assman
1mo ago
I agree there are some inefficient markets with deceptive pricing schemes, network effects that create effective monopolies etc. but the idea that this applies to food of all things is absurd. Yes, Wendy’s/McDonald’s are both highly priced now, so as a consumer I simply eat them less. I quite like fast food and if a quarter pounder with fries and a drink was $6 I would probably go to McDonald’s frequently when I didn’t feel like cooking, but it’s $12.29 (just checked) so I’ll get pizza for $2/slice instead
assman
2mo ago
This is kind of what I’m getting at though- right now the status quo is that illegal immigrants have to traverse across Mexico, cross the border, and work jobs where they are paid under the table in shittier conditions than the government allows for its citizens. I and many others have problems with this, but this selects for these hardworking young people you’re referring to. I’m not sure if they end up paying into social security, but I know they don’t draw on it. So point taken there. The legal immigrants are often very smart and conscientious people who largely are a net financial benefit to the government.
But if we were to have de jure open borders, where the rights of citizenship are given to anyone who can scrounge up money for a plane ticket from around the world, you’re going to get a billion people and their old parents following them which would immediately cripple every social program and lead to massive crime and housing shortages. Do you disagree with this? If you’re suggesting some sort of permanent residency program where the immigrants are not ever given a path to citizenship or any entitlements like they have in the Middle East, I actually agree this could potentially work but I don’t consider that open borders, and I rarely see that proposal made explicit.
Regarding your last point about diversity decreasing support for welfare states, I would guess this is because the data is coming from western countries that went from being largely homogenous to having an immigrant underclass very quickly. The data also overwhelmingly shows that second-gen immigrants in the US and Europe vote for pro-welfare parties. This causes a larger share of the majority population to oppose welfare states, but if the previous majority becomes a minority I don’t know why we should expect the immigrants to stop voting for gibs
assman
2mo ago
Don’t you think it’s more likely that for the jobs that AI appears to be capable of automating right now (a lot of things, but basically any job where you sit at a computer all day) we’ll increasingly just turn our jobs into makework? Email and excel have already made us 100x more productive at white collar work, but that’s only created more of it, and people often point out that there are tons of e-mail jobs where nobody is really sure exactly what these people are doing, right now. I don’t see why that trend won’t continue, we’ll create project managers who oversee the AI’s work output, we’ll need people to interpret what’s needed and figure out how to ask the AI for it. We’ll have AI audits and compliance. We’ll create professional licenses to use certain AIs. We’ll have companies employing a bunch of people to have meetings all day about nothing. I think you work in high finance?, if so you’d be well aware there are boomer MDs who don’t know how to use excel and dick around on phone calls all day making million dollar salaries. There are people who work from home for 5 hours a week making 200k in tech. Theres millions of people in low level admin roles making $50k who do approximately nothing all day.
Until we see really impressive AI robotics which automate manual labor (it’s fair to extrapolate capabilities, but we’re not there yet), I don’t think it will fundamentally alter our economy that much. There will be various disruptions, but ultimately I think there is way too much status and people’s self worth tied up in their jobs to fully do away with them. The market is competitive and in theory incentivizes companies to automate away as many employees as possible, but we’ve all seen with our own eyes that lots of companies are very bad at this and employ thousands of people who don’t help the business at all (see Elon firings at Twitter). Plus already a substantial number of white collar employees work for government or non-profits.
assman
2mo ago
In some sense yes, I think “libertarianism” is not a viable political program in a democracy (or maybe at all). But for something like drug legalization which you mentioned below, a lot of the more mainstream arguments for this are that it actually reduces drug use, or makes it safer, or the cost-benefit of enforcement isn’t worth it etc. There’s plenty of arguments that even with our current political program it would be beneficial for various reasons, whether they are correct or not.
