ControlsFreak
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User ID: 1422
My sense from reading court documents (some interesting 4A law) is that just getting access to some CP is not all that hard. What is prized/valued in those communities is new CP, which does inherently involve new victimization. Warrant applications will say that they found such-and-such a server, and it had some 'examples' accessible on the surface, but you were required to upload new material that wasn't in their database already in order to get an account to access the rest of what they had. Moreover, you had to keep uploading new material every so often to maintain your account.
It seems that having this be inherently valued has a two-fold purpose for that community. First, it creates a direct incentive for people to become producers. Second, it serves as a 'law-enforcement filter', adding an additional layer of difficulty for law-enforcement to gain deeper access to the site. The unfortunate side-effect is that I don't get the sense that people are making large quantities of currency money by producing CP; they're instead gaining status and access in their tiny little community.
One of the main questions is to what extent this community value is dependent on the current size of the pool. They seem to like "new" and have these reasons other than the actual pool size to value it. I've seen some pretty large numbers in court documents about how big some of their pools are. Perhaps some of those numbers are somehow fudged (like how they talk about 'street value' of drugs seized), but it doesn't seem like the currently large pools that these folks are able to manage getting access to has yet become a serious impediment to them continuing to promote a local cultural value of "new".
I don't know for sure the mechanics behind how they manage to verify "new", but just from background knowledge of tech, I sort of have to imagine that AI gen is a much more serious threat to this local cultural value than just plopping up a Megaupload.
ControlsFreak
2yr ago
I don't know what state they were in at the time. I knew them well after the deed was done, but she said that she definitely had to sign. I'm maybe a little less confident now that it was a legal requirement rather than doctor-driven, but I can't really tell. Search is broken in 2024, especially when looking for good history. ChatGPT seems to think some states had such laws into the ~60s/70s (and its suggestions would jive with my guess of where my friends probably lived back in the day). Maybe it's hallucinations all the way down...
As I've written before here, the Violinist Argument does a very poor job, gets intentionality exactly backwards, and mostly serves to trigger people's disgust response at a secret cabal of shadowy figures being allowed to kidnap innocent, unrelated individuals in order to strap them to a machine and 'suck the life force out of them'. Zero percent of people are capable of suspending their disbelief enough to actually imagine that you "just wake up" one day and some random process of the universe put you in that situation. As such, it actually tells us very little about how people view bodily autonomy.
My preferred analogy is rock climbing. When two people go rock climbing, they intend to have a little fun. They 'hook up', using the best safety equipment possible, intending to make the probability of an issue be as low as possible. But Murphy's law happens, snake eyes come up, and your partner ends up dangling at the end of a rope attached to you. Maybe that rope is causing you a little discomfort; maybe it's threatening minor rope burn; maybe it's threatening one of your limbs; maybe it's threatening your life. Lots of possible variations to handle a variety of scenarios people want for abortion. I don't think people are nearly as likely to say that you can choose to pull out your pocket knife and intentionally cut the rope, knowing that it will surely lead to your partner's death, completely regardless of what the danger is, all the way to the case where there is literally no real danger, just that they are relying on you to not cut the rope. This gets intentionality the right way 'round and also neatly handles the question of contraceptive use to reduce the probability of the undesired outcome, as well as the question of danger to the physical body of the woman. This should be an easy bullet to bite for any people who think they genuinely hold an extremely strong view of bodily autonomy.
ControlsFreak
2yr ago
A man can absolutely get a vasectomy without his partner's approval or knowledge
This was not always true. I personally know a couple where the wife had to sign paperwork in order for her husband to legally get a vasectomy.
Society really used to treat marriage differently than we do today.
ControlsFreak
2yr ago
People are taking Trump seriously as a threat.
I mean, maybe? I imagine that for a lot of people who only have a surface view of politics, the narrative on Trump has moved from 'he's going to put black people back in chains' to 'he seems weird'. That's quite a shift in how big of a threat he is.
ControlsFreak
2yr ago
This reminds me of Matt Levine's observations on net worth calculations. Own a small business (maybe you're even the only employee) that made $200k last year? Well, we're going to assume it will continue to make $200k/yr for some number of years, do a net present value calculation, and blam, your net worth is however many million. You're a lawyer who works for The Man and makes $200k/yr? Whaddya got in the bank? That's your net worth.
suppress overall demand for goods and services
Possibly so, similar to how income taxes suppress overall income. I guess whether this is a good thing might depend on how one feels about vague things like "consumer culture".
might lead to government subsidy of "core" goods and services
I don't see why this would be the case. What would be the set of "core" goods and services in question?
