Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
Hello back frens
User ID: 2022
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
4mo ago
...and now for something completely different: Lemurs and the True Human Form,
in which a Zizian uncovers the biological basis of furrydom, which actually everyone has and is in denial about.
The bodies people walk around in here on Ancient Earth do not necessarily match the sensorimotor portions of their brains, and/or other information content about what their bodies are supposed to be like.
From what I can tell by looking at stuff from the fossil record, other modern species, and my own ancestral memory, it seems that a large part of the True Human Form evolved between 30mya and 85mya, around the time of our common ancestors with lemurs.
Most of our proprioceptive body map probably was selected on during this period of time because the delta to our ancestors’ survival was strongly tied to them using their bodies very precisely and acrobatically.
An anthropomorphic mammal seems like a valid way of trying to project the human self-concept including sensorimotor body map, visual modules, and social modules into a 3D form.
I actually find this somewhat plausible. While a good bit of the bodymap is propably learned as well, we should expect remnants like this. The culturewar-relevant part is how moral conclusions are drawn from it - that this is what youre supposed to be like, your True Form. The analogy between gender and species transition is hardly new, but it always gives a bit of a distorted impression, the latter is always a bit of a cardboard figure. Here, we have someone filling in part of the discourse a transspecies movement that laid similar claim to seriousness as transgenderism would produce.
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
4mo ago
The same way that you might look at a guy with a broken hispanic accent who just attained citizenship saying "shut down the border" is how I look at most people saying "shut down the border". Or the same way you might look at a person, still dripping wet after pulling themself onto the lifeboat and saying "we can't let anyone else on".
You know, unless I had some independent reason to think theyre crazy, I would take that as strong evidence that its in my interest what theyre saying.
And since were doing credentials: My family has lived within an hour of here longer than europeans have been to america.
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
4mo ago
You say youre not a troll, but this is a very wordy version of "Conservatism is bad because I hate my family.".
Canadian Man Dies of Aneurysm After Giving Up on Hospital Wait
So this is making the rounds on the internet today. Comparisons to the accute discussion in America obviously suggest themselves and are even briefly mentioned in the article. Now a lot of this seems to be more typically discussion of the merits of prublic vs private healthcare, but my initial thought was, "Who could you shoot for this?".
Obviously, murder is bad. But assuming you accepted the idea that killing people for delivering insufficient healthcare is ok, and you thought Canada was bad enough to count, who would it even be? From what I understand healthcare is done on a provincial level there, so maybe theres some kind of health commissioner in the local executive? But then again, budget limitations are propably more to blame on the local parliament. And they implement what they ran for election on. Etc. I mean if youre lucky theres someone somewhere who lost metric fucktons of money and thats all there is to it, but propably not.
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
1mo ago
MMT is propably not a popular position here. Your comment mostly assumes its true, and your very long quote is entirely about why the reactionaries wont see the light. The justification is essentially this:
To be economically literate, one would have to know that saying the government deficit should be cut is identical to saying the non-government surplus should be cut.
The rest is the same thing in different words. And as for that.
Government deficit & debt are good things, and the only problem is along the lines of 'too much of a good thing' (inflation, which is the self-correction mechanism)
Why is inflation correcting it? We have over the last few years heard from many left-leaning economists that inflation is actually fine, the lower classes are just irrationally afraid of it, go right ahead Mr Biden. In a mostly cashless economy like the US, even the logistical problems of hyperinflation can be handled pretty well.
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
7d ago
Why would you use this though? I can understand not wanting to do hormonal birth control, but thats not the only option. Im generally open to natural law argumentation, I just dont see why they would treat cycle timing differently from condoms or especially pulling out. The only relevant distinguishing factor is that, as a certain dissident rightist said, the days you cant are the ones youll want it most. I could see any combination of this being good/bad if it does/doesnt cause people to fail, but its not the argument any exception-makers seem to go with.
