fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
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User ID: 3415
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
5mo ago
autarky is a child's understand of economy
It works great in Victoria 3 though
Although ironically even in that, once they implemented the world market simulation earlier this year average AI GDP shot way up lmao
Etobicoke is the middle of nowhere and I'll die on that hill
My girlfriend once called Dovercourt "some random suburban street" in a conversation shortly after moving here, I was very proud.
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
5mo ago
I started typing a different comment but got distracted and never finished. I'll try again.
3+ right:
I believe that privatizing government services, where there is a competitive market for the service, is almost always a great thing. I.e. privatizing trash collection? probably excellent idea, privatizing municipal water? Probably a terrible idea
I'm an extremely strong believer in gun rights and aside from no-brainer restrictions on violent fucked up people, I'm generally opposed to any gun limitations
I think voter ID laws are kind of a no-brainer, however I do believe the government has an obligation to make it quite easy to get said ID. I have very low faith that politicians who support the former will enable the latter, but in a vacuum it's a solid plan.
While I am pro-organized labour in theory, I find that almost every large prolific western union is more of a rent-seeking organization than something that actually makes workers better off. I think most teachers, police, government workers, and dock workers (I've seen effort posts on this last one that they're not as bad as I think they are, but can't remember the details) should be razed to the ground and then maybe allowed to be rebuilt provided they don't immediately go back to rent seeking. Paradoxically, I think declining union enrollment overall in the West probably hasn't been great for society overall, but I'm not strongly attached to this one.
I'm generally very opposed to the most recent wave of Western government immigration policy. I live in Canada, I'm sure you can fill in the blanks here.
Patriotism is good, actually.
3+ left:
I think things like school lunch programs, and basically anything that improves children's lives is massively positive EV and should have money poured into it.
I think public transit, bike lanes, etc are actually the only solution to grid lock and increasing traffic. If we accept that 1) cities have finite downtown space, 2) populations of major cities will continue to grow 3) those people will want to move around and 4) traffic is already bad, then the only solution is to get people moving in ways that are significantly more space efficient per person. There is no other way to solve this math equation.
I'm generally quite pro skilled immigration pipelines, provided they are implemented sensibly. To get super leftist, they actually feel kind of like neo-colonialism as were basically sucking smart motivated people out of countries that need them more than we do, but as a beneficiary of it, I'm still down.
Green/renewable energy is clearly good. It obviously has issues around intermittency and cannot be the entire grid, but it also has clear utility and cost structure benefits.
The Civilian Conservation Corps was absurdly based and needs to come back ASAP. To get spicy, I'm a fan of expanding low skill patriotic government employment opportunities and then getting rid of minimum wage. You don't have to offer min wage, but you do have to offer a better working option than the CCC+.
Things that I imagine piss off people on both sides:
I'm quite pro UBI, specifically a negative income tax. I think it makes sense (the right does not like this). I also think that to make the math work, you'll at the very minimum need to delete basically every other government support program, and then fire all the people who administer them (the left does not like this).
Pensions in general in the West are absolutely fucked. In the USA, you need to uncap social security tax contributions, and I'm sure some other brain-dead obvious tweaks that are deeply unpopular politically, if deeply rational. In Canada , that looks like dramatically reducing OAS clawback thresholds, and probably having an asset test as well, for a start.
Build baby build. I'm very YIMBY. I think that we should basically wholesale take basically Tokyo's zoning and apply that across the Western world. Constraints on building shit is a huge reason why China is about to become very very scary. I also think that suburban built environments are retarded and profoundly unsustainable (see: property tax rates in the outer GTA cities, especially ones running out of Greenfield development space vs Toronto, really makes you "hmmm") and should have to pay for themselves and then get fucked and densify.
I have a hard time caring about trans issues, both for and against. I'd prefer to leave them alone and let them live. I don't give a shit about bathrooms as long as their design isn't obviously bad (just give everyone full length stall doors that lock, so basically a small room with a toilet, boom problem solved and it's way easier to do coke in club bathrooms, win/win). I'd also like women's sports to be just bio women. I am definitely against trans flavor medical interventions on anyone under 18. I am very against my (hypothetical) child going to a drag queen story hour, but I'm not sure if preventing other parents from being dumb is something I should have a say over.
