ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
Blogger, Christian convert, general strange one. https://shapesinthefog.substack.com/
User ID: 3709
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
2d ago
Yeah the erasure of social technology like etiquette, standard topics of conversation, calling cards, etc. is a huge issue in dating discourse and socializing more general.
Also, women going into the workforce instead of spending more time upholding the social fabric is another factor.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
2d ago
Ok I regret my previous response, I wrote it in anger.
I do think you can make an extremely compelling and true case that overseas employees are often much less productive than American employees, even if only because of a shared culture. However, unfortunately much of our economy is geared towards short term juicing of numbers, instead of long term genuine value creation. This means offshoring is naturally incentivized.
I'd also say that I don't think there is anything wrong with protectionism, and I don't think it's unamerican. Early Americans were extremely patriotic and judgmental of others countries. I highly doubt the founding fathers would've been in favor of the massive globalist free trade economies we have today, in large part because they considered their nation morally superior to the rest of the world.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
2d ago
But by your own admission, you don't care about giving Americans jobs. You want to give Americans jobs at vastly inflated salaries relative to their market worth without their creating any additional value i.e. rent-seeking. If you just wanted to give American software devs jobs, you would tell them to either:
Yes, I want Americans to enjoy the wealth our ancestors created and be exclusionary and rent seeking to the rest of the world. I have no problem with that, to a certain degree.
I'm sorry you have contempt for the country that built the modern internet, and much of the modern world, wanting to have a higher status than other countries that are mostly along for the ride.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
2d ago
If an Indian can do the same job as an American for half the price, it would be foolish not to hire the Indian. This is also known as "economic efficiency".
Unless you actually care about the American people and giving Americans jobs? Protectionism in economics is not "foolish" it's a strategic decision to promote your own people's economic interests over others.
I don't believe in the economic vision of "comparative advantage," it seems to be obviously riddled with holes at this point. Like, for instance, lacking strategic manufacture of key military tech and medicines. Not to mention hundreds of other issues.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
3d ago
Fair points I do agree that over regulation was another part of the death knell of local manufacturing. Offshoring was part of it as well though.
Indian programmers are really not that terrible. I work at a bigcorp and our whole team is Indian. The bad ones get fired and over time the remaining team is decent.
Helps that our manager over here is Indian too though, I suppose.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
3d ago
The ultimate problem is, Reagan and the free traders were just wrong. Free trade destroyed our ability to manufacture physical goods, offshoring is forcing American workers to compete with every person in the world and making software far more attractive since software companies can hire thousands of Indians to work for pennies.
Ultimately I think Trump should just accept that fact and say hey Reagan was wrong. But then again I'm not a politician.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
3d ago
Yeah I suppose the fact that he's just increasing the power of the executive instead of actively trying to extend his own power after his term does sink a hole in this theoretical boat.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
3d ago
Yeah, you make a strong point. I suppose ultimately the 2016 campaign with the FBI covering for Hillary, and then subsequent FBI involvement in the 2020 election and the Covid "misinformation" thing is evidence of utter corruption in our political process.
Nuts that it's all relatively out in the open, and yet half the country seems to not be aware or not care about it. Sigh.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
3d ago
What is the bright line for you that would show an actual overthrow of the system?
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
3d ago
On the sqs thread, @Capital_Room had an interesting query, about whether Trump is actually being authoritarian:
Is there anything to this: "The Coup We've Feared Has Already Happened"?
The coup we’ve been fearing has already happened. Utterly servile to Trump, Speaker Mike Johnson refuses to convene the House of Representatives for even pro forma business (and by extension Congress) indefinitely, thereby shielding Trump from all manner of inquiry and accountability, not least the Epstein files, and giving him de facto full dictatorial powers. The longer the shutdown continues, the more irrelevant Congress becomes. Next expect unilateral executive decrees on assuming full funding authority, essentially rendering Congress defunct. It may never reconvene. Suspension of the Constitution cannot be far behind. Dictatorship came to us while we slept.
Is this what it seems like to me — just more lefty pearl-clutching and crying wolf — or is there something to the arguments James Bruno and Tonoccus McClain are making?
Some of the commenters like @MadMonzer offer an interesting response:
That substack is a bad take on it - the best version of the theory I have seen is spread across multiple posts on lawfaremedia.org. But the underlying story is absolutely serious, and as far as I can see it is true. The three-bullet version of the story is
- Trump is trying to replace the Congress-driven budget process established by the Constitution with a White House-driven budget process.
- Johnson is helping him, and Senate Republicans are not trying to stop him
- So far he is succeeding
The slightly longer version is:
- Trump has, on numerous occasions, refused to spend money appropriated by Congress. Congressional Republicans have not complained. As well as using his partisan majorities in both houses of Congress to pass recissions under the Impoundment Control Act (which can't be filibustered), Trump has used a dubiously-legal pocket recission to cut spending without a Congressional vote. SCOTUS has helped this along by setting up procedural barriers to anyone suing over this.
- Despite the Republican trifecta, Congress did not pass a budget in FY 2025, and does not appear to be trying to pass a budget in FY 2026. Notably, Johnson has shut the House down rather than trying to make progress on any of the outstanding appropriations bills.
- Rather than moving a mini-CR to pay the troops (Enough Democrats have said they support this that it would pass both houses of Congress), Trump has paid the troops with a combination of private donations and funds illegally transferred from the military R&D budget. The White House ballroom is another example of using private donations to pay for what should be Congressionally-approved government spending.
