ENDORSED.
Just inflate the debt away to virtually nothing, swap to a Gold and/or Bitcoin standard, and keep rolling.
Man, I'm basically an Anarcho-Capitalist, I will bite those bullets like candy.
And I am not joking. I live in Florida. We have no income tax. We have no estate/gift tax, we have comparatively low property taxes. And we're discussing getting rid of the property taxes altogether. Most revenue is sales tax.
And we've run a $10+ billion dollar surplus in recent years. There's just shy of $5 billion sitting in the 'rainy day fund' for emergencies. Spending is PROACTIVELY being cut just in case we get a recession in the near future.
I fucking love it. I'm actually quite tired of having to deal with the profligate spending of the Federal Government whilst living in an overall fiscally responsible state.
I expect that the U.S. economy would probably survive the FedGov defaulting on its debt. How each state would weather that storm is a bigger question, but the fact that the U.S. can so readily fall back on its constituent political units definitely makes it more flexible.
So hey, I say RETVRN to a system that apportions federal taxes amongst the states and makes said states figure out how to raise that money or, if the burden is deemed too high, acts to get the FedGov to constrain its spending.
But under the current political reality, I'm very interested in seeing how FedGov navigates the current crisis and avoids a default situation.
faceh
10d ago
My read is that the goal is to settle into an equilibrium where the Tariffs other countries have against the U.S. are reduced or eliminated, and the U.S. keeps tariffs low but in place on certain 'critical' goods, and sees some revenue from these that doesn't piss off too many people.
Add in steps like securing deals for resources on foreign soil, or taxing remittances, or even acquiring stakes in U.S. companies.. These seem like semi-stealthy ways to try and squeeze some money out of the economy that doesn't show up on the voters' annual tax return.
Also they tried to sell off some Federal Lands but people pitched a fit.
Do I like all this? NO.
But it looks intentional, not just arbitrary steps to enrich Trump and his cronies with no larger strategy at work.
faceh
10d ago
From US-internal perspective, he was mostly fine, but his foreign policy was quite the disaster, and Trump will be hard-pressed to cause a similar loss of utility even if he decides to invade Greenland.
That's about the sum of it.
Domestically he did introduce a lot of programs for spying and policing that I CONTINUE to disagree with, but foreign policy was, as you say, disastrous, and while I think Obama had a horrible foreign policy record as well, its hard to quantify just how much damage the warmongering did in sheer human lives cost on top of the economics of it. I look back and I cannot think of a SINGULAR positive thing that came out of it.
Okay, we unseated Hussein, but that led to the rise of ISIS (man, haven't thought about them in a while) and a general upswell of sectarian violence in the region. And they can barely hold their official government together. I genuinely appreciate that Trump made his campaign to squash ISIS as limited in scope as he did. EVERY instinct in me assumed he's put boots on the ground and pull us into another boondoggle because that seemed to be SOP by that point.
The Taliban instantly taking back Afghanistan was quite the cherry on top.
faceh
10d ago
And you pay for taxes with production and you get more production if you don't tax productivity.
Round and round it goes.
And if we're being really technical, they could also pay the debt by selling off various assets, including the millions upon millions of acres of land they hold. This would have possible undesirable impacts, I grant, but its a lever they could indeed pull.
Trump could try to do that. (Oh wait.) If someone really wants to make a 'dent' in the debt crisis that should, honestly, be on the table.
So I'm really not disagreeing with the idea that its hard, and raising taxes will be part of it. I just think the political will to directly impose higher income tax doesn't exist.
faceh
10d ago
I think various high-tax European countries are showing how that process doesn't really work.
Doubly so if your country's entitlements can be hijacked by racially-motivated interest groups.
Entitlements tend to be 'nonproductive' spending. Taking money out of productive investments to spend on nonproductive ends is... not going to grow GDP, which is going to hurt tax revenues over the longer term.
faceh
10d ago
Of course the most obvious place to start would be getting rid of the literal trillions of dollars(over a decade) in tax cuts that he passed.
having a lower debt burden is in fact a way us tax payers are benefiting.
