Alternatively, you believe that it is my tribe that should adhere to norms, and your tribe that should adjudicate exceptions. It hardly matters which is the case; you cannot now argue that Reds should not do a thing, because otherwise Blues might do the thing they've repeatedly done and are currently doing. One cannot endorse a compromise that has already been repeatedly violated.
Politics is not so simplistic that there's just "red tribe" and "blue tribe". Political parties may coalesce around it as compromises, but political philosophies don't. Also "person disagrees with me on topics" is not "person is in other tribe and should not be listened to and inherits the sins of the outsiders"
This black and white thinking helps to underline how your argumentation here is backed by emotion. You push your grievances with others onto me.
At no point do formal legal mechanisms determine this process; we already know that the Constitution and the laws supposedly based upon it are a sham.
This is actually a great example of how political philosophies aren't so tribal. Try saying "the constitution is a sham" to your average Republican and they'll firmly disagree with you. There are lots of proud and patriotic conservatives who believe in the constitution and traditional American classical liberal values.
Most citizens are not in some cultural war obsessed "burn everything down, fuck the constitution, we're at war" mindset.
It seems to me that the fewer valid uses a buyer has for the thing being bought, the more this logic obtains, and the more valid uses they have, the less it obtains. Guns have numerous valid uses to the degree that, if we are currently pretending that it matters, legal ownership of them is specifically enshrined in the Constitution. "getting super high and physiologically addicted" is not nearly so valid a use as "defending myself and my family from illegitimate violence."
Ok here's a big example then
Google says
Tobacco use is responsible for over 480,000 deaths per year in the United States,
In raw numbers, that's about 6.5x as deadly as fentanyl in terms of how many people die a year! And some of those are secondhand smoking, people who didn't choose to be harmed by cigarettes unlike an addict ODing.
Why aren't we drone striking the tobacco companies? They kill half a million citizens a year, and there's not a "legitimate use" for cigarettes.
magicalkittycat
28d ago
Let's specify "illegal ghost guns" just to highlight the faultlines.
So is harm only harm if it's been designated illegal? Seems like we could solve all the drug problems just by legalizing them then.
Wait no, that would be stupid and the distinction drawn here would be equally stupid.
magicalkittycat
28d ago
If by "laughed out of society", you mean an opinion fervently held and actively implemented by half the country, in which pursuit they have proven willing and able to violate black-letter federal law and support the murder of innocents.
Luckily they haven't been able to implement such laws well. Enshrining the same logic however is a great step to helping it happen!
Drugs are not equivalent to guns. Drug dealing is not a victimless crime.
Well yeah, people who choose to use drugs in a bad way hurt others/themselves. The same thing happens with guns and bullets.
Some people sold a gun by a gun shop will go home and use the gun to kill themselves or another person. That is not victimless, people died from the gun being sold. But is the gun shop responsible for that? Apparently yes, according to this logic, the seller is responsible for what the buyer chooses to do!
, I am confident that you personally would be willing to offer people like them significantly more protection from the law than people like me no matter what I or my side says or does now or in the future, so I do not recognize value in preserving some hypothetical form of detente here. You will never be willing to treat me and mine with the care and respect you steadfastly insist must apply to narcoterrorists.
There is no discussion to be had with such a victim complex. If you're so emotional about it as to actively admit you're making up your strawman ideas about me, then it's not gonna be productive. You don't change emotions with rational arguments, "no, I support due process with you as well and believe in personal responsibility for everyone" would not change a single thing that comes out of feelings.
If South American cartels were running guns into the US that were used in the deaths of over 100k Americans per years, would you be ok with the government using lethal force on the gun runners?
If US manufacturers and gun shops were selling guns in the US, and the guns they made and sold were involved in the deaths of ~48,000 a year and used in untold numbers of robberies and other crime, would you be ok with the government using lethal force on the gun shop and manufacturers?
