Oceans Yet to Burn

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May 2017

I’ve said it several times over the last few days, but a lot of this comes off more with not liking the implications of the principles, and they disagree with your sensibilities. You made a claim, in the prior post, about it not being emotional, but frankly, this post doesn’t really lend credence to that, it instead makes it far more likely that it is a highly, perhaps even primarily, emotional response.

I was explaining why I hate Anarcho-Capitalism, not why I think it’s logically incorrect.

Because it’s not ‘under anarcho-capitalism, my life doesn’t matter to the wealthy’ that is really the complaint, it’s ‘my life has no intrinsic value and I don’t like that.’ Because in truth, that’s the complaint, and it would be so under any system that proposed the same. Yet value is subjective, it can’t be intrinsic. Value is just an abstract concept of how we measure things. There is no absolute value to anything.

Value, as I consider it, is directly experienced, on a root level of reality in the same park as “I think, therefore I am”.

Value is not an axiomatic concept, not to me and I’m guessing not to you either, because if you’ve got issues with my axioms of self-ownership you can’t rightfully turn around and declare one for value.

I’m not assuming value, I’m experiencing it.

I could go on about the constructed scenario, but lets go for it. Yes, if that loaf of bread somehow belonged to this man, it would be a violation of their property rights to take it. It actually would be a violation to even be on the planet, if they did somehow own the whole thing. I suspect you’d still do it (and so would I) if my life depended on it on that moment, but that doesn’t make it not a violation, it merely places you in a shit scenario were you’re gonna have to make some choice and live with the consequences. There is no argument of why it isn’t a violation of their property rights, you outright admit that it is.

People are fundamentally more real than property.  Your idea that essentially argues that property is people (as an extension of them) is part of why you do not accept the people > property ordering.

but the issue about scruples is precisely why I don’t what you and your plan for some authority to control the breeding population of the planet, among a vast number of other frankly terrifying proposals.

My default support for Bland Liberalism, which I don’t discuss much on Tumblr, is grounded in my own skepticism based on previous events.  Further, while it may be the case that it turns out we don’t have to resort to such measures (it looks like population growth is falling, but technological advancement rate is not guaranteed), what I more accurately object to is taking them off the table entirely completely independent of actual conditions.

And if you recognize the unscrupulous nature of humanity as you seem to, than it is fundamentally irrational to propose creating the very Actual Boot we joked about not long ago, now with fancy lights attached.

Water flows without regard to where we wish, but with sufficient accuracy we can control it and force it to.  However, Anarcho-Capitalism, much like Communism, is too willfully unaware of the nature of the water to adequately plan for it.  Communism can ‘work’ too if you assume everyone goes along with it and doesn’t obey the local incentives or behave irrationally (or ‘irrationally’).

Although I would like to see both it and an AnCom commune attempted.  I predict both would implode dramatically and subsequently be denounced as not real Scotsmen, but I’m not all-knowing.

And that’s why your consequentialism is both ethically and logically bankrupt. You list all these reasons, and contrast them to “lol I don’t want to,” but “lol I don’t want to,” is no less arbitrary than any of those other reasons you listed.

People are real and precede property.  They ‘physically’ exist regardless of the nested layer of reality and available metadata in a way that property does not.  Likewise, the subcomponents of their minds also exist.

I bring it up because frankly, a lot of your objections in prior places, and now here about charity spending, are essentially this, and perhaps the role reversal is doubly ironic then, because you are transhumanist technocrat, yet you seem to be criminally unimaginative about these problems, because you’re basically just turning back to the old style responses to them all. I don’t need charity giving to reach 30-40% of GDP, I need ways for charity to be less necessary.

It isn’t a lack of imagination, it’s an observation of how businesses and individuals have proceeded in the past, and then assuming that hey, they will likely do so again in the future.  

If you want to hear a more imaginative solution - I want the government to subsidize the distribution of an executive-function-enhancing genetic modification.  Not only would this significantly decrease crime, but it would boost the economy, lower welfare budgets, and have all sorts of positive secondary effects.  Also, it would be hilarious watching the “just pull yourself up by your bootstraps lazies” people get BTFOd by the simultaneous increased competition and evidence that it was non-trivially biological all along.  But that’s trivial in comparison to the likely reduction of the prison population to 1/10th of current levels, fewer homicides, etc.

