Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
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User ID: 863
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
29d ago
Farmshine has learned that these fines were ignored on advice of their former attorney, so as not to admit guilt. After all, why should Herr and Wentworth admit guilt for actions that have become commonplace and are open to interpretation of the state’s vague and archaic veterinary law in regard to defining ‘diagnosis’ — especially since pregnancy is not a disease to be diagnosed, but rather a condition to be observed?
This advice is so fucking stupid they should be suing whatever attorney gave it to them. I am not a barred lawyer in PA but I am confident that the proper response to "a state executive agency has inappropriately levied a fine and injunction on me" is "file suit challenging the action in a court of competent jurisdiction" not "ignore it and hope it goes away." All that notwithstanding, reading the Veterinary Medicine Practice Act, it sounds like the board has not followed the legally required procedure for enforcing its judgements. Unless there have been some proceedings initiated in a PA court that are not being mentioned.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
25d ago
I think the bigger problem for shady companies switching to crypto is that they are going to have expenses they cannot pay in crypto, necessitating entities that will swap their crypto for fiat. These entities are almost certainly, if they do business in the US, required to abide by KYC and AML laws. Maybe randos looking at the blockchain don't know address X is Pornhub, or whatever, but whoever is changing Pornhub's crypto into dollars has a legal obligation to know. So the angle of attack can easily shift from payment processors to whoever is doing their currency exchange. Crypto is censorship proof as long as you only ever have to use crypto but that's not a sustainable state of affairs for most people or businesses.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
25d ago
Yes. The problem isn't the Pornhub customers identity (although that is a general problem in crypto) it's that whoever is doing the crypto->fiat conversion for Pornhub needs to know who Pornhub is and so needs to at least tolerate their business. The benefits of being anonymous (or pseudonymous) when using crypto disappear once you need to turn the crypto into cash.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
25d ago
I am not sure what you mean by a "cut-out." Like, a third party that works with the crypto exchange doing the conversion instead of Pornhub? Unless that third party is also paying all of Pornhub's cash bills it seems like that would be the same as working with the exchange. I guess the idea is the exchange might object to Pornhub but not the third party?
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
24d ago
What's this?!?! A distinction between "having an urge" and conduct?!? In the realm of sexuality? Say it isn't so! How many times can The Lefties That Be just boldly admit that the entire slew of homosexual behavior to gay marriage cases were based on a fundamental lie?!
I'm a little confused what the lie is supposed to be. In both Lawrence and Obergefell the state was discriminating against people because of their status. If two people of the opposite sex wanted to engage in some conduct they could, but if the two people were of the same sex they couldn't. The conduct wasn't at issue, the status of the participants was. Unless the idea is being a particular sex is conduct rather than a status? Or that the conduct is different if different people are doing it?
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
24d ago
Technically no, but that's because the logic of Lawrence would extend Griswold and similar right-to-privacy cases to prevent the state from criminalizing sodomy between consenting adults of either the same or opposite sex. Quoting Lawrence:
As an alternative argument in this case, counsel for the petitioners and some amici contend that Romer provides the basis for declaring the Texas statute invalid under the Equal Protection Clause. That is a tenable argument, but we conclude the instant case requires us to address whether Bowers itself has continuing validity. Were we to hold the statute invalid under the Equal Protection Clause some might question whether a prohibition would be valid if drawn differently, say, to prohibit the conduct both between same-sex and different-sex participants.
The opinion then goes on to discuss various right to privacy cases and ultimately come to the conclusion a prohibition on sodomy would likely be unconstitutional applied to basically anyone. Quoting Lawrence again:
The present case does not involve minors. It does not involve persons who might be injured or coerced or who are situated in relationships where consent might not easily be refused. It does not involve public conduct or prostitution. It does not involve whether the government must give formal recognition to any relationship that homosexual persons seek to enter. The case does involve two adults who, with full and mutual consent from each other, engaged in sexual practices common to a homosexual lifestyle. The petitioners are entitled to respect for their private lives. The State cannot demean their existence or control their destiny by making their private sexual conduct a crime. Their right to liberty under the Due Process Clause gives them the full right to engage in their conduct without intervention of the government. "It is a promise of the Constitution that there is a realm of personal liberty which the government may not enter." Casey, supra, at 847. The Texas statute furthers no legitimate state interest which can justify its intrusion into the personal and private life of the individual.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
18d ago
My wife and I were married for nearly a decade before we bought a house. In the US.
