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pigeonburger
1d ago
I wouldn't even say that the people in government are specifically dumb, just that we aren't selecting them for what we say we want (competent administration) but instead for what our revealed preference is (we select them for their ability to comfort our tribal biases). And for that, they are actually very good, some of the best we have.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
1d ago
If nothing else, they can afford to pick a high-end escort for a night.
1% is the general number for American men using escorts or prostitutes in the past year, and the highest estimates are only two and a half percent. It's also negatively correlated with income in general.
Just not a real thing people do at a level where it would impact these numbers.
RenOS
something is wrong
1d ago
Yeah, that's what I meant with the first paragraph. But he indicated wanting to actually use sorceries, so I didn't expand further on that.
the_Culture_is_great
1d ago
If you're going to make this argument I you can't elide those details and still argue in good faith.
Actually spelling out at least the broad outlines like you did is good, it gives some sane limits and allows us to discuss actual tradeoffs.
all solutions that removes these people from the street are superior to those that let them there, including some that cross moral lines
This is exactly how I read what OP wrote, and it's obviously abhorrent if you allow solutions like "shoot on sight", or "Vagrant? Straight to the mines, no appeal".
hydroacetylene
1d ago
Uh, does this distinguish between kinds of rich men? I know a master plumber who founded a construction company with some big contracts. Four ex wives.
hydroacetylene
1d ago
Australia probably wins for giant flightless birds. It also probably wins for giant lizards.
Crocodilians- I mean there’s american alligators, and theres saltwater crocodiles in Australia. Aquatic mammals almost certainly goes to US, with elephant seals even if manatees are too marginal.
For large browsers I think the US wins again, with moose.
Bears is definitely US or Norway. No way it’s Russia- it’s just too poor to win on widespread species. Canada, Japan, Scandinavia, all have bears.
pigeonburger
1d ago
It's a huge huge difference though. Canada to the US is almost a 6x difference. Do the inherent population and cultural differences between Canada and the US really justify that? And even if they did, is more prison the best way to close the gap?
Population has some effect. Cultural though I think does much of the lift here. America has an ambitious culture, which I believe pushes people to more extreme behaviors. Canada, as far as it has a national identity, is defined by not rocking the boat and getting along. This dates back to the foundations of both countries as independant entities, the US being created in a bold armed revolution, Canada by convincing daddy Great Britain that its peoples are getting along now.
It's not just Canada, much of Europe is the same in this, ambition is looked at with suspicion. This leads to calm, sedate peoples. Americans are more ambitious, which leads to a more aggressive people; more Americans resent and resist the idea that they have to be content with their lot in life, which leads many to act erratically.
If you make it illegal to do this or stretch some disorderly conduct law, the people who will get collared will largely not be these guys
I ran into an example of this in even a small town policing context. An older Dead Head hippie lady decided to create, then cycle through semi-permanent campsites nearby an elderly relative's property. One camp she chose was as close as possible to private property while technically still sitting in national forest. I'm talking yards when there's thousands of acres of accessible national forest to choose from. She must have decided a great cosmic injustice had occurred when more secluded alternative sites were offered for her, uh, more natural demeanor and trash. Areas that would be out of view of a sweet, old God fearing woman.
If the squatter was ever liable to exude nice old hippie vibes instead of robbing your campsite is karma, also fuck you scumbag vibes I never saw or heard about it. One expects, unless you're in Vermont or something, a Sheriff can be called out to apply some pressure on behalf of an elderly taxpaying resident. If not to drive a squatter out of town, then at the very least to make a token effort to comfort a voter. "Yes ma'am, you give us a call" instead of "Sorry, nothing we can do-- federal land." Nope.
Eventually this was resolved with trashy, angry nudist hippie squatter moving on. Maybe there was liaising between police and National Forest Service I never learned of that aided in getting the squatter to move on, or maybe the federal land excuse really should dissuade any action. Regardless, I was left a greater impression that the injustices and costs of small town prejudice in law enforcement are mostly just that. Not any great leeway to actually get stuff done or help people that should matter.
hydroacetylene
1d ago
There were jaguars on the Texas gulf coast until the 30’s. Tigers lived in thé actually populated parts of southern Russia until soviet times. Mountain lions lived through most of the east until the late nineteenth century and they’re still present in the outer suburbs of most American cities in the west- their ecological requirements aren’t that different from pantheras.
