Oceans Yet to Burn

writing-prompt-s

Anonymous asked:

prompt: Trump withdraws the U.S. from the Paris Climate Agreement convinced that it would have a positive impact on the economy. Little did he know that more and more non-US businesses demand green products and certifcates like Sedex. Write about how america becomes an autarky, isolated from the rest of the world.

writing-prompt-s answered:

mitigatedchaos

-the Chinese were the last to fall to the sword of the Ultracaliphate, just after Japan and Korea. The iron fist of the mighty Chinese state that had held steadfast against Caliphate fighters rusted from the inside with the spread of the Copper Flu. Only America, under the rule of the isolationist American Freedom Party, has not fallen-

Oh, sorry, was this supposed to be a “bitch about politicians I don’t like” prompt?

People bitching about “> greentext”,

honeys, the > sign has been used to denote quotations in flat text since before 4chan even existed. If you’re worried about its ideological contamination, and that the syntax might twist your soul into an Alt-Righter or something, you’re an idiot.

argumate

Careful, you will end up with a country where everyone proudly marches on National Day, burning flags held aloft in a unifying display of patriotism…
…and people who douse the burning flags with water are considered terrorists.

mitigatedchaos

Protesters proudly holding up the Unity Flag of the Earth Sphere Federation as flags of the former nations their ancestors belonged to burn beneath their feet in a display of tolerance and multicultural understanding. I grasp the bucket and-

Oh, um. Sorry, I got the timelines mixed up again.

Protesters proudly holding up the flag of the European Union as the flags of the former countries their ancestors fought and died for burn beneath their feet in a display of tolerance, the political power that is rightfully theirs flowing away from them into an unaccountable body that is neither a band of countries nor a true federal superstate, its shining currency draining the blood from their economies.

There. You should find that more relatable.

mitigated future chronofelony politics

I legit don’t understand the popularity of Choking as a kink thing.

nfsw?

argumate

Hypothesis: the glaring flaws in rationalist ideas that people jump on (a fascist shared house!) are only there to hide the more insidious flaws that are actually far more damaging in retrospect (you can’t build a reliable system if you have components that aren’t 100% reliable, redundancy and fail-over isn’t a thing, relationship drama can be eliminated by agreeing on rules in advance and if necessary inventing new words, object-level critique can be dismissed with meta-level rebuttals, meta-level critique can be dismissed with object-level rebuttals, etc.)

mitigatedchaos

It turned out that Rationalists were only interested in polyamory in order to obtain passive failover relationships configured as redundant arrays of inexpensive drama.

shtpost the rationalists

wirehead-wannabe

rainy-days-are-over

The thing that pisses me off most about this is I was the first to do it way way back but nobody likes it smh.

ranma-official

ironic how Tolkien despised Nazis and served during WW2 and then Nazis now randomly decided that orcs are a better metaphor for one of subhuman races

you piece of shit cretin

go eat a shotgun

rendakuenthusiast

Tolkien served during WWI, not WWII. Also he almost certainly would’ve politically supported drastically anti-Muslim and anti-foreigner political policies, what with him being a Medievalist Catholic conservative who wrote a bunch of texts to try to promote a very specifically English mythology.

the-grey-tribe

I actually recall that the SJW position on Tolkien circa 2010 was that LOTR was racist and the Easterlings are Arabians. With the right justification, you can get people to say pro-orc stuff.

wirehead-wannabe

I mean, I don’t think LOTR is, like, morally harmful or that Tolkien was a bad person or whatever but it seems pretty obviously true that the characters and setting are racist?

mitigatedchaos

This so-called “Orc Biodiversity Movement” is nothing but a cover for extreme raci–

*coughing*

Sorry, don’t know what came over me there.

Yes, the races in LOTR are literally biologically distinct, not just in healthspan and shape, but in behavior, and thus it could be argued as being quite racist, and having set a precedent for fantastic racism for the Standard Fantasy Setting thereafter.

The right-wingers, I think, care less and less what the left-wingers think, and have decided to go whole hog on their shtposting since they’ll be denounced either way. Thus the above image, which is certainly not very fair at all.

