domain:aporiamagazine.com
TowardsPanna
7hr ago
To me he seems nothing like a visionary leader who accepts temporary pain for the greater, long term good of his people. His first and second priorities are his ego and his embezzlement.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
7hr ago
I’m with you, zero confidence that Americans will go along with this, because Americans have been raised up until maybe 15 years ago in a world of abundant wealth where hard choices didn’t have to be made. Or the can could be kicked until basically now. They aren’t used to “suffering for the greater good”, making do or doing without. So they aren’t going to tolerate such a thing. Add in the opposition making a point to blame the GOP for the suffering and promising to go back to the before times when the public could expect high standards of living, cushy office jobs, university education, and cheap consumer goods, and you will see the revolt.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
7hr ago
Or more generally, doing anything fun and non-programmer with generative llms?
RP?
You can slam any two settings together or make your own, any moderately known characters replicated with moderate authenticity, go on adventures. I might be eccentric since I'm more of a '2nd person going on an adventure in a world' person while many if not most seem to be 'directly communicating with an invented character 1 to 1' people.
Surely this has to be the most freeform roleplaying game ever made.
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
8hr ago
Can't cut medicaid or social security because your voting base will revolt.
I don't see why Trump gives a shit. He can't be reelected anyway, so who cares if the voters hate him? His career in politics is over either way. He's in the ideal position to do necessary-but-unpopular things. Granted that he needs Congress to play ball (he can't just cut spending on welfare himself), but Trump himself doesn't need to worry.
Ioper
9hr ago
Normally I'd agree but the situation is already unsustainable and rapidly spinning out of control. Massive fiscal reform needs to happen soon and I doubt that cuts to future entitlements that obviously were never going to happen would garner more opposition than cuts to current entitlements.
nopie
9hr ago
My view is slightly different. Sometimes debt is good, you would buy a house on mortgage, for example. But the current debt is purely for buying trinkets, not good. The US is also a very strong economy, the best in the world. Some more debt is not going to bankrupt it. However, excess debt can reduce growth. The fact that the US was growing faster than other developed countries, is no reason to limit this potential. Therefore this debt should be eliminated as it would allow the US to grow even faster.
Now, Musk wants more growth. Everything depends on it. It is a long game he is playing, some moves might be wrong, but it all makes sense.
mrvanillasky
Indo Aryan Thot Leader
9hr ago
Can be a decent exercise, I write poorly, something long form should help me get better at writing at the very least.
Some of my favorite movies are the three that make up the Oslo trilogy which focus on lives of people. Two of the three don't involve grand plots of any kind. Slice of life is hard to pull off.
nopie
9hr ago
In all those cases I was totally on Musk's side. Lockdowns were terrible and now even Scott Alexander quotes studies that they didn't do anything, only destroyed economy even more and increased mental problems of people. This is where both democrats and republicans dropped the ball on science.
Elon deserved at least some recognition for EVs.
Elon's transkid? The UK banned puberty blockers for a reason. It turns out that most “transkids” stop being “trans” by reaching adulthood, but if they are given puberty blockers, then it is almost 100% guaranteed that they will continue this transpath. Not good outcome at all and only the most ideology obsessed people cannot see why this is a problem.
The only thing I don't like about Musk is his over promises, for example, selling self-driving cars (was promised to be ready in 2024)? Clearly a fantasy although the idea to develop them is good. Of course, sometimes I don't like his talk (calling some a pedo etc.). But that is not important in the great scheme of things.
The first thing I did was read your post and the first sentence and a half of @urquan's post and immediately ran and asked chatgpt and gemini to create an image based on how you feel about me. When I asked chatgpt I got this which is great. Gemini on the other hand gave me this, which made me laugh and realise I should probably try reading posts properly. Can I ask what prompt you used? Likewise urquan? I also asked grok and got this. It insists it's based on our chat history and not just the session I asked it in, but I'm not sure I believe it.
Skulldrinker
9hr ago
It would have been 10 minutes before 2017. It's just the most extreme version of the recurring pattern of someone liking me only for a third party to hate me so much they feel the need to intercede, and it always happens in the context of geek culture. And I'm very annoyed that something that happened so long ago is still a load I carry.
dr_analog
razorboy
10hr ago
AI would need to deliver, like, 8% annualized growth or something to pull out of our debt problems. Our historical average has been 2%
Basically, this is in crack pipe fantasy territory. Not that a man can't hope though...
PokerPirate
10hr ago
Where is your line?
I'm not able to articulate it. That's largely because I've never liked the framing of there being a spectrum of bad things that can happen, and everyone draws a line somewhere, and violence is allowed below the line but not above the line. In this framing, pacifism is a totally passive thing that just places the line somewhere very low.
I think if pacifism is going to be viable, it needs to have a much more positive framing than merely as rejecting violence in some circumstances.
sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
10hr ago
I don't care how good it is, I don't want to hear it blaring through my windows. Or my walls (been there, done that).
I'll feel less bad about Social Security if ever convinced the only alternative is UBI For Women and Single Mothers.
Hoffmeister25
American Bukelismo Enthusiast
10hr ago
You seem not to actually be paying attention to anything going on in American popular music today, if you think that there is no “melodically complex” music being “played on real instruments”.
