceptance of sugardaddying and luxury escorts is far higher.) With regards to third-worlders, you could say the Kiplingpill was never actually fully removed from the diet.

"the poor have no agency" is fairly mainstream. (I would reckon that acceptance of sugardaddying and luxury escorts is far higher.)

That's an interesting perspective. Sure, we don't let poor people sell their own kidneys, but we certainly let them do a ton of other degrading or dangerous stuff, like be garbage collectors or work in coal mines. I haven't noticed the acceptance of sugardaddying and luxury escorts to be higher, and I'm highly certain it's not far higher.

Maybe no agency might be fringe. But women having lower agency is not fringe but mainstream and not only far left and far right. Just not outright stated by some of the adherents of this since they might still want women to have equal influence or don't mind even women being overepresented in colleges.

It is still mainstream to think that women should be especially protected and are easier to exploit, can more easily go along with what is harmful for them, are more passive, defer decisions to others, and so on.

But women having lower agency is not fringe but mainstream and not only far left and far right.

I suppose what you bluntly mean is that it's mainstream to assume that it's easy to lure (some) young girls into prostitution through empty promises of romance and commitment?

Not that specifically, although it can be a part of it and more that they are more passive and a greater subset of women can be pushed around by the more aggressive men, or even more aggressive women than would apply to equal % of men. Of course as we see with only fans, it would be inaccurate to assume that any woman that sells sex is necessarily coerced into it. And there are women who benefit from expectation of lower agency and lower responsibility where it is assumed that they aren't responsible for their own choices.

Low agency I would see it to be about taking ownership of one's own choices and taking an active role in directing one's life and one's affairs. It is about being responsible. Women do this less. Which isn't just about only vulnerability since higher agency men often take care of important things for the sake of their wives.

The feminist side sorta acknowledges this low agency view when it comes to the "protect vulnerable women", but blames the patriarchy and opposes it in some cases, and also forgets the negative side of female behavior when it comes to their quest to give more positions to women, including above and beyond their 50% share of population.

If some 20-year-old throws herself at a 40 year old centrist, he will go for it. Yet if you ask him about someone else, he will spout some “it’s creepy, that poor women” conformist sludge. Yet he is also aware of the knock-down “consenting adults, no harm done, women have agency” liberal argument. So he is unable to justify his middle position either in practice or in theory. It just looks like he’s socially pressured by middle aged women into parroting a feeling he doesn’t share or agree with.

It just looks like he’s socially pressured by middle aged women into parroting a feeling he doesn’t share or agree with.

Yeah, there's definitely a lot of that going on. "Age gap" discussions have always been farcical. It's OK for a 20 year old woman to take a loan or a job from a 60 year old man, but not to have sex with him? The double-standard is extremely obvious, and it's clear that most "age gap" stuff is just older women being angry at older men not finding them attractive as they once did.

I'd go as far as to say that ~90% of the angry online/feminist discourse regarding the age gap is driven by urban middle-class PMC single women aged 31-33 expecting in vain urban middle-class well-paid high-status PMC single men aged 34-37 to marry them.

It's OK for a 20 year old woman to take a loan or a job from a 60 year old man, but not to have sex with him?

For most normal human beings, sex is tied up with emotion in such a way that these other things are not.

Yes. Although I admit, the age gap argument is the easiest to make, the one where the centrist will most readily concede. But imo it is fully generalizable to most issues involving women having sex : prostitution, porn, workplace sexual harassment, ‘college party culture’/drunk consent. Here again, the centrist is torn. He says one thing (we must protect women), but can justify another (women have agency). Part of his confusion comes from the fact that, as you mention, feminists/progressives and reactionaries are on the same side (women have no agency), so his usual ideological points of reference are all over the place and useless.

it's clear that most "age gap" stuff is just older women being angry at older men not finding them attractive as they once did.

While this may be true, my only exposure to the "age gap" discourse is 40-something women posting on Tumblr about how the teens/20-somethings policing age gaps are talking nonsense.

