cjet79
Anarcho Capitalist on moral grounds
Libertarian Minarchist on economic grounds
User ID: 124
cjet79
1yr ago
Point 1, only 20% of their budget is state funding. That is still any state funding, true, but I feel like sometimes people act like they're entirely state funded and that's really seriously not the case.
20% is easily the difference between "this is a successful and growing venture" and "we need to do mass layoffs or risk being shut down". I also pointed out in my comment that they can do what they want with student/donor money, so obviously I know there are other funding sources. And if I am wrong and the budget from the state is so small and not worth mentioning, then certainly they won't make a big fuss if they lose that funding. But I think we both know that a very large fuss would be made.
Point 2, I think it's reasonable for the government to subsidize education without dictating what the education entails. You can trust the market to efficiently decide what type of education takes place between students and teachers
Do you want a functioning market, or do you want state funding? The more state funding the worse the market.
pumping money into the education sector because you think the economy benefits from more education happening overall.
And I can want my tax dollars to not be spent for bad reasons. Two different professors at GMU have written books about the subject of rotten academia.
Point 3, I don't want to pay for many aspects of our military, police, and prison systems, to name just a few. 'I shouldn't have to pay for things I dislike' has never been a cogent argument against government spending; it's a democracy, you can vote for what you want but everyone has to pay for everything that ends up in the budget. You don't get a line-item veto unless I do too, and if everyone gets one then we end up with no government at all, society collapses, and we get invaded by China or w/e.
I specifically said "Cut all state funding" and "Republicans [should] wash their hands of the university system". I suppose my last line could be interpreted as wanting a line item veto, and I'm not opposed to that. But its not really the point I was making in this comment. As long as we don't get a line item veto I think its reasonable to say "I hate this thing" as a reason why that thing should receive 0 funding. In fact, if there was line item vetoing by individuals my comment would be dumb and pointless and you could just respond "if you don't like it then just line item veto it, and the rest of us can continue to fund it as we like".
cjet79
1yr ago
I went to George Mason Econ, still live nearby, and had lots of interactions with various parts of the university over the years.
The common online reputation of George Mason is basically totally wrong. People see it as a libertarian bastion of economic and legal research. That is basically just a portion of the economics college and the graduate law department. Its a tiny minority of the university. A very online and very prominent minority that most people know about, but if you are actually on campus or working there its very different. The density of libertarian students was pretty awesome when I went there, but it is still only like 5-10% of them. The Campus Democrats and even Campus Republican organizations were still much larger.
Most of the university is your traditional state school. If anything, its a little more diverse than most state schools, because of where it is located. The Language department is still mostly as crazy as any other school. But instead of having to go anywhere to protest things, they just step next door and make trouble for conservative or libertarian econ speakers that they don't like.
The Econ department and Law departments mostly survive because they have semi-independent funding form the rest of the university. There have been multiple attempts by other departments and the university in general to impose certain hiring restrictions, or to cut off those parts of the university. Those attempts have all failed, but they were still made. The "UnKoch my campus" organization has been in an ongoing battle with GMU Econ for over a decade at this point.
So basically it is entirely unsurprising that GMU would introduce some kind of woke required course. Or it is as surprising as any random State School introducing this sort of thing.
cjet79
1yr 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
1yr ago
Yes, that is an ability I use often and fully upgraded. Sometimes there will be groups of guys standing around talking to each other and there is no way to snipe them one-by-one without turning the whole situation into a firefight.
cjet79
1yr ago
I realized "military sim" was the closest genre tag and I bought Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon® Wildlands
It has a big sale on steam right now like 80% off. Usually I can clear out locations with a decent amount of sniping. There are still times when I need to clear an interior building, but it doesn't feel very often.
There are scenarios in the game where I'm worried about bullet travel times and bullet drop.
It's a little bit of a new experience having three NPCs with me at all times to form a squad. I could probably be using them more to clear internal spaces. It makes the game much easier. I've gone down in firefights at least 10-20 times but I've only had a full squad wipe once or twice. The teammates will revive you in the fight. So you are not a bullet sponges and can go down easily but if you were being careful and not getting into a crazy situation you can be revived. Prevents deaths from turning the game into a grind.
The DLC I think also screws up the progression of the game. They gate some good weapons behind the DLC, and not too much starts unlocked. I bought the DLC not really knowing that and had some super good gear immediately.
cjet79
1yr ago
I don't have time for this right now, but I'll leave my flag in the sand and say HBD is wrong. I'll just leave this quote here I found on reddit that does the same job as me taking the time:
Don't do this.
