the only countries shock therapy "worked" in are the ones which got EU membership and a flood of Western Euro dollars, and even there it's not without problems.
Who's the rich Argentine neighbor willing to flood the country with investment and offer them open borders, provided it screws over its own poor enough and sells enough public assets?
Estonian GDP/capita increased by about 200% in the decade before Estonia joined the EU and by about 130% in the following decade, so ascribing its success to EU membership does not to me seem like a self-evident conclusion.
The Baltic countries had a large population exodus to Western Europe starting in mid-90s, so GDP/capita is inflated by both lower population numbers and remittances. Of course, EU transfers also helped.
I think this is essentially false. Most people in the developed world have no clue how rich they are by global standards, will often deny it when pointed out, and have no idea how poor the global poor really are.
"Bryan Caplan thinks this can’t be true: after all, practically nobody moves to poorer areas, automatically giving themselves higher relative income than their neighbors?"
Isn't there a recognizable type of migrant (whether an immigrant or from, like, Alabama or Iowa) who moves back home not because they actually miss the place, but because they prefer being a big fish in a small pond to being a small fish in a big pond?
EDIT: of course many people move to nominally poorer areas because a dollar goes much further there. The reason why I went for psychological reasons was to avoid a retort from imaginary steel-manned Bryan Caplan. Still, the fact that people move to poorer areas for the sake of purchasing power is already a very good retort to those (economists and otherwise) who imply that relative income does not matter, and even that those who states it matters must be motivated by envy, the evil eye or some such thing.
We are all just demonstrating the obvious: it is the case that, if others become wealthier and you do not, then you will have effectively become poorer, even if the price of a standard basket of consumption goods does not change. There are also positive externalities to other people's wealth, but all the good examples I can think of (other than "well, now you can be their servant") depend on their willingness to spend on public goods or have their money taxed and spent on public goods: better public schools, better roads, better public transport or public libraries (ok, neither of those last two is going to happen in the US in our days), etc.
I've moved abroad as an international school teacher for kind of this reason. We were barely getting by in the US, now I earn nominally less salary but now our lifestyle includes taking
vacations and we are putting away a hugely increased chunk of savings every year.
However, I'd say our increased happiness comes mostly from increased purchasing power, not from the pure fact of being richer than the people around us. I do take some satisfaction out of being comfortable enough with our budget to give generously to people around me, but it's not the main effect. Also the happiness gains are offset somewhat by the difficulty of being far from family in a foreign culture.
I could second every sentence of this post. I tried to move back to the US once, and my savings began to evaporate. I honestly have no idea where. It was terrifying. Being free of the stress of seeing your money dry up before your eyes is definitely a major plus.
> Isn't there a recognizable type of migrant (whether an immigrant or from, like, Alabama or Iowa) who moves back home not because they actually miss the place, but because they prefer being a big fish in a small pond to being a small fish in a big pond?
I suppose he’s talking about local relativity, staying where you are and comparing to the locals. Anybody who has been to New York isn’t going to feel rich just because he absconded to Idaho. He may well have a better standard of living but if he’s driven by status, he won’t feel higher status in his head because status seekers would try to make it in New York.
Caplan is also wrong because the relative income that matters for status is the pre tax, pre non discretionary income. And obviously housing matters.
I think people like "passport bros" would also fit into this category, where people are moving from HCOL countries to LCOL countries.
At a more local level is plausible the benefits of moving from say California to Mississippi are far worse than just moving from the USA to Thailand so people who are inclined to move to a poorer area just move to another country rather than moving around within their country.
>At a more local level is plausible the benefits of moving from say California to Mississippi are far worse than just moving from the USA to Thailand so people who are inclined to move to a poorer area just move to another country rather than moving around within their country.
I don't think this is true, because there are much greater barriers to such emigration than there are moving states, both legal and practical. Not everyone who wants permission to emigrate is granted it, whereas there are no restrictions on interstate travel, there are no language barriers between US states, people are far more likely to be able to remain in the same line of business when traveling between states, and to build social circles with people they relate to.
For certain people, the advantages of moving countries can be much greater. But the barriers and disadvantages are also correspondingly greater.
Lots of people move from California to nominally poorer states. It's hardly unreasonable to sell your million dollar house in Van Nuys, CA, where you are paying private school tuition, to buy a half million house in the Dallas exurbs where your kids will go to public school.
I think it's actually quite common for people to move to poorer areas when they don't have professional or social obligations keeping them in one place. Think of all the digital nomads in Mexico City or Peru. Or retirees moving to Florida.
If you could tell me their Internet access provider, I'd be thankful. I organised a conference there in 2015, and Internet access (speedy enough for videos) was a bit of an issue.
You might thrive at this altitude, but can your wife carry a child to term there? Can your baby then thrive?
I visited Cuzco when I was 19 in 1978 with a tour group and did okay, but the middle-aged African-American couple in our group both had to be evacuated to Lima at sea level.
Children born there thrive, unless of course they carry a recessive sickle-cell gene, which one of the African-American visitors might have. Did SS want me to say that to score some sort of weird point?
At any rate, no problem with doing mathematics at that height - people are just advised to arrive on Saturday if activities start on Monday. It’s not even high enough for hard drives to have problems (try 4000m for that) - and that is of course less relevant now.
Evidently, you aren't familiar with the research on evolutionary adaptations to high altitude done by Prof. Cynthia Beall of Case Western and others. From Wikipedia:
"Cynthia Beall is the leading scientist in the study of high-altitude adaptation in humans, particularly in places where there is little air to breathe. Among the Tibetans the first thing that she discovered was that they could live at high levels without having high hemoglobin concentrations or large chests, they had high birth-weighted babies, and no complications of mountain sickness. Unlike most humans who migrate to high altitude, the Tibetans do not exhibit the elevated haemoglobin concentrations to cope up with oxygen deficiency, but they inhale more air with each breath and breathe more rapidly, and retain this unusual breathing and elevated lung-capacity throughout their lifetime.[4][5] Their high levels (mostly double) of nitric oxide in the blood increase their blood vessels to dilate for enhanced blood circulation.[6] An astonishing discovery of Beall is the convergent evolution in humans from her studies on other highlanders such as the Amhara in the high-plateau regions of northwest Ethiopia, the Omro people in the southwest Ethiopia, and the Aymara of the American Andes. She found that these groups had adapted to low oxygen environment very differently from the Tibetans.[1][7] Physiological conditions such as resting ventilation, hypoxic ventilatory response, oxygen saturation, and haemoglobin concentration are significantly different between the Tibetans and the Aymaras.[8] The Amharans exhibit elevated haemoglobin levels, like Andeans and lowlander peoples at high altitudes, while the Andeans have increased haemoglobin level like normal people in the highlands.[9] All these observations show that different people adapted to high altitude in different genetic and physiological responses.[10]"
It's a standard observation that in high altitude South American cities like La Paz, the white people tend to live at the bottom of the canyon at the lowest elevation, while the indigenous Indians live at the higher elevations. Leftwing governments in countries like Bolivia have been installing ski lift-like gondolas as mass transit to make commuting from the high Indian suburbs to the low-lying business district easier for their constituents.
People who are indigenous to the Altiplano thrive at Cuzco's 11,000 foot elevation, but other people indigenous to lower elevations can vary considerably in their response to high elevations. (Sickle cell is hardly the only reason some people might be daunted by Cuzco's altitude).
My father, for example, was a rugged outdoorsman up to about 10,000 feet, but fell off dramatically above that. For example, at age 25 he tried to climb 14,500 foot Mt. Whitney, but only got to Trail Crest at 13,777 and then had something of a physical crisis there.
Being sensitive to the fact that humans vary in how well they do at high altitudes seems prudent and considerate.
No, it actually is harder for women to give birth and for infants to thrive at high altitude (unless they have evolutionary adaptations to altitude). This is one reason that places like Cuzco, and more generally highland South America, had fewer Spanish settlers (and consequently, a much higher proportion of indigenous population today) than the lowlands.
There's a half million people that live in the city. People are able to give birth there...
I think people are able to get acclimated over a few days so your visit might not be representative. There's people working in Cuzco hospitals doing heart surgery or at the Cuzco airport directing planes. I'm sure that it's possible to build out Tableau dashboards or take zoom calls under the same conditions.
Sure, it's obviously possible, but is moving to 11,000 feet of elevation an optimal choice to do the kind of Work From Home jobs that ACT readers tend to do?
And even if you are at 100% capacity at 3,400 meters, what about people who are or might become important to you?
For instance, my uncle built his retirement dream house in the Sierras at 9,000 feet, but then it turned out his wife could no longer handle the altitude. That was a very unfortunate situation.
There are a lot of advantages to living at higher altitudes, especially at lower latitudes. E.g., Cuzco, near the equator has average high temperatures around 70 F year round. That's pretty pleasant.
But when thinking about places to move to, you need to take into consideration a lot of factors, many of which don't seem to be obvious, as suggested by these angry responses.
I studied a for semester in Cuzco in uni. And yeah, we were able to learn just fine. Myself and a few American-born classmates did 5+ mile hikes that went as high as 16,000 feet without any issues. None of us were anything more than hobby hikers.
10 years later I visited again with my pregnant wife and 1 year old son. And they both were fine with the altitude too.
This. Some people will have altitude issues, and retirees should be careful (that includes some people who were born there, moved elsewhere and haven't been there for a long time). The limitations are physical - never heard of any mental effects at that altitude.
Chronic altitude sickness is a thing, but it generally happens far further up. The difference between life at 4300 (say) and at 3500 meters above the sea level is in some ways more significant than that between 3500 meters and 0 meters.
Many years ago, I remember coming across an online piece written by an American, praising the choice to live in a Brazilian favela (though not necessarily permanently).
It's dirt cheap, located within a city, fun and colorful, and just as safe as anywhere else in Brazil! What's not to like?
Some Brazilian commented, saying this was the funniest thing he had ever read, and that he hoped the author enjoy his favela; as for him, he was moving to Denmark.
That exchange really made me think. From the perspective of the Brazilian guy praising the favela was ridiculous. How come you have to be a foreigner to see it differently?
For the American in that anecdote, we assume a location independent source of income. For the Brazilian, income in a favela would be no worse than in the rest of the same city.
A location independent source of income is the premise of this entire thread. It typically means one of two things:
(1) You work remotely, often as a programmer or similar.
(2) You're living off interest.
Here's how you can get to (2): pretend your income is 1/3 of what it is now. In other words, pretend you are poor. You must live on that budget. Unless you're already very poor, it's possible. Some people live like that. So now you have 2/3 of your income to invest. In about 10 years, your investments will have reached the point that they generate an income equal to what you're spending each year (which, remember, is 1/3 of what you spend now). Now you can live off interest forever.
If you replace 1/3 with 1/2 it takes 20 years instead of 10.
There's also the phenomenon of so-called gentrification, where intrepid trendy types move to a dodgy area of a city, because property there is cheaper and maybe they like "vibrancy" (menacing looking characters sitting around on front steps, strange people directing traffic, etc). Then over time more and more of these yuppies move in until the original locals are priced out. There are several examples of this in London, and it's probably the same in any large city.
There is also range compression to consider. Some people might prefer living in, say, Mountain View rather than Los Altos but would not be okay living in Gilroy. The fact that extreme versions of "big fish, small pond" don't seem to happen a lot doesn't mean that there isn't some form of the effect.
Isn't retiring abroad as an expat kind of a thing also? Once when my wife and I were traveling in Ecuador we stayed at a lodge run by a guy who had retired into a life of Ecuadorian luxury on an NYC school teacher pension (he didn't do the work at the lodge, it basically just gave him a constant stream of gringos to go birding with).
I know people that moved to "poorer" countries, on retirement or close to it, and while I can not definitely know their motives, lower cost of life seems to be one of the factors. In fact, I myself moved from California ("rich" state, very high cost of living) to another, relatively "poorer" stare with lower cost of living. And while it's not related directly to my neighbors income, having a better house for 1/3 the price sure seems like a good benefit. Of course, I wouldn't move to Rwanda or Albania some place like that just because people are poorer there, but generally I think Caplan is wrong if he claims nobody moves to places that are "poorer". Within some conditions, a lot of people do.
The small rustbelt city I grew up in on the shore of lake Erie has a steady stream of boomer retirees who made their money on the coasts or in Florida then retired to Ohio. I've spoken with a few of them when I'm home visiting family about why. The low CoL is a big factor; they can build a spawling estate on the lakeshore for less than a medium sized condo in NYC/SF etc. Several also mentioned, whithout prompting, that there are no jews and very few blacks and immigrants.
Yeah, it was also a common topic of discussion in the Russian-speaking software community prior to 2022: those who moved to the US make more and have better standard of living in absolute terms, but those in Russia (or other post-soviet countries) have a significantly wider gap between them and the rest of the population. People would have different opinions on it naturally, but it was explicitly acknowledged as one of the pros of staying home vs moving to the States by both sides of the argument.
I knew a guy in college who explicitly planned to get hired by the Malaysian branch of an American company on the American MBA pay scale, move back home to Malaysia, and live like a king.
I also think you can't just change your reference class by moving. Sure, you're richer than your neighbours, but to all of your family & old friends & classmates you've now moved to the ghetto.
I think this is the big thing, yeah. Also, it might have worked better in the past, but now you can't really prevent constant information inflow re: all the people who live elsewhere & make more than you anyway.
The operative words are is "moving back". You need some cultural claim of legitimacy to be integrated in the poorer society. "I went to the city, got rich, and now I am back home" is a story people can stomach. "I was born in a rich country/state, worked there, and now I retire here on a pension ten times as big as what I would get for the same work here, now please give me the respect that is due" will not work.
There's also a whole "down-shifting" movement where people move to SEA and live cheaply. Big chunk of the satisfaction is actually a feeling of relief of you being "on top of the game".
Source: lived in Bali for 5 years. The downside of being "on top" is no longer having motivation to grow
Regarding 10, the actual latest news is that inflation has again risen to almost 4% in march, though some of it is explained by seasonal factors.
On the other hand, the government has pretty succesfully reduced capital controls via an agreement with the IMF, leading to a strong revaluation of the currency (in the "real" exchange rate, the official one went up briefly and then came back down), meaning they shouldn't be spending reserves propping it up.
The Economist in writing about that IMF deal this week called it a bold but risky move on Melei's part. They think it has as much chance of backfiring as working, for reasons that TBH I don't entirely grok. But the Economist retains its organizational roots and covers macro-level financial stuff both regularly and thoroughly so I tend to have some respect for their judgement on such topics.
Thousands of people moved from San Francisco to poorer areas (Texas and Idaho) when they could do so and keep thier high incomes. Many people retire to Mexico (or from NYC to Florida) where their retirement goes further. Clearly there is a wealth effect, where having more money than is "expected for the area" lets you live a happier life.
Was that to get higher relative income, or just for normal absolute reasons like SF having high crime, or being able to afford a bigger house in Idaho?
Is "higher relative income" some technical term that i don't know? In plain English "afford a bigger house" is one result of having a "higher relative income"
Well, there are two reasons you might be able to afford a bigger house (in one location relative to another):
1. People there might have less money than you.
2. Houses there might be more abundant.
Only the first one is a question of relative income. If you move from China to the United States, your relative income will drop fairly dramatically, but you'll be able to afford more Pop Tarts than you could before.
Well, even the first might not be an issue of relative income. You might just want a bigger house than you have now, without caring a whit about how well off your new neighbors are.
It has a plain meaning: having a high income relative to the people around you. Caplan appears to be talking specifically about the phenomenon of being happier *because everyone around you is poorer than you*. This isn't the same as having greater purchasing power, although of course the two things do correlate.
(But they don't necessarily correlate all that much: If you move from a middle-class neighborhood in Los Angeles to a poor neighborhood in Los Angeles, you'll get some more purchasing power with respect to housing, and of course most of your neighbors will have a lower yearly income, but food and cars and clothes and utilities and vacations and such will still cost the same, and your car insurance will likely go up! So you'll have to really really get an ego boost from that price per square foot advantage plus the fact that your neighbors' annual salaries are lower than yours.)
> or being able to afford a bigger house in Idaho?
Since land is limited, over the short term housing is a "relative terms" item.
Inside of a currency union, this is also pretty much what we'd expect to see. Poorer areas should have lower prices for non-tradable goods like housing and personal services.
This also makes the pure form of the relative income hypothesis difficult to test. A big fish in a small pond will probably have better access to local resources (land) and personal services (haircuts, lawn mowing), and those provide meaningful, measurable increases in material standard of living beyond a simple feeling of status or financial superiority.