It's clear why the far left and far right hate it: the Fascist-Feminist Synthesis holds that women have no agency in such a situation, and that they must be protected from their own decision to offer themselves to beastly men.

Not quite.

When you view women through the standard "human fleshlight, plus domestic labor" lens (and the far-left and far-right agree that this is the best a woman can do in life; they just differ slightly in their approach to making that state of nature men's problem), prostitution and sex tourism offer a far superior product to domestic women.

Normally, to get a human fleshlight you have to marry it and you're stuck with it for the rest of your life; prostitution offers a massive variety and it's by the hour. Southeast Asia is considered the best place for prostitution simply because there's no minimum (w)age for prostitutes there.

Gynosupremacists are simply making sure there's no competition for domestic women, so they can get a higher price for their assets ('why buy the cow' and all that). Casting aspersions about the safety and morality of the competitor's products is a classic sales tactic.

The exact spear counterpart to this is illegal immigration; foreign men work harder and expect less than domestic men, so it's obvious why the femcels love them.

But why does the center go along with this still?

Because those sales tactics work.

"human fleshlight, plus domestic labor" lens (and the far-left and far-right agree that this is the best a woman can do in life

There's a lot of horseshoe in gender discussions when it comes to the far left and far right, but I'm not sure the far left would go that far. Care to elaborate a bit?

Gynosupremacists are simply making sure there's no competition for domestic women, so they can get a higher price for their assets ('why buy the cow' and all that). Casting aspersions about the safety and morality of the competitor's products is a classic sales tactic.

I definitely agree there's a ton of this going on. I'd say "sex cartel" concerns account for roughly 80% of the discussion around prostitution, although nobody would admit it obviously.

I think the main difference between the far-left and far-right is how they deal with the biological ground truth that "women are useless, men are disposable".

The far-left leans a lot more into policies emphasizing the disposability of men (and that men exist to serve women, "all are equal but men are more equal than others", #itsHerTurn) while encouraging women to make sacrifices for some grand social project ("a good woman is independent and dominates men", "criminals and vagrants can't help it", and the like). Men are not permitted dignity in this society and their masculinity is taken for granted; that is why these societies tend to be communist (where any masculinity-driven private improvement belongs to your neighbors).

The far-right leans a lot more into policies emphasizing the uselessness of women (and that women exist to serve men, "man is head of the household", etc.) while encouraging men to make sacrifices for some grand social project ("women and children first", wars on neighboring societies/white feather effects, 996, and the like). Women are not permitted dignity in this society and their femininity is taken for granted; that is why these societies tend to be [what people actually mean when they say] fascist (where any femininity-driven public improvement is a waste of valuable resources).

This doesn't necessarily mean that these factions are going to state this openly (it's just relying on instinctive human behavior; anyone not following their instincts is naturally suspect), but it is why far-leftism and far-rightism naturally attract women and men (respectively) who are worth less. By contrast, centrist men and centrist women aren't just running solely on instinct (for a variety of reasons) and tend to hold views that are a mess of sloppy, logically-inconsistent compromise between those extremes.

Thanks for the clarification. I broadly agree with this.

I suppose what you actually mean is closer to "women are perishable, men are disposable"?

You are of course leaving out all the benefits of traditional marriage which are not ‘access to sex on demand’.

What other benefits? Aside from legal protections around having children, there's little else that marriage offers to men that a close male friend couldn't also provide, oftentimes at higher quality. And there's the issue of "marriage" and "close male friends" are often substitutes, i.e. men often lose their male support groups when they get married either due to time constraints or from the woman covertly sabotaging things (e.g. controlling the social schedule and deprioritizing them).

Access to your own children, full time or near full time companionship, having two adults in the house, and all the little things that tend to be improved downstream of having a woman in the house. Most people prefer a woman’s touch for their dwelling, and most men cannot replicate it for themselves.

