MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
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User ID: 1783
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
2mo ago
I think it’s useful as a heuristic. It the system in question is always getting a supposedly wrong result, it’s perfectly reasonable to say “that wrong result is the point.” If you have a system that is supposed to produce widgets, but instead the people who run it produce nothing but paperwork on the impacts the widgets will have, then the point is tge paperwork and not the widget. The point of most iPad games is not to be fun, the point is to show ads and frustrate the player into spending money.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
2mo ago
I mean taking in another roommate, renting out an unused room, or the like are dealing with the cost of housing in that example. But I guess it’s a poor choice for the situation. My point is that about half or more of our federal budget goes towards entitlements enacted decades ago when our demographics were vastly different and we steadfastly refuse to adjust them for the reality we’re in now. Sure, in 1960, we could probably afford to have seniors retire at 65 and we had a glut of 20-30 something people entering their prime earning years. Especially since most people didn’t live much past 70. Now, we have retirees drawing out their SS, Medicare and so on for something like 20 years at a time when there are not nearly as many young people to prop up the system. Seniors comfort themselves that they’re only getting what the6 put in, but really if you live 20 years post retirement and get colas on top of your earned benefits, then you’re taking more than you ever put in. And we’ve refused to do anything substantial about it. The retirement age, if we were to keep it in line with what the age of retirement was in 1950 would be nearly 80.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
2mo ago
Except that we can’t even start that process as long as the default position of the government is “just come in, stay. By the time we actually get around to dealing with the case, you’ll be married to an American, probably have a couple of kids, and therefore we won’t be allowed to deport you anyway because we don’t break up American families.”
I want a sane immigration policy, as I think it’s much to hard and takes to long to come in legally. But at the same time, starting on that process with so many people crashing the border, overstaying visas, coming in as “students” but never enrolling in college, etc. isn’t going to work. We first need control of the border. Then we can create a vetting process that allows us to let good people in people we know are not gang members, drug pushers, terrorists, and people with so few skills that well be paying them welfare benefits forever. A sane system is possible, but trying to build it without dealing with the backlog and making it clear we don’t tolerate people sneaking in or overstaying visas, there’s no way to get there.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
2mo ago
I’m not opposed to some sort of internal process. What im concerned about is those motivated to prevent deportations weaponizing tge process to basically grind tge whole thing to a stop by lawfare. I’ve said this a million times, but a good lawyer can absolutely abuse procedure to make what should be a hour long case into a month long slog through endless motions, frivolous witnesses, long discovery processes, and so on. Th3 end result is grinding everything to a halt as we now spend 6 months per detainee trying to defeat the lawfare. And of course this leads to over crowding which forces us back to “catch and release” and people staying for decades because the system is ground to a halt.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
2mo ago
It’s a position of inconsistency. The biggest fish in the Waste/fraud/abuse category are in welfare and entitlements. In fact at least a two-thirds of our budget goes to mandatory entitlements, social security, Medicare, Medicaid, without getting into welfare payments. To talk about cutting the waste in government spending without touching those things is inconsistent. It’s like having a family budget, and saying you’ll make big changes to protect yourself from too much debt, and never getting around to asking if you’re spending too much on housing. No, that’s not serious. It’s not something as inessential as the makeup buying, but if you’re really needing to cut spending, it all has to be on the table.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
2mo ago
I mean im not a military expert so that’s mostly why I’m not thinking specifically about the military process. However, there are things you can do in the case of planes, mostly stress testing them in ways that simulate combat and picking those that perform well. You don’t want a jet fighter that shakes apart at combat speeds or on quick turns, and so you simulate those things. And you can have those tests, im not completely opposed to procedures and tests, but they must be in service to the end goal which in this case is a fighter jet that can handle combat conditions, and has guns/missiles that fire accurately and explode as needed on impact.
