I guess I never really understood why Nineteen Eighty-Four was a stable equilibrium, if the world it described was at all true, because the fundamental thing is the game, either within states or between them, because there’d always be actors of greater or lesser talents, because there’d always be shocks to technology or inputs, so that there’d be no equilibrium
it’s good and fun to imagine this sort of terror, but I always found it hard to imagine it as a permanent state, because it seemed so fragile, so dependent on the virtues of the leadership and the competitive equilibrium between states – and I know the predictable answer is that the airbase is a little North Korea, but, with the caveat that I haven’t read the book in years, that never seemed like a strong or plausible reading of the text to me
like, Orwell was great at Stalinist terror, but even Stalin emerged through intra-party competition, and even Stalin was threatened by inter-state competition – as Adolf Hitler was done in by it – so it’s just hard to imagine that equipoise surviving anywhere for long, much less one that survives everywhere
the thing I’ve always feared is collapse, the collapse of complex societies, because collapse is the terrible thing we see again and again, and the thing you can’t insulate yourself against
if 1984 ended in collapse, with the factories torn up, the money turned to rubbish, with Smith on the dole and working on the black market, drinking himself to death, and all the little old tea-drinking pensioners wishing they hadn’t done away with Big Brother, and maybe it hadn’t been so bad being Airstrip One, and maybe we’d all have gotten away with it if it hadn’t been for those awful Continentals – but even that wouldn’t have been all that bad
the thing that really chills me is the Dark Ages
like, you read these books and you realize, like, hey, they don’t have pottery anymore, they barely trade, they’re barely literate, and they just fall into darkness for centuries, where even their names are forgotten
I have another three segments of Whiteout queued, and it’s both kind of annoying and exciting since I want to show them to you right now, but if I do that then there won’t be any more queued, so we all have to wait.
Anyhow, if you’re enjoying the Whiteout story, make sure to like the posts so I know how popular it is.
The article about “why we need price gouging in times of crisis”, is some odd shit. I can assure you that there is plenty of water to go round, even if it isn’t as much as normal. Many people did buy ahead of time, however when you get 28 inches of water in 3 hours instead of 3 days and you have to leave your home, you are not carrying the case of water. So kindly fuck off with you random garbage articles, I disconnect with most ancaps when it comes to compassion. Do I believe we need laws, nope, but I believe we need compassion, and Joe Blow selling water for $42 is anything but compassionate. This is the very reason a lot of people do not believe an anarchist, free market, voluntary society can work. I am watching my neighbors who have never flooded be plucked from their homes in boats, losing their entire life, and I got to read that fucking trash. Kindly fuck off. Want to show the world anarchy can work, do like the countless people out lending a hand, donate a case of water, come help me cook for the shelter, and STFU.
This is precisely when people attack the price system, though, because people have the moral intuition that someone selling at higher-than-normal prices is doing something wicked and must be responsible for the price being that high, when they aren’t at all. The authorities interfering to stop local prices from being allowed to rise during a crisis is exactly why famines happened historically, it’s something that turns a localized temporary disaster into something worse. Price ceilings always create shortages, and that’s precisely what you don’t want in an emergency situation.
The choice isn’t between the guy selling water bottles for $42 or him giving them away, it’s between letting him sell them for $42 or not having water bottles there at all. Yeah, he isn’t being altruistic, but his greed is actually leading him to contribute to disaster relief efforts by showing up with water instead of staying home. You’re not being compassionate to disaster victims by telling those people to stay home if they’re not going to help for free, you’re taking away their opportunity to buy water that they apparently need badly enough they’re willing to pay $42 for it. The greedy asshole who was induced to drive from several states away with a truck full of water bottles just to try to make a quick buck is possibly making the difference between life and death for some people in need, even if he doesn’t have an ounce of compassion. The moral intuition you’ve got about price-gougers is backwards - that’s the important insight those articles are spreading, and this is exactly the time to spread it. If anti-gouging laws get passed after this hurricane, those guys won’t risk jail time to show up for the next one, and there will be a shortage where people can’t find drinkable water at any price. Trying to prevent that is beneficial as well.
Compassion is great, but one of anarchy’s greatest strengths is that it doesn’t actually require compassion to work, that people without any compassion in their hearts are still led by greed to work for the benefit of others anyway. A system that only works when people are eager to sacrifice their self-interest to serve others doesn’t work at all.
Okay, but “no price-gouging laws” isn’t incompatible with improved civil defense infrastructure, and calling it “anarchy” is stretching it. If the situation destabilized enough they’d call in the army, and there is still very much the risk of prosecution if you kill the man selling waters for $42 and take all of his waters, once the disaster clears.