- On the revenue side, Trump has raised a helluvalot of revenue with dubiously-legal tariffs. He also did a deal with Nvidia and AMD where they pay what is in effect a 15% export tax in exchange for Trump waiving controls on advanced chip exports to China. Export taxes are unconstitutional. There has been no attempt to incorporate any of this revenue into a budget passed by Congress.
- An obvious combination of this type of "deal" and funding specific programs with private donations is to set up a parallel budget where money is raised and spent outside the official Congressional budget process, all backed by more or less soft threats of government coercion. Trump hasn't done this yet, but it is a logical continuation of things he has done.
- Trump has also claimed in social media posts that he can spend the tariff revenue without Congressional approval.
The claim that Trump and Johnson are trying to change the US budget process to one where (at least as regards discretionary spending - the only changes to entitlement spending have been done in regular order through the OBBBA) Congress does not meaningfully exercise the power of the purse seems to me to be straightforwardly true.
Overall I tend to agree that Trump's admin is acting in authoritarian ways, and even moreso than past administrations. However, it seems to me that the Congressional structure is so broken that, it kind of makes sense?
The way I see it, and the way Trump et al probably sees it, is that the Three Branches as they exist are extremely dysfunctional, and cannot do the actual job of governing the country pretty much at all. This has allowed NGOs and other non-state actors to come in and basically take over by deploying social and cultural capital in key areas, craftily created a sort of secret network of influence, etc.
The only way for us to get out of this morass, the theory goes, is to have a strong executive who basically burns this gridlock down. Though I don't know if Trump's team would want to restore a functioning American government after or just keep an extremely strong executive.
Anyway, I can't say I fully agree with Trump's seeming plan to just destroy jurisprudence for the executive and do whatever he wants, but I admire the sheer boldness. OTOH, I'm also not convinced that the U.S. has more than a 2% chance of meaningfully falling into an authoritarian dictatorship under Trump, or even in the next 10-20 years. Hopefully I don't eat my words!
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
3d ago
Ok fine I'll do it!
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
3d ago
Can you repost this in the cw thread?
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
5d ago
Yeah the constant distractions of communicating with various teams etc. gets to me too. It's frustrating because it's hard to quantify that time, exactly.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
5d ago
I can agree with the point that, in an ultimate sense, your own skills are more reliable than being on the dole. However, the dole has been pretty good for the last ~60 years or so, and requires far less effort along almost every metric. I'm not saying that people on the dole have it equal to someone on a career, but that the relative security and comfort for effort is INSANELY disproportionate.
In terms of the second couple - they worked for their money and made smart decisions. They deserve to reap the rewards. Earning money via investing is again, a world of difference away from forcibly redistributing other's wealth to yourself via taxation.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
5d ago
Ok fair, but we often pretend we do, no?
Also, if you factor in that both parents work, it isn't as great as it seems.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
5d ago
Wow, how many lawyers do we have on this website?
I for one appreciate your sacrifices.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
5d ago
Yeah, somebody in the gooning thread said a huge problem with modern America is that we lack the ability to utilize or feel shame.
I think that's true, but only for certain groups...
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
5d ago
If I had heard about this 100 years ago, I would have supposed people would work a lot less, or we would have something like a UBI, but that's not what we have. Maybe we have bullshit jobs and gaming the system instead? Which isn't great, plenty of people are upset about the current state of affairs. I don't particularly want my kids to spend 40 hours a week, for 40 years doing fake work, that seems in some ways worse than farming and textiles, but it seems to be the direction we as a civilization are heading in.
Yeah I have to say, on the face of it, it really does seem absurd that we are so incredibly wealthy compared to our ancestors and yet we work just as much, or at least pretend we do.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
5d ago
The reality is twofold: first, that welfare will continue until the affected nations are more or less forced into a New Deal of sorts, because those benefiting from welfare planned their lives around receiving it and aren't remotely prepared for the consequences of not having it; and second, that it is much, much better to not be on welfare than to be on welfare. Look at your two examples.
I disagree with this idea that it's "much better not to be on welfare" in the most strident of terms. What are you even talking about? You go on about how it's "insecure" for these people, without even mentioning the fact that they are far MORE likely to have security than someone actually working, paying for their benefits, who has to worry about losing a job or getting priced out of their area, etc.
This is just a completely nuts take imo. Not even mentioning the fact that these people DON'T HAVE TO WORK!!!
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
5d ago
Hah that's fair. I suppose I have trouble seeing things in such a cynical light, but yeah.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
5d ago
Yeah the latter view helps me quite a bit more. I know that cynically the former view is correct it just... feels terrible to actually live/think that way. Part of the reason labor is fundamentally disadvantaged in these relationships, I think.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
6d ago
How come?
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
6d ago
So do you feel guilty about it??
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
7d ago
If you put meeting blocks on your calendar it takes longer to show you as idle.
For me, the destruction of rural America's prosperity and selling out these people for globalism hit very close to home. My father died when I was young, in large part because he was committing to keeping a rural family business alive that his grandfather built, and he had to compete with overseas manufacturers. There are real costs to these economic plans, and I genuinely don't give a shit about the economic efficiency of competing with people in other countries if it's at the cost of my fellow Americans livelihoods.
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