I was scrolling through Tumblr and saw a vintage photo of a pretty woman saying ‘I hate men. if one of them touch me I will bite his hand off.“
I assumed this was posted by someone who thought it was funny or relatable. There are lots of images and messages on Tumblr like this - light hostility towards men, from attractive women.
I didn’t even notice my anticipation that this was done by someone approving, for an approving audience - until I imagined reversing the genders. If there was an image of a handsome man demonstrating light hostility towards women, I would anticipate that it is done by a radical or tiny group, for a largely disapproving audience. I would be much more shocked.
I don’t like the general social acceptance of hostility towards men, is my point. It’s hypocritical, because that same social acceptance vanishes if the hostility is towards women.
Men are in the process of noticing this, which is why male gender movements (distinct from the movement that is actively opposed to notice this) are popping up.
Ross, buddy, Singapore is orders of magnitude more homogenous than the US. Of course healthcare will be cheaper there. Industrializing customizability is hard.
Forget the fact that Singapore is something like 75% ethnic Chinese. The government there is just flat out more competent, responsive, and self-disciplined. You and I both know, Slart, that the Central Provident Fund (and its component healthcare programs) cannot exist in the United States of America because even if it weren’t shot down as evil anti-freedom paternalism, it would be raided for either tax cuts (Republicans) or social programs (Democrats) within ten years of its creation.
That’s fair.
Hopefully we can automate medical specialist jobs soon.
Look Slart, all I’m saying is that I should be made technocratic dictator of the North American Union. Then I can enact thousands of weird ideological trades and replace congress with a legislature made up of delegated voting think tanks that bet competitively on the outcomes of their laws to determine their funding.
It’ll be great.
Make America Confused Again
Ranma m8 all I’m saying is that the RAND Corporation knew that the Iraq War wouldn’t go at all as well as planned, so an entire legislature composed of them and a bunch of other think tanks might reasonably outperform politicians.
Now I know what you’re thinking - Americans are too stupid to use a delegated voting system where the top 100 delegates by delegated vote count form the legislature, much less navigate a ballot of over 500 registered delegate candidate organizations - but I have an answer to this. The first page of the ballot will just have the top five by previous vote count in the last election times percentile standing in the legislative prediction market. They don’t need to know what that means, just click one of the five big buttons.
…Actually nevermind this will somehow get accused of racism within about five days of going into effect.
Ross, buddy, Singapore is orders of magnitude more homogenous than the US. Of course healthcare will be cheaper there. Industrializing customizability is hard.
Forget the fact that Singapore is something like 75% ethnic Chinese. The government there is just flat out more competent, responsive, and self-disciplined. You and I both know, Slart, that the Central Provident Fund (and its component healthcare programs) cannot exist in the United States of America because even if it weren’t shot down as evil anti-freedom paternalism, it would be raided for either tax cuts (Republicans) or social programs (Democrats) within ten years of its creation.
That’s fair.
Hopefully we can automate medical specialist jobs soon.
Look Slart, all I’m saying is that I should be made technocratic dictator of the North American Union. Then I can enact thousands of weird ideological trades and replace congress with a legislature made up of delegated voting think tanks that bet competitively on the outcomes of their laws to determine their funding.
You say that now, but once I enact 7-part Regional Federalism in order to ease the introduction of Mexico and Canada into the NAU, your opinion on Vice Director Kanye and I may change.
Ross, buddy, Singapore is orders of magnitude more homogenous than the US. Of course healthcare will be cheaper there. Industrializing customizability is hard.
Forget the fact that Singapore is something like 75% ethnic Chinese. The government there is just flat out more competent, responsive, and self-disciplined. You and I both know, Slart, that the Central Provident Fund (and its component healthcare programs) cannot exist in the United States of America because even if it weren’t shot down as evil anti-freedom paternalism, it would be raided for either tax cuts (Republicans) or social programs (Democrats) within ten years of its creation.
That’s fair.
Hopefully we can automate medical specialist jobs soon.
Look Slart, all I’m saying is that I should be made technocratic dictator of the North American Union. Then I can enact thousands of weird ideological trades and replace congress with a legislature made up of delegated voting think tanks that bet competitively on the outcomes of their laws to determine their funding.
I’m told Bush campaigned on not getting into as many wars. Obama, of course, campaigned on not getting into as many wars, though his not-wars still created more refugees. Trump campaigned on the Iraq War being a costly disaster, on not getting into a fight with Russia, on going up against ISIS militarily (which could just mean a return to Iraq, which would not really be a new war), and on not needlessly attempting to knock over strong men and replace them with democracy - thus implicitly against getting into as many wars.
So there is demand there among the American public for reducing the number of wars, but somehow the wars happen anyway. If the second part could be rectified, the number of wars could be successfully reduced.
what does America spend on defence, $600 billion a year?
I’ve seen costs for the Iraq war being bandied about in the trillions.
difficult to turn off the tap, I think.
I’ve been infuriated by the shear cost of the Iraq War simply in economic terms since around 2008. Either they’re looters or they’re freakishly incompetent, and I don’t like either. I’m really hoping this whole Trump thing works out. He’s at least smart enough to realize that you can’t just export democracy to other countries like it was done to Japan - or that you have to actually stay there and make it stick, like Japan.
Of course if you actually notice that not all cultures can support democracy and that hey, you’re going to have to do some real proper imperialism to make it stick and overwrite non-trivial chunks of the local culture, that marks you as right-wing these days…
Maybe I am right wing now. I did, after all, say that if a Communist Revolution emerged, I’d have to back the Anti-Communists. (Struggle sessions and famines aren’t really my thing.)
