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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   7204 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 26, 2025

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So much clueless discourse and blathering on here really makes me think that a lot of people here have rather interestingly false conceptions of the gap between them and an attractive man in terms of dating success. That's not to speak of the absolutely massive gap between the average man and the average woman that I think could do with some amount of rectification though the use of a couple particularly pertinent examples. In short-- the average man i.e a guy who would probably get rated a 6 or 7 by most people is virtually invisible to women online to a degree that's frankly quite horrific when you compare it to the experience of an attractive man. The average guy could probably expect to reasonably manage about 5 to 10 likes a day, probably dropping off to less than that after the first week, with maybe a couple matches a week and perhaps 1 out of 50 matches actually converting to a date and an even smaller proportion converting to anything more significant than that. That doesn't sound too bad, right?

The thing is, an attractive man isn't just getting say 10% more matches, or even just doubling their matches. The amount of attention they get from women usually dwarfs the average male by several orders of magnitude. The top profiles on Tinder, Hinge, Bumble, are maxing out the like counter in give or take under an hour, the rungs below that with ease in under a day and so on and so forth. There are plenty of men who are not rich, not famous, not exceptional in any way really other than the face God gave them and perhaps the muscles Trenbolone gave them (though if you're thinking steroids alone will make you one of these men, you're living in a world of delusion-- women want the complete package) breaking 20,000 matches in relatively modest sized metro areas like Copenhagen, Stockholm or Denver. I should probably note that these profiles are typically white men though, as funnily enough even here racial gaps manifest, though this is frankly a matter of degrees, as even these disadvantaged attractive men of color are usually not lacking for women-- but it's going to be generally significantly less attractive and desirable women and they'll have to be a point or two better than their white counterpart to compete. These men have such an abundance of choice and easy access to women that they effectively dwell in a completely separate reality when compared to the average man-- they are the pickers and choosers and have no desperate need to compromise or settle down with one woman. Think of the gap between a man with 70 IQ and a man with 160 IQ in terms of capacity for intellectual output and perhaps multiply that gap a few times and you'll have a somewhat decent grasp of the dynamic in play here.

No amount of game or self improvement will ever get you close to that if you lack the genetic basis for it. It's like thinking a 70 IQ man can become a world class physicist and win the Nobel prize if he just tried hard enough-- the world doesn't work that way.

It's well known that attractive women have their pick of the litter, but I'll just add in that a woman need not be particularly attractive to be bombarded with options. The average girl you see on the street could open any dating app and find literal thousands of men throwing themselves at her within a day, maybe two or three if she's a bit ungifted in the face. Though as with attractive men, there's a pretty big gap between the kinds and amount of attention that white women get, and every other race of woman, including Asian women (of the northeastern and southern varieties) and having blue or green eyes supercharges this a surprising amount.

Here's an album of proof

The absolute last thing anyone here needs is more blackpills about dating. Yes, the apps suck. Yes, there are people who will always be more attractive than you due to the vagaries of genetics and society. Yes, birth and marriage rates are going down the drain. No one can deny these things; we live them every day and they have been discussed to death here and elsewhere. If you have some new data apart from Tinder screenshots, that would be interesting. If you insist that we must all accept our place at the bottom of the totem pole in our new de facto polygamous society, that could be an interesting line of inquiry too. After all, we have plenty of historical examples for comparison, as well as other analogous traits (e.g. will people respond any differently to being told they belong to a group with below average IQ vs. a group with below average reproductive success?). Just give us something to work with besides "we're cooked, gooners."

No amount of game or self improvement will ever get you close to that if you lack the genetic basis for it. It's like thinking a 70 IQ man can become a world class physicist and win the Nobel prize if he just tried hard enough-- the world doesn't work that way.

I've certainly met people who aren't very attractive but some combination of attire and posture and personality gets them laid a lot.

It mostly seems illegible to me (and probably them). When it comes to discussion of game I imagine it's people trying to crack that code for themselves. It's probably not hopeless to try, if that's one's goal, even if they aren't the top 10% hottest in terms of profile pics.

Online dating is probably not your strong suit if you're not in the top 10%. You're probably a lot better off going out and getting drunk and hitting on girls in that case.

This was originally intended to be a response to a post by @faceh below where he links to an article that contains the oft-quoted statistic that the top 80% of women are contending for the top 20% of men and the bottom 80% of men are contending for the bottom 80% of women, or some similar numbers that are eerily close to the Pareto distribution. I've heard this mentioned a lot, particularly in the context of people complaining about dating apps, but it seemed a bit suspicious since approximately 100% of the friends I've know who have used them with the goal of landing a long-term partner have found one, and several of those friends are nowhere near the to 20% of guys using whatever metric you want to use to rate desirability. Not to mention that the app companies themselves are notoriously tight-lipped about their user data. So I decided to trace the source of this, and post it here so it won't get buried.

It turns out the statistic is incredibly dubious. The quote comes from a [Medium post from 2015] in which a blogger named worst-online-dater attempts to come up with the Gini Coefficient to prove how unfair Tinder is. This blog has 6 total posts, four of which weren't posted until seven years after the initial two posts (which include the post that contains the statistic) and were only created to address the increased attention he had been getting in the wake of his study being quoted online and occasionally in mainstream media. There is no biographical information provided for the author of this "study", so at best it can be said that it comes from the very definition of an "online rando", and at that, one who seems to have an axe to grind.

The actual study the guy conducted was a very informal one where he used pictures of a male model to attract likes from women on Tinder, and used his chatting privileges to ask them questions about their usage. He doesn't say what questions he asked or how many women actually answered, but he says that the women reported, on average, to liking approximately 12% of the profiles they looked at. I could comment on how the sample size is small and the methodology dubious, but that's neither here nor there because the actual research he did doesn't factor at all into the whole 80/20 statement. That seems to just come out of nowhere, without explanation as to how he extrapolated it from data he collected or attribution from another source. It's collateral to the point of the study anyway, as he's trying to calculate a Gini coefficient and uses it as a number he plugs in somewhere along the way.

Of course, that was the takeaway from the article, and not what he was even trying to say, which is that dating inequality on the apps is worse than economic inequality in all but a handful of countries. Years later, after the statistic began to gain traction, he addressed it in a followup post in which he responded to criticism of the original article. Someone sent him a link to an article that pointed out that the whole 80/20 thing was a lie. He responded to the criticisms that were leveled at him in the article, but he never adequately explained where he was getting the whole 80/20 thing from. As far as I can tell, at best he's getting it through an uncertain derivation based on data from a highly flawed study. At worst, he just made it up.

That isn't the end of it, though. Another of the responses to his original post was a separate study of Hinge data based on actual comprehensive data that was conducted by an employee of the company. He doesn't discuss the results of this study in the same terms as the 80/20 thing, but the results are similarly dramatic: Men as a whole only receive 14% of the likes sent out on Hinge. This breaks down further to 9% for the top 20% of men, 4% for men in the 50%–80% range, and just 1% for the bottom 50% of men. By contrast, the bottom 50% of women receive 18% of total likes. He claims that this Hinge data basically confirms the conclusions he drew from his Tinder data. It certainly makes it seem like even attractive guys have no chance if they're not even getting the same amount of action as below-average women.

There's one huge problem here, though, in that it takes two to Tango. I can't comment too much on the Tinder stuff because I never used Tinder and am therefore unfamiliar with its idiosyncrasies. I have used Hinge, however, and basing success on likes received is enough to make me discount the study before I even look at the data. It's my understanding that unless you're in a paid tier, with Tinder you just swipe on profiles you like with limited personal information and match with people who happen to swipe on you as well. In other words, everyone has to swipe, and there's no guarantee that someone you swiped right on will even see your profile. On Hinge, however, you can like a profile and even send a brief message, and you're like will always show up on the person's queue. So there are two ways to match: You can send out a like and hope the other person matches, or you can automatically match with one of your incoming likes.

And, like in the real world, while either sex is free to initiate, the way it usually works is that men get matches by sending out likes and women get matches by choosing from their incoming likes. While the opposite can happen, most women only send out likes because they aren't getting enough incoming likes, so it's rare for men to get likes, and when they do it usually isn't from anyone they're interested in actually dating. Likes received is a bad barometer for determining success on Hinge, and given that the author seems to have no grasp on how Hinge actually works, it leads me to question whether he understands how tinder actually works, and whether the data he is purportedly measuring is actually a reasonable proxy for dating success.

I tried to come up with some ideas on how to accurately measure success on Hinge but I came up short each time. the experience of men and women on these apps seems to be so different that it would be difficult to quantify who has it "easier". Part of the problem is that while the whole thing is seen as a grind, the statistics we use to determine success tend to celebrate the grindy aspects of it. Someone who is on for a month and only matches with one person is seen as a failure compared to someone who matches with a couple dozen people, but if the former finds a long-term partner and the latter goes on a string of boring dates, we all know who was more successful. Until we figure out exactly what we're measuring, these "studies" are all useless. It's all bogus information based on proxies for other proxies, and a set of assumptions that amount to nothing more than a house of cards. And with no shortage of people willing to complain about online dating, I don't think these dubious statistics are going away any time soon.

I have used Hinge, however, and basing success on likes received is enough to make me discount the study before I even look at the data.

Although the Hinge post that included their top line numbers has been scrubbed, it's still available on Wayback. They address your point directly:

When we look at the rate of men forming connections – rather than the rate that they are sent initial likes, as we did before – we find that index of inequality greatly decreases.

With straight men on Hinge, the Gini index of connections comes down to 0.324, or approximately the UK — a huge improvement.

As an aside, this movement toward equitability when dealing with connections exists with straight women too, so much so that the Gini index becomes meaningless.

That, arguably, supports your point (things are substantially less dire than looking at raw likes), though I think the credibility depends on how the junior data analyst defined "forming a connection."

What I'd love to see is the Gini coefficients of mutual matches for different dating apps in 2025.

In Morocco I got about 150 likes per day and literally didn't have time to look at 3/4ths. I think online dating is evil and have never otherwise tried, so nothing to compare.

By chance are you a white American or European?

This hits on two points that I think apply to a lot of online discourse around dating.. The first is that in any competitive environment, playing in a game where the odds are not in your favor is dumb. Anyone with a tiny bit of quantitative background will tell you that playing slots at a casino is a bad idea. In fact, playing anything in a casino unless you have an edge is probably a bad idea. But those same people (assuming they are guys) will get on dating apps and then complain. Dating is a competitive endeavor. Those apps are massively stacked against you unless you are very attractive. So the logical solution is: don't play. Go find other options where you have a competitive edge. Is it fair? No. Why should it be. Is it harder this way? Of course, if it was easy, the app people would be doing it.

Which brings me to my second point. Whenever these conversations come up online, there's always a strong undercurrent of self-pity from a bunch of the people talking. And self-pity is death. I wonder sometimes what evolutionary advantage self pity-ever carried. In any case, it underpins a huge amount of the terminally online world, and is dragging society down with it. But for a guy trying to date, it truly is the mark of the beast. Women will not go near a guy who stinks of self-pity. And the isolation it breeds just serves to reinforce it. It's a painful cycle to break out of, but unless you're ready to curl up and die, there really is no other choice.

The first is that in any competitive environment, playing in a game where the odds are not in your favor is dumb.

It is quite possible that that is the only such game, or all the available games are similarly bad. As is attributed to Canada Bill Jones: "I know it's crooked, but it's the only game in town."

One can always attempt the Hock as an alternative

In abstract/general sense, I agree. If your options are to accept a bad lot or to gamble with long odds, it's probably better to gamble. When it comes to dating though, I have a hard time imaging a situation (or at least a common situation), where apps are literally the only option. Maybe if you are in a mining camp?

what evolutionary advantage self pity-ever carried

maybe its there to counter our natural thirst for revenge at wrongdoings, perceived or real.

imagine a scenario where one tribe wipes out all but one member of another, a young man who ran away. His choices are either to flee forever (and maybe survive) or die trying to enact some token revenge against his enemy. Running from something like that likely foments guilt and self pity, but its also the only path towards survival in some situations.

My initial thought was that it was some form of sexually antagonistic selection. Self-pity in women isn't nearly as detrimental to courtship as it is in men. And it does work really well as a defense mechanism. Given that it isn't terribly important for lower tier males to reproduce from an evolutionary standpoint, having such a defense mechanism that helps women survive at the expense of some men is probably a good tradeoff.

Lower tier males isnt necessarily what we're talking about here though, a genetically excellent 12 year old could absolutely be put down by a group of older but genetically deficient guys. Being able to cope with the aftermath of avoiding terrible martial engagements is probably an advantageous trait to have for anyone who isn't part of an overwhelmingly forceful collective, whether male or female.

I did just watch a movie called The Northman about a badass little viking child that escapes a raid on his village, and thats probably coloring my current thought process on the matter. I dont know how common of a plotline that is in reality.

I did just watch a movie called The Northman

The Northman was ahistorical subversive GARBAGE. I got 15 minutes into that film and it was looking pretty based and redpilled and then ^^^Anya Taylor-Joy^^^ showed up. So now we have to take a historically accurate film set in Scandinavia in the Eighth Century AD on Earth and cram an ayylmao actress into it in the name of “diversity”

—inb4 some onions boy is like “weeell ACKSHUALLY there were ayylmao minority populations living in Scandinavia back then, look at this article from ^^^Barbra Xorlon-Stygggaszzzt^^^ from the history department at ^^^the University of New Mexico, Roswell^^^”

I don’t care. One blurry UFO in one Viking woodcut doesn’t mean we have to take work away from human actresses and give it to ayys. This is human erasure.

This seeeeeeems like a tongue in cheek pantomime of anti woke media preferences, but ahem.

If you think The Northman is pozzed then i literally dont know what you want out of movies. That actresses eyes arent quite far apart enough to make her diverse.

Anya Taylor-Joy's character in The Northman was a slave taken from raids on other lands. The raid the protagonist is taking part in when he finds out about his uncle and then runs off to take revenge is a raid on Garðaríki, i.e. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gar%C3%B0ar%C3%ADki

Not Scandinavia.

Also her character is meant to be Olga of Kiev: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olga_of_Kiev

What “other lands” could possibly explain casting Anya? Mars? Proxima Centauri? I don’t buy it. It’s clearly woke pro extraterrestrial propaganda. They take special glee in ayy-washing films set in ancient Europe. It’s the same reason they cast her The VVitch.

There is something about the human psyche that makes it very difficult for many of us to actually emotionally come to terms with unfairness. We might understand the unfair nature of life perfectly well intellectually, yet not come to grips with it emotionally. We live in a world where some people are just born with vastly more wealth, and/or sex appeal, and/or intelligence, and/or health than others... there are things we can do to improve on our starting position, but there are no guarantees of success.

There is a tendency to develop compensatory psychological narratives, defense mechanisms... ideas like "in the afterlife god will judge us and I will be compensated for all of this unfairness", or "if I am a good boy I will be reincarnated in a higher caste", or "I swear in just two more weeks I'll launch the great people's revolution that overthrows the rich", or "women aren't attracted to me but they're a bunch of degenerate sluts anyway and I'm the real based sigma male, I don't really want those evil whores anyway".

Another common way of dealing with it is to give up on any hope of actually remedying the unfairness while emotionally latching on to more powerful groups through psychological identification mechanisms. One example of this is the depressed housewife who spends eight hours a day watching the lives of celebrities on TV so that she can emotionally exist in a virtual world in which she feels like she has some stake in their lives. Another is the nationalistic soldier who is willing to go fight and die for the interests of his country's elite class because he has become emotionally identified with the entire nation as if it was his family - even though, even if he wins the war and survives, he will become no richer for it.

The whole obsession with fairness is just an outgrowth of humans' acute awareness of social hierarchies. People lower on the totem pole hate and envy those above them and dream of moving up. Those near the top live in constant dread of losing their spot. Nobody is happy.

On top of that, the optimal strategy for a happy individual is not aligned with the optimal strategy for a society. For an individual, the best strategy is to climb high enough to meet all of your needs, and then stop worrying about the hierarchy. For a society, the best strategy is to convince everyone to be satisfied with their current place in the hierarchy and to not rock the boat. It's no coincidence that basically every major religion pushes this message.

In the end, the messaging from society usually wins. So most people "accept" their place, but not in some zen sense of the word. They use defense mechanisms that hurt their chances of improving their situation, but numb some of the pain. A win-win for society, but not great for those holding it up.

Here's a good study to add to your arsenal in regards to this topic: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/367325876_Sexual_loneliness_A_neglected_public_health_problem

The distribution of the number of sex partners among American heterosexual men was skewed already, but in just ten years, the distribution of sex partners among men became even more skewed. During the same time, there was no such change in the number of sex partners for heterosexual women. Sex is concentrated within a small, yet sexually active, group of people. In one study, it was reported that the 5 % of the population with the highest number of vaginal sex acts (penile-vaginal-intercourse) accounted for more vaginal sex acts than the bottom 50 % of the population with the lowest number of vaginal sex acts. 4 Using the Gini index, it is found that the distribution of the number of sex partners both for men and women throughout their lifespan is as unequal as the distribution of wealth among the most unequal countries in the world (South Africa Gini 0.63 in 2014 and Namibia Gini 0.59 in 2015). The number of female sex partners is more unequally distributed among single men (Gini 0.60) than the number of male sex partners is among single women (Gini 0.58) although both male and female sex partners are highly concentrated among people. 5 While sex is not like money or wealth in every aspect, the lack of access to sexual experiences can be seen as a concern for distributive justice6 and a problem for public health since an active sex life is beneficial for people’s health and well-being. There are numerous studies that show the link between active sex life and our mental and physical health.7 On the other hand, people experience negative emotional effects when being without access to sexual and romantic partners. Sexual loneliness decreases self-esteem and positive mood in both men and women. Especially for men, sexual loneliness might cause anger and aggression, which can manifest violently.

I'm pretty sure that the vast majority of The Motte posters are well aware of the enormous variation in men's attractiveness to women. It's not like it's some secret knowledge that is only available in obscure corners of the dark web.

