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Notes -
I ran into the following tweet (xeet?) over on X:
https://x.com/DaveyJ_/status/1942962076101603809
I would feel bad for simply posting this as a naked link, so I guess I have to add on some half-baked analysis and commentary on top:
This is horrifying. Rarely, so you see examples of behavior that is clearly "legal", in the sense that there's no clear crime being committed, but with so much potential for harm to unwitting bystanders. I'm unfamiliar with the scope of child endangerment laws in the US, but I'd be surprised if they covered this or, even if they theoretically did so, whether they'd be enforced in that manner.
(I don't claim to be an expert, but my understanding is that these laws typically require a prosecutor to prove that a guardian knowingly and willfully placed a child in a situation where their life or health was directly endangered. The behavior of the sister-in-law is profoundly reckless, but it falls into a legal gray area. A defense attorney would argue she had no intent to harm her children and that the danger was hypothetical and probabilistic, not immediate and direct. Proving a direct causal link between her online activities and a "clear and present danger" to the children would be incredibly difficult until, tragically, one of the inmates actually showed up and acted on his threats.)
At the same time, is it a problem worth solving? How do you reconcile that question with my earlier claim?
Well, that's a matter of impact or scale. Laws have costs associated with them, be it from the difficult to quantify loss of freedom/chilling effect, enforcement costs, sheer legislative complexity, or what I'm more concerned about, unexpected knock-on effects/scope creep where a desperate attempt to define the problematic action results in too wide a scope for enforcement:
What if it turns out to affect single moms looking to date again? Their new partners are far more likely to abuse their kids, but should such women thus be arrested for putting their kids at risk? Should people be forbidden from writing letters to inmates, or falling in love with them, or sex with them?
Is it worth it to specifically criminalize such behavior?
Despite my abhorrence for it, I'm not sure it is. I think the fraction of people who would be stupid or insane enough to act this way is small enough that the majority of us can treat this like a horror story and ignore it.
Another way to illustrate my intuition here would be to consider being a doctor or legislator reading an account of some kind of ridiculously horrible disease. Maybe it makes your skin fall off and your guts come out while leaving you in crippling agony (I'm like 50% certain there's an actual disease like this, but it's probably something that happens to premature infants. That, or acute radiation poisoning I suppose). Absolutely terrible, and something no one should go through.
Yet, for how horrible it is, this hypothetical disease is also ridiculously rare. Imagining it happens to a person every ten years, and makes medical journals every time it happens because of how rare it is. I would expect that doctor, or that law maker, to both be horrified, but if they were rational individuals considering the greater good, I would strongly prefer that they focus on more mundane and common conditions, like a cure for heart disease. There are lower hanging fruit to grasp here.
Now, the biggest hurdle holding back the poor family in the story I've linked to is a simple one: the Overton Window. If, for some unfortunate reason, the number of women crazy enough to act that way rose significantly, society would probably develop memetic antibodies or legal solutions. This might, sometimes, become strong enough to overcome the "women are wonderful" effect, if such women are obviously being the opposite.
Sometimes it's worth considering the merits of informal resolution systems for settling such matters, even if they have other significant downsides. For example, how would this situation be handled in India?
(I'm not aware of a trend of Indian women being stupid enough to act this way, though I can hardly say with any authority that it's literally never happened)
Firstly, the extended family would have much more power. This is the rare case where both the husband's side and the wife's own family would probably agree that something needs to be done, the latter for reputational reasons as well as concern for the kids. She'd probably end up committed, if she wasn't beaten up or ostracized to hell and back. The police would turn a blind eye, should she choose to complain, they'd be profoundly sympathetic to the family's plight and refuse to act against them. And if they weren't, they'd be even more sympathetic to the idea of their palms being greased. The most awful outcomes would become vanishingly unlikely.
As a wise mullah once said: "What is the cure for such disorders? Beatings."
This isn't necessarily an overall endorsement of such a legal framework, or societal mindset. I'm just pointing out that, occasionally, they tackle problems that an atomized, quasi-libertarian society like most of the West can't tackle. I'd still, personally, prefer to live in the latter. While it's too late for the gent in question, you can reliably avoid running into such problems in the first place by not sticking your dick in crazy. Alas, as someone who has committed that folly, it's an even bigger folly to expect people to stop...