Ross, buddy, Singapore is orders of magnitude more homogenous than the US. Of course healthcare will be cheaper there. Industrializing customizability is hard.
Forget the fact that Singapore is something like 75% ethnic Chinese. The government there is just flat out more competent, responsive, and self-disciplined. You and I both know, Slart, that the Central Provident Fund (and its component healthcare programs) cannot exist in the United States of America because even if it weren’t shot down as evil anti-freedom paternalism, it would be raided for either tax cuts (Republicans) or social programs (Democrats) within ten years of its creation.
Christopher Balding has described significant accounting weirdness around these funds, where the numbers just don’t add up:
I’m not qualified to investigate these claims (or indeed any claims) but given the level of corrupt investment money flowing from Malaysia and Singapore into Australia recently I would certainly not take any government figures for granted.
Thank you for this information. The last time I read about this, it was just noticing the discrepancy between GIC and Temasek growth (7-16%) and the CPF payout (2.5-4%), making it seem that the Dark Open Secret was that the government bureaucrats were using the population’s savings for cheap capital which they could then out-earn on and give themselves handsome salaries. But if the actual growth is not that strong, it could be a big problem.
Ross, buddy, Singapore is orders of magnitude more homogenous than the US. Of course healthcare will be cheaper there. Industrializing customizability is hard.
Forget the fact that Singapore is something like 75% ethnic Chinese. The government there is just flat out more competent, responsive, and self-disciplined. You and I both know, Slart, that the Central Provident Fund (and its component healthcare programs) cannot exist in the United States of America because even if it weren’t shot down as evil anti-freedom paternalism, it would be raided for either tax cuts (Republicans) or social programs (Democrats) within ten years of its creation.
Edit: The zoning laws aren’t going to be fixed. The law enforcement is not going to be fixed. We aren’t going to pay our politicians an amount which actually reflects how dangerous/important they are to the economy, and we’re going to get a higher minimum wage and higher unemployment and a trash fractional UBI rather than wage subsidies. Cities will go bankrupt and urban sprawl will drain our energy. Money for clean energy will be invested into solar walkways that don’t even work.
I’m told Bush campaigned on not getting into as many wars. Obama, of course, campaigned on not getting into as many wars, though his not-wars still created more refugees. Trump campaigned on the Iraq War being a costly disaster, on not getting into a fight with Russia, on going up against ISIS militarily (which could just mean a return to Iraq, which would not really be a new war), and on not needlessly attempting to knock over strong men and replace them with democracy - thus implicitly against getting into as many wars.
So there is demand there among the American public for reducing the number of wars, but somehow the wars happen anyway. If the second part could be rectified, the number of wars could be successfully reduced.
I was doing semi deep dive into Orion’s Arm after @immanentizingeschatons reminded me of it, and it got me thinking about post-scarcity and politics.
Specifically, I was comparing it to some of the other post-scarcity settings I’ve seen, like Eclipse Phase, Mindjammer, and Nova Praxis. One thing that all of these have in common is that the politics presented in the game seems off.
Nova Praxis and Mindjammer to my mind don’t really have political conflict. They try to describe some of the political units, but they seem to be stereotypes masquerading as politics or and otherwise just poorly described. Eclipse Phase and Orion’s Arm do have political units, but they’re fairly obviously based on the political viewpoints favored in the demographic and seem kind of goofy and impossible because of that.
And it strikes me that to some level this is an impossible problem. If you think there won’t be real politics in the post-scarcity future, I’m going to very much doubt that. But if you think that you can predict the nature of political conflict in the post-scarcity future, I’m also going to very much doubt that. So, either way, you’re stuck with writing a political scene that’s weird.
But really, can there truly be post-scarcity? Maybe with magic violating conservation of matter-energy, but without it, someone is going to want to use the mass of your asteroid to build their habitat to replicate their ideology.
Good points but I take issue with "Because game journos are not real journalists and will praise you if you, like, give them a free Nexus 7" A 4-pack of chicken nuggets would suffice, you don't have to buy them a whole Nexus 7.
Is there any way to get Muslim immigrants to Western countries to integrate better, or are the cultures just totally incompatible?
I don’t think they can integrate and stay substantially Muslim, no, but I think they can integrate just fine if they drop Islam or water it down into meaninglessness like most Christians and Jews in the West have with their religions. And for that to happen I think people need to be way less *socially* tolerant of sincere Islam and recognize it as the enemy of any free society instead of virtue-signaling about how they’re not racist against a religion. Like, on the basis of how badly its claims have been debunked and how immoral its teachings are, I’d put Islam well below even Mormonism and Scientology on the religion tier list, it’s somewhere swimming in the deep abyss along with the Christian Identity Movement and Aum Shinrikyo. That’s how you should treat serious Muslims - their ideas are worthy of nothing but mockery, the principles they teach are vile, their religious traditions absurd. If you made it to the West, you’re free, you don’t have to pretend you believe in that self-contradictory nonsense any more, and you shouldn’t be bringing it with you. Ex-Muslims, though, should be especially praised and respected, like people who grew up in a cult but were strong enough to free themselves from it as adults. And beer-drinking bacon-eating cultural Muslims should just be shrugged at.
