domain:ashallowalcove.substack.com
Southkraut
The rain fell gentlier.
8m ago
people who agree to mutually benefit each other.
And people who lie about it. And people who half-heartedly agree to it just enough to be let in. And people who are born into it and then reject it but there's no mechanism for excluding them or making them comply.
the best beliefs
Best as in most beneficial to hold, or best as in most able to propagate in a competitive environment? Because a belief that is the one may not also be the other.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
8m ago
Yeah... something. I'd like to know what the idea's proponents have in mind.
Southkraut
The rain fell gentlier.
11m ago
and I don't know that a creedal nation can stay coherent, if you can participate without following the creed it's based on.
How about second-class or otherwise tiered or modular citizenship?
jake
14m ago
fewer immigrants increase cost of living
A rare return from the field of economics is the fact known for >200 years that increasing the supply of labor literally only ever benefits the ownership class. The idea of foreign laborers as beneficial because they make goods cheap is somewhat reversing causality. Goods have to be cheap because we have so many foreign laborers. If people couldn't afford the staples, they wouldn't buy them. The outcomes from there are: goods cost less, or workers are paid more, or revolution.
"Cheap goods" are an illusory benefit. You shouldn't be thankful big ag can bring in >100,000 H-2A workers so your strawberries are only $5 a pound. You should be furious that your compensation hasn't scaled proportionally so you can afford strawberries at $10 or $15 or $20 a pound; you should be furious at the greed of banks and corporations, at the incompetence and corruption in government, that has allowed the rampant inflation from the probably $0.50 a pound strawberries cost in 1970. Or the $0.25 for bread and the $1.25 for milk.
Your stresses over cost of living are the direct consequence of these three events:
- The frontier was settled, no more pioneering, the supply of labor only rose
- Women entered the work force, the supply of labor was effectively doubled
- Since the late 20th century, >100 million more people are living and working in this country than it would have produced naturally
Also bankers being bankers, amidst all that.
(And if you want to argue that, explain why even Trump still hadn't gotten rid of it.)
This should be an entire post. In brief, the wealthy have too much to lose by the ACA being repealed, and the #1 way to improve healthcare in this country is to deport >50 million people.
To be clear, as a catholic, I disagree pretty heavily with many liberals and virtually every leftist about what "creed" the nation should be based on, and how the government should contribute to its enforcement.
This touches on the first question I was planning to ask - how should it contribute to it's enforcement? I would imagine that with a name like "creedal citizenship" it would at a minimum mean disenfranchisement of anyone who doesn't follow the creed. If that's how it is to work, I agree that a coherent nation can be formed this way, but you go on to say that over-exclusion is worse than over-inclusion. This makes it sound rather wishy-washy, and I don't know that a creedal nation can stay coherent, if you can participate without following the creed it's based on.
But I think by far the bigger threat is a government that excludes people who indisputably share my creed, versus a government that would try and promote another creed.
I think I disagree. If you have a nation that's 98% Catholic, facing the importation of a sizeable population of Muslims, with some Middle-Eastern Christians sprinkled in, that seems like a clear example of excluding people who share your creed being to your benefit.
By the very virtue of me believing the things I believe, I should rationally think they're the best beliefs, and that they're guaranteed to eventually win. The benefits of pulling in allies therefore massively outweighs the risk of allowing in enemies.
If you're this optimistic about your ideas winning, I suppose that makes sense, but I think it's far from guaranteed. It's particularly strange to hear it from a Catholic.
Even if you're right, it's not clear it's worth the costs. For example, Communism may be destined to lose to capitalism (or whatever economic system you prefer), that doesn't mean there's any benefit in giving political power to communists.
Southkraut
The rain fell gentlier.
16m ago
This post may be peak motte modding. It should be printed, framed, and hung over the physical server.
GoofyGoose
18m ago
Sure, crypto aims to eliminate the middlemen; but middlemen are sometimes useful.
Why not both? Why not have crypto act as a threat that keeps bankers from ripping off their customers?
Payment systems are rigged. You need to be a large bank to participate, and regulators will fight for large banks to keep competitors out. Sure, they might say this is for a good reason like financial stability or anti-money laundering (AML); but they don’t even have good arguments for why this is worthwhile (in the case of AML) or whether it is effective (in the case of financial stability.
You might be right that, in some ideal, free-market world, there wouldn’t be crypto. But, in this world, there should be even if it is only to push against the inefficiencies imposed by governments, bureaucrats, and regulators.
Rosencrantz2
52m ago
JD Vance characterised lefties recently as being believers in creedal citizenship, whereas Vance prefers a citizenship based on ancestral line (with creed actually not being part of it at all). I don't really agree with him as I don't think it is a uniting feature of the left but I guess it's probably true that the right is less likely to believe creed is 'enough'.
Dean
Flairless
56m ago
But whatever-- there's no point in fighting about who started it.
If there wasn't a point of who started it, you wouldn't have made the claim that was a proof of a lack of care of norms. That you are retreating from defending it is less an indication that there is no point, and more that it was a indefensible bailey you are retreating to your motte from once challenged.
It may have been a disposable soldier of an argument, but it was still a soldier you were happy to have fighting for your framing.
Alright, here's my contribution: It sure would be nice if one society could manage to agree to one set of core values and live by them and everyone pulls on the same rope, as we say here, and also that creed turns out to be a really good one and there's nothing wrong with it. Others can come in so long as they comply with this creed. People are kicked out when they don't. But the creed is good, and the nation prospers.
Failure modes:
IMO it's all hot air anyways. The future won't give a shit about what people believe or what ethnicity they might be traced back to. Technological totalitarianism that has full control of each and every individual seems more likely than grand social experiments of the feel-good kind.
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