One statement I've found that cuts across the bipartisan spectrum is 'the internet made us all crazy'.
It may be one of the factors, but not necessarily the primary one. People in the past refused to date or engage with people of other religions or classes. What I think really happened in the past decade, is that for many secular people the politics basically became the new religion - especially for those more radicalized ones. Internet may spread the radicalization more effectively, but the underlying phenomenon is still the same.
georgioz
4mo ago
I read a lot about the male loneliness crisis, or think pieces on why men are dropping out of the dating pool and I can’t help but draw nebulous connections with these experiences.
I always found this weird, as mathematically for every lonely man there has to be one lonely woman and vice versa. There are some confounders, like that women can have one night stands or situationships. Or that men can pay for prostitutes as a substitute for one night stands. Or that there is more lonely women especially in higher age due to them living longer than men. In any case for each man that lays his head alone in his bedroom, there is a woman somewhere doing the same. It is intrinsically linked phenomenon and it does not make sense to talk about it separately.
Maybe one thing that is different is that in general men who are alone are more aware of it not being ideal situation and they talk more of despair. Even MGTOW community talks about loneliness as preferable to other types of suffering, not as something that is preferable to fulfilling relationship. While on the other side when people are talking about lonely women it is more linked with some sort of empowerment and other positive vibes.
American politics are generally much less corrupt than Roman ones were. Sure, companies will sponsor campaigns, but any voter who cares can find out what the sponsors of a politician are. My gut feeling is that 87% of the political decisions (weighted by impact) are made on either ideology or merit, perhaps 10% of the decisions are made to please campaign donors and perhaps 3% of the decisions are made to personally enrich the decision maker.
You could say the same about crucial issues in Rome at that time such as let's say land reform or distribution of wealth from kingdom of Pontus. On surface level it was a discussion of ideological conflict between optimates and populares, but in the end the conflict was about which faction will distribute wealth and maintain power.
For instance during latest elections 92% of votes of people in DC landed in favor of Democrats - these are all people staffing all the most powerful federal institutions. You can go one-by-one with other institutions depending on public money be it public schools, academia etc. It is by now basically captured by one of the parties. You may downplay it such as merit or ideology, but the fact is that people governed by bureoucracy have different views from those who rule them. This also means that members of one political party extract resources from general population and distribute them toward their own client network of sympathizers.
In a sense the system is already corrupted. When they saw Caesar giving them personal promise of benefits they saw it as more tangible and in a sense even less corrupt compared to some vague promise of of reward by the republic controlled by people they viewed as actually corrupt.
There are 45 thousand wet markets in China according to my google search. How likely it is, that novel coronavirus comes from the market literally only a few miles away from a lab studying novel coronaviruses? At least 1:10,000 let's say. Let's even say that Wuhan is a huge hub, not unlike another 113 large cities with population over 1 million in China. Again, how likely it is that a new virus appears in Wuhan and not in any other large city? And I am not even talking about other facts such as that China is notoriously opaque communist dictatorship falsifying uncomfortable data.
Nevertheless even if you are convinced that the virus is of zoonotic origin, the lab-leak could never have been anywhere close to conspiracy theory realm. In fact it would require some conspiracy to explain this away - such as bat > pangolin > human transmission in Wuhan chain of events to explain zoonotic origin. That one is more complex. Additionally even if we accept wet market theory, that one is is still compatible with lab leak - such as let's say infected bat carcass being sold on wet market for profit by some careless employee in charge of incineration inside famously corrupt Chinese environment.
The fact that even reasonable rationalists mocked and suppressed this theory is wild to me.
georgioz
4mo ago
It does not matter, the genie is out of the bottle and people will not believe the government. In fact I think that in this case your argument is completely the other way around. People advocating for lockdowns as an open policy is similar to somebody making apologetics for Nazis. Maybe their government has been wrong when it comes to Jews. Mistakes were made and German government apologized for it. But who knows. Maybe sometimes in the future there will be a need for government to lock some portion of the population into concentration camps. We do not want to have such a strict no more Holocaust policy. What if utilitarian calculation of government experts shows that locking people against their will and marking them as pariahs with martial laws and all that is necessary and will save a lot more people?
