DuplexFields
Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it.
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User ID: 460
DuplexFields
Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it.
10mo ago
· Edited 10mo ago
One of the Bernalillo County (where Albuquerque, NM is) Republican Party’s big talking points is that the Albuquerque Public Schools district’s total budget is poorly spent by government.
Divided by pupil, the cost is a few thousand dollars more per year than tuition at Albuquerque Academy, the swankiest of our two prep high schools and the one with the biggest, showiest campus. At that price, we should be turning out Silicon Valley/Harvard/MIT-level high school grads, but we’re not.
DuplexFields
Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it.
10mo ago
Licensed fiction. I’ve probably read more Star Trek, Star Wars, movie, and video game adaptation books by volume, plus fanfiction, than original works.
DuplexFields
Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it.
10mo ago
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.
DuplexFields
Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it.
10mo ago
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.
DuplexFields
Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it.
10mo ago
I immediately imagined having to pretend I’m an anarchist (full grey tribe mode) in order to continue being a libertarian conservative (grey-red).
DuplexFields
Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it.
10mo ago
Some thoughts on self-sabotage, also known as akrasia.
People generally want to face the world with accurate perception, sound judgment, and intended actions. The product of these three things is a choice made wisely.
Not doing one of the three makes the person appear to have chosen foolishly. If one of these was not within their power, they have an excuse. If all three were within their power but they didn’t do them, they chose foolishly.
When someone is punished unjustly or out of proportion for choosing foolishly, usually by a parent, manager, or teacher, they might become a perfectionist, of either the harder-working or the avoidant perfectionist (procrastinator) types.
Perfectionism and procrastination are often seen in people who have a toxic “need to be right” impulse.
DuplexFields
Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it.
10mo ago
I’m your peer in age, approximately, but I never saw a reason to “grow out” of watching cartoons; I still enjoy them for their fun and fantasy. So do Lauren Faust, her husband Craig McCracken, their frequent collaborators Genndy Tartakovski and Rob Renzetti, and lots of other GenX and Millennial cartoon creators whose skill in the storytelling medium of 2D animation carry forward a century of tradition.
I found the MLP show when I was in deep depression, and because I still watched cartoons, I had the joy of watching the show and discussing it online to help me overcome some major difficulties in my life.
(As for “why furries,” I’ll wait for a less sneering phrasing with fewer bundled implications.)
DuplexFields
Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it.
10mo ago
Any thoughts on the “secret service agent accidentally delivered the kill shot” theory? It’s the most interesting one I’ve recently heard.
DuplexFields
Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it.
10mo ago
This sort of mirroring rarely if ever works in doing anything more than just giving more strength to the original meme.
It’s ironic that the original “weird” meme could have been easily countered with either of the two classic responses: “I’m rubber, you're glue, anything you throw at me bounces off and sticks to you,” or “I know you are, but what am I?”
Make it clear they’re using playground insults, third-grade level at best, and don't deign to rise beyond that level of seriousness with a considered and unique response.
DuplexFields
Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it.
10mo ago
The ones who would inherit the power vacuum caused by recusal would, by the same logic, need to recuse themselves, leaving nobody.
DuplexFields
Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it.
10mo ago
In shorter form, Kamala Harris’ Blackness has a lot in common with the personhood of an unborn child: it depends on who’s asking and why, and it’s a political football in the hands of a Lucy van Pelt.
DuplexFields
Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it.
10mo ago
· Edited 10mo ago
It’s not for the sake of being weird, it’s in spite of.
Generations X and Y grew up watching quality fantasy adventure comedy ensemble cartoon shows, often from Disney with the exception of Sonic the Hedgehog: Adventures of the Gummi Bears, Duck Tales, Darkwing Duck, Chip and Dale’s Rescue Rangers, Tale Spin, Goof Troop, The Mighty Ducks, and more. The fandoms of these shows endure because of the care taken with the storytelling and the high production quality. (They also tended to be incubators of furries.)
In 2010, such shows had basically gone extinct. There was the oddball Adventure Time and the “combining robot” adventure show Sym-Bionic Titan, and little else. Then The Hub channel from Hasbro debuted with My Little Pony, and fans of shows like Tale Spin or Sonic the Hedgehog recognized a return to the classic form: a quality fantasy adventure comedy ensemble cartoon show. It was not just fun, it was meaty in how enjoyable it was. Storytelling was back. It was written so parents could watch with their kids and not be secretly wishing to turn it off.
The basic premise is that a top student (nerdy, autism-coded) in an elite prep school gets sent by her mentor to a small Midwestern town to make friends with the local small business women who are vendors for the mentor’s big event: a farmer, an animal caretaker/trainer, a party planner, a dressmaker, and a crop-duster/cloud-seeder who dreams of flying with the national airshow team. They rescue the mentor when her estranged sister kidnaps her. The mentor assigns the student to learn sociology there in the town with her new friends.
Except they’re all technicolor horses (unicorns, pegasi, and “earth ponies”) in a quasi-feudal fantasy realm, the mentor is the princess alicorn (winged unicorn) who raises the sun each day, and 1/3 of the population has reality-warping magic.