The purpose of this forum is to be a discussion group. This is why we don't allow people to just drop bare links at the top and say "discuss".
So either participate in the discussion, or don't. If you do not want to participate the correct action to take is to not post.
cjet79
1yr ago
Is there a single player mode? Multiplayer is usually just not fun for me unless it's PvE
cjet79
1yr ago
I did try the demo, wasn't for me, but it helped me narrow down what I actually wanted which is more range on engagements.
cjet79
1yr ago
Well, maybe you'll try Tarkov one day, but I feel like the anxiety would kill you, and ping limits mean I can't even carry you through the new player
on-boardingwaterboarding.
Tarkov does look mechanically like a game I'd be interested in, but the gameplay doesn't interest me as much. Its more that I dont get anxiety when playing games. Which might seem like 'oh then its perfect for you', but no, it just means I repeatedly suck at them. Anxiety is a feature of human psychology, not just a bug. It gives you some degree of heightened awareness and increased focus.
Grey Zone Warfare
This looks very interesting. Combined with me bouncing off a few other recommendations, I think I've figured out why I have a problem with many shooters: engagement distance. So many "shooters" these days are basically melee distance. Everything is tight corridors, with enemies popping out right in front of you. Most engagements take place 0-15 meters away from the player. Almost every 4 person co-op shooter that follows the mold of left 4 dead is like this.
Halo on the highest difficulties is nearly impossible to win at 0-15 meter distances. Most covenant weapons were not instant hit. They have travel distance, but most human weapons are instant hit. So optimal engagement distance is more like 15-50 meters. And the maps often allow you to actually fight at those distances. Its also why I think the flood levels are so hated and controversial.
If you've ever actually shot a modern firearm you'll realize very quickly how insane a 0-5 meter engagement distance is. 5-15 meter engagement distance makes some sense within buildings. In a city environment between buildings it can be more like the 15-50 meters. Outside of cities engagement distances in modern combat are like hundreds of meters, and most of the killing is done by artillery rather than small arms. So many games going for that close engagement distance nerf the hell out of the weapons to force it to happen.
cjet79
1yr ago
Some of the boomer shooters feel too "floaty" to me. Part of me just wants to move fast and shoot stuff. but another part of me likes the balance of "no you can't float instantly anywhere and shoot super accurately". I grew up in the Halo shooter era, not the boomer shooter era. So I'm maybe looking for games that imitate Halo 2 more than doom/
Doom original is very floaty to me. I have been thinkning of doom 2016.
I also must admit I have some level of graphics requirements. Post 2015 at least. And I'm just throwing that out there as a random year. But really I don't know of any games I play before that date.
Thanks for suggestions though.
I'm really looking for a good FPS. Preferably single player, and I'll accept multiplayer PvE, but if it's PvP it's gotta be perfect.
My problems with most shooters these days is very hard to define. Some of them have a floaty characteristic where all the guns feel like laser pointers that magically kill things. Some of them are boring because enemies are bullet sponges (and somehow game designers don't know that this ruins the whole point of shooters?) Many games just lack a soul, and it's hard to even say what's wrong with them.
I've been playing starship troopers and I really enjoy it as a shooter. There are lots of enemies, situational awareness matters, positioning matters, twitch skills switching between targets matters, and the shooting feels weighty when your powerful rifles can stun an enemy bug.
I just tried hell divers today and was very disappointed. It's not a shooter. It's a grenade throwing game with sidearms to get you in to grenade throwing positions. Most of the "grenades" are not called grenades they are called ordinance and are explained by you having a floating artillery ship in orbit. But you call in all this ordinance by throwing a tracking beacon with a countdown timer. And throwing the beacons is exactly the same as throwing grenades. The progression is all about unlocking grenades/ordinance.
It's frustrating to see the relative popularity of the two games. Starship troopers will probably be dead before it gets out of early access. Hell divers might get game of the year.
Edit: thanks for all the many suggestions. It has allowed me to figure out what I'm actually interested in. Which is longer range engagements. I describe it in another comment, but the 0-15 meter engagement distance of most shooters turns me off. To me that is just a melee game masquerading as a shooter.
cjet79
1yr ago
It would be nice to have a 3-tier citizenship that looked something like:
- Full citizen.
- Full resident.
- Foreigner trying to become citizen.
cjet79
1yr ago
In general I think people should have the right to work and live anywhere they want. I don't believe voting, receiving government welfare, being a citizen etc is a right. So that is my conception of open borders. I don't really think of open borders as open citizenship for anyone or open welfare.
cjet79
1yr ago
Sometimes government can really pile on the messes. They've certainly done similar things with medical care in the United States.