I know you don’t follow me, so you haven’t seen my favor of wage subsidies at the current level of technology, which would also likely - reduce crime, reduce welfare spending, have positive secondary effects, recover some economic value, etc etc.

But like, why would I say that in an argument such as this, since it would essentially go without saying, and does not in any way justify the AnCap position to me?  This is a coordination problem.  States are a method of solving coordination problems.  I don’t consider using states to solve coordination problems inherently immoral.

You can’t make people value you, though. And you’ve no right to try to use force to make people value you, or anything else. This sucks. It’s a horrible thing to accept, and that’s why so many folks reject it. Because the implications aren’t nice.

Because I experience value directly, I have value independently of whether other people value me.

But neither good or truth are reliant on being nice, or the sensibilities of any given person. Or even all the peoples that exist and ever have. No amount of offended sensibilities will stop the sun from rising.

AnCap is not truth.

And the flat truth is that you and your sensibilities are exactly the sort of folks who lacked scruples prey upon and thus drove (and, in truth, created) the communist horror that has afflicted the world, and many movements before and since. 

Communists often don’t actually behave like Consequentialists.  You’ll notice they argue a lot about “oppression” and “justice” and the moral responsibility of classes in society, and wax poetic about killing perceived enemies.  Not, you know, just jailing them.  Or exiling them.  Killing them for reasons of collective justice.

For many of them, including Tankies, the “good” includes suffering of class enemies.  Likewise with SJ.  Likewise with Feminists.

And as for people like you, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire was justified by such sensibilities, and rampant support of Capitalism has enabled every other tragedy perpetrated in its name.  (I don’t collect detailed lists of those because hey, I’m not a Communist.  But I know it isn’t trivial.  You may object that this is not true AnCapism, but Commies talk about how No Really That’s Not Socialism’s Fault all the time, and failures of this kind reflect on Capitalist markets generally.)  

And the property instinct? Itself emotional, as another commenter noted elsewhere regarding people getting offended at ‘stealing’ images they had themselves ‘stolen’ and not credited them for, for example, cleaning up and organizing pages of manga that they had never paid for.  So don’t pretend that you’ve escaped emotionality when choice of axioms is itself under the influence thereof.  If your mind were devised differently, you would not have likely ended up as an AnCap.

May 10, 2017 96 notes
#the yellow black snake

anarchyinblack:

mitigatedchaos:

Except whether using “evil” to do good is “evil” is one of the matters in dispute, and AnCap does not have a way to say those categories of suffering are bad - only people within AnCap do and only by using theories which are not part of AnCap even if they aren’t incompatible with it. For my part I still consider the concept of self-ownership at the AnCap level invalid. As a being with imperfect executive functioning I will never accept an infinite liability morality of that class.

“I reject your self ownership because I lack self control.”

Holy fucking shit.

You lack self control too.  We ALL do.  And if you think you don’t, you’re only one injury away from that changing.  Infinite moral liability for such limited finite beings is not justified.

May 10, 2017 93 notes

mutant-aesthetic:

cybercupcakementality:

TFW 4chan alt-right trolls try to use your call out and accountability process to set people you care about against you

this is a good sign that maybe call out/accountability processes are a bad idea because there’s no way to stop them from being weaponized against you by bad faith actors

what if demonstrating this was half the reason they do it in the first place

May 9, 2017 21 notes
#the other half is lulz
May 9, 2017 426 notes

You have received one (1) new notifications from DOG:

DOG is STRESSED

May 9, 2017
#mitigated future #cybernetic dog accessories #the app economy

thivus:

desetoilesdslesyeux:

UK : fucks up

America : fucks up

France : rejects Voldemort as president

France : *looks at the camera like on The Office* oh yeah baby

i never understood fundamentalist Christians hatred of harry potter until u people started trying to describe all geopolitical events using references from that cursed children’s book

May 9, 2017 14,929 notes
#politics

@remedialaction

Let me put it this way.

According to Anarcho-Capitalism, my life is not worth even the smallest sliver of involuntary suffering by the wealthy.  It’s worth nothing.  Zip.  Zilch.  Nada.

Under Anarcho-Capitalism, it is impermissible for me to perform even the smallest violation to the point that I could be on a garden world owned by one man, take a loaf of bread that he doesn’t even consciously know exists, for my own survival, and it’s a total violation.