Rebellion and break down in law & order in any area of the country undermines the authority of the state as the ruler and monopolizer of force and arbiter of law. Desperation is a key factor in breaking down law & order. Therefore, it would be prudent to create caches of limited, key supplies (such as clean water, water filters, and MREs) at various points in the country, cycling them out as donations to poverty organizations (or selling them) as they near expiration.
This serves both the internal (preventing looting, rioting, and loss of faith in the government) and external (decreasing the amount of death and dysfunction in the event of enemy attack) security primary functions of the state, and increases the scale of hazardous events required to bring down the government. Improvements in civil defense infrastructure also act as a multiplier on available military force as a credible threat for use in international politics.
“Why in the fuck would you just let someone wanted for murder go like that?” Asked Charlie, as we walked through the reflective matte-white halls of the OHK State Hospital. Our steps were in sync, though not really voluntarily. Old habits die hard.
“She made bail,” said Huan.
“How the fuck does some random biter make a five hundred thousand dollar bail?” Came the response.
“Don’t let the media fool you,” said Huan. “It may not be a license to print money, but there’s plenty of action to be had. A lot of old men, made young again, who are fed up with their wives. The adultery laws don’t apply to registered prostitutes.”
I grunted in acknowledgement.
Charlie sighed. “Why do we even have the adultery laws anyway if we’re going to let a class of people just ignore them?”
I kept in pace. “Because they’re not about love,” I said. “They’re about money.” Lots and lots of money.
Charlie muttered something about pleasureboats under his breath, but I pretended not to hear it.
The doors to the ward opened before us, and we followed the guidance towards room 8005, near the back.
“Just how hard did you hit this guy, anyway?” Asked Charlie.
“Oh,” I said, “I just used a Buster grenade.” It was true. I hadn’t even fired a shot.
“A Buster grenade put someone in the hospital?” Asked Charlie.
“Nah, I figure it was the fall that put ‘em in the hospital. The Buster grenade was just because they were dumb enough to keep shooting after they fell.”
Huan grunted in agreement.
“Remind me never to piss you off, Vick,” said Charlie.
The halls in the judicial holding wing were white, like the rest of the building, but they had a thick blue stripe along each wall. Tall unidirectional windows marked each holding cell. A male nurse was outside, facing away from us, checking the tools on a cart.
“Excuse me,” I said, “we’re here to see Rain Bailey Biyu in room 8005.”
“I’m sorry, but Ms. Bailey isn’t seeing anyone right now on account of her condition.” The nurse said without turning his head.
“It’s part of a homicide investigation,” I added.
The nurse turned and saw all three of us standing in the hallway. Black suits, black shirts, black gloves, matching sunglasses, and MetroPol AR[ar] IDs. “Ah, well,” he said. “Of course. Ms. Bailey is stable for now, but she’s not in great shape. The doctors want to have another look at her later because she’s not healing properly.”
“You think it’s ECSD?” Charlie asked.
“You should pay more attention to television, Officer Lin,” said the nurse. “It’s never ECSD. ECSD is genetic. No NeoHan has Electro-Conductive Sensitivity Disorder.”
Charlie made a mild noise of embarassment, so I changed the topic. “Right, well, we’d best get in there now, then. We were informed the patient was ready for in-cell interrogation.”
“Yes…” Said the nurse. “You may go on in. I’ll stand outside and observe.”
I gestured at the door and it opened. We stepped in.
[ar] - Augmented Reality, an overlay of computer information over the real world.
So it turns out it is possible to view Tumblr posts in chronological order. …if they’re tagged, and up to a certain amount (a few hundred).
So later on, if you’re following the whiteout story and you missed a post and want to view them in chronological order to avoid spoilers, here’s the link, as well as the general format for tagged chronological Tumblr browsing.
god it’s way past time we dissolved Western Australia
either get rid of all the states entirely and give more authority to local councils, or get rid of the federal government and let states print their own currencies, but the current split between state and federal is incredibly irritating.
That’s the part of the world @mitigatedchaos can be in charge of. It’s mostly uninhabitable, so who cares if it’s fucked up?
I know, you’re probably thinking this is a safe idea. “Let’s exile that lunatic to the vast desert of Western Australia. No matter how many bizarre plans they have, the collateral damage cannot possibly escape to the rest of the developed world.”
And of course, this seems perfectly reasonable. The diagonal of Western Australia is literally over two thousand kilometers in length.
It’s just over two point six million square kilometers in size. Even the construction of a Special Economic Zone kept wet by a nuclear-powered desalination plant would be dwarfed by four orders of magnitude by the shear scale of Western Australia.
But did you realize it’s possible to terraform the Outback with existing technology?
