Oceans Yet to Burn

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

[collapsedsquid]

The recent UK polls are killing me, because despite the surge in labor, the fact that UKIPers are now voting Tory and their districts are first-past-the-post means that the Tories are likely going to win.  (Labor, the libdems and the SNP together get >50% of the vote in some polls.)

[collapsedsquid]

raginrayguns:  i was telilng some europeans that having > 3 parties was dumb but they werent buying it

It’s a good idea if you have an electoral system set up to support it properly.  If we had a proper system we could have a Trump party separate from the republicans and a Bernie party separate from the dems.  Then maybe people would be a little less insane because they’d have parties that represent them.

[mitigatedchaos]

I would actually like for both the Bernie and Trump parties to exist, since they might actually do something about the trade balance and conditions for American workers, tbh.  I wonder if they might have less regulatory capture, too, but I’d have to check that against foreign countries where multiple parties are the norm.

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

[afloweroutofstone]

The right praising Japanese failures is a recurring theme. They often laud Japan’s restrictive immigration policy despite the fact that it is a huge contributor to Japan’s economic problems at the moment. Of course, they would respond that the protection of national culture/race comes first, but that philosophy is a pretty good way to ensure your culture will very literally die

[mitigatedchaos]

The thing is, from what I’ve seen, the dogmatic economists and the liberals and all the lot yelling at them have overstated their case on just how big this problem is for their economy, and they’re going very hard on automation which is about to push many people out of work in the West over the next few decades, and while we in the West are told we need to “get used to” Islamic terrorist attacks, and will probably soon be told we need to ignore FGM, etc, in the name of cultural diversity… they don’t have to deal with that problem essentially at all. (And that isn’t the only factor - there are social Rules Japanese corporations follow that would not be feasible under mass migration, for instance.)

Why should we have to get used to terrorist attacks? What on Earth is so bloody valuable about Islam that we can’t get a similar advantage from taking Hindus, Buddhists, etc instead?

[afloweroutofstone]

“while we in the West are told we need to ‘get used to’ Islamic terrorist attacks”

No, we need to “get used to” terrorist attacks generally, which will be an inevitable consequence of asymmetric military conditions and technological development and can’t be fully prevented by any reasonable means

“will probably soon be told we need to ignore FGM, etc, in the name of cultural diversity…”

No, you won’t, but you’ll find a few anecdotes of people saying that and then use them to justify the belief that it’s a popular social narrative

“What on Earth is so bloody valuable about Islam that we can’t get a similar advantage from taking Hindus, Buddhists, etc instead?”

A few things here worthy of note: terrorism is an asymmetric military tactic utilized by radical groups regardless of ideology and belief and there are groups of both Hindus and Buddhists who are currently using terrorist tactics; immigration is not a primary contributor to terrorism and those who claim otherwise have an extremely weak case that they’ve made seem legitimate by repeating it over and over; and if you genuinely think that terrorism is an intrinsically Islamic phenomenon you have a tenuous grasp of both the nature of terrorism and global demography

[mitigatedchaos]

No, we need to “get used to” terrorist attacks generally, which will be an inevitable consequence of asymmetric military conditions and technological development and can’t be fully prevented by any reasonable means

Look man, you might come back and say that “well the IRA used terrorist attacks”, and yeah they did, and they killed people, but they also would give warning allowing evacuations before blowing up something big and expensive and not end up killing anyone.  Why?

Because they were national separatists.  They had a far more specific and measurable goal, which they were arguably more successful at.  In other words they had a different ideology, and different ideologies produce different behavior, which is the entire reason anyone cares what ideology someone follows to begin with.  And religions are very much like ideologies.

Much like FGM is cultural, and cousin marriage is cultural, and different cultures produce different behaviors besides what food you eat and what rug you put in your house.

So I’m going to ask a test question here to see how serious you really are: Are you willing to ban cousin marriage, or would you argue that doing so is a form of unfair ethnic discrimination?