I mean, come on, if the next thing to go pandemic (lab leak, bioweapon, or natural) has the mortality rate of septicaemic plague, there's just straight-up no alternative.
Non sequitur. We had data regarding COVID outbreak on board of Diamond Princess cruise ship since February 2020. We had 7-14 deaths out of 700 confirmed cases out of 3,700 passengers and crew - of course depending on how strict you want to attribute these deaths to Covid. This rate of 0,2-1% mortality rate that was discussed early on, it was known already in April including age and comorbidities based on this ideal natural experiment, and even that was the upper bound given small portion of people infected on board. All of this was known way before lockdowns were enacted. These policies were nothing short of criminal.
(…) for the first time [this debate] made me see the coronavirus as one of God’s biggest and funniest jokes. Think about it. Either a zoonotic virus crossed over to humans fifteen miles from the biggest coronavirus laboratory in the Eastern Hemisphere. Or a lab leak virus first rose to public attention right near a raccoon-dog stall in a wet market. Either way is one of the century’s biggest coincidences, designed by some cosmic joker who wanted to keep the debate acrimonious for years to come.
Even if it was a coincidence, it still means that lab leak theory should never have been considered a conspiracy theory. You can believe whatever you want, but the sheer coincidence of all this should always give some credence to lab leak at least enough not to outright mock or ban it as completely wacky thing to believe in.
It has to have certain flow and be aesthetically pleasing. Gary Provost nailed it
This sentence has five words. Here are five more words. Five-word sentences are fine. But several together become monotonous. Listen to what is happening. The writing is getting boring. The sound of it drones. It’s like a stuck record. The ear demands some variety. Now listen. I vary the sentence length, and I create music. Music. The writing sings. It has a pleasant rhythm, a lilt, a harmony. I use short sentences. And I use sentences of medium length. And sometimes, when I am certain the reader is rested, I will engage him with a sentence of considerable length, a sentence that burns with energy and builds with all the impetus of a crescendo, the roll of the drums, the crash of the cymbals–sounds that say listen to this, it is important.
georgioz
6mo ago
Far from a blackpill, rulings like this give me some hope that checks and balances will actually work in practice.
It depends on your definition of checks and balances. The question here is who is checking and balancing court decisions. Somebody can say that it can be executive by ignoring them. It is also not without a precedent such as when Andrew Jackson simply ignored court decision of Worcester v. Georgia (1832) stating that executive branch also has ability to interpret the constitution. Another example was Lincoln ignoring ruling regarding suspension of habeas corpus
georgioz
6mo ago
In America the existence of a certificate in following basic directions, using the English language, being able to not make problems when working in groups, etc is the function of a bachelor's in psychology, but what else do you suggest fill that role?
I am not sure if college degree provides that certificate anymore. First, universities now tend to produce culture warriors that can endanger you business if they think your corporation is the best platform to promote their political ideas. Additionally I am not sure if even ability to cooperate in a team or command of English language is something necessary to get a degree anymore. I think what you basically have to do now as a business owner is to do your own testing of potential employees including basic tests such as composing some simple email to customer or related to reading comprehension of some corporate memo.
georgioz
6mo ago
Their combined GDP is around $550 billion. That is similar level to that of Israel or Ireland or United Arab Emirates or Denmark.
georgioz
6mo ago
Exactly. It would be as if we had an 80ies movie about how bunch of regular and nice kids committed heinous murder inspired by violent action movies while trying to reenact D&D spell in real life. And the whole thing would be promoted by school system as a guide for teachers and parents.
I am not sure if there was anything like that during satanic panic, but it would not surprise me. Wokeness has attracted the usual moral busybodies of yesteryear, I would not be the first one to go with "woke is secular puritanism" angle.
Ok, I can even grant you Rowling, although she is at least a liberal. "Fortunately" there are many others, like Camile Paglia - self described admirer of Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex and all that shtick, who is now supposedly on the right making interviews with Peterson because of her cat fight with Judith Butler and 3rd+ wave of intersectional feminists.
georgioz
6mo ago
being infinitely scared by Russian nuclear arsenal is (in addition to Libya vs North Korea) something that will greatly encourage nuclear proliferation.
