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EverythingIsFine

Well, is eventually fine

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I know what you're here for. What's his bias? Politically I at least like to think of myself as a true moderate, maybe (in US context) slightly naturally right-leaning but currently politically left-leaning if I had to be more specific.


				

User ID: 1043

EverythingIsFine

Well, is eventually fine

2 followers   follows 0 users   joined 2022 September 08 23:10:48 UTC

					

I know what you're here for. What's his bias? Politically I at least like to think of myself as a true moderate, maybe (in US context) slightly naturally right-leaning but currently politically left-leaning if I had to be more specific.


					

User ID: 1043

Hmm. I was going to disagree, but some back of envelope bayes-rule calculations actually do seem to agree I understated the case so I guess I stand corrected on that front.

Tangentially related and a bit more on-rails, but you might really like Suzerain, a sort of amalgamation of a little bit of political simulation, a bit of choose your own adventure, a bit of visual novel, and a bit of Paradox. You basically guide your country, fresh off of a lifelong dictator's one-party rule, into the sorta-democratic era, and decide if you want to be a dictator yourself, maybe a commie, maybe a capitalist pig, maybe in the middle. But it's not all country-simulation: you are you, the leader. If you promise to reform the constitution, you sort of have to follow through, unless you're savvy enough. The chief justice of the supreme court might try to bribe you at some point. Your son sometimes acts out. A cabinet member might get embroiled into an affair or a scandal. Terrorists sometimes attack. You have neighbors including one who might invade you, and a sort of cold war analogue going on internationally (where you are not one of the big dogs).

I'm not comparing with the Bidens, though. To me that's too much selection bias, of a sort, but there's more than that besides. We should compare Trump's progeny to other business magnates - the original claim from faceh was that Trump is underappreciated for having well-adjusted progeny, and I reply that no no, he's merely doing par for the course. Billionaire kids, near as I can tell, aren't poorly-adjusted all that often. Politician kids, which were lumped in the same category, are not the same category. They are in fact on the spectrum that leads toward celebrity kids, which is definitely not the same category, despite conflation in that same comment! Trump is a businessman who, in the twilight of his life, decided to be a politician (and some think didn't even fully intend to, alleging he expected to lose). That's a very different thing than a political dynasty family. And even then... you know, children of major politicians being an embarrassment is probably still the exception rather than the rule.

I think you’re going from the wrong assumption here. Kids and grandkids of Trump have much more in common with stereotypical children of wealth than they do children of celebrities. Confusing the two is a common mistake, but they are extremely different. A child of wealth learns that they have a parachute if they screw up. A child of celebrities learns that attention = survival, and are clearly poised to learn counterproductive lessons.

Speaking of children of politicians as a sort of weird third category doesn’t make sense. Either they are kids of the attention seeking variety (where some craziness is expected) or wealth (where they largely turn out fine). And I think you far oversell the number of crazy kids of wealth. Now I grant you part of that is wealth does better at hiding even after being busted for something (eg the children of the Reuters guy and their nanny). Despite that it’s impressive how relatively few wealthy kid screwups there are.

He must have been working on it a while. Feels like it's been actually over a month since we had an actually good post? Maybe it's just me

Salary load can be notable in some industries, but I think it only rarely takes down entire companies (more than capable of causing problems on a per-location basis of course) because it's not often actually the biggest cost on the balance sheet (just the most "controllable" which is why so many emphasize it a lot). It is pretty "sticky" though, so it can compound otherwise controllable problems when a major financial shock happens (this has happened to a few airlines, for example). That's not quite a single point of failure, though it might depend on how you parse the question.

The big thing to note is how the problem used to be worse when pensions were a thing. Many, many companies would go down because they didn't have enough in the bank earning investment return to cover pensions and didn't have enough from revenue to pay it either. Part of why so many companies dropped pensions in favor of the 401K as soon as they could. But even then, you'd still have legacy stuff - GM in 2009 comes to mind, Wikipedia says "For each active worker at GM [in 2006], there were 3.8 retirees or dependents in 2006". Yikes.

The other failure mode is start-ups who hire too much too fast, but that's not really what we're talking about.

