HaroldWilson
1yr ago
If it were the Russians, why would they blow up their own pipeline and not an enemy pipeline? They control Nordstream, they don't control the Norwegian-Polish pipeline or other pipelines that reduce their leverage and fuel their enemies. Why would they do something that creates a 'tremendous opportunity' for the US to sell LNG to Europe and render them more dependant on America?
Well, there's historical form for this kind of misstep. The Confederate burning of the cotton crop appears as a perfect analogy here. The idea was that once the Confederacy starved Britain of cotton, they would realise how important they were and intervene. But it was a total failure, obviously, since Britain just started getting cotton from elsewhere and the move only antagonised them. The Russians could have been attempting something similar. If they stopped gas supplies by sabotage, they could have intended to so cripple the central European economies that they stop support for Ukraine once the tap turned back on, lest they face another stoppage. A stupid idea, perhaps, but I don't suppose Jefferson Davis was any more stupid than Putin is.
HaroldWilson
1yr ago
Sure, I mostly agree with that. Though I think that's mostly a reflection of how unhealthy America/Britain etc. is as a society
HaroldWilson
1yr ago
Two reasons, firstly Iron doesn't generate revenue passively. Iron has an 'unimproved value', clearly, but whereas a landlord can realise an increase in land values by increasing rent, for instance, an owner of a lump of iron won't realise the gains until they use it for something productive or sell it to someone who will.
Secondly, iron is fungible (mostly). If you don't sell me your lump of iron, I can go and buy someone else's. But all land is unique.
HaroldWilson
1yr ago
LVTs don't have to be 100% of land values.
HaroldWilson
1yr ago
Everyone in this thread seems to be labouring under the impression that an LVT is always 100%. Not necessarily, no reason why we couldn't have a tax on unimproved land values of any level one was to choose.
HaroldWilson
1yr ago
Really taxes aren't even a question of revenue, taxes are just one of many interlocking opaque and unaccountable systems the government and its cronies can use to regulate the economy, or in other words, to control people. For their own good, maybe! But that's the kind of thing I would prefer the government be forced to do explicitly, if it's going to be allowed to do it at all.
Not sure where to begin with this really. Governments can't spend in any great capacity without taxation, whether or not you want to call it a 'question of revenue' or not. The government can't borrow without the presence of taxation guaranteeing to debt holders that the government will eventually fulfil its obligations. Nor can it simply 'print money', the consequences of financing expenditure with only creating new money would be absurdly inflationary.
When there's a clear connection between the tax being levied, who it's being levied on, and how it's being spent, that benefits citizens by keeping systems accountable
This is how people perceive taxes like fuel duty but they are totally wrong. All taxes pay for all expenditure. We know this is true because firstly rates of fuel duty move up and down completely out of sync with costs of road maintenance and construction, and secondly because what you pay for fuel duty doesn't correspond with the wear and tear you cause on roads. If two cars of the same weight have different levels of efficiency, then the more efficient car pays less despite not doing any more damage to roads. On a policymaking level, fuel duty is set with no reference to the cost of roads, it's just one source of revenue for the government (with added environmental concerns).
HaroldWilson
1yr ago
And, most relevant perhaps, Florida voted passed the 2018 ballot measure restoring voting rights to felons. I'm sure Democrats will be quaking in their boots at being 'forced' to defend a measure the majority of Florida voters agree with.
HaroldWilson
1yr ago
The blue tribe has been importing a new electorate hand over fist for decades
And by importing, you mean advocating fewer restrictions. Isn't it just possible that people support immigration because they think it's good for a range of economic or moral reasons, not for some nefarious reasons regarding the partisanship of immigrants. I do, at least.
The media memeplex blares out left-propaganda 24/7 in an effort to manufacture consent
This is just silly. Not only does media coverage mostly just respond to demand - at the end of the day even MSNBC just want viewers, that's what they exist for - cable news is not the entirety of media in America. Local news and most print media (with a few notable exceptions), especially tabloids, don't 'blare of left-propaganda' at all.
Lawmakers just change the rules whenever they feel their hegemony slipping (e.g. Covid mail voting)
Sure, that's why famously liberal Kentucky, Montana, West Virginia, Indiana, Arkansas, Alaska and Missouri also expanded mail voting during Covid.
