domain:furiouslyrotatingshapes.substack.com
Hadad
3hr ago
Okay. I predict we'll not see people turn away from the idea of bombing Iran over Ted Cruz not knowing the population size. I think we'll probably see approval mildly climb up over the course of the near future, actually, though also not due to Ted Cruz's interview.
Hadad
3hr ago
So what do you think is keeping China out of Taiwan right now, if not the bombs I'm proposing we drop on Iran? Or is it you think we'd be targeting China itself, and not the chip factories?
I'm trying to understand the causality chain earlier.
fmaa
3hr ago
I largely agree with you, but I don't think the last part is true. As with the weirdos wanting to be hunter-gatherers (or worse, raiders), you really can't be those things as they were in the past, because all the good land has been taken by people doing something vastly more productive with it.
And an off-the-grid cabin in the woods isn't really being a medieval peasant. You need a lord for that. But, ironically, for the authentic frontier homesteader experience you really need some nearby raiders to potentially pillage your homestead, otherwise you're benefiting far too much from the peace and prosperity of the modern state surrounding you.
IGI-111
God was a dream of good government.
3hr ago
He's a politician and this is a game all journalists and politicians have played forever ("what's a leppo?") at the least he should have some canned answer when he doesn't know the specifics.
Trump would have never in a million years fallen into that trap, he'd just enthusiastically move it on or make shit up doggedly on the spot "it's a lot of people Tucker, great people, some of the best people, but we have to make a deal, we can't allow nukes Tucker, they're very dangerous..."
quiet_NaN
3hr ago
You raise excellent points.
I would add that in two millennia of Christianity, the amount of blessing that the Christians bestow on Israel (e.g. the Jewish diaspora) seems pretty limited, on the level of "unlike pagans, we will suffer you to live on our lands as second class citizens (until we turn extra faithful and kick you out or murder you as a warm-up exercise for a crusade)".
I think one thing which might have changed this attitude is Christian Zionism:
Christian Zionism is a political and religious ideology that, in a Christian context, espouses the return of the Jewish people to the Holy Land. Likewise, it holds that the founding of the State of Israel in 1948 was in accordance with biblical prophecies transmitted through the Old Testament: that the re-establishment of Jewish sovereignty in the Levant—the eschatological "Gathering of Israel"—is a prerequisite for the Second Coming of Jesus Christ.
I am by no means an expert on Christian prophecy -- my knowledge of that link was mostly due to horror movies and alt-history novels -- neither of which are known to be super reliable, but it seems that a significant fraction of the evangelicals believe that the second coming (optionally followed by the end of the world, seals breaking and all?) will happen Really Soon Now, and that the Jews being in control of the holy lands is a prerequisite to that for some reason.
More pragmatically, Christians have long cared about the holy lands, which was generally what the Crusades were fought about. From a modern Christian point of view, Israel controlling Bethlehem and Jerusalem is tolerable -- Christian pilgrims are allowed and generally not hassled too much. If the ayatollah regime took over Israel, that would likely change for the worse.
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
3hr ago
as that you believe the latter but realise that touting that principle is a bad look/likely to decrease support for you
This is the part I disagree with, because I dont think they run this calculation, following the rule literally is not even on their radar. The way I think of it, their understanding of what following a rule means just is what will make other people say they followed it. Like thats what meaning is. The "other people" are a little abstract, for example they can see what you do even if noones around (not that thats relevant in this case) but its all based on social cognition. They do this even if it would be to their advantage to really understand, because its all they can do.
hydroacetylene
3hr ago
This is entirely fair- I do think unborn babies are people and not potential people. You caught me, my opposition to abortion is not about maximizing future population.
pusher_robot
PLEASE GO STAND BY THE STAIRS
3hr ago
One way would be to have some institution, powerful and widely respected by social consensus, but without access to the tools of violence and completely separate from the state, capable of directing people's behavior and social status via moral force instead of the policeman's truncheon.
