cjet79
Anarcho Capitalist on moral grounds
Libertarian Minarchist on economic grounds
User ID: 124
cjet79
7hr ago
Definitely a funny option. Though if they had somehow ended up in Taiwan as a result of this, and been right on top of computer chip production. Oy vey, imagine those rumors of Jewish control.
cjet79
7hr ago
Yeah I also had the thought of something akin to the Indian reservation system that US has for old tribes. They get their land, they are a semi sovereign entity within US territory. And their people can choose integration or separation. The Amish and Mennonites also are able to maintain extreme religious beliefs and a separate society within America. Orthodox Judaism seems to also have thriving communities in New York city.
cjet79
7hr ago
In all seriousness, read a few books on the topic. (I recommend reading both pro- and anti-Israel historians.) It might not convince you the Israel project was a good idea, but there are definitely reasons that made sense at the time, both ethno-religious and otherwise. Of course there were many alternative plans besides Israel itself; Uganda, Madagascar, Venezuela, and Alaska were among the proposals. It was both practical and historical reasons that lead to Israel proper being the location chosen. It may well be that it was doomed from the beginning, but for example, "Let all the Jews who want their own state move to America" was definitely not an option when the Zionist movement began in the 19th century, and it wasn't even an option for all the Jews to flee to the US after WWII.
I believe you. I'm not gonna read books on the topic. My level of interest in foreign affairs tends to drop precipitously off of a cliff somewhere at the edge of my neighborhood. Its a benefit of living in the US that I dont have to understand foreign peoples and conflicts.
Im curious if you know if any of the architects of the Israel project ever expressed regret or a moment of 'whoopsie, that was the wrong place'?
cjet79
7hr ago
I think DC would need a few hundred more incidents like that in a year to rival an israeli citizen's terrorism danger. I think I'd revise my position if these sorts of incidents became neighborhood awareness of threats rather than national news. Which would maybe be around a few dozen happening each year in most or all cities, and many more happening in Jewish centers like New York.
The perpetrators are also as far as I'm aware still treated like full criminals, with no chance of them being handed off to a neighboring nation in a hostage exchange.
cjet79
14hr ago
I am sure there is someone out there who is opposed to the existence of Israel on philosophical grounds but legitimately harbours no animosity towards Jews on an interpersonal level and sincerely wishes them no harm.
I feel this describes most of the Jewish Americans that I knew in college and highschool. Especially the ethnically and culturally Jewish that did little of the actual religion part. I didn't get to poll many of them after the October 7th attack, but the few I did poll seemed to have shifted a bit after that. More pro Zionist obviously.
There is something to be said about the people harping on the Jewish state online the loudest are just generally not happy with Jewish people.
I sort of feel that the best solution would be for Jews to just all live in America. The middle east seems like a shit hole. The fact that they really want to stay there and make it work seems strange to me. I feel no animosity towards Jewish people, and I certainly tend to enjoy their comedy (ari schafir) and writing (scott Alexander). I'd be happy to have more of them as neighbors.
It just seems like a doomed project to have an ethnostate and religious minority in a third world area, and neighbors with one of the most war happy religions out there. I am confused how the Israel project seemed like a good idea ever. Unless it was a naked attempt to just kick the remaining Jews out of Europe and let the Muslims finish the ethnic cleansing that Hitler started.
cjet79
1d ago
Fair enough, if AI is merely a productivity enhancement tool we have nothing to worry about.
cjet79
1d ago
How does moral not come into tax questions?
It's one of the main ways that the government slams it's weight around in the economy. How it does so can impact everyone's livelihoods.
cjet79
1d ago
It was comparing token output of a knowledge worker making about 100k a year. Which it estimated at 15-20 million tokens of human output. And then taxes on that person being about 30k. So tokens being taxed at 30k per 20 million.
The approach is not necessarily good, it's just what I started with when I had this thought.
cjet79
1d ago
AI labor currently has a tax advantage over human labor. I ask an AI to spit out a tax proposal where AI tokens were taxed a similar rate to humans that make 100k in the US. It made AIs something like 18x-850x more expensive. Which would make AIs economically non viable.