I think the war on drugs and general drug Puritanism has been a profound fail. I think that leftist drug "treatment" (read: do nothing) is also a profound fail. Just fucking bring back institutions already.
In general I cannot bring myself to care about Chinese subsidies on things like EVs and solar panels. Every time you buy a highly subsidized Chinese good, Xi Jinping essentially gifts you a small amount of Chinese taxpayer money, I'm more than happy to take their money.
I'm pretty open to massively weakening IP protections, both patent and copyright. I'm open to the idea of that being a disaster, but I'm also extremely confident the current setup is far from the Pareto frontier.
Western tax systems are dumb and bad. I'm quite open to things like Fair Tax. I've also spent a while trying to come up with my own optimal taxation scheme. In short: remove corporate taxes almost entirely, but also massively reduce the ability to defer recognizing income by keeping cash at the corporate level (unless re-invested into the company, which I want to incentivize) and force income recognition as it happens. Also increase the top marginal tax brackets a lot. This causes Mark Zucc and other billionaires to recognize 100s of millions to billions in income each year, which makes them unhappy. However I think capital flight is offset by extremely low corporate tax rates. I'm also more than happy to make the LCGE/QSBS exemption like $100 million. Capitalism abhors a vacuum, and after some upheaval I think this creates a much more dynamic economy.
Conclusion
I'm sure I can think of more, I also have takes along these lines for basically every political issue.
In general, I am extremely pragmatic, if the policy increases wealth, wellbeing, GDP, or in general holistically improves society, I'm all in. I do not give a shit what the underlying ideology of the idea is, as long as it works.
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
5mo ago
thought the liberal
the crying leftist
I know the ship has sailed and human culture and communication have moved on without me, but I'm so butthurt these terms are interchangeable
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
5mo ago
While what you say is 100% true, the unfortunate truth is that The Motte has been slowly but steadily shifting in a "monolithic rightoid hiveblob" direction.
It is not one, and one of the reasons I like to state my opinions and then get dogpiled by the hiveblob is to prevent it from becoming one (as long as I am here, it can't be one by definition).
But as someone who considers themselves a pragmatic centrist with (classical, not contemporary) liberal characteristics, I do find this place increasingly frustrating. So like it or not, it's cathartic to see some seethe and cope from the gang.
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
5mo ago
You make a fair point that theoretically, the previous generations can actually be right that the youth relative to them are corrupt, weak, and shitty and then that trend reverses itself a generation or two after.
My point was that given the ancient Greeks were complaining that their youth sucked, and I've now seen two generations of older people say their youth sucked (boomers/Gen X > millenials & everyone > Gen Z), it seems very likely that every generation likes to think the ones after them suck. Given that it's not really possible for every generation to be worse than the preceding one and to have a functional civilization, this complaint should be taken with a few pounds of salt.
Weak men create hard times, etc.
One of my favorite variants of this: Hard times create strong Slavs, strong Slavs create hard times
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
5mo ago
As I said in my other comment, I'm not against ICE at all, I think that agents of the government exercising a monopoly on force should be held to extremely high standards, and relaxing those standards because they're "on your team" is stupid, because they very much are not on your team, even if your goals are aligned right now.
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
5mo ago
Sorry forgot to respond
If you build a boot and gleefully stomp on the faces of your opponents, you don't get to cry when the boot ends up on the other foot.
I didn't build the boot? I'm also not a shitlib and have been deeply against wokism for basically my entire life.
I went to schools that were deeply immersed in grievance politics and "wokism" long before it was cool, and I found it stupid then, as I do now.
Alternatively, would you rather Trump just issued letters of marque and reprisal to citizens to hunt illegals and communists?
No, I just think that agents of the government exercising a monopoly on force should be held to extremely high standards, and relaxing those standards because they're "on your team" is stupid, because they very much are not on your team, even if your goals are aligned right now.
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
5mo ago
To be fair
artists who puts certain elements in his painting because they look good to him there full stop
And
the contrast between the bright cerulean blue of the sky and the complementary colour muted orange of the Autumn hilltop is a very clever trick employed by the artist to enhance the strikingness of the image for the viewers eye
Are the same thing. The artist might not be able to articulate why they like the elements, but they have an excellent eye for what looks good, it's what makes them an artist. So they make shit that looks good to them, and then everyone else goes "holy fuck this looks great, how?" and then break it down
Applying this example to here. You write things that you think are interesting and expressive. Your honest views are interesting, and incidentally what you find interesting is also excellent The Motte chum in the water.