As far as generals predicting the future of combat, this is a stickier problem, simply because it involves building when you don’t know exactly what you need. If we go to war with Iran, we need something different than if we go to war with China. There’s no real work around for not knowing what to plan for, though I think the generals have better ideas about how to approach the problem Than I do. Gun to head, I might go with an internal version of a warfare prediction market and listen more to the guys capable of predicting shorter term scenarios correctly. This would be a rough proxy for the ability to predict long term trends.
My point is to get the general systems aligned with accomplishing the things they’re tasked with doing. I want my highway department to build roads, not file endless paperwork on environmental impact, on obscure safety issues, or on the precise details of the demographics of the companies hired to build the road. At the end of the day what I and most of the public want are roads built and maintained that are reasonably safe to drive on.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
2mo ago
Such things can be adjusted on the basis of what the project actually is. If the project is highway construction, then if the road is not functional, or the road doesn’t get built within a reasonable timeframe, then obviously that’s something to be accountable for. There might be more long term projects— I imagine getting drugs approved is more of a safety problem, and I think you could expand the scope of accountability to include long term health effects ten years on.
The trouble with procedure based accountability is that it basically incentivizes foot-dragging by punishing people for not following thousands of procedures, but effectively not caring at all if the results ever happen. I’ll admit that random bad luck can happen, but over a long enough timeframe, say you do ten projects a year, at least half would be successful by chance, and perhaps another quarter could be made to work by careful work. That would give a person on that position a 7/10 success rate, which is pretty good.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
2mo ago
I think it’s a thought more like the natives in the Americas, or most other similar wars. They used to be fought to completion and capitulation— basically until the losing side would understand that not only can they never win, but that even attempting this will do nothing to the enemy but mean decimated populations for that losing side. This is simply the natural order of human civilization as it happed from time immemorial. What happened to the Hittites? They were eventually conquered and absorbed into the Assyrian empire that eventually was itself absorbed into the Ottoman Empire. Those who were once a big empire are now assimilated to the point that they no longer exist as a people.
And especially with Israel — a small state about the size of New Jersey — I see capitulation as the only real answer as there’s just not enough room for two states to exist next to each other with no friction. That’s assuming a two-state solution in which all sides want to get along, which isn’t true. Put two armed camps next to each other and you not only get the region at war constantly, but the fallout of those wars causing political instability in other countries. If Palestine became obviously untenable with the only options being either leaving the region or assimilation into Israeli society as Arab Israelis, the entire thing will eventually settle down. Being a Palestinian Israeli will be perhaps a cultural affiliation, but it will be reduced to dances, food, the practice of Islam, etc. much like Souix still exist and accept that they exist only as a cultural enclave kept alive via song, dance, story, foods, and religion, but with no hope of a country of their own.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
2mo ago
I think if you’re talking about continuity, I think that it’s a case of saying “if I took someone from the previous era and dropped them into the after era, would they be shocked by the changes. Would George Washington be shocked by how government works in 1865? What about Lincoln dropped in 1965? Would JFK be shocked by how government works in 2065? And so I think we’ve had 3 republics in America and more in Britain which went from pagan Rome to Christian Rome to Anglo-Saxon pagan, to Christian Anglo-Saxon, to Norman, to Manga Carta, to Empire, to post Empire, to what appears to be the beginnings of Islamic Britain. If you take a British man from Rome and drop him in any era after they’d be shocked by the changes.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
2mo ago
It’s not “accountability” in some nebulous sense. It’s accountability to having done the right process regardless of what happens. And this does skew things away from actually getting things done because there’s always a chance that doing something will result in a bad outcome that could be prevented by doing the processes. So in order to avoid the consequences of being wrong and held to account for a potential failure, you do processes to cover your own ass and who cares if the project gets done at all. It’s a question of the incentives being put in place such that you avoid actual accountability by abusing the accountability system such that you protect yourself from accountability by doing and creating lots of processes and not actually getting things done.
