domain:kvetch.substack.com
HereAndGone
10m ago
No other billionaire gave all his money to one rando with no real qualifications and made that guy a billionaire for no apparent reason.
Just reading the barebones Wikipedia article on Epstein, it seems to be a combination of:
(1) Guy was charismatic in some way, he managed to charm a lot of people; he seems also to have been smart, with talents in music and maths.
(2) He had some amazing luck at the beginning - he managed to get a teaching gig in a private school that was run on sort of hippy-dippy principles (which meant he could get a job there where a conventional school wouldn't have hired him due to lack of credentials, and again seemingly by managing to charm the guy in charge) and one with a ton of well-heeled and connected parents, and he worked those connections as hard as he could (before getting bounced from the school for perhaps being a leetle too friendly with the girl students).
(3) By virtue of those connections, he wangled a job at Bear Stearns. This gave him vital exposure to the world of high finance, experience, and more networking/connections he could later call on (again, he seems to have been able to manage the high-wealth clients well, which would involve being able to create a personal relationship with them: "Jimmy Cayne, the bank's later chief executive officer, praised Epstein's skill with wealthy clients and complex products.")
(4) After being let go from Bear Sterns, he set up his own consulting firm and managed to position himself where he worked with/on behalf of wealthy, connected, and important people. Connections, connections, connections: this seems to really have been Epstein's strength.
(5) Gets hired on by another guy for a firm that morphs into a corporate raider and when this all explodes later on, he managed to walk away without criminal charges for investor fraud. Another combination of luck, talent, and charm.
(6) Set up his own financial management firm while working at (5), and once more his luck meant he landed a really big fish. Indeed, one might even say, a whale. Was indeed competent at the job and sorted out the finances, which means more trust, more personal relationship, more connections. Not to be diagnosing someone when I have no information but it honestly does seem like the guy was deeply closeted gay and so gave over way more control over his finances to Epstein than would have been usual. Epstein used this opportunity to make hay, and while he seems to have been smart enough not to kill the golden goose by robbing him blind, he was able to more or less act as if the wealth was all his (" In July 1991, Wexner granted Epstein full power of attorney over his affairs. The power of attorney allowed Epstein to hire people, sign checks, buy and sell properties, borrow money, and do anything else of a legally binding nature on Wexner's behalf").
Epstein made a tidy fortune managing Wexner's affairs, worked his connections with other wealthy people to the maximum, and was careful to keep up his old networking with figures in Bear Sterns and elsewhere, plus he seems to have been genuinely capable with money (so long as he could resist any temptations to get involved in dodgy deals). So how wealthy was he really, as aside from appearances? Probably nowhere near as much as he liked to let on, but in those circles appearances are what count (see other stories of successful cons of the rich and famous by someone pretending to be part of that environment).
dev
17m ago
I did college debate as well. This is specifically a problem for prominent rightists doing open speeches or debate in front of leftists, in the last 10 or 15 years, where the rightists has a view that the left has decided is no longer in the realm of acceptable debate, ex: the current Republican presidential nominee/president is good; gay marriage is bad; 13 do 50 or anything race realist; ice deportations are actually good, etc. I can hardly think of any rightist other than Charlie who was still doing those kind of open-invite debates at colleges on those kind of topics. IIRC, Charles Murray basically stopped doing events after the attack at Middlebury.
until we get total numbers at year's end) has had fewer visitors in 2025 than 2023, an astonishing fact when you consider the earth's population has grown hundreds of millions over that time period.
There's a reason I selected average of 2021 to 2023 as the criteria. We skip 2020 because the Biden admin was not in charge then, so we include the remaining 3 years where pandemic-excused policies were relevant to tourists, though by 2023 they were pretty weak but not entirely absent.
You're welcome to provide data for the average of 2021 to 2023 against 2025 for Vegas.
Regardless, I specified "Visitors to the US" because the initial discussion was about international tourism, and "Visitors to Vegas" is a poor proxy for this because of domestic tourism. Most numbers I could find on the percentage of visitors to Vegas that are domestic tourists puts it somewhere between 70% and 80%.
To decouple the chilling effect from the desire not to travel during a pandemic is quite simple, just compare the total decline to the specific decline in places with legal restrictions, the difference will tell you approximately how many people didn't travel because they were banned, and how many didn't travel because they were afraid of the deadly global pandemic.