Consumption and consumer behavior is how prices are discovered and demand signals are captured. I don't know how you'd do it otherwise. Investment is good, but you have to eventually invest in a company that makes sales.
Sure. I can't imagine consumption would go to zero, just like how income doesn't go to zero just because we tax it. People still want to earn income and consume stuff. Both income and consumption taxes have some distortionary effects and suppress some amount of things that we like... but a consumption tax just does it all slightly better. I think a shift from income to consumption tax would have, as they say, marginal effects for most people. On the low income end of the spectrum, the rate is likely to be quite low, but it may provide a small nudge for such people to think about saving a bit more (which is often good for them, individually). This should be a positive for anyone who is worried about poor people not having a lot in savings to get through the occasional tough time.
Most importantly, for people who are concerned specifically about the opulent consumption of the super wealthy, this should be incredibly appealing. If anything, it's great for figuring out which people actually care about extreme consumption inequality (who should be totally fine with investment that helps everyone)... and which mostly just hate rich people generally and want to stick it to them.
ControlsFreak
2yr ago
There might still be some scope issues for me, personally. I'm thinking about my family. I don't think there's anything all that wrong with trying to impress upon a spouse/child, "You don't want to associate with that person; here's why." I mostly don't go beyond anything like that.
Another area that might be hazy is whether you're avoiding a specific person or a group. I had a friend once invite me to what was clearly an MLM scheme that they had just started to get into (they jettisoned it not long later, thankfully). I sort of tried to convince them that (implicitly) it wasn't a good group to associate with, but focused on the reasons why I didn't think it made business sense to do (framed as reasons why it didn't make sense for me, trying to soften it with, "...if someone else has these characteristics, maybe..."). This makes me sort of feel in my bones the value of people just blasting to everyone, "MLMs are bad, here's why, and you shouldn't get involved with these specific MLMs," but I can also see how this opens the door to some pretty big conceptual tensions.
ControlsFreak
2yr ago
The typical proposal for something like this is call a "consumption tax", using the economics definition of "consumption". Though, my understanding is that most proposals either just put it all into a form of sales tax or have something of an "implied consumption", where the calculation is just income minus investment/savings, where it's implied that you've used the rest on some sort of consumption. This is a simplification that has some edge cases, but it makes the calculation problem a lot simpler. It's still slightly more complicated than an income tax, because you have to include information from your various financial institutions about how much net new investment/savings you had in that year. You're probably getting a tax document from all these people, anyway, since they're taxing interest/cap gains, but they'd basically have to include this number, too.
The justification for such a tax regime is pretty much exactly what you've hit on. First, if what people actually care about for inequality is that some people can consume obscene amounts of things, then it makes sense to just tax that directly; we mostly don't care if some money sits in an investment account in perpetuity. Even if it is inherited, why would you care, except to the extent that those heirs are using it for consumption? Secondly, economists believe pretty strongly that investment/savings in capital is an important component of increasing GDP (super simple example here), and so people should be perfectly happy to incentivize investment/savings. Every dollar that you save, even in your bank account, makes the cost of capital 'cheaper' for a potential new product to be developed, improving the lives of everyone. So, if we want a rich society with cool stuff that people can consume, it's good to incentivize investment and not care if some baron has a billion dollars invested in an account somewhere, providing this capital. And if we want to make sure that people maybe moderate their consumption at least a little bit rather than going all out with opulent displays of consumption, it seems more palatable to just directly tax consumption, perhaps quite progressively.
ControlsFreak
2yr ago
America had public ballots up until the 1890's
I've told the story of the "Australian ballot" here before:
When Australia was colonized by the Brits, they used it as a penal colony. Of course, they didn't go full Lord of the Flies with the convicts, but sent good, upstanding Brits to run the place and maintain good order. After serving out their sentences, many convicts did have the option of returning to Britain, but lots of them chose to stay. They were free citizens, but obviously, their jibs were cut a bit differently than the better class of good, upstanding Brits who were sent to run the place. The convicts were even free to run for elected office, and some even did. Yet somehow, confusingly, even as time went on and there were many more freed convicts than there were good, upstanding Brits, none of these convicts ever won any elections. Maybe everyone just realized that it was better if good, upstanding Brits continued running the place.
Other folks disagreed, and they managed to implement the 'Australian ballot', where each individual's vote would be totally, completely secret. Suddenly, magically, freed convicts began winning elections and were able to curtail some of the
harshest abusescurious practices of the good, upstanding Brits.
The Australian Ballot was first introduced in Victoria and South Australia in 1856. Being adopted literally halfway across the world only forty years later is a testament to how compelling the idea is to solving genuine concerns.
