This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
The latest Trump legal woes comes once again from NY where a judge ordered his business dissolved for fraud. Nobody losts money and it came down to some misstatements. I haven’t read the full case, but the judge on a high profile part of the case is completely off. Not even ballpark off.
He valued Mar-a-Lago at 17-25 million. I texted a broker in the area and he told me 100 million for an ocean acre and 25 million for a non-ocean acres. Mar is between 17-20 acres depending where you look online. Palm Beach has gone up a lot since COVID so maybe divide those numbers by 2 since Trump made his filling. He listed the property at 450-650 million. Without doing a full underwriting (maybe zoning issues where it couldn’t be worth the raw land price) it still appears Mar is worth a lot of money.
If you are going to do lawfare shouldn’t you avoid obvious mistakes? It’s easy to see a headline and write this whole case off as political. It weakens public perception of all other cases if you make mistakes that are this stupid.
If I am remembering this case correctly he did likely violate the law and include some statement that were obviously false but in a category that no one besides Donald Trump gets prosecuted for. So the case of Mar-a-Lago violates a principle of maintaining plausible deniability.
Edit: @AshLael looked up the prosecutors brief and it appears they did not use the tax assessment for valuation purposes. Which would negate my main point. The judge has a history of making stuff up against real estate developers and being later reversed. It’s quite possible this judge hates developers and just does stupid things.
https://twitter.com/goodguyguaranty/status/1707232241925910944?s=46&t=aQ6ajj220jubjU7-o3SuWQ
https://nypost.com/2023/09/27/mar-a-lago-judges-developer-hating-past-is-a-big-win-for-donald-trump/
Which would change the ruling and it’s citations to much more of all developer are bastards story (which is culture war) than my why are you lawfaring stupidly story
I feel a little bad about this, but whenever I see you complaining about Trump-persecution, it biases me in the other direction. As if the fact you felt a need to explain is evidence against his behavior. I know this isn’t really rational; it’s a reflex from years of apologetics.
I’m aware that courts, including NY in particular, have gone after Trump for stupid gotchas. Is this really one of them? The judge is granting a summary judgment in part. He gives detailed reasons why plaintiffs’ arguments were credible, while the defendants have consistently misrepresented their position. Throwing that out on the basis of one sloppy valuation is the definition of an isolated demand for rigor.
It looks like Trump has employed his traditional legal strategy of Throwing Shit at Walls. Dismiss this, dismiss that, usually in direct contradiction to precedent or to rulings earlier in the same case! See the fascinating section “Arguments Defendants Raise Again.” None of this inspires confidence.
If you’re going to do fraud, shouldn’t you avoid obvious mistakes? Mistakes like claiming a 3x overstatement of square footage was “subjective,” or that Mar-a-Lago was totally worth $1.5B, or that the SFCs could include a 15% premium for the “Trump brand” while simultaneously stating that they include no brand value. Easy things to avoid, right?
This isn't even close to fraud. It is just basically random speculation by him and banks. Everything is estimates made by people without even 12% knowledge of what reality is. These cases shouldn't be legal because they are treating art like a science. Its basically punishing a person extra above the bet they wagered just because. "Oh you put $500 on the Bills to beat the Redskins and Jim Kelly lost again on a fluke field goal, well actually we are taking another $2500 from you because reasons."
First of all, just by him. The banks (and other business partners) are the ones being defrauded. That's sort of the point.
Second, if it were random speculation, his estimates would be under the true value as often as they were over the true value.
Do you think that's true?
It's actually pretty easy to notice random noise, it tends to follow a well-defined distribution.
When every number over decades comes out heavily biased in the same direction, the direction that benefits you and hurts the people you're dealing with, that's not random noise. That's a pattern of misdirection.
Which is what this case is about.
None of them alleged that during the course of business. They all got paid. The numbers were arbitrary.
Random was the wrong word. The right word is, self serving normal stuff that businesses do and tax people have to go along with 99.99999999% of the time or the state's economy collapses.
Didn't he brag about how often he files bankruptcy to get out of debts? Haven't his companies filed for bankruptcies more often than anyone else's in the US? Haven't there been hundreds of stories about his organizations not paying their bills and obligations?
I haven't gone over all the statements in the case to sort out the specific claims and charges on this particular valuation, but the idea that everyone got paid and no one was hurt by these practices feels leaves me skeptical.
However, part of the reason I'm not investigating that in more depth is because it doesn't matter; you can in fact be defrauded even if you don't lose money. If that sounds weird, remember that all of finance is about the expected value of an investment.
If Trump overstated the worth and stability of his holdings, then any loans he took out were riskier than the banks thought. The expected value of those loans was lower than the banks thought, and if they'd known the truth they might not have made those deals, or might have charged higher interest to compensate (which is a material loss even if the loans were paid back).
Drunk driving is illegal even if you don't hit someone, because it increases the chances you will hit someone. Similarly, lying about how risky it is to make a loan to you is fraud, even if you manage to pay back that particular loan.
Indeed, many things are both illegal and common, and enforcement of pretty much all crimes is spotty and arbitrary at best. That's a sad state of affairs and I think we should solve it with fewer laws; nonetheless, this is not a good reason to decry the law being enforced correctly one time, unless you decry it all the other times too (isolated demands for rigor etc).
That said, there's still such a thing as matter of degree; this was a very long pattern of very big lies on very big deals, a pretty big outlier from the common range for this type of thing.
Again, I agree that it's common to round your $146k income up to $150k when applying for a mortgage. This was a lot bigger than that.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link