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
1mo ago
I never feel like I learn something from your comments anymore. Its always just AI/China is the best, unbeatable, even better than you thought, and not even committing to anything concrete there. Like for example:
That the EU has sovereignty, that Canada has sovereignty, that… basically, that the US is not a big scary hegemonic superpower it imagines itself to be and sometimes laments the wages of being. It's just a very powerful country, with large but decidedly finite leverage, and that runs well short of getting everyone to play along with American King's unreasonable imagination.
In what sense wasnt this already demonstrated by Germany buying russian gas? That seems like a case where wed expect more US influence than any of this tariff debacle.
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
4mo ago
In Austria, we used to have political hiring very far down the chain. This worked fine because every government was a coalition of the two major parties, so we didnt constantly turn them over. It changed eventually, but more so due to the bad optics of patronage and limited meritocracy. Today of course, we do actually change our government - though theres also a good chance well settle into something again in the medium term, and maybe that bit of chaos now would be worth it.
I dont think this flipping is viable long-term. It was fine in the days of Jackson, but today the civil service is much more of a career, and thats not compatible with flipping a coin every 4 years whether youll have a job. It would sooner lead to actually obedient bureaucrats.
But I also dont think the wilder swings in governing ideology are viable. The government just does too much for that. Spending is a third of GDP (plus more effectively commandeered by regulations), redirecting even just a good portion of that every 4-8 years is very destructive, and besides, theres no value in a border closed half the time, or a pension paying out half the time. Ive said this before in the context of election fraud or electoral college discussions, but if a 2% effect can make your government not just different, but really different and unacceptably bad, then you should reconsider whether the one without that small deviation is really legitimate.
So I think this scenario youre describing will be avoided, one way or another. Boringly, by continuation of the status quo pre-Trump. Or interestingly, by a stable orthodoxy that encompasses much more than bureaucrats.
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
1mo ago
My guess was definitely about US officials and how their actions may be explained by their private knowledge, rather than an estimation about our forum members' beliefs.
The point of me saying this was that in that situation you should put more effort on justification.
When collectively...
None of this describes an actual problem with inflation. It says that inflation will automatically regulate away any excess borrowings. Why then not set taxes to 0, and just let the inflation run its course?
If you think the government deficit is a bad thing that should be reduced, you have to explain why you think that of the non-government surplus as well. It is quite literally the same thing.
Is there any reason this is unique to the government? Or is my deficit also literally the same thing as rest-of-the-economy surplus? Because if it is, then it seems noone else should have objections to me borrowing indefinitely, either - it just makes you better of!
When collectively the private sector has more monetary savings than we want
Why would they not want more? You demand that I explain why we would ever want non-government surplus to be less, but now you just assert that it will be the case.
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
1mo ago
What will lead the GOP?
I think trumpist campaigning plays out pretty differently when there are multiple people doing it. Im not totally happy with the following explanation of such campaigning, and expect people to dispute some things, but I feel I have to at least attempt one, and I think the conclusion that theres some void to be filled here is relatively clear from just considering the question.
The way the politics game is played traditionally, candidates talk about their policies, are probed for gaffes and flipflops, lose some points for not aswering questions, etc. This gives voters some basis for making decisions, but it can also lead to an "emperor with no clothes" situation with politicians trying to comply with thing voters actively dislike. Trumps strategy exploited a big, interconnected bunch of such issues by rejecting this sort of accountability entirely. This includes saying the populist things, but also not caring how offensive or contradictory you are doing it, never apologising for that, etc. The goal is to trigger a preference cascade towards not judging by those standards. This obviously worked pretty well for him, but it also gives a drastically lower-resolution picture than the conventional strategy. Thats fine if youre far away from all the other candidates anyway, but what if youre not? Now youll need something to distinguish yourself, and I think the great question of the next few republican primaries will be what that should be. Here are the options as I see them:
Inertia-based
Trump won the '20 and '24 primaries because he is the Trump, noone was gonna out-trump him and so noone seriously tried. The path of least resistance going forward is propably that Trump remains in charge of trumpism, continues to voice himself prominently in the media and xitter/truth social, and expects the candidate and later president to dance by his fiddle. I expect this not to go well: People propably arent excited to vote for a president who is outshone even as a figurehead. A falling out at some point is also likely, especially since Trump will likely be more erratic when the role thats naturally the center of attention is filled by someone else. The best case scenario is propably that this goes well once, and then either Trump is too old to stay relevant, or the new guy falls out with him and manages to "win" the internal conflict before his time is up, and then the next election is something else.