Yeah, so tying tax increases with actual entitlement spending cuts would in theory be palatable. But you're going to piss off the groups who rely on that spending, who can then vote for people who promise to restore the spending and keep the taxes high.
So the promise of "I'm raising your taxes, but don't worry I'm only using it to decrease the debt" is not intrinsically reliable.
That's the Gordian knot, as it were.
If I ended up in a situation where I found myself trying to land a 747, I wouldn't be doing things for "no reason" in the cockpit, but it would be a mistake to think that I had a coherent plan to land the plane except to the extent that I'm aware that landing the plane requires reducing speed and reducing altitude.
If you didn't understand how the controls work or how to read the instruments, it would be pretty close to just flailing around in there. I mean, you might not crash the plane right away, but all you can do intentionally is experiment to figure out the controls, or radio for assistance. Maybe we could say you have "the concepts of a plan" though!
But sure. You could analogize that to Trump 1.
I think its somewhat evident that Trump 2 has an idea of how the 'controls' of his office work and is better at reading the 'instruments' in terms of how he is progressing.
Do you actually think that Trump is going to make a dent in the debt crisis?
Yes. I think there's a >50% chance that the Debt-to-GDP ratio is lower when Trump officially exits office than it was when he came in.
If I want to hedge a bit, I'd say that the average Debt to GDP ratio for the 4 years Trump is President will end up being lower than the 4 preceding years of Biden. But that's cheating a bit considering the massive hike that occurred in 2020.
If I'm correct, would that make the problem 'solved?' Hell no not by a long shot. But its a start.
and much more interested in putting down some actual predictions about the debt to GDP ratio and seeing who's right in three years, because I don't think that either of us is going to convince the other.
Ayyy this is very fair. NOTE, my position is based more on my belief that certain economic developments in e.g., Robotics, or Space industry, or continued AI progress will boost economic growth in the meantime. Trump's role will be more in removing the barriers that have hampered such industries, rather than him actually passing new laws.
This is ALREADY happening in Argentina! Milei's plan of just cutting as much red tape as possible as quickly as possible has worked!
So, not discounting that black swans could happen, I think its reasonable that similar changes will occur in the U.S.
So yeah, Debt to GDP will work for me, but I'll be much more finicky on the size of the shift in three years.
faceh
10d ago
Sure, candidates would sometimes quibble over individual districts with irregularities and might need the SCOTUS to resolve their differences, but at least once a verdict was in, the losing side would accept the result and concede
Sigh. My generally reliable long-term memory superpower is kicking in again.
HE LEARNED IT FROM WATCHING YOU, MOM:
For instance, Abrams at various times has said the election was “stolen” and even, in a New York Times interview, that “I won.” She suggested that election laws were “rigged” and that it was “not a free or fair election.” She also claimed that voter suppression was to blame for her loss, even though she admitted she could not “empirically” prove that. While she did acknowledged Kemp was the governor, she refused to say he was the “legitimate” governor.
Well, probably not. But he was echoing the same sentiment. And I can reiterate my spiel how the 2018 elections in Florida sure looked like they came close to being 'stolen' too.
In his 2nd administration, Trump seems completely free of traditional political advice, instead relying on his clique of yes-men to implement his personal ideas.
When almost every single person he appointed to help him due to "traditional political advice" backstabbed him, usually immediately after exiting the administration, why the hell would he repeat that mistake?
Previous administrations had the decency to do corruption under a mantle of plausible deniability. With Trump it is ubiquitous and brazen.
Oh boy, time for my generally reliable medium-term memory superpower.
Remember Biden (or someone using his pen) pardoning his own son for literally ANY criminal acts he might have done "during the period from January 1, 2014 through December 1, 2024...". Curious that he'd pick that particular period of time.
How fucking "plausible" is that deniability.
I'd love for us to return to a better equilibrium but that requires BOTH sides to agree to such a return.
But if your contention against Trump is that HE broke these particular norms that were up-until-then sacred... well I'm not convinced in the slightest.
I mean, yeah, you're not saying "trust the plan", you're merely saying "it's worth considering if we should trust the plan". I don't know that this is a major distinction.
