MadMonzer
Temporarily embarassed liberal elite
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User ID: 896
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarassed liberal elite
9hr ago
we will never be capable of thinking in the sort of "my tribe versus other tribes" thinking we see in, say, Somali scammers.
Somali scammers will scam and rob each other as cheerfully as they scam us (see actual Somalia for evidence) - the idea that they are some kind of high-asabiyyah society which gains an advantage over the west through tribal unity is absurd. Tolerating this kind of behaviour in Minnesota was a (foolish) choice, not an skill level issue. See for instance this Patrick McKenzie post about how institutions that actually want to stop fraud (including regulated financial institutions) do so.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarassed liberal elite
13hr ago
Apart from Iran, which doesn't have the option, "Don't sponsor Wahhabi jihadis as a plausibly deniable political tool against your sane enemies" is a lesson countries apparently have to learn the hard way, and in the case of the US and Pakistan more than once. Many such cases - I think it needs to go into a Princess Bride remake before people take the lesson seriously.
I also think the Tanner Greer theory about Chinese fear of US soft power is relevant.
The basic thesis (see for example this blogpost but it is a theme of much of Greer's work) is:
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The Chinese regime cares about its own survival a lot, as you would expect
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The Chinese regime is more likely to be defeated by American soft power (as the USSR regime arguably was) than by American hard power - there is no scenario where America (or a broader Western alliance) acquires the ability to enforce regime change in mainland China militarily. In fact, American (or western more broadly depending on your point of view, but probably almost entirely American) soft power is the main threat to the survival of the Chinese regime.
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China spends a huge amount of resources (e.g. the Great Firewall) defending itself against American soft power, but as long as China has to do business with the rest of the world the potential effectiveness of this approach is limited.
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The nature of American soft power is that America can't turn off their soft power threat to China, even if they wanted to.
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Accordingly the Chinese regime will not feel secure as long as America looks like a powerful, attractive alternative, and Chinese policy reflects this.
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All this applies whether or not China wants to spread their system - or indeed whether America wants to spread theirs. Freedom wants to spread even if individual free countries don't care about spreading it.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarassed liberal elite
3d ago
Thanks. The UK media had lost interest at some point before then once it was clear to anyone who wasn't wishcasting that Trump would win.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarassed liberal elite
3d ago
Yes, apart from South Asian muslims. In particular, black-white intermarriage is noticeably more common here than it is in the US.
The overall rate of interracial marriages is just under 10% in both countries, but you have a lot more opportunities in the US because you are more diverse to start off with (the UK is still 83% monoracial white as of the 2021 Census), so compared to baseline demographics Brits are more likely to marry interracially than Americans.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarassed liberal elite
3d ago
pregnant men
Men still can't get pregnant. Women pretending to be men getting pregnant is vanishingly rare - cross-sex hormones suppress fertility, and the kind of woman who pretends to be a man probably doesn't want to anyway.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarassed liberal elite
3d ago
If you are following the right-wing noise machine in America, you are learning about twice as many problems in Europe as could be Noticed by being there. We have problems, but the American right has an incentive to exaggerate them. It is exactly analogous to Guardian readers in the UK learning about problems in the US that they would struggle to Notice if they spend time there.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarassed liberal elite
3d ago
Yeah, it's interesting that where I live (Northeastern Suburb) the native European stock is completely gone (I'm talking about the "posterity" referenced in the Declaration of Independence.) All that's left is street names and old gravestones.
"European stock" and "the posterity mentioned in the Declaration of Independence" are different groups. Intermarriage between white ethnic groups makes the statistics dubiously meaningful, but most white Americans self-define as descended from Ellis Island era immigrant groups.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarassed liberal elite
3d ago
Since 1997, British governments of both parties have pursued a policy of cutting material inequality within the wage-and-salary class while trying to increase inequality between low-paid workers and able-bodied dole bludgers* and being broadly relaxed about the increasing wealth of the super-rich. It isn't clear to me how much of this was deliberate, but almost every government economic policy since 1997 is either that agenda or a transfer to pensioners.
* Hence why every marginally employable adult in the UK has found a disability.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarassed liberal elite
3d ago
This is nonsense. I don't think Phoebe is unhappy because she is a paypig for entitled Boomers (the problem is clearly spiritual and not material), but that is a much more accurate model than Phoebe as ungrateful welfare queen.
Yes. Her education is subsidised,
Phoebe took out a student loan to pay for tuition fees and living expenses. The fees she (nominally) paid don't cover the full cost of delivering her education as calculated by the Hollywood accountants in the Pro-Vice-Chancellor-for-finance's office, but they are a lot more than the amount of actual instructional and facility spending she got the benefit of. The loan is subsidised, but in a way Phoebe won't see the benefit of until the unpaid balance is written off when she is in her fifties.
a lot of the jobs she could get are probably a result of legislation passed by the state and subsidised by it,
Roughly half of female graduates are working in healthcare professions, teaching, or non-graduate retail and food service jobs. Comparing the UK to peer countries suggests that government involvement in healthcare and teaching reduces worker pay (by setting up a monopsony) rather than increasing it. Also, a large percentage of the total compensation in healthcare and teaching is public-sector pensions which are generous in a non-obvious way - i.e. money that Phoebe isn't seeing and would, if she stopped to think, assume she would somehow-or-other be cheated out of by the time she reaches retirement age.
