domain:jessesingal.substack.com
jkf
1d ago
If there was a concerted effort at any point in time, it would have to have been a pan-national cover up of frankly astonishing proportions.
What do you think the consequences would be, if the populations of the countries that were forced to take this stuff (and strongly encouraged to give it to their children) were to find out that it was even somewhat harmful?
Rivers of blood my man -- this is not a game.
And if that is not worth covering up (on an individual prospiracy type basis; not overarching organization is needed because the incentives are the same everywhere), I don't know what would be.
IGI-111
God was a dream of good government.
1d ago
This is politics. Principles are objectively for suckers.
You even evidence why: there are vast quantities of people who will defect, which makes being a cooperate-bot a terrible strategy.
If you don't tit for tat you just end up in the grave with Thomas More, Pompey and Alexander Kerensky. Though what an honorable grave it is. The best.
How does "spend political capital to achieve left-wing policy goals (and take the blame when they fail)" accomplish any of what you're saying?
I think it's an ideological move that doesn't help Trump's position, so I don't think it's good politics. It's spending political capital on something that could be better allocated, on my opinion, but far from me to tell Americans how to spend their infinite debt. Exchanging worthless paper for Intel stock might well be a good deal.
I'm commenting on the general idea that ideological principles should guide politics instead of pragmatic coalition building, which is a loser's position by any objective metric. And thus undesirable even to the ideologue, insofar as he's sincere.
people are so eager to throw away principles for the sake of spite that they aren't stopping to ask questions like "Is this just helping the people I'm trying to be spiteful towards at my own expense?"
People are just growing up from the follies of the 1990s now that the chickens have come home to roost. Awaking from a slumber, if you will.
You'll notice I don't advocare pettiness or impotent spite here. Only total annihilation. Anything less is actually a waste of good lives.
If you don't have principles besides "oppose the enemy", and also you don't understand what your enemy believes, it's pretty easy to end up supporting the enemy against your own side
Of course, and the lesson here is that you need to know your enemy and know yourself. Not that principles should get in the way of doing what is right.
Ideological purity is a broken compass that doesn't provide a substitute for true knowledge of one's own tendencies and that of one's enemies. It's not the loss you think it is.
Observe everything, admire nothing.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
1d ago
"Look what you made me do" - man doing what he was going to do anyway. The thing about unprincipled people is that they think everyone else is just like them and that principles are for suckers. There are enough other unprincipled people that it's extremely easy to sustain this belief even in the face of clear evidence that you're well below average in terms of behavior simply by telling yourself others would do it if they could.
Why political revenge narratives don't make sense to me.
Political revenge narratives make more sense if you consider them as a gloss on crude dominance seeking. You can't just come out and say "I enjoy having power over my enemies" because you'll scare your less dominance-oriented political allies (who may start to wonder when the jackboot is coming down on their face). Framing it as revenge lets you justify it as a balancing of the scales - both punishment for misbehavior and a necessary reminder of why you shouldn't be fucked with. Actual misbehavior or unbalanced scales somewhere between optional and a negative.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
1d ago
Definitely more. The Blues, even in Europe, were much more bloodthirsty when they thought the original loss to Trump was just a fluke.
There's been this hilarious attempt to make the poibt you're hinting at: "Oooh! You're really going to get it now!". They're going to become "Dark Woke" now! And I'm sitting here waiting for someone to point out the difference, if anything they're significantly more mild.
FirmWeird
Randomly Generated Reddit Username
1d ago
Maybe it shouldn't be called "mental health", but what would you prefer for such a reasonable ask?
Not who you're talking to, but I believe a good word for this is "stress", which most people recognise as something that can play a part in adverse health outcomes. The possibility that the medical system might just saddle you with a gigantic, life-ruining debt by surprise and with no recourse would make absolutely be a significant source of stress.
sodiummuffin
1d ago
The specific context which inspired his post is Trump doing stuff like buying the government a 10% share in Intel and some people justifying this with "your rules, fairly > your rules, unfairly". I'm pretty sure this isn't even Trump trying to "use left-wing tactics against them" or anything, it doesn't accomplish anything partisan. Trump just genuinely believes in a bunch of left-wing policy positions like opposition to free trade and government ownership of companies. How does "spend political capital to achieve left-wing policy goals (and take the blame when they fail)" accomplish any of what you're saying?