I don’t really get the point of dooming about dating.

There are lots of very unremarkable men who have sex and even get married and have kids. Yes, even in “hyper competitive” 2025.

If they can do it, you can do it.

I do agree with you, but also feel that a lot of the people who end up in the dating app loop tended to have 'missed the boat' on stuff like meeting organically through friends group and at college.

That's becoming less true every single year. In every single country.

Call it dooming or blackpilling if you want, it is happening. It is observable.

If it were just some smallish subset of people experiencing it then we could say its something you can change individually.

When it is happening everywhere to everyone at the same time, that reads as a systemic/societal issue that no individual can change.

South Korea shows just how bad it can get.

We in the U.S. can fall even further if the course isn't changed.

Maybe.

Then again, the stereotype of that happening is a man rapidly approaching middle age who's had little luck up to this point finds himself in a situationship with a woman who's had her fun already and has run out of options. One thing leads to another, she decides "He'll do I guess" and they live happily ever after in constant seething resentment. Her because he wasn't who she wanted to end up "stuck" with, and him because this lady treats him like something that got stuck to her shoe and constantly humiliates him in public with stories of the sexcapades she used to have in her 20's. But not with him. Eww. She doesn't do those things anymore.

Shit, I ran into five of those couples at a school function last week. Putting aside the insane inappropriateness of bringing up your 20's sexcapades not just in mixed company, in front of your husband, but with your fucking kids not 10 feet away on the jungle gym.

Needless to say, yeah, people can eat shit. People can draw straws lost at sea. But most would prefer not to find themselves in situations where those are there only options.

breaking 20,000 matches in relatively modest sized metro areas like Copenhagen, Stockholm or Denver

Interesting. Source?

First picture in the proof album. Do note that "Niko" is only about 5'8

There isn't nearly enough context in that gallery to prove your point.

To be honest, what strikes me most is how unattractive the guys in that gallery are. Gosh, doesn't Finn look like a git? A lot of those guys look like total pillocks. I am glad I don't look like any of those guys, and I regularly get complimented on my appearance by women in real life.

What I see here is an extreme generalisation with firstly little evidence that it's true on dating apps, and secondly little reason to believe that even if it's true on dating apps, it generalises to anything in real life.

I wouldn't call them unattractive, I think they are quite handsome, but they don't strike me as some unattainable ideals.

  • well-dressed? That's the easiest thing to fix
  • professional photographs instead of a fish picture? Hire a photographer
  • sub 20% body fat? Attainable
  • nice even teeth? Dentists are expensive, but still attainable
  • charismatic? Go flirt with 100 women you don't want to have sex with to grind some XP

Frankly, the biggest problem is the hair. If you have limp thin hair, you need to find a good barber that can find the right hair style and teach you to maintain the look plus visit him every two weeks to maintain the right length.

It's not that they're unattractive, it's just that you don't know how to properly judge attractiveness in men and have a seriously distorted view of the distribution. Finn and Niko are at minimum 1 in 100 males. If you don't believe me, make a female profile on Tinder, you'll only see a man that good every hundred or two hundred swipes. In fact, you can even go on the Instagram pages of college frats and you'll find that most men are simply not on that level.

I'm far from convinced of this - if I think about what women of my acquaintance tell me about male attractiveness, and how it syncs up with my own judgements, it certainly doesn't seem as if I'm blind to what they like.

I actually find your argument here a bit odd because it's a well-replicated finding, surely, that women care less about physical attractiveness than men do. Attitude and bearing are worth a lot more than symmetrical facial features. Women do care about appearance, but as far as I'm aware, less intensely than men do.

In this case specifically I wonder more about the algorithm. I don't know how Tinder works specifically, but I've used other dating apps before and most of them have some kind of recommendation function, where the app will suggest particular people to you. In most apps I've seen you can pay money to the app to get yourself bumped higher up the queue. So for all I know, X random man with some ridiculous number of hits is just some guy who got really lucky on the algorithm - who had the Tinder equivalent of going viral on Twitter. But you shouldn't make sweeping generalisations from a weird outlier. It's like seeing someone win the lottery and assuming that it's due to his in-born talent for personal finance. For all you know it's a combination of random chance and buying a lot of tickets.

As I said, I don't know how Tinder works specifically. I understand that Tinder is a casual hook-up app, and I have no interest in that, so I've never used it. (Though that probably also distorts the results and makes them unrepresentative of most people's romantic preferences and experiences.) I'm speculating wildly here, but I suspect no more wildly than you are.

1/100? Maybe on tinder. They look like 7-8s not >9.9s.

You're doing more to convince me of the poor quality of the median man on tinder than of some great social injustice.

I'm 80% convinced you're just a troll.

I don't see what's so outrageous about the post you replied to that you'd assume trolling. Maybe saying Finn and Niko are top percentile is hyperbole, but not crazily so.

As a woman, it's hard to figure out who his "incest, cannibalism and John 3:16" blub is attracting. Finn looks pretty average, kind of douchy.

My advice in general would be for guys to take photos from below, girls take photos from above, maybe seek a professional photographer if it's that important.

My advice in general would be for guys to take photos from below

Just generally some easy appearance hacks for guys- take photos from below, have a good haircut, wear clothes that fit, unless you're notably tall wear cowboy boots(comes off as masculine and adds 2"), know thyself with respect to facial hair(Nietzsche moustaches and civil war general chops are out, obviously, but some people benefit from a beard and some don't), stay in shape but don't worry about muscles. Dress a rung or maybe two up on the formality ladder from what the situation technically calls for. Obviously, groom yourself well.

Yeah, I can't imagine who sees that line and thinks "exactly my type!" though there may be matches from girls just looking for some fun but nothing serious. Nikola, for instance: that would be fun if intense but short experience, but definitely not long-term boyfriend material, much less husband. Much too aware of how good he looks and poses like a romance cover model. He'd be kissing your hand and handing over a bouquet of thirteen red roses while at the same time setting up a date with six other women for the rest of the week 😁

Niko seems like a nice young man but he badly needs advice on "not a polo neck with a blazer with jeans, dear, and clear the paper bags off the table before taking the photo, and don't smile so hard, you look nervous not relaxed".

This kind of attempted mockery has always struck me a bit as being more or less being sour grapes. It's a bit odd that you'd write a couple paragraphs about how he needs to do this or that when he's easily already a top 1% profile on Tinder and has functionally infinite access to attractive women. Does seeing a man this sexually successful just make you insecure? Is it something deeper? There's pretty obviously no need to change your approach to dating if your approach has already given you north of 25,000 options to pick from.

I don't think it's sour grapes; my understanding is that HereAndGone identifies as asexual. Asexual people, having known multiple as friends... don't often understand just how little they understand about how sexual attraction works. You can see that in how none of her criticism is actually about attractiveness -- she's judging their personal style and how they come across in a social-presentation manner, not whether they're hot or not.

But also people can be very critical, especially when evaluating people as romantic partners, and especially when doing so as an exercise instead of actually dealing with a real person. Men can be similarly critical of women, if you put them in the right context, or if they won't tell you about the labor dispute at Starbucks. This is a big reason why dating apps enable and drive some of our worst instincts -- people are caricatures and not people.

That being said, the turtleneck is a bit silly and the photos do look overly polished, but standing out by dressing slightly oddly and taking overly polished photos is basically what you have to do. If you're going to be a caricature of yourself, you might as well lean into it.

You can see that in how none of her criticism is actually about attractiveness -- she's judging their personal style and how they come across in a social-presentation manner, not whether they're hot or not.

Meh, this is exactly the dating advice I'd expect from a cookie-cutter representative of Women, Inc.; the identification as "asexual" is... also exactly what I'd expect, too. So's the specific criticism, which appears to generalize to "this dude pattern-matches too closely to a woman to be husband material"- again, as much of a 'straight woman' thing as you can get.

Not that there aren't similar representatives of Men, Inc. around here, of course; you can tell someone is like that if they say things like "women who have sex have something wrong with their souls" or similar.

See, we already have a blueprint of what asexuality in women looks like; that's what that "secrets of female attractiveness" thing that gets passed around here is. Female asexuals just cold-open conversations with this type of thing and, if you're a man, will probably paint your nails for you if you ask nicely.

The point of by grandparent commment was that it shouldn't be hard for people to match that guy's rizz. At least half the men at my college were as attractive as Finn. I didn't mean it in a sour grapes way. I have a husband who I think is much more attractive (though he has the benefit of being older.)

Edit to add on reflection: I just realized that the youngest guy I ever found attractive based on photos/videos (and not in-person interactions) is David Boreanaz in Buffy season 1 and he was 28. When I was young I found classmates attractive at times, but that was generally only after they had shown some kind of interest in me. (By doing me a favor, making art for me, something personal, not just a swipe or like.) A man who makes it to his 30s with under 25% body fat is likely going to have an ok time if he knows how to dress and style his hair.

That was what jumped out at me, too. Frankly it makes me think that I really ought to try Tinder again with some better photos, if this is all it takes.

To slightly derail your post, what is the best way to judge one's market value? How do I know if the problem is tinder or my expectations?

Would the market benefit from a impartial third party rater that could tell people what is realistic for them based on market conditions.

Run yourself on dating apps. If you can't break 30 likes in 24 hours, you're most likely unattractive. If you can't break 99+ in 24, you're most likely not above a 6 in the eyes of women.

This is a totally out of touch standard. Have you actually used a dating app? I use hinge and have been on dates/slept with very attractive girls and I probably get 2-3 a day.

You do get a pretty big exposure boost for the first 24 hours on a fresh account

The impartial third party kind of exists already. I use photofeeler, you get ratings on your dating photos, and you can see roughly where you stand.

For example, one insight I got is that it didn't matter a whole lot which photo I think is good and which photo I think is bad - they all get roughly the same ratings. By using your best vs bad photos, you might get 0.5-1 point increase, as opposed to 2-3 points difference.

As a benchmark, I get ratings around 6-7, and very few matches in dating websites (though I am very picky). So you should aim for 8-9.

This is actually pretty easy to figure out.

Swipe right on everyone. Then, observe whether you get zero matches, or whether you get matches with obese single moms and MtFs.

In short-- the average man i.e a guy who would probably get rated a 6 or 7 by most people is virtually invisible to women online to a degree that's frankly quite horrific when you compare it to the experience of an attractive man.

What sort of scale is this? Surely "average" means someone who most people would rate around 5/10.

Standard sports pages player ratings model. 6/7 is average. 3/4 is terrible. 8/9 is excellent. Almost no one scores 1, 2 or 10

Why is 3/4 terrible but 6/7 is average? I admit, I have no grasp of numbers.

Read it as “three or four,” most likely.

That's about how it works when men rate women.

Not the case when women rate men.

I think women do judge men more harshly when it's based on photos, because women are accustomed to "this is how you must look to be attractive in a photo" while men seem to go "I combed my hair, that's good, right?"

First impressions are unkind, but if you're trawling through hundreds of images, things that are small flaws in themselves build up to make choices harder.

Yep.

The whole problem with apps is they've all converged on the "Swipe through cards endlessly" rather than letting you target in on people you actually think would be a good match (how OKCupid used to work). Plus gamification algorithms.

My last foray into the apps, I FELT myself dehumanizing the people in the photos more as I went. You see 150 different profiles in like an hour, and you get very critical of even small flaws.

There's also the argument that men look better in motion since women like seeing men do things. So a dating app that let men post 5-10 second videos of themselves, e.g. playing guitar, rock climbing, playing tennis to showcase a skill would probably even things out a bit in the attractiveness field.

Have to assume the app companies don't want to deal with policing the content of millions of videos, though.

policing the content of millions of videos

so yeah heres me playing my guitar AND THEN I PULL MY GIANT DICK OUT WOOOO

Okay, but who is using ‘dating’ apps?

Studies consistently show that approximately 75-85% of Tinder users identify as male, while women make up only 25-15%. In some regions, the disparity is even more pronounced, with ratios as high as 91:9 in Italy.

Even these numbers overestimate the actual percentage of female tinder users who would be willing to hook up with a man from the app, since a substantial percentage of tinder’s women users just do it to get some easy attention and never meet up with anyone from the app at all (whereas almost every man who uses it would probably be willing to hook up with an attractive woman he met on it).

So in reality, what do dating app statistics tell us?

They tell us that a substantial percentage of the male population is competing on the apps to have casual sex with the ~15% most promiscuous women, who as a result have their pick of the men. Given that this 15% run the gamut of hotness, that means maybe 4% or fewer of women are both attractive and open to casual sex with random men from dating apps.

This results in the genre of ‘sad tinder despair’ male posts. It also explains how most men who rack up high body counts (and aren’t celebrities, famous athletes or male models) are usually hooking up with less attractive women.

This does not tell us much about the dating habits of the vast majority of women. The kindergarten teacher whose hobbies are crochet and collecting Disney memorabilia who is far too shy to meet a man off the apps (and far too insecure to create a profile at all) is not fucking a new guy off Hinge every week. The average man never even encounters this kind of woman except maybe in passing.

You seem really quite misinformed about the prevalence of online dating in the current year. It's no longer the niche, obscure, relatively novel apps of yesteryear-- online dating quite literally forms a supermajority of all dating in the year 2025. It is arguably more "real" and relevant than bars or clubs. You're also considerably naive if you think this kind of treatment only exists on Tinder. I've spoken with the man in the side profile selfie, and his life is like something out of a bad porno movie. I've seen him on video to be clear, so this isn't just hearsay, been surrounded by several women as if he were Justin Timberlake, been offered money upfront at a club by women to take their virginity (not unattractive women either), paid for transport somewhere where he didn't have a car by letting the woman drive him simply give him a blowjob, and the list goes on. You are very much just not in the know when it comes to things like this.

No, there really are lots of quiet, shy, stereotypically feminine women who aren't part of the mainstream dating market because it scares them. They'll venture out into some attempt at dating every once in a while, get scares, and withdraw back to their shells.

This does not tell us much about the dating habits of the vast majority of women. The kindergarten teacher whose hobbies are crochet and collecting Disney memorabilia who is far too shy to meet a man off the apps (and far too insecure to create a profile at all) is not fucking a new guy off Hinge every week. The average man never even encounters this kind of woman except maybe in passing.

These women, in my experience having dated and befriended a lot of them, are just generally not on the market or only on the market for like a week per year in which they try Hinge as a New Year's Eve resolution and then quickly delete it after their third untoward comment received. Then maybe 6 months later they go home for Thanksgiving and get ribbed by mom and it's downloaded again but it doesn't stay.

Billion dollar idea - rent-a-yenta. A service where an overly critical older woman follows around the timid marriageable types and needles them constantly about their relationship status, frequently trying to set them up with their neighbor or cousin’s kid until finally something clicks and they find a suitable match.

Studies consistently show that approximately 75-85% of Tinder users identify as male, while women make up only 25-15%.

Accepting these facts as true, what are all the young single women doing?

  • Do they not care about being single for the rest of their life?

  • Are they stupid and can’t comprehend cause and effect? (i.e. “If I make a Bumble profile, I am more likely to get a boyfriend”)

  • Are they slutting out? (I’m including having a Chad fwb who obviously won’t commit in this category)

  • Are they in church and expect to find a worthy man there?

  • Are they mindkilled with wokeness to the point where they fail to understand normal human behavior?

“If I make a Bumble profile, I am more likely to get a boyfriend”

I do wonder about that. How many people who are now on Bumble are looking for proper relationships, versus at the beginning? Dating apps may also be seen as the last refuge of the hopeless, or that men are using them to hook up/cheat while in relationships:

Shares in Bumble crashed 30% this month [August 2024] after a bad earnings report. Match Group, the Dallas-based owner of Tinder, Match.com, OkCupid, Hinge and others, has reported a decline in its total number of paying users, for seven straight quarters. According to Pew research, nearly half of all online daters and more than half of female daters say their experiences have been negative.

The same study found that 52% of online daters said they had come across someone they thought was trying to scam them; 57% of women said online dating is not too or not at all safe; and 85% said someone continued to contact them after they said they weren’t interested.

...Allie Volpe, Vox writer and author of a recent article advocating for finding romance offline, says her single friends in Philadelphia are burned out by online dating.

“People are sensing that it has become so impersonal, and such a numbers game, that people feel there are infinite options out there, we’re not really that nice to people on the apps any more,” Volpe says.

“People are looking for organic ways to meet each other,” she adds. Running clubs and sewing circles, for example. “At least in person you can tell them, ‘hey, I’m not interested’, but online you feel like you have no control on the other side, and they have the means to contact you, that’s kind of scary.

“It can be kind of weird on the apps to go from stranger to being potentially romantically involved immediately,” Volpe adds. “It can be jarring, and that doesn’t happen when you’re meeting somebody face to face.”

But Volpe volunteers that the situation is confusing. “The pandemic normalized the dating app experience because you couldn’t go places or meet them in a bar because they weren’t open. For gen Z, maybe their first dating experience was during the pandemic. So they’ve never dated except online, and don’t know where to go where there are people they don’t know.”

I think that the obvious missing bullet point here is "They date from their pool of IRL friends, coworkers and acquaintances, like normal people". (Church is only a special case of this.)

This may be a thing that happens, but it cannot explain the effect.

To be absolutely clear, what needs to be explained is the anomalous predominance of men on dating apps (and in the dating pool more broadly) when a naive gender-symmetrical model of monogamous pair-bonding would imply equal prevalence of men and women in such spaces when the population sex ratio is 1:1.

Pointing to the existence of even a large number of male-female pairings does not help explain the discrepancy because such pairings (should) remove one woman and one man from the dating pool, leaving the absolute discrepancy unchanged.

I think this is easy. More single men are looking to date than single women. According to a PEW study from 2020 61% of single men were looking to date vs 38% of single women. There was pretty significant age stratification for women (61% of women 18-39, 29% of women 40+) but much less so for men (67% of men 18-39, 55% of men 40+). That does not get you quite to the extreme numbers in the OP but is surely part of the explanation. Add to that young men (under 50) are much more likely to be single than young women (51-32 ages 18-29, 27-19 age 30-49).

