Randomness thread, part two.

[rong]

Assuming the zombie thing doesn't happen, I'll be at a wedding in two weeks, sharing a table with a famous wreckhead rock star who happens to be in a relationship with one of my partners very good friends. In all probability nothing more than a small amount of polite chitchat will take place, but if the opportunity presents itself to get fucked up with a rock star, you should take that opportunity, right?

[MadMojoMonkey]

If the drinking works out, you can invite him back to your place to shoot stuff.

Gotta yooooz that shotgun for sumthin'

[spoonitnow]

A "guaranteed income" is yet another example of institutionalized theft. You're half a step away from a full-on raging communist shithole by then.

[wufwugy]

yeesh another monster incoming. i really am sorry. i try to not leave holes

On zoning:

What is the mechanism you propose to replace it? I am well aware of how absurd zoning can be, and I think there are tons of places for improvement, but it is absolutely necessary for a planned city. And if you think the idea of a planned city is a bad one, then I'm pretty sure you've never been to Boston, London, Bangkok, etc. And once you leave the urban areas, zoning is naturally relaxed since as properties spread out, the need for zoning decreases and the cost of enforcement goes up.

I have no idea about specifics because they're technical and involved. What I do know is that zoning is a mess because of state ownership. This is what perpetuates things like height limits in Silicon Valley because enough voters tell their politicians that's what they want, and the politicians have to back it even though it stalls economic growth a ton. If all land was privately owned, we would see some major reorganizations that would eliminate most of these sorts of problems since the cost-benefit analyses that go into them are based on profits of the investors instead of votes for the politicians.

Even things like homelessness and traffic jams are probably a product of state ownership of key zones in cities or regulations of business. One way this is a factor in creating homelessness is that urbanization tends to carry with it the need for workers with higher skills, which prompts immigration of workers with those skills. Yet many residents who "were there first" yet lack or don't build needed skills don't get nudged out because the state maintains all sorts of regulations and properties to help them. But what this does is keeps those low-skilled residents from living in places where they can use their skills to best their situation. A double whammy is that the city around them gets more and more expensive from basic supply and demand. So we end up with a bunch of people who would not be struggling financially if they migrated elsewhere, yet are struggling because they're stuck in the city. Stuck by their own design, by voting for politicians who craft policies to keep them there

That isn't true for most low-skill people in cities though. Most can still get work since lots of low-skill jobs are still done in cities. But on the margins it hurts the low-skill.

Another real easy example is that if all property was owned by non-state entities, vagrancy simply wouldn't be a thing to the degree it is with a government that owns lots of property where the homeless can reside and the enforcers of the law don't kick them out. The non-homeless would view the state kicking out the homeless as a humanitarian catastrophe, but the facts are that the last place homeless people should be is in expensive cities. If they migrated into the country, where things are cheap and virtually all jobs are low-skill, there wouldn't be that many homeless anymore

To be sure, I don't support the state forcing homeless out of cities, but I do support private entities not allowing vagrancy on their property if that's their choice. All of that said, if cities were privately owned, I doubt the homeless would be forced out since there would be a lot of private organizations with the agenda of rehabilitation, on whose property and in whose programs the homeless could choose to reside and participate.


As for traffic jams, they're the last thing we would get in privately owned cities. Walk into any store and the owners/managers/employees are doing their best to streamline everything. There is some wait during rushes, and it all sorta depends, but the jams are nothing compared to what happens in government establishments or government roads. This is because the economic incentive of owners of business is profits. They want more customers. They want a swift experience. They are always looking for new ways to streamline the experience. But the incentive for government in its upkeep of roads is nothing of the sort. Its primary incentive is a streamlined experience for government vehicles (everybody seems to have forgotten that one). Its secondary and tertiary incentives appear to just be about keeping people from raging so hard that the politicians in charge lose their jobs. That's why there are billions of potholes causing all sorts of damage to vehicles and jams that persist for hours. For the state to solve those problems, they lose money, but in a privately owned environment, solving those problems makes money.


I think the standard democratic view of the world has things completely backwards. People tend to view the state as a moral good and for-profit organizations as a moral bad, but the truth is that it is by the competitive pursuit of profit that good is created and by the lack of this pursuit by the state that it does bad. I think it's a little ironic that people fear private ownership of things because they think it will create grand monopolies, yet they think the solution is to allocate those grand monopolies to the state. Especially ironic since private ownership doesn't create monopolies. Only in the most obscure and inconsequential ways do markets have monopolies, and those tend to get subverted rather easily. But it takes the deaths of millions to subvert the state monopoly....only to erect a new state monopoly

On guaranteed income:

Yeah, this plan sounds pretty awesome. Part of me does want to see a GI without any strings-- I'm not sure exactly how it would work, but I think the author of that article is imagining a world and circumstances that fit with his vision instead of fitting his vision to a more realistic world and circumstance. But maybe I'm also not imagining a robust enough rating system since he used eBay's as an example and eBay's system has been better than nothing but nonetheless abysmal since its inception.

But, yeah, while we may be on opposite ends of what we think is wrong with the proposal, we both can agree that it would be far far better than what we have now. So, if only I could bring the bleeding hearts in on this and you could convince the Atlas Shrugged thumpers that this is a great compromise...