I would narrow it to "Consider that perhaps a plan exists rather than think he's flailing around and screwing with things for no reason." You can't trust OR distrust the plan if you don't think there's one in the first place. If you don't think there's a plan, then what exactly are we seeing? And why does it often seem to work out for him?
What is the behavior of Trump we would expect to see in the world where: He has a secret weapon for addressing the debt crisis, versus He has no secret weapon
There is no 'secret weapon.' You can either reduce spending, or increase tax revenues... or both.
Reducing spending is a minefield. Increasing tax revenues can work via either economic growth or strategic tax increases (see the Laffer curve for why you might not want to push this very far).
I'm guessing that he's aiming/hoping for unleashed economic growth AND a combination of very gradual tax increases (especially indirect ones) and some monetization of the debt, which is why he's hammering away at the Federal Reserve right now, hoping to get them to reduce interest rates. IF he's going to propose spending cuts, I'd guess that comes after the midterms... which explains why he's expending so much capital to shore up more republican seats (see the current redistricting fight, and preventing mail-in voting and other election fraud issues) in 2026.
If he has any 'secret weapon' at all, it is that he can perhaps convince people to accept a series of individual steps that all seem odd on their own but push us to a 'better' equilibrium in the long run. I think that is EXPLICITLY his goal with negotiating new trade deals that force other countries to reduce tariffs on the U.S.... which can assist with that 'unleashed economic growth' point, up there.
I think Trump's primary goal is something like status. He wants people to think that he's the best, that he's the Big Guy. That's why so much of his politics seem to revolve around the respect and deference that he receives, or does not receive, from the people at the other end of the table ("did you say, 'thank you, Mr President'?").
You know, I agree there's a narcissism in what he does. But I don't think he takes himself NEARLY so seriously as you're contending here. Personally, I think he really, genuinely enjoys 'doing deals' and almost everything else about his personality is in service of his negotiation tactics when trying to make such deals happen. "Did you say thank you" is a tactic for putting the other party on the defensive by reminding them how much they've already gotten.
Like, what 'status' did it win him to go walking along the Roof of the White House and to scream at reporters from 100 yards away?. I pretty much believe his explanation that he was just surveying things to help plan out his White House expansions. Sometimes he just does things because... he can.
faceh
10d ago
Who said anything about nobody being held accountable?
Me, for one.
The poster you responded to made a specific claim about a specific guy, you responded saying that people like that guy all think that we just need good people running the show for everything to be OK.
No, I was saying that Liberals, not the 'classical liberals' but the ones that vote Dem and are very performatively anti-Trump for reasons independent of his actual policies, find it comforting to believe that the government is run by "good people" in the 'deep state' of interconnected administrative agencies, and the fact that Trump is tearing up the machinery of said deep state is part of what would terrify them about him.
The quote in particular I tried to address was:
because they've so internalized Weberian rationalization and this liberal view that they can't really even recognize actual human leadership as anything but some kind of pathology.
Leadership tends to imply accountability. But the issue now is that they don't want any one person acting as 'leader' and the person who tries to act as a leader (in opposition to the amorphous blob of administrative bureaucrats just 'following incentives') scares them.
And from the longer post linked up there:
So, when modernity and Liberalism came along, the outsourcing strategy was that outlined by Weber: “rationalization” — the replacement of human judgement, now deemed too terrible and corruptible to ever be trusted, by rules and procedure; that is, by algorithms. In Weber’s day, implementing them still required human bureaucrats in all cases, but nowadays, ever more of them can be done by our machines — “software eating the world.”
So I pointed out that Clinton winning in 2016 would have enabled a government almost completely divorced from its leader. The Bureaucracy (and later, machines) would do all the work of making the state function, and let her take credit for it, she wouldn't have to exercise agentic 'leadership' (an in return, would never be 'accountable.') and from the Liberals' point of view this is nearly ideal.
Instead, we have Trump who is taking the reins and making decisions for himself, and now going through the process of 'bullying' the bureaucracy into actually carrying them out for him. He's substituting his will for the 'processes' that used to underpin the state's behavior.
faceh
10d ago
The going joke is always the "strange newfound respect" for someone that they had maligned as hitleresque before.
