domain:betonit.substack.com
Felagund
9m ago
I've usually seen it to mean something having some level of pro-free market (with, of course, a pejorative sense, and while pretending to refer to a precise group), which this didn't exactly seem like.
Glassnoser
10m ago
OK, at every school I attended in Canada, it would have been unusual for a student not to walk to school. There must be some students that live nearby and walk though. Are they forced to eat at school?
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
10m ago
There is a pie chart of government expenses at the end of the Form 1040 instructions.
Glassnoser
12m ago
I'm not saying they're obligated to do anything. I am saying that in conversations with white nationalists where they're trying to convince me of white nationalism, they have rarely made any effort to define white people and I find that frustrating.
Rov_Scam
15m ago
I don't know that any of these are great examples. Let's approach them individually:
Pregnant Worker's Fairness Act
It's a bit academic, but it should be noted that the EEOC doesn't actually have Title VII rulemaking authority. The "rules" they promulgate are merely interpretive documents that inform businesses on how to comply and inform courts on the agency's interpretation. The courts themselves are only bound to follow EEOC guidance if it's "reasonable". Now, there are decisions out there that say that courts can't just wave these away and should give the agency deference, so there's a pretty big hurdle to overcome if you want to go against this guidance, and it gets pretty complicated here, but suffice it to say that courts aren't bound by these rules the same as they would if they were promulgated by an agency that actually had rulemaking authority. It should also be noted that the EEOC still has to follow the APA when it comes to procedural matters in promulgation (like notice and comment), so this lack of authority doesn't exactly make it easy for them to run wild.
As far as the actual rule is concerned, it's hard to say from a Republican perspective what the EEOC should have actually done. Saying outright that the law didn't apply to abortion would have created a situation where the EEOC guidance was directly at-odds with any reasonable canon of legislative interpretation; I don't think any textualist could argue with a straight face that abortions aren't pregnancy-related. Saying nothing about the matter isn't an option either. Since they're still bound by the APA, they have to address the comments they received, and they received plenty of comments about abortion. And even if they could have just omitted the abortion section, all that really does is kick the can down the road for when a court actually has to decide the matter, and it's unlikely that any but the staunchest anti-abortion judge would rule that abortions aren't related to pregnancy.
But that's all irrelevant because it's unlikely that this rule (or lack thereof) would ever result in litigation. The rules pretty clearly state that the effect of this guidance is that an employer is required to give a woman leave (paid or unpaid) to receive an abortion. While this seems like raw culture war bait, the reality is that, excepting for circumstances where someone is trying to rub it in an employer's face, no one is specifically asking for time off to get an abortion. I've personally never had an employer ask about the nature of any medical procedure I've taken time off to get, or had them ask me which doctor I was going to, and if a doctor's excuse is required, I doubt many employers are going to do internet research to determine if this is a doctor who exclusively performs abortions. Employers generally aren't allowed to ask employees about medical conditions that aren't work-related, except to verify leave, although as long as a doctor confirms that the absence is for a medical reason they can't really inquire further. And I doubt they would, since hunting for people who are getting abortions means, practically speaking, that they'd have to investigate every employee's medical leave, which I doubt any really want to do. There may be some unlikely confluence of factors where this could become a real issue, but I doubt it. Most women seeking abortions aren't going to tell their employers that they need time off specifically to get one.
If Republicans felt that strongly of this, they would have sought to get specific language into the bill. They didn't, and complaining about this is just them getting hoisted by their own petard given the electoral consequences involved.
FFLs When the entire point of specific statutory language is to expand a definition, you can't complain too loudly when that definition gets expanded. If you had sole rulemaking authority with regards to this, how would you expand the definition to conform with the new law without simply restating the old definition? I'm sure you can think of a dozen ways that this could be done, but that's beside the point. The point is that someone has to come up with these definitions and they have to conform with the statutory language without being overbroad. But that's tricky. The problem here is that there are two basic categories that are uncontroversial. One is the people who are actually running gun stores who need FFLs for legitimate business purposes. The other is people who simply have a gun they don't want anymore and want to sell it. But there's a third category of people we've talked about before who the government really doesn't like — people who want to sell guns part-time or as a hobby. You mentioned in a previous post how the ATF no longer will issue FFLs for hobbyists. You can disagree with that stance all you want, but it seems to me that Congress agrees with that and that was the specific intent behind the change in language. Now it's up to the ATF to flesh out that definition to cover the myriad circumstances in which someone might be selling guns "for profit". And that's hard! The problem as I see it doesn't stem so much from the law itself or ATF's interpretation of it but that there is a group of people for whom any further restrictions on gun sales is bad and needs to be stopped. They simply aren't arguing that the law was a good idea but ATF bungled the implementation; they're arguing that the law was a bad idea to begin with and using the ATF's interpretation as proof. But those are two separate arguments.
