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@Mall
If that could be done with a snap of a finger, sure.
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It's the aggressive side of my brain. 90-95% of the time it's because I'm angry. When I get angry, I have almost no sense of proportionality and will say and imagine some truly insane things. Whipping out the crudest items in my vocabulary is par for the course when I'm in that mindset.
But on rare occasion, some mild profanity will come through as part of my edgy sense of humor, which chiefly revolves around the scenario where a wimpy fat dude (i.e. Hank from Breaking Bad) is howling like a monkey with pleasure because he's getting railed in the butthole. I basically tell myself the same joke over and over and over again, because to me it just doesn't get old.
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@Savant
I think I'd dispute that every intermediate step to achieve self-defense is itself self-defense.
I mean, if a given step is unrelated to or unnecessary for self-defense, then sure. But if there's just one option, and it entails doing X Y and Z, then I would consider a right to do X Y and Z as an extension of the right to self-defense at least in the context of this scenario. This tangentially relates to the 2A debate; what proponents are claiming isn't so much an inalienable human right to discharge a metal slug through a rifled tube and into the air via a chemical propellant, but rather that the right to gun ownership is an extension of the right to self-defense.
The idea of stealing some random third person's car to offensively defend yourself sounds ridiculous, but that's mainly because we live in an environment where this scenario would never come up. For that matter, the idea of pursuing to defend one's self sounds ridiculous since one could readily take refuge in the arms of the law and let them handle it.
But the international system is quasi-anarchic. There are no cops and each country must defend itself, which often means finishing a fight. For Israel, that means dropping bombs wherever Hamas targets are. It doesn't entail dropping bombs elsewhere, of course, but I don't see a whole lot of evidence of Israel doing that.
In case #5 that you described, where the third party physically can't remove themselves, I think killing them definitely isn't self-defense, even if there are other routes to argue killing them is justified. The self-defense distinction is important because utilitarian justifications usually require a higher bar to be justified than self-defense. Self-defense is basically a justification in and of itself, but utilitarianism requires that the good of an action outweighs the bad, and a lot of civilian warfare likely doesn't meet that bar.
I would suggest that #5 only partway applies in reality, since many hundreds of thousands of Gazans have ignored Israeli orders to evacuate zones where the fighting is heaviest. That's not to say Israel hasn't dropped a single bomb outside these zones, but the level of risk to the average civilian is significantly less there.
But sure, to some degree or another there is no escape. From the self-defense angle, there is some degree of moral dilemma.
I haven't touched on utilitarianism because that's a whole different animal. Utilitarians would claim that self-defense is not justified if it does harm without succeeding, or if doing so entails killing a greater number of assailants than your one self, or if doing so entails killing someone who would go on to enjoy a higher quality of life than you or contribute more to humanity. Per this school of thought, a first world citizen's life is worth more than a third world citizen's, since he would tend to experience more pleasure and be more economically productive over his lifetime.
In one telling, it would demand that poor Gazans forfeit their lives and their land to their affluent neighbors. In another, it would demand that the Israeli government on 10/8/23 do nothing at all, since even if their actions averted 4 or 5 additional 10/7s in the future it wouldn't add up to 50,000 lives saved. Or that, hypothetically, the Israelis must subordinate their lives and land if Gaza's women were to pump out a billion children. Naturally, anyone on the losing end of such a utilitarian calculus won't pay it any regard whatsoever.
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@Savant
I would say that:
1. If it's necessary for self-defense of your future self to currently and actively pursue your foe, then the right to self-defense entails a right to pursue your foe wherever he flees or hides.
2. If, in this scenario, third parties are willfully giving shelter to your foes, then the right to self-defense entails a right to count said third parties among your foes and behave accordingly, or at the very least to target their shelters. Just this fact by itself poses no moral dilemma for you; said third parties have effectively consented to become targets.
3. If third parties are giving shelter to your foes under duress (e.g. Hamas will shoot them if they refuse), so that their own pursuit of self-preservation comes into conflict with your pursuit of self-defense, then we get a profound moral dilemma. Both you and the third parties will choose to "resolve" the dilemma by making the selfish choice. There's no way around this; barring the presence of some overwhelmingly powerful outside force that's able to impose a solution, someone has to lose.
4. If third parties are not sheltering your foes, but are free to physically remove themselves from where your foes are yet haven't done so, then there is no moral dilemma. They've incurred no moral guilt but are responsible nonetheless for getting caught up in whatever happens where your foes are. There is no dilemma here insofar as 4 is truly distinct from 5.
5. If third parties are not sheltering your foes, but are not free to physically remove themselves from where the attacker are (e.g. to live their lives they must traverse roads and public spaces where Hamas militants are), then we get a lesser dilemma compared to 3. Having to quarantine in your home isn't the same as having a gun pointed at your head, but if a war goes on long enough then it's unreasonable to assume that the average person would or even could keep doing so.
The Gaza War is some inscrutable mix of all five.
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The AP has this to say about tariffs:
U.S. tariffs are generally lower than those charged by other countries. The average U.S. tariff, weighted to reflect goods that are actually traded, is just 2.2% for the United States (sic), versus the European Union's 2.7%, China's 3% and India's 12%...Previous U.S. administrations agreed to the tariffs Trump now calls unjust. They were the result of a long negotiation between 1986 and 1994 -- the so-called Uruguay Round -- that ended in a trade pact signed by 123 countries and has formed the basis of the global trading system for nearly three decades.
The European figure doesn't reflect non-tariff trade barriers; the EU has been called a "regulatory superpower", and has a lot of arbitrary rules that an import will be blocked if it doesn't meet, a famous example being US chicken (which, in fact, is perfectly safe for human consumption). As a result, in 2024 the EU imported $370 billion worth of US goods while exporting $605 billion worth of goods to the US, an enormous trade deficit and an increase of 12.9% from 2023 levels.