It won't happen. An overhaul like this requires some people losing their specific subsidy, and that alone is good enough to halt change. Even something like a hugely positive tax overhaul where we close loopholes that distort the market and create "bubbles" while also lowering tax rates to make the effect neutral isn't feasible since there will be losers in that transaction.

The solution, I think, is just gradual tax reductions of any sort (preferably on income, payroll, and capital), and effective privatization that would end up reducing government obligations. Both of these are feasible, but they have to be slow and steady. Even more importantly I think what we need is a cultural shift in sensibilities. The Religious Right and left-wing have one major thing in common: they want a strong state that tells everybody what they can and can't do. Both sides think they have the moral high-ground.

Maybe a cultural shift requires calling people out on their bullshit. Like when somebody with an iphone complains about capitalism and says the state should stop corporations from whatever. Maybe we should point out to them how human civilization has had state control for thousands of years and it never created the iphone, yet just a couple centuries of burgeoning support for capitalism has given them those magic wands in their hands.

[boost]

Lots of interesting points, few of which I think I can meaningfully respond to and continue this discussion.

I would like to snipe this one though:

Walk into any store and the owners/managers/employees are doing their best to streamline everything.

No, not at all. The entity is doing all it can to streamline everything, or at least that is where all the incentives are. The employees are doing all they can to keep getting paid and either get paid more or do less work, or at least that is where the incentives are. The entity needs to co-opt the diverging incentives of the individuals to fulfill it's goals. The state is the greater entity, and the businesses are the employees, or at least that's the best way to work your analogy. What you're proposing is that the business should not impose rules on its employees, and they should just be allowed to set up the store in a way that best serves their individual interest. The store would be chaos.

TL;DR: You're either ignoring the tragedy of the commons, or you're taking a huge leap of faith that the market will self correct in a way that will solve for this dilemma. The latter seems like an absurd position, especially since the dilemma's causality is the purported source of all that is great in a free market.

[spoonitnow]

Also fuck Obama, fuck Obamacare and fuck anybody who supports Obamacare.

[MadMojoMonkey]

lol spoon

If you actually weren't talking out your ass, I might engage you.

[wufwugy]

No, not at all. The entity is doing all it can to streamline everything, or at least that is where all the incentives are. The employees are doing all they can to keep getting paid and either get paid more or do less work, or at least that is where the incentives are. The entity needs to co-opt the diverging incentives of the individuals to fulfill it's goals. The state is the greater entity, and the businesses are the employees, or at least that's the best way to work your analogy. What you're proposing is that the business should not impose rules on its employees, and they should just be allowed to set up the store in a way that best serves their individual interest. The store would be chaos.

TL;DR: You're either ignoring the tragedy of the commons, or you're taking a huge leap of faith that the market will self correct in a way that will solve for this dilemma. The latter seems like an absurd position, especially since the dilemma's causality is the purported source of all that is great in a free market.

I think businesses should absolutely impose rules on their employees. Literally any rules they want, because that entity and the profits of the owners/investors live or die by the employees choosing to participate in those rules. An entity with bad enough rules loses talent and sales to a business with better ones

The key is choice and competition. Without those, what we're really discussing is a monopoly no different than a legal state.

We find this dynamic at play in every industry where government has little involvement. Like software. The last thing a software company can get away with is being shitty to its employees. The companies have very little power to suppress wages or cut costs attaining to the work environment because any one that does just loses talent to the others who don't. The competition has incentive to not abuse its workers for exactly this reason

If the popular Hobbesian view was true, we would not be seeing companies like Google do every little thing it can to make the work environment spectacular. Read any ol article that portrays the popular view of the world, and you'd think corporations are breaking their backs to crush the workers, but that simply isn't true. Even the infamous Koch Industries is reportedly awesome for its employees. I've heard tell that it's one of the few large corporations that organizes mostly on merit instead of status and priors (like education certificates)



As for tragedy of the commons, check out wisdom of crowds

More specifically about TotC, markets definitely correct for this. How? Supply and demand. The TotC is a depleting of resources for the purpose of individual gain. In a large economy, this just doesn't happen because everything is priced. It's not a coincidence that the go-to example for TotC is a wholly uncompetitive, tiny proto-nation on Easter Island. In our modern economy, a move towards resource depletion brings with it substantial costs and a subsequent move against its use. Markets self-correct this superbly; whereas states do a pretty awful job. Just look at rising costs in healthcare and education. Those are not market-based in the slightest

Just a couple bullet-points for why this is true of healthcare: (1) A while back the state made it illegal for most competent practitioners to practice. The AMA lobbied the government hard enough and this has virtually kicked out all cheap care from the market. Overall this colossal supply restriction is costing trillions in waste. Nobody can do anything about it because the government has made it illegal to challenge. (2) During WW2, the government made it illegal to raise wages. This promoted companies to raise compensation via healthcare benefits. Ever since, this tie of employment to healthcare has caused a cascade of overuse, which in turn increases costs by making demand outpace supply. (3) Everything from Medicare, Medicaid, to the ACA displaces costs of individual healthcare choices onto others, which in turn promotes overuse. It's not a coincidence that the best healthcare system, which spends only a fraction on care that we do (Singapore), is structured in such a way that most expenses are out of pocket (mandated savings programs). This means healthcare consumers only consume what they need/want instead of what they can get.

