MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
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User ID: 1783
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
11mo ago
See this is exactly why I don’t like environmentalists as a group. I can understand the need to protect a species, and I’m generally in favor of protecting the environment where possible. But there’s a point where you have to be pragmatic about these things. We need roads, power plants and wires. Planning around a major habitat I get. But if you oppose everything people want to do even when it’s 95% of what you want, then I see no reason to take them seriously when they suggest we need to retool our infrastructure to protect the environment.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
11mo ago
The times I’ve seen it it’s used to at least imply that the person involved is hoping a white man would be put in his place.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
11mo ago
The idea wasn’t that the King would literally know how to do everything. The idea was that the king would have full control over the state and thus could set a vision or set of visions for what success looks like. And while the King might not know all the details, they’d have their entire youth up until taking the throne to learn how to actually run a state. But having full control, knowing the basics of how things work, and having a vision of what he wants the state to look like by the end of his reign gives him a leg up to actually getting those things done. It’s a lot easier to get the administrative system to approve more nuclear plants if the king knows that nuclear is fairly safe, provides a lot of energy, etc. and with a vision of better energy independence and efficiency and a plan to get there, chances are you’ll get there.
Modern democracy encourages people to learn how to run for office with very little knowledge of how to run things once they actually get there. I think democracy does work most of the time, I just think good statecraft is much more important to a functioning state than the details of how the decisions are made. We lack this in both parties. It’s a campaign of clowns with no serious ideas about how the United States should move into the twenty first century. Our foreign policy is based mostly on vibes. Our plan for education is basically to bandage over the failures of universities and do nothing to improve K-12. Our infrastructure plan appears to be “fix potholes”. Health care is still a mess. And general health is terrible as Americans are pretty much obese at this point.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
11mo ago
I’m in the Midwest actually. And I drive on one of these “bike routes” daily. The speed limit is 35 MPH, cars regularly hit 40-45 because the speed isn’t enforced. Not only is there no shoulder on the road, but there’s a revine right at the edge of the road. But yes, after the mayor hit a biker, they painted the bike path symbols on the road and stuck up a few signs. But they did get a grant from DC for having bike lanes.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
11mo ago
To be fair, honestly most of us are in grimdark phase right now anyway because so much of our real world society is falling apart. You’ve undoubtedly been reading the descriptions of Philadelphia here. Or if not you’ve seen the ruins of most major cities with bars on the windows, trash in the streets, drug use and homeless people everywhere one looks. Where taking public transportation is an exercise in risk management during the day and unsafe at night. Where kids no longer expect to live as well as their parents even as they must work ever harder to not fall into poverty from the cost of living and debts and lack of real opportunities even though those kids worked extremely hard to get where they are. It is not exactly surprising that the grandkids of people who watched the original show resent that their grandparents believed in a hopeful optimistic future where there’s no poverty and people can live a life they want when the promise is not only no closer to being delivered, we’re actually farther away from many of them than we were in the 1960s.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
11mo ago
Most of the country lacks “real infrastructure” for bikes. At best the state will paint a few lines on existing roads and call the rightmost lane a bike lane with no real barriers against traffic. At worst, they paint a bicycle lane symbol on a road with a 35mph speed limit and stick up a “share the road” sign or two. It gives the state prestige “we’re supporting green infrastructure!” And cash from the Feds. But it’s not a safe way to ride.
And exercise is pretty easy to get if you do a little while watching TV in the evening.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
11mo ago
It’s not a stupid hobby, however it’s stupid to think that you can ride a vehicle that goes 15 mph on public roads without being at risk. At least with a sidewalk or a separate path, you’re not blocking cars.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
11mo ago
In my area, bike lanes are a joke. Regularly on the single lane of a two lane road, no shoulder to speak of, and where traffic speed is set (for cars obviously) at 35-40 mph and in some cases curvy roads at that. You’d have to have a death wish to even think about using “bike lanes” like that. And to be honest, I think bike lanes and traffic don’t mix simply because of the speed differential involved. A fast biker can ride at 10-15 mph. A slow car riding the breaks goes 20-25. There’s just no way you can have a roadway set up for both without a physical Barrier to protect bikers from traffic. If we were taking about building bike lanes away from cars — dedicated lanes where there’s no roads connected to it, I think the perception would be better. As it stands, from the POV of car drivers, bikers are basically a road hazard to them — they have to brake hard suddenly with cars behind them going 40 mph putting them at substantial risk of being in a wreck themselves for trying to not hit a biker in the road. It simply doesn’t work from a design standpoint to try to fit a vehicle that moves less than 20 mph into a space where other vehicles are going anywhere from 30-60 mph.
