TIRM
25d ago
Singapore has a functioning modern economy. They can buy food. The poorest people on earth with desertifying land cannot.
TIRM
25d ago
I have no respect at all for the SPLC. "designated by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) as a hate group" just means they aren't sufficiently progressive. Which this Malthusian born over a century ago certainly wasn't.
Based on my memories of reading his writings: he was very concerned about the fact that parts of Africa are desertifying. Those localities' ability to grow food is decreasing over time. So it is an enormous act of cruelty to dump food on them. That lets their population grow yet further past their decreasing food supply. That's endless escalating starvation and dependence. And if the aid ever stops it is mass starvation on the scale of the worst communist policies. He's concerned for their welfare so he cautions against poorly thought out aid programs.
I wasn't aware of his private letters. That's disappointing. Oh well. I would also like an English speaking majority in the US. I'm sure the SPLC would smear that popular and valid view as "hate". Using their non-standard understanding of that term.
Garrett Hardin wrote a lot about this. Dumping food and medicine on 3rd world countries increases the number people dependent on aid to survive. Perversely increasing deprivation and suffering long term.
Googling him now I see Wikipedia lists him as a white nationalist. I read a bunch of his writings and never encountered that. Either I somehow missed his spicy works or a Wikipedia editor is character assassinating some dead academic.
TIRM
25d ago
A slightly wiser utilitarian would know that reputations matters and not on a case by case basis decide to deceive everyone.
My problem with some critiques of utilitarianism is that they assert utilitarians have to be very short sighted to the point of obvious self-harm. I don't suppose that's actually the case.
TIRM
25d ago
the surrogate takes on full financial responsibility for the child
Long ago I read about a case of DIY sperm donation from a guy who knew two lesbians for them to have children, with a contract stating the man held no financial responsibility. Later he gets hit with child support. The laws regarding child support cannot be negated by a private contract. This guy practically wrote down "laws don't apply to me" and signed it with a couple lesbians.
Users on Reddit generally agree that informal home donations carry severe legal risks because private contracts often fail to override state welfare recovery laws without medical oversight.
Uh, thanks Google search AI. I was hoping for the opinions of Reddit regarding this. Other more relevant search results showed state governments going after some hapless guy for child support.
Anyways, this could work but we'd need a legal framework allowing it.
TIRM
26d ago
She harmed herself and tried to commit suicide after
Kind of. I don't have stats on the survival rate of falling out of a 2nd story window, but it must be very high. If anything her spinal injury is an unusually bad outcome for such a short fall.
TIRM
27d ago
Back in college a class went over how jurors act based on race, sex and age. Prosecutors and defense use these stats to make informed decisions of who they want on a jury. Long story short older black men like to vote to convict and support executing the guilty. At least relatively more than some other demographics. Young white women just the opposite. This is based on my memories of very outdated statistics. Anyways, yes to your point.
TIRM
28d ago
For some reason Reddit made hiding history as an option. Cynically that lets bots run rampant as you can't just check and see if they are spamming about something. And Reddit admins are fine with that.
TIRM
28d ago
That's fair. I lived in Shanghai for a bit. Also visited other major Chinese cities on other trips. They have none of the issues I have with American cities. The Chinese have opted out of American-style urban blight.
I still don't want to live in a Shanghai style mega-city. But my complaints would be orthogonal to my issues with American cities.
TIRM
28d ago
we had to convince ourselves that we loved living in the suburbs
I think suburb dwellers honestly like living in suburbs. I certainly do.
TIRM
29d ago
A shooter repeatedly shot at Trump including grazing Trump's ear. Trump is far past 10%.
American presidents have an 18% fatality rate. So Trump is in good company.
TIRM
29d ago
Very tangentially: I can't strongly enough recommend The Outlaws by Ernst von Salomon. He was a teenager in Weimar Germany and it was an unmitigated disaster. Nearly getting murdered by communists. Thinking maybe he should join them. Then ultimately death-squadding them and denying responsibility for the killing of Rosa Luxemburg.
Back on topic, and to be very fair to the cops: They commonly see "disappeared teenagers" turn out to be kids spending a couple days with their boyfriends. Then yet another parent says their daughter disappeared. Why would they think death by torture rather than yet another kid who will be back in a few days?
Gay representation in media is illegal in China.
Films with gay characters are banned and don't play in Chinese theaters.
Phone app games can't have characters with ambiguous genders, or effeminate men or anyone gay.
China has illegal gay romance stories published on websites. This is hypothetically illegal but the laws weren't enforced. Then they were. The women who write these gay romances were arrested and held in prison for long periods of time awaiting trial.
Us Americans are culture waring about trans women in combat sports. China is on a completely different level.
Their leaders are billionaires. They're whatever form of communism is rule by billionaires.
They are nationalists in the way I wish Americans were. We have a tragic deficit of nationalism. It might be terminal.
I once saw a homeless beggar in China. Two Chinese cops were standing in front of him and very kindly asking him to go away. My main complaint about American urban decay is forbidden in China. They have the will to ban it and enforce the ban.
It is hard to shoehorn everything into a simple left-right dichotomy. They like abortion and dislike economic liberalism. They aren't "right wing" in that sense. They are culturally conservative in a way some Americans would consider far right. If Republicans endorsed a fraction of Chinese state policy, it would be loudly denounced as far-right extremism.
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