It’s very difficult for me not to take that as personally insulting, especially as someone who has experienced how deeply biological (and thus relatively arbitrarily distributed) executive functioning is.

Private charity is never going to hit 30-40% of GDP, even if the state were abolished, unless it isn’t really voluntary.

And let’s not even pretend that AnCap would turn out Consequentialist in practice.  It won’t.  That is not how people work, that is not how businesses work, that is not how land works, that is not how pollution works, and so on.  If people were that scrupulous, Communism would not have been such a disaster.

Various Consequentialisms do not think my life has zero value.  They may say that I can’t steal the bread because there isn’t enough bread and it would collapse the economy.  They may say the same thing about taxes and medical operations.  But it’s trading for something of greater value than “lol I don’t want to and property is absolute”.

And that is far, far more acceptable to me.  Especially because executive functioning and everything else was never distributed fairly at the very start.

May 9, 2017 96 notes
#the yellow black snake

I find none of this convincing, but it isn’t worth my time to argue it.

And to be honest, I have an emotional loathing for Anarcho-Capitalism.

This isn’t to say that my opposition is fundamentally emotional, but whenever I interact with it, I find it highly annoying, as well as what I consider to be the extremely unrealistic projections of AnCaps on how it would turn out.

May 9, 2017 93 notes

remedialaction:

mitigatedchaos:

remedialaction:

I’d rather the Invisible Fist than the Actual Boot, tbh.

It’s a joke name dude. My Communism tag is “The Red Hammer”, which should not be interpreted in the benign sense of the word. More in the sense of “the nail that sticks up gets hammered” and, well, red as in blood.

I should make a joke tag so folks know when I’m not being overly serious, I think. :P

“#The Actual Boot” would be a great tag for tankie posts, tbh.

May 9, 2017 4 notes

And sure, you can dispute if using evil to do good is evil all you want, but that debate is not a winning one for the “advocating evil” side, quotes around evil or not. Its why we have to go through so many lengths to obfuscate certain actions, and why folks, if you pitch them the same idea but sans obfuscation, will recoil in horror at the implication

The “evils,” under AnCap ideas of what counts as evil, of a typical modern state, have fairly broad public support.  So yeah, it actually can be a winning one, relative to some standards of evil.

I’m curious what categories you are specifically thinking of though, and actually potential solutions that cannot be achieved under anarcho-capitalist structures.

Population control, that will likely require some involuntary non-action that will have to be enforced, depending on conditions on the planet, once life-extension capabilities hit.  Under AnCap this is effectively impossible unless you cheat/exploit the AnCap rules by doing things like physically trapping people.

Actually caring for the poor at a sufficient rate.  Now I know you think this is unwinnable because “then the state becomes something to fight over too,” but just because a perfect solution has not yet been found does not mean that a good solution does not exist.  The AnCap answer is a non-answer and the actually-charitable will likely be outcompeted in the brutality of the market.

Environmentalism, since you have to resolve whether emitting carbon dioxide, or indeed any substance, violates the NAP, and if so what the appropriate level of response is, and people will necessarily disagree on this issue - they may even disagree on the facts without even just doing so out of being greedy.  (Edit: In fact, whether emitting carbon dioxide is a problem is defined by whether other people are emitting carbon dioxide, and if so, how much.)

Malthusian conditions are actually bad, and I won’t be persuaded into not even trying to prevent them because of AnCap principles I don’t even agree with.

Plus most of those random things Argumate keeps bringing up that bleed a little too much detail for your perfect axioms - which a well-designed Consequentialism can decide on IFF it actually matters to someone, but which your axioms cannot.

May 9, 2017 93 notes
#the yellow black snake

Except whether using “evil” to do good is “evil” is one of the matters in dispute, and AnCap does not have a way to say those categories of suffering are bad - only people within AnCap do and only by using theories which are not part of AnCap even if they aren’t incompatible with it. For my part I still consider the concept of self-ownership at the AnCap level invalid. As a being with imperfect executive functioning I will never accept an infinite liability morality of that class.

May 9, 2017 93 notes

remedialaction:

I’d rather the Invisible Fist than the Actual Boot, tbh.

It’s a joke name dude. My Communism tag is “The Red Hammer”, which should not be interpreted in the benign sense of the word. More in the sense of “the nail that sticks up gets hammered” and, well, red as in blood.

