BurdensomeCount
Singapore is the only country that learned the correct lessons from the British Empire.
The neighborhood of Hampstead is just at present exercised with a series of events which seem to run on lines parallel to those of what was known to the writers of headlines and "The Kensington Horror," or "The Stabbing Woman," or "The Woman in Black." During the past two or three days several cases have occurred of young children straying from home or neglecting to return from their playing on the Heath. In all these cases the children were too young to give any properly intelligible account of themselves, but the consensus of their excuses is that they had been with a "bloofer lady." It has always been late in the evening when they have been missed, and on two occasions the children have not been found until early in the following morning. It is generally supposed in the neighborhood that, as the first child missed gave as his reason for being away that a "bloofer lady" had asked him to come for a walk, the others had picked up the phrase and used it as occasion served. This is the more natural as the favorite game of the little ones at present is luring each other away by wiles. A correspondent writes us that to see some of the tiny tots pretending to be the"bloofer lady" is supremely funny. Some of our caricaturists might, he says, take a lesson in the irony of grotesque by comparing the reality and the picture. It is only in accordance with general principles of human nature that the "bloofer lady" should be the popular role at these al fresco performances.
User ID: 628
BurdensomeCount
Singapore is the only country that learned the correct lessons from the British Empire.
29d ago
the prayer conflict resulted from aggressive children forcing others to pray or be labelled bad muslims
Interesting. My original assumption was the the headteacher was preventing someone from praying out of her own volition (bad), but in this case I can see why the headteacher wanted such a policy (and would support her in it).
So all meals are vegetarian, to prevent conflict between vegetarians and meat-eaters.
This makes perfect sense. I don't think the fault line in particular the school wished to avoid was meat/no-meat (in that case why not take it further and make everything vegan?) but rather the desire to avoid catering to special religious dietary requirements like halal/kosher which would again give the studnets somethign to tribalize over. Removing meat entirely from the menu is a particularly elegant solution here.
BurdensomeCount
Singapore is the only country that learned the correct lessons from the British Empire.
1mo ago
The upcoming Rafah offensive has had me seriously reconsider my support for Israel. At the very least Israel, as the overlord and conquerer, has an obligation to resettle and provide new accommodation for the people of Gaza when it destroys their previous homes.
Much like how it supports the Jewish settlers in the West Bank I don't see why Israel can't support a resettlement project of the Gazans into the West Bank too. It'll cost billions sure, but that's still worth it if Israel annexes Gaza once it's done with its operation. Instead we don't really have any good plan for what will happen to the civilian Gazans after Israel razes their entire land to get at Hamas.
Israel has obligations towards the Palestinians, all the more so because it's destroying their lives at the moment. First moving them south so you can destroy North Gaza and then moving them north so you can destroy South Gaza is not meeting them.
BurdensomeCount
Singapore is the only country that learned the correct lessons from the British Empire.
14d ago
Passing remidial statistics should be a requirement to be given the vote. If you don't understand the difference between standard deviation and variance then for the benefit of society you should be disenfranchised.
BurdensomeCount
Singapore is the only country that learned the correct lessons from the British Empire.
29d ago
The grooming gang predators need to be whipped on a weekly basis followed by a promise upon release that if they ever get caught again it'll be immediate castration plus twice the sentence they just served. It's the only language they understand.
Unfortunately Westerners are too far gone at this point and will not listen to groups that have actual historical experience of properly subjugating the excesses of these people. At this point what can you even do...
BurdensomeCount
Singapore is the only country that learned the correct lessons from the British Empire.
1mo ago
Well then their hand will have to be forced into it and I can't think of a better force at the moment than the threat of annihilation and subjugation by the Russian bear.
Europe took the "peace dividend" at the end of the cold war and spent it on welfare rather than using it to cut taxes to the levels they were at before WWII, now that dividend is going away and the only place to get this money back is to slash welfare to the levels it was at many decades ago.
BurdensomeCount
Singapore is the only country that learned the correct lessons from the British Empire.
1mo ago
The future of Ukraine is Somali and Bangladeshi migrants working on farms owned by American financial institutions and managed by HR women educated in the US.
Still beats becoming a vassal state of Russia. Europe really needs to get off its ass and start arming the Ukrainians properly (it's understandable why the US doesn't seem to care, but Europe doesn't have the same luxury of distance). Yes, this will cost lots of money, but Europe can easily raise this money by massively slashing welfare and benefit spending.