And the barriers don’t seem to happen mostly from a money standpoint. The barriers cost money, then you need more money to redesign intersections to accommodate your barriers and bike lanes, you need better traffic control. None of that is cheap. To do bike paths alongside the actual road with protective barriers, updated traffic control, signage and parking costs millions and the majority of road users will never get use from it.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
11mo ago
Yeah, misspoke, sorry. But the point being that unless a woman is basically a semi-pro athlete (let’s say that she’d be competitive in a small school college sports program) her chances of successfully defending herself against a minimally athletic male in a one on one situation is fairly small. It’s why I basically laugh at the “learn self defense for women” programs. Unless you’re seriously training and competing in combat sports you aren’t going to have enough skill to win out against a male with enough extra muscle mass to manhandle her.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
11mo ago
Everything will matter by job and major. If you are in a highly competitive market, the credentials will matter a lot. If not, you’ll be able to get by with lesser schools or in some cases no school at all.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
11mo ago
Define “real”. I mean a militia group did manage to blow up a federal building in the late 1990s.
But I think when asking whether a social movement is “real” I tend to think in terms of organizational effectiveness. Can they actually do any effective disruptive force type things? Can they project actual force beyond their home territory? Hell, can they effectively defend their home territory? And in that sense, while these groups exist and are armed, the most that these grouhave done in the last 10 years is marching around in business casual clothes and shouting into bullhorns. I’d suggest with sufficient time and pressure these militias could become more effective. It’s rather anecdotal, but the online portion of these groups on YouTube seem to be concerned with professionalizing the movement, incorporating the types of training that the actual military uses and trying to purge the ranks of beer drinking larpers. Whether this is actually happening, I don’t know because I’m not in a militia. But this is now at least being talked about.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
11mo ago
Honestly, I would hope and expect that the parties themselves would deal with those who are clearly and obviously calling for violence, and I would expect them to defend their own members from false accusations. I’m not sure, outside of the public refusing to support people and groups calling for violence, there’s much the general public can actually do.
As it stands, the bar for what constitutes “calling for political violence” seems pretty low. If you use a flamethrower on empty bio es labeled with the agenda of the other party, that’s now political violence. Even though no humans are in the images. With such a broad definition, almost any ad that gets attention could be accused of violence in some way. To me, if we’re going to stop “encouraging spree killings”, I think it should be done in cases where the call is real and unambiguous. You can’t curtail free speech by calling every symbolic reference to a gun violence.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
11mo ago
In the case of gender, I would argue that it’s at least in part about safety. Men are orders of magnitude stronger than women, and given that most instances of stranger rape occur in private spaces, keeping natal males out of women’s restrooms, changing rooms, and sleeping areas is simply the best way to prevent rapes in those spaces.
Height and weight are more about proof of identity in general. If you match 5/5 of the identifying characteristics listed on your ID, it’s pretty clear it’s your ID.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
11mo ago
I think the less the general public knows about spree shooter’s manifestos the better. There’s at least some evidence that spree shooting can be contagious much like suicides and so the less sensational the reports on any given shooting, the less likely the shooting is to inspire copycats. I don’t think it changes if the motives are political.
I do think there’s a place for experts to study the motivations of spree shooters. I want cops and schools aware of the commonalities between the events, likely motivations, and best practices for preventing them or mitigating the damage during those kinds of events l.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
11mo ago
I mean welcome to decline era Western politics. We have cookies. It’s been my frustration on all levels of modern western politics and one of the things that draws me to Moldbug. We’ve been so dominant on all fronts throughout the period from the 1960s to the 2010s that we really didn’t have to take political issues seriously (as in being practical and focused on real facts and real political goals) for most of the last century. I’m convinced that most politicians have no idea how to actually identify, study, and solve problems in the real world. And now that we have given away most of our manufacturing base to other countries, reduced our education system to basically a joke, haven’t modernized any infrastructure really (given the state of the roads, we aren’t really maintaining infrastructure either). We run on slogans and propaganda while our nation crumbles around us. Is it any wonder that the West truly believes that wars can be fought and won on the basis of “well, Russia was big mean by invading, therefore they’re destined to fail, and the plucky Ukrainian military run by a former comedian can win a war against a former KGB agent.”
