coffee_enjoyer
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User ID: 541
coffee_enjoyer
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1hr ago
I think there’s an argument to be made that Portland Oregon briefly had one of the highest qualifies of life for young Americans before gentrification (and before the migration of crazy people — a separate matter). There are certainly cases where gentrification is harmful. But while we can secure the interests of the poor by simply saying “close the migrant floodgates”, handling something like gentrification within national borders is more complicated… But ideally you do want your cities to be overflowing with young adults who can afford rent and have extra time on their hands, as this promotes art / culture / etc. Are American remote workers doing this in Mexico City? Perhaps not. Maybe they insufficiently participate in the local economy.
coffee_enjoyer
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2hr ago
I’m not sure why it would work like this. If we consider it all per capita, shouldn’t China need an even larger pool of laborers given their manufacturing and mining sectors? But they’re getting away with far fewer laborers per capita while sustaining an absolutely dominant domestic industry. And their wages are continually rising across income levels!
https://old.reddit.com/r/economy/comments/142c9t2/manufacturing_wages_in_china_have_risen/
coffee_enjoyer
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2hr ago
Lampedusa is entirely irrelevant except for African migrants. It’s a tiny island with less than 7k inhabitants.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lampedusa
Lampedusa is an infamous island since it's been a major receptacle for illegal migrant boat crossings
Yes, exactly what I said. African economic migrants, mostly Muslim, mostly military aged males. Great priority for a Pope, to promote the destruction of Europe even as Catholicism dies in Europe.
The word "Lampedusa"
You aren’t familiar with the history and practice of Catholic wordplay. You can start with the famous etymologies of Isidore of Seville: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etymologiae (pro-tip: the etymologies are not real). It is no coincidence that on America’s 250th anniversary, the institution which supports the replacement of Americans with Hispanic Catholics and protested their deportations, and which pretends to act as a light unto the nations, is visiting Lampedusa the African migrant island known solely for importing Africans into Europe.
For you to call it a "completely irrelevant island”
Do you know how frequently popes visit this island? Do you know the last time was 13 years ago? Do you think it’s a coincidence that Leo chose to visit on the 250th anniversary of America, after spending all year crying about deportations because his dying institition requires a perpetual supply of Latin Americans (else they have to sell off their churches to the very Muslim migrants whom they supported coming in)?
coffee_enjoyer
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4hr ago
China has more innovation than Europe even controlling for their population. Sizably so.
coffee_enjoyer
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4hr ago
An actual labor shortage means that every business owner who owns two mansions and three cars has to sell one of their mansions and one of their cars unless they want to lose their entire income and become homeless. No one in America has ever experienced an actual labor short. There are only labor shortages in very narrow subspecialties. If Amazon for some reason needed an experienced Lisp or COBOL engineer, then Amazon needs to spend money to recruit one. Then the sub-occupation of Lisp programmers have a better QoL, and Bezos’ QoL stays exactly the same because he has so much money that it can no longer increase his QoL. We have more than enough wealth wasted (genuinely wasted) at the top, that we can artfully redistribute it to the poor by simply preventing the addition of more low-wage workers.
Things that people want or need to be done, don't get done
Nope. It means that the people who want or need something done need to pay more to have it done, otherwise the employee will stop working and find somewhere else to work. You only need a very small amount of “temporarily can’t do it” or “need to do it suboptimally” to accomplish this, only 1 out of 1000 projects, a civilizationally-irrelevant amount. When the QoL and wages of the lower class increase, then they can actually afford to quit their job for months to find a better one, and can actually afford to move to other parts of the country to find a better position. It’s a race to the top in terms of QoL and wellbeing. It’s only bad for the rich who hate the poor. Consider landscaping. A rich person always wants pristine landscaping. In the wealthy areas of the east coast I am familiar with, they universally spend exorbitantly on landscaping and nearly all the employees are illegals who don’t speak English. (The oversees of more sophisticated projects speak English). They are worked to exhaustion and have to eat outside under the shade of trees. What happens when we restrict the labor pool here? If the landscaper doesn’t want to be worked to exhaustion or piss in a bottle, he can quit to find a firm with better QoL; the firms have to compete over QoL in order to retain workers; everything improves for everyone, except the ~0.1% of wealthy properties which did not want to pay more to secure the QoL of the poor. That person may have to hire a local kid to do spotty landscaping, which is also good for the poor. Or maybe the grass grows a little taller (the horror!).