It remains to be seen if the Trump Administration (as opposed to just Trump by himself) is competent enough to renegotiate the balance of global trade. But let's give credit where credit is due; this is the first administration in 30 years to seriously try, and there is ample justification for doing so.
Likewise, I remember reading that something like 80-90% of US economic output is sold to American customers. Tariffs imposed at home will be painful to the American consumer, but the American producer will be insulated to some degree from the effects of foreign tariffs, and I view this as the most important thing in the long run. Right now choice foreign countries stand to lose a lot more money than we do from a trade war (and this is discounting the leverage we have in the form of paying most of NATO's bills), which is why, if we "let the man cook" for a few months or up to a year or two, we might see results.
Yes, free trade is good and protectionism is bad. Which is why we need to teach the rest of the world this lesson. A dismal year or two could yield a brighter half-century afterward, not only for us but for the world at large.
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But the Greenland thing is stupid. We need some kind of intact alliance with Europe if this is to work. Making them pull their own weight is fine, because deep down they know that's what they are supposed to be doing, but imagine if the Canadians stole Alaska from us and then were like "Hey, let's stay allies".
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What you're saying about Europe, Russia, and our need to pivot is Asia is the conventional wisdom but I say we need to hold off for another year or two. One study has it that Russia lost 360,000 soldiers in Ukraine last year, which was roughly on par with the number of new recruits (and not counting people who retired from the Russian military when their contracts expired; when put together, the Russian army is probably shrinking).
Those numbers are insane. If the US had to suffer one year of that for a foreign war that we could tap out of at any time, we would indeed tap out, and perhaps lynch the President who got us into that mess for good measure. Now for an affordable cost we can make the Russians repeat that in 2025 and then a third time in 2026. We Americans will be shopping at the mall and eating fast food, while the Russians will be pushing their nation closer to the brink of collapse. Even if they replace all their soldiers and the regime survives, at some point they'll have none of the well-trained people from before the war left over. The new people have gotten like 5 weeks of training and only know how to do primitive meat grinder tactics like we're seeing in Ukraine.
Seriously, we'd have to be idiots to pass up on this once in a lifetime opportunity. Our mortal enemy has volunteered to let us bleed them dry without us having to risk our own necks in the process.
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@Dr.Franklin
BUT a judge pulled some bullshit reason and declared it "unconstitutional", meaning it was voided, thats right in the United States of America a judge can declare something VIA THE CONSTITUTION to shut down something that WAS DEMOCRATICALLY DECIDED ON.
Okay, so if 51% of the public were communist and voted in a referendum to seize your property and then lynch you and your family and all of your neighbors, it'd be wrong for a judge to keep them from doing this?
Also, how do judges get appointed? By elected officials, right? Meaning judges are, in fact, indirectly elected officials. But their appointments are greatly staggered over time, meaning the judiciary as a whole doesn't reflect the mood of the public at one given moment, but rather the public's aggregated attitudes over time, which lean less radical. Furthermore, rules like the filibuster tend to discourage the appointment of judges who are too radical, since an appointee has to be acceptable to at least a few members of the other party.
It's no accident that the judiciary is the least partisan of our three branches. The public has its short term passions and prejudices, which they express at the ballot box. But their excesses are tempered by the moderates in robes. Overall our system is pretty balanced, which is why it's survived 236 years, a civil war, two world wars, many recessions and depressions, etc.
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@Double_R
This looks like an opportunity for us to come together in bipartisan agreement - This is really, really bad... Right?...Right?
Both the adjective "bad" and the qualifier "really, really" depends on: (1). The extent to which Patel was serious as opposed to this being campaign trash talk; (2). The extent to which he's still keen on carrying this out now that an enormous mantle of responsibility has been thrust on his shoulders; (3). The extent to which the named individuals are truly innocent of any crimes; (4). Patel's genuine belief, or absence thereof, in their guilt; (5). Patel's willingness to take illegal actions to go after said people beyond legal investigations of them; and (6). the degree to which he wouldn't actually be blocked from taking said illegal actions.
So far, all of these are largely unknowns. But assuming for the sake of argument that yes, Patel has the intent to knowingly and illegally target people who've done nothing wrong for political reasons, and the means to have this actually amount to something, then yes, this is bad. Politically motivated prosecutions are bad and have no rightful place in America.
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@Double_R
Curious then to hear your thoughts on Trump picking the guy who published and enemies hitlist and stated publicly that he would use the justice department to go after Trump's political enemies as his FBI director.
Citation, please.
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@Moozer325
Just about my whole family's been watching Severance, and it's pretty good IMO. It leans a bit too hard into the "mystery box" storytelling convention popularized by Lost, and random plot beats that probably won't go anywhere, but who knows. Maybe one day we'll find out what's up with the goats and whatnot.
There's a lot of interesting characters, moreso the innies than the outies. I hate how dark tinted everything outside the overly bright severed floor is. Presumably there's some symbolism behind it, but I don't know if it fits since there's no hard evidence the outside world is a dystopia. I'm also confused about when this is supposed to take place, with the company's 19th century origins and strange blend of inexplicably analog and outright impossible technologies suggesting alternate history as much as a plain future setting. I've got maybe 4 episodes left of Season 2 but I hope Irving and Cobel aren't off the show for good.
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Petty and contrived "scandal".
Does Trump really want to play this game? Once he's out of office, Democrats will be scrutinizing the breakfasts he had in the morning to find some bullcrap pseudolegal reason for why his presidential actions were invalid. And if they can get some wingnut lefty judge to sign off on this, it just might stick.
Gee, I wonder what this development will mean for rule of law in America. Only good things, surely. /s
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@whiteflame
There's not much to say. UHC denies a huge number of claims, this fact was heavily scrutinized after the company's CEO got shot, and I pointed out that they don't have the money to behave otherwise.