If you’re saying ‘well men don’t need to marry for all that’- you’re talking about cohabitation, not prostitution. Those are meaningfully different arrangements.

Most people prefer a woman’s touch for their dwelling, and most men cannot replicate it for themselves.

I think this really varies from person to person. I've seen too many single guy friends get married, and then when I visit their home, it's totally dominated by their wife's style. Frilly cute things everywhere, and not a single visible trace of the stuff the guy used to like (or maybe it's hidden away in a single room, the mancave). The women in a modern western marriage just have so much power they can take over the house if they want to. One of the benefits (for the man) of prostitution is he can still get sex very conveniently but allso still have his own living space just the way he likes it. Including being roommates with a close male friend if that's what he wants, which most married women wouldn't tolerate.

It's possible that more of the benefits accrue to society in general than to the specific man, in a way that benefits defectors as long as society as a whole doesn't unravel (as it has been lately). For instance, having an involved father is a benefit to a boy and young man, as part of living in the kind of society where marriage is the norm.

Hang on, the far-right want women pumping out children and raising them patriotically as good citizens of the nation. Hitler was very big on natalism, the whole point of the war was to acquire more land and increase the number of Germans in the world. The far left were among the first to conceive of birth strikes and were generally bearish on natalism.

Too much horseshoe, not enough 'different things are different'.

Our cheap raw materials and manufactured goods all rely on unsafe, exploitative labor performed in the Third World.

Some of it is exploitative, some of it is just because life in poor countries is generally not so great. Of the part that is exploitative, some of it is because the politicians and other elites in these countries are corrupt, and it is genuinely difficult for even a benevolent rich country to change that.

Based on historical evidence and my understanding of the underlying economic mechanisms, it seems to me that trade is very good for making poor countries not poor anymore. I think that rich countries have screwed up many times in this area, but:

  1. For the most part, life in poor countries is bad because that's the definition of being in a poor country, not necessarily so much because they're being exploited by rich countries.

  2. When poor countries don't get rich, there are other factors at play besides the machinations of rich countries.

Those factors would be:

a. Corrupt rulers.

b. Locals who use their power to support economic policies which turn out to be counter-productive, whether the locals are the rulers or the public at large.

Some would say this is what happened in Mexico with their domestic oil company, Ghana under Nkrumah, Brazil's attempt at trade-substitution, the Sri Lankan energy crisis, Argentina under both Peron and the military junta that deposed him, etcetera.

I know this is a tangent, sorry.

Oh Houellebecq is very clear that they're partially doing it to themselves. Especially in the case of Cuba. Cubans didn't necessarily believe in Communism and the Revolution and all that, they just wanted to be not poor. So once Che left and Fidel was dead, they went right back to the same old capitalist system, just with different people on top.

Not quite a tangent, if you think about it. The language of 'exploitation' is employed by failing nations to externalize their own responsibility for failure onto other countries that are willing to accept said responsibility, whether or not said country actually did anything. Bangladeshi intellectual employs the language of colonialism to blame English self-flagellants for their current woes, even though it is Pakistanis who engaged in * actual * genocide. Pakistanis are both too poor to be bilked for sympathy, and also more likely to declare that the job should be finished than issue even a cursory apology. By contrast local activists in the UK or US are eager to take up the Bangladeshi cause to castigate their proximate opponents.

Similarly, Nigerian or Congolese or Saudi governments engage in direct transactions with foreign entities to let their own economies and resources be exploited. Oil or minerals buried underground have no worth if they are not extracted, and waiting 50 years to MAYBE develop the necessary industry and intellectual capability to exploit said resources is itself a threat when neighboring countries would immediately attack if the land owners are too weak to protect themselves, like Guiana.

Most of third world exploitation by first world powers is not done by the first world, but by the rules or local power brokers who sell out their own people. The khaleeji nobility reap all the profits of their oil resources and spend said profits in Europe. Meanwhile South Korean chaebols who let their people be low wage factory slaves were strongarmed into domestic reinvestment for industrial development. Whenever a country cries against the evils of colonialism, it is useful to ask where the monies received in exchange for selling out their people actually went.

