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PaperclipPerfector  3d ago (text post)   10982 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 7, 2026

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5,000 for every American citizen? Might sound farfetched, but the president just proposed it https://apnews.com/article/trump-dividend-5k-5000-check-republicans-cc80644e3168acd31c892129fb849436

First of all this is obviously retarded, there's no ability to mince words here, it would be about 1.3 trillion dollars almost doubling the annual federal deficit, causing massive inflation, and generally fucking the economy. Second of all, it's obviously not happening just like the DOGE dividend and tariff dividends and all the other free money constantly promised. We all know it, there's no need to pretend that this isn't just constant lying.

Rather I'm more interested in what this suggests, here's some thoughts.

  1. Trump is really worried about the midterms to the point he's trying to outright suggest bribing voters. This concern makes sense given the Dems have a 50% chance of a complete sweep. Trump arrived, disappointed Americans, and his legacy is already ending.

  2. As I spoke earlier about the plan to pay parents to stay at home, it's another highlight of how modern "conservativism" just doesn't give a shit about money anymore. The entire concept of fiscal responsibility is just a joke now. If we take the president seriously (which I would hope we could given the prestige of the office but obviously we can not), it's one of the most destructive singular policies someone could possibly suggest.

  3. Likewise, there's not even an attempt to hide the corruption anymore. I can not even imagine how much more blatant he could get that this is attempted bribery. People can play the whataboutism game of former admins if they want, but at least those had the shame to hide it behind closed doors a bit.

  4. The magical tariffs continue to do everything. Trump has promised so much with tariff revenue (a number I can't even cite him on since like many of his claims, it fluctuates widely). CATO has an excellent list of everything they're claimed to fund. It's not just fiscal responsibility that is a joke, the entire idea of government funding has become one.

  5. And this isn't occuring in isolation, it's another sign of the GOP transformation into a populism powered welfare socialist party. Fiscal responsibility is a joke, redistribution from the rich to the poor in bribes is based, trade is evil and companies should be owned by the government.

  6. And what political coalition now exists to point out the obvious and say this isn't smart?  The stereotypical conservative response before was "how will we pay for that?" in regards to big sending. The response now is crickets. Negative polarization has gone so far that the DSA, a group that literally calls themselves socialist are now the most free trade voting bloc, so will we reverse polarize ourselves into a small government balanced budget "socialist" president at some point?

  7. But most importantly, what does this say about politics now where promising $1.35 trillion in direct payments to voters is presented as the conservative campaign message. How much further into the slop can we possibly descend, and how we can ever pull ourselves out of it? Maybe the Dems can just promise 5,001 dollars or something.

Another round of looting the country.

Another round of justifying it by exaggerating the outgroup's policies and claiming "we're only spending in retaliation for how much spending THOSE guys did!!!"

Another round of populist-induced amnesia where everyone forgets the country was on solid financial footing a few decades ago.

Another round of everyone looking around for where the money went, while conveniently forgetting about Social Security and Medicare.

Another round of the electorate thinking the deficit is fake, and that we could trivially fix it if only we targeted [favored boogeyman] (choose one or more of foreigners, immigrants, billionaires).

It's all so tiresome.

I'm not unsympathetic, but the problem of the Fiscal Responsibility Party building up a treasure chest through being harsh and unpopular and then the Gibs Party looting it is a real issue. What's your proposed solution, beyond restricting the electorate or just accepting your role as Nasty Daddy and watching the Gibs Party eat your work every time?

We had the same problem in the UK with the old Tory party and Labour, and getting fed up with that is one reason why Reform is doing so well at the moment.

Username checks out.

Can we just agree Trump is now Caesar?

I think it’s clear the American Republic has fallen. The question is will we get an Augustus?

Democracy just doesn’t work in non Anglo and definitely non European societies. It’s time for an emperor.

Edit: I’m probably being too dramatic. It likely felt like the Republic had fallen during the last migration wave in the thirties and fourties. But we likely only have a window to fix it.

Trump is a Grachii Brother, we are in the late republic era. He's the first wave of populist politician in the modern American republic elected due to rising dissatisfaction with the establishment. Dissatisfaction is probably a bit euphemistic, people are pissed that the government isn't and hasn't for awhile been perceived as working in the interests of the people.

If this DSA surge is anything to go by, the democrats are having their own populist civil war. We really are in the optimiates vs populares section of the republican history.

Lincoln was Caesar, and FDR was Augustus. We are already 150 years into Empire, and you're seeing the results of late empire, not late republic.

It kind of fits. I guess nothing is a perfect parallel. Lincoln personality wise isn’t Caesar and the issues he faced seemed less like Caesar’s time while modern America seems much more like Caesar. FDR does seem to be the start of true Empire America.

Can we just agree Trump is now Caesar?

I don't like this comparison because Caesar had a successful military career and was overall competent in many respects. Trump is much closer to a jumped-up Hugo Chavez or Napoleon III.

Democracy just doesn’t work in non Anglo and definitely non European societies. It’s time for an emperor.

Democracy is fine, it's the electorate that's the problem. And an actual dictatorship would almost certainly be worse in the long run.

Napoleon III seems fine to me, the worst you can say about him is that he's not his uncle, and he's not Otto von Bismark.

Napoleon III (born Charles-Louis Napoléon Bonaparte;[2] 20 April 1808 – 9 January 1873) was the first President of France from 1848 to 1852 and then Emperor of the French from 1852 until his deposition in 1870. He was the first elected president, second emperor, and the last monarch of France. He established the Second French Empire in 1852, which began a period of rapid industrialization and expansion of infrastructure in France and saw the rise of French influence in geopolitics after several decades of instability. As head of state of France for 22 years, he was the longest-reigning French head of state since the end of the ancien régime.

Twenty two years, rapid industrialization, rise of French influence after decades of instability. Longest reigning head of state since the Revolution. Where's the downside? I wish Trump were as good as Napoleon III.

I think you're correct. My main gripe actually is that Trump is too old to serve effectively in that role, and there's no clear successor.

But I'd like to see you make the case rather than just stipulate it.

  1. K-shaped economy and a struggling native class. Widespread slavery made the rich very rich in Rome but the average Roman Citizen saw lower wages.