The UK is a big exporter of professional services, so the stereotypical power-suited girlboss is much more likely to be working in a competitive export-focussed firm than her US equivalent.
So the chance that Phoebe is a government-subsidised girlboss in a way which is legible to her is well below 50%. Overall, there is some subsidy to girlbossing, but not enough (definitely in the UK, and almost certainly in other rich countries) to compensate for the cost of the three Bs of grand-scale welfare beneficiaries (Boomers, bastards and babymamas).
If Phoebe is able-bodied, employed, and childless she is going to be a net contributor. The Boomers get so much that there is not much left for deserving working-age cases, and in any case single childless able-bodied white women are pretty close to the bottom of the Progressive Stack.
in the unlikely event she has kids that is heavily subsidised,
As you acknowledge, she doesn't. And Phoebe comes from a culture and social class which means she would expect to only have kids with a gainfully employed husband, meaning that the amount of subsidy would not be high, and would not count as a transfer from men to women.
as is her aged pension, her healthcare, of which she will consume a lot more statistically over a lifetime than if she were a male,
Her mother is subsidised. She may be subsidised in the future if the country doesn't go bankrupt in the interim. (She is even more pessimistic on this point than we are). Right now, she is paying the subsidies.
Taxes overwhelmingly go to the old, women and the infirm.
Taxes go to the old, the infirm, and families with children. (In the UK, now in that order, and increasingly not to families with children where at least one parent has an upper-middle-class income). Not women like Phoebe. The statistics show women as net beneficiaries because subsidies to families disproportionately go to families headed by single mothers, and the payee field on the welfare cheque has the babymama's name on it even though the money is supposed to be for the kids.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarassed liberal elite
3d ago
There is an absolute racing certainty that she would say this - it is the politically correct thing to say. She would be wrong though, as demonstrated by her dissatisfaction having begun a lot more than six weeks ago.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarassed liberal elite
3d ago
In the UK, the falling pound (and resulting imported inflation) and declining tax revenues (and resulting bond-market enforced cuts to the public services her mother relies on). Finance is an export industry for us, so whether or not it benefits the clients is not a problem for the British to worry about.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarassed liberal elite
3d ago
I came across the idea of the omnicause from Matthew Yglesias, but I think he was popularising a term coined by other centre-left figures with more experience at the sharp end of intra-left turf battles.
From a mistake theory perspective, the omnicause is the mistake common on the activist left of taking everything bad in the world, lumping it together, calling it "patriarchy" or "capitalism" or something similar, and defining your activism as opposing the lump. When the Israel-Palestine conflict is in the news, the lump is "Zionism".
From a conflict theory perspective, the omnicause is the result of all professional left-wing NGOs adjusting their positioning to attract funding from the same small number of funders. Right-wing conflict theorists tend to suspect the relevant funders are George Soros and other European financiers with large noses, centre-left conflict theorists are pretty sure that it is the Ford and Hewlett foundations (and they would know).
The link between feminist causes in the US and the Israel-Palestine conflict in the minds of omnicause activists is that real progress (as defined by the activist left) on both can only be made if the lump is defeated, and military defeat of Israel by Hamas would take a lump out of the lump. This is as stupid as it sounds, which is why I subscribe to the mistake theory on this point.
Sufficient words have been spilled that you can just google "omnicause" to find them.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarassed liberal elite
4d ago
Did the RINOs line up behind Cruz? My memory is that Kasich went the distance until it was mathematically impossible to beat Trump and the RINOs supported him in doing so.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarassed liberal elite
4d ago
But once the shape of the 2016 primary became clear, Trump was running against Cruz, so "I want a real Republican and not a RINO" doesn't point to a Trump vote.
I know a lot of people who thought that way did vote for Trump over Cruz, and it sounds like you were one of them. I would be interested to hear what the logic is - was it simply that Trump was hated by the GOPe even more than Cruz was, or was it a specific policy or issue? (The small number of non-Mormon conservative Americans I know all voted for Cruz, although they thought of it as a 2 good options scenario rather than holding their noses and voting for the lesser evil).
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarassed liberal elite
4d ago
Very much agreed. Trump got about 40% of the 2016 Republican primary vote if you only look at states which voted while the race was still competitive. Cruz voters don't need to hold their nose to vote for Trump, but I don't think they are any happier with him than they would be with another winning Republican who appointed pro-life SCOTUS justices.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarassed liberal elite
4d ago
Most of the issue isn't value over replacement on substantive issues, it is value over replacement on beating Democrats.
