fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
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User ID: 3415
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
3mo ago
I agree with you regarding your critiques of socialism, but
The problem with socialisms are two - people are selfish and tragedy of the commons.
This describes a huge % of issues the capitalist West is currently failing to deal with too
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
3mo ago
Which problems are you referring to here?
Because the big NYC ones are:
Housing, which is entirely the fault of local voters using government to prevent more building. I blame the voters for this, not the politicians responding to their voters (selfish) wishes.
Public safety, voters hate all functional solutions to drugs/homeless because they feel "gross" (bleeding heart libtards hate enforcement, delusional rightoids hate proven solutions like SIS, no one wants to pay for more rehab centers).
Traffic/transit efficacy. See the huge backlash to congestion pricing, despite it being an economically sound and obviously beneficial policy. Also note that absolutely no one wants to give the MTA money despite it falling apart all the time (because preventative maintenance is expensive and boring). Admittedly it does seem like the MTA admin is a bit of a shitshow, so I guess we can blame government for that one. Although I've worked for large oligopolistic corporations and their admin was also an inefficient shitshow.
More broadly, in every western nation absolutely every citizen wants more gibs, and absolutely none of them want to pay more taxes to fund the gibs. So they mortgage the future instead.
I find it hard to blame government for all of this, as any politician who actually tried to take action to fix any of this would immediately lose their next election.
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
3mo ago
I mean vs Ukranian civilians relative to population size for both countries.
So per 1,000 people in each country, there ~30 Gazan civilian deaths per capita for each Ukranian civilian death.
fmac
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3mo ago
maybe the whole project should never have been attempted in the first place
Episode #1052 of "the British Empire setting up geopolitical nightmares for the world in 100 years"
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
3mo ago
There is something so grim about driving by a bar just off a highway with a parking lot full of cars.
Also grim in that no one even bats an eye at the implications
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
3mo ago
no one is seriously accusing them of being genocidal.
Ukraine's population is 20x the size of the population of Gaza, but the civilian death toll in Ukraine is 3x lower.
So on a per capita basis, Gazan's are dying at a per capita rate of ~42x higher. My incredibly rough math has 1 civilian death per 3,158 Ukrainian citizens (using 2022 population) versus 1 death per 74 Gazans.
Couple of orders of magnitude there.
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
3mo ago
I'm so torn on gambling. I'm generally staunchly in the "let people do things" camp, and I dislike regulating things that will immediately create uncontrollable black markets because the demand is very strong.
But holy shit gambling is a fucking disaster for our society. The explosion of sports betting has made me firmly convinced of this.
Crypto at least is harder to get into and plausibility useful. Same with prediction markets
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
3mo ago
sell already cold beer for off premises consumption, because people use it to drink and drive
Do you think that the coldness of beer is a large determinant for whether or not people drink and drive?
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
3mo ago
While your nuanced take is true, this is a funny video
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
3mo ago
Yeah the Iranians are a disaster shit show.
Much like the Russians pre-2022, I thought they were much more sophisticated than they actually were. Then things started exploding and they turned out to be yet another paper tiger.
Praying we get the same twist with China, very worried we will not
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
3mo ago
I did some googling and actually much less than I would have expected. Common L for clickbait media. Good to know though, kinetic deaths feel slightly less gruesome.
I guess I'll amend my sentence above to "and then you look and Gazan civilians are being killed at close to a 30:1 ratio, with no clear end in sight and a guarantee that once the newest generation of traumatized kids grows up, this will happen all over again".
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
3mo ago
idk I'm not the guy above, I just wanted to offer the thought that they don't only retreat
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
3mo ago
Yeah the Israeli government is acting to its incentives, I get that. Every action has tradeoffs and consequences. This is the action-set that the Israeli people (and by extension their government) have chosen. I don't envy their choice, it's a nightmare.
But the consequences of their choices is permanent conflict around them, and a world (which to an extent they depend on) that is steadily losing sympathy for their plight.
I've said it before and I'll say it again. This conflict is so fucking long and there's so much bad blood, I don't ever see it ending unless someone rips the band-aid off and ends it with a final... solution? But that won't happen so instead it'll just limp along. At this point the Israeli's and the Palestinian's deserve each other.
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
3mo ago
I'm not saying Iran isn't an idiot for being in this situation. Their hostility to Israel is a massive, profound, and decades long unforced error. Although hard to blame them about being mad about the Shah. But we've done worse to countries and now we're chill (Vietnam, Germany, Japan) so if they'd suck it up they'd be better off.
I'm talking about the situation at hand though. Iran and Israel have beef, is it stupid? Yes. But it is real, and Iran getting nukes is bad. And clapping on Iran makes them want nukes more, I think that's also bad.
fmac
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3mo ago
What is an example of a piece of history of the conflict that you think would change people's minds if they were aware of it?
This is what gets me. At a certain point once the conflict spans generations and over 100+ years, "who started it" is the most useless question/discussion topic.
Every time someone tries to dunk with "well X did Y so the current Z situation is their fault" it is just so laughable.
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
3mo ago
But never their settlements in the West Bank, which do a lot of the heavy lifting in pissing people off.
fmac
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3mo ago
The Holocaust was obviously worse. It just contrasts extremely poorly when part of the founding mythos of the country is "we need a save haven for our people, who have suffered greatly" and then you look and Gazans are dying of malnutrition and preventable diseases purely because the Isreali's won't let food in.
History doesn't repeat, but it's definitely rhyming.
Random not very related thought, but the exact same logic applies more broadly to the hardcore lefty's, who are also the more irrational pro-palestinians. They all claim they hate the structures of power that perpetuate racism or sexism , but they don't actually dislike the structure, they just want their people at the top of it. Makes it hard to take them seriously.
fmac
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3mo ago
I agree. Also helped they were part of an actually productive civilization that had ethics and values which pushed them into prosperity
Also also they got shitloads of money to rebuild, which I think always softens attitudes somewhat.
fmac
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3mo ago
You break the country and the people decisively, and you relocate the survivors, and a few generations later you have a rough peace.
I'm not sure what aspect of horseshoe theory is at play here, but I never thought this would be the topic that we both agreed on
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
3mo ago
Oh I see, in that case yeah
This conflict is so funny in that it seems to turn people's brains off way harder than other ones (on both sides).
It's so nakedly partisan if someone isn't blaming every side for the 100+ years of tit for tat revenge.
I used to think there was a solution and I don't anymore. The Isreali's and the Palestinian's deserve each other.
I do assign Isreal a larger share of the responsibility to end it these days though, given they have so much more power. There's also something so amazing about saving them from the Holocaust only for them to immediately go start kicking someone smaller than them, you'd think of all the people they'd be marginally more sympathetic lol.
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
3mo ago
Sorry, I meant they can coexist with America / the western world
Ahhhhh, in that case, yeah
Their greatest moral failure has been half-assing it.
Seriously, it's very similar to the state of native Americans (and Australians). That at least has an end. Assimilation will win eventually I think.
Neither of these things have anything to do with the ownership of the means of production.
I feel like we've fallen into the trap of using "socialism" as a shorthand for "stupid liberal policy I hate" in the same way the "far right" now means "conservative people with ideas I really dislike"
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