magicalkittycat
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User ID: 3762
magicalkittycat
1d ago
This is the really intractable portion, because killing protestors is probably net pretty good when done by private individuals. Protesting, even the "peaceful" kind is still highly antisocial, at best being a massive waste of time and resources. But usually also significantly interrupting business and people's lives
Killing people also disrupts a lot of lives too, including taking court and police time away from other crimes. It disrupts the employers of both, the family members and friends of both, etc. It increases the fear of violence level of the rest of society. It devalues nearby property by increasing the crime rate.
Murder doesn't just hurt the murder victim.
Yeah like 15 years ago for a brief stint. They're all very weak connections, and I think an obvious way to see this if you tried to draw a connection elsewhere.
Like would "Local store once hired roommate" be a convincing connection to attach Vance to the owner of the local store? Probably not.
Or if Walmart had employed him, would we be worried about the district manager? Probably not.
And yet we could just as easily draw all those connections. Hundreds or thousands of people all suspect, from former coworkers to employees for his security firm to other people on that workforce board or even just the people at the church he attended.
This too seems like an isolated demand for rigor, incredibly weak connections that include a shit ton of people who aren't being implicated despite many having even closer ties.
Walz was quick off the mark with "this is a politically motivated assassination", presumably on the basis that if Democrat politicians were attacked, it must be those dastardly Republicans to blame. Well, turns out that (it's looking like) the guy is one of your own, Tim. So now what is the political motivation, and how is your party to be held accountable?
The connections to Walz are incredibly tenuous, that he was reappointed six years ago to a large bipartisan workforce advisory board (one of 130 total state boards, advisory councils, task forces, etc) with this including volunteer small business owner representatives from around the state where most of the nominations came from basically just rubber stamping local council choices.
It's a ridiculously weak connection, but that's not really the point now is it? The bigger point is the implications people try to make like you put here
So now what is the political motivation, and how is your party to be held accountable?
The bigger logic employed here is "bad guy tenuously connected to your side did something wrong? That's proof you're evil!" and this logic means a person using this logic simply can't accept that anyone bad ever exists on their end of the political spectrum or they'd have to contend with the same implications.
And it reminds me of this point from SSC about the Ashley Todd case https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/04/ethnic-tension-and-meaningless-arguments/
I think insofar as this affected the election – and everyone seems to have agreed that it might have – it hit President Obama with a burst of bad karma. Obama something something psychopath with a knife. Regardless of the exact content of those something somethings, is that the kind of guy you want to vote for?
Then when it was discovered to be a hoax, it was McCain something something race-baiting hoaxer. Now he’s got the bad karma!
This sort of conflation between a cause and its supporters really only makes sense in the emotivist model of arguing. I mean, this shouldn’t even get dignified with the name ad hominem fallacy. Ad hominem fallacy is “McCain had sex with a goat, therefore whatever he says about taxes is invalid.” At least it’s still the same guy. This is something the philosophy textbooks can’t bring themselves to believe really exists, even as a fallacy.
But if there’s a General Factor Of McCain, then anything bad remotely connected to the guy – goat sex, lying campaigners, whatever – reflects on everything else about him.
And let's be honest, the large majority of the time this logic gets used it's as an isolated demand for rigor.
The other side is accountable for all their bad actions, whereas my side just has a few bad apples. I'm going to assume you're Republican aligned based off previous comments and context so let's ask that question.
Should we be holding Republicans responsible for the recent stories of people trying to kill protestors yesterday?
I think no and I've been consistent with my beliefs. I said it about Charlottesville, Gamergate, BLM, the "stochastic terrorism" accusations against LibsofTiktok, Palestine activists, Israeli activists, January 6th protestors, protestors in France during the pension strikes, etc etc that blaming groups for the actions of a few individuals is just poor reasoning.
So will you be consistent with your argument and agree Republicans should be held accountable for cases like these car attacks or the attempted assassination of Pelosi, the attempted kidnapping of Whitmer, the murder of a cop during Jan 6th, etc?
Now I'm not going to assume bad faith of you, but I will say that I find most people, right and left wingers alike tend to agree with my position that they aren't responsible for a few crazies once they're asked about their side.
He has ties to Tim Walz and the greater Democratic Party. Still no released motive.