The population of single heterosexuals might be roughly equal (PEW reports both 31% of men and women report being single) but desire to get in a relationship in that pool is not symmetrical.

‘Women less motivated because they have less agency’ doesn’t explain it?

Maybe, but all they have to do is take selfies and go, “tee-hee, I love coffee,” which I understand is what they do anyways.

If a woman is downloading an app, she's saying, "No guy in real life wants me." Or, "I don't care about being loved, I just want to fuck."

Women want to have a man fall for them naturally, just by being in her presence. Going on a dating app is admitting defeat.

Is there a big spike in female dating app usage at 35? That’s about when “admitting defeat” becomes the rational thing to do.

I'll look for any relevant stats, but it looks like women are more likely to report dissatisfaction with Dating Apps than men. (51% vs 42%) https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/02/02/key-findings-about-online-dating-in-the-u-s/

I think that's less of a thing than it used to be. Social groups/interests are more gender delineated, workplace flirtation isn't what it used to be due to the potential massive ramifications of going too hard.

I spent about a year in 2022 dating a bunch of educated, upright upper-middle class 25-35 year olds with a view to finding a wife with whom to have children. I now have wife + child, but the experience made me think that the issue is that a lot of the shyer girls just only very sparingly spend time on the market. They'll download an app for a week or two until they have a meh date or get distracted, then either find a mate or delete the proverbial app for 6 months before quarter-heartedly trying again in hopes of their Prince Charming happening to be in the first 2-3 serious conversations they strike up on the app before the next deletion.

Also these women are truly inexperienced, which means those brief forays are more likely to go anywhere since the mindset is more 'formulaic husband interview' than anything romantic. I had about 60 first dates in 2022, 50 or so of which would fit into the broad category of educated women looking for something serious with actual careers and an intent on 'settling down' and I found about half seemed to legitimately be completely inexperienced romantically.

workplace flirtation isn't what it used to be due to the potential massive ramifications of going too hard.

Notably, though, getting MeTooed for coming on too strong is rather less of a concern for women, and explaining why fewer women use dating apps is exactly what @Quantumfreakonomics wanted explained. If the workplace dating scene is hostile to men who are proactively looking for a partner, but less so to women who are doing the same thing, that fits pretty snugly with a lot more men than women turning to dating apps.

Yes but the vast majority of women are not proactive in approaching in person, so if men are unwilling to be the first to initiate interest that's going to have a large impact on the amount of inperson relationships being kindled.

I had about 60 first dates in 2022

Uh, what? Are we even talking about the same concept at this point? How does one both have the opportunity to go on 60 first dates in a year and also none of them go well enough to terminate the process? Is this some poly thing?

Oh I'm married and with child now, having finally struck gold with the 60th but I did a ton of field anthropology along the way.

I live in a majorish metro, managed to work my way up from a 5/10 to like a 7/10 through weight loss + trial & error and essentially didn't turn down a first date with anybody who was open to get a coffee and not obviously a hard no.

You're correct about the gender ratio on dating apps.

You're missing that every app that allows users to interact can become a dating app.

"Twitter is a dating app" is a meme, but it is also true. Instagram's gender ratio is more equalized.

So consider how many women have instagram, tiktok, snapchat, whatever, and put themselves out there with photos of themselves, and then entertain proposals from men who "slide into their DMs."

So that Kindergarten teacher who likes to crochet and collect Disney Memorabilia would need only start up an Instagram account and post a couple photos of herself holding her cute Tinkerbell ornament wearing a hat she made herself and has a decent shot at getting a guy's attention.

So that Kindergarten teacher who likes to crochet and collect Disney Memorabilia would need only start up an Instagram account and post a couple photos of herself holding her cute Tinkerbell ornament wearing a hat she made herself and has a decent shot at getting a guy's attention.

This sort of implies that the optimal male dating strategy is shameless simping, which… would probably explain why there is so much male homosocial stigma against it.

Has this been the solution all along?

No. Simping is the wrong way to go about it.

I'm someone who has reliably slid into DMs. Leaving aside the first and second rules of dating, the third would be to not come across as desperate. Be charming, be funny, but don't come across as a simp. You want her to know you're interested, but without giving her the impression that you couldn't withdraw at a moment's notice if things don't work out.

Or shameless hating. Apparently shoeOnHead married and had a kid with a hater who slid into her DMs.

Although her first relationship was... interesting and unique to say the least.

Its one of those things that DOESN'T work when a bunch start doing it at once.

Too many men simping and a woman can simply bask in the attention whilst giving nothing back to any individual one.

Information asymetries also make it possible to condemn simping whilst continuing to do it on the downlow.

In what aspect is the discussion clueless? Please elaborate.

I think people don't get how Power Law distributions dominate on dating apps.

So they think an "average" guy is doing okay on the apps, even if he is jealous of the more attractive guys who have it easier.

When in reality, the Average guy is barely scraping by, as virtually all serious female attention flows to a handful of Top Tier guys, so the mismatch is SEVERE.

Top tier guys obviously have no incentive to change this. Dating apps don't have much incentive either, since they can sell the lower tier guys various products that they imply will help, and those guys don't have many other options.

And of course these dating apps keep their data secret so we can't even look and judge how well they work for their stated purposes (not well).

So average guys are getting quietly more desperate but can't do anything about it or even talk about it because talking about it marks you as a loser and further lowers your status.

And of course these dating apps keep their data secret so we can't even look and judge how well they work for their stated purposes (not well).

Side tangent but I think you would enjoy this blogpost from someone who works at a dating app (not sure which dating app though).

https://blog.luap.info/what-really-happens-inside-a-dating-app.html

I think this is the best bit:

Can dating apps work?

There are a lot of people saying that dating apps are evil, that Match Group exploits people's feelings. That's true on one hand and wrong on the other.

First the expensive resource on a dating app is girls, not girls because they will pay you, but because if you have girls it will attract guys, what impacts the retention of girls on a dating app? The number of likes they send, so the first goal of a dating app is to make girls like, clearly not something evil. There is no interest in making them pay as none will do it. (Hot girls can be replaced by bots, or by girls that promote their Instagram, they should just not like everyone but they don't need to be real for the system to work, in truth it is not super complex to acquire these girls, so no need to have bots.)

Second the most expensive resource on a dating app is hot guys, because without hot guys you won't get girls, well hot guys are the users that have the best retention, without effort they will have a 50% retention, so in fact you just have to wait some time and the app will fill up with those guys, need a specific strategy? No, do nothing. Is this evil? No.

Then the last most expensive resource on a dating app is guys that are willing to pay, what can you offer to guys that want to pay? More likes received. Well good news more likes received = more retention for these guys. So the things these apps do, is how to make a guy pay the most to access likes? It is very similar to any business, a football club has the same objective, a restaurant has the same objective, a gaming app has the same objective, a gym has the same objective. The ones that are left behind are actually the ones that are not paying. Tinder for example, they are just the best at converting you into a paying user and keeping you, and they will not keep you if you don't get likes.

The problem of dating apps is not the product in itself it is the users of these apps. People that complain about datings app are either:

MALE

  • Not willing to date (so they complain they cant accumulate matches as fast as they would like),

  • Make no effort to be attractive (everyday we would receive emails to the support of guys saying "im not receive likes and im not the less attractive", well yes you are ),

FEMALE

  • Not willing to like anyone (We have plenty of girls that can scroll through 300 profiles and not like anyone and deleting their account saying "I dont like anyone" well

  • Liking users too attractive that would only want to have sex with them

The hard truth is that if you are a guy and you dont go on a date with at least one new girl per week and dont have your picture taken by a professional photograph you are loosing your time on a Tinder-like dating app

And if you are a girl and you dont date at least one guy per week and you dont lower your appearances standards then you are also loosing your time on a Tinder like dating app

So for me dating apps currently work, and actually they are the biggest place people meet these days. But using them is very disappointing

I am wondering if we are going to see a rise in relationships between ugly women and relatively attractive men. A lot of men are priced out of the dating market and will be forced to date down. There could be strange effects were a woman who is a 4 and a women who is a 7 could end up dating equally attractive men. We end up with the elite of women getting the elite of men. Then a huge surplus of men who are 6-8 attractive and a large span of women being able to meet equally attractive men with many choosing not to in the hopes of dating up.

Anecdotally, in public I notice pairings where the guy is clearly a bit of a gymrat, good muscle definition, takes care of himself, and he's got a woman with actual physical fat rolls latched onto his arm.

And some guys are just into that. Whatever. But I think its the marginal effect of men having a harder time and the competition being stiffer.

The reverse pops up MUCH less often. Although I have seen a few petite, waifish women on the arms of some large, obese men.

And some women are into that. Whatever.

While working at an outdoor retail it was a semi-regular occurrence where I'd be chatting with a fit, outdoorsy guy and then his girlfriend would walk up, and… well, let’s just say she wouldn't be a fun belay. If she took a whipper, he’d be in for quite a ride. Fit women were usually well-matched in terms of looks. More elite guys - expert kayakers, climbers, and guides - usually had attractive girlfriends.

In everyday life, the imbalances I notice between attractive women and less attractive men often involve guys who were once "cool" but have since gained weight and lost hair. For example, a former football lineman who married a cheerleader might now seem mismatched because she has maintained her appearance better than he has. While there's an imbalance now, there wasn’t in the past.

For people that don't think this exists or thinks it goes the other way I believe they anchoring off of >0.1 percentile guys like Harvey Weinstein, who looked like a cave orc yet would have a world-class smokeshow on his arm.

Also anecdotal but I see men who are not gymrats or muscly with extremely hot women absolutely all the time. They are reasonably fit, tall and athletic though. I'd say if you take the very most beautiful women of all, it's actually uncommon to see them with men who are on the meathead side of the athletic/strong spectrum.

Men get in shape for women, men become meatheads for themselves.

Truer words have never been said. You don't have to do that much to appeal to women. If you've got bulging pecs and veins, you're going to get a lot of compliments from other men and little else.

I saw someone recently point out that bodybuilders are rarely with conventionally 'hot' women.

It seems likely that the time commitment required for being serious about bodybuilding and the lifestyle changes for diet and such would actually make it VERY HARD to date seriously, that's time, money, and effort that takes away from your fitness goals.

And of course there's evidence that women don't find the roided-out look very appealing anyway.

A lot of bodybuilder types are actually geeks / nerds. The best example of this that comes to mind is Dr. Mike Israetel on YouTube. Watch just a few of his videos and you'll catch the sense of humor; a little too dry, heavy on puns, self-deprecating in a very cringey way. He gives out excellent lifting and nutrition advice and I do recommend him for that.

But as far as personality, charm, charisma, and "game" go, Dr. Mike reveals the truth of a lot of gym rats -- they're weirdos who just autist'd their ways to the weights.

There's also the slight issue that Hollywood has deformed the idea of what 'natural' and 'roided out' looks like.

Clueless discourse and blathering is it. Well. I am trying to find your point, which seems to be, give up? Anyway all this talk makes me want to throw myself into a profile just to see what would happen, though I'm well out of the game.

Every time the Motte begins discussing dating culture, my reaction is to go and hug my wife and children.

It's not that bad. People just like to be dramatic and use questionable statistics to explain away their crappy profiles.

Look at this man, boasting about a wife and children /s.

Yeah.. If I had a wife and kids and saw this, I'd feel like I caught the last chopper out of Kabul. Thankfully you did haha

You really like rubbing it in.

And this is why only clueless people use pure online dating. Meet girls IRL. Chat with her a bit. Take her contacts. Is it THAT hard?

Meet girls IRL

That's not how couples meet anymore. Especially among young people, who don't get out much anyway, they grew up in the digital world, and Covid made this even sharper. You can't meet Gen Z girls by just 'going out.'

The gender ratios in most public spaces are skewed towards men, which also makes women more averse to being approached over and over agan.

Women can get on the dating apps or any social media site and get all the attention she wants, so there's no need for her to entertain IRL offers.

Is it THAT hard?

Yes.

Now what.

What exactly are you looking for here?

Do you just want people to tell you that it's hopeless? Very well then. It is hopeless. I agree that you should give up hope. Do with this what you will.

If this is a prelude to arguing for certain policy proposals, then it would be more interesting if you made the case for those policies directly, instead of gesturing angrily at the stats and insisting that something (what, exactly?) must be done.

If it is indeed hopeless, than we can at long last dispense with the concept of building anything for the future. Loot what you can, while you can.

My observations shows that the genz are as outgoing as the millenials and X-ers before them. They gather and drink beer in the park when the weather is warm, love going out clubbing, love going out on hikes and so on and attend shittons of house parties. There is probably selection bias since I drink quite a lot with the outgoing ones, but I don't think that there is massive epidemic of reclusive people.

Covid did move to house partying - but that is not a problem - you could obtain or host one.

Nearly half of Gen Z guys say they're not dating at all.

You're SEEING some of them out, but how many of them are you just not seeing because they're not visible.

You have put quite a lot of links showing that single people are not trying, few that prove it is hard.

...

Is your belief that out of nowhere, for no reason at all, young people, around the planet, have chosen to 'stop trying', unlike every other generation that came before them?

Does that pass muster to you?

Or is it just possible that it got HARDER, (and/or the rewards have diminished) which made it much less appealing to try?

Anyway, here you go:

https://archive.is/X72VS

Tons of analysis of the issue.

A decent summation:

If I had to sum up this big messy story in a sentence, it would be this: Coupling is declining around the world, as women’s expectations rise and lower-income men’s fortunes fall; this combination is subverting the traditional role of straight marriage, in which men are seen as necessary for the economic insurance of their family.

I've spent inordinate amounts of time researching this stuff. I'm not 'proud' of that, but I can provide you just about whatever form of evidence you want.

Here, check out how dating apps work in South Korea, which is even worse off than the U.S.:

https://instagram.com/reel/DFyqCOmz-LM/

Does that seem 'reasonable' to you, or is it maybe a lot more competitive than it used to be?

Is your belief that out of nowhere, for no reason at all, young people, around the planet, have chosen to 'stop trying', unlike every other generation that came before them?

"For no reason at all" is a strawman. Looking at the wide variety of hedonistic pleasures available to the 2020s twenty-something from the comfort of their own couch, it's not surprising that fewer and fewer people are "going out" - with each other or otherwise. Going outside, literally, has lost a lot of its appeal relative to other stuff you could be doing with your free time. It's hardly surprising that this applies to going out to meet girlfriends/boyfriends just as it applies to going out to meet platonic friends in-person. Logging into the groupchat has replaced meeting the lads at the bar. I'd never have met my first girlfriend if I hadn't been in the habit of meeting up with mixed friends, in person, outside, and that's happening less and less.

Bars aren't that much better, often lower quality women and more women than men. Starting a hobby to meet women is not efficient at all. Signing up for tennis/pottery or language classes just to meet women is a massive commitment of time to say high to maybe one or two single women in your age group.

Bars and clubs have kind of died as a place for 'average people to unwind', especially past University age. There's simply too much competition from other entertainment mediums, atleast in my experience. A certain subset of extroverted nightlife enjoyooors rotate around between eachother visibly, but as a subset of the population I believe it's smaller than it has been historically.

That’s obviously not what people mean when they say meet people in real life. You’re right that most hobby groups are filled with retirees, because those are the people who have time to do those things.

You meet people in real life by making friends, getting invited to parties, meeting more people, getting invited to more parties (by which I include everything from barbecues to housewarmings to weddings to Halloween to NYE, whatever) until you have a relatively busy social schedule because one of your dozens of friends and acquaintances is probably hosting something this weekend and you’re invited.

100%. This very night, I caught up with my best friend and his rather inebriated girlfriend. A little bit into the conversation, she interrupted me and asked me if I was considering getting married, to which I reacted in the affirmative, albeit in a year or two. She immediately tried to set me up with her sister, and by set up, asked me if I wanted to marry her.

Having platonic female friends is life on easy mode, women love few things more than matchmaking. Prove that you're not a creep, and they'll send people your way.

I can remember several platonic female friends complain about women in their circles that no one was interested in, and then refuse to make introductions.

Were the guys that they refused to make introductions for lacking social proof? The guy they've never seen in a relationship before, even if a good guy in other aspects of his life is not a known good party for a relationship, he's an unknown, untested, possibly one that has some red flags that scare women away because increasingly as a man gets older from a woman's (mistaken) point of view it should have happened at organically if there was nothing "off" relationship wise with this guy.

Once a guy has just one relationship that wasn't completely disastrous done, only then have I seen women willing to endorse him.

Having platonic female friends is life on easy mode, women love few things more than matchmaking. Prove that you're not a creep, and they'll send people your way.

Not in my experience. I have had plenty of platonic female friends, but none of them ever tried to set me up with someone. Nor (as far as I'm aware) did they do so for any other dudes they were friends with. I can only speculate as to why, though (generational difference? nerdy women don't get into matchmaking the way normie women do? who knows).

You meet people in real life by making friends, getting invited to parties, meeting more people, getting invited to more parties (by which I include everything from barbecues to housewarmings to weddings to Halloween to NYE, whatever) until you have a relatively busy social schedule because one of your dozens of friends and acquaintances is probably hosting something this weekend and you’re invited.

This is key and what a lot of dating discourse neglects. The problem is that many men who want a romantic partner often aren't particularly interested in making more platonic friends. Psychologically, it also feels a lot more indirect (compared to being told how to looksmax or how to cold approach), so can be difficult to generate enthusiasm for this approach.

I would also like to note that from the recent discourse about marriage in Mormons/religious groups, it was pointed out that the men are a lot more social and very regularly go to non-romantic social events where they get to know the women in their community (and the women get to know the men).

You also don't need to start a new hobby to meet people. For hobbies with any women and even a modest number of young people taking any initiative, even the bare minimum, is often enough to make a big difference in your social life.