Who would fund such a thing? Well, multiple nations are looking to meet their climate commitments, and the newly-formed state of Technocratic Western Australia would be in a position to supply. A new city would need to be built to accommodate the infrastructure necessary to oversee this enormous project, along with a series of smaller and more temporary towns, allowing a great degree of flexibility in urban planning.
The scale of the project would ensure funding for the new regime for several decades, while power was consolidated and a new culture was forged across multiple immigrant groups brought in to provide the labor for the project. A tiered citizenship system, including education and service to advance up the hierarchy, with special status reserved for national heroes and more voice available in the National Delegation for loyalists, would place long-term political power in the hands of those committed to the new Western Australia.
As the trees spread across the continent, new development opportunities and industries would open up as the temperatures and local climates changed, paving the way for a nation of twenty million by the mid century.
The only thing preventing this future is that I am not in charge of Western Australia.
The other crucial thing preventing your plan is that nobody wants to live in your western australian towns, because it’s western australia.
According to the elaborate theory of mind I just created in the last two seconds, people either want trees or money. It follows, therefore, that they will be willing to move to the middle of nowhere for money and the promise that eventually, trees will come.
The brightness of the optical camouflage shimmered in the light, as the dark hallway gave way to a chaos of orange and white construction scaffolding. The figure dodged and weaved through towards the light outside, their black clothing showing through as their cheap active camo suit flexed and folded. I followed.
“Stop,” I yelled, “in the name of the law!”
The light of day burst through as the figure reached the edge of the scaffolding, where the orange plating gave way to the air outside. Beyond was the old Ivory Rose building, the first to be condemned in Outer Hong Kong. Its demolition had been tied up for legal red tape for years as it slowly degraded.
The combat software in my head spurred up, sensing my direction as the figure leapt. I watched as the guidance path unfolded before me, carefully matching the trajectory, and I pushed off after them.
Hey, you only live once, right? Or maybe twice, in my case.
The chasm to the street below us whipped past in what seemed like only a fraction of a second, and then I tumbled and rolled through one of the broken windows on the other side, a chunk of debris nudging into my back.
The figure stumbled, then got up and ran. “Hey!” I shouted, “You can’t just torch a crime scene like that! Stop right fuckin’ now and maybe we’ll go easy on you!” It was a lie, of course. Whoever torched it was probably the murderer, and IntSec wasn’t going to go easy on someone who capped a double platinum.
My ears buzzed. It was Charlie. < They torched this right, Vic. You cap ‘em yet? >
< You put the fires out yet? >
< Well, no, but - >
We dodged down a flight of stairs in the dim light, lit only by the red glow of emergency lighting expected to have long since failed. The building was a mess. Debris everywhere, garbage, bottles and drug injectors.
< Then shut off your mouth and get to it. >
A surface projection appeared in my eyes, overlaying the darkness, a green grid wrapping around the shapes in the hallway, like in movies that were already old when I was a kid. The figure stumbled again as they ran. Maybe they couldn’t see in this light. Big mistake. Now I had the advantage.
A section of the grid was red up ahead, and the figure rushed forwards, tripped, and fell into it. There was a loud, feminine cry accompanying a thud and a crash about a floor below.
“Surrender now!” I shouted as I approached the hole in the floor. A gunshot rang out and a bullet whizzed by my head. I jumped back.
“Alright then,” I said, as I reached into my jacket and withdrew a canister. “We’ll do this the hard way.”
Combat software didn’t control your movements. Not directly, anyway. Instead, you sort of leaned in to it, as a learned habit. It put tiny pressures on your arms and legs and other muscles, and you just had to follow those pressures. Canister in hand, the combat software sensed my microgesture intent, and projected a path before my eyes.
With one smooth motion, the canister went flying, then rebounded off the wall. The suspect’s second shot missed it as it came back down and burst open.
There was a yelp and a jolt. The things could disable anything that wasn’t paramilitary grade, at least temporarily. “I told you we could’ve done this the easy way,” I said.
I leaned over and looked into the hole. The cheap active camo had shorted out. Now I could get a good look at the face and other identifiers.
I could feel my sweat as I started to cool off.
Rain Bailey Biyu, age 34, sex F3. Resident status nickel. Previous offenses…
< HQ really dropped the ball on this one. It’s the fucking hooker. >
< You’re kidding… > Said Charlie.
I sent Charlie a live snapshot. I was definitely not kidding.
< Ah, geez, > said Charlie. < Why do the pleasureboats always cause so much trouble? >
Huan’s tone was measured. < Careful, Charles. I don’t want our investigation getting disrupted over accusations about slurs. >
False flagging is for everyone! Being an idiot who, apparently, cuts himself with a knife he just bought, then makes up a completely disprovable story and wasting police time is this guy’s special thing though.