The "better" version of inertia is propably some kind of "the party decides". There are plenty of countries that manage without primaries, and while occasional upsets propably cant be prevented entirely if primaries are mandatory, something more like that seems possible. However, the republicans are specifically not set up for this. The democrats have "the groups", and a kind of permanent party leadership - meanwhile, you never really hear about the RNC, except in the fixed phrase "RNC convention". They long where much more of an extension of the current president(ial cnadidate). So the somewhat-possible version of this is that Trump anoints Vance his successor, and Vance some else, they remain supportive of the new guy but in the background, and afer a few times of this you have a more substantial party leadership - but leadership at any time deciding to separate from the previous ones would likely break this, so it takes a long streak indeed.
Return of the media
Candidates go back to conventional campaigning, with a somewhat shifted overton window. This could happen if it seems like political wins were big enough that shielding yourself from the media is no longer necessary, and its also the default option if trumpism has become too unpopular for another go. If it hasnt, there will be significant hesitation before adopting this option, as rejecting it was one of the central ideas of trumpism. Those dont die easily, and its not even clear if the problems of that system where just inerta or an attractor.
There is also the question of the trumpist media. Its been 10 years of Trump on the right, new media outlets have been founded and older ones reconstructed to supporting him. Theyre not really set up to evaluate politicians in a meaningful way, and follow his lead instead. What direction they will take once there is no longer an obvious leader of trumpism is in many ways a similar question to the one Im asking here. If they just try to pivot to evaluation without any kind of more systematic ideological program, that will be one huge slapfight that propably eventually ends in one, but it sure is going to be rough until then. Writing them all off leaves only people who are in significant part not even republicans in name anymore, and propably means a collapse of the right.
Full bore
Candidates engage in an epic rap battle, whoever has the greatest stage presence, the most charismatic voice, and the best alliterative insults wins. This is theoretically the closest thing to multiple people running the original campaign unmodified. I think its unlikely to happen in a pure form, but the the problem of trumpist campaigning that I outlined is with too many candidates running like this. If noone is trying that anymore, it could be viable again. So there could be a mixed equilibrium here, where theres one candidate trying full bore in addition to whatever else ends up happening, with either winning the candidacy sometimes. And since theres no reliable way to have exactly one guy like that, sometimes candidates like that will have to face each other, and it would have to go like that.
Anything you think Ive missed?
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
7d ago
Thank you. Most of this seems pretty reasonable, I have some disagreements from action 3 downwards. I think this is a superficial understanding of what an act is, and you would have trouble in other areas of ethics if you set aside background knowledge and intent this much. Consider for example a surgery that ends up lethal: what distinguishes accident from murder, and bad luck from negligence? What is the sin of gluttony, if knowing that youre satiated makes no difference?
You could similarly break the pulling out method down into steps, each of which "surely is allowed": 1) having sex is allowed under the right conditions 2) youre not obligated to keep the penis inside the whole time 3) if you just happen to ejaculate while its outside, thats an involuntary reaction. This assumes you can do it without jerking once outside, but thats possible and I doubt its supposed to make a difference.
From what I remember, the church allows nuns to use the pill in places where theyre at risk of being raped. So its allowed to be used, and even for its contraceptive purpose. Why? Presumably because they dont intend to have sex that way.
Would an intra-vaginal spermicide be allowed? What if its application moves further in time from the intercourse, in the limit to something like a copper IUD without side effects? You cant technology your way out of purposes, and the selling point of natural family planning is that it doesnt feel like technology.
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
5mo ago
A lot of these arent really points of conflict though. If the husband gets sick in a permanent career-ruining fashion, wouldnt he also wish they had a second income? And it would have been a problem in the old days, too.
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
1mo ago
I could say that I do want to shrink the non-government surplus in hypothetical situations, if we're having obnoxious levels of inflation, maybe caused by too much government spending being indexed against the price level
Ill note that you still havent explained why too much inflation is bad, or how we would know what "too much" is.