It doesn't matter whether the Reps or Dems win anyway because the politicians of both parties come from the same class stratum and are pursuing UniParty agreed goals anyway
Probably not the place for this discussion but consider that 'uniparty agreed goals' may exist because of genuine overlap in the preferences of both sections of the electorate, not some conspiracy.
And even if they weren't, the example of Trump proves that even if an outsider were to win, they'd just get stymied by the Deep State
Again, probably for another time, but I'd just ask on what specific issues wholly within the President's power Trump was stymied on.
HaroldWilson
1yr ago
Two wolves and a lamb voting who's for dinner may constitute above-board, by-the-numbers, all nice and legal democracy... but an autistic loyalty to the rules while shrugging your shoulders at the result has confused means with ends.
So essentially your argument boils down to 'my preferred candidates and policy preferences are losing'?
HaroldWilson
1yr ago
Two people are rolling dice, and get into an argument. The first guy claims that unless the other guy can prove he's cheating and explaining exactly how the cheat works, it should be assumed that he's playing fairly. The other guy points out that his dice win too often to be fair.
Maybe your policy preferences aren't that popular? The Tories in the UK are a far more successful party than the Democrats, but no-one from Labour whines about the conduct of elections (there are debates w/r/t FPTP, but they've popped up once or twice in the last thirty years and fade in the background very quickly). See also LDP in Japan. Sometimes you just lose.
HaroldWilson
1yr ago
Would this be fair?
Of course not, because of the partisan selectivity. But that isn't really the case for mail-in ballots etc. They're mostly Democrat in many places, sure, but conversely that must mean in-person voters tilt Republican. In which case, by your estimation polling by in-person booths is unfair too because it leans towards one set of people.
HaroldWilson
1yr ago
So, there's two key points here.
Partygate was by far the most important thing that happened to get Boris removed. But general 'sleaze' in the party didn't help, especially the way it was handled. Look up the Owen Paterson case in particular.
More critically however, the Tories faced some awful defeats. By-elections in seats which had formerly been ultra-safe True-Blue constituencies were electing Liberal Democrats, and Wakefield, a former Labour seat (though not by enormous margins) that went to the Conservatives, returned to Labour in fairly spectacular style, the margin being a crushing 17%, not far off the 2001 figure. Boris' personal figures were through the floor, and voting intention polling, though better, wasn't great either.
HaroldWilson
1yr ago
That article just makes is seem as though Trump was uniquely incompetent at getting things done. Most of those frustrating him were his appointees, he could have just sacked them. I mean, Biden got it done.
HaroldWilson
1yr ago
Well all rules that change have to be changed at some determined point in time. And expanding mail-in voting is hardly any more arbitrary than keeping it restricted. For a long time the secret ballot was not a feature of British elections. Does that mean some MP who lost his seat because of the introduction of the secret ballot could complain about the 'arbitrary' changes made to the voting procedure? Under your argument the electoral system now has to stay the same literally forever.
HaroldWilson
1yr ago
What I meant is that just because one 'side' seems to be more successful that doesn't at all imply that some nefarious foul play is at hand, or that some fault with the system needs to be fixed. Republicans are hardly exceptionally unsuccessful.
HaroldWilson
1yr ago
"A person" can do that kind of supporting, perhaps. But when 75% of people named José vote Democrat, then no, I absolutely do not believe that the opportunity to import a reliable electoral bloc is absent from the minds of the Democrat politicians advocating for low immigration restrictions.
One could just as easily turn this round the other way and say that Republicans don't want immigration because they lean Democratic significantly. Seems pointless to get caught up in this hyper-partisan reading of policy, why not just debate the actual merits?
I suppose I can't fault you for countering my Just So assertion with your own Just So assertion, but let's not pretend that yours is any better supported than mine. "MSNBC exists to serve viewer's demand" is one possibility. "MSNBC exists to spread it's owners propaganda to the masses" is another, and I feel like it's a better fit to the evidence of it's content.
'Media companies exist to make money' seems like a fairly simple assumption to make in the absence of evidence suggesting otherwise; and I'm not a partisan about this, I would say the same about Fox or Newsmax or whatever.