I do still feel that the tax advantage for AI labor is still morally wrong, but I don't want to effectively ban them. Is that just me?
How would you try to structure taxes such that the advantage disappears, but the AIs remain viable?
cjet79
1d ago
Mining was also a pretty rough profession for a long time.
The word "necessary" might be doing a lot of the lifting either way. It definitely makes some industries more profitable for the owners, but how "necessary" is it for that industry to be more profitable?
For something like salt mines maybe it matters a lot since salt was used to preserve food, and food preservation was very important for armies and power projection.
But for something else like tobacco production in the Americas .. the industry wasn't necessary at all. It was a luxury good that caused long term medical problems. Sugar is probably similar as well.
cjet79
3d ago
Started TheMotte factorio server with krastorio and additional planets. Let me know if you want to join. Weird time zones welcome. We don't have to all play at the same time.
cjet79
4d ago
I'd go back in time to pre Disney acquisition of Star wars with all the scripts of the worst Disney era star wars movies.
I'd do something to try and stop them from getting made. I don't know enough about movie script copyright to know the exact details. Or maybe I just mail them to George Lucas.
cjet79
6d ago
To me, it seems wild to look at this and not want to shut all eonomic immigration down hard, (H1-Bs, etc).
Economics is often not intuitive, and this is not likely to actually help the situation.
There are basically two economic tracks that anyone can take. They can either offer services to the global market or the local market. The global market pays really well, but its also competitive as hell. The local market pay is dependent on how many rich global market people you have living nearby. Local market pay is often going to be heavily tied with local cost of living, but generally the local market pay outpaces the cost of living (or when it stops doing that people to leave).
An immigrant moving to your country can either work in the global market, in which case there is more money and resources flowing into your local area. Or they can work in the local market, in which case they are slightly lowering the cost of living for you. If they stay where they are they can still compete with you on the global market, its just that none of the money/resources is flowing to your area.
cjet79
6d ago
For sure, and for Eric Swalwell having someone interested in his political career was probably an important variable as well.
cjet79
6d ago
True, I more meant recent human culture would get crushed under the weight of those two things.
cjet79
6d ago
Had a sexual relationship with someone in HR at a workplace.
Now here's a man who likes to live life on the edge.
It was a terrible idea, but had way more to do with the woman than her job at the company.
Regarding the double reality thing, do you think there might be a partisan element to it?
There is maybe different partisan expression of it, but it crosses political boundaries. Humans have some base urges and evolutionary desires. A couple dozen years of culture isn't enough to erase a billion years of evolution.
Its kind of funny in some ways. Two amoral optimization systems butting heads. Evolution vs Markets. Who will win? Not humans thats for sure.
cjet79
6d ago
Professional life in America has a weird double reality happening.
One where sex exists, men are horny, and women are using their bodies to advance.
And one where we act like sexless automotons in the workplace and things are determined on merit and skill.
I call it a double reality because both are true, but they are also obviously contradictory to each other and reality at the same time. The sex realism reality is at odds with having a functional workplace. And the merit matters reality is at odds with human nature and behavior.
There are three groups that matter in most organizations (and their comparative name at a national level in parenthesis). Managers (politicians), Employees (staff), and Owners (voters).
Managers tend to like the sex reality, owners tend to hate it, and employees have mixed feelings depending on how much it benefits them.
Owners tend to like the merit reality, managers tend to hate it, and employees have mixed feelings depending on how much it benefits them.
This has served me well for understanding job shit that happens, big government, small government, big corporations, or mom and pop stores. Some things that result:
- If owners are also managers, you'll find out what their priorities are pretty quickly. Either they are fucking their employees, or hiring a bunch of uggos. Its not fully that bad, but in small business it can feel that bad.
- Managers try to obfuscate everything happening to the owners. They dislike oversight from owners. But need maximal oversight on employees.
- Owners are addicted to hard performance metrics. 'Are you making money?' is hard to fake. When hard performance metrics aren't possible like in government orgs, sometimes owners will resort to a byzantine set of rules making or a catch all "if i dont like what you are doing you are fired, and no I won't tell you all the things i dislike".
- As an employee beware of other employees when complaining about the reality you dislike. You don't know if they are part of the other one.