No, we need to “get used to” terrorist attacks generally, which will be an inevitable consequence of asymmetric military conditions and technological development and can’t be fully prevented by any reasonable means

So do we need to get used to #PrayForEngland being renewed each year, or sometimes more than once a year?  Or does the difference in the rate of terrorism between different groups mean that we might only need #PrayForEngland about once per decade?

Have you ever noticed that when we #PrayForJapan, it’s usually because of some enormous natural disaster that could not have been prevented, and not because of some massive terrorist attack?  They have had terrorist attacks, but the frequency is much lower, and as such they’re not having to “get used to” it.

No, you won’t, but you’ll find a few anecdotes of people saying that and then use them to justify the belief that it’s a popular social narrative

I can see a push for the legalization of polygamy on the horizon, I’m confident it will start to come in about ten years, which we were promised would not happen.  ‘Soon’ was probably overblowing it, the FGM thing will come in 20 if conditions don’t change, as demographic changes transform it into an issue that can be captured for votes by the larger political parties.  After all, we already allow male ‘circumcision’, so what’s one more step?  The law won’t stop such a political transformation because you get the laws that the culture supports, which is why Chechnya has Chechen laws and we don’t.

A few things here worthy of note: terrorism is an asymmetric military tactic utilized by radical groups regardless of ideology and belief and there are groups of both Hindus and Buddhists who are currently using terrorist tactics; immigration is not a primary contributor to terrorism and those who claim otherwise have an extremely weak case that they’ve made seem legitimate by repeating it over and over; and if you genuinely think that terrorism is an intrinsically Islamic phenomenon you have a tenuous grasp of both the nature of terrorism and global demography

It weren’t Hindus what blew up the fucking towers mate.  

I’m going to guess that the Hindu terrorism is a result of some kind of spiraling ethnic tension (probably with Islam!) or national separatism, and that their tactics suit this.  I’d also bet money that the rate of terrorist deaths caused per Hindu is lower by at least a factor of 2.

Now you might well point to US intervention in the Middle East, but you know what “Get The Fuck Out of the Middle East” would look like as a terrorist campaign intended to be actually successful?  It would look more like the IRA, and less like this bullshit we’re getting now.

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

Dear Leftists: Stop virtue signaling to make you look good on social media, no amount of virtue signaling is going to bring back the dead or stop the terrorist attacks. You Leftists are morally bankrupt so your virtue signaling is pretentious.

[regressive-libtards-are-cancer]

If you want to practice Islam in the inconsequential, semi-secular sense. Fine. But the only way to solve this problem is to recognize that POLITICAL Islam and anyone who follows its prescription is inherently incompatible with western values.

That means:

• Want sharia courts? You’re not welcome. 
  
• Think it’s okay to marry a 6 year old? You’re not welcome. 
  
• Think it’s okay to strike your wife for ANY reason? You’re not welcome. 
  
• Believe in ANY kind of punishment for apostasy? You’re not welcome. 
  
• Believe in ANY kind of punishment for “blasphemy”? You’re not welcome. 
  

Period. These are the kinds of values that progressives would defend against any radical Christians who believe any of the above. And rightfully so. So why can’t we all agree on these universally? Anyone who holds any of those beliefs is by definition, incompatible with the western world.

People are giving President Trump crap for calling them “losers”. Listen, the guy isn’t eloquent, but he’s right. These terrorists fear shame more than death. It’s why Abu Graib was such an outrage when American, female soldiers stripped them naked and laughed at them while dogs barked. To them, that is a far greater punishment than death or even torture. If any American received said treatment at the hands of ISIS, we’d thank the lord above that we weren’t being burnt alive in cages.

We don’t merely punish terrorists through death. We punish them through shame. At least ONE leader is willing to give it the old college try. So today, I stand with the President of the United States, instead of trying to mince words on social media and virtue-signal about how much “unity” we need.

the evil that is political Islam. To unite with it’s practitioners would be to unite with evil. Anyone who sees that as a virtue is simply enabling evil and by proxy, is evil themselves.