"Afraid of the deadly global pandemic" is not something independent of government policy, but instead the product of government policy. If a government makes people afraid to travel by telling them covid will kill them if they do, that's still the government's fault.
This is something we could agree on, but probably won't: The chilling effect of both covid restrictions and ICE deportations is the direct result of government policy, not something that happens without. Yet for some reason you think the chilling effect of covid restrictions is merely an organic "desire not to travel".
A good example seems to be Egypt, a country that is a tourist destination, centrally located, and had very light corona virus requirements (Between August 15th 2021 and June 16th 2022 you just had to show a negative test within the 3 days before arrival).
Not a comprehensive account of tourism restrictions, you need to also consider domestic restrictions that would affect the activities that tourists can do once in the country.
But regardless, we can use your method, with the actual source Wikipedia is using for these graphs.
Egypt's numbers as a percentage of 2019 visitors: 2020: 28% 2021: 62% 2022: 90%
Mexico's numbers as a percentage of 2019 visitors: 2020: 55% 2021: 71% 2022: 85%
Australia will be an example of an extreme restriction country. Numbers as a percentage of 2019 visitors via this dataset as OWID is incomplete: 2020: 19% 2021: 3% 2022: 39%
That some countries had returned to 90% of 2019 tourism numbers by 2022, while Australia remains down at 39%, strongly suggests that the overwhelming majority of the decline in tourism can be attributed to government policy. If the decline in tourism was instead mainly due to fear of covid, then tourists would have no reason to continue visiting Egypt while refusing to visit Australia.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
33m ago
Thank you. This was wonderful.
I will now do my utmost to somehow PsyOp Highly Online Navy SEAL bros into wearing ascots.
some unspeakable mix of wealthy and homosexual.
Perish the thought! The wealthy should be straight as hell or asexual lizard people, the way God intended!
WandererintheWilderness
36m ago
the people saying get over it are the same people who convinced this person to kill.
The stochastic-terrorism angle doesn't convince me as a unilateral sin of the Left. A right-winger going on a rant about how wokeness, or some specific faction of it, is an unprecedented existential threat to Western civilization which must be destroyed at all costs, sounding every bit as shrill as the most hyperbolic rhetoric about the dangers of Trumpism... that's basically what the Motte calls "Tuesday".
WandererintheWilderness
41m ago
Well, it sounds like you live in a city. That was probably your first mistake. Cities are a distorted parody of "the world".
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
44m ago
The US weakened Al Qaeda by going after the rank and file, hammering away at them and blocking terror attacks with security. Osama Bin Laden was not key to the organization and his death had no significant affect on their capabilities. Likewise with ISIS. Killing Al-Baghdadi didn't have much effect, it was defeating their troops in their field that matters.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
1hr ago
I think class isn't entirely or even mostly about one's salary.
NullHypothesis
1hr ago
Turning point USA was founded in 2012, so 13 years ago. He was 18 then so he pretty much went all in.
From Wikipedia:
In May 2012, 18-year-old Charlie Kirk gave a speech at Benedictine University's Youth Government Day. Impressed, retired marketing entrepreneur and Tea Party activist Bill Montgomery encouraged Kirk to postpone college and engage full-time in political activism. A month later, the day after Kirk graduated from high school, they launched Turning Point USA, a section 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization.Montgomery became Kirk's mentor, and worked behind the scenes handling the paperwork for the organization. Montgomery often described himself as the group's co-founder, although it was not an official recognition by the group or Kirk.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
1hr ago
Kirk opposed the civil rights act. Motteposters may not consider that a far-right political view, but normies do.
If you just drop that little factoid and leave it at that, this might be true. When you explain why he opposes it it will probablynturn out that even a good chunk of liberals agree with him.
It's always then same story with these slogans.
MadMonzer
Epstein Files must have done something really awful for so many libs to want him released.
1hr ago
Churchill was technically fired for plagiarism and for falsely claiming to be a Native American. The fact that affirmative action fraudsters like Churchill and Warren only get caught and fired if they become politically controversial is an indictment of the system, but his firing was clearly legally justified.
