TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
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User ID: 373
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
3yr ago
Religion and culture can also change just like language, they just happen to be a bit more sticky than language. It's a difference in magnitude, not of kind.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
3yr ago
Inflation is almost 4%. That’s double target and btw that’s 4% on a hit elevated base.
Judging inflation by multiples of the target is goofy since the target is so low in numerical terms. E.g. one could say that in May of 2020 during Trump's tenure that inflation of 0.12% was off the mark by a factor of over 16x. That sounds disastrous and is technically true, but paints an obviously biased picture. A current inflation rate of 3.7 is basically fine since the long term trend has been downward given interest rates.
American consumer appears to be at a breaking point (as their credit is drying up). They decrease spending and earnings tumble. Earnings tumble and stocks tumble.
US wage growth is indeed slowing, but that's just because it was at historical highs for the first half of Biden's tenure. The 3 month moving average of wage increases is still higher today than at any point during Trump's tenure.
The employment numbers are heavily massaged. the Philly Fed had a piece in this that the numbers aren’t consistent. MoM there have been large unlikely beats (eg six sigma). That doesn’t happen naturally. It’s rigged via adjustments.
Citation needed. There are critiques of headline unemployment numbers like participation rate and marginal attachment rate, but both of those are steady or improving.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
3yr ago
The US is about to get dragged into some middle eastern conflicts by Israel.
Very unlikely. Biden got us out of Afghanistan which is something Bush, Obama, and Trump all should have done but failed to do. He also ensured no American troops got involved in Ukraine. It's very unlikely that he'll decide to go on a rampage in the Middle East.
our economy is hanging on by a thread
It's pretty much the strongest it's ever been. Unemployment is <4%. Stock markets are near all time highs. There's inflation, but that's cooled off significantly to being basically on-target.
our weapon and oil stockpiles are depleted
Not even close. Some factors (like artillery) that the US doesn't use much of are pretty low, but new shells are always being created. For most other things the US is the same as always since we're not sending them anywhere.
The SPR has little to do with domestic consumption of oil.
our reputation is dwindling
The opposite is true. It took a big hit after Iraq, then another moderate hit during Trump, but Biden + Ukraine have gone a ways to repairing it. The chorus of "America is an evil empire" is slowly being drowned out by "America isn't great but the alternative is so much worse".
our allies are weak or disappearing
Both Germany and Japan are rearming. Europe is weaker relatively speaking compared to history since it's been basically just living off its inheritance, but it still has a significant economic footprint.
Nothing except China's actions or a possible civil conflict in the USA would do much to change these things. Certainly not Israel, Palestine, or Iran.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
3yr ago
The Harvard doxxing truck isn't evidence of much since it was condemned by most people on campus, including the Harvard Hillel. People have been giving Israel a pass due to the warcrimes of Hamas like the decapitated babies, but that'll end in a few news cycles when there's been nothing but story after story of Israel pounding Gaza.
For every story of the West being pro-Israel, there's another one saying they shouldn't go too far or that they've lost sympathy altogether. Unless we have solid data (not mere anecdotes) showing decisive long-term shifts one way or the other, we should default to assuming events will roughly follow the status quo.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
3yr ago
Diaspora Jews are neither monolithic enough nor centrally coordinated enough to make this feasible. Palestinians have a nontrivial amount of support in the West which is why Israel hasn't been able to solve the problem despite decades of conflict, and this is showing no likelihood of change anytime soon.
At this point I don't know if you're joking or not.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
3yr ago
"I don't have any answers" I think loses the right to say "but this isn't the answer".
Hard agree on this. What makes Israel vs Palestine so difficult isn't that it's a complicated history, since that's true of nearly every major conflict. The problem is that it's gone so far down the toxoplasmic spiral that neither side is willing to compromise, so there are only bad options. But one must be chosen as you said.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
3yr ago
There's only one problem with this: Israel is fairly dependent on the outside community for support. They can't afford to turn into a pariah state by ethnically cleansing Palestinians from Gaza.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
3yr ago
Whataboutism is when you complain about something materially different, e.g. Soviets responding to any American critique by saying "and you are lynching negroes".
My point isn't "whataboutism", it's a critique of blatant hypocrisy. "Political corruption is an impeachable offense, but only when my outgroup does it!"
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
3yr ago
Kushner was absolutely doing the same sorts of things during Trump's presidency, to the point it was actually affecting major US policies. If you ever wondered why the Trump admin was seemingly always willing to "compromise" on immigration while being absolutist about Middle Eastern (especially Israeli) stuff, that was Kushner. Hunter Biden didn't have anywhere near the amount of influence that Kushner did.
Not sure what your point about Kushner marrying based on personality/potential is about.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
3yr ago
Isn’t what you described like the definition of bribery. Hunter gets paid and Joe talks to the business associates?