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Secondly, the politics of this would be terrible for the democrats. They do not get to claim the republicans shut the government down when they are literally the ones who voted against keeping the government open. They will get blamed for the shut down.
Agreed. Every time Republicans demanded a shutdown over the past 10 years they took immense flak for it. There's no reason why Democrats should be insulated from the consequences when it's their turn to attempt the same.
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That honestly wasn't a very good thread IMO. It was a few sentences long and the sentiment expressed was pretty basic. Had my Programmatic Civicism thread been remembered well enough to make the cut, I would've been really proud of that.
But I'll take what I can get, lol.
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@Barney
I don't know what that means, but I guess whiteflame if he's willing.
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@IlDiavolo
The video is referring to the moment Nixon abandoned the gold standard.
Then no. There's a finite amount of gold in the world, and if a process were developed to economically manufacture it, the price of gold would collapse, making it useless. A global economy that we expect to keep growing needs either a steadily expanding supply of fiat currency or some better substitute for gold.
Some countries, instead of gold, have used currency pegging, meaning a local "dollar" is exchangeable for a foreign "dollar", assuming their value was the same. This is done to stabilize such and keep its value from collapsing, but most economists view this scheme as unhelpful in the long run and advanced economies tend not to rely on it. For example, see the so-called "impossible trilemma":
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@IlDiavolo
I can't envision a pyramid scheme that takes centuries to collapse, nor one that tangibly enriches the average participant as opposed to a small minority of them.
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@Shila
I wouldn't trust cybersecurity advice from Wylted...
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@sadolite
2008?
(Holy cow. I joined in late 2013 but with so many OGs still around I guess I'm not even old guard at this point.)
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Really though, there's a way to do this that all the long timers who actually left did, and just making a thread isn't it. I'm calling 50/50 he'll be back within a year.
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@sadolite
Out of curiosity, when did you join DDO?
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@WyIted
Europe as of late has turned into an authoritarian shithole and I wouldn't hold them up as a model of democracy, but I'll try to answer the question at large.
This problem was actually solved more than 2,100 years ago by a political theorist named Polybius. His answer is that no one political system is ultimately defensible, since all eventually degenerate into hideous caricatures of themselves.
Monarchy/Tyranny
If you're lucky, monarchy/autocracy/dictatorship will start out with a "good" king who's reasonable and isn't bloodthirsty. But sooner or later you'll get a tyrant. This is for a number of reasons. If it's a literal monarchy/hereditary dictatorship and the king picks his son or another close relative to succeed him, this isn't merit-based and he'll get the job even if he's a bad person. After all, it's natural for any parent to let their child inherit their kingdom and continue the family dynasty, and they might want this badly enough that they're willing to overlook said character defects.
But let's assume there isn't a hereditary scheme. If the dictator wishes or has little choice other than to retire while still alive, then this puts him in a precarious position. To safeguard himself and his family, he will choose a loyalist who won't go after him (a big part of why Putin replaced Yeltsin). Again, this concern trumps competency or decency.
But let's assume that the dictator is planning for a competent and basically decent man to succeed him when he's dead, and he never happens to retire while alive. This runs into another problem: dictators, even monarchs, frequently get overthrown and replaced by another dictator. Sooner or later, then, a person who lacks decency or competency will take the throne.
Now you might be thinking, what's one bad dictator every now and then? Well, all of the great genocides of the 20th century were done by dictators. Mao's famines, caused by his mismanagement of the heavily centralized economy (dictators left or right wing love command economies because it gives them more control and marginalizes the power of outside groups, but this also makes economic downturns more disastrous) killed up to 55 million people, the North Korean famine of the '90s killed up to 3.5 million people, Stalin's Holodomor (admittedly more intentional than the former two) killed up to 5 million Ukrainians, and the Ethiopian famine of the '80s, exacerbated by a communist dictatorship, killed more than 1 million people.
Aristocracy/Oligarchy
What about aristocracy? Well, for one thing you get some pretty massive and inescapable conflicts of interest. Traditionally, the aristocrats were just the rich, especially the rent-seeking rich (e.g. plantation bosses). So what'll they do? Enrich themselves maximally at the expense of everyone else. Perhaps bring back slavery or serfdom. Stymie needed economic reforms that come at their expense; for example, in the early to mid 19th century Russia's aristocrats held back the Industrial Revolution by not allowing peasants to leave the farms to go work in the factories. That's an outdated example, but 21st century equivalents exist, e.g. zoning laws. Again, maybe the first generation of aristocrats will be noble and not too greedy, but eventually that will change.
But suppose that, instead, you have a party-based aristocracy like in communist countries. While I'm sure there's still no small degree of nepotism, the initial selection process for who joins the aristocracy may be a lot more meritocratic. Well, for one thing, this needs some kind of ideology to justify it. If communism, they'll hold back the economy and rule with a bloody iron fist. If Chinese communism, then admittedly things are going pretty good for them right now since they're forcing capitalism at gunpoint. But China, assuming Xi Jinping doesn't make himself god-emperor for life, will eventually run into the same problem as above: either there's a massive overlap between the communist party bosses and the capitalist overlords, or you have an ascendant outside interest group which increasingly views communist rule as an obstacle to its own interests, or the fresh blood party members who aren't rich try to return things to old fashioned dysfunctional communism. One way or another, a bad scenario will happen.
But both monarchy and aristocracy have another problem: they aren't responsive to the wants and needs of the people they're in charge of governing. In a democracy, people are allowed to express their frustrations at the ballot box and through their speech, which either forces incumbent politicians to pay attention when people are unhappy or replaces them with new politicians who got elected by doing so. In short, voting and free speech aren't just about voting and free speech; these things provide useful data to the government. Undemocratic societies, which don't host free elections and where people who criticize the government risk being jailed or worse, have governments which are comparably less informed about how to serve their constituents. At best, things chug along normally but people aren't as happy as they could be. At worst, these frustrations eventually boil over into civil wars.
