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DuplexFields

Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it.

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joined 2022 September 05 05:51:34 UTC
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DuplexFields


								

								

								
								
								

								
							
					
 
				


				
Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it.

				
				
				

				

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					joined 2022 September 05 05:51:34 UTC
				


				
					

					
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				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 10, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
In my attempts to turn Triessentialism from "noticing an interesting pattern" into "a viable philosophy for life and business," I've recognized possession of things and territory as part of the vertebrate brain's instinctual ontology. It's so powerful and human an instinct that the only thing which does more damage than following it is trying to squash it entirely. (See the history of socialism.)


Possession, linguistically, indicates a relationship, not specifically ownership. Its default use as an indication of ownership is a sign of the power of the proprietary instinct. C.S. Lewis wrote in The Screwtape Letters about demonic tempters who are quite keen psychologists and studiers of the human condition in their quest to gain souls for their "Father Below." One passage on linguistics has always stuck with me and has shaped my view on ownership:




We produce this sense of ownership not only by pride but by confusion. We teach them not to notice the difference sense of the possessive pronoun - the finely grade differences that run from 'my boots' through 'my dog', 'my servant', 'my wife', 'my father', 'my master' and 'my country', to 'my God'. They can be taught to reduce all these senses to that of 'my boots', the 'my' of ownership.




I've written elsewhere about my ontology of values: utility, experiences, status, and agency. Everything someone values as a possession (or makes an object of commerce) conveys at least one of these four values. Possession of land conveys the status of landowner which fulfills the deep-seated mammalian need for territory, makes experiences on that land relatively controllable, and enables both utility (toward goals) and agency (control). It is seen as something to pass down to one's heirs. Ownership of land (as with any owned thing) can also convey the four debts: hassle, bad experiences, negative status, and loss of other choices.


I have concluded that legally recognizing this instinctual reality is a societal good.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for March 7, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Also, there’s a chance Santa Claus will slap you.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 24, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Does a section of the city commonly called “the warzone” and officially termed “The International District” count as “an area of effect anti-regeneration ward”?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Speechcraft and Pithiness: Give your tips here
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I’ve started using the buzzing G sound from “menagerie”.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 10, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
If I go into Walmart and text someone to come buy something from me there, Walmart is within its rights to have me ejected, and my customer. Why? Because it's their space. Similarly, if I arrange with a barber to meet her at the local Supercuts where he isn't one of their barbers, they'd tell both of us to leave, and if we didn't, call the police. This is a "threat of violence" which is fully justified by the property rights of the business. I assume you consider these "the collective coercion of justice" too, along with the very idea of property rights?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 16, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Another thought:




But in that era, nobody thought of this as a disease.




Psychological (software) and psychiatric (hardware) illnesses have historically been downplayed because of their invisibility. People fell through the cracks and died, or were caught in the social safety net and were institutionalized and forgotten. Nikola Tesla, inventor of radio, AC power, and the electric motor died penniless in a hotel where he kept pigeons in a coop. He was hailed as a great man, but had he known about his autism, he might have been even greater.


(The best explanation I’ve hear for Franz Kafka’s “The Metamorphosis” is that Gregor Samsa woke up disabled one morning, and the bug thing is just a metaphor for dehumanization and dependency.)


It’s actually a good thing the rates are going up because, assuming there’s no actual rise in incidence, they’ll get care because the medical industry has got a profit motive to provide them care.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Tinker Tuesday for December 31, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I'm always working on philosophical meanderings for storytelling and sensemaking purposes, and this one's a doozy -- though not related to Triessentialism, so posting it here instead of my TE thread.


I've been fascinated for a while by the concept of waves: why were sci-fi writers of the 30's through the 70's so fascinated by waves, rays, and beams? Think of how Captain America was not just injected with a serum but also bathed in "vita-rays". Why did they imbue them narratively with almost magical powers? (I've since realized it's just the evolution of technobabble, and "quantum" has taken the place of "waves". But I digress.)


But this focus on waves was also present in real science. What are 3d waves like, in contrast to the simplified 2D diagrams in all the science books? What does it even mean that light and matter have wave-particle duality? The interference patterns of the double-slit experiment are fascinating, but what's the physical reality behind it all? There was always something missing, something on the edge of thought which made waves a slippery concept for me.


At some point, I had an epiphany: waves are a copy of the shape of a thing impacting a medium, propagating through the medium.


Consider a diver, executing a flawless front dive with pike. When she hits the water, she displaces the water around her, carving a 3D tunnel through the water which collapses around her as the gravity returns the water to its lowest local energy state. The wave propagates outward, its shape initially precisely mirroring her shape as it touches the water. As the wavefronts of different continuous impacts of parts of her body interfere with each other, the shape becomes muddled, approximate, and eventually the shape is lost, having averaged out to a circle through this entropy.


