Quantumfreakonomics
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User ID: 324
Quantumfreakonomics
4hr ago
What makes this case so deliciously ironic is that the only reason that Abrego Garcia was granted withholding of removal in 2019 was because his life was in danger due to rampant gang activity. The thing that actually solved the problem was locking up all the gangsters with little to no due process.
This kind of thing is exactly why trust in institutionalism is collapsing. I originally thought that this was a stupid hill for the administration to die on. It may still turn out to be a bad idea, but Trumps instincts have once again shown a method to his madness.
Quantumfreakonomics
9hr ago
It’s largely aesthetic reasons, but grad-student TAs who speak unintelligible English are a well-known and yet unaddressed practical problem.
It is alienating and subconsciously hostile to one’s innate sense of community when the prevalence of myriad exotic accents reaches a certain level.
Also, the Chinese nationals are totally spies for the PRC. It’s fine if you’re not a China hawk (I’m not either), but it’s obviously happening.
Quantumfreakonomics
10hr ago
Maybe the cops in Utah are different, but speeding and fishing without a license are both incredibly low catch-rate offenses. There are hundreds, if not thousands of individual offenses for every recorded encounter. You have to commit a lot of minor infractions to get caught three times.
Three adverse law-enforcement encounters over the course of one’s college career is not a particularly good record. I’m sure the decision was made that we have too many foreign students in the country (honestly a completely reasonable opinion if you’ve ever spent a significant amount of time on a major university campus), and they decided to revoke the visas of the xx% least law-abiding F1 holders.
Quantumfreakonomics
2d ago
Is there any practical reason why China couldn’t simply pirate all of the entertainment IP they wanted? As if we won’t soon have AI capable of turning a shitty camrip into a feature-quality product?
Quantumfreakonomics
2d ago
This means that everyone who invested valuable early 21st century dollars into fixed-income dollar-denominated assets gets paid back in worthless middle 21st century dollars. Look at the underlying movement of goods and services. Printing money increases demand without increasing supply. A debt crisis is about not having enough stuff people want in order to pay for the stuff people expected to have. The numbers in account statements are just an accounting strategy
Quantumfreakonomics
2d ago
I’m not against the idea of a penal colony, but sending prisoners into the hands of foreign sovereigns is inherently risky.
Quantumfreakonomics
2d ago
Here’s an anecdote: I was 80% of the way through writing a giant post on the Abrego Garcia kerfuffle. I stopped when I realized that the absurd straw premise that I was arguing against — the idea that the core function of the US-Mexico border wall, Customs and Border Patrol, ICE, etc. is to be a gigantic obstacle course that weeds out the weaklings and ensures that only the strongest and most determined migrants survive to enter the heartland of The United States — is actually literally true. The extant US immigration system makes absolutely no sense unless you accept that the purpose of it is not to do any of the things people say it is for, but instead is the thing that it actually does.
Quantumfreakonomics
3d ago
Wait, nostalgia? Is your inner monologue not composed of at least 20% Leonard Nimoy Civ IV quotes?
Quantumfreakonomics
3d ago
I don’t think it’s out of the question that a judge could rule that deportation to the current El Salvador regime is a per se violation of the convention against torture.
Quantumfreakonomics
3d ago
"Oh, we are sorry your honor, we honestly thought that you had authorized that no-knock raid against that (suspected) Tesla-burning terrorist. Anyhow, now he is dead, so there is nothing we can do about that misunderstanding. All's well that ends well, I guess."
Obviously the court doesn’t have jurisdiction to bring people back from the dead. Perhaps that case is instructive. Maybe the proper remedy is to find the officer who screwed-up and charge him with kidnapping?
Quantumfreakonomics
3d ago
Alright, I’m crossing the streams.
We need to take the regulatory shackles off of AMERICAN correctional institutions instead of shipping our prisoners overseas for cheap. Our national security is at risk if we don’t have a vibrant and flourishing prison industrial base. We cannot entrust foreign nations with our incarceratory needs forever.
Quantumfreakonomics
3d ago
I’m actually not sure. He is a Salvadorian National and a suspected gang member. The Bukele government might want him in jail anyways.
Quantumfreakonomics
3d ago
The crux of the Abrego Garcia controversy is a dispute about who "morally" counts as an American citizen.
I’m not so sure that fits this particular case (it’s a better match for Mahmoud Khalil IMO). I think the deeper controversy is about what level of process is necessary to permanently remove someone from US jurisdiction.
Trump has dropped plenty of hints that he is thinking about sending American citizens to El Salvador prisons.
Quantumfreakonomics
5d ago
We did it Reddit!
Quantumfreakonomics
5d ago
The mods are a lot harder on top-level posts than they are on replies. I get the impression that this is a considered policy on their part, but it does have side-effects
Quantumfreakonomics
6d ago
The top comment is the correct synthesis in my opinion.
I thought the meaning was more something like “the system took these side effects into account and still considered that what it was doing was net positive in expectation, so the side effects are as much part of the system's purpose as the ‘positive’ outcomes”.
I take Scott's objection that this is a trivially obvious insight for what it is, but you do see a decent amount of "if only the Tsar knew"-type thinking in the wild and the phrase is a good counter to that.
Quantumfreakonomics
7d ago
If ICE detention facilities are full, then via the pigeonhole principle any foreigners being required to enter the country increases the number of people on the loose.
Quantumfreakonomics
7d ago
Read literally, the original order requires the government to send in SEAL Team 6 to perform an extraction operation at CECOT in the event the Salvadorian government doesn’t hand him over in time.
I suppose a court could order the government to request Abrego Garcia back and to stop paying El Salvador to detain him, but beyond that I’m not really sure what they can do.
Quantumfreakonomics
7d ago
What is current public opinion in China like regarding the tariffs? Are Americans public enemy number 1 yet?
Quantumfreakonomics
8d ago
I get a sensible chuckle every time I see how the retail trading apps have managed to turn the mandatory risk disclosures into a, “you must be at least this cool to trade options 😎, “ button.
Quantumfreakonomics
8d ago
Now of course the explanation is obvious
You’re right. The answer is obvious.
they're doing it as a dig on trump.
No, it’s because futures exchanges are open longer hours than stock exchanges. If you want to know what the market thinks of recent news that broke while the stock market was closed, you look at the futures market.
Quantumfreakonomics
8d ago
Quantumfreakonomics
9d ago
I can sort of understand if you didn’t think about the semantic content of what you wrote, but there’s a baseline level of general quantitative knowledge that one needs to know in order to meaningfully partake in discussions of civic importance. The all-inclusive annual cost of having an employee in a first-world country is about $50,000 - $100,000. The US military has a lot more than 15,000 active duty personnel. You don’t have to know anything about how much ships, tanks, or planes cost to know that $892 million will not come close to covering US military expenses.
Like, if you saw a headline tomorrow saying, “Trump to buy Greenland for 50 trillion dollars”, you should know immediately that that isn’t true. Even if Trump said those words, that would be orders of magnitude more than anyone has ever paid for anything ever.
It's not quite true to say that he was "denied" due process, but there is definitely a sense in which his due process was "violated"
Say you are accused of a crime. You are put on trial. The trial proceeds as normal and results in a judgement of aquittal. The cops throw you in prison anyway. Were you "denied" due process? You technically got a trial. The issue is that the due process didn't actually do anything. Despite the aquittal, you were still imprisoned.
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