I think what you’re getting at is, “I want to trade the suffering of the poor for greater tech development”. If we compel them to keep working really hard, while their life may be miserable, it’s worth it for the rest because they get more goodies, like 4k VR porn and even more addictive algorithms. But this doesn’t even apply in America, because if you wanted more tech development you would want to restrict the supply of tech employees, whereas we are saturating the field with Indians and Asians. Now all the creative techies do not have the stress-free working conditions or the income affordance necesssary to really dive into passion projects. I mean some do, but only the most conscientious and industrious, ie not the most creative. So you actually have the worst of both worlds here. Not only do we trade the stress and tears of the poor for more waste at the top, but we even trade the stress and tears of our technologically-interested creatives for more waste at the top. If you wanted more tech development, you would want to restrict tech jobs, particularly in regions known for less creativity and less start-up potential. We have done the opposite. We have guaranteed less innovation, and instead we have Mark Zuckerberg 80 billion dollars on the MetaVerse, and Bezos space vanity projects. I will admit that Musk buying x was a good thing though.
coffee_enjoyer
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7hr ago
In real life, when you restrict the labor supply then quality of life and technology improves: https://history.wustl.edu/news/how-black-death-made-life-better . And when you saturate the labor pool, wages for the poorest drop: https://www.hks.harvard.edu/publications/wage-impact-marielitos-reappraisal-0
China has genuine technological growth far exceeding ours without saturating their labor pool with new workers. Europe has little technological growth despite saturating their labor pool with new workers.
American Uber drivers would be making a killing if it weren’t for mass migration.
coffee_enjoyer
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7hr ago
A first-generation Indian will trivially find a partner back in India, this is what many first-gen Indians who move here or in Canada do.
do you think Americans moving to lower cost of living places (which has a negative impact on the economy and housing for locals) is evil
It would be a good idea for the locals of that country to protest unless they are inevitably prevented from living in their own cities. It is not evil to to take advantage of something legal, it is evil to harm the poor in your own nation through pernicious immigration policies.
passport bros
Well it’s certainly not a preferable outcome. And I imagine it harms dating in the subject country. But that’s a lot different than what we’re talking about.
coffee_enjoyer
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17hr ago
The Pope planning to spend the 250th anniversary of the USA in the completely irrelevant island named Lampedusa (yeah we get the pun Leo), known solely for importing Africans into Europe, reminds me why I ultimately have to hate Catholicism. This is a serious insult to an entire country over a political dispute involving a transient administration. And never would an Italian pope consider missing an important political anniversary in Italy. If Catholicism continues supporting endless migration into America and Europe then I will support any effort to shatter them into a thousand pieces and scatter them into the winds. There’s a generous middle-ground between “not supporting the destruction of an alien civilization” and “bringing literally infinite aliens into your country”, I don’t know how they could get this so wrong.
(Just reasoning from love thy neighbor: the Hispanic laborer who works in America has the privilege of sending home remittances with significantly greater purchasing power. Due to average salary difference adjusted for USD, cost of living difference and purchasing power difference, the Hispanic laborer could effectively make 10x more than his American counterpart. This allows him to easily support a family back home, which according to God’s design is a key factor for happiness, but the poor American laborer does not have this same privilege. Even the poor Indian who migrates here to work at a gas station has greater odds of supporting a family due to the status / wellbeing differential between here and India. We oppress our poorest neighbor by forcing him to compete with foreign workers when he makes significantly less in two key ways: (1) he often makes far less in terms of purchasing potentials re Latin America, (2) he makes far less in terms of marital potential re all foreign migrants. Same amount of stressful work, but significantly different payoff for wellbeing. Seems evil to me.)