It seems like the difference here is
American: Perfectly good, not responsible for anything. Foreigner: Evil, full responsibility
Even if they're doing the exact same thing and selling the exact same products.
magicalkittycat
28d ago
I don't find this convincing, for the same reason that a gun dealer smuggling weapons into Somalia is, as far as I'm concerned, killing people. Sure, they didn't shoot anyone. "Guns don't kill people, people do, unless it's a Sig" etc etc.
There are people who make the argument that gun sellers should be held responsible for anything done with their product, but it's generally laughed out of American society. Especially by the right wing, given the long history of focusing on personal responsibilities.
But how about the other examples then? Are sugar companies terrorists? Are the tobacco and alcohol companies terrorists? They're all dangerous unhealthy products that get misused and abused, causing health damage and even death.
They're not as dangerous as most drugs sure, but they are pretty dangerous. Alcohol just off a quick Google search is estimated at "approximately 178,000 deaths per year are linked to excessive alcohol use.". That's 178k lives annually, some of them course not even the drinkers own life like people hit by drunk driving. Were the teens in my high school hit and killed by drunk drivers years ago victims of Alcohol-terrorism by the store who sold the drunk a dangerous product? Kids died because of it, so using the same logic it seems like a yes. I'm sure the alcohol manufacturers were well aware that some of their drunk customers go on to drunk drive and hit other people at times.
But none of that changes the simple fact that at the end of the day if you compare 65 year old senior with a million dollar home and 25 year old kid from a renter family without any major assets, just the house alone puts the senior a million dollars richer in value.
The senior's total value here is Renter + 1 Million
The difficulty in liquidating their holdings is only because they are actively using the one million dollar house, a choice the latter does not have unless they spend a million.
anyone who thinks we should give drug smugglers free reign is not.
You know that's not the actual argument being made right? There's a lot of room between "just blow up boats because we said they had drugs" and "do nothing"
Most of the concern is whether or not they're even carrying drugs, something that the admin has not been forthcoming with evidence for to the extent that they even send back survivors instead of prosecuting them.
But ok, let's say that they are drug boats. Is the response to that calling them terrorists and murdering them anyway? People who sell drugs are not killing people, because drugs can not kill people in the same way guns can not just kill people. Drug deaths are suicides by the irresponsible drug users, whether on purpose or on accident. People may feel shameful if their father or brother or daughter or whoever ends up as a druggie and ODs, but blaming the person who sold them the drugs is like when leftists blame gun stores for shootings.
That doesn't mean we should or have to be legalizing them, there is no constitutional right to either use or sell drugs but the argument being used currently by the Trump admin is one of poor victims who aren't responsible for their own drug additions, and they need to be protected from the "terrorists" who provide the druggies the goods they want. An easier way to think about it is with a lesser harm, like if someone were to proclaim we should start rounding up Nestle and Coca Cola shareholders for victimizing poor Americans with obesity, because offering high sugar snacks and drinks is damaging their health. It's the same logic, they provide an addictive product that Americans use to hurt themselves with so are they not corn syrup terrorists?
We could ban high glycemic index products and we could punish people who kept selling them anyway because likewise there is no constitutional right to them. But calling the sellers terrorists for something the "victims" choose to do to themselves is nonsense. We ban those products so people can't hurt themselves from their own stupid decisions.
But if the home you live in goes from $200,000 to $1,000,000, you are not wealthy, because the replacement home also costs $1M. You are trapped. You cannot sell the house and take the profit, because you still need a place to sleep, and the house across the street also costs $1,000,000.
You haven’t gained purchasing power. You have simply experienced a revaluation of your Cost of Living.
This is obviously false simply by glancing at the alternative.
Person A: No income but has a million dollar house
Person B: No income, and also no house.
Person A is a million dollars of value richer. If people B want a home too they have to give the people A a million (or build their own, which is becoming increasingly not allowed).
Nothing here is negated because A bought in early or because A wants their current situation of having a home instead of B's situation. They still have a million more dollars of value.
Ironically, Trump did this exact thing with the pardon power.
