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DuplexFields

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

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DuplexFields


								

								

								
								
								

								
							
					
 
				


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

				
				
				

				

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				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 9, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


If it is true that “God makes no mistakes” he has some very serious explaining to do in regards to why he engineers certain pregnancies to result in a fetus with half a brain, or with no lungs.




Creationists say there would be no such mistakes were Adam not to have eaten a specific delicious fruit. There would be no mutations, humans would live a thousand years even without eating the fruit of the tree of life, and T-Rexes would still be vegan to this day.


Christian evolutionists have a much simpler answer: God used the death-churn of evolution to make us, so we should have no complaints about the problem of evil/suffering.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 19, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
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.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for May 2, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Happy May the Fourth! Here’s a scene Grok wrote for me from Galen Erso, architect of the Death Star, in the style of (and with the morals of) Ayn Rand. I made a few tweaks here and there for accuracy and to emphasize certain points. May the Force be with you.




My mind is my own, and no force in the galaxy can claim it. The Empire, with its blasters and its threats, its bureaucrats and its banners, believes it can chain a man’s reason to its will. They took my body, dragged me from Lah’mu’s quiet fields, murdered Lyra, and held Jyn’s shadow over me like a blade. They thought they could seize my intellect, bend it to their machine of death. Fools. They do not understand the nature of a mind that creates. They cannot fathom the fire that burns in a man who knows his own worth. I am Galen Erso, and my mind is not theirs to command—it is mine, inviolate, eternal.


In the sterile halls of Eadu, surrounded by the timid and the compromised, I labored under their gaze. They demanded a weapon, a Death Star, a monument to their collectivist nightmare—a machine to crush the individual beneath the weight of fear. They could have built it without me eventually, with blood-thirsty sycophants managing the output of scientific minds cowed by fear. They thought my equations, my crystals, my genius would serve their purpose more quickly, and they were right.


But purpose is not theirs to dictate. Purpose is the province of the creator, the man who thinks, who dares to see beyond the violent herd’s clamor. They gave me kyber, the heart of the stars, and expected me to forge a club for their brutality. Instead, I wove a trap. In the reactor’s core, I hid my truth: a single exhaust port, unshielded, able to cause reactor overpressure; a whisper of defiance that could bring their monstrosity crashing down. This was not sabotage—it was justice. It was the assertion of my right to create, to define the terms of my work, to refuse their perversion of my mind’s fire.


Let them parade their TIE fighters and their Moffs. Let Krennic strut with his cape and his lies. They are nothing—parasites who produce no value, who exist only to steal the creations of better men. I saw their world, a galaxy of gray submission, where the individual is ground to dust for the sake of their “order.”


I will not kneel. I will not let my work, my reason, my life’s essence, be twisted into their instrument of enslavement. The flaw I built is my signature, my declaration that no man’s mind can be forced to betray itself. If the Rebellion finds it, if Jyn carries my spark, they will strike the blow I could not. And when the Death Star burns, it will be my mind—free, unbowed, triumphant—that lights the flame.


They thought they could break me with threats, with loss. But a man who knows his own value cannot be broken. My love for Lyra, for Jyn, is not their weapon—it is my strength, my reason to fight. I am no martyr, no sacrificial lamb for their altar. I am a creator, and I have chosen my stand. The Empire may take my life, but they will never take my soul. In that reactor flaw, I have carved my freedom, my truth, my self. Let them build their empires on the ashes of others. I have built my own monument, and it will outlast them all.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for March 7, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
(I wrote a better version of this answer, but the web ate it when I accidentally reloaded the page. Oof.)


I saw what I now call Triessentialism first in a passage which many scholars say was not in the original manuscript but was added by a later hand due to tradition: the doxology of the Lord's Prayer in Matthew 6.




For Thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.




I had been pondering the make-up of man, what the heck the "spirit" and the "soul" are and how they're differentiated, and "where" they are in relation to each other in the body in a Christian ontology. I'd also been thinking the idea that emotion and logic are as fundamentally different from each other as are the material world and the immutable laws of logic. (You can't hold a "two" in your hand, nor burn a "deduction" to release warmth.)


It was while pondering the differences between the three ontological categories that I realized this distinction was also present in the doxology. My reasoning?


    

  • We see the power of God mostly in the Old Testament where God the Father acted with great power on behalf of His chosen people
    • 

  • The word "spirit" is usually used for emotions instead of supernatural beings in everyday life ("the spirit of Christmas" and such) and glory is about our emotions when beholding God
    • 

  • The best king would be someone omniscient: infinitely intelligent, infinitely wise, and who knows everything.
    • 



So I identified the power as belonging to God the Father, the glory to the Holy Spirit, and the kingdom to the Son. (Of course, all three Persons have power and glory, and God is rightfully sovereign over everything, so it's not a "this Person of the Godhead doesn't have X" heresy.)