Principled agents are bad politicians: they will sacrifice what is necessary on the altar of their principle, and thus be outmaneuvered by less scrupulous agents. Their principles will be subverted by their enemies and become the instrument of their demise.
I've been noticing the exact opposite problem on the internet lately, where people are so eager to throw away principles for the sake of spite that they aren't stopping to ask questions like "Is this just helping the people I'm trying to be spiteful towards at my own expense?". For instance I've seen several cases where SJWs censored something and there were comments kneejerk supporting it as "what goes around comes around" because they somehow misinterpreted which side the censorship was coming from. If you don't have principles besides "oppose the enemy", and also you don't understand what your enemy believes, it's pretty easy to end up supporting the enemy against your own side. After all, people understand their own positions better, so if you treat "this violates our principles" as a sign of insufficient commitment against the enemy you've given up your main indicator and all that's left is understanding your enemy so well that you hopefully notice before you end up accidentally supporting them.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
1d ago
Third, you’re misrepresenting Democrats. “When they go low we go high” was the motto for quite a while.
Did they actually go high?
Also, how doesn't everything you said apply to OP's point to begin with?
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
1d ago
Wow. First of all that’s mighty quick to jump to “sides”. Democrats aren’t a monolith, nor Republicans, and neither are Trumpists - not even within his own administration.
Second, I think you’re misrepresenting the game theory. It’s been a while, but I’m pretty sure that “generous tit for tat” usually wins in the situation most like US politics (you copy the last move of the other side, but occasionally show forgiveness - note that tit for tat also allows chained cooperation, so it’s not infinite revenge). Of course it’s highly dependent on the situation and population of other players, so you’re overstating your case anyways.
Third, you’re misrepresenting Democrats. “When they go low we go high” was the motto for quite a while. You can make a good case it was never this rosy but many felt that way. In that respect Newsom’s actions are a half anomaly and not universally supported to boot (though anti-gerrymandering is not a partisan issue; even my home state of Utah passed a ballot measure for independent redistricting, though the legislature has tried to nuke it).
A better model of Democrats - at least as far as you can consider them united, as disclaimed - is that they are pro-rule of law or “norms”, but frequently break those norms just a little bit (eg federal judges without 60) and then go all surprised face when Republicans decide it’s open season and blow by whatever excuse/reasoning they gave (eg SC without 60). That is, Democrats are broadly reasonable but also guilty of first small steps, but Republicans are guilty of escalation. Which is worse? Eh. Depends on what you view as the normal population of game theory players! Which is debatable, not fact. Though I’d be interested to hear you actually put some reasoning to your claim.
We do have some polling data that might be helpful. Source. When Democratic voters were asked about how acceptable gerrymandering is, 70% say never (9% in retaliation only, 7% it’s normal, 14% not sure). When asked if they would gerrymander California in response to Texas, 63% say yes (18% no, 14% not sure). With some reasonable assumptions that implies about half of the Democratic electorate are hypocrites.
That’s a little depressing until you recall that this isn’t too uncommon when an abstract principle collides with a concrete example. Affordable housing advocates often turning into NIMBYs, deficit hawks suddenly balking at actual cuts, or Trump supporters who claim to value personal character, the list goes on. Ideally those of us here aren’t actually playing these games and say what we mean while thinking about the implications before blanket claims, but people are people and confirmation bias/selective attention are potent sociopolitical drugs.
The final issue that I think is a latent one lurking behind this disagreement is this: how many politicians genuinely believe what they preach, vs how many are simply milking a character or playing chameleon just to get reelected (or self-enrich)?
I find the answer to that latter question has a very broad spread, and if two people don’t agree on a common answer you get accusations of bad faith or poor reasoning because of the implications of your answer on the political process.
It essentially implies the difference between the right wing and left wing argument about things are about morals and not about the effectiveness of policy or economic ideas for the good of our country and our citizens.
It seems to me that people who have adopted what you label "revenge narratives" generally no longer believe that there is such a thing as "our country" or "our citizens". Certainly I do not.
If "your rules fairly" includes doing things that you think are stupid, inefficient, counter-productive and extra prone to corruption then doing it back would be strange.