May 9, 2017 4 notes

remedialaction:

argumate:

barryogg:

argumate:

remedialaction:

argumate:

Even the axiom of self-ownership isn’t so simple to pin down, and biological experimentation is only going to make it worse.

I literally could just amend “to you” to every post you make on the subject, at this point. :P

It’s pretty tough to define self-ownership given the existence of chimeras and conjoined twins, let alone psychological issues like split personalities and all the future weirdness that biotech is going to unleash.

Given that people have been arguing over the definition of “self” for thousands of years so far and it shows no sign of abating I don’t think it’s unreasonable to say that there are still unresolved issues here.

So this post has helped me finally crystalize a recurring train of thought I am having when confronted with other people’s opinions. See, my first reaction to the post above is absolute terror.

Because my brain tends to very quickly and wildly extrapolate any given view to its most extreme consequences. And boy howdy can you extrapolate a lot of things from a negation of self-ownership. Existing terrible things, like the war on drugs (of course the actual historical reasons for the war on drugs are horrible and racist but in theory you can rederive it from one’s health being a public matter), or reproductive coercion; but also lots of speculative terrible things. So th thoughts short-circuit from ‘there are weird things going on in the margins’ to ‘Argumate wants use the fact that chimeras exist to be able to kill me and harvest my organs for the greater good, and I will not have any moral foundation to object to that’.

Of course this is a bizarre way of thinking because the majority of people argue for issues because they care for these specific issues and not some wild consequences that are conceptually related, and aren’t trying to use foot-in-the-door tactics (and those who do try to get a foot in your door can be identified pretty easily). And in the concrete example of this here conversation it’s not even a policy discussion, but rather a theoretical musing. So all that anxiety is completely unfounded. Alas.

And I think that most concepts are useful even if they’re fuzzy at the margins. Non-relativisitc moleds were wrong but still we’ve managed to come up with planes.

Personally I think that some kind of contractualism is a better approach for getting the outcome that you want.

I don’t want to have my organs harvested without my consent, and nor does anyone I know, and even though the veil of ignorance is not mandatory, in practice in a world of seven billion people it’s very difficult to make rules that say you can’t be a dick to anyone except barry specifically.

Negotiating the individual issues is always going to be necessary; simple axioms either imply too much or too little, and are best used as slogans and rallying points to guide the political process.

While I believe in self-ownership, that really means I support most of the positions associated with the concept of self-ownership, not that I think they can necessarily be derived from this single axiom nor that this axiom is necessarily the foundation for morality and politics.

The issue I have with this, my esteemed strigiform and self-employed pharmacist, is idea that someone can like the arguments and concepts that surround a thing (ie: self-ownership in the recent case, but broadly libertarian ideals in general seem to get caught up in this a lot) but then dislike or even reject the principles behind those arguments. In short, there is a lot of folks who seem to like the results of libertarian arguments but don’t like where they come from.

Which is sort of a running issue, because in many cases the principles the arguments are founded upon can lead to some unpalatable ends, at least to some people. Folks will seem to say they don’t want to throw out the baby with the bashwater and ditch the principles with the unfortunate implications for their wants and desires, and keep the results, but the problem is you can’t really do that.

Like, the arguments and the like that surround self-ownership, and the derived protections from it, cannot be defended by the merits of how you, or anyone else likes them. The issue is that far from being difficult to make rules that say you can’t be a dick to any of the seven plus billion people except Barry, it’s actually exceedingly easy to do so unless your moral and ethical foundations are in order, and are universal.

Because that’s the only way to avoid explicitly allowing arbitrary and subjective choices into the system of morals and ethics.

Like, yeah, you have to use negotiation and navigate the complex network of human interactions and any society is going to be heavy on contract, but you can’t build your ethical framework from the top down. It’s got to have a base to build up from. Folks like the results of the principles but hate the principles, and that is just a recipe for disaster. 

In practical terms, people liking something enough to take up arms to force others to comply with it - like property in general for instance - is how a political theory is physically realized. So if everyone hates the principles, then it doesn’t matter how much you think they’re true, unless you have all the guns. And from what I’ve seen of actual human behavior and actual markets and not hypothetical spherical cow markets, AnCap/pure libertarianism’s consequences will ensure that it is never the most viral meme. Which, IMO, is good because it lacks the ability to recognize that entire categories of human suffering are bad.

