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anti_dan
5hr ago
It is certainly true in almost all major blue states. It is also true in many purple states like Ohio, PA, Virginia, and more. Your admission that people can't take their gun into the post office anywhere is also telling. What that means is you can't GO to the post office if you have a gun on you while you are walking around, or if you are in your car, you need a safe in which to store your gun lest it get stolen when you go into the post office. Even many red states have municipalities that ban firearm possession on public transit, meaning many people are effectively disarmed during work hours.
DLs, OTOH are basically universal and trivially easy to obtain. No one actually fails the driving test anymore, I doubt they ever did. And you get multiple screw ups before privileges are revoked. Indeed they can be re-obtained even after DUIs. OTOH, 1 fuck up with a gun typically means permanent deprivation of your gun rights, subject to rapidly ratcheting prison sentences.
So actually, open carry is legal in my blue state but I specifically went out and got a CHL because I didn't want to wear it openly in the off-chance other hikers might see it since I'm sure they would think they almost died.
Of course given my luck I'd get prosecuted for concealing a handgun if I didn't bother to get the CHL, so here we are.
The real salt of the Earth guy teaching the CHL licensing class thought this was kind of gay.
anti_dan
5hr ago
Gazan's are such an incompetent set of people that when given almost 2 decades of self rule they did absolutely no economic development, no infrastructure construction, etc etc. Instead they dedicated all that time towards scheming up new terrorist attacks.
If Red America was given a similar gift they would be on the moon and the US gov would be afraid to attack the free enclave because they might lose.
Yes Gaza sucks to live in, because it is full of Gazans.
dr_analog
top 1% of underdog fetishists
5hr ago
What's specifically stressful about it? Aren't you just, like, talking to people and billing hours?
I could imagine being forced to care about people you don't care about can wear on you. But make you an alcoholic? Isn't the point of training and experience so you can autopilot most of the time?
Are you talking about being a corporate attorney?
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
5hr ago
But doesn’t that require that the population be willing to actually fire back? That might be easier with guns, but modern suburban Americans are not the same stock as Muslims in MENA. Insurgency works if you have a population willing to fight. Arabs in the Middle East sure, they’re raised to fight, to wish for tge deaths of their enemies. White suburban Americans are not made of that stuff. They’ve been tamed from birth, raised to be nice, to prize comfort and safety and peaceful living. I just find it hilarious that people expect suburban professionals who meekly obey every dictate from corporate America and schedule their two week vacations during which they do work emails are suddenly going to rebel and shoot government workers. It’s not going to happen because most of us would be under the bed afraid of the cops.
The whole point of an index fund is that it's basically always better than guessing which companies are "solid and growing" and this advantage is only more obvious, not less, as time goes on (in part because index funds inherently re-weight on a mechanical basis as companies enter and exist whatever toplist they track, though minor differences especially within index ETFs exist in implementation). Turns out that judgement is way more subjective than often appreciated, according to the data.
There exist some speculative, theoretical reasons why index funds especially in their modern iterations might backfire in the future, but these remain wholly speculative, would mostly affect all investors roughly in aggregate together, and are not worth the time of day for most investors.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
5hr ago
Red tribe defection doesn't look like random acts of terror.
It demonstrably can: look at Oklahoma City. But I think you're right in the general case.
I feel like that article's example is chosen more for shock value than truth, though. Practically, they only invest a single time for almost 15 years, even though it's a big amount, does that really reflect true investor behavior (saving in the meantime)? Not only staying put for a while, but your income won't stay the same over time, so even though they inflation-adjusted the core stock market measure, it's not going to be anything remotely like "I have 40k right now or I could strategically invest it over time in equal lumps on the dips" since that 40k is already inflation-corrected, you'd never have that to start with, so to me something feels a bit wrong in the setup. At any rate most people aren't debating between saving until a major dip and investing each month. Most people are debating between investing a lump sum all at once, or doing a structured investment. That is, I have 10k in savings, do I buy now or do I split it up into some number of equal parts over days/weeks/months? Notably both this more limited entry strategy and investing your extra every month ad infinitum are both sometimes referred to as dollar cost averaging, confusingly, since they represent two quite fundamentally different use-cases and setups.
Although a similar logic applies in the structured investment case, where the lump sum technically wins out mathematically, and the longer the time horizon the more this is true (somewhat counterintuitively), it's still worth noting that a structured deposit does offer both a decrease in risk as well as some emotional benefits (provided you actually stick to the structured deposit schedule without overthinking, which is a major doubt considering they're more also probably more risk-averse and overthinking in the first place). Overall I think the math says the risk decrease is overstated, so really it just comes down to emotions. Consider the worst-case scenario and if your precise entry strategy would have made an emotional difference or not, and then consider the best-case scenario and if you'd feel substantial regret not earning more. Only the investor themselves can say, but e.g. this Vanguard paper makes the claim that assuming you don't have loss aversion (which is to some extent irrational for most investors) only "very conservative" risk tolerance people should bother to DCA and also puts some numbers to it (see page 6 for some sexy money curves).
ninja edit: fixed objection about inflation
Gaashk
5hr ago
Thanks! That is pretty interesting. I did like the few Lovecraft stories I read more than I had expected as well.
anti_dan
5hr ago
Many people get very uncomfortable with frank and honest discussions about voting and voting rights (one may hearken back to SSC's Civil Rites post for more elaboration). My con law professor had a Roko's basilisk-esque response to our 1L Federalist society secretary (or maybe it was treasurer) pointing out that "voting is just pointing guns at people with more steps." I don't find something along that line uncommon.
philosoraptor
5hr ago
the only state that is plausibly a nation is Texas
Hawaii?
hydroacetylene
5hr ago
Pilots and doctors are very different crowds.
phailyoor
5hr ago
Red tribers don't need to believe that Gaza is the outcome for it to be an effective deterrent. Red tribers could think that rebellion is sunshine and rainbows, and the deterrent would still work because the actual outcome of rebellion would be Gaza. And that Gaza would extend to blue territory as well.