Source: this-is-cthulhu-privilege racism cw politics

ranma-official

unknought

If you’re arguing about whether the U.S. should weaken protections of freedom of speech, I’m likely to find you a lot more persuasive if you examine other Western nations with weaker free speech protections (i.e. most of them) and the observable consequences of that, than if you expound on the most horrifying dystopia that you can imagine resulting from the opposing side.

femmenietzsche

Yeah. As someone who’s innately a free speech absolutist, it’s hard to admit that moderate limits on speech aren’t necessarily very onerous and can be maintained for decades (at least) without spiraling into anything much worse, but it’s pretty obviously true. Doesn’t mean the restrictions pass a cost-benefit test, but it’s pretty obviously true.

rendakuenthusiast

I do actually think that European and Canadians restrictions on speech are already onerous, and American 1st amendment jurisprudence is the one major thing that is genuinely politically superior about the US compared to those countries. I keep seeing stories about the cops being called on people for hate speech tweets in the UK that would be unambiguously constitutionally protected in the US, and thinking I’m glad my servers are here and not there.

If I lived in one of those counties I would consider it politically important to move local law more towards the US model, or barring that preventing effective enforcement of censorship law; since I live in the US, I consider it politically important to prevent the state of 1st amendment law from moving even a little bit in the direction of Europe and Canada (which I agree are not dystopias).

thefutureoneandall

It’s also worth recognizing that with the advent of the internet, European nations get a lot of benefit from American speech protections. There are lots of things put online by Europeans which would be taken down by lawsuit except that they’re hosted in the US.

Of course, European nations were hardly dystopias before that, but things like bringing legal action against critics of Erdogan really do frighten me.

ranma-official

and there are things hosted in Europe that would be taken down within seconds if they were hosted in America. really the internet strongly benefits from hopping around trying to be a neutral waters territory

mitigatedchaos

I hope people realize that having a single, unified, global government is a terrible idea before it gets locked in as inevitable.

It’s actually beneficial to have a diversity of legal regimes. That’s contra much modern Progressivism, though, which pretends to universality.

Source: unknought politics

mutant-aesthetic

politics

reasonandempathy

Source: taliasturm shtpost politics

ranma-official

afloweroutofstone

>“Social democracies like Norway only work because they’re ethnically homogeneous and swimming in oil money”

>Small island nation of Mauritius has highest standard of living in Africa

>No natural resources

>68% Indo-Mauritian, 27% Creole, 5% other

>(Religion also split between Hindu, Catholic, and Muslim)

>Leftist parties make up vast majority of parliament

>Free healthcare and education, including college

>Right-wing Heritage Foundation still lists their economy as 15th “freest” in the world

>Ranked more democratic than the United States by the Economist Intelligence Unit

>mfw

mitigatedchaos

The family planning programs’ success was due to support from the government and eventually the traditionally pronatalist religious communities, which both recognized that controlling population growth was necessary because of Mauritius’ small size and limited resources.

Tight feedback loop, effects of policies more immediately obvious because there is no where to go, and percent control of the polity per person is higher.

Downturns in the sugar and textile industries in the mid-2000s and a lack of highly qualified domestic workers for Mauritius’ growing services sector led to the emigration of low-skilled workers and a reliance on skilled foreign labor.

Hmn, I wonder what impact that might have.

Since 2007, Mauritius has pursued a circular migration program to enable citizens to acquire new skills and savings abroad and then return home to start businesses and to invest in the country’s development.

This is Nationalist. An Internationalist program would involve them leaving the island permanently.

Net migration rate: 0 migrant(s)/1,000 population (2016 est.)

Huh. Doesn’t sound like mass migration to me.

Of course, many of the objections to the United States becoming Singapore are based on things like its size, relative concentration of population, and so on. …criticisms which could also apply to Mauritius.

So, OP, do you agree that the United States could become Singapore?

It seems what we have here is not an argument for Open Borders Neoliberal World™, but rather, an argument for small countries which have tight political feedback loops between policy and its effects, and high percentage of political control per person. (Something I have been considering myself.) This means people have to live with the consequences of their political decisions and have the ability to do something about it.

ETA: The real question here is, can we find one of these that’s big? Japan (127M) and Korea (50M) both fare reasonably well despite being over ten times the size of Norway (5M) and for Japan, about 100x the size of Mauritius (1.3M). …but they’re those evil ethnically homogenous type nations we’re all supposed to hate.

Source: afloweroutofstone politics

See, that’s what the app is perfect for.