  2. Bread and Circus. Basically the policy proposed today. And he’s definitely done circus.

  3. Legal attacks and threats of imprisonment followed by a crossing of the Rubicon and winning.

  4. Assassination. Trump did survive.

  5. Potential - An adopted son taking over after death. Vance obviously. Though Kushner could fulfill this role

  6. I think Rome also had a fall in morality and falling tfr in the native population

A sentiment I'm seeing in this thread is essentially that Democrats propose policies that, when you hold them up to the light just right, are indistinguishable from mere gibs, so why shouldn't Trump do the same thing? I agree with the many posters here that democracy has increasingly shifted into a "to the victor goes the spoils" mindset, where politicians are incentivized to promise their constituents as much material benefit as possible if elected. However, it's my recollection that most Democrat gibs are at least presented under the pretense that they solve a problem or have a social benefit. Even reparations for the descendants of slaves, which are arguably the most diffuse and nebulous use of government funds, have been justified many times over with varying publications, media efforts, etc. We can discuss the veracity of these claims, but they're at least granted an air of historical importance and societal justification. Trump, in contrast, is simply saying "vote for me and you'll get money," without even gesturing at some social purpose. Simple quid pro quo. I don't see how this can be anything but concerning.

Patronage in general is the dominant strategy in a democracy. I think Latin America is an instructive example: they way the 19th century oligarchy, and later right wing movements, got popular support was via patronage. It could take the form of anything between local Don Gonzales getting you a loan to el Partido Conservador in Colombia handing out government posts based on loyalty to Vargas in Brazil making the state the patron and protector of the urban worker. Even in the US, you had patronage in the form of machines like Tammany Hall and in forms like “write your congressman and his staff can help solve your problem.”

While libertarianism and economic liberalism is a political current even in culturally clientelist Latin America, having “vote for me and if you want recompense that’s communist” be the default right wing position is very anomalous since it just isn’t competitive politically.

The choice is in between left-wing or right-wing clientelism; libertarians can somewhat limit the whoring, but they can’t stop it.

EDIT: To add a bit of nuance, pro-market politics in the age of mass politics aren’t totally doomed the fail. The Neo-liberal turn in the 1980s and 1990s globally was a very real success. At the same time, I honestly can’t think of any society after the advent of mass politics that one could describe as “libertarian” that didn’t include patronage, welfare, or industrial policy.

The realignment is totally unsurprising if you accept that the US parties represent different tribes, rather than any universal political principles or approaches to government. Whichever party represents the tribe that is on top will want to cement the advantage, conserve the circumstances that put it there, jealously guard the wealth and integrity of the state that is an extension of the winning tribe's volition, and reinforce its power to keep its enemies down. The one that represents the underdog will want the opposite of all that, to subvert the culture, overturn hierarchies, constrain and weaken the state and redistribute its assets.

As the Wheel of Fortune turns, if you are caught up in the idea that D/R mean left/right mean concrete political beliefs, you are bound to be surprised at the parties supposedly "betraying their principles" or undulating sinusoidally.

Socialism is just the natural voting choice of a society in which almost all adults are allowed to vote. The thing that really has to be explained is why not all major political parties in mass franchise democracies are socialist. And this can be explained: other factors such as pride, ethnic tensions, pro-capitalism propaganda, etc. can override the desire for socialist redistribution. So can intellectual arguments about how socialism fails, but let's face it, only a tiny minority of the population are familiar with them so they don't really play that much of a role except perhaps when rewritten by capitalism-loving think tanks to appeal to a mass audience.

Another thing that can override the natural popularity of socialism is a widely held notion that the economy is doing well, that a rising tide is lifting all boats. I think we probably had something like that in the 1950s. We don't have that now. I'll leave aside arguments over whether the economy is really doing well or not. The important thing when it comes to the current argument is that large numbers of people are upset with how it's doing.

In recent years in the US, one of the major reasons for the low popularity of socialism has been just the plain off-putting nature of many people who are vocally into socialism, plus the fact that many of them are anti-white racists and/or are into ideas like "defund the police". But it stands to reason that as soon as socialists manage to actually get their act together and stop seeming like insane weirdoes, the popularity of socialism rises. Especially given the progress of AI that increasingly is capable of doing more and more people's jobs.

I don't even think that socialism is a good way to run a pre-AI society in the long term, although I think that it might be the only viable way to run a post-AI society. I'm familiar with and agree with the major arguments against socialism: it stagnates economic and technical progress, eventually leading to worse outcomes across the board including for the working class, and it tends to result in authoritarianism and often mass murder. I'm pretty far from being someone who is sympathetic to socialism.

And even despite all that, I would still happily vote for a socialist or at least a social democrat party IF I could believe that voting for them would result in better economic conditions for me and wouldn't just result in having the local police force defunded. I have my own material prosperity to think about. The possibility that socialism might overall make things worse for the working class 10-20 years down the road compared to if we stayed with a more capitalist model... eh... I don't know, the reality is that I want to ensure my material well being now and try make sure that AI progress doesn't turn my current economic class into a luxury that the rich only have incentive to keep around out of altruism.

Any anti-socialism arguments that are likely to actually work on me would have to appeal to my selfishness. Indeed, socialists themselves would be able to appeal much better to me if they did a better job of appealing to my selfishness.

Trump's socialist-leaning qualities do that for many people (I'll put aside the question of the degree to which his socialism is just a con). It's somewhat socialist-leaning economics without the stereotypical blue haired people, the vegan communes, and the "white people bad". Also without the boring mundane day-in-day-out activities of labor union organizing, which is probably the other main thing that people were identifying with socialist-leaning politics until recently. The "dirtbag left" is another, much more culturally leftist variant, of the same thing. Basically, socialism in the US reached a stage of irrelevance at some point that it actually had to be rescued from the people who were calling themselves socialists. Now that it kind of, to a limited extent, has been, it's understandably on the rise.

At this point I think Trump is a scam artist, and his proposals should be treated like the baubles of a gypsy. He’s a scam artist in a literal way, in that his scams have a genuine artfulness to them, but they are scams nonetheless. Nothing he proposes or promises should be taken seriously. There will be no pay-out just like there was no $2,000 “tariff dividend”. It’s scams all the way down.

You're getting a lot of push back, rightfully so, on grounds that you almost certainly support Democratic party actions that similarly raid the public purse for their preferred spoils. And sure, complaining about when the other guy does it is as gay as the day is long, but it appears an observable truth to me that such mere complaining in this form has not been beneficial for either side. Nor are the discussions that tend to follow, as they mostly descend into finger-pointing.

