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Culture War Roundup for the week of October 28, 2024

But that's where I worry about the election cycle. Four years is not long enough to rebuild the entire federal bureaucracy.

First, I — like many — would question just how necessary so much of the federal bureaucracy is. There was that discussion here recently about what the Department of Education does. I'd also point to some of Curtis Yarvin's comments in this interview by Harrison Pitt about bringing in Elon Musk to head a "Department of Government Efficiency":

Well, if you wanted to run the government efficiently, you would do actually the California startup thing, which is you would simply replace it with a different organization; and which is about approximately 100,000 times easier and more effective than trying to take a process-oriented bureaucracy and turn it into some kind of mission-oriented thing.

It would be like, you know, if you told Elon Musk, basically, that he had to build a space program and start with NASA, he would simply fire all of NASA and build SpaceX.

…

Like you can't actually make these organizations more— I mean, you cut a little here; modify, tweak a little, but you can't make them into organizations that are even 1/1000 as efficient as SpaceX.

Moreover, if you're doing this kind of organization where you're just, like, "okay, I'm going to replace the State Department," uh, great, then you're face-to-face with an even more knotty question of what is the State Department, and what does it do, and why does it do it, and is this organization going to have the same goals and missions as the State Department; because the State Department is, of course, living in this sort of, like, exquisite historical fantasy, which it itself has constructed, of the Global American Empire.

…

You would not, if you actually worked from first principles in the way Elon Musk does when he launches a rocket, you would be, like, I don't even know even the concept of a rocket is up for grabs here, because if you look at what the State Department does, and the system it administrates, it is almost entirely a contingent product of history.

…

There's all of this just frame-breaking, where you try to make this thing— we're going to make the State Department more efficient, and you start thinking harder and harder what is the State Department? Why do we need a State Department? Right. And you're just basically, as you get more and more galaxy-brained, you're basically just, like, the reality is the United States does not have an Executive Branch, it has an administrative branch.

So, if you focus only on rebuilding the most core, essential functions of the federal government — can we get by for awhile without a Department of Energy? Transportation? HUD? CPSC? USAID? The Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service? the Postal Regulatory Commission? — I can see quite a lot getting done in just four years.

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 28, 2024

He wasn’t saying they were the sole source of funding.

Moreover, he made the point that the Greens attacked nuclear while trying to replace with wind and solar. But as a result they had a base power problem so turned to natural gas thereby benefiting Russia.

It isn’t quite the Baptist and Bootleggers combo but similar.

Can you explain how the green policy helped the US?

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 28, 2024

Mildly interesting: Tweet from a guy who saw JD Vance rush out of the mini golf course at the time

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 28, 2024

In the past Federal election cycle, I organized Reddit vote swaps via TheMotte subreddit. This cycle, there's a new game in town: https://www.swapyourvote.org

Under the vote swap system, one swing state voter agrees to vote for Kamala Harris and is matched with two safe state voters, who vote for a third party of the swing state voter's choice.

In my case, the swing state voter doesn't have a preference, so I get to vote for Chase Oliver, my preferred candidate, while also securing a critical swing state vote to take a shot at defeating Trump in that state.

Exchanging votes is completely legal and is the only real way to secure support for alternative viewpoints until we can get approval voting on the Federal level.

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 28, 2024

The head canon is that, being a Mottizen, he didn't want to directly attract the eye of Sauron. The article in question is also from July 2019, so unless Thiel-aligned people are dredging Scott's backlog, it's possible he read it at the time of publishing, prior to the injection of Trump and Thiel's connections, which suggests rat-adjacency.

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 28, 2024

"If you want law enforcement, don't complain when you get anarcho-tyranny instead". Yes, this strategy keeps "working", but it doesn't actually solve the problem better enforcement would.

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 28, 2024

But all this is entirely beside the point. If it seems best to you that you should vote for a major party candidate, then do it! And if the emergent pattern is a "two party system," okay, that's the emergent pattern! What's completely bonkers is telling people that

if you dislike Trump more than Harris you must support Harris and vice versa

That's just bullshit, and someone declining to vote for either is much more likely to have a positive effect, insofar as it has any effect at all, than forcing oneself to pick a "lesser of two evils" instead.

Wellness Wednesday for October 30, 2024

Have you seen a doctor yet? You'll probably need an ENT.

This could be a million things. Atypical anatomy. Something like allergies or GERD causing odd problems.

Serious things are possible and you'll want to rule them out.

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 28, 2024

The funniest answer would be someone like Deisach or Hlinka from the old site.

Or maybe @FiveHourMarathon here, also come to think of it has anyone heard from @JTarrou recently?

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 28, 2024

(It is hard to cancel a doctor in private practice.)

Not necessarily. Private pay patients have choice and can google, in Cali they may avoid Scott.

You also have to not piss off your partners, staff, malpractice provider, landlord, etc. Again in Cali can be a problem.

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 28, 2024

I think there is a very real chance that he knew very well who wrote the article but he didn't mention the name on purpose so as to not bring unwanted focus on Scott who he knew wouldn't want it.

Transnational Thursday for October 31, 2024

Yeah I think the medical side of things are most worried about the flu side of things. Monkeypox doesn't excite me, Myco isn't a big deal.

A Kessler cascade is one of my biggest fears though, yikes.