I think the author needs to take his schizophrenia medication. (I deserved the warning).
Up-efforting my comment:
I don't really see a lot of the connections the author makes in the piece. I think the excerpts in the post here are some of the more cogent parts and even those are questionable. The piece seems committed to the idea that there is some shadowy they out there that are responsible for various culture shifts but it does little beyond vibing to actually make that case. What particular entities are responsible for Kelce's rise? For his dating Swift? How did they do that? What is the evidence that they did this? You will search this piece in vain for answers to these questions.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
14d ago
I think one angle missing here is why women want the ability to have their own careers, income streams, etc. This post seems to reduce it to a kind of cultural brainwashing which is far too simplistic. Women want the ability to have their own careers and income streams for the same reason men do: they want to have some control over their lives. They want to be able to mitigate the downside risk that comes with being completely financially dependent on someone else. Imagine you're a woman. You give up your career, education, etc to become a homemaker for a man. Half a decade in (perhaps with two or three children) he becomes an abusive alcoholic. What kind of options do you have for protecting yourself and your children? For exiting the relationship? I know, as a man, I would be pretty uncomfortable being completely dependent on someone else due to the potential for abuse. it seems totally rational to me that women feel similarly. I suspect many women have heard stories from family members or friends about such relationships and so the concern seems especially salient to them. How prestigious does motherhood have to be for women, as individuals, not to care about that downside risk?
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
14d ago
This is a post in itself but a substantial reason why so many work outside the home today, and why women working outside the home is correlated with wealth and technological development, is because having access to labor saving devices heavily shifts the economic calculus in favor of women working outside the home. It requires far fewer hours today to achieve what would have been a full time job providing goods for a household historically. One of the few areas where this is not true is child rearing and i s part of why daycare is so expensive and why people sometimes quit work to care for children. Otherwise we have largely automated the tasks of homemaking, freeing people's labor up for other productive uses. Related to this is the idea of a "gold digger." A woman interested in a man for his wealth but who does not proportionally contribute. It's much harder to proportionally contribute without a job when technology can automate most of the things you're supposed to be contributing!
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
13d ago
I think part of it is government regulation but another part is that we often have higher standards for entities we outsource these things to than we have for ourselves. Compare home cooking to eating out a restaurant. I generally want the restaurant food to be at least as good as what I could make or I wouldn't bother going. On top of that the restaurant has to comply with a bunch of food safety regulations I probably don't abide when cooking at home. This makes things more expensive!
On the parenting front, I suspect a lot of parents who would be fine giving their kid an iPad or some other device for entertainment would be mad at a daycare they pay for doing the same.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
11d ago
I mean, I think the regime you describe for the ADA satisfies all of the 1-3 points you propose for basic things you agree on, though perhaps not in a manner you like.
There is an unlimited number of things people might want to "fix" about our society, but a limited amount of resources to spend fixing such things.
Of course. The ADA, and many similar pieces of legislation, contain explicit limits on what is to be covered and who must (or may not) provide accommodation under the Act.
There should be a way to determine how many resources we want to spend fixing a particular problem.
We do this with the ADA, and many similar laws, via a combination of the private market and our adversarial justice system. Businesses talk to consultants and experts to understand what they need to do to be in compliance. Sometimes people think they're wrong about whether they are and get sued. Then a jury of their peers is going to be responsible for figuring out whether they were in compliance and how much they harmed the plaintiff if they weren't.
This process may not come up with some obvious fixed-in-advance dollar amount but it seems a very common way of determining how much "we" should spend fixing a particular problem.
Paying to fix the problems should be done in a fair and above board way. (i.e. reverse lotteries where you randomly get fucked over are bad).
Of course. The Act describes who is covered and what accommodations those covered need to make. If anyone is alleged to be in violation theirs a public judicial process to determine if they are. Characterizing this as a "reverse lottery" is absurd. Lots of businesses (probably most) manage to go without being sued under the ADA or similar laws. Who wins and loses is not random either, unless you think the outcomes of jury trials are random. In which case there's this whole thing called "the criminal law" that should be much more concerning.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
9d ago
What are the circumstances such that the "powers that be" would be able to assassinate Trump but not his VP? Especially if Dems take back the House, as predicted. Assassinating both of them would likely mean President Hakeem Jeffries.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
3d ago
I think a lot of people are radicalized by being priced out of the place they grew up (I've had coworkers who certainly were) but it's not clear to me how this translates into support for Trump. Mostly I think this translates into support for YIMBYism, which I think is on the rise across the country.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
3d ago
I think a big reason there aren't posts about these topics is because a lot of people don't want to discuss events in-themselves, they want to connect it to some larger thesis or narrative. For some of these it's not clear what the narrative is. For others it's a narrative that this site has beaten the dead horse of. The latter issue is compounded by the site having a relatively small user base. I think a solid majority of users are people who have been here forever and in some sense "seen it all" so they aren't interested in re-hashing debates that seem futile (this certainly describes me).