The connections to Walz are so weak that it's basically misleading to just say without stating the context. As Fox 9 reports https://www.fox9.com/news/minnesota-lawmaker-shootings-suspect-id-ap
Boelter was appointed by Gov. Mark Dayton in 2016, then reappointed by Gov. Tim Walz in 2019 as a private sector representative to the governor's workforce development council, with the term expiring in 2023. The Governor’s Office appoints thousands of people from all parties to these boards and commissions – the workforce development council has about 60 people on it. They are unpaid, external boards that the Minnesota Legislature creates. They are not appointments to a position in the governor’s cabinet.
I don't know Minnesota politics too well but it says right here in the original law (relevant at 2016 during the time of the appointment)
https://www.revisor.mn.gov/statutes/2014/cite/116L.665
In selecting the representatives of the council, the governor shall ensure that 50 percent of the members come from nominations provided by local workforce councils. Local education representatives shall come from nominations provided by local education to employment partnerships. The 31 members shall represent the following sectors
So high chance even Dayton had little connection besides basically rubber-stamping the recommendation from a local council, and then Walz just renewed it. Even then, you can't really expect and aren't vetting for random businessmen on a random workforce development council you're appointing them for to start shooting people.
1 and 2 are generally good to do just for keeping as a habit and muscle memory.
3 depends on context, generally you should go for the speed of traffic but I can't blame anyone staying at speed limit given the cost of a ticket.
4 The left lane should be for passing but with some caveats. If I'm passing a crowded right lane going 10 over and you're wanting to go 20, then you can just wait. Also no excuse for riding someone's ass ever, it is simply endangering them, yourself, and everyone around you for no actual gain. Not to mention all the people who get delayed for hours if you do crash, therefore making you way worse of a road menance.
5 Don't cut off, again it's dangerous to everyone around and causes delays if a crash occurs. Risky angry behavior like this is what makes me have to plan a few extra hours into every road trip just in case some inattentive or aggressive driving asshole can't control themselves enough to drive properly.
6 Probably not, good driving rules should be pretty universal and allowing exceptions to people who think they deserve one inevitably means egotistical people who can't handle it grant themselves a pass too.
Overall safe driving is good driving. If you want to give up your life on risky behavior go jump over the Grand canyon or something, don't make everyone else on the road sit in traffic waiting for a crash to be cleared.
magicalkittycat
5d ago
Yeah, makes sense. I'm a bit bitter that I probably wont get SS benefits, but oh well.
This is a common worry but going off current projections, you will get social security. Just not all of social security, about 80-70% scaling down over the years. https://www.ssa.gov/OACT/TR/2024/trTOC.html
Annual OASDI cost has exceeded non-interest income every year beginning with 2010. Cost is projected to continue to exceed non-interest income throughout the 75-year valuation period. Cost is projected to exceed total income in 2024, as it has each year beginning in 2021, and combined OASI and DI Trust Fund reserves decline until they become depleted in 2035. After trust fund reserve depletion, continuing income is sufficient to support expenditures at a level of 83 percent of program cost for the rest of 2035, declining to 73 percent for 2098. Figure II.D2 depicts OASDI operations as a combined whole. However, under current law, the differences between scheduled and payable benefits for OASI would begin in 2033, when the OASI Trust Fund is projected to become depleted. Scheduled benefits equal payable benefits for DI throughout the entire 75-year projection period, because the DI Trust Fund is not projected to become depleted during the period.
Basically the issue right now is that payroll taxes doesn't cover outgoing benefits enough for the OASI funds, so we're currently eating into the saved up money put into the Treasury. Eventually we'll run out of those savings (estimated around 2033) and then only be able to pay out benefits equal to the amount of payroll tax collected. But that's still roughly 80% of total benefits.
I think people gloss over the part where I'm worried about mass AI layoffs because it's just a single sentence but I think it's a great place to start for this conversation. Disability is interesting in that it's not a binary question of yes or no but rather depends on your relative ability compared to the people around you and the society you're in.
Imagine a person who is so unbelievably dumb that they can only do work carrying buckets of water from the river because they were taught it as a kid when their brain was slightly more pliable and anything else, including any variation of bucket carrying just does not work out properly. This person obviously does not exist, but if they did then they would just not function anymore in today's society with plumbing and pipes. We don't really have any jobs that are "go get buckets of water from the river for us to drink, shower with and do laundry" anymore. Plumbing turned them from abled (to do the one job) to disabled.