Most of third world exploitation by first world powers is not done by the first world, but by the rules or local power brokers who sell out their own people.

Yes, and the smarter third-world intellectuals explicitly call the first world out for being all too willing to take the money from third-world elites when it is complaining about third-world corruption at the same time.

Honestly, as a third worlder, I find these intellectuals to be disingenuous blowhards. Railing against the first world is easy, because there are sympathizers in the first world eager to take up any cause that undermines proximate enemies. Railing against their own elites is harder because of the obvious risk of bodily harm but also because the intellectuals want to be the elite and thus want to preserve the system for themselves to take over. The first world being heckled isn't even the same first world enabling the third world elites to stay in power; Shell pays off Bruneian royals to have first rights to extract resources, and both the Shell executives and Bruneian royals buy property in High Street with their share of the loot.

The other group that I find to be disingenuous blowhards are the first world anticorruption campaigners. Moralizing from afar is especially tedious for a recipient to hear, and the anticorruption westerners are usually the most clueless and sanctimonious dickheads to ever lecture us. We don't really like corruption here already, but some bespectacled nerdy woman lecturing us makes us reflexively band up to our kin. Better my neighbor reap the rewards than some NGO pretending to be useful.

I can think of three bad options for Western countries:

  • Saying "you are corrupt, therefore we embargo you". This might work when the sale of natural resources was essential to prop up the regime, but in general it will at most result in the people being exploited by slightly poorer elites. (This is great if one follows the Copenhagen interpretation of ethics, though: profiting from child labor is wrong; who cares what happens to the kids without employment though.)

  • Invade with the goal of establishing a democracy. This one has a terrible track record.

  • Just shrug and buy their resources. This makes the West complicit in their exploitation.

Ideally, the West would keep trading, but also exert some pressure to make conditions for the workers less horrible. But telling the elites to industrialize so that their country will not stay poor might not be well received.

we have no problem with other types of sexual tourism that don’t involve money. Rafa told me a story of one of his German friends who used Tinder Plus as an alternative to hostels in Latin America. Although all these women were consenting to this German man sleeping over and presumably having sex with them, the relationship was no less exploitative than if cash was used. Dreams of being taken away to the West, higher status in one’s local community (for bagging a Blanco), are two big non-amorous factors at play in this situation that many would find just as damaging to the individual women and the local community than if cash was exchanged.

I don't see how this is meaningfully different from any sexual/romantic relationship between a wealthy man and a poor woman which doesn't lead to marriage (or an otherwise committed relationship). What you're describing is a critique of the sexual revolution, not a critique of the relationship between the global north and the global south.

which doesn't lead to marriage

Why stop there? Even if it leads to marriage, the fact remains that the poorer woman was likely somewhat incentivized by material gains, so the pure act of sex was profaned by base worldly considerations.

The reality is that social status has been hot since our ancestors were living in the trees. Money is one of the ways we track social status. Over millions of years, the women who were selecting mates purely on physical or emotional grounds were surely selected against compared to women who were also considering the social status of their mates. Nor was it very different for men. A young woman wearing jewelry indicates "my family is rich (or at least of appropriate social standing) and would be a useful ally to you". The fact that such displays were (from what I can tell) common seems to indicate that they worked.

And while we are criticizing one of the core tenets of mate selection in social species, why stop there? Physical attractiveness might also have solid genetic reasons, but it is hardly less worldly.

If you would not fuck your True Love (TM) even if they were a worm, then you are profaning sex with your petty worldly concerns.

As someone who admittedly did something similar to the described tourist at some point in my life, the biggest difference was that I am not a particularly rich or exceptionally handsome guy, but some of the girls I could date easily were definitely the top of their societies in these aspects. (Also I am not particularly “white” to a westerner but in the third world I am. Weird dualism of being Turkish..)