Having some amount of taxes is what gives the currency an initial anchor value... That's what allows them to indefinitely print up IOUs that promise to pay nothing but an abstract amount of value in a unit of measurement they make up, and people will still line up to earn those IOUs
Transitioning out of just questions, I agree that the taxes give value to the IOUs, but I dont think the made up unit gives you all that much long-term. You can inflate away your debt, but expectations of inflation are built into the interest rate you are offered. Unless you can somehow inflate above expectations indefinitely, in the long term you need to tax back what you borrowed plus interest in real terms. There is no reason to borrow unless your position as the government gives you investment opportunities above market returns, youd just pay interest for no good reason.
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
4mo ago
I agree with this, but I also had the impression lately that these rules have become much more relaxed when its not about the Special People.
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
6d ago
and i think I made that clear in the above comment when I talked about the subject knowing
I dont think this is considering intent properly. Theres a difference between doing something despite or because of an effect. I think what Im suggesting here is similar to the doctrine of double effect - and you have been arguing that because the "forseen unintended" case is ok, the "forseen intended" case is too.
I think there is a conflation between sexual intercourse and the possible results of sexual intercourse - or conception. Sexual intercourse is the ejaculation of a penis in a vagina.
How do you think acts and their proper form are determined? I thought that it was to do with purposes. Meanwhile your description taken at face value, without background knowledge of what you want it to mean, sounds like condoms are ok too. I suggest that thats not a coincidence: the principles youre using on this case are much more permissive than those that inform your general view.
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
30d ago
I assume you're not asking for the various downsides of inflation in general and why people find it annoying when it's above some small amount like 1-2%?
Im asking for some kind of real economic cost; "Its annoying when the prices are different than I remember" doesnt count, no.
As for paying interest, it's purely a policy choice to pay anything other than 0% on any of these IOUs
If you dont pay enough interest, people will stop lending you money.
When and why would they ever need to 'tax back' this amount? The IOUs just roll over indefinitely.
Well, you said that the difference between me and the state is that the state can tax. If it doesnt actually need to do that, then whats the difference? Why cant I have ever-increasing amounts of debt that I service by taking on new debt?
What youre proposing here is "The Ponzi scheme that actually works". Because Ponzi schemes do work so long as the investors dont take out their money, ie stop letting you roll over your debt.
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
4mo ago
when the left-leaning home depot employee lost her job
You mean the one that spoke in favour of the Trump assassination?
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
3mo ago
Every single one of them that mentioned it eagerly brings up new evidence in favor of the theory.
I dont think that implies theyre serious about it. Or, maybe serious but not literal? Basically, if you need the big guns OP is bringing out, the point is made.
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
3d ago
It's fine to just liberate Chinamen or Ashkenazim
Looking at the current geopolitical situation, there may have been other downsides.
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
26d ago
‘This is the moment of testing. The moment your hearts are weighed against the Phoenix’s feather. Are you not curious at the outcome?’
‘Not remotely. I know my worth, and I know my crimes. This court holds no jurisdiction over me.’ Fabius straightened, trying to slow his heart rate. His muscles strained against unknown pressures. It was as if he stood at the bottom of a vast ocean, and the weight of thousands of fathoms pressed down on him.
‘Its jurisdiction extends far beyond your ability to conceive, alchemist. You have committed crimes of such monstrous elegance that even the gods themselves grow uneasy. Look – see – they sit in judgement of you.’ A too-long finger drifted upwards, and Fabius followed the gesture. He looked up, and something looked down.
It was not a face, for a face was a thing of limits and angles, and what he saw had neither. It stretched as far as his eyes could see, as if it were one with the whole of the sky and the firmament above. Things that might have been eyes, or distant moons or vast constellations of stars, looked down at him, and a gash in the atmosphere twisted like a lover’s smile. It studied him from an impossible distance, and he felt the sharp edge of its gaze cut through him, layer by layer. There was pain, in that gaze, and pleasure as well. Agony and ecstasy, inextricable and inseparable.