Voltaire originated the witticism that in the beginning God created man in His own image, and man has been trying to repay the favor ever since. Well, now Man has killed God, and God is likely to return the insult.
Hieronymus
3hr ago
Christian understanding does not end at the Bible. Indeed the Bible says not to use itself that way (2 Thessalonians 2:15).
If you have another reliable record of apostolic teaching, you should listen to it. But you don't – both Rome and Constantinople have a history of backdating later innovations to ascribe apostolicity to them. Tradition can be useful, but to call it authoritative is an error.
Fortunately that's not needed here, because the Bible speaks to the issue. If Cruz gets it wrong, well, Cruz gets it wrong.
For non-Protestant Christians, having so many Protestants in political power is bemusing, frustrating, and sometimes terrifying.
I'd like to respond with some clever remark about Roman Catholics in power, but that'd be silly because, like Protestants, they are too varied a group to generalize about that way. As far as I'm aware of Eastern Orthodox politicians in traditionally Orthodox countries, they seem more driven by ethnic nationalism than by any particularly Christian concerns.
JarJarJedi
3hr ago
By every sensible measure? Income, GDP, opportunities, quality of life, technological advancement, etc. SK is a highly advanced modern nation, while Viet Nam is "developing". If you take pretty much every criteria that common people would use when comparing one nation against other, SK would come ahead.
I mean if we disagree on the facts we're surely not going to find agreement on their interpretation. We can drill down on a specific topic if you want, I hold my opinion on this topic to be fairly solid and nuanced, and backed by actual scholarship. But history being ultimately inaccessible to us, we may yet disagree forever, I'm fine with that.
But on exit rights, I speak from personal experience so I can just tell you how you're wrong specifically. I have attempted to live off the grid and succeeded to some degree, in more than one country. And my success has been inversely proportional to how liberal and modern the country in question is, and never total.
Consider the prospect seriously: if you want to live away from society you need enough land to subsistance farm, that's not a trivial amount and it requires some initial capital, so you need already be successful enough in modern society to afford it, as a luxury. I'm lucky like that, so it's on to the next step: you need to get that land and sever every tie you may have.
This is where it becomes impossible and if you genuinely try you end up like Albert Dryden or Vicki Weaver.
First of all there's the taxman, most places require that you pay something to the government for the privilege of owning land, if you don't produce enough to have an economic activity that's impossible and the inevitable man with gun eventually arrives. The good news is that the taxman is lazy, so you can live your whole life waiting for him, that's the story of Ed Brown. But that still means being imprisoned in your own home by the State ultimately.
Now assuming you find a nice tax free jurisdiction or make enough that that's never going to be a problem, comes the much more serious problem, and true enemy of the homesteader, and that's the municipal council. There's a building full of people whose sole job it is to prevent you from doing what we're proposing here, and as soon as they get a whiff that you're building a dwelling on your land, leaving a prebuilt or caravan on it for extended periods of time, or god forbid, engaging in agriculture, then they will send legions of cops, inspectors and various other officials your way.
Here you have a choice, either you comply or comply sufficiently that they leave you alone, making you tied to society in ways that strictly limit what yo can do and ultimately force you back into the system, or you ignore them like you did the taxman. The problem is that the councilman is not lazy. So when you start a war with them they do eventually send the men with guns to arrest you and/or kill you on your property.
Since I like to stay alive, my personal strategy to deal with this has been to leave for more enlightened shores that don't turn all ownership into renting from the government and where local officials are corrupt and lazy enough that they'll let you do whatever you want on your own land for a price.
That's still not really exit. But the Desert Trash lifestyle or equivalents is the closest that's practically possible.
And by the way, I have no qualms with technology qua technology. I find the internet to actually be tremendously useful in my ability to do these things. And I am not at all convinced that technology requires liberal states/empires to exist. Some forms of it certainly do. But not the ones I desire or enjoy.
I find it's not technology that stands in my way in the slighest. It's men and the nature of power.