The alternative to integration, though, would be having distinct Muslim residential enclaves like Muslim Chinatowns, and I think that could also be somewhat practical - but Western states would have to allow voluntary self-segregation and greatly increased local autonomy for communities to make that happen, and they’ve spent the last half-century forcibly integrating and atomizing everyone and centralizing power. You’d need to let them enforce their abhorrent religious laws at the local level to keep them from forcing them on the country at the national level - I’m not sure that that’s something that should be tolerated, either, though.
If not either of those voluntary-leaning solutions you’d have to start doing serious 180s on a lot of the Western democratic consensus and start stripping voting rights from them, or expelling them from the country by force and becoming explicitly nationalist, or just banning Islam, if you didn’t want to wind up being reduced to dhimmi status by the inevitable consequences of the combination of democracy and a Muslim majority.
The Bible posits that the circumference of a circle in the Temple was three times its diameter, but π≈3.14,
tired: therefore gods don’t exist
wired: therefore circles were smaller back then
This is just a statistical error. The circumference of the median circle is
π times its diameter. The Cosmic Negacircle which rests in the Vaults Beyond Time and has a circumference of -1*(10^2470) times its diameter is an outlier and should not have been counted.
Why do communists seem to think that competitive markets and providing a standard of social welfare for people are mutually exclusive?
Well, not all of them do, see market socialism, but there are aesthetic and political yearnings for a more communitarian approach which run much deeper.
There’s an interesting dichotomy between the “in a capitalist system, you can do whatever you want“ and a “The capitalist system will optimize everything for maximum efficiency“ lines. It’s one of the things that I think of whenever I see sharing economy stuff, I’ve seen the occasional quip mentioning old complaints about how in a communist system you wouldn’t have a car, you’d have to share one, which is totally unlike our current system with uber.
That baugruppe discussion reminded me of it, it’s an attempt by libertarian-leaning people to build a commune to solve problems they have with the housing market. Feels like it really should be built at sea though.
Do you support the President's relocation of Oprahists that violate the National Freedom Policy to the California Special Autonomous Region? (I think it's a bit heavy-handed, tbh, but good luck getting the AFP to reconsider it.)
I like the old liberties, but we have to admit that the Oprahists have provided aid and comfort to the insurrections in our cities and the rural rebellion in the Deep South – so the old liberties are no protection of our first freedom – freedom from fear
that said, I prefer the old policy of tracking, monitoring, and punishing individuals, and suppressing the uprisings when they come; collective punishment seems like a return to the dark old days, led by the worst elements in America – the cruel irony of ‘American Freedom’ isn’t lost on anyone now, I hope
when peace returns, we’ll look back on this in shame
Harem anime is like reverse birds: the females are colorful and competitive creatures full of life and personality, and the male is an indistinct grey blob that goes flying sometimes.
And myself, if you don’t mind sifting through the dross of complete shitposts and Maleficent fanart for the occasional gold of a real post.
omg thank <3
what really annoys me is when people to about the subreddit tumblrinaction and are like ‘i liked it when it was just making fun of otherkin,now it’s all about SJWs’
really? the ONLY bit you were ok with was making fun of the people pretty much trying to do their own thing and even if misguided weren’t harming anyone?
When it was a baby subreddit (i remember those times) it was way less mean-spirited and we were even fans of some otherkin bloggers (but also, I’m going to note that a lot of otherkin bloggers were super vile for no reason)
What’s the SJ value if I think Otherkin is ridiculous and undermining transgender people, but also support their morphological freedom in the awe-inspiring/terrifying Transhuman future?
There is an idea, in some circles, that parents effectively own their children. This risks leading to various abuses, and also doesn’t line up with all moral intuitions. On the other hand, most children do not have the capabilities, including executive function, to adequately evaluate and act on long-term preferences that will become important when they become adults.
I propose a rather simple-but-vague model that has no doubt been proposed before. The child is effectively held in a trust owned by their future self. The duty of the parents, therefore, is to safely deliver a well-developed adult to be inherited at the point of hand-off. They are the trust’s operators, not the trust’s owners, and thus they have a variety of duties, abilities, and limitations.
A parent can have vaccines administered. They can’t remove a significant portion of the child’s body, or demand a tattoo of their choice. They can enact ordinary disciplinary measures, but not abusive ones. They can require that the child attend school and do well at it, but they are not allowed to engage in pure ideological indoctrination. And, if they fail to meet the terms, they can be removed from administration of the metaphorical trust.
The exact details might vary. In many ways this is what people are acting on already - thus why Child Protective Services exists in the first place - but it isn’t explicitly specified. I outline it here mostly so that it can be brought up as a counter-model when people suggest either ownership of children, or treating children as atomistic adults with fully-formed executive functioning and experience.
In practice, the child wouldn’t be held in trust by the future adult, but in trust by society at large. What counts as ordinary vs abusive discipline and education but not indoctrination is inevitably defined by the local monopoly on force, because they’re the ones with the ability to remove the child in cases of breach of trust. This feels like it would gravitate towards parents being contracted childcare for the state, and a too empowered CPS could greatly restrict the space of valid parenting styles without huge outcry because they’re “protecting the children”. To some extent this is already happening e.g. the Maryland parents who almost had their kids taken away for letting them walk to school.
I’m not proposing this as a formal legal model, but rather an intuitive moral one, and mostly to counter the two other models I mentioned, which could result in child abuse or exploitation.