May 9, 2017 93 notes
#the invisible fist #philosophy #politics
May 8, 2017 24,533 notes
May 8, 2017 67,661 notes
Gay teen in Chechnya pushed from 9th floor balcony after being outedpinknews.co.uk

slartibartfastibast:

misanthropymademe:

lipstickchainsaw:

roseerin:

thespectacularspider-girl:

dangerbooze:

brosefvondudehomie:

princessdissociation:

brosefvondudehomie:

princessdissociation:

iamsapphirecrimsonclaw:

t-b-d-o-t-u:

iamsapphirecrimsonclaw:

cockandpokeballs:

socialistgay:

its been over a month since this came to light and so few people are talking about this 

This entire article is heartbreaking…

I don’t want to hear a SINGLE Islamophobe talking about “THEY PUSH GAYS OFF OF ROOFTOPS” ever again.

You know that Chechnya is ~95% Muslim, right? You know that MUFTI (wikipedia: an Islamic scholar who interprets and expounds Islamic law (Sharia and fiqh) ) of Chechnya during assembly of other religious figures in central mosque of Grozny (there were about 15000 ppl) said that journalists who covered the subject of gay men will be punished by the Allah?

Do you really have the arrogance to think that you know more about islam than a religious authority of the region which was muslim for a longer time than US exists?

Do you think that MUFTI of Chechnya is also islamophobe because he paints islam as a homophobic religion with no concern for gay people suffering (which it fucking IS)?

Are you a Trump voter? Because they’re the only people who toot their horns about how Muslims are homophobes that don’t belong in the country.

No, in fact, I didn’t know that! I’m sorry I’ve been too busy preparing documentation for a job than to know absolutely everything about everything, which is required on Tumblr! SILLY ME!

I am no expert that would fit Tumblr standards either but at least we can realize it’s homophobia, not Islam.

The Chechen gov.m is allowing this to happen, not the Muslim people who live there…

You mean the Chechen government that is made of Muslims? That Chechen government? The Muslim filled government of Islamic Chechnya?

That is no excuse to criminalize Islam and all the Muslim people of Chechnya.

Originally posted by dexters-sliceoflife

Are you serious?

No, they’re just retarded

WHAT
THE
FUCK

“criminalize”?? what are on about?
No we want the corrupt islamic government to stop abusing and killing people and calling that out, Islam is heavily tied to their political movements its a contradiction to support them under any circumstances.

We want to criminalize islamic-state backed capital punishment legalized murder and child abuse and genocide of lgbt and atheist/other religions too chechens. It is unavoidable collision with the philosophies of islam that put as at odds with their fascist governments. for as long as one believes in freedom you cannot support islam as a religion.

In their defence,

@iamsapphirecrimsonclaw

is right; they didn’t push this kid off of the roof.

Meh, Islam’s had relatively freethinking phases: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_Golden_Age
I checked and as per usual the fuckers in Chechen responsible for the most radical anti-gay sentiments are everyone’s favourite, the Wahhabists. I don’t understand what’s so hard about singling out the fundies. 

“I don’t understand what’s so hard about singling out the fundies.”

It’s too precise and doesn’t induce enough cognitive dissonance. You’re either a bigot who hates brown people or you have to think there’s zero correlation between fundamentalism and hating gays. You have to be in one of those two bins, because these people don’t want to parse an opinion for nuance. They just want to be mad about something on the internet.

Let’s be realistic - a compromise where specific sects of Islam are punished, and we just ignore e.g. Quranists, is not on the table.  That would mean admitting this foreign non-white religion can be bad at more than the random nutter level, which is not going to happen no matter how many gay nightclubs get shot up, not to mention the loss of pride involved.  

Gays are lower on the Progressive Stack than Muslims.

Though admittedly, I still don’t get why they love such an oppressive religion so much.

May 8, 2017 5,131 notes

I am now being followed by 8 Nissan bots that don’t even exclusively post Nissan cars. They shall be known as the Eight Nissan Samurai.

May 8, 2017 1 note

quoms:

the nation and the state are inseparable concepts. the struggle for ‘national liberation’ is, from its very beginning, a struggle for the existence of a state (this is true even when ‘the nation’ doesn’t seek independence and only seeks acknowledgment and accommodation within an existing state apparatus; the struggle is dependent on that apparatus and envisions its indefinite continued existence)

Good thing I’m no Anarchist.