coffee_enjoyer
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21hr ago
The mysterious and parabolic sayings of Jesus are not orthopraxic jurisprudential rulings. But the Mishneh Torah is all about orthopraxic jurisprudential rulings. These are two different religions. The Mishneh Torah is the authoritative redaction of the Talmud and read worldwide by the Orthodox like Jared, as binding rules for life. The mysterious sayings of Jesus have never been distilled down to concrete actionable prescriptions (unlike His specified commandments) but are elaborated upon according to the spirit of the reader. You can see here how Aquinas has collected different readings on the "fathers against sons" saying. Or see how a Pope interprets it. You can't draw a comparison between this and Maimonides, because they are handled differently according to the different conventions of the religion. Or in other words, when Jesus says something mysterious it is meditated upon; when the Mishneh Torah says something, it is both meditated upon and implemented within one’s daily life.
Note that we are now, in a sense, staking the possibility of starting WWIII on the presumption that a particular Orthodox Jew does not follow the most important work in his religion, a work read and studied annually by the observant adherents of his denomination. Why would we we even risk these odds, when we can just say “actually, the ~0.8% of the US population who believes this can’t exercise any foreign policy influence”. We can even append “unless they make some kind of vow or public display of condemnation for these specific verses” to the end of that stipulation, if we want to be abundantly tolerant. But as is, having this guy decide the safety of Israel in a conflict against their mythical enemy Persia does not seem rational to me, as his values do not represent the values of 99% of Americans.
coffee_enjoyer
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1d ago
Kushner is Modern Orthodox, attended a yeshiva school growing up, and financially supports Orthodox Jewish institutions. He has studied the Tanya and visited the grave of Schneerson, and so it is reasonable to assume that he agrees with their view that —
the souls of the gentile nations come from the three impure kelipos and “they contain no good at all.”
[With regard to] the Tanya’s statements that the three impure kelipos do not possess any good at all, the intent is not that they do not possess a spark [of G‑dliness] at all. For without a spark of good, it is impossible for any entity to exist. (Although their existence comes from an encompassing light; nevertheless, we are forced to say they possess some type of spark.) This spark, however, has become so separated and darkened, that it is as if it is evil, i.e., it has no feeling at all for G‑dliness.
The particular denomination which Kushner attends and financially supports also teaches that compassion in gentiles is forbidden, and that consequently you are not allowed to have concern for them dying and are in fact obliged to not aid them when they are dying, which you can find in Chapter 10 of Avodah Kochavim of the Sefer Hamada section of the Mishneh Torah, a work read annually among the members of his congregation (and when they finish reading the work there is an enormous celebration).
All well and good to believe these things in private, but IMO we can’t afford to have someone like this possess an iota of influence in middle eastern foreign policy decision making. They are under no obligation to care about the lives of American which are lost, in fact they are under an obligation to not care about them.
coffee_enjoyer
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1d ago
And when we have finished blaming Trump, we still have the important question of how to prevent this from happening again. The obvious answer is to significantly curtail the influence of pro-Israelis, as this is the second war they managed to get in just 23 years. Israeli lobbying is unusually influential in America, and so we can simply curtail it to regain sovereignty. Why allow the risk of another war? Especially in light of Epstein!
America can also act as a self-interested nation. This means preventing Israel from ever having so much influence again. America can do a number of things to protect her sovereignty: banning Israeli visits on American soil, pruning all areas of government and journalism from pro-Israel subversives, and so forth. Surely it is not the case that only Israel can act in a self-interested manner, but America is obliged to act without any consideration of their interests. The chief interest of any nation is securing absolute sovereignty, and punishing those with traitorous foreign loyalties outside the borders.
The person at fault here is Trump
for being manipulated by Israel, yes, and if Americans recognize this then they can cut off the possibility of this ever happening against. Which is in their national interest.