But for open borders- I don’t understand what is even meant by this when it is put forth as a policy. If the US were to pass a law tomorrow that literally anyone who wants to live here can show up and be entitled to the benefits of citizenship, we would immediately see millions of immigrants from poor countries around the world show up who are now entitled to welfare, food stamps, healthcare, housing and minimum wage which would become unsustainable immediately. We’re able to mostly handle high levels of illegal immigration now because these people are not entitled to government benefits or subject to minimum wage laws or other labor protections. When people argue for open borders as a policy- do they mean we maintain de jure immigration laws but just completely stop border enforcement and allow anyone who shows up to remain here as illegal immigrants not eligible for our entitlement programs?
assman
2mo ago
What I was trying to say is in an ideal libertarian state, where the government is just law/contract enforcement and a military or whatever, and does not otherwise redistribute money or interfere in much else - de jure open borders would at least be a possibility. Having actual, de jure, open borders in 2024 America would collapse the government relatively quickly if millions and millions of immigrants showed up and were given welfare, healthcare and other entitlements.
assman
2mo ago
Are you in favor of open borders as a practical policy matter under our current political system which does include redistribution schemes, birthright citizenship, various employment regulations etc.? The libertarian case for open borders in a legitimate “libertarian state” makes sense to me as ultimate freedom of association, but in current year US it seems to have second-order effects that are detrimental to libertarianism given the voting tendencies of second-gen immigrants and the fact that they end up as beneficiaries of various redistribution schemes. Is it like an accelerationist point of view, where having actual de jure open borders (which seems unlikely to ever happen in reality) would quickly make redistribution schemes untenable? Or is it just that the moral/ideological importance of open borders supersedes the practical considerations for you?
assman
7mo ago
Not disputing it- just genuinely curious why Gates is considered 99.99th percentile? I’ve never read much about him so I’ve only ever heard redditors say that Gates was more of a ruthless businessman than a genius computer scientist
assman
8mo ago
Yeah it always shocks me how many people seem to sincerely believe in blank slateism despite 1. Recognizing heredity in individual families and 2. Noticing racial stereotypes being so evidently true in real life. When I was a kid and all the adults said that the reason Asians were smart and blacks weren’t as smart was “poverty” or whatever I always assumed it was just being polite. Like it registered the same to me as when little league coaches would tell kids they were batting last to “balance the lineup” or something. I always just assumed everyone privately believed in innate group differences but didn’t like talking about it, but tons of people insist it’s a crazy idea even on anonymous forums so I tend to believe they sincerely think that
assman
8mo ago
I’m not sure I agree that stopping shaming for depression and anxiety was a wise decision. More generally, it seems that “society” is incapable of transitioning from “shaming a behavior” to “tolerating a behavior”, without the pendulum swinging way too far the other way and outright celebrating various forms of antisocial behavior. I might just be too internet-culture-war-brained, but the big examples of formerly shamed behaviors like homosexuality, transgender, various mental illnesses, to older culture war fights about how women should dress or whether people should have sex before marriage tend to immediately flip from general intolerance, to encouragement and celebration, without much of a “tolerate but don’t encourage” phase. It seems like you basically can’t get rid of shame, you can only change the polarity of it. Now you are shamed for being a *phobe, or for not having the “basic human decency” to accommodate people’s questionable self-diagnosed mental illnesses. Are there any examples of this not being the case, maybe for more banal, less politically charged behaviors? The only thing I can think of maybe is obesity, where most people agree it’s rude to outright shame people for being fat, but the “celebrating fatness” movement hasn’t really taken off
assman
9mo ago
Ah I misunderstood the paragraph, but now I’m left wondering what makes the MtFs far more problematic than mere weirdos or perverts. Is it just something like what Sailer says about the AGP types?