The solution, to my mind is to shift accountability to the results of the project. If you can’t get the job done, you’re accountable for that, and if you can’t do the project right you’re accountable for that. If the project is building a road, the accountability should not be in filling out forms to authorize the road, or quadruple checking that the processes are followed to the letter. Instead shift accountability to the correct, safe, and timely building of the road.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
2mo ago
I think the “better fencers” theory makes the most sense. Swordsmanship was the job of a class of people, and you’d to some degree just pick things up from being around swordsmen training. The other thing is that you wouldn’t necessarily want to create a book for your school that gives everything away, as rivals can use that to train countermeasures against your school of fencing.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
2mo ago
Black block was wild back in the day as well.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
2mo ago
Except that there have been moves away from the petrodollar as global currency. Saudi Arabia nearly dropped the Petrodollar, and the Russian sphere from what I gather has already switched to the Ruble. China wants to make the Renbei the reserve currency. If (and I think it’s a when ) the world stops using petrodollars, not only will the debt and trade deficit matter a lot, but given the number of dollars in circulation globally, we’re talking about Zimbabwean levels of inflation.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
2mo ago
It’s one of many reasons that I’ve long since stopped paying any attention to that stuff. The LARP is funny in a sort of Disney movie way — overacted sanctimonious and generally silly to people with a working understanding of OPSEC and grey man. I watched what the Hong Kongers were doing to protest the Chinese government’s takeover. They were serious, came prepared for teargas, took precautions to not out themselves or their comrades, hid their faces to avoid being identified, paid for things in cash.
Even those in government are pretty stupid as far as actually getting things done. Nobody who really wants to obstruct an authoritarian regime is going to hold a press conference announcing it. If Trump does declare martial law in some form, doing that doesn’t prevent him from sending in ICE in the least, it just signs your death warrant or maybe if you’re lucky you just get fired. Either way, it’s ineffective, but near term good for campaign contributions.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
2mo ago
I’d hardly call it martyrdom the way most dissidents on the left are doing it. They just have no sense of seriousness. It’s like a game. They are not organized or even trying to organize. They have very little sense of strategy (one woman legitimately thinks that getting into the face of an ICE agent with a gun on her hip and filming while aggressively asking questions is going to end well. Obviously it won’t as the gun alone is reason to act in self defense, which at best means they’re going to aggressively arrest you, but they could just shoot and probably get away with it.) they fear martial law but also are giving money via credit cards and direct payments— both of which give the full name and are easily obtained via the database of the company or their bank. They also can’t keep their mouths shut on Facebook. I’m talking people using their full name Facebook accounts, tagging fellow protesters in their posts, taking pictures at the event and posting them from the event with their personal cellphone.
I just can’t take these people seriously. They’re almost going out of their way to be easy for any real authoritarian government to round up, by being obvious about their identity.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
2mo ago
In defense of some of this, I think they’re meant less as a stand alone list and more of a “add these books to supplement the standard Woke books list that almost everyone gets through high school” list. And the job of the list is to simply correct for just how far left, multicultural and woke the usual readings are. And that is done by curating a book list that specifically includes things left off of those more woke lists. They’re corrective lenses to fix the gaps of literary history, and as such they don’t need the more progressive, liberal, or multicultural voices included because the stuff most kids read or are otherwise exposed to.
For an exhaustive list, sure, I think I’d balance things out more. I want kids exposed to as many views as possible. It builds character to have to understand ideas and perspectives you don’t agree with. But if 99% of the standard curriculum is Woke leaning and multicultural, you don’t correct it with a perfectly balanced curriculum that includes more woke multicultural stuff, you correct it by introducing conservative books.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
2mo ago
I think the “rot” goes back much farther than people think. The biggest difference between modern society and much more ancient ones is that we have lost the idea of purpose, or to be more precise a purpose other than selfish hedonism. Why are we here, and what is our society actually supposed to accomplish and how every person fits into that great plan for society. Most traditional societies have that, usually connected to religion. You fit into the world created by God or the gods to do something either great or small to bring about whatever the will of the universe. Sometimes it’s secular, bringing about freedom for everyone, civilizing a frontier, colonizing a place (even mars). But it’s something all of society is striving for. We have “money and bitches” more or less. That’s the grand narrative— you exist as an atomized human in a society and your job is to get what you can for yourself and to have fun in any way you choose. Anyone getting in the way of your hedonistic desires or your wealth is bad.