[wufwugy]

I very much enjoy this discussion BTW. I hope anybody who cares to point out problems with my arguments does so.

[wufwugy]

Also fuck Obama, fuck Obamacare and fuck anybody who supports Obamacare.

Jeb Bush wins the presidency in 2016. Ya can take that to the bank

[spoonitnow]

lol spoon

If you actually weren't talking out your ass, I might engage you.

Forcing people to pay for over-priced coverage that underdelivers is CHANGE.

My favorite part of it is that people who make 100% of the poverty level are able to get great policies for $20 a month. Meanwhile, if you make 98% of the poverty level, you can get absolutely no help whatsoever from the government (neither Federal nor state) in a lot of places including where I live in North Carolina.

[spoonitnow]

Jeb Bush wins the presidency in 2016. Ya can take that to the bank

I completely agree that he wins against any democrat. I'm only slightly less-than-certain that he beats other Republicans.

[boost]

Right, so I think I pretty much agree with your explanation of how the market corrects for TotC in the examples you used. But we were more specifically talking about city planning, zoning, etc. In this realm, the resources concerned are not as tangible, for example, airspace, number of entrances/exits in a given stretch of road, etc. Pretty much, I'm thinking more of TotC scenarios in which the end game is not a depletion of a finite resource, but a stalemate in which inefficiency is mandatory, else you give your competitor an edge.

I think businesses should absolutely impose rules on their employees. Literally any rules they want, because that entity and the profits of the owners/investors live or die by the employees choosing to participate in those rules. An entity with bad enough rules loses talent and sales to a business with better ones

The key is choice and competition. Without those, what we're really discussing is a monopoly no different than a legal state.

Right, so the mechanism to respond to an under-performing state needs to be better. A voting system that doesn't encourage two (and in all practical ways only two) centrist political parties, and maybe the possibility for a recall referendum could be a viable solution, no?

The parties/candidates that cannot hold office because they renege on campaign promises will not be able to fund successful campaigns, pay to employ talented staffers, etc etc.

Like, dude, we need a state, so I'm just always weary when everything that you tap into your keyboard can be summed up by "gubment bad." It's like people who claim all police are bad, and furthermore that the institution itself is inherently bad, but, like, you know, you don't want to live in a world without police.

[boost]

I completely agree that he wins against any democrat. I'm only slightly less-than-certain that he beats other Republicans.

Yeah, I think I flip this. I think the GOP winning the house gives the Democrats a lot of ammo for their 2016 presidential run, but for Jeb to beat back his republican competitors and come out ahead in the primary, all he has to do is pander to the base a little without going full retard to the point that the pundits will mock his ability to win in the general.

[boost]

I very much enjoy this discussion BTW. I hope anybody who cares to point out problems with my arguments does so.

Yeah, I think this has been a good chat.

[wufwugy]

Forcing people to pay for over-priced coverage that underdelivers is CHANGE.

My favorite part of it is that people who make 100% of the poverty level are able to get great policies for $20 a month. Meanwhile, if you make 98% of the poverty level, you can get absolutely no help whatsoever from the government (neither Federal nor state) in a lot of places including where I live in North Carolina.

Outside of that enormous problem, I think the even bigger problem stems from the widespread belief that the state must regulate safety. It is for this reason that it is illegal for any but the most stringent and expensive medical facilities to exist. Everybody thinks the government is saving us from ourselves when it makes licenses so tough to get that only those with expensive educations can provide care. The practitioners then end up being majorly overqualified for the work they perform. There are probably about a million people in the country who have the know-how to provide quality care for 98% of visits, yet they are legally prohibited from doing so.

The change we need is for people to realize that it isn't government that keeps us safe, but markets. Cops are not keeping streets safe, the people who live on them are. Houses are not kept from falling over because of building regulations but because home construction is a business where the primary incentive for its investors is homes that don't fucking fall over. Food isn't making us sick because of the FDA but because people won't buy food from companies that have a reputation of selling contaminated food. When I was a kid, I remember a health crisis at Jack in the Box. The company had to completely change its image after that, not because of anything the government did, but because people stopped eating there. It did so by doing everything it could to not make people sick


The government does not protect us. It protects itself from us.

[OngBonga]

Jeb Bush wins the presidency in 2016. Ya can take that to the bank

I fucking hate America.

[wufwugy]

Right, so I think I pretty much agree with your explanation of how the market corrects for TotC in the examples you used. But we were more specifically talking about city planning, zoning, etc. In this realm, the resources concerned are not as tangible, for example, airspace, number of entrances/exits in a given stretch of road, etc. Pretty much, I'm thinking more of TotC scenarios in which the end game is not a depletion of a finite resource, but a stalemate in which inefficiency is mandatory, else you give your competitor an edge.

I think that is a very good observation, and the answer is that I don't think anybody knows how the chips would fall. However, it is important to note that there is not just one city. We currently have some very small competition between state governments trying to do things like attract businesses from other states, but I think that pales in comparison to the competition between city boards would be if all property was private. I think the basis is that in a market, the cost-benefit analysis reigns supreme; whereas, it doesn't in a state. So even with finite resources in a specific city, the cost-benefit analysis works better than the vote-politician dynamic

Right, so the mechanism to respond to an under-performing state needs to be better. A voting system that doesn't encourage two (and in all practical ways only two) centrist political parties, and maybe the possibility for a recall referendum could be a viable solution, no?