NullHypothesis
1hr ago
I think part of the reason Kirk wasn't brought up here in the Motte despite his enormous popularity is that he's not known for having insightful, original thought, Instead he was good at getting ideas out to young people. His positions are mostly moderate republican and ultimately he's a political activist, albeit an effective one. So unless he's part of a culture war event of substance, there isn't much reason to talk about him. The only thing of interest I can think of that might have been worth discussing prior to his assassination would be his role in founding Turning Point USA and the role he played in helping get Trump elected.
I think normie leftists don't know him, but the one's that engage with leftist influencers probably did know him a little. I think you are right that most of them are regurgitating talking points, considering just how many of those talking points break down when you examine them in context.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
1hr ago
Sure, he used money from the banks to pay people -- but I'm sure lots of criminals withdraw money from a Chase ATM in the commission of a crime, which hasn't (till recently) been laid on the bank.
There's a big difference between the ordinary JPM customer who has an account with $5,000 in it and who barely interacts with anyone at the bank, and a high net worth client who has private bankers and gets personal attention from higher ups.
Saying those are the same is like equating purchasing Nike shoes with being sponsored by Nike. Or wearing a Cartier watch with being provided a custom Cartier watch at reduced price for promotional reasons. If the Charlie Kirk assassin wears a suit from Polo, I don't know that anyone will notice.
JPM didn't just let Epstein open a checking account at a branch without anyone being aware of it. They extensively courted, discussed, facilitated Epstein's business at the bank.
I also don't think that we've ever gotten a really good explanation for where Epstein's money came from. @2rafa et al put it as "Epstein got an extraordinary deal with Les Wexner and got all his money from there and he didn't have any other clients and case closed." But no one ever puts Epstein in a class of similar people. To my knowledge, there is no class of similar people, there are no other cases that are remotely similar. No other billionaire gave all his money to one rando with no real qualifications and made that guy a billionaire for no apparent reason. No other billionaire signed power of attorney over to some guy. Despite a plethora of gay billionaires, no one ever signed everything over to his boy toy. So "Epstein got all his money from Les Wexner" isn't really a conversation ender to me, it's the start of another more interesting mystery.
NullHypothesis
1hr ago
That is interesting.
I think the lesson is if you want to argue with flat earthers with the intent to win the argument and fail to do so, you should accept that you don't actually know why the earth is round, then spend some time learning some reasons for why the earth is round so that in the future you are better equipped to win that argument. Or, if you have no interest and time then don't bother. Flat earth discussion has very little productivity value.
If you are unable to argue your point or dismantle the opponent's, just accept you lost the debate. It doesn't mean you're wrong, or the opponent is right. Or, just listen with an open mind. If the flat earther has a solid argument, maybe they're right. Otherwise, you'll spot the contradiction or error. If you can't then maybe you aren't understanding their argument, so just admit you need to think about it more and move on.
MadMonzer
Epstein Files must have done something really awful for so many libs to want him released.
1hr ago
Kirk opposed the civil rights act. Motteposters may not consider that a far-right political view, but normies do.
He was also all-in on Trump's attempt to remain in office despite losing the 2020 election. If you think (as Orwell did and you should, although most people don't) that the main danger of the far right is the same as the main danger of the far left - the threat to democracy and the rule of law - then that makes Kirk (and Trump, and most of MAGA) far-right in the way that matters. That is what I mean by Jan 6th being the ultimate scissor.
PS. If an American publisher were typesetting this post those hyphens would be rendered as em-dashes. (British style is to render parenthetic dashes as en-dashes between spaces, which is why I was so confused by the first few months of the em-dash discourse). Still not a bot.
Soteriologian
1hr ago
Men can survive just fine without women; women cannot survive without men.
No, the dynamics I’m talking about manifest at timescales larger than a generation. Men cannot reproduce without women, nor vice versa, so they are both parts of a single whole. I don’t think one can reasonably call a gender relationship “parasitic” in any biological sense. I’m not using “parasite” as a slur, but referring to a particular dynamic of how life operates.
Now, one can ask “ok but if we just imagine reproduction could be done without the need of one of the sexes, now what?” Basically, either synthetic sperm or synthetic wombs. And yeah, here women don’t come out looking very well. Andrea Dworkin (blackpilled feminist addicted to doomposting before we even had the internet) explicitly posited that right-wing women are terrified of male homosexuality because it represents a potential world without women at all—with reproductive tech, gays could obsolete women entirely and live in a paradise without them. (Yes, this was her actual thesis lol)
I’m not sure I entirely buy her thesis—if nothing else, homosexual desire only exists as a bug in heterosexual desire, so once you’ve severed reproduction and sex with technology, there’s no selection pressure to even be horny in the first place, so I predict it would vanish entirely within a few short generations.