I'd go so far as to suggest that very few people can realistically conduct that experiment and choose to live in a poorer area in a way that makes their material situation worse in every single aspect except for status.
"Bigger house" and "higher/lower relative income" is the same thing said in two different ways. In SF, you compete for the house with unicorn millionaires and VC-funded crypto bros, in Idaho, you'd compete with regular people with regular incomes. There's no way a market can sustain a level of pricing if there are no people with enough income to pay it. So, it areas where incomes are lower, the prices would be lower too. Plus, of course, less people itching to live in high-cost area and overbidding for the privilege, which is also a contributing thing of the same origin.
No. "Bigger house" can mean "same relative income, but houses are cheaper here because they're in less demand".
The median household income in Lancaster, CA (where I live) is about the same as in Hawthorne, CA (where I sort of work), but houses in Hawthorne are about twice as expensive in Hawthorne. Same relative income, but lots of people are willing to pay a larger fraction of their income to live Hawthorne because it's convenient to the beach, many good jobs, cultural amenities, other cool people, etc whereas Lancaster is in a literal and cultural desert with maybe three good employers.
This is true for two cities that are next door to each other. However, if they are at any distance, then the setup that you have now - whether essentially the same set of people, obviously having the same common income profile, can live either in Lancaster or Hawthorne - can not occur. If you take Idaho/Texas and SF, then the incomes aren't the same, because there's not a lot of people that commute there and back for work from Idaho to SF and back, and thus the situation of "maybe three good employers" (which of course not true for Idaho but I take it as a rhetorical exaggeration of the real income differential) leads to relatively lower incomes in one place and higher incomes in another.
Hawthorne and Lancaster are not "next door". They are separated by about a hundred kilometers, a mountain range, and 2-3 hours of rush-hour traffic. It is not practical to commute between the two, unless you happen to own an airplane. Both cities do have convenient airports, but unless everyone else is flying stealth planes I'm the only one who actually does that.
People who live in Lancaster, generally work in Lancaster or one of the neighboring communities, with some commuters but not into the heart of the LA basin. Many of whom could get jobs in either city if they liked (they both have e.g. a substantial aerospace-industry presence), and at similar pay. Some people want to live in an apartment in a cosmopolitan city, others prefer a house in a suburban or rural town. And some want a nice house in a big cosmopolitan city, which they'll bid up to a stratospheric price even though their classmates who took the job in the high desert are making the same money and paying half as much for housing.
I think the phenomenon in 7 has to be split to be precise:
Areas with lower income and lower costs of living are not necessarily the same (although usually highly correlated). The fact that people move to areas with lower costs of living seems obvious. If I have a remote job and move from SF to Lisbon where everything costs half, that makes a lot of sense. In Lisbon both average income and average costs of living are lower.
But the claim seems to be: people would also move from SF to London, where costs of living are similar, but everyone else makes less money. Hence any gain in happiness/utility would not come from affording more things than before, but from affording more things than peers.
I like that you clarified a distinction that most here seem to have missed, but there is an even further distinction in the original claim (as written) that you have also missed. It's not about making more money than your peers but more money than your "social circle". These days, it's not uncommon for much of one's social circle to exist outside the physical neighborhood where they reside. Now if you move to London and spend all our time in a neighborhood pub and the other regulars become your new social circle then you might have moved up in relative wealth, but if you mostly keep the same friends as before, moving to a poorer city or neighborhood doesn't test the claim.
There is a significant wealth effect in being "the Joneses" that everyone else is keeping up with. The psychic freedom to spend on what you want to, and not feeling like you are missing out, certainly contribute to overall happiness.
I think that is also why rural life appeals to the semi-rich: when you go down to the diner or country club, it doesn't matter if you have 10 acres of unusable rocks or 100 acres of corn and $100K in farm equipment - you can still max out the local available conspicuous consumption.
> section from Walter Isaacson’s Musk biography claiming that his father Errol, previously a successful engineer, suddenly became a crackpot in his forties:
The 40s are a bit early for age-related cognitive decline, but they're also late for schizophrenia. Is there any commonly-accepted psychological or medical condition that would cause someone to become a crackpot in their forties?
> Where are the people who coincidentally ended up living in the slums and love it?
It's not common, but I regularly hear about people who retire to low COL areas, up to and including poorer countries like Mexico where 'their dollar goes a lot further'. It's not a pure example of relative income mattering because of purchasing power parity effects, but I think it nudges in that direction.
Besides this, however, why should relative income be measured with respect to one's neighbourhood? To me, the intuitive description brings to mind one's peer group, but that's flexible and itself income-dependent. Rich people get invitations to parties where even richer people circulate.
To intentionally exploit the relative income effect by 'moving to a slum', you'd have to intentionally cut yourself off from family and former friends and consciously avoid social climbing, Seems a bit of a tough call, and also a move more likely to be made by someone already unhappy.
> Is there any commonly-accepted psychological or medical condition that would cause someone to become a crackpot in their forties?
Untreated bipolar can worsen over a lifetime. Science fiction fans may remember the infamous _Last Dangerous Visions_ anthology that Harlan Ellison somehow failed to publish for something like 50 years - it nominally came out last year posthumously, with its main point of interest being J. Michael Straczynski's long memoir of his association with Harlan Ellison, in which he describes how he knew Ellison had bipolar disorder within hours of meeting him, but it took decades for it to slowly grind down Ellison, taking away his ability to write novels and then stories (because the manic cycles increasingly failed to last long enough to finish anything substantial), leading to grossly inappropriate behavior like groping Connie Willis or compulsive shopping of nerd trinkets, and finally, in old age, to a suicide attempt with a gun, after which Straczynski was able to use a psychiatric hold to force him into going to a psychiatrist for diagnosis. The most tragic part is that the drug treatments were apparently starting to work and Ellison was finally able to write again... when he got hit by an unrelated stroke, declined, and died of another.
Anyway, I don't know about the stories, but the Ellison memoir is well worth reading.
I grew up reading Harlan, thought he was quite talented, wondered why he rarely wrote long pieces and then became sad when I learned what a jerk he could be. Bipolar at least *explains* a bunch of this...
> I grew up reading Harlan, thought he was quite talented, wondered why he rarely wrote long pieces and then became sad when I learned what a jerk he could be.
I too sometimes wondered what was up with Ellison and why he never wrote any novels after his initial batch of juvenilia... but to the extent that I thought about it, I wrote it off as a mix of a perfectionist personality, performing a role as the Brooklyn infant terrible of SF, and too much Hollywood money & fun times. After all, Ellison would not be the first writer to have been ruined by easy screenwriting money, the lure of seeing your fiction *truly* immortalized and influential on the silver screen (no SF short story would ever have the impact of a really successful Star Trek episode or movie), and the tempting lifestyle of being a Famous Writer in LA, as opposed to the hard work and risk of grinding out another novel. Somewhat like Douglas Adams, who apparently deeply enjoyed being Douglas Adams and hosting dinners to wax eloquent at, rather than sitting down to actually *write*, and so had a busy active life that involved a lot less writing than it could have if he had more of a work ethic like, say, Terry Pratchett.
So bipolar never came to mind for me as a possible explanation until he announced the diagnosis publicly some time before his death. (Although now that I write that, maybe I should cast a more skeptical eye over biographical accounts of Douglas Adams...)
This makes Harlan Ellison a good example of how bipolar is the dark matter of highly successful writers: we know it's there in large quantities from the surveys and statistics, but we can be staring right at a case for half a century, in retrospect looking obvious, and never even think of it, assuming that the long stretches of depression are just the writer gestating new pieces or enjoying the lifestyle or busy with other things or the symptoms are being 'a jerk', while insiders do their best to hide it from the rest of us (like how Straczynski continually covered for & bailed out Ellison, and never said a word publicly about what he'd seen until the end).
Now that I read this, imagine if George R. R. Martin is actually bipolar and struggling with long depression bouts and that's why we don't have Winds of Winter yet but we're all complaining. Huh.
I don't think it is simply just that writers get seduced by the lifestyle of being a famous writer.
I think that people differ by how many good novels they have in themselves. Tolkien wrote the Lord of the Rings over a decade, and while he lived for quite a while after publication, he did not use that time to churn out more epic fantasy trilogies. And that is totally okay, human genius is not a production line.
My feeling is that Douglas Adams is kind of similar. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy was tremendously successful, but over the next four sequels there was some decline, IMHO.
Terry Pratchett published a tremendous amount of Discworld novels which were pretty solid -- I think that his best later ones often worked by introducing new characters and settings (Small Gods is novel #13, for example).
But there is a certain trap of a writer writing a great novel and the publishing endless sequels, and I like to think that both Tolkien and Adams knew when to stop instead of milking their franchise dry.
How many letters did he write after? It seems to me that he spent most of that time imagining more stuff about his world and put those into letters, or into his drawer. That's how we got The Silmarillion (and other posthumous publications).
Tolkien was I think in it for the worldbuilding more than the storytelling. He buckled down and wrote one good children's novel and one amazingly good adult meganovel because he knew that worldbuilding unadorned by storytelling was only a private fancy, but after that mostly just did story-fragments to flesh out the worldbuilding.
Which was enough because those novels were good enough to bring a lot of people around to the view that, hey, I kind of want to see more of that world even if it isn't packaged into shiny perfect stories.
If he'd been born a generation later, he might have been a first-rate writer of RPG settings, a la M.A.R. Barker.
> My feeling is that Douglas Adams is kind of similar. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy was tremendously successful, but over the next four sequels there was some decline, IMHO.
I don't think that's a good example because what I said was that it was bad that he didn't write more. I didn't say what he didn't write was just more Hhgttg. You are correct that the later Hitchhikers were definite dropoffs and we probably aren't missing much compared to if Adams had milked another Hhgttg or two out of himself. Blood from a stone, etc. However, he could, and did, write more than just Hitchhikers stuff. I liked the Dirk Gentlys, for example, and his contributions to various games were interesting, and _Last Chance To See_ was pretty interesting (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_Chance_to_See). _The Meaning of Liff_ still gets brought up occasionally.
And, of course, that's just what we know of; we cannot know what he would have done if he had been more industrious. When he dropped dead of a heart attack at age 49 in 2001, he hardly looked like he was an exhausted creatively-dead burnout case. Plenty of writers do a lot of good work, sometimes their best work, after 49. (For comparison, Terry Pratchett died at 66 in 2015, so had he died at 49 like Adams, then he would've died in 1998; that means we would've lost: fully half of the Discworld novels and almost all of the award-winning/nominated ones, a lot of ancillary Discworld material like all of the _Science of Discworlds_, Baxter's _Long Earth_ series, several award-winning documentaries, his Alzheimers & assisted-suicide activism... And this is despite 66 being quite young, well below his life expectancy and at an age where plenty of fiction writers are still producing noted works!)
> I'd guess that Flowers for Algernon was more impactful than any single Star Trek episode.
...But only because Flowers for Algernon got adapted again and again and again into shows and movies: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flowers_for_Algernon#Adaptations (For example, 'Flowers for Algernon' is alluded to prominently in _End of Evangelion_ - but only to the Japanese title for the *movie adaptation*, _Charly_.)
The melancholy fate of many really successful SF/F works is, even when the original story is still technically read rather than plunged into complete obscurity, to see the book version overwritten and erased by the successful film version. Even the readers of the books can no longer read them as written. (And I don't mean things like Lucas retconning Darth Vader into Luke's father so _A New Hope_ comes off as entirely different when you as a later viewer 'know' that Darth Vader is Luke's father and this is supposed to be a whole cycle of 'the tragedy of Anakin Skywalker'.) For example, in Ted Chiang's "Story of Your Life", was it time-travel precognition, as it was in the movie adaptation _Arrival_? Most people will tell you that it is, even though it makes no sense when you read the story closely: https://gwern.net/story-of-your-life And
Or, was it ruby slippers... or silver, in _The Wonderful Wizard of Oz_? I know people who have read the book - one of the most successful children's books ever - who will tell you that they were, of course, ruby. And if you allude to 'silver slippers', no one will have any idea what you're talking about (despite showing up again and again in the later novels).
Speaking of children's books, probably the most successful ones were the Harry Potter books, and no one these days can keep straight what is from the books, the films, and the fanfiction: http://members.madasafish.com/~cj_whitehound/Fanfic/fanonvscanon.htm And I'm sure someone has written an equivalent version of how many Tolkien fans now believe things about the LotR which are due solely to the Jackson movie versions, no matter how many times they read the novels... You just approach things with certain assumptions and can't notice that it's not actually there in the text.
>But only because Flowers for Algernon got adapted again and again and again into shows and movies
Hmm, seems unlikely. None of those were big enough hits to eclipse the written story, certainly nothing close to the level of Arrival. If anything, the novelization by Keyes himself is probably the single best known variant... which I guess is still sort of in line with your point.
I can recall as a kid in the early 1970s, Harlan Ellison was in the Los Angeles newspapers constantly: writing, being written about, getting into arguments with people, etc. He was a real ball of fire.
Interestingly, when Frank Sinatra harasses Harlan Ellison over his informal footwear, Ellison is playing pool with baseball manager Leo Durocher, who was perhaps the most similar personality in sports to Sinatra. Durocher would have gotten the credit for managing Jackie Robinson's historic 1947 season breaking the color line (Durocher did an excellent job during spring training of putting down any racist reluctance on the part of the other Brooklyn Dodgers to playing with Robinson), but at the last moment before the historic game, the commissioner of baseball suspended Durocher for the year for spending his off-season gambling with mobbed-up movie star George Raft (which sounds like a Sinatra scandal).
Ok but then it's always clear that higher relative incomes are a mean not an end. To argue otherwise is to posit some dark and very conveniently falsifiable subconscious motive, so that when a Swiss retirees talks about how cheap is to dine out and rent a beautiful seaside house in Malaga, what he actually means it that he satisfied some Jungian urge to best his fellow man. Seems a bit superluous when the stated motive so clearly suffices honestly.
> 7: A common sociological claim is that relative income (compared to your social circle) matters more for happiness than absolute income. Bryan Caplan thinks this can’t be true: after all, practically nobody moves to poorer areas to enjoy the higher relative income this would confer.
That's because high income areas generally have better culture, restaurants and opportunities. In addition, the perceived risk of low income areas.
Why would a high income person move to an area without Michelin star restaurants, Whole Foods, and Montessori schools? In addition, why risk being a victim of crime?
When I moved to Chicago, I moved to a glamorous high rise apartment overlooking the lake in Lincoln Park so I could get a girlfriend. When I got a fiancee, I moved north to the grungier Lakeview neighborhood. When I got a wife, I moved north to highly diverse Uptown (diverse meaning lots of cheap Vietnamese restaurants).
Outlining this, I wrote to the U. of Chicago scholars who had authored "The Social Construction of Sexuality" and suggested they write a sequel entitled: "The Sexual Construction of Society." Remarkably, they more or less followed my suggestion by eventually writing a tome entitled "The Sexual Organization of The City."
I have long maintained that sexuality in humans is largely a social matter, unless you think that, for example, there was some mysterious gene in Afghan tribesmen and ancient Spartans that made them attracted to young boys.
There's another theory that homosexuality is caused by some kind of communicable disease, which is why it's much more common in cities than in rural areas, and why it appears to have mostly vanished from history between 300 AD and 1900 AD.
A further theory is that Greek homosexuality wasn't all that common, it just got written about a lot.
But the thing that makes me suspicious is that there's no actual record of anyone enforcing that strong religious taboo.
For instance the Spanish Inquisition in all its investigatory zeal managed to prosecute one thousand people for sodomy... but only half of these were sodomy between persons (the others presumably being with animals) and only a handful of cases involved two consenting adults https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Catholic_Church_and_homosexuality ... suggesting that homosexuality was a hundred times less popular than bestiality in Inquisition-era Spain.
Yet, even sticking to Spanish territory and the 300-1900 period, many of the Andalusian caliphs kept male harems.
I don't disagree that it's a puzzle, although I suppose widespread religious belief that X is a horrible sin can discourage something to a degree without the church needing too many actual prosecutions.
Turing's and Wilde's case became such cause celebre because the laws against homosexuality were never actually enforced, despite it being so common in boarding schools and ships to be a running joke. I doubt this denotes anything except a certain tendency of traditional societies to tolerate a lot as long as it happened in an adequately surrespicious matter.
