Tollund_Man4
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User ID: 501
Tollund_Man4
3yr ago
In a severely misguided attempt since the end of WWII (and continuing until the present day!) successive governments tinkered with this system and slowly removed the things that made the system work
I want to post a rather long quote that suggests this happened earlier, going back at least as far as WW1:
Until August 1914 a sensible, law-abiding Englishman could pass through life and hardly notice the existence of the state, beyond the post office and the policeman.
He could live where he liked and as he liked. He had no official number or identity card. He could travel abroad or leave his country for ever without a passport or any sort of official permission. He could exchange his money for any other currency without restriction or limit. He could buy goods from any country in the world on the same terms as he bought goods at home. For that matter, a foreigner could spend his life in this country without permit and without informing the police. Unlike the countries of the European continent, the state did not require its citizens to perform military service. An Englishman could enlist, if he chose, in the regular army, the navy, or the territorials. He could also ignore, if he chose, the demands of national defence. Substantial householders were occasionally called on for jury service. Otherwise, only those helped the state who wished to do so. The Englishman paid taxes on a modest scale: nearly £200 million in 1913-14, or rather less than 8 percent of the national income.
The state intervened to prevent the citizen from earing adulterated food or contracting infectious diseases. It imposed safety rules in factories, and prevented women, and adult males in some industries, from working excessive hours. The state saw to it that children received education up to the age of 13. Since 1 January 1909, it provided a meagre pension for the needy over the age of 70. Since 1911, it helped to insure certain classes of workers against sickness and unemployment. This tendency towards more state action was increasing. Expenditure on the social services had roughly doubled since the Liberals took office in 1905. Still, broadly speaking, the state acted only to help those who could not help themselves. It left the adult citizen alone.
All this was changed by the impact of the Great War. The mass of the people became, for the first time, active citizens. Their lives were shaped by orders from above; they were required to serve the state instead of pursuing exclusively their own affairs. Five million men entered the armed forces, many of them (though a minority) under compulsion. The Englishman’s food was limited, and its quality changed, by government order. His freedom of movement was restricted; his conditions of work prescribed. Some industries were reduced or closed, others artificially fostered. The publication of news was fettered. Street lights were dimmed. The sacred freedom of drinking was tampered with: licensed hours were cut down, and the beer watered by order. The very time on the clocks was changed. From 1916 onwards, every Englishman got up an hour earlier in summer than he would otherwise have done, thanks to an act of parliament. The state established a hold over it citizens which, though relaxed in peacetime, was never to be removed and which the second World war was again to increase.
- A.J.P Taylor, English History 1914-1945
Tollund_Man4
3yr ago
It's clear as the day the rest of the World looks down on them for this at the time of writing this.
I wouldn't be so optimistic about the rest of the world. I can't tell if the intent is to make vaccine passes the new normal or just to make preparations for the next pandemic (the Indonesian health minister wants to introduce them in May iirc, will find the link once I'm finished my shift), but here's an excerpt from what was agreed to at the recent G20 meeting:
"We acknowledge the importance of shared technical standards and verification methods, under the framework of the IHR (2005), to facilitate seamless international travel, interoperability, and recognizing digital solutions and non-digital solutions, including proof of vaccinations. We support continued international dialogue and collaboration on the establishment of trusted global digital health networks as part of the efforts to strengthen prevention and response to future pandemics, that should capitalize and build on the success of the existing standards and digital COVID-19 certificates."
Cheap daycare doesn't seem like something small. At least according to UNICEF it makes up a large portion of the average couple's salary in many rich countries:
In 2020, a couple of two average earners would need to spend 14 per cent of one wage to keep two children in childcare. The spending would range from nothing, due to free childcare (Chile, Malta and Italy) to Ireland, New Zealand and Switzerland where a couple would need to spend between a third and a half of the average wage (see Figure 9). Due to recent reforms, especially the new 30 hours of free access and the disadvantaged two-year-olds offer, the cost of childcare for such a couple in the United Kingdom fell from 44 per cent in 2015 to 30 per cent in 2020. Still, the country remains one of the five countries with the most expensive childcare services.
All this guilt has to me a definite, Old World flavor: Christianity.
This is confusing to me. Americans seem, and this seems to have been true from the beginning, to be an especially religious group of people. Protestants may be on the back foot in America, but European Christians would love to have something so well organised at the grassroots level (the Catholic Church is obviously well organised, but their moral authority in daily life or at the governmental policy level has all but collapsed). To give an example, in Ireland's referendum on abortion in 2018 the pro-life campaign depended greatly on donations from pro-life Americans.
It's utterly baffling to me. Why should I feel guilty for anything as a newly-minted American? What part did I take in any of the violence that happened centuries ago? In the same vein, why should the majority of contemporary Americans, whose families immigrated here hundreds of years after these sad events took place, feel any guilt?