I don't know that I've entirely given up on finding a true solution, and perhaps there are others, but let me suggest that there might be one. The core problem is a credible commitment problem. Both sides see each other complain when they're out of power, but cannot believe that they will commit to not doing likewise once they regain power. If FC's particular brand of doomerism is not controlling (and it might be), then perhaps the most suitable tool in our Constitutional Republic for the task would be a Constitutional amendment.

So draft a suitable amendment. Provide a text. Argue convincingly that this draft text, if adopted, will actually constrain Democrats when they're in power as well as Republicans (this will be a hard task). Show that you can garner enough Democratic votes (in Congress and the States) to adopt an amendment that will almost certainly gore many future Democratic party oxen as well. Honestly, you will probably have to gore some current Democratic party oxen, too. Do some productive herethetics and show that if you split the issue differently, there can be more people on the side of, "Both of these parties need to knock it the hell off," than on the side of, "We'll gleefully do it for our team and constantly complain when it's their team." I'm personally happy to be on the side of, "Both of these parties need to knock it the hell off," but I probably doubt that you are. So just show me a draft text to make it apparent which group you're in.

If you find this unpalatable and cannot bring yourself to credibly commit to goring enough Democratic party oxen in the process, then the answers to most of your questions become readily apparent. The same goes for the other side.

You're getting a lot of push back, rightfully so, on grounds that you almost certainly support Democratic party actions that similarly raid the public purse for their preferred spoils.

I've said probably dozens of times at this point here that I am a reaganite libertarian, not a big government progressive. There are more viewpoints than the two mainstream ones of being a sheeple following the political waves of whatever one's favorite culture war party shifts towards.

There is no shortage of content criticizing the Democrats for this sort of nonsense, the Republican party used to be one of the biggest critics of socialism and free money handouts! Now it's not, and us critics are few.

Could you link your criticism of the Inflation Reduction Act?

Can you explain back to me why I may be asking for that link?

So draft a suitable amendment. Provide a text. Argue convincingly that this draft text, if adopted, will actually constrain Democrats when they're in power as well as Republicans (this will be a hard task).

Yes. This would be good. This should also be done for fixing the Supreme Court at 9 justices (with 18 year terms for new justices if necessary). There's a lot the Democrat Party could do here to restore trust.

The only way to keep home prices where they are as foreign residents leave the country and Boomers die off is to inflate the dollar, so this kills two birds with one stone. Total Boomer victory. The rest of us will have fun in the ashes of a once great civilization, I'm sure.

I remember trump bux during Covid- this is nothing new. Government helicopter money does not go back into the helicopter, ever. Trump specifically trying to bribe voters is also nothing new.

I mean I’m going to take my $5k. My act of resistance won’t stop inflation. I’ll probably put it in silver.

We get it, you don’t like what the Republican Party has become. That’s fair, they’re not what I would pick. But we’re stuck with two rising tides of fiscal irresponsibility, one of which wants multiple new spending programs on the scale of social security, and the other one wants to chum the water with stimmy checks to win elections. We will never have a balanced budget again, not unless we manage to outgrow government spending.

There is an old saying, old enough that many Mottizens may be too young to ever have heard it, that "it takes a Nixon to go to China." The aphorism points to a political tendency where certain political moves are too "on the nose" for the party that seems most likely to do them, which strangely allows the other party to get away with it. Reverse the polarity and you get the occasional observation about conservatives being hawks but progressives actually starting wars and conflicts (though Trump has, I think, successfully brought that particular observation into closer parity).

So yeah--I wasn't kidding when I said "Trump is a lib," at least by the standards of the US culture war circa 1990. Small government conservatism had its last apparent gasp in about 2009 with the "Tea Party" movement. Trump has already demonstrated both his willingness to mail everyone a check (during COVID) and the consequences of doing so (rapid, albeit not immediate, inflation). Interesting that the total budget didn't really go back down even though I'm no longer getting direct deposits from the federal government. How is all that money being spent now, instead? Who is getting enriched by the profligate feds if it's not individual citizens? But another way of looking at all that is to say--well, now we have more data. Let's try it again!

A Democrat in the same position might face heavy opposition on such a broad distribution, even from their own party--see also "Obamacare," as well as interminable arguments over how "equal" distributions shouldn't be made because there are more important voting demographics some people who are in greater "need" than others. Trump isn't going to give us real welfare reform but it might actually take a Republican to manage it, and for the moment, he's the "Republican" in that position. He faces the slim but far from impossible prospect of an impeachment with conviction if the midterms go sufficiently badly for him. As per the usual, he has presented the idea in a garishly populist and self-serving way, but like Nixon going to China, Trump has continuity with his first term in office as the man genuinely shifting the Overton window on UBI.

For better or for worse.

So yeah--I wasn't kidding when I said "Trump is a lib," at least by the standards of the US culture war circa 1990.

Yeah Trump in many ways is just a demsoc from the 80s-90s era. Anti trade, anti immigration, free money for all.

He had a fantastic quote, I think from ~2015? Of saying that "everyone goes socially liberal and fiscally conservative, the trick is to be socially conservative and fiscally liberal" and I think about that a lot

He saw a niche to zig when the gang was zagging and my god he exploited it.

Without looking deeply and taking this at face value, yeah it's pretty bad and I agree with all your points except #2. I still think this is quite different from the core contention of #2.

at least those had the shame to hide it behind closed doors a bit.

the money gets pissed away either way, so who gives a shit about this theoretical shame of no consequence?

it's another sign of the GOP transformation into a populism powered welfare socialist party

Yes, we now have two braindead populist welfare socialist parties. Your side won! Shouldn't you be happier?

edit:

what does this say about politics now

chump politics won and a death spiral is overdetermined. that said, there's a lot of ruin in a nation, and that death spiral is likely to be long and fairly luxurious.

Yes, we now have two braindead populist welfare socialist parties. Your side won! Shouldn't you be happier?

I'm a Reagan style libertarian, can you tell me how "my side" won?

while i don't have an eidetic memory of all posters, my recollection of your posting here is quite #resistancelib in your flavor of anti-Trumpism.