Other nations leaders' are trying to convince America to do stuff all the time
And none of them have the influence machine of Israel, or the unheard of ethnoreligious dimension of loyalty. Our chief negotiator with Iran believes, as a religious dogma codified in his sacred scripture, that the lives of his fellow Israelites are more important than those of Americans. It is not in America’s interest to allow these people to have any influence, whatsoever.
coffee_enjoyer
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1d ago
Kent immediately resigned when the war started rather than waiting until the war seemed to be going poorly. He had been against new wars in the Middle East since 2021. His wife died in a terrorist attack; He served 11 combat tours. In early 2024 he warned that an Iran war would be a disaster. Why should anyone doubt that he believes what he says and is acting with good intentions? It’s hard to even imagine a more sincere person.
Consider whether the reality of the situation is best described in the language of bias and scapegoats, and whether the problem is Nick Fuentes or the people who just got us into a literal war.
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A foreign nation successfully persuaded the President to wage a costly and unjust war on their behalf despite the protests of the entire USIC and most of his appointees. The only appointee who was supportive of the war is Hegseth, who secured his nomination through the approval of the Jewish community via Norm Coleman, a pro-Israel shill and the leader of the Republican Jewish Coalition.
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Lindsey Graham, a closeted homosexual who visits Tel Aviv every two weeks (except during the war when he replaced his visits with Disney Land — odd), was integral to persuading Trump about Iran, using the soundbites he learned from Mossad, in Israel.
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Trump’s favorite news program, the Mark Levin show, is run by a pro-Israel shill with a close relationship to this foreign country.
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Our negotiating team was comprised of two Jews with a close relationship to this foreign country, and they apparently lied about the negotiation progress.
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The extent of foreign interference was so significant that the head of our counter-terrorism resigned to tell the American public, a man who formerly served directly under the DNI, which oversees pretty much all intelligence between the USIC and the executive branch.
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During our mission to rescue a lost pilot, Israeli journalists jeopardized the safety of hundreds of Americans by reporting first on the second lost pilot.
The takeaway for the average American is not going to be “aw, the innocent scapegoat Israel is getting blame”, it is probably going to be “get these people as far away from power and influence as humanly possible”, which I think is the rational assessment based on two decades of their pernicious influence. Trump is 80yo, the Israelis should not have the influence they have on him, not with the team of 140iq psychologists behind them who know exactly how to zero-day his personality vulnerabilities.
Another way to put it: okay, we have blamed Trump, and he should get blame, but is that where the blame should stop? What about the false-ally — the traitor-ally — that tricked us into war by taking advantage of the cognitively-vulnerable 80yo Trump? It is more useful to blame this entity, because they may continue to exert a pernicious influence on American politics into the future.
coffee_enjoyer
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1d ago
If this is real, I wonder which party a two-week ceasefire benefits. I would think Iran, because it allows them to reorder and replenish the missile cities while determining new strategies re: launchers. But maybe it’s better for America, insofar as it staves off economic woes? I have no idea. I also wonder what influence the GCC is exerting, and how this war changes their opinion on US v Iran, if at all.
coffee_enjoyer
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1d ago
https://www.un.org/en/genocide-prevention/definition
The problem with trying to use a non-robust definition of genocide is that it allows someone like Hitler to cause the same destruction simply by thinking cleverly for twenty minutes. This is why you need to work with robust definitions of terms of art here. Imagine, for the sake of argument, an Egyptian Hitler in the year 2040ad. This hypothetical Führer may declare that he will “destroy Jewish civilization forever” because they are “animals”. What would we intuitively understand is being referred to by these remarks? And if our Pharaonic Führer proceeded to target with his air superiority the civilian infrastructure, medical institutions, technical instititions, scientists, and so forth, all while threatening water desalination plants and the electric grid, I don’t think anyone would doubt his genocidal intent. It’s pretty clear he would be intent on destroying in substantial part the population of his victims.