Whether Jesus predicted this in his answer to the Sadducees I leave as an exercise to the reader.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
1hr ago
Do go on!
The word Cravat comes from Croat, and the neck scarf comes from a scarf worn by regiments of Croatian light-cavalry mercenaries during the Thirty Years War, who were famously fierce fighters.
In 1660 a regiment of Croats arrived in France — a part of their singular costume excited the greatest admiration, and was immediately and generally imitated; this was a tour de cou, made (for the private soldiers) of common lace, and of muslin or silk for the officers; the ends were arranged en rosette, or ornamented with a button or tuft, which hung gracefully on the breast. This new arrangement, which confined the throat but very slightly, was at first termed a Croat, since corrupted to Cravat. The Cravats of the officers and people of rank were extremely fine, and the ends were embroidered or trimmed with broad lace; those for the lower classes were subsequently made of cloth or cotton, or at the best of black taffeta, plaited: Which was tied round the neck by two small strings.
-- Le Blanc, H., Esq. (1828). The art of tying the cravat: Demonstrated in sixteen lessons
The Croats were famously fierce fighters, mothers all the way to the early years of the 20th century would supposedly frighten their children with stories about the Croatians depredations at the sack of Magdeburg. Croat regiments for a time became a generic term for light cavalry, comparable to hussars, and many adopted the Croatian costume.
So an elite, famous, fierce military unit shows up in Paris. The fashionable men of Paris immediately cop their style, to imitate the masculine devil-may-care mystique of the mercenary. Soon the Cravat was de rigeur for formal dress. Charles II brought it back from exile on the continent, and it became part of English fashion. From there the cravat evolved into the bow tie and straight tie and I guess the bolo tie of today, and the once military cravat became the faggy ascot that a costume designer puts on a character to inform us that the character is some unspeakable mix of wealthy and homosexual.
I will say, a lightweight scarf is really a pretty functional piece of dress for a life outdoors. I'll occasionally wear one despite the aria di frociaggine if I'm on a long hike or a bike ride. Keeps the sun off your neck, keeps the chill off without too much weight while being easily adjusted. The Croats had it right.
lurker
1hr ago
I know from personal experience that leftists also use the phrase and like the song as well. Again, not particularly convincing.
NullHypothesis
1hr ago
That is an intelligent observation. Really clever. I don't agree with being intentionally deceptive just to make your argument stronger. That's manipulation, not truth seeking.
I suppose in the context of the debate, Sean ought to have been better prepared with actual stats of his own for the particular claim. It let Destiny set the frame.
For what it's worth, I think Destiny was right for the wrong reason. The numbers he's quoting are different from the numbers Sean was thinking of, but the numbers Sean probably was thinking of to support the idea that federal funding on defense is higher to the degree that it would tip the scale to make his argument was also wrong. So Destiny uses invalid stats to prove his position, which means it doesn't actually disprove Sean's point, but he was right by default because Sean was wrong to begin with.
I personally think that Epstein's finances were above board and he simply wasn't as rich as he claimed to be (his lifestyle was consistent with the amount of money he could have made scummily but legally by charging Wexner 2-and-20 without providing alpha). But if I was the Feds I would have been going over his finances with a fine-tooth comb.
Indeed, and that also explains why the banks (in particular JPM) were so keen to maintain his business, because he did nothing with the money except hand it to them to ride the booming 90s equity market, so everybody got their cut. The private wealth division at JPM was making huge fees from Wexner (the kind of billionaire who would usually have a more shrewd family office) for pretty much nothing.
In Maxwell’s recent testimony they asked her about the house (legally transferred for almost nothing) and at last there was an answer there, too, namely that it was in lieu of “fees”. Epstein seduced Wexner, “invested” his money (unlike the Madoffs of the world for the kind of boring, safe returns best suited to that task) and then charged hedge fund fees. Why didn’t Wexner measure his returns against the market? Hard to say, maybe he was in too deep, didn’t care, assumed Jeffrey was a genius, liked the attention and friendship, was a little in love, or was just under the thumb of an overbearing and domineering mother (which is the historical record) and didn’t really think of it much.
