cjet79
Anarcho Capitalist on moral grounds
Libertarian Minarchist on economic grounds
User ID: 124
cjet79
3mo ago
It's weird to see those mods all listed together. If I'm reading them right some are nude mods for Hogwarts legacy, and since the characters in that game are generally in highschool, that makes the mods CP. They are listed alongside mods for other games that basically just swap out pride flags. One thing is not like the other.
cjet79
6mo ago
I blame Fauci.
Its hard to come out of Covid without some sense that "the science lies to us". I generally like to trust experts, but now it constantly feels like a slight level of uncertainty has crept into all my interactions with experts. The idea of an entire group of academics capture by a single interest group and willing to lie to our faces ... no longer seems very far fetched. At most you'll get a couple of the experts that defect and say all of their colleagues are wrong.
What it often requires me to do is to go look at the data the experts have, rather than what they say about their own data. At which point I get frustrated about even having experts in the first place. I usually have to rely on other smart people that I actually trust to go and check the data.
Things where I am suspicious about what the experts say:
- Lockdowns
- Covid vaccines in the young
- Death rates of covid
- What the "intelligence community" says about political things
- Runaway global warming
- Economists on the topic of currency
Since Fauci isn't really being punished for any lies, I can assume most experts picked up on the hint: say what we want you to say and you'll be protected.
I still tend to have a lot of trust for economists, but that is maybe because I have found economists I actually trust, and I don't read the economists that would ruin my trust.
I can believe that we are in a great economic period right now. Nothing in my life suggests anything is great or terrible economically, so its not hard to think that either scenario is possible. There are multiple measures of employment, and I really wish news orgs would just report the full table of employment measures, U1-U7 (if I remember correctly). I feel like any one of them is potentially misleading individually, but altogether they give a great picture.
I have a very hard time trusting economists related to currency. The topic has always seemed like black magic to me. There is a joke among the academics I work with that monetary economists are always a bit on the weird side. I personally feel that its because monetary economics is a bit like studying cthulu. Simply witnessing it and understanding it drives you a little crazy. Also if there is any place where apparatus of government control has an incentive to get economists to lie, then that place is gonna be monetary economics. You simply cannot have modern sized governments without currency manipulation and money printing. I don't think they tend to lie too often about inflation numbers, or I at least believe that the numbers they give are consistently measured. Its more of a big giant lie that I worry about, rather than tiny lies to benefit one specific administration.
cjet79
7mo ago
The feeling of working on an effort post on a topic, only to see that it was brought up a half day earlier and the discussion is mostly done is disheartening. It is why I often personally want the rule enforced against others. Point 1 is how i make sure I don't violate the rule or the spirit of the rule. I've had stories I've wanted to share here, but all i can think of is "[link] discuss?"
cjet79
29d ago
From the impression I've gotten from surgeons and doctors who know many surgeons, this doesn't surprise me. Surgeons have a bit of a reputation for being high class technically skilled butchers. They operate on flesh, but their treatment of it is closer to that of a car mechanic than most other doctors. I think they perhaps see it as a very easy case of tumor removal. @self_made_human may have more insight.
cjet79
6mo ago
I played Harry Potter Legacy and reached 100% completion last night. I cant remember the last time I 100% completed a game like this. The assassin creed series and far cry series have the similar big maps and lots of collectibles, but I tire of the game before I ever reach it.
It was a good game, combat was interesting, if a bit easy once I got the hang of it (I had to turn up the difficulty to hard, but still never died). I liked a few of the side stories more than the main story. There were some silly fan service moments, like at the end how your house ends up winning the house cup cuz one of the school teachers gives out a bunch of points to just you.
There was some level of story and gameplay disconnect. I was slaughtering a dozen enemies at a time, and still sometimes got reactions like "you are a kid, it is much too dangerous for you!" Kinda like when some no name bandit in Skyrim tries to mug the dragon born that is walking around in Daedric Armor.