For example, my local hiking meetup was always desperate for hike organizers. What is involved with organizing a hike? Sending a single email to the list saying "Hey I'm going to X trail at Y time I expect it be Z difficultly. I can take 3 people from W parking lot, if you are arranging your own transport we leave promptly at Y from the trail head." By spending 30 seconds composing an email you get to:

  • Choose a trail you actually enjoy
  • Any single women that do show up will be primed to talk to you, you did "organize" things after-all
  • Meet other men and couples who will expand your social circle. There might not be a bunch of single women who show up, but if you do not give off mega weird vibes you'll probably get at least a couple of social invites per event.

You don't need to directly pull numbers at your hobby to have it expand your social circle.

Do you have a manual on how to do this.

Arrange an event and invite the people you want to get to know better.

The main ingredients are an easily understood distracting activity or two that promotes interaction (cooking/eating, watching sport on a screen, simple table games, whatever suits you and your group), somewhere to rest and an informal atmosphere.

If you don't want to arrange something yourself look for similar low stakes events around your area and ask if they're thinking about going, then if they're open to the idea suggest meeting there.

Set up a standing social event - church used to fill this role for many. You can still do that, but adding another regular event helps. It’s a low-effort way to invite people without the mental load of planning. For me, planning one-off events often fell through, so I stick to, “I’m at trivia at this spot every Thursday; first beer is on me.” People say young adults aren’t going out, but I see plenty of attractive mid-20-somethings at the trivia nights I hit up. Really want to amp it up, I have beautiful big dog (thanks to my wife) that is a magnet for women.

Get roommates and run the house so you can choose who lives with you. Bonus: you cover your rent. Double bonus if you can house-hack.

Learn to cook and make cocktails. Create facebook events for house parties. Eventually someone will bring couple of girls they are hitting on. Befriend them. They have friends, they can invite other girls and they will vouch for you that you are cool guy and not a creep.

The average age of people on Facebook is like..55.

Fuck.

Take her contacts.

What?

She's not going to want to look at you with 20/20 vision.

He likely means get her contact information.

He means get her contact information, not steal her contact lenses. What PUAs call a number close (distinct from the k-close, which involves kissing, and the f-close, which involves fucking).

Good news (ish). While it's possible for such Chads can make a good crack at saturating the demand for casual sex, they're far more constrained when it comes to fulfilling the very real demand for steady relationships. Maybe they can juggle 4-6 women at once by operating in a gray zone or being noncommital, but it only goes so far.

Yeah, the actual “average” guys I know are doing just fine when it comes to finding a steady long term relationship, even if they might have issues with casual sex. It’s the high IQ, terminally online, borderline autistic guys that tend to struggle with both, and they often tend to get stuck in cognitive black holes.

I agree wholeheartedly, albeit in 2 entirely different countries.

Casual sex is a luxury. And that's been true for the entirety of human history. Short of prostitution, courting a partner/paying the bride price was the only way to get your willie wet for the overwhelming majority of men.

The fact that norms have changed, and a small fraction of men are able to avail of it.. Well, that naturally emboldens everyone else. Yet, a longer relationship (that includes sex) is both easier to achieve for the average man, and often more fulfilling. But everyone dreams of driving a Lambo on a Lada budget, and here 'tis the same.

Casual sex is a luxury. And that's been true for the entirety of human history. Short of prostitution, courting a partner/paying the bride price was the only way to get your willie wet for the overwhelming majority of men.

I'd have assumed most men throughout history have had access to prostitutes.

Short of prostitution

The idea that the majority of women of good character and upbringing could have premarital sex with men with the public being aware without devastating repercussions on her future is less than a century old.

Notably, most self-proclaimed incels react quite negatively to the idea that they could get around their anguish by paying someone for a quick fuck. They have a point, since a steady relationship is very different from being a john. Casual sex without money explicitly changing hands is one of the greatest/sincerest forms of validation a man can have, it means that they're so intrinsically desirable that there's no need for any of that.

Nope.

High IQ, terminally online, borderline autistic guys were probably just the first to notice.

Even this assumes a certain amount of stupidity or desperation among all of the women involved. If you want to keep up the pretense of dating someone, you have to at least make an attempt at seeing them a minimum of once a week, and unless you're in a committed relationship, you have to actually date them; that means that inviting them over to your house so they can hang out while you do whatever it is that you normally do on a Tuesday night doesn't count. Simultaneously stringing along 4–6 women thus means committing the bulk of your free time to dating, which seems horrible and expensive. It also means that there's some additional deception being pulled here—in addition to having to pretend you aren't dating four other women, you have to pretend that you have an active social life that keeps you from seeing them. So now if you do decide that one of these girls is the one, she's quickly going to find out that no, you don't ride bikes on Wednesday nights or go to the book club Thursday nights or bowl in a league on Friday nights or have dinner with your family on Sunday nights and even if she doesn't suspect that you were lying because there were other women, the image of yourself that you sold her on will be revealed as a sham, and you're likely to end up with zero women in the end.

The problem is tons of women are happy to believe they should be able to marry someone like the pool of guys they've slept with throughout their most attractive dating years.

The majority get the hint eventually. Some have too much pride to accept that they're going to have to settle, but most women I know eventually figure out that soulful men with sixpacks and a guitar aren't strictly necessary for a fulfilling partner.

Of course, (attractive) men do have it easier. A 40 year old man has far more prospects than a 40 year old woman, and can compensate for age and waning looks with things like money and prestige. Those hold far less value for women.

Here's a genuine question, because I do think men and women have different attitudes to sex, relationships, love, the whole package (e.g. the stereotypical excuse of the cheating husband when caught "it was only sex, I really love you, honey!")

Average guy on here, if you had fifty women throwing themselves at you, would you pick the top ten most attractive ones or would you sleep with all fifty?

I'm asking because I see a certain amount of resentment in comments (not necessarily on here) about women being too picky and they get loads of matches on dating apps and they only reply to the most desirable ones. Well, if you had a selection of possible sexual/romantic partners vying for your attention, would you reply to Number Fifty on the list as well as Number One, or would you just select out Numbers One Through Ten of the ones you personally find hottest and ignore the rest?

I'm not trying to gotcha anyone or point fingers, I'm honestly curious.

Average guy on here, if you had fifty women throwing themselves at you, would you pick the top ten most attractive ones or would you sleep with all fifty?

I'm asking because I see a certain amount of resentment in comments (not necessarily on here) about women being too picky and they get loads of matches on dating apps and they only reply to the most desirable ones. Well, if you had a selection of possible sexual/romantic partners vying for your attention, would you reply to Number Fifty on the list as well as Number One, or would you just select out Numbers One Through Ten of the ones you personally find hottest and ignore the rest?

I'm not trying to gotcha anyone or point fingers, I'm honestly curious.

This is the plot of basically every harem anime out there, or at least the plot of every harem anime made after the realistic social, legal, religious, and economic constrains that forced the protagonist to choose a single girl to wed gave way to the pure wish-fulfillment fantasy of polygamy. And the revealed preference of men is, overwhelmingly, to keep them all.

Operating under the assumption that all 50 are somehow equally interested in me for some inexplicable reason, I'd work on narrowing them down to find the one that's most compatible with me in terms of personality, outlook and life goals.

And then marry her.

This assumes that I'm actually aware of your theoretical scenario. Otherwise, I'd probably come to the conclusion that they're just being nice, and nothing would come from it.

Average guy on here, if you had fifty women throwing themselves at you, would you pick the top ten most attractive ones or would you sleep with all fifty?

This was basically my experience of the summer of 2010, I went from being invisible and unable to get a date, to having the attention of several girls in the space of about a month. Not fifty, but five or so was more than I could handle at 18. So I can tell you from direct knowledge: I would try to have it every way, be seized with indecision as a result of the abundance, fail to commit to any one choice, piss them all off a little bit when they figured it out, and like Baridan's ass starving in the midst of plenty eventually fumble the whole lot of them. I would behave with mild immorality, while using vague language and a personal sense that I'm a "nice guy" to assuage my guilt about clearly not giving any of the women what they actually want. I would date or make love to as many of them as practical, rising to my Level of Incompetence and eventually screwing up the whole thing.

Luckily I'd learn something useful for the next set of fifty.

if you had fifty women throwing themselves at you, would you pick the top ten most attractive ones or would you sleep with all fifty?

Top ten. Even if I'd want to sleep with all fifty women, to sleep with one each day would take almost two months, and also involves losing every evening to womanising. And that's assuming every single one would put out on the first date. Even libidinous 20-year-old Crowstep would find that tiring.

Answering as my younger self, i'd probably do some initial sort to eliminate ones with some particularly off-putting personality trait or very gross physical features that would mean the baseline amount of sexual attraction just wouldn't be there. Above the minimum physical attraction threshold, basically not at all concerned with trying to pick the "hottest" as then it's more important to find both a personality, philosophly/values, and commitment match.

I may be highly unrepresentative, but I would sleep with precisely zero of them before getting to know them and, at a minimum, not suspecting or knowing they weren't marriage material. Sleeping with someone I would not consider a potential serious long-term partner seems actively repellant, and I strongly dislike other men who have a significantly different outlook on relationships and women.

Ten? Hell, I'm trying to juggle five right now and that's only because of a combination of luck and poor judgment on my part. 50 is almost inconceivable. Even if it's clear to both parties from the start that this is only going to be a hookup with zero possibility of a second date, you're still looking at nearly two months of stringing number 50 along before you get to her, and that's assuming you're available every day with no other obligations. In my experience, if you're going to ask a girl out on the apps you'd better do it within the first week or so, depending on message frequency, or they're going to think you're just stringing them along and stop responding. You have a better chance of success if you try to cultivate 2 or 3 at once than if you try to spread the limited amount of time that you have too thin.

Yep.

Dating apps have made everyone so flighty that the OPTIMAL strategy is to try to have like 3-5 on the line at any given time, as most won't even lead to a date, so you run up the numbers as best you can.

But if you get a string of luck (if you're a dude) and actually GET 3 women to go on dates... suddenly your incentive changes to keep this bounty going and drag that out as long as possible.

I think women are dynamic enough that you keep pursuing as many women as you can reasonably allocate the time to do so.

The 10 most attractive in other words may be bad lays (way common than you'd think), annoying, etc. The probability that the best overall woman is in the "Bottom" 40 is high. It's your minor league farm team.

Answering from the perspective of my younger and more ignorant self…

I would start by dividing the women up into those above my “bar” of attractiveness and those below. Harsh, but that’s basically how it works. With that done, I’d attempt to engage with every woman above the bar. However, I’d very quickly realize this was much more difficult than I thought, because (youthful lechery aside) I do like women and don’t really enjoy making them feel bad by brushing them off etc. At that point, I’d start trimming numbers until I got a manageable amount, prioritizing attractiveness. But then, as the warm feeling of approval started wearing off, I’d start being more picky again, mostly on the basis of personality. (Any man who says personality has nothing to do with how attractive a woman is either has no experience with them or is totally disconnected from the women he fucks.) Specifically, pleasant, caring, and engaging women will make the cut, while mean, erratic, and dull ones will fall out. And eventually I will realize that more than one is nothing but trouble and just go for the best one.

The number isn’t 50, and it wasn’t like I had an absolute pick of the litter, but this is a somewhat accurate if abstract story of my dating life (minus all the women I tried dating solo before learning what real standards I had).

Average guy on here, if you had fifty women throwing themselves at you, would you pick the top ten most attractive ones or would you sleep with all fifty?

I can tell you what I hope and pray I'd do, but I don't know if asking a bunch of wallflowers a question about getting attention like this will yield a realistic answer.

You're talking to an Indian living in Europe, trying to dodge a marriage arranged by his auntie. If there's anyone here playing on hard mode, it's him... Well, on the other hand he is a doctor... Ok, so I don't know exactly what all that calculus comes down to, but if he's able to maintain some optimism, I think he's worth hearing out.

You're talking to an Indian living in Europe, trying to dodge a marriage arranged by his auntie.

That was a year back, and fortunately said aunt managed to get the hint eventually.

I am still unclear on the difficulty setting on the British server, so to speak. I spent the past year in a steady but unexciting relationship with a girl over in Scotland, which ended amicably. So I wasn't really on the dating market, and had maybe 2 MILFs and 2 young and cute co-workers hit on me or evince interest. My lifestyle has been work and wasting away at home, with the majority of the incidents mentioned happening when I'd ventured out to the nearest pub. In previous discussions, I had accepted that being an Indian guy makes dating in the West an uphill struggle, so that's far from the worst.

In India? No issues really. I just had my best friend's girlfriend try to hitch me up with her cousin. Too many issues for me to go that way, but I'm confident that I could end up married in a few months or at most a year if I wanted to be. I've just given myself a few more years of potential runway because I think finding the love of my life is worth the effort.

The Reincarnation of Julius Caesar or: Why So Many People Give Trump a Pass for Corruption

This is partly in response to the post by TheAntipopulist below, but at the same time I'm about to go off on a tangent about Julius Caesar so I thought I'd make this top level.

Donald Trump is, undeniably, the most openly corrupt President in modern US history. What I mean is, no other President has been so corrupt and yet done so little to hide it. He isn't even pretending not to be crooked.

So why do so many people not seem to care?

Let's go back in time 2,000 years and talk about the assassination of Julius Caesar.

To set the stage: Caesar was a charismatic politician in ancient Rome who rose to be the leader of the Populaire faction. As a Populaire he favored redistribution from the rich to the poor, especially in the form of land reform. He also practiced what he preached, giving lavishly to the people of Rome. Notably, he left a huge amount of money to the people in his will, a cash sum to every citizen that was large enough to make a difference in the lives of the poor. And this clause in his will was a secret - people only found out about it after he was assassinated! That means it wasn't just performative or ambitious, he really meant it.

He was also one of the most shameless criminals in Roman history.

As his opponents never ceased to point out, Caesar's conquest of Gaul was built on a series of wars that he illegally started without consulting the Senate. He bragged about how he could get away with anything by bribing judges and politicians. When two of his opponents won both of the two Consular seats (essentially co-Presidents), Caesar bought one of them off with a king-sized bribe and used him to block the other's legislative agenda with his veto power.

I want you to imagine the scope of this with an analogy: A younger Donald Trump gets himself elected to Congress and marches an army into Mexico on a flimsy pretext (invasion of illegal immigrants!). He starts a blatantly illegal war using a combination of US troops and local Mexican auxiliaries, and becomes a trillionaire by enslaving millions of Mexicans and plundering their treasure. Then an unfriendly Democratic government under Bill Clinton tries to attack him by passing a bill condemning his actions. In response, Trump pays President Clinton off with a bribe of 100 billion dollars and Clinton uses his veto to block the bill that he himself just proposed, and, in fact, campaigned on.

That is how corrupt Julius Caesar was.

The thing is, everyone else was also corrupt. Corruption was a load-bearing element of Roman politics. In order to win office, a politician needed to pay out bribes, throw games, build temples, and so on. This usually involved borrowing money or owing favors. It was inevitable that when that politician came to power and those debts came due he would need to leverage his office to repay what he owed. In other words, everyone was corrupt. Literally everyone.

Enter the Optimates, Rome's other major political faction.

The Optimates were against corruption in theory, but in practice they were also all corrupt. What they really wanted was quieter, less disruptive corruption. To keep it at a manageable level. To them, the way Caesar went around flaunting his crimes was the real problem. It was one thing to pay off a few Senators, but buying a Consul was going too far.

The thing is, the Optimates also reflexively opposed all attempts at actual reform. Caesar was the one who passed sweeping anti-corruption legislation that put limits on how much politicians could squeeze out of their offices, and even his opponents couldn't deny that these reforms were necessary.

It was not really a dispute about whether corruption was acceptable or unacceptable. I would argue that the Optimates' desire to sweep it all under the rug was actually a step in the wrong direction. Caesar talked about corruption openly, and having a problem out in the open is the first step to solving it.

Later on, Caesar was serving as proconsular governor of three provinces. This office made him immune from criminal prosecution, so even when his opponents were able to take power he was safe. But the Optimates knew that Caesar would run for Consul again as soon as the mandatory ten-year gap between Consulships expired. They wanted to stop him from passing more reforms or wealth redistribution schemes, and they knew that there was no possible chance that Caesar wouldn't win his election in a landslide, so they decided to find a way to get rid of him.

They found a dubious legal ambiguity that they argued would allow them to take away Caesar's immunity and bring him back to Rome to face trial. After a lengthy debate, the pro-Optimate Senate suspended the law and the Constitution and declared their version of martial law (the Senatus Consultum Ultimum) to force Caesar to step down. Caesar surprised them by marching on Rome with his army, and the rest is history. After a civil war, which Caesar won, and an election, which he also won, his enemies stabbed him to death on the floor of the Senate house.

But when they paraded through the streets declaring that a tyrant had been killed and Rome was free, they were not greeted by the cheers they were expecting. Wasn't Caesar ambitious? Wasn't he corrupt? Wasn't he plotting to make himself a king? Why didn't the people of Rome hate him like the Optimates did? Why weren't they happy the tyrant was dead?

Because the people of Rome were not happy with the status quo. They didn't care about the Republic, because that was just a system for deciding which wealthy aristocrats would get to oppress them. They didn't care about the law, because that was just a system for deciding how the wealthy aristocrats would get to oppress them. They only cared that Caesar had given them games, feasts, and victory over the Gauls, and now he was dead.

Even the Optimates didn't try to deny that Caesar's reforms were necessary. They damned his memory but did not repeal his anti-corruption legislation.

Caesar's assassins did not get to enjoy their victory for long. When Caesar's will was read in public and the people of Rome found out that every adult male citizen had been left a part of Caesar's vast fortune, it started a riot. Caesar's assassins, who had attended the funeral in a show of peace and unity, had to flee the city in fear for their lives.

In the end, the people of Rome would riot to demand that Caesar's adopted son, Caesar Augustus, be installed as king. That's how little they cared about the Republic.

