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PaperclipPerfector  8d ago (text post)   31633 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 7, 2025

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Yes, it's all lies. Big mean Trump is fooling the innocent construction company and permit offices of NYC, all of whom are completely non-corrupt innocent idealists seeking only the best for everyone.

Back in reality, trump is a NYC real estate developer the same as all the others. Everyone involved knows the game. Trump didn't make the game this broken, NY politicians did. Trump has always been critical of them, and engaged in theatrics to expose them - e.g. writing a book, public clashes with Ed Koch over what later became Trump skating rink, etc. This is what led him to enter politics.

What would you have preferred he do? Be the only honest real estate developer and go bankrupt cause nothing gets built? (Similarly, I don't fault Soros for breaking the pound.)

What would you have preferred he do? Be the only honest real estate developer and go bankrupt cause nothing gets built?

Yes. "Everyone else does this too, it's how the game is" is not and has never been an excuse for immoral behavior. You are responsible for your conduct, no matter the circumstances you find yourself in.

What’s immoral about finding an end run around retarded awful laws and rules?

Lying, and not following the law, are both immoral without a sufficiently good reason. "I want to make money" isn't remotely good enough of a reason to lie and break the law.

‘Shit needs to get done and these kinds of adversarial boards aren’t doing what they’re supposed to’

That's closer. But if you think anyone circumventing the planning board process is actually doing it because they want to better society, and not because they want to profit, I have a bridge to sell you. A fine property in the middle of the Mojave desert.

What’s wrong with that? Circumventing the planning board is a good deed that deserves remuneration.

First, that is not a good deed. Fixing the regulations would be a good deed. Going around them is (somewhat) bad on its own merits.

Second, even if it were good, doing a good deed only carries merit if you're doing it for its own sake. Doing it to line your pockets means you don't have any moral credit for doing the good deed. And since this isn't a good deed to begin with, that means that we're now talking about doing a bad deed for selfish reasons, which compounds the badness.

Fixing the regulations would be a good deed. Going around them is (somewhat) bad on its own merits.

An ideal, yes, but conditional on the possibility of the regulators letting you fix it.

I understand the content of the moral imperative here, but I think we need to look at the Soviet Union to understand where this falls flat. The system was built and sustained on lies, there were lies and deceptions and samizdat all the way down and it made for an awful society, but they had no choice. Things literally could not get done without people being deceived at various points in the Great Chain of their society.

There are no practical rules to live by here, other than "have an honest and fair system from Day 1" and "anything that lets you sleep with food in your stomach can't be that bad."

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Perhaps, but the issue here isn't everyone else doing it, it is specifically the government and system that enacts and enforces the rules. If that system doesn't play by its own rules, then playing by those rules will only hurt you. You can not expect a system without enforced rules to produce any other result, because even if you play by the rules others will not.

We aren't talking about "does this system produce good outcomes", though. We are talking about "is it wrong for someone to do bad things because that's what the system incentivizes", which IMO it is.

What I'm saying though is that it isn't the people who are wrong, it's the system.

They are both wrong. The system is indeed set up poorly if it incentivizes people to circumvent it. But the people who circumvent the system are still wrong and deserve to be penalized for their actions in some way.

I agree, but it's like a slap vs a bullet. Your perspective of it seems highly susceptible to anarcho-tyranny. How do you repair a system that punishes you for trying to repair it? That's usually how this kind of thing starts - the unscrupulous don't give a shit about laws of course, but to get the scrupulous to ignore the law you need an already corrupted system.

How do you repair a system that punishes you for trying to repair it?

Nobody said anything about that. Trying to repair the system looks like pushing to get the laws improved so that the system works better. There's no reason to expect one would be punished for that.

Following the rules as-written as opposed to the rules as-enforced doesn't make you a paragon of morality; it makes you a chump.

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