I had fun roleplaying a bit and making my own personal cannon. I unlocked the killing spell, and never used it on anything smarter than a Troll. It was a little silly that the killing spell got treated so badly, but I created a literal mountain of bodies without the killing spell. (unless they are all just sleeping)
I also had the thought that finishing a game at 100% completion is kind of bad. One thing that could be said in favor of an assassins creed game that I play to 80% is that there was enough content for me to play for as long as I was enjoying the game. I suppose I could start a new playthrough in harry potter in a different house, but Ravenclaw felt like it fit best, and I don't respect the other houses very much.
cjet79
11mo ago
Every time you write about legal stuff I just feel more and more convinced that the rules are made up and the laws barely matter.
What is the point of a statute of limitations if it can be changed after the fact to include things previously protected by that statute?
What is the point of the trial related amendments if you can just have your reputation smeared and ruined by the media without anything vaguely resembling "due process"?
What problem are civil courts solving other than 'how to make lawyers rich'?
Plea deals destroying incentives to get your day in court. Prosecutors seemingly immune to any consequences of malpractice.
An old movie keeps coming up in my mind. It took me an hour of searching to find it based on my vague recollections. Interstate 60. There is a section of the movie where the main character (on a mythical road trip) takes a stop in a town called Morlaw. The entire town is comprised of lawyers that are constantly suing each other for everything (get it, Morlaw -> More Law). Any unlucky idiots that find their way to the town get caught up in the web of suing very quickly.
How does the protagonist escape? Do they make a compelling argument that this is insane? Nope, that doesn't convince any of the lawyers. They just see that as another reason to sue him.
Valerie McCabe: Every adult citizen of Morlaw is a lawyer, so everybody sues everybody else. It doesn't matter if there's a cause. It's how we ensure that everyone makes a living of their profession.
Neal Oliver: Yeah, but that's insane.
Valerie McCabe: I could sue you for that. You just made a defamatory remark about this town. Hey, are you looking at my legs? I could sue you for that too, sexual harassment.
Neal Oliver: Is there anything you can't sue me for?
The way the protagonist escapes is by making a call to a friend he met on the road. An ex-marketer that is dying and decides to go on a personal crusade against lying. This ex-marketer has a bomb vest strapped to him, and seems willing to use it. Yup, that's right, it takes literal terrorism to extricate the main character from a web of lawyers. The ex-marketer decides to stay around Morlaw to keep them in line.
Our legal system increasingly resembles a system of "might makes right" if you have enough powerful people on your side then the law can literally be what you want it to be. It doesn't feel like there is a legible system of rules where an underdog that is correct or in-the-right can beat the system. In the end someone might make the same realization that the ex-marketer makes. "Why play by your rules when I'm always going to lose? Why not bring violence to the table?"
cjet79
5mo ago
Anyone else care to personally prognosticate?
Not me, but I appreciate the analysis. Aside from the most obvious party line predictions, I don't have any special insight into the supreme court. They seem mostly like a black box to me.
Any thoughts on the recently adopted code of conduct for the supreme court?
And did they ever find that leaker?
cjet79
5mo ago
Crazy. Apparently your friend is not the first person, news story from February 2023: https://www.nbcwashington.com/investigations/little-known-maryland-law-requires-people-with-sleep-apnea-to-report-diagnosis-to-driving-authorities/3272929/
The I-Team reviewed driving laws from across the country and found several other states – such as Florida, New Jersey, Maine and Texas – also list sleep apnea as a condition that may be subject to medical review by state motor vehicle authorities.
Virginia law requires its Department of Motor Vehicles to ask drivers applying for or renewing a license if they have a medical condition that could prevent them from driving safely but doesn’t specify sleep apnea as among them.
This is probably because driving is treated as a "privilege" by the state.
cjet79
8mo ago
"Libertarian" is not trademarked. Anyone can use the term. I consider myself libertarian, and many other people would agree I fit the common conception of that term. But I'm not gonna defend anyone and everyone that uses it for themselves.