It's not uncommon to actually not know every single pardon being done in high levels of detail, the president is supposed to have capable and trustworthy staff to do the nitty gritty shit for them after all. They're presented with the general idea, the summaries, and then sign off on it. You can't expect them to have intimate details of every Tom, Dick and Harry. Of course, I think most can agree that the executive should do a proper job like not presenting cop beaters, or drug traffickers or smugglers, or fraudsters wiping away the debt they owe to their victims but that's part of why you're supposed to have good trustworthy staff that won't present those to you.
But still, it wouldn't matter if Trump personally knew who Chengpeng Zhao is and the specific details of how Binance under him intentionally avoided rules to help stop the laundering of money for Hamas, drug trafficking and CSAM materials on Binance because his staffers just referred to it as a "Biden witch hunt" if it wasn't in the context of trying to say pardons don't count.
magicalkittycat
1mo ago
So, for the American commentators - should I be concerned about this? Is this just Trump saying shit, is there a left wing equivalent I missed, is there some form of precedent that excuses it? Did I miss something major in my interpretation of it? Is this just not a big deal at all.
Consider all the things that Trump says he will do that never come to fruition and some have literally no chance of ever happening. From literal promises like lower prices, end to Israel/Ukraine conflicts both on day one (which we're way beyond) to the impossible like lowering medicine prices by 1500% or the trillions of tariff revenue. His admin boldly claims to have saved millions of lives from fentanyl. He's a natural liar and anything he says needs to be interpreted under this lens. Just go back a few months and you see this exact same sort of nonsense like threatening to take Greenland, make Canada into a state or whatever.
And it's not just him, it's the whole structure around him. Musk went on Fox News during the doge period literally promising increased social security payments, it was Pam Bondi who said they saved 258 million lives, and multiple parts of the admin during and before the campaign (and even earlier this year!) were all claiming to be fine with releasing the Epstein files
Sept. 3, 2024 — Lex Fridman’s podcast
Trump was more assertive when asked by Friedman about releasing Epstein’s client list.
Trump: “Yeah, I’d certainly take a look at it. … Yeah, I’d be inclined to do the Epstein, I’d have no problem with it.”
Only to go on and threaten MTG/Massie/etc for trying to get the files he had no problem with it and was "inclined" to do, then when the votes were clearly against him suddenly be ok with doing it again at the same time he orders an investigation to be started for the purpose of delaying things more.
So the first question is why take anything he says seriously? He lies as naturally as he breaths and he makes ridiculous bold claims that will never happen. His admin tries to follow up with some "well I guess we kinda technically did it if you're half blind and squint" way like with the flag burning EO where Trump boldly claims to make flag burning illegal whereas the EO doesn't do that whatsoever (and has no ability to) so maybe we'll see some noise of them larping about it but until they actually take a meaningful step forward, why is it any different than the rest of his larps?
I'm not sure there's much reason for a UBI in a post AGI jobless world to begin with, you only need money currently to exchange with other people. Jobs exist to do things for other people so they'll do things for you.
Any jobless world then is either
-
No one is alive
-
People have their desires that are capable of being met by a job already met so they don't work to do things for others and those others don't work for them.
Of course there's a possibility that Person 1 has an automated life with no desires left unfulfilled and Person 2 has tons of desires, but that would only mean Person 2 has a job then, working to fulfill their own desires! And if there's lots of people who don't have their desires fulfilled, they can do what humans do now and participate with each other in trade of labor and resources.
Anything problematic regarding jobs is more likely to happen in the interim, where people get laid off and displaced in batches of suffering before they've achieved status of having their needs met without requiring others.
Regardless the greater problem here would be resource distribution. An AGI and automation might be able to do everything better and quicker than a human to the point there's no need for anyone to work ever, but eventually resources will run out. Maybe it'll be so super smart it even figures out how to prevent that, but the real issue seems to be
Group 1: Fully automated life Group 2: They literally can't work a job because all the resources are guarded by group 1's super robots and they die.
magicalkittycat
2mo ago
Okay, people are accusing you of being Darwin. Right now I am not convinced one way or the other; you definitely post in certain ways that are very similar, but your style isn't quite the same. However, playing "Spot the Darwin alt" is almost as annoying as playing "Spot the JB alt," so I am asking you point blank, and consider this an official mod question:
Are you Darwin aka @guesswho? Is this a new alt you are using?