This is no way to build anything. A society of atomized humans is not a society, just like a herd of cats — it’s not a cohesive unit coordinating to do things, it’s a bunch of cats who happen to be in the same place at the same time. And they cannot possibly trust any other cat to not steal their Fancy Feast, or not scratch them, or to let them use the scratching post. A herd of atomized humans is the same. You don’t form a community, you just exist around each other. And as such you don’t expect that anyone will not try to take advantage of you, or let you have things you need, or just simply leave you alone if need be.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
2mo ago
I think that the decline of blue collar work has caused or at least exacerbated many of our social problems. The reason that jobs you can get right out of college suck for a lot of people (tech is at the moment, an exception) is the absolute glut of college graduates. But why? Why did 80% of Americans decide that they needed to spend $60,000 to get a degree? What other options are there? So off we go to college and unless you are super talented, you don’t get much for it except the loan you’re paying off. Why is there so much homelessness? The good paying jobs aren’t there. Blacks in Detroit can’t get jobs at ford anymore, so they deal drugs and form gangs. Basically our economy only works if you’re one of the elite who can manage to get a STEM degree, do all of the unpaid internships and build a good GitHub. The rest will probably struggle to reach such milestones as “paying for rent and groceries on one paycheck without 6 roommates”.
Whether tariffs will fix it, I don’t know. But the economy is hollowed out and importing more workers when those at home can’t afford food and rent, so why not try it?
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
2mo ago
In bang for buck, I think you could do much the same thing with less cost and less lost opportunities (another cost of college is that you’re keeping your 18-24 year old young adults out of the workforce, which not only means they aren’t earning money for the company, but it effectively means that they don’t start households until later on and thus aren’t buying things and are behind on saving for a house and for eventually having kids), by having the high school diplomas do the same thing. If you’re not reading and doin* maths on grade level, you shouldn’t graduate high school and the reason that college became the “well at least he can read” degree is that high school diplomas stopped being that.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
2mo ago
They’re a net negative at present because most companies are tooled for a free-trade environment. They generally outsource the labor needed to produce goods by building factories overseas or importing goods or inputs. Depending on what happens, 5 years from now it might not be a problem at all.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
2mo ago
I mean he’s not exactly wrong which is why I’m much less enamored with the idea that final authority should rest with the people and that the legitimacy or rulership should rest on the people.
It creates a lot of really strange results simply because it rests on a flimsy idea. The basic idea is that somehow the sum of several million people who don’t understand a system voting on how to run the system somehow results in a well run system. Or the sum of ignorance is knowledge. This doesn’t work. 300 people who know jack all about city planning simply cannot accidentally figure out how to time traffic lights. 300 million people who can’t even find Ukraine on a map cannot possibly be making a good decision on whether to conduct a war there, how to conduct it, or when to end it. No other place on earth do we do this. Parents generally do not get their four year olds approval on dinner because they’d choose ice cream. Children are not trusted with the family budget. Soldiers are not asked to approve of war strategy. Workers are not given the right to vote on the direction the company will take in the next year. And on it goes — when we need a system that just works, we put competent people in charge and let them run the thing. Except government where anyone over 18 can choose the general direction of almost every function of government by choosing leaders to do as they promised when asking for their votes.
