domain:astralcodexten.substack.com
Quit with the magical thinking.
There is always a mechanism. It might change, be fluid, sure. But somewhere, somehow, if the US wants to do stuff, it needs to get people willing to do stuff. And there always, always, must be some mechanism by which that's happening, some way or ways to motivate people to put labor and materials toward whatever it wants.
What I'm asserting is that the current method (pay for it with dollars, using promises of future dollars in order to get enough dollars to cover what taxation isn't sufficing for) is being done in an unsustainable fashion, and will have to stop, or otherwise be revised eventually.
I was saying that that problem would eventually be remedied by printing money, which should have the effects I discussed (A worldwide shift away from dollars, to some extent).
(Heavy taxation or cutting spending are also possible, but probably harder to get through the political process.)
So what are you suggesting instead? You keep bringing up force. Are you suggesting that we'll impose a tribute on other countries? That's possible. (Though definitely a big departure from now, when we give countries a ton of money, instead of exacting it)
Edit: If innovation in AI or something causes sufficiently large US-centered economic growth to increase tax revenue enough to pay for things, that could also work, provided it's not also accompanied with corresponding spending increases.
Edit 2: If the US does impose tribute, ancient Athens might be a cool comparison.
Felagund
6d ago
Good relationships also exist.
Got any tips for staying sane while single?
What's your life ordered around? Is there anything you care about? How best can you make the world better for your having been here?
Living for something is significantly better than living hedonistically.
(I submit as an option, Pascal's wager, for your consideration.)
What do you do for fun?
Have friends whom I can talk to about the things I care about or take interest in. Play board games. Spend way too much time on the internet.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
6d ago
I'm not totally clear on hugged here, that doesn't or does mean a physical hugging? I probably sound obtuse here but I am woefully ignorant of how the online courtship scene currently functions.
This is just politics as pro wrestling, meaningless simulacra level 3 stuff. He's posting galaxy-brained dumb justifications for things his audience believed anyway because it gets him likes. Threats of assassination are not a meaningful incentive in US politics right now, if anything it's lower than ever when you compare the rate of political violence a mere 40-80 years ago to now. If they were, the stakes would be a lot higher than 'have a VP that's slightly worse than trump'. Assassinating a sitting President Trump would both be a huge escalation against 'process' and 'democracy', which the deep state loves, and extremely stupid because it'd backfire horribly in terms of support for Trump, people love martyrs.
Sticking with the theme, let's look at the quote tweets. From one of the DR people, Peachy Keenan: A very experienced criminal psychiatrist who once testified in the Bobby Kennedy assassination case told me TODAY that he is convinced with absolute certainty that assassination is the only path left for the Democrats. Chilling.. Chilling, yes. Candace Owens: Was literally saying this 48 hours ago. Trump should obviously choose Vivek or someone like @RepThomasMassie for this reason. He chooses Tim Scott or Nikki Haley, and we are in trouble. Needs to be someone the establishment cannot control. Very reasonable.
curious_straight_ca
6d ago
Anyone can make a toplevel post, there've always been a few of these.
confidentcrescent
6d ago
the GOP voted against it because…?
The moment Republicans vote for the bill it will be touted as a bipartisan solution/compromise to fix the border crisis. Giving approval to the bill puts their reputation on the line and having it then fail to sufficiently fix the problem would catch them in the fallout and relieve pressure on Biden.
xpym
6d ago
It may not have been unavoidable, but I'd say something like it was extremely likely. That period in Russia is commonly referred to as "evil nineties", and Putin bringing an end to it is certainly a major factor to his genuine popularity, re-establishment of tsarism notwithstanding. And it's not like there was much of a substantial alternative to him in particular. His biggest opponent was Primakov, another ex-KGB goon, not exactly someone to expect kindness to dissidents from.
some
6d ago
Assasination of former Japanese PM Shinzo Abe, by a man motivated by his mother getting scammed by a Korean New Religious movement, led to it and particularly its influence on Japanese politics put under scrutiny.
magic9mushroom
If you're going to downvote me, and nobody's already voiced your objection, please reply and tell me
6d ago
Over the past few years, these things have been successfully prevented through organized performance art style protests drawing gigantic crowds of journalists.
Sorry, not sure I'm parsing correctly. What are they preventing?
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
6d ago
Certainly they are not.
Certainly they are. The guns are never, ever going to go away. Registration is not going to happen. Confiscation is not going to happen. They're still trying to go after the manufacturers and dealers, but DIY manufacturing gets easier and more accessible every year, and we're well past the point where this process can be stopped or even meaningfully slowed. Enforcement on any of this, whether against the gun culture or against criminals, is a complete joke.