People are generally accepting of class differences and its consequences in their own societies to sometimes extreme degrees. But they tend to get angry and develop some class consciousness very quickly when it’s the foreigners doing the same and disrupting the existing cultural norms. Perhaps it’s because this also bothers local elites and they are the only people whose opinions actually really count.

The great genius of American world empire compared to the previous European attempts was to avoid appointing any visible American rulers to its colonies but instead co-opt the local elites to run their own countries like colonies and share the spoils through opaque financial means.

I am not a particularly rich or exceptionally handsome guy, but some of the girls I could date easily were definitely the top of their societies in these aspects

If I'm parsing this correctly, you mean that you're not particularly wealthy in your home country, but were unusually wealthy relative to the typical standard of wealth in the countries in which you were travelling. A sort of comparative advantage?

Right now I am rather wealthy in both aspects but this is a while ago and I was just a broke backpacker back then

True, and maybe this is a weakness of my review: that I'm mixing the a critique of the sexual revolution with a critique of the exploitation of the global South. To steelman myself I think what I was probably going for her was a direct comparison with prostitution (why is this kind of relationship okay, whereas one more explicitly involving money is not).

To be fair, I do not think that the Tinder plus thing is very transactional.

As far as 'bagging a blanco' is concerned, if people having sex with you for bragging rights is exploitation, then the popular girls in college are exploiting their boyfriends pretty hard.

As far as dreams of a better passport are concerned, I think that most woman have a realistic estimate of the probability of a tinder hookup leading to marriage. It is not like they think the next guy will be the one to fall for them. They have sex because they want to have sex. They also know that there is some minimal chance that the relationship will turn into something more serious, and would prefer a relationship with someone with a western passport, so they decide to optimize and prefer white dudes. Solid decision theory on their part.

As an intuition pump, consider either a gay person or a straight woman engaging in the same behavior, using the fact that they are exotic and come from a desired culture to fuck their way through a country without paying for a bed to sleep in. Would these people also be vile exploiters?

Would these people also be vile exploiters?

Fiirst of all, yes.

Second, the whole argument should start with "is such a thing as exploitation at all?" A lot of the extreme rationalist arguments on this subject aren't really about sex, they're about the idea that exploitation isn't real unless you're forcing someone at gunpoint.

If you believe this, it's an extreme minority position among pretty much everyone that isn't a weird Internet guy, and really needs to be defended on its own terms, not taken for granted.

If you don't believe this, you should lay out exactly what you do think counts as exploitation before trying to argue that something can't be exploitation, especially based on a principle that you don't believe anyway.

So your position is that if two people have sex, but their idea of what a 99th percentile good outcome might be (say, "he falls in love with me and marries me, so that I can move to the West" vs "she brings another hot girl along and we have a threesome"), exploitation is taking place? By that test, every human interaction is exploitive. (How do we determine who is the one being exploited? Easy, whoever is higher on the woke totem pole.)

I mean, if we twisted that scenario a lot, saying that the guy is happily married in an open relationship, but falsely indicates a willingness to marry some woman in the third world so that he gets to fuck her, then sure, that would be exploitive.

I find your comment deeply unethical, but I won't substantiate why. Instead, I want you to either admit that you are a nihilist who does not believe unethical behavior is a useful category or otherwise lay out in detail a coherent theory of ethics and argue why your comment is in fact ethical. See what I did there?

See what I did there?

It's not what I did.

"There is no such thing as ethical or unethical, as long as nobody is at gunpoint" is an extreme minority position. "There is such a thing as ethics" is not. The more extreme your position is, the clearer you need to be that you actually hold that position, and the more you need to explain it. This also applies if you are making arguments that can be easily and reasonably mistaken for that extreme minority position.

I haven't expressed such an extreme minority position myself, so that doesn't apply to me.

So your position is that if two people have sex, but their idea of what a 99th percentile good outcome might be (say, "he falls in love with me and marries me, so that I can move to the West" vs "she brings another hot girl along and we have a threesome"), exploitation is taking place?