With great effort, he tore his gaze away. ‘There is nothing there,’ he snarled, his teeth cracking against each other. His hearts stuttered, suddenly losing their rhythm. He pounded at his chest, as internal defibrillators sent a charge of electricity shrieking through him. The chirurgeon flooded his system with tranquillisers, and he tapped shakily at his vambrace. A secondary solution of mild stimulants joined the tranquillisers, stabilising him. He ignored the urge to look up. There was nothing there. Nothing at all. ‘There is nothing there,’ he said again, tasting blood. ‘There are no gods. Only cold stars and the void.’
The pressure increased. Something whispered, deep within him. It scratched at the walls of his mind, trying to catch his attention. He ignored it. ‘No gods,’ he repeated. ‘Random confluence of celestial phenomena. Interdimensional disasters, echoing outwards through our perceptions. I think, therefore I am. They do not, so they are not.’ He met the Quaestor’s bland gaze unflinchingly. ‘Gods are for the weak. I am not weak.’
The Quaestor nodded expectantly. ‘No.’
/u/Amadan is entirely correct and in fact doesnt go far enough. The controversy is part of the game, and so is you thinking about how You Can Save Her. There is no form of attention you can pay to this that makes things better, except possibly in minecraft.
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
30d ago
Keep seeing same link. Keep making same response
If "is a fish" really were just semantic, then by the same mechanism "has tiny hairs" would be just semantic. So there would be no facts based on which you can classify things... The only thing that makes this theory remotely workable is that you already know which things you want to apply it too. Its pure Humpty-Dumpty-ism in practice.
You could look it up, it's not my argument. It's good enough for me that most people hate it, so let's avoid it. It's fun when nickels are worth picking up off the ground and can get you a coke.
I mean, thats some reasons, but when weighed against "prosperity beyond what anyone can imagine" they dont weigh especially strongly. Could you at least link it? MMT has lots of cranks that will be dismissed as not representative.
I said the government levies 'some' taxes every year
I also have 'some' income outside taking on debt. I can commit to spending part of it on buying back my own IOUs/debt service in the future. Indeed, my nominal income increases with inflation and economic growth, so this is in many ways like a relative tax. Also assume I live forever. Now can I blow up my debt to infinity? Propably not; propably there is some mechanism tieing the debt amount to the size of the tax base/income, but what?
So, I actually agree that, with fixed expenditures and relative taxes, you can just print money to make up the deficit and it will stabilise eventually. Youll have inflated down the expenditures so that they are covered by the taxes. But this will have reduced the real amount of the expenditures. What is the benefit of doing this over just cutting the expenditures to meet the income?
That doesn't imply anything about somehow taxing it all back and paying it all off or whatever, at some unspecified jubilee judgement day where we have to unwind everything.
Indeed, you never have to actually go down to zero debt. But the debt is nonetheless tied to the ability to do that. It can not grow without limits in real terms. Consider: in your view printed cash and government debt are interchangable. So lets say we only print money. Then unlimited real growth of debt would mean unlimited real growth of GDP, or an unlimited willingness of people to sit on cash and never spend it. Neither is realistic.
This question of an "end date" where you unwind everything or absence thereof is in fact very interesting and fruitful to think about more broadly, because it leads to a lot of changes in economics, and Im not sure you understand this in a "settled science" way (else you would have likely lead with that, because thats the only point where your assumptions may differ from classical). For example, imagine you have no time prefencence and an investment that will keep yielding 10%/year indefinitely. What is the optimal amount to withdraw each year? For any given percentage, half of that is better in the long term... but 0 provides no utility at all.
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
4mo ago
[Integral of (ΔGDP PPP + ΔAvg. Wages) over immigrant length of stay]
(Based on your later discussions, I assume those deltas are meant for measures of the whole country, with and without the immigrant.) What do you want this term to do? For one, you almost certainly want total wages, because the other numbers are also for the whole country and not just one american. And then, GDP already includes wages, so youd be double-counting those. And and, some of that benefit is going to the immigrant himself, you should propably subtract his wage.
it treats the benefits received by the citizen children of immigrants as benefits received by immigrants. That's poor-faith sleight of hand.