I have no idea who that is lol so I don't think so.
As the saying goes, onus probandi, the burden of proof is on the speaker. If people wanna make shit up, they can do that. They can provide evidence if they actually want to be believed. I don't have any way to prove I'm not something compared to asinine "it came to me in a dream" tier evidence.
f you are not Darwin, then you need to slow your roll and understand why people are pattern-matching you to a notorious shit-stirring troll known for making bad faith arguments and starting thread after thread on the same topic just to rile people up.
Again I don't know who that is so it's not only literally a worthless comparison but does the opposite of "Wow is this place so opposed to disagreement that they just accuse everyone of being a secret bad faith troll?"
magicalkittycat
2mo ago
All this alarm about Nazis and no attempt to demonstrate any policy position these supposed "Nazis" hold that would make them actual Nazis.
Holocaust denial does not make you a Nazi.
Making edgy jokes does not make you a Nazi.
Thinking Hitler did some good things (or at the very least for the German people) does not make you a Nazi.
Ok sure lets call them "Razis" then if you don't think they should be called Nazis. Let's amend a question to be "is there a rise of "Razis" who openly praise Hitler, deny the holocaust, and say antisemitic things like Jews can't be trusted then?"
magicalkittycat
2mo ago
You know I get like 30+ replies every time I check back here? I do not have the time in my busy life to read every single part of every single comment, yet alone reply to them all. I glance through and pick a few.
For what it's worth, I don't think you're Darwin - Darwin at least tried.
Meaningless, I don't know who that is so it's not worth anything.
If you're trying to imply that I'm some other poster for disagreement then that just seems odd. Do you not think there are lots of people in the world who don't share 100% of every belief this site holds? Is TheMotte really such a circlejerk that voicing major disagreements is seen as an oddity only done by a few?
magicalkittycat
2mo ago
but he/she is certainly causing issues, and that's a problem by itself.
What issues am I causing?
magicalkittycat
2mo ago
Because rule of law was specifically designed to deal with the problem of men's anti-social behavior.
Yeah I'd agree. Women in general tend to be peaceful (as we can see by crime rates around the world) and even commit non violent crimes less often. The rule of law came about specifically as a way to address irrational and emotional men who get into fights with each other, steal, drunk drive, or do other insane behavior. Even in terrorist zones like the middle east, women are basically considered at the level of young children for likelyhood being non combatants. We basically never have to worry about a female extremist, despite them still being half the population. It's up to 90:10 ratio.
magicalkittycat
2mo ago
Preferring literal Hitler brain-rot over leftist brain-rot doesn't mean that the person is either into Hitlerism or Nazism.
Biden was a terrible president, but if you'd have rather have Hitler over him then yeah, you probably are into Hitlerism. The average American doesn't feel that way.
magicalkittycat
2mo ago
Go ahead, explain how this isn't pro nazi
Bring on the nazis. I'd rather have literal Hitler
If you're asking people to gaslight themselves, it never works. You get the loyalists to close their eyes sure, but the loyalists aren't the ones who need to close their eyes. You want the moderates and normies to side with you.
This is what Ben Shapiro is talking about. Rallying around the nazis is not just a bad idea to begin with (because the Nazis are bad to begin with), but also the normies don't like Nazis and it's a stupid political idea to actively associate yourself with widely unpopular statements like that. The progressives lost because they embraced their radical wing, why make the same mistake?
magicalkittycat
2mo ago
You know he is very literally not a republican, right?
Did I say he was?
I said that it's just more evidence of growing Hitlerism and Nazism which is what "Bring on the nazis. I'd rather have literal Hitler" is.
magicalkittycat
2mo ago
It seems to me any theory about rule of law or emotions regarding feminization/masculinization needs to contend with that men commit something like 80 to 90% of violent crime and the large majority of crime in general, and engage in many passionate irrational behaviors statistically more often.
