ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
No bio...
User ID: 626
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
1d ago
I don't understand why you kept putting classical liberal in quotation marks.
I think he's right to do. This isn't applicable to you, but the overwhelming majority of people using the term act like liberalism was invented in the 90's or, at most, with the election of FDR. "Classical liberalism" is a complete misnomer for them.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
2d ago
I was never that good with 3D art, but I dicked around a bit. Don't know what it is about Blender, it's obviously quite powerful, but working with it always made me want claw my eyes out. Seems to basically be the GIMP of 3D modeling.
So, my sympathies, and I hope it goes well.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
2d ago
Took a small detour from optimizing the backend, and worked on the UI. I do quite like the result.
How are you doing @Southkraut?
Those vegetable stands that farmers put up at the side of the road, as though they were thinking "Would someone do such a thing? Just take stuff without paying for it?", were one of the most beautiful things I've seen when I was in Bavaria.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
2d ago
If democratic principles include sending in the military to crush dissent, no system isn't democratic.
So the Soviet Union was not a laboratory of democracy relative to Czechoslovakia, but was one relative to itself, correct?
Aside from that, your definition of a "labiratory of democracy" sems to have clearly changed. Originally you said one state try one thing and the other can try the opposite. You are now telling me that preventing the opposite from being tried through the use of the military is completely fine. You can hold that view, but your original description of the concept does bot fit your current one.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
3d ago
So to be clear, since the deployment of the 101st Airborne wasn't just about a cut in federal funding, it clearly crossed the line into proving that the US is not a laboratory of democracy, right?
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
3d ago
There was a social program for seniors in the UK to get guys together and give them some free tools and a workshop. Something about combatting male loneliness, IIRC. It was originally conceived of as a male only space, so the wives of some of the attending chaps couldn't stand the thought that something might bot belong to them, and they nagged their husbands until they were allowed in.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
3d ago
Personally, I find it hilarious. Something about the lengths people go to, to get past the filters, and the absurdity of the metaphors, just make me chuckle. Like, I remember some guy on /r/stupidpol, who ended up dating a zoomer, tearing his hair out because she wouldn't stop using code even IRL. They were talking about rape, and she would not stop saying "grape" instead.
If it's Orwellian, there's an optimistic twist to it, as it only shows the folly of the newspeak project.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
3d ago
...it's always been that way, hasn't it?
I don't think so. My Eastoid mind has been blown several times by how much of the Western system relied / relies on an honor system, and then blown even more by how it was actually working until recently.
The fact that the feds stopped them by force is exactly the point-- it's the tangible proof that those states lost the ability to contest outside control over their cultures
Can you give an example of a system that's not a "laboratory of democracy" then? By that logic Soviet tanks rolling into Prague just shows how the Eastern Block was a "laboratory of democracy".
Seeing the parallels yet?
Not until they send in the 101st Airborne. But even that will only show the same rules are applied equally to both sides, not that the US is a laboratory of democracy. It will clearly disprove the latter point, in fact.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
4d ago
Plenty of states tested exactly that until very recently and failed.
What exactly are you referring to? I don't recall any test followed by failure, I only recall a test that was stopped by the federal government through force.
What more do you want out of a laboratory?
I want it to work as advertised. We don't have some states doing one thing, and some doing the opposite. We have some states doing one thing, and the opposite being explicitly illegal.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
5d ago
I still want to know which one of you is Vance.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
6d ago
It doesn't count as some states doing the opposite of others, when one side is doing something explicitly, and the other subconsciously, imo.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
6d ago
Gotta admit, I didn't read much past the first line, just saw that Southkraut responded.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
6d ago
Minimum wage and basic income are separate questions, I'm not sure why they need to be mentioned here.
Like tariffs, they belong in the "economic policies that contradict libertarianism" bag, so they seem pretty relevant, and I'd expect the position on them to predict the position on tariffs. At least barring an explicitly stated theory that would justify supporting one, but not the others.
and I'm not sure if there are any points where I would have expected him to support tariffs on the basis of his other ideological positions, is the point.