You also seem to have some personal beef with "vaping heterosexual white men with Asian wives". I'd suggest dropping it. This is not the kind of discussion forum for your personal grievances.
I was attempting to write up a longer post, but I'm tired and sick so it was turning into low quality crap writing. So I'm just gonna do short responses to your questions.
But this is a song and dance that has been done before. Hans Herman Hoppe laid down the law on this stuff years ago. Insofar as libertarians want to live in nice societies (they do) the only functional tool against the kind of people who destroy nice societies is physical punishment. You quickly stop being a libertarian in a universalist sense and turn into a Civic Nationalist. My question for libertarian or libertarian leaning people would be, why bother with this song and dance?
Libertarians have set out the rules pretty clearly. Property is a thing. Property implies ultimate ownership. You and only you can have ownership of your body and person. That ownership can be expanded to physical objects. The rules of how that ownership can be expanded do not have to be set in stone, or handed down by the gods of libertarianism. Violations of property are considered initiations of violence and will likely be met with violence. Libertarians have never expressed a full story of non-violence. So there has never been a contradiction with libertarians using physical violence against thieves, rapists, and murderers.
Why ground your arguments in some abstract first principles relating to freedom and whatever else when you truly do not want freedom for everyone to do what they please?
Some of us are true believers. I want you to do whatever you want. Just don't violate me or mine.
Asking for the golden rule treatment is apparently a horrible thing for libertarians to do. "Well yes, you can want to have your freedom to live in peace and not have your stuff stolen, but I also want my freedom to enact endless social problems with wealth I don't have, so I need you to pay taxes first, oh and go along with my social programs when I want".
Why not just say the things you want society to be and stand on those grounds?
Because I don't think everyone else has to live in the same society as me. I'm hoping they can live in the society they want. So how would my vision of a good society convince anyone? The idea of imposing your vision of society on others is a fundamentally statist way of looking at things. For example, I don't want to live in Amish society, but I support their right to exist. When the government tries to say "no Amish, you must do X" my thought is to push back against those government intrusions. If you ask me to defend Amish society, I'm gonna shuffle my feet and say 'well they want to live that way, so let them, yeah I agree it looks boring as hell and more than a little silly'.
cjet79
10mo ago
I play a Co-Ed recreational sport in my spare time. One of the players has annoyed enough people that I'm thinking of kicking her out. But she has shown a willingness to report people to the national board for minor offenses.
Any thoughts on how to remove her without triggering national board reprisals?
cjet79
2mo ago
I agree with this, but also wish Republicans would just go ahead and wash their hands of the university system. These are Publicly Funded universities. Cut all state funding. Problem solved. Let them go and be as crazy as they want with student/donor money. But I certainly shouldn't be paying taxes to support the craziness.
cjet79
3mo ago
Is there a reason to care about these conferences? I think every time I've seen a list of the books that won awards I'd never read a single one, and never had any interest in reading them from the descriptions. That isn't a criticism of the conference, I have very weird and esoteric reading preferences so its not a surprise when my preferences aren't mirrored by these conventions.
Let them have their weird little conference where they pretend to be super progressive, and then also hold the conference in a country with active censorship.
With many other culture war issues I get why there is a fight. The universities should not just be surrendered. The institutions should not just be surrendered. The competitions and sports that are location based should not just be surrendered. The licensers and certifiers should not be surrendered. This though? I don't know why you'd want to save it or fight for it. Just let them go off the deep end.
cjet79
6mo ago
I had a father that wanted to be the point of the spear. Luckily for me he didn't make it. Most of his military career was spent trying to get out of a tank division and not end up in jail for leaving. Timing also helped, he joined after Vietnam. He wanted to join Green Beret, and in his approximate words "they should have just dropped me off in a jungle and let me kill those gooks".
The "violent class" definitely fits. He grew up with stories of him and his friends having bb-gun wars where they'd shoot at each other with pellet rifles. He was on the cross country team in highschool, which routinely did illegal things, and simply outran the cops through back woods whenever shit hit the fan. After finally getting out of the military he did manage to complete a college degree on his second attempt. The stories I've picked up suggested that he was in a few fights in college.