Yeah, I figured it was a good idea to hedge that previous post. I support prosecution in this case.
“Double platinum,” said Huan, flicking through the victim’s information.
The dim orange light of the interface lit his virtual face, his expression grim. “Second one in two weeks,” he said. Details of man’s life flickered before him, dynamically summarized, as he gestured through them in his mind.
Robert Cang Bai, age 52. Senior Engineering Manager, Prescott & Associates. No known enemies. One prior conviction, for a parking ticket, twelve years ago. Double Platinum citizenship status, registered with the city of Outer Hong Kong. NeoHan, though that part was unremarkable.
“You seeing a pattern here?” Asked Charlie, standing next to him. Their dark suits and dark gloves, immaculately clean, were the uniform of the city’s homicide unit. “Two double platinums, two weeks, both high-ranking engineering managers, both in OHK.”
“Yeah,” replied Huan, “but that guy was killed by a hooker over a deal gone bad. This guy is clean as a whistle.”
I crouched over the body, examining the victim’s head. A single gunshot wound penetrated his skull, past all the barriers woven into his skull. Probably high-velocity ammo. Simple, but effective.
“It’s possible,” I said. “Go after the leader, and he may be replaced with the second in command. Wipe out the senior staff, and you can really damage the organization. I learned that from Trump.”
“Woah, decorated PacMet Officer Victor Fang was a MAGAtoon?” Teased Charlie. “I find that one hard to believe.”
It was quiet for a moment as Huan read through more information about the victim, before Huan added “why does a MAGAtoon immigrate to PacMet anyway?”
I was tempted to tell Charlie that I had been a lot worse than that during the Maelstrom. Instead I chose the sensible option.
“There is a plan,” I said. “It may not be a perfect plan, it may not be the best plan, but people follow the plan.” I gestured at the body. “Usually.”
Huan nodded knowingly, while Charlie looked on for a moment in disbelief.
“Besides,” I added, “the past is the past. That’s the promise of-” My eyes caught a distortion in the drone recording. A shimmering, translucent figure opened its hand, withdrawing a canister, and then a distorting brightness overtook the room.
isaacsapphire Are you referring to the weird Subaru blogs?
Not just Subaru, they come in a variety of car-themed flavors.
My running theory is that they gather followers and then change names and transform into some other kind of spam blog, since if they’re not being monetized, what’s the point? Little digital caterpillars, chomping away at pictures of lamborghinis.
I’ve never actually seen this transformation btw, this is just a hypothesis.
isaacsapphire Are you referring to the weird Subaru blogs?
Not just Subaru, they come in a variety of car-themed flavors.
My running theory is that they gather followers and then change names and transform into some other kind of spam blog, since if they’re not being monetized, what’s the point? Little digital caterpillars, chomping away at pictures of lamborghinis.
Transhumanism just sounds really gay but also inevitable so I guess we’re all going to be gay cyborgs one day
I believe it will involve a lot of literal, rather than metaphorical, homosexuality.
The first generation to gain the ability to change to a new sex easily and cheaply and completely passing (on a physical level) will also start experimenting with new sex configurations, probably. For the generation after that, it will be normalized, and manipulation of hormones at key points in development may used to guide sexual orientation towards bisexual or pansexual.
In lieu of discourse, someone ought to make a hotornot clone where it just shows you a random statue somewhere in the US and you vote whether you think it should be destroyed or not.
Expert level: artificial neural network turns pictures of random people on the Internet into statues and imbues them with artificially-generated histories and ideologies.
Pretty sure that I became a liberal for the Beer and Tits more than for the “Liberalism” per see (whatever that actually is) considering that I always opposed Second Wave’s anti porn side.
The proto-rape appoligism from trans activists and “anti-racist” activists is getting extremely old. The anti free speech position, the pro violence position, the pro imprisonment and forced reeducation of people who have moral disagreement with the SJW party line, even when those who disagree are LGBTQ, or non White, or women themselves is getting to be more than I can take.
It is literally, ontologically, impossible to please them with anything less than ceasing to exist if one is straight, cis, and/or White, and even if you are LGBTQ or a PoC, that’s only good enough if you toe the party line completely, erase all evidence that you ever haven’t, keep up to date on the latest terminology and erase all evidence that you ever used old terms in the past, and never piss off someone who is more “disadvantaged” than you or has more social clout.
I can’t keep doing this.
I think that people should be treated based on their actions and the content of their character, not the color of their skin. I think that people should be permitted to love as they will, to form consensual relationship with adults as they will, and that minors should receive accurate information about sex and human reproduction and access to birth control if they so desire and not legally punished for consensual relationships with others of their age.