Once I'd seen this pattern there, I started seeing it throughout Scripture. (I don't have the Bible where I highlighted them (highlit?) with me at the moment, and Google is being unhelpful as usual nowadays.)


So do I have more reason to identify Jesus the Son with logic, and not the Father or Spirit? Quite a lot. John described Jesus as both "the Logos"/"The Word" and "the Light." Jesus called Himself "The Way, the Truth, and the Light."


Early Christians said they were followers of "The Way," a word that means both paths and processes. Paths lead the sojourner from the origin to the destination. Processes turn intention into action. Logic is about processes and algorithms as much as it is about interactions of the descriptions of things.


In Chinese, "Tao" means "The Way" and implies "The Right Way". Logos was a Greek concept akin to the Tao: an inherent order and regulation underlying the universe. Heraclitus pioneered the concept and wrote about it in various ways, non-systematically and sometimes contradictorily as a universal consciousness or the mind of a supreme Being, but usually as a receptacle of truth. Other writers picked it up before John, but John identified the Logos as co-equal with God the Father.


Light has taken on a more fascinating meaning to me ever since I pondered waveforms as a carrier of the information of what impacted the wave's medium and holograms as a capture of that waveform. The unknown writer of the Letter to the Hebrews has some of the highest quality Greek prose in the New Testament, speaking with the precision of a programmer and the expression of a poet.




hos ōn apaugasma tēs doxēs kai charaktēr tēs hypostaseōs




"He is the radiance (apaugasma) of the glory (doxa) of God and the exact imprint (charakter) of His nature (hypostasis)..." - English Standard Version


"He is the emittance of His majesty and the hologram of His person..." - my gloss


To perfectly describe God the infinite Being would take an infinitely precise Likeness, as flawless and divine as He. To measure God would take a standard as perfect and infinite as He.


In a way, the logical measurement is the "son" of that physical thing which is measured, existing with it even if the measurement has not been read out or recorded.


The Muslim writers sometimes speak of the Quran ("The Recitation") as God's uncreated word, not something created by humankind, the ultimate revelation, existing eternally with God.




Gödel's incompleteness theorems were among the first of several closely related theorems on the limitations of formal systems. They were followed by Tarski's undefinability theorem on the formal undefinability of truth, Church's proof that Hilbert's Entscheidungsproblem is unsolvable, and Turing's theorem that there is no algorithm to solve the halting problem. - Wikipedia




Here, then, is that perfect formal logic which describes God: Jesus of Nazareth, who told the religious elites to love, and was killed for it. His resurrection is the proof of His correctness and their corruption.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 10, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
There's no fundamental difference between taxes and theft, unless it’s designed from the ground up not to be theft. And that’s what the FairTax proposal would do: remove the famous libertarian / anarchist-capitalist moral complaint against taxes. Don’t want to pay taxes? Don’t be a business owner in the great market of America.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 21, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
He also had four years of control of America’s executive branch and armed forces, at the time an exclusive club of 45 men throughout history. A quarter of Americans would willingly fight and die to return him to that control, were cheating provable. That’s riches.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 16, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I don’t know of any atheists out there saying a Mormon state is the end-goal of American Christianity, which is what would garner the equivalent response, “The Church of Mormon is a conspiracy theory.”


It would be easy, actually, to point out how the LDS church is a major driver of conservative culture, trying to match the Roman Catholic Church in cultural power through new media (Angel Studios, Glenn Beck, The Blaze, etc.). Now, build up a conspiracy theory of a group of influential and wealthy Mormons trying to bring about the White Horse Prophecy. Then check the funding of conservative candidates and PACs by Mormons, and you’ll see “evidence” for the theory everywhere you look. Easily disproved, of course, but now you’ve got the mind-worm whispering to you every time you see a Mormon involved in the culture war. (It works because of the successful othering of Mormons since their beginning, the American equivalent of the perpetually-othered Ashkenazi Jews of Europe complete with pogroms.)


But all that aside, the reason “Cultural Marxism” is denied is because most people have no clue what actual Cultural Marxism was/is. The progressive movement’s economic policy wing is rolling along on the momentum of bog-standard envy-driven collectivism, same as it ever was, grabbing and using new terminology by opportunity, not by design.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 16, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
As long as the magical wish could also prevent any government agent from having a successful shooting of an innocent, that might work. Of course, it would also lead to police just “firing” into crowds and whoever’s not “innocent” gets shot. All sorts of dystopia come into play there.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				The Philosophy of Triessentialism: An Ontology Of Values
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Problems can be classified on this four-axis model by how much or little they remove these four qualities of value from anything of value, or introduce the negative values. This is a step toward the creation of my universal problem-solving project.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				U.S. Election (Day?) 2024 Megathread
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The true black pill is that, somehow, they will claw this back. Court case, rent a mob, assassination attempt number three, something.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 10, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Perhaps a new phrase is needed: "indulgentia pro abstinendo" "Indulgence for abstaining".


