pusher_robot
PLEASE GO STAND BY THE STAIRS
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User ID: 278
pusher_robot
PLEASE GO STAND BY THE STAIRS
1yr ago
Also, what are the arguments against LVT, besides low-effort "taxes are always bad and raising them is evil?" Genuinely curious for well thought out reasons why an LVT would be a bad idea.
My understanding is that this is effectively an opportunity cost tax. I.e., if you are sitting on a valuable plat which could generate 10 M$ in rents with 1 M$ of improvements, the market value of the plat should be about 9M$, and you would be taxed on that value, even if you were only generating 100K$ of rents (including imputed rents).
This is economically very efficient, as it encourages land to be used for its most economically efficient purpose. However, this butts directly up against peoples' real-world desires to "settle" - to establish a home in a place and be able to stay there indefinitely. If, for reasons beyond their control, the price of their property increases, they can be financially forced from their homes, which is about as soulcrushing as being foreclosed upon, while also seeming much more unfair. It destroys a person's ability to make stable long-term plans regarding a very fundamental fact of life. It also destroys residential community, by creating a disincentive to make a community that people want to live in, which has the natural effect of increasing property value. These are already problems with existing property taxes, that would be greatly amplified by taxing away all of the land value (leaving only rents).
After all, most people recoil about applying the same logic in other contexts: should a person's income tax be based on the amount of money they theoretically could be earning, if they worked as much as possible in the most valuable field they are qualified for, in the location with the highest salary? Hard-core utilitarians have seriously proposed this, but the concept of being treated as an economic ends with no function other than to produce social benefit, rather than a sapient being with noneconomic needs and desires makes most people reject this with prejudice.
[removed, overly emotional]
I think Trump has a point, that arguing the specifics seems irrelevant to me, when the larger issue is unfair treatment. Unfortunately, it's probably impossible to persuade anyone of this to people who consider Trump to be a singular threat.
pusher_robot
PLEASE GO STAND BY THE STAIRS
1yr ago
And therefore, the West's support for Ukraine is entirely justified by the desire to make sure nobody is allowed to get away with just seizing territory because they want it.
But why do we want that? The U.S. had a clear interest in preventing this when the spread of Communism was a real threat. But that's not the case any longer. What interest do we have in guaranteeing the rights of the weak everywhere against the strong? (Without taking position on whether or not Ukraine is stronger than Russia, the implication seems to be that they cannot win without massive assistance from us.) Some countries, perhaps, are Too Big to Fail. Is Ukraine really one of them? Is preservation of the status quo worth any amount of blood or treasure? I'm not persuaded of the automatic moral duty of bystanders to intervene when one country consumes another any more than when one wild animal consumes another. In terms of international relations, the world is a jungle and jungle rules and ethics apply.
pusher_robot
PLEASE GO STAND BY THE STAIRS
4mo ago
It’s clear a conviction wouldn’t remove him from the ballot
How is that clear? The recently rejected suits were about a pre-conviction determination.
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The size of the Supreme Court shall be permanently fixed at 9 members. All Presidents are guaranteed one appointment per term. If there is no vacancy during the term, then the President may vacate any single judge to create a vacancy at the conclusion of the Presidential term. If there is more than one vacancy, the President may appoint additional interim justices who will automatically be vacated at the start of the next Presidential term. [EDIT] The Senate may veto permanent appointments by a two-thirds majority. Interim appointments may not be vetoed.
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The House of Representatives shall be expanded to 1,000 members, with additional districts being added proportionally. The House of Representatives must conduct its business in a way that allows members to participate without being present in the chamber. Members shall be required to maintain residency in their district, spending no less then 50% of the calendar days per year there.
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Birthright citizenship shall be granted only to children where at least one biological parent is a citizen or resident having legally remained in the country continuously for a period of at least 3 years. Children may have no greater than two biological parents.
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The non-state district of Washington, D.C. shall be formally dissolved and the land de-annexed to the original states from which it was obtained. Congress may designate property within the current district to remain federal enclaves immune to state jurisdiction.
pusher_robot
PLEASE GO STAND BY THE STAIRS
1yr ago
What do you mean? The president does nominate the person.
pusher_robot
PLEASE GO STAND BY THE STAIRS
11mo ago
This is my theory - that as part of the settlement the hosts have to get permission from lawyers to run stories on certain topics, and that TC doesn't find this acceptable or was denied permission on what he thinks is a legitimately important story.
pusher_robot
PLEASE GO STAND BY THE STAIRS
4mo ago
Why, if it does no harm?