Right, I did mean to mention how Cuomo was basically hiding because he was so sure the name-ID and perceived experience/steady hand/moderation would carry him, but I forgot. But to be honest, usually that strategy works! Also, great point about heat, I did see that mentioned in the lead-up as something that would hurt Cuomo, who is stronger with older folks. Will have to wait for numbers to see how much of a difference that may or may not have made.

Despite thinking Mamdani's (general) election to office would be a disaster, I'm encouraged. I absolutely hate political dynasties, despite thinking they often result in decent governance. One of the few exceptions to my rule, along with poor personal judgement of the candidate. Cuomo basically illustrates that dilemma perfectly: exactly the kind of establishment figure even an avowed moderate, "the establishment actually kind of works" person like myself would normally favor, but where my hate for dynastic figures and corrupt individuals overpowers what would normally be my main interest. I would definitely be a Brad Lander voter (maybe a Mamdani 2, followed by blanks?) though this is double moot because first I don't live in NYC/don't intend to ever, but secondly locally still refuse to register with a party even in my own area, so I'm not ever voting in primaries anyways. Is this somewhat contradictory with my position as a pragmatic moderate who thinks working within the system is almost always the best choice? Yes, for sure, but I like to think I more than offset that by actually volunteering for campaigns (usually state, occasionally local, seldom national) with some regularity. I do sometimes wonder how many people actually to fit in my same boat, though. Probably not many. Though the electorate is far more diverse than most pundits give it credit for, so less-predictable people like me (but on different issues than mine) I think are more then norm than party-line types.

Vans or, it must be pointed out, it's pretty darn common for a pickup truck to have one of those pop-up covers (some of them extremely stock or permanent-looking). I'd say the actual contractors get a nice cover more often than a van, especially if it doubles as a personal vehicle. True minivans are basically reserved for secondhand purchases by the illegal immigrant.

Oregon: Ask the locals where the good tidepools are at! Washington has some, but there are some great ones in Oregon too, and poking sea anemones is never not fun. Also, dress WARM, and prepared for rain just in case. The beach is often cold (and windy), though not always; the water is always super-cold, wetsuit territory, suitable for "how long can you stay in" competitions. Kites are fun for the wind! And the scenery is pretty, and you can still do sand castle things if that's your jam. Speaking of wind, if you want to try wind or kite surfing and are in the right spot, the Columbia gorge has some of the best in the whole world, but there are a few places on the coast that do it too. And yeah, of course there are great hikes everywhere, including waterfalls.

The traditional argument is that US voting systems are mostly first-past-the-post (aka FPTP, single winners on plurality), and this naturally creates a two-party system due to fears about third parties just being spoilers/wasted votes (see Duverger's Law for the poli-sci theorizing). However, there is a counter-argument in that some other countries did not turn out this way despite similar voting systems, like Canada or India (for now). The traditional answer to that is that the US selects a president directly, while the PM can be chosen via some more indirect process. This is on purpose! Historically, although Parliament was kinda-sorta democratic, there was this weird interplay with the King. Baby America vehemently hated kings, and was trying to challenge the whole idea altogether! A directly-elected president is the ultimate rejection of a king-model. The modern reality of directly elected presidents being more powerful than confidence-of-Parliament heads of state was a bit unforeseen.

However, I want to make a different appeal, beyond structure: it might just be the way history shakes out! Remember the US is inventing representative democracy almost from scratch! Now-common ideas like political parties weren't even concepts yet, much less actual practice. The specifics of history have had very strong impacts on how the vote has gone. The first two pseudo-parties formed pretty early on over a mix of national vs state power, with a dash of foreign policy disagreement, pretty natural. One collapses and you get a brief mega-party period. Then Jackson shows up and is Trump-level controversial, setting up Democrats vs Whigs, partly stylistic but economics plays a big role here, and this starts to create more noticeable party-level mechanics as well (beyond voting blocs, you start getting them more involved in vote-getting, persuasion, and financing). Worth noting that at this point voting also starts to expand to non-property owners. Slavery eventually guts the Whigs a bit more than the Democrats, and you almost get a three-party scenario developing, or even a four-party one. It was probably the most likely electoral outcome for a while!