The parties/candidates that cannot hold office because they renege on campaign promises will not be able to fund successful campaigns, pay to employ talented staffers, etc etc.

Europe is much more advanced than we are in this regard, yet that has solved none of its problems. Europe is in full-on disaster mode today, and honestly I think we'd be in for WW3 if it wasn't for global trade and the known impossibility for any European state to create a dominant military. That's just fun speculation though. The point is that Europe is better at what you suggest yet it hasn't improved their policies. Arguably it makes their policies worse.

Like, dude, we need a state, so I'm just always weary when everything that you tap into your keyboard can be summed up by "gubment bad." It's like people who claim all police are bad, and furthermore that the institution itself is inherently bad, but, like, you know, you don't want to live in a world without police.

I do want to live in a world without police. Also I don't think that because some police are bad it means all are bad; instead I think that the system is fundamentally dysfunctional, which means that "the police" as a whole is inherently a problem.

Let me explain why I think we shouldn't have police:

I seriously do not believe that they are responsible for safety and security in communities. If they were, then wouldn't it mean that places where there are more police are places that quickly become the safest? Yes, I think it would, but that isn't what we see happening. What we see is all the safe regions being where the people themselves do not tolerate an insecure environment, and the police do very little there. We see in the places where the police are the most, perpetuation of an unsafe community.

Police almost never stop crime in process, but regular people do on a regular basis. Because of our belief in the police state and the illegality of many forms of private protection, the people depend on the police to provide them security, yet the police rarely live up to the standards. Just take the recent riots for example. I contend that private property was damaged precisely because all the businesses rely on the police for protection. Yet if instead, the businesses knew that their only protection was what they created on the merits, they would already have a system in place that truly benefits them over the costs and protects them from vandalism.

Consider what the fundamental duty of the police is. Is it to protect and serve? No. That is a lie. It is to uphold the laws, to protect the state. This is why the overwhelming majority of what cops do is just patrol the streets, looking for anybody speeding, rolling at stops, or without updated tags, so they can ticket them for state revenues. The police spends almost all of their time harassing citizens.

As for more indepth policing, like homicide investigations or SWAT type enforcement, that stuff could be handled so much more easily by private organizations on contract by insurance companies on contract with individuals and communities who choose to pay for those services.

Taxes are you being forced to pay for what you're told you need. Why does freedom of choice work for everything except for those handful of arbitrary things the state says we need?

[boost]

Outside of that enormous problem, I think the even bigger problem stems from the widespread belief that the state must regulate safety. It is for this reason that it is illegal for any but the most stringent and expensive medical facilities to exist. Everybody thinks the government is saving us from ourselves when it makes licenses so tough to get that only those with expensive educations can provide care. The practitioners then end up being majorly overqualified for the work they perform. There are probably about a million people in the country who have the know-how to provide quality care for 98% of visits, yet they are legally prohibited from doing so.

The change we need is for people to realize that it isn't government that keeps us safe, but markets. Cops are not keeping streets safe, the people who live on them are. Houses are not kept from falling over because of building regulations but because home construction is a business where the primary incentive for its investors is homes that don't fucking fall over. Food isn't making us sick because of the FDA but because people won't buy food from companies that have a reputation of selling contaminated food. When I was a kid, I remember a health crisis at Jack in the Box. The company had to completely change its image after that, not because of anything the government did, but because people stopped eating there. It did so by doing everything it could to not make people sick


The government does not protect us. It protects itself from us.

I think this is a whole lot of cherry picking. Building codes are the reason San Francisco doesn't look like Haiti after an earthquake. The idea of regulations is that the reputational risk tolerance of a company does not adequately provide the level of safety we want. Maybe this can change with better systems for tracking and reporting reputation, but that certainly doesn't currently exist. A guy doing shoddy residential electrical wiring in the absence of a licensing system could work for decades without A) even knowing he is doing shoddy work and B) without any calamities coming to fruition due to his shoddy work. If and when catastrophe does strike, losing his reputation as an electrician is not sufficient punishment and his shoddy bookkeeping will likely make it impossible to warn all his clients of the electrical fire brewing in their walls. The reason we have licensed and bonded contractors, and it is a common requirement to be one, is for this very reason: "common sense" does not account for all sorts of possibilities for calamity, and the delay in negative consequences can be so vast that it's unreasonable to expect reputation alone to be an effective safeguard.

[wufwugy]

I completely agree that he wins against any democrat. I'm only slightly less-than-certain that he beats other Republicans.

The thing is that there's no Republican to beat him. The establishment guys, Walker and Christie, will suffer in ways Bush won't, and the evangelicals have too little power and will back Cruz for the lose. Rand Paul is a darkhorse, but I don't think he can beat Bush and I think he cares more about playing a long game of shifting the party's priorities.

Bush's VP will probably be Rob Portman, John Kasich, or Mike Pence. This will all but cinch Florida, Ohio, Virginia, and Colorado FTW. Jeb is really strong in ways I don't think the media understands

[wufwugy]

I fucking hate America.