… anyone have foreseen the tragedy that awaited them? The 20th century (Old Calendar) reification of a rough gender binary had reached its apotheosis and like all such apogees it was soon to be riven, split by the seeds that had fallen into the hidden cracks of its apparently pristine edifice. Things had reached such a state that even cheap intoxicants were divided between mascul [Text missing] While scholars differ on whether the introduction of intoxicants aimed at gendfugees (an anachronism - the term used at the time was ‘enbies’) was originally satirical in intent, what is certain [Text missing] ‘cultural appropriation’. Thus, as the number of gender identities soared into the tens of millions, the culturally condoned ‘ownership’ of a specific, subtly different intoxicant was a badge of great honor, not to be trifled with except at great risk of sanction. Distillation was a rite both sacred and fractious, [Several pages missing] final triumph of the Individualists. Ten billion people, ten billion genders, ten billion nanobreweries. Time spent in one’s distillery pursuing a unique perfection led to loneliness which led to drinking. The civilization’s nadir was at hand. Thankfully, [Text missing] still be found, in the hidden places of the world, corroded metal reminders of a past now almost lost to cyberhuman understanding.
Lets say no one used nukes or chemical weapons, how devastating would a world war on the same scale as the previous 2 in numbers be but with modern weaponry?
Lets say no one used nukes or chemical weapons, how devastating would a world war on the same scale as the previous 2 in numbers be but with modern weaponry?
Now consider the consequences if this is relatively common - or at least if men believe it is relatively common.
Would male gender norms, with all their fear of deviation, and desire to be high-status and dominant and on top of a hierarchy of masculinity, look like they do today? Would the norms be seemingly stubbornly resistant to change in ways that can’t be adequately explained by Feminist theories about gender?
I’m not sure how to untangle it, and how much is cultural vs deeper human psychology.
“Yes,” said the technician. “We got the test results back, and well…” The look on her face was very grim.
Bernstein was aghast. They had all agreed to pass the law. They had all agreed that it was wrong and immoral to have sexual thoughts about others who didn’t want to be thought of sexually.
And, since one couldn’t know who was or was not okay with being thought of sexually beforehand, it was a moral necessity that humanity should default to asexuality. Gender discrimination and sexual crimes had dropped off significantly. Only an underground of resentful dissidents had refused to comply.
“Surely it can’t be,” said Bernstein. “She couldn’t be that reckless. It’s impossible.” He let out a second “impossible” under his breath, just barely audible, as he stared at the technician.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Bernstein,” said the technician, “she’s sex-positive.”
There’s this…. aesthetic? I don’t know if that’s the right word. It’s this “style” that pops up in certain internet communities or forums or chatrooms. This style features things like:
* Using lots of action-emoticons like *blushes and nibbles on lip* * Using cutsey words like “glomp” and “snuggle” * Innocence and child-like aesthetics, word usage, and attitudes * High overlap with the kink community, so familiarity or references to things like dom/subbyness. * Strong affiliation with anime, with avatars and shared images being almost entirely anime. * High and dispersed “slutty”(?) affectionateness. Anyone may be glomped or tickled, with naughtiness being an assumed hidden but universal trait. Reminds me of the feeling of cuddle parties. * High sexual undertones, although this generally exists on a spectrum depending on the community. Can range from “innocent” flirting to full on cybering. * Association with the queer community
I have questions about this but I don’t even know exactly what I want to find out.
Why the high overlap with anime? Why the babylike combination with sexual promiscuity? I feel like I understand “littlespace” kinks, but this seems different for some reason. Why so much glomping, blushing, and arm pinning? And more importantly, why do they all happen together at the same time so often?
It’s such a heavy and permeating style. I’ll see regular chatrooms that operate pretty normally, except everyone talks like that and has anime avatars. Why? I can’t think of any comparable instance where other “regular chatrooms” operate under an aesthetic so pervasive. I’m assuming engaging in this…. not-quite-roleplay? gives some sense of validation or excitement or security or something, but I’m having a lot of trouble figuring out what it is. Can someone help explain?
I mean, I’m assuming your avatar is a picture of you. So you’re attractive and female, which means that:
Your advances will, more often than not, be wanted.
Your advances will usually not be perceived as threatening, even when they aren’t wanted.
Your advances will raise, rather than lower, the social status of the person you approach, unless they’re already very high social status.
These groups are going to involve people whose affection is usually treated as unwanted, undesirable, oppressive, or even evil. But they still have that drive for affection, to want to be loved, to be desirable. A lot of what you’re probably seeing is that the left half of the bell curve for gender presentation for men has been reserved only for gay men, combined with the side effects of (low-status) men being seen as disgusting and a threat.
I’m actually expecting pretty substantial defections from having male or purely male bodies in the early transhuman era, until masculinity performance is so utterly broken by transhuman body choice and bi/pansexuality becomes so normal that the threat narrative collapses and it returns to a more even distribution.
Your compliance with the National Freedom Policy is required. Violators and violent pro-Oprahist agitators will be exiled to the California Special Autonomous Region.
xhxhxhx said: I’m delighted to see you subtweeting Stalinists
I’m going to start posting videos of happy Americans dancing, solid evidence that they are content with their government and have not been brainwashed by the finance capital that oppresses them.
Well, while I’m not ideologically inclined to agree with Voxette, I still think it’s misguided. The economies with more restricted worker hours below 40 seem to be underperforming and have lower employment, basic income plus fewer work hours simultaneously will cause a bigger hit on the economy, basic income (or other alternatives) already creates more worker leverage to negotiate for fewer hours and safer conditions, and slashing everyone’s Mondays across the board will hit a lot harder than alternatives, because not every worker’s time is equally valuable. Also, I don’t think it will sell well politically - and business will fight like dogs to prevent it from happening.