And as Hanania rightly points out, modern democratic governments are highly tuned to avoiding the realities they exist in. Whether or not a policy is a good idea doesn’t matter. What matters is that the public supports it. Giveaway programs of various types are always popular — leading to a famous warning from Alexis de Tocqueville that democracy would only last until people discover that they can vote themselves largess from the public coffers. And so we have. Welfare, student loans guaranteed by the government, a big push for universal healthcare (provided by the government) etc. it doesn’t matter if these things work — it can easily be shown that government guarantees of student loans has ruined not only education (dumbing down college to the point where anyone who graduated high school can go, and lowering standards until literally anyone can pass), but job markets (as lots of jobs that require no higher order skills now require 4-year degrees as a minimum). This is just one reality avoided — we don’t have infinite money, and even if we did, handing out money tends to distort markets and create more problems than it solves. You can add in things like social liberalism where every form of deviant behavior is tolerated if not celebrated. Don’t kink shame adult babies, porn actresses, furries, or drag queens, and don’t keep them away from kids, even if their fetish is only plausibly not pedophilia. And again, a lot of this turns out to be bad for society. But it gets votes, so who cares.
But beyond that, it’s the perfect engine for avoiding responsibility. Who is responsible for the decisions in a democracy? The people. They voted for the guy who did the thing. He was only doing what the people wanted. So 300 million of us are responsible for the results of the tariffs. Or the negotiations with Russia. Or the bombing of the Houthis. Or whatever happens with Iran. Or anything else that happens. It’s even better for elected representatives when it goes through a parliament or congress. They can do nothing, collect a paycheck and come back for reelection and blame everything on those other guys for messing it all up. If you send us back we’ll fix it. And if it doesn’t work or doesn’t pass, blame the other guys and run again. At no point is anyone In government accountable for the results of the votes he casts or tge decisions he made. The people voted for it!
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
2mo ago
I’m not impressed with the defense. Every single person cited as evidence that she shouldn’t be deported has at least some interest in her staying, either for professional reasons or personal reasons. It’s like saying that “my mother says im a nice person” — you’d have to be extraordinarily naive to take as gospel the words of such people, especially when other neutral parties are silent. If the Jewish Student Union were standing up for her, that would be evidence. Her friends? Her coworkers? Her defense lawyer? It’s not impressive.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
2mo ago
It doesn’t make you uninformed, it does quite often make you misinformed. Yes, if you read NYT, you’ll know there’s a recession, you’ll know the unemployment rates, stock prices, and so on. But it will be misleadingly contextualized to appear that the recession is All Trump’s fault. And they’ll use their think piece section to push the idea that “is this the end of the Trump Era?”, “Will the Trump-cession cost Republicans control of Congress?” But when Biden was in charge, the NYT would cover the inflation and people not affording groceries as if it just happens like that sometimes. It’s the typical thing where they’re looking to the business cycle, Covid, the Republican Party holding up stimulus checks, bird flu, and everything else even if it’s nonsense. Conversely, economic booms are always caused by the Democrats’ economic policy — even when that democrat hasn’t been in power for years and most of the policies have been curtailed or reversed. The Trump boom, boys and girls, was really the Obama boom, at least according to the NYT.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
2mo ago
To me, a big thing that gaming companies got wrong is that they essentially started chasing graphics over gameplay. This wasn’t obvious at the time, because graphics are a very obvious selling point when graphics capacity is growing fast. But it seems a dead end especially once you get to high levels of graphics that are photo realistic. Except this takes the place of doing other things: gameplay itself, storytelling, characters. There were a lot of games in the late 2000s that were beautiful to look at and so boring to play that it just wasn’t fun. This is something that Nintendo has always got right — they focused first and foremost on whether or not the player was having fun.
Getting fired has nothing to do with free speech. The principle of free speech is that the government cannot prevent you from speaking. It does not mean the government is obligated to protect your job in the event your boss doesn’t like what you’re saying or to keep you on staff in a university.
It also doesn’t mean that you can protest in any way you like. You are free to March around with signs. You are not free to block access to buildings, harass people, deface property, or block traffic.
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