FACE Act It's telling that this law has only become controversial in recent years, after the Biden Administration used it aggressively in the wake of Dobbs. For the first 30 or so years of its existence, the fact that it was never used in cases of church vandalism was never an issue. At least not enough of an issue for 2 Republican presidents to invoke it in 12 years, one of whom was devoutly religious and the other of whom was devoutly into culture warring. It's also telling that the act also allows for private enforcement via a civil cause of action that few parties seem bothered to sue under. That being said, anti-abortion protestors necessarily do most of their work when the place is open and in full view of the public. Most of the church vandalism was done at night by people who actually disguised themselves. One type of crime is much easier to investigate than the other.
Of course, that doesn't really apply to the Nota case, because the perpetrator was caught in the act. But it doesn't compare to the Houck case, at least if you actually look at the procedural posture. The information in the Nota case was filed the day before the plea was entered. This itself was several months after the incident. What this suggests was that this was already a done deal by the time it was even on the court's docket; for all we know, the prosecutor could have threatened to throw the book at Nota before offering a misdemeanor charge and a sentencing recommendation as a lifeline. Houck, on the other hand, was found not guilty by a jury. For all we know he could have been offered the same deal as Nota but turned it down; I'd be surprised to say the least, if there was no deal offered at all.
Glassnoser
16m ago
That's not true. There was a debate in the US over even including the bill of rights because those rights were considered to already exist and it was worried that including it would imply rights not listed did not exist.
In Canada, our Charter of Rights explicitly lists "freedom of expression", but there was also a law passed earlier recognizing an already existing "freedom of speech" and there are court rulings stating that this already existed as a quasi-constitutional right emerging from English common law.
faul_sname
Fuck around once, find out once. Do it again, now it's science.
19m ago
I present to you: nobody.
... I see a lot of you arguing that The_Nybbler believes that giving an inch here is a bad idea because they think that a tiny regulation will directly kill innovation, while The_Nybbler is arguing that there's no particular reason for the regulators who introduced this legislation to stop at only implementing useful regulations that pass cost-benefit analysis, and that the other industries we see do seem to have vastly overreaching regulators, and so a naive cost-benefit analysis on a marginal regulation which does not factor in the likely-much-larger second-order effects is useless (though @The_Nybbler do correct me if I'm wrong about this, and you think introducing regulation would be bad even if the first-order effects of regulation were positive and there was some actually-credible way of ensuring that the scope of the regulation was strictly limited).
Honestly I think both of you could stand to focus a bit more on explaining your own positions and less on arguing against what you believe the other means, because as it stands it looks to me like a bunch of statements about what the other person believes, like "you argue that the first-order effects of the most defensible part of this regulation are bad, but you can't support that" / "well you want to turn software into an over-regulated morass similar to what aerospace / pharma / construction have become".
IMO, it shows that you misunderstand how these things work. They're not saying "secure against a nation state decapping your chip". They actually refer to ways that persistent storage can be generally regarded as secure, even if you can imagine an extreme case.
Quoting the examples:
Example 1: The root keys involved in authorization and access to licensed radio frequencies (e.g. LTE-m cellular access) are stored in a UICC.
Ok, fair enough, I can see why you would want to prevent users from accessing these particular secrets on the device they own (because, in a sense, they don't own this particular bit). Though I contend that the main "security" benefit of these is fear of being legally slapped around under CFAA.
Example 2: A remote controlled door-lock using a Trusted Execution Environment (TEE) to store and access the sensitive security parameters.
Seems kinda pointless. If an attacker can read the flash storage on your door lock, presumably that means they've already managed to detach the door lock from your door, and can just enter your house. And if a remote attacker has the ability to read the flash storage because they have gained the ability to execute arbitrary code, they can presumably just directly send the outputs which unlock the door without mucking about with the secrets at all.
Example 3: A wireless thermostat stores the credentials for the wireless network in a tamper protected microcontroller rather than in external flash storage.
What's the threat model we're mitigating here, such that the benefit of mitigating that threat is worth the monetary and complexity cost of requiring an extra component on e.g. every single adjustable-color light bulb sold?
H-what? What are you even talking about? This doesn't even make any sense. The standard problem here is that lots of devices have debug interfaces that are supposed to only be used by the manufacturer (you would know this if you read the definitions section), yet many products are getting shipped in a state where anyone can just plug in and do whatever they want to the device. This is just saying to not be a retard and shut it off if it's not meant to be used by the user.
On examination, I misread, and you are correct about what the documents says.