Which, is odd enough for me to say, seeing as with executive functioning stuff a 4-day workweek (perhaps leaving out Wednesday instead) would fit me well.
Additionally, just on shear economic cost vs efficiency, I can’t see a reason to prefer a combination of 4-day workweek + basic income in the short-medium term, given that the level of automation in the future is uncertain, over a low minimum wage plus direct-to-employee declining hourly livable wage subsidies.
Wage subsidies + low minimum wage would create lots of new jobs, which is a good sell politically, while also taking a lot of pressure off the poor and lower classes and giving them a lot more leverage. Businesses won’t fight it as hard, even though it will need a tax increase, since they’ll benefit from lower labor costs at the low end. It multiplies government spending with private spending for a larger potential effect. It can also be rolled out incrementally in different amounts to test out just how much economic efficiency is lost.
There are other potential advantages, I really should write a post on it specifically, but it doesn’t seem to be getting much coverage vs UBI. I think the Republicans might support it as their alternative to UBI come 2024/2028.
There’s a few points I could make, but one of the great things about giving people time off is that it doesn’t affect the value of time off, and it’s not something that can just cause a decrease in employer contribution leaving people no better off. Giving money, that’s not as straightforward.
Considering it hasn’t seemed to perform well in other countries, I’d rather make simpler overtime rules, then crack down hard on those that don’t follow them.
Anyhow, as part of how I’d sell this, I’d set the starting wage with subsidies higher than the current minimum wage, and since it would make labor relatively cheaper, there’s not much reason to expect a decrease in hours at the low end.
In addition to the risks involved with yanking 20% of the work hours out of the economy, killing Monday also incentivizes workers to work under the table in violation of the employment law in order to get enough money, since the employers can actually cut their salaries to compensate, either directly or through attrition.
With state-backed wage subsidies, there’s no incentive to work under the table, because if the income isn’t reported, you don’t get the subsidy. Though, it is key for this plan that subsidies taper off more slowly than employer wages increase, but that’s how it should be to prevent a new Welfare Trap.
Well, while I’m not ideologically inclined to agree with Voxette, I still think it’s misguided. The economies with more restricted worker hours below 40 seem to be underperforming and have lower employment, basic income plus fewer work hours simultaneously will cause a bigger hit on the economy, basic income (or other alternatives) already creates more worker leverage to negotiate for fewer hours and safer conditions, and slashing everyone’s Mondays across the board will hit a lot harder than alternatives, because not every worker’s time is equally valuable. Also, I don’t think it will sell well politically - and business will fight like dogs to prevent it from happening.
Which, is odd enough for me to say, seeing as with executive functioning stuff a 4-day workweek (perhaps leaving out Wednesday instead) would fit me well.
Additionally, just on shear economic cost vs efficiency, I can’t see a reason to prefer a combination of 4-day workweek + basic income in the short-medium term, given that the level of automation in the future is uncertain, over a low minimum wage plus direct-to-employee declining hourly livable wage subsidies.
Wage subsidies + low minimum wage would create lots of new jobs, which is a good sell politically, while also taking a lot of pressure off the poor and lower classes and giving them a lot more leverage. Businesses won’t fight it as hard, even though it will need a tax increase, since they’ll benefit from lower labor costs at the low end. It multiplies government spending with private spending for a larger potential effect. It can also be rolled out incrementally in different amounts to test out just how much economic efficiency is lost.
There are other potential advantages, I really should write a post on it specifically, but it doesn’t seem to be getting much coverage vs UBI. I think the Republicans might support it as their alternative to UBI come 2024/2028.
But, if we leave race out of it… the fact that nearly all land has been taken by violence undermines the idea of “well this was violently transferred” in principle, I don’t think it makes the case that the Japanese government cannot opt to restrict immigration, since all land ownership is effectively created by force of arms anyway. Even by the basis of “well some specific Japanese might object,” there is almost never going to be complete unity of opinion in government, so their objection does not necessarily invalidate the entire project, especially if emigration is permitted and there are states to emigrate to.
In fact, there is a thriving market in governance already, with hundreds of options to choose from. As criticisms of “but the market doesn’t have what I want” can be shut down as the market not being obligated to supply it, so too, here.
There is an idea, in some circles, that parents effectively own their children. This risks leading to various abuses, and also doesn’t line up with all moral intuitions. On the other hand, most children do not have the capabilities, including executive function, to adequately evaluate and act on long-term preferences that will become important when they become adults.
I propose a rather simple-but-vague model that has no doubt been proposed before. The child is effectively held in a trust owned by their future self. The duty of the parents, therefore, is to safely deliver a well-developed adult to be inherited at the point of hand-off. They are the trust’s operators, not the trust’s owners, and thus they have a variety of duties, abilities, and limitations.
A parent can have vaccines administered. They can’t remove a significant portion of the child’s body, or demand a tattoo of their choice. They can enact ordinary disciplinary measures, but not abusive ones. They can require that the child attend school and do well at it, but they are not allowed to engage in pure ideological indoctrination. And, if they fail to meet the terms, they can be removed from administration of the metaphorical trust.
The exact details might vary. In many ways this is what people are acting on already - thus why Child Protective Services exists in the first place - but it isn’t explicitly specified. I outline it here mostly so that it can be brought up as a counter-model when people suggest either ownership of children, or treating children as atomistic adults with fully-formed executive functioning and experience.
btw what is the Official Counterpoint to Japan not taking immigrants?
is it that their circumstances are different, or that they’re just super racist and not an example to emulate?