I am too, in an ideal world, a Reaganite libertarian, but that almost feels like some quaint dream from a former life. It has little or nothing to do with the world as it now is. Do you think there can be a return to a politics with Reaganite libertarianism is successful? Is Reaganite libertarianism sustainable? Personally, my "black pill" was realizing that libertarianism really is only marginally more compatible with human nature than communism, albeit for different reasons. I could argue for Reaganite libertarianism, but it feels rather like trying to convince people to close the barn doors after the horse, pig, sheep, and even the donkey have already bolted while the people I'm trying to convince are denying there was even a barn to begin with. We lost. Reaganite libertarians are like downed Japanese fighter pilots still fighting world war 2 into the 1970s. Condemning Trump for these actions feels merely philosophical, but it's all so obvious as to not be especially philosophically interesting. Of course it's stupid and wrong, and yet it's also necessary and inevitable.

I often see this style of post by progressives. The same progressive who, if they were in charge, would give trillions to their preferred groups, bankrupting the government in the process. (See: Joe Biden)

"I thought you were conservative, they say. Don’t you want to cut social security? I thought you had principles. Any real man would commit electoral suicide."

But no, handing Democrats permanent electoral victory is not conservative.

Since the 1960s, the people who receive gibs from the government have been a stable base for the Democratic Party. And now we’ve reached the point where net tax paying households are outweighed by net recipients. Mass gibs have been a part of politics since the 1960s. It's just that until now, only one party benefitted.

Which brings us back to this: My rules > your rules applied fairly > your rules applied unfairly.

Obviously this proposal is a bad idea. But if democrats win a trifecta in 2028 more money than this will be spent. It will just go to people who hate America and white people. Better to have gibs for all then gibs for everyone except me.

Which brings us back to this: My rules > your rules applied fairly > your rules applied unfairly.

I'm a reaganite libertarian, so this is incompetence in understanding there are more viewpoints than just hyper left and hyper right.

Ah yes, the famous fiscal conservative Ronald Reagan.

Reagan was consistently for shrinking government spending. Congress holds the power of the purse, not the presidency, so he was not empowered to do as he wished there but it's very obvious what his preference was. That's one of the biggest takeaways from the Grace Commission, like 80% of what they found required Congress (controlled by Democrats) to work with him. They did not, because the Dems are for big govt.

That is not the case now, we can not pretend the GOP is still a small government less spending advocate given both Trump's constant grandiose claims to increase spending, and the fact that there is actually a trifecta without any action to decrease the deficit. Reagan didn't have the power but he tried. Trump has the power and keeps pushing for more spending.

The debt and deficit exploded under Reagan. In the words of the immortal Dick Cheney: "Reagan proved that deficits don't matter".

His biggest legacy is a giant increase in military spending to force the Soviets to respond, thereby collapsing their empire. And good on him for it. No doubt he'd also be in favor of the current Iran conflict, which we are doing on a shoestring budget in comparison.

But of course it's very easy to be in favor of dead conservatives who you assign any beliefs you like to. No doubt there were "conservatives" in the 1980s who claimed to have voted for Eisenhower, but now encouraged people to vote for Mondale because Reagan was "too radical".

To be completely fair, Bush redirected a lot of federal domestic spending towards republican supporters.

I'm at a loss. Medicare Part D? Halliburton seems like a better fit, but that's not domestic.

I don't have many reasons to like Bush, give me one. What did he do to help Republicans? He wasted a historical mandate, badly bungled two wars, expanded the welfare state, and now campaigns for Democrats. He's the worst Republican in modern history.

He did pass out shit to the Republican base. Faith based charities, tax cuts that favor breadwinner families, Medicare part D… all favors thé Republican base.

It may include things that there are good reasons to do, but they do favor individual republicans.

doesn't give a shit about money anymore.

How would you realistically balance the budget? Using the long term average, theres maybe 1.1 or 1.2 trillion in tax possible, which leaves a trillion dollar hole. What are you cutting to close that? As much as I'd enjoy the hilarity of an actual trillion dollar cut to any program, anything you cut that much is almost certain to shift into increases in other categories (current serviceman or seniors getting on social services after their funding is cut, etc). There isn't a fiscally conservative path out, might as well get some spending on things the 41% of the voters paying the taxes value, too.

The budget gets balanced after a default if there's a constitutional amendment requiring it and limiting the voting franchise to lifetime net tax payers.

Many white-collar jobs are bullshit and AI is taking over more. Blue-collar isn’t much better, with robotics capable of automating most unskilled labor, skilled labor doesn’t have enough demand for the refugees, and service jobs are getting replaced with robots and delivery.

I think UBI is a net positive. Even though it increases inflation, it reduces wealth inequality, thus it may give lower classes enough to afford “basic luxuries” that are cheap for upper classes and get wasted otherwise. People will always demand more but that doesn’t mean the state should give them nothing, gen Z may use the money to socialize more, reducing TFR and mental health crises, and create art and research which is occasionally very interesting or useful.

And if UBI is good, a one-time payment of $5,000 is a good start. The Democrats have an easy counter to this bribe: they can become pro working class again and offer $6,000.

Blue-collar isn’t much better, with robotics capable of automating most unskilled labor

I bang this drum a lot, but can you present any evidence that this is the case? I've worked in this field. Automating an unskilled task that is not already automated is hard. Automating with sufficiently reliability that your solution does not bring factories grinding to a halt every hour is MUCH harder. Doing that and have it be cheaper than immigrant labour is harder still.

It's not currently true in any sense whatsoever. The biggest robot industrial deployments are highly constrained trial runs on EV/robot factories, arguably PR stunts. (That's if we are talking of humanoid/other general purpose robots, obviously industrial arms are very productive and have been for decades now). I'm very optimistic about robots but we're not here yet, and certainly the US blue collar work is all done by meatbags.

I know that they're working on getting robotic welders at shipyards - I think the Philly yard is one of the first to try it out. I would say it's not yet replacing the welders they've been unable to hire, but it is more progressed than just a PR stunt.

Robot welding has been used for a while in detroit, hasn’t it? It’s clearly a mature technology that they just hadn’t figured out how to deploy to this particular application.

Starship switched from human to robotic welding years ago, around 2020 or 2021 IIRC. This was shortly after 3 embarrassing cryo test failures, 2 of which looked like structural flaws, and the only such failures since then look to have been related to test misconfiguration or (non-welded) COPV failures, so it was way more than a PR stunt, it was basically a necessity to get the program off the ground.