I think that gender and gender roles have changed, gender reassignment technology has advanced astronomically in the last half century, and our culture is struggling to absorb these changes. I don’t have all the answers for how to best accommodate all the permutations and changes. I do know that, at minimum, people should be permitted to do what they like with their own bodies and make whatever modifications they feel inclined to make, and as long as nobody is misrepresenting the body modifications that they’re selling, it’s not really any business of strangers what body mods other people choose to have.
I’m not sure exactly how all this should best be accommodated or not by schools, medical insurance, or employers though, or to what, if any, degree the government should enforce particular accommodations or forbid them.
I think that people ought to call people what they want to be called, but I also think that occasional accidental misgendering is a regular part of life and not necessarily intentional or meant to be harmful.
I don’t think that there is anything wrong with interracial relationships. (And JFC, WTF is wrong with the world that I’m saying that in 2017 to differentiate myself from LIBERALS?)
I don’t think that anybody is morally obligated to try to change who they are sexually attracted to, although you might be morally obligated to not act on some attractions (eg. Minor attracted people). I’m also pretty sure that attempts to change what you are sexually attracted to don’t work.
I don’t think that anybody has a right to sex with anybody else, whether in general or specific. Marital rape is rape, and you don’t have a right to have sex with x category of people either.
I don’t think that speech that isn’t outright direct “you kill that guy” type incitement has any business being called violence, and DEFINITELY should not be met with violence, but rather more speech.
I think that silencing those you strongly disagree with is a bad strategic move, not merely morally doubtful. If you are so right and they are so wrong, there is nothing to be gained by not publicly debating them.
I believe in freedom of religion, and freedom to not be religious, and freedom to say that other people’s religions are stupid and bad.
And I have to go get lunch now, so that’s where I’ll end for now.
I think most actual liberals are probably closer to you than the people you’re complaining about. I don’t know what your life is like so maybe I’m wrong, but it sounds to me like you’re reacting to social bubble and “the most obnoxious yeller gets heard” effects that create a very distorted picture of what the liberal Overton Window actually looks like.
Knock on the door of your average Democrat voter and my bet is you’ll find a person who has never heard of the Cotton Ceiling, has a basically liberal perspective on anti-racism and feminism and LGBT rights, thinks Hillary Clinton is kind of cool, thinks the rich have too much but doesn’t like communists and doesn’t want revolution, etc.. Heck, go to your average Tumblr leftist and my guess is you’ll find somebody with roughly the opinions you just posted. Opinions like “interracial marriage is actually problematic” get reblogged disproportionately because they’re unusual and therefore interesting.
I mean, Hillary Clinton won the 2016 primary and Bernie Sanders was the maverick outsider who fired the imaginations of the young and radical. Do either of them look like the kind of candidate a hard-core “SJW” type would get excited about to you?
I think this is why hard-core “SJW” types are so frustrated and angry: they know that most people are extremely problematic and unenlightened by their standards and this includes most of their ostensible allies.
This use of the word “Liberal” probably has something to do with the American usage not differentiating “Liberal” and “Leftist.”
I mean, it’s honestly kind of ridiculous to suggest that the proper answer to “too many Chinese buyers are holding empty apartments in our country as a store of value” is “remove the state’s monopoly on the enforcement of property laws” instead of the far less difficult and less likely to break every thing “change the laws so that so many housing units can be built that holding these empty apartment buildings is no longer economically sensible.”
The number of empty housing units acting as a real asset store of value for Chinese money fleeing capital restrictions is also probably quite small relative to the market size, much like those expensive apartments in London that people were complaining should be socialized, even though in practice it wouldn’t make much difference in the price.
the issue with loosening zoning regulations to encourage property development is that many people treat property as a safe haven asset and don’t care about actually living in it or even renting it out.
Build fast enough that they can’t make 5% real returns by leaving it empty though, and see what happens.
Without monopolized property rights enforcement by city planners preventing the full utilization of public land to organize communities in ways that are actually organic, emergent, and practical; these issues considered to be flaws of capitalism would be largely irrelevant.
Property rights are a social institution. They exist because a group of people/community mutually recognize and enforce it for each other’s benefit. If you have the building of some absentee speculator just sitting there for years unused while people struggle under a highly regulated housing market, that’s immoral. Many libertarians may turn a blind eye to that, but it should be criticized and opposed. And it certainly shouldn’t be considered the result of a free market.
Neighbors in historically decentralized communities have always taken common sense measures to ensure that mindless speculation and hoarding of land wouldn’t waste their local resources and artificially drive up rent and home ownership.