MaximumCuddles
The world-spirit texting on the toilet
4hr ago
For example, him talking about other nations spying on the US was completely correct and very honest; everyone spies on everyone, including allies, especially allies. It’s just a truth of the world, there’s nothing good or bad about it.
People getting their panties in a twist about it seems either performative or worse, incredibly naive.
HereAndGone
4hr ago
Well, I'm taking "pro-single motherhood" to mean "don't have an abortion, have the baby" even if giving it up for adoption. The lesser of two evils. I wish Alexander would be clearer about what he intends to communicate, rather than just flinging some insults around.
Well, we got free love and contraception and abortion and divorce, and there are still plenty of prostitutes in London, and seemingly increasing amounts of young women selling sex for cash as a signal of empowerment or something. Schopenhauer plainly could not envision OnlyFans.
I do wonder where he got that figure, and who he was including in that. Did he mean "if only men could marry several women, there would be fewer women having to sell sex to survive"? Or did he mean "if living together without marriage was tolerated, many of these women would be in stable relationships"? Because uh, we got that, and we still have prostitution, escort work, sex work, porn, etc.
EDIT: Yeah, looking it up a little, those figures seem debatable. Schopenhauer could be including "poor women who sold sex from time to time, women living in irregular unions, women in temporary relationships" and the likes:
Although London police reports recorded there to be approximately 8,600 prostitutes known to them, it has been suggested that the true number of women prostituting during this time was closer to 80,000 (Rogers).
During the Victorian Age, prostitution did not subscribe to any one tradition; some women lived in brothels, some with soldiers or sailors, and some worked on the streets. Judith Walkowitz, a professor of history at Johns Hopkins University, highlights the different avenues available to prostitutes in her book Prostitution and Victorian Society. The most common form of prostitution during this time was streetwalking. Women who performed this act were most commonly those who supplemented their daily income with money they could earn by prostituting on occasion, but there were also some who used streetwalking as their primary source of income.
...During the Victorian Age, the number of prostitutes who actually lived in brothels was considerably low. Despite this, customers that behaved inappropriately towards the prostitutes that did inhabit such places were normally unappreciated and unwelcome (Walkowitz, 23-25)
I would tend to go with the police estimate for "prostitutes who are street walkers or in brothels" rather than "80,000 genuine no other income or relationship prostitutes". The link for the 80,000 figure seems to go "I got this from Rogers" "Hi I'm Rogers and I got this from Mayhew" and where did Mayhew get it?
To understand the mid-Victorian perception of prostitution we must appreciate the scale of the concern. Mayhew tells us that in 1857 there were 8,600 prostitutes in London known to the police but that the true number may have been nearer to 80,000 (Mayhew p. 476).
Mayhew, H. London Labour and the London Poor. Penguin, London 1985
Digging that one up gives me this source:
To show how difficult it is to give from any data at present before the public anything like a correct estimate of the number of prostitutes in London, we may mention (extracting from the work of Dr Ryan) that while the Bishop of Exeter asserted the number of prostitutes in London to be 80,000, the City Police stated to Dr Ryan that it did not exceed 7,000 to 8,000. About the year 1793 Mr Colquhoun, a police magistrate, concluded, after tedious investigations, that there were 50,000 prostitutes in this metropolis. At that period the population was one million, and as it is now more than double we may form some idea of the extensive ramifications of this insidious vide.
And here I stop, because I am not going to chase down Dr Ryan and the Bishop of Exeter.
But another writer cautions that Mayhew is not the most accurate for data:
Mayhew seems not to have corrected the errors in his text, even when he was willing to acknowledge them. (The long list of errata at the end of Vol. I is mostly taken up by inaccurate calculations.) E. P. Thompson’s conclusion seems reasonable: ‘Every single table and set of statistical data in Mayhew must be scrutinised, not for dishonesty or manipulation, but for sheer slipshod technique and haste in getting to press’, ‘The Political Education of Henry Mayhew’, Victorian Studies, 11 (September 1967); 41–62 (p.58).