A good case study would be the Soviet Union. It had a large economy, but at the same time there was a perpetual shortage of all kinds of consumer goods, because the government simply didn't know what goods people wanted. Likewise, consumer goods that were available often weren't very good. Granted, this example is more an indictment of command economies than of dictatorships, but there are other examples. Europe itself could be called one; previously fringe parties like the AfD and the one in Romania grew to prominence at the polls because, due to people being afraid to break hate speech laws, the establishment didn't realize how just unpopular mass immigration from the Muslim world was, so it miscalculated and brought in more migrants in a way that ultimately backfired.
Democracy
But democracy, defined as a simple majority of the voting public being allowed to make the government do whatever they want, isn't much if any better. If you have a large middle class then democracy can perform very well, since this is truly rule by the "wisest". The middle class is mostly self-sufficient while also being egalitarian-minded and not in a position to lord over others. It has the most vested interest in economic growth and opposes both welfare robber states and stagnant plutocracies. They care about the well-being of their local communities, unlike many of the poor, while also not being rich and cosmopolitan enough to just take a plane out of the country to Switzerland or Dubai if everything collapses on itself. The poor can't afford taxes, and the rich know how to avoid them, so it's the middle class who shoulder much of the national tax burden.
But the problem with democracy is twofold: first, when the poor comprise a voting majority, they will seek to enrich themselves by using the government to steal from anyone who has more. Perhaps they'll employ self-deception so that they don't consciously realize how shitty and selfish their actions are, but either way if no one has the power to tell them "no" everything will crash and burn after a while. In this environment also, language of class conflict will take hold and social cohesion will unravel, meaning the rich and middle class (what's left of it) will stop thinking about how to positively contribute to society and focus instead on protecting themselves. Second, even where there's a large middle class, many of them will sympathize with the plight of the poor enough to want to help without being noble enough to donate their own fortunes to charity. They'll form a coalition with the poor and institute the welfare state.
What To Do
So every kind of government is self-defeating. What now? Luckily, Polybius has a prescription: the mixed government, where the strengths of one approach cancel out the fatal flaws of another. That's most Western governments today, but especially the United States. The most successful mixed governments have a strong share of democratic elements in the mixture, which is why they're colloquially dubbed "democracies" without actually being so.
And in that sense, democracies have a good track record. Here's the Human Development Index; you can check it out for yourself, and with the exceptions of Dubai (a lot of oil) and Hong Kong there aren't a lot of undemocratic states on top of the list.
Granted, this is a flawed list as it doesn't deduct points from Europe or Canada for its lack of free speech, but these countries are materially well off, at the very least, in the way that dictatorships are not.
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A distinction needs to be made with Germany because the AfD isn't banned from running and their recent electoral gains haven't been overturned. The established parties simply refuse to work with it, which is freedom of association. Granted, their whole party being under government surveillance is sketchy and authoritarian, but in any case the situation in Romania is a lot worse. If we fail to recognize varying degrees of badness our arguments will end up being muddled and we won't be taken as seriously, like what's currently happening on the left.
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Native Americans had different values and defined quality of life differently, so did Africans.
I hate this way of thinking about native peoples, as though their existences are static and locked in a more primitive time and they should be denied access to things that would make their lives easier and more comfortable because they're specimens in a giant anthropological exhibit rather than actual human beings with agency.
If somebody wants to live that way, let them. Under modern capitalism there's nothing would stop a guy from buying up many acres of land in the countryside (or pooling his savings with some likeminded people to do so, or paying the owners thereof for long-term access to it) and living on it the old fashioned way. But it's telling that virtually no one chooses to do so. Granted, a few communities exist around the world where those who've never stopped hunter-gathering continue to do so now. But very few people who've stopped and had a long taste of the alternative have willingly gone back to it.
Your argument was also used to justify slavery, they have made it the law in Florida that teachers can't teach that slavery was bad.
These two positions are not logically incompatible:
(A). What happened to their ancestors was a monstrous crime.
(B). They, the descendants thereof, benefited through having been born into a highly developed society.
Also, since there's so much propagandistic nonsense out there, I need a citation or credible summary of the Florida law in question before I'm willing to believe that slavery cannot be taught in Florida schools.
I doubt the native Americans, or the Slaves would agree with your assessment.
The historical victims of these crimes were grievously wronged, no question about it. I'm talking about their descendants who, whatever they might profess with their mouths, say something very different through their lifestyle choices.
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@RemyBrown
At this point it's our land as much as it is theirs. A small minority of America's population has no special claim to all of its territory to the exclusion of everyone else.
And since a hunter-gatherer's quality of life is nowhere remotely close to that of even a poor American today, whereas it would've taken them at least several thousand more years to build a modern society in isolation, any value that our ancestors took from theirs must be weighed against the value added by their inclusion into and right to live in the America that the colonial-settler population (and the descendants thereof) built.
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@RemyBrown
We arguably already have. Single-race Native Americans were 1.12% of the population as of 2020 but have 2.3% of the total land area of the US set aside exclusively for them in the form of reservations. No one else is allowed to live there; only them. And of course, Native Americans are free to live anywhere else in the US if that's what they want.
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@RemyBrown
I forgot I blocked you when I thought your mind wasn't changable (which is largely true on the left as well, you can't block everybody). You're unblocked.
Alright then, I'll do the same.
The US violated self determination when we annexed pretty much a lot of our current land.
Do crimes committed 150 years ago justify further crimes today?
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@RemyBrown You blocked me first. I'll undo it if I see that you've done the same.