I don't believe you actually believe Trump intends to murder "a significant portion of the members of the civilisation" (please tell me if I'm wrong)
He threw his support behind a plausible genocide just last year. Why would you doubt that he would do it this year? Causing starvation and preventing infant formula from entering the Gaza Strip is, also, a textbook act of genocide, as it is “imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group”. Trump supported this. Why would he not support it against Iranians, whom he has already dehumanized?
coffee_enjoyer
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1d ago
Deliberately inflicting on a group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in (substantial) part is an act of genocide, and I don’t see another means by which Trump can cause “a whole civilization” to “die” “never to be brought back again” without inflicting such destruction. You can’t bring an entire nation to “the Stone Age” because “they’re animals” without consciously inflicting such destruction on the members of the group.
rather than the obvious reading that he's referring to the society
If Iranian “society” is defined as a national or ethnic group, or, in its Shia adherence, a religious group, then you can’t aim to destroy the “society” either. If Trump’s actions are designed to destroy a substantial part of the Iranian population according to nationality, ethnicity, or religious identification, through (say) targetting enough civilian infrastructure that it necessarily destroys a substantial part of the population, then that’s an act of genocide. We also don’t have to use words with a specific connotation; we can just say that it’s not in the interests of the human race to do such things because it’s an act that is unnecessary and really bad for wellbeing, and thus those who do it should face a Nuremberg-style tribunal as deterrence for future defectors of the norm.
If so, why didn't he just say that?
Why didn’t he just say “regime” or “political party”? Why did he choose the word civilization, which has never been used to refer to a regime before? I’m having a hard time imagining how you can destroy a civilization forever, without intentionally destroying a significant portion of the members of the civilization.
coffee_enjoyer
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1d ago
Have we forgotten that polls are inaccurate when it comes to predicting actual voters?
coffee_enjoyer
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2d ago
Right. The reason that Trump has disgraced America more than Jackson, implying that Jackson’s conduct is considered genocidal, is that we are 220 years of moral progress away from Jackson, and everyone should know that destroying an entire civilization forever is wrong. Though I find the comparison inexact for other reasons (low total loss of life by Jackson; the aggressive raids of Indians; that Indians did not actually have a valuable civilization unlike Iran; that Indians were given reservations; that Iran is filled with 90mil people; that the conduct does not provide America any benefit or expansion).
coffee_enjoyer
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2d ago
Supposing that Jackson’s actions did constitute genocide, there are 200 years of moral progress separating our era from his, which I think does make Trump’s threat of eternal civilizational destruction more shameful.
coffee_enjoyer
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2d ago
Netanyahu is not an American president.
coffee_enjoyer
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2d ago
A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again
This is genocidal rhetoric. What do you even say at this point? We are clearly in the wrong. Trump has disgraced America more than anyone before him. The Republican Party may be over for the next decade. Perhaps endless immigration will simply be our punishment from God for allowing the bloodthirsty to occupy the government.
coffee_enjoyer
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2d ago
I think we probably lost lives. There’s the video of a helicopter crashing down; it makes no sense that all the aircraft were somehow stuck in mud when there was no mud in the area; the propellers in one photo are bent as if they crashed while in use; Iranian news showed a skull in the wreckage. Downplaying fatalities is important here for morale reasons: because of the Easter holiday, because Trump fired all those generals who opposed his plans, because Trump-Hegseth have a particular eye for PR, and because Trump wants to make a ground invasion seem easy. We will see, eventually, but perhaps not for some years.
coffee_enjoyer
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2d ago
It is a quintessentially tasteless tweet
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Posting a message about your enemy living in hell on Easter, the joyful day celebrating Christ rescuing sinners living in hell
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Posting it on TruthSocial, which I imagine is only populated by evangelicals who care a lot about the holiday
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Threatening to destroy civilian infrastructure, which again, is on Easter morning, and presenting it in the language of an easter basket
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Concluding with Praise be to Allah (???????)
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Posting no other Easter message the rest of the day
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Coming off as desperate, not at all in control
My running hypothesis is that the rescue operation went poorly and handicapped his judgment.
I am otherwise fond of everything Leo has said, fyi. It’s just that the migrant / deportation issues are cataclysmically bad in the longrun for what I value.
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