Anyway, be it 8,000 or 80,000, contra Schopenhauer the problem was not monogamy but rather poverty: the lack of secure employment and good wages for working and lower class men, and the lack of employment for working and lower class women (street sellers of everything from flowers to vegetables to small items was the fall-back if no steady employment in domestic service or elsewhere). So it's the economy, stupid, not sexual politics that was driving women into part-time or full-time prostitution.
HereAndGone
4hr ago
I am not trying to speak for you, I said that was the impression I took away from previous encounters.
If you feel that this mischaracterises your position, then please state what your position is, including how you define "far-right" and why you think most people on here are far-right, because so far as I can see, your definition seems to be "not as enthusiastically pro-infanticide as me".
thrownaway24e89172
naïve paranoid outcast
4hr ago
Too bad. Vanishingly few would truly rather be a single mother--rather they expect the benefits men normally bring to relationships be provided by society so they don't have to suffer the compromises necessary to make a relationship work. Such selfish entitlement shouldn't be encouraged by society.
remzem
4hr ago
The administration that caved and eventually brought back an ms-13 member all because there was a minor clerical error and, despite him being cleared for deportation, he wasn't cleared for deportation to El Salvador specifically so the media spent an entire month throwing a fit about it? I lack your faith. All the institutions are still aligned against Populists.
Lizzardspawn
4hr ago
Russia has no way of helping Iran. If this was in 3 years time and the war in Ukraine has ended with massive Russian victory and they couldn't turn off their military industrial complex for fear of the holy mother of depressions then I could see them sending shitload of material for cold hard cash. The only party that could help Iran now is China. But they still test their toys in Ukraine. And shipping now is hard. It is obvious that Iran has zero opsec. So they cannot arrange securely receiving anything even if someone was willing to send it to them.
pusher_robot
PLEASE GO STAND BY THE STAIRS
4hr ago
Obviously, but I think the TRA would argue that this is exceptionally unusual and outweighed by the QoL improvements of early transition.
I strenuously disagree, but I do think that's the actual crux.
Rov_Scam
4hr ago
Iran isn't just going to sit there and take being bombed. They may not have air defenses, but they have missiles, and you can bet your bottom dollar that they're going to use those missiles to take out Saudi oil infrastructure. Or they might just block off the Straits of Hormuz, which we could clear, but it would require more than just bombing stationary targets. Or they could decide to protect their own oil assets, which are close to the border, by invading Iraq, starting another war that Iran might actually win, taking more oil offline. The bottom line is that you'd better be prepared for a sharp spike in gas prices, and one that won't subside until the war ends. If, as you say, you're going to go after every possible military installation in a country that covers over 600,000 square miles and has 90 million people, you'd better be prepared to pony up at the pump for a long time.
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
4hr ago
Oh
My mistake for being unclear then.
I highly doubt America will be glassing Taiwan, that seems very unhelpful
On an economic level, I agree. This is a very very hard problem. In the case of orphans, you can resolve it by sending them to foster families or other forms of government housing instead of just handing a check to reward every kid that runs away from home. The state still pays lots of money, but the kids don't directly benefit because they get substitute parents instead of just money. But you can't really do that with single parents. You can't realistically assist single mothers with state-funded foster-fathers who come and act as the missing parent for the kid. Because she's an adult and has rights, there's a lot less coercion and control that you can't use to force compliance in the same way you can with a runaway teen (and if you tried it would turn out horribly dystopian). So we're kind of stuck handing out checks and trying to make them exactly the right size: not too small or the kids suffer poverty and neglect, not too large or the mothers have more kids and avoid marriage.
On a social level, there is so much more we could be doing to incentivize marriage. Stay at home mothers used to get respect and praise for their parenting. Single mothers used to be shamed and looked down on. Now we do the opposite. People respond to economic incentives, but they also respond to social ones too. Even if money incentivizes more single mothers, turning the dial on the social pressures in the opposite direction could help mitigate this.
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