But either way, a combination of a couple hundred million in fees from Wexner, reinvesting his own money, some shrewd early-90s real estate purchases in Manhattan (a few apartment buildings, as I recall) and the $170m from Leon Black (Epstein’s only other “client” even though he never managed his money and the one case where I suspect blackmail is possibly central) and his fortune is easily explained even with some blunders along the way.
Thank you for the solid feedback. I guess I should've made a stronger argument.
The reason I didn't make a more substantial argument is because it's been two years since I last watched Destiny, and I didn't want to spend hours looking through past debates and effort posting about Destiny to justify a minor point I made. I still don't feel like it. If I felt like it and I had the goal of trying to convince people something about Destiny I would've made a top level post with the appropriate amount of effort and evidence.
But I'll acknowledge you have brought up some valid points, and perhaps I was too charitable in assuming Destiny's motive around 2022/2023 when he was engaging in debates with popular figures from the other side, which caused me to react more negatively to his subsequent behavior within the last year than I would've if I hadn't had that charitable impression of him. I'll adjust my parent comment with an edit.
Are Crowder, Shapiro, and even Kirk trying to change people's minds via debate at their events on college campuses? No, they are there to rile up lefty college students that have never in their life actually had their beliefs challenged and completely fail to defend them to clip farm. I think Destiny approached it more honestly and wanted more real engagement than they normally do, but I see this as very weak evidence of Destiny's persona and ethos.
Kirk founded an organization with the purpose of advocating for conservative politics amongst a younger generation, and you don't accomplish that without changing young people's minds about politics. Even if I were to grant you that they are there to primarily clip farm, that does not constitute evidence that they are not trying to change people's minds via debate at their events.
I disagree that Destiny approached it more honestly on the grounds of his attitude towards the people he is engaging in. Nothing Kirk has said comes remotely close to the inflammatory description of the regular people of the other side that Destiny has. If there has been, then it would've already been used as ammunition in the current campaign to bring down his image. I don't know about Crowder or Shapiro, but I doubt there's anything to the same degree either. Why do you think Destiny approached it more honestly and wanted more engagement than Crowder, Shapiro, or Kirk?
MadMonzer
Epstein Files must have done something really awful for so many libs to want him released.
2hr ago
The other claim is that his friends in the bank intervened when some transactions were flagged (for what, no one really explains) but this only deepens the original question: even if he was guilty of sex crimes, that doesn't imply that his financial dealings weren't in order.
If Epstein was as rich as he claimed to be without any of the wackier conspiracy conspiracies being true, he got the money by embezzling from Les Wexner. If any of the wackier conspiracies were true, he had a lot of foreign income he was being dishonest about the source of.
I personally think that Epstein's finances were above board and he simply wasn't as rich as he claimed to be (his lifestyle was consistent with the amount of money he could have made scummily but legally by charging Wexner 2-and-20 without providing alpha). But if I was the Feds I would have been going over his finances with a fine-tooth comb.
2D3D
2hr ago
I only know Kirk as the smallface meme of a smugfuck conservatard parodied as dunking on strawmanned liberals. In otherwords, a modal mottizen. Which is why the reaction of liberals to basically be gloating that Kirk is dead is one part personally impactful since I'm not that far removed from Kirks relatively anodyne willingness to entertain novel arguments and impatience with devoting too many brain cells to argue into infinity against categorically bad faith opinions. The end state of that difference in opinion should be 'fuck that guy', not 'cap that fool'. Frankly, most liberals don't really know Kirk either. He's a totem, a standin for Trump and all the men they hate. The bad taste jokes of Kirk dying doing what he loved aren't funny they're schaudenfraude (understandable) escalating into wishcasting for every other conservative to die (bad). Political violence when its social is corrosive to a country. Culture arms races for privileged access cripples any measure of prosocial cooperation. An actual arms race cripples cooperation while also destroying whatever makes the spoils have value in the first place.
He said Floyd hagiography is possibly sillier than Kirk hagiography. Not that it is.
Given that one was a drug-addled serial criminal and the other a controversial but otherwise law-abiding speaker, any comparison that Floyd hagiography- and its attendant violence and racism- isn’t categorically orders of magnitude worse is insane or trolling.
It is uncharitable, but I think my lack of charity is roughly correctly tuned to Anti’s past issues in the forum.
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