The harm is the complexity of creating a policy that allows innocuous things but does not permit obnoxious or offensive things. The bureaucratic burden of having to decide that, say, posting pictures of a ski trip is fine, but posting pictures of a religious retreat is not, pictures of political protesting, or posting pictures of a gay wedding reception - it's all just so tiresome. It's a given that there are people who constantly push the limits of any policy in an obnoxious way, so it's entirely reasonable to set a simple bright-line rule that veers widely on the side of inoffensiveness.
pusher_robot
PLEASE GO STAND BY THE STAIRS
4mo ago
People stop thinking 'trans' is a thing and it's illegal to call someone by different pronouns than they were born with?
People stop thinking 'trans' is an identity and instead an unfortunate mental illness. Relatedly, mental illnesses generally are viewed as undesirable, both practically and socially.
We go back to having white men be 70% of characters in all entertainment media, and another 25% are white women with zero character traits beyond 'sexy and horny for the main character'?
I would settle with characters roughly in proportion to population, as opposed to the gross over-representation of minorities we see today. In particular, race-swapping characters and even historical figures would require justification beyond "representation matters". Media that appeals to characteristically male fantasies should be permitted to exist on its own terms without its creators being subject to harassing accusations of sexism.
We all agree that actually women and minorities are genetically more stupid and incapable than white men, and stop giving them jobs that earn more than a subsistence wage?
We agree that differences exist and that unequal outcome is not itself proof of discrimination. We explicitly reject equal outcomes as a reasonable policy goal.
pusher_robot
PLEASE GO STAND BY THE STAIRS
11mo ago
I play the violin in a university-affiliated community (amateur only) orchestra and we just had a concert that went, in my opinion, fairly well.
What instruments do other people here play? Does anyone else play in groups just for fun?
pusher_robot
PLEASE GO STAND BY THE STAIRS
7mo ago
We talk a lot on this board about dangerous precedent. Letting an interest group invalidate an election by storming the legislature is particularly bad.
We allow protestors to storm government buildings and interfere with proceedings all the time with little or no legal response. This seems like special pleading to me.
pusher_robot
PLEASE GO STAND BY THE STAIRS
1yr ago
a decent few are 'sexual deviants', but almost none of them have committed crimes related to it
That you know of.
pusher_robot
PLEASE GO STAND BY THE STAIRS
1yr ago
What counts as an "abuse of art"?
Propaganda, perhaps.
pusher_robot
PLEASE GO STAND BY THE STAIRS
1yr ago
Do you not think it is desirable for white to become a minority?
pusher_robot
PLEASE GO STAND BY THE STAIRS
1yr ago
I know what anti-racism is, and Tolkien saying “I have the hatred of Apartheid in my bones” fits.
No, that's being "not racist." Totally different than anti-racist. A "not racist" person believes in color blindness and treating people equally and putting the responsibility for differential outcomes on the individual. An anti-racist person believes in structural racism and fighting it by treating people differently in order to compensate. Where is the evidence that Tolkien acknowledged the existence of structural racism? Where is the evidence that he ever advocated or personally gave special dispensation to URM in order to counteract the effects of structural racism?
I think it's reasonably plausible that Tolkien was not racist, but I don't see much evidence that he was anti-racist.
pusher_robot
PLEASE GO STAND BY THE STAIRS
8mo ago
In that case I don't understand the objections when that word is used to describe what happened to white ethnics in urban cores in the sixties.
pusher_robot
PLEASE GO STAND BY THE STAIRS
8mo ago
I doubt they could afford it, and no NGO will touch them
pusher_robot
PLEASE GO STAND BY THE STAIRS
11mo ago
As I've said before I tend to agree with @Primaprimaprima that many, perhaps even most people, will prefer to see a human doctor for the majority of symptoms.
