cjet79
Anarcho Capitalist on moral grounds
Libertarian Minarchist on economic grounds
User ID: 124
cjet79
1yr ago
Also, stop deleting all your old comments, it's annoying, and makes old discussions with you unreadable.
cjet79
1yr ago
Nope, we aren't a breaking news website, there is no urgency. Take your time and write something that starts the discussion.
If you can't think of anything to discuss about a major event then maybe it's not worth discussing.
cjet79
1yr ago
RSV or something seems to have hit everyone I live around. My daughters have had off and on coughs for like two months now. I think they keep just getting reinfected. Cuz they'll go a week or two without a cough, and then three weeks with one. Talking with my family that lives nearish, neighbors, friends that live in the area, co workers, and people from my kids' schools. Everyone has had something like it. My mom tells me that this is normal for having kids between 2 and 5 and having them in daycare.
I'm just hoping to avoid another winter like the one I had in 2020. It was a stomach virus, then a cold, then covid, and finally the Flu. All in one winter. (For those wondering the ordering from worst to not bad was: Flu > Stomach Virus > Covid > common Cold).
cjet79
1yr ago
My beer drinking is the least interesting. I'm generally trying to do low carb, so Miller Lite, sometimes Michelob Ultra if they are out of Miller.
Hard liqours have been more fun. I've been enjoying Gin lately. The Juniper aroma and taste is just something I find easier to slide into on a random night. I'll go back to Whiskeys with friends, but the harsh smokey and peaty flavors I like in a Whiskey are not tastes I'm always in the mood for. I've also been enjoying some Rye whiskeys lately.
I've gone through a few sampling kits from the website Flaviar.
cjet79
1yr ago
Please don't post bare links with minimal commentary.
I know there are lots of times when there is breaking news and we want to see what other motters think about it. But please resist the temptation to just link dump a story. Think about what you want to discuss then post it.
cjet79
1yr 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
1yr 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
1yr ago
This got a lot of reports for being "low effort".
It does pass my very low standards for not being "low effort": There is context. There are some of your thoughts on the context. And there is a jumping off point for a discussion.
What people probably did not like was you dropping the text of a very long article into the main thread. That is mildly annoying, and I'll try to explain why:
I read a lot of the writing on this website, and it has spoiled me in a specific way: I no longer enjoy reading stuff if I can't talk with the author about it. My learning style is often very discussion oriented. I don't fully understand a point from someone else, or sometimes even my own thoughts on a topic until I try to communicate it.
This website is explicitly dedicated to discussion. Just posting a ton of someone else's writing is against the spirit of this website since we can't discuss with that author.
cjet79
1yr ago
Early Rome: Yes
Late Rome: No
Athens: too small of a place to be drawing examples. It was a weird place, so was Sparta.
I expand elsewhere. Summary of my thoughts: Rich trading civilizations can have soft people. Pastoral and hunter gatherer societies cannot have soft people. Rich trading civilizations can also have hard people. But trendline is gonna be towards softness overtime, since it is usually individually easier, even if it dooms the civilization longterm.
cjet79
1yr ago
Because it was an option for them, and people tend to take that option when it is available. Even when it might mean the long term collapse of their civilizations. The Romans and Mongolians were both well aware of this phenomenon and took steps to address it.
A civilization can be soft and still be willing to step on people beneath them. It doesn't take balls to park a gunboat in a foreign port when you can blast them out of the water, and they have nothing to retaliate against you. The Vikings mostly raided villages and Monasteries, not hard targets. The European trading empires had gunpowder and armor against sticks and stones. Rome's armies were mostly composed of non-Italians in the late stages of the Empire.
The original question is difficult to answer, even for civilizations we know a lot about. For example, what do we know of the morality of an American? The very pertinent thing to ask back is "which Americans"? Where do they live? How wealthy are they? How do they vote? What religion do they follow? Are they a military family? Etc, etc.
I suppose the point I am trying to make is that in a civilization with "hard" people I generally think of everyone having to be hard. A civilization with "soft" people doesn't mean there are no hard people within it. It just means that soft people can exist within it. Pastoral farmers and hunter gatherers don't really have the option of an easy life of luxury. They work for food, men must fight for territory with other tribes, women are subject to rape and kidnapping, and kids need to be valuable contributing members at a very young age.
I'm curious what people like Bronze Age Pervert say about the bronze age. Are you familiar with their work at all?
cjet79
1yr ago
Going back to the original question "what do we know of their morality"
The ability of a state to wage war doesn't necessarily say much about the morality of the people within it.
America's war capabilities are highly decoupled from the internal morality. Empires have a point tip of the spear.
America has a commerce oriented set of ethics and morality. We have ideas about fairness and trading.
cjet79
1yr ago
Another thought about Bronze:
It is easier to turn peaceful Bronze towards war than it is to turn peaceful Steel towards war. What I mean:
Bronze has a much lower melting point than Iron, and requires far less knowledge for metal working than something like Steel. You can get wood fires hot enough to melt and then cast bronze. Cast iron is nearly impossible with wood as a fuel source. Also, cast iron is a strictly inferior metal to cast Bronze.
If you want to outfit your entire military with Bronze, the main limiter is going to be how much Bronze you have.
If you want to outfit your entire military with Iron/Steel, the main limiter is going to be how many skilled craftsman you have.
A barbarian horde that loots a Bronze age city suddenly has way more Bronze. They can melt down the currency, decorative items, tools, etc. A barbarian horde that loots a city with iron tools is still limited by the number of crafters that can re-work iron into weapons/armor. Iron is also very fuel limited. They cut down entire forests to supply the iron industry.
cjet79
1yr ago
Its a comparison to the people they are around.