BurdensomeCount
Singapore is the only country that learned the correct lessons from the British Empire.
2mo ago
Yeah, it's extremely weird that Google et. al. went on hiring sprees when they could have just given their employees next level money. All those weird side projects that haemorraged money led to lower return on capital employed, which pisses off investors (even more than not giving them fat dividends does) and also pisses off your employes compared to the counterfactual where they would get millions a year.
Funnily enough I was recently talking to a (leftier than me) friend of mine who didn't know that all the big famous investment banks were public companies and that anyone could buy their shares.
After I told him he was extremely surprised by this fact and opined that they must be an excellent way to make money only to be brought down back to earth after I told him that in reality they were really shitty investments because all that money they made went to their employees as salaries and bonuses, leaving their public investors with mediocre returns.
He said something along the lines of "Of course this happens, typical greedy banker behaviour". Because I value this friendship I wisely left it at that and changed the subject, but deep down a part of me wanted to quip "Firstly you complain about big companies putting investors ahead of their employees and how this makes them capital-B Bad/greedy, and now here you have an example of a class of companies which do the opposite and put their employees ahead of their investors and now you are calling them capital-B Bad and greedy for this behaviour? Make up your mind man!"
BurdensomeCount
Singapore is the only country that learned the correct lessons from the British Empire.
1mo ago
Trump had a policy where he wanted rich European countries to pay the same amount that gets charged to medicaid/medicare for these medicines however he wasn't able to get it implemented before he was booted out and the Biden admin scrapped it.
BurdensomeCount
Singapore is the only country that learned the correct lessons from the British Empire.
1mo ago
Repeat after me: Nowhere. In. Two. Weeks.
BurdensomeCount
Singapore is the only country that learned the correct lessons from the British Empire.
1mo ago
Concern about female fidelity has always been a prominent feature of wartime propaganda. But, this takes it to a new level, since the women are in a different country, making new, better lives for themselves. How many will ever even return to Ukraine?
And then in the very next breath Westerners complain about how the vast majority of refugee migrants initially coming to the west from the middle east etc. tend to be men. They fail to realise that it's not just a way to allow the women to take the easier route via plane once their family members have settled down but also a very good method of ensuring their chastity and honor stay intact and no suspicion can be laid upon their feet.
Everything we say and do makes complete rational sense. We're just starting from a different (and I would argue, better) set of axioms than you.
BurdensomeCount
Singapore is the only country that learned the correct lessons from the British Empire.
29d ago
I am pretty sure that the school is for the underclass/lower class.
Yep. It's non selective and draws its pupils from a known poor area full of poor people. It's not somewhere I'd want to send my future children too (it would stifle them) but its policies and ethos are excellent for turning little shits (who have nothing in them to be stifled in the first place) into decent if unremarkable members of society, I want to see 100x of these schools all over the country.
BurdensomeCount
Singapore is the only country that learned the correct lessons from the British Empire.
1mo ago
SK's protectionism worked because it was done with a spear pointed at the ass of the local companies who were always told it was going to be time limited and would be wound down gradually and so they had 15-20 years to become internationally competitive or they were going to die out anyways. Most crucially this threat was believable to the point that the local companies shaped up and actually became competitive on the world stage.
Unfortunately you can't replicate it in the modern day US because their culture of lagresse and gibs mean that tacitly the companies know that even if the current government says the tariffs/support will end in 15 years political considerations near expiry time will lead to it being probably extended because who wants headlines like "poor salt of the earth car factory workers left destitute after government pulls funding to cut the taxes of the wealthy"? As such the car companies have zero real incentive to modernize and can just coast off of government subsidies and having a captive market. The ultimate loser of all this is going to be the taxpayer who now gets his hard earned money given to these relicts and just to add insult to injury is forced to buy worse products at higher prices.
BurdensomeCount
Singapore is the only country that learned the correct lessons from the British Empire.
2mo ago
Another valid solution is state sanctioned "beating the shit out of bad human beings until there is no more shitty behaviour left in them". This is surprisingly effective at getting those who are immune to reason to see sense. Operant conditioning works just as well on humans as it does on lower animals.
Six lashes for his rude behaviour followed by a solemn promise that he's going to get another sixty lashes if anything untoward was to happen to the woman afterwards would set him straight very quickly.