This is still "industrial arms are very productive" territory, though, and although it's "blue collar" work it's not even close to being cheap unskilled labor. The goal for humanoid (or semihumanoid; hands are way more important than legs) robots isn't "with a year of engineering work you can migrate this specific expensive manufacturing process", it's "you can just tell the robot what to do and it'll go do it, and even after amortizing the cost it's cheaper than just telling a person".

Aerospace welding has enough precision going into it that "we spent tons of money automating it to reduce process variation" (structural flaws caused by human tolerances) has long been on the table, regardless of the financial efficacy. Even literal amateurs have been building automation for this for quite a while.

The real jobs to watch are the ones that are cost-sensitive and sufficiently-varied to make automation difficult. I'd watch industrial textile sewing, fruit-picking, or things like that.

You don't need a fully humanoid robot to start replacing a lot of sedentary blue-collar labor like sewing or assembling electronics. Just two arms and a head, mounted on a basic swivel.

Legs aren't the hard issue anymore. The hands and manipulation policy is the current bottleneck.

Robot arms are still 99% using preprogrammed motions only. In all seriousness, even controlling two arms independently is considered a serious problem because your solver needs to account for the motion of each arm independently and plan trajectories that don't move the arms into collision. That means every movement takes significantly longer to plan. Such robots exist but are generally considered a gimmick.

sewing

If you have invented a robot that can do complex manipulation of cloth at speed with a 99.9% success rate, you can get 100,000,000 dollars of investment tomorrow.

If you have invented a robot that can do complex manipulation of cloth at speed with a 99.9% success rate, you can get 100,000,000 dollars of investment tomorrow.

As far as I know, there are data harvesting operations going on in sweatshops right now to train ANNs on. Someone (like Aliyun) is already spending these millions of investments.

I know. I'm not saying it's unsolvable, but it's very firmly not solved at the moment and that's before you get into actual economic implementation.

On top of that, there's the question of comparative advantage. Early Rats really wanted to brush it off, something something we did not do comparative advantage for horses. For a long time, we kinda did, actually. Maybe one day everything gets automated, but simple accounting dictates that we fire all the lawyers, and hand them a broom first.

what does this say about politics now

That "lolbertarian" was a really good insult?

Seriously, though: if simple can vote, simple will govern. Most people don't give a shit about coherent ideology or complex policy. Let's call it "too autistic."

will we reverse polarize ourselves into a small government balanced budget "socialist" president at some point?

If you want a real policy that isn't "we support whatever those losers hate now" you'll have to look at a smaller number of people.

Yeah, this is what made me stop being a libertarian in the normal vein.

Libertarianism only works when enough people in the population are committed to being libertarian. In practice, being libertarian just means losing to people who are more willing to hold the reigns of power. On a national level, libertarians are principled losers.

To their credit, the Free State Project has actually addressed some of these concerns. They actively work to bring libertarians to New Hampshire while making the state unattractive for leftists. And its starting to have some effects.

Likewise, there's not even an attempt to hide the corruption anymore. I can not even imagine how much more blatant he could get that this is attempted bribery. People can play the whataboutism game of former admins if they want, but at least those had the shame to hide it behind closed doors a bit.

This is a neat bit of rhetorical framing, but is that actually better? I think it's much worse to disguise your political bribes as prosocial programs. Medicaid is about a trillion, and not just once; every single year! Medicare is 1.2, social security 1.5; this bribe doesn't seem obviously worse to me. Likely better, as the lack of means-testing should mean a greater portion of it would end up getting saved instead of immediately consumed. That doesn't make it good, but I don't think it's whataboutism to discuss this political bribe in the context of other (ongoing! larger!) political bribes.

(The most direct comparison is of course Biden's student loan forgiveness program, which was also a ridiculous pre-midterm lie. But that was small potatoes compared to the bribes that actually did and continue to happen.)

Now, you might object, the old-age programs were founded by democrats but mostly benefit republican voters! (I'm not sure whether this actually true; Republicans are more common in this age range, but it's possible the democrat subset benefits more for one reason or another. But it might well be, and let's say it is for the sake of argument.) So how can I call that a political bribe? Well, the republicans have had numerous trifectas since, and not once have they repealed the programs. The bribe doesn't benefit democrats because republicans elected to match it. This is the worst possible case for everyone (who isn't getting bribed): enormous expense and no political edge (not that a political edge would be worth that kind of money).

This program, though, I believe is so blatant (and so very Trump) that I don't think the democrats will get suckered into matching it. Oh, maybe if it worked they would, but it won't; Trump has no credibility on this point, as you say. So on the whole, I think this is better for the nation than if Trump promised double school budgets (also around a trillion) or whatever.

The student loan bribe was worse in that it was targeted to Biden's political supporters, rewarded bad decisions, and made paying off student debt a stupid decision. Better to just wait until the next Democrat gets elected. Which is exactly the point.

Trump's plan just gives money to everyone. Bad, but not to the same extent.

I think you’re significantly overrating thé knowledgeability of low information voters. To them, thé President can totally helicopter out cash.

As I spoke earlier about the plan to pay parents to stay at home, it's another highlight of how modern "conservativism" just doesn't give a shit about money anymore.

Nor should it. There is no economic, political, nor social benefit available to pursuit of fiscal conservativism in any shape or form. It achieves nothing, can achieve nothing, will achieve nothing. If America needs a party of higher taxes, spending cuts and austerity, I nominate the Democrats take up this noble burden upon their broad shoulders and wish them well of it.

As I spoke earlier about the plan to pay parents to stay at home, it's another highlight of how modern "conservativism" just doesn't give a shit about money anymore.

You probably ought to take a break from slathering on the emotives and supply a specific argument as to why they should, which will be difficult because no coherent argument for such action exists.

Likewise, there's not even an attempt to hide the corruption anymore. I can not even imagine how much more blatant he could get that this is attempted bribery. People can play the whataboutism game of former admins if they want, but at least those had the shame to hide it behind closed doors a bit.

If you are going to call the Trump Administration corrupt, I think you should detail who in the Administration has been convicted of corruption in a court of law. I have lost count of the times you have argued that the procedural outcomes of the criminal justice system settle a matter: well, this also is one of those procedural outcomes, yet here you seem to believe that your own judgement takes precedence in a way that you have never and will never accept from your opposites.