Add to this that the post-Roman, pre-westphalian legal system was weird and convoluted, with personal rather than territorial jurisdiction and very blurry lines between secular, religious, professional, regal and familial legal spheres, and I'm not really sure you proved much.
These days The Gays™ feel safe enough to even occasionally vaguely hint that they weren't actually "born this way", it was just a useful bit of rhetoric.
Young men will routinely fuck each other in any environment where women are not available and (for societies condemning it) prying eyes turn the other way. Prisoners, soldiers, sailors, young aristocrats in boarding schools and Moldovan bricklayers living on site all do that.
I find much more plausible the Kinsey view of a flexible sexuality, with heterosexuality being a strong preference rather than an absolute costraint for most, than any sociological theory trying to encompass all the groups above.
Calling Lakeview "grungier" than Lincoln Park, while I guess technically true, is a wild claim. All three of those neighborhoods are very safe, have great amenities, and are effectively next door, given that they're all two train stops away from each other. It mostly sounds like you had a relatively stable income and decided to move to very similar neighborhoods with very slightly lower costs of housing as you got older.
I had a fairly rapidly rising income in the 1980s, but chose to move to less fashionable neighborhoods once I had acquired a fiancee and then a wife.
The differences between living at 2700 North, 3600 North, and 4900 North have probably diminished since the 1980s as more people have come around to my point of view.
I would recommend to young single people that you bite the bullet on housing costs and live where the kind of people you'd like to marry live.
My own experience is that exposure to people significantly richer or significantly poorer than you is distressing. The distribution of distress is asymmetric, meaning that your best bet is to be surrounded by a fairly narrow band of wealth where you're towards the top.
I used to live in a proper rich area where the range was upper middle class professionals like me at the bottom and proper rich people at the top. I found that when I walked around I spent an uncomfortable amount of time thinking about money -- every time I saw a really nice house or car that I couldn't possibly afford it set off a pattern of musing about money.
Nowadays I live a few suburbs away in a slightly less rich area that's full of people at roughly my wealth level. When I walk around I rarely see anyone that I envy, nor anyone that I pity, and my brain gets to focus on more interesting things.
I grew up about 8 miles north of Beverly Hills. I've always found walking around Beverly Hills to be pleasant. I find crazy rich people entertaining. But I am terribly unambitious, so it doesn't bother me I'll never live there.
Same here. Sometimes I'll see something and think "Oh, that would be nice to have" but in general I don't go "Damn it, why don't I have that! Why am I a loser by comparison!"
If someone likes Michelin restaurants and Porsches, good luck to them and I sincerely hope they enjoy them, but I've never felt "Oh I am missing out" by not having them.
This is no comment on you, Justin, but I can't wrap my head around "oh my goodness, I cannot eat at a Michelin starred restaurant here? Life is not worth living!"
My problem is I like plain food (and plenty of it) so while I can appreciate the aesthetics (and incredible skill and effort involved) of one carefully trimmed miniature eel's brain with three streaks of jus on the plate, it would not fill my stomach.
> From @msamalam: 1932 Japanese map of world features/stereotypes
Interesting that India comes pre-partitioned (what do colors denote?). Also, llamas and alpacas are way too far south (you'll see a stray guanaco vaguely there, but not on the plains I'd think) and there should definitely be a cow where llamas and alpacas are.
The Spanish are criticised a lot for their actions in the new world, and probably wouldn’t do well in this survey. Also they probably weren’t as bad as us Anglos, truth be told.
That argument is a deflection and a false dilemma. The survey wasn’t either or. You can assign bad to any of the questions.
The Spanish court of the 16th Century felt a surprising amount of guilt over what the Conquistadors were doing to the Indians, more than Anglos did a century later.
"what they did in the New World"? That's as relevant as pointing to the leading Nazis all being devoted fans and promoters of classical art.
The Vikings' violence in the Old World, which was 99 percent of their interest and activity, was a notably brutal and effective deployment of the military technology of their era. They were _good_ at what they were doing, which was a big part of why they became so widely feared.
Funny in that chart is that the black plague is positive to 9% of the responders. Maybe those people know their history, and how the reduction in workers led to higher wages and better working conditions for those that survived - likely leading to the creation of the middle class and possibly the advancement of Europe towards the Industrial Revolution.
Horrible at the time and worse to try to recreate it, but I think there's a value in recognizing the positive as well as negative outcomes to things happening in life. I would be more than skeptical of anyone advocating something like that now, even if it worked out well in some respects back then. Not to mention there have been a whole lot more plagues and the most common results were pretty much all misery and no noticeable benefits.
I ended up wondering if this is (lizardman constant and) the one or other person thinking the survivors raising the immune system baseline to something "better" was worth it. If so, allergies would like a word with these people, though.
When I saw those results, I figured the non-lizardman component was the economic argument that the Black Death cut population density in western Europe and thereby led to wage increase, mechanization of labor, and eventually the basis of the industrial revolution. I suppose the galactic supercluster-ascended Buddha-brain take would be that on the long term, by leading to industrialization and modern medicine, the Black Death eventually *decreased* the risk of death by disease on net. At quite the high cost, though!
While I think that it is mostly Lizardmen's constant, the steel-man for the Black Plague would be the following.
Medieval populations had a total fertility ratio far above replacement, and were thus in the Malthusian trap.
Counteracting population growth are the three horsemen Famine, Pestilence and War. All three are horrible. Disease can not only kill, but maim. Starvation is a long and terrible process which will leave even those who survive diminished. And war brings out the very worst in humans, it is not simply people gutting or crippling each other with swords, but also the rape and the destruction of resources.
I am happy that we have our methods of population control called Pension Plan, Condom and OnlyFans, but if they are not an option, and the population has outgrown what their fields can produce, and I have to decide if 10% of them should die by starvation, war, or infection, I would probably pick infection.
The average person, born and raised in their home country and having lived there basically their entire life, has little idea of what full impact any historical matter has had on the people living then and there, or of the deep cultural memories those events formed. The farther the remove in space and time, the more the gaps in that image will necessarily be filled by popular culture, often by projecting modern sensibilities back in time.
Sure, you have some unambigously bad stuff like the Black Death where everyone everywhere can agree it was bad, even without knowing specifics. But the Hundred Years War? Hundred years of war sounds bad. But what was it even about? Maybe it was kinda justified?
Then the Vikings. Will most people even know it's a job description, not an ethnicity, and what that job entailed? Also, Vikings are kinda cool, aren't they? There are comics about them, video games, movies; much like pirates, their historical package gets sanitized the further you are removed from them. I bet if you'd ask the average English, especially on the East coast, they'd have a more nuanced perspective.
Castles and Chivalry? Barely anyone will think of the feudal system, the massive inequality and repression they represent, of the almost perpetual war that necessitated them. They think of countless fantasy novels and other pop culture products, or at most their once-in-a-lifetime Europe roundtrip out of school.
Another example, not on the list: The widespread adoration of Adolf Hitler in parts of India. Notwithstanding the fact that Hitler hated Indians as a race (ignored) or that he killed millions in Europe (irrelevant) he is seen positively at least in nationalist circles because they credit him with bringing down British rule over India.
So the point is: for any given historical topic, every society in space and time has their own image of it, which can be very different from each other, even contradictory. Finding out what these views are like is certainly useful and interesting, but one should probably not overly blame people for not knowing the full historical reality.
Actually, Vikings were quite active as traders all around European coasts, from Baltic to Mediterranean. Also, they created/modernised governance for at least two major European nations (Russia and England).
I don’t think the understanding for the Vikings runs that deep. Most people see the Vikings as the marauders not the settlers or colonialists, which is something that modern historians agree with. A farmer isn’t a Viking.
Best to say danish law, not viking law. Therefore people are happy with the pillaging and raping and slaving, in a way they aren’t for other historical groups.
*Rus', not Russia. There's an argument that Ukraine is closer to being the Kievan Rus' descendant while Muscovy was heavily influenced by/basically a creation of Mongols. Like Manchukuo surviving into modern times and claiming to be the rightful descendant of the Imperial China. I don't know if you'd agree, but anyway Rus' seems more accurate. Not to mention that the name most likely means the Vikings as an exonym derived from Finnish ruotsi, or directly from the same origin.
You are right that the English name of the country did not become Russia until well after the Viking age.
Not sure in which sense Ukraine is a more direct "descendant" of Rus' though, given that it did not exist as a state before 1918. The last relatively independent Rus' principalities on modern Ukrainian territory were annexed by Poland and Lithuania in XIV century. The elder Rurikid branch ruled continuously over Rus principalities in the North-East and then Muskovy and then Russia until the XVII century and it is hard to dispute state continuity from Rurikids to Romanoffs. Actually, Lithuania has arguably a better claim to a continuous state and cultural descent from Rus', at least until the polonisation in XVI-XVII centuries.
As to the Mongols, there were several Rus' principalities that never subjugated to Mongols (like Polotsk and Pskov), but none of them were located in modern Ukraine.
Not sure, perhaps I distorted the idea or it was more political, along the lines of "With the way Russia acts they would be better described as the political descendants of the Golden Horde".
Anyway, with Kyiv being the capital of Ukraine I don't think it's fair to mention only Russia as a modern Eastern European state owing some of its history to the Vikings.
Though I'm not really sure it was a positive thing. Reminds me of the Soviet joke about time travelers who went to Ancient Rome to find a rally with the signs "Forward to feudalism, the bright future of humanity!". If the default state was "Vikings robbing and capturing slaves regularly" then sure, a Viking state that went about robbing in a more organized manner while protecting the Slavs from other threats and maybe doing something useful in the meantime was an improvement. But compared to "no Vikings at all"? If having more centralized/modernized governance is an improvement, I'm still not sure the Vikings were well-suited for the job, so perhaps having some Central European conquerors or Byzantine missionaries inducing the native leaders to start the modernization a few decades later would've played out better.
It is quite a stretch to describe Russia as "political descendant of the Golden Horde" as opposed to a descendant of the Rus' principalities. One would need to ignore obvious linguistic, religious, dynastic, architectural, and legal continuities with the Rus'. Perhaps, one could argue that tax collection mechanisms and establishment of the absolute monarchy can be traced to the Horde. But these are pretty standard elements of late feudalism and they happened in many European countries, from England to Hungary, at roughly the same time without any Horde influence.
It is quite weird to ignore this continuity from Rus' while claiming the continuity for Ukraine which literally did not exist before 1918 and has a 500 years gap between the last independent Rus' principalities on its territory and 1918. This sounds like modern Ukrainian political propaganda and is honestly puzzling for me. Today, it is quite clear that Ukraine has a much stronger claim to be a "proper" "real" state than most countries. This claim is backed by well documented events of the last 35 years (and especially last 3 years.) What is the point in backing this claim also by made up interpretations of events that happened 800+ years ago?
Probably claims that Russia is the successor of the Kievan Rus' feel more than just academic on the 12th year of Russia claiming its "historical" territories.
In what way did they modernise Anglo-Saxon government? Even if you count the Normans as quasi-Viking, my understanding is that they inherited a much more sophisticated state structure than the one they had previously (and that this was one of the major prizes of conquering England).
Yes, I counted Normans as Vikings here. Not sure what "sophisticated" means in this sense. A proper census (the Domesday Book), a proper Exchequer, a system of centralised royal power with feudal landholding, and a system of garrisoned castles to enforce this control were all created by the Normans in the immediate aftermath of the conquest.
I don't think it's obviously right to call William's Normans Vikings. One might argue they were more French than Viking at that point. And you can't make the same claims about Svein Forkbeard and Cnut the Great modernising England.
Yes to Domesday Book (although it was only the administrative heft of the existing English state that made it possible — nothing like it could have been attempted in Normandy) and castles (although these were a French innovation, not a Norse one), both of which were new — but what do you mean by a proper exchequer? Afaik the English (pre-1066) were the only regime in Northern Europe with a standardised coinage, and their state apparatus for collecting taxes and mobilising royal income far exceeded anything in Scandinavia or Normandy (and enabled Aethelred the Unready, and later William I himself, to raise the immense sums needed to buy off Viking raiders). Feudal landholding, again, reflected the Frenchification of the Normans rather than their Viking roots. I’d add, to a list of Norman modernisation projects, a huge reduction in slavery in England after the Conquest, but this is maybe the most obvious case of the Normans having already adopted the new, Christian norms of the Gregorian Revolution that was sweeping France at the time. Cutting edge, yes; Viking, very much not.
A Domesday Book equivalent was indeed not compiled in Normandy (or anywhere in France) at the time. It is not clear why one would think it was impossible - neither Normandy not France were going through such a wholesale state reorganisation at the time, so there was no dire need to take stock of all assets. The only roughly contemporaneous census of similar scale was undertaken by (surprise!) Normans in their Southern Italy lands in mid XII century (the first compilation of Catalogus Baronum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catalogus_Baronum)
The Exchequer was the agency established by Henry I to collect, audit, and disburse government revenue. It also arbitrated on tax and financial matters and both the judicial system and the modern Treasury grew out of it.
Ok, but Henry is two kings later and any claim of Vikingness is getting a bit tenuous by that stage! And surely one would say he formalised and named an existing system there, rather than introducing it wholesale. I think the main reason why Domesday Book couldn’t have been compiled in Normandy/anywhere in France is administrative capacity. I mean, maybe you could have done it as Duke of Normandy, but then it would have been a much smaller job. If you were the King of France, you’d have the additional problem of uppity vassals (not least the Duke of Normandy!) refusing to let your auditors do their work. As conqueror of the only (?) effective unitary state in Northern Europe at the time, William was in a unique position, having both the motive and the means to audit everything. Same applies to “feudalism”: the idea that the king owns everything and everyone else holds their lands on his behalf works very well *and is very necessary* when the king has just led a military takeover of said land, and in fact the system found its purest expression in England.
The Vikings were absolutely not the Normans. Christianity alone, ignoring Normandy being in France, would mark them as a culturally different people.
In fact that’s why I was referencing the difference between attitudes to the crusades and the Viking plunder to begin with. “Converting to Christianity doomed their descendants to ignominy”. This isn’t new of course, the crusades have been in bad odour since the reformation.
Vikings were not Normans - agreed. However, it is less obvious that Normans were not Vikings :)
Normandy being in France is not very relevant here, as it tells us very little about the culture of XI century Norman rulers.
It is true that Normans in XI century were Christians, spoke French, intermarried with French, and adopted many other elements of French culture, including mounted warfare. However, they were still quite distinct from French and kept a few elements of their Viking culture in areas such as inheritance and governance. However, the key aspect here is the ability to launch large scale amphibious assaults. Vikings were able to perform them. There is no reason to believe that a random French duke with a tenuous dynastic claim was capable of such a feat. Indeed, no French or European force over the next 900 (!) years was capable of such an assault on British Isles.
When the Normans landed, most of the English army was on the other end of the country, fighting the Danes. The big battle happened on land, two weeks later, when the English arrived.
Wikipedia says that William "had to assemble a fleet from nothing", hardly a sign of a culture with a strong naval tradition.
> Thinking medieval: The large shares of Americans with no opinion about prominent medieval figures reflects the reality that most Americans don't think about the Middle Ages very often. 11% of Americans say they think about the European Middle Ages weekly or more, and another 12% say they think about it monthly. But 42% of Americans say they never think about the Middle Ages, and another 24% think about it only occasionally.
>
> These figures are similar to how often Americans say they think about the Roman Empire. Americans are slightly more likely to say they think regularly about the Middle Ages than to say they think about Rome.
I like how the Vikings are right next to the monasteries in popularity.
I think that which cultures get idolized is weird. Take the Ninja -- murderers for hire morphed into noble elite martial arts fighters in the Gaijin mind. Of course, I am with acoup that the worst popularization is actually the Spartans -- a culture which excelled solely at inflicting human misery to their non-free classes, no redeeming qualities like producing great works of art -- but in the public perception their martial valor is greatly exaggerated, so they are the fearless hardcore warriors, not the freaks who initiate their youths by having them murder unarmed serfs.
I liked them. They are straight historical fiction, no fantasy element, but they still have Anderson's voice. Hardrada had an interesting life, and I gather the books are a true to what's known, though of course the details are Anderson's.
Probably not as much detail as a nine-season biopic, but what HBO would add would probably be pretty annoying. :-)
The Vikings contributed violence, maritime navigation, and about 30% of the cultural fusion that is the English. The latter two are things that are really important to who we are today, so it's understandable that we'll romanticize the violence a bit.