You can probably also add Poland to that list in the future
I think Stefferi is correct. I can give you just one example - Dave Rubin, a homosexual conservative star who together with his husband bought their children from surrogates. A lot of conservatives use him as a proof that they are not homophobic or whatever. You have more, like Elon Musk or Joe Rogan or lately even Bill Maher. Or take as an example of narcissist OF prostitute Nala Ray, who recently landed a soft interview with Michael Knowles about her newfound faith, and apparently is now some sort of a saint going around and preaching to conservatives how to be proper Christians. Or how J.K. Rowling or other old school leftie ultrafeminists are now conservative heroes, just because of their one particular stance against transgenderism.
If you take it at face value, none of the above deserve to be anything approaching to conservative role models, but conservatives love it if they see even fake semblance of their values reflected by their former opponents. I can guarantee you that if let's say Destiny or Hasan Piker declare that they are now officially conservative, they would be immediately launched into conservative stardom with conservatives gushing all over them - even if they do not even curtail their values and degeneracy. In a sense it is kind of happening with Ana Kasparian already. It is strange.
A VAT applies equally to foreign and domestic goods. It is not similar to a tariff.
It is similar to tariff, as VAT on foreign goods is used to subsidize domestic production. Revenue from VAT is used to subsidize domestic infrastructure, healthcare and other benefits for domestic workers and companies, or they can even provide direct subsidies. None of these are available for factories or workers from foreign manufacturers who get nothing from VAT imposed on goods they produce. So in the end domestic producers reap more advantage compared to what they pay as a tax.
Whether applying a retaliatory tariff (harming both sides) in order to kick the first side into dropping their tariff is a quantitative question that can easily differ from one situation to the next.
Okay, so what are these quantities and what are costs or benefits to that? If retaliatory tariffs are beneficial then under what conditions? What if these conditions are met when you are the one enacting the tariff as first mover - should you do it?
I'm no economist, but my understanding is that tariffs harm both parties.
Sure, but then the question is how and why. Details matter in this case as reasons may bring more light into the whole issue of tariffs.
Moreover this to me seems quite a different statement: any country that refuses to trade with us under any circumstances except of condition of absolute free trade, is harming us and we will retaliate. This is quite a statement, especially when it then comes to oxymoron of mandatory "free" trade. You would probably not deal like that with an individual.
Also there is more to this type of thinking. In this framework Trump is then also right regarding VAT/Sales tax. If country A has sales tax of 20% and uses this tax for instance to provide free health care, then it is using taxes on foreign goods to artificially bring benefits to its domestic workers. Country B with sales tax of 0% is thus "harmed", right?
This is why details matter.
I would agree, but only in case when tariffs actually have some impact on targeted nation. Again, the free trade doctrine would mean that tariffs are bad just for the country enacting them. There is no game theory where you have two players and one just shoots himself in his foot. The other player either does not care, or maybe he can use the now injured other player to take advantage of. He should definitely not "retaliate" by shooting his own foot. It does not make sense.
So even if adopting this game theory framework - if tariffs are so universally bad, why interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake? And if tariffs are so effective that they help the enemy player at your own cost, then tariffs are actually useful and good at least in some case and we can have honest discussion who is benefiting and who is losing given certain trade framework. That is the core of the cognitive dissonance I am talking about.
One topic that I was thinking about lately is regarding tariffs and some sort of hidden cognitive dissonance behind the whole policy. It seems to be a clash of different type of worldviews, one being the so called industrial policy, which is a policy where a nation creates favorable environment to grow domestic behemoths and grow their domestic economy. There are multiple examples of countries employing this type of policy such as South Korea, China or even Japan back in the day.
On the other side of the spectrum you have standard economic theory in favor of free trade. It has formidable range of theories for why this is ultimately the best policy, the most important one being the concept of comparative advantage.