Wolves live up and down Italy. Bears are surprisingly willing to live near people.
Clearly large predators living near civilized people is a thing that has, in fact, happened.
TowardsPanna
1d ago
Cool. :)
I'm in Castle Morne now, down south, after killing a giant firing giant arrows. Not sure what I'm supposed to be doing here.
There's a blockade, after all.
You think those tunnels to Egypt were for tourists? This is a decades-long relationship.
Whereas this time around they were unable to even conquer the first frontline villages of Khiam and Al-Naqoura
They were "unable" or that wasn't their plan? I'm just aware of what the general sentiment was about how things went in 2006 vs. 2025 and in the latter it's widely agreed Hezbollah got beaten to an embarrassing degree. The fact that Israel could do it without a major ground invasion adds to Hezbollah's embarrassment.
All the credible reports I've heard from Iran are that the hardliners are the ones rising in power while the reformers were humiliated by getting betrayed in the middle of negotiations. If your story were accurate we would expect new concessions in negotiations whereas in reality Iran hasn't moved an inch and has refused to even reopen negotiations.
I haven't seen a good story on things for like a month now. It's funny to see the sentence "hardliners rising in power" since that's their default position for the last very long while, minus a bit when Rohani looked like he might be succeeding. My belief is that it's pretty unlikely Iran goes the pragmatist route and we see a renewal of the conflict.
The real negotiations with Iran tend to happen in secret. That was true of the JCPOA and I imagine it will be true for anything else. They have until almost the end of August to deal with the E3 re: snapback sanctions.
I will say shit like this is hilarious in that Iran's secular nationalists used to run the place, but were friendly with Israel. If the theocracy goes there's no reason to be in conflict with Israel! That article is also funny because it never seems to mention the fact that your average would-be protestor knows that they're likely to get gunned down right now if they try anything for any reason, so the lack of protests might not be because of greater solidarity.
An odd comparison, how is Israel's economy doing?
Do you have any idea how weak Iran's economy is? Israel is orders of magnitude better off, which is why it can win a war against a country nearly 10x its size.
clearly you missed the funeral where half the "dead IRGC hardliners" miraculously turned up alive.
Two survivors is not "half" of what was claimed, lol. There were a lot of coffins.
Iran's missile production and launching capacities are quite literally underground. There's zero evidence that they took significant losses in that respect, whereas the fact that it took less than 10 missiles on day 12 to land hits when on day 1 it took more than a hundred proves that Israel's air defenses were collapsing. If anything it's the Israeli strikes that had zero military effect.
Ok now you're just being delusional and I have to doubt you know what a "credible" source is here. Iran's launchers are not all underground. That's total nonsense. You have to believe that the IDF is just lying I guess and that all those bombs they dropped didn't do much.
Israel has demonstrated that it can launch missiles from over the horizon and hit targets in Iran, but they don't have the ability to actually fly directly over Iran dropping bombs, something that would be necessary to inflict any damage to their underground strategic infrastructure.
So the IAF is just lying about this? Also they were dropping JDAMs and bunker busters. There are photos of the damage.
Because Israel doesn't bark when they want to bomb Syria, they just do it.
You're confused about how Israel decides to do things in light of U.S. pressure and risk. Israel does not want to piss Trump off about Iran.
There is no such footage of Israeli jets over Iran.
Oh so you don't believe the footage of Iran shooting down F-35? The IAF had drones over Iranian airspace, which are much easier to shoot down. Hard to believe they didn't have faster combat aircraft dropping munitions. I'd imagine that the aircraft stayed much higher in Iranian airspace because of the risk being much higher than in Syria.
Again, if Israel didn't receive an ass-whooping from Iran they would still be bombing Iran.
In your mind Iran came out better here? Israel called off aircraft mid-flight because Trump demanded it, but you think Israel was actually glad to stop.
That's incredible. What are you reading that causes you to credulously believe Iranian propaganda like this?
faceh
1d ago
Question is a bit fraught.