As a member of the large category of men who generally dislike going to the doctor and won't unless there seems to be an urgent problem, I think I would be more likely to go if I was certain the doctor would be a dispassionate robot.
pusher_robot
PLEASE GO STAND BY THE STAIRS
1yr ago
I really don't have any reasonable basis to either agree or disagree. My uninformed prior is that weirdo sex perverts (not generically LGBT, mind) probably commit roughly equivalent crimes or worse at around that rate.
pusher_robot
PLEASE GO STAND BY THE STAIRS
1yr ago
I've not thought of nor seen a solid rebuttal to this proposal.
The simplest rebuttal is that it is immoral to tax people for having natural human feelings of attachment to their home. You could make the same case for forcing people to set a sale price for their children. Very efficient for clearing the adoption market. Or for their spare organs, even. By forcing people to pay for the right to not be forced from their home, you are turning a voluntary market into an involuntary one, which degrades the market and degrades basic human rights and dignity.
That said, I'm not totally against the use of eminent domain powers where you have obstinate sellers blocking genuine civic improvements. But I think the "public benefit" of such seizures needs to be adequately established.
pusher_robot
PLEASE GO STAND BY THE STAIRS
9mo ago
Not necessarily. The Court took pains to explicitly disallow the use of racial stereotyping. I take this to mean they can't assign points for being the same race as other people who experienced hardship and bigotry, but they could assign points if you, personally, experienced hardship and bigotry.
pusher_robot
PLEASE GO STAND BY THE STAIRS
10mo ago
Most of these problems seem to be unrelated to the extent to which a city is walkable.
I strongly disagree! People won't want to walk or take mass transit if they feel much more likely to be victimized in doing so. This creates a spiral, where the most walking-friendly destinations and infrastructure end up neglected, making them even less attractive, and people who want to drive end up going elsewhere.
Were cities already plagued by the same issues after WW2, when the exodus to car-dependent suburbs began, and is that why people started to leave?
Yes. People began moving to suburbs almost as soon as they could get cars. Even before, with the "streetcar suburbs" proliferating in the 1920's. Then rising crime and unrest, and safety-hostile urban policies like blockbusting and forced school integration caused mass flight right when the new interstates made it convenient to do so. But notably this happened in the sixties when the boomers were still children or young adults. The highway builders and urban renewists were mostly members of the Greatest Generation. The Boomers just inherited their world, and actually put a lot of effort into fixing the bigger mistakes, leading to an urban renaissance in the 90's, at which point they seemed to have declared victory and turned their attention inward.
pusher_robot
PLEASE GO STAND BY THE STAIRS
1yr ago
I don’t see anything in the ensuing paragraphs that would narrow this meaningfully, although I welcome input from anyone with a sharper legal eye than I have.
Well, the text you quotes authorizes such waivers as are authorized by paragraph (2), so let's look at paragraph (2):
(2) ACTIONS AUTHORIZED.—The Secretary is authorized to
waive or modify any provision described in paragraph (1) as
may be necessary to ensure that—
And then a number of things that can be ensured is listed, but the most relevant seems to be the first, item (A):
(A) recipients of student financial assistance under
title IV of the Act who are affected individuals are not
placed in a worse position financially in relation to that
financial assistance because of their status as affected
individuals;
Ok, so this seems to allow that a waiver can be made to make it so that an "affected individual" is not made financially worse off by virtue of being an "affected individual". This leads to the obvious question, who is an affected individual? Helpfully, the statute tells us in Sec 5:
(2) AFFECTED INDIVIDUAL.—The term ‘‘affected individual’’
means an individual who—
(A) is serving on active duty during a war or other
military operation or national emergency;
Doesn't apply to ordinary borrowers.
(B) is performing qualifying National Guard duty
during a war or other military operation or national emergency;
Doesn't apply to civilian borrowers.
(C) resides or is employed in an area that is declared
a disaster area by any Federal, State, or local official
in connection with a national emergency; or
To my knowledge, this did not happen, i.e. the entire country was not declared a disaster area, so does not apply.
(D) suffered direct economic hardship as a direct result
of a war or other military operation or national emergency,
as determined by the Secretary.
This would be the one to hang your hat on, but would seem to require, at least, some demonstration that the borrowers suffered direct economic hardship as a direct result of the national Covid emergency. Linking economic hardship to COVID-related employment problems is a possibility, but that's not terribly "direct", particularly since forbearance was already granted. And, this would not seem to obviously not apply to relief granted to borrowers who remained employed throughout.
