domain:arjunpanickssery.substack.com
Glassnoser
8hr ago
As someone who has had two bosses before, I know it can be a complete disaster, especially when they have very different personalities and priorities.
hydroacetylene
8hr ago
I hear about mass-hacking attacks and vehicular homicide in China pretty regularly. I’m more interested in the conspiracy theory that casualty counts are massively understated to protect local officials.
Pitt19802
8hr ago
A federal judge on Tuesday denied Vanderbilt quarterback Diego Pavia's request for a temporary restraining order that would grant him another year of eligibility https://www.espn.com/college-football/story/_/id/42367444/vanderbilt-qb-diego-pavia-denied-tro-request-added-eligibility
hydroacetylene
8hr ago
He was a black supremacist sovereign citizen. I suspect, based on police statements that sovereign citizens are a major threat but also the relative lack of sovereign citizens in the news, that these ideas go together very frequently,
remzem
8hr ago
I don't see how Syria made the US look weak and vulnerable. It just made it apparent that leadership was out of touch since he had no popular support for involvement in Syria and had to backtrack.
If anything Iraq and Afghanistan have done the most to make the US look vulnerable. They showed that a strong enough opposition can actually defeat the US military and this was a case of the US overextending. Too much chest beating.
Russia is harder to say since the information environment has gone fully 1984 and there is almost no factual information circulating in western media at this point about the conflict. Equal odds we are deluding ourselves about Putin's red lines.
Glassnoser
8hr ago
How does this work when the budget is set by Congress and many of these jobs are required by regulations that Congress would have to repeal? Is there just going to be a massive surplus and a government that doesn't enforce the law? What happens when things like permits that are required by law to do certain things aren't issued because the remaining staff can't keep up with the demand?
It seems to me that the first step should be changing the law so that the government isn't needed to do most of the things it currently does.
hydroacetylene
8hr ago
Uh, are mass shootings a red tribe thing specifically? It seems like they’re pretty spread out among Americans.
hydroacetylene
8hr ago
Yes, American and Latin American societies have very high rates of mass violence(although so does China).
astrolabia
8hr ago
Maybe we're talking about different things. I'm thinking of Obama talking about red lines in Syria, then not doing anything about it. Or Putin hinting about using nukes over foreign involvement in Ukraine and then not. I agree one can also go too far and be easily baited.
Glassnoser
8hr ago
Absolutely. He has very wrinkly and loose skin that makes it impossible for him to be confused for someone in his 30s. I actually didn't know his age and guessed he was 45.
remzem
8hr ago
He also got outmaneuvered on Ukraine and with all the MIC Russian collusion agitprop had limited options when it came to Ukraine without giving their propaganda more credence and further tanking his reelection prospects. The Soleimani thing was pointless though and did nothing to better America's position in the ME and that's entirely on him. He's also definitely in Israel's pocket, but so is most of the US government, there's a reason we'll never get the full info on Epstein. Only politicians I can think of not owned by them without doing research would be the ones owned by Islamic interests and Thomas Massie.
hydroacetylene
8hr ago
No, and making it so is likely to result in a wave of exit from banks and into cash-stuffed mattresses.
It’s pretty common and most people don’t keep Benjamins under their mattress.
hydroacetylene
9hr ago
Restricting minor’s access to digital media- especially social media- is very much a culture war of the future. In the USA this is a thing we’ll increasingly associate with republicans.
remzem
9hr ago
Nah it's 2024, you don't need to beat your chest and throw your spear threateningly in the direction of the rival tribe's line of warriors. We have enough nukes to destroy the world multiple times over. Speak softly and carry a big stick and what not. Trump's bravado stems more from insecurity and narcissism, which makes him easy to manipulate by the deep state.
non_radical_centrist
9hr ago
There's not nearly that much fat to be trimmed
The fat to be trimmed all comes from stuff like unions and other special interests, and you'd have to break those before you can actually cut the fat. When unions have rules like "Only janitor union members can clean floors, and only food sector union members can peel fruit", at small locations you can easily end up with multiple employees where you only need one. But you can't actually fire either employee until you get rid of the union rules, because those jobs do actually need doing.
TitaniumButterfly
9hr ago
I don't understand the point you're making. How sexually-dimorphic does a trait or behavior need to be before it's rightly understood as either masculine or feminine?
hydroacetylene
9hr ago
Ancient germanics had a distinction between Noblemen and commoners, with nobles having priestly privileges, just like Ancient Rome. There’s no evidence for some kind of hardcoded up and down social hierarchy like the Indian caste system.
SophisticatedHillbilly
9hr ago
the US challenge on the budgeting sense is the automatic entitlement spending, not the bureaucracy administering it.