In any case, if Trump and his administration were corrupt, it seems to me that since you were comfortable looking the other way for his predecessors, what justification other than tribal animus could lead you to argue for doing otherwise now? We are not even at the part where the FBI coordinates cover-ups with every major media outlet and platform in the country that involve mass-violations of freedom of speech and the press. You did not care then, why should we care now, or indeed ever again? Where do you get off pretending that there are rules being broken here?

It's not just fiscal responsibility that is a joke, the entire idea of government funding has become one.

Sure. Just not merely as much of a joke as your shabby pretense that this moment, now is when it became one.

Fiscal responsibility is a joke, redistribution from the rich to the poor in bribes is based, trade is evil and companies should be owned by the government.

Do the words "Stimulus", or "Bailout" mean anything to you? "Entitlements?" No? How delightful it must be, to be each morning born anew, unburdened by what has been.

We have been discussing the precariat for more than a decade at this point. Economic stress is driving radicalization nation-wide. What you so callously describe as "bribes" to "leeches" is necessary economic assistance to Americans who both need and deserve the help. But by all means, continue framing the issue this way, and I can only hope that the Democrats follow your appalling example.

The truth, as I see it, is that you are angry that Republicans have figured out that we also can distribute largesse from the public purse. We can probably even do it without inculcating massive ethnic fraud machines! How unfair of us! Everyone knows the democrats are supposed to be the party that buys votes with tax dollars, and the Republicans are supposed to be the party that loses votes by implementing austerity. How dare we refuse to play the role assigned to us!?

And what political coalition now exists to point out the obvious and say this isn't smart?

There isn't one, and you know it. And when the consequences come due, as they must, it must be a great relief to you to know that your side will grimly tighten their belts and set to work picking up the pieces in a measured and responsible manner, foregoing extremism and finger-pointing and blame-games, and through reason and persuasion patiently persuade the public the necessity of taking responsibility and accountability for the mistakes made and the many hard years of sacrifice ahead. Honestly, I'm hopeful that you'll personally be one of them, given your evident honesty and dedication to plain-speaking truth. I hope I get to watch you make that pitch someday, perhaps on TV.

But most importantly, what does this say about politics now where promising $1.35 trillion in direct payments to voters is presented as the conservative campaign message.

It says that Conservativism is dead. The Progressive coalition successfully strangled it to death, and its last, brightest glimmer of hope was squandered in a cross-tribe coalition effort at nation-building in the Middle East. For all your performative disgust, you know that Social Security is insolvent, that entitlement spending has been obviously unsustainable for decades, and that the Democrats have worked ceaselessly to make these problems worse for at least the last fifty years. What point is there for Republicans to continue to exercise restraint? Whatever we save, you will squander, loot, spend or redistribute. And this presumes that we even can coordinate savings, which we have historically not been able to do, and which further attempts at doing directly trade off on our other political objectives.

This ends badly, obviously. Equally obviously, that bad ending was locked in quite some time ago, and I for one decline to be scapegoated for it.

How much further into the slop can we possibly descend, and how we can ever pull ourselves out of it? Maybe the Dems can just promise 5,001 dollars or something.

Sure, go for it! Counter-offer: we offer 5,002, and a plan to pay for it by nationalizing the endowments! The destination is fixed, does it actually matter if we get there fast or slow?

You probably ought to take a break from slathering on the emotives and supply a specific argument as to why they should, which will be difficult because no coherent argument for such action exists.

There is endless material by conservative economists and other such experts on the matter. You can disagree with the likes of Hayek/Friedman/Sowell/etc but to act as if no coherent arguments exist whatsoever is simply a skill issue on your part. Why be proud of your lack of knowledge?

If you are going to call the Trump Administration corrupt, I think you should detail who in the Administration has been convicted of corruption in a court of law. I have lost count of the times you have argued that the procedural outcomes of the criminal justice system settle a matter: well, this also is one of those procedural outcomes, yet here you seem to believe that your own judgement takes precedence in a way that you have never and will never accept from your opposites.

Corrupt does not necessarily imply to the point of illegality. There are plenty of ways to be corrupt without being illegal. For example, foreign governments just coincidentally deciding to invest into his meme coin I think it's corrupt. Installing sycophants on the Kennedy Center board who threaten to destroy the whole thing entirely if they can't put Trump's name on it might not have been illegal, but it's corrupt.

And likewise maybe lying and saying you'd give every citizen 5k isn't illegal, but is that not corrupt?

There's also of course the obvious issue that they currently control the cops. I can call Putin corrupt without him being convicted of it for the obvious reason that he is corrupt and the Russian police will never touch him because he is literally the one in charge of Russia. The DOJ is explicitly a political weapon now, and as such I feel I can treat their lack of action as irrelevant as I do Putin.

There isn't one, and you know it.

Exactly. We went from having at least one pro capitalism fiscal responsibility party to having zero. It is a loss for any of us who believe in capitalism and fiscal responsibility.

And when the consequences come due, as they must, it must be a great relief to you to know that your side will grimly tighten their belts

I'm a reaganite libertarian, "my side" has been for belt tightening already. Sorry the world is too complex for your brain to understand more than two viewpoints exist, but your bullshit about "my side" doesn't apply.

There is endless material by conservative economists and other such experts on the matter. You can disagree with the likes of Hayek/Friedman/Sowell/etc but to act as if no coherent arguments exist whatsoever is simply a skill issue on your part. Why be proud of your lack of knowledge?

It's been a while since I read them, but I don't recall any of their material about why it's bad to redistribute money, that will get redistributed no matter what you do, to your preferred social causes, instead of to the causes preferred by the social liberals. Can you perhaps post a link or two where they've made that case?

I'm a reaganite libertarian, "my side" has been for belt tightening already.

Reagan did not tighten the belt.

As I spoke earlier about the plan to pay parents to stay at home, it's another highlight of how modern "conservativism" just doesn't give a shit about money anymore.

I've been socially conservative, fiscally liberal since I started voting (which meant it was and remains difficult to find a party that fits me any time I go for those US-based political compass style quizzes; one side has the conservatism but also is hard in areas I don't support, another side has policies I could support but then remain wedded to policies I can not countenance). In Irish political terms, I was Fianna Fáil because that's how my granny voted, but they have now become happily Siamese Twinned with Fine Gael and both parties have run after social liberalism as hard as they could for easy votes, so I'm a bit of an orphan now even in my own political context.