As long as the elites in charge are smart enough to understand MAD, the dumb boomers who think rebellion is easier actually contribute more to MAD.
hydroacetylene
6hr ago
In Texas no you did not before constitutional carry- a car was reckoned as your personal property and the same rules for firearms applied as inside your own house.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
6hr ago
I will tell you that this is definitely true for pilots, however, in full agreement with the popular perception. Of course the barriers or demonstrably lower (spending time in hotel rooms already, far from home) on top of the similarities (long work hours, mix of boredom and stress, an abundance of young female lower-ranked coworkers).
hydroacetylene
6hr ago
Red tribe defection doesn't look like random acts of terror. It looks like loss of full civilian control of the military. It looks like cops saying they 'can't figure it out who did it' a lot. It looks like general refusal to cooperate with the federal government, even by people for whom that is their actual full-time day job.
Would Greg Abbott have succeeded in preventing the border patrol from holding the border open if they hadn't been Texans who strongly disagreed with the Biden admin's policies?
hydroacetylene
6hr ago
Most of us refer to the relative laxity of US covid restrictions due to the heavy armament of the US anti-covid restrictions crowd. Ain't nobody gave me shit over a mask while I was open carrying.
hydroacetylene
6hr ago
I think there's a further epicycle here- the blue tribe would, when facing government oppression, roll over, lawfare, and flee to Canada. The red tribe is the one that might go kinetic(still very unlikely). And they staff the security forces.
The black tribe also might go kinetic but its internal problems prevent that far harder than anyone else.
To have a brutal authoritarian regime in the US requires red tribe buy in. And you can do it through rum millet, I suppose, or cleruchic grants. But realistically red tribe ethnogenesis is more a thing that needs to be taken into account than a thing that can be really controlled so you can't get too oppressive to red interests without losing state capacity towards the uncooperative fast.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
6hr ago
I mean, it's practical for the government to police unlawful speeches after the fact insofar as they would be justified in doing so (i.e. rarely). But you only buy a gun once, and the government needs to know you bought the gun to run the check. Are you proposing letting someone buy the gun, and then doing the check? Seems obviously flawed. I'd add that of course such a check should be done in a reasonable and timely manner, or the law is invalid/illegal/wrong/not to be enforced. For similar-ish reasons, although I view the right to protest as pretty fundamental right, it's also a realm where requiring a permit is not baseline illegal to me, or trampling on any rights. There's plenty of other stuff that, while not as hallowed as a right, are still bureaucratically necessary to approve in advance instead of retrospectively, from food handler's permits to driver's licenses to becoming a schoolteacher. I will cop to supporting short (think 1-7 days) mandatory waiting periods, but wouldn't really be too sad if they weren't a thing (and wouldn't be bothered in principle by smartly implemented mandatory waiting periods for other things, either, like major medical decisions or whatnot). All of this is in a background of not being too bothered by guns themselves floating around society like they always have, and like really quite a lot of Americans (even borderline brainwashed ones if you interrogate them closely), I'm no closet abolitionist, far from it.
erwgv3g34
6hr ago
Well, no, I don't want to live in Gaza, but the threat of Gaza can keep governments from turning (more) tyrannical.
Sometimes you have to be willing to punish defectors even at great cost to yourself, otherwise nobody has an incentive to play nice with you. That's why we evolved the revenge circuitry in our brains; a deterrent is a deterrent.
Or, as the meme goes, "I swear to God I'll kill us all if you fuck with me".
aqouta
6hr ago
You've convinced me to give this a whirl with some of my secret smut writing and man, I had heard people complaining about the em dashes, and maybe I just didn't notice them on my more back and forth QA style questions but it managed to deploy not one, not two, not three, not even four but five em dashes in just 700 words.
WandererintheWilderness
6hr ago
The threat of turning the place into Gaza is the deterrent.
Is it? I mean, sure, that's the steelman. It works. But is it actually the mainstream Red Tribe belief? I feel like most gun owners who cite the "safeguard against tyranny" argument think of it in terms of the Spirit of '76, not mutually-assured destruction. And I don't think support for one necessarily implies support for the other.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
6hr ago
Ah, spending your vacation in the best way!...? :)
self_made_human
Grippy socks, grippy box
6hr ago
I've ended up writing such a long response that it's best submitted as it's own post. Standby, I wasn't going to get much sleep anyway haha.
Even if they are, Red Tribe Americans are smarter and better trained than those two groups plus one would need to account for military defections. Like I said, they'd have to glass everyone. You can't hold a mid sized suburb with drones and a few tanks. You need to be able to go door to door.
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