...and then a literal Civil War happens instead of waiting to let elections resolve things. At the end of which, you get two parties again, and surprise surprise for a while these line up neatly with the boundaries of the two actual contenders of the war. And yes, one of the two (the winner) is more powerful for a while. Also, every time an international war happens, you tend to get dominance by a party in the nationalist afterglow (sometimes backlash), and the US has had semi-regular wars. Since then, many of the issues have been packaged in such a binary way that arguably the "need" for a third party wasn't super strong. There's an interesting scenario where the Civil War doesn't happen and you do get some more regional powers competing, maybe even forming individual parties. However, circling back to one part of the "structure" argument: only one person can win the Presidency outright, otherwise the decision goes to the House. This happened, but was messy and unpredictable, so no one really wanted that to happen again. And remember, the president is increasingly powerful, and drives the big issues in politics, rather than reflects it! So there's motivation for regions to group together if only for convenience.

Since the US was first, many other democracies formed since then sometimes deliberately structure their democracies to be multi-party, such as via proportional representation or so such. Historically, though, again the US was first, so not only was our system the only one in town, but parties had to be "invented"! It took like 40 years for them to start to take shape, and the issues that became big deals in the US were also often of a very specific flavor: how to use the national apparatus to help specific local regions. Thus state-level and national politics are very intertwined. Also, due to the historical structure of state government, as well as state loyalty and identity, municipal power would very rarely be competitive with state power, so those elections were often done in tandem. And national issues almost historically have very often driven voting enthusiasm more than municipal issues (!!), so splinters in local approaches within one party almost never lead to local-only splinter parties. Furthermore, state and national candidates have to come from somewhere! If you have ambitions to be a bigger fish, why would you join a smaller party? I buried a lede for voting expansion in the earlier paragraph. It's my (weak) understanding that some important "third-party" groups in Canada formed in the aftermath of increasing suffrage. In the US, these new constituencies were often rapidly absorbed.

India is the other major counter-example of the FPTP theory. Duverger notes that FPTP works on a district-level, and this is low-key the case in India. However, India has also had extreme local social, religious, and economic stratification! This pairs with fewer major wars and international crises (we are in the post-WWII era exclusively, remember), which also means that there are fewer overpowering national questions. To some extent, there is economic motivation to create more national party-coalition blocs, but local identity politics is very strong to this date. While in the recent decade the BJP is showing early signs of a dominant party, it is yet to be seen if and how that might trickle down to state and municipal contests. Finally, India has a president, but they are also chosen indirectly, and are mostly ceremonial, but it's still worth pointing out how they are chosen: members of parliament (!) combined with locally elected leaders (!) use a secret ballot (!) of RCV-IRV ranked voting (!). The president in turn works basically like the Crown does for the UK, where the PM is chosen, again indirectly, via a confidence-based coalition approach (and can lose said confidence), and then basically appoints all the top level executive branch themselves.

So in short: I'd argue history mostly, which has heavily involved the president. A typical political scientist might say it's structurally all FPTP, with the constitutional role of President being relevant as a tiebreaker. Furthermore many modern democracies deliberately construct themselves to be different than the US in some way, despite the obvious influences, so it's not really a fair comparison in the statistical-causal sense.

Per Politico, Zohran Mamdani set to topple Andrew Cuomo in NYC mayoral race, at least the Democratic primary. Live results here if that changes. The general election is in November -- Cuomo left the door open as he conceded tonight already to run as an independent; current mayor Eric Adams already is intending to run as an independent. This is nothing short of a massive political earthquake. Here's what I see as the most important questions raised:

Did ranked choice (and associated strategy) make a major difference?

We don't know yet quite how much. In percents, Mamdani leads 43.5 - 36.4 with 91% reporting as of writing, this means on Tuesday ranked-choice results will be released as he didn't clear 50% alone, since Brad Lander who cross-endorsed Mamdani has 11.4, Adrienne Adams who did not for anyone has 4.1. But it seems a foregone conclusion he will win. I'm not certain how detailed a ranked-choice result we get. Do we get full ranked choice results/anonymized data, or do we only see the final result, or do we get stage by stage? The voter-facing guide is here which I might have to peruse. I think the RCV flavor here is IRV (fewest first-place votes eliminated progressively between virtual "rounds" until one has a majority)

In terms of counterfactuals, I believe the previous Democratic primary system was 40%+ wins, under 40% led to a runoff between top two, so Mamdani would have won that anyways. But the general election is, near as I can tell, not ranked choice, it is instead simply plurality, no runoff. This creates some interesting dynamics. Of course, it's also possible the pre-voting dynamics and candidate strategies of this race were affected.

