hydroacetylene
No bio...
User ID: 128
hydroacetylene
3hr ago
This does make me wonder if tobacco companies are prohibited, in some way, from itemizing vice taxes
Not sure, but tobacco and hard liquor companies are definitely prohibited from selling directly to the public- everything is marked up from the taxed price.
hydroacetylene
3hr ago
I continue to believe that the problem by which sufficient intelligences dedicate themselves to navalgazing and schizophrenia is fundamentally unsolvable; true artificial superintelligence will pull a Chris Langdon. It’ll replace lots of upper midwits, of course, but universal basic six figures for college degree holders isn’t something I care about.
hydroacetylene
3hr ago
The blockade wasn’t blue water, no, but it shew considerable naval strength and competence and in conjunction with previously established blue water capabilities(eg Barbary war, anti slavery operations off of west Africa, opening Japan) can be taken as demonstrating that the USA was already a naval power to be taken seriously.
hydroacetylene
6hr ago
The U.S. didn’t have a welfare state in 1860 but it definitely had a blue water navy- while the union army found itself initially incapable of conquering the south the navy was more than able to blockade it, the USN had carried out overseas operations such as the Barbary coast war and opening Japan to trade, etc.
I’d also point out that welfare for the old is funded separately from the general fund- payroll taxes are technically not the same thing as income tax.
hydroacetylene
20hr ago
Care to explain it?
hydroacetylene
21hr ago
Black people with moderate opinions on race, or even 'when we say "kill all white people" we don't really mean "kill all white people"' opinions on race, do not name their children 'Tatishe'. African immigrants use biblically inspired names, Caribbeans use normal Anglo or Hispanic names, and AADOS use distinctive AADOS names which might be weird but which are recognizably not deriving from the Niger-Congo languages.
hydroacetylene
21hr ago
Young earth creationists by and large do not jump into discussions of human genetics or the rise of civilization with 'but all humans are descended from the sons of Noah who lived a few thousand years ago' unless complete schizos. It's just not what they do. Most of young earth creationism as an institution is dedicated to epicycles to bridge the findings of archeology, genetics, etc with what the bible says, not to apologetics.
hydroacetylene
21hr ago
No it hasn't. Trump has caused market instability, forced Israel and Palestine into a ceasefire, and deported a handful of people against court order. Hardly Sulla's march on Rome.
hydroacetylene
22hr ago
I would also push, quite strongly, for 'it's not my job to educate you' to be a bannable offense.
hydroacetylene
22hr ago
is that ownership is essentially and definitionally the right to deprive others. That's it. I don't like that.
What's your address? I'm coming over to drink all your beer.
Sorry to be flippant but I don't think you actually 'don't like that'. I think you don't like some people having more than you think they should, maybe a certain category of good that you think should be the commons in all cases. You can make an argument for, eg, right-to-roam laws on privately owned wilderness land without trying to abolish the concept of trespassing entirely.
hydroacetylene
22hr ago
Anyone want to brainstorm a viable alternative to "ownership"?
There isn't one. Well, technically, there is- central planning technically 'works' despite being shitty- but for all the effort people- and not dumb people at that- put into finding alternatives to private property they have consistently failed.
It's not that making mistakes with economic policy is bad(although it is). It's that the mistake has already been made and the results were bad.
hydroacetylene
22hr ago
Ownership is the right to deprive another of his own property. For example your mother in law has the right to beat you with her cane for pilfering from her garden. She probably won't, but it wouldn't be unjust. A primitive in New Guinea has the right to shoot you with a bow and arrow for trying to eat his pig- again, he probably won't(mostly because you are unlikely to try to eat his pig) but it would be just if he did.
hydroacetylene
22hr ago
For context, Texas secession varies from 30% to 66% depending on the recent news, wording of the survey, etc. That makes this sound like the same order of improbability.
hydroacetylene
1d ago
What are the actual odds that Alberta secedes? How likely are Saskatchewan, Manitoba to go with it? Is it even possible for the non-Vancouver parts of BC to go?
hydroacetylene
1d ago
I agree that there is a possible future democrat who will have strong border controls. But this scenario isn’t very likely; Obama still had a reservoir of moderate-ish(or at least willing to take orders) mid level talent and that’s increasingly difficult for democrats, for one thing, but also polarization just drives the parties farther apart- Trump has stronger border enforcement than Bush ever did(or tried to do). Likewise Biden had border chaos that Obama didn’t even gesture at.
Politics is unpredictable. Democrats could run to the center. But they’re currently refusing to moderate on trans issues, which are even more lose-lose for them.
hydroacetylene
1d ago
Tatishe Nteta" strongly suggests that the author's race is sub-Saharan African
It also strongly suggests he was raised to be an activist. Normie Africans name their kids things like ‘John’ or ‘Mary’ and normie AADOS use names which are, yes, dumb, but recognizably Anglo.
hydroacetylene
1d ago
The motte will always appear more socially conservative than the media on some issues because it is willing to look at what actually happened in eg red state maternal mortality cases and not simply hallucinate a scenario. But the motte is not pro-traditional values on the whole.
hydroacetylene
1d ago
Yes, I just said that 16 as the generally agreed upon compromise is not clearly worse than 18. It simply happens that one is generally agreed upon and the other is not. But, well, something has to be generally agreed upon.
hydroacetylene
1d ago
They weren't but, uh, it's the Iberian peninsula. It's like an outpost of the Balkans.
hydroacetylene
1d ago
Have we considered that while Joe Biden and his grand vizier Ron Klein didn't want open borders, the increasing radicalism of the democratic party(and I specifically mean the party, not the base) made it near-impossible to implement non-open-borders policies due to staffers and undersecretaries?
In any case, I suspect the de facto equilibrium is 'when there's a democrat in the white house the borders are open, even to serial killers claiming asylum from bigfoot, but the Texas governor shuts it down and the border patrol just lets him, regardless of actual orders'.
hydroacetylene
1d ago
helped allay Southern fears that the North would come for slavery (at least for a time)
In 1789? Abolitionism didn't really get going until the 19th century was well on.
hydroacetylene
1d ago
Translated to American sensibilities, imagine Philadelphia succeeding, the great colonial cities, home of the liberty bell, the continental congress etc. and insisting you have nothing in common, you New Yorkers and Georgians just oppressed them and they don't even want to speak English anymore, but create some new literary tradition etc. etc.
The American national identity is not based on common descent from some decrepit yankee cities.
hydroacetylene
1d ago
Sure, Putin identified Ukraine as a threat to his regime, but the story is just a bit more complex than 'democracy spreading into the Russian sphere'. Ukraine recently overthrew a Russian-aligned guy before the first invasion, after all.
hydroacetylene
1d ago
Malaysia, Indonesia and Australia can still keep China cut off from maritime trade with Europe and Africa in that scenario.
Chinese civilization expands slowly, it doesn't have the booms associated with the west or the assabiyah cycle of Islam. And the three probably have to work together(with Singapore, too) to blockade China; it just needs one ally out of the three.
What throne and altar conservatives were discredited by(or indeed relevant in) WWII? The Carlists in Spain probably would have picked Hitler over Churchill but they weren’t a relevant factor(indeed they were a minority party of a neutral power). There were clerical fascists in central Europe who collaborated but that is, literally, a different thing.
Do you feel the same way about left wingers who are comfortable working with communists?
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