BurdensomeCount
Singapore is the only country that learned the correct lessons from the British Empire.
1mo ago
it’s the obvious fact that black people have much more dominant genes than everyone else
Yeah, this is obvious BS. There are lots and lots of traits which are dominant and more present in whites compared to Africans, e.g. the gene for Glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase deficiency (this is what causes favism in such people who consume fava beans) which is more prevalent in Africans is recessive X-linked.
BurdensomeCount
Singapore is the only country that learned the correct lessons from the British Empire.
17d ago
Don't pull the emergency lever on the MRT.
BurdensomeCount
Singapore is the only country that learned the correct lessons from the British Empire.
1mo ago
· Edited 1mo ago
You haven't really said much about what bothers you about their way of life
I like the people close to me having basic freedoms like my wife not needing to wear a niqab. I like being able to argue using reason and being able to counter "The good book says X, therefore you are wrong when you claim not X" without being denounced as a heretic. I like being clean shaven (yes, the Taliban imposed a beard requirement on all men the last time they were in power), I enjoy dancing and music etc. etc.
I can go on and on...
and the way you talk about them seems more like a point in their favor than anything else
Oh boy, if you don't like me you really won't like the Taliban. When I say they are my coethnics I don't just mean they have the same skin colour as me/come from the same part of the world, I mean that I, like a very large portion of them, am Pashtun (complete with tribal affiliation and all that). The values they grew up with are the same as those my parents instilled in me as a child and from where I derive my belief system today, except that I've become extremely westernised (people call me a coconut back home - brown on the outside, white on the inside - and I can't really say they are wrong). I'm like the grown up version of Kamal's son from Kipling's Ballad of East and West after the British system has completely laundered him.
Think me but fundamentalist Muslim when you think of the Taliban and then reconsider whether you want someone like that to rule over you.
BurdensomeCount
Singapore is the only country that learned the correct lessons from the British Empire.
1mo ago
but I recognize it as humane
Only someone who has never experienced the direct influence of the Taliban would think that way. The Taliban are like fire, they make good servants but bad masters (in the sense that they keep the overton window open for moderate Islam by taking all the attacks which would have come upon moderate Islam otherwise). Putting them incharge of other human beings or in general handing them any power at all ends badly (see how they commit terror attacks when handed power etc., they're even planning on bringing back stoning for adultery!). They work best as zoo specimens, not wild animals.
BurdensomeCount
Singapore is the only country that learned the correct lessons from the British Empire.
4mo ago
Anybody Here? ...
Nobody? ...
Well, alright then:
A large study from all of Sweden has found that increasing people's incomes randomly (actually, increasing their wealth, but you can convert wealth to income via an interest rate very easily) does not reduce their criminality. The authors find that via a cross sectional model, people with higher incomes are less likely to commit crimes (this just compares rich people to poors and sees rich people are less criminal), while when they switch to a "shock" model where people who won what is effectively a lottery don't see reduced criminality in either themselves or their children. This is a pretty big blow for the "poor people are more criminal because they don't have money for their basic needs" theory.
Original study here: https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w31962/w31962.pdf
Marginal Revolution post discussing this here (also reproduced below, post has an additional graph at the end on the link): https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2023/12/why-do-wealthier-people-commit-less-crime.html
It’s well known that people with lower incomes commit more crime. Call this the cross-sectional result. But why? One set of explanations suggests that it’s precisely the lack of financial resources that causes crime. Crudely put, maybe poorer people commit crime to get money. Or, poorer people face greater strains–anger, frustration, resentment–which leads them to lash out or poorer people live in communities that are less integrated and well-policed or poorer people have access to worse medical care or education and so forth and that leads to more crime. These theories all imply that giving people money will reduce their crime rate.
A different set of theories suggests that the negative correlation between income and crime (more income, less crime) is not causal but is caused by a third variable correlated with both income and crime. For example, higher IQ or greater conscientiousness could increase income while also reducing crime. These theories imply that giving people money will not reduce their crime rate.
The two theories can be distinguished by an experiment that randomly allocates money. In a remarkable paper, Cesarini, Lindqvist, Ostling and Schroder report on the results of just such an experiment in Sweden.