The setup for this war is the worst of all worlds. A vibe based conflict with a nuclear power in which we have no plan to win, no strategy, no strategic reason to think that Ukraine itself is value to anyone (it’s an agricultural country, and mostly exports gains).
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
11mo ago
Even this analysis has a problem in the fact that the numbers aren’t telling the full story here. The cost of necessary household goods, groceries and gasoline have gone up much more than that 2.9% and because you feel the effects of this very strongly because it’s directly impacting QOL even more than the 2.9% number would suggest. Eggs were $2.02 in 2019 and $2.86 in 2022. The graph doesn’t go to 2024, but going from $2 to nearly $3 is a big hit to the budget. (https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/inflation/egg-prices-adjusted-for-inflation/). If you’re seeing those kinds of new prices, especially if rent and other bills are increasing faster than your paycheck, it’s not good.
And I just don’t see the party in power especially taking it seriously. Trump and RFK get it because they’re talking to ordinary people who struggle to afford things. I know lots of people who are constantly taking formerly normal things off the table. No more name brand stuff, staycation instead of vacation. No more meals out. Make clothes and shoes last longer. And as this continues, the appeal of candidates and media outlets that at least get it will be more popular. And unless the ruling elites start to get it, vibes don’t work as a bandaid. Kamala has a weakness hear because she doesn’t seem to actually get how the cost of living has changed since the Trump days.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
11mo ago
I’m not sure how realistic it is, but I think a border along the Dniepro River is at least going to be a reasonably defensible border.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
11mo ago
Political apparatchiks have an insular and provincial view of the American electorate based mostly on hearsay and things they learned from their political science courses. They aren’t necessarily reading the room as it actually is, but seeing it through lenses that are decades out of date and thus either don’t work anymore (seriously, who’s watching political ads on TV, let alone basing their votes on them? Hence Trump was able to get around the media gatekeepers because he understood that people are much more engaged with social media and online platforms and online news). RFK understands that most of the concerns of the working classes below the PMC are much more rubber meets the road kinds of problems than the high minded “let’s build the future” vibes that the major parties are putting out. The political class is baffled by the fact that most people think the economy is bad and that inflation is a major problem. They keep jabbing at random graphs and saying “look the numbers are going in the right direction!” And the people look up from their kitchen tables where they’re trying to squeeze their budget even tighter because rent, groceries, and gasoline went up again unimpressed with those graphs. Trump and RFK get that. They also get that people want things like safer streets, schools focused on the basics, etc.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
11mo ago
I think at least some of the differences in mental health are caused by the nature of the movements. Liberals tend to move further left and tear down anyone who doesn’t go along completely on everything they believe. If you take the liberal positions of 2004, you are on the far right to most social liberals. And the same group is not shy about using their power over institutions to massively punish people for pretty small transgressions. The bleeding edge of social liberalism wants Harris gone for daring to say that what Hamas did on October 7 was bad. It’s a massive purity spiral that’s easy to fall off of requiring adherents to live in a 1984 world where you have to change your views on a dime and pretend that Oceana has always been at war with Eastasia.
Conservatives are much more chill about the whole thing. If you’re conservative, you are allowed to have beliefs outside of that. As long as you’re generally conservative on most things, they don’t really care. If I’m in favor of gay marriage and my more conservative friends are not, my friends will not scream at me, nor will the more conservative kids decide that my political beliefs warrent ruining thanksgiving dinner when they throw a fit and leave. If I work for a conservative, my job isn’t in jeopardy if he finds out I’m not super conservative. There’s not really a purity spiral either. If I stand still, I’m not going to find that the party as a whole finds my views abhorrent.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
11mo ago
TBH I’ve never really had a deep offline conversation about politics that were really about politics and not ultimately vibes. What I mean by that is that left, right or libertarian (have yet to meet a communist) all seem to be picking positions based on “vibes” or “culture” rather than any specific position or set of facts about the outside world. The world of politics isn’t about rubber meets the road issues, but essentially about tribe proxies forming up based on shared cultural norms and interests.