If the point is "he's not ideological about economics in general", then my point is that he is pretty clearly leans left on economics, and as such he should not be expected to support free trade.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
6d ago
I get that sneering at populists is whole reason you made this alt account
It's not an alt, he renamed.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
6d ago
I stumbled upon your forum
This is completely off topic, but whenever we get a newcomer I'm always intrigued, since we don't advertise too much (at all). How did you end up finding us?
It should be pretty trivial then to point to, say, men-only scholarships, pro-white "non-diversity statement" requirements for positions at universities, white only dorms, etc., etc...
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
6d ago
Apparently the "laboratory of democracy" thing is working exactly as the founders intended-- no matter what an individual state does, there's going to be another state somewhere else doing the complete opposite thing
Really? Where are the states that discriminate against women, non-whites, and promote heterosexuality to the same extent that progressive states discriminate against men, whites, and promote minority sexualities and gender identities?
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
6d ago
What's "liberaltarian" if not the liberterian-ish wing of left-liberalism? If the minimum wage or basic income are good enough for him, why would he be ideologically opposed to tariffs?
Paul Krugman, the famous economist whose views are taken seriously, is the guy writing academic papers. Paul Krugman, the economics popularizer whose political views are Taken Seriously, is possibly the biggest hack who ever existed in the history of punditry, so to the extent the distinction is worth making, it works against your argument.
It is hard to distinguish between "the Trump tariffs are implementing a bad policy" and "the Trump tariffs implementing a questionable policy incompetently" because Trump is deliberately opaque about what the policy the tariffs are implementing actually is. (For the umpteenth time, tariffs are a tool, not a policy).
If tariffs are a tool not a policy, then the absence of "Trump tariffs are implementing a good policy incompetently" as a possibility should show you that the argument is not being made in good faith. There are principled leftwingers who do make that argument, they point out why the trade policy done up to now was bad for America / the world, why you might want to change it, and why tariffs can be the right tool for the job, and then proceed to show why the way Trump is doing it is bad. But implying that tariffs are somehow ideologically incompatible with left liberalism is just historically wrong.
although I still think it's useful to look within the movements to see if there's corrections within the movements as well. When Dems lost 2024 they had a notable period of reflection where new ideas were more accepted
You can't use the Dems as your example for a concession done within a movement, when you just rejected MAGA as an example of "Repubs" doing the same. Earlier you were using even broader categories like "the left", so this just comes across as gerrymandering.
What happened in the Democratic party is the same kind of factional warfare of one movement trying to supplant the other that we've seen inside the Republican one... except it's a strictly inferior version of it, because whereas the neocons got beaten so badly that a good deal of them decided they have better chances with the Democrats, woke progressives are alive and well.
There was a brief period of Dems asking questions like "how do we win young men back?", but the answer apparently was "by doubling down on nagging them to death". There was absolutely no repudiation of their positions on culture that they supposedly were introspecting on.
I don't see why anyone here is relevant since this place is small and mostly dominated by conservatives.
Because we are specific people with an ongoing relationship, and discussed the subject. If anything it makes more sense to discuss people here, because talking about Democrats or progressives at large usually gets you accused of homogenizing the outgroup. If there was such a widespread mea culpa on Biden's senility, it should have been reflected on this forum, the same way the original "Biden is fine, and if you disagree you're crazy/biased/both" was.
Demanding they stop rejecting conservative critiques more broadly
All I'm demanding that they reckon with why they rejected what was clear and obvious reality, and why they attacked anyone who disagreed with them.
Depends what you mean by "durable". I see no reason so far to believe that it will stop being effective, but if you're referring to the possibility of it being overturned by the next administration, that's certainly a choice they can make, but it's a choice that will unequivocally show that substituting the diligent and competent for the short-attention-spanned and retarded does work out better.
Can you dig it out? I can think of several ways both of you can be right.
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