[routinebitten]

can you legitimately imagine waking up and seeing the bombing of innocent people just to see a concert and spouting some pure vitriol like this? like how must it feel to know that you are trying to push your islamaphobic views in the wake of a tragedy like this? like maybe i’m too much of a “morally bankrupt” leftist to get it but ok

[mitigatedchaos]

“HOW DARE YOU implicate the Communist Party in this famine which was an entirely predictable consequence of Communist policy about which we were warned repeatedly!? Don’t you care about the victims at all?!”

Look man,

I know someone with a URL like libtards-are-cancer is not gonna be the most charitable guy towards liberalism, but these terrorist attacks are ideological in nature, and they were completely preventable. Japan does not have Islamic terrorist attacks, and it is not because they work so hard to love and tolerate Muslims. Unfortunately that ship has sailed, but something different needs to be done, and it starts with acknowledging that there is no law of the universe that religions have to be equally dangerous.

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

Single-Payer Health Care Thought Experiment

[simonpenner]

Today I saw this

http://khn.org/news/tab-for-single-payer-proposal-in-california-could-run-400-billion/

I’m working on a higher quality blog post for the main site on this, but for right now I’d like to point out a novel idea. Consider this quote from the article

A single-payer system likely “would be more efficient in delivering health care,” said Larry Levitt, a senior vice president at the Kaiser Family Foundation. (California Healthline is produced by Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent program of the Kaiser Family Foundation.)

But the proposal expands coverage to all and eliminates premiums, copayments and deductibles for enrollees, and that would cost more money, Levitt said. “You can bet that opponents will highlight the 15 percent tax, even though there are also big premium savings for employers and individuals,” he added.

We always hear this. “Single payer health care will save so much money because of all the efficiencies that you can get from central management”

Is this true? Well it just so happens we have a real-world example: HMOs. For example, Kaiser Permanente, the entity referenced in the above quote.

(an aside for non-US readers: in the US, health care is generally privately provisioned, and fee-for-service. That is, if you want a doctor to do a thing, you give them money, and they do the thing. Most people have some kind of health insurance, and this tends to take one of two forms: HMO or PPO.

PPOs are standard, and flexible. In a PPO, the insurance company develops a “network of providers”, a set of doctors who have agreed to work with the insurance company. You are strongly encouraged to go see one of these doctors. If you choose to see a different doctor, “out of network”, your insurance will cover a smaller fraction of the cost. This remains fee-for-service, it’s just that insurance pays.

HMOs, on the other hand, take a very centralized approach. They are one large company responsible for catering to your health needs. In an HMO, you can only go to doctors at facilities run by the HMO. If you need a specialist, you must get a referral to a specialist who works for the HMO. Since everything is integrated, it’s easier for multiple doctors to coordinate and work together. However, your choice of doctor is severely limited. With a PPO, if you don’t like your doctor you can get a new one. Under HMOs, your choices are limited)

The description of HMOs sound a lot like single-payer health care writ small. You give lots of money upfront to an organization like Kaiser (you pay lots of money in taxes to the government to support health care), and in return you go to Kaiser-affiliated facilities (government-funded hospitals) where all of your care is provided to you by one entity. The centralization facilitates efficiencies as bureaucracies are cut, and your needs are taken care of as best they can.

So, approaching the problem from a different point of view: Single-payer government-provided health care is more-or-less the same as if everybody signed up for Kaiser. 

This gave me a deliciously trollish idea, an argument to bring out whenever relevant. Let’s say you’re arguing with some commies who insist that single-payer is the best/only solution. Pose to them this hypothetical:

“Would you be in support of a law that gave $HEALTH_INSURANCE_COMPANY a legally-mandated monopoly in health care, at the cost of forcing them to become a non-profit organization?”

