Ben___Garrison
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User ID: 373
Ben___Garrison
1d ago
Your anger reminds me of the Liberation Pledge that vegans did, where they aggressively pushed their principles to their non-vegan friends in the form of ultimatums, "either stop eating meat or we can't be friends". When their non-vegan friends didn't comply with their craziness, the vegans got extremely mad and essentially said "well I guess they weren't ever my friends anyways!!!"
Losing friends and making enemies for pointless battles is just dumb. Politics has always been overwhelmingly about vibes and direct personal interest. Leftists of the e.g. feminist+pro-Muslim variety irk me as much as anyone, but it's utter silliness to think you'd accomplish anything but your own harm by raging at those types of people. And if you think your outgroup is the only side with a large amount of contradictions, then you're hopelessly naive. The Bible has so many contradictions that it's worthless as a philosophical guiding light, yet it's served that purpose to basically the entire Western world for centuries. Individual rulers or religious leaders just cherry-picked whichever parts happened to suit them. For another example, it wasn't too long ago that a large chunk of the alt-right cheered when Trump sank the most conservative immigration bill in a generation for blatantly self-serving reasons. When pressed, most of the alt-right just mumbled out explanations that showed they had no idea what was actually in the bill, or the state of current immigration laws. In practice it didn't actually matter, since the fact that they like Trump's vibes easily overrode their ideological pre-commitments.
How would you feel if I did what you plan on doing to Christians or Trump supporters? How would you feel if I "say something friendship-ruiningly impolite because I just can't hold in the anger at this stupidity any more"? You'd probably think I'm being silly and dumb, right?
Ben___Garrison
4d ago
Are you suggesting everyone just not use exchanges, or only use exchanges that let you still "hold your keys"? That's fine for committed crypto enthusiasts, but most people just want the financial system to work hassle-free. It's like the difference between an iPhone and some hacky Linux system.
Ben___Garrison
4d ago
You make good points. I usually balk whenever I see crypto as the only option for payment, but if these businesses actually invested in a bit of digital infrastructure to make stablecoin payments hassle-free then it'd probably be fine. And considering the other option is "go out of business", it seems kind of strange that they haven't done this yet.
Ben___Garrison
4d ago
The problem with crypto is that it's used for a lot of fully illegal things, and so the government has cracked down on it quite a bit. It's also somewhat difficult for the average person to use, at least marginally more complicated than something like Paypal. Then there's the issue of risk, where plenty of people use crypto as a form of speculation so you can never be sure if the crypto held will have the same value as before unless you're using a stablecoin. Then there's the risk of exchanges just running off with your money like FTX did.
Most people beyond the small niche of ideological libertarians only use crypto when they're doing something sketchy or illegal, otherwise conventional banking is the easier option with far more guarantees for standard transactions.
Ben___Garrison
4d ago
rising anti-semitism on the right.
Anti-semitisim has historically come from the right, but is it "rising" still, especially compared to what's going on in the left?
Also, what exactly has Elon Musk done that's so anti-semitic?
Ben___Garrison
4d ago
I remember reading this a few months ago. Yeah, he makes a pretty compelling case.
Ben___Garrison
5d ago
With Dems increasingly opposed to Israel, this makes me wonder if we'll see a broader realignment of American Jews towards the Republican party. Most are currently overwhelmingly leftist, although Orthodox Jews (a small minority) are conservative.
Ben___Garrison
6d ago
It's positive-sum in terms of material resources, which is what I was responding to given the OP's message.
I agree that not everyone shares the same system of values, with some diverging or even outright conflicting. For some, like Nazism, military conflict is required, but that does not necessitate "elimination of large masses of populations". Just some humiliation for the Holocaust and other crimes. For most others, persuasion will suffice. Communism was defeated simply by capitalism existing as a viable and better-seeming alternative. The great thing about democracy and the modern world order is that it heavily emphasizes persuasion as opposed to force of arms to solve ideological disputes. I'd prefer to keep it that way.
Ben___Garrison
6d ago
let's assume there's a Dyson sphere around the sun. Where to from there? That's it, that the ceiling. Would you rather share the energy with a hundred billion others, or a hundred thousand?
Humanity is thousands if not millions of years away from achieving Dyson Sphere tier technology. Your argument here is the equivalent of saying we should ignore life-extending medicine due to the eventual heat death of the universe. Maybe at some point in the distant future that will become relevant, but for now it's unabashedly a good thing, just as it has been for the entirety of human history. And who knows, maybe at that point in the distant future we'll be able to pull energy and matter from nothing.
Ben___Garrison
7d ago
I believe there are malicious, intelligent, competent agents which plan for humiliation and elimination of large masses of populations, because, respectively, social status is zero-sum and material resources are finite.
This is a silly position to hold. The world is positive-sum given that scientific advances in productivity combined with returns-to-scale have allowed us to make humanity richer than ever before. I presume you are right-wing but this horseshoes pretty well with the leftist idea that European civilizations only got rich by plundering brown countries, and that whites will forever be tainted by this until reparations enforces equity upon all nations (and perhaps not even then). It's utter tripe.