Forming, equipping, and paying a police force is "stupid, inefficient, counter-productive, and prone to corruption" in a number of ways. It's just that it's less stupid, inefficient, counter-productive, and prone to corruption than not having police, given the situation we find ourselves in. If the situation were different, police might not be worth it. But it isn't, so they are.
After all if you care about the country, I would assume you want good and effective policy.
Leaving aside the questionable existence or identity of "the country", sure, everyone wants "good and effective policy". What are their goals, though? What's the situation? What's the problem that needs solving? Different answers to those questions lead to very different answers to which policies are "good and effective".
Let's take a concrete example. I used to be very concerned about government spending and the national debt. I thought that it was very important that we get this spending under control, and bring the debt down. This was part of the basis for my voting for George W Bush in 2000. But Bush then blew the budget out funding the war on terror, and then Obama (who I also voted for) blew the budget out even worse (to my recollection, corrections welcome) with his various domestic and foreign policies. Voting for fiscal responsibility did not actually secure fiscal responsibility.
Moreover, it's concretely evident that government spending domestically has positive first-order, short term effects for the places and people receiving the money, and thus purchases votes/political power. Even if the long-term effects are postulated to be net-harmful, there is no mechanism available to prove it sufficiently persuasively to offset the votes/political power gain it offers. Partisans are therefore incentivized to spend public money when they are in power, receiving concrete benefits for themselves and their allies in exchange for costs that are diffuse, delayed, and socialized to everyone. And in fact, the entire history of government spending shows exactly what one would expect if one formed their priors off this model. Given that this history is varied and quite long, there is no reason to expect it to change to any significant degree without heroic sacrifice or terrible disaster.
Now, you might say "but if you believe this, then Heroic Sacrifice is the right thing to do!" ...And if such a sacrifice would actually fix the problem, that would be a solid argument. But if party A commits this great sacrifice, they will be less popular, because people won't be getting paid government money any more, and will be mad about it. Then party B is free to promise to resume or even increase spending, win the election, do so, and then win the next election too, and now the problem is the same or even worse. Nor would it matter how many times A repeated the heroic sacrifice; B is strongly incentivized to defect. And if this is even an approximately accurate model of our situation, then it is obvious that there is no benefit to being the "party of fiscal responsibility", when your opposition can simply squander whatever you have saved when it's their turn in power.
I observe that previous governments, Democrat and Republican, have chronically failed to exercise fiscal responsibility. I observe that attempting fiscal responsibility now will cost significant votes and political power, which will naturally flow to the fiscally-irresponsible. Therefore, I conclude that while I would strongly prefer fiscal responsibility, there is no way to get there from here, and so I abandon this as a political goal because it does not appear to be practically achievable. Therefore, I no longer care about fiscal responsibility or the debt, and I apportion my political priorities and values to areas where victory seems more probable.
Now, my guess is that the above doesn't make sense to you. But you're free to give it a think and tell me where you think I've gone wrong, specifically.
If you see the left's policy ideas as bad and harmful to our future, it's not a great idea to join in on the self-harm.
As you may be aware, prior to the outbreak of World War II, politicians from a number of countries mutually recognized that arms races between the various political powers were a stupid waste of everyone's resources, and attempted to prevent such contests through diplomacy. The Washington Naval Treaty was a product of this thinking. And yet, war broke out anyway, and once war broke out, all sides abandoned the limitations of the treaty and began building warships as big and as quickly as they possibly could, accelerating the arms race as never before.
Now, hadn't we all agreed that naval arms races were stupid and counter-productive, and what we actually wanted was not to build warships, but to give our citizens medicine and education and good roads and electricity? Obviously so! We (as you say) wrote a treaty and signed it! Weren't the Americans and the British upset that Germany and Japan were building bigger ships than the treaty allowed? Absolutely! They were extremely upset about this, and said so very loudly and at considerable length!
And yet, America and England turned right around and began building their own warships, also bigger than the treaty allowed! Didn't they understand that Germany and Japan were wasting money on these stupid ships, and the best thing to do would be to hold to their principles and not waste their own money on stupid ships the same way? Why do you suppose that America and England fell for this "revenge narrative", reversed course, and did exactly the thing they'd previously promised in writing not to do? Is this as confusing to you as the questions you pose above? If not, why not?