I am just barely old enough to remember how vicious the attacks on Bush II were (and hell, I think some was justifiable!), but hey, the guy paints now, how endearing!
Even fuckin' CHENEY gets a pass now. Probably helps that his daughter is quite Anti-Trump (which could be a bit of a tell, no?)
And I do truly believe that even Trump will be seen with some level of nostalgia once he's gone.
You won't find me saying "Trust the plan" at any point.
I do think Trump acts more strategically than virutally any of his detractors give him credit for, though.
But if the complaint is that Trump hasn't taken a chainsaw to entitlements (which, for example, Milei has actually done in Argentina! Well okay, stopping them from increasing is not quite the same thing), stating:
Trump is not addressing the debt crisis, he's giving tax breaks that far exceed any cuts and hamstrining our industries with hare brained tariff schemes while demonstrating no understand (sic) of economics whatsoever.
and
but if your overriding concern is the budget then Trump is not using his smashing of norms to actually address that.
I think its worth considering that Trump may be aware of the fact that this current situation is unsustainable AND that making the needed cuts is going to be exceptionally politically unpopular, and that his ultimate approach to addressing this might be something people haven't considered yet.
Otherwise, what exactly do you think his motivations are? Just ignore the debt issue entirely and try to kick the can until he leaves office in a few years? I'm trying to understand the mindset that suggests that Trump acts at semi-random or that he is SOLELY self-interested and doesn't have any goal other than wealth accumulation.
faceh
10d ago
If any of them had seen the opportunity to cross the Rubicon and make themselves dictator, they would likely not have taken it, because nobody wanted to go down as that figure in the history books.
Taking this analogy more literally, none of them faced the sort of ultimatum that Caesar did. They weren't seen as overly popular and powerful and thus a danger to the status quo in and of themselves if they returned to the public sphere.
They enjoyed the mutually agreeable reassurance that if they gracefully retire they can live out their days in ease.
Trump's Rubicon moment was probably in the vein of "If you keep up this election denialism and run again we'll burn down your entire life." Maybe he sincerely truly believed that the election was stolen from him, or he just really hates losing, or he does legitimately think he's uniquely qualified to get the country back on track, but for whatever reason he called that bluff and then survived the onslaught. Where's that leave him now?
I am however wondering what will happen to the Trump party once Trump finally croaks. As any player of Crusader Kings can tell you, these systems of personal loyalty are all fine while you are alive, but tend to get very messy on succession.
Very curious too. How much of the coalition is genuinely tied into Trump the man. There's some who buy into "MAGA" as a broader idea, or "America First," but if Trump does die or, hell, even retires and endorses a successor, what portion of the current GOP will just stop participating for want of an inspiring leader?
Vance is positioned as a legitimate successor, but Trump could throw him under a bus too before going out. Succession fights get ugly. And a decent number of people, on both sides of the aisle, have their careers/livelihoods pinned on Trump's activities and they'll have to re-align quickly if they can't hook on to his train any longer.
faceh
10d ago
I mean, what's the actual disagreement?
The fact that there are no persons who can be held to account for any given decision benefits the entire structure, and makes it easier to pull off graft and rig things for the outcomes that they find preferable. Get the incentives aligned towards your preferred goals, even if it means that you have to tolerate a few bad actors in the mix.
I'd argue the main difference in view would be whether its appropriate for these people to receive rewards for their successful service to the regime/cause. Amorally, if a bad person does the 'right' things during their tenure and we get good outcomes, then letting them earn a few million buckaroos off their public office is not a big deal. But if it is generally known that you can earn millions via graft if you attain public office, you will attract a lot of people who might not do the 'right' things.
From whence should the 'rewards' for good service come?
Anyhow, my point is that the thought of a 'deep state' made up of your ideological bedfellows is comforting to liberals, not that it actually is made up of such folks.
It's remarkable that 250 years after Adam Smith, the classical liberal worldview is so hard to understand and so easy to round off to the complete opposite.
I'm definitely NOT talking about "Classical" libs when I say this, in point of fact.
faceh
10d ago
Yep.