TBH this is why I don’t trust either side completely. Neither one is actually interested in fixing things or building for the future. There’s no real problem solving going on there. I’ve come to the conclusion that whether it’s D or R that eventually pull the trigger, American democracy is essentially already comatose and on life support. Politics is about solving things, filling potholes, teaching kids to be literate, numerate and scientifically literate future citizens, creating a social structure that promotes human thriving, passing real budgets, and making good decisions about how best to protect the people from enemies and keep them healthy. None of that actually seems to happen, and while the government and the parties and the people themselves are distracted by various flavors of vibes-based Kafaybe arguments, our country is rotting from within.
In 1960, the median family could afford a modest home, a car, and a local road trip vacation. That same median household probably could walk around town without worry about crime. Homelessness and drug use were fairly rare. Most kids, even without college (which was, at the time, fairly affordable) could read and write on grade level. Attacking a teacher was absolutely unheard of, and school shooters were rare enough that schools allowed kids to keep hunting rifles in their cars. Every single one of these QOL indicators has gone down quite a lot since then, and all we have from our leaders, the parties, and “political groups” is Kafaybe and Vibes.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
11mo ago
Actually I suspect that a lot of them if examined would not be mentally fit to vote anyway. If someone is in the ER for a mental health episode, it’s obviously pretty severe, with either heavy drugs or commitment as real possibilities. Add in that a doctor, if you’re in acute distress, hold a lot of power and authority over them. I’d love to be a fly on the wall, because I have a suspicion that it’s at least somewhat implied that help is contingent on them registering to vote.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
11mo ago
I think it does though. I mean the interests of those who have a stake in the preservation of society and those whose interests lie in voting themselves ever larger benefits packages from the state. I think there’s a balance to be struck, and I think eventually those who have a stake in society will absolutely turn on people who do nothing especially when they do nothing and are proud of it.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
11mo ago
To me, the bigger issue is the question of productivity. Men are orders of magnitude more likely to be in the important and well paid jobs simply because of the way that men think about work. Men think of work and political power in terms of getting things done. For a man, the point of working is money, power and prestige. To a woman, it’s more often decided on the basis of pleasing work environment, good hours, fun, friendly coworkers etc. if you took everything on that list away, men will still want the job if it pays enough. And in politics, it think it’s the same sort of idea. Men will take an uncomfortable civilization where hard work is rewarded because they want the rewards to come to them when they earn them. They aren’t worried about whether a policy seems mean or if it makes poverty more uncomfortable. It’s not mean, they just want a practical result of most people doing productive work even if the jobs are dirty.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
11mo ago
I think that part is unquestionably true, but one thing I keep coming back to is just how easy it is to avoid or shift blame for catastrophic outcomes when the people making the decisions are in offices answering emails and doing spreadsheets thousands of miles from places where their consequences will be seen and quite often spread through several layers of bureaucracy between themselves and implementation of the policies they set in an e-mail while looking at numbers in a spreadsheet.
To be blunt about that part of the problem, the buck doesn’t stop there if someone in the C-suite hires a person incapable of the work, he knows he’s not going to be personally responsible for the outcome. He can blame those below him — the hiring manager, HR people, the hired person themselves— for anything that actually happens. He didn’t cause the near miss on the runway. It was all those people below him who didn’t implement his ideas properly. It’s quite often that those who defend the idea of DEI say that they don’t intend to lower quality, but to get more minorities who are capable into those positions. It’s the fault of those below for not seeing through the “hire diverse or else” rules to find competent candidates. If the C-suites were held responsible for failures, there would be less of a quality decline, because like everyone else the executive would value his reputation and keeping his job.
I think I was a bit unclear. But the criticism of the west that always stuck with me was Xi Diengpeng saying that we are an unserious people. To be honest, he’s absolutely right about our leadership. And I think Moldbug is right in his diagnosis of the problem even if I think absolute monarchy is probably not a solution. If you read about how statesmen of the past thought about governance, it’s not anything like what we talk about in governance. You can read the Republic and the Laws and Cicero is talking about laws being aimed at the common good. Confucius talks about rulers and ministers having a duty to study and understand the issues. It was seen as an art and a science of making the state prosperous and powerful. I just don’t see those kinds of serious pragmatic leaders coming forward.
Some of this is just incentives. The person who can win the election is the one who can pander best. The ones who can promise what sounds good on TV as a sound bite of less than 10 seconds. If you are drawn to solving problems and fixing things, then I can’t imagine the need to go on TV and give interviews where you do your best to give non answers for an hour. You’d probably rather build a business or financial empire or rocket ships or something.
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