My thoughts? It seems Cuomo was ganged up on, and I think ranked choice accelerated this. It will be very interesting to see how this did or did not pay off for Lander specifically -- was he close-ish to a situation where people hate Cuomo most, but are still uncomfortable enough with Mamdani to hand Lander a surprise victory from behind? Statistically this seems unlikely in this particular case, but it could still happen, and how close he comes could offer some interesting insights about how popular a strategy like this might be in the future.

Will Democratic support and the primary victory make a difference in the general election?

The literal million-dollar question. Cuomo might very well run again as an independent -- otherwise his career is kind of extra-finished, no? I suppose he could always try and run for Congress later, but this is a black eye no matter how you spin it. Eric Adams, the former Democratic candidate, has also had his share of scandals, so potentially there is some similarity with Cuomo on that level. But he does have an incumbency advantage, and has expected some kind of fight for a while. Republicans might back him more, however, depending on how much they dislike Mamdani. It's hard to say. Also, Mamdani would have the Democratic party machinery and resources behind him. How much will they pitch in? That's an open question for sure. It will certainly help to some extent, for legitimacy if nothing else.

Will these results generalize nationally? And if so, what part of the results?

First of all, you must see this as an absolute W for grassroots. Cuomo is a political super-insider, despite being a major bully who is widely disliked. Yet many former enemies have backed him anyways, especially more "moderate" ones. Interesting article link. Bloomberg for example backed him. He formed a super PAC "Fix the City" and it spent a ton of time on negative attacks against Mamdani, especially on his pro-Palestinian comments framing them as anti-Israel. There's that angle of course. I'd rather not get into it personally, but I'm sure there will be some observations about if the Israel-Palestinian issue was big or not, whether it was fair, etc.

Then there's the socialism angle. Do Democrats want more extreme left candidates? Are socialists ready for the big time? Was this Cuomo's unique weaknesses? Was is just crazy turnout among young people? Did AOC and friends help a lot? All things we will be thinking about for a number of months to come. Personally, I see this as Mamdani doing much, much better among kitchen-table issues for the median voter. All about affordability. Of course, the merit of his attempt is a separate question. He's pro rent control (economically sketchy but not unheard of), wants to create public supermarkets (horrible idea all around, supermarket margins are very small), taxing the rich (will they flee or not?), and is obviously young and not super experienced.

Kevin Spacey did this to both American Beauty and House of Cards for a lot of people pretty closely. So great analogy.

I haven’t read Ellison so I can’t really say, but it has consistently been true that among many artists of all types, suffering, restrictions and angst leads to great art (or at least, the reverse is true, conditioning on great art). The real question is, how often does art in general present actual worldviews rather than merely challenge them, or throw out fascinating ideas that we then grapple with and fill in ourselves? Quite often! I think that’s partially the point, that new ideas, perspectives, and filters can be intoxicating and intriguing. And honestly I view sci-fi writing as more art than science or engineering or something, despite the reputation and being more “cerebral” (not a bad thing). As visionary as art can often present, I think most art is actually overwhelmingly reactionary on both a personal and societal level. It’s just how art is. Once you see it you can’t unsee it, and it shows up everywhere.

So in that sense I do wonder if you put more expectations on his art than any art merits. At the same time I deeply sympathize and more specifically you might not be wrong (again never read him)

The vibes I'm getting is that Trump was way too bullish on the success of the Fordow strikes. Partly this is just Trump to a T: would he ever admit something didn't go well right away? Per this link, not only Fordow it buried deeper than the MOP bomb is actually rated for (~260 feet vs max disclosed bunker depth of 200, though that figure might be misdirection), but also we only possess about 30 of them -- so we'd only be able to make one more pass or so, given that it was reported that 14 were used. That is to say, a sustained bombing campaign might not have done much more. At least with a single strong strike, you can still deflect most of the blame on Israel, because it really is mostly opportunist. Satellite imagery is hard to parse, and obviously tells you little about the underground condition of the facility, but it's still plausible the cave-ins weren't super extensive. Source which also mentions that there's another facility in Isfahan that also has some deep underground areas, plus the chance Iran has a complex that the US/Israel don't know about, plus the fact that as noted here in thread, the uranium itself was almost certainly moved.