Yes, the key part of your two examples being that the guy who stayed in the market the entire time payed slightly more tax at $52.50 vs $51.88 that the guy who rebought after a year, due to the slightly higher principle. In other words, they delayed the tax, but they did not dodge the tax.
So maybe my point up above about being "subject to the same tax" was a bit misleading, and I should have clarified that they pay at the same rate, adjusted for principle. The guy who stays in for two years pays 25% of his gains on his two years, vs the guy who rebalances after one year pays 25% for one year, then 25% for the second year. The important point here is they're not avoiding the tax forever, they're delaying it.
It could be in a tax sheltered account though.
Not sure what you're referencing here other than qualified dividends.
Ben___Garrison
8d ago
I don't know of any literature that says the lock-in effect is so extreme that someone who had been planning to invest for, say, 6 months, would now choose to do so for 20 years. Rather, we'd be looking at something closer to a 10-30% increase in the time a median security would be held depending on the rate increase. Furthermore, interest rates are anomalously high right now compared to the last decade or two and will likely ebb a bit over the coming years assuming further waves of inflation don't happen (inflation has been on a downward trajectory for several quarters now).
Ben___Garrison
8d ago
I think it's wrong to attribute the popularization of "incel" primarily to women. Women definitely prefer to be with men who are successful with women, but the vast majority are not consciously aware of their hypergamy. Women don't look for men who brag about their bodycount. They have other insults for low-status men, like the ever-useful "creepy" term that will never go out of style. While some women might have used the term "incel" on Tumblr or in random blogposts, it was more used as a replacement for the "entitlement" phenomenon, i.e. that men are not "entitled" to have sex with women because they're friends or neighbors or "boys will be boys" or whatever.
In contrast, some men absolutely consider bodycount to be crucial to any man's overall value. Thus, terms like "incel" really started gaining popularity on male-dominated forums like 4chan long before they broke into the mainstream.
Ben___Garrison
8d ago
I find Nate's arguments pretty compelling here, assuming you actually want woke democrats on the Supreme Court, which I don't. But setting aside my personal feelings on the matter, he's basically correct.
Your arguments can basically be boiled down to the following:
- Seniority is important for judges to gain respect through judicial rigor.
- Democrats shouldn't bother thinking tactically since they should just win more elections by appealing to more people.
- Sotomayor would be more left-leaning than any candidate the dems could nominate now.
The first argument is the strongest, but it only has a marginal impact. The respect of judicial rigor that comes tenure is non-negligible. Further, other people in the thread added to the point that more senior justices get selected first to write opinions. But neither of these are that important. Even if they nominate Dumbo McGee, they're still locking down a lifetime appointment in one of the most consequential positions in America and the world. As a counterexample, Anthony Kennedy had pretty terrible reasoning in many of his opinions, but he was ultra-powerful by virtue of being a swing justice. So while you're making a good point, it'd be a lot stronger if you had some evidence of how much it actually matters in practice.
The second argument is just goofy. The senate has a heavy bias towards rural states, and it's been a minor miracle that Dems have remained competitive thus far, but as blue senators in red states retire or are defeated the bias will become undeniable. Nate has argued many times that Dems should stop pandering to the woke crazies, but he doesn't control the entire Democratic party. Abandoning positions will always come with a ton of pushback and there's no guarantee others will be on board, and the Dems would need to cut extremely deep to appeal to rural conservatives. The "tanking" argument doesn't hold a lot of water since there's a big difference between a 9-0 conservative majority vs a 5-4 conservative majority, just like how there'd be a huge difference between a 51-49 senate split vs a 100-0 split. Doing an end-run around the SCOTUS would be far, far harder than just fighting tactically for a justice now. Dems might end up uncompetitive in the senate in the long run, but they can still delay that for a bit.
The third argument is disproven by Ketanji Brown Jackson, who was recently confirmed in the same environment that a replacement for Sotomayor would face. Jackson is a female equivalent of Ibram Kendi, so no, I don't think the Dem pick would be guaranteed to be some moderate.
Ben___Garrison
8d ago
Your argument to me seems like the following:
Motte: Higher capgains means people could elect to stay in the market longer, thereby delaying when they pay their taxes
Bailey: Higher capgains means people could elect to stay in the market longer, thereby avoiding taxes forever
I'm arguing against the bailey. You keep restating the motte, but then it sort of seems like you want to edge towards that bailey. The main way to avoid paying taxes is through death via the step-up loophole, which should absolutely be closed. Beyond that, there's a small cost to the government getting the money later from the concept of the time-value of money, which certainly does exist but which is still a fairly small piece.
Ben___Garrison
9d ago
That's just more can-kicking then, not an actual way to avoid taxes.
Ben___Garrison
9d ago
The less frequently you sell your assets, the lower the effective tax rate due to capital gains tax.
No, that's not how it works. Capgains are taxed based on a percentage of the appreciation. It's not like a financial transactions tax that is a flat fee every time a trade is made. A 20% gain will be subject to the same tax as 2 equivalent 10% gains would be.