Civilizations that trade with others civilizations are softer than civilizations that only engage in war and conquest.
Ancient China was by no means soft compared to people today. But they were softer than the neighboring Mongolians, so they kept getting invaded and conquered every few centuries.
The same happened to the Romans, who were certainly a hardy and war like people during the expansionist phase of their empire. But turned rich and soft, then had to rely increasingly on foreign mercenaries, until those mercenaries turned on the Romans.
I don't think the bronze age civilizations were peaceful by our standards, but they probably were peaceful by the standards of the "hill people" or whatever Barbarian tribe invaded them all and tore down their civilization.
cjet79
1yr ago
Parts of their morality can be inferred, mainly from the time period's namesake: Bronze.
Some minor background for people that don't regularly go on history binges:
- Bronze is a very useful metal. It is easier to work and in most use cases superior to iron. Steel is best, but really difficult to make with their furnaces.
- Bronze was an economic innovation. Its an alloy of tin and copper. The mines for these two types of metals were not next to each other. To make the metal in any meaningful quantities you had to have a Mediterranean Sea spanning trade network.
- The end of the Bronze age is a frightening event. The "Bronze age collapse" happened suddenly. Scholars seem to think some kind of widespread invasion and war caused the collapse. The trade network of the Mediterranean collapsed within a short time period. Some archeology has found clay tablets from the time period asking for help to fight off invaders.
The people in the civilizations using Bronze were likely soft trader types. They likely had a morality that allowed for trading and interacting with foreign cultures. They probably weren't very war like (which would have made them bad traders, and it might have allowed them to fight off the invasion that ended the Bronze age).
Most of the rest of the world was full of hunter gatherers and pastoral farmers. The exceptions being in the other cradles of civilization, Indus valley, China, and possibly Mexico/South America.
I don't really know what Bronze Age Pervert, or any of the other "larpers" say about bronze age mentality. It would be interesting if they have come to similar conclusions, but what little I have heard makes me think they have a very different understanding.
cjet79
1yr ago
In this specific case feel free to repost what you previously had.
As a general rule, reposting from a previous week's thread is ok.
Intentionally reposting from something that is already in the thread is frowned upon.
The rule of thumb I use when modding: is there already a live discussion on this topic, if so, just join that. The deader the previous discussion the more ok it is to repost it and start it up again.
cjet79
1yr ago
I fished out all your comments from the filter. They seemed like good comments, keep it up.
There probably should be some message to new users about things not appearing. Might be a good item for the backlog @ZorbaTHut
Typically I read all the comments by a particular user. Trolling stuff never gets out. If we have recently banned or perma banned users I have to be on the lookout for similarish commenting.
There are certain thresholds you have to hit before your posts and comments get auto-approved.
Spam and bots are not serious problems. But trolls and ban-evaders are major problems. The time delay of a moderator reading the comments and approving them helps lower the effectiveness of trolling, and makes bans actually costly (unlike on reddit, where they were trivially easy to dodge as long as you didn't piss off the admins).
We try to lean heavily towards approving new comments and posts. So all of your comments will eventually get approved.
cjet79
1yr ago
This isn't 4chan. If you have something to say, then say it, don't vaguely gesture to it with lazy quoting.
cjet79
1yr ago
You had three warnings last month, and one of them was specifically for posting "low-effort boo-light memes".
https://www.themotte.org/post/687/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/143928?context=8#context
You are doing it again. The warning didn't stick apparently.
3 day ban for now, please try and lurk some more and get a sense of the expected level of engagement and participation.
cjet79
1yr ago
This comment, your comment above, and these other two recent comments are all bad.
https://www.themotte.org/post/760/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/159540?context=8#context https://www.themotte.org/post/760/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/159366?context=8#context
Mostly you are leaning into the antagonism too heavily.
You also keep getting warned about this: https://www.themotte.org/post/621/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/127157?context=8#context https://www.themotte.org/post/621/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/127550?context=8#context
It would be a much better look if someone from the community could come in and say "hey chill out" and you'd either silently agree and chill out, or say something like "ya my bad, I'll chill". But instead you got even worse. So now I'm here reading your comments, and I'm not really sure what to do with you.
For starters, a 7 day ban. Then I'll go talk to the other mods as well, but if anyone else has suggestions, please feel free to respond.
cjet79
1yr ago
My young kids really enjoy the "spider friends" cartoon. Its basically young miles, young peter, and young gwen teaming up to fight bad guys.
It feels like a very traditional kids cartoon thing, where the worst thing the villains are trying to do is "ruin everyone's fun".
I feel like the spiderverse concept saved the spiderman franchise a bit. I liked the original spiderverse movie and miles simply because I've heard the peter storyline so many times.
cjet79
1yr ago
Someone asked about it and I gave permission. They said there were a bunch of updates, and I know nothing about the issue so I believed them.
cjet79
1yr ago
I found one company that seems pretty good in my area. They have electricians, plumbers, and indoor air specialists.
One of the things that made me a little more confident was how frustrated they were with the state of the house and how reluctant they were to do more expensive fixes.
There also seems to be two layers of protection in place:
- The local government comes out and inspects work related to plumbing, electrical, and gas. The professional might not care too much about their reputation with me, but they need the inspector to like them.
- They fix things that they messed up on. So one pro doing a bad job and screwing it up for a different professional gets noticed.
It seemed to generate plenty of speculation, not sure I'd say it generated lots of "discussion" aside from some people digging up the past allegations of abuse from his sister.
@greyenlightenment had a better post that could have been a top level post.
There are not length requirements. A certain length of post is a necessary but not sufficient pass of the threshold.
My recommended structure for a top level post:
More options
Context Copy link