That said, the correct reading then seems to be "users should not be able to debug, diagnose problems with, or repair their own devices which they have physical access to, and which they bought with their own money." That seems worse, not better. What's the threat model this is supposed to be defending against? Is this a good way of defending against this threat model?
Primaprimaprima
Bigfoot is an interdimensional being
20m ago
self-driving cars are essentially banned.
I don't see why that's a problem, to be honest.
There has to be some sort of consequence for the manufacturer when self-driving cars cause an accident, same as how human drivers pay fines or go to jail. What's your preferred liability structure?
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
20m ago
In Australia tax bills are itemized in proportion to the budget, they give you a little chart that shows where all your money is going. I didn't even know we still did 'industry assistance' but we do. All the little fish would be put down in 'other' though.
Dean
21m ago
I would disagree with your conclusion, and affirm your opening question. I think the variations you see do exist, as Putin runs a personalist system and so his personal foilables show themselves (including his desire for historical reputation, his propensity for aggression when he perceives it as a safe i.e. easy win), but there is a distinction between someone who is pursuing a strategy badly (Putin is, I have asserted for many a year, strategically inept), versus not having a strategy at all.
Putin is in many respects incompetent at various strategic factors, but that's a matter of capability, not intent.
100ProofTollBooth
32m ago
And this is why anyone who starts their own business and, therefore, has to file quarterly immediately starts hollering "taxes are too damn high!" .... and then you also start paying self-employment tax.
Show me a person who:
- Owns their own business (and, relatedly, pays for their own healthcare)
- Has children as dependents
- Owns their home
And I will show you someone who wants to vote for a conservative with their mind and wallet, but may let their heart and social signaling sway them to voting for a liberal.
100ProofTollBooth
36m ago
I FEAR NOTHING.
I believe the odds of the State artificially and outlandishly prosecuting me for something like self-defense or free expression go up when in blue states. Especially if the news cycle is just right.
100ProofTollBooth
38m ago
My community’s source in the DHS tells us that this plan failed because the agents just kept going native.
"This Jesus feller's got a few good goddamn points! Oh - sorry"
The_Nybbler
Does not have a yacht
47m ago
Liability also doesn't come into play until the suit is underway.
The expenses start immediately.
And yes, I predict that if actual self-driving cars become more common, either we will see limits on liability or the companies will be driven out of the market or out of business.
Celestial-body-NOS
đŸŸ¦ For more information please reread this post
47m ago
On the other hand, if the tax bill were itemised in proportion to the Federal budget, it might be harder for certain demagogues to get people angry about a government program that costs them ⅒¢....
Liability also doesn't come into play until the suit is underway. It's trivially true that anyone can file suit for anything, but the plaintiff isn't going to recover any money unless they have evidence of causation and damages.
Also, my thought experiment notwithstanding, it's already totally possible to sue self-driving car manufacturers for causing accidents, yet these companies are not only in business but doing better than ever.
The_Nybbler
Does not have a yacht
1hr ago
Unfortunately, if manufacturers of self-driving cars can be sued for all accidents in which self-driving cars are involved (the "caused" part doesn't come into play until the lawsuit is underway), self-driving cars are essentially banned. The cost of covering that liability is staggering.
guajalote
1hr ago
Anything that expands the scope of things that one individual can sue another for is laundering costs.
This statement is often not true. Lawsuits are often a more efficient and transparent way of allocating costs.
Let's say society is worried about accidents caused by self-driving cars and wants to allocate some amount of resources to fixing the problem. There are two straightforward ways to structure the resource allocation:
-
Pass a law specifying that victims of accidents caused by self-driving cars can sue the manufacturer for damages, or;
-
Pass a set of safety regulations that self driving car companies have to comply with, and if a compliant self-driving car nevertheless causes an accident, the government compensates the victim.
In scenario 1 we are causing the cost of accidents to be carried by the car company, who is in the best position to figure out how to prevent accidents. So we have given them a monetary incentive to devote a rational amount of resources to fixing or improving the problem. This is the opposite of a reverse lottery because the car company is in the best position out of anyone to try to predict and prevent accidents.
Scenario 2 creates a situation where car companies are only encouraged to comply with regulations, rather than try to figure out the best way to prevent accidents. The regulator is in a much worse position to know what regulations will actually be effective at preventing accidents, and the regulator has no direct monetary incentive to care about preventing accidents. Simultaneously, they also have no monetary incentive to care about over-preventing accidents either. So we will almost necessarily get an inefficient set of regulations that devote an incorrect amount of resources to the problem.