This is also what the "Deep State" represents, and why liberals can regard the concept with fondness. The thought that there's a whole passel of administrators with specific 'expertise' (lol) in certain governmental functions who are able to act independently of the actual elected Executive is comforting to them. It means the government will putter along on a particular course even if there's a raving lunatic at the helm, they know when to ignore him, when to humor him, and when to take steps to reign him in. It represents the inversion of the hierarchy as it is supposed to exist (i.e. President is the plenary ruler of the executive branch itself) while diffusing responsibility enough that nobody needs to be punished for any given mistake. You all know my thoughts on that.
No leaders needed, just the abstract forces of 'good people' making decisions en masse without being beholden to the fickle, stupid electorate.
Vague guess is that Clinton was the apotheosis of this mindset. She would (intentionally) make very few actual decisions, but would be happy as a figurehead of the ship of state, and would get credit for good things that happen and could generally avoid blame if bad things happened (Goddamn, I STILL remember the Benghazi hearings, she really pretended like her position as SoS did NOT make her accountable for people dying on her watch). They did it with Biden but... well, you need your figurehead to at least look like he's in charge for it to work.
Their honest mistake WAS turning that machinery into a tool for directly resisting Trump 1. That made it way more legible and marked it as an enemy. Whoops.
Be that as it may, the literal only cuts that would make a difference would have to be to entitlements. Slice the defense budget to ZERO and it wouldn't actually fix the issue.
And reducing entitlements is the political equivalent of navigating a field of nuclear landmines.
And for this same reason, raising taxes would directly imply taking money from productive sectors of the economy to give to the nonproductive sectors. Which is not exactly a formula for growth.
So if you think Trump is not doing enough, please, PLEASE specify exactly which programs he should start making drastic cuts to, and then go and explain to the voters who will see their benefits reduced why this is important and necessary and they SHOULDN'T revolt at the ballot box.
Or, alternatively, explain to the various taxpayers why THEY should be on the hook for programs they generally don't receive a direct benefit from.
Simple problem to solve, I'm sure.
(Incidentally, I suspect that part of the plan RE: Tariffs is to help spread around the tax burden in a way that most Americans won't see as a direct extraction from their wallet, so as to avoid the outrage that would come with congress passing an actual income tax hike)
faceh
10d ago
Counter-argument to that is the U.S. has weathered a good number of major crises over the years without drastically changing its system of government, or at least, not permanently doing so. Civil War was obviously very bad, but things recovered and the nation got stronger over the next 50 years.
I'd agree that stuff like Wickard v. Filburn and the 19th Amendment were certain inflection points. Honestly, though, I don't think political crises are what will kill the current setup, it'll have to be something larger, and probably external in nature.
Perhaps the question is whether, if the crisis becomes deep enough, the appropriate people will actually decide to invoke the tools that the Constitution has built in or, as you suggest, chuck out procedures and checks and balances to save the Republic, even at the cost of the Republic.
Personally I think what terrifies a certain class of people about Trump is just that he seems actually interested in wielding power, and has, I dunno, 'agentic' behavior when he does it. There's clearly some objective he's swinging towards, even if he's taking actions that appear stupid.
He did it quite inartfully in the first term. The second term, there's a certain amount of focus and relentlessness that probably scares such people even more. So much happened in just the first 100 days. We're 8 months in, and every week or so another angle of attack is unleashed, and it sure looks like the legs are getting knocked out from under the activist class. Simultaneously too many targets to actually focus on, AND fewer resources to divide amongst the various causes.
I assume it feels like an existential battle for them, whether it really is or is not.
Compare it to a Romney or even Bush-like figure, who are seemingly more content to twist the dials on the administrative state a few degrees here and there and not interfere with their enemy's tactics (or disrupt their funding) so the actual 'balance of power' doesn't shift much.
For better or worse, Trump is taking steps that will actually make it harder for the dems to regroup and mount another offensive, and the one thing that is missing thus far, the one seal that hasn't been broken, is actually prosecuting and jailing the people who are best positioned to thwart his power.