- As a male manager you need to be very clear about not wanting to fuck your employees. It will probably be the default assumption about you for anyone living in the "sex reality". As a female manager, you don't need to be clear, we get it.
- Anyone married and with kids has bonus points towards the "merit reality". The exceptions, hos and horn dogs, will be obvious for the non-autistic. Trust your instincts.
- Barriers come down outside of work. You can find out many details about your organization over some drinks. Helpful for gathering information and not making stupid mistakes. But also a bad place for you to make stupid mistakes and lay your hand out too early.
I wish I could say "if you want to fuck people at work, you are bad and shouldn't do that" but I'd be gigantic hypocrite. I dated a girl from work in high school. Met women at work parties for one night stands in college (I was working on capital hill at the time). Had a sexual relationship with someone in HR at a workplace. Later at that same workplace I met my wife, dated her secretly for a while, and then openly dated before getting married. Can happily say I stopped 'shitting where I eat' after that.
All of that to say I also have no idea what reality looks like in Washington. But "both of the realities are true" doesn't feel wrong to me. There are probably weird sex orgies, there are probably high level government employees cheating on their spouses, fucking hookers, and hitting on underage girls. At the same time it doesn't mean these sexual escapades are running Washington. I'd bet good money that all of the supreme court justices are faithful to their spouses and not getting sexually tricked into supreme court rulings one way or the other. There is probably a large amount of "meritocracy" within agencies. I put that in quotation marks, because it is merit that the agency cares about. But its not so bad to be merit in the sense of "how good is your blowjob technique".
cjet79
6d ago
I see your point, I think it is interesting, but ultimately wrong. I do agree that they have changed, but I don't believe the change is bad. Digital distribution has been absolute boon for video game lovers.
I mostly have to go to various poorly publicized indie corners to find what I want
This is not hard? In fact it is often fun and entertaining. The gaming subreddits that follow a niche genre or specific indie game are one of the few places on reddit I still enjoy visiting.
Steam has also made discoverability very simple. They have every imaginable way to discover and filter games on their platform. You can listen to curators who care about the same thing as you, use game tags, look up "games similar to what you already play", see sales, get bestsellers in your country, or best sellers internationally, user ratings, price, etc etc etc.
cjet79
6d ago
First, because he got caught up in a Chinese Honeypot, then because he obliquely threatened to nuke me.
Same two links for me, but I do remember the second one
cjet79
6d ago
Endless jugs of fermented grain, huge buns of bread in reserve, the nile delta spread out in an inviting welcome, and countless hard obelisks and pyramids erected all long that river. Egypt is such a slut.
cjet79
6d ago
I'll second your take. I think it was maybe more that he had a lack of options rather than having some particular thing for this woman.
cjet79
6d ago
I feel the same way looking at photos of the Chinese honeypot in question. I'm not saying she's ugly or anything, but she seems decidedly... mid? And this is coming from someone who has a thing for Asian women! There are plenty of Asian women who aren't even famous for their looks who are more attractive e.g. Tiffany Fong, Yvette Young, Jia Tolentino. I've personally met Chinese women who were hotter than her.
Arnold's wife Maria Shriver and the woman he cheated on her with Mildred Baena. I feel confident in saying that I'd choose Maria over Mildred.
But I do wonder if the choices for Arnold and the choices for weren't actually as good as you'd think. Arnold might have been in a sexless marriage. And Eric might have been a creepy politician with weird power fantasies that turned lots of women off.
The choice between "will you have sex with an ugly/mid woman or no woman at all" is a lot easier for most guys to understand, and I think that might describe their situations more accurately.
Its this sort of statement I responded to above and what kind of bothers me. There are definitely moderates on this issue. I just get the sense that you don't get to be both a moderate and get any air time in the debate. Its a toxoplasma issue and both sides spend a lot of effort amplifying the crazies on the other side, and there is plenty of crazy to go around.
This seems pretty close to the same position as all the moderate secular Jews i know. And pretty close to my position, with the added caveat that I blame more than just Israel's immediate neighbor. The Arab states in general seem like bad neighbors. Like maybe only above "african warlord" and "USSR" as a category of bad neighbor.
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