MAGA supporters are right that Trump is more electable than a Goldman-Aramco Republican who wants to cut Social Security and Medicare and let another million H1Bs in, but I suspect they are wrong that he is more electable than a more competent, less divisive populist Republican like DeSantis.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarassed liberal elite
4d ago
he's probably in line with most of Christian morality
apart from the bits about sexual morality, bearing false witness against neighbours, dealing honorably with social inferiors etc. (The Bible explicitly condemns stiffing workers, something Trump thinks is just obvious business savvy).
So basically he isn't in line with Christian morality.
I agree with you that while Trump is a huge narcissist, he doesn't think he is God. A worrying number of his core supporters think he is a Godlike figure (I remember Trump as the W40K Emperor being a popular meme back in 2016), and Trump is delighted to humour them.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarassed liberal elite
4d ago
OR an unconscious sign of romantic interest, which you were both wise not to have acted on given that she was engaged to someone else. Fidelity is a social institution (and one which is deep and regrettable decay), not a biological adaptation.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarassed liberal elite
4d ago
At the level of detail needed to tell an 8 from a 9 from a 10, I can't tell what those chicks look like because the Wikipedia infobox pictures are taken in soft focus. Is this normal for Chinese women in Chinese media?
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarassed liberal elite
4d ago
If American poasters think the consequences of his policies were terrible but Canadians kept re-electing him, there is the definite possibility that the consequences of his policies were not, in fact, terrible, at least for his first two terms.
I can't speak for Canada under Trudeau, but the two examples in the UK of a long-serving, historically successful, Prime Minister becoming catastrophically unpopular in their third term both involve the country being worse governed and not chickens coming home to roost from the honeymoon period. Thatcher did the Poll Tax, which was a genuine disaster. Blair did Iraq, which was unpopular in itself, but also became a distraction which prevented him continuing to push his ambitious domestic-policy agenda (which had been working in the first term - public services got visibly much better with only a small increase in spending). The "domestic policy" section of the wikipedia article on Blair's third term is entirely about counter-terrorist policy, which was also something which was less important than it looked and should have been delegated.
But the first two terms of both Thatcher and Blair were genuinely great times to be British. (Unless you were a union worker in one of the industries Thatcher stopped subsidising, I suppose). Thatcher's legacy was generally good - most of the damage of "Thatcherism" is about the next generation of right-wingers hanging on the ramblings of an increasingly demented elderly lady rather than doing the work of applying her insights to the circumstances of their (our) own generation. The worst parts of the legacy Blair left were not entirely his fault - the things that are most wrong with the UK post-GFC (not building enough houses, failure to diversify the economy away from business and professional services, not integrating or civilising the descendants of Mirpuri Pakistanis who immigrated in the 1960's) are all the working out of trends which predate Blair, although he enthusiastically allowed them to continue.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarassed liberal elite
6d ago
Or in cases of fetal abnormality. These span a spectrum from absolutely non-viable cases (like anencephaly) to clearly viable babies who are likely to be severely disabled (like Down's) but Christian pro-lifers want abortion to be illegal in almost all of them and normies with an ick about abortion think they are some of the good examples of legitimate abortions.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarassed liberal elite
6d ago
I remember this type of feeling after the 1997 election in the UK. I didn't even support Labour, but the Tories who had been fucking things up since before I was born were finally kicked out, and it felt good.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarassed liberal elite
7d ago
The best British example is former Home Secretary and Vice-President of the European Commission Leon Brittan
De Gaulle remains the best example globally, I think.
The best answer I have seen, and it isn't a great one, is this law review article by (left-wing lawprofs) Jack Balkin and Sandy Levinson (henceforth B/L)
They identify three types of constitutional crisis:
The traditional paradigmatic examples (not cited by B/L) are:
B/L are good on what is not a constitutional crisis - for example anything which can be resolved by SCOTUS is a normal dispute, not a crisis; impeachment is an extraordinary but regular remedy for Presidential misbehaviour, not a crisis; the controversial use of emergency powers in a real emergency is a crisis, but not a constitutional one.
B/L are less good on what is a constitutional crisis - partly because the US Constitution mostly works so true constitutional crises by their definition are rare. (Also it will never be clear whether something is a type 2 crisis or not because it isn't clear what action is actually necessary). They say there has only been one clear-cut type 1 crisis in America since independence - and it was right at the beginning, with the Constitutional Convention going rogue and the Constitution being adopted in violation of the amendment procedure set out in the Articles of Confederation. They identify two cases of type 2 crises that they think are clear-cut:
The biggest flaw in the paper is that B/L don't think about game theory. There are a number of cases where actor A threatens to violate the constitution (triggering a type 1 crisis) or to use dubiously constitutional hardball tactics (triggering a type 3 crisis) and actor B acquiesces. B/L consider this to be a dispute resolved within the constitutional framework, but it isn't. They give numerous examples of Roosevelt getting his way with this type of threat, both during the New Deal and during WW2.
The other obvious gap (which B/L acknowledge) is that their framework doesn't really work in an environment of pervasive government secrecy. If the President violates the constitution but doesn't get caught, is it really a constitutional crisis?
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