For Iran, in terms of the simple pros and cons, if they really has suffered a multi-year setback, I think there would be a certain logic to setting up a new deal, despite looking weak. There's still probably room for more carrot even so. If we say they really did get a major setback, by making a deal are you truly giving anything up? You'd only be giving up on something you no longer fully have. I was impressed by the initial Trump response to emphasize that he didn't necessarily care about regime change (formally and publicly giving up on it would be one such carrot). Sadly this did not last long. But overall yes, assuming the strikes were successful, there's a good argument to be made that this is the "best" (maybe not "good" but "best") chance for a longer solution since at least the JCPOA?

In terms of potential (middle to long term) blowback, I see two main routes. One, some kind of cynical move by China where they lend Iran tons of stuff as a major proxy, in a way that for Russia/Ukraine they didn't fully commit to. I don't actually list major reprisals on US troops by e.g. Iraq militias because I don't think that makes a massive difference in the long term. Two, and this is the true scary one you refer to, if the Iranian navy actually does try and fully close the straight, and gets in a shooting war with the US Navy, this is actually one of the worst-case scenarios (the true worst-case scenario is the Iran detonates a dirty bomb in Israel, but I doubt they'd be able to pull it off and it would make them an actual international pariah). It's possible the US Navy would take some losses, and that might lead to a wider war, because it's a major unknown how the public would react to major combat losses. Americans would probably stomach it, despite how ahistoric it would be, and just double down on long range bombing, but the endgame there would be very unclear and it could still snowball into a more conventional-ish war. It's just, anything short of losing a carrier or major battleship (think 100+ crew) I think wouldn't be enough to overcome the war skepticism.

Under scenario 2, the actual most probably end result would be a bombing campaign, and we get a rehash of history when an American pilot or two gets shot down and captured alive, resulting in yet another hostage situation. From there it's anyone's guess what would happen, but history does offer some clues.

I would say that this is correct, the left/liberal rhetoric is pro-Islamic mostly by accident (as a byproduct of the anti-racism and anti-discrimination ideas taken to a logical conclusion)

This is actually part of why Congress or the President will “approve” arms sales - it’s not just national security (making sure we only give restricted tech to people we like) but to some extent foreign politics too. So it’s not like states totally ignore it when it happens, but yeah it’s generally not considered an act of war. This can vary and change over time of course: the Germans started unrestricted submarine warfare in WWI, and even today the Chinese throw a fit when we sell to Taiwan despite literally telling them we’d continue to do so over 50 years ago

I was quite annoyed that I got more details quicker from the Daily Mail than I did most US outlets. Which included satellite images, though I can’t remember the provenance.

With that said I think if you look closely at the statements and rhetoric that we’ve heard so far, plus the physical facts, it seems highly likely this bombing run wasn’t enough for full destruction. They would probably need to pound it for a week to be more sure. Clearly the Trump admin is banking on Iranian peace seeking - I think they have a decent chance at it, but far from certain.

It’s been a bit of a mixed bag in craziness over the years. Ahmadinajad as president was a notorious “kill all the Jews” type but the Khamenei who always has ultimately held the reins has been a bit more pragmatic-ish. I personally think most of the allies they have promoted in the region were more cynical and self serving in purpose than religious. In other words ultimately they seem to genuinely care about keeping their own Islamic revolution going, but I don’t see them as super invasion prone. I mean 15 years anything can change but that’s the vibe.

However, theocracy type governments are particularly hard to consistently model - see for example some of the more extreme sects running out of control in Saudi Arabia and metastasizing to locations and purposes SA didn’t actually want.

Strong agree. Evidence of craziness is just literally exhibit A: basic factual comprehension. There's literally no need to assassinate Klobuchar to free up space for Walz to run for the Senate, because the other Senator Tina Smith, is retiring already in 2026, so there's already a free spot -- a spot which, by the way, Walz himself decided against running for. For reasons not totally explained by science yet, some small percentage of men just seem to snap at some point in their lives. Although I'm not sure how much exactly to put it into this category: guy was allegedly a classic prepper, and the plan itself wasn't actually all that badly thought out (in fact I'm impressed, props to the police, that he was caught on only the second house, though a mask in combination with a police uniform still seems like anti-synergy, for lack of a better word; are you trying to hide your identity or get closer/infiltrate your targets? Pick one).