Unless you're a traitor and hate the country, you would be pushing for what you think is the best policy.
"the best policy" is drastically underspecified.
The best policy if I were the immortal God King, whose very word is law?
The best policy that I can get the nation to vote for on the election next Tuesday?
The best policy I can convince one of the two major parties to support?
The best policy, even if it has modulo-zero chance of being implemented or succeeding?
The best policy, even if it harms you and helps your enemies?
These are all different policies.
This is part of why principled groups can stay principled so easily.
Others have asked you why the ACLU failed, and it seems to me that your replies have been flippant. You claim that over a century, any organization will change as people come and go. But the ACLU did not change over a century. It had a very solid reputation for a specific set of principles as recently as 2010, and by 2016 that reputation was utterly demolished. If you believe that principled groups can stay principled easily, you need to explain how the ACLU maintained its principles for many decades in a row, and then lost them completely in less than one.
An organization like FIRE truly believes that free speech is beneficial.
And yet, the evidence has shown that they cannot prevent endemic free speech violations, nor even significantly impede them. When it mattered, they could not protect my speech in any meaningful sense, nor will they be able to do so in the future. Their impact is, to a first approximation, theoretical. The model they operate off, where only government speech controls impinge on the first amendment, is a suicide pact that I respectfully decline to involve myself in.
I value free speech because I wish to be able to speak as freely as possible. FIRE has not and very likely will not made any appreciable progress toward securing that goal. Supporting Trump has done far, far more, so I will continue to support Trump.
Counter to this, the "revenge" narrative comes off like the advocates never believed the words they were saying.
Perhaps you are correct, and this is how the narrative really does sound to a thoughtful, well-informed neutral party. Alternatively, perhaps it only sounds this way to people like those you present yourself as: young, naïve and lacking both crucial historical perspective and formative life experience, dismissive of both contrary evidence and contrary perspectives, certain that they alone hold the answers to all life's questions. Many of us were that way, once, but I find that persuading such people is both difficult and generally unproductive. If you are as you claim to be, you'll understand in time.
Tariffs are fairly standard policy when it comes to import-substitution industrial development. If they're so bad, then why does the rest of the world have them? Are they stupid?
Without going into a Putin-esque diatribe about the history of the United States, free trade was the bribe that Americans gave to the defeated Axis and their European partners to be anti-Soviet and anti-Communist. Now that Americans no longer benefit from this arrangement, they are free to end it as they please. Economically? Not very good. As a scheme to destroy the liberal, atlanticist order? Very good.
And there's the root of the problem, of which the OP doesn't get. You can't paper over ideological differences like that. What if I see destroying the old order as a good thing? What if we don't agree on the role of American hegemony? Can the Americans back away from their own empire if they want to?
If my ends are the fundamental destruction of your world order, we can't chalk it up to democratic plurality. There really are positions of which are irreconcilable to the liberal worldview. What are you going to do about it? Honorably lose to me? Have many moral victories to your name as I take power?
I'd like that very much, actually. That sounds great.
Every flight so far was suborbital. There was one where people were saying they could have gone to orbit with it, by chose not to.
Edit:
100 tons to LEO is aggressive
Wait, which one was that? My interpretation of all the bets is achieving orbit during a test flight, no cargo. Self_made_human's predictions include a safe landing.
Glassnoser
1d ago
I guess what I'm confused by is why people have emergency funds. Why not just spend your regular savings or use a line of credit and slowly pay it off, spreading the cost out over a longer period of time? Or if you need a new car, why not finance it?
self_made_human
amaratvaṃ prāpnuhi, athavā yatamāno mṛtyum āpnuhi
1d ago
I keep saying I've reached the point in my Motte career where I've discussed every topic under the sun. That's true for this one.
In this specific case, assuming it's the incident from a year or two back, the child was almost guaranteed to die regardless of where they were taken. The main objection of the doctors and the government against them being taken was both that transfer would be highly expensive, and that it wouldn't make a single jot of difference other than prolonging the anguish. If you know any paediatricians, you'll know that they're the kind of people who love kids and will move heaven and earth to help them. If they're saying it's a write off, I am highly inclined to believe them.
From my own, liberatarianish position, I would have preferred the family got to try nonetheless. But there is no clear cut answer, and it was a decision made in good faith.