Lewis2
10hr ago
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
11hr ago
With a bit of narrative distance and perhaps confidence you could write a novel set in this area. Avoid any AI help, keep the rich detail, maybe throw in a love triangle or violence, or if you prefer, something dystopian. Just a thought.
LiberalRetvrn
11hr ago
awful Mexican music
Mexican music is objectively better than the slop being pumped out in the US these days. I spend a lot of time around lower class mexicans at work, and it's mindblowing how many of them listen to melodically complex folk music played on real instruments.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
12hr ago
I think OP is agreeing with you about the Republicans. Their reputation is "the fiscally conservative, small government party" despite them actively increasing the debt and expanding government for decades. See also "the party of Christian family values" despite doing little to nothing to oppose the normalization of progressive values.
America is over, and so, okay, then what?
you have the answer already:
be selfish and just try to grab what I can and hope I'm dead before the shit really hits the fan
Hard reforms may have been possible back when America was a nation. Here in Japan, people are just buckling down and weathering the long running currency devaluation because (they believe) the alternative is worse. There's a sense here that everyone is suffering together which makes it bearable. Unfortunately, America is not a nation anymore, it's a multiethnic, multicultural, multi-faith empire that include groups who bitterly hate each other, which means it's nearly impossible to get all the different groups game-theory-cooperate to avoid disaster (barring an existential threat, and even then...). Instead, we will have factional war to the knife as the coffers run dry and systems gradually break down.
I don't expect a collapse that will make good TV, rather it will be a slow version of South Africa where everything gets gradually shittier, punctuated by sudden slips along regional/local political and social fault lines that result in brief but bloody spasms of violence.
So yeah, I think you would be wise to start grabbing what you can now while praying for a unifying moment that will help us avoid that future. I also recommend moving to a place where you're around ideological, religious, and or ethnic allies so that you're not the odd man out when broadcasts from Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines start to reach your neighborhood.
DuplexFields
Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it.
12hr ago
TANSTAAFL, no matter how rich.
If they’re financing businesses through loans, the businesses will be buying services and goods on the open market using the loan money, and those will be FairTaxed. The goods or services those businesses sell will be FairTaxed. That’s less money returning to the investor.
If someone rich buys a used mansion, either they’ll refurbish/remodel it to their own standards using FairTaxed services and goods, or the seller will refurbish/remodel it before putting it on the market and raise the purchase price from “fixer-upper” to “like new”. And if they try to work around the FairTax to refurb it, the contractors will get caught and charged with tax evasion, so the contractors will be sure to include FairTax in their receipts. Trickle-up taxation.
According to Google search summary by AI, “New home sales and improvements, which would include land, would be subject to the tax. Sales of existing homes and, presumably, existing land, would not be taxed. This is consistent with the FairTax's exemption of ‘used items’ to prevent double taxation.”
If the rich are buying used stocks (not IPO), why should they pay FairTax? If they’re buying new IPO stock, they’re transferring ownership of a used company from the private proprietors, who built it by buying and selling FairTaxed goods or services. If they’re buying and merging companies, same deal. The difference is they can’t just sell it at a loss to cut their tax liability. (I’m looking at you, Hollywood Accounting!)
If the rich buy a big, big boat worth a bunch of bucks in Bahrain and keep it in the Bahamas, why should the federal government of the USA get a single dime of that purchase?
As to the fairness of power, prestige, reputation, value speculation, and all the other ancillary benefits of capitalism, the existing income and investment tax system has no ability to curb them, so the FairTax doesn’t even try. The tax system should be focused primarily on efficiently collecting necessary revenue for the government, not solving all the social ills caused by the 1% of the 1%. That’s what antitrust is for.
Thank you for engaging with me on this, there’s little I love as much as talking FairTax.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
12hr ago
You're approaching this from an angle where propaganda is something I don't think it is.
Maybe. I think it's media created with the purpose of spreading and inculcating ideas and specific types of thinking, is that not what it is? What do you think it is?
Joe Rogan wasn't 'built'. It was an accidental fire that happened to be able to exist since it spawned from spheres that were very much not intellectual and not mainstream.
His podcast is very much a result of deliberate human action, rather than a random accident. None of his story that you bring up contradicts my point, and none of what you said addresses it.
Similar to how cries of cries of a lack of internet censorship were eventually heard, the calls for a left wing Joe Rogan will eventually be heard.
The left might one day decide to turn itself into something that can sustain a left-wing Joe Rogan, but it is currently incapable of doing so. They might succeed in taking him down, they might succeed in having him supplanted by slop they control, but unless they change themselves, they're not reproducing him or the effect he's having on the world.
token_progressive
maybe not the only progressive here
13hr ago
Sure, that's the way they act for the middle class when who are just buying enough stock to fill out a retirement account. But for the wealthy making investments large enough, they are buying power.
TIRM
13hr ago
But the true alternative is you borrowing from your children's future followed by them additionally borrowing even more from your children's future. Not a hypothetical, but instead a decent description of presidencies. A D blows up the debt more than ever before. Followed by an R. Followed again by a D. Followed again....
But that would have been right after the years the US federal budget had been running a surplus under the Clinton admin, no?
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