And I think you're confusing "the descendants of the Vikings" with "Scandinavians". "Viking" isn't an ethnicity, it's a job description, and the job was getting on a boat and sailing hell and gone from Scandinavia in pursuit of fortune and glory. Modern Scandinavians are descended from the ones who *weren't* Vikings; actual Viking descendants are, well, pretty much everywhere else you might find blondes. And yes, having more fun.
What’s really “odd” is approving of both Vikings and monasteries, as Vikings were fond of looting monasteries. It would be more consistent to approve of both Vikings and saints, as the Vikings gave people opportunities to die defending the faith.
Can you get an ambassadorship to France without being rich?
My understanding was that being named ambassador to France is just a reward for generous political donors, and that the job has no particular responsibilities. Ambassadors used to represent their countries' interests, but we have direct communication now.
Well, I thought the thrust of your comment was to look at where people choose to go when they have the choice. I guess you can still make the argument that we can see that France is where they want to go regardless of whether they have the choice. But you can't see that by looking at diplomats moving to places.
7 (relative income): Within the same social class, higher relative income is great. If the low income people aren't in your same class, there are a bunch of negatives that show up. Discrimination, targeted crime, guilt, etc. Also, it's low-class to admit to your higher-class friends that you're enjoying your newfound slum king status.
29 (COVID reckoning): The people who still support the enacted covid policies also still falsely belief that they were effective. A combination of self-deception and lies by government and media keeps it this way. No-one wants to contemplate that the massive suffering we endured for years, and the massive economic damage we caused, was all for nothing.
I realize I sound like a crank saying this. I'm not trying to convince anyone about the object level here. Just pointing out that the informational environment was very bad and continues to be bad.
Furthermore, you should compare these numbers to the % of the population that supports stuff like executing terrorists without trial and other anti-freedom positions, which are consistently very popular.
Among people who are intellectually capable of understanding the trade-offs, there does need to be a reckoning.
Re: 7, well-put. Relative income hypothesis is likely true but there's a definite lower bound; as the colloquial wisdom goes, the worst thing about being poor is living around poor people.
Class is a good way to put that factor, among other cultural traits, and Big Bang Theory had a pretty good model of a certain interaction- specifically the fundraising episode, directly stating that the very rich *do* enjoy a certain "academic king status."
Whether continued support for covid policy is justified or not, it is. Which makes a reckoning unlikely. The actual merit and the popularity of covid policy are completely seperate questions.
You are doing a pretty good job of perpetuating the bad information environment by pontificating like a crank. Even 9th graders learn to at least cite their sources when making claims, and I think this whole discussion would be far more fruitful if we could all agree to meet even that standard.
Stating a belief without citing sources is epistemically neutral.
You are free to read my entire post with a big "if" appended to the front: "IF covid policy was disastrous, then many people would have a hard time admitting it." That's a straightforwardly true claim.
> cite their sources when making claims, and I think this whole discussion would be far more fruitful if we could all agree to meet even that standard.
I am not the guy you replied to but…
You haven’t even met the standard of rebuttal either, by your own standards, nor the standards of courtesy.
The productively non-hypocritical way to respond to that would be to say "actually I disagree and think our Covid policies were beneficial and here are a few links that support my position" instead of just being an equally-crankish naysayer.
Sample size of 1, but if tomorrow I suddenly became thoroughly convinced that those COVID policies were ineffective, I expect that belief wouldn't make me angry in the slightest. It was a novel situation, the stakes were very high and all of the policies that get brought up were things that were plausible at the time as being helpful[1]. I'm not going to get angry at either scientists or government officials who needed to act fast with incomplete information for making an honest try to save lives.
Of course, your belief system around this mentions "lies by the government and media," but this very much *does* seem to stray into crackpot territory. I mean, governments around the world adopted similar policies for similar reasons. And there's nothing resembling a plausible motive for them *all* to be deliberately deceptive about it. The amount of evidence that would be necessary to promote this to even minimal plausibility is not small.
[1] And still plausible now, AFAIK. I haven't actually seen any evidence that they were ineffective.
I cut governments a lot of slack for picking reasonable but suboptimal policies in march 2020. That's not the problem.
The problem is when those policies were not updated and improved in light of new information. Or when policies were bonkers insane even for a day 1 response.
w.r.t. lies, Anthony Fauci lied to the public "for their own good" (he later testified to this under oath in front of congress IIRC). Zvi extensively documented the whole saga at the time, check his substack.
Several governments chose nonsensical policies without any physical basis for working (e.g. shutting down outside social places such as parks, while allowing indoor gatherings to continue, or even more extreme, prohibiting people from leaving their houses as happened in the UK and Spain, which doesn't pass any sane cost/benefit analysis).
Similarly, when the Floyd protests happened, suddenly the media was completely on board with these massive gatherings, when they had been shrieking about irresponsible protesters spreading the virus the week before. It was a complete reversal of stance, purely due to the political valence of the protests in question.
In my own country, the health minister nonstop beat the drum that "the vaccine is the only way out of the crisis". he said this every week at press conferences. He continued saying this until long after the vaccination rate stalled (at about 70% IIRC), and continued using it as an excuse to not lift restrictions, even though the situation got better and better. In reality, herd immunity was the way out of the crisis, which was going to happen with or without vaccines. That slogan was a moral imperative, completely unrelated to scientific facts.
Then there was this whole situation with "anti-racist" vaccine allocation policies. You remember that, right? Where perfectly good vaccines were thrown in the trash en masse, even while entire countries remained in lockdown. Because god forbid we give out doses in a way that covers the whole population as fast as possible. Again, Zvi wrote about one trillion words about this as it was happening.
I think that there were two sensible covid policies:
1. Shut down until eradication and then live as normal (with closed borders) until a vaccine is developed
2. Keep life going as normal, issue warnings and advice
The problem is that most countries tried to pick a middle course between these two. Usually a middle course is sensible, but when it comes to this particular situation it was dumb. Locking down but stopping before eradication gives you most of the costs of locking down to eradication with none of the benefits.
OK, so those don't appear (to me) to be the same goalposts we started with. Your reply would be a great answer to the question "were there some bad decisions/policies made as part of various governmental COVID responses." But I doubt very many people would answer "no" to that question in the first place. Everybody's going to have policies they disagree with (though likely different policies for everyone).
But the original question was about whether there should be "a reckoning over the government's disastrous anti-COVID policies." Your own post said "The people who still support the enacted covid policies also still falsely belief that they were effective." Both of those to me rather strongly suggest a belief in a policy regime that was *broadly* ineffective and likely *deliberately malicious.* That's a whole different order of problem.
Like, if the responses were overall in the right direction, but some people told some lies, and some people pushed some nonsense policies and you're upset about those, the utterly banal democratic response to that is simply to *vote the offenders out*[1]. By the year 2025, that's almost certainly happened to whatever extent it's going to happen. Government is not perfect, citizens vent dissatisfaction with blunders through elections, news at 11. THAT need not be a crankish reaction, when the criticisms are reality based. But that's a *far cry* from saying " the massive suffering we endured for years, and the massive economic damage we caused, was all for nothing." Talking about lockdowns being left a little too long, or scientists losing their head a bit in supporting an unrelated protest movement *will not* get you from Point A to Point B.
[1] Or vote in people who promise to replace them in the case of appointed positions.
The disastrous policy, and the one there still has to be a reckoning for, was not the initial educated guess of "OK, let's lock down, mask up, and socially distance the COVID away". Those policies were wrong in hindsight in that they were a suboptimal and generally ineffective counter to COVID, but they were the sincere best guesses of the experts at the time.
The disastrous policy, and one that some of us at least recognized as disastrous at the time, was the one where those educated guesses were elevated to the status of a civic religion, such that it would be essentially heretical to say "It looks like we didn't get that part right; based on new information we should probably e.g. reopen the elementary schools but close the meat-packing plants". The only allowable response to the continued pandemic was to lock down, mask up, and socially distance *even harder*. But not smarter.
And, yes, the lies were also disastrous and they were policy. To which the answer can't just be "vote the offenders out", because most of the liars weren't elected officials or direct subordinates of elected officials. This was a massive blow to public trust, a commodity which is scarce, valuable, and extremely hard to replace when it is lost.
For all his faults, I'd rather have Anthony Fauci than Robert Kennedy calling the shots on vaccine policy. But for that to happen, we really need the reckoning where Team Fauci says "we were wrong, please forgive us, we promise to do better next time".
"The disastrous policy, and one that some of us at least recognized as disastrous at the time, was the one where those educated guesses were elevated to the status of a civic religion, such that it would be essentially heretical to say "It looks like we didn't get that part right; based on new information we should probably e.g. reopen the elementary schools but close the meat-packing plants"."
OK, but this wasn't a "policy." Like obviously, plainly this was not a policy. It honestly boggles my mind a little bit that a reasonably intelligent person could look at what happened in 2020 and say "yes, that was the way that the people who set policies intended things to happen."
The effect your describing is simply an especially striking manifestation of the decades-long trend of the political polarization of *everything* in the U.S.. It's clearly visible at least as far back as the 90s, but I think social media turbocharged it, and Trump's first term probably added a decent amount of fuel to the flames. In the past, a crisis of that magnitude would have drawn people together, but the U.S. was already so far gone that it simply pushed people farther apart (and made the crazy ones even crazier). The stronger the effect gets, the less the U.S. as a country is able to function: that's not anybody's policy goal.
The way I would describe it playing out is as follows: early warnings of COVID start to filter in, the experts who are taking it seriously (few at first) start to sound alarm bells and suggest action. This sounds premature to almost everyone at first, but starts to look more and more sensible as the scale of the crisis starts becoming apparent. Three major factors determine the political valence of the response in the U.S. First and foremost, the U.S. right already has a longstanding distrust of academia and experts. Second, Trump finds idea of a pandemic to be a very inconvenient one and would rather it not be true; having spend four years surrounding himself with yes-men allows him to live in this preferred reality for longer than otherwise possible, which sets the initial tone for any other government official taking their cues from Trump. Finally, the urban-rural split means that left-leaning folks are closer to the epicenters of COVID in the U.S. and more vulnerable to unchecked community spread: simply put they have more skin in the game, especially early on.
Together this means that by March of 2020 at the latest, the battle lines were already drawn. The blue tribe cultural sphere had been treating COVID seriously for several weeks already, a portion (though certainly far from all) of the red tribe sphere had been treating it as a nothingburger, a hoax or a conspiracy, and once the blue tribe belief started translating into action, the red tribe reaction was basically inevitable. "If they're doing A, we're doing not-A!" Tribal polarization hit hard and fast and robbed policymakers on both sides of options. Millions of red tribe voters believed that all COVID measures were solely about government control: any red tribe official acting on better information was seen as being in on it. Millions of blue tribe voters believed that the red tribe was being dangerous, ignorant and irresponsible in ways that would harm *everyone*, not only themselves: any blue tribe official suggesting laxer safety measures (even if supported by evidence) was seen as recklessly caving to pressure. A few very high-stress months pretty much locked these attitudes in and elevated them to the level of stuck priors. Any suggestion regarding altering COVID safety measures was evaluated in terms of political valence first and foremost, and scientific soundness last (if at all). I think there were lots of people whose main priority through all of this was saving lives and effectively controlling the pandemic, but they still had to live with the reality of the situation, which meant (for example) considering how their words would be heard in this kind of toxic information environment.
Incidentally, watching this play out was what finally convinced me that the U.S. is effectively finished as a nation. Broken beyond possibility of repair. When millions of people implicitly regard truth as downstream from politics (rather than the other way around), there's really no way to re-ground them in reality. At the time, my estimate was between 5 and 30 years before the U.S. undergoes some sort of collapse and ceases to exist as a unified nation under its current form of government: 5 years later, I still think that estimate was sound.
>Among people who are intellectually capable of understanding the trade-offs, there does need to be a reckoning.
Normally, I would agree. But the Dem/GOP splits in those figures look frightening. Is the clarification of the actual pluses and minuses of the options worth pouring more fuel on the fire of the nation's polarization? There is something of a meta tradeoff here (though I agree that keeping the discussion "Among people who are intellectually capable of understanding the trade-offs" would help).
I never supported the shut-downs, but you're making a huge assumption regarding "massive suffering". Lots of people didn't suffer at all, or their lives actually improved because of the shut downs. Mine sure did, even though I didn't think it was good policy. The people who suffered were lonely single people who couldn't go out, people with kids at home, and people living in cramped apartments. The people for whom it was neutral or actively positive were suburban people, people with office jobs, and retired people. There are just as many people in the second category as the first, if not more.
7. Part of the attraction for me of living in Europe is that I am relatively richer than my peers given an American salary while still enjoying all the amenities I would have living in Boston. I think that is an important element of why so many upper middle class Americans work remotely in Europe or retire here. Moving to the „slums“ creates other problems- crime, lack of entertainment options, dining choice, etc. that might make you feel poorer relative to the lifestyle you used to enjoy even if you’re relatively richer than your neighbors.
Don't you get double taxed as an American living in Europe? I would think that cancels out the higher income in many cases, although I guess if you make enough money it doesn't really matter.
There are treaties to avoid that. The price to pay is really that Americans aend up having to use the services of a specialized tax-preparation person for the first few years.
U.S. accountant here. This is outside my specialization, but I remember the basics of how it works.
First you pay however much the country you're in says you have to pay. If that's higher than your taxes in the U.S. would be, then you don't owe U.S. tax. If your U.S. taxes would be higher, you pay the difference to the U.S. So your total tax ends up being the higher of the two countries, rather than both put together.
On my modified oat-fiber supplement for plasticizers: first of all, thanks for linking! It's still being prototyped and tested, but if you're interested in becoming a beta tester when it comes out (and getting updates on progress), you can sign up on the website: neutraoat.com .
With regards to the difference between microplastics and plasticizers: microplastics are the little bits of plastics themselves, plasticizers are the chemicals that make plastics soft and malleable. When you hear about the negative health effects of microplastics, like hormonal disruption and cancer, that usually has to do with plasticizers. There are dozens of plasticizers, each of which interact with the body differently, but many of them, like BPA, have been convincingly linked to endocrine disruption and other negative effects in humans and animals. I've summarized evidence here: https://trevorklee.substack.com/p/the-evidence-on-plasticizer-health .
On a side note, I'm very interested in talking to people who are involved in the supplement world and the D2C world more broadly. I feel confident on the scientific side, although there's a lot of work ahead, but D2C is a new world for me. If that's you, or if you know someone who's involved in that world, please contact me at trevor [at] neutraoat.com .
33. If you wanted to maintain the taboo against a President invoking Art II authority against a SCOTUS decision, then it should have been enforced against Pres Biden when he ignored a SCOTUS decision to do student loan forgiveness - and bragged about it.
Nobody on the right is going to listen to complaints about "due process" when millions of illegal aliens were let in with zero vetting or process. The "process" that is "due" to an illegal alien is deportation. This applies to roughly every single procedural complaint against Pres Trump; there is a Pres. Biden analogue ready at hand. Remember when Barack Obama drone striked an American citizen? Where were the calls for vigilante justice and armed insurrection then?
I remember a lot of tsking, i.e. quietly negative remarks, about that Obama example, and the big difference is that Obama didn't loudly defend it and seek to replicate it.
This is some variant of 'isolated demand for rigor'. Obama killed an American Citizen, went quiet, and didn't ever say anything that I've heard about, about not doing it ever again. I think he considered that a valid tool in his toolbox and haven't heard anything strong statements to the contrary.
Trump and Co. have said quite a lot about the need to deport at scale to fix what they see as an emergency caused by, and the responsibility of, the prior administration. Side effects of that would likewise be the responsibility of the prior administration due to the impossibility of providing due process at the scale needed to remedy the problem.
"Due process" , let's just discard because it's difficult.
Remember the bipartisan bill that Trump told the Republicans to withdraw their support from? That was going to add a whole ton more enforcement and judges so that we could deal with the immigration issue while providing "due process." But Trump the candidate wanted the issue and his solution the 10+ million illegal immigrants is deporting 200 people who may or may not be illegally in the US to a foreign prison.
The prior administration DDOSed the current adminstration with at least 5,000,000 illegal immigrants imported into the country. There are ~700 immigration judges in specific locations scattered around the country and each trial . What is the reasonable remedy you propose to the current administration who were elected with broad support to undo this, which would scale feasibly? What specific error rate is acceptable, recognizing that courts and due process all have non-zero error rates as well?
Obama didn't have to say anything about not doing it again, to differentiate himself from Trump. All he needed to do was refrain from boasting about it and seeking to replicate it. Big difference.