Trump is the chief law enforcement official in the country, and also the top immigration enforcer per the Constitution, which gives the President the power to control immigration and repel invasions, including the power to limit or suspend entry of noncitizens. It's his purview to drop charges when Adams is flipping/informing on a colleague in corruption.


EDIT: The case against Adams is fascinating. I listened to this Lawfare Daily podcast on the case, and it sounds like the FARA law is one of those broad laws designed to cast a wide net with a miasma of interpretations. I'd like to see a huge crackdown on straw donors, but this case is obvious lawfare from the start.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 21, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
To do this, we’d need some sorting algorithm beyond “rich parents.” I propose Triessentialism, my own philosophy, as a guide for creating a sorting mechanism.


Humans are born (I theorize) with an inherent drive to understand systems, which in most neurotypicals is geared either toward understanding and manipulating the physical world or the emotional inner worlds of their fellow people.


If an autistic human develops without either of those, they instead find a system with as much internal logic and interface consistency: the train routes and engines of trainspotters, the elemental type advantages and weaknesses memorized by Pokémon fans, the logics of Aristotle or Boole, a computer language or operating system, etc.


If people with emotional, logical, and physical intuitions were catered to in their early education, and their natural deficits accounted for by society, they could find their “Michael Jordan” field much more efficiently in one of the seven Venn categoricals: Physical, Logical, Emotional, Scientific, Philosophical, Psychological, or Moral.


Of course, any such development is more likely to be a split based on a test administered by Pearson, the neurocrats underlying the psychostate, resulting in a dystopia like in the Divergent series.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 5, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I immediately imagined having to pretend I’m an anarchist (full grey tribe mode) in order to continue being a libertarian conservative (grey-red).


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 10, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Yes, good points.


Defining differentiating lines between independent contractor, commissioned producer, employee, slave, etc., is vitally important to labor relations. Often it comes down to pay structure. Are they only paid room and board (food) in exchange for labor? Slave. Are they paid a sum, part up front and part upon completion, for an artwork? Commissioned producer. Are they paid wages with 1.5x for working more than 40 hours in a week? Employee.


In a perfectly free market, or in a criminal "black market", power dynamics are more likely than negotiations between peers. The meta-market of government can, by dint of owning the market (both jurisdiction and coin), restrict the types of allowable employment, business categories, products, services, etc. This is similar to how a salon can choose to restrict its hairdresser contracts to those with certain qualifications and manners, require they follow a dress code, and kick out unruly trespassers who aren't planning on being customers.


Interestingly, the "insurance" rackets of mobs are criminal meta-markets: they keep away the rabble and the other gangs' toughs for a cut of the profits, occasional access to the shop's environs for criminal dealings, favors unspecified, etc. (As a minarchist, I prefer a republic that prevents criminal meta-markets, of course.)


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 9, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I asked Google to find me the worst Kinkade painting, and it said there was "no such data" and wouldn't I like a list of the names of his most famous works, and oh, by the way...




Kinkade's last completed painting was The Gazebo Of Prayer. He died at the age of 54 from acute intoxication from alcohol and the drug diazepam.




Wow. That hit me like a sledgehammer. Was he in physical pain? Was he tired of being bullied by the art community like the Austrian painter who had similar problems with proportion and composition? Was he mentally ill and professionally medicated? I'm sure I can find the answers, but really, I don't think I want to know.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 16, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I know the guy who developed the gravity bomb concept. Want a miles-wide chunk of Earth gone? I know which book to point you to.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 30, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I’ll agree to that as soon as advocates for these people return the unadorned word “immigrant” to its rightful place as a synonym of “naturalized citizen”.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 16, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
“I can no longer sit back and allow Communist infiltration, Communist indoctrination, Communist subversion and the international Communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids.” - Gen. Ripper


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 16, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


every privately owned gun




“Looks like tyranny’s back on the menu, boys!” - American politicians, bad cops, the 80,000 new armed IRS agents, etc.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				The Philosophy of Triessentialism: An Ontology Of Values
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
My Triessentialist classifications into What, How, and Why has the potential to give insight into comparative rankings of value amongst people-groups.