Augustus himself put the rebellion down. He didn't want or need to be king. He had already rigged the vestigial Republic so that he could rule in everything but name. The Roman Empire would go on pretending it was still a Republic for several centuries.

What to take from this? I don't think you can just measure two sides against each other and say, "This side is more shameless and blatant in their corruption, so they should be criticized more harshly." On one hand you could say that defying anti-corruption norms will erode them and make our society more corrupt. But on the other hand, bringing it out into the open might be necessary to kill it.

Now that Donald Trump is openly messing with US tax policy for personal gain with his combination of tariffs and insider trading, maybe that will be the catalyst to finally pass laws against using secret government intelligence to make money trading stocks. Maybe if it stayed at the level of Nancy Pelosi doing it under the table it would have gone on forever, but now that it's so blatant and so offensive it can be eliminated in one chaotic decade.

My intuition is that public crimes are actually less bad than secret ones. I would rather have it all out in the open.

Maybe if it stayed at the level of Nancy Pelosi doing it under the table it would have gone on forever

According to this site, trade like Nancy, make 715% returns over ten years!

I would argue that basis of the political system of Rome, the patron-client relationship, was already as corrupt as any mafia by our understanding. Basically, if a rich patron family sponsored a political campaign for the scion of a client family, the expectation certainly was that the scion would use his office to further the interests of his patron. Perhaps not always in the most blatant way possible, but a magistrate who one day decided to make decisions on their merits for the Roman people only would certainly be seen as a disgrace to his family.

This was forever the issue with land reforms: whoever gave land to the masses would by Roman convention become their patron, and thus gain enormous political power.

Now, there is obviously a difference between having a long-standing client family and just buying a consul with cash, but it is a difference in degree, not in kind. A platform to stomp out corruption (as we understand it) in Rome would go as well as a platform to abolish the navy in the British Empire.

American politics are generally much less corrupt than Roman ones were. Sure, companies will sponsor campaigns, but any voter who cares can find out what the sponsors of a politician are. My gut feeling is that 87% of the political decisions (weighted by impact) are made on either ideology or merit, perhaps 10% of the decisions are made to please campaign donors and perhaps 3% of the decisions are made to personally enrich the decision maker.

Trump II is different from this. Sure, all the anti-immigration stuff is purely ideological, and if you count the personal ego of Trump as part of the ideology, a lot more of his squabbles are also non-corrupt. But all this tariff back-and-forth seems like it was mostly for the purpose of ripping of the stock market, and the airliner thing was on a "we do not even bother to pretend otherwise any more" level.

Sure, companies will sponsor campaigns, but any voter who cares can find out what the sponsors of a politician are.

Where patronage relationships not known in Rome? At least you could attack your opponents on it.

My gut feeling is that 87% of the political decisions (weighted by impact) are made on either ideology or merit, perhaps 10% of the decisions are made to please campaign donors and perhaps 3% of the decisions are made to personally enrich the decision maker.

How would Rome compare? You dont conquer the mediterranean without making some good decisions.

American politics are generally much less corrupt than Roman ones were. Sure, companies will sponsor campaigns, but any voter who cares can find out what the sponsors of a politician are. My gut feeling is that 87% of the political decisions (weighted by impact) are made on either ideology or merit, perhaps 10% of the decisions are made to please campaign donors and perhaps 3% of the decisions are made to personally enrich the decision maker.

You could say the same about crucial issues in Rome at that time such as let's say land reform or distribution of wealth from kingdom of Pontus. On surface level it was a discussion of ideological conflict between optimates and populares, but in the end the conflict was about which faction will distribute wealth and maintain power.

For instance during latest elections 92% of votes of people in DC landed in favor of Democrats - these are all people staffing all the most powerful federal institutions. You can go one-by-one with other institutions depending on public money be it public schools, academia etc. It is by now basically captured by one of the parties. You may downplay it such as merit or ideology, but the fact is that people governed by bureoucracy have different views from those who rule them. This also means that members of one political party extract resources from general population and distribute them toward their own client network of sympathizers.

In a sense the system is already corrupted. When they saw Caesar giving them personal promise of benefits they saw it as more tangible and in a sense even less corrupt compared to some vague promise of of reward by the republic controlled by people they viewed as actually corrupt.

For instance during latest elections 92% of votes of people in DC landed in favor of Democrats - these are all people staffing all the most powerful federal institutions.

The gentrified bits of DC where the young childless feds live is about 70% Dem. The reason DC is 92% Dem is not the feds (most of whom commute in from the suburbs), it is the black vote turned out by the Marion Barry political machine.

Very interesting post. I'm not entirely convinced, but let me turn it practical: where was the safest place to live when Rome turned from a Republic into an Empire, and where is the best place to live now? I've been worried that the Pax Americana is coming to an end, our Republic's core can no longer maintain its security, and that the international shipping lanes are seeing a lot more instability than before. But if Trump is to be our Caesar, then we will lose our Republic well before the point when our Pax Americana breaks down.

My focus right now is in settling and raising a large family, so where to settle in Roman times? I think "in Rome" proper is out: the city saw numerous riots and insurrections during the political chaos at the end of the Republic, and one does not want one's family caught in the chaos. However, the benefits of being a citizen of Rome were vast, with increased legal rights, commercial rights, and freedom of movement, so one probably wanted to raise one's children within the Empire (Saint Paul as a citizen of Rome was able to walk all around Modern Turkey unaccosted.) One also wants the benefits of industrial civilization (toilets!), so life outside the Empire is also not recommended.

What about the provinces? It depends a lot on the province. Some of them were subject to regular warfare and raids. The marker of these was that they were highly militarized and the risk of invasion was known. The provinces in the "middle ring" of the Empire were probably the safest place to be.

The other major dangers of industrial civilization are subfertility and industrial contaminants. The cities of Rome had poorer sanitation (more plague), high poverty, and greater rates of lead poisioning. Fertility among the elites was also much reduced in Rome due to later age at marriage and smaller family size. The provincial fertility rates were so much higher that the elite became more provincial toward the time of the Late Empire.

So, what would this mean in the modern day? Avoid the core cities due to low safety and low fertility: New York, London, DC, SF. Avoid the threatened periphery due to risk of invasion: Taiwain, Poland, Korea, and states with lots of military infrastructure like Nevada and the Great Plains states (Map of Nulear complexes 1 Maps of silos and predicted fallout patterns). It looks like the winning strategy is to settle the prosperous provinces: the eastern Midwest, Southern canada, Southern France, or Scandinavia.

I think you’re right about Pax Americana having ended. For most people it ended decades ago. It’s just now reaching the professional classes. But if you drive through the rural parts of the South, it’s already happened, probably 2 generations ago, and these places look like the ruins of a civilization rather than a thriving one. Rusty, dirty, shabby, abandoned buildings everywhere. The people themselves live in poverty for the most part. Urban cores have been war zones for decades and everybody knows it.

I see Trump as a manifestation of the problems of American Empire, rather than the cause. We are not the same steady, stalwart and practical people who built Pax Americana, we don’t have the ability or the willpower to keep it. All that’s left is to tear it up and hopefully squeeze out the few good years we have left.

But if you drive through the rural parts of the South, it’s already happened, probably 2 generations ago, and these places look like the ruins of a civilization rather than a thriving one. Rusty, dirty, shabby, abandoned buildings everywhere. The people themselves live in poverty for the most part.

The rural South has always looked like that. The economic and social structure of the South has not historically been conducive to prosperity. Arguably, many parts of the South are doing better than ever, thanks to weak labor laws, cheap labor, and permissive planning/environmental laws making it an appealing place to build factories (and houses).

The (rural) South has, if anything, done better than most of the rest of the country over the last few decades. The entire Sunbelt has no shortage of brand new construction suburbs and schools and infrastructure (even some factories!) while the Rust Belt, when I've visited, has, at best, maintained the infrastructure from most of a century ago. Pick a suburb in Ohio and compare it to one in Florida or Texas.

Air conditioning has really changed things.

Very interesting post. I'm not entirely convinced, but let me turn it practical: where was the safest place to live when Rome turned from a Republic into an Empire, and where is the best place to live now?

A backwater seaside province. Northern California/Southern Oregon or Maine. Ma-aybe Florida Panhandle/Mobile/Biloxi.

I will live in Montana. And I will marry a round American woman and raise rabbits, and she will cook them for me...

It was not really a dispute about whether corruption was acceptable or unacceptable. I would argue that the Optimates' desire to sweep it all under the rug was actually a step in the wrong direction. Caesar talked about corruption openly, and having a problem out in the open is the first step to solving it.

Because it wasn't about corruption as such. They just didn't want Caesar (or, early on in his career, his allies Pompey and Crassus) to win

You can't really map it unto America by making it all about corruption in the shady business deal sense. You can't really explain anyone's behavior here (though arguably some Optimates seem crazy or reckless either way) without the civil war that preceded Caesar and what it did to the Roman psyche.

America isn't really there.

Now that Donald Trump is openly messing with US tax policy for personal gain with his combination of tariffs and insider trading, maybe that will be the catalyst to finally pass laws against using secret government intelligence to make money trading stocks.

I mean, if we're going to compare to the Roman Republic, it should be noted that many attempts were made to pass laws to fix the problems caused by corrupt people. Including, sometimes, by those very people!

It didn't work, and the after-effects of their corruption and norm-breaking outweighed their good intentions.

The Republic, once it became so "corrupt" that it lost the ability to promise its citizens safety in the pursuit of politics, could no more legislate that back into existence than it could control the weather or enforce a positive economic sentiment.

You can't always get it back. You can't always write something that outweighs your lack of virtue. Sometimes you just break things.

Because it wasn't about corruption as such. They just didn't want Caesar (or, early on in his career, his allies Pompey and Crassus) to win

You'll forgive me if I find this to be more of a similarity between Caesar and the optimates/Trump and the establishment than a difference.

The other side remembered the proscriptions and chaos caused by people pushing their reforms and will too far. People lost friends and colleagues and people like Pompey and Crassus were prime beneficiaries.

They weren't scared of just losing a political battle. They were scared of getting liquidated this time around if they let anyone claim enough political clout by getting certain wins.

Very different from the initial backlash to Trump. The moment of realization that history hadn't ended and there wasn't going to be a coronation by the emerging democratic majority may have felt existential but hard to argue it's the same.

Virtues are dead so there is no point in up holding them. In Rome during Caesar's time the system was broken and people knew it. The same is true in modern day America.

When the system is broken and dysfunctional you need someone who doesn't care about the rules but instead can fix things. Trump and Caesar are both less focused on formalities and more focused and doing. The current system consists of people like the people in Versailles who were more concerned with trivialities at dinner parties than the national budget.

Trump's biggest issue is that he is far older than Caesar was when Caesar was in power and the US has far more institutional inertia than Rome had. Trump can't get nearly as much done even if he blatantly disregards the rules.

Virtue is predictability. Those with honor can be trusted to at least follow the terms of a deal and not try to screw you at the last minute. A man who promises wine at one drachma per amphora but who will fill it with cholera water is less worthy a partner than a man who sells at five drachmas per amphora but who fills it honestly.

That is the big problem with corruption: it is an open ended incentive to race to the bottom, and it ruins any faith that any activity with a time lag will be honored. Did the property owners intimidated by Crassus have any faith that Crassus would not come back later and spike up the rates? The main advantage is that Crassus would have stopped other arsonists from burning down their property if only to reserve that right for himself, which from our modern lenses is insane.

What we see in modern USA is a different form of corruption: the corruption of credit. The wheel of loans and equity and finance have made money in hand disconnected from money that is spent, and so it is those who game the system that benefit. Republican corruption may involve private benefit, but Democrat corruption involves robbing the public purse to pay off their friends and pets. I again point to the homeless advocacy industrial complex that exists only to drain coffer for the privilege of inconveniencing everyone including the homeless even further. Its not like the grifter even profits that much; Dominique Davis of Community Passageways per propublika bilked 10m from 'community contribution' which are largely state funds put into 'dollar matched' foundations and the wages only hoovered up 50% of the funds, with the remaining 50% just disappearing.

For all the crimes of Caeser and Crassus and Trump and the republicans, I can at least squint and see they did SOMETHING with their corruption and their grift. For the corruption which includes democrat and socialist and every possible shithole tinpot dictator you'd be lucky to even see the mansions that are built off stolen lucre. Spending money to waste money even more quickly seems to be the order of the day for others, and if you're a US citizen asking what the hell the democrat states do with their current tax bases should make promises of taxing the rich being the panacea suspect.

Virtues are dead so there is no point in up holding them.

I disagree with this. It's good to be personally virtuous.

If (for the sake of argument) "the system" truly is broken and it needs someone who can operate outside of the rules, bending or breaking them at times, even getting his hands dirty, then the necessity of that is worth considering. But the aspiration behind that should be returning to an era where virtue is rewarded, not creating an extraordinary state where the system being broken is acceptable.

NYT has a primer on all the corruption that Trump has been engaging in:

  • There's a film about Melania that will pay $28 million directly to her. Did you know about this? I certainly didn't. This could have been a major scandal in past administrations, but at this point it barely registers at all.
  • The Trump meme coin has collected $320 million in fees. Noah smith has written about the coin a while ago, and since then Trump has invited coinholders to private events as a reward.
  • Justin Sun was accused of fraud by the SEC, but Trump put the investigation on hold after Sun bought $40 million in Trump coin
  • The luxury jumbo jet from Qatar that has been heavily featured in the news. In what I'm sure was a total coincidence, Trump announced a big AI deal with Qatar, KSA, and UAE that's almost certainly a big net-negative for the USA according to Zvi.
  • Trump's family are raking in cash head-over-heels by monetizing perceived access to the president, with Kushner, Trump Jr., and Eric Trump each individually dwarfing the amount that Hunter Biden ever received from doing similar activities, but basically nobody cares about that at this point.
  • Previous presidents have divested their business holdings prior to coming into office to head off allegations of corruption, and of course Trump never did, and basically nobody cares about that at this point.

Beyond this article, you could probably add a bunch more, like how White House aides are buying and selling stocks suspiciously timed around tariff announcements to make big profits.

The response to all of this from MAGA has been next to nonexistent. A handful of people have implied that maaaaaaaybe Trump shouldn't be doing this, but none of them remotely push the issue. When the left try to criticize this, most of MAGA either retorts with the broken record of Shellenberger arguments, or otherwise claims something Biden did was somehow worse, and Trump's corruption is implied to be good, actually. Isn't it wonderful living in an era when negative partisanship is the only political force that matters? Scandals and corruption used to be a thing that allowed the other party to come in and try to do better, but now they're used as a justification for the other side becoming even worse.

I do feel slightly bad about giving zero fucks about the things Trump and his clan are doing compared to what the Dems have done recently. Almost I feel like it’s a ‘ well the doors open now ‘ so motorboat away whole heartedly.

I guess I never much cared about Hunter Biden getting paid as much as I cared that people were lying about it and calling me a ring winger or even Nazi or stupid for ‘ believing ‘ that anything shady was going on.

Now that I write that out, that’s definitely the issue. I see what corruption is, and so does everyone else, for the most part. Being gaslit is what makes me start giving a care.

That’s actually a shockingly small list from the NYT so maybe Trump isn’t pulling a Ceaser.

Mr. Trump, the first convicted felon elected president, has erased ethical boundaries and dismantled the instruments of accountability that constrained his predecessors.

Quoted to make clear the journalist behind this article interprets all of Trump's actions in maximally bad faith.

Jeff Bezos agreed to finance a promotional film about Melania Trump that will reportedly put $28 million directly in her pocket

A documentary made by and about Melania was acquired by Amazon for $40MM, her cut is $28MM. Higher by percent than typical EP share in cinema, but in cinema they profit from tickets.

A business entity tied to the Trumps sits on a large stash of the $TRUMP cryptocurrency and collects fees every time the coins change hands. So far, the coin has generated at least $320 million in fees, which the Trumps share with their business partners, according to Chainalysis, a crypto analytics firm.

Extrapolation from trading volume and an assumed fee. Appears correct. As for Smith:

And the crypto people are right that TRUMP and MELANIA just make the whole space look bad

Crypto has required no assistance from Trump to look bad. Smith's scenario is plausible but an extreme reach, at the value and volume it would take tens of millions to move it 10%, and it would have to keep that value until Trump's sons could sell enough to profit the intended amount of the bribe.

I do find it interesting, because I feel a quiet dissonance about Trump having a memecoin beyond the obvious issues. It's something about the aesthetic of it all, cryptocurrency has one kind of griminess to it, while politicians have a different kind of griminess, and to me, these clash. This even despite TRUMP having its namesake as a man who controls aircraft carriers, and thus it carrying more objective value than all other cryptocurrencies combined. Cue obvious issues, in no circumstances should a President profit from alternate fiat currency, and his family shouldn't either, whatever those "ties" are exactly. But if a businessman capitalizing on crypto is the only criticism of merit in this piece, it's nothing, and ultimately, those who lose on crypto get what they deserve.

The Securities and Exchange Commission in 2023 accused Mr. Sun of fraud, but after Mr. Trump took over the agency put its lawsuit on hold even as it dropped other crypto investigations.

The SEC under Biden opened an investigation into Sun a year ago after he invested in the Trump-tied WLF. Not difficult to see what happened here.

The luxury jumbo jet from Qatar that has been heavily featured in the news. In what I'm sure was a total coincidence, Trump announced a big AI deal with Qatar, KSA, and UAE that's almost certainly a big net-negative for the USA according to Zvi.

Hollow. They criticize because it went to Trump.

Zvi gets lost in the weeds on deeper AI questions when it's a matter of geopolitics. The oiled Arabs are beyond desperate for diversification, if they attain economic salvation it will be through AI. Terrifically easy and critical win for US diplomacy.

Congressional Republicans spent years investigating Hunter Biden, the son of President Joseph R. Biden Jr., for trading on his family name to make millions of dollars, even labeling the clan the “Biden Crime Family.” But while Hunter Biden’s cash flow was a tiny fraction of that of Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump and Jared Kushner, Republicans have shown no appetite for looking into the current presidential family’s finances.