I've inherited some of his anger and temper, but I've always avoided situations where that anger or temper might be directed at strangers. I also don't know how to fight, and I consider that a good thing. It would be bad if I felt I had the option of fighting.
He is no longer part of the "violent class" and I feel like I dodged a bullet. There was a temporary glance into that alternate lifestyle when I was too young to remember. My older brother and mom have stories of him coming from the bar every other night drunk and angry. They would hide under the table until he went to bed. He never beat my mother or older brother, but it was fear of living with that type of person.
Some of the "violent class" might be able to switch it off when they enter into civilian life. But I feel like I've heard plenty of stories where they could not switch it off. They've been taught violence as a way to solve problems, and they apply it throughout their lives. Argument with the wife? Violence. Kids misbehaving? Violence. Someone being a jerk in public? Violence.
My sister nearly married a cop a few years back. My main worry was that he would get violent with her. Instead he just cheated on her and dumped her a few months before the wedding. More of a typical dirtbag guy move, and not a violent dirtbag guy move.
From my somewhat sheltered perspective violence looks like a slow spreading disease. In order to handle it you have to be inoculated to it. The soldiers and police of our society are often familiar with violence before they ever experience it within their profession. They then take it home and spread it to their families. The first time I ever heard the term "generational trauma" I thought this is what it referred to.
How much of man's violence is the brutality of nature, and how much is from painful nurture?
cjet79
6hr ago
Government Programs Should Have Legible Budgets
This kind of rule may come across as obvious, pointless, or doomed depending on your perspective.
There is an impulse among many to see a problem in society and turn to government for a solution. I strongly disagree with this impulse. But I also think that these people and myself could come to terms on some shared "rules of engagement".
To start we should agree on some basic things:
- There is an unlimited number of things people might want to "fix" about our society, but a limited amount of resources to spend fixing such things.
- There should be a way to determine how many resources we want to spend fixing a particular problem.
- Paying to fix the problems should be done in a fair and above board way. (i.e. reverse lotteries where you randomly get fucked over are bad).
There are many devils in the little details, but what these three basic things suggest is that there should be: A set way of collecting taxes. A budget using those taxes that pays out to various social causes. The determination of that budget can be debated upon in some agreed way (maybe by electing representatives to a 'congress'). And that all social programs must go through this set of procedures.
To address the criticisms:
"This is pointless we already do things this way."
Sometimes governments do it this way, sometimes they don't.
The Americans with Disabilities Act does not follow these rules. Private individuals are given the ability to sue other private individuals to provide accommodations for them. The threat of getting sued also encourages a lot of preemptive work on the part of companies. How much does all of this suing and preemptive work cost? No one knows. How much will it cost you to provide for people with disabilities? Maybe a standard amount. Maybe you'll be one of the unlucky ones that gets sued in a new novel interpretation of the law and you'll win a reverse lottery.
How much do you think it is worth it to help disabled people in this country? It seems like a valid political question, but right now the American Government is basically on a blind autopilot path. It cannot know how much is spent. It cannot control how much is spent. And it cannot work out more lucrative and appealing deals for edge cases.
A little while ago (maybe a decade) some university (maybe MIT) decided to put all of their classes online for digital consumption, for free. Sometime later they were forced to take down the entire archive, because they were not subtitled, and a deaf person could not access them. The deaf person wanted them all subtitled. Subtitling a free online resource would have been too expensive and not worth it. So they were instead just removed for everyone. This is the kind of problem that a competent government middleman can solve:
[In the alternative universe where the ADA creates a government middleman agency for solving disability issues.] Each deaf person is allotted $5,000 a year to solve for their disability. They can choose to spend this on hearing implants, or on paying towards having some work transcribed. If enough deaf people want a thing transcribed it gets done. No business owner or non-profit is suddenly held hostage. No single person or entity is stuck paying enormous costs. Things aren't removed from public consumption just because a disabled person can't access it. We know how much is spent on deaf people per year. Medical companies that want to solve or fix a disability have a clear customer market for potential solutions.