Japan is super racist.
I honestly did not think this point was up to any debate at all.
I deal with this problem by not trying to move to Japan, they can be as racist on their own island as they want.
Yeah, but that hits a wall under the modern moral climate, where it’s implicitly argued that foreigners have a right to immigrate to, essentially, anywhere, but particularly to developed nations. The idea of “the Japanese on their own island” has the audacity to suggest collective ownership of a nation-state for the benefit of an exclusive group - the old Nationalist model.
A model that I actually approve of, minus the racism, but one that now would mark me as right-wing, even though I don’t consider myself right-wing.
Yes, this is my view.
The Japanese don’t have the “right” to “be racist on their own island”, if that means excluding immigrants. All this amounts to is placing the whims of the collective (the alleged ownership of the islands by the Japanese race as a whole) over the rights of the individual: i.e. the right of individual Japanese to invite immigrants to work for them and to sell or rent property to them.
Suppose a group of Japanese racists get together and start a corporation. That corporation buys a small island, and and allows its owners to live on the island, so long as they are Japanese. Land is portioned out based on stake in the corporation.
This is not a covenant, because owners of the corporation can sell to whoever they want. Similarly, the corporation could, by majority vote, sell the island, or allow non-Japanese owners to live there. There is no condition that restricts the use of the land in perpetuity ( @theunitofcaring raised this objection the last time this came up).
However, so long as a majority of the owners of the corporation don’t want non-Japanese living on the island, they can’t. And practically, the rule won’t change unless the owners become less racist over time and generations, or wealthy anti-racist activists buy them out, fairly compensating the racists for being prevented from satisfying their preference. Or somewhat fairly, anyway; I’m not quite sure how only needing a majority stake affect the cost of buying them out. That’s a question for someone in murders and executions.
Do the Japanese racists have the right to do that? If not, why not? And what is the minimum change to the scheme that would make it within their rights, in your opinion?
Conversely, if your do think that would be within their rights, I suppose your objection to the current restriction on immigration to Japan is that it’s not the Japanese’s island?
That would be fine, if they acquired the land voluntarily.
What’s not fine with the Japanese government doing that is that it didn’t acquire the land that way.
And a big difference is that if they are restricted to acquiring the land voluntarily, that would greatly limit the amount of it that they could practically obtain. But supposing hypothetically that this weren’t true and that freedom of contract led to one private “government” owning all the land, then that would be a strong point of having a “public” government to limit their ability to do that.
By that logic nearly all land on Earth in private hands could not be considered “voluntarily acquired”.
Surely the benefit to high-skilled wages and loss to low-skilled wages is an artifact of the legal regime under which high-skilled workers are the only ones allowed to come in most cases?
… emigration, which entails the loss
of talent and brains in much larger proportion than the loss of unskilled workers, is the
real threat for unskilled workers left behind, even in some OECD countries. Less educated
workers in Cyprus, Malta, Ireland, New Zealand, and Portugal all lost between 1 and 6%
of their wages because of the flight of highly educated emigrants. While net emigration,
especially of college educated individuals, may be a symptom of economic malaise and not
its cause, it certainly directly contributes to lower productivity and wages of the remaining
workers.
As I understand it, Ireland and Portugal had freedom of movement within the EU, and most of their emigrants went to the EU, so the effect shouldn’t be an artifact of a legally-discriminatory regime.
And the same effect appeared in simulations across 2000 and 2007, across a host of EU countries, including Luxembourg, Austria, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, France, and the Netherlands, in addition to the countries of the eastern and southern European periphery.
I think the hypothesized mechanism here is plausible: high-skilled workers have positive externalities, which helps raise the wages of complementary low-skilled workers. If you drain a country of its high-skilled workers, it should hurt the wages of native low-skilled workers.
And because high-skilled workers are inherently more mobile and employable than low-skilled workers, they have a higher propensity to emigrate even when the target country’s legal regime is non-discriminatory.
This table is pre-accession for nearly every country but Ireland, but the table shows the same disparity for Greece, Portugal, and Spain – Greece had a 0.3% emigration rate during the 1990s, but a 4.6% emigration rate for college graduates – and I suspect it would show the same disparity in post-communist Europe post-EU accession.
Interesting.
But there are other legal barriers to the employment of low-skilled workers which would discourage them from moving, even within the EU; e.g. the minimum wage.
Also money, it costs money to move, to temporarily live in new places while finding a job, to find new insurance, to survive while learning new rules or a new language…
There is an awful lot of friction that isn’t just government interference. And of course, there are ways to reconcile lowering the minimum wage with employment of low-skill workers, but not with perfect freedom of movement.
no offense but “family is the people you choose to surround yourself with and love you dearly” will literally ALWAYS be a better theme and a better concept than “love the family you were arbitrarily stuck with because they’re related to you”
because there are some obvious inequalities and injustices in how the traditional family is structured, it’s prone to some well-known abuses, AND even without those, the former model is a lot more appealing in a lot of ways, for the obvious reason that elective affinities are usually going to be a lot more rewarding than accidental, arbitarry ones
BUT
i think a huge amount of the appeal of the latter, and something that would be dangerous to lose, is that it’s a guarantee of warm relations, or at least warm relations of a certain type, that can’t exist in a frame where everything is entirely voluntary.
the idea that EVERYBODY, at least in principle, gets a few people who will be socially pressured to be loyal to them (whether or not they like each other, etc) is an emotional safety net. and, just as there are people who are especially vulnerable to abuses of the family-as-involuntary-loyalty model, there are people who would be especially vulnerable to a world that was more atomistic in terms of emotional and social relations (even assuming there was a decent welfare state, which of course in most historical circumstances there haven’t been.)
as history keeps on going (assuming we don’t kill ourselves) hopefully we’ll develop institutions that balance all these concerns, but i think it’s worth considering what the appeals of all the various models are
Reading various politicians talk about consumer power in healthcare makes me really want to take all of them and make them shadow and then try to do the work of some medical social workers. Like I just feel all these plans really underestimate how little executive function sick people and their families have at the time they need to get health care.