Also, if it's something that generates a return other than through appreciation (e.g. a dividend paying stock or real estate), by holding to it longer, you realize more of the value in a form that doesn't count as a capital gain and so you pay less tax.
Dividends are taxed at either the personal income tax rate, or the capgains rate if they're qualified dividends.
Ben___Garrison
9d ago
I don't deny the lock in effect is real and present to some degree, but it's not a way to avoid taxes, only to delay them a bit. Owning stocks is not an end unto itself for most people, they're a vehicle to get returns, either through dividends or appreciation. So yes, they can own the Apple stock for longer, but eventually they'll sell which triggers the full effect of the tax.
Also there are strategies to monetize without triggering gain (eg leverage, death).
The death loophole is bad and should definitely be closed. I'm not sure how leverage could be used to avoid taxes, but it should probably be closed as well.
Ben___Garrison
9d ago
Compare it to the people who oppose immigration or the sense of "being replaced". One could sneer at them, say they should just buckle up and accept changing racial demographics without complaint, that their sense of being a "stranger in their own land" is stupid and dumb, and that giving into their demands is defacto giving in to racism. Indeed, many coastal leftist elites do some version of this, but we'd generally regard them as pompous and out-of-touch.
So it goes with inequality. We could say to a poor secretary "no, no, your rich billionaire boss needs to have a lower tax rate than you, because the way he makes his money is special and taxing it too highly would be unfair". Somehow I doubt they would be convinced.
Ben___Garrison
10d ago
Construction workers in general have always been unreliable people
I was talking to my lawyer friend about construction workers, and he has a few construction worker clients and he says they're all on meth, so yeah, this checks out. I always kinda envisaged them as only slightly classier than a depressed Walmart worker, so it's good to confirm that with people who come into contact with them, as I certainly don't do so often.
Yes, that means the customer eats the bill for lots of waste, dishonesty, and sometimes theft
This is just crazy to me. Such a moral hazard that nobody I've heard really talks about defending against.
Ben___Garrison
10d ago
That just kicks the can down the road a bit. They eventually sell if they want to get access to the money to do other stuff with it.
Ben___Garrison
10d ago
Bezos isn't stealing crusts of bread out of peoples' mouths, but there are a few direct problems like the rich usually being pro-immigrant for starters, as it lowers the cost of wages to make them even more money.
Then there's a lot of indirect problems, like the existence of the ultrawealthy causing a general sense of unease and unfairness. It's a lot like having a ton of unassimilated immigrants. There are some direct problems, but the bigger issue is the backlash it causes.
Ben___Garrison
10d ago
That link you shared is an exceedingly strange scenario, where a man with $84 million never spent it. I can't check the link to the article it was responding to because it was dead, but people with $84 million usually don't tend to live a life of subsistence. When people make money through labor or capital, they usually do so with the desire to use it on something, be it material possessions for themselves, bequeathments for their heirs, or chasing things that are a little less tangible like power and influence.
Elon Musks for example can’t be taxed.
I generally like Elon for what he did to Twitter, but the dude owns several houses, an entire fleet of private jets, and a lot of other luxury items. The bigger issue would be if he would pass down his wealth to his kids to create a Musk Dynasty with the wealth continuing to expand further and further. To some degree you could say Musk deserves his money since he made a large chunk of it through his own labor, but his kids wouldn't have the same claim.
Ben___Garrison
10d ago
Sure, I have a Russian chick in my work who came to the US long before the war. She had originally intended to perhaps return to Russia one day, but the increasing totalitarianism and lack of white collar opportunities are making that vanishingly unlikely in her eyes.
That said, the benefits that the US gains from this type of thing are really quite tiny. Russia didn't have much of a good future before the invasion, and it's only gotten worse afterwards, but Russia isn't really a threat in the long-term.
Here's the summary of the bill, and here's the full text. Can you point out what specifically you object to? I've been accused of being uncharitable on this topic before, but whenever I press for details I typically get little but handwavey "Biden bad" style arguments. Which, to be clear, he was bad early in his presidency on this topic, but then he did an about-face and has signaled that he would have used the law quite aggressively.
Most of the bill is funding increases or rules changes that have little discretion involved. The big point of discretion was the Border Emergency Authority, which could be used if there were an average of 4000-5000 immigrants per day, and must be used at 5000+.
What is this referring to? The US already has formalized laws on asylum, like its signature on the Convention Against Torture. Right now, a big loophole in immigration is that immigrants can stay in the country until their asylum application is heard by a court, but courts are clogged and they often just miss their appointment anyways. The law would have plugged that.
What does this even mean? The bill was never passed, so comparisons to "Biden with the bill" as if it was law are nonsensical.
What "Swiss cheese" loopholes are you referring to? Trump was effectively no better on immigration than Obama, and most of his changes were executive orders that cost little political capital, and were trivial to repeal or ignore. Trump himself often went back on his more aggressive immigration changes whenever he got negative coverage on Fox News.
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