Also, Canadians identify with their own country and would not consent to join the United States. Any annexation would be at gunpoint and violate their right to self-determination.
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Oh yeah, what a loser. From 2011 to May 2020 the US was totally dependent on Russia to shuttle people and supplies to and from the International Space Station. Elon Musk singlehandedly changed that.
I know you think that isn't a big deal, so imagine this: in 2022, Putin waited until the crew up there were running low on supplies and then invaded Ukraine. Then he threatened to cut off US access, since in this scenario SpaceX wasn't around. It would've been politically unthinkable for Biden to just let a couple American astronauts die in space, their bodies unrecoverable for possibly years, so Putin might've strongarmed Biden to sign an agreement not to give Ukraine weapons. Poof, Ukraine loses within 18 months.
And how about Starlink? I live out in the boonies, but Starlink gives me reliable wi-fi (save during intense storms or hurricanes, and even then the outages don't last all that long). There's no other option as good as it for where I live, and the same is true for maybe a couple million other customers.
And it was true for Ukraine in 2022; there was no available alternative to Starlink at the time. The tens of thousands of units shipped have proven crucial to their national defense, thus to the security of Western democracies at large. At the height of the Mariupol siege in 2022, the defenders' only way of communicating with the outside world was through a Starlink terminal. And yes, I'm sure you'll moan endlessly about that one time Musk briefly flipped the switch, giving no credit to all of the other countless times Starlink did its job as advertised. Again, Musk didn't buy SpaceX from someone else; he built it, and by extension Starlink, from the ground up.
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There is literally no non-rebuttable non-emotional reason for an American to be opposed to peaceful Russian or Chinese annexation.
Prove me wrong.
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@Sidewalker
I never said that effort doesn't pay off. I didn't tell OP not to set goals and then strive to meet them. I told him not to just expect things will go his way because he has a college degree. There are life and career challenges your typical recent to recent-ish graduate in his 20s faces, and having self-awareness about one's circumstances is a good first step to either doing something about it or at least coping with it.
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@Sidewalker
It's not supposed to be. It's real talk that a lot of college students/grads aren't told. OP, I think, is going to be fine, but the mismatch between the average young person's post-graduation expectations and their lived post-graduation experiences is pretty big.
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At this point in your life, you probably won't have to worry about your physical health. But your mental health could take a nosedive very fast. There are precautions you can take against this:
-Avoid doomscrolling, especially late at night. Algorithms will feed you scary articles about how the world's falling apart, or ragebait material. After a while I had to get off Quora because half of everything was either misandrist screeds against men, unsubtle neo-Nazi propaganda, or disturbing porn. Be conscious of what you're consuming online. There may be a part of your brain that actually likes to be offended and upset, but don't indulge it because that's not good for you in the long run.
-Get a gym membership. You're unlikely to get a heart attack and die in your 20s even if you are a fat slob, but exercising will improve your mood and self-confidence, and it'll inform lifestyle habits in your 30s, when health matters more. It's also a leisurely venue to meet other people your age with at least one shared interest.
-Stay plugged in to a church, and wake up early on Sunday mornings to attend. Your profile suggests you identify as Christian, so this shouldn't be a problem. I know orthodoxy is "based" and cool, but there aren't a whole lot of churches meeting this description in the US. If you have to settle for a Baptist or Methodist church or whatnot, then do that; one real church, no matter the denomination, is worth a thousand idealized churches that only exist on subreddits or Discord channels. Preferably not a megachurch, or a church otherwise so big that you feel completely anonymous. Church is supposed to be a communal experience.
-If you're actually getting depressed or schizo or whatnot, then seek professional help. I know our culture still kind of stigmatizes mental illness, but don't worry about what other people think. A doctor's obviously not going to blab to your friend group about what you tell him.
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@Vader
Congratulations.
A word of advice from someone in his late 20s:
From this point on, while you will age you won't automatically move forward. There is the path of least resistance, in which you can live comfortably and enjoy a good amount of leisure time. Say, a routine where you clock in for 40 mindless hours a week where the only thing on your mind is going home. Without conscious and continuous effort, this is where you'll end up.
The drawback is that you'll stay in one place, as one year rolls over to the next and to the next. You may well wake up at 28 and find that you're not better off than you were at 23. There may or may not be a heaven and a hell, but regarding this present life you only have one shot. If you get a few years older and realize you've irreversibly lost time without accomplishing anything during it, that won't be a good feeling at all.
Another thing: school is an environment where your peers are mostly the same age, and you're forced to interact in a common space that conduces itself naturally to friendships. The "real world" isn't like that. It'll be very easy to find yourself friendless and adrift. You won't see your college friends every day, or every week, or every month. Your coworkers will usually be people in their 30s, 40s, or 50s, and they're unlikely to share your interests and hobbies. There won't be a lot of women your age, nor contexts that are appropriate for flirting. If in high school you asked out the girl who you shared one class and had interacted twice with, then whatever. Sometimes it'd work out, sometimes it wouldn't. Either way the stakes are low. But if you do the same to a woman on the streets, or to the regular barista at your coffee shop, then that's sexual harassment. Now, I'm assuming you already knew this much, but I say it to drive home the point. There are dating apps, but those are dumpster fires and internet horror stories of the dating app experience, especially for men, abound.
I'm sorry to put a damper on the occasion, but that's what you should expect. Plan accordingly and perhaps you'll make it work out despite everything I've said.
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Today, March 6, a 40-day boycott of Target kicked off. This event was declared by majority-Black churches in protest of Target's cancelling of its DEI policies. Presumably, most participants will be Black, while at the same time, the average Target customer in Feb. 2023 was "a woman who is 39 years old, White, married, with a household income of $80,000."