Hunter Biden is a fuckup, Trump's kids aren't. Had Trump never entered politics, his eldest sons' dealings would be unsurprising . . . but this isn't a defense, because he did enter politics, and his sons run his organization and are part of his political brand. It caps your list but reading about it makes me feel like you've made an afterthought of the point deserving this entire discussion.

Zach Witkoff, a founder of the Trump family crypto firm World Liberty Financial, and son of Steve Witkoff, the president’s special envoy, announced a $2 billion deal in the United Arab Emirates, just a couple of weeks before his father and Mr. Trump traveled there for a presidential visit.

(And the article)

Sitting in front of a packed auditorium in Dubai, a founder of the Trump family cryptocurrency business made a brief but monumental announcement on Thursday. A fund backed by Abu Dhabi, he said, would be making a $2 billion business deal using the Trump firm’s digital coins.

That transaction would be a major contribution by a foreign government to President Trump’s private venture — one that stands to generate hundreds of millions of dollars for the Trump family. And it is a public and vivid illustration of the ethical conflicts swirling around Mr. Trump’s crypto firm, which has blurred the boundary between business and government.

Corruption in politics is those three principled civil libertarians who care equally about all corruption and those seven zillion witches taking turns trying to cudgel each other with hypocrite. We know this, no more state of the discourse.

There are clear lines here, and it doesn't matter if it's entirely above board. If a hypothetical business in one of those countries invested two billion in a hypothetical non-political Trump org then he would visit as quickly as possible. For it to happen with the President gives the appearance of impropriety, and for the President, appearing improper is being improper.

Except impropriety isn't a crime, and I'm not sure what crime is supposed as having been committed. Now I did just say appearance alone is a problem, and if say the Soros org gave Trump a large amount of money, even if they loudly proclaimed their opposition and continued to operate antithetically to one another, everybody would be suspicious. Even still, impropriety is not a crime. What's the result? Like we might say it's improper, it is spiritually criminal, for politicians to engage in insider trading, but it's not a crime, and how many traders now profit from the Pelosi Index? It's also only spiritually criminal to lobby for and support politicians who campaign on making a kind of business illegal or regulated into insolvency while shorting those businesses and also investing in alternatives to those businesses. The Green Industry thanks them. Corruption is the game and the rules against are now only used as weapons. I will not hear appeals to convention, against Trump, the left struck first.

A person or organization can bribe a politician. The sheriff is bribed to ignore crime, the judge the same, the city manager bribed to softball a contract. I'm not so sure a country can bribe a politician. Foreigners can, but I just covered this. People who happened to be Ukrainian were bribing the Bidens so their own wealth increased. The governing body of a country? Somewhere on that path it must veer into geopolitics and diplomacy. If an entire country makes it personally worthwhile for the President to pursue better relations, what's the crime? Their accepting of gifts? To what end? Favoring them in policy? If it harmed US companies that would be a crime. If it harmed companies in other countries? I think they should have made a better offer. The President is America, and no length of litany of "incompetence" applies to the man who gains that office. Even if in his later years he sharply deteriorates and someone else holds the pen, he still first made himself electable. I say this because these are men with a special quality of judgment, and an emissary delivering a horde of gold unto the king might make him very interested in that country indeed.

The Bidens saw only money. Hunter Biden was on the board of Burisma and the US relationship with Ukraine has brought hell to that country. The real crime of the Bidens' corruption isn't the impropriety of taking money from foreigners. There is a crime, but the rote ho-hum sort, of taxpayer dollars being pilfered out of Ukraine and then funneled into private coffers. Taxpayer dollars are already pilfered into private coffers, so this isn't unusual, just elaborate. Their real crime matches whatever degree of their involvement in the greater machinations behind all those young men dead in holes from kamikaze drones.

What of the Trumps' impropriety? And while one final time it is impropriety by our standards, I'm just not sure it's corrupt. These aren't sinecures for Junior and Eric, these aren't private businessmen buying access in interest of their own wallets. These are governments, who may well have bought access to the President, but who are acting in the interest of their peoples. So it might have also been for Ukraine, sometime, someplace. In theory. But those involved aren't state department spooks running a color revolution. It's Trump walking on stage and talking about his hopes for the region and asserting et refrain their right of self-determination. We're investing, American businesses are investing, Trump's organization is investing in these countries. If economic flourish results, if Trump Tower & Resort Jeddah becomes a beloved destination, where's the grift? If his efforts at enduring peace and prosperity in The Middle East succeed, what will history care if his motivation was personal wealth?

I'm often blinded by my optimism, but I know I see better than Peter Baker here, who is blinded by hate. Or I should hope he is, because I can respect that. If that article came out of pure cynicism, I know as fact I'm right.

A bold response, Jake, "Trump is corrupt but actually that's a good thing."

What if it is?

Hunter Biden is a fuckup, Trump's kids aren't.

Of course they’re fuckups, even Don himself doesn’t like them, which is why the actual business decisions in his family business - which he built to pass down to his own sons - are made by others. Trump spends more time with Elon and possibly even with Kushner that with his own older sons. Maybe he likes Barron. Certainly Ivanka is the child he considers not only his favorite but also the smartest.

Trump spends more time with Elon

He had a debt to pay off to Elon, I doubt that Trump will be in any hurry to work with Musk again. If nothing else, two people with such massive egos don't tend work well with each other.

Donald Jr was reportedly the biggest booster of JD Vance.

Zvi's claim:

China is competing in spite of this severe disadvantage. It is vital that we hold their feet to the fire on this. China has an acute chip shortage, because it physically cannot make more AI chips, so any chips it would ship to a place like UAE or KSA would each be one less chip available in China.

I don't think this is true, at all.

There's a gigantic amount of smuggling going on. A third of Nvidia GPU sales were in Singapore.

They're smuggling because they have a chip shortage, and the smuggling isn't meeting all their needs.

They're smuggling because they have a chip shortage, and the smuggling isn't meeting all their needs.

Then why was there low utilization of clusters before Deepseek got popular?

"highly advanced AI chips"

Ooooh so scary. It's true that Nvidia is ahead right now and nobody who can get their hands on Nvidia will even consider anything else. But the fact is that AI accelerator chips aren't that hard to make, especially for a state level actor. As long as mainland firms have access to TSMC fabs for their blackbox designs, China won't be lacking in compute.

Also to say that UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar, countries that can print money for decades with oil, are going to turn around and steal these AI chips for a quick buck is borderline absurd. Especially since UAE has already shown that they're willing to blow tons of money on half assed AI research in the name of getting some prestige for their universities and whatever.

As long as mainland firms have access to TSMC fabs for their blackbox designs, China won't be lacking in compute.

Can you source this claim? It goes against a substantial amount of writing and commentary I've heard about this subject. China is significantly lacking in computer as evidenced by their attempts to get their hands on even the nerfed versions of chips and all the mainland labs use nvdia chips.

Didn't we have some china bulls in here just a few weeks ago talking about how good Huawei AI chips are? I personally don't buy it but we also have AMD and intel maybe a generation or so behind Nvidia, but nobody wants to use them because it's just more work and could run into unexpected hiccups.

Currently China is gobbling up nerfed chips because qualitatively they're not that different from the latest and greatest. They'll be more power hungry and less cost efficient, but they are still capable of training a gpt-5 level model if needed.

Didn't we have some china bulls in here just a few weeks ago talking about how good Huawei AI chips are? I personally don't buy it but we also have AMD and intel maybe a generation or so behind Nvidia, but nobody wants to use them because it's just more work and could run into unexpected hiccups.

Huawei chips are significantly worse than nvdia chips at a higher cost and lower yield. They're stuck on 7nms that actually compare to how tsmc's 3nm chips are made and some cope 5nms that use a layering technique that isn't worth the yield hit to use. America definitely has a big compute edge on china.

If you're at all serious about AI being a big deal in the next decade then maintaining this edge over our main geopolitical rival is actually really really important.

Currently China is gobbling up nerfed chips because qualitatively they're not that different from the latest and greatest. They'll be more power hungry and less cost efficient, but they are still capable of training a gpt-5 level model if needed.

Takingthe advantage to taking months VS years to train a model at this kind of cutting edge iterative process is difficult to over state.

If we get down the physics of it all the difference is that the latest gen nvidia chips can do more matrix calculations for a given amount of power.

Yet China is already at 3X the USA’s power generating capacity and grows by about a whole USA’s worth of capacity every 18 months.

And Chinese industrial policy is more nimble. If they decide to prioritize data centers they can just do that. In the USA private industry is squabbling over limited generating capacity and starting to plan for on site generation.

If we get down to the physics level China literally cannot produce enough chips for this calculation to matter and matrix multiplication benefits immensely from not having to have separate chips talk to each other. It just is not the case that china is producing enough chips even if they had infinite power.

How did they do Deepseek so quickly, if they're at such a disadvantage?

Deepseek wasn't really a compute constrained thing and they did use ndvia chips. They basically did 2 things with deepseek.

  1. Trained a model using the nerfed nvdia chips but with some hacks that got around most of the nerfing. Nvdia basically half passed nerfing them to comply with chip export controls. This doesn't mean export controls aren't good, it means we need to actually enforce them in spirit.
  2. They were the first to release chain of thought scaffolding which isn't compute constrained but also almost certainly something western labs had in house but hadn't bothered to productive yet as evidenced by the release only a few months later.

They didn't use Chinese chips so I'm not really sure how it could say anything about Chinese chips.

It's interesting that so many of the replies here seem to be "yes, but the other side is worse" or "yes, we need to take the bad with the good" or even "yes Chad".

I'm a Trump fan but I abhor corruption and wouldn't want to turn a blind eye to it. That said...only two of your examples (if true) would count as corruption?

  • Melania doing a film. Actresses do typically get paid (directly!) for being in movies.
  • Trump meme coin is cringe and low class but not corruption.
  • I would need to look more into the Sun story as I hadn't heard of it. But it seems like there would be less obvious ways of paying off Trump than buying Trump coin? And why would Trump care about 40 million?
  • The jumbo jet is a gift to the USA, not to Trump. It is a token of goodwill and a sign of respect. Trump is famously more open to deals after being shown respect, so it is possible that it helped grease the wheels but it is not corruption. It is interesting you cite Zvi. I read Zvi religiously, and he has been extremely critical of Trump's policies. Zvi was comparatively subdued in his criticism of the Middle Eastern AI deals, being merely skeptical. I updated in favor of the UAE/KSA/Qatar deal after reading his overview.
  • Is Kushner even still in the inner circle? I thought he and Trump were on the outs. Regardless, if true, this would certainly be corruption and while Trump is not directly involved, he would have to know it was happening. That said, it does seem an odd grift for children of a billionaire to play.
  • Previous presidents weren't billionaires; divestment wouldn't have had the same impact on their net worth. Retaining business holdings isn't inherently corruption, and could actually align incentives: if the American economy does well, so does Trump. Proof of Stake/Principal-Agent.

What makes a Melania Trump performance worth so much? How do you know the meme coin isn't a vehicle for corruption?

What makes a Melania Trump performance worth so much

You get to advertise your movie to the maga or less-maga-but-conservative half the country thereabouts on "we have the presidents hot trophy wife in our movie."

Trumps personal corruption is stupid and I honestly think he's just creating a void where bad actors and those confident in his insanity can profit. Timing stock purchases around tariff announcements is risky if you think Trump will back down at the last minute, as he has done before, so it just reflects a bet that Trump is actually pulling the trigger on something every suited economist is screaming will be stupid. The memecoin stuff is honestly just funny at this point and calling it access capitalism is dubious since access to Trump seems to be counterproductive - Musk is on the outs, and Susie Wiles is still by all accounts the main powerbroker.

Right now the bigger problem is that the irritating screeching makes it hard to filter genuine problems of Trump accruing personal gains through the power of the executive versus the normal machinery of government being somewhat incompetent. Everything Trump does is corruption destroying the republic, but yet it still stands, so at a certain point it is legit to ask what the hell this corruption actually is.

The mechanisms to hold Trump accountable are unfortunately degraded, and the question must be posed on whether such mechanisms ever would have worked as intended anyways. In such a degraded and polarized environment, we're going to end up in a vibeoff anyways. Wait, I just time travelled back from 2011, and its been a vibeoff since a decade ago. Elevatorgate raises its head again!

Trump's corruption is implied to be good, actually

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.

Isn't it wonderful living in an era when negative partisanship is the only political force that matters?

I don't think so, no, but... if it bothers you (does it bother you?), why engage in it?

Trump cannot seem to do anything at all without the corporate news media screaming that it is a sign of "scandals and corruption" and most of the time it turns out to be nothing. As a direct consequence, when it does look like something, I feel like the best response available to me is to wait and see. The news media has repeatedly turned out to be a bunch of shrill partisans who spread misinformation without hesitation and then run a retraction three months later at the bottom of page B17.

Particularly the New York Times--it's awfully hard to overlook their reluctance to write clearly about it when a (D) is involved. Book and film deals happen all the time, including with sitting members of SCOTUS. I still haven't seen any really convincing evidence, either way, that the Qatari plane deal is out of the ordinary (and apparently it may have been discussed with the previous administration). I'm more concerned about the cryptocurrency and influence peddling, but the only people crying wolf about it have been crying wolf for so long, that I don't feel any urgency at their alarm.

That, really, is why an era of "negative partisanship only" bothers me--because at this point, if we really did have a deeply corrupt politician in office, how would I know? I can't trust the corporate news media. I can't trust its openly partisan competitors. I can't trust the government itself, clearly. The moment journalists and FBI agents and every lawyer and judge to the left of Neil Gorsuch took it upon themselves--often, explicitly--to defeat Trump no matter what, every story, every press release, every speech and investigation and judicial declaration, became just another piece of culture war ammunition. Trump's first term was routinely prophesied to end with concentration camps for Muslims, war with North Korea, and the total economic collapse of the United States. Those prophesies were clearly idiotic at the time (at least to me), but at least they were happening in the absence of fixed priors on what a Trump presidency would tend to look like. People today lack that excuse.

I don't like Trump, I've never been a Trump supporter, I think he is perhaps the worst thing to happen to the Republican Party in living memory. But that doesn't justify the New York Times functioning as the propaganda arm of the Democratic Party. If you want to live in an era where negative partisanship isn't the only political force that matters, you're not going to get there by writing posts in the Motte consisting entirely of negative partisanship.

Just because the outgroup is spamming untrue attacks doesn't abrogate responsibility for one side. I'm reading through Original Sin right now, and the fact that Republicans constantly made incorrect attacks against Biden and Democrats more broadly was a big part of why the Dems ignored Biden's mental decline -- they could treat it as just another desperate attempt to smear Biden in the long gish gallop that was always going on. To them, the "Biden is senile" line could be treated as just another "Obama was born in Kenya" or "Joe is pocketing bribes from Hunter" line. If the Dems had a responsibility to actually report Biden's decline (and they absolutely did, IMO), then Republicans have a responsibility to clean up their side too, no matter what the other side is saying or how untrustworthy they are.

I'm not claiming one scandal was worse than the other (MAGA will always claim anything Biden and co. did was infinitely worse than what Trump is doing), I'm demonstrating the principle.

Hunter gave "10% to the big guy". Biden was pocketing the bribes. It is not all Republican fantasies.

Trump cannot seem to do anything at all without the corporate news media screaming that it is a sign of "scandals and corruption" and most of the time it turns out to be nothing. As a direct consequence, when it does look like something, I feel like the best response available to me is to wait and see. The news media has repeatedly turned out to be a bunch of shrill partisans who spread misinformation without hesitation and then run a retraction three months later at the bottom of page B17.

Correct. Of the things listed, the Sun story looks the worst -- except if you know that the Biden administration (in which Sun's investigation was started) was heavily into crushing crypto by regulatory means and the Trump administration is openly the opposite, so there's no definite quid-pro-quo here.

I agree and have for some time agreed that Trump is an abomination and embarrassment to conservatives. The problem for actual conservatives is what is there to actually do here? Join the Democrats? There are some rational positions where that is the greater of the two evils. Perhaps this abundance agenda is the invitation they need to throw behind a Democrat side of the aisle that disavows a lot of the leftie fringe that the rest of the Democrats have been a little too beholden to.

the problem for actual conservatives is what is there actually to do here?

Really, the problem for "actual conservatives" is more along the lines of "how can we claw anything of any relevance back?" The "real conservative" party is dead, Trump killed it, and publically so. Being a William F. Buckley fanboy is the surest path to a dead political career, and frankly good riddance.

what is there to actually do here?

Stronger internal criticism, like what MAGA did when Musk implied we must have open borders for Indians back in December. That would at least be a good start.

The problem for actual conservatives is what is there to actually do here?

Invent a time machine, go back 80 years, and convince the “real conservatives” to not spend the next eight decades constantly losing.

"Don't lose" is not the most clear or transparent piece of advice.

What should conservatives have done starting from 1945?

Crushed the universities with force and not allow the long march through the institutions to continue, slash and burn the administrative state.

And be willing to burn any and all political capital needed to stop Ted Kennedy's immigration bill.

My point is, the Republican Party as of 2015 was dead in the water. If you look at the 2012 election internal postmortem assessment, the Republican strategy was basically “give up, concede all cultural and immigration positions, become slightly more corporatist Democrats”. The landslide defeat of ¡Jeb! to Hillary Clinton in 2016 would have been the final loogie on the grave of American conservatism. People like @aqouta bemoan Donald Trump’s hijacking of the Republican Party and the demise of REAL TRVE CONSERVATISM, when Trump is only reason any kind of conservatism, or the Republican Party itself, still exists at all.

If conservatism is when you refuse to address entitlements, blow up the budget deficit, tarrif our allies because you don't understand trade policy, behave like a petulant child in every possible situation and fall for lowest common denominator X slop posts then what even remains of conservatism? What is Trump conserving exactly?

