domain:alexberenson.substack.com
TheBailey
soapy mop
1hr ago
While exchanging (promises of) votes is completely legal, there is of course no possible enforcement for this, right?
Joe Blue could easily create many sockpuppet accounts, claim to be in a safe state, and farm a bunch of swing state votes without providing any corresponding value to any 3rd party?
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.
It is interesting to see how they try to balance the affinity between the Libertarian Party and the Republican Party with the assumption that the Republican Party needs to be defeated.
We are not matching [safe state] voters from red states (like Texas) … unite to advance a non-fascist, forward-thinking agenda for a more just and fair world.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
1hr ago
America can find trillions to pay for silly overseas wars but preventing the robbery of stores is too costly?
I have some experience with legal practitioners, there's a certain inherent status-quo-ism whenever they hear anyone looking for a quick fix to these absurdities. They produce all these examples of edge-cases and procedural reasons for why things can't be done or changing anything is very complicated. Or they blame badly drafted laws (which is fair and reasonable given how badly written some laws are in my country, presumably the USA too).
But I think to myself, none of this applies when people really want something. Free commerce and protection of private property? Not in war time, your property belongs to the state! You're in the army now, straight off to the front! Prices? Regulated! Speech? Restricted! Rights? Gone!
Or take COVID. There must've been a million reasons why, in theory, you can't just order everyone to stay in their houses, have businesses shut down, why it's just too impractical and hard and expensive. But they did it anyway. Were there unreasonable edge-cases and were there absurdities? Absolutely, in industrial quantities.
Law is interpreted and enforced by men. If they really want something to happen, they can make it so. If they really want to stamp out petty crime like this, it can be done.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
1hr ago
whatever the hell else you think kids steal these days.
You're talking as if "kids" as a general category are broadly guilty of shoplifting something. IME, most kids didn't, and don't, shoplift; and those who do tend to be greatly concentrated in terms of class, culture, family background, etc.; and much as with crime in general, it's dominated by a small number of repeat offenders.
Capital_Room
rather dementor-like
2hr ago
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.
zeke5123a
2hr ago
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?
ares
2hr ago
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.
promotor
2hr ago
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.
The_Nybbler
Does not have a yacht
2hr ago
"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.
naraburns
nihil supernum
2hr ago
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.
Throwaway05
2hr ago
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.
The funniest answer would be someone like Deisach or Hlynka from the old site.
Or maybe @FiveHourMarathon here, come to think of it, has anyone heard from @JTarrou recently?
Throwaway05
2hr ago
(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.
DelendaEst
2hr ago
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.
Throwaway05
2hr ago
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.
Rov_Scam
2hr ago
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.
CertainlyWorse
Dedicated Pessimist
2hr ago
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.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
2hr ago
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.
Glassnoser
3hr ago
What is your general strategy for making money on prediction markets and crypto?
OliveTapenade
3hr ago
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.
jkf
3hr ago
Assume that it works, why would it? It's not as though the climate has become intolerable, or will be 20 years from now?
Glassnoser
3hr ago
I don't think anyone here wouldn't be able to remember Scott's name.
OliveTapenade
3hr ago
If you had to be based to post here, I would never have managed to register!
Kensington Pro Fit — specifically the full-size version if you have big hands, specifically the wired version if you hate wireless, and specifically not the “ergonomic” version in any case. A no-nonsense, very solid desktop mouse. Had one for 11 years (about 9 of which included ~10h/wk FPS gaming) before the scroll wheel started bugging out, and I just bought the same model as replacement.
Nothing usable to report mousepad-wise, but have you considered nabbing a friction glove for use with drawing tablets, if it's your skin contact (rather than the bottom of the mouse itself) that's yoinking the pad around?
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