Cesarini et al. look at Swedes who win the lottery and they compare their subsequent crime rates to similar non-winners. The basic result is that, if anything, there is a slight increase in crime from winning the lottery but more importantly the authors can statistically reject that the bulk of the cross-sectional result is causal. In other words, since randomly increasing a person’s income does not reduce their crime rate, the first set of theories are falsified.
A couple of notes. First, you might object that lottery players are not a random sample. A substantial part of Cesarini et al.’s lottery data, however, comes from prize linked savings accounts, savings accounts that pay big prizes in return for lower interest payments. Prize linked savings accounts are common in Sweden and about 50% of Swedes have a PLS account. Thus, lottery players in Sweden look quite representative of the population. Second, Cesarini et al. have data on some 280 thousand lottery winners and they have the universe of criminal convictions; that is any conviction of an individual aged 15 or higher from 1975-2017. Wow! Third, a few people might object that the correlation we observe is between convictions and income and perhaps convictions don’t reflect actual crime. I don’t think that is plausible for a variety of reasons but the authors also find no statistically significant evidence that wealth reduces the probability one is suspect in a crime investigation (god bless the Swedes for extreme data collection). Fourth, the analysis was preregistered and corrections are made for multiple hypothesis testing. I do worry somewhat that the lottery winnings, most of which are on the order of 20k or less are not large enough and I wish the authors had said more about their size relative to cross sectional differences. Overall, however, this looks to be a very credible paper.
In their most important result, shown below, Cesarini et al. convert lottery wins to equivalent permanent income shocks (using a 2% interest rate over 20 years) to causally estimate the effect of permanent income shocks on crime (solid squares below) and they compare with the cross-sectional results for lottery players in their sample (circle) or similar people in Sweden (triangle). The cross-sectional results are all negative and different from zero. The causal lottery results are mostly positive, but none reject zero. In other words, randomly increasing people’s income does not reduce their crime rate. Thus, the negative correlation between income and crime must be due to a third variable. As the authors summarize rather modestly:
Although our results should not be casually extrapolated to other countries or segments of the population, Sweden is not distinguished by particularly low crime rates relative to comparable countries, and the crime rate in our sample of lottery players is only slightly lower than in the Swedish population at large. Additionally, there is a strong, negative cross-sectional relationship between crime and income, both in our sample of Swedish lottery players and in our representative sample. Our results therefore challenge the view that the relationship between crime and economic status reflects a causal effect of financial resources on adult offending.
BurdensomeCount
Singapore is the only country that learned the correct lessons from the British Empire.
1mo ago
Yeah, Henry is about as much of a loser as you can get based on what our society ostensibly says it values. And yet he was able to get plenty of women.
BurdensomeCount
Singapore is the only country that learned the correct lessons from the British Empire.
1mo ago
Eh, it really shouldn't matter to you all that much if you are personally smart, that's suggestive that your family is also relatively smart and that (assuming you pick a good partner), your descendents will also be decently smart (regression to the mean notwithstanding, unfortunately the influence of your family on your children doesn't "factor through" you completely).
It's just so unfair
Life is what life is. There are highly intelligent people rotting away in the third world while 80 IQ clueless imbecilles in western welfare states who only have it in them to take out more than they put in live decent and comfortable existances. No amount of rage from me or anyone else at this injustice is going to change this so I've come to accept it and move on. I have extended family in the former situation too so it's not like this is just a theoretical problem for me.
(I also believe intelligence gives rise to moral worth, I'd happily eat a chicken - provided it was slaughtered in a Halal way - I very much would not eat a chicken that had human level intelligence and would be horrified if such a being was treated like how we treat chickens today)
BurdensomeCount
Singapore is the only country that learned the correct lessons from the British Empire.
12d ago
BurdensomeCount
Singapore is the only country that learned the correct lessons from the British Empire.
30d ago
Fair point yes it does.
BurdensomeCount
Singapore is the only country that learned the correct lessons from the British Empire.
2mo ago
This is ahistorical. Back then they didn't have seedless watermelons.
BurdensomeCount
Singapore is the only country that learned the correct lessons from the British Empire.
2mo ago
An alternative punishment could be requiring a two page essay on rule-following
LLM go brrrr...
Interesting you say that, because I as an actual practicing muslim (and coethnic) would far rather have the current batch of western elites over the literal Taliban ruling the place.
Sharia law really isn't something you want in the modern world. The prohibitions on interest alone would destroy the economy far worse than what current elites are doing by not listening to economists/giving in to populists.
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