I like a Jeb presidency.

He doesn't hail from the evangelical base that his brother did. His policies as governor in Florida revolve around tax cuts, regulation reduction, and increasing school choice. All good stuff. He is one of the only Republicans who can get pro-immigration policy done.

As for the problems with the GWB presidency:

He didn't create the 08 crisis. Many blame him for that, but his effect on that is tiny to non-existent. It was a long-term congressional housing policy issue and Federal Reserve monetary policy issue.

The Iraq War probably would have been just as much of a disaster under a Democrat. Hussein was going rogue and he needed to be taken out, even Dennis Kucinich would have done it. The problem arose due to the occupation being wholly inadequate, the solutions for which are only speculative and generally wouldn't have been feasible. "Installing democracy" is not something that could work. Probably the only thing that would have worked short of annexation (which wouldn't have worked for duh reasons), is merely just taking out Hussein and then letting his military install a new dictator ASAP, with the knowledge that if he gets out of line, he too would be crushed beneath the heel of the international community.

[wufwugy]

I think this is a whole lot of cherry picking. Building codes are the reason San Francisco doesn't look like Haiti after an earthquake. The idea of regulations is that the reputational risk tolerance of a company does not adequately provide the level of safety we want. Maybe this can change with better systems for tracking and reporting reputation, but that certainly doesn't currently exist. A guy doing shoddy residential electrical wiring in the absence of a licensing system could work for decades without A) even knowing he is doing shoddy work and B) without any calamities coming to fruition due to his shoddy work. If and when catastrophe does strike, losing his reputation as an electrician is not sufficient punishment and his shoddy bookkeeping will likely make it impossible to warn all his clients of the electrical fire brewing in their walls. The reason we have licensed and bonded contractors, and it is a common requirement to be one, is for this very reason: "common sense" does not account for all sorts of possibilities for calamity, and the delay in negative consequences can be so vast that it's unreasonable to expect reputation alone to be an effective safeguard.

I don't know how we can prove it, but I disagree.

If you were right, I think it would necessarily mean that private industry owes all of its positive attributes to government oversight.

Anecdotally, I am the son of a residential general contractor and have worked in the field. I know many people from framers to electricians to plumbers to excavators. They get work on their reputations. The only thing the building department does is delete productive hours so the contractors can wait in line downtown or wait for an agent to find his way to the site to approve something (sometimes this is a whole day affair). The worst part of the construction industry is the building department and its silly rules and halting schedule. It's so bad that most of its agents don't even know the material as well as the contractors, and the contractors are then forced to expend a lot of time and energy into "fixing" something in such a way that the building department understands it and can approve it, even though it doesn't improve safety at all.


I believe the view you're expressing, the "snake oil con", is mostly a myth. It is extremely hard to get work doing something that you haven't been able to prove you know how to do properly. This is true in all industries where the product or service is of real consequence. In construction, tons of stuff is done under the table (without government oversight), and virtually none of it comes from workers who have tricked others into giving them work. People are mostly very skeptical of who they give their money to. The construction industry is enormous and it's almost entirely referral and reputation based.

Snake oil only works as long as it is in a realm of the unimportant. And it only works when its faults are a mere benign effect, not a deleterious one. Besides, it isn't that safety can only be promoted by the state. Private companies can promote safety far more effectively. It's not like a lack of an FDA would make consumables a free-for-all. Instead the industry would have all sorts of insurance companies and reputations on the line, all upheld by choice of consumers. Instead of one FDA that is paid for by forced taxation, we would have three or twenty or however many, and they would all survive on the merits of their analyses instead of on their ability to keep the taxed populace from rebelling too hard

[OngBonga]

My problem with Jeb is his fucking surname. GWB is a bastard war criminal, and you guys are about to vote in his fucking brother. They're feeding you lot stupid juice.

[OngBonga]

I wonder if it's just a coincidence that since Malaysia convincted GWB and Tony Blair in their absence at their war crimes court, they've "lost" three planes.

[wufwugy]

My problem with Jeb is his fucking surname. GWB is a bastard war criminal, and you guys are about to vote in his fucking brother. They're feeding you lot stupid juice.

The torture situation is frustrating. But I think it has little to do with the president and a lot to do with the powers congress allocates the CIA and other secretive agencies. It appears that GWB never signed off on the torture, and it is reasonable to assume that a Democratic administration may not have been altogether better.

It's a tough issue for sure, but I'm not convinced it's something that can be pinned on the surname. Doing so is wholly unscientific at the least

[wufwugy]

One point to make: Obama was about as much of an outsider as possible, and, um, he's been pretty bleh. People have taken this to mean that we need another outsider, but hey this is where I say people are stupid and don't know what they need. Queen Victoria was fucking queen of all things yet she presided over the path towards a constitution that would ultimately subvert her family's power. The state needs state insiders to get things done. Of course the preference is state insiders who wish to intelligently marginalize the state

[OngBonga]

The torture situation is frustrating. But I think it has little to do with the president and a lot to do with the powers congress allocates the CIA and other secretive agencies. It appears that GWB never signed off on the torture, and it is reasonable to assume that a Democratic administration may not have been altogether better.

It's a tough issue for sure, but I'm not convinced it's something that can be pinned on the surname. Doing so is wholly unscientific at the least

Ok so you'd have no problem if Hans Hitler got voted into germany?