Just for the record, regarding immigration issues: I feel that the current rate of roughly 1,000,000 immigrants per year is roughly acceptable for the United States. (My statements elsewhere might have implied that I thought this was too high.) I’m not particularly worried about most of the categories of immigrants currently arriving in the US. I could be convinced for a higher number under certain conditions I won’t elaborate on now, partially because I don’t think they can credibly be offered due to political conditions in the United States, including ideological pre-commitments.
I predict at 80% that Trump will not lower the yearly immigration level below 800,000 by the year 2020.
I cannot accurately forecast the numbers on refugees. The Trump administration originally planned to be more selective about refugee groups (particularly persecuted religious groups that are religious minorities in their country of origin), so we may see them make a grab for Christian refugees from ISIS, supposing some sort of support infrastructure (such as American churches) were set up to take them. Alternatively, they may not, and the number of refugee admissions may crash. I predict at 60% that average annual refugee admissions from 2017-2020 will be lower than under the Obama administration.
I predict at 80% that there will not be a new American Middle Eastern war by 2020, so long as Trump remains President and there is no major attack on US soil, defined as an ideologically-motivated terrorist attack with a death count exceeding 100. (For the purposes of this prediction, American forces returning to Iraq and Afghanistan does not count as a new war.)
I predict at 80% that at least one more Sikh is going to get killed by some moron in America for ideological reasons before 2020.
I predict at 70% that one person will die from either Antifa violence, or violence by Antifa rivals by 2020, and this will make the national news. I predict at 90% that this will not be intentional.
@xhxhxhx You are known for your longposts. Do you have any evidence that emigration from countries addresses the conditions that caused people to emigrate in the first place, particularly near to our modern era? For instance, does it appear to lower fertility or improve institutions (possibly measurable by corruption perceptions or ease of doing business, maybe GDP/cap)?
If there’s good evidence for it, that would favor increased immigration, but if there’s good evidence against it… well, that’s pretty damn tough, as it would probably favor some kind of weird semi-colonialism, but I have some thoughts about ecological tariffs paid to developing countries that could be more developed…
admittedly even if Japan took a ton of immigrants there would still be plenty left over, so it’s kind of just being used as a debate trump card, like right of return for Palestinians to Israel.
At this point I’m inclined to agree with proposals to just split the Palestinian territory between neighboring countries other than Israel.
For the record, my conception of Nationalism is multiracial, rooted in a group identity based on culture, ideology, and reciprocal loyalty rather than race.
Each nation has a different immigration policy best suited to it. I don’t consider the racism in various nations good, even if I think restrictive immigration policy is suitable for that country.
btw what is the Official Counterpoint to Japan not taking immigrants?
is it that their circumstances are different, or that they’re just super racist and not an example to emulate?
Japan is super racist.
I honestly did not think this point was up to any debate at all.
I deal with this problem by not trying to move to Japan, they can be as racist on their own island as they want.
Yeah, but that hits a wall under the modern moral climate, where it’s implicitly argued that foreigners have a right to immigrate to, essentially, anywhere, but particularly to developed nations. The idea of “the Japanese on their own island” has the audacity to suggest collective ownership of a nation-state for the benefit of an exclusive group - the old Nationalist model.
A model that I actually approve of, minus the racism, but one that now would mark me as right-wing, even though I don’t consider myself right-wing.
btw what is the Official Counterpoint to Japan not taking immigrants?
is it that their circumstances are different, or that they’re just super racist and not an example to emulate?
I’ll have you know that the Japanese are proud People of Color™, and it isn’t the standing of White Imperialists such as yourself to question the wisdom of the Might Japanese Emp–
**coughing**
No, they’re considered racist but either you’re not supposed to talk about it as much because they’re Asian, or it just isn’t considered as important because they aren’t Western. The plan of the Japanese government itself is to just send large amounts of money instead.
However, since the country is so safe that their children can routinely commute to school on their own, I can’t really say that I disapprove (edit: of the nationalism and low immigration, not the racism). Not every place in Asia needs to be Singapore.
I personally believe that doing…that…will itself lead to a counter-reaction, because it’s becoming clear that most rational people are otherwise disgusted by the actions of populists, and perhaps there will emerge a figure capable of realigning interests towards a saner future, all other ideas having been exhausted. That person would know exactly how to play to people’s self-interest or even selfishness while directing it to the goals they want to achieve.
The current situation is itself a reaction to the fact that multiculturalism as practiced and often preached is, well, contradictory. Either culture matters, in which case immigration rates and assimilation are important, or it doesn’t, in which case there is no actual point to “diversity”. The situation held with previous immigrant groups because differing conditions prevailed at the time, but now it’s being stretched to the breaking point. While you might see “the most rational people” being otherwise disgusted, from what I’ve seen, a lot of people are shifting to the Right and the Left has ideologically blocked itself from actually addressing any of the problems because anyone who actually starts talking about it will be shouted down as one of the “deplorables.”