This exists because of monopolized property rights enforcement which, no surprise, exists largely to benefit crony big business at the expense of everyone else.
/in my estimation, this is the furthest left I’ve seen jaehaerys1 go on a libertarian topic/
Although I have to wonder to what extent local and decentralized measures are necessary.
Japan has famously good land use policy, and to my knowledge, no problem with speculators acting as absentee landlords. But Japan even more famously has a falling population.
So I have to wonder at what point these local measures to increase land utilization would have to kick in even if you started reducing land use restrictions.
Part of the problem in this specific case is caused by economic extortion of the Chinese people by the state, and their attempts to evade this.
As long as something fucked up is happening in one part of the world, other parts of the world are going to end up compensating for it in one way or another.
Abandoned homes are only a good investment if there’s a cheap way to prevent squatters from moving in and taking over, otherwise you lose all your money paying your guards.
In this specific instance, that would be “the police will do it for me for free.”
In the grand tradition of crony capitalism, they are wasting a public resource (police time) propping up their private capital.
These are mostly apartments, so it only takes a small number of people occupying the building and the possible presence of a caretaker to make squatters exceedingly unlikely.
What’s the caretaker going to do if he finds squatters?
Because I believe he’ll first threaten to call, and then escalate to calling, the police.
Actually if we take David Friedman’s rule on criminals having to compensate proportionally to the harm they cause (such as in the example of breaking and entering a cabin in the woods to recharge your cell phone to call 911), it would force equilibrium prices really damn quickly.
Someone squatting in someone else’s apartment is undoubtedly a violation of property rights, but the actual compensation for squatting an empty building might be really (surprisingly, so some) low.
If the squatters evacuate promptly once a paying tenant is found it’s definitely not the price of rent, because the building was not generating any revenue and thus the opportunity cost was zero. If they don’t cause any damage to the apartment the depreciation costs are negligible. It seems like it would mostly come down to utility bills, changing the locks twice (once to replace the original picked lock with one controlled by the tenants, once to replace that one with the landlord’s lock others don’t have keys to), rent for however long it takes for the squatters to move out once they’re informed that someone is actually going to live there (which could be just a few days), and whatever wear and tear has occurred.
Thus, if this were ancapistan, well-behaved squatters would be able to obtain housing for really cheap. This would quickly incentivize marginal apartment owners to find someone who pays actual rent, pushing prices down towards 100-friction% occupancy.
I think you guys are overestimating how much the market is actually in equilibrium, the difference of the average cost of providing security in today’s society to occupied and unoccupied apartment buildings, and the marginal cost of finding a clean squatter and ensuring that they are actually like that vs Airbnb which you know are kind of banned everywhere in the developing world.
Yeah, I agree with NN here.
Like, if you get a bad squatter that messes everything up, just how are you going to extract the value from them to fix things? If they had all sorts of money laying around they would not be squatters. If they could easily generate that money when ordered to do so they would probably not be squatters. If you have to throw them into a work camp to get that money, that’s really sketchy tbh and smells of slavery, and also it would probably depend on state subsidy.
“If only we didn’t have a monopoly on the enforcement of property rights” is a blatant overreaction to a situation that would be easily sorted out by just changing the zoning rules, and in London at least, Chinese value-holding housing stock is only a miniscule fraction of total housing stock.
Tsundere despotic technocrat:
B..b..baka, it's not like I actually care about my fellow citizens. I just want them to be healthy and productive members of society so I can maximize the expected risk-adjusted total real government spending over the next 50 years, including any spillover effects.
Asserting that the government of the Articles of Confederation springs from the revolution while the Constitutional government does not is sophistry, because the same body of politicians were involved in both documents. As a single example, Washington was a delegate to the 2nd Continental Congress, led the army under the government of the Articles, was president of the Constitutional convention, and 1st US president under the Constitution.
I do worry that the folks who believe the google guy had a real concern about the business consequences of google’s affirmative action policy are going to go broke someday trying to buy the Brooklyn bridge
mitigatedchaos: Eh, I do suspect it’s a drag on the company, but I don’t think it’s anywhere near enough to kill it.
What I want to know is, what is the business case for google donating 4 million to refugee-related organizations? This clearly has no benefit for google and I am very concerned that they would waste their money like this.
Right, right, PR blah blah. Manifestbro was also writing for an intended audience, blah blah.
But of course, the people saying it has business consequences aren’t actually that naive.
If you work for Google, it’s relevant. And if you have shares in Google, it’s relevant.
The consequences, though, aren’t limited to just Google. If Manifestbro is correct, it’s potentially a drag on the whole sector, depending on just what it is you want out of that sector.