Consider a metal cube touching the surface of a still pool. The cube makes a square wave on the surface, which quickly becomes a round wave the further it is from directly touching the cube.


Consider a hologram, a 3D recording of a laser wavefront on a special kind of film substrate. What's captured is multiple perspectives, continuously, simultaneously, and analog. Holograms have always seemed like science magic to me, but now they make a bit more sense.


But that wasn't the doozy! I've recently been considering how systems tend to lose focus on their original purpose and turn into simulacra of what they had been.


Consider problem-solving organizations. Whether that's a system of government, a system of commerce, or a charity with a specific goal, without constant refinement or straight-up replacement, they regularly become jobs programs focusing on makework.


Consider computer operating systems which start out with purpose and clarity, but through the entropy of installations and uninstallations, become slow and befuddled.


Here's the doozy: while a focus on entropy or on individual failures in systems may be useful in modeling them, it may also be useful to model them as waves with interference. Initially, the solutions are shaped by the problems, But over time, additional concerns will round the sharp problem-conformed edges of the solutions.


This suggests what's needed for a sustainable problem-solving system is not a problem-conforming entropic wave, but a solution-propagating wave, like a flute's finely designed and well-played sound waves creating a melody.


Hm. I need to read John Gall's Systemantics. I've heard that it may shed some light on how systems fail and why replacing them is easier than fixing them.


Parting thought: an answer and its question shape each other. ("Why? Because." "How? Thus." "What? This.") But is the answer a wavefront of its question, or the other way around? Hm.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 28, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Sounds like the system wanted to make an example of P'Nut.


Like Bill Foster's wife's divorce lawyer made an example of him in "Falling Down".


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 11, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Thanks! That's a high compliment on a sensemaking forum.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 16, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
“Might work” only in the limited scope that reply chain was talking about. There are innumerable reasons for private citizens to remain armed, as you’ve enumerated with excellence.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Triessentialism: My Post-Objectivist, Re-Modernist Philosophy
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Linkback to a new Triessentialism post: An Ontology of Values


TLDR: the four qualities or axes of value are Agency, Utility, Experience, and Esteem.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 12, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I’m an individualist American, an objectivist libertarian, and well versed in Western mental health models. This informs my Christianity that I should strive for health as one of my highest utility functions, and suicide outside of martyrdom is one of the unhealthiest acts I can perform.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 12, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


A speedy decapitation is the least barbaric method I can conceive of.




Skydiving without a parachute has always been my preferred autoeuthanistic endeavor, though as a Christian I am honor-bound never to do such.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for August 2, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Any thoughts on the “secret service agent accidentally delivered the kill shot” theory? It’s the most interesting one I’ve recently heard.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 29, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
It does sorta go off the rails because he went off his rocker, and meanders while he parodies genres, but the arc prior to 200 is a solid run and 200-250 are fantastic, some of his most memorable. The third- and second-to-last phone books are heartbreaking. The final one is 60% text, but worth it for the self-reflective nature of Dave losing it once more vs Cerebus losing it. The final issue is stupendous.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 10, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
FairTax as the fairest tax


The concept of a market as a business fascinates me. It's a business that's a container for other businesses.


The ur-example is a hair salon in a strip mall (business apartment). The manager of this strip mall business (who may or may not be the proprietor/owner of the business) rents one of the suites to the proprietor of this salon. The salon in turn furnishes each of the salon booths and rents them to the individual hairdressers, each one an independent contractor. This salon has a single payment system where the money is divided between this hairdresser and the salon, but any tips you give the hairdresser are theirs to keep. (This example is not how all salons operate.)


In this example, is the hairdresser paying the salon a booth rental out of the total cost of the haircut, or is the customer paying the salon a fee for getting a haircut there instead of having the hairdresser come to her home and cut her hair in the bathroom?


I've decided it makes the most sense to call the salon's cut a "market fee", a part of the price which the customer pays but the hosted business doesn't get to keep. It's a true three-way transaction, not a pair of two-way transactions.


So how does this become a conversation about taxes?


Three simple models of taxation


Philosopher Robert Nozick famously came up with a way to philosophically justify private property in a society, but failed to find a way to justify taxes, which derive from private property, other than the sheer necessity. (His Anarchy, State, and Utopia is a magnificent book.)


    

  1. The King's Due: The king is the rightful owner of all that's in the kingdom his army protects, and so he has the right to tax your wealth as a subset of his. He makes sure to tax the wealthy more so they can't afford to raise an army against him and become the new king.
    2. 

  2. The Common Pot: The people of the community each give a share of what they all have, and usually the ones who earn more give more. This way they can pay an army to keep them safe.
    3. 

