cjet79
Anarcho Capitalist on moral grounds
Libertarian Minarchist on economic grounds
User ID: 124
cjet79
22d ago
It seems backwards to me that you think cultural changes are harder to implement than policy changes. Its a form of Democracy propaganda that I see often enough that its worth addressing.
Changing culture is hard and slow, it involves talking to a lot of people, convincing them, having role models to hold up who are paragons of the change you want. If you are pushing against specific incentives or people then they will try to reverse the cultural changes you are making.
How do you get a democratically elected government to change policy? You have to change base cultural desires of the people so that they change their voting habits often and consistently enough. And you need to tailor the policy to make it survive through whatever political process exists in the country.
Cultural change also has the benefit of snowballing effects. If you have some good ideas and good culture it self advertises as it spreads. Democracy requires a minimum 50%+1 starting point. So good ideas and terrible ideas have somewhat equal chances to getting implemented.
cjet79
23d ago
It honestly doesn't seem like internet companies have good moat options anymore. A platform moat exists for all the current platforms. Creating a new platform moat usually means you need to take space from some of the existing platform. Alphabet seems to attempt to make a new platform every time they get a chance. They suck at it and abandon the ones that fail pretty quickly, but it is guaranteed minimum competition. Anything social media related is likely to be bought up by facebook. Anything shopping related is likely to be bought up by amazon (or at least have them move in on your space). Chat and video platforms both had to compete with microsoft. AIs have zero moat, with people happy to switch between them and use whichever is cheapest or best. They almost have an anti-moat, because quite a few AIs degrade in quality as the context window increases. Since the business model is tokens, consumers are better off spreading their token usage as far and wide as possible.
If AI gets better at helping programming projects, then the cost to copy other successful software platforms goes down. Which further decreases the moat software related incumbents.
And don't forget real world things can have moats too! North America has at least two moats that aren't going away anytime soon, the Atlantic and Pacific. There have been lots of court battles over Trump's tariffs, but they might become part of the republican platform in the future. That might only stop foreign competitors, but there is a real difficulty in spinning up brand new manufacturing areas. A much higher difficulty then spinning up a new internet business company.
cjet79
23d ago
I agree that there is no such thing as appeasement for the each the rich types. There are enough marxists that I've met in real life that seem to want CEOs and the wealthy lined up against a wall and shot. Their idea of "compromise" is to simply confiscate all their wealth and imprison them for the rest of their lives in some Siberian equivalent work encampment. These people were joyous to hear about the United Health Care CEO being gunned down in the street. They were also joyous to hear that it had made other CEOs worried for their lives.
The only people like this that I have seen mellow out got married, had kids, and held down a good solid career for a decade. Which obviously has nothing to do with the policies they espoused, but it was never about policies in the first place. Its gripes about their life situation disguised as a policy gripe. And just like you can't reason someone out of position they didn't reason themselves into, you can't appease a life situation gripe with their claimed policy solution.
cjet79
23d ago
The spacex IPO has happened and made Elon Musk a Trillionaire.
There are probably hundreds of potential topics from this story, feel free to go off on your own tangents.
What I am interested in is that this is a company that is building real world things, and not fake internet shit. It feels like a lot of new wealth and investment in America comes from and is directed to the internet. I think one of the main reasons has been that large investors are generally play-it-safe followers. They see which companies are newly striking it rich: Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, Google, Apple, etc. And they are happy to invest in copy-cats.
I'm hoping the spacex IPO has a similar effect. That investors start chasing new copy cats. But this time copy-cats of spacex rather than copy cats of facebook or google.
cjet79
25d ago
I'd be happy to do writeups of underwater hockey practices, which simply doesn't have enough players to get beyond rec league performance. Not sure if you genuinely interested, or just making a point.
cjet79
27d ago
given the model of infidelity as driven by availability.
My model of some cheating is that its an easy way for people to initiate a breakup. Especially for young people. It was done to me by two different girlfriends, and two other girlfriends didn't accept my reasons for breaking up with them. I had to just persistently say "its over", and looking back on those instances it would have been easier to just tell them I cheated on them to get them to hate me.
cjet79
27d ago
Getting caught cheating is the coward's method of initiating a breakup. Especially during teenage years and early 20's.
I had two girlfriends cheat on me during that time, both readily admitted it and then didn't seem too upset when I broke up with them.
Single instances of infidelity are almost impossible to catch, and prolonged affairs are almost impossible to hide. Hiding is so difficult because humans are gossips and great at sniffing out who's fucking whom. Even if the affected partner doesn't figure it out, someone in their ~50-200 person social circle is likely to catch on. Way more likely if the "homewrecker" is in an overlapping social circle.
Big obvious takeaway from survey is that cheating is a common experience. Which is relevant to the original discussion about why Mr Brightside was popular.
cjet79
28d ago
Finally over the awful ear infection I had last week.
It was either the worst or second worst sickness in my life. It was like a constant 6/10 pain with spikes up to an 8 or 9. Tylenol and Advil barely did anything. Or maybe they were the only things keeping me from an even worse experience.
It mentally wore me down and I broke. Was a whimpering mess for an hour, before I pulled myself together enough to go to the ER in the middle of the night.
I think that goes too far.
There are some cultural issues where I do believe the government exerts significant cultural force.
It tends to be on issues that question the legitimacy of the state, the tax apparatus, and democracy itself.
But there is plenty of cultural leeway on things they don't care much about. And there are things they sort of care about where they exert some minor pressure.
I think natalist stuff is something they sort of care about. They prefer you having kids that go to government schools and drink the cool aid of system indoctrination. Homeschoolers fought an uphill battle, but have mostly been slowly winning in a bunch of states.
Child tax credits didn't have any major detractors. "Pro choice" doesn't call themselves pro abortion or anti natalist.
I just don't think the model of natalist culture as a government defended cultural view is accurate.
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