I obviously just made that name up before anyone takes me seriously.

[OngBonga]

The point about the surname is that you're allowing a corrupt dynamsty to continue to dominate American politics. Jeb's father is not exactly an angel. These people need to be banned from politics, not given the highest office. Jeb is going to be under exactly the same influence that GWB was under. Does anyone actually think GWB was running the country? If he was, you'd be in even more shit than you already are; he couldn't run a pub quiz.

Then again you guys voted GWB in after he blatantly stole an election. Fuck it, you deserve them.

Vote Bush, dickheads.

[spoonitnow]

The point about the surname is that you're allowing a corrupt dynamsty to continue to dominate American politics. Jeb's father is not exactly an angel. These people need to be banned from politics, not given the highest office. Jeb is going to be under exactly the same influence that GWB was under. Does anyone actually think GWB was running the country? If he was, you'd be in even more shit than you already are; he couldn't run a pub quiz.

Then again you guys voted GWB in after he blatantly stole an election. Fuck it, you deserve them.

Vote Bush, dickheads.

Voting in a different president will not change the bold.

Also, the word "allowing" is not completely accurate. It's not in the hands of the voters at this point.

[OngBonga]

Voting in a different president will not change the bold.

Also, the word "allowing" is not completely accurate. It's not in the hands of the voters at this point.

Well at least someone seems to have an idea what's going on.

You're right, American democracy is a joke.

So is ours, for that matter. I'm not just anti-American. I hate the British too. We're equally as fucking dumb.

[MadMojoMonkey]

The popular vote for the presidency is a sham. The president is elected by the Electoral College. The electoral college is appointed, not voted for, and therefore do not represent the general public.
Furthermore:
In most states the electoral college casts their votes before the voting booths have closed.
In most states the electoral college is not required by law to vote in a way that reflects the popular majority.
In most states, that state's electoral college votes as a block, openly denying any subtlety in that state's preferred candidate.

While most of the votes cast by an American citizens matter, the vote for president is irrelevant.

[spoonitnow]

Growing up, I was taught that the electoral college is in place because the founding fathers did not trust the election of the president to the citizens.

[Renton]

How many intelligent people here are actually pro universal suffrage and direct democracy?

[wufwugy]

The point about the surname is that you're allowing a corrupt dynamsty to continue to dominate American politics. Jeb's father is not exactly an angel. These people need to be banned from politics, not given the highest office. Jeb is going to be under exactly the same influence that GWB was under. Does anyone actually think GWB was running the country? If he was, you'd be in even more shit than you already are; he couldn't run a pub quiz.

Then again you guys voted GWB in after he blatantly stole an election. Fuck it, you deserve them.

Vote Bush, dickheads.

Dynasty is the popular claim, but the word is thrown about loosely in this case that I think disagrees with the intention of the word

GWB didn't steal the election, the right-wingers on the SCOTUS arguably played partisan politics so that the results that favored him weren't overturned. They had a legitimate claim even though I disagree with it.

GWB was running the country as much as Obama has been


Many of your points assume it is right to favor democracy. I don't. I don't know to which degree I think this, but I think that empowering the vote is an utter disaster. Voters tend to cast their votes on their own moral authoritarianism more than any other factor. If all of the most popular sentiments were enacted, we'd be up shit creek without a paddle

Dictatorships aren't any better. They're probably worse, but it's important to remember that it's a mistake to think too highly of democracy. I agree with the founders' wariness of entrusting policy to the people. Only in a small number of ways do the people have a good sense of what they want/need. Anytime the issue is marginally technical or the effects are indirect (which is almost always), voters tend to make bad choices

The only idea I've come across that could potentially fix this is making it legal to sell your vote. This would keep the poor and uninformed from being disenfranchised (while giving them extra cash), yet would allow those who construct policy to be those with the greatest expertise and the most skin in the game.

Just a handful of "small" changes could make all the difference. Another is making it illegal for the government to give contracts to entities that have lobbied them. This is the campaign finance reform Rand Paul wants to do, and it's currently the only non-batshit proposal I've seen


I would personally prefer Rand Paul or Scott Walker to Bush, but for the most part Bush is a good idea.

[wufwugy]

How many intelligent people here are actually pro universal suffrage and direct democracy?

I am not, but I am pro-open borders. Ironically, that would be infinitely more empowering to the disenfranchised than any voting scheme, yet I doubt we could get even 10% of the American left to support it.

[MadMojoMonkey]

Darwin award candidate right here:

[a500lbgorilla]

Darwin award candidate right here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BH68...ature=youtu.be

Because I will murder you for not embedding that video.

[MadMojoMonkey]

Sorry. I was on shift and I wanted to share it and get back to work. I noticed that I didn't get it 100% correct, but that the link looked like it would work, so I let it go for a bit.

I intended to come back and properly embed the vid when I got off shift, but you took care of it, like a bro.

Thanks, bro.

[jackvance]

You can't actually get another guy from the Bush dynasty become president, that would be so messed up. Just.. remember George W. Bush and all the shit he pulled?

[wufwugy]

You can't actually get another guy from the Bush dynasty become president, that would be so messed up. Just.. remember George W. Bush and all the shit he pulled?