This sentence isn't parseable. If you mean what I think you're trying to say, the "exploiter" is entitled to make reasonable assumptions about the other person. If the "exploited" has unreasonable expectations, but hides them, the"exploiter" isn't exploiting. If the exploited has sufficiently unreasonable expectations, and the exploiter does or should know about them, yes, it's exploitation.

If the exploited has sufficiently unreasonable expectations, and the exploiter does or should know about them, yes, it's exploitation.

I think that is the crux of our disagreement.

In my model of the world, the woman on tinder likely has a realistic estimate of how rare it is that white men marry their tinder dates. After all, she is likely in contact with other women who are applying the same strategy, and knows how many Westerners they had sex with without getting married by any of them. She likely has some mid-status life and job in her home country (it is hard to invite Westerners over if you are living in a street or in a room with ten family members, after all). She enjoys being part of the hookup culture, and preferring white dudes is simply optimizing for the unlikely case that a hookup nets her a long term boyfriend (whom she would prefer to have a Western passport).

From what I can tell, in your model, the woman on tinder is desperately looking for a ticket to the west, in the same way that someone who sinks all their disposable income and then some into lottery tickets it trying to win the lottery. Like that gambler, she is totally deluded about her chances. She despises having meaningless sex, but carries on regardless, always convinced that the next date will finally be the one, and always being heartbroken when the guy leaves in the morning.

I think that we can both agree that having sex with someone one knows to be in the latter situation so one can save the costs for a hostel would be exploitative. I also maintain that having sex with the former woman is not exploitative.

The reason I consider the latter situation somewhat unlikely is that it basically is contrary to how women traditionally try to attract high quality mates, which is making a credible effort of appearing to be hard to get. If you are 25, on tinder and willing to fuck a man you have just met, that man can likely make an educated guess at the number of partners you had before him. While I am sure that there are men who tend to fall for woman who had tons of partners, I would assume that the average man would be slightly less likely to consider a long term relationship given that information. For example, getting hired by a Westerner as a tour guide for some token amount, being a bit flirty but not having sex with him in the first week, while also spending a lot of time with your mark seems a lot more likely to net you a boyfriend than just fucking your way through tinder. But what do I know.

She enjoys being part of the hookup culture, and preferring white dudes is simply optimizing for the unlikely case that a hookup nets her a long term boyfriend (whom she would prefer to have a Western passport).

Weird Internet guys drastically change their actions based on tiny optimizations. Nobody else does. That suggests she thinks the chance is unrealistically large.

I would agree that if your scenario is correct, it's not exploitation.

So your position is that if two people have sex, but their idea of what a 99th percentile good outcome might be (say, "he falls in love with me and marries me, so that I can move to the West" vs "she brings another hot girl along and we have a threesome"), exploitation is taking place? By that test, every human interaction is exploitive.

I mean... we do kind of apply that framework to most, if not all interactions. A lot of things are left unspoken, and the person who breaks such unspoken conventions is treated as a transgressor of some sort, if he does not follow them.

I had the understanding that tinder is used by people looking for sex. But perhaps I am ignorant.

I would argue that it is indeed rare that the motives of people are 100% aligned. If person A hires person B as an uber driver, the shared baseline expectation is that B will transport A in a safe manner and A will pay the pre-agreed fee. If you ask A "what would be a 99th percentile outcome?", they might reply that to meet the trip would have to be quicker than expected, and B would delight them with good conversation. If you ask B, they might say if A gives them a 50% tip. While the 99th percentile outcomes might coincide for both participants of the transaction, it likely won't.

Or take a man who buys a woman a drink in a bar. Both of them have a prior probability estimate that this will not end with a "thanks for the drink" ten minutes later. In most cases, the estimates of the nonstandard outcomes (sex, marriage, becoming the next Bonnie & Clyde, whatever) of both participants will not coincide. However, this does not make their deal unfair. Even if the woman knows beforehand that the outcome the man is hoping for is not in the cards, she is under no obligation to give him a warning that she is not in the mood for sex / would not fuck him if he was the last man on earth / has vowed never to marry again / is strictly against gun violence. This does not make her an exploiter. The line I would draw is intentional deception.

