The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
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User ID: 174
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
7hr ago
While you hang those 90 pickpockets, are another 900 working the crowd watching the executions?
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
9hr ago
Sanctions refer to what you describe, but not just what you describe. In particular, these sanctions disallow flag registry for participating nations. Any ship in international waters not flying a legitimate flag -- a stateless vessel -- is subject to seizure. That's what the US did here.
The ship is "subject to seizure" as a matter of US law, because the US made a law which applies outside its territory.
Yes, a law which applies on "the high seas". Which is certainly not anything unusual.
As a matter of international law, it probably isn't. (There are some technicalities here because most of the flags of convenience used by oil tanker operators are US client states - the situation where the US seizes a Liberian or Panamanian-flagged ship and the country of registration doesn't object is messy).
The seized vessel in this case -- the Skipper -- was flying a Guyanese flag. However, it does not have a Guyanese registration; this was a literal false flag. There's no flag state to object.
(Also, the Skipper wasn't exporting anything from Venezuela. I believe it was delivering naphtha)
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
9hr ago
The most depressing part is realizing this will make no difference. Everyone who mattered was aware this was going on and was fine with it, and that will remain true.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
9hr ago
The US is seizing tankers transporting Venezuelan oil in international waters close to Venezuela with neither the ship nor the cargo having any connection to the US.
The ship was sanctioned (for Iranian connections, not Venezuelan) and thus subject to seizure. Venezuelan oil exports are sanctioned. If you and (in particular) Europe wishes to use "sanctions" as some sort of intermediate path between pure diplomacy and actual warfare, there has to be enforcement of those sanctions. Otherwise sanctions are a farce.
In plain English this isn't sanctions, it's a blockade.
The wording only matters in that a blockade is an act of war. Certainly Venezuela is free to respond to it that way. But enforcing sanctions isn't generally considered that.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
1d ago
Indeed they do prefer Malvinas. I suppose the 3700 people on the Falklands care too, though the half-million sheep and million penguins likely do not.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
1d ago
I don't think the situations are comparable here. For Britain, beating up Argentina and keeping whatever they kept, nobody cares by now what it is anyway, was pointless and meaningless.
The Falkland Islands, and Argentina very much still cares.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
2d ago
Indirect solutions like this always sound good but in practice end up as anarcho-tyranny -- people end up having to do a LOT of work to prove their workforces are legal (some of which work may itself be illegal according to other laws), if they screw up they get nailed to the wall, and meanwhile someone else who operates completely unlawfully gets away with everything.
Keep it simple, reduce collateral damage, if you want to stop illegal immigration, go after illegal immigrants.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
2d ago
You won't be able to buy the Chinese ones either.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
2d ago
Could you work on New Jersey instead?
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
2d ago
My Vanguard stocks are up 14% since this time last year.
Ouch, some poor investment decisions there. S&P 500 is up over 16% and total stock market index 22%.
That's my lazy rule of thumb on how well the economy is doing, so that probably means the economy is doing well.
That's Wall Street. Few deny Wall Street is doing well; it's very easy to see how well Wall Street is doing by checking only stock indexes and inflation. The question is Main Street. And the benchmark I gave a few threads back is now answered -- holiday spending is up more than would be expected from sentiment. It's not a great year, but it's a pretty average year.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
2d ago
You can sneer at Maryland but you can't make it go away. Many have tried, none have succeeded.
One of the Intolerable Acts pertained to toleration of Catholics!
Establishment of Catholicism, by giving the Midwest to Quebec.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
2d ago
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
3d ago
Some grand global game of competition in which AMERICA NUMBA ONE just doesn’t really exist in the minds of most Americans in the way it does for the Chinese or even for, say, the French. American identity is tied to more amorphous things that don’t really have anything to do with global affairs like the Wild West and country music. A Dane or Swiss will gladly lecture you on why Denmark or Switzerland is the best country on earth (both would be mostly correct). Americans don’t really do that except in a very tongue in cheek Team America World Police way and even that is mostly limited to the middle class.
Americans don't do that because we don't need to. We know we're number one, we know everyone else (especially the French, who hate it, but excepting the Chinese) knows we're number one, and there's no point in arguing about it.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
3d ago
Getting the New York AG to go after him would be one of the better things for Vivek's popularity.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
3d ago
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
3d ago
Obviously it’s unpopular, although there’s certain elite circles which like the idea. They are, however, not GOP elites.