The defense you postulate for Trump would be slightly more believable if he were taking any care at all to limit his deportations to those he says he's trying to deport. It would also be slightly more believable if he weren't pretending to make obeisance to the need for due process while actually evading it. In other words, he knows he's doing wrong, he knows he's lying.
>I think he considered that a valid tool in his toolbox and haven't heard anything strong statements to the contrary.
I think he realized it was a tool that would generate too much blowback to be worth the bother, and I haven't heard any strong statements to the contrary.
Since AFIK he *didn't do it ever again*, does it matter which is true?
People will tolerate a single injustice where they won't tolerate an ongoing pattern of injustice. They will forget what isn't being talked about and focus on what is. And they are right to do so. If you're concerned about maintaining a taboo or setting a precedent, it's the things that happen repeatedly and openly and to cries of "we meant to do that!" that are *most* important. Since nobody has the bandwidth to fight and win every battle, those are the ones to prioritize.
Also, it is entirely possible to provide due process at the scale necessary to remedy the immigration policy. It isn't even all that expensive. It does require *some* effort, and it does require acknowledging that yes, due process is a requirement, and that's apparently too much for the Donald.
Did he not seek to replicate it because of the relatively small amount of quiet complaining, or because it was an unusual and rare situation that didn't necessarily need replication on a regular basis?
If a "relatively small amount of quiet complaining" was enough to keep him from replicating it, that itself vastly differentiates himself from Trump, who isn't stopped by very loud protests. I'm not trying to defend Obama's action here, just inoculating against "whataboutism".
Per above, Trump was elected on a platform to specifically undo the immigration behavior of his predecessor. This differs from Obama being elected on a platform of drone striking American citizens abroad. What remedy should Trump pursue to remove ~5,000,000 illegal immigrants that scales and has acceptably low error rates?
That's half the question. Was that enough, or were there simply no other American citizens in positions to be drone-struck? That's the distinction. Doing it once and stopping because you recognize the error of your ways is importantly distinct from doing it once because there was only one situation where it was needed.
I don't think anybody said he didn't "get away with it" (which implies he did it deliberately). The discussion was over comparing his attitude towards it with Trump's.
When you say 'most of the media apparatus', what are you talking about? The top most watched programs, podcasts, youtubers, etc. are all distinctly right leaning. More generally, the GOP has control of the presidency, house, senate, and SCOTUS, so why are you still acting like the GOP is the underdog?
I'm not acting like they're the underdog, I'm acting like they've had minimal cultural influence for about 40 years and that there's an incredible level of traditional media bias against them. "New media" is a weird, amorphous, heavily siloed set of phenomena still early in development and reach.
Also the GOP does not have "control" of SCOTUS. You think a GOP-controlled SCOTUS would've written Bostock? Or would've written the loopholes into Harvard v SFFA like Roberts did to ensure they can keep discriminating?
Joe Rogan is very popular, yes. Until *literally this election*, nobody in the government (or any other government) took him or his supporters seriously. The NYT gets taken seriously, and for some psychotic reason they're pushing violent morons like Piker now. There's a whole ecosystem of established traditional media that gets taken seriously and keeps out newcomers (like, again until quite recently, who gets access to the White House media room was decided in large part by the Associated Press).
Podcasts and youtubes may have lots of subscribers, but most of them are wildly siloed. They don't, as the kids say, *build*. They have no organized goals. They grift to enrich themselves and their sponsors.
> If you wanted to maintain the taboo against a President invoking Art II authority against a SCOTUS decision, then it should have been enforced against Pres Biden when he ignored a SCOTUS decision to do student loan forgiveness - and bragged about it.
Accepting this framing for the sake of argument, there is a profound difference in subject. Biden's decision was concerned with how the government managed its money, whereas the Trump decision affects the basic right of people to liberty and freedom from imprisonment.
Both the common law and US constitution independently protect the right of habeas corpus, independently of statute law.
> Nobody on the right is going to listen to complaints about "due process" when millions of illegal aliens were let in with zero vetting or process. The "process" that is "due" to an illegal alien is deportation.
You're begging the question here and also ignoring inconvenient law.
First, it takes a proper hearing to determine whether a human person in custody is in fact an illegal alien. People don't come with their immigration status stamped on their foreheads.
Second, US law provides far greater ground to remain in the country than a bare 'illegal aliens are bad' statement would suggest. The law permits applications for asylum, and once filed 'due process' requires a fair and impartial hearing of that claim. The law also independently prevents removals in some circumstances, which again trigger 'due process' rights. It's fair to disagree with the benefit of these legal entitlements, but such changes *must* go through Congress.
Third, the US appears to be playing fast and loose with legal residents as well, including revocation of study permits for speech-based reasons followed by prompt deportation with no or only cursory hearings.
> Remember when Barack Obama drone striked an American citizen? Where were the calls for vigilante justice and armed insurrection then?
There were plenty of right-wing militias who vehemently disagreed with a variety of Obama-era actions.
More profoundly, there's also a difference between a one-off bad action from a government and systematically bad actions from government. Doing a bad thing is bad, but a bad thing done once can often be handled through ordinary channels.
Doing a bad thing repeatedly is a sign that the system is broken and that normal feedback mechanisms aren't working, so extraordinary correction might be necessary.
Remember, vigilante justice and armed insurrection are generally bad things. We shouldn't call for them lightly, but it's easier to exercise restraint when we can also be confident that the other branches of government are still functioning.
"Changing a bunch of numbers in digital bank accounts that the government owns is equal to snatching people off the street and sending them to a foreign gulag." Is that the argument you are going with?
Also, the drone strikes didn't stop after Obama left. Trump increased them in his first term but removed the public reporting that the Obama defense department did.
Not sure what you're asking. The Obama administration argued fairly successfully that American citizenship was no barrier to the strike that killed Al-Awlaki per standard war powers of the Executive. That was certainly a major escalation in terms of black-letter policy, but IMO a correct one; the only real novel part was specifying an individual ahead of time. Unless I missed something, no following president has repudiated that power.
If we are saying this can happen and due process in this case is different than due process for 'normal' American citizens then where does this sit relative to claims of necessary due process over Garcia, who was not an American citizen and saw 17 judges during his various treks through the court system while here?
What makes Trump uniquely bad in this regard vs Obama, and what are the limiting principles that define bad behavior and good behavior? Is it just 'they got re-elected so it was good'? Might makes right?
If this is purely a political discussion then this group should not wrap themselves in the cloak of due process and the law. If it is a legal discussion, which of these, if either, was legally based?
No if. American citizens have specifically been targeted for death via military action, and died as a result - matter of public record under Obama, less sure about the details under Trump but that's the "removed the public reporting" element in play. Drone strikes *did* markedly decrease under Biden but that's another topic entirely.
What constitutes due process is a contextual thing, to perhaps a surprising extent. What an executive can order the military to do to a specific individual in the context of a military campaign is *very* different from what the executive can order law enforcement to do domestically. (No, nobody serious is buying the "invasion" rhetoric.)
"Contextual" does not mean "whatever I feel like".
This argument is falling into the one case is a tragedy, a million cases is a statistics.
A number I saw for Biden’s loan forgiveness program is $188 billion with a B. PEPFAR, the program that many of the left decried when its budget was temporarily suspended in the USAID kerfuffle has an annual budget of $6.5 billion. How many PEPFARs can be funded with $188 billion?
I am pointing out PEPFAR as a program that does good and I support. I would support efforts to get the valuable parts re-instated on a more permanent basis. Trump only reinstated it on a temporary basis, which might have lapsed.
I was making the argument that $188 billion is alot of money and there are always trade-offs. $188 billion for student loan relief vs $188 billion for PEPFAR like programs.
Biden could have renewed it for the usual 5-year period instead of only one year. Perhaps that wouldn't be enough to save it, but I think it would have helped.
The second order effect of "changing a bunch of numbers in digital bank accounts" is pretty significant inflation, which has all kinds of negative effects on its own.
Foreign gulag is still worse, but "student loan forgiveness" is effectively printing massive amounts of money, not merely changing a few unimportant numbers.
I'm fascinated by the theory of mind of people who legitimately believe that Biden's 4 years in office means we no longer live in civilized society and that we've returned to a hobbesian state of nature where anything is fair game.
Can you explain your position more? Also, where do you get your news / information?
I can't speak for OP, but I think it's more like the right wing has a laundry list of specific violations the left wing committed during the Biden years, and if Democrats didn't hold Biden accountable for those violations, they're not willing to hold Trump accountable for them. It's just tit-for-tat.
(That's why OP says, "This applies to roughly every single procedural complaint against Pres Trump; there is a Pres. Biden analogue ready at hand.")
The easiest way, I think, to understand this sentiment on the right is to look into the Trump 34 felonies case. A lot of the right-wing arguments about left-wing norm violations are pretty weak, but this one is understandable.
Did you know that the specific crimes he was charged with in that case can't conceptually exist unless he's guilty of some initial crime? They're all "add-ons". Look into it. And, if you can, try and find out when he was charged, tried and convicted of that initial crime.
You won't be able to, because he wasn't. The New York court assumed, without anybody having tried or convicted him, that he was guilty of the initial campaign finance violation, and then convicted him of 34 additional felonies that depended on it. Now, apparently, there are complicated legal reasons why this wasn't technically a violation of Trump's constitutional right to due process.
But, also, they did this during the 2024 Presidential campaign, like 8 years after the events being litigated took place; and nobody else has ever been charged with that combination of statutes. Unique legal theory; convenient politicized timing; dependence on being considered guilty of an untried crime...
It's super fishy. I mean, common sense says Trump is obviously guilty; but the whole idea of due process is that common sense shouldn't come into it.
So anyway, from the Republican perspective, if they can do it to Trump, and get away with it (which, so far, they have) then they'll do it to any Republican they want. Which means that, de facto, Republicans don't have the right to a trial. They watched their chosen avatar punished for a crime he never got to defend himself against in court. And there are tons of other (less convincing) examples of right-wing people being denied due process, enough for them to make a long, systematic-looking list.
So why shouldn't ICE do to some random member of MS-13 what the State of New York did to Trump? Same-same, one set of rules. When Democrats object to ICE violating due process, it sounds to Republicans like they're advocating a two-tier system of justice: non-citizen human traffickers are first-class citizens who deserve full due process rights, while native-born Republican presidential candidates are second-class citizens who don't.
In my opinion, their primary motivation is not wanting to be second-class citizens. They have these long lists in their minds of stuff that they've been complaining about for years; and everybody laughed at them and treated them like idiots, and the Democrats got away with it. So now, when Trump does that same stuff, and Democrats complain about it? They laugh.
(I myself don't agree with this, I have a more complex view; the Republicans often are idiots who deserve to be laughed at. Many of their complaints are stupid. I'm not trying to defend the Republicans here; just explain them. ICE obviously ought to respect due process; and the 34 felonies verdict will probably eventually be overturned by a higher court -- so it's not actually the example of systematic due process denial they want it to be.)
As a final note, I would guess that the way to appeal to these people is to address the past. They feel like victims, and liberals who want to convince them of stuff would get really far just by acknowledging their feeling of pain. They have a lot of pride, and many of them would be offended to see me framing it this way. But, I think if you were to start your appeal to them with "Trump shouldn't have been convicted of those 34 felonies; it was a due process violation, and it should be overturned", or "it was a miscarriage of justice for the FBI to lie to the FISA court in 2016", then they would probably listen to you advocate for due process for undocumented immigrants. But their basic assumption is that all liberals agree with denying due process to Trump, and so if you go straight into advocating for it for undocumented immigrants, they'll ignore you because they think you're a hypocrite.
The shorter answer is that Republicans are delusional and consistently lie about reality. When Trump runs for a 3rd term their response will be "Democrats shouldn't have tried to steal the 2020 election." The moron original commenter thinks Biden defied a Supreme Court order that was as general as "All student loan debt forgiveness is unconstitutional" and there were 0 contempt inquiries into it. There is no reaching these people because they don't live in reality.
>The New York court assumed, without anybody having tried or convicted him, that he was guilty of the initial campaign finance violation, and then convicted him of 34 additional felonies that depended on it.
This is a pathetic misinterpretation. Cohen pled guilty in 2018. The Trump trial was about proving Trump aided him by falsifying business records, which elevated the misdemeanor counts to felonies, because he was falsifying business records while aiding someone in committing another crime. https://codes.findlaw.com/ny/penal-law/pen-sect-175-10/ There's no complicated legal reasoning here, you are just not living in reality and are ruining this country with your willful ignorance/lying.
and make up your mind for yourself! I don't think TheKoopaKing's reading of the case is accurate, but who cares what we think? You're able to settle for yourself whether the predicate crime was supposed to have been committed by Trump or by Cohen.
And, more importantly, you should decide for yourself whether the legal reasoning involved matches your idea of due process; and whether you'd like ICE to apply similar reasoning. This is the particular "whatabout" connection that's happening in right-wing minds, which I'm trying to illuminate.
Since I'm trying to build bridges and foster mutual understanding here, I'm not going to get mad at TheKoopaKing's insults. Particularly since his or her ire seems to be directed at Republicans, who I'm not particularly interested in defending or identifying with. Besides, I feel like he or she has made a few of my points for me; so I'll be content to sign off here.
>I don't think TheKoopaKing's reading of the case is accurate
It's not just my reading; it's the judge's, the entire jury's, all of news media's that isn't just Republican outrage slop. Anybody who is a moderately normal person is capable of reaching the conclusion that Trump is guilty and that there was no malfeasance in the trial besides Trump violating gag orders by attacking family members of the involved attorneys on social media. It's only Republicans who willingly and carelessly lie that each trial brought against Trump was corrupt and illegitimate and become kindergarteners with respect to their ability to read and interpret laws. Like I said in my initial response - there is no respectable contention provided here that the legal authority Trump was indicted and convicted on - directing Cohen to pay off a pornstar by falsifying business records - was illegitimate. Here is a list of numerous other cases where convictions were secured according to the same statute: https://www.justsecurity.org/85605/survey-of-past-new-york-felony-prosecutions-for-falsifying-business-records/ Saying the court trial was questionable is just a blatant lie that no reasonable person would ever reach or seriously try to pass off as a reasonable question after this has already been litigated in excruciating public detail.
Koopa is out of line imo, and I appreciate you for playing devils advocate.
That said, even if I thought this particular case was total baloney and was just the left trying to get at Trump, Trump was also dead to rights doing obviously bad things in 3 other cases of increasing severity. Those were:
- storing classified documents at mar-a-lago (and bragging about it?!)
- election interference in Georgia
- attempting to stay in power and overturn the results of an election (!!!)
No one ever seems to mention these, and it is WILD that the last one isn't disqualifying! The latter three cases didn't progress fast enough, and they all got dropped because it was the DOJ that was prosecuting them (which obviously was not going to continue the prosecution of their new boss), but he was obviously, brazenly guilty!
I agree that the NY state case has way less meat on it than what I would like to see for prosecuting a presidential candidate, and if that was the only thing that Trump was being prosecuted for of I'd be marching in the streets with the Grand Ol' Party for the obvious political lawfare. But I get the feeling that most people are either forgetting the other three cases out of convenience OR they never knew about them because their epistemological systems didn't have any way for that information to get through.
In the wider context of the other cases Trump was indicted for, I cannot take seriously anyone who is like "well I voted for Trump specifically because I thought the Dems were breaking norms". That was wayyyyyyy gone after J6 / the eastman plot. It's like getting Al Capone on tax charges -- no one thinks that was a violation of norms because it was obvious to everyone who was paying attention what Capone was up to.
Okay, so, you're pretty much at the same place as a right-wing person is at, with the polarity flipped. Liberals are like, "well I voted for Harris specifically because I thought the Republicans were breaking norms" and conservatives don't take them seriously. The conservative list will be something like Russiagate / Covid restriction disparities / 2020 election / Biden dementia coverup. To them, it's laughable to think the Democrats would uphold democratic norms.
Here's a thread outlining that perspective from 2021:
I don't condone this poster, I think he's insane about a bunch of stuff (although he has put out some darn good history podcasts). But that was the mega-viral thread that pretty much the whole right wing agreed with. And, say what you will, that final sentence is chilling, given the context of the 2024 election.
I guess what I'm trying to communicate is that, the place you're at, where you think Trump is a danger to democracy? Conservatives were mostly in that place already, well before January 6. They lived through a period of severe disillusionment during which they found out that they were naive idiots for thinking that Democrats would obey the norms they learned in civics class. And now that Trump is in power, Democrats are trying to shame them over those same norms.