What are your predictions of the boycott's impact on Target's quarterly profits? What, if any, social ramifications of the boycott do you anticipate?
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@ebuc
Congrats to her, as her explanation feels plausible enough that it's probably right. When it's a man we credit him as an individual rather than singing the praises of his whole sex, but whatever.
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@Best.Korea
Even in the best of system, there is 1% to 5% rate of innocents being declared guilty.
I don't believe this is a current statistic. Perhaps there are still guys on the books from like the '80s or the early '90s, back when forensic science wasn't what it is now and DNA testing wasn't widely employed if at all, and they get counted when researchers come up with these numbers.
But new convictions? Nah, I don't buy it. And even insofar as there's still a small handful, I don't buy the whole "Better a thousand guilty people go free than one innocent person is wrongly convicted" talking point. You cannot sacrifice a functioning society at the altar of an unattainable perfect ideal.
As for racial bias, I would argue the opposite is true today. In general, jurors and judges would be more likely to scrutinize themselves for any biases that might cloud their thinking in the case of a black defendant than a white one.
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@Owen_T
Yes. If done right, the death penalty can deter crime, save taxpayers money, ensure that a given profligate will never return to the streets (there have been cases where released killers in their 70s or 80s went on to kill again), and remind the public how morally serious the crime of taking a human life is, since a lot of pop culture seems to cheapen the act. But the right conditions need to be met.
On one hand, if you have a democracy so backslid that the state's throwing people in jail for exercising their inalienable free speech rights, you don't want them having the death penalty as another tool in their toolbelt to clamp down on dissent with. So the death penalty should be reserved for a country where rule of law is strong, and it should be strictly reserved for crimes that either cause a person to lose their life or cross a certain threshold of severity in terms of permanent bodily mutilation dealt to the victim. And if your country is locked in a bitter culture war where one side wants to misinterpret "severe bodily mutilation" to make a slew of lesser crimes death penalty-eligible using spurious arguments or analogies, then this could be narrowed to just homicides.
On the other hand, there are countries with legal systems unnecessarily jumbled and borderline unworkable in the name of rule of law. A death row inmate in the United States can tie up the courts for 10 years trying to appeal his sentence. As a result, the death penalty deters no one, it saves taxpayers no money, and it hardly does more to keep thugs off the streets than a long prison sentence.
The framers of the Constitution, of course, were fine with a man being strung up 24 hours after his conviction for murder, so the relevant clauses of the Constitution needn't be interpreted in such a restrictive way as most contemporary jurists do. So here's how the death penalty could be made workable:
(1). There is only one court of appeal for death penalty cases; if a state government would execute you, then it's a state appellate court; if the Federal government, then a Federal appellate court. The only question this court will consider is whether you were rightly or wrongly convicted of the crime in question, not the fairness of said penalty.
(2). This court works on a rigid timetable. You have, say, one month after your sentencing to submit an appeal to them, or else your execution will proceed as planned. After this, they have, say, 3 months to accept your case. After this, they have a total of 1 year to complete your case. If they fail to meet the deadline, it'll be treated by default as though your death sentence was upheld by said court. If upheld, then you will be executed either within 48 hours of said upholding or on the stipulated due date of your sentence, whichever comes later. As a result, prisoners whose sentences are not overturned will be executed no later than 16 months and 2 days after their initial sentencing.
(3). The appellate court is permitted to decline to hear your case, such as if you're obviously guilty of the crime in question. If it does (and not otherwise), then you are entitled to file in the aforementioned other appellate court. If it too declines to hear your case, then you have exhausted all avenues of appeal and your execution will proceed as planned. So then, an obviously guilty man in a state where the courts weren't packed with ideologue hacks could expect to die within 4 months or so.
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The plan explained from one of the embedded links:
"Most Americans believe that insuring people who cannot afford health-care coverage — assuming it can be done cost effectively without reducing the quality of care — is a proper goal of public policy. Such a goal can indeed be responsibly pursued, if we conceive of it in terms of real insurance. We should aim, in other words, to make catastrophic coverage available to everyone.
Outside of health care, there are almost no forms of insurance that cover small and routine expenses. Auto insurance does not pay for oil changes. Home owner's insurance does not pay for house painting. Rather, both of these forms of insurance protect their beneficiaries from only serious or catastrophic financial losses — from costs involved in, say, a serious car accident or a devastating house fire. If otherwise unaffordable health expenses were covered by insurance, and routine health expenses were treated like normal household expenditures, the entire population would be shielded from devastating losses while an efficient consumer market in health care could emerge.
A sensible and affordable health-insurance system would thus be based on universal catastrophic coverage. The federal government could actually provide it to every one of the 209 million Americans who are not already covered by public insurance, and at a cost far lower than that of the Affordable Care Act.
Catastrophic insurance involves nothing more than a high-deductible policy that covers all, or nearly all, health-care expenses in excess of the deductible amount. For today's uninsured Americans, such coverage would offer vital protections they do not now have. For those who are now insured, it would displace the catastrophic portion of their existing insurance policies — whether employer-provided or individually purchased — thereby reducing the costs of those plans.
To be sure, a high-deductible plan could leave some people with higher out-of-pocket costs than they would like or think they can afford. But nothing in this proposal would preclude employers from providing insurance to supplement the catastrophic-coverage plan supplied by the government. Nor would any individual be prohibited from purchasing supplemental insurance in the private market. The key, however, is that the premiums for such supplemental coverage would no longer receive the tax subsidies provided in our current system. Everyone in the private market, regardless of his circumstances, would receive the same benefit and the same catastrophic coverage. Beyond that, the market would be left to work.