May 8, 2017 22 notes

why are car blogs following me all of a sudden

is there some sort of Nationalist conspiracy among motor vehicle enthusiasts?

I’ll have you know that despite my leanings I only drive Japanese cars

May 8, 2017

ranma-official:

I wanted to say “Trump is worse because he has a military to command” and then realized that Le Pen getting elected would mean having to deal w/ the fact that
France has the biggest fucking military in Europe

What exactly were you expecting Le Pen to do with this military?  Invade and bomb countries in order to cause more mass migration?

May 8, 2017 15 notes
May 8, 2017 7,544 notes

I’m Consequentialist, so I don’t think the fundamental difference in axioms will be resolved here.  Any other system seems to prioritize rule-following over people to me.

May 8, 2017 431 notes

If they’re so competent, when are we going to hear plans for WAGE SUBSIDIES instead of a minimum wage hike?

(But yes, Paul Ryan is trash and may outright sink the Trump Presidency.)

May 8, 2017 3 notes
#politics #center-handed

What squid said, plus there’s a reason states own (yes, own) all the valuable land.  It isn’t some kind of accident.

You want a justification?  The state owns the land as a joint private owner, you’re just renting it.  Tada!  Now everything the state does except for foreign invasions is justified.

May 8, 2017 431 notes

anarchyinblack:

lordpatiii:

ranma-official:

anarchyinblack:

Liberty is not a means; it is an end. One does not defund the program to balance the budget; one resists taxation in order to abolish the programs. The object of property is property. The object of resistance is resistance. The object of liberty is liberty.

Since taxation is actually good, it sounds you’re advocating for a bad thing as a means to a bad thing

I kind of figure that taxation is a good or as bad as what it’s funding

Alas my friend you are wrong as it is theft.

Why is theft universally wrong?

May 8, 2017 431 notes
RE: Centrists: The question then becomes, how does real change become possible? Revolution isn't a good option, since it tends to kill lots of people without much actually-good change.

i legitimately dont know, because it seems any democratic option is instantly suppressed

maybe a mass uprising like in tunisia or egypt demanding politicians step down or make reform.

but reform to what?

May 7, 2017 1 note
#politics #policy

To put the culture post another way: Muslim countries get Muslim laws.  

This isn’t just under democracy, but also dependent on raw ability to wield force, which is also impacted by how big and willing to fight the dominant cultural group is.

If you want a Liberal country, with Liberal laws, then either you need to have a Liberal culture, or someone strong enough and with enough backing to impose Liberal laws.  

If an imported culture gains ground until it replaces the dominant culture, then it will replace the dominant culture’s laws.

May 7, 2017 1 note
#politics #the iron hand
"Beliefs? Ideals? Nah bruh, I'm a centrist. People who have actual convictions beyond their base desires are FUCKING IDIOTS" -t. You.

very true, u FUCKING IDIOT

May 7, 2017 5 notes

memecucker:

wow i guess france just isnt ready for a woman president

May 7, 2017 716 notes
#hahaha #politics #shtpost
I wonder what you'd get out of a survey that was structured like voting is--i.e. *guaranteed* anonymous, without having to say your answers to a person, just marking your answers and putting it in a box--and offered to all registered voters. Actually, it seems like a good idea to have something like that anyway--having an actual legally binding vote be people's main forum for ~expressing their opinions~ is far from ideal.

Current representative democracy doesn’t give voters any direct influence over specific policy questions, literal direct democracy makes them vote on every issue, and most people suggest a sensible hybrid where everyone votes on every issue but you can delegate your vote to representatives at varying levels of pickiness.

May 7, 2017 4 notes
#parliamentary DCO stratocratic republic or bust #politics #policy

mitigatedchaos:

The existence of immune system overreactions does not mean that immune systems are a bad thing.

@flowingblades​

I mean, I agree, but also “immune systems” are bad wrt nationalism. A country is not an organism. A body needs to keep the body safe; a culture does not need to keep itself safe, rather it needs to keep the people in it safe.