Im not sure it is? They are means-tested based on parents means. If we imagine that those children go on to be the same as children of natives, then that would mean we are paying more to produce an ultimately identical citizen. There may be some unfairness insofar as immigrants have more children, but other than that I dont see the problem.
As a general argument, if we could put a copy of the USA somewhere into an empty bit of ocean, do you think that would benefit americans? Because once the aging argument is eliminated, thats like immigration by people just like citizens.
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
5mo ago
...and the women who want it are all kinksters I guess? And ~every man in the 50s though keeping her trapped was more important than financial security, no romatics who thought they didnt have to worry about that?
My point is that list entires that dont themselves have a conflict of interest dont predict a different interest from men and women. So insofar as you think those are a big part of why women dont want early marriage, you should reject this branches framing that men are there on offer and women dont want it.
A few weeks ago, Trump signed an executive order attempting to end birthright citizenship; it is currently working its way through the courts. Some users here claimed that the 14th amendment "obviously" implies birthright citizenship. I disagree, but wanted to take the time for a long from explanation. First, the relevant text:
The question, now, is who is subject to jurisdiction. It cant just be everyone, because then why would they write it, and besides there are known exceptions made on this basis, notably foreign diplomats, invading armies, and (formerly) indians. Of these, I want to look at invading armies in particular. Why are they not subject to jurisdiction?
The common answer seems to be that, since they control the territory, they have the jurisdiction rather than the US. But does the US accept that it doesnt have jurisdiction? No. After the invader is expelled, they likely have the right collect the outstanding tax from the time they were unable to collect. Crimes under US law that occured during that time can also be prosecuted (though it may be an extenuating circumstance where relevant).
Now, you might try to solve this by requiring defacto jurisdiction. The problem is that you then have to explain how the defacto failure to immediately reoccupy territory is different from the defacto failure to immediately apprehend any criminal whatsoever. This sounds quite weird and not like something they would have meant, and also every illegal immigrant is a fugitive criminal, because he violates immigration law. And it also seems that the invasion exception applies to the invaders, rather than every non-citizen in the territory.
A more promising approach might be to notice that the way the government treats illegal immigrants is a lot like how it treats enemy soldiers: Where safely possible, they are caught alive. They can then be prosecuted for any crimes committed in the US (unless responsibility goes up the command chain), and are eventually sent back home (when there is no danger that this will help the enemy anymore). This suggests that jurisdiction applies to them in a similar way, and reasoning for an exemption is likely to transfer. Indeed, one of the simplest descriptions of an invasion is "People coming into the country that the government doesnt want to". Subjecting people to jurisdiction requires activity of the government, and it seems quite sensible that someone refused entry is also refused jurisdiction. I think thats more plausible than such a refusal requiring jurisdiction, but even if you disagree, its at least a binary choice rather than having to find some complicated new distinction.
Is this a motivated reading? While it has some complexity to it, I dont see a way to accommodate the invasion exception without that. I think this is the most plausible way to resolve that. A reading which doesnt make the invasion exception may also be reasonable, depending on judicial philosophy, but if thats what the people calling it "obvious" meant, they should indicate that theyre defending something other than the status quo. In conclusion, I think children of illegal immigrants do not necessarily have citizenship, those of temporary residents (also targeted in the EO) do.
...is what I would have written, if I didnt remember that the US actually claims universal jurisdiction for some of its laws. This doesnt make everyone a US citizen, because there is the territory requirement in the text, but it potentially outflanks the exceptions, and under my above reading all of them would be invalid. Admittedly I dont think SCOTUS will take this line seriously - theyre too practical for that, and if they just really want to keep children of illegals theres plenty of bad arguments to use that sound more normal. And actually, theres a wrinkle in the wrinkle, because one of the laws with universal jurisdiction was passed before the 14th ammendment, and so actually maybe you should make the traditional exceptions work even under universal jurisdiction (depending on judicial philosophy). I think the universal reading of that law is bullshit, but it has precedent.
EDIT: Since noone seems to take into account the last paragraph: My final conclusion is that all the exceptions are gone.
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