What you call "time travel ethics" is more like "acausal ethics", people intuitively grasp the acausal negotiations that underlie our ethical systems.
In this case, I disagree. This represents a potential recommitment to bad policy on the grounds that you or your ancestors (who are not you) did it before. I’d say it’s more similar to a sunk cost fallacy than an acausal negotiation.
That’s why I gave an example of a 16 year old girl having a kid. This is, clearly and obviously, a bad policy.
And if you’re reading this, you probably either agree abortion should be legal (in which case you disagree with the logic of the argument), xor you probably agree that mass migration isn’t such a great idea (in which case you disagree with the logic of the argument).
Suppose there is a girl who was born when her mother was sixteen. And her mother was born when her grandmother was sixteen. And suppose this burden of caring for a child at the age of 16 has contributed to an intergenerational cycle of poverty that has harmed her family and her education.
A boy of sixteen comes to her and says (roughly translated),
“Hey girl, your mother recklessly had a kid at age 16, and her mom recklessly had a kid at age 16, so you should get with me and recklessly have a kid at age 16! After all, if they didn’t do the same thing, you wouldn’t exist!”
Is this a good idea? I mean, after all, if they didn’t do it, she wouldn’t exist.
No, it is not a good idea. In fact, this argument does not make sense…
unless, implicit in the argument, you have access to a time machine and can change the past.
However, if one did have a time machine, that opens up an entirely different bucket of ethics which this argument completely fails to address.
This applies to abortion
regardless of whether other arguments are also valid
- “but if your mother aborted you…” implies time travel.
This applies to immigration, regardless of whether other arguments are also valid - “but if immigration laws were different…” implies time travel.
those who would celebrate strong women must celebrate weak men.
that’s a straw man
He means it as a good thing. I think?
Oh…maybe?
to celebrate women challenging feminine norms and adopting roles traditionally coded as masculine while scorning men who challenge masculine norms and take on traditionally feminine roles is simply to reinforce the idea that masculinity as is superior to femininity, not a progressive stance but highly reactionary.
cultural engineering that attempts to use traditional masculinity to subvert itself comes across as deceptive pandering (”are you MAN ENOUGH to accept your girlfriend earning more than you do??”) and builds resentment.
much like anxious femininity trying to excel at sport but still look pretty doing it, pictures of bearded lumberjacks wearing pink or bikies braiding girls hair only emphasise that of course men can be feminine: but only if they make sure to signal masculinity so hard that no one could possibly get the wrong idea.
saying “girls, don’t waste your time on a man who doesn’t have his life in order / has a decent job / has a car that works / owns a neat apartment” is an ostensibly feminist statement (”you’re worth it!”) that is just recapitulating gender norms that are centuries old: the woman chooses a man who will provide for the family.
Hollywood loves to match young actresses with old men and we love to decry that practice. support older women! yes. but are we willing to watch stories about young men, weak men, immature men, fragile men, failing men?
society hates nothing more than a weak man, and celebrating strong women only doubles down on that. those who would celebrate strong women must celebrate weak men.
You know, it’s not like science has fucking stopped entirely. So why the hell do none of these sci-fi shows seems to have any vision? It’s like ideas for sci-fi stopped being created in the 80s and they can’t use anything that wasn’t written about before 1990.
In some cases I think it’s just “near-future shows are cheap”, but with Spaceship Shows, I think there’s actually a retro-futurism thing going on. Spaceship Shows are so rare now that they’re wedded to a particular era and symbology in the popular consciousness, so there’s an element of pastiche.
Star Trek always had the particular problem that it wanted to be seen as serious scientific space thinking, but also didn’t want to threaten the Motherhood Statement in any way, which leads to this weird situation where it has to scrupulously avoid all the implications of its own tech. Obviously that just gets worse the more of it there is!
You don’t have to dive deep into sci-fi vision to be good, necessarily. Battlestar doesn’t and (IMO) it was great. But we never feel as though their technology is used radically out of sync with its implications, precisely because all their tech is fairly nerfed and there are in-story reasons about the issues with artificial intelligence.
Fk man, are you saying you aren’t going to greenlight my series about a retired white nationalist becoming a Pseudo-Han Chinese cyborg through genetic and surgical modification and working as a detective for a series of corporate-run faux ethnonationalist city-states on the Asia-Pacific rim?
You know, it’s not like science has fucking stopped entirely. So why the hell do none of these sci-fi shows seems to have any vision? It’s like ideas for sci-fi stopped being created in the 80s and they can’t use anything that wasn’t written about before 1990.
Because Eclipse Phase is too unrelatable to general audiences.
We even got a live action Ghost in the Shell movie, and it really missed tons of opportunities in trying to dumb itself down for general audiences. Perhaps the worst part of it is that Standalone Complex was really quite prescient about the power of memeforce!