  3. The Market Fee: The country is a meta-market, paying an army to create a safe place where businesses and marketplaces can exist safely, without fear of disruption by foreign armies. They and their customers pay a portion of their economic activity to fund the army, proportional to the business they do.
    4. 



(Please note, whichever model of taxation you prefer or use internally, modern-day taxes can be seen as any or all of these. This is a simplistic philosophical model.)


In cases 1 and 2, the obligation of the nation's people to pay taxes is based on what other people want (1) or need (2), and only respects personal property if there are safeguards in place, and only while the king or the people respect those safeguards.


The FairTax is a Market Fee form of taxation which automatically respects private property by only taxing business transactions, and by allowing anyone to resell property that has already been FairTaxed once without ever paying tax on it again. It even builds in a dividend for the people, the owners of the national market, equal to the taxation they'd pay at the poverty level, making the government free on the net calculation for the poor.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 3, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


If thousands of Ukrainians are deported to Ukraine, especially if fighting is still ongoing or resumes in the near future (more likely than not given Russia's stated territorial ambitions), I wonder if this event will be remembered in the same way turning Jewish arrivals by boat prior and during WW2 is remembered.




Why (outside of naked partisan historical shaping) would turning over refugees to be press-ganged to the Eastern Front be remembered this way, but not paying for there to be an Eastern Front in the first place?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 29, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Impolitely:



				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 17, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
There’s more sanity to some of these lines than people think: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoners_of_Geography


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 9, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
From personal second-hand experience, the difference between a parent who tells another adult, "Oh, I would never strike my child!" and the parent heard uttering to their child, "Look at me right now or you are getting a spanking and going to your room!" is about twelve months.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 30, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
“The Unobservable Universe: A Paradox-Free Framework for Understanding the Universe” by Scott M. Tyson, self-published and universally shunned.


I was his friend for nearly a decade. The man was a materials scientist and helped solve cosmic ray errors in satellite electronics. Whip-smart but distractible, he was looking for a funder who wouldn’t look at his proposed experiments and think “oh God, another perpetual motion nut.”


His theories start from the concept that we got gravity wrong: instead of masses having gravity, he believes it’s more accurate to say gravities have mass. From there, he explains the Casimir effect, propulsionless motion, and free energy, but doesn’t mention in the book the possibility of gravity bombs more terrible than the Tsar Bomba.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 28, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
A fetish, or paraphilia, is traditionally a focus on a part or feature of one’s sexual partners, or oneself considered sexually, or a behavior/role. By contrast, a sexual orientation or gender preference is based in the partner’s identity, and a gender is how one’s sexual features relate to their own identity.


One can have a thumb fetish: for big thumbs, small thumbs, thumb-play, gloves, mittens, art focused on thumbs, etc. Most people would not consider the thumbed to have an orientable identity, so a fetish it remains. (I can think of two specific exceptions for that sentence.)


Features traditionally considered primary, secondary, or tertiary sexual characteristics of one sex (size and shape of genitalia, big/small breasts, long/short hair, short/tall stature, small/large hands or feet, hair color, etc.) can be immediate dealbreakers if they go against one’s typical image of their target orientation. However, they can also be fetishes, not just identifiers.


Race can be a fetish or an orientation. So can height. For people toward the middle of the bisexuality spectrum, major categories of genitalia can be fetishistic; those toward or on the edges will generally consider them orientable.


For furry fans, consult a furry scale. Everyone inside and outside of the fandom will have different opinions on what level of furriness is a furry fetish, what level is xenospecies orientation, and what level is a bestiality perversion. Levels 5 and 6 do not have thumbs. Level 6 does not have linguistic sapience.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 21, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
In 1995 when NewsRadio first aired, Trump had just lost his casinos in a billion dollar business bankruptcy. It’s wild to think Joe Garelli’s actor interviewing someone similar to billionaire radio boss Jimmy James* might be the most consequential media event of the twenty-first century.


* Jimmy James’ actor, comedian Stephen Root, refers to his character as “Trump-like” in this Uproxx intervew from 2020


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 21, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
For the sake of argument: that’s after six months of doing shoddy work at dozens of job  sites, plus however long the court cases take.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for October 13, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
In New Mexico, it’s the Hispanic and Catholic populace who haven’t twigged to the “moral party switch” and remain in the Democrats’ pocket, plus the super-progressive Santa Fe/Taos area and metropolitan white-liberal Albuquerque. Think Austin.


We’re about 60/40 blue, but our legislature obviously and deliberately gerrymanded our representatives to be all blue. (Florida countered this by gerrymandering red, and there are dozens of similar stories around the country, but I live here, I’m allowed to be salty.)