Glassnoser
1d ago
What do you mean by "losing your car"? Are you saying everyone you know has totalled their car multiple times to an uninsured hooligan? I don't think I know very many people who have totalled their car for any reason. Personally, I have never been in an accident that did more than damage a bumper.
Even if this is your situation, it doesn't make sense to buy insurance for something you expect to happen a few times in your life. Savings and loans are tools that already exist to even out the expense over your lifetime. Insurance adds an unnecessary cost to this.
Now, if you are unusually prone to getting into accidents and your insurer doesn't know that, then it makes sense, but this averse selection is exactly why it wouldn't make sense for most people.
faul_sname
Fuck around once, find out once. Do it again, now it's science.
1d ago
Your mistake is that you assume there is a platform of universally agreed upon policies that are agreed to be universally beneficial. There are not. If you disagree with this, name a policy, and I'll show you its partisan sides. You can't technocrat your way out of politics. What is your good and effective policy is my bad and harmful policy. The bad and inefficient parts of policy that I support are called tradeoffs that I can live with.
Ok, sure. Please show how the tariffs, as implemented, will achieve their stated goals, or any other goal that could not have been better achieved some other way.
faul_sname
Fuck around once, find out once. Do it again, now it's science.
1d ago
Do you feel like you are more or less protected in the long term from the democrats than you did 6 months ago?
Good and effective politics necessitates revenge. Total revenge in fact.
This can be easily demonstrated as long as one is willing to admit that politics, as a phenomenon, has instrumentally nothing to do with the enactment of some transcendental moral ordering, and everything to do with the accrual and maintenance of power.
Principled agents are bad politicians: they will sacrifice what is necessary on the altar of their principle, and thus be outmaneuvered by less scrupulous agents. Their principles will be subverted by their enemies and become the instrument of their demise.
This is most famously evidenced by Machiavelli in The Prince, from whom we can draw on the necessity of revenge:
So it should be noted that when he seizes a state the new ruler must determine all the injuries that he will need to inflict. He must inflict them once for all, and not have to renew then every day, and in that way he will be able to set men's minds at rest and win them over to him when he confreres benefits. Whoever acts otherwise, either through timidity or bad advice, is always forced to have a knife ready to his hand and he can never depend on his subject because they, suffering fresh and continuous violence, can never feel secure with regard to him.
It is timidity you advocate here, a timidity which only causes more bloodshed.
Machiavelli of course had his share of historical examples of this, such as the successful pacification of Romagna which was enabled by Cesare Borgia's cruelty. But we may draw very large numbers of examples from both ancient and contemporary history.
Roosevelt, Mustapha Kemal, Lee Kwan Yew, Peron, Stalin, Abraham Lincoln, Mao Zedong, Charles de Gaulle, Margaret Thatcher, Konrad Adenauer, every successful politician follows a similar trajectory that has them reward their friends and punish their enemies, with what you call "principle" and "policy" being an instrumental concern or a long term vision to rally around rather than the grunt work.
It's the inflexible will to power and the dirty hands that result from it that makes one successful in politics, which is why so many of the people I just listed have "Iron" associated nicknames and quotes.
So if you are genuinely asking yourself what is effective, ideological inflexibility is essentially the first thing to ditch.
Liberals used to understand this, which is why they were very much ready to break their own rules so long as it would enable a larger victory. But you've grown in a world where these people won so long ago that their principles are the background radiation of your morality, much like Christianity was to the people Machiavelli was trying to instruct.
You can either accept that politics is a dirty game and all your fanciful conceptions of rights and liberties and fairness will be muddied if you are to secure anything; or you can lose.
Of course accepting this isn't incompatible with a desire and ability to enact good government that manifests those principles at least somewhat, but none of it will ever be pure, and you have to make peace with that.
Power always corrupts, but that also means the innocent is powerless.
JarJarJedi
1d ago
Whereas Strateg says Putin is intentionally disarming Russia for a NATO invasion.