As someone who takes great inspiration from American ideals I'll try to steelman this and say that the origin of your country cannot be disentangled from its present state because the norms, laws and values of today are merely developments on those of the past. If people who honestly believed in the values of the American revolution sanctioned genocide, then, insofar as there is continuity between the society of the present and the past, that should worry you, as it shows that the values of the American revolution are no guarantee that your society won't sanction genocide.
To stereotype, it's like the German's authoritarian streak, or the Russian society's susceptibility to tyrants, it's not going to go away just by ignoring it, and even attempts to have a deep reckoning (like the Germans' relationship to their authoritarianism) often miss the mark. To give another example of how problems persist through the centuries, I don't think sectarianism has gone away in Ireland just because people no longer go to church, and I fear that because of this a united Ireland might end being used as a means of crude cultural victory rather than of coexistence.
What's the Anglo version of this (to lump you in with that other North American colony)? What ugly trait is likely to resurface eventually if it is not rooted out? I'll have a go (this is far easier with the Germans): Willful blindness when the time calls for it.
Tollund_Man4
3yr ago
Is it really something to worry about? I've been squatting for years and it never caused me trouble.
Tollund_Man4
3yr ago
Incidentally I started getting all A's (used to get B's) in essay based courses after I started effort posting on the motte (Early 2020). Kind of a lame and too good to be true sounding anecdote, but it totally happened and no one will believe me if I told them.
I think the same happened with me. Part of it is just practice, but the thing I was most conscious of while writing college essays was thinking "if I posted this confidently on themotte it would get torn apart in the replies" (my standards for posting on the rest of reddit are far lower in comparison).
Tollund_Man4
3yr ago
The only practical way to reach it is with something vaguely phallic.
You clearly haven't heard of my gayness avoiding implant™.
Tollund_Man4
3yr ago
Sex toys for men becoming widely accepted would lower women's value in the sexual marketplace in the same fashion that a UBI puts upwards pressure on the lowest wage.
They might also placate a lot of low value men to the point where women are grateful for the drop in attention, it wouldn't be the type of attention they're trying to win after all.
Tollund_Man4
3yr ago
Yep. Though I've found if you wrap the chicken in bacon the pink will bleed through to the chicken even though both have been cooked thoroughly.
Tollund_Man4
3yr ago
In the case of sports I wonder if it's a case of some unarticulated feelings about how there is an unpriced social good being destroyed in the process of optimising for the aspects that can be priced?
Here in Ireland you get the same thing happening with Gaelic Athletic Association sporting matches, except the GAA explicitly articulates a focus these unpriced social goods, with an emphasis community (It's no surprise that one of its original motivations was the fostering of Irish nationalism). All players are amateurs who often work other jobs on the side (their celebrity status and endorsement deals make up the shortfall) and everyone else involved is a volunteer, tickets are priced well below market value so as to not exclude any devoted fans, and showing up to an all-Ireland final without knowing a thing about the game (and taking the place of a true fan) isn't something that will win you popularity. There was a big controversy a few years ago when Sky bought the exclusive rights to screen some games as it was thought to go against the inclusive spirit of the organisation.
I don't think the GAA is offering a different product than other sporting organisations, they're just unique in their recognition and protection of, let's say the wider role of sports in the nation, or in economic terms the positive externalities which it's hard to put a price on. I see English football fans complain about the damage the involvement of insane amounts of money has done to their game and I suspect that they're talking about the erosion of the type of thing that the GAA makes great efforts to protect.
Tollund_Man4
3yr ago
but it has existed since at least the 1700s when Jefferson wrote extensively to the same end
For those who want to read an exact quote from Jefferson (and a parallel I found in Aristotle): https://old.reddit.com/r/SlowHistory/comments/sa1rmd/jefferson_on_the_virtue_of_the_farmer
Net Africans will never pay your good deed forward, at least I do not think so; compare that to when Native Americans donated cattle to Ireland in their famine, and 170 years later Ireland returns the favor and sends aid to tribes dealing with COVID. This sort of cross national charity is possible with sophisticated states, but not with net Africans.
I think this is a strange example to choose to support that point. The Irish didn't have a sophisticated state back when the Native Americans donated to them, the Irish tenant farmer had a lot in common with today's net African in his ability to repay. From the point of view of the Native Americans it must have looked like a one time good, straightforward altruism, which is why it made enough of an impression to be remembered nearly 2 centuries later.
Or maybe they just saw some of themselves in the plight of the Irish, as Devalera put it when he was made a chieftan of the Ojibwe Nation in 1919: “I want to show you that though I am white I am not of the English race. We, like you, are a people who have suffered, and I feel for you with a sympathy that comes only from one who can understand as we Irishmen can.”
As an aside, the Turks are also remembered fondly, and the crescent in Drogheda's crest is often (mistakenly?) thought to originate in the Ottoman Sultan's donation of £1,000 for famine relief.
Tollund_Man4
3yr ago
On the one hand this seems a bit misguided: if you're going to send death threats to someone, shouldn't it be a literal neo-Nazi, rather than someone who generally supports trans rights but still thinks female-only spaces are important in a few limited contexts?
Isn't that what "Punch a Nazi" is for? You send death threats to people which they will work on, and act violent towards people you think won't be persuaded by anything else.
Tollund_Man4
3yr ago
I don't think that example shows what it's being made out to show here.
I haven't played Valhalla, but the characters in the Assassin's Creed games are Assassins, a group engaged in a 2000 year old struggle with the Templars to decide the destiny of humanity, and whose creed involves the tenet "Stay your blade from the flesh of an innocent".
The goal isn't to accurately represent Vikings, it's to tell the story of Assassin's Creed, and one Viking protagonist not killing civilians (though in my Assassin's Creed runs plenty of innocent guardsmen get killed too) is just the history bending required to make the story fit.
Tollund_Man4
3yr ago
A dumb brute with muscles, in the nerd society he paved the way for he is seen as an exemplar of the Medieval Man and academics quiz him thoroughly about his takes on the Bayeux Tapestry.
Tollund_Man4
3yr ago
No, but I don't think you'd need as many guns as the US population has now.
A poorly armed but motivated and organized militia can bring a government to the brink. If Northern Ireland didn't have the support of the rest of the UK it would have collapsed in the early 70s, and if the US were to enter a similar civil war state you wouldn't have a relatively untouched region with >35x the population supporting one side.
Tollund_Man4
3yr ago
If they have access to guns, then they could form militias and wage an insurgency against the government if they wanted
And if they don't have access to guns, they import them, just as the IRA did (much easier now in the era of sophisticated drug trafficking networks). A legal right to guns seems helpful, but not necessary.
Tollund_Man4
3yr ago
Huh, so the American factories here in Ireland really are getting cheap labour even though they offer decently paying unskilled jobs by local standards. A barista gets €10.50/hr while factory jobs range from €12.00-16.50/hr.
It took effect immediately, as in while I was lifting the weights I started feeling my focus and discipline return, and my anxiety decrease. It's not a wonder drug, there's still the recognition that there is a painful road ahead, but I do feel like I'm making progress along that road.
Tollund_Man4
3yr ago
For me it's a slight improvement. I spend just as much time on themotte, but once I'm done reading the new posts there's nothing else here to distract me.
Tollund_Man4
3yr ago
Incidentally, I wish The Matrix had gone with the idea that the AIs had decided that the Matrix was the best way of protecting humans from ourselves, rather than "Let's use humans as a power source, because entropy is for nerds."
I think the original idea was that the human brain's processing power was the important part for the machines, or something along those lines, but the executives ruled that out because it would be too complicated for the audience.
Tollund_Man4
3yr ago
I don't think there's much that's special about Russia from a US point of view
Aren't they still the only, or only other besides China, country that could match the US in a nuclear war?
One of the most interesting things about de Tocqueville, for instance, is that he does not mention immigrants or immigration at all in Democracy in America, written in 1830. The word immigrant or immigration does not appear even once.
That's not true (emphasis mine):
In the North, as I have already remarked, a twofold migration ensues upon the abolition of slavery, or even precedes that event when circumstances have rendered it probable: the slaves quit the country to be transported southwards; and the whites of the Northern states, as well as the immigrants from Europe, hasten to fill their place. But these two causes cannot operate in the same manner in the Southern states. On the one hand, the mass of slaves is too great to allow any expectation of their being removed from the country; and on the other hand, the Europeans and Anglo-Americans of the North are afraid to come and inhabit a country in which labour has not been reinstated in its rightful honours."
(Volume 1, Chapter XVIII)
About fifty years ago Ireland began to pour a Catholic population into the United States; on the other hand, the Catholics of America made proselytes, and at the present moment more than a million of Christians professing the truths of the Church of Rome are to be met with in the Union. The Catholics are faithful to the observances of their religion; they are fervent and zealous in the support and belief of their doctrines. Nevertheless they constitute the most republican and the most democratic class of citizens which exists in the United States; and although this fact may surprise the observer at first, the causes by which it is occasioned may easily be discovered upon reflection. I think that the Catholic religion has erroneously been looked upon as the natural enemy of democracy. Amongst the various sects of Christians, Catholicism seems to me, on the contrary, to be one of those which are most favorable to the equality of conditions. . .
(Volume 1, Chapter XVII)
These are just two instances I remembered and knew to look for, I'm sure I could find more with a proper search.
There is a sense in which this supports your point, the Anglo-Americans are distinguished from the European immigrants and a parallel can be made with the settlers.
Tollund_Man4
3yr ago
Anyone got some recommended guides to male fashion? I don't think I dress terribly but it seems like something that it would pay to know more about.
And who unmade Britain?
It seems like we should pay attention to the arguments those Anglo-Saxons were having amongst themselves, and explain the making or unmaking of Britain with a focus on the political questions they saw fit to focus on, like that of taxes. After all, one Anglo-Saxon's vision of the desired society can be radically different from another's.
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