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Hannania, Iowa State Fair, and Vivek. Vivek’s response to LGBTQ made the rounds on twitter mostly with positive support on how it can be handled.
https://twitter.com/richardhanania/status/1690890371398836224?s=46&t=aQ6ajj220jubjU7-o3SuWQ
Vivek says a lot of words but if I had to summarize it’s basically libertarianism for adults - you can do what you want - but no pride for kids and restrictions on female sports and bathroom usage.
I use to share these type of opinions and perhaps I still do. But I no longer find these as stable positions. It comes down to well why don’t you want pride in schools? It’s because I believe in social contagion (and the broad right) that pride is bad and I don’t want the next generation of children to be more gay and transexual. Basically I don’t want grooming for those lifestyles. I think the left knows this. And won’t settle for the right thinking pride is bad. And then it’s well your a homophobe/transphobe. Masks off yea I am. That is why I don’t want pride in school because I think it’s bad for people.
Of course I think the same problem exists with Hannania’s new position on race. Treat everyone the same. Be tough on crime. Do I think being colorblind will be accepted by the left when it ends up with whites always on top and blacks on the bottom with a lot of black men in prison? No.
I feel like we have discussed these issues a lot. Even a mod thru in a post on why can’t we just be colorblind (perhaps bad summary from memory). I think it’s interesting seeing the third leading GOP candidate making similar arguments. And in all honesty my guess is Vivek’s position is likely the preferred position of mosts on the Motte. None of the pride everywhere but adults can do as they please. The race issues I think perhaps we could get back to the old equilibrium of ignoring disparate outcomes and just treating blacks as if they are white. But I doubt it. The Pride issues I think are harder because not wanting children exposed more directly says we think it’s bad and don’t want our children taught this stuff. The positions I’m laying out are likely the preferred position of most of the GOP establishment. I think Desantis would even accept these positions if offered. I don’t expect the left to offer these compromises because they are true believers that disparate outcomes are proof of racism or because a lot of supporters find the moral superiority of getting to call red tribe “your a racists/transphobe” etc enjoyable so no reason to stop.
While I think these positions are unstable I’m not sure the right could move the country to the stable positions. Which would be widespread knowledge that a great deal of disparate outcome is from hbd and on pride matters getting the country to agree that lgbtq lifestyles are not desirable (which was the world pre-2008). As it is the current positions seem unstable to me and easily attacked by the left and to a great extent makes the right look like hypocrites afraid to say the quiet part out loud.
Also, might be a good place for anyone to posts anything they found interesting at the Iowa State Fair.
Just going to throw this out as a tangent. Looks like Argentinas likely next President will be a far-right libertarian Trump supporter wanting to dollarize.
https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2023/08/argentina-update-canine-mastiff-edition.html
Seems like a lot of libertarian talk going on so feels like it’s connected.
Edit: asked an ex from Argentina what she thought about him. She said her age group has a saying
“Of course! There’s a saying among my generation Milei or EZE”
I think it's vastly more "libertarian" than anything else, at least if we are taking him at face value (and there's some reason to do so given his career). Still probably goes nowhere. Eagerly waiting for @Soriek's writeup.
@functor
Have you ever lived in a country with hyperinflation? This is my third one at this point and let me tell you, it got old the first time.
I am really not sure a globalist banker is a better option for it. Dollarization is a terrible idea as it will lead to Argentina exporting products and importing money created out of air.
It is kind of funny as the right in the US seems to hate the federal reserve yet this Argentinian likes it even though they are getting a shorter end of the stick. Americans at least get to create money out of thin air. Argentinians get money created from air in exchange for products. Libertarians seem to like gold.
Reasonable inflation as of lately. I have however experienced living in a country with a half million migrants from America's attempt to bring wall mart to the middle east.
To be honest I don't think your position here is deeply reasoned, it looks like generic kneejerk «anti-globalism». Dollars have more staying value than Argentinian exports, much as I love me a decent steak. I won't go all NATOwave here, but it is necessary to recognize that nations can fail overwhelmingly for their own fault, even when Americans happen to be fairly graceful with their influence. This also isn't about right- or left-wing in the myopic tribal sense. Lastly, I am not trying to sell you on Milei's policy proposals, but just to explain Argentinian perspective. They don't feel like they can afford more of this bullshit.
Decades after the war, Argentina is peppered with ressantiment-filled Malvinas memorials (very much a «Crimea ours» vibe, only it feels safely toothless). This coexists peacefully with an already enormous share of dollars in cash, and socialist politics. It's a very populist, very short-time-preference society, that takes «kicking the can down the road» principle to its limit while the rich and well-connected enjoy prosperity (or comfortably emigrate) and the poor get poorer. Over 100% (more like 200% now? USD:ARS is at 670 right now; it was below 400 in May) YoY inflation is not an inconvenience but a catastrophe, it makes people unable to save and invest, it actually tests how much poverty you need to increase crime rate, it kills hope. @2rafa had some interesting notes on this topic.
Of course, I believe Argentinians will be unable to take the triage-like measures necessary to salvage the economy (even if Milei is elected, which is unlikely, and gets to execute on his plans, which is implausible) and flinch back to Kirchnerism, which you will probably approve of as a brave stance against the GAE.
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I don’t believe dollarization requires importing of dollars to happen. Theoretically it could be done without ever importing dollars. Realistically you probably need to have some foreign currency reserves to guarantee the value when the currency dips below a level.
It would require Argentina to run monetary policy in-line with the US. And to have roughly similar inflation rates etc.
The key thing is getting traders to have no preference between owning Argentinian pesos and dollars at whatever peg you set and relative interest rates.
The big issue with dollarization is it gives up independent monetary policy and you can’t tighten when your economy is hotter than the US or ease when your economy is softer than the US.
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