I understand that you've had mail in voting for a decade and that you personally have not encountered any issues with it. But basically right before you got mail in voting, international pro-democracy organizations had all agreed that in-person secret voting was basically the only way to do it. If you expand your scope beyond an extremely-restricted, probably high-trust (and high-other-things) setting, there are plenty of reasons to significantly favor an actually secret ballot.
ControlsFreak
2yr ago
Oh, I'm totally aware that people tried to do that. Some were more hedged than others. Some minor academic spats happened. People mostly tried various ways to be like, "Well, we're not gonna, like, say that climate change caused caused anything (because we can't accomplish that), so we'll, like, call it a 'threat multiplier' or 'intermediate variable'."
But I guess none of that really matters, since one can so clearly see both the impact of climate change and the obvious moment of sparking the Syrian Civil War in this chart.
If you really want to rehash what is/isn't supportable for Syria/Arab Spring, we can. But in this thread, I was asking about Bangladesh. Do you have some data on Bangladesh that indicates a causal and/or primary role for climate change?
ControlsFreak
2yr ago
Obvious? As in, like, you have data sticking out in your face about the crop/fishing yields and food prices in Bangladesh leading up to the recent civil unrest? Where did you see this data? Can you point me to it?
ControlsFreak
2yr ago
If we're doing thought experiments, then I think you're missing some flexibility. Black markets and underground behavior are a typical result of heavy constraints by governments. So, while the number of units may be considered essentially fixed in your model, you'd probably see people packing 2, 4, 8, 12 people to a unit. Which, whaddya know, I feel like I've seen stories about that sorta thing going on.
But of course, that's kind of an extreme model, and I'm not really sure what your actual point is.
ControlsFreak
2yr ago
I don't have a Twitter account, so I may not be getting a proper snapshot of his recent activity; I think they only give us a weird smattering of posts from different years. Anything specific to Bangladesh?
ControlsFreak
2yr ago
Any actual evidence for any of those intermediaries? Or even just actual "people" (as in "prominent, narrative-shaping type folks in the chattering class") actually trying to argue for such a casual pathway in this case (whether or not they bring any actual evidence for the proposed intermediaries)?
Like sure, I can just imagine a billion possible causal pathways that are at least as plausible a priori, but bare a priori plausibility for something to be the case is about the most thin gruel out there.
ControlsFreak
2yr ago
Has anyone blamed it on climate change yet? There was a huge push for a while to talk about how climate change would cause a huge, worldwide refugee crisis. Bangladesh was the poster child, with maps claiming that some huge proportion of the country was going to be submersed in water. By those maps and estimates, it was by far the biggest outlier that allowed for some of the splashy-sounding numbers that were trumpeted.
I have no idea what's going on there, but I'm guessing that the country isn't submersed in water, is it?
ControlsFreak
2yr ago
Very small thing I saw today. The claim is that people are not really moving out of NY/CA/WA/DC because of housing, presumably trying to implicitly support the general zeitgeist that there's nothing wrong with extremely restrictive housing policies. Instead, it's just jobs being in different locations that is causing people to move.
...like, sure, jobs are probably always going to be a major factor, if not the major factor, but I couldn't help looking at their chart and think that their category selection is just bad. To my eye, it looks like 'For cheaper housing', 'Other housing reason', 'Wanted new or better housing', 'To establish own household', and 'Wanted to own home, not rent' are all categories that are basically subcategories of "Housing". Much more minor, I could potentially see an argument for 'For easier commute', 'Wanted a better neighborhood', and 'Foreclosure or eviction' being lumped into a general "Housing" category.
Of course, I would also think that 'Other job-related reason' and 'To look for work or lost job' could potentially be lumped in a more general "Jobs" category, and eyeballing the chart, I think a general "Jobs" category would still beat out a general "Housing" category. I think this is probably right, and jobs are probably still a stronger driver than housing, but I can't help but think if we rolled these larger categories together, the visual impact of the chart would be much different. It would be "Jobs" and "Housing" as the two absolutely dominant categories, with "Housing" not looking as far behind "Jobs" as it does here.
ControlsFreak
2yr ago
Possibly so. On the other hand, if the people "in authority", the "teachers" and "professors", are constantly and visibly completely unable to muster even the tiniest shred of plausible explanation, it eats away at any perception that they do, indeed, merit those descriptors.
ControlsFreak
2yr ago
'Black' to normies means culturally African-American and with a minimum(often literally one-drop rule) blood quantum.
If this is how you think race is supposed to work and that 'everyone knows it', then it would be highly productive to move this statement from the category of naked emperors that 'everyone knows' to the category of actual common knowledge that cannot even be implicitly denied on the pages of NYT.