This is doomed people would rather have the costs hidden and less obvious.
As I said above, sometimes the government does follow the good set of rules. I'd consider an agency like NASA a good example. The American people give some vague indications of how important they think space science and exploration is to their elected representatives. Those elected representatives can talk with the scientists, engineers, and managers at NASA to determine if maybe there are some important research projects that the general public doesn't know about but might want if they did know about it. NASA's budget is paid through taxes and is a clear line item on the federal budget. For the last two decades NASA has been about 0.5% of the federal budget. Which sounds vaguely correct to me in proportion to how much Americans care about funding Space related stuff.
The cynical reason why I believe that programs have hidden or "laundered" costs is that I don't believe voters would be actually willing to fund them if the true costs were obvious. If a party has a temporary political victory the best the best way to leverage it is through hidden and laundered costs. Pass a medicare act that doesn't really change the rules until you are out of office. Pass a civil rights act with murky enforcement that can be slowly ratcheted up every year.
Despite politicians doing this pretty often, I don't think it is what voters actually want. There is a huge amount of frustration from people over these sorts of policies. Hanania's book the Origins of Woke kind of blew up one of these issues recently. But they are all going to become problems, because when you remove the funding control from government there is no funding control. There is no countervailing force to push down the costs of these various programs. And the only way to get rid of them is often just destroy them altogether. So while people might have supported the ADA if it was 1% of the budget, they might start getting pissed at the program when it balloons up to 10% of the budget and a bunch of reverse lottery sob stories start showing up in the news. And suddenly instead of 10% or even 1% of the budget, you get 0% for your cause and no one trusts you with a 1% allotment cuz they will all remember the horror days of 10%. I don't know how likely a full reversal to 0% is for any of these policies. But that seems to be whats on the table as far as alternatives go.
There is also an ongoing legal weakness to many of these policies. Now that the supreme court is mostly conservative it could start invalidating different laundered cost schemes that have been liberal policy staples for decades. Affirmative action has taken a hit. Paid housing for the homeless might get hit next.
Conclusion
In general I think we should be suspicious of any public program that tries to hide its costs, or launder those costs onto private actors. Anything that expands the scope of things that one individual can sue another for is laundering costs. If you want a social program done or accomplished, you need to be willing to raise taxes and pay for it. If voters can't stomach raising taxes to pay for a particular social program, then too bad! Nothing is free. Start comparing the costs and fighting for them in the agreed upon battlefield.
Too much boo-outgroup. Too close to waging the culture war rather than discussing it.
You've had 9 Mod actions against you, and have been a consistently bad poster. I'm not sure there is any point in trying to "reform" your posting habits at this point. I'm gonna start with a perma ban, but if some quality posters or mods want to speak up on your behalf then I'm open to just making this a temp ban.
Edit: bolido_sentimental Spoke up in favor, changing to a twenty day ban.
cjet79
9d ago
How would y'all recommend finding a personal trainer?
I want someone local, and I have a fitness goal of being in better shape for an upcoming underwater hockey tournament. But otherwise I think I'm flexible. Just don't know what to look for or avoid.
cjet79
14d ago
This is the kind of problem that crypto currencies were meant to solve.
To elaborate:
- Cryptocurrencies are a bit like cash in that transactions are never reversed (I know it can be done, but its mostly not done). This is important when the products might be embarrassing and for digital goods which can't be fully "returned" once you have access.
- Cryptocurrencies do not have to actively endorse all the transactions that go through them. If a government doesn't like a transaction going through a traditional payment processor, they can lean on and pressure the people running that payment processor.
- Cryptocurrencies can have a degree of anonymity. Bitcoin doesn't have great anonymity, large-scale actors like government can figure out who owns specific wallet addresses. But personal anonymity is pretty easy compared to credit cards. Its not a payment to pornhub on your financial statement, its a payment to wallet [string of characters]. Which is often enough to hide from girlfriends/wives.