It is impossible to lay out every detail of such a proposal here, but a basic outline is not difficult to sketch. It would involve a publicly funded universal catastrophic-coverage benefit, largely funded by a dedicated per-capita tax. Since the new benefit would reduce each beneficiary's current insurance costs by a like amount, the vast majority of beneficiaries could pay the full amount of the tax out of these savings. Those who are needy would receive subsidies (from a series of revenue sources and savings described below)."
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@Shila
True. Also, if Israel holds onto the Philadelphi Corridor then it'll be difficult for Hamas to resupply itself through smuggling.
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All that is sensational nonsense. He is not going to take Canada, nor Panama, nor Gaza. Never going to happen; ESPECIALLY Gaza.
True.
The current power dynamics dictate that the colonial pocket of Israel is a political reality
You wouldn't speak of Egypt, Turkey, or Saudi Arabia only existing because of "current power dynamics". These are countries in their own right, they have every right to exist, and this right has no expiration date. Israel is the exact same way - a permanent majority-Jewish state, in the same way that there are dozens of permanent majority-Arab states.
for it was successfully inserted in the region by relevant Colonial powers after the fall of the Ottoman Empire & the subsequent occupation of the region
The Jews resettled Palestine in large numbers during the late 19th and early 20th century. So what? The Arabs themselves conquered and colonized Palestine, and that's the only reason you consider it an Arab land today. From my point of view, both acts of colonization are ancient history; that one piece of ancient history just happens to be more recent than the other (and the expulsion of the Jews from Israel is the most ancient piece of history of all) is irrelevant to the discussion.
What's relevant is that both Jews and Arabs are in the Middle East today. The question is how to make sure that both groups have a self-governing space large enough to accommodate their basic needs. At present, that question has been answered satisfactorily, with the exception of the Palestinian question. And the Palestinians are, of course, just Arabs.
Gazans under siege for decades came to two realizations early: that the supremacy of US/Israel military is air power, & that the political solution (to achieve a Palestinian state) is a lie
How do they know when they haven't seriously tried a political solution? Actually, scratch that, they did -- there were two successful Oslo Accords, then they went to the Camp David Accords demanding the moon and the stars, and when that one summit broke down they immediately went on a Jew-killing frenzy, extinguishing all prospects of further diplomatic breakthroughs for a generation. Meanwhile, of course, the people behind the violence of the Second Intifada are either still running the West Bank or at the very least have been afforded safe haven inside of it, and the Palestinian Authority is still paying people to indiscriminately murder Jews.
As for Gaza, in 2005 Israel expelled all Jewish settlers from the Gaza Strip (whereas millions of Arab Muslims are allowed to live in Israel proper), and the Gazans immediately proceeded to elect Hamas. At literally any point in the last 20 years the Gazans could've tried removing Hamas and then seeing if the Israelis would sustain the blockade in the face of moderate Gazan leadership, but the Gazans never did.
If the West Bankers and Gazans actually put moderates in charge and stop letting their territory be used as a launchpad for terrorism, they could try negotiating for reasonable terms. Not some mythical, non-existent right-of-return (Israeli Jews who parents/grandparents were expelled from Arab countries have no such right of return), nor any concessions of land in Israel proper, but Israeli non-interference in the affairs of these two countries and the removal of settlers from the West Bank. Then they could negotiate with other Arab states for right of travel.
2 million Palestinians who just lost their land on top of suffering & losing everything else, who successfully fought Israel with the full backing of the West, might just be as successful in taking over the country they were moved into, say Egypt or Jordan.
The PLO tried to take over Jordan in 1970. They failed.
Unlike in Israel, a resistance force launching a coup against the Egyptian regime, for instance, will not face much resistance from the people, if not the opposite.
Which is it? Are neighboring Arabs scared of Palestinian refugees, or would they cheer them on as they seized power in said countries? If the latter, then what do democratically run Arab countries have to lose from accepting millions of Palestinian refugees?
This might lead to the infamous Samson option. But if the Israelis use nuclear, it is certain that all regional powers will rush to acquire their own as fast as possible.
If a vast horde of crazy genocidal Palestinians were to succeed in overrunning Israel, this outcome would be little different from being glassed with nuclear weapons, in which case the Israelis might as well take their enemies down with them.
It is not farfetched to believe that the resistance factions might 10x their forces after this. Which means 10x the fighting force, 10x the weapons & 10x the tunnels. The resistance is growing stronger not weaker.
I agree with you so far as concerns the manpower, if only because a large number of Gazans are too dumb to stop and consider that Hamas might be principally responsible for their suffering. But not for the weapons or smuggling. If Hamas can ill afford to furnish its new recruits with anything more than a basic sidearm, then this army won't be of much use.
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In 3 days, Germany will be holding its parliamentary (Bundestag) elections. The polls have AfD (right) in second place, and CDU (center-right) in first place. Right now AfD controls around 10-12% of seats, but it could plausibly rise above 20% when this is done.
I predict that if both the CDU and AfD perform well enough to win a combined 50% of seats, then the longstanding "firewall" against AfD will collapse.
This is due to two factors: first, the CDU has to some extent moved rightward in the past few years in a bid to court voters who would otherwise support AfD. Second, an ascendant AfD will cause the German left to panic. They've already psyched themselves into believing that your average AfD voter is a crypto-Nazi, even though this obviously isn't true, and after such an upset loss they'll scapegoat the CDU and start hurling Nazi accusations at them too.
In other words, the CDU post-election will have heightened expectations that the German left parties work with them to pass an at least vaguely right-wing agenda, and the German left parties will be more strongly inclined to refuse than ever before. Eventually the CDU will get frustrated enough to reach across the aisle and work with AfD parliamentarians to pass something.
Once that taboo has been violated once, it'll cease to exist. CDU will grow more amenable to the idea of cooperating with the AfD, while the German left parties will respond to this initial violation by doubling down on its refusal to work with the CDU. At this point, the CDU will be forced to team up with AfD to have a governing majority, and that will be that.