Again, this is a matter of social conventions, which are of course somewhat arbitrary. I could imagine some weird culture where the buying of a drink is equivalent to marriage vows being exchanged, et cetera. Now, if the white backpacker is in a country where 80% of tinder dates lead to marriage, and knowingly flouts this convention by planning to go on tens of tinder dates without marrying anyone, then I would say that he is taking advantage of his partners.

in a country where 80% of tinder dates lead to marriage

Not as an absurd hypothetical as you might think. Back when I was on a local genuinely hook-up app, lots of girls used a variation of “yes, I'm using this app as Tinder, I'm actually looking for a long-term relationship” in their bio. (There is a tangent that could be made about how even 10% of female users openly admitting interest in sex for its own sake counts as a genuinely hook-up app.)

A lot of things are left unspoken, and the person who breaks such unspoken conventions is treated as a transgressor of some sort, if he does not follow them.

As often, the "unspoken conventions" are either applied selectively (Hello Human Resources), or wholly made up after the fact and imposed by the higher-status party.

I'm sure that's what those Tinder gals that have absolutely no romantic or sexual intentions, and just want to go on a series of first dates where the guy pays for everything, tell themselves and others.

Mail order brides and incels long predate the sexual revolution, though. There were men unable to get married(and resorting to prostitution- when they could afford it- for their entire lives). And brides shipped in were extremely common.

Right but unlike then we've made those things illegal or at the very least heavily looked down upon in the West. So of course people are going to look elsewhere for those kinds of things.

I don't think "looking down on guys who can't get a mate" is a new thing, or something we've developed recently in the West.

Prostitution has been varying degrees of frowned on/illegal in the West since Christianity took hold (and even absent Christianity, I think it's fairly rare that prostitution is considered an esteemed career, historically). It's not like everything was fine up until George W. Bush banned prostitution, or whatever. Historically there have always been cycles where it was tolerated and then cracked down on.

It's true that literal "mail order brides" are looked down on, but people still go overseas (or online) and find someone who meets their fancy and marry them, and that's not illegal and I don't think is generally looked down on at all, as long as it isn't framed as a transactional relationship.

Setting all the moral quibblings aside, the nuclear family is a very beneficial societal force, and prostitution a negative one, so it doesn't seem strange that people would promote the one thing and look down on the other.

Setting all the moral quibblings aside, the nuclear family is a very beneficial societal force, and prostitution a negative one, so it doesn't seem strange that people would promote the one thing and look down on the other.

While I'm sure there are plenty of people here who share this view, I'm not convinced that the existence of prostitution is inherently negative for society (the reality, of course, often can be). I think it's a good idea, for instance, for there to be an outlet for pent-up male sexual frustration that isn't rape/SA.

Fortunately we have invented video games which are infinitely superior to prostitution!

Glib answers aside, and conceding your point for the sake of argument - it seems to me that we would want to balance what you are saying against the demonstrated positive good of the monogamous model. Which I think suggests that having prostitution "normalized" is not the ideal. Again, agreeing with you for the sake of argument (I'm not sure that I do "for real" but I acknowledge that this argument is facially plausible and worth engaging with) it seems that the goal would be to have prostitution available enough to reduce violent crime, but suppressed or stigmatized enough to drive most people towards the nuclear family.

Which I think is historically a not unusual state of, ah, affairs.

Does anyone know what proportion of clients of prostitution are married vs single men (for any given time/place)? I feel like that's an important detail when discussing the impact of access to prostitutes on monogamy.

Not today, but off the top of my head I do know that the medieval church took for granted that urban men would not be virgins at marriage, although it deplored this, but considered it achievable to prevent fornication during courting/engagement. This points to most single men visiting prostitutes.


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