I mean honestly, they’re cheering on demographic destiny and population atrophy. They’re getting the backlash of people realizing that the plan is to replace them, and well, they don’t want to be replaced.
I don’t see that changing soon, unless Neoliberalism implodes and the Left starts taking seriously Islam and some associated cultures to task for all of its problems. They killed Melting Pot for being evil and “racist.” Why would they bring it back?
rocketverliden:
And why the appeal to political power? Your worst enemy will likely gain power after you’re gone. Sometimes the problem with politics doesn’t necessarily seem to be structural inertia, but down to the intelligence of actors within the structure.
The utility of plans must be considered based on their probability of actually being implemented, and the Left intends to use mass immigration to secure a permanent majority. I didn’t used to believe this, but it’s far too consistent with their behavior. We’re already playing with political power.
Also? I don’t see any way of increasing the intelligence of actors in the system in my country. At least not one that would actually go through. The necessary structural reforms are either not sexy enough, or would be overruled because people are apparently legally too stupid to rank candidates in order or something along those lines.
rocketverliden:
If anything, I think this roundaboutism could contribute to the problems it’s trying to avoid. For all we know, school vouchers don’t actually solve the problem of the job market selecting for collegiate prestige over quality of education, nor the problem of college costing exorbitant amounts of money.
That’s not what the school vouchers are for. They’re for the kinds of K-12 systems where performing well in school is criticized as “acting white” by peers.
rocketverliden:
Reducing immigration doesn’t stop rich fat cats sending jobs overseas to places where they can pay less for the same labor,
It tightens the labor market at home, though, and they’re about to cut down on the indentured labor of H-1Bs. An ACTUAL solution to that is not on the table and you know it.
Edit: Oh, and also, they’re actually on the verge of doing something about the trade deficit, which would have an effect on that. The rival Globalists are against doing anything like that, because who needs nations anyway right?
rocketverliden:
or solve the problem of why we keep sending troops to die in pointless wars.
Again, actual solution not on the table. If the Orange Man avoids getting us into another war, however, I will consider it a success that saves us $1 trillion.
Stupid Danes just don’t understand how all that rape helps their economicses. Everyone needs to have lots of economicses. Rape isn’t very quantifiable (because that would be offensive) and therefore doesn’t exist. But economicses exist. There are courses in school about them. Have you raised all your boat sails with my Keynesian theories of human trafficking? If you sell one child per family you can fund AI research. People aren’t real. When do I get my hedonium implants? Why are people so mad about rape when we will all soon get hedonium implants?
How many utilons can be exchanged for one rape?
This is a mindset that I’m finding very frustrating, in that I’m having difficulty categorizing it. Is it a reasonable, rational understanding of actual conditions? Is it xenophobic dog whistles, predictable playing on the existing memes of “furiners gonna rape our women”/miscegenation threat?
What are the underlying issues here? Increased pressure from refugees/migrants from the Middle East (not all of whom are Muslim)? The impending population decline? A sudden rise in giving a shit about rape?
WTF is actually going on? Because everyone seems to be going around with blinkers on, cherry picking and building echo chambers and rubbing themselves with factually incorrect memes.
Memes about how everyone is biologically identical and culture is arbitrary reached peak signalling potential and then the same portable media tech that motivates opportunist migrants also made it impossible to cover up the horrifying consequences of importing them (we used to be able to nip those stories in the bud, or obfuscate perp details).
Rotherham also hit the news in 2014, so that didn’t help.
Okay.
Okay.
Look, I get you have this whole…complex about the migrant question in Europe. I get it. You think the truth’s been buried all this time and now people are getting their comeuppance for the folly of trying to be humane to others.
But I also see you like to conflate rationalist/transhumanist language with memes about “liberals,” and at this point, I think it’s clear that you’ve become so jaded that you might as well be a full-fledged member of the alt-right, because only alt-right people do shit like that.
“How many utilons can be exchanged for one rape?“ I dunno, but it costs $0.00 to not be an asshole, so there’s that
I’d rather be an asshole than enable a bunch of violent child rape through ironic detachment. Stop defending the priesthood in the 80s. You’re a religious zealot…
I’d also recognize that if I became a wonk about Catholic priests molesting children, I’d probably look like one of those asshole atheists, and to be quite honest, that’s not a look I’d like.
You fall into the trap of believing that stopping one piece of the problem will backsolve and fix everything, when, no, actually, the solution might be to instead to remind migrants that Westerners are strange people with strange customs and to enforce the same laws you’d enforce on a white man (or enforce on the white man the same laws you’d enforce on a non-white non-male).
The political will for your proposed solution does not appear to exist, and multiculturalism seems as though it will actively fight to stop your solution from being implemented. How will you create the political will for this? If it fails, what is your backup plan?
School vouchers have political momentum in the US now because it’s cheaper politically to use them to route around the fact that schools can neither effectively punish problem students, nor exclude them, preventing the other students from getting a good education. It probably isn’t the best solution, but it may actually be politically feasible. It seems some kind of intelligent immigration and law enforcement policy isn’t actually on the table, so using right-wing populists to slow immigration to levels more in line with rates of assimilation and undermine the cultural left, Globalism, and multiculturalism itself seems more feasible.