I'm not sure if I'm supposed to have sympathy for these websites/users, because the failure of traditional payment processors to handle this sort of thing was recognized and predicted before cryptocurrencies existed. When bitcoin/cryptocurrency was first released/invented it wasn't a bunch of people saying "oh look at this cool toy, we have no idea what its for, but it seems neat!" No, they were specifically saying "yay! we have solved this hard problem of digital payments that has been plaguing us for the last decade on the internet! These are the cool things we will now be able to do: [same list as above plus other things]."
For any kind of business that once needed cash to function: switch to crypto or die a slow death as payment processors leave you.
cjet79
2mo ago
Despite being atheist I do think I hold some anti-materialist views.
The first one is a sort of mind over body or spiritual health outlook. I'm finding it hard to articulate, without dismissing some important things. I just have some sense that material reality is missing something about health, and my best way to point at this phenomenon is to look at the placebo effect.
where every conscious mind's inherent beliefs to affect material reality
This is also something I accept, but only in some of the less controversial instances. The stock market is the main example i can think of. Enough investors believing in a market process can kind of will that process into working by lending the process money and time.
I also think there seems to be some sensitivity from politicians to a collective will. They can overcome the Will, but it takes effort. Otherwise they fall into the game of politics and can only take prescribed actions. People who routinely and easily violate this are rare. Andrew Jackson, Coolidge, and Trump come to mind as flagrant violators of the will.
My main anti materialist viewpoint is that I have a sense that there is free will. No amount of evidence or talking has ever been able to dislodge this belief in the slightest. When I first encountered challenges to the concept of free will I tried to argue against them or find alternatives that preserved it. I mostly gave up on those endeavors. Free will exists, and it's not up for debate with me. In the same way that I think the material world exists and my brain isn't just hooked up to a machine feeding it sensations and nutrients.
cjet79
5mo ago
I'd prefer if driving with insurance was treated as a right. And that car insurance companies were allowed to price in all relevant information.
I get the dangers of vehicles, I avoid dangerous drive times, avoid highways if I can take slower roads, and generally follow all rules of the road. I've gone 15 years without a ticket for a driving infraction. And I've never been in an accident worse than a fender bender at the wheel.
The state can be a bit of a sledgehammer with things. Sleep apnea and bad sleep can increase your risk of causing an accident, but the state is applying a one size fits all solution: take away the license.
The price of admission to driving on shared roads should be to compensate others for the risk you pose. If the risk you pose becomes too large then it will be too expensive for you to drive.
cjet79
7mo ago
I think my sister in law might be an alcoholic. Not sure what to do. Her and my brother have three kids together.
Last weekend was my grandfather's funeral. At the service she started drinking wine, and getting through a few glasses pretty quickly. She then got in an argument with my brother about how she wanted to stay and go to the smaller party we were having with just close family. My brother was saying no, because he had been worried about this exact scenario, they'd only originally planned to stay for the service. She then suggested that he take the kids home and she could stay and get a ride home from our parents. Keep in mind, this is not her grandfather. She didn't know him particularly well either.
That was the latest incident. There are many more that start with some variation of "[sister in law] drank too much and then she ..."
cjet79
7mo ago
Its fine if you leave. I only see warnings and bans on your notes. If you don't like it, that is more of a complement than a criticism. Not sure why you consider it worth it.
cjet79
7mo ago
3 day ban.
Antagonistic, low effort, culture warring.
To everyone wondering why I moderate heavily on top level posts, this is an example of why. It creates discussions that are all heat and no light.
In case other users have missed the hint like sliders: I am watching this thread. Either start a useful discussion or don't comment.
We are for discussion. Start the discussion if you are a top level post.
We are not for breaking news.
If all you have is questions and no real discussion to add consider:
Normally this kind of thing is only a warning or not brought up at all by the other mods. But what's the point of a rule if it is never enforced? Bad luck of the draw getting me as the reviewer of the post. I am not a fan of infinite warnings.
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