Obviously again this person does not exist in real life and people are more adaptable, even the dumb ones. But in the context of dumb old people with aging bodies and injuries? They might have been able to do the job they've been doing for the past few decades, but transferring them over to something else will be difficult. And in the context of a bad economy with high unemployment? They might not be able to find anything. They're not entirely equal to the water idiot, but they're not that far off either.
In that same way, it's not just the idiot middle aged men anymore that we should be thinking about. A generalist AI in the 2030s might make all of us puny humans disabled by comparison. Technology historically has freed up labor to go to do other jobs, some that didn't even exist until the labor was around to do it. But this future AI might beat us at everything. You may go from your job subsistence farming to the car factory in the past. Now you may go from your current job taken by AI to a new job that also gets taken by AI.
Maybe we'll maintain some comparative advantage and still be worth having most people work despite the absolute supremacy, but this might be an issue coming up. What happens when no one can work anymore because the robots are simply better in every single way? Some would put up that as a utopic paradise, like that silly meme of fully automated luxury communism, others worry about an automated dystopia.
But either way, a major change may be coming. And perhaps all humanity will be disabled. And even if the generalist AI doesn't come for a while, remember the great recession was only 10% unemployment.
OP of the thread here! Normally just lurk but I'll reply since it's my SSC thread.
Back to my thoughts, I'm extremely skeptical that the disability numbers could halve over such a relatively short period without some sort of accounting trickery. I could definitely see Covid having an impact, especially since the vast majority are older people. But the drop in numbers is just too great for me to take them at face value.
We've seen it before with disability, social security, etc, but often times the medicalized benefits system will just shuffle large amounts of people from one category to another once political pressure comes to bear on a label like "disability."
I agree, it's a really dramatic drop. But I also think it's useful to know that the mid aughts was also a dramatic rise. https://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/statcomps/di_asr/2006/sect01.html
In December 2006, about 7.8 million people received Social Security disability benefits as disabled workers, disabled widow(er)s, or disabled adult children. The majority (87 percent) were disabled workers, 10 percent were disabled adult children, and 3 percent were disabled widow(er)s.
https://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/statcomps/di_asr/2006/sect01.html
In the same way we halved from then to now, we also had basically doubled during the time period.
If we view the surge during the recession as essentially being a temporal anomaly, then our current numbers are just a return to form with the reduction (and lack of growth relative to population) since the mid 2000s explainable through the increase in ALJ denials.
It going to some other disability program is an interesting hypothesis, but seven million people is a lot to transfer! Heck it'd be more than seven million if we assume that the expected growth had also occured too. And there's no other known disability program this large. So it seems either they genuinely shrank through some mechanism (such as just a return to form as they aged into normal retirement) or they've been heavily fudging the numbers in a consistent manner through two different administrations and Trump 1, Biden and Trump 2 (including groups like DOGE now) haven't noticed a thing.
This also reminds me of the old post by Alone on how SSI is basically medicalizing political problems - can't seem to find it but if anyone knows what I'm talking about and has the link that would be great.
Sounds interesting, but would like to point out that SSI and DI are different programs with different funding. SSI is administered by the Social Security Administration, but the funding comes from the treasury's General Fund rather than the OASDI trusts. SSI is intended as a supplemental (hence Supplemental Security Income) payment to disabled people who don't have enough credits to collect on DI.
Edit: To add, SSI numbers have also decreased too, which means that can't be where the 7 million went. And total social security recipients did go up (despite the 7 mil drop in DI) showing a lot more retirees and quite a bit less disabled. So I stand by the "many disabled people just got older" hypothesis.
Putting aside any morals, I don't see how you're feasibly going to make a law that allows for people to kill others easily that also doesn't inevitably end up with a bunch of people dying because "I thought they counted as a valid target" becomes an obvious excuse with very little ability to counter, and not to mention it pretty clearly violates the entire principles behind the first amendment if we start killing people over them just existing together in a public space with signs and speech. Even with self-defense/stand your ground laws which are generally easier to work off of, we still see things with murderous people shooting doordash drivers and pulling guns on girl scouts trying to exploit it.
It comes off as "I'm bloodthirsty and I want to justify it, no one will be bothered if I just shoot that guy I find annoying right?"
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