The culture doesn’t need to be preserved if “culture” is just hot dogs vs sushi, ballet vs rap, basketball vs rugby.  In other words, if it’s just aesthetics.  Falling below a certain level of Nationalism makes it infeasible to field an army - but fielding an army to defend sushi would indeed be overkill.  However…

  1. Consider FGM.  We now have it in Michigan, apparently.  For now, it’s still considered a criminal activity.  But what happens when 5% of the population supports it?  10%?  15%?  Eventually, it becomes more normalized and the political will to legalize it will materialize and be captured by some political party.  FGM is actively harmful and unironically bad.
  2. However, that still only affects one group.  What about long runs of repeated first cousin marriage?  That’s a cultural thing, and the effects stack the longer it goes on, putting a disproportionate burden on the healthcare system.
  3. But even then, you could hypothetically force the entire medical system to be ‘free market’ to make individuals pay for the burden of that instead.  So let’s step it up again.  What about who deserves the fruit of the economy?  Is the society individualist or collectivist?  Should we help each other or is it smart to screw each other over at the earliest opportunity?  Differences on this matter impact the political will to perform redistribution - either with no redistribution, some redistribution, or proceeding to Venezuela-tier “bordering on a failed state” botched Socialism.  That has a HUGE effect.  
  4. What religion should be the dominant one, and should it have control over what to do with heretics and “degenerates”?  You know, like LGBT people are considered in some countries and territories, like, say, Chechnya.

Ultimately, culture is not actually individual and not actually escapable at the national level.  To keep the people safe, it is actually necessary to keep the culture some level of safe, particularly if that culture involves not becoming Venezuela or Saudi Arabia.

May 7, 2017 5 notes
#nationalism #politics
What do you think is the rationality community's fatal flaw? I want to hear yours before you hear mine, so as not to influence your thinking

I’m not sure if it makes sense to talk about communities having fatal flaws, and I’m not actually involved in this community, so I couldn’t really say.

May 7, 2017 7 notes
#politics #gender politics #meta community

The existence of immune system overreactions does not mean that immune systems are a bad thing.

May 7, 2017 5 notes
#nationalism
France chooses centrist Macron over far-right Le Pen as next president: exit pollsabcnews.go.com

slartibartfastibast:

http://www.cbr.com/pepe-frog-creator-kills-white-supremacist-icon/

This is bad. Le Pen was supposed to be leverage to get the rest of these people to wake up and fix the giant holes in Liberalism. Instead, honor killings, FGM, and burkhas will be politically unremovable in France in 30 years or, left to boil over with no real solution, FN will be back after winning more mayorships for a showdown.

May 7, 2017 6 notes
#politics
Sexism and Objectification

bambamramfan:

Tumblrites are talking about how men rarely feel objectified, both the negative and positive parts of that, so I thought now was a good time to post my essay on men and women, subjects and objected.

Keep reading

Back when I kept my eyes on MRAs, they called this hyperagency/hypoagency. (Outside of them, there is an idea of “hypermasculinity” applied to black people, but I don’t know the details.) It likely originates in the biological expendability of men as compared to women in terms of being a population bottleneck.

Regardless, because the MRM is a reaction to Feminism and Traditionalism (and could be considered a rogue school of Feminism), it can incorporate these ideas. A high quality MRA is thus often more clueful about gender equality than the median Feminist. Low quality MRAs not so much.

May 7, 2017 352 notes
#gender politics
what are the didgeridoos and don'ts when visiting your country?

how about don’t use the word didgeridoo in casual speech unless you’re Ned Flanders huh

May 7, 2017 14 notes
#shtpost

argumate:

sexbots for the men, emotional support bots for the women!

or is it the other way around.

It is but you can’t admit to it, so you make sexbots that perform emotional support and emotional support bots that perform sex.  That way everyone can save face.

May 7, 2017 21 notes
#mitigated future #gender politics
May 7, 2017 31 notes
#shtpost

argumate:

So the focus on Western women- sorry, Westernized women seems misplaced. (Might as well complain about Westeros women, and their focus on dragons).

“I’m Westernese,” she said.

The others in the room paused, attempting to deduce whether they should be offended, and if so, how much.

May 7, 2017 15 notes
#shtpost
#MacronLeaks Viewers Claim To Find Evidence Macron Is On Gay Mailing List, Aide Buys Hard Drugs With Bitcoin – MILO NEWSmilo.yiannopoulos.net

slartibartfastibast:

That isn’t even very hypocritical. I don’t care.

Keep digging.

Agreed.