If they caused all the messes in the first place, should we really gonna trust them to fix the latest one?
cjet79
1yr ago
Yes, I am very much against licensing restrictions. And No, I am not waving my right to sue people for fraud.
cjet79
1yr ago
Practical concerns make me more in favor of open immigration, not less in favor. The largest spending item on the federal budget is not welfare, its social security. And Social Security is a pyramid scheme paid for by young. Immigrants tend to be young and looking for work. "economic migrants" is for some reason a dirty word, when without them the federal government would be going insolvent much sooner. One of the largest forms of welfare currently and being pushed by progressives and liberals is free/cheap medical care. The people most in need of medical care are often old, so the native population, not immigrants.
Those two effects alone end up swamping all other fiscal concerns.
There is also good empirical work that voter support for welfare states tends to fall with racial and ethnic diversity. Progressives have realized this and torn out their hair in frustration over all the racism. I see the result and become far less concerned about immigration.
cjet79
1yr ago
I don't feel that community regulation is equivalent to government regulation.
On the basis of distance from you, or the ability to send you to prison, or something else?
I think you can't have neither, and at worst you'll have both. And they do have many different characteristics.
Your post talks about disliking having your friends chosen for you by your parents and goes on to discuss the government, so I assumed you saw them both as being somewhat similar.
I made the comparison mostly to give some sense to people of how it feels. I picked the most relatable experience I could think of. Not the most similar comparison.
Could you add more detail? Or point to a post where you’ve discussed this?
Detail on what specifically?
cjet79
1yr ago
I don't really see what the big deal is?
This is often the same thing I hear progressives say about diverse representation in media. "Whats the big deal? Can you not handle seeing a gay or lesbian couple and a few extra black actors."
I think people on this forum rightly point out, that its the principle of it. Once you grant them the principle of it then it is increasingly hard to push back. This might feel new to conservatives, as if progressives suddenly started springing this dirty trap on them in the last decade or two. Where originally progressives just said "lets allow gay marriage" and now they say "whats wrong with teaching your daughters that they are actually just men?" But libertarians are very familiar with slippery slopes. Its one slippery slope after another for just about every government on earth and for just about every policy they ever enact. Rolling back even unpopular government policies is like pulling teeth.
So yes, let me hire the useless plumber from Guatemala, and you not allowing me to is stepping on my liberty.
If sharing a physical location with these people is so important for you, have you considered moving? Surely libertarians could get together, pool some money and figure out a way to make their border-free utopia a reality.
Seasteaders have been working on it. I suspect the first few will get blown up, invaded, and smeared if they go and do anything too libertarian.
cjet79
1yr ago
None of the stories here imply violence as a solution. It was messing me up. It was ineffective on my brother. And the solution to the parent's friend kid was ultimately separation. The spanking merely brought about that separation, its unclear if the spanking would have worked long term.
But yes, I agree some people need violence to stay in line. Nothing else will really work. They have short time horizons, low to no empathy, or some form of psychopathy. And there are even some people where I think even extreme violence will not work.
What's your plan?
Me? I'm not that smart. I like the work of David and Pattri Friedman on these types of problems. I also think the impulse to structure societies into some perfect form is a statist impulse, and something I try to avoid. I don't know if there is a perfect solution. I do feel pretty certain that the current solution is not very good for a multitude of reasons. And those reasons are my entire belief set and political experience for the last two decades, so not a short list or something I've not thought about a lot. It just feels too long to go into here.
cjet79
1yr ago
Eh, if you push me I suppose I am an anarcho-capitalist. I'm happy with small marginal movements in a libertarian direction, and the intellectual arguing and posturing within the liberty movement is supremely unhelpful.
How much are they the same vs not the same? I think they are similar enough to give people a sense of how I feel about the issue. Even if as I said above I don't think it's the most convincing way to argue on this topic.
I do believe there are good and helpful interventions, but I think having the machinery of government laying around is too much of a temptation to use government on bad interventions.
I believe most people share a value for wealth and money. Or at least it is a fungible thing that can be converted into other values. That is why the stock market works and publicly traded companies exist. Until DEI crap came along most of them have been legally obligated to pursue money and profit as a singular value, because that is one thing everyone can agree on.
Certain values matter way more than others. I think there are only some minimum values of non-interference that I need to live around others, and everything beyond that is just icing on the cake.
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