I'd absolutely bet that historically and recently, it was more likely that wealthier men had higher infidelity rates simply because it would be relatively easy for them to find attractive affair partners.
If nothing else, they can afford to pick a high-end escort for a night.
The idea that every rich man who can afford to is secretly fucking hot teens or young women seems like more of a prurient fantasy than anything else.
Invert it. Consider that young women are actively pursuing the rich men (if you're on dating apps, this is effectively explicit) and are much, much quicker to put out for them.
On balance, what effect would we expect this to have? Rich guys getting laid a lot, and very few of these women getting wifed up by said rich man. He can wait for the 'ideal' match, hopefully one that isn't so naive as to bang the nearest rich dude without much discretion.
I've talked to death about the lack of actual long-term relationships forming among the current crop of young women, I think the point that's relevant to this discussion is that there's a class of men who have their pick of women, and actually DO get to have it both ways. Bang the nubile ones for fun and then eventually find one worth marrying.
So what these men are marrying isn't quite revealing what they're actually pursuing, sexually.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
1d ago
Again, I am not surprised by that view.
To focus on the substance though, I think this is exactly where the whole impasse is coming from:
Explicit lack of caring about others is kind of what makes one a "bad person".
I don't agree with that at all. The extent of care that an individual deserves is contingent on their behavior, it isn't just automatically owed to everyone. Related but probably tangential here is that I also don't think I owe care to all humans around the globe and my level of care is higher or lower based on relative levels of closeness to me. For my wife, infinite care. For the guy yelling obscenities at people on the street, very little care. For the terrorist or brutal murderer, anti-care and explicit wishes for the state to terminate their existence.
hydroacetylene
1d ago
Theres one gets shot in downtown Dallas every couple of years. Usually around the dump or in the trinity river floodplain. Their normal range peters out right around where the Fort Worth far suburbs turn into generic small towns.
the_Culture_is_great
1d ago
Sorry I wasn't clear, I'm actually not trying to focus on the root cause, I agree that focusing on the causes doesn't help in the short term.
I'm agreeing that you should be mean and force people out, but that you're not a good person if you don't have a limit on how mean to be.
I don't doubt people think you're a good person, but until you're going to say what your limit is, there's no way to judge. If you limit was all the way to "shoot on sight" that's bad - if it's "we can't move them until we have median-quality housing for them free of charge" that's unrealistically generous.
My line is somewhere around "they should have free housing options somewhat better than the hell-on-earth shelters that currently exist", then you can force them out.
Magusoflight
1d ago
Yup. And while we are granting wishes for things that are good but will never happen, Corporal punishment should also be brought back into schools
rokmonster
Lives under a rok.
1d ago
This is interesting. I think this might be very much a US phenomenon. It would be even more interesting to look at how this varies between cultures and between countries.
In the US cultural context, rich men usually got rich by either having upper-class connections or by being workaholics. In the former case, they are beholden to upper-class cultural norms, which condition a certain status and social acceptability with a similar-age bride from a family of similar class. This might make the young bride less attractive even to this subset of the rich.
Among the US nouveau riche, social skill development is stunted by workaholism, and this probably limits their ability to date young upper class woman. The young upper-class American women I have met recently seem to have their creep detector tuned up to 11 and to habitually present an attitude of cynicism. Which is to say that they will probably make an older man really work for it while they are young, go single for a long time, and not marry until they are late in fertility, starting to get desperate, and cannot afford to be so bitchy.
In the US, there is also a lot of financial risk to marrying young women. Younger women are generally more likely to lose interest in their partner after the first few years, and the loss of 50% of assets during no-fault divorce makes their departure really expensive to rich men.
But thinking of other countries I'm familiar with, it seems that even where 50% split of assets during divorce is not common, compensating social dynamics exist which make the rich man/young woman pairing less common than one would expect. Korea completely lacks the financial divorce risk, but makes up for it with increased social pressure and higher standards for social acceptability, which pushes all relationships (and especially marriages) into similar age brackets.
Perhaps a good experimental counterexample for my explanation would be China, which has low divorce risk and fewer social norms. I think women there get very very picky about their partners' finances, which would predict that rich men there will skew toward younger women and middle-class men there go unmarried until later in life.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
1d ago
If I see a mountain lion in my neighborhood, something has gone very wrong.