Imagine one way to implement single-payer government-provided universal health care:

1) Give Kaiser a legal monopoly on health insurance

2) Legally require Kaiser to be a non-profit.¹

I suspect that most of your commie friends would be incredibly opposed to this idea, and yet it is fundamentally the same thing as a state-run single-payer health, with two caveats

a) You aren’t legally required to opt-in. You can still pay expenses out-of-pocket instead. 

b) Instead of the health system being run by whoever is friendliest with our elected representatives, it’s run by people with a proven track record of success in that field. 

I suspect this argument generalizes, too. You could apply it to any realm of government service provision that you can think of. It might help a handful of the smarter, more intellectually ethical folks see things from a different perspective.

---

1. Kaiser IS ALREADY A NON-PROFIT. So much for “greedy health insurance corporations ruining everything in their greedy corrupt quest for more profit”

[collapsedsquid]

The way single payer works is that it negotiates prices with providers which it can do because it’s the only buyer.  It’s the same way Singapore does it, it’s just there they set legally prices but don’t pay them. Maybe you should look at how this shit works instead of just imagining how it works.

[mitigatedchaos]

I still laughed. TBH I don’t understand why the Repubs don’t spring for healthcare vouchers. Well, okay, I understand why but …

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

[quoms]

the state’s monopoly on legitimate violence against its own citizens is a ‘common good’ with respect to the capitalist class, in the same way that roads and schools are common goods with respect to the rest of society… as neoliberalism slowly strips away the functions and capacities of the state in order to sell them for scrap, what remains untouched by the ravages of privatisation is nothing else but the coercive monopoly. when better than the present to serve as a police officer?

[argumate]

I suspect that the past was a better time to serve as a police officer, and it’s unlikely to get better in the future.

[mitigatedchaos]

It has already begun with Libertarian/Capitalist plans to “make the perpetrators of crime responsible for paying its costs” as city budgets have declined, resulting in police forces bringing back debtors’ prisons and getting a significant part of their revenue from fines, which is partly responsible for terrible racialized police relations in many US communities (even though many US police forces are multiracial).

Because, y'know, having a justice system that actually works isn’t a public good, right? People are ‘totes atomic yo.

The Left could maybe have put a stop to this… but the problem is that since they have embraced Globalism, you can’t have a sturdy social safety net and mass immigration, because it incentivizes people to migrate to go on your welfare system. It also gives you a disadvantage in the global marketplace over countries that are willing to be crueler for money. The natural tendency of Globalism is towards atomized global capitalism in which the wages of all across the world will be equalized and social protections will not exist.

You could do some things to fix this - in one nation, where the benefit of the people of the nation was considered valuable rather than oppressive.

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

Anonymous asked:

"why nearly half the nation thought Donald Trump’s vision of America was a compelling one" What's so surprising about a positive vision of creating jobs by eliminating competition from Mexican immigrants and Chinese workers appealing to non-coastal-elite white-working-class men?

wirehead-wannabe answered:

Honestly, I mostly agree with you that this is the explanation. There’s kind of a pattern where liberal thinkpiece writers will either try to explain the Trump phenomenon in terms of one or a few components of these things, or else think of it as a result of a bunch of independent factors that add up to produce it. In reality, Trump voters seem to believe in the entire narrative, and it seems like a mistake to address it as though it’s merely the sum of its parts. “Illegal immigrants come to America, take our jobs, dilute our culture, bring crime and drugs, spur social atomization, and collude with the left to keep us down, all while shipping what few jobs are left overseas and imposing stupid and/or malicious regulations on us to benefit the bureaucrats over the little guy” is an entire worldview that, despite how silly it might seem to us liberals (except for maybe the part about cronyism), a large fraction of the country Actually Believes. Economics lesson about the Iowa Car Crop don’t seem to be helping much, and I’m not sure how much we can get Trump voters to trust us when we tell them that the narrative is faulty when there’s a genuine value difference in how much we care about preserving Red Tribe culture and helping the ingroup versus trying to help everyone by being globalist/universalist.