Which American elite circles like it? Plenty of Democratic elites want to make us more like Europe. But "bring on the Asian grind" doesn't seem to be popular anywhere. I remember the "Homework Gap" (with Japan, not the modern DEI wikipedia version), but I'm pretty sure the most fervent supporters of more homework would recoil at modern South Korea.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
3d ago
Right. However bad infinite Indians are, the "real engineering" gerontocracy is far worse.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
3d ago
So master morality in the end optimizes for the things you own, which means celebrating actions that we consider immoral. Because that is often the fastest way to own as much stuff as possible. Fair enough.
That is not what I said. Certainly master morality is not mostly about "stuff"; even "resources" are not merely about "stuff" -- time is a pretty major one as well, for instance. And you can't define "master morality" in terms of "actions we consider immoral" because that implies a shared morality. You can say that master morality celebrates some actions slave moralities would consider immoral, but that's not very informative.
In that case, what is needed is for society to agree on a new moral system. One that incentivizes effort and celebrates success and beauty, while still punishing those who gain wealth by trampling others.
This is certainly a common ideal of a moral system. Doesn't seem to be very popular in the real world though. It's attacked on one end by those who think some trampling is fine, and far more successfully on the other by those who argue that all wealth and beauty and success is gained by trampling others, and therefore success itself is immoral. And of course the relativists who deny the existence of objective, or even common standards of, beauty.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
3d ago
Worse, so many high-profile people pretending to straddle political aisles are very clearly not that there's less than zero trust, here.
This, I think, is a huge part of it. Calls for "deradicalization", "reducing polarization", or "moderation" are nearly always calls for the other side to surrender and disarm. Either there's no offer for the caller's side to give something up, or they obviously don't have the power to make it come about.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
3d ago
We had the discussion last time. Vivek was (and presumably is) just wrong. Zach on Saved by the Bell was all-around competent. He's not mediocre at all. Canonically he gets a 1502 on the SAT. He was almost as good at sports as Slater, almost as book smart as Screech, he had Tom Sawyer's social skills and business skills on top of that. And a rebellious streak a mile wide, which gives lie to Vivek's later complaint about "nerdiness over conformity". Perhaps Ramaswamy's own immigrant parents sheltered him too much from American culture, and he is criticizing that which he does not understand.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
4d ago
I don't follow. Why can't one say slave morality is stupid and disregard it and be a yeschad.jpg that tithes 10% to EA charities and selfishly spends the remaining 90% on themselves?
Because giving 10% to the enemy when you can give 0% to the enemy is stupid. Even where EA doesn't veer off to the left and go full woke, or waste money on a Berkeley Villian Lair, they miss the boat; there they were, buying mosquito nets, when they should have been put a lot more money into malaria vaccines.
Getting rich while building great things and doing noble deeds for status (which can be cashed in for hedonic utilons) still seems strictly better than doing ugly things just for money to cash in for hedonic utilons. The first one is more altruistic, even if it's just as selfish at its core.
Your language bakes the assumptions of slave morality into it. Building great things is ALREADY good; you don't need to take the money and do "noble" things with it.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
4d ago
There's also local issues like electricity, which has generally increased more in blue states than red.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
4d ago
I'm pretty sure Gates gives money away to strangers to control their lives. He says he "fights poverty and disease" but damnit the recipients will do it the Gates Foundation way. Nobel certainly seemed more guilt-ridden. A purer version of what I mean is those whose main business makes people's lives better; this applies to Musk and Bezos and Carnegie -- his steel business rather than his later philanthropy.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
4d ago
You are proposing a solution that ignores the tradeoffs. I cannot save the children and invest in people to watch the shores and so on, because I have limited resources. If I spend them saving the children I will never get to the point of having enough to hire other people to watch the shores. I could take something like Carnegie's view and let the kids drown until I'm rich enough to do something about it without destroying myself, but slave morality would reject that as "cruel".
Only if there's anyone with the power to add the red tape to attempt to stop the fraud. If not, money given to fraudsters simply increases without bounds, as with SSI/SSDI fraud.
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