2rafa
1d ago
Red Pill would suggest that a wealthy man can and would keep a soft harem of younger women, discarding them as needed, which isn't really refuted by the data here.
I’d guess actual billionaires (like Hollywood stars, whose indiscretions are more public) have a higher rate of infidelity than average, but do male investment bankers have a higher rate of infidelity than male bartenders, tattoo artists, taxi drivers or nurses? I doubt it. Polling shows that male infidelity stays pretty similar controlling for education and most non-religious class background.
The idea that every rich man who can afford to is secretly fucking hot teens or young women seems like more of a prurient fantasy than anything else. Some do, just like plenty of married cops and truckers fuck hookers. But most? I doubt it.
the_Culture_is_great
1d ago
It's a huge huge difference though. Canada to the US is almost a 6x difference. Do the inherent population and cultural differences between Canada and the US really justify that? And even if they did, is more prison the best way to close the gap?
I think the more likely truth is that the US is well past the point of diminishing returns when it comes to prison capacity, and should instead spend in other areas, like trying to bring down housing cost and funding proper asylums (rather than prisons).
When you say "Remove them first" I think you need to specify more precisely what that involves.
Of course I have preferences as to what I think it involves, but what I mean by it and what I assume OP meant is that all solutions that removes these people from the street are superior to those that let them there, including some that cross moral lines (for instance, some mild forms of supervised forced labor), and excepting only, for me at least, the most extreme ones (such as killing them).
I do broadly agree with your plan but I'm afraid that without a lot of "drawing the rest of the owl" it wouldn't necessarily resolve the issue, as some countries have actually managed to provide cheap housing to push its undesirables into, and the result is unpoliceable ghettos (see: French suburbs) that erupt into large-scale violence regularly. And as disfunctional as French immigration can be at times, the people that end up in the banlieues are still likely an order of magnitude more functional than raving park yellers.
Walterodim
Only equals speak the truth, that’s my thought on’t
1d ago
I worded it like that because the OP worded his comment like it was surprising people think these opinions are seen as "bad person" opinions.
No, I'm not surprised by it, I am accustomed to it and acknowledging that I am simply at an impasse with people that differ on this. We have irreconcilable moral intuitions and I'm articulating where I think that comes to a head.
I think if you say "this group of people is annoying, I want them removed by the state and and don't care what happens to them" you've eliminated any possibility of having yourself seen as good, at best you're amoral.
Yeah, obviously I just disagree with this. I consider myself a good person, most people I know consider me a good person, and many other people that both think I'm a good person and see themselves that way agree with my perspective on this matter. I actually don't see my opponents on the issue as intrinsically bad, I understand them to be softhearted people that are unwilling to accept mean solutions to problems. The exception to that would be people that seem to revel in things sucking, that suggest that there's something wrong with people that don't want bums camping in parks, but I actually think this is a pretty small minority view even if it's overrepresented on social media.
Much of what I'm pointing at here is what I see as an actual, real difference in preferences though. You're back to the root cause end of things here with the implication being that the individual I'm referring to is either mentally ill or homeless. As mentioned, that wasn't clear to me at all, and I have certainly encountered individuals that are just aggressive assholes that enjoy bullying other people in public spaces; they would stop if they were forced to stop, this isn't some uncontrollable tic or a product of them not having a nice enough abode in which to blow off steam. I'm fairly confident that there are already statutes that could be enforced against this, there is just a cultural norm of not doing so in blue cities, so everyone gets to enjoy the serenade of belligerence.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_United_States_incarceration_rate_with_other_countries
Sure, countries with a lot more criminals per capita will imprison a lot more criminals.
Chicago had 573 homicides last year; the entirety of Australia had 409 homicides in 2023. Australia has about 25 million more people.
Yes, we've all recently learned that the multimillionaire CEO of a tech company will risk it all to have an affair with the head of HR at said company.
I'd agree escorts aren't the MODAL case here, for sure.
But for most guys, a night with a decent escort is not likely in the budget, so he's likely to throw money at strippers or somesuch.
Rich guy has that fallback, but is not necessarily going to need it.
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