Though really, I also think that many Hollywood writers are mostly not of the sci-fi visionary caliber to go from “what if some dude became part robot?” to “what if every dude became part robot?”
The latter includes all sorts of cascading changes throughout society, seen in shows like Standalone Complex, with ordinary people becoming vulnerable to cyberbrain crime and reserving organs to be grown in pigs. Psycho-Pass is really the spiritual successor here in that it will probably seem really prescient about the use of big data to analyze people for criminality in about 10-20 years, the way Standalone Complex seems prescient about crimes-as-memes.
But even then, those are what, two shows in a foreign country, where most of the shows are either not of that type, or not of that caliber.
How would American audiences have responded if Standalone Complex were a live-action TV show?
You know, it’s not like science has fucking stopped entirely. So why the hell do none of these sci-fi shows seems to have any vision? It’s like ideas for sci-fi stopped being created in the 80s and they can’t use anything that wasn’t written about before 1990.
Because Eclipse Phase is too unrelatable to general audiences.
We even got a live action Ghost in the Shell movie, and it really missed tons of opportunities in trying to dumb itself down for general audiences. Perhaps the worst part of it is that Standalone Complex was really quite prescient about the power of memeforce!
How the hell has Donald Trump managed to convince people that he's not a billionaire elite. He must be one of the best examples of detached wealth there is. He has a golden tower with his name on!
Standard answer is that don’t perceive it so much as rich v poor as educated coastal vs uneducated inland. He sells himself as an uneducated inlander, so that’s what think of him as.
Ah yes I’m sure your working class ideological forefathers would totally agree with all the shit you currently shill for. Like why the fuck can’t people admit that shit mutates and changes and that only the names and the most bare bones of beliefs tie current movements to those they claim to continue the legacy of.
You see Octopi, it turns out Leftists still want to tie themselves to history, to weave themselves into a tapestry of narrative connecting the past to the future.
The past still grants political legitimacy, even to those who would overthrow it.
will the japanese government push Catholicism on the populace to try and increase birth rates?
Contrary to conspiracy theories circulating in some parts of this website, I am not secretly an official within the Japanese government, nor the child of any such official, nor a contractor hired on their behalf, my darling Anon. (I consider myself an American. This nation’s fate is my fate.)
So let’s go farm Wikipedia:
In 1873, following the Meiji Restoration, the ban was rescinded, freedom of religion was promulgated, and Protestant missionaries (プロテスタント Purotesutanto or 新教 Shinkyō, “renewed teaching”) began to proselytise in Japan, intensifying their activities after World War II, yet they were never as successful as in Korea.
Today, there are 1 to 3 million Christians in Japan, most of them living in the western part of the country, where the missionaries’ activities were greatest during the 16th century. Nagasaki Prefecture has the highest percentage of Christians: about 5.1% in 1996.[39] As of 2007 there are 32,036 Christian priests and pastors in Japan.[26] Throughout the latest century, some Western customs originally related to Christianity (including Western style weddings, Valentine’s Day and Christmas) have become popular among many Japanese.
About 2.3% of Japan identifies as Christian.
A number of Asian-Americans within America are Christian, but that does not necessarily apply to the ancestral countries.
Korea, on the other hand, is far more Christian for some reason.
According to the national census conducted in 2015, 19.7% of the population belongs to Protestantism, 15.5% to Buddhism (Korean Buddhism), and 7.9% to the Roman Catholic Church; in total Christianity is the religion of 27.6% of the Korean population.
I can’t pretend to see inside the minds of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, but apparently, while it is showing signs of strain, the LDP is in a coalition with another party closely aligned with a Buddhist religious movement…
So I’m going to guess that no, they won’t push Catholicism to try to increase birthrates, that it isn’t really part of the vision of Japanese national identity the ruling classes in Japan have.
But someone currently living in Japan would be better to ask.
With that said, given the outcomes for Protestant countries vs Catholic countries, that certainly isn’t a tradeoff I’d make until after I’d exhausted other options, like getting Japanese people to spend less time at work so they can actually meet members of the opposite sex and form families.
The Democratic establishment reminds me of like, that 19th century history thing where a state realizes it’s in bad need for modernizing reform and there’s a clique of nobles that are like “actually we must never abandon the old ways that serve our immediate self-interests even if doing so is self-destructive in a wider scale”
I don’t like this analysis as it makes the DNC into samurai
Your blog is fascinating (and fun), and your posts about possible futures are making me consider aspects of politics I'd never thought of before. Thanks for writing.
You’ll regret this in time, Kindness Anon. Mark my words.