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 28, 2024

Okay then, replace it with a six pack of beer from Sheetz, or a candy bar, or whatever the hell else you think kids steal these days.

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 28, 2024

General JD/Rogan comment:

When he heard Trump was shot he took his kids home from mini-golf, loaded his guns and stood sentry at his house. Fuck yeah.

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 28, 2024

It's funny, usually expressing that you hope someone dies at the age of 79 in bed surrounded by loving grandkids is generally a blessing... unless the person is 78.

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 28, 2024

What is your general strategy for making money on prediction markets and crypto?

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 28, 2024

Right - the conscience veto didn't work in the case of marriage because it was only a small handful of people willing to stand up for it. It's different when you're looking at most of the bureaucracy. The president can fire them all, but if so he's destroying his own state apparatus and thus his own ability to act.

There's an obvious rebuttal here - "If I fire the bureaucracy I won't be able to act? But I'm not able to act now! My choice is a bureaucracy that refuses to do what I want, and no bureaucracy that does nothing. At least with no bureaucracy, there isn't an institution actively impeding me, and I can get started on the long, difficult process of building a new state apparatus."

But that's where I worry about the election cycle. Four years is not long enough to rebuild the entire federal bureaucracy.

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 28, 2024

Assume that it works, why would it? It's not as though the climate has become intolerable, or will be 20 years from now?

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 28, 2024

I don't think anyone here wouldn't be able to remember Scott's name.

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 28, 2024

If you had to be based to post here, I would never have managed to register!

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 28, 2024

Am I completely wrong in my guess that the Greens don't want nuclear weapons stationed on German soil?

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 28, 2024

We, in fact, hold posters here to a higher standard than presidential candidates. Don't do this.

( @corman, you too - I know you are just playing tit-for-tat, but don't do that. Report the post.)

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 28, 2024

Degrowth Greens are getting absolutely crazy, easily 10x as radical as any far-right European party. More radical than Putin too.

A (biased) source on what one German Greens thought leader wants to see, noting that it isn't all Greens but a formidable brand of Green thought: https://www.eugyppius.com/p/in-which-a-leading-green-intellectual

New construction banned, train travel rationed, 50 sqm living space per person, meat rationed, end of banking (because money is basically worthless since everything is rationed)... This from an apparently respectable political voice, editor of a newspaper, who basically wants to destroy the Western way of life. These people have influence in the real world, their fellow compatriots get into power and start shutting down nuclear plants for no good reason.

It's in the UK too. Some imbeciles passed a law mandating net zero emissions by 2050. A think tank gave serious thought as to what that would actually look like if we take the laws and climate scientists seriously:

https://api.repository.cam.ac.uk/server/api/core/bitstreams/75916920-51f6-4f9c-ade5-52cbf55d5e73/content

TLDR, they conclude that technology is too unreliable, the only path to success is crushing austerity. No air travel for 30 years. No shipping for 30 years. 40% less heating. No meat.

What I find most revealing is the mindset of 'well we don't really have any known methods to get CO2 out of the atmosphere besides planting trees and there's not much space for more trees so let's take a low-risk path to absolute zero, using only known technologies'. And then the low-risk path they propose is shooting yourself in the foot with a 50 cal. No shipping and no air travel ON AN ISLAND? Famine is locked in - they add that 'fertilizer use is greatly reduced'. This mindset is absolutely toxic.

The correct solution to climate change is directly controlling the temperature by releasing sulfate aerosols in the upper atmosphere. At a cost of $5-20 billion per year we can hold temperatures in place or reduce them, even as CO2 levels rise. These people want to destroy industrial civilization over a glorified nothingburger.

And I think Russia might be trying to assist them. These Degrowth Greens can be viewed as purely destructive agents, Stalin's mythic wreckers that were deliberately harming the economy by submitting false instructions or damaging machinery. If you want to induce chaos and dysfunction in Europe, help them out! They might shut down a nuclear plant or commit some other blunder and cause right-thinking people to panic-buy more natural gas or oil (which in a global market will increase Russian income). Russia probably doesn't have much ability to help them and doesn't spend much time doing so but I think it's part of their agenda.

Suffice to say that with no air travel and no shipping, the VDV could probably take over Britain by themselves. Inducing stupidity and self-sabotage in your rivals is usually a good move, even if it hurts you occasionally. Just because Russia exports fossil fuels, it doesn't mean they don't want division and incompetence in their targets. Nuclear power is still the primary threat to their energy exports IMO. Nuclear France produces fewer emissions than 'Green' Germany' per $ of GDP.

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 28, 2024

Vance follows moldbug, and I believe also BAP on twitter, just for reference.

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 28, 2024

My understanding was that the German Green party's core policy objective was to see Germany divest itself of locally produced coal and nuclear power in favor of what was sold as "renewables" on paper but was natural gas supplied by Russia in actual practice.

I also recall reading something back in 2019 (when there was all that talk about Germany wasnt pulling its weight in NATO was in news) about how the German left in general and the Greens in particular was rife with ex-Soviet/DDR apparatchiks and thier kids.

The invasion of Ukraine may have been an inflection point that flipped a bunch of incentives, but it seems to me that the Green Party being a bunch of watermelons (outwardly Green but Reds/Communists under the skin) and the Russians quietly looking to sow political dissent amongs thier nieghbors isn't a crazy conspiracy theory as much as it is a solid prior.