So no, I'm not worried about spending money like drunken sailors in Pattaya 😁 Not that I think money should be squandered, but the kind of conservatism you seem to imagine (everyone pulls themselves up by their own bootstraps, no social safety net, business first, light-touch regulation, free market capitalism is the one true way, etc.) doesn't describe my views.

Yeah, this is buying votes. Yeah, it's not gonna happen because the money is not there. Yeah it's shameless brass-necked impudence. But it is very amusing to see the people of "reparations! reparations forever!" losing their lives about this nonsense.

It is frustrating that you're such a good writer because over years and years of reading you I've realized that all your beliefs amount to Hottentot morality in so many words. Democrats celebrate crime and brutality? Disgusting, we should do that to them, appoint our own thugs. Democrats buy votes? There is no coherent argument against buying votes! You just defend whatever Republicans do, no matter how obviously debased. You gleefully embrace the race to the bottom.

In 2023, the Peronist government of Argentina tried to buy votes with total tax relief for "the working class" and free bus rides. I've been impressed by Argentinians when they didn't take the bait and still voted Milei, who reversed the law.

There's been a lot of concern about Brazilification of the US. I think it's way past that. The US is a South American society, maybe Middle Eastern. Just wrong skin color by accident.

It is frustrating that you're such a good writer because over years and years of reading you I've realized that all your beliefs amount to Hottentot morality in so many words.

"Hottentot Morality" seems underspecified.

I refuse to pretend that rules or norms constrain us all equally when in fact they obviously do not. Why should I? What works that way? What positive outcome is secured by such a method? Further, if stability or peace or the current maintenance of plenty requires obvious, systematic injustice, why would you think this maintainable long-term? Why is pretending it can be sustained useful? What is gained? A pleasant aesthetic ambiance between now and the inevitable shattering crash?

Democrats celebrate crime and brutality?

Whoa now, you can't just sneak that in there, that seems pretty uncharitable! Most of the Blues remaining here certainly wouldn't agree that Democrats do anything of the sort, even when you quote examples of they themselves doing so!

Which is to say, you are willing to make this accusation to me, who is speaking the truth plainly, and decline to make it to those who have actually acted on it but are willing to lie. And even then, they burned our cities; have we burned theirs? Are we running gangs of masked men to kick people's teeth in for saying things we don't like? Are we murdering their political champions? If you're going to draw an equivalence, you really ought to back it up.

...But allow me to skip much tedious listing and harangue.

The difference that you don't seem to recognize is that I'm willing to agree that these things are, in fact, actual problems, and they are, in fact, going to lead to a bad end, provided my opposite is willing to engage with the facts in good faith. Absent that good faith, I'm not really sure what you or others expect. My side lost, and was trampled down. Can you resurrect us? If you cannot, why curse me for failing to do so? I say that the culture war is a serious problem driven by fundamentally-incompatible values across broad, coherent populations, that this locks us into an escalation spiral that is very obviously going to break things we can't fix, and I'm told that I'm being a silly-billy, that this is all a distraction or an algorithm bubble, and then the next day I'm presented with a conversation like this one, where it's awful that my side is doing the thing the other side built their entire party around doing, and has consistently claimed my side is bad for trying to stop, all the way up to five seconds ago.

If you think vote-buying is bad, explain what ought to be done about eighty-five fucking years of ceaseless vote-buying. Explain what should be done about the trillions of dollars in vote-buying that is definitely going to happen this year alone. Explain how the ideals you're espousing have even the slightest connection to the world I have to live in, or how precisely they extend even two inches beyond this specific, entirely-bespoke Russell-conjugation.

Things can be destroyed that cannot be repaired nor replaced, and recognizing this fact does not in and of itself bring them back. Pretending harder doesn't change this. Cursing people who point out that you are pretending also does not change this.

In 2023, the Peronist government of Argentina tried to buy votes with total tax relief for "the working class" and free bus rides. I've been impressed by Argentinians when they didn't take the bait and still voted Milei, who reversed the law.

The wheel carried them down, now it carries them up. The wheel carried us up, now it carries us down. We probably have a Milei, somewhere; it's a big country. What we lack is a population willing to accept a Milei. We are too fat and comfortable, too deluded to accept that hard decisions need to be made, and so those who argue correctly that hard decisions are needed to forestall serious disaster simply lose. And so those of us who can recognize that hard decisions are needed to forestall disaster recognize, correctly, that the hard decisions can't be coordinated, and accept that the disaster is going to happen, and attempt to prepare as best we're able.

There's been a lot of concern about Brazilification of the US. I think it's way past that. The US is a South American society, maybe Middle Eastern. Just wrong skin color by accident.

I honestly suspect that you have no idea. And yet, you frequently speak about inevitable US victory and our impending dominance of the light-cone. I think that's unlikely. I think things go badly for us and probably for a lot of other people in the not-too-distant future, as the Belle Epoque collapses.

So it goes.

The culture war is a war, and increasingly so year by year.

"Hottentot Morality" seems underspecified.

"When they rustle our cattle, this is bad. When we rustle their cattle, this is good. What do you mean, what's the difference? One action hurts me, the other benefits me."

"When Russians shoot Ukrainians, that's bad; When Ukrainians shoot Russians, that's good". Such Hottentot Morality.

Unironically yes. Learning how to step away from this viewpoint was one of the big things about the Enlightenment.

That's odd, I distinctly recall lots of people being killed not just as a direct result of, but in the name of Enlightenment.

And while I'm sure extreme pacifists existed among Enlightment thinkers, I don't think "it's morally wrong to repell an invading army" was a representative view among them.

The destination is fixed, does it actually matter if we get there fast or slow?

In other words, "we're circling down the mouth of Charybdis, and the only reason we're all still alive is because we struggle against the flow, and you don't. Well, fuck that, we're all going down together"

Which is understandable, but ignoble behavior.

If we were circling Charybids, that would mean we were on a boat, and if we were on a boat, then there would be a captain who is actually in charge for the duration of the voyage, and we wouldn't vote on the captain midway through.

The reason why we're circling Charybdis in the first place is because we vote for where to go every other year, and who should be captain every fourth year. And now we are going to be sucked in no matter what, and we will have to come out the other side somehow.

there would be a captain who is actually in charge for the duration of the voyage, and we wouldn't vote on the captain midway through.

I mean, that can happen, but it's usually called a mutiny.