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
3d ago
I just don't see the causal chain from voting for Trump to the home prices in someone's hometown going down. The President just does not have that much power over local home prices or land use. To the extent CA Democrats are responsible for the housing crisis in the state, they are also passing a bunch of bills to try and fix it.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
2d ago
The solution is simple. If the state wants women to give up their careers, their education, their financial independence so that they will have and raise children then the state needs to adequately compensate those women for what it is asking them to give up. No state on earth is prepared, or could afford, to do this, which is why functionally all efforts to increase fertility fail.
We might further ask: why can't states do this? The answer here is also simple. Women's work outside the home generates a lot of economic value. The issue at the heart of raising fertility by having women work less is that society will be poorer, which people are generally opposed to.
Why could this work historically? Partially because much more of women's labor was needed inside the home (and so unavailable for work outside the home) and partially because there were actual legal restrictions on the work women (especially married women) could do outside the home.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
2d ago
Feminism is a symptom, not a cause. The cause is more fundamental: human want. People want nicer houses, nicer cars, nicer food. They want financial security and control over their own lives. Human wants are unlimited and they are the fundamental force pushing towards the efficient utilization of human labor.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
2d ago
I mean, I think the prima facie case is pretty simple: entities that have an incentive to be profit maximizing have decided that paying these women to do the work they do is, on margin, worth it. The market is not perfectly efficient, of course, but I am not sure why I should believe you are more likely to be correct than the people actually making the decision to hire them.
I think that generally speaking creating tons of economic productivity is what frees up women from household tasks so they can in fact find full-time employment, it is NOT necessarily more women working which frees up tons of economic productivity.
I think it is, more specifically, technological development. It reduces the amount of labor needed to perform household tasks, freeing that labor up for other uses, and increases economic productivity at various tasks outside the home. Technological development simultaneously increases the benefits and reduces the opportunity cost of working outside the home.
I am asking with complete sincerity. How quickly would we notice if every single female quit their job overnight? (Let me be more specific, by 'notice' I mean 'what parts of society would actually grind to a halt such that economic activity was seriously disrupted?')
Almost all of them? Even in the heavily male dominated industries you mention women are somewhere between 10 and 30% of all workers. Do you think if 36% of all farmers disappeared no one would notice? What about 10% of all construction workers? Or hell, how about healthcare. Would no one notice if 88% of all nurses disappeared overnight? What about 38% of all physicians?
The real question is how much excess value a given female produces for the economy over and above the value she would produce if she were instead raising kids and maintaining the household. Childcare costs are 'internalized' if she takes over this role, but it still counts.
Yes, hence my proposal. One disparity here is that the value produced outside the home is partially returned to the women in question in the form of money she can use to acquire shelter, food, and all the necessities of life. If she quits working outside the home to raise a child very little of that value comes back to her in a form that can be spent to sustain herself. If the state wants more women to choose raising children then more of the value that action produces needs to come to them in a form they can use to sustain themselves.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
2d ago
What counts as "low?" According to the World bank Japan has a female LFPR of 55%, Italy's is 41%, and Israel's is 61%. This is compared to, say, the United States at 53% or Afghanistan at 5%. Israel is an outlier in terms of TFR but I'm given to understand that's heavily driven by population subgroups that mostly don't work.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
2d ago
I did not intend to denigrate them by calling them wants instead of needs, sorry if it came off that way. I agree those things cannot be satisfied without some kind of fundamental change in human nature. I'm interested in what this coordination end looks like.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
2d ago
I think I touch on this in my last paragraph. From the perspective of the person choosing to have children (or not) a lot of the social benefit of having and raising a child comes in the form of a positive externality they don't receive. Maybe it's an opportunity cost for society to, in some sense, have someone work rather than raise children but that externality isn't an opportunity cost for the people doing the choosing, they were never going to receive that benefit anyway.
? I think I answered your question pretty directly.
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