Now to get back to the cognitive dissonance stuff, there is one huge question. If you are in the latter camp where you oppose tariffs and trade regulations - why are these people not against retaliatory tariffs? From this standpoint it seems as if you are shooting yourselves in the foot. If USA imposes tariffs on some goods like steel, then you can actually take advantage of that in free trade framework: buy state subsidized steel from USA to build your own infrastructure and factories for cheap, and then use this advantage to sell things you produce back. And even if USA decides for some broad tariff regime, it still enables you to use this advantage to sell goods to other countries. Under this framework the only country punished should be USA and the rest of the free trade world should be winners.
The other side of the cognitive dissonance is that in fact at least during last few decades a lot of economists are actually pro industrial policy. You can easily find articles like these where protective measures are praised. The same goes for EU, which explicitly aims to subsidize certain industries.
I think that the most interesting example here is China, which especially subsidies the basic production capacities: energy, steel, concrete, basic chemicals etc. These basic commodities tend to "supercharge" the rest of the economy, mostly as they are hard to transport and thus create at least local monopolies. It also benefits and/or suffers from so called double marginalization problem, as costs of goods at the bottom of supply chain propagate positively/negatively throughout the rest of the economy. Moreover creating complete supply chain in certain place increases intangible "know how". You can then have experts on the whole supply chain working collaboratively with each other to produce superior goods cheaper. Think of Detroit being the old car hub or Silicon Valley as a hub for software or Hollywood for entertainment industry.
To be frank I am leaning more into industrial policy side now, especially since COVID-19. Noah Smith has an article defending such a policy for national security reasons. But in the end with how complicated the supply chains are, this becomes almost an impossible conundrum. Just take chip production issue: you have to have mining facilities for pure silicon and other valuable minerals. Then you have to have companies designing new chips in research labs. Then you have companies capable of producing highly sophisticated lithographs capable of producing high-end chips, such as ASML in Netherlands. Then you have to have companies capable of producing said chips such as TSMC in Taiwan. The whole system is very fragile and even one of the chains in the links proves security risk. The same goes for pharmaceutics or other technologies.
And that's because US foreign policy decisions seemingly being driven not by wider strategic objectives or alliances but by the personal feelings and sentiments of a president upset about if you wear a suit or only say thank you X amount of times and not Y is a terrible way to go about any sort of long term planning.
I think that this is incredibly onesided view of things. I remember that Trump was since 2016 constantly target of ridicule, jabs and insults. I used AI to list some of them, here are examples:
Boris Johnson: The only reason I wouldn't go to some parts of New York is the real risk of meeting Donald Trump
Kevinn Rudd, former Australian prime minister and US Ambassador called Trump "traitor to the West" and the "most destructive president in history."
David Lammy, UK foreign secretary: described Trump as a "tyrant" and "a woman-hating, neo-Nazi-sympathising sociopath".
You can go on with more or less egregious examples from Merkel, Macron, Trudeau and many more. Are these people not supposed to be wise world leaders who are beyond antagonizing their allies with unnecessary insults? Should they not be beyond "personal feelings and sentiments"? And I would even get some spats between diplomats, but it really is something to see when you literally come begging for handouts but lead it with insults? I think a lot of these leaders - especially in Europe - smelled their own farts for too long. They just cannot help themselves as they do the same to their own opposition at home be it Le Pen, Farage, Meloni or politicians from AfD. And of course they have no problem to insult Orban and Georgescu or Fico and dozens of other leaders they need to work with. I find it fascinating how can they be this surprised after spending years antagonizing people they actually need.
However, a number of factors make me think that the Philippines would be better off explicitly pivoting towards neutrality.
The question is what do you mean by neutrality. For instance up until recently Finland was neutral, but they spend more money on defense than majority of NATO countries, they have compulsory military service and conscription and warplans that involve turning the whole country into one large military fortress. Being neutral means you have to prepare to face all threats without allies and thus it is much more difficult and costly when it comes to defense spending. Unless you are one of the countries like Switzerland, Austria or Ireland - for which it is easy to be neutral as they are far away from any belligerent country.