And both GenX and the Millennials adored it.
DuplexFields
Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it.
10mo ago
The system is built to notice and disrupt coordination.
DuplexFields
Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it.
10mo ago
Vance had to choose his own identity when the institution of patriarchy broke down in his family and failed to give him one. I don’t think it’s cringe, given his life story as portrayed in Hillbilly Elegy.
I can think of two other circumstances treated somewhat seriously by society, beyond legal name changes and brides taking their husbands’ names.
A story trope I heard about, growing up as a GenX kid in America, was how generic Noble Savages would rename themselves following their Trial Of Manhood. I have never heard nor researched this tradition’s provenance in any particular tribe or people, but it was played straight in the Star Trek TOS novel Uhura’s Song.
Then I discovered the Internet and chose a handle or two. This one dates back to finding out My Little Pony had the answers for my autism-based lack of relational instincts.
DuplexFields
Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it.
10mo ago
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.
DuplexFields
Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it.
10mo ago
Grammar Nazis versus Grammar Commies, to coin a phrase.
DuplexFields
Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it.
10mo ago
Interesting thought: they use their gut reaction as a signal that bigoted people would be offended by it, a form of transference to resolve the cognitive dissonance.
Perhaps even a delusion where they think it’s not their feeling they’re feeling, but the psychic vibrations of people they assume are bigots.
Dave Sim’s Cerebus warned me that some people honestly believe they can read others’ minds (feelings/intentions, not thoughts/concepts), but until now, I didn’t have a model of the delusion’s mechanism.
DuplexFields
Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it.
10mo ago
I was trying to give user Plural one possible reason “it doesn't hit close enough to home for me to understand why it would be effective or offensive in either direction.”
For you, clearly it does hit home, as it does for me. But this is a rationalist space, so I’m not surprised to run into someone for whom it doesn’t.
And for the record I find it a very offensive ad.
DuplexFields
Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it.
10mo ago
It’s basically this comic/meme, intending to make conservative women feel gross when men in their lives have opinions about sexual morality.
Jon Haidt’s work on Moral Foundations Theory suggests that grey tribers don’t have instinctive moral judgments except when freedom or coercion are involved. I’m not surprised it’s not hitting here as fighting words like it did over on patriots.win when someone posted it there.
DuplexFields
Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it.
10mo ago
Impolitely:
- Pedos want marrying ages below 16.
- Creeps want marrying ages below 18.
- Prudes want a maximum age gap formula.
DuplexFields
Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it.
10mo ago
“But but but it’s not gross men like that who transition,” says the intuition of trans rights activists.
The only thing which can resolve warring noncentral fallacy accusations is statistics, and I don’t think anyone will be satisfied by the stats on “actually a gross man”/“actually a pure and innocent woman cruelly given androgens by the wrong genes and forced to age up past puberty by a patriarchal and binary system”.
DuplexFields
Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it.
10mo ago
The inherent disgust reaction is one of the most powerful emotions humans have. For some, it’s triggered by women showing their penises in locker rooms, for others it’s would-be rapists touching women’s bodies with their words.
DuplexFields
Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it.
10mo ago
Flat percent gross receipts tax with one exception: If enacted, every business pays 25% of the receipt price of goods and services directly to the federal tax authority, except for used goods. This ensures that goods from used jeans to used skyscrapers are only taxed once, ever: you buy it, it is yours to resell without government interference. This protects private property rights.
Flat universal rebate: Every citizen and legal resident gets a direct-deposit monthly rebate, 1/12 of 25% of the federal poverty income level (with certain adjustments for married, kids, etc., adjusted yearly). This dollar amount is supposed to recoup the taxation paid by the poorest, so the government doesn’t cost them a dime on net. Everyone gets an identical flat amount, rich or poor, a true national dividend. This can even benefit the unbanked, who can get a checking/savings account due to the guaranteed nature of the deposit. This makes it fair.
Ends FICA payroll withholding: Income tax is eliminated permanently and the income tax amendment repealed. FICA withholding is replaced with a one-time downward wage adjustment equivalent to the FICA calculation, whereupon workers get their full contractual wages with no taxation, no April 15, and no fear of the taxman ever again. This ends government intrusion.
Ends the IRS: Replaces a unionized bureaucracy/federal revenue police force/retirement fund for bureaucrats with an automated system and a much smaller revenue enforcement bureau aimed solely at businesses. This yields cost savings for every taxpayer in every bracket, while keeping the plan a revenue neutral replacement for income taxes.
Ends investment taxes: This encourages people to invest without fear of jail or penalties.
DuplexFields
Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it.
10mo ago
I’d been letting my Motte replies stack up in my inbox, so I just cleared the reply counter and reduced that attention debt to zero. Did anyone have any lingering thing they wanted me to address?
I’d like to register my disgust with this definition.
Civic nationalism, the choice to become an American through the legal naturalization process, is as fundamentally American as birthright citizenship. As long as my neighbors have come in through the front door, or were born on this land, I welcome them as my cousins.
If someone rejects America while living here, as many WEIRD socialists do, they are to me as alien as the person who snuck in under cover of night.
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