[mitigatedchaos]

The only way to convince them would be to change ideologies.  

When the plan is to prioritize foreigners over them, replace them with foreigners to obtain a permanent political majority, erase their culture, encourage social atomization, remove as many social rules as possibly feasible, bow to foreign cultures that are actually more oppressive in the name of “inclusiveness” and “diversity”, and abolish nations, then why on Earth would they go along with the plan?

The Left doesn’t want them to have a place that is theirs anymore.

I don’t know what to say.

There was another likely terrorist attack in the UK today.  At least 19 people died.  

Culture is real!  It isn’t just aesthetics!  Religion is ideology, much like Communism, and it can be as dangerous.  It isn’t just the shape of the building you pray in!  People actually believe in this stuff!

Polygamy practiced by normies is polygyny, and polygyny is bad and patriarchal.  Some cultures practice cousin marriage at much higher rates than what we consider normal, because their religion says it’s okay, and over multiple generations this has pretty serious effects that can alter the cost of healthcare.  Having a religious threat to kill people that leave the religion is cheating when it comes to competing in the metaphorical marketplace of ideas.

Culture is not individual!  Culture is not linear!  

These things are not accidents!

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

[oddbagel]

Centrism and normalcy are all ruses created by the establishment to make any sort of alternative seem like madness. Seriously think about what kind of world we must live in where politicians as moderate as Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn are written off by the establishment as extremists. On the other hand, growing economic inequality and the downright cruelty of the establishment os meant to be normal or a “harsh truth of reality” that can’t be changed whatsoever because anything else is an extremist aberration.

[evilpandagod]

People aren’t advocating for poverty. Jeremy Corbyn’s intentions may be pretty fucking great, but raising minimum wage by so much in one go will cause workers to becone redundant and will slow the growth of businesses.

[oddbagel]

Listen dude, if paying workers fairer wages somehow makes the economy worse overall, then that means there’s something seriously wrong with the current economic system and the solution isn’t more of the fucking same. I didn’t write this post saying that Jeremy Corbyn was some savior, I wrote it saying that he wasn’t an extremist and that there needs to be alternatives. To centrists, there are no alternatives, only the status quo, and I hate to break it to you, but for the vast majority of the people on the planet the status quo is fucking shit. That’s the reason why the Western world is in such an upheaval at the moment, because we have uncaring governments who want everything to continuously stay the same because they’re the primary beneficiaries of the current system. And if an alternative is never found, and everyone sits around listening to centrists, they’re going to end up being the only beneficiaries.

[mitigatedchaos]

Villainous National Technocratic Centrist here.

Direct-to-employee wage subsidies (with a minimum wage decrease, but a net total increase in compensation) would increase the purchasing power and economic security of the working class while not damaging businesses (much, because it will need a bit of taxes to fund), and having a variety of other positive side effects (including higher employment overall).  It could be implemented gradually and rolled back if it doesn’t work.

Unfortunately, this isn’t in the interests of Globalist Capitalists (who are pursuing a global unification of wages, including through open borders), Leftists (who may seek UBI or industrial nationalization instead), or bootstrapper Conservatives (who really believe the whole bootstraps thing for some reason).

I do agree Bernie isn’t that extreme though.

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

[sam-keeper]

Workers: Single Payer is-
Dems: Workers, shut up and get the fuck out. I’m gonna fuck your insurance provider now.

[mitigatedchaos]

Fair meme.

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

[rtrixie]

The tombstone of Western Civilization is going to say “At least we weren’t racist”

[kvltmvtherfvcker1349mvrdermvsic]

I will be pissing on the tombstone, 40oz in hand

[awootheory]

i’ll welcome the birth of a global civilization, where we can all live in peace, with open arms

[rtrixie]

Don’t tell me there are people who seriously believe that’s what’s going to happen once the lights go out in the west

[awootheory]

yeah, because western society is shit

[mitigatedchaos]

“The beatings and murders of homosexuals in Chechnya,” he said, “are nothing more than further evidence of the vile influence of Western Imperialism.  Yes, it is claimed that the West loves the homosexuals, so much that they have parades of openly gay men in the cities- but this is staged by their Capitalist Hollywood studios!  It is only in tolerant and culturally diverse countries such as Iraq, Iran, and Saudi Arabia that homosexuals can achieve true freedom from Western hegemony.”