But for instance if you are country like Belgium - which was neutral both before WW1 and before WW2 - then neutrality means jack shit when bordering a belligerent neighbor. The only thing neutrality achieved was preventing allies to station their troops there before Germans invaded. This fate of neutral countries was probably main reason why Finland recently decided to join NATO, as neutral Finland could prove to be a soft target for Russia once it wraps its war in Ukraine. With Putin waving old imperial maps when talking to people like Tucker Carlson explaining his Casus Belli, it is is easy to remember that up until 1917 the Grand Duchy of Finland was part of Russian Empire.
Maybe what you meant was something like Philippines becoming vassal of China instead of USA? That could work for preventing war, but it will not work for larger independence and neutrality as it is normally viewed.
I live in EU and I have different take here. EU is increasingly growing irrelevant on global stage. You can look at it from the perspective of GPD, where the share decreased from 31% of World GDP in 1980 to 15% now. Or you can take it through most successful companies in EU where two out of top 5 EU you just have bunch of luxury apparel companies like LVMH and Hermes or old IT companies like SAP or Accenture representing the IT sector with some pharma companies added. Top 15 top EU companies have less value than Apple with 3,6 trillion market cap.
You can look at it from the perspective of security. EU countries cannot do anything for themselves in this front for last 70 years at least. We could not resolve issues in Yugoslavia, we could not resolve issues in Syria or Lebanon and we cannot do shit in Ukraine. The whole EU cannot even produce the same amount of artillery shells as North Korea.
Culturally EU is dead. In the past there were at least some italian spaghetti westerns, some interesting French movies and music. This is now completely overwhelmed by USA. There is basically nothing produced in EU, the culture is thoroughly US based.
Politically, EU countries are weak as well, it is much worse than in other countries. We now basically have permanent unelected bureaucratic structure with zero legitimacy. Our current President of the European Commission - Ursula von der Layen - is career bureaucrat, she was just a party figure in local German politics. She does not represent shit, most people in EU do not even know she exist. She is a dwarf not even compared to people like Trump or Xi Jinping, she is a dwarf compared to Macron and other elected EU leaders. This whole structure is a joke.
When I am thinking about the whole debacle with Trump, it is just another nail in the coffin. Some people in EU may be surprised, but in reality EU countries are not US allies, we are just vassals. If anything I do actually consider this as a "tough love". In a sense it is liberating to see somebody who actually talks to EU leaders as irrelevant dogs as they are instead of getting pets and platitudes from figures like Obama or Biden, while inevitably going into irrelevancy.
It also opens a very interesting conundrum for many people in Europe, who so far thought of themselves as "The West" or some such. This may even continue if some other countries - especially Germany o France elect more nationalistic governments that will try to forge their own path in the world. In a sense the whole Russia narrative is just a red herring. It is the topic of this decade, but there are other heavy-weights: India, China, Turkey or some up-and-coming countries which may have increased importance in upcoming decades such as Nigeria. European countries will have different geopolitical goals even compared to one another - like when Germans were cozying up to Putin for decades despite many warnings from other countries like Poland - until he was suddenly a bad guy. But there will be different goals compared to these other great powers or superpowers.
georgioz
8mo ago
Just a random thing, Pompey has to be one of the most egregious exonyms ever. We are talking about Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus, one of the most powerful and famous Romans in history. Pompey sounds more like a name of your neighbor's chihuahua.
georgioz
8mo ago
I see this somewhat regularly and I really dislike this style of comment
get a grip! You aren’t fighting a war
you’re rallying for a cause. But in reality these issues are often not as polarized in the public as you might think.
It is interesting how self-unaware this comment is. You are doing what you incorrectly accuse the OP of - only worse.
Sure, but then this cuts both ways. In that sense MGTOw man who regularly goes to pub with his colleagues or who plays D&D with his friends or who organizes grill party for his nieces and nephews or who volunteers for summer camps for children is not lonely either.
Of course this can explain only part of the problem, loneliness is something deeper no matter how women or men try to rationalize it. And maybe in current culture lionizing single powerful women it may be easier for women to do that. The word "incel" has much more shame and negative connotation in it compared to femcel. A lonely childless widow may have more social status than lonely childless widower. Nevertheless in some fundamental way they are still lonely.
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