My hope is that the next President will, explicitly and transparently, give up some power and advantage in order to re-establish the norms that have been exploded; and then that the next President of the other party will uphold that deal.
I remember that thread, and I remember what I thought at the time too after I looked into some of the claims: "lol it's all bullshit". I don't mean that to denigrate on people who got confused, because the noise looks convincing, but _it was and is still noise_. I'm reminded of Scott talking about degrees of freedom (https://open.substack.com/pub/astralcodexten/p/contra-kavanaugh-on-fideism?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=5sutf). People will point to things like "it can't be a coincidence that these underwater rocks look like chiseled brick, it must be Atlantis!" And, no, it's actually just a coincidence.
The same is true here. You don't need any crazy coordination to understand why Trump -- who even in 2016 was way past the norm of every politician who came before him -- would create an environment that *looks* conspiratorial in the normal interactions everyone has with him. Hanhania said something similar recently: that Trump behaves so far outside the norm that our existing systems bend and break. Even the worst of the Russia stuff was because Trump's team was doing legitimately shady stuff with Russia! (And frankly given how the Ukraine stuff has turned out, even I find myself wondering whether there was more truth to those conspiracies than I'd given credit for in the past).
I think epistemology is hard in the modern world, and I'm sympathetic to people who get caught following their empirical institutions down incorrect rabbit holes. But just because the Chinese Robber Fallacy happens a lot doesn't mean it's not a fallacy.
Look, I'm historically a centrist. I never thought our left wing was any more pure than the GOP. But the GOP is dead, it had its face eaten by MAGA. And even though I'm a centrist, I'm first and foremost an engineer and scientist. MAGA isn't a political party, it's a death cult. It is deeply uninterested in truth seeking or scientific process or even doing what's best for the country. There are a million things maga could be doing to actually be strategic about its goals. It could isolate China with hard tariffs while increasing exports from Vietnam. It could massively increase funding for immigration judges and use technology to streamline asylum applications. It could create manufacturing jobs through local defense spending initiatives. And instead of doing anything like that, it's just destroying things in the dumbest way possible.
Based on my conversations with dozens of MAGAs, the only goal is vengeance, at any cost. And the problem I have with that opinion is that it's based on something that is at best a misunderstanding and at worst a malicious attempt by cynical counter elites to grab power (Andreessen, Thiel, Musk, and Murdoch have much to answer for). I voted for Harris because it was obvious after J6 just what kind of person Trump was. The problem is, for a certain class of person, that was exactly why they voted for him. "He's a bastard but he's our bastard"
To be clear, though, I think the average trump supporter is just misinformed. Most Trump supporters I end up talking to are very online and politically engaged. The average trump supporter is like my friends mom in Ohio, who voted for Trump entirely because he said "he would make the economy better". I don't blame her either -- you have one candidate being (more or less) honest and one candidate lying through is teeth. The voter isn't informed enough to know the difference. That's why I spend time arguing here -- in the hopes of piercing some part of the epistemological bubble people seem to be in.
Just want to note that it's not *all* BS, lots of the specific factual claims he makes in the thread are true. The TIME magazine article he refers to is real, the election-related clause of the Constitution he refers to is real, the FBI did lie to the FISA court; that was litigated in court and they lost. I saw the Hunter Biden laptop story censorship happen myself; friends' Facebook posts about it were just blipping out of existence.
The narrative he puts those facts into is another thing entirely. Caveat emptor. But I wouldn't like somebody in the future reading this to think it was all a matter of invented facts.
Are you entirely sure and certain that 'Nobody on the right is going to listen to complaints about "due process' is the argument you want to lead with? There's a lot of other things that are infantile and foolish about your post, and we can get into the specifics of it, sure.
Just: to be clear on this point, are you entirely sure you know what you are suggesting here? Have you actually thought about what that means? I get that it can be fun and charming to boldly declare that you are not interested in petty concerns of the law, because [big important thing] must be done [now] otherwise [bad nogood thing] occurs and so we shall ignore due process!
Just keep in mind: An illegal immigrant, by definition, as in, the meaning of language itself, cannot be illegal if there is no process by which to determine this. You lose the ability to declare them illegal at all if you abandon the conceit of laws. There is no legality in that world.
Giving up on the concept of rules and a law abiding society does not lead to the place you think it does, and the (seeming) rampaging hordes of millions you are so concerned with would appear to have a sizable advantage in deciding the outcome of any dispute if you abandon the conceit of dispute resoluton via legal abitration and due process.
That invokes, by its shape, what we might call 'alternative means of dispute resolution'.
Does the point that due process is meant to protect YOU not resonate with you at all? Due process exists to protect the rights of everyone, not just the people currently being subject to it. Once it starts to erode, your chances of being denied due process go up, because we have already conceded that in some circumstances it is permissible to do without it, and now we are just arguing about what those are.
I much prefer the world in which we don't argue about that at all.
"Does the point that due process is meant to protect YOU not resonate with you at all?"
No, no it doesn't. At least not for a substantial portion of the right. This isn't even trying to argue with you; you can just google "Anarcho Tyranny" and find a lot of conservative writing that boils down to "laws will be maliciously enforced against conservatives and not enforced against liberals". Right or wrong, you're appealing to defense of common rights that a lot of conservatives no longer believe they have.
As whether those are valid...
At the personal level, kinda. Most college kids and corporate workers in the 2010s were very familiar with unjust enforcement of corporate policies and rules against certain groups. More generally though, I think a lot of it and almost all of the more serious stuff involving cops is more people reading malicious intent into deeply dysfunctional bureaucratic systems. Like, even if you're a good person, if you talk to the cops, you should have a lawyer. Not because they're out to get you or they're bad people, more because they're kinda out to get everyone because the system is deeply misaligned.
At the more general level...it was not terribly subtle when Covid lockdowns were an urgent requirement that overruled all other considerations until BLM came along. Some things trump quarantine and some don't. More generally, the ATF seems to be an absolute mess and might be, literally, inventing felonies.
And finally, at the top level, as I will never cease to remind people, that the FBI lied to the FISA courts in 2016 and 2017 in order to wiretap Carter Page and, by extension, the Trump campaign. (1) This is not controversial, the FBI has admitted it, no relevant party doubts it or disputes it. If you're Trump or a Trump staffer, do you believe the FBI and other federal law enforcement will provide you proper due process when they have a proven history of not doing it. And if you're a Trump voter, how are you supposed to interpret this?
I'm a bit confused about what right you think has been taken away from conservatives. Are they not getting due process anymore? If so, in what circumstances?
I'm not exactly rebuffing your examples. They aren't false. But I'm not sure they're an example of "due process" not being afforded to conservatives in some systemic manner. It's some selective weaponization of law enforcement, and that's bad, but that's not the same as due process.
What difference do you think there is between selective enforcement and due process? Not like an own, I googled the difference and the 3rd thing that came up is this from the American Bar (1):
" A recognized defense in non-tax prosecutions, both federal and state, is that the Government discriminatorily and invidiously targeted the defendant....The defense is constitutional in nature, implicating the Equal Protection and Due Process guarantees"
There absolutely might be some technical distinction you're drawing there but it's a pretty fine line.
More generally, I suspect you'd get more benefit from reading around a bit for the general conservative vibe than my own weird opinions. I see a lot of stuff like this:
"This is Blue Zone governance, full stop, the thing people describe as anarcho-tyranny. Common San Francisco business owner experience: Police don’t intervene in the constant vandalism and tagging that degrades business property, but the highly alert army of code enforcement officers fine business owners for failing to clean up the damage that the city hasn’t prevented."
Because you're asking why due process doesn't resonate with people and, well, I see a lot of people, some quite important, treating due process and equitable treatment as dead letter. (2)
“Here’s some unrelated examples of bad policing/policy enforcement that I don’t like… so basically habeas corpus is dead to me and the executive can summarily banish anyone they want to a third party county”
Basically that you're confusing my personal argument with the general public's argument and the general public's argument is usually...kinda dumb. So I'm trying not to motte-and-bailey you.
A safe example is probably Russiagate.
There's a strict case that Russia made moves to interfere with the election with the intent of helping Trump, mostly through various fairly marginal online activities. Which is probably true but was not what motivated most people.
There's also a very loose case that Trump and Putin literally and directly conspired against Hillary Clinton. Which was what genuinely motivated tens of millions of people and is also almost certainly not true.
But it wouldn't be fair to pretend that tens of millions of people were deeply concerned about marginal election interference, even though that charge is overwhelmingly more likely to be true.
Likewise, I think I laid out the more strictly true case in my first post but I also included the second because it's indicative of, no shade to Chris Bray, the more popular and less defensible case that really motivates dramatically more people.
Don't confuse the weird autistic strict arguments you see here with the general epistemic horror show that actually influences real people is all I'm saying.
>Pres Biden when he ignored a SCOTUS decision to do student loan forgiveness
Except that didn't happen. Biden did exactly what Trump did re the "Muslim ban" -- when his initial version was struck down, he enacted a narrower version, and then a narrower one, until one finally passed muster. There is nothing wrong with that.
>when millions of illegal aliens were let in with zero vetting or process.
>The "process" that is "due" to an illegal alien is deportation.
No, the process due to an illegal alien is deportation PROCEEDINGS. Because the law is very clear that not all persons in the country illegally are subject to deportation. They might, for example, be eligible for asylum, or for withholding of removal.
The crazy thing is, Trump is deporting people every single day. Many thousands. But he screwed up in a few instances and rather than fix that problem he's doubling down.
He did not screw up, him or his Cabinet members are directing ICE and DoD to deport people without due process. The AEA proclamation was handed to ICE before it was made public - when the AEA requires the President to make the proclamation publicly to avoid these sorts of secret arrests. Further, the apprehended subjects were removed without the possibility for judicial review - the direct intention of secretly alerting ICE before the public. These were all intentional illegal removals. Since then ICE has testified in court that DoD removed other subjects because the DoD was not formally enjoined in the court proceeding. These aren't mistakes, the Trump admin is criminally directing ICE topdown to break the law.
"complaints about "due process" when millions of illegal aliens were let in with zero vetting or process"
I think ... it *might* even be more than just the right, which has noticed this - which I guess is why we must all be made to swallow, very forcibly, the most extreme and ludicrous example, of a tatted-up Salvadoran wife-beater as the reason the brief experiment with deportations must come to a stop, and never be revived.
Nobody is saying you can't deport people. You just have to follow the process. This is a matter of what is legal for the government to do. We all should have a vested interest in making sure the government is operating without total impunity, it is what safeguards everyone from the impossible power of the federal government, which could be used to enforce anything at any time if not for the constraints that are meant to hold it.
Plenty of people are saying you can't deport people. In fact, in much the same way that the same folks who would have once been in solidarity with Occupying Wall Street are complaining about the stock market tanking (immediate increase in societal equity!) and grousing that it is only so because MAGA are too stupid and poor to have portfolios - are in fact reddit-commenting that they need to deport themselves the sooner to another country because of the deportations!
Of course the judiciary is trying to shut it down. What have we been arguing about the last eight or 10 years? Don't toy with us. I'm not toying with you when I say that my side on the issue feels precisely the same, that years, indeed decades, of cumulative actions have been taken with utter impunity, that led us to this pass.
Who is saying you can't deport people? I don't mean some random reddit comment that reflects the views of a tiny slice of the population. I mean public figures, party playforms, media outlets, anything public. You can find any view you want on the internet in some tiny community, but the view that you can't deport people at all is essentially so minor that it's not worth discussing. Biden even deported millions, he just let millions of others in.
The debate is about the process, and Trump is using a novel, and potentiality abusive, process that deprives immigrants of a hearing they are entitled to have by law, as confirmed by the Supreme Court of the United States.
Of course, your argument also implies that innocent people will get scooped up; "those who got in without due process shall be sent out without it" presumes that set of people is universally known with certainty.
OTOH, innocent people were getting victimized by open borders policy. So there's also this sense of a bleeding wound requiring first aid, and that aid might hurt more cells. So you'd also need to demonstrate that that due process is worth letting US society bleed out further, and if it turns out you believe the US isn't in that kind of danger (common among people who believe the US can be a haven to the poor, the tired, the yearning to be free), you'll have a very hard time making that case.
Due process exists for the protection of all of us. It is not given based on anything you want or demand or who you are in any way. It exists specifically to bypass any of those concerns. It doesn't matter what they did. Does a murderer not get due process because they killed someone? Surely that's a bigger issue than hopping the border? Of course they do. Because due process prevents mistakes. It creates gaps in the enactment of law where you can plead a case, and those are the only things that protect the innocent. We have trials for the guilty even when it is obvious, because sometimes it seems obvious when it is later proven not to be.
>Due process exists for the protection of all of us.
Mostly, but this isn't just a binary choice.
Personally, I want ICE to be _very_ careful to distinguish between citizens, green card holders (permanent resident aliens?), valid visa holders, and all-other-aliens. Say at the 0.1% level of accuracy (who am I kidding, can the Trump administration do _anything_ at the 0.1% level?...).
But then distinguishing which of the all-other-aliens have e.g. fully valid asylum claims, and which of them do not might be at a different, perhaps sloppier level. Maybe 20%?
I don't know what is actually feasible here. Anyone have real information?
But there surely are tradeoffs between time spent per person and accuracy, and the tradeoffs can be set differently at different stages in determining someone's status.
The tradeoffs are currently a big part of the debate. If there were no tradeoffs - for example, ICE could reduce its error rate by 90% with no additional expenditure or impact on anyone's rights - then doing so would of course be a non-issue. They'd just do it as soon as they learned it was an option.
In reality, anything ICE changes policy-wise carries a cost in retooling and maintenance, just like any other organization. That part is eclipsed in the debate by the rights impact, since that's what draws all the clicks. In this case, the impact is not just to people being considered for deportation, but also the rights of people who aren't at risk of deportation, but are at risk of predation by people who happen to be here illegally. One side says that risk is high, and borne completely by actual citizens in order to spare the rights of a smaller number of non-citizens, who shouldn't get priority over actual citizens. The other side says that risk is small or nonexistent; rights of deportation targets are the dominant factor.
That's a terrible counterargument. It boils down to an argument against all due process and a return to pre-modern justice systems. "Murderer who bypassed laws demands due process before being executed," "Thief who bypassed laws demands due process before having hand chopped off". Haha, silly criminals.
Yes. The murder rate in the 90s was off the charts compared to now. Easy to make the same "bleeding out" argument then and just throw the suspects in prison without trial. But we didn't, and we're better off for it.
Shaked Koplewitz makes the argument below (search for "there is a genuine problem"). You're using "due process is valuable" as if it means due process is infinitely valuable. It should be easy to see how leaning on it can deprive you of everything else (or save you, at everyone else's expense).
To those continuing to argue "due process", I'm curious: how long do you think that due process would take? This is not a rhetorical question. Maybe it's minutes; maybe it's years. I suspect that in one or two cases, it was a day, or would have been, and the administration was moving faster than it should have.
But the way I see it, "due process" is a term we can taboo. If it would have taken only a day or less, then the argument to make isn't "follow due process"; it's "it would have taken only a day to check; why didn't you?". And if it would have taken longer, then it becomes clearer why they didn't do that - people were using "due process" to exploit the system. (Someone earlier referred to it as DDoSing the US.)
The timeframe is not what is at issue. It is that only during a hearing could you present evidence to contradict what the government is claiming. Without a hearing there is no way to plead your case.
I in fact believe the whole immigration system needs a big overhaul, a higher budget, more judges to hear more cases, etc. etc. The system takes too long as is. But that doesn't mean you get to bypass it just because you think it's inefficient. It is the only mechanism that allows you to fight back against the federal government's decisions, decisions that can be, and sometimes are, very wrong and harmful.
Suppose the timeframe is a year. We have P people able to do due process to a maybe-US-citizen, and I immigrants. Total immigrants processable per year is P, and if P < I, then the system grinds shut. Every time you claim the timeframe doesn't matter, you pretty quickly lose anyone who understands how slow the government works.
As you say, it probably needs an overhaul. What if that overhaul requires a reduction in the amount of due process done? Possibly to the level currently performed in some of these cases you're talking about now? You mention increasing the judge count; how are you going to pay for their training? And their salaries afterward?