assman
9mo ago
Sorry to necro but can you explain what tier two is? I can’t figure out what the HBD informed view of MTFs is and my curiosity killing me. You can send via PM if you don’t want to elaborate on here (if you feel like elaborating at all)
assman
9mo ago
I actually think I have a pretty good idea of how the discrimination against Asians worked in practice. I went to a public high school (not a magnet or charter, just a regular public high school) of about 1500 kids, which was around 50% Asian split pretty evenly between East and South Asians, which placed around 20 kids into Ivy League schools every year out of the ~400 person graduating classes, and many more into the next tier of schools. My 1500 SAT was like 80th percentile in my graduating class iirc. I’d say there were about 100 kids who were the stereotypical children of Tiger Mom’s. They were obviously very smart, but they weren’t geniuses- they studied really hard to get high scores on their APs and to do well in their classes. When they weren’t studying they were doing some sort of resume box-ticking like playing in the orchestra despite not seeming to be passionate about music, playing a sport they weren’t really trying to compete in like cross country, or joining one of the random schools clubs that didn’t really do much. Many of these kids really did seem to fit the exact stereotype of Asian kids with “bad personalities” that seemed to be joylessly going through the motions of trying to get into an elite school, and their résumés and test scores were certainly good enough for any of the ivies. These kids mostly seemed to end up on a large scholarship at local public school, or at one of non-Ivy elites. I’m sure most of them will be very successful in tech or engineering or whatever, but I doubt any of them will be remarkable. The kids who did make it to an Ivy League were the 10-20 who were either: 1. Extremely nerdy, but legitimate geniuses. The kids who took the AP calc exam in their freshman year, and were winning Olympiad competitions and such and 2. The Asian kids who fit all the Tiger Mom criteria, but were also social butterflies involved in student government, seriously competed in sports, etc. The type 1s I expect to be impressive academics in whichever field they study, and the type 2s will fit perfectly in the “elite fields” which require more soft skills like finance, law, consulting or whatever.
I don’t agree this is a fair system at all, but I will say in my experience it seems like the Ivies were quite good at spotting the “future elite” types out of the dozens of qualified Asian resumes they received every year from my school
assman
11mo ago
I’m not really trying to argue for the merits of these ideas- but that they are major issues the various factions of the online right care about, mostly agree on, and are theoretically possible through normal politics.
assman
11mo ago
Well, at least two of the more prominent and intelligent voices in the online right (BAP & Yarvin) basically don’t see a path to power for the right until the current regime collapses on itself. I agree with you that I don’t think there’s much of a chance for the right to obtain power either. As academic agent says though, there’s many different factions with different goals and preferred destinations.
I think there’s 0% chance of establishing New Hyperborea, but I think there are at least a few avenues for the right to pursue that most factions would see as an improvement on the current regime, and have at least a slim but non-zero chance of working. You note that even the average red-blooded American, even those that are nominally conservative, find racism/sexism/etc. distasteful. But I think the left has shown that public opinion on a lot of these social issues is downstream of policy rather than vice versa.
So I think Richard Hanania’s idea of repealing the civil rights act, and (contrary to Hanania) actually enforcing immigration laws (deport illegal immigrants and don’t let any more in) would go a long way to accomplishing many of the online right’s shared goals. These ideas are obviously not very popular, and are opposed by basically every powerful institution in the country in addition to most normal people (which is why neither of these things will ever happen), but you could theoretically do them through underhanded but legal political lawfare, judicial rulings, executive orders and such, which the mainstream right has been able to successfully use in the case of 2A/abortion. To successfully do this I don’t think you’d actually need to “clear everyone out” down to the local librarian. You’d need republican majorities in both houses, and a president who is willing to fire the higher level heads of the federal agencies/military and install competent and loyal people in their place. Then use those agencies to actually aggressively enforce your ideology on non-governmental of sub-federal governmental entities. Over time, public opinion will follow.
Of course the problem is in getting the electoral mandate and a president who understands that it’s friend/enemy all the way down, and who is competent enough to get it done in the face of overwhelming resistance from our current regime. The only reasons to think this has more than a 0% chance to happen are that we are starting to see mainstream republican politicians who are at least trying to fight back, dissident-right political theory is seeping into the mainstream (Moldbug has been on Tucker), and as our institutions decline further maybe there’s some small chance that the stars will align and there will be an actual major conservative backlash in electoral politics.