I’m not sure how true this is. Most times people complain about government spending it seems to relate to corruption, cost disease, and regulatory costs: Broadband programs that provide access to ~0 people for billions of dollars, bridges that cost 100X what they should, hospitals needing 10 administrators for every doctor etc. All of these are executive issues. The complaints about the actual literal entitlements ordered by Congress usually come up as complaints of vote buying, and regardless aren’t the core of the problem.
non_radical_centrist
9hr ago
My prediction is that early on Musk will run into the incredibly thick red tape that normally prevents massive cuts in government, try to cut through it anyway because that's what he's used to in the private sector, and it results in some sort of lawsuit or other scandal.
non_radical_centrist
9hr ago
not withdrawing from Afghanistan
He did begin the process, it just only finished under the Biden administration. I agree with everything else.
remzem
9hr ago
Most of his confirmed appointments seem to be Rubio tier or worse. Complained about the Cheney's during his campaign and literally appointed a Cheney loyalist and ex-advisor as his national security advisor. Trump's criteria for a cabinet member is how loudly nice they are too him, not their political policy.
Really the big question surrounding Trump's second term was, "Has he learned from his first term?" and the answer is clearly no. X seems to be in near open revolt after all the appointments and Thune getting voted Majority lead. He's gonna lose all the libertarian support, all the weird center-left? populist RFK support and so on. It'll be funny if he loses the house because he appoints to many people from it and republicans all lose the follow up special elections.
hydroacetylene
9hr ago
Your conspiracy theory is… big business probably has some skeletons in its closet?
SophisticatedHillbilly
9hr ago
The issue is that pay increases for government employees just means poaching talent from the private sector. You’ll increase government efficiency at the cost of lower private sector efficiency. There’s only so many competent people. Raising pay doesn’t make more of them.
self_made_human
Kai su, teknon?
9hr ago
Not really. For the middle class and above, nobody would really bat an eye unless the proposed spouse was otherwise socially undesirable.
If we're talking the lower class, it's still largely acceptance, albeit the picture becomes more murky when you consider the variation inevitable in such a large country.
The biggest issue is avoiding falling in love with the wrong person, defined as probably being poorer, in a bad job, wrong caste (which matters far less than it used to) and so on.
Even then, arranged marriages are nowhere near the popular misconception where the bride and groom only get to see each other before marriage (in most of the country). It's far closer to family-mediated speed dating, as opposed to having friends introduce prospective singles as is more common in the West (until dating apps steamrolled everything else).
Ever since you reach a Certain Age, your family, including bored aunts-twice-removed, begin putting out feelers or become more receptive to the same. Or they make a profile on a matrimonial site I guess. Then comes the carousel of cups of tea in living rooms, families and prospects vetting each other. Assuming both sides like what they see, the couple is encouraged to become familiar with each other, often unsupervised (or at least nobody in the living room) and them genuinely falling for each other, while not strictly necessary, is a welcome outcome. I'd be so bold as to claim the would be partners have veto rights throughout the process.
When everyone is happy and no skeletons or jilted lovers have turned up, then it's time for a big fat Indian wedding.
This isn't particularly different from a modal love marriage either! You take your partner home one day, introduce them, and then both families nigh inevitably begin giving each other a closer look. Objections may or may not be raised, but there's still a lot of reconciliation to do. You marry not just a person but their family, after all.
It's a pretty reasonable system, and God knows that there would be fewer NEETs and incels if more families in the West took hints from Indian mothers exasperated that their kids took their advice to ignore relationships and study for the NEET a little too seriously and need coaxing to produce grandkids eventually.
Those could literally all be true without caveat, and it wouldn't matter in the budgeting sense since those may seem like big numbers in absolute terms but are proportionally very small compared to entitlement spending. It doesn't matter of bridges 100x or even 1000x more than they 'should' if the budget is spending thousands times more on entitlement spending than on bridges.
To wit- according to the Biden administration earlier this year, the US has $40 billion allocated to spend over 5 years on bridges. By contrast, the combined Medicare, Medicaid, and Obamacare spending in 2024 is $1.67 trillion, and expected to rise to 3.1 trillion by 2033.
Put another way- 5 years of all bridge spending is less than 3% of one year's medical spending, and shrinking. You could make that $40 billion 10x, 100x, or even 1000x more efficient, but no matter how efficient you spend 40 billion it's a drop in the entitlement spending. Sure, you could argue that there are savings to be made there... but then you're not going into the discretionary budget administration, you're going to the automatic entitlement spending, which goes to the laws rather than the executive administration thereof.
Part of that's just baked into demographic politics.
When the Americans legislated Social Security in 1935, FDR signed a law that authorized payments for those 65 or older when the average American lifespan in 1935 was... 61 for men and 65 for women, according to a quick google search.
Today, social security can begin between ages 62 and 70 depending on your preference of payout amount... when the average American lifespan is about 75 for men, and 80 for women.
It fundamentally doesn't matter in a budgeting sense how efficient you are at executing the discretionary programs if the entitlements previous created on the assumption that less than half of people would live long enough to see them are instead expecting to pay for more than a decade. When you start adding in medical spending, which costs increasing with age, you're adding more. This is an issue of law and what the legislators deem is the appropriate entitlement, not administration of that amount. No matter how much you save on the executive side- and it can be very good to have more efficiency there!- it's not the central or determinative issue.
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