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
1hr ago
It's weird to have one person do it, let alone more than one.
hydroacetylene
1hr ago
You can own a weapon. Attitudes towards recreational drug use are far more liberal. You have less concern over police brutality and the justice system needs a warrant to surveil you. You have far greater freedom of speech. You can hire and fire notionally who you please, and it’s easier to get a job because of it too. Religious freedom laws are much more comprehensive. If you are a parent, you are allowed much more latitude in deciding what is best for your child, even if not in agreement with the government.
KMC
1hr ago
The most famous and most 'successful' shrouding of costs related to government is tax withholding. If people had to actually pay their tax bill all at once, they would be pissed, but by withholding throughout the year, and then returning the amount that was too much, people feel like they're getting paid to do their taxes, instead of being robbed slightly less.
ControlsFreak
1hr ago
Nobody is arguing
The argument is, instead, that adding a regulation increases the chance that we will slide down that slippery slope.
This is a vastly better argument, but one that wouldn't allow us to then simply reject any continued discussion, just because we've 'declared' slippery slope and observed that we're epsilon on it. For example, one might ask about the underlying reason for why it increases the chance that we will slide down it? The answer could take many forms, which may be more or less convincing for whether it does, indeed, increase the chance. See here for some examples, and feel free to click through for any specific sub-topics.
Section 5.4.1, "sensitive security parameters in persistent storage shall be stored securely by the device," seems a bit more likely to be a costly provision, and IMO one that misunderstands how hardware security works (there is no such thing as robust security against an attacker with physical access).
IMO, it shows that you misunderstand how these things work. They're not saying "secure against a nation state decapping your chip". They actually refer to ways that persistent storage can be generally regarded as secure, even if you can imagine an extreme case. To be honest, this is a clear sign that you've drunk the tech press kool aid and are pretty out in whacko land from where most serious tech experts are on this issue. Like, they literally tell you what standards are acceptable; it doesn't make any sense to concoct an argument for why it's AKSHUALLY impossible to satisfy the requirement.
And then there's perplexing stuff like 5.6.4 "where a debug interface is physically accessible, it shall be disabled in software.". Does this mean if you sell a color-changing light bulb, and the bulb has a usbc port, you're not allowed to expose logs across the network and instead have to expose them only over the usbc port?
H-what? What are you even talking about? This doesn't even make any sense. The standard problem here is that lots of devices have debug interfaces that are supposed to only be used by the manufacturer (you would know this if you read the definitions section), yet many products are getting shipped in a state where anyone can just plug in and do whatever they want to the device. This is just saying to not be a retard and shut it off if it's not meant to be used by the user.
But I think it's also good to minimize governing by the elastic clause as much as possible.
I'd agree with that. But suppose we want to allow people to respond to warnings, even to push back on them and explain why they think they're in the right, but we don't want people to outright defy warnings.
"respond", "pushback", and "defy" are all subjective terms. If we nail down a definition for them, we can just recapitulate this conversation again, about whether or not people were "defiant", or merely "pushing back".
If a mod says "you are breaking the rules, stop it," and the reply is "You aren't the boss of me, I'm gonna keep doing it", I don't think most people are surprised if the response is "okay, we'll cut to the chase and just give you a ban then." That doesn't seem to require a lot of elasticity. We give warnings because we want people to modify their behavior without having to ban them. We give limited-duration bans because we want people to modify their behavior without perma-banning them. If someone straight-up tells us that they aren't modifying their behavior based on the current response, escalation seems like a reasonable alternative.
cae_jones
2hr ago
So typical that reading this comment made me go "wait, it's not like that in Europe?" For a country whose selling point has supposedly always been freedom, I had so little that, when that technically changed after high school, it was like one of those wild animals bred in captivity with no concept of how to live in the wild. The most freedom I got was on that one high school band trip to Universal Studios Orlando, in which I was the goody two-shoes stopping my 16-17 year-old companions from trying to order alcohol from a restaurant that seemed more than willing to believe that the tall guy in the group was actually 21.
... Wait, what freedoms do I have that Europeans lack? I guess I could get a weapon if I wanted?
I don't know. All I know is the consequences. Once the cars become popular enough, a self-driving car company is basically going to be mostly a legal company, defending (or settling) lawsuits in all 50 states involving its cars. And that's even if its cars are perfect and never cause accidents, especially since the car company is going to look like "deep pockets" to plaintiff's attorneys and juries. The cost of all this legal defense is going to increase the cost of the cars by a ridiculous amount, and the more cars there are the more of a chance of a "reverse lottery" where a self-driving car is involved in an accident that kills a busful of kindergartners and is found liable for more than Alex Jones even was. As long as there's a fairly small number of cars they can play the odds, but a liability regime which involves a car manufacturer in every major accident one of their cars is involved in will kill the whole thing.
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