ControlsFreak
2yr ago
I had been thinking about this whole shebang and wanting to formulate a comment on it, but I was struggling, probably because my brain secretly felt exactly what you write, but wasn't able to put it into words as well as you. Ultimately, I'm torn between this and what I was originally feeling/wanting to talk about.
...what I was originally feeling/wanting to talk about was that this really is prime "JUST TELL ME HOW THE FUCK RACE IS SUPPOSED TO WORK" territory. I got a feeling of that from what Trump said, and I wonder if it is at all plausible for the right to just triple down and constantly just demand that leftists actually explain how it's supposed to work. Because everyone knows it's broken. Everyone knows that it doesn't work. The emperor is truly naked. Just constantly point at the naked emperor and openly remind everyone that everyone can see that he's naked. There is example after example after example (Dolezal, Warren, the entirety of the definition of 'hispanic', etc.) Hell, I'm still remembering Trevor Noah making basically exactly this same point WRT Obama. Just over and over again say, "Why don't you tell me how this is supposed to work?" Don't tell them how you think it's supposed to work. Just ask them to explain.
They won't. They can't. They know they can't. So they're just going to go to the columns of places like the NYT and say how aghast they are that anyone would even ask the question. So ask it. Again and again and again. If Trump and however many high-profile Trumpists that he can control can bring a version of this up (hopefully a milquetoast version like, "Why don't you just tell me how you think race is supposed to work?") basically every time they have a mic in their face, the pressure of the question remaining unanswered will be glaring. Honestly, a sustained messaging campaign of, "Why don't you just tell us how you think race is supposed to work?" could be the single best... or single worst... thing to happen to race relations in this country in a while.
ControlsFreak
2yr ago
They don't say that all the old shit they're getting isn't from specific targets, either, and it's highly likely that there would be a legal objection to it if it wasn't. So again, we have either a phenomenally twisted interpretation that still involves them not wanting everything from everyone, even though they magically have legal authority to collect everything from everyone (and oh by the way, how that clashes with your general zeitgeist that they must want to collect everything from everyone)... or we can interpret it as them suddenly getting a bunch of old shit that they don't want from targets.
I'm really not sure how this supports your initial position and claims.
ControlsFreak
2yr ago
That's not in the memo, unless you're going to a maximally-NSA-contemptuous reading where you're just guessing at numbers. They pretty clearly talk about targets and targeting, with the biggest complaint being that they're getting mammoth quantities of old shit from targets. As for your reading, it says nothing of the sort. At best, you could say that maybe they were accidentally getting everything due to a technical glitch, even though they didn't want everything, were annoyed by it, and wanted to make it stop so they could focus on the current things they care about from real, actual targets. Though that would kinda clash with the clear statement that they seem to have checked and determined that it was "valid" collection, presumably under a valid legal authority. So your reading would have us believe that, rather than intentionally collecting everything from everyone, they oopsed into it, didn't want it, yet somehow also had a valid legal authority to collect everything from everyone, but apparently they weren't using this other legal authority because it would be dumb and pointless. Quite a weird position for you to have, that they don't want to collect everything from everyone, but they have legal authority to collect everything from everyone, and they happen to collect everyone in a nefarious scheme to collect everything that they don't want from everyone that they don't want it from, and yeah. This just doesn't make any sense.
I mean, if this is the only basis for your entire complaint, that you're just squinting your eyes and trying to imagine something out of this document, it's the thinnest of gruel. I'd have thought you'd have had something real to support such a strong opinion.
ControlsFreak
2yr ago
How do you know that?
ControlsFreak
2yr ago
entire email archives (metadata + text + attachments) from Yahoo
...of which customers?
I'm not actually aware of many folks that do the latter. Most presentations I've seen of why GDP is a useful number at all actually reason about GDP/capita, saying that this tends to correlate well with general living standards. Not perfectly, of course, and those folks will be quick to point out areas where it's still an imperfect measure.
I think the main argument for raw GDP would be on a national scale. Raw GDP on a national scale tends to correlate with state capacity to wage war. This obviously has its own benefits, but it's definitely a sideshow for any country that doesn't have significant security concerns. For countries that have significant security concerns, I can't imagine that any form of degrowth could possibly have much purchase.
Perhaps an argument could be made for tech development, in that having a significant pool of economic activity/capacity is an enabler. Robin Hanson is probably the closest to this, but I think his model heavily weighs just raw population, though I could imagine that if you pressed him on edge cases, he would say that some factor or threshold on GDP, GDP/capita, or something or other is potentially in play.
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