assman
1yr ago
I saw that, surprised nobody has made a post here about it. I think I had almost everyone on there about 10 pts higher than the average except for Spencer, varg, Kanye, Fuentes and Tate, which maybe is a point against my ability to estimate IQ
assman
1yr ago
I feel like it’s pretty clear by now that he’s not playing a character, which is what makes him so interesting to me. I might’ve internalized the IQ-supremacy point of view where “street smart vs book smart” isn’t a real distinction of intelligence (just high IQ applied differently) too much, which is why I’m overestimating him. It just seems like you have to be pretty high IQ to take “street smarts” as far as he has despite coming across as not very intelligent. I also would be interested to know how difficult it was to get into UPenn back then even assuming a lot of nepotism involved, as that would be a good data point to try and estimate a floor for his IQ
assman
1yr ago
What does everyone think Trump’s IQ is? I feel like you need to be pretty smart to be a billionaire/POTUS even if he had rich parents but speaking as someone who loves the guy he is so inarticulate and has such weird speech patterns that it’s really hard to gauge what’s going on under the hood so to speak. I think probably like 125 with +3 sigma charisma & will-to-power
assman
1yr ago
Thanks, that pretty much answers it, seems like they bank will arrange the cash order with the government for you but it’s your responsibility to take delivery
assman
1yr ago
There definitely seems to be some bipartisan China-hawk rhetoric that picked up around then and hasn’t stopped. To steelman? the idea that it’s not a top-down propaganda campaign though, I think around then is when it became clear that China was no longer just a “developing country” that would inevitably become a liberal democracy as it got richer and become a client of the US through trade dependency, but an actual illiberal near-peer who wasn’t going to just fall in line with the US
assman
1yr ago
See my answer below. The gist of my question is basically- is it possible for an individual to actually turn his $50m bank deposit into $50m worth of 100 dollar bills to keep in a vault at his house (or under his mattress or whatever), and how would it logistically work if someone wanted to do that
assman
1yr ago
How do you ultimately get the cash out though when the t-bill matures without interacting with the banking system again? By IOU I meant like can the bank just give you some certificate that says you are owed $50m in cash from the Fed/treasury (idk which), and then make it your problem to try and get the actual cash from them? Since I assume the bank would need to order the $50m in 100 dollar bills from the government anyway
assman
1yr ago
I have a dumb question that I thought of while reading an article about the SVB thing. Say you have $50 million in a savings account. You are really smart (or an idiot) and after doing your research you expect the entire banking system to collapse in a few weeks, and you want to take your money out and figuratively “stuff it under your mattress” (as in not just wire it to a different bank account). Is it possible to even do this? I know you can’t just walk into a bank branch and ask for your $50 million dollars, but say you informed them ahead of time, will they actually be able to give you $50 million in 100 dollar bills? If they can, will they deliver it to you in an armored car, or is it your problem to figure out what to do with it? Is there some way of dealing with this where the Fed will hold it for you in something like a “bank account”, or you can get some sort of government IOU so you don’t need to take it out of the banking system in cash?
assman
1yr ago
Good write up but I feel like you kind of glossed over that he’s not really proven as a pocket-passer at all. People point to the injury concerns for a running QB, and Lamar has a bit of an injury history now, but I think the main problem is simply that we’ve only seen him succeed in a sort-of gimmicky offense tailored to his running ability. He had one incredible season, plus a couple more good ones, and he is certainly a good QB. But the reality is that he has thrown for over 3000 yards only once in 5 years and has played terribly in the playoffs. There’ve been plenty of examples of guys who are great runners, and just okay passers having great seasons and then flaming out, and we haven’t seen any QBs who aren’t primarily passers win any Super Bowls.
Regarding the public reaction, I think you’re also ignoring that tons of people have been claiming it’s the owners colluding to not give out guaranteed contracts. I agree though that the reaction at least on Reddit is a little more sane than I would expect. I think that can be explained by the fact that 1) the ravens offered him a mega-deal that just wasn’t quite big enough for him, 2) many fans are skeptical of giving him a long-term deal due to either injury concerns or (like me) thinking he’s unproven as a passer, 3) the player who received the gigantic ill-advised contract he is asking for is black so it makes it hard to argue the racial angle, and 4) the media has had this weird paternalistic relationship towards him since before he was drafted a few teams wanted him to work out as a running back which many media people considered to be racist. So when they see him making a stupid decision like acting as his own agent and essentially asking his team to cripple their future, they can’t condemn him for being stupid and go with the “oh what a pity” reaction instead
I saw someone link to Meditations on Moloch in the college football subreddit a couple of days ago, to explain why conference realignment is happening and get a lot of upvotes. Was shocked to see Scott referenced in a normie subreddit like that
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