Please keep sharing your interesting ideas, I very much like them
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
5mo ago
I trust Donald Trump
Also insane given his profound track record of lying and clear self interest in all his activities and statements
I wouldn't trust any of those three characters, as I'm very confident that any of them would gladly send me to my death if it helped them
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
5mo ago
What does that have to do with anything? I bet the Macedonian elders thought their youth were pussy ass spoiled bitches compared to them, maybe only begrudgingly shutting up after their youth came back home with the spoils of Athens.
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
5mo ago
No it isn't, because the vast vast majority of people who comprise "the government" do not change with election cycles
And that's not even to mention the fact that the two parties have way more in common (albeit diverging more recently) than they are different
And that's not to mention how foolish it is to trust politicians, period
"It's a big club, and you ain't in it"
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
5mo ago
It's a post-2020 phenomenon
This was happening in 2016 and I only picked 2016 because I didn't feel confident saying ~2013
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
5mo ago
This new knowledge has made me reevaluate my views on him.
That he wasn't just an incredible scientist, but he was also based?
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
5mo ago
You may not be an evil genius but inadvertently (or not... OooOoOOOooOo) you're quite good at poking the hornets nest here
I like it, please continue
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
5mo ago
Damn I genuinely learned something from this lmao
Kind of makes me want to shitpost more, there's so much unexplored skill ceiling. You've put me on to some new tech.
Feels like when I first figured out how to wave dash.
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
5mo ago
Yeah if there's no milage logs for the thing you are claiming to be a taxable expense then you get fucked and can't claim it as a taxable expense?
Putting aside the cartoonish scenario of "oh yeah we totally need the g-wagon for our tree farm", my understanding of tax law has always been you are guilty until proven innocent and they onus is on you to prove it.
If you don't do your homework, if you don't have logs, etc, you get fucked
I'm not saying I agree with this, I'm just saying I'm surprised the IRS didn't lean on this harder in court. They really need to have logs.
Like if you can just show up to court and say "but it's just he said she said so why even bother having logs your honor?" and then win, why does anyone keep logs for vehicles ever?
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
5mo ago
I'm not pro mass immigration at all, I'm quite unhappy with how it's been implemented, especially in the last decade across the West.
I'm just very very anti government force being applied retardedly and without extremely high standards for conduct and use of force
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
5mo ago
I'm not American, so no
I just think standing up (or massively expanding) a new militarized government force, one who also in this case likes to mask up, not uniform up, and generally act like aggressive retards is a massive self own. They're racking up a small, but growing resume of doing awful shit to American citizens which will only grow larger and more frequent as they expand.
I think further, if you support the government creating yet another group of goons who get to fuck people up, detain them without rights or due process, and above all, operate in an environment of "eh whatever, shit happens" then you are a cuck.
You might feel fine about it, but make no mistake, you're sitting in the chair
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
5mo ago
the willpower is a limited resource
This concept isn't holding up well to replication btw
Not that anyone really knows the answer, but studies (Carol Dweck?) have shown you can be psy-op'd or placebo'd into having more after it's been "depleted"
Personally, I think willpower and energy/tiredness are inversely correlated. Your willpower is worse at the end of the day because your brain is fatigued.
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
5mo ago
Mileage logs are not required by the statute. The business testified that farm-related use of the vehicle was around 95 percent, and that testimony was not rebutted by the department of taxation
Insane they didn't fight on this point
> control all 3 branches of government
> propose a budget that sucks
> you know other side must vote for your budget, refuse to make it not suck, refuse to negotiate
> refuse to change the insane procedural rule (filibuster) that would also allow you to get your budget through without them
> "wahhhhhhh why would the Democrats do this"
Literal skill issue
Also don't pretend like if President Kamala Harris was trying to pass the "trans surgery bonanza budget" you'd be saying that the Republicans should suck it up and just vote with the Dems to pass it for.... reasons - in the way you're saying Dems should now.
Why should they vote for the budget they don't like? Justify that.
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