HaroldWilson
1yr ago
Just because HR etc. are the least productive of all employees, that doesn't actually mean the job they do is 'bullshit', just no longer economical in the current environment. I mean, corporations are generally not in the business of making frivolous expenditures. A comparable example might be agriculture. In favourable economic conditions for farmers, for instance if the price of bread rises, farmers/landowners will put 'marginal' fields to work; that is, fields which don't usually yield enough to be profitable except in good (for the landowners) times. When these fields are no longer profitable and fall out of work, that doesn't mean they were 'bullshit fields', it's just that they only operate profitably in certain conditions. The same could said of certain employees or even departments; they only make economic sense in good times.
HaroldWilson
1yr ago
Without rampant credentialism the average bricklayer would have the alternative choice of becoming the average email sender.
I think this claim requires a lot more evidence than anyone ever gives for it. For it to be true, it would mean almost every company in the world is just ignoring an enormous opportunity to cut their spending on salaries because... who knows. Maybe possible, but a fairly extraordinary claim that requires commensurate evidence. I think it's fair to assume that if these companies could employ most anyone to do 'email sender' jobs, they would.
Also, if all people mean by saying 'bullshit jobs' is 'jobs that maybe aren't quite as hard as people think', 'bullshit jobs' is a terrible term and people should stop using it. What do you think most people hear when someone describes something as 'bullshit'?
HaroldWilson
1yr ago
evolutionarily self-destructive choices
particularly at the thought of them being medically sterilized.
Not the thrust of the comment I know, but I'd be curious if you really think this is at the root of your reaction. I mean, would you react in the exact same way if your kid was in some other way rendered unable to have kids themselves, like they were gay or got a vasectomy once they were an adult?
Also;
I can't even attempt to oppose it without facing the full wrath of the modern State
I think we're tipping in hysteria pretty clearly here.
HaroldWilson
1yr ago
you can put me in that camp that we are an evolved species with deeply rooted programming on what leads us to a happy life. And homosexuality to me seems like a couple of your genes are off that may individually have benefits but combined turned your gay, but the vast majority of your genetic programming is still happier in traditional heterosexual relationships. As a society we have decided that a small bit of a person their sexuality should dominate the totality of that person.
This all sounds very Just So. I mean what can anyone who disagrees with this do except to say that what is asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence?
As I said to the author of the parent comment, this doesn't really amount to much more than a Just So story. Maybe there are millions of gay people the world over lying about their real preferences, but I am much more inclined to belief in revealed preferences than blind speculation about how I or you reckon people have evolved. 'I believe in evolutionary psychology' unfortunately appears to amount to little more than 'my assertions are unfalsifiable'.
Also, I'm not gay but I've got to say I don't really 'yearn in [my] bones to be a pater familias reigning over the little kingdom of [my] own household and offspring'. So am I just lying, or I don't actually know what my real desires are? In which case, in what way could it reasonably be called a 'yearning' do something if one is not conscious of the yearning themselves.
HaroldWilson
1yr ago
a proposed bill to take kids away from parents who expressed resistance or skepticism
What bill? I hope you're not referring to SB107 because that isn't what that did.
HaroldWilson
1yr ago
That's not actually relevant. You can't respond to the assertion that your assertions are unsubstantiated by saying 'well there is no evidence so we must simply assume that I'm right.
Whether it 'seems rational' is not at issue for two reasons. Firstly, we've circled back to falsifiability - I can simply say 'I think it doesn't seem rational and we are at an impasse - and secondly, the world is generally not so simple that we can reason our way to grand claims that 'deep down nobody really wants homosexual relationships in the long term'.
HaroldWilson
1yr ago
Untold amounts of suffering
Obviously worrying but doesn't actually prove anything until you can parse out what the effects would have been if strict measures weren't introduced, which is to say what part is actually attributable to Covid measures and what to just Covid itself.
Well that's kind of what you get if you spend years trying to code everything high-culturey as something that only liberal elites enjoy. Indeed, the 'liberal' side of the culture wars are often accused of having no regard for history or culture, but in Britian, for instance, I am almost certain that those who fill the halls of the nation's museums, theatres, opera houses and especially historic universities are disproportionately Remainers, and probably future Starmer voters.
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