Hearing a story about a woman involved in a shooting during a rage road incident, or a young girl shooting up a school, or gang activity are unicorn events. And it can't just be explained away as women being physically weaker, because guns are an incredible equalizer and if that was the only thing then we would see more women shooting at men as it's more needed for them to use violence (where as men can just use physical strength against women and don't need a gun). Instead, they opt out of it to begin with.Even across racial lines, black women commit less crime than any race of men.
Speaking of road rage from before which gender is more likely to drive dangerously because they're too impatient over a few seconds/few minutes of travel time? Not the women and American men (56%) drunk drive far more than women (29%) do and if you think that's self reporting bias, actual crime statistics for DUIs and studies into BAC levels would suggest men are might be even worse than that, possibly a 4:1 level.
Men are twice as likely to gamble, more likely to play the lottery, getting addicted to sports betting now, and in general make other similar unwise and irrational financial choices more than women do. Men are more likely to do drugs and drink lots of alcohol. While obesity rates are similar, general overweightness is, you guessed it, skewed quite a bit more towards men. Men are even more emotional about even stereotypical "woman" things like relationship breakups if the studies on this are accurate.
The buff muscle packed gang member prisoners are like the peak of many "masculinity" stereotypes, and they're all emotional imbeciles lacking so much thought that they found themselves in jail. And the more "male coded" a young boy is in much of black culture, the more likely they ain't getting far in life.
If rule of law is so masculine, why do men keep breaking it while women follow the rules all around the world? If rationality is so masculine, why do men keep gambling away their money, driving drunk and get fat? And if they're more dedicated to truth then how do you explain male dominated politics being so untruthful and so corrupt?
You're right that alone isn't much but my other comment showing his long history in conservative spaces, including pointing out he was described as a friend by JD Vance a few years ago makes for a strong case.
nor does it prove history in right wing spaces.
Yeah, but his time writing for Project 2025, multiple appearances on Tucker Carlson, etc does. I suppose I should have written "Richard Hanania (Author of the Origins of Woke, prior Trump voter, Tucker Carlson guest, Project 2025 writer, former friend of JD Vance, describes himself as "part of the original alt-right 1.0.") and whatever else proof there is, but I figured that would be getting silly.
magicalkittycat
2mo ago
Bring on the nazis. I'd rather have literal Hitler spread his brain-rot than give the left another day to spread theirs.
This is what they said. I didn't write this, they did. I don't think you're gonna convince me that this isn't pro Nazi rhetoric, I'm typically opposed to calling things "gaslighting" or "telling me to ignore what is in front of my eyes" or something, but I don't see any serious argument that "bring on the Nazis, I'd rather have Hitler than the left" is anything other than a pro Nazi sentiment. Unless he's not being serious in the comment in which case whoops!
magicalkittycat
2mo ago
I notice no rebuttal on the other points?
Go see other comments I've written on this replying to similar points. That's what I've been told to do by mods before instead of reposting the same thing over and over in response to different users, even if it's a rebuttal to the same argument from those users. There's a lot of people trying to make these similar arguments so if you want to know my views, you'll have to check out the prior responses from me.
magicalkittycat
2mo ago
He promoted Trump over Harris, wrote a whole book on being anti-woke, contributed to the Heritage Foundation's project 2025, was called a friend by JD Vance back in 2021, and was on Tucker Carlson Tonight twice
Hanania has a very well established right wing conservative history. Maybe you think he no longer counts, but that just makes him, the "man whose tweets helped kill DEI" as some have referred to him as before, an example of someone who got pushed away.
By raw numbers, junk food companies kill and injure way more citizens a year than fentanyl does. They have massive lobbying arms to get themselves into schools (where they clog our childrens arteries and make them unable to exercise well and ugly), remain on programs like SNAP, and get funneled government money.
And Google says
In raw numbers, that's about 6.5x as deadly as fentanyl! And some of those are secondhand smoking, people who didn't choose to be harmed by cigarettes unlike an addict ODing.
Why aren't we drone striking the tobacco companies? They kill half a million citizens a year, and there's not a "legitimate use" for cigarettes.
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