This tweet encapsulated it perfectly:

The breakfast question for small government conservatives

"You live in a welfare state. Federal taxes are taken from you, spent, and wasted. Would you rather have the money given to your friends, or your enemies? Remember that the money will be wasted either way, you're not allowed to get it back, the money needs to be spent. The only thing you can decide is whether the money is given to your friends, or your enemies."

"But I don't want to live in a welfare state."

Frame it and put it on the wall.

The post-Elon Twitter is interesting in that it serves as a sort of distributed intellectual movement that percolates the best ideas up towards people who can actually act on them.

Which is understandable, but ignoble behavior.

There is no durable consensus that we are circling Charybdis. The ask here is that people like me continue to act as though we are circling Charybdis and exhaust ourselves rowing away from that apparent danger, while Blue Tribe laughs at our absurd concerns and forces us to serve them the wine we're too busy rowing to drink.

To the extent that Charybdis does not exist, we should also drink wine. To the extent that Charybdis does exist, this is not an acceptable plan to avoid it. It does not seem to me that nobility comes into it one way or the other; if you require people to enslave themselves in lifelong, futile misery to secure your approval, do not be surprised when they shrug and turn their back to you.

One thing that needs to be asked is "how many rowers, how many drinkers".

Most people are fine with rowing if it's 90% rowers, 10% drinkers. But then we rescued a lifeboat full of drinkers, and now it's 50% drinkers on the boat. And the old rowers harangue the young rowers "I'm retired now, you need to row twice as hard to pay for me and all the drinkers I rescued. It's the noble thing to do."

Asking young white men to continue to bear the burden of society and make themselves subservient to other groups is no longer tenable.

A lifeboat of foreigners who hate us, don't care about charbydis, and just want to drink our wine and tell us where to steer the ship.

While singing the praises of the lifeboat.

The Master said, Entirely trustworthy, a lover of learning, faithful until death, exemplar of the Way, he never enters a state where there is peril, never remains in a state where there is disorder.

When the Way prevails in the world, he appears; when the Way is lacking, he retires.

When the state follows the Way, being poor and lowly is a cause for shame. When the state is without the Way, being rich and eminent is a cause for shame.

Buying voters is not new in American politics, but is the value of the American voter going up or down? Let's find out!

Bribe We done got paid? Total Bribe Target group Bribe per-capita Real Bribe per-capita (2026 dollars)
Bush rebate check Yes $152B 130M households, approx 150M adults $1,013 $1,571
Obamaphone Yes $2.2B/yr Low-income households, 20M at peak $110/yr $171/yr
Stimmy checks Yes $830B Near-universal, 165M adults $5,030 $6,490
Student loan forgiveness No $450B 40M borrowers $11,250 $12,836
Trump "dividend" No $1.3T Universal, 260M adults $5,000 $5,000

Fascinatingly it seems that Trump consistently believes an American vote is worth five thousand dollars.

But most importantly, what does this say about politics now where promising $1.35 trillion in direct payments to voters is presented as the conservative campaign message. How much further into the slop can we possibly descend, and how we can ever pull ourselves out of it? Maybe the Dems can just promise 5,001 dollars or something.

In a democracy, the guy promising to do the responsible thing will always lose to the guy promising more gibs (whether the gibs comes in the form of lower taxes or increased spending is immaterial as long as there is a deficit). This has been known since ancient Rome. Solving this is a coup-complete problem. Until that day comes, all we can do is agitate for our gibs, and try to deny gibs to our enemies.

Or, as Alexander Fraser Tytler put it:

A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been 200 years. These nations have progressed through this sequence: From bondage to spiritual faith; From spiritual faith to great courage; From courage to liberty; From liberty to abundance; From abundance to selfishness; From selfishness to apathy; From apathy to dependence; From dependence back into bondage.

Or, as Alexander Fraser Tytler put it:

I seem to recall this being deToqueville but maybe they just made similar points.

Amazingly, this is misattributed to both. And apocryphal in more ways than one.

The main sentence ("A democracy...largesse out of the public treasury") first shows up in print in 1948 (or 1951) in an op-ed by Elmer T. Peterson in the Daily Oklahoman, who just claimed "a somewhat obscure Scotsman named Tytler made this profound observation." with no known evidence.

The second paragraph ("From bondage to spiritual faith...") comes from a 1943 speech by Henning W. Prentiss Jr., then president of Armstrong Cork Company and started out as a piece about industrial management, not democracy.

The two halves were not joined together until the 1970s and the combined version went viral around the 2000 election recount.

This wasn't a problem for the vast majority of America's history. It's been an issue in modern times. The Left was fine up until either FDR or Great Society. The Right was fine until Trump.

FDR was elected in 1932. Trump was elected in 2016. That is an 84-year gap, during which Democrats accrued massive political capital via the public purse, and Republicans expended vast amounts of political capital trying (and failing) to restrain them.

What was the point of that effort? Why should it be continued? Obviously the democrats have not and will not agree that there is any need for restraint, and obviously a large portion of America sees nothing wrong with this attitude. Are they mistaken? If so, can you persuade them of this fact to a degree that will result in them changing their behavior?

Shit, where's the modern monetary theorists up ins? Aren't we due for a lecture about how the deficit isn't actually a problem, how the National budget isn't actually like a household budget, how debt isn't real?

The Republican party also gained quite a lot of political capital from their stances during this time. They were even able to effectively box Bill Clinton in and get him to balance the budget somewhat. These were popular measures that helped win Republicans elections, since there were enough voters who valued these things relative to other priorities to make it so.

Again, the idea that balanced budgets are political poison akin to cooperating in a defector's game is an overwhelmingly modern phenomenon based on how the electorate moved. The problem is the modern electorate.

The problem is the modern electorate.

How has the electorate changed to make this the case?

An interesting thought experiment. What if, after 1932, the Republican party was socially conservative but fiscally liberal. It might be that we are at the same position as our current timeline vis-a-vis the debt, but with much lower crime, multiculturalism, and degeneracy.

Assuming that spending is constrained by external factors, it doesn't make sense for one party to restrain spending so their enemies can spend twice as much.

Reminds me of the "good" kings throughout history who handed a giant treasury surplus to their successors only to have their successors blow it on extravagance and foreign wars. Today we remember Henry VIII, the spender and warmonger, not Henry VII, the prudent saver.

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