“When the Revolution comes, we will finally put to rest the legacies of vile white men such as Ghengis Khan.”

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

Some sides I’m on haven’t fully materialized yet, but they will.  My blog description contains more than one metaphorical truth about which sides I’m on, that should be easy enough to guess at.

But on second thought, let’s do a reading of the blog description for anyone who thought it was just flavor text.  (Not you, Anon-kun.  I know you’re a very smart man of many talents, which is how you can send so many asks to so many people on this website.)

Type-19 Paramilitary Cyborg. - This is more aspirational than anything, but also I support the right of American citizens to obtain human augmentations under the 2nd amendment, subject to certain restrictions.

Wanted time criminal. - Likes to wax poetic about non-existent possible futures.  Future shocked by the 2016 election.

Class A-3 citizen of the North American Union. - Two-sided: 

1. In the future, the government may introduce multiple classes of citizenship in order to handle the fallout of immigration issues.  Also, if the formation of a North American Union happens, entering the Orange Timeline may have only somewhat delayed it.  Progressively larger international unions is the current way forward for both Liberal Capitalists and Leftists.

2. Actually, to bolster Nationalism I would deliberately create a tiered citizenship system if I were Technocratic Dictator of the United States of America Central Director of the North American Union, based on a series of tests and a period of National Service which would be used for survival training and martial education to make the nation even harder to invade and help communicate the idea that citizenship isn’t something free that you just give out.

Also, as you might guess, it indicates where I happen to live.

Opposed to the Chinese Hyper Mind-Union, - Using cybernetic technology to make a hivemind is Bad, okay?  I don’t care how equal it supposedly makes you.  This is one possible nightmare future for China, which is actually even more of a nightmare for the West than the National Technocratic Black Dragon timeline.

the Ultra-Caliphate, - Islamic Theocracy may be Culturally Diverse, but it’s a plague upon mankind which wishes to enslave us.  For now a wide unification across multiple polities isn’t feasible, but that may change as conditions change.  Now with cybernetic implants to enforce Islamic Law.

Google Defense Network, - Let’s not explicitly make corporations with massive surveillance networks and armies of autonomous killer robots the State, okay?

and the People’s Republic of Cascadia. - Originally the Free Peoples’ Republic of Cascadia - apostrophe positioning deliberate.  If we took campus Commies and campus SJ seriously and they created a state, it would be a ludicrously oppressive disaster constantly insisting that the outgroup can’t be oppressed, so therefore it’s impossible for us to oppress them.

National Separatist, enemy of the Earth Sphere Federation government and its unificationist allies. - If Open Borders becomes popular, the balance will shift towards a unifying global government, and that government will insist on controlling everything as far out as the Moon.  This is almost inevitable with open borders, and will come out of crisis management treaties and a need to control criminals as they cross national borders.  It isn’t an accident that power has been centralizing in the EU.

Its enemies may become known as National Separatists, and it will oppose them on the grounds that they are bigoted anti-[dominant economic mode] racist X-ophobic terrorists that are identical to Hitler.  To expand its power, the ESF will leverage whatever means it can get away with, particularly economic, to pressure hold-out countries into joining.

However, the median quality of government on Earth is not America or Western Europe, but probably more like Brazil both in competence and in corruption levels.  This isn’t an accident, institutions and culture both matter a lot, the causality for them doesn’t run purely from economic development to nice culture and good institutions.  The formation of a world government is actually really, really bad.  It must be strangled before it ever gets a chance to breath, here in the youth of our timeline, the first half of the 21st century.