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.
8d ago
Writing prompt! Think of secret government agencies that take control of low-fantasy magic items, like Warehouse 13 or The Librarians or the warehouse in Indiana Jones.
Assume that on December 9, 1933, when King Kong died falling from the Empire State building, the Smithsonian took custody of the body and, on the orders of President Roosevelt, commissioned the creation of four enchanted monkeys paws. On December 22, Roosevelt wished on the first of 20 uncurled digits that America would be given an industrial rebirth to end the Great Depression. On the other side of the world, The Reichstag Fire Trial Verdict was acquittal of the Bulgarians, which came down against Hitler’s wishes. Furious, this ignited a fire in his heart that would soon consume all of Europe.
What other wishes have been made?
DuplexFields
Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it.
9d ago
It got me thinking once again about how viscerally negative the reaction is that certain people have to the aesthetics of cleanliness, order, and sharp dressing.
I asked here once what people mean by “fascism,” and the primary meaning was bullies in power, but I’ve since come to a definition of fascist vibes: powerful people proud of their masculinity and strength. This extends to aesthetics.
The Communist rabble of Europe admired a stylish rumpled aesthetic of the working man’s clothes, signifying how a collective of the weak can be as strong as the powerful.
The Italian Fascists contrasted this with snappy uniforms and manicured grooming, a theatrical machismo signifying the strength and power of men working together. Like the uniform bricks of a tall and impressive wall.
And like a clean and functional wall, there are people who long to do nothing more than cover it with anti-wall art. Thus the memes about the Falcons.
DuplexFields
Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it.
9d ago
Thanks! Interesting review, I’ll put the book in my queue.
DuplexFields
Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it.
9d ago
Did anyone else here watch Cloud Atlas and "get it"? For me, it helped me to comprehend systemic injustice the way social justice warriors see it. It's six interwoven stories about people locked out of freedom by systems and oppressive power.
(It didn't shift my political position; if anything, it made me more minarchist / libertarian / Objectivist-adjacent.)
DuplexFields
Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it.
9d ago
Your local nondenom Evangelical or Pentecostal Protestant doesn’t appreciate the sneer, CE. We just don’t call them exorcisms when we cast out demons and come strongly against darkness with the laying on of hands.
I’d love to see a film based on reports from the revivals at Angeles Temple when Aimee Semple McPhereson was doing the healings.
DuplexFields
Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it.
9d ago
Actual Protestant/Evangelical/Pentecostal here. Missionaries to Africa (and many other spots) widely report lots of spiritual goings-on, with “witches” being people who seek in various ways for spirits to harm others. Witches don’t like when Christians show up, because the rituals stop working.
That said, as a descendant of the Mather family, and a cousin of Increase Mather and Cotton Mather, I believe the only devilry in Salem was in the hearts of the petty spiteful accusers.
DuplexFields
Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it.
13d ago
Indeed, however it feels immutable until the processing happens that commutes it.
DuplexFields
Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it.
13d ago
Or that it’s possible psychologically for some to work through and resolve gender dysphoria (and the less well-known dysphorias and dysmorphias such as Body Integrity Dysphoria, people who feel they should be amputees).
DuplexFields
Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it.
16d ago
Kazimierz Dąbrowski's book on the labor camps of Germany, as cited in the Christianity on the Spectrum podcast, emphasized the dichotomy of the ongoing war between slaves and free men, those who have choices they can effect upon others and those who have no power to leave off working; that the poets and academics stand upon the backs of slaves to have their platforms.
This leads me to the idea that the elite class, middle class, and labor class are three qualitatively different ways to live:
- The elite are those who get the benefits of their choices, and don't have to live with their negative consequences.
- The laborers are those who don't get the benefits of their own choices but have to live with the negative consequences of the elites' choices.
- The middle class are those who get the positive benefits and negative consequences of their choices. They have to live with the negative consequences, so they make wiser choices.
The middle class must also live with the negative consequences of the choices of all others, and the laborers must live with the negative consequences of the middle class and other laborers. The elites have to deal with each others' decisions, but escape the negative consequences of the rest.
I find it important to note Dąbrowski's category of "free men" conflates the elite and the middle class. The middle class only exist in capitalism, in meritocracy. Meanwhile, socialism elevates some laborers to elites by making the middle class laborers through taxation, and Communism's pre-paradise stage elevates some laborers to elites by making all others laborers through confiscation and murder.
A functional society has more middle class, but if your society becomes so by turning another into laborers, you have become global elites. It's easy to mistake hard-working middle class for laborers, but to see the real difference, check my definitions. Note I'm not saying there's a hard-and-fast line; the middle class are those who get the bulk of positive benefits and negative consequences of their own choices.
DuplexFields
Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it.
19d ago
Aha! The misuse of the play face might be why evil clowns are terrifying: a betraying and malicious violation of the group safety mechanism. (And that mechanism misfiring or being overly precise might be why even the most benign clowns are creepy to some people.)
DuplexFields
Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it.
28d ago
That's a wild ride. Thanks for letting me know the idea's been done before; I'd never heard of that other IP before.
DuplexFields
Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it.
29d ago
Idea for future Harry Potter ratfics: House Elf is not a lowered subspecies of human, but rather a magically uplifted captive tribe of naked mole rats.
- Eusocial, going mad if they’re not allowed to serve a master.
- NMRs are kept in line by their hive’s queen by physical abuse, and House Elf masters liberally smack them about.
- Feel most at home when covered in the smells of their hive’s bodily wastes.
- Naked, or mostly.
- Dobby of the Malfoys might have been more independence-seeking as one of the few breeding studs of the House Elf Queen. Winky, however, was a typical worker and became quite distraught once she was no longer allowed to clean the Crouch family home.
This is pretty much the only way I could think of to make House Elves scientific, rather than just a metaphor for the British servant class/caste.
Per my LLM of choice, the Cost Per American (Full Footprint) of the Israel war is about $90 to $96 per person to empty Arab territories in the Levant of weapons of medium destruction, logistics chains, and terror cells, while having a surprisingly low death rate of civilians and Israeli soldiers.
Meanwhile the Ukraine war is costing $560.64 per American to empty Ukraine of non-disabled men, freeze the lines of battle as long as the money lasts, and bring the world closer to nuclear exchange. And that’s before counting the higher price of diesel fuel since the refinery bombings.
The faction of conservatives who want Ukraine to concede the lost provinces are counting utilons, and those who want Israel to stop fighting are counting hedons.
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