At any rate, OP, you should feel a little bit of shame for this dreadful post, by the way You are treating these absurd claims as if they are possibly credible and at face value. You are bringing out the classic "they" in conspiracy framings. Who is "they"? Yeah, yeah, Antifa and BLM, but they aren't like, actually well-organized groups (at least not on any kind of national level). I think you can make a case for loosely coordinated actions on a local level, but a new Weather Underground this is not. Consciously attempting to "recruit susceptible members" is a pretty big claim and requires actual cognizance, not something that happens stochastically or by chance.

If you want to make an actual argument about how "Antifa, BLM" are moving towards an actual "targeted assassination" strategy, make the argument, don't piggypack on some random news story and stop at innuendo.

Disclaimer: I was like 10 at the time, so directly I most remember just like, graphics on TV of the invasion with arrows and stuff.

I very much agree. I think what's also missing in the conversation is that it seems to me that the US population was also still pretty bloodthirsty at the time and honestly was relatively easy to convince. A lot of post-9/11 anger still without easy outlets (Afghanistan's insurgency hadn't yet kicked into major gear and was relatively quiet, Bin Laden was elusive, etc) was still in the air. Sure, Bush coined the Axis of Evil but a ton of people ate that stuff right up (maybe we didn't learn the Cold War lessons as deeply as we should have...) All of this means that when Iraq's stability had majorly deteriorated by early to mid 2004, at the same time that year the big post-op intel reports were coming out to the public and were pretty damning. In that context, I think there's a very human motivation to try and wash your own hands and absolve yourself of responsibility, and it's very easy and cheap to say "I was tricked". And even then, there's some major revisionism going on. Polling data and the behavior of politicians both seem to agree that a lot of the regret only started to spike when Iraq and then later Afghanistan war deaths continued to rise, which was well after the facts of Iraq's WMD's were well known. So yeah, people also "backdated" their opposition to the war quite a bit. All you need to do is simply look at the contrast of the 2004 and 2008 election seasons.

By agency I mean the capacity to make new choices free of undue influence or restrictions. I realize the modern definition has shifted slightly and some people now use “agentic” as a synonym to someone who regularly takes novel action, but I mean it more in the Webster sense:

the capacity, condition, or state of acting or of exerting power

I would add, [especially over one’s self]

Maybe “volition” is the best word but sadly low usage

Possibly was my rec, glad you liked it! Wasn’t able to figure it out but he did respond to a few comments particularly in the last few normal chapters IIRC, so it might be deducible. He said 2 years? So I assume Israel or South Korea

I don’t see why our era is different other than a fairly stable system in which power could and did change hands often enough to make all voices feel heard more or less

That’s… a pretty big change actually. And fairly fundamental. It’s why at least to SOME extent Dems were justified in being a little freaked out by the noises Trump was making about elections. Because trust that your opponent will be forced to give you another chance to win is foundational to democracy as currently practiced.

I genuinely think the source for this strife is that people are self sorting too much. People naturally tend to moderate when exposed to other perspectives. It’s just the exposure is too skewed towards social media and online/TV personalities and too little towards everyday fellow humans. Also why travel as a source for eliminating prejudice has reversed - too little actual genuine interpersonal contact. People will never learn how to talk about politics without rage unless they attempt it (and occasionally fail). It’s not much different than other social skills in that way.

I think the word you’re looking for is not freedom but “agency”!

I think it always makes more sense to describe freedom in specific contexts rather than try to define some kind of net, global, non-associated “freedom”. Freedom to breathe clean air without payment or restriction is a different freedom to, say, pollute the skies. These freedoms are often in conflict and it’s not clear that you can describe a ‘net freedom’ as if it were something numerical.

To choose a more grounded example, burning trash is a classic local conflict with no clear ‘more free’ option. One neighbor says it’s freedom to choose how to dispose of their own property on their own property. Another neighbor says it’s freedom to have clean air. Another says freedom is being able to throw loud parties whenever, but yet another says excessive noise infringes on their own freedom to do certain activities that might require quiet.

The solution is practical compromise, not arguing over which appeal to freedom is stronger.