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Notes -
It's been a while since I've done one of these- what's a small scale conspiracy theory you're willing to go to bat for?
Now, by 'small scale conspiracy theory' I do not mean grand unified theories of the jewlluminati or lizard people, or major government direction, or whatever. It's small-scale.
Some things I think are likely true-
The 'Marriage penalty' in US welfare law is- or was- an intentional experiment to prove that marriage was outmoded in late-industrial societies. It fits the zeitgeist of the time and we know there were other reckless experiments going on in first world countries(like German pedophiles). It was not based on the assumption that single mothers need the help more.
Coyote predation on small children is far more common in the USA than commonly acknowledged(note that a huge increase over a trivial base is still trivial), and those toddlers who just disappear and everyone assumes the parents killed them but they're never charged because nobody ever finds the body were mostly snatched by coyotes. Wildlife departments and law enforcement agencies prefer to cover this up to discourage reprisals by poisoning, which has substantial knock on effects. The only confirmed coyote kill of a child(there is also a case of a hippie musician who wandered near a den, but this probably wasn't a predatory attack) was interrupted during the attack rendering it undeniable.
Conventional health wisdom overstates effect sizes because it originated in attempts to explain the rise of chronic disease in the mid twentieth century. In reality, these diseases became common because people lived long enough to get them(largely due to reduced disease burden), with effects from rising waistlines, sedentary lifestyles, etc.
Coyotes are pretty well-hated and oft-culled because of their attacks on pets and livestock, though, and there's also the 'dingos ate ma baby' option of simple incompetence. That said, if you really want to go nuts on coyote conspiracies, the degree that coyote populations have exploded and the individual coyotes themselves have gotten much smarter in <10 generations is a real fun question.
For fun conspiracies I actually believe:
XTwitter's recent fine in the UK. But there's a lot of these orgs running at <100 person levels regulating through smoke-filled backroom deals; a lot of what's 'weird' about the modern era is just the ability of those orgs to impact companies with large impacts but not the large scales of pre-internet companies.Is that…Trek?
Not exactly unusual—didn’t Scott write about ADA enforcement in these terms? The main limiting factor is the difficulty of bringing a case. Technology has to have reduced that cost, so a given org can target smaller companies.
I dislike this class of law for other reasons, but I think we’re seeing a difference in degree, not in kind.
Nextwave (cw: sound, mild profanity)! Only Warren Ellis comic I can unconditionally recommend. Very short series, sadly.
I think so, but I can't find it now. The ADA (and the Texas abortion pill thing) are laws or at least regulations on the books, even if they're probably getting stretched to their breaking points. A lot of this stuff isn't a strict rule, or even necessarily written down anywhere, so much as it's just Understood at ultimately one-on-one scales. Sometimes that's unavoidable: in aviation, I think you could get five opinions from three DERs if you bring up flutter analysis. But it ends up in a world where a lot of things are theoretically allowed, and you can even find people doing them quite publicly, but also prohibited.
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