This is hilarious. But I hope whoever that fine specimen of humanity is, he's not in Russia, or hides well, because Putin's oprichniks does not care which place you criticize it from, be it from the right, from the left or from the depths of derangement only accessible to a devoted Lovecraftian. The mere fact of criticizing the Boss is enough. Girkin got how much, 4 years I think? I am not sure I will be sad when that specimen is declared Foreign Agent and shut down too, but I would probably prefer it to continue to exist - somewhere far, far away from me - as a proof that the Universe is capable of producing more wonders that I would ever be able to comprehend.
All in all, if the war is fake theatrics
Anything can be derived from a false premise.
ulyssessword
1d ago
They are so much worse in combination.
- Leaving your passed out friend behind is terrible.
- Making baseless accusations that someone's a groping pervert is terrible.
- Leaving your passed-out friend behind with a pervert who was groping her???? No shit she cut ties.
magicalkittycat
1d ago
Bernie Sanders isn't a liberal.
You're right, he's a socialist.
Neither am I. That is not a novel observation. I am telling that I am not a liberal.
Correct, you're not a liberal. You're a person agreeing with a socialist about whether or not government should assume control of private enterprise.
I am not an American.
Oh ok then. Perfectly understandable you wouldn't care as much if the US implements good or bad policy if you aren't an American.
A free-market capitalist economic zone is mutually exclusive with the vision of America as a Christian nation.
America has pretty much always been capitalist. Many of our amazing presidents have been both capitalist free traders and Christian. Maybe you haven't heard of him since you're not an American, but we've had plenty of greats like Ronald Reagan (one of the most widely respected and liked conservatives in our history) who fit that bill perfectly.
I have to wonder are you a socialist? You seem to agree with the socialists on policy ideas around government involvement in private enterprise, and think capitalism goes against Christianity.
JarJarJedi
1d ago
Orwell was a communist. He wrote about what he knew and observed directly. This lends him the ability to describe the bleakness more realistically. Though he was a Western communist, so he hadn't experienced the full measure of what totalitarianism could do to a person and a society.
They say that ice is incompressible, but it's only 1/20th as incompressible as steel (9 GPa vs. 200 GPa elastic modulus). I'm not sure how well it would work given that difference.
(The "elastic modulus" of air isn't really a meaningful concept, but if you ignore that then the right number would be 0.0001 GPa, or 100000x as compressible as ice.)
I think megalomaniacal projects are inherently collectivist, a National Pride thing. You can do that when you have some particular mixes of populism and optimistic technocracy, perhaps; or when you're an authoritarian quasi-fascist (by modern standards) state that doesn't feel the need to pander to felt mundane needs of the electorate and is able to sell random infrastructure as a cause for celebration. Britain these days sounds more like it might do a mega-housing project for immigrants, or a renovation of state surveillance grid. That can be sold as visionary, too.
So speaking of China, yeah they've got that in droves. What @roystgnr said about rocketry (I am more optimistic, their currently tested designs are innately better than Falcon 9 and may allow rapid scaling beyond Starships, though this might take 5+ years). They have started to assemble a distributed orbital supercomputer (again, bottlenecked by lift capacity). There's preliminary research into using Lunar lava tubes for habitats, with the goal of eventual settlement of the Moon once they have the means to deliver nontrivial mass. What @RandomRanger said about the big dam; for datacenters, I like that they have a project of national «public compute» grid to basically commoditize GPU cycles like electricity and tap water . They have this Great Green Wall project, planting a Germany-sized forest to arrest the spread of Gobi desert. They've done another one in Xinjiang already. Mostly it's trivial things at vast scale – like installing thousands of high-current EV chargers, solar everywhere etc. There's a lot going on.
I think Britain would be very much improved by something mundane like that instead of flashy awe-inspiring megaprojects. It impressed me today to find that this July, China has increased residential power consumption by 18% versus July of previous year. «Between 2019 and 2025, residential power consumption in the month of July rose by 138%». I can't readily find the equivalent stats for Britain, but energy use per capita has declined by 14% in the same period; incidentally China has overtaken the UK on per capita total energy use in 2019-2020 (you can click your way to apples-to-apples comparison). The decline in energy use is a very clear sign of British involution, and it wouldn't take that much, logistically speaking, to reverse – Brits are still rich enough, and they're small enough, to procure gas (Trump rejoices), and maybe some Rolls-Royce reactors, and reduce costs and raise quality of life. AC in the summer and ample heating in the winter would do wonders to make the island less dreadful.
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