And in a sense, that is the most terrifying thing of all, since that sword of Damocles will hang around for the next couple years, certain people can never feel completely comfortable that the FBI won't be showing up at their door sometime soon.
That's my take, anyway. There's the people with the symptoms of Trump Derangement Syndrome who aren't actually threatened by him, and then there's those whose whole raison d'etre is acquiring and wielding political power, and this current situation is threatening to remove that possibility entirely for them.
And because most schools are not quality controlled in the least, you often have guys who have never been in an actual fight teaching things they don’t understand how to work to other people who know nothing about fighting. B
Quality control is definitely the biggest issue when trying to choose a training Gym for any martial art. MMA at least has the necessity of pressure testing for purposes of preparing to compete, frauds get revealed QUICKLY.
It so happens that our gym also has boxing classes, AND has BJJ classes trained by black belts, although the emphasis is not on competition.
So I would not hesitate to say that its probably one of the highest quality Krav programs in the U.S. (yes, this is tooting my own horn), if only because it gives students the chance to sharpen those individual elements as well, rather that just teaching them a few choke breaks and groin kicks and sending them out the door.
And end of the day, what you learn in boxing and BJJ is constrained by the 'rules' of the competition you're training for.
Is there any point in BJJ where you train how to handle two attackers at once? Not shark tank where you go one after another, but two guys trying to pile onto you simultaneously? I'd assume no, because that's a scenario that doesn't ever happen in competition.
And that likewise informs the tactics that are taught. BJJ guys want a fight to be on the ground.
Krav, we emphatically do NOT want to be on the ground, and so we train on how to both avoid going there, and at getting up as soon as possible. Every second you spend tangled up with a guy while working for a submission is a second in which his buddies could arrive and punt your head or he could pull a concealed weapon.
Boxing, well, if you're competent at that you'll be able to hold your own in a random street fight against unarmed opponents. But again, Boxing 'proper' assumes padded gloves, an enclosed ring, and a referee, so certain 'outside context problems' arise if you haven't trained again e.g. multiple attackers, armed attackers, or similar adverse conditions.
The (possibly futile) hope of civilian Krav is to give someone a sufficient set of tools to respond appropriately and effectively to almost any given threat in any plausible context, and hopefully have it ingrained enough that it comes out of them 'naturally' even when there's an adrenaline dump, which we assume will cause any strategic thinking and fine motor skills go out the window. Hence, some of the more fancy BJJ moves aren't really suitable because someone operating under their fight-or-flight reflexes won't be able to pull them off.
Just a distinct core philosophy that ignores any priorities that a 'sport' or 'competitive' system might include.
But yeah, people have to be able to train under pressure, hence why I host weekly light sparring sessions to at least offer the chance to sharpen the basic skills against an opponent that isn't just flopping along with the technique.
Of course, Krav Maga's real claim to fame is "It's used by the Israeli Military," and thus that implies that it has been tested under real, harsh conditions by soldiers who are very motivated to win fights. Association with the IDF might tarnish it in some people's eyes nowadays, but that is why I do suggest that the instructors you choose should have some training lineage that includes someone who trained in Israel where they have high motivation to maintain quality and they're more likely to have used it in a fight.
I have only seen it in the context of disarming videos and that always looked like some serious bullshido to me.
If they start training you on gun disarms early, yeah its completely pointless. Even if you manage a disarm, you still have to fight off the guy who had the gun. So building the basic toolset is utterly necessary to making everything else 'work.' The flashy techniques are there to get attention so people check out the system, the basics are kinda boring but they're what works. Which is what I like about the system. There's no emphasis on any 'mystical' aspects, there's no pure "do it this way or its wrong" in the techniques. Its "DOES THIS WORK and can you actually use it."
I have been running an 'advanced' student class with some of our most experienced practitioners, and we have been training our gun defenses with Nerf guns (i.e. projectiles 1/40th as fast as most real bullets, obviously) to see how often we actually avoid getting shot.
Even the black belts (myself included) can only 'succeed' at our easiest techniques about 4/5 of the time. That means we're eating a bullet 1/5 times. Not amazing odds.