May 6, 2017 5 notes

argumate:

the ultimate preexisting condition is being born American, hyuk hyuk hyuk

You know I’ve revised my estimate for Trump 2020 down to 40% over this (and other considerations).

May 6, 2017 21 notes
#predictions #trump cw

> 2058
> arguing with Commies on minicom
> point out that the GDP per capita of the DSAZ is 8x that of Seattle
> point out no lines for antirejection drugs in DSAZ
> mfw “the Free Peoples’ Republic of Seattle isn’t real Socialism”
> mfw “Detroit Special Autonomous Zone is Fascist Dictatorship”
> mfw receiving these messages at coffee shop w/in DSAZ

May 6, 2017 1 note
#shtpost #mitigated future #mitigated fiction #the invisible fist #the red hammer
[from the emoji article you linked] "and domain names that incorporate emojis are being developed" hoo boy. hoooooooo boy.

*tears of laughter on the outside hiding tears of impotent rage on the inside*

May 6, 2017 19 notes
#shtpost #mitigated future #chronofelony

ranma-official:

socialjust-ish:

talesofnorth:

Today at work came an order for a print on a mug, client asking to print “1488” on it. So I sent him back this.

Could you imagine the confusion if this wasn’t a fascist?

Like just some guy who was born on like, January 4th 1988 or something and the order didn’t print the ‘/’s?

I assume that a person whose birthday falls on ¼/88 would be fully aware of the problem by now.

Not necessarily.  On Tumblr it’s well-known enough, but I had no clue about it until relatively recently.

May 6, 2017 50,027 notes

just-shower-thoughts:

Imagine a world without hate, violence, wars, weapons, a world where everybody is kind, and loves each other. Without starvation, poverty, or pollution. A world where all the people are happy. And then imagine us attacking that world. They wouldn’t stand a chance.

That’s an engineered species.  An evolved species can’t be like that.  

Fear the masters that created them.

May 5, 2017 3,132 notes
#mitigated future
Regarding voter suppression, it's not the ID Laws themselves that creates the issue (even though it's a solution for a problem that is extremely rare), it's in conjunction with limiting days for early voting, closing down DMV offices in areas of certain populations, onerous requirements to obtain the IDs in either the costs of registration, time/transportation to get to the offices or obtaining the necessary documentation. This while they also oppose measures to help register people better.

my concern was that, is that really quantifiable evidence of fascism?

its more a symptom of plutocratic classism with intersection with racism.

the aim of Voter IDs is not to coalesce power into the hands of one leader and the absolute control or establishment of strict order of society… but to diminish the capacity of the more populous, poor of the country to influence the affairs of government that threaten to undermine the state granted privileges of the wealthy.

They wouldn’t want to totally control the poor and the minorities or how they live, they would actually prefer to preserve the freedom they feel the poor enjoy, but only greatly reduce their share in governance. The rich care so little for how the poor and minorities in the country go about their lives, they only care if it gets in the way of their own interests

Calling it fascist and likening it to nazis and shit just obfuscates that and makes it all the more difficult in addressing and fighting it.

May 5, 2017 1 note
#politics #the elephant
House is reactionary. YesMan is a prog. NCR is imperialist but liberal. Caesar is for faggots who aren't edgy enough IRL.

It genuinely disappoints me that the Legion is more of a twisted parody of Caesarism rather than an actual revival. It would have been interesting to see a nuanced portrayal of right-wing authoritarianism.

May 5, 2017 1 note
It's still an Sjw Game you stupid fucking fag, jesus christ please kill yourself.

why are you so mad anon

May 5, 2017 3 notes
#spoilers #fnv
How are you so based?

Temporal pre-familiarity bias.  You are remembering my posts from the future, causing the release of endorphins and other neurochemicals.  The posts aren’t actually that good, it just feels like that when you read them.  They’ll seem normal again in a few months.

May 5, 2017
#shtpost #mitigated future #chronofelony #anons
New vegas is a SJW game you fag

Eh, New Vegas is far more divorced from progressive orthodoxy than Fallout 3 or 4. You can tell that they put a lot of effort into making House and Yes Man as close to morally equal to the NCR (the clear prog favorite) as possible. All the prog bias is entirely unintentional, and the game goes out of its way to not preach to you, except all the times it tells you that it’s important to look at a problem from multiple angles and consider different perspectives.

May 5, 2017 8 notes
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