Ben___Garrison
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User ID: 373
Ben___Garrison
3d ago
Your anger reminds me of the Liberation Pledge that vegans did, where they aggressively pushed their principles to their non-vegan friends in the form of ultimatums, "either stop eating meat or we can't be friends". When their non-vegan friends didn't comply with their craziness, the vegans got extremely mad and essentially said "well I guess they weren't ever my friends anyways!!!"
Losing friends and making enemies for pointless battles is just dumb. Politics has always been overwhelmingly about vibes and direct personal interest. Leftists of the e.g. feminist+pro-Muslim variety irk me as much as anyone, but it's utter silliness to think you'd accomplish anything but your own harm by raging at those types of people. And if you think your outgroup is the only side with a large amount of contradictions, then you're hopelessly naive. The Bible has so many contradictions that it's worthless as a philosophical guiding light, yet it's served that purpose to basically the entire Western world for centuries. Individual rulers or religious leaders just cherry-picked whichever parts happened to suit them. For another example, it wasn't too long ago that a large chunk of the alt-right cheered when Trump sank the most conservative immigration bill in a generation for blatantly self-serving reasons. When pressed, most of the alt-right just mumbled out explanations that showed they had no idea what was actually in the bill, or the state of current immigration laws. In practice it didn't actually matter, since the fact that they like Trump's vibes easily overrode their ideological pre-commitments.
How would you feel if I did what you plan on doing to Christians or Trump supporters? How would you feel if I "say something friendship-ruiningly impolite because I just can't hold in the anger at this stupidity any more"? You'd probably think I'm being silly and dumb, right?
Ben___Garrison
6d ago
Are you suggesting everyone just not use exchanges, or only use exchanges that let you still "hold your keys"? That's fine for committed crypto enthusiasts, but most people just want the financial system to work hassle-free. It's like the difference between an iPhone and some hacky Linux system.
Ben___Garrison
6d ago
You make good points. I usually balk whenever I see crypto as the only option for payment, but if these businesses actually invested in a bit of digital infrastructure to make stablecoin payments hassle-free then it'd probably be fine. And considering the other option is "go out of business", it seems kind of strange that they haven't done this yet.
Ben___Garrison
6d ago
The problem with crypto is that it's used for a lot of fully illegal things, and so the government has cracked down on it quite a bit. It's also somewhat difficult for the average person to use, at least marginally more complicated than something like Paypal. Then there's the issue of risk, where plenty of people use crypto as a form of speculation so you can never be sure if the crypto held will have the same value as before unless you're using a stablecoin. Then there's the risk of exchanges just running off with your money like FTX did.
Most people beyond the small niche of ideological libertarians only use crypto when they're doing something sketchy or illegal, otherwise conventional banking is the easier option with far more guarantees for standard transactions.
Ben___Garrison
6d ago
rising anti-semitism on the right.
Anti-semitisim has historically come from the right, but is it "rising" still, especially compared to what's going on in the left?
Also, what exactly has Elon Musk done that's so anti-semitic?
Ben___Garrison
6d ago
I remember reading this a few months ago. Yeah, he makes a pretty compelling case.
Here's the summary of the bill, and here's the full text. Can you point out what specifically you object to? I've been accused of being uncharitable on this topic before, but whenever I press for details I typically get little but handwavey "Biden bad" style arguments. Which, to be clear, he was bad early in his presidency on this topic, but then he did an about-face and has signaled that he would have used the law quite aggressively.
Most of the bill is funding increases or rules changes that have little discretion involved. The big point of discretion was the Border Emergency Authority, which could be used if there were an average of 4000-5000 immigrants per day, and must be used at 5000+.
What is this referring to? The US already has formalized laws on asylum, like its signature on the Convention Against Torture. Right now, a big loophole in immigration is that immigrants can stay in the country until their asylum application is heard by a court, but courts are clogged and they often just miss their appointment anyways. The law would have plugged that.
What does this even mean? The bill was never passed, so comparisons to "Biden with the bill" as if it was law are nonsensical.
What "Swiss cheese" loopholes are you referring to? Trump was effectively no better on immigration than Obama, and most of his changes were executive orders that cost little political capital, and were trivial to repeal or ignore. Trump himself often went back on his more aggressive immigration changes whenever he got negative coverage on Fox News.
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