What shit was that? I'm not being snide, I really want to know.

As far as I can tell, the main problem of his presidency was his voting base was evangelicals (Jeb's isn't). The religious authoritarian policies he enacted were a problem, but the worse of this was the cultural move towards religious authoritarian sentiments. Ofc 9/11 probably played the biggest role in that.

The biggest plus of his presidency was probably the tax cuts and those rebates late in his presidency. The media won't talk about them except in a bad light, but what I've seen from economists is that they were significant successes for the economy


Also note that being a Bush doesn't mean he's the same. GHWB and GWB were much different presidents

[Jack Sawyer]

HAPPY NEW YERZ FTR! HAVE A GOOD ONE

TIL Nico & Vinz are from Norway. What

[MrFerguson91]

I love lamp

[a500lbgorilla]

I love lamp

U my boy

[oskar]

How to farm humans:
http://www.ted.com/talks/luis_von_ah...ation#t-747782

I have to advertise duolingo again, because it's amazing even if you don't give a shit about their business model: https://www.duolingo.com/

[OngBonga]

Darwin award candidate right here:

This was in Darwin, of all places.

What a tit. He made a right bloody mess of the cash machine, he might have been successful if only he wasn't so fucking stupid.

[MadMojoMonkey]

This was in Darwin, of all places.

What a tit. He made a right bloody mess of the cash machine, he might have been successful if only he wasn't so fucking stupid.

Yeah. I must have caught it out of the corner of my eye* that it happened near Darwin, Australia when I posted it.

The news story from which I got the link made it sound like the police were calling him a vandal, not a thief, whom had done this before.

* Eyes don't have corners, FYI.

[OngBonga]

So I just had a -15 BI downswing at 10nl that was driving me fucking crazy. I think I lost at least 5 BI purely due to tilt, maybe more, idk, I was playing godfuckingawful as the beats hit me one after another. Started tiltraising against anyone I had a note against. So I did what any sensible person would do and moved up to 50nl and cut down to one table. One hour and +3 BI's later and I think I'll call it a night, somehow not broke. Here's to fucking gambling.

[OngBonga]

* Eyes don't have corners, FYI.

Yes they do. Maybe not the eyeball itself, but the socket does, and the socket is part of the area I would define as "eye".

[a500lbgorilla]

So I just had a -15 BI downswing at 10nl that was driving me fucking crazy. I think I lost at least 5 BI purely due to tilt, maybe more, idk, I was playing godfuckingawful as the beats hit me one after another. Started tiltraising against anyone I had a note against. So I did what any sensible person would do and moved up to 50nl and cut down to one table. One hour and +3 BI's later and I think I'll call it a night, somehow not broke. Here's to fucking gambling.

Strong stakes selection. After dumping 15 BIs, you were due.

[a500lbgorilla]

[OngBonga]

Strong stakes selection. After dumping 15 BIs, you were due.

Actually my thinking was even more retarded than that. I figured that if I'm going broke, then I'll be fucked if it's happening at 10nl due to morons hitting two outers, or me tilting T3o top pair into jacks, etc. I decided to gamble with my stars roll, and if I blew it, I had my FTP roll to grind shitty stakes with. It wasn't a sense of "I'm due an upswing", it was me being utterly demoralised by losing half my roll in a few hours and taking chances to recover losses. Many poker players have gone broke doing what I did. It was stupid, but it was at least a calculated risk. Calculated as in I didn't give a shit what happened.

[a500lbgorilla]

but it was at least a calculated risk. Calculated as in I didn't give a shit what happened.

I wish their was a gif of someone punching into a calculator and it returning "YOU'RE FUCKING UP"

Or "AINT NO WHERE BUT UP FROM HERE"

[spoonitnow]

Took off to Roanoke for a couple of days over New Years and did the museum and food thing. This was pretty fun:

Sculptor Ralph Eaton’s first large-scale site-specific museum project draws from nearly three decades of “laying bare the absurdities” of our culture’s fascination with “junk.” Commissioned by the Taubman Museum of Art, Fuzzy Kudzu (2013-14) transforms the City of Roanoke Atrium into an otherworldly fantasyland, where a thirty-foot cascade of white furry tendrils made from restructured stuffed animals spills over the central balcony, countering the building’s architecture in ways both welcoming and unsettling. The title of the monumental work refers to the Kudzu plant familiar to any Southerner, an invasive summertime vine that enshrouds anything in its path. Likewise are we as a culture being overtaken by mass-produced stuff. “We are a dysfunctional species,” Eaton declares, “and my work is about finding the humor and beauty in the absurdity of it all.”