I mean, Trump is clearly far more socially conservative than the alternative, and he’s definitely preserving space for social conservatism to continue to exist.

If conservatism is when you refuse to address entitlements, blow up the budget deficit

Every post-war conservative seems to think it is.

What is Trump conserving exactly?

The population composition of the country, the definition of "woman" and "racial discrimination", children's genitals, classical architecture...

Any kind of conservatism? I'm wondering what kinds those are?

From my perspective, it doesn't make sense to describe Trump himself as a conservative of any kind - he's a populist demagogue and I'd say closer to the revolutionary of the spectrum than the conservative end. But of course it's possible for a non-conservative to, however inadvertently, create the space for conservatism to survive.

The question is what that is. What kinds of conservatism are we talking about? The conservatism of the American experiment itself, i.e. a kind of classical liberalism? A sort of cultural or social conservatism embedded in community and religious life that goes back long before the American Revolution? Reaganite fusionism? I think this kind of dialogue often struggles because 'conservative' can mean a lot of different things in the American context, some of which outright contradict each other.

At any rate, I notice you didn't answer my question. If you had a time machine and went back to 1945, what would you advise 'conservatives' (who are they, specifically?) at the time to do? Would you give advice to Thomas Dewey or Robert Taft? Maybe William Jenner? What would it be?

Thé difference is that, although Trump may not personally be much more socially conservative than Matt Yglesias(emphasis on may- I could easily be persuaded to lean either way on this question. I don’t think either of them are wedded to their views on trans and abortion anyways), he is much more credibly committed to protecting the rights of social conservatives to be socially conservative. Even centrist inoffensive democrats would be happy to leave masterpiece cake shop to die.

Impeachment and removal. Vance too if he won't behave himself. It'll incite a massive grassroots rebellion in the GOP that will have unforeseeable consequences, but IMO the tail risks of continuing on the current path exceed the tail risks of a drastic course-correction.

Impeachment and removal. Vance too if he won't behave himself.

And then what? Install Kamala as the Real President?

Mike Johnson is third in line.

Hot take: this does not really belong in the CW thread because it is not controversial. Nobody seems to be contesting that Trump has done most of the above. His defenders mostly claim that this is normal politician behavior.

Most congress critters are sponsored by big companies in their home state and certainly do their best to help these companies afterwards, sending the gravy train their way etc. Some go beyond that and do a bit of insider trading on the side. Only a few are open about taking money from foreign interests with an implied quid pro quo.

Allow me a metaphor. Except for a few (Bernie Sanders?), every politician farts in the whirlpool. There are certainly quite some who occasionally pee in the whirlpool too. But Donald Trump has just removed his trunks and taken a jumbo-sized shit in the whirlpool.

Let's not forget about Paul Weiss, the law firm Trump sanctioned earlier this year, only to drop all sanctions against them after they promised to do $40 million of pro bono work for him.

Then: Caesar's wife must be above suspicion.

Now: This shit

Eight other law firms have since made similar deals with the White House.

the law firm Trump sanctioned earlier this year, only to drop all sanctions against them after they eliminated DEI policies and promised to do $40 million of pro bono work for him White House initiatives.

Given the way Trump thinks of himself as King and everything, there really isn't any fundamental difference between the man and his white house administration.

  • -11

Of course there is, just like there is a difference between donating $100M to Mar-A-Lago, and donating $100M to IRS.

Good catch. I'm sure there will be many more examples to add to the pile by the end of Trump's term.

"I wish that voters in America would vote only in consideration of policy."

The monkey's paw curls a finger.

Edit: An anecdote. My father-in-law swore off Newt Gingrich because of his divorces. A decade of mass immigration and an explosion of gayness later, and he's a die-hard Trumper, the exact kind of person you see being ridiculed every day at the top of reddit. He's a soldier now, not a debate rival, and certainly no longer someone who is super choosy about his political allies.

Newt Gingrich was exceptionally vile even by today's standards because he left his wife as she was dying of cancer. Trump is not the best husband (he may have beaten one of his wives) but so as far as I know his ex-wives all live comfortably.

Republicans also hardened up a lot about morals after they publicly beheaded Nixon for jaywalking, and then twenty years later the Democrats closed ranks and lawyered up to get their guy out of rape and cartel money laundering charges.

Oh yeah. I've always been a social conservative, but the rank of feminists lining up to joke about how they'd strap on the kneepads for the Presidential blowjob so long as Bill kept abortion legal, and throwing Monica under the bus, after the protests about patriarchy, sexual harassment, imbalance in power dynamics, inappropriate boss-employee relationships and the rest of it?

So after that shining example of what really mattered, why should I believe them when they screamed about Kavanaugh and rape, or any of the fifty other offences? Trump allegedly assaulted E. Jean Carroll in a department store? You lot defended a guy old enough to be her father using his position to have an affair with a young woman in the Oval Office and who then tried logic-chopping his way out of it by "it depends what 'is' is" when under oath about "did you have sex with her?"

This seems basically symmetrical. Why did Republicans care about Clinton's bad behaviour if they don't care about Trump's?

Because this is tit for tat and not caring about Trump happened after the Democrats defected on Clinton.

cartel money laundering charges

I must have completely missed that... I'm assuming it was Clinton-related?

Theres also Ted Kennedy if you thought it was a one off for a president.

Yes, the Whitewater scandal

Fail to listen to the people and you will eventually invite into power someone ambitious, cynical and charismatic enough to ride their rage into power. It turns out that in addition to their political talent, those leaders are also usually extremely greedy and corrupt. Who would have guessed?

Fortunately, any potentially affected country’s political elite can avoid this disappointing outcome with one simple trick. Just end / partially reverse mass immigration and, if you can stretch to two policies, facilitate the construction of huge amounts of cheap, quality housing.

Insider trading? Family members selling access to the President? I am shocked, shocked to find that corruption is going on in here...

Well, not that shocked. Isn't this just business as usual? The sums are pretty small compared to the size of the Federal budget, and it's not like corruption in Washington is a new phenomenon.

And revealed preferences are showing that people don't actually care about this stuff much at all, that they only pretend to care to use it as a cudgel against the other side. To someone who genuinely thinks corruption is bad and should be stamped out as much as possible, that's horrifying.

If you "genuinely think corruption is bad and should be stamped out as much as possible," then you must be equally critical of every US politician, regardless of party! After all, they're all corrupt, as we well know. I bet if I look back through your post history, I'll find an even 50/50 split between posts criticizing left-wing corruption like Nancy Pelosi's insider trading and posts criticizing right-wing corruption like Trump's meme coins.

Because you, unlike those other guys, don't just "pretend to care to use it as a cudgel against the other side," (your words, not mine).

People should be critical of every US politician to the extent that they actually engage in corruption. Tons of Republicans made accusations that Joe Biden was receiving huge kickbacks with Hunter as an intermediary, but that was mostly false in regards to Joe actually getting any money. I did criticize Joe for pardoning his son though. The problem here is that the two parties are not equal in corruption, at least for now. It's plausible that Dems will become worse in the future and use Trump's current actions as justification for their own awfulness. I'll criticize that if it occurs.

I can't help but notice that you avoided the example I actually used (Nancy Pelosi) and compared Donald Trump to Joe Biden instead.

I specifically referred to Biden since I knew much more about his scandals than Nancy Pelosi's alleged insider trading. If Pelosi is doing that then it would obviously be bad, although I haven't seen much evidence that she's actually doing it. Not that I've looked super hard, I'm aware of it on the periphery of my knowledge but I've never delved that deeply. If you have an article or two that make convincing cases I'd be more than willing to give them a read.

Nah man, you don't get to say that, not after people screamed until they were blue in the face trying to point out the corruption of the democrats in the past few administrations only to be gaslit by the fucking government and media and have their lives ruined. You don't get to punish anyone who mentions corruption and then when you have silenced them claim their silence is proof they don't care.

It's not the hill I'd die on, necessarily, but I think it's coherent to care more about overt corruption like Trump's than about covert corruption like the Clintons' and Bidens' - in other words, to prefer the government to gaslight people about the corruption that's happening, if we must have corruption at all. A President who's overtly corrupt is fouling up the institutions themselves and eroding public trust by making a spectacle of his lack of morals. Meanwhile, a President who gives in to temptation in private, but understands and cares about the fact that he shouldn't, and tries very hard not to let it get out, is just one fallible man.

Do you exclusively get your news and information from Fox or some other right of center source? If not, how are you sure you are not conflating the overtness of Trump's corruption with the reporting frequency and tenor of the news sources from what you derive your feelings about what is happening?

While I don't think corruption is the most compelling example of this, I think immigration enforcement is (most of what has been reported on as unprecedented under Trump happened sometime under Biden or Obama and just no one noticed or cared to). But it is still an example. If there are thousands of reporters trying to report a thing, vs. two in the news sources your consume, your view is going to be skewed.

I actually think most people on the motte "Know" this, but far fewer act in accordance with their knowledge.

I think the exact opposite. This seems like a conflict vs mistake theory thing to me - I think you are a better person than anyone who has or will run for president. Perhaps if you have generally good pious people in charge corruption can be better in secret. Perhaps. I think the incentives will still lead to disaster, but I can buy the argument. When you are run by halfwit narcissists though, overt corruption is intrinsically better because overt corruption must toe the line of public acceptability. Kickbacks, insider trading - all perfectly acceptable to the US public as has been amply demonstrated by everyone in power since at least 2008 (before then absolutely but 2008 is where it became obvious to everyone paying attention). Sex trafficking rings? Pedophilia? Those bloom in darkness.

Edit: added the line about my personal view

What corruption were the past few Democratic administrations engaged in that exceeded the level of magnitude and blatantness that Trump is now engaged in? Even if you can list examples, why is your response to imply that makes Republicans immune from criticism now, rather than asserting that both parties deserve criticism when they're doing bad things?

What corruption were the past few Democratic administrations engaged in that exceeded the level of magnitude and blatantness that Trump is now engaged in?

You really don't know? How can you claim Trump is worse if you can't even list a few things off the top of your head. I even gave an example in the other comment (though you did remove it when quoting it, so maybe there's some gaze-averting going on).

Even if you can list examples, why is your response to imply that makes Republicans immune from criticism now

This is why I originally said you're dismissing the argument that Trump doing better. Criticize him all you want, just don't act like MAGAs should be more outraged than they were about the previous administration. At least not without evidence.

You really don't know? How can you claim Trump is worse if you can't even list a few things off the top of your head. I even gave an example in the other comment (though you did remove it when quoting it, so maybe there's some gaze-averting going on).

Which comment are you referring to? I'm not trying to be obtuse here -- I did a ctrl+f on all your comments in this thread and nothing immediately stood out, but maybe I'm just missing something.

Biden's decline, a.k.a a chunk of his term being Weekend At Berney's-ed. The comment is here.

Edit: oh, did yoh edit the but about Original Sin in? I don't recall seeing it before. In any case it doesn't matter to the argument, the decline was obvious long before the book was published.

Oh you want data? Read all of the motte - it's all in there.

I point blank do not believe you care about corruption. At all. If you cared about corruption by anyone as much as you claim, you should already have investigated the claims against the previous administration, and you would have had no choice but to conclude that it at least looks fishy, and therefore you would have investigated it and you would now have bulletproof arguments that it wasn't corruption. Since you claim that you don't even know what corruption the previous administration has been accused of, I can safely conclude you don't care about corruption, you care about Trump.

And I did not imply that republicans are immune from criticism. My implication is that nobody gives a shit about corruption on their side anymore. I have been beating this drum for years, but I have been explicit about it since Trump's election - this is democrat's own fault. There is a point past which spite becomes an acceptable justification and they pushed the right there. They had plenty of warnings this was coming, plenty of people were willing to point out that the right would only tolerate two tier anarcho-tyranny for so long, but they were ignored. So now they reap the whirlwind.

you should already have investigated the claims against the previous administration, and you would have had no choice but to conclude that it at least looks fishy, and therefore you would have investigated it

I feel like I’m having a stroke.

If I’m reading you right, though, I think you’re jumping the gun. How do you know Ben doesn’t have a “bulletproof argument” for whatever it is you’ve got in mind?

I know he doesn't have bulletproof arguments for all of the DNC's corruption because the DNC are hopelessly corrupt. And if for some reason you imagine he has been a motte regular for years but somehow missed any discussion of DNC corruption in the past, he has no idea that the party is run like the Mafia and so on, his concern wasn't that there was corruption he didn't know about - he dismissed that idea out of hand - it was that the corruption exceeded that of Trump. I think it's pretty safe to conclude his concern is Trump, not corruption.

I’m sure he’s seen the discussion. I know I have. And yet I don’t share your conclusion either. It’s not because I hate Trump, but because I really do believe his administration is more flagrantly corrupt than Biden’s, Obama’s, or the DNC.

I wish you would give a specific comparison on insider trading or nepotism or something. How many politicians are given personal 747s?

If you cared about corruption by anyone as much as you claim, you should already have investigated the claims against the previous administration, and you would have had no choice but to conclude that it at least looks fishy

Again, I must insist you list out a few examples of the corruption you're talking about. Because I did investigate some of the more major allegations. The claim Biden "stole" the 2020 election was 99.9% pure hallucination/confabulation. The Hunter Biden stuff was true in regards to Hunter being a dirtbag but critically lacked the link connecting to Joe, which was always the point in the first place.

So what exactly are you talking about?

'Again I must insist' 'Because I did investigate' 'so what exactly are you talking about' - why are you talking like this? Are you trying to convince me this conversation has gone on a lot longer than it has? I can't see your investigations if you don't mention them and stick to exclusively handwaving away all claims of democrat corruption with Hanania links, can I?

But you tell on yourself anyway when you did investigate 'some of the more major allegations'. If all corruption concerns you as much as you claim you should be concerned by all of it, surely? You should be able to rattle off a list off the top of your head of bipartisan corruption.

Here's my list of 'some of the more major ones'. I don't really want to do this since it is beside the point that someone who cares about all corruption can not possibly be partisan in the US and yet you are.

There's yes election fraud, Hunter Biden's bullshit and the cover up 'to protect the election', covid policies, insider trading, the weaponisation of the doj, the deliberate sabotage of our borders, the politicisation of social media, basically everything the DNC has ever done and, of course, the puppet president bullshit.

So the Hunter Biden cover up is definitive, as is the weaponization of the doj and the puppet president shenanigans, as were covid control measures, insider trading and the politicisation of social media - those ones are bipartisan, yay. But you didn't know about any of them? This must be a massive blow.

The Hunter Biden stuff was true in regards to Hunter being a dirtbag but critically lacked the link connecting to Joe

An associate involved in some of their dealings testified under oath that Joe was "the big guy" referred to as getting a cut -- maybe you don't believe him or whatever, but that doesn't seem like an hallucination to me?

At all. If you cared about corruption by anyone as much as you claim, you should already have investigated the claims against the previous administration, and you would have had no choice but to conclude that it at least looks fishy, and therefore you would have investigated it and you would now have bulletproof arguments that it wasn't corruption

Which specific claims are you talking about here? Hunter Biden? Stolen election? Biden's "fuck all y'all I'm pardoning everyone" end-of-term pardons? The congressional insider trading thing? Or is there some other specific, credible, and concrete accusation of corruption that you are referring to?

Trump could EO himself a billion dollars and as long as he stops immigration, deports all the migrants here and stops all funding for the foreign wars / foreign aide I'd still vote for him. The country has just gotten bad enough that normal crime doesn't really matter. The threat is existential.

Personally I suspect that this sort of corruption was always happening, we just didn't get coverage of it because the uniparty was in control and they didn't want to release things that overly damaged trust in the system. Now the knives are out and all the dirty laundry gets aired. I mean epstein was getting dirt on mega rich businessmen and influential politicians way back in the late 90s.

(there should be disclaimers on hanania links so people don't give him traffic against their will, or use archives)

Well look at all of the self dealing DOGE found. NYT was…against that and those numbers dwarf what they are reporting here.

And to your point re uniparty there is zero appetite to fix it because some republicans are in on it too.

The threat is existential.

No, it is not. If the Taliban party had just gotten a majority of the votes in New Mexico, then I might be inclined to agree that your country faces an existential threat. But this does not happen. The only religious nutjobs getting elected to Congress are self-identifying as Christian, and even they do not pose an existential threat.

Sure, given current demographic trends, at some point in the future the non-hispanic whites will be a minority. But this is not the end of the world. I mean, plenty of Asians preferred living in the US (where they were a minority) to living in Asia, because by and large, being an ethnic minority is not that bad a deal in the US.

Since you beat the Brits, you had perhaps two conflicts which might be called existential: the civil war (in retrospect, the outcome was over-determined, if not in the 1860s, then in the 1900s) and the cold war (which was more of a threat to the world as a whole than to the US specifically).

Anyone who wants to tell you that any current political thing, be it Dobbs, immigration, Trump, Social Justice or whatever poses an existential threat to the US is very likely wrong. (The AI doomers at least have a plausible pathway in mind, though.)

I mean, plenty of Asians preferred living in the US (where they were a minority) to living in Asia, because by and large, being an ethnic minority is not that bad a deal in the US.

I think there's a reasonable fear that the "being an ethnic minority is not that bad a deal in the US" is only the case because of the unusual and ahistoric forbearance of the existing ethnic majority. There's a disquieting dearth of places friendly to ethnic minorities that are not run by white people.

Singapore?

A noteworthy exception, but a Crown possession in living memory, and possibly not scalable past city-state.

Instead, new mexico is ruled by a party that

  1. Put the Taliban in power in Afghanistan
  2. Tried to ban all guns on a whim one day
  3. Deliberately invited in the largest wave of illegal aliens in US history
  4. Is stubbornly tolerant of public drug use on city sidewalks and parks
  5. Mandates lgbt exposure in school for 5 year old children.
  6. Imposes racial and sexual quotas
  7. Opposes the deportation of any and all illegal aliens
  8. Requires their legislators put lgbt flags on each of their desks (in some states, idk about new mexico)

Etc

I would rather have the Taliban start a legit civil war than let the enemy turn the US into a whole new thing.