I'll say the same thing I said to Chris: you're treating "due process" like some talisman with infinite weight. You can claim it's what we should do, until the cows come home. But reality gets final say, and what you're probably going to see is immigration services being paid small fortunes to still not keep up with demand, or compromises that will look pretty close to what we're seeing now, or the whole system just comes apart and no one gets due-anything.
This is legally incorrect, and for obvious reasons.
Let's say one has immigrated illegally to the U.S. ICE picks him up. There is a prescribed process and hearing, that is true. But now let's say the determination is made that, yes, he is not entitled to be in the U.S. and can be deported at will, but he is released temporarily pending later deportation.
Then ICE picks him up again. He has a deportation order. But he says ",Wait, actually, I'm here legally." Is another hearing required?
Let's say we give him that hearing too. The deportation order is upheld. Then he says "Wait, I claim asylum." Another hearing?
Let's say he gets that too. His deportation order is upheld again and ICE lays hands on him again to transport him. Now he says "You've got the wrong guy. Mistaken identity." Is another hearing required?
You see the issue. What process is "due" depends on statute, and as one would imagine, the amount "due" gets smaller and smaller as the process continues. At some point, it is simply not true that "a hearing [] to plead your case" is required. And yes, sometimes that endpoint will lead to errors. It doesn't mean that due process has been violated.
I think one of the interesting issues is that this framing misses more or less the whole point? Though I grant that's obviously my opinion, so I could be wrong.
If you take it in terms, it becomes easier to see.
" How long do you do you think the process should take " -- > As long as is legally mandated. Caveat: If unworkable, propose broad-scale large adjustments to the rules. Do not break and violate the rules.
" But the way I see it, "due process" is a term we can taboo. " --> Sure.
"If it would have taken only a day or less, then the argument to make isn't "follow due process"; it's "it would have taken only a day to check; why didn't you?" " --> This is the same question and statement, though. They didn't, because they did not want to, and them not wanting to and making trivial mistakes is avoided by taking a day / week / month to check. Which, again, they do not want to do. And so do not.
"And if it would have taken longer, then it becomes clearer why they didn't do that - people were using "due process" to exploit the system. " --> Were they? What makes you so certain of this? What evidence do you have to reach this conclusion? You didn't check! You *cannot make this claim*!
There's a trick here, and the trick is performing the basic fundamental attribution mistake that you have *pre-emptively declared someone as worthy of criminal/legal/judical/executive proceedings* but you have not *performed the neccessary process by which you check whether this is due*.
It is patently obvious that *if* someone was *explicitly exploiting the system* then dragging out any procedure is an *act of malfeasance*. But the law has capacity to handle these cases too. There are many, many options available for courts and systems that explicitly allow this. We can discuss whether this is optimal or intended (no, yes), but it is factual. This *also* means that if someone is exploiting the system and "ddosing the united states", the united states is not a completely monolithic, passive participant without access to legal council, lawyers, directives, systems, monitoring, oversight, processes and so on designed to handle these things.
However. If one does take the day / week / month to check these things, they do not happen. Then mistakes happen.
You are subtly suggesting, and this is the trick that leads to seriously bad shit, so I am pointing it out plain:
That if the *inconvenience* of a process *outweighs* someones judgement of what they stand to gain from it, they get to not participate in that process. That may work in normal social interaction, but it cannot work in matters of law. The government is not granting us the nicity of not stuffing someone into a van and flying them off to a foreign country where there is no recourse. This is not a polite thing they're doing *until they stop feeling polite*. We can discuss and talk about whether that is the case in some "real" sense of the word, and I'm sure one can leverage arguments for and against, but that is a different conversation. The point of the fact is they must take time to check these things because these are the processes the system is bound by. If there is an issue with how long it takes:
Eg:
"And if it would have taken longer, then it becomes clearer why they didn't do that "
Then their job is to *change the rules* in the legal fashion, as is done and has been done for centuries, and is the foundational point of how lawmaking and civic society works. They do not get put the rules aside on the presumption that someone else is exploiting them, with no proof that is so, because they did not take the day to check.
The timeframe is not an issue.
Asking about it is irrelevant, and it leads to a magic trick, where you're going "Oh, at some point, the implied cost of it becomes so high that the government is allowed to just ignore it".
Not so. The government, as an entity, does not get to perform special pleading of exemption because it does not like the rules and feels it would be inconvenient to obey them. The government is full of big people in big suits who are grown, mature adults. They can handle their issues without blackbagging people. Meanwhile, you cannot in good faith pre-emptively declare that other people are exploiting the concepts the government are violating and that is reason for violating their legal rights. That doesn't work.
There are metrics and systems in place for altering onerous requirements. They exist to prevent people from being shipped off to foreign prisons with no possibility of redress. Once they stopped being applied, people are shipped off to foreign prisons with no possibility of redress.
" (Someone earlier referred to it as DDoSing the US.) " -->
The US is not a single overloaded server at danger of blowing out because it gets a lot of requests. And if it was, an IT professional can resolve a DDOS attack. They are remarkably easy to handle, and require, fundamentally, simply taking the steps to do so. If one does not take those steps, one does not get to use it as an excuse to be upset when malign actors ddos your server infrastructure. When malign actors then do ddos your server infrastructure, one certainly does not get to snatch random, unaligned civilians off of the street on the vague suspecion that they have a laptop in their backpack, bundle them off to a foreign prison, and never, in that ordeal, check if they actually have the laptop, know what a ddos attack is, or have any relation to the on-going situation of your own flawed server architecture.
It is an analogy so stupid it makes me sigh, which, I don't to imply that anyone believing is stupid for thinking. But just, like, c'mon.
Think about it for a second. The Government doesn't work like a server. And if it did, the government has IT professionals. In a very real sense, if we're being sincere, the people flooding the legal architecture with endless spam to overload it and get the stuff they want through the loopholes the systems are too slow to catch seems to be the people doing the grab-and-ship-them-off-to-foreign-countries-which-we-can-do-so-long-as-we-get-to-do-it-before-a-judge-tells-us-we-can't trick.
The people doing the malicious hacking of legal codes in this scenario doesn't seem to be the people that analogy is meant to imply it is!
F> " How long do you do you think the process should take " -- > As long as is legally mandated. Caveat: If unworkable, propose broad-scale large adjustments to the rules. Do not break and violate the rules.
The other side has had a response to this general argument for a long time. The mandates have long been unworkable. Adjustments were proposed long ago. They were denied by footdragging from officials not affected by the downside - in other words, the current due process side got this process because it wanted to and could deadweight it into place, rather than because it was fair.
F> "If it would have taken only a day or less, then the argument to make isn't "follow due process"; it's "it would have taken only a day to check; why didn't you?" " --> This is the same question and statement, though.
It is not the same argument as "you didn't use due process". The question I quoted above assumes the administration wants due process but made a minor mistake it believes will make no difference in said process. The latter statement assumes the administration is generally opposed to due process. If these look like the same picture to you, check again.
F> "And if it would have taken longer, then it becomes clearer why they didn't do that - people were using "due process" to exploit the system. " --> Were they? What makes you so certain of this? What evidence do you have to reach this conclusion? You didn't check! You *cannot make this claim*!
I am not certain of it, but I am also not certain it isn't happening. This is based on decades of experience working in the government, plus decades of accounts from other people I've seen working in government and interacting with it. The capacity of the state to demand process beyond what is "due" has been well known by a lot of people, for generations. It is why "you can't fight city hall" is an aphorism.
In light of the fact that it might be happening, and might not be, my default is to look for better evidence, or for a tiebreaker. So far, most of the evidence is motivated, and not preponderant on either side; and the most evident tiebreaker is people who appear to be here illegally, vs. people who much more certainly aren't.
F> There's a trick here, and the trick is performing the basic fundamental attribution mistake that you have *pre-emptively declared someone as worthy of criminal/legal/judicial/executive proceedings* but you have not *performed the necessary process by which you check whether this is due*.
I've already discussed why people are waving "due process" around like a talisman; this argument just attempts to reassert what I already addressed. The side arguing for deportation is already past fundamental attribution, and into "okay, there seems to be a clerical error in the process, but it looks like correcting this error isn't going to change the ultimate outcome, so this demand for 'due process' isn't actually on principle; it's demanding endless procedure, at expense of other US citizens, and particularly in order to retaliate against an administration you already don't like". That's at least one argument I'm seeing; I recently posted a comment above with more. For more detail, you might want to go to the DSL thread. (At times, there, I've made the same argument you just did.)
> innocent people were getting victimized by open borders policy
> due process is worth letting US society bleed out further
I'm so intrigued by this language! What were the harms of immigration that you were feeling, out of curiosity? Like, what specifically do you think was hurting you / your family / your community? Was it primarily economic? Feelings of an increase of crime? Something else?
ETA: Well, let's see. First link: "students who participated in pro-Palestine protests that erupted on campuses across the country in 2024 during Israel’s war on Gaza" (in response to Gaza's unprovoked attack on Israelis). Second link: paywalled. Third link: doesn't go into detail about the terms of Biden's "scheme" (their word), but I know it came when Biden was retaliating against Trump's first attempt at border control, and the counterargument there is the rise in crime from such immigrants. So it's not for no reason at all; it's far from being all student here on visas, and seems to be based on some sort of analysis of where violent criminals are coming from.
I'm not feeling any personal harms from immigration so far, but neither is the side arguing for better enforcement against *illegal* immigration. In other venues, I argue the other side, and try my best to internalize what each side is saying.
I've been pretty clear that *this is the argument*, and if you're going to impugn the people making it, just for making it, and making it fair for them to level the same attacks at you, I don't see the resulting Condescensionbowl 2025 going anywhere productive. Which is to say, next time I have to argue that illegal immigration enforcements are maybe going too far, the best I'll have to offer on this front are ad hominems phrased as innocent questions, and I'll probably just exercise discretion and let their arguments stand.
I'm sorry that you thought I was being condescending, I legitimately wasn't and you can see other examples in other open threads where I am trying to legitimately understand the mindset of people who openly admit to experiencing no harms from this issue and yet are willing to stake quite a bit on it. To that end, I appreciate you for being honest on this
> I'm not feeling any personal harms from immigration so far
but I have to ask in a follow up: even if I take the utilitarian framing, if you are experiencing no harms from this, and to a first approximation _no one I have asked_ is experiencing any harms from this, why is this the thing that is worth destroying due process over?
Like, elsewhere you argue
> In this case, the argument is that there are cases in which due process ought to dominate, in order to protect civil rights, and there are cases in which due process is itself smothering civil rights because it is being suborned by scoundrels. Ergo, we need to re-examine the justifications behind due process and border control and see if they're still applicable, and to what extent.
surely this is not a case where "due process is smothering civil rights" if no one is feeling any harms?
- to be clear, re students you aren't denying they were here legally? Doesn't that go against the 'those who enter without due process shouldnt expect it on the way out'?
though I'm not sure youre really arguing in good faith, since the headline of the article is not paywalled and gives more than enough information about what I'm talking about. If your only answer is 'paywalled' I don't think youre actually interested in learning.
If you're an environmentalist, this is not the gotcha you think.
Of course, if you want something more, I might suggest the feeling that your country no longer has a shared culture, and that urban sprawl in the guise of Bazaar of Global Cheap Stuff is not really the consolation prize you might imagine.
And a vague feeling that the boring permanent conversation about school, and the failures of school, and money for school, and where are the people who will teach the school/we told them they were the Wrong People but nonetheless it was their responsibility, and where are they? - will now go on forever and ever, and the same fake platitudes uttered.
And ditto the familiar conversation about where people sleep, and whether we've enough of these people in these beds and so on.
And all the multicult shattered into a thousand pieces. And not even an emperor to unite.
I'll be honest, I read this a few times and I am not really sure what you are saying.
To try and break down what I think you are saying:
- more people coming to a first world country results in a bigger environmental footprint, better to let them stay in their second/third world countries. They may suffer but they won't impact the environment as much.
- something about 'shared culture' -- maybe immigrants create less 'shared culture' than we had before.
- something about cheap commodity goods. For some reason these are bad?
The stuff about school, beds, and 'multi cult' you really lost me on. No idea what you're trying to say.
---
To try and answer this:
- I'm not a degrowth environmentalist who would rather people suffer than just like, develop or industrialize. This is an extremely fringe population, and you may be in a bubble if you think that there are a lot of people advocating for this.
- I love immigrant culture. I'll copy paste my answer above:
> As far as the immigration population generally goes, I live in NYC, and my favorite part of the city is Queens (I lived there for two years) which is basically just a series of ethnic enclaves. It's amazing, these are people who are so excited to be in America! Their neighborhoods are brimming with optimism and they are some of the most patriotic people you will ever meet. And the food is fantastic to boot. Spend a day in Queens and it is immediately obvious to me that the economic game is not zero sum, the way it is portrayed
The country I grew up in cared about immigrants and saw them as the driver of so much American growth and progress. "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore." This is our national advantage -- we take the brilliant people and the best parts of the cultures of the entire world and incorporate the best parts into our society. What is the 'shared culture' that you are referring to that you miss so much? Have you personally experienced some sort of a degradation of that culture as a result of immigration specifically? I'll be totally up front: every time I have ever interacted with someone who cares a lot about our 'shared culture', it has always been a dogwhistle for outright racism -- as in, "i want the country to be more christian and more white, and I am uncomfortable with the idea that that may not always be the case". I'm open to hearing your take, assuming its not that.
- cheap commodity goods are good. Sorry, I believe this unabashedly, and every time a cuban immigrant comes to a costco my faith in this is reaffirmed.
“Person accused of doing illegal thing demands due process to determine if they actually did it” haha, so funny. How can those dumb liberals not see how ridiculous their position is when we frame it this way?
The Bee is not a serious source, it’s providing an obviously bad faith argument to try and be humorous and yet you are trying to pass it off as something deserving of consideration.
I have considered it. It is slop. If you are interested in high minded and fair discussion maybe don’t lead with a poorly done sneering conservative satire piece and get upset when it is respond to in kind.
"Due process" is not a monolith. Different process is due in different circumstances with different people. There was an error with one of the Salvadorians - he was 100% permitted to be deported summarily, and had a standing order to that effect. He just wasn't supposed to go to El Salvador due to his gang affiliation.
Yes, there are different processes for different people. But if they wanted to deport him to El Salvador they would have needed to follow the process of reopening his case and giving him a hearing. They didn't do that.
They could have deported him somewhere else, but they didn't. So they didn't follow his due process. That's the problem.
He wasn't entitled to more due process. He had a removal order. The due process was completed years before. The government screwed up by sending him the one place he wasn't supposed to go - but there wasn't any question of his being allowed to stay.
He absolutely was. If they wanted to deport him to El Salvador they needed to reopen his case and have a hearing to contest the current stay. They didn't do that, so they didn't follow due process.
If they had deported him somewhere else, there was no more due process required. But they didn't, so there was.
He was entitled, before being deported to El Salvador, to stand before a judge and say "this is why I shouldn't be deported to El Salvador". That's due process. Independent of what happened the last time he stood before a judge, which was also due process but a different instance of such.
*Everyone* who is hauled in off the streets and scheduled for deportation to El Salvador, is entitled to that. Which, in most cases, will be a brief discussion of "yeah you've got nothing backing up that sob story and it doesn't match what you said on your tourist visa or whatever, off to El Salvador with you", But sometimes it's a slam-dunk "I guess we can't deport you to El Salvador", and that can be cleared up quickly, and the case for both "Meh, it was a mistake but no harm no foul" and "Oh noes! Due Process is too Hard!" goes away.
You might as well ask why the guy terrorizing the college campus and threatening to blow up little indie shops in my college town, has been arrested dozens of times while convicted or even trialed - never? And never will be?
But you’re right, maybe these incidents are purely situational - she provoked him and had it coming to her. Like when he got stopped for coyote-ing the illegals that time, she probably bitched at him and said you were probably speeding and that’s why they stopped you. You’re supposed to drive slow.
For the wife-beating? She didn't show up for the final trial, and they reconciled. For other crimes? Well, that's what we're discussing right now: "innocent guy just carpooling to work" versus "caught travelling with a bunch of other migrants, possibly might be doing coyote work".
Especially when that Salvadoran *did* receive due process. A judge declared him an illegal, and a judge declared him a gang member. He was eminently deportable. The only thing he had going for him was an order not to deport him specifically to El Salvador, because his gang and other Salvadoran gangs didn’t get along. I don’t know, and have no way of knowing, whether his deportation to El Salvador was malice or an honest error. But you know, while I am a big believer in due process, I’m not going to lose much sleep over this one. It baffles me that Democrats chose this hill to die on. Are all the rest of the deported even more unsavory than this one?