Fuzzy Kudzu is stitched almost entirely from used stuffed animals donated by the local Roanoke Goodwill. Most of its “pelt” is recycled from discarded teddy bears, bunnies, and kittens, each taken apart by the artist and reassembled into over fifty “vines” ranging from twenty to thirty-four feet. Weighing nearly a ton, Fuzzy Kudzu is comprised of faux fur fabric, polyester fiberfill, and more than one thousand stuffed animals. Open for interpretation, the resulting shape can be seen as a waterfall, tree trunk, or column—something immediate and organic, yet elegantly classical. Like much site-responsive sculpture, it also morphs with changes in light, be it the movement of the sun or black lights trained across its soft, articulated surfaces. (Source)

[a500lbgorilla]

[oskar]

I'm thinking about my hair too much lately. I have finally gotten to the point in my life where I know how to groom a beard. I won't post any pictures, but you'll have to believe me when I say that it's glorious. I have wonderful Jim Jarmush hair when it's grown out except for a growing bald spot on top where jews put their jew hats. Which is probably why they put the hats there. I checked if I had any jewish ancestry, but when it turned out it certainly wouldn't be enough for a free trip to Israel, I stopped looking further. So now I'm in a dilemma. Do I want to go full Ginsberg and just grow it out anyway like I don't care, or do I commit to my insecurities and go with the Galifiniakis in Hangover II look.

[MadMojoMonkey]

Lolwat?!



Lolwat!?

[Galapogos]

Lolwat?!

Awesome, looks like a possible apprentice of Derren Brown decided to use his powers for evil.

Derren Brown performing the same stunt:

[MadMojoMonkey]

Took off to Roanoke for a couple of days over New Years and did the museum and food thing. This was pretty fun:

Did you stand in the column of fluffy bourgeois angst, just 'cause you don't belong there?

Seems the only reasonable approach to this installation.

[rong]

Finally the evil derren Brown! World domination must surely follow, after a battle between good and evil if course.

[spoonitnow]

[oskar]

[surviva316]

I'm on a webinar hosted by Microsoft right now, and they don't have the audience on mandatory mute. The meeting is a total disaster, hold music keeps playing, echo keeps kicking in, we keep hearing mutters in the background. The IM chat is split between people raging at how hard it is to follow and people who are just laughing in their face.

The "Unmute" button is just sitting right there, tempting me to click it and pull some hilarious troll.

[surviva316]

Lol, there was just a child's voice whining/yelling in the background. Chat is like: "The echo's back." "That's not an echo, it's a child's voice!" etc. I am learning nothing, but I do not feel as though my time is wasted.

[a500lbgorilla]

http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/...etting-crimes/

Kids these days.

[oskar]

I'm on a webinar hosted by Microsoft right now, and they don't have the audience on mandatory mute. The meeting is a total disaster, hold music keeps playing, echo keeps kicking in, we keep hearing mutters in the background. The IM chat is split between people raging at how hard it is to follow and people who are just laughing in their face.

The "Unmute" button is just sitting right there, tempting me to click it and pull some hilarious troll.

So their voip software is less capable than mumble?

[a500lbgorilla]

http://www.theonion.com/articles/no-...image,29553/?2

Muslims these days.

[oskar]

If there is one good thing to come out of this, it's that the european left finally pulls their heads out of their collective asses and admits that there is a fundamental problem with islam today, and that that is not condemning people based on race and believe, it's condemning people for their moral values.

There was a discussion about an islamic school opening here. The only people protesting were the far right. The far right in austria is borderline retarded. Not retarded as in dumb. Retarded as in the medical term. There is no comparison to the US. Imagine Ted Nugent had fetal alcohol syndrome and you dropped him off a ladder 50 times and then clone him... badly, a hundred times, there you have the austrian far right. And these were the only people crying out that we might not want a medieval indoctrination center in the middle of a first world city. I don't blame people for seeing it as just another religion that gets hijacked by some radicals, but the press and politicians should really know better. It's a political movement at its core and it needs to be gently but actively pushed back into the desert.

[a500lbgorilla]

There is no comparison to the US. Imagine Ted Nugent had fetal alcohol syndrome and you dropped him off a ladder 50 times and then clone him... badly

[Renton]

I have to repeatedly remind myself how prevalent islam is in western europe. It's like 6% of the euro population, compared with 0.8% in the american continents.

In unrelated news, Blueprint for Armageddon V just dropped a couple of days ago. Been waiting anxiously for this and it slipped by me.

[oskar]

Dan Carlin is awesome.

[wufwugy]

spoiler alert: armageddon will only happen via asteroid impact

[oskar]

What about supernova?

[wufwugy]

Eh I guess. We tend to hear all about them but haven't seen any of their destruction so I'm left wondering if they're even a concern.

I'll rephrase to "celestial hazards".

[oskar]

There's a thing called a hypervelocity star. Apparently what can happen when one supermassive star in a two star syststem collapses into a black hole is that it can slingshot the other star at a million miles an hour through the galaxy. I wonder if any civilization ever got hit by one of those and whether they were thinking it was their fault.

Supernovas terrify me. Apparently there's one called wr-104 that could potentially already have gone supernova and the gamma rays could already be on their way to us, and if it was just on the right rotaional axes it could evaporate us immediately.

[OngBonga]

ffs it's not Islam that's the problem. The problem is those who are trying to stir up religious tension. Where did al-qaeda come from? They were created by the Yanks in the late 70's, to bait the Soviets into a war they couldn't win, ultimately leading to their downfall. They're not pushing Muslim agenda, they're pushing Western agenda. They were created by the West, just like ISIS.

Their tactics are working. Religious intolerance is on the rise. Look at everyone blaming Islam for something a few evil people did. It's like blaming Judaism for Israel's war crimes. The people to blame are hiding behind religion, they don't speak for religion. What fucking god would condone such actions? Not one that any sane person should worship.