So our official position is that you should comply with the attacker's demands unless there is some clear reason that you shouldn't (do you have kids with you? Spouse? Are they likely to shoot you anyway?)
Yet, we are finding that you can be successful enough to avoid a bullet in the brain and instead only get a grazing hit somewhere less lethal, which allows you to at least fight the guy off once the weapon is neutralized. Its an improvement. But is it an improvement worth training for years to achieve?
Knife defense? BWAHAHAHAHAHAH. Nothing 'works.'. Survival is the only thing you can hope for.
Question to ask is, at what point do you consider a given attack scenario unlikely enough that its just not worth training for? If you just want to build the skill for the sake of building a skill, then just keep learning stuff regardless. It is fun! And obviously cops are significantly more likely to have to deal with a knife or gun attack, so it makes some sense for them to train it.
And of course, a lot of self-defense scenarios can be solved by just carrying a gun yourself. Although we ALSO train how 'simple' it is to deploy a weapon under stress or while tangled with an attacker and it turns out its fucking hard, so once again being proficient at fighting under an adrenaline dump comes in clutch. Learning more won't ever relieve you of the need to keep the basics sharp.
Let me close it out this way: our curriculum is based around training you for the most likely scenarios first and foremost, then get to ever less-likely scenarios the more you train. And we teach situational awareness to avoid bad situations and cardio to ESCAPE bad situations.
If your instructors are playing up the "you'll be able to demolish people instantly with these techniques" aspect of it, you're probably in the wrong place.
That said, of all the techniques we teach, the simple eye-gouge is probably the most effective for 90% of situations you might ever encounter. If only someone can develop the gumption to USE it. As I sometimes say "No matter how big the guy is, he can't train eyelids."
So the biggest challenge for training folks is getting them to overcome whatever mental barriers they have against hurting other humans when the time comes.
I do it more than 'casually.'
If you are concerned about self-defense, the strongest argument against BJJ is NOT that it doesn't work as a system. You can say that about a lot of arts like Aikido or traditional Kung Fu, which fail on their own terms.
BJJ is surely better than not being trained. But it is less likely to work if you're fighting outside of the gym context:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=ZpTctLEKV9Y
Since you do not get to pick the time, place, nor manner in which you are attacked, the system has to be adaptable and, unfortunately, cover as broad an array of scenarios as feasible.
But its a great workout, and it appeals to nerds because you're literally solving a geometry puzzle involving two human bodies, while they're fighting back, so you're not just 'mindlessly' punching things.
Me, I train Krav Maga. On the one hand there are internet memes about people who think it turns them into a badass overnight. On the other, it is designed, from the ground up, to first make someone 'proficient' at fighting (read: can beat an untrained attacker consistently) as quickly as possible. Then to build on that base to an ever-broader set of skills (multiple attackers, armed attackers, ground fighting, and offensively deploying weapons).
We know what works the best in one-on-one MMA fights, but its still a very, very open question as to what substantially increases your odds of surviving a life-or-death street brawl. If anything. Other than cardio and being able to run further and faster than the attacker.
The focus on 'efficient' techniques for debilitating an opponent means most of them CAN'T be trained in sparring context, but I run weekly 'light sparring' sessions to give people the experience of being punched in the face in a friendly context.
Oh, and BJJ is also pretty injury prone, because so much joint manipulation goes on and a badly-applied technique can do DEVASTATING damage to the impacted area.
If you try Krav Maga the only recommendation I do have is find a gym where the instructors can trace their training heritage to Israel, which I say mostly to 'ensure' that they're legitimately well-trained. My org is the USKMA.
faceh
13d ago
Some users primarily browse this website, not by clicking on posts and reading the comments below those posts, but by reading the page that lists all comments in chronological order regardless of post,
Absolutely unhinged way to do it, imho. I love it.
I notice that some people forget that Trump's Organizations owns or has fingers in real estate all over the planet.
This gives him some pecuniary interest in NOT doing foreign adventurism and warmongering. And avoiding wars involving countries where he has property, at all.
I imagine the thought of big, beautiful buildings getting bombed to rubble causes the guy physical pain.
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