Meanwhile, the Gun Culture has learned to actively erode existing laws through malicious compliance and technological innovation, and are doing an excellent job of radicalizing the community as a whole to reject the legitimacy of gun control laws. The Fudds are all but extinct, and the people who replaced them are moving from "I lost them in a boating accident" to "I didn't lose shit." I am pretty sure I'm going to see the NFA die in my lifetime, one way or the other. Concealed Carry continues to steadily expand. And as fantastic as all that is, we've barely started on the low-hanging fruit. There's beautiful avenues of practical lawfare/tech development just lying around, waiting for someone to pick them up and thus further beclown state and federal laws.
Yes, it's easier for the blues to violate the letter and the spirit of the laws they don't like, thanks to their stranglehold on institutional support. But it is not only possible to do as they have done, it is inevitable.
SteveKirk
6d ago
They are literally tracking all the online purchases of people buying 3d printers, checking them against social media and reports by leftist informants, and raiding people at 3am.
Thinking about "revolution" is insane with the kind of tyranny you're facing.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
6d ago
They are literally tracking all the online purchases of people buying 3d printers, checking them against social media and reports by leftist informants, and raiding people at 3am.
Could you provide a source for this? I like to keep abreast of current developments on this front.
In any case, what do they do if you have a 3d printer and no social media?
Thinking about "revolution" is insane with the kind of tyranny you're facing.
I suppose that depends rather heavily on how you expect a revolution to work. Some are easier to execute than others.
Southkraut
Rise, ramble, rest, repeat.
6d ago
Where's the line between an assassination and a purge? Because if you kill enough people, that frequently makes a difference.
benjaminikuta
6d ago
How can rates mean nothing? It would be harder to get a relationship if you can hardly get any dates in the first place, wouldn't it?
BahRamYou
6d ago
They're also quite good at their original mission: investigating and stamping out counterfeit money. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counterfeit_United_States_currency
an estimated $70 million in counterfeit bills are in circulation, or approximately 1 note in counterfeits for every 10,000 in genuine currency, with an upper bound of $200 million counterfeit, or 1 counterfeit per 4,000 genuine notes
2rafa
6d ago
I thought both of them had murky alleged ties to sex work but might be mistaken.
2rafa
6d ago
Surely the number of people buying 3D printers is far too high to perform meaningful background checks on all of them.
magic9mushroom
If you're going to downvote me, and nobody's already voiced your objection, please reply and tell me
6d ago
to reign in
"rein in" is an equestrian term and has no G.
SteveKirk
6d ago
Not when you can casually cross-reference all credit card transactions to automatically detect "home grown violent extremists" who shop at sporting goods stores and search for political topics. That narrows it down well enough to make a target list for manual investigation.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GEEkKBDWgAA6g4R?format=jpg&name=large
You do not seem to realize what the Democratic party are capable and willing to do to maintain power, and what a powerful tool the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network is when used as a political weapon.
magic9mushroom
If you're going to downvote me, and nobody's already voiced your objection, please reply and tell me
6d ago
It should be remembered that for much of the US's existence, SCOTUS wasn't really as powerful as it now is. Jackson, for instance, directly defied SCOTUS successfully.
2rafa
6d ago
This is just cons complaining about the lib version of 'noticing'. Pattern recognition applies to everyone. If they've detected specific transaction patterns highly predictive of possible mass shootings, why is it wrong to acknowledge that? Would you have the same sympathy with some Muslim garden supply business owner regularly profiled and investigated for his high-volume fertilizer purchases? I know for a fact that this kind of transaction analytics is responsible for preventing a lot of successful terrorist attacks, and I also know that conservatives don't care when it's used on their outgroup.
magic9mushroom
If you're going to downvote me, and nobody's already voiced your objection, please reply and tell me
6d ago
While the establishment Democrats probably don't want a civil war, there are those on the SJ side who think a civil war beats another Republican presidency, particularly if they can leverage being technically in power into enough control of the military to win that civil war.
And, of course, assassinating the President is very much a "unilateralist's curse" issue.
"ghost gun raid on Staten Island nets arsenal of firearms"
"Members of the financial crimes task force are embedded with Homeland Security Investigation's NY EDTF"
"We just basically track Internet purchases from eBay, PayPal, Amazon, different various online companies. We get a list every other month... With people purchasing components that could possibly create a ghost gun, like the rails, the 3d printer "
Should a certain number of purchases related to making a ghost gun be made, Vaughn says the task force moves toward in conducting investigations on the individual, including social media
The last two paragraphs were edited out of the article, but you can still see them on archive.is. DHS and fincen are still trying to keep it under wraps that literally every bank and store sends them complete customer data to comb through, but every so often some junior dumb fuck assigned to a state task force brags about it on record.
I like.
I'm not convinced that Teddy changed the trajectory of the regulatory state. This is all speculative, of course, but both Democrats (stagnant in support, admittedly) and a meaningful and growing number of Republicans were anti-corporate in sympathies. Teddy may have been the particular executor of many anti-corporate policies, but had McKinley not been assassinated, would his vision have dominated for the next 20 years? I suspect eventually someone outside of it would have won a Presidential election (perhaps TR himself).
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