Well, there’s the guy who was fishing and threw a rock at the endangered heron. He could be a backup. He was deported right quick.
And then there’s the guy the NYT anointed this week, who was ordered deported upon release, when he was convicted of kidnapping in his first year here as an illegal.
I didn’t read the story so it may have been one of those nuanced kidnappings - but Steve Sailer did a funny write-up of the “hell” that awaits him in … Jamaica.
When did Biden have a student loan program struck down and then continue with that very same program anyway? Isn’t the issue that he kept coming back with narrower and narrower programs so that no one could tell whether they were covered by this round or not?
And no, due process does not *begin* with deportation, any more than a trial begins with a declaration of guilt. There is a process involved of proving, or at least providing a preponderance of evidence, that the punishment is due.
Biden's vote-buying scheme was never expected to succeed at the courts. By trying and failing repeatedly and by sending mail to each person individually with his signature stamped on it he got exactly the results he wanted. And he also got the bonus that if not checked at the courts exactly correctly each time, he might even succeed.
Biden did not ignore any SCOTUS orders or injunctions.
What SCOTUS actually ordered was a lot more moderate than what the headline-grabbing 'SCOTUS STRIKES DOWN STUDENT LOAN FORGIVENESS" headlines would lead you to believe. Their actual order was a limited injunction against a specific program of debt relief for specific types of loans.
The smaller number of loans Biden did forgive were different things that didn't violate that order.
>The "process" that is "due" to an illegal alien is deportation.
Cool, you are an illegal alien, we're going to deport you now.
What, you say you're a citizen? Sorry, there's no process by which you could officially offer evidence to that effect and force us to consider it. Goodbye alien scum!
"Pres Biden when he ignored a SCOTUS decision to do student loan forgiveness" -- people need to stop repeating Jim Jordan's facts-free sound bite.
Biden's plan that the SCOTUS rejected 6-3 was to forgive $10,000 to $20,000 of federal student loan debt per borrower, which would have benefited more than 40 million borrowers and cost around $400 billion. The SCOTUS found that the plan stretched a key phrase of a specific federal law beyond Congress' intent in passing that law. The Supreme Court did not rule that the Biden administration could not cancel student loan debt; it ruled that the specific statute was being stretched too far.
Biden acknowledged that finding and dropped the proposal. He then proposed three much-smaller pieces of student loan forgiveness under a different statute. Federal district judges in two states put holds on two of those proposals and an appeals court agreed, under similar logic as the SCOTUS case (a statute being stretched too far). So the administration dropped those. They ended up doing only one further student-loan forgiveness which benefitted around 1/8th as many students, for much-smaller individual amounts, compared to the original plan that had been rejected by the SCOTUS.
To sum up: the courts told the administration it could not do something under a particular law. So the administration dropped that plan. Then the administration tried to achieve a smaller version of the same goal by using a different law, to see if that law would allow it. The courts said no to most of that as well, and so the administration didn’t do those parts of it. They did end up doing one much-smaller thing that the courts had no problem with.
Biden then bragged about having found a way to cancel student loan debt despite the courts which was just routine politician face-saving. In reality he did not defy or evade any court rulings about student loan debt, and did not cancel anywhere near as much student loan debt as he would have if the courts hadn't said no.
I find these arguments from hypocrisy completely uncompelling. Yes, hypocrites exist, and yes, the two major parties have almost universally engaged in similar types of bad behavior (although often not to the same degree in any particular case), but when defending a particular instance of bad behavior from the current group in power: what do you say to the people who _weren't_ hypocrites? Many such people exist. Lots of people criticizied, at the time, exactly the things you are describing. So what do you say to the people who are also now criticizing Trump?
Hypocrisy is a reason to not take a particular person seriously. It is not a reason to dismiss an entire class of complaint.
Previous bad behavior does not justify current bad behavior.
Also in this (and many other cases), the only way to make the accusation of hypocrisy is to brazenly lie about the facts. The Biden admin complied with the court orders and enancted only the parts of the programs sanctioned by the courts, at least one order of magnitude smaller than the original proposal. It's a textbook case of the executive deferring to the judicial!
I think it works best if you think of it as people's incomes relative to their expectations. To use a hypothetical example. If you grew up three meals a day and can now only afford two, you're going to feel really hungry. But if you grew up on one meal a day but can now afford two you're going to feel good. Especially if everyone you know is still on one meal.
One example of people who "moved to slums" would be digital nomads. Though if you're earning an American software engineers salary and paying Manila prices for rent you're probably living a quality of life better than a software engineer in San Francisco.
Per your paragraph 33 due process note, it might also be worth mentioning that the Trump administration itself has conceded this point. The recent SCOTUS JGG order observed this: "The detainees’ rights against summary removal, however, are not currently in dispute. The Government expressly agrees that 'TdA members subject to removal under the Alien Enemies Act get judicial review'....'It is well established that the Fifth Amendment entitles aliens to due process of law' in the context of removal proceedings.' Reno v. Flores, 507 U. S. 292, 306 (1993)."
so, someone advancing this point I think has to acknowledge they are going so far out on a legal limb that:
1: Scalia disagrees
2: The Supreme Court as recently as 2 weeks ago disagrees
A federal judge might open investigations into the US government being in contempt of court. Deadline ends in less than a day from now, not sure what news if any on this development.
Also remember the dog and pony show with Bukele a few days ago, where an autocrat, practically dictator, regrettably had to admit he "does not have the power" to send back the prisoners.
The Per Curiam opinion in the JGG case came out the way it did because the government "expressly agree[d] that TdA members subject to removal under the Alien Enemies Act get judicial review." The government also agreed that “It is well established that the Fifth Amendment entitles aliens to due process of law” citing Reno v. Flores (a 1990s-era case that held the same thing).
I can't emphasize this enough, and I've talked a bit about it on the discord as well: Trump has, in court anyway, conceded that the detainees he seeks to deport under the Alien Enemies Act are entitled to a due process determination of their basis for removal (In habeas) and that the Alien Enemies Act itself is subject to judicial review (that is, courts can examine whether "invasion" under this act pertains to TdA, it's not just "up to the president."
Trump's attorneys have also conceded he messed up in Garcia's case. Simply put, in COURT, the administration is flat-out saying those subject to deportation get due process and the basis for deportation is subject to judicial review.
People usually refer to bit flips in memory as due to cosmic rays but they aren't any more common in high altitude places like Denver than low altitude places, making it unlikely that cosmic rays have anything to do with it in most cases. Mostly they're due to radioactive decay of something inside the chip.
It still needs to know what children look like and how they differ from adults. This is just like that case last year where kids were uploading photos of female classmates to generate porn.
> The IA has to base it's imagery on real kiddie porn.
No, style transfers and generalization are things.
For example, AI image generators are already reasonably good at generating photorealistic versions of hand-drawn sketches. If I give Dall-E a crude stick-figure drawing of a house, the model is capable of turning it into something that looks like a real-estate photo. If you give a model a hand-drawn pornographic comic, it's equally capable of generating something reasonably photorealistic.
Similarly, image generation models can generalize from their training sets. If it knows what a man wearing rabbit ears looks like and it knows what women look like, it has a reasonable chance of generating a pseudo-photo of a woman wearing rabbit ears.
Legally, at least in some jurisdictions, you are breaking the law if you get AI to do this, as this is taken as infringing their rights.
If you do it in your mind it's just morally wrong :)
If you think it's OK, why don't you ask them....?
There's a similar argument about art. The arts world got up in arms a few months back cos they were worried that AI was going to be trained on all their output and then put them out of a job. But how did they learn their art? By training on the output of their predecessors!
Only cos he's seen fully dressed 17 year olds. As soon as the AI incorporates that info it's abusing the 17 year old. Anyway, kiddie porn isn't about 17 year olds. Younger kids look very different.
I can't believe I have to say this here, but I were much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much rather abused as a child by someone doing stuff with pictures of me, than ... me.
I suppose an argument could be made that yes, AI-generated photos are indeed *way* better than real photos.
But then our old friend the slippery slope comes along. After all, if it's okay for you to masturbate to AI generated photos of toddlers in diapers, why not AI generated photos of toddlers naked? After all, it's not real kids.
If it's okay for AI generated photos of naked toddlers, why not AI generated photos of naked toddlers touching an adult's penis? After all, it's not real kids.
If AI generated photos of toddlers touching an adult's penis are okay, why not the toddler sucking on the penis? After all... and we get all the way up to "getting off to AI generated photos of crying six year olds being raped violently because it's not real kids".
And then maybe the guys getting off to those photos get bored after a while with the AI stuff and start looking for the real stuff. Are there any good studies on escalation of porn watching (that is, after you get over the forbidden fruit thrill of vanilla porn, you start needing something a little spicier to pique your interest and that escalates over time?)
I think this is what makes people uncomfortable with the idea; fake cartoon/AI generated kiddie porn is definitely better than the real thing, but how extreme do we let it go? And how safe is it, is there a genuine risk of graduating to the 'harder' (i.e. real children) stuff after you get used to the AI stuff?
I suspect your comment isn't supposed to be a direct reply to me.
Otherwise:
I didn't intend to argue for any okayishness of AI generated pictures like this.
I just wanted to highlight the difference between doing stuff to a photo of a naked person that has not agreed to someone doing that stuff to that photo on the one hand and doing it to the person on the other hand. Because "if it does [know what naked children look like], it's abusing the models" blurres this, and it shouldn't get blurred.
Not directly replying, no. More musing on it. I think most people will have a feeling of revulsion about even AI generated child sexual abuse material, and not be able to articulate exactly why in the face of arguments about "but it's not *real* children".
The MAPs reformulation is the nice part of all this. But human nature is sticky, and very often not-nice, and the nice, moderate, 'will appeal to the normies' cases are often used as Trojan horses by the not-nice types.
"I'm attracted to 16 year olds, is that really paedophilia?" may fly for "so why is it bad to provide me with AI images of fake hot 16 year olds". But it damn well will also be used as cover for the ones who want violent and sadistic imagery, or imagery of 6 year olds and not 16 year olds.
And then there are the types that maybe can't even be called paedophiles proper, but who should not be accommodated in any degree, not even with AI generation of CSA, because they are too dangerous and too depraved.
The case about the guy who uploaded images of raping a baby is particularly bad, and I don't think arguing "well if he and others like him were just able to get their fill of AI generated baby rape imagery, it wouldn't happen in real life" is going to win over anyone. People who perpetrate that kind of crime plainly aren't concerned with minimising harm, and probably would not be happy with the 'fake' alternative "no, you cannot fuck a real baby in real life, just use this AI picture to masturbate to".
I remember someone once trying to describe Aella as "someone who defends child porn", and now I see what they were probably referring to, and it's not a defense of child porn (let alone abuse). Her argument seems similar to the one in favor of brothels and porn theaters because they correlated with a drop in sexual assaults (pretty promptly, in at least one case - a town closed the local brothel, rates went up, they reopened, rates dropped again). And this has been known for decades.
Anyone who is very confident about whether the long term effect is positive, negative, or neutral, is deluding themselves about their ability to read the future. This seems like a very hard sort of question to figure out the net answer to.
Does erring on the side of caution mean that if we have no idea which one of two options is better or worse in long term, we should choose the one that is worse in short term?
Logic never comes into it when legislating on sex!
Science can't help cos it's not something any ethics committee would allow research on. Maybe a way could be found to carry out an investigation with locked-up sex offenders, but it'd take a brave politician to even raise the question.
"Autistic": she is kinda. Hard to measure "exactly" quantitatively as long as "what IS autism" very much lacks an "exact" answer. - James Damore? Oh, the former google guy who wrote: "Damore said that gender-differences include women generally having a stronger interest in people rather than things, and tending to be more social ... . Damore's memorandum also suggests ways to adapt the tech workplace to those differences to increase women's representation and comfort, without resorting to discrimination." (wikipedia) Wow, if that counts as highly controversial in your bubble ... ;)
> Aella argues AI kiddie porn consume results in less real kids getting hurt:
I think the weakness in this argument is that the taboo against kiddie porn and against child sexual abuse in general is socially constructed. Looking back historically, we see societies that tolerated various forms of child sexual abuse, even considering it a right of passage. As recently as the 70s or so, a strain of European philosophy was arguing for sexual liberation in a way that sounds awfully child-porny to modern ears; NAMBLA was founded in the late 70s.
Intuitively speaking, it seems hard to maintain a selective social taboo. Even if the instant effect is towards less child sexual abuse, normalization of the practice might easily lead to more practitioners, so we should probably consider the precautionary principle and act very carefully.
It's not wholly a social construct, if I understand it correctly. If it were, there probably wouldn't be such a revulsion to it in most people. I acknowledge there are societies where sex acts involving children are permitted, but I suspect there are rules in those societies (it's not a subject I'm deeply familiar with, for understandable reasons) that cut down on actual biological trouble, like trying to perform intercourse with someone who's too small and/or prepubescent.
Puberty is the primary factor, given its role in reproduction. There's much less evolutionary justification for wanting to have sex with pre-pubescents than for post-, and this is supposed to manifest in mental revulsion at the former that's probably present across societies.
Ergo, there's an argument that someone who's pedophilic in the technical sense is *broken*, and needs to be physically isolated; they can't socialize their way out of that urge. People who are just ephebophilic - they're attracted to ages 15-17 (while being full adults themselves) - probably socialized their way into it, and can be socialized out (with negative incentives like the mere threat of prison).
Good points. Otoh, the law could and imho should treat AI-done or drawn "kid-porn" (making, publishing, owning) max. as an offence resp. a lesser victim-less crime with less harsh fines. Also - see Paul B. - treat all sorts of porn with minors older than 14 / 16 / whatever age-of-consent less harsh than below 14 / 12 / 10 / 8 ... Michael Jackson met Wade Robson when Wade was seven, right? ...
In real life, I am sure judges do consider all those and more; but I am sure glad, in all games/comics made in Japan I ever had on a hard disc: all the girls drawn are explicitly described as "18" (no matter how much younger they looked). Yes, owning a graphic novel depicting 17 year olds making out: might put you in prison in my country. Owning the novel "Josephine Mutzenbacher" is legal for adults. (Same author as "Bambi" - in German, it is porn, illegal to sell to minors - but well-done literature and funny, too; the English translation is abhorrent child-porn, do not read.)
If someone claimed this sfw-pic of an Ä https://freebiesupply.com/logos/a-logo/ showed two minors having sex: the police may break into my home and confiscate all computers. I SWEAR: it is a married couple, both older than 30 and only ever having vaginal IC. And just a company-logo anyways.
No extra victims over what would happen without the AI. I'm assuming the government uses confiscated porn and doesn't compensate the producers, so it's not making more porn nor retroactively incentivizing past porn to be made.
But it's further perpetrating the abuse of the original models. How would you like to think that it was trained on images of your naked body taken during a period of intense suffering?
Anyway, by your argument the government could just release all the confiscated porn for free...
I think the other commenters have made it clear that AI does _NOT_ need photos of children while being abused to create JPGs that look like photos of children being abused.
But you have a point, that fake abuse photos resulting from training with real abuse photos should be prohibited. The training itself with those is already prohibited because the possession of those is prohibited.
"14: Did you know that China has mostly solved the problem of smog in Beijing? (X)"
Similarly, Los Angeles beat smog between roughly 1975 and 1995. Environmentalists should celebrate their successes more often to remind people that they've often been pragmatically right.
Nah, whether or not they celebrate their once-uncontroversial successes, some wire trips in people's brains because Rush Limbaugh used the radio waves every day to condition them to hate environmentalists and owls, on account of needing a substitute for Commies after the USSR broke up.
I don't think it's hugely analogous, as the USA cut pollution via the clean air act and related measures. While China has made some progress in having stricter environmental standards the enforcement is variable at best. For Beijing specifically it was mostly moving dirty coal power plants and other industries to neighbouring less politically influential cities
Agreed, acid rain is almost never talked about these days and I’m not convinced most people of my generation (Gen Z) are even aware of what it was or why it was an environmental accomplishment.
29: You don't live in a conservative bubble, you live in a "cares about good policy" and "cares about Justice (variously defined)" bubble. Most of those policies were ~useless, various tradeoffs were never (and have never been) addressed, and perhaps we should consider non-COVID reasons that Democrats specifically remember COVID policy as particularly favorable.
Another possibility is that you live in a particularly *liberal-libertarian* bubble, in ways that do not actually appeal to most people. Most