    

  • I expect physically intuitive people (biggest groups: men and the red tribe) to value enjoyment and agency higher than esteem and utility.
    • 

  • I expect emotionally intuitive people (biggest groups: women and the blue tribe) to value esteem and agency higher than enjoyment and utility.
    • 

  • I expect logically intuitive people (biggest groups: the grey tribe and people on the autism spectrum) to value utility and agency higher than esteem and enjoyment.
    • 



Now, that’s not to say that people don’t value their group’s “outvalues”! Everyone values all four values in most situations. That’s just human, or perhaps I should say, mammalian.


I’m saying that when one value is weighed as the cost of another value, such as giving up tasty food to lose weight, gain status, and retain health (gain utility and agency), people who categorically prefer one value will devalue the others in their economic calculations.


They’re also more likely to see agency in terms of their preferred value: enjoyment, esteem, or utility being the true end for which agency exists as a means.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for July 28, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
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?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 23, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Ooh, the unpleasantness jittery fuzz of felt versus the soothingly orderly corrugation of corduroy. Tags have never bothered me, but I used to have to cover my ears at basketball games. (To be fair, UNM’s B-ball arena “The Pit” is famously loud.)


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 2, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
What drew me into the FairTax at first were the end to FICA and the concept of permanent untaxed ownership. Since then, the more I compare it with other revenue collection methods, I haven’t found anything I’d characterize as a poison pill, or even anything I’m having to hold my nose over. I’ve only found more to love about it, practically and philosophically.


I personally haven’t run the numbers, but my parents sold the family home my dad spent his working years buying, and moved into a home they inherited. The math for making the former a rental in walking distance from the University of New Mexico campus, one of the highest occupancy areas of town, wouldn’t work out considering upkeep and repairs, a property management company, property taxes, income taxes, and the accountant they’d have to hire at least the first year to add rent to their income taxes. If the FairTax were enacted, they’d pay a simple 23% out of their renters’ check each month. It would be clean income after that, no profit/loss calculations messing up their Social Security, and no worrying about the next administration making their lives hell for 3% in the polls.


Your question 1, “am I [to assume] this tax policy will make people tilt even harder towards ownership vs rental?” I have a feeling this is so. I’ve always understood home ownership to be a part of the American Dream which (question 2) society is invested in encouraging. In America, every citizen is a nobleman, and his home should be his estate.


The most disordered people I know have been lifelong renters. An “efficiency” apartment is an abomination, a box built to impart pain and despair, but even the townhome apartment one of my best friends had stank of fear and giving up. And with vulture capital buying up complexes, it’s an even worse situation.


But aside from philosophical and psychological ideals, I’m sensitive to structural inequality. There’s a point to be made about giving everyone slack at once, not just one class. My gut says the slack is to be found in ensuring owners of second homes are renting them long-term to families that want to escape apartment life instead of renting them as Vrbos and Airbnbs. It seems abominable to me that hotels are long-stay while houses sit empty three out of seven days a week.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 2, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Let me add a thought experiment: what would be the effect on the housing market were all rental property owners exempted from the portion of income tax derived from renting? Grok suggests three outcomes:


    

  • Grey Tribe: Tax exemptions for rental property owners would incentivize investment, increasing rental supply and potentially lowering rents. However, it might inflate property prices as demand for investment properties rises.
    • 

  • Blue Tribe: The policy could exacerbate inequality, favoring wealthy landlords while offering no relief to renters or low-income homeowners, potentially widening the wealth gap.
    • 

  • Red Tribe: Exempting landlords from income tax might destabilize public finances, reducing funds for community services like infrastructure, which could harm housing market stability and neighborhood quality.
    • 



Distorting the market in favor of “necessary” goods usually ends up with those goods costing just as much, other goods costing more, and inequality rising. That’s the primary reason the FairTax has no loopholes for housing, food, or medicine, just a flat pre-calculated rebate that makes governance effectively free for people at or below the poverty line.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of June 2, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Second buyer doesn't get taxed on the appreciation; the developer pays FairTax out of the first “retail” sale if the first sale occurs after the FairTax is legislated into existence, otherwise the govt. already got embedded taxes a myriad of ways. Sell at a loss, the govt. doesn’t pay anything.


As a renter, you’re already paying the income taxes of your landlord and property mgmt company’s hirelings, embedded in the price of your rent, similar to “utilities included”. This is a market distortion which is expected to be compensated for by rentals dropping 23% and then having the 23% added back in (30% exclusive) on the receipt as FairTax.


Used homes not being FairTaxed (except renovation/remodel costs) is a philosophical reward similar to owning DVDs costing less than renting them a dozen times or paying streaming and rarely watching. Besides, the homeowner will be paying FairTax on everything they’ll use for upkeep in the future.