When dealing with questions of punishment, we always have to confront the problem of how the authority figure's prosocial motivations can be disentangled from the pleasure he gets from enacting the punishment itself. Can they even be disentangled? Is it possible that they're always one and the same?
For the suburban Karen who calls CPS because her neighbors let their son ride his bike without a helmet, the wellbeing of the child is of secondary importance at best. Her primary motivation is the feeling of power she derives from being able to commandeer an instrument of state violence.
In your case, the violence is not even mediated through the state, but is dished out by the man's own hands, "with a good conscience" -- this makes the charm all the more seductive. Are we to suppose that the man is not secretly, or not-so-secretly, hoping that his wife will someday commit a transgression which merits some familial intervention? An "evolutionary genealogy" of such a system might reveal that its primary and originary purpose was as a system of ritualized violence, with its usage as an instrument of "justice" being vestigial or epiphenomenal.
There are no pure assertions of "negative" restrictions on rights -- there are only positive assertions of rights. "You should not have the right to do X" can be rewritten as "I should have the right to punish you for doing X". Or, more explicitly: "I want the right to punish you for doing X".
And people still wonder why feminists get up in arms over the concept of "traditional family structures". In the system thus described, is it ever the wife who beats the husband for his transgressions? She can try, and she may even have the support of the community on her side, but due to physical asymmetry, it's unlikely to end well for her. She can get male relatives to do it for her; but the prerogative of deriving full enjoyment from the act of punishment remains with the man. That hardly seems fair.
I think this is a bit confusingly written. There are three possible states here:
The way you phrased the above implies that 3 and 2 are equivalent, while I don't think they are.
Free speech (in America) falls under 1, murder falls under 2, while something like "paint your house vibrant pink" falls under 3. In theory, you are not allowed to enter into an arrangement where your right to free speech is abridged(1), you are forbidden from entering into an arrangement where you are allowed to murder someone(2), and you are free to enter into an arrangement where your ability to paint your house is denied (HOA).
(1) The reality on the ground may differ from the ideal.
(2) Soldiers and police officers aside.
This post's conversation also reminds me of first amendment auditors who go to public places and record everything and everyone around them because they're not legally in the wrong. They operate under the guise of protecting the first amendment, but this (as Primaprimaprima put it when describing Karens) is of secondary importance. Their real motivation is to create a reaction that they can capture and record, then post on their YouTube page.
The extent to which these people who aren't "technically" wrong corrode the cohesiveness of our society can't really be quantified in real time. I think a lot of us just understand that it is bad and that it will have future implications. Normal people recognize the problem as well, but there is no way to say "no" with any real force unless a law is broken. An atomized society has nothing but the law to truly dictate behavior, but more laws ultimately lead to less freedom. Informal resolutions while they can be deeply satisfying also carry the potential for overreaction or being too heavy-handed.
When it comes to feminists bitching about family structure, they're just trying to ensure they maintain as much social power and freedom as possible, and, since the receipts of "family structure" abuses are readily available, they constantly point to them to beat back the opposition. What makes them even more powerful is the online presence of women, especially neurotic ones, who will collectively treat any issue they're arguing for as if it's the most morally important problem of our time. These women are numerous, and passionate, and hysterical. The only real recourse seems to be one where society collects the receipts of unchecked feminism and pluralism. Unfortunately, it will have to run its course and we will have to continue to watch people be as annoying and as immoral and as disgusting as possible while still not being "technically" wrong.
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You can absolutely enter into agreements that restrict the 1st amendment right to free speech, NDAs, trade secrets, non disparagement clauses, even just normal character clauses in a contract restrict your right to free speech.
The first amendment protects from the government, it does not protect from private contract law.
Perhaps "You can't sell yourself into slavery" would be a better example here.
I mean those are just completely different things.
In theory (if not usually in practice) one could have the right to free speech and free exercise of religion but not the right to freely move, choose one's own work, or make other contracts on one's own behalf.
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