fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
No bio...
User ID: 3415
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
1d ago
I haven't but your comment was a very effective hook, and now I'd really like to read whatever thought you have bouncing around
You should tell the story!
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
1d ago
Infinity Indians. I'm not even joking.
I've read so many of your comments but I never realized you were Justin Trudeau's alt account this whole time
fmac
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2d ago
OH
thank you I totally understand now
Our systems are too complex for us to actually understand how they work
I feel so blessed to live in your world. I just learned that cow genomics are massively boosting cow productivity and milk quality, and there's literally lasers they zap cow sperm to filter it for traits (gender?).
I'm so happy there's people who's job it is to figure that out
fmac
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2d ago
I didn't see any Democrat making the case that the budget sucked
They didn't vote for it? The government shut down?
"Suck" in this context = unable to pass as is
fmac
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3d ago
Back to your earlier point, I shouldn't need to pay you a bunch of money because Left Inc already has tens of billions of dollars slushing around ten thousand NGOs and Think Tanks, and I very much notice that all of that produces approximately nothing that anyone wants to point to as a rigorous policy wonk argument.
Oh I see what you're saying. Yeah fair enough I guess, that is definitely true.
They're too busy paying administrators to figure out the most equitable way to deliver money to the homeless unhoused person experiencing a lack of a structural roof temporarily but oops! we spent it all on administrator salaries.
I'm not entirely sure what that has to do with The Motte but maybe my reading comprehension today sucks because I'm really tired.
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
3d ago
Oh sweet, so all the previous shutdowns are retroactively the Democrats' fault now.
I mean, yeah? I'd assume so, I have 0 knowledge of any previous shut downs. They should probably have negotiated better. Given all the shut downs ended, I'm sure they eventually did.
Idk why the immediate assumption to dunking on Republicans is "oh you must gargle democratic balls"
No, I love shitting on the Democrats.
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
3d ago
writing anything for public consumption
I don't think it's possible to meet your quality requirement as I understand it and also be even remotely consumable for the public. If it's consumable, it's going to be short, high level, and summarized.
If it's a "massive research undertaking to inform an actual laa or policy" it's going to be 100s-1000s of pages and an absolute snore fest of stats and legalese.
There's a fair bit of substacks and blogs that discuss econ/politics/infrastructure but they're short and readable, by definition
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
3d ago
Where are the "I know everything about trains" type posts laying out a sensible, state level energy policy? Anyone have an expansive-yet-granular solution for healthcare?
If you paid me a bunch of money I'd write one for you. But producing these is a full time job so you'd have to employe me in lieu of my current job.
Working groups throw dozens of people and thousands of man hours into papers
Exactly (I can't comment on the "no one reads them" part). Effort posts on that level of "basically actually government policy" are epic undertakings that 0 people on the Motte will do for free, as it's an actual job.
The best you'll get here is effort posts, which I guess you don't find good enough?
I was pretty happy with mine the other week explaining that why even if adding people to a city brings down average income, it's still accretive to overall city value/GDP/wealth.
> 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.
fmac
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3d 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
3d 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
5d 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
5d 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
5d 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
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5d 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
5d 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
5d 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
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6d 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
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6d 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
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6d 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
6d 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
You were a wonderful Aladdin and don't let anyone tell you otherwise <3
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