  1. Put the Taliban in power in Afghanistan

Let me stop you right there. With the benefit of hindsight, the revival of the Taliban was already a forgone conclusion when GWB invaded Afghanistan. Within the US RoE, there was no way things could have gone differently. The US stayed for two decades -- easily a generation -- and the democratic state collapsed as soon as they left. They could have stayed for another generation and the outcome would have been the same.

(This is not to say that the retreat was well done, but that the alternative -- pouring resources into Afghanistan to keep the Taliban out of power forever -- was not worth it either from a geostrategic or an EA perspective.)

New Mexico has low state capacity by US standards, though. Quite a bit of the lefty insanity from the top in New Mexico doesn't make it past the top.

Even the most "moderate" democrat will toe the party line when asked, or else face bullying or expulsion. All democrats are democrats.

And? I’m not claiming they’re moderates. I’m claiming they’re inneffective.

Yeah, I think most of the state is mostly Democrat because they want to use the oil money for daycare, extra school, extra Medicaid, and whatnot. But not the "LGBTQ for 5 year olds" kind of school, just the "too bad we don't have more high achieving kids here, maybe we can teach the ones we have to read and do math if they just sit in a classroom for more hours" kind. It's not like the sheriffs want to enforce the governor's orders about disallowing guns or wearing masks alone in the desert, so they don't.

"Ship of Theseus" existential, not "Destruction of Carthage" existential. Mass immigration and erosion of the civil religion threaten to transform the United States into something unrecognizable. That already happened once with Ellis Island immigration, and it is currently threatening to happen again as a consequence of the 60s cultural revolution.

I find it amazing that on this day 1 year ago it would have been the true blue left who would have called for Hanania link disclaimers while now it's the right wingers doing the same, even though his views haven't really changed much in that time.

Particularly given that many of those same people have likely ridiculed the purity spirals on the left.

By mid-2022 I could tell Hanania had exhausted his couple of interesting ideas, and it had become clear he wasn't at that 99.9th percentile of internal coherency that makes for an insightful commentator. I almost wrote a response to a comment here, saying that people were obviously overestimating Hanania's ability to invest into his own ideas. He was an r-strategist poster. And he was going to have to start wasting everybody's time to keep up with the meatgrinder of being a professional twitter wonk.

Never really liked him as a populist since he's basically open borders. He seems to lack a basic understanding of humans. It's become especially grating now though since he's basically this term's Romney/McCain/Cheney. Being held up by all the left wing posters as a conservative with morals and principals, aka beliefs that align more with their own.

I have been calling out Hanania's stupidity since at least 2023, and I'm no true blue aussieleftist. But he's definitely flattering different biases these days.

Well yes, the strategy of farming hateclicks with deliberate offense is not especially dependent on actual opinions.

There are still a few Hanania fans here, at least. He is a contrarian drifting towards the Yglesias level of annoying, but he still makes some good points.

I suppose I count as defending Hanania - I don't particularly like him, but I think hate for him here is absurdly overblown.

I will just straight-up defend Yglesias, though. I don't find him particularly annoying and he strikes me as effectively advocating for his preferred positions in a way that admits of rational argument and counter-argument. Well done him.

He can write reasonably when he wants to, but when he just wants to Boo Outgroup Yglesias gets really bad.

I suppose I count as defending Hanania - I don't particularly like him, but I think hate for him here is absurdly overblown.

The hate he gets is just a result of people putting him on a pedestal. If it wasn't for that, he'd be indistinguishable from the blur of faceless Substackers that no one cares about. I wouldn't even care that he's calling himself "elite human capital", it's the fact that others agree with his self-image that is absurd, and warrants the reaction to him.

Personally I suspect that this sort of corruption was always happening,

Biden's drug addled failson was on the god damned board of directors of a gas company in UKRAINE. Bloody Nancy Pelosi and all the rest of the house should be banned from even thinking about owning stock. The media can talk about Trump's supposed corruption until they are blue in the face, and it wouldn't matter for me one bit.

I really don’t understand what’s so bad about congresscritters insider trading. They’re using their connections to enrich their family members in harmless ways, what’s the problem? It isn’t like taking bribes or anything that might affect how they do their jobs.

It annihilates the illusion of a fair and lawful system, if I was insider trading the way they are the SEC would be setting up exploratory forward bases up my colon. Also it should be illegal for anyone in lawmaking or executive positions to retire and go work for the exact same companies they were supposed to make laws controlling. And it isn't, and everyone turns a blind eye, and if you bring that up with normies they don't even know wtf you're talking about. The media will not bring it up because they know how their bread gets buttered.

And then just knowing this is the state of play we're "supposed" to read the headlines in the Grand parent post and take it seriously. It's extremely aggravating.

You want smart, capable people in congress, right? They should get some opportunities to enrich themselves and their families that don’t cost anything to sweeten the pot.

But I don’t think we have a smart and capable Congress and we have them fattening themselves up.

Trump could EO himself a billion dollars and as long as he stops immigration, deports all the migrants here and stops all funding for the foreign wars / foreign aide I'd still vote for him.

Well, hell, I'd at least think about voting for him if I thought he could or would carry out some of his grand promises. Every politician promises he will deliver incredible things, and if you vote for him and say "I don't care if he steals a billion dollar as long as he does all the things he promised to do" you are being taken for a rube.

Well, hell, I'd at least think about voting for him if I thought he could or would carry out some of his grand promises.

He did actually stop immigration, though...

Trump has temporarily gotten it back to the levels that Obama had. He's done almost nothing in regards to helping ensure that will continue long-term.

Trump has temporarily gotten it back to the levels that Obama had.

You're saying it like it's a bad thing?

He's done almost nothing in regards to helping ensure that will continue long-term.

In American democracy, how would you propose to achieve ensuring some policy continues forever, regardless of what future voters or executives want, and how such a situation is different from a dictatorship?

What you're saying is that it continuing long-term is entirely up to the next administration. If they want to return to open borders that will be their decision, not Trump's.

Trump could absolutely make the job of anyone seeking to explode immigration harder by changing the law, i.e. passing legislation, not just executive orders.

Under Article I, legislation must be passed by Congress. The President only has the power to veto or not.

The POTUS absolutely helps set legislative priorities. This is even more true for Trump, who's basically the God-King of the Republican Party at the moment.

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I have wondered if he could massively expand the APA notice-and-comment regime by executive fiat. He lost a number of cases to APA procedure questions in his first term (and seems somewhat likely to again), but "now all executive policy changes require 4 years of notice and comment, effective 60 days from now, conveniently the day before I leave office" seems like, if IMO a poor governance choice, the sort of live policy grenade Trump likes tossing.

Trump could absolutely make the job of anyone seeking to explode immigration harder by changing the law

No he absolutely can't, that's what the Congress is supposed to do.

See my comment here.

Yes, but if they reverse his policy, the responsibility for that is on them. If the non-MAGA politicians want to act like "adults in the room" they need to stop blaming the parents for not hiding the cookie jar out of their reach.

Sure, if they reverse the legislation that would be on them, but undoing legislation is much more difficult that just doing executive orders, which is how Biden basically got to defacto open borders via loophole.

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Why do you think he doesnt do that? "Le dumb" was kind of believable during the first admin, but now theres all sorts of people who could be doing that and presumably understand the importance of it. Why isnt e.g Vance writing an immigration bill?

I have a post rolling around in my head around that, but it basically comes down to Trump not really liking to do legislation since it's harder than doing EO's, and the party and especially the base broadly respecting that. Trump absolutely could pass sweeping immigration reform if he wanted to, but he doesn't really want to.

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The obvious answer for a skeptic is "because they're all - to a man, young or old, dumb or brilliant - basically amoral nihilists maximizing their short-term gains, not selfless statesmen invested in the long-term advancement of Republican ideals". eg Vance isn't even trying to write an actually effective immigration bill because he needs immigration to still be a live issue in 2032 so he can use it to win the Presidency then.

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Easier said than done. The administration right now is putting most of its energy into dismantling the federal bureaucracy in a way that will be difficult for a future administration to undo, but successive administrations being able to reverse the policies of previous administrations is a feature, not a bug, of American politics.

Trump could certainly push for laws that will make immigration much harder, establish enforcement norms that will require effort (and perhaps public, politically unpalatable action) to reverse, and generally make it difficult (but not impossible) for the next administration to roll it back and open the gates again. But that is not where he's actually focusing his efforts.

But that is not where he's actually focusing his efforts.

Yes, and that's a bad thing. He's spending his (legislative) efforts right now passing regressive tax cuts that will blow out the deficit even further. It would be much better if he focused on long-term immigration reform instead.

Wasn't the problem with enforcement, and not the law?

Both the enforcement and the law were broken.

From "Reactionary Philosophy in an Enormous, Planet-Sized Nutshell" by Scott Alexander:

Would the Czar be corrupt and greedy and tyrannical? Yes, probably. Let’s say he decided to use our tax money to build himself a mansion ten times bigger than the Palace of Versailles. The Internet suggests that building Versailles today would cost somewhere between $200M and $1B, so let’s dectuple the high range of that estimate and say the Czar built himself a $10 billion dollar palace. And he wants it plated in solid gold, so that’s another $10 billion. Fine. Corporate welfare is $200B per year. If the Czar were to tell us “I am going to take your tax money and spend it on a giant palace ten times the size of Versailles covered in solid gold”, the proper response would be “Great, but what are we going to do with the other $180 billion dollars you’re saving us?”

Why wouldn't the Czar be spending all that $180 billion on making allies among the oligarchy? It's not like he gets all that tyrannical power from thin air.

Right, and indeed Scott makes exactly that point in his rebuttal.

We've been living in a banana republic for 30 years high time we got a banana republic style president.

I don't agree with this at all. Populists have hallucinated that there's massive amounts of corruption already going on, but in reality Trump is taking it to a new level of magnitude and blatantness.

What do you think of ABSCAM? It looks like they did a sting operation, found that lots of politicians had ~0 inhibition to corruption, and the end result was... they promised not to do those operations again? So if there is actually very little corruption, why not? Just a bunch of 100$ bills on the floor?

Part of the problem is that so many of us are former libertarians, who see rent-seeking aka banal corruption everywhere already. So Trump just seems a more blustery iteration of something already underway.

Or, ideology-free corruption > bad ideology operating transparently and on-schedule

Populists have hallucinated that there's massive amounts of corruption already going on

"Corruption" is itself a motte/bailey issue, because on the one hand there is the general (and nonspecific idea) of "dishonest gain/graft/abuse of power" and on the other is the very specific criteria of "that's illegal." And when you're defending, the question is "is this legal" and when it's the other side doing it the question is "does this seem at least a little bit sketchy to the reporter with a deadline."

So everything alleged in the NYT article [AFAIK, sans insider trading] is perfectly legal and therefore not corrupt, just as a major defense contractor making a practice of hiring former Pentagon procurement officials who selected for them in contract awards is perfectly legal and therefore not corrupt.

Now - I actually think "there are massive amounts of corruption going on" is a defensible position. Just look at the acknowledged and prosecuted cases in the defense industry, which publicly produces major malfeasance with gigantic price tags roughly once a decade.

But whether the Fat Leonard scandal or similar incidents pegs as "massive" to you depends a lot on if you are outraged at a few tens of millions of dollars here or there or consider that the cost of doing business. And when discussing "corruption" people alleging it often go beyond cases that result in a successful prosecution. Look at the problems with falsification of data, plagiarism, and non-replication in the academic community. Is this "corruption"? I would say yes, at least with the fraudulent data cases - abusing your position to accept money and then producing a fraudulent product should count as corruption, no? Yet the issue becomes fuzzier in the less blatant cases (is accepting money to make a shoddy study corruption? Is intentional plagiarism? Inadvertent plagiarism?) What about setting up a nonprofit as your own personal piggy bank (examples can be trotted forth on both sides) - the man on the street likely answers "yes" even though the behavior is (or can be) quite legal.

In short,

  1. There are and have been massive amounts of corruption measured in absolute values, but it's easy to flip back and forth from absolute numbers to percentages based on whether or not you're trying to score points or defend your own goal.
  2. Unless people agree on what specifically "corruption" means, there's just going to be an endless roundabout of "my politicians earned the money from their businesses and nonprofits while yours were doing it in the service of corrupt Eastern European oligarchs."
  3. Neither side really wants to agree on any one definition of corruption because that would either constitute agreeing to look bad, or agreeing to stop accusing the other side of being corrupt (since most cases of alleged corruption are not prosecuted and may not even be illegal.)

Corruption in the military is particularly hard to deal with since much of it is secret, and it's not like a society can just totally disband its military if things go too wrong. Perun has a good video on this, with his bit at the end being particularly pertinent. Even though corruption will always exist to some degree, it's much better to live in a society where it's at least not blatant and generally seen as a bad thing that should be dealt with, as opposed to a country like Russia where it broadly runs rampant.

Exploding or minimizing the definition of "corruption" largely seem like post-hoc justifications for bad behavior rather than genuine attempts to understand the issue. If the valences were reversed, e.g. if Hunter Biden received a $200M jet and gave it to Joe, do you think Republicans would make a stink about it? I certainly do.

Even though corruption will always exist to some degree, it's much better to live in a society where it's at least not blatant and generally seen as a bad thing that should be dealt with, as opposed to a country like Russia where it broadly runs rampant.

It depends. In the UK, I would vastly prefer the blatant corruption of money under the table to get construction contracts done over the stealth corruption of planning permission restrictions in favour of incumbent property-owning rentseekers.

What you mean is that you prefer the implementation of a very bad policy (the build-nothing UK planning framework) to be undermined by corruption. The current policy is not "stealth corrupt" - it is working as advertised for the NIMBY voters who voted for it.

This is a special case of "competent and evil is more dangerous than incompetent and evil", with corruption being an effective competence-reducer.

Exploding or minimizing the definition of "corruption" largely seem like post-hoc justifications for bad behavior rather than genuine attempts to understand the issue.

Yes. As I said, it's a motte-and-bailey issue, and it is to the advantage of both sides to accuse the other side of corruption while suggesting that their side is blameless under the more narrow definition. But after decades of this, it is not surprising that "populists" think that there is a massive corruption problem. Populists read the mainstream media too.

If the valences were reversed, e.g. if Hunter Biden received a $200M jet and gave it to Joe, do you think Republicans would make a stink about it? I certainly do.

Yes. We don't have to ask this question hypothetically.

or otherwise claims something Biden did was somehow worse

(...)

Scandals and corruption used to be a thing that allowed the other party to come in and try to do better, but now they're used as a justification for the other side becoming even worse.

How can you dismiss the argument that he's doing better, just before complaining that people don't care enough about him doing better?

What? My position is that Trump is far worse in terms of corruption, and that nobody really cares at this point -- MAGA will never care about Trump doing bad things (they'll just rationalize it afterwards no matter what it is), and the left sort of cares but doesn't see it as a particularly potent attack vector. The result is that this could easily become the new baseline of corruption that any President engages in if they want to, and that's a bad thing.

What? My position is that Trump is far worse in terms of corruption

I think you need something to back that argument, rather than assuming everyone agrees with you, and that anyone who doesn't is obviously wrong.

MAGA will never care about Trump doing bad things

Is MAGA worse than you in that regard? I don't recall you criticizing Biden (or his family / administration) much. Even about obvious things like hiding his cognitive decline.

I think you need something to back that argument

That's... what the NYT article was about?

Is MAGA worse than you in that regard? I don't recall you criticizing Biden

I personally criticized Biden plenty, from his free pass to many levels of wokeness, to his defacto open-borders immigration policy, to his pardoning of Hunter Biden. I'm reading Original Sin right now, and plan on doing a book review at some point.

I'm reading Original Sin right now,

Just so you are aware. This indicates to anyone right of center that you are basically a bot or an idiot. That Biden was infirm and incapable of the job was evident throughout the campaign and his presidency. In fact, both of the authors of that book were active co-conspirators in the cover up.

All the indications I have of are the book is not that it is a mea culpa by Tapper et al, rather it is portrayed as some heroic work of journalism, which it is not. He simply has a new set of power brokers he is transcribing for.

People who have actually read the book will understand that it gives a fairly scathing account overall. Collecting all the anecdotes along with the storyline of how it happened very much is good journalism.

A scathing account of someone who the Democrat Party is currently scapegoating for their loss of power by transcribing for those doing the scapegoating is not "good journalism".

How does this address the point that Biden's decline was obvious at the time that the book's author was complicit in it's cover-up?

That's... what the NYT article was about?

I've only skimmed it, but I didn't see any sort of comparative analysis to the previous administrations, so it cannot back your argument.

It specifically contrasted against Hunter Biden that Republicans spent years fishing for evidence against. It might not have done a line-by-line comparison against the rest of the claims, but nobody can really point to anything past administrations have done that have the same magnitude and blatantness as what Trump is doing.

If a news report came out that e.g. claimed that Biden was embezzling $100M dollars, would you similarly handwave it if it lacked a detailed comparison to what past Presidents had done?

It specifically contrasted against Hunter Biden that Republicans spent years fishing for evidence against.

Are you talking about this paragraph?

Congressional Republicans spent years investigating Hunter Biden, the son of President Joseph R. Biden Jr., for trading on his family name to make millions of dollars, even labeling the clan the “Biden Crime Family.” But while Hunter Biden’s cash flow was a tiny fraction of that of Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump and Jared Kushner, Republicans have shown no appetite for looking into the current presidential family’s finances.

That's not a comparative analysis. Even assuming their conclusion is correct, I don't know how they made their comparison, and have no way of reproducing their result. Be my guest if you think Trump is more corrupt than Biden, but nothing you posted here can be a basis for discussion. You're just venting.

You're just venting.

And it seems by the parts of my reply that you ignored that you just don't want to talk about this topic.

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