That's my prediction, anyway.
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Looks like this is the House's proposal. The Senate still has a chance to stop it.
March 14 is a date to keep an eye on, since it appears that rather than a normal fiscal year being in effect, the USFG is currently funded by a continuing resolution which expires then. I expect the standard pork barrel to buy the government a few more months, maybe kicking the debt up to around $38 trillion, and then the future of our country will be decided later in the year.
Right now the fiscal hardliners, who are willing to impose the austerity and run the legal challenges that it takes to save America from ruin in the face of a completely useless Congress and heavily politicized courts, have Trump's ear. But Trump is neither a principled nor ideologically consistent man. He could just as easily be persuaded by the establishment to return to business as usual, or by some flight of fancy could persuade himself.
If Trump does stand his ground, then he may compel Congress (which can't count on Democratic votes to override a presidential veto) to pass a balanced budget. If he does so, and it's a precedent-setting move repeated in subsequent years and by subsequent administrations, then he will go down as our Aurelian or Heraclius. But if not, then he is Nero and Caligula wrapped into one man.
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@Mall
If you can leave the relationship without incurring an unacceptable cost (e.g. loss of parental custody or assets you need to live comfortably), then do it. Don't hesitate. Your intrinsic worth and dignity as a person, and right not to be mistreated, is no less than that of a woman. Even if being abused doesn't take a serious physical toll (though some men are indeed murdered or maimed by their wives), it'll ruin your mental and emotional health, which can shorten your lifespan and make the time you do have left hardly worth living.
If you can't leave, then either mitigate or deter the misbehavior.
Mitigation could entail, for example, checking out. In other words, spending as little time at home as you possibly can. Wearing headphones and listening to music or a podcast at home. Taking long phone calls at home so that your wife feels obliged to hold her tongue until you are finished. Perhaps go around with a Bluetooth in your ear so she's left guessing whether you are on the phone or not. Or, mitigation could mean taking care of little things that you know tend to set off your abusive wife. For example, taking out the trash or whatnot.
If you feel sexually dependent on your abusive wife and lack the willpower for sexual abstinence, then pick up a discrete porn habit. Morally speaking, a partner who chooses to seriously abuse you has chosen to sever the marital bond, so it wouldn't be completely immoral to have an affair under these circumstances, but again, it may not be advisable if our misandrist court system makes it prohibitively costly to do something that would cause her to divorce you.
Deterrence means credibly signaling to your wife that there's a price to be paid if she chooses to escalate. For example, filming her and threatening to post the footage online if she goes ballistic. Retain any footage, such as by uploading it to a cloud account your wife doesn't know about/can't access, as evidence in any future court proceedings or for the "court" of public opinion.
Physically restraining your violent wife counts as mitigation, not deterrence, since you've given her no particular reason not to try again in the future. Though, if she feels humiliated by being overpowered, then it might sometimes deter.
While it's not immoral to hit a woman after she hit you first, our law is rife with double standards and you would likely end up being arrested while she gets a pass. If you do elect to go down the road of physically harming her to deter future violence, then I would suggest a strong warning first. For example, if she throws a plate at you, then throw a plate back, but narrowly miss her. If that fails and actually hurting her is the only way to deter her, then choose a method that leaves no physical trace. Something that she could go to the police and claim happened, but she wouldn't likely be able to prove it. So long as no child witnessed or heard this (i.e. it happened while they were away from the house), you should be in the clear; even if the police did arrest you, they would end up releasing you so long as you stuck to your guns and denied everything, and left behind no incriminating evidence.
This should, of course, be treated as a last resort instead of a first resort. And this should only be done in the case of physical abuse; beating the crap out of someone and talking the crap out of someone aren't equally bad, and the latter doesn't justify the former. Verbal abuse, again, has a very simple, non-violent fix in the form of tuning out with headphones or getting into your car and going to a pub.
Ideally, before any of the above, first make sure that your wife is indeed an irredeemable abuser and that the marriage can't be salvaged through counseling. Perhaps you yourself have issues to work out. If she's willing to try this option with you, then try it.
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@n8nrgim
the top one percent own about 45 trillion worth of wealth. a two percent wealth tax would raise about 900 billion dollars per year. we spend about four or five trillion a year, so cutting that would save another 4 or 500 billion per year. our deficit is 1.8 trillion.
That wealth is largely in stocks or other investments they haven't liquidated, and the rich aren't big spenders (over-the-top frugality is a character trait which contributes to becoming wealthy in the first place) with the taxes already in place, not counting the additional taxes you would impose. So my question is, how much would you realistically raise this way?
Assuming you were to impose an unrealized capital gains tax (which would obviously raise a lot less than $900 billion at two percent), what would stop a bunch of whales from manipulating the markets so that they dip on tax day and then bounce back the day after? For example, if Jeff Bezos wanted to deflate the valuation of his roughly 9 percent share in Amazon on tax day, why couldn't he order Amazon to cut down on stock buybacks during and in the month before tax day, or have a million bots trade with each other at low prices, so that demand for Amazon temporarily cools?
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Friendly reminder that multi-year tax cuts are multi-year, while a new budget has to be passed annually. In other words, if you see that the tax cuts are still in effect and you vote for a budget exceeding projected receipts anyway, then you don't get to blame the tax cuts for the ensuing deficit.
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@Greyparrot
Ukraine gives up the Russian speaking Donbas and gets some protective assurances from Europe. Will that be "not to lose"?
It would be at least a partial loss, yes. I'm also not sure if a few hundred or even a few thousand boy-faced Belgian peacekeepers with sparkly rifles would pose a credible deterrent to Russia. Any serious proposal would have to involve the Americans, but Trump breaks deals on a whim and I wouldn't blame Zelensky for not trusting us at the moment.
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