So, I would disagree that the law clearly and unambiguously grants the Secretary this authority.
pusher_robot
PLEASE GO STAND BY THE STAIRS
9mo ago
Have you never grilled out and drank beer with friends on a nice green lawn?
To sum it up, the only real question is... Why are they like this? Who hurt them?
The answer is bums, hobos, panhandlers, psychos, perverts, buskers, criminals, litterers, and generally obnoxious people, and the leaders that do nothing effective to stop them from shitting the commons.
I've found the recent imbroglio with Congress v. the University Presidents pretty interesting due to the somewhat conflicting reactions I've had and just wanted to post some thoughts.
For those not aware, the Presidents of Penn, MIT, and Harvard recently appeared before at a Congressional committee on the subject of antisemitism on campus. Somewhat unexpectedly, the video of the hearing went somewhat viral, especially the questioning of Rep. Elise Stefanik, who repeatedly asked point-blank if calling for the genocide of Jews would be a violation of the campus code of conduct, to which all the Presidents gave evasive answers. The entire hearing is actually worth watching, at least on 2x speed.
Some of my thoughts:
Rep. Stefanik has a trial lawyer's skill for cross-examination. Her questioning was simultaneously obviously loaded and somewhat unfair but also dramatic and effective at making the respondent look bad. However, I wish she would have focused more on the obvious hypocrisy of claiming to only punish speech that effectively is unprotected by the First Amendment, pointing out some of the more obvious cases where they elevated things like misgendering or dog-whistling white supremacy to "abuse" and "harassment" while refusing to do the same for genocide advocacy. In fairness however, other representatives did ask questions along those lines, though not nearly as effectively.
The University presidents were either woefully unskilled or badly coached on how to handle hostile questions like this. They gave repetitive, legalistic non-answers and declined to offer any real explanation of their underlying position or how to reconcile it with other actions taken for apparently viewpoint-related reasons. Stefanik was obviously getting under their skin, and their default response to grin back while answering like Stefanik was a misbehaving child was absolutely the wrong tactic. The Penn President came across so poorly that she felt she had to post a bizarre follow-up video to almost-apologize for not appearing to take it seriously while at the same time implying without really saying that calling for genocide might be harassment.
Their performance was especially frustrating because they were taking a position that I basically support: that the University will not police opinions, even terribly offensive ones, but will police conduct and harassment. It's not that difficult a position to explain or defend on basic Millian principles, but they couldn't or wouldn't do it. Granted, Stefanik would probably have cut them off if they tried, but they didn't try. They didn't use their time during friendly questioning to do so, and they still haven't. I want to support them in an effort to actually stake out that position. But--
It's hard not to think that the reason they haven't is because they don't believe it. Actions speak louder than words, and there have been a number of cases of Universities, even these specific ones, taking action against people for harmful "conduct" or "harassment" when the conduct in question is actually just expounding an offensive opinion. "Safety concern" has also been a ready justification for acquiescing to heckler's vetoes against disfavored speakers. I simply don't believe that they believe their policy requires them to allow hateful speech against Jews. I think they are lying, and that makes me want to not support them.
The episode seems to have especially impacted what I'll call normie Jews, who are reliably blue-tribe but not radically woke. On the one hand, I think they have a legitimate grievance against the hypocrisy of how the code of conduct policies are interpreted for some opinions vs. arguable antisemitism. On the other hand, I think it's bad policy to not be able to make antisemitic arguments ever, even if maintaining civility. I don't actually believe that hate speech is violence, even antisemitism, and I don't support their movement to make antisemitism a per se violation. On the other, other hand, the cause of knocking down the prestige of the Ivies and exposing their rank hypocrisy might be worth allies of convenience. On the other, other, other hand, as a SWM I feel like the prisoner in the gallows in the "First time?" meme. You have a grievance at their hypocrisy, but I have a grievance at your hypocrisy. Most normie Jews have had no complaints at all about woke people saying similar or worse things about "white people." Some of those woke people were themselves Jews, and I suspect that if the universities capitulate, it will be by making Jews a special protected class, which would further from the outcome that I want. I've had a superposition of all these reactions going on.
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