If they were a single person, perhaps. But considering they are in fact two different individuals, things are different. Is Hunter guilty of something? Almost certainly. Is Joe though? If he had knowledge of Hunter's deal and/or if he got payments himself, then yes. But that's critically where Republicans haven't been able to produce evidence despite years of trying.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
3yr ago
Do you have a source for this?
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
3yr ago
Under the standard of “proven” you are using nothing is ever truly proven in this world. Outside of Joe or Hunter confessing we will never hit your standard of proven.
Strawman. I don't have some crazy burden of proof like you're saying I do. I really don't think asking for more evidence than hearsay that doesn't even refer to Joe by name is absurd.
Hunter is clearly a dirtbag, although he had far, far less influence than Kushner, who actively shaped many of Trump's policies and who's received billions in Saudi funding as a result.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
3yr ago
The fact that some avenues of investigation were blocked isn't evidence of much. This happens all the time. Trump famously refused to even interview with the Mueller investigation while it was ongoing.
There's a big difference between crimes committed by the son, Hunter, and those by Joe. It's clear that Hunter is a fuckup and tried to parlay his father's status into connections and money. Going after Hunter is therefore justified, but the evidence against Joe is much more flimsy. That's why Republicans only make vague mentions of Joe's connection to this whole thing, before quickly trying to tie him to his son as much as possible as if they were functionally the same person, when it's clear their relationship has always been strained at best.
Also, I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on whether Trump deserved to be impeached for all the corruption Kushner got up to, including some recent developments.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
3yr ago
probably the largest bribery scandal in a century.
Assuming there actually was bribery, which, again, is still very much unproven despite months of a Republican led investigation to find evidence of exactly that.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
3yr ago
They've found evidence that Joe has taken meetings/calls with people at the request of his son, but not that anything ever came of these, or that Joe ever benefitted monetarily. Republicans have had subpoena power for years and have had a full investigation going for at least several months, and still haven't found the bribery part of the whole "bribery scandal."
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
3yr ago
There is none, unless you want to throw capitalism under the bus for this, which is maybe sort of justified?
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
3yr ago
Laptop with Hunter saying dad got paid.
There's no solid evidence that Joe got any money despite Republicans aggressively looking for it for years now.
None of it matters that it’s a strong case you will never convince partisans to turn on their only electable candidate.
Correct. Even if it was a slam-dunk case, it still probably wouldn't matter. "Impeachment" has become little more than a press conference with some adornments.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
3yr ago
Because Republicans haven't been able to find any evidence to verify it despite looking very hard for years now.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
3yr ago
They clarified - you're wrong, they are only charging for the first install.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
3yr ago
This is just grandstanding via toxoplasma. "The Dems impeached Trump so we've got to impeach Biden!" In the conversations I've had with people on this site who think there's a huge scandal here, I've never heard of any solid evidence about direct bribery other than the wishy-washy "money for the big guy" statement. On the point of "meetings for money", nothing Hunter did was worse than what Kushner flagrantly did during Trump's admin, and nobody even really questioned that. House Repubs haven't been able to get any better evidence after months of searching. There's basically 0 chance that they can convince 18 dem Senators to flip.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
3yr ago
Most people are up in arms about the fact that this charges for any install, not just unique installs. But this seems like a giant nothingburger because nothing in the blogpost specifically says it's not unique installs. Doing (or switching to) a fee per unique install basically solves all the issues people have while still accomplishing Unity's goal of charging per install. Charging for any install is just so transparently abuseable that anyone should be able to see how much of an obviously bad idea it is.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
3yr ago
Participants in every category—men and women of all races, ages, and social classes—were quicker to associate positive attributes with women and negative attributes with men.
This seems like the Women Are Wonderful effect in action.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
3yr ago
This sort of thing could definitely become an issue in the future. I wouldn't be surprised if there was limited gift-cards-for-votes in 2020, but there is basically no evidence that it's widespread, at least not yet.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
3yr ago
Evidence could be of stuff like people claiming their employer/landlord or whoever else that's in a position of influence over them demanding to see them fill out their ballot. That, on a large scale. Given how US politics is dominated by toxic negative partisanship, people would be screaming absolutely bloody murder if they thought they were being coerced to voting for the other side.
As of now, Polymarket implicitly thinks either the deadlock will go on longer than 8 months, or that we'll have a candidate coming completely out of left field (i.e. one that's not currently listed). The total potential profit from buying a no share for all options, assuming none come true, is just 38 cents. Granted, Polymarket is a fairly thinly traded platform, but it's still real money people are betting with so that gives it a good deal of legitimacy in my eyes.
Current frontrunners are, as of 10/20/23:
So there's around a 60% probability that the eventual winner isn't in that list, or that the deadlock lasts longer than the market resolution date of June 30, 2024.
Modern US federal politics is notorious for its gridlock, but this is taking it to a new level.
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