WandererintheWilderness
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User ID: 3496
WandererintheWilderness
1d ago
Broadening the scope, it's uncontroversial to believe that some medications work, some medications don't really work, and some work but have unacceptable side-effects. I don't see why vaccines have to be any different.
WandererintheWilderness
2d ago
Bringing women who want tit jobs or whatever along for the ride is just a sop you're willing to throw in.
It isn't. I am a genuine transhumanist and I do in fact support transgender people as a special case of my broader principle of supporting people's desire to alter themselves however they damn well want.
and since those can't possibly exist
Sure they can. But if we decide that they do and we should just have very small government, then there's not much point in talking about the politics of gender transition on its own merits. I have strong opinions on "if there are charitable government subsidies for various things, should gender transition be one of those things" but I have neither expertise on, nor particular desire to discuss, the viability of that "if". It is, quite literally, a different question.
I take the point re: the general swampy Moloch-spiral of any new government scheme - but that's a fully general argument against introducing new forms of government spending, orthogonal to the innate value of the proposal. A conversation on government bloat qua government bloat is not really the conversation I was looking to have; the policy was meant as more of a "here's how I think a sensibly run state would do it" deal than an electoral suggestion.
I'm not sure how in practice your pitch appeals to those who are net taxpayers and think that transness is an unfortunate delusion.
Well, that's where the one-size-fits-all nature of the policy comes in. As discussed in the tangent with FttG, I'd be happy expanding the scope of the policy such that it encompasses subsidies for forms of self-improvement that Red Tribers might be interested in just as well as pro-trans progressives, such as gym memberships. Besides, in the mid-to-long term, I expect genuinely attractive self-mod options not related to gender to become more and more available and popular; one (wo)man's sex surgery budget would be another man's cyborg-implant budget. Though again, I wasn't really thinking of it in terms of how to "sell" it to a partially hostile nation, just describing how I think a state populated by what I'd call reasonable people ought to do it.
I almost went on a tongue-in-cheek tangent about the fact that rationally, a random cisgender taxpayer can't be sure he or she won't have a gender epiphany in twenty years, and spending a few extra dollars in taxes on supporting the policy would therefore be insurance of sorts. I suppose that actually does raise the serious alternative option of introducing straight-up private-sector "trans insurance" separate from health insurance. Plausibly, enough affluent Blues would buy it as a virtue signal to meet demand, without touching the wallets of anyone who objects.
I don't love that option, because it bakes in gender exceptionalism, whereas an important part of my morpho-freedom-budget idea is that it would serve as a slow lead-in for broader societal acceptance of transhumanism (within which I hope and expect today's gender specific "trans movement" to ultimately dissolve). But it would probably work better than the healthcare kludge we have right now, and would presumably be more acceptable to gender-criticals, as they could keep on buying their health insurance without funding transitions.
WandererintheWilderness
2d ago
In what world does what I'm suggesting inconvenience non-trans people in any way? It's literally free money, distributed indiscriminately to all citizens.
(I guess you may be assuming that it would require a tax hike to implement, but I don't think so. I suspect it would pay for itself relative to the status quo by eliminating the need for a complicated diagnosis and insurance claim process; even if it doesn't, I would be very happy to reduce funding to some other over-bloated area of government to this end, while leaving overall budget the same. And in any event we aren't talking huge numbers. Counting $20k per person as a rough estimate, we're talking a maximum of what, seven billion dollars nationwide? That is a drop in the yearly Federal budget, and it would be a lifetime allocation, not yearly. Moreover a majority of people would never use their 20k, so a vast percentage of the money would be repossessed by the US gov at no loss.)
Rationalists tend to worry about x-risk and the very long-term survival of the human race. Thus, HBD-believing fertility-rates-concerned rationalists' thinking goes that lower IQs might be selected for and boost short-term reproductive fitness in the short term, while preventing us from solving AI alignment or colonizing Mars or any of that good stuff, and thus drastically reducing Homo sapiens's chances of long-term survival.
(Of course, this is assuming one only values survival of the species and nothing else, which is true of very few rationalists.)
WandererintheWilderness
2d ago
But my gym membership costs me less than €40 a month, which according to ChatGPT is pretty typical: I find it hard to imagine the monetary expense is a leading factor in why so many people are sedentary.
Not as a rational cost-benefit thing, but I think a government subsidy could plausibly manipulate significant numbers into taking advantage of the opportunity, due to the human tendency to not want to "miss out" on a free lunch. Think of all the people who stuff themselves at buffets on free snacks they'd never touch if they had to pay for them, even for cheap. If people were told "you have [X] thousand dollars in the bank, they're yours, but they'll revert to the government unless you spend them on one of gym, hair-dyes, plastic surgery, etc." I think that would in fact increase demand for each of those items as people rush to get what's 'theirs'.
And I don't think it's fair to call my proposed policy "nonsensical" even as you grant that it might be net-positive and that you might like to take advantage of it yourself if it was on the table! Unorthodox, yes; implausible in the short term; but hardly nonsensical.
WandererintheWilderness
3d ago
My pitch regarding subsidies for transition is that every citizen should be entitled from birth to a finite "morphological freedom budget", calculated to cover gender reassignment plus detransition. A trans person can cash it in to transition (with just enough left over to detransition if they change their mind); an ordinary person can use the money on whatever other elective plastic surgery they want. But once you're out you're out, and further expenses are on you.
WandererintheWilderness
3d ago
That's not what Coil meant - he meant that the "policy outcome" of the existence of "a new sub-class of horrifically incompetent 30 year olds" will be increased immigration from India to fill their slots in the economy.
WandererintheWilderness
6d ago
My dating life has been an unbroken succession of disappointments because none of the women I've dated were comfortable with waiting for marriage to have sex - they wanted to fool around, and I did not.
Honest question: have you considered giving in on this point? If you'd potentially want to start a family with any woman you're dating, you must be reconciled to the idea of having sex with her at some point even if you genuinely lack the drive/desire. If it's a religious objection then, well, I'd have to know your religion, and you'd do better to talk to a priest; but AFAIK consummating a future marriage early doesn't tend to be looked on very harshly by mainstream Christian denominations even if it's not the ideal.
Of course, if you suspect that the women wouldn't have stuck around all the way to the altar either way, that's a different question. But taking your words at faith value, if your reluctance to have sex with potential fiancées is all that's keeping them away, I think you might be self-sabotaging your marital prospects here.
(And by the way, I'd also question your self-perception as "repulsive to women" if you can't be "a provider". Surely all the women you've dated wanting to have casual sex with you, and getting turned off when you confess you'd rather tie the knot first, clashes with the idea that no women find you physically attractive and your only hope of attracting a mate would be one who's after your bank account?)
My null hypothesis was that the people in charge of making that decision didn't really think Kamala would win, and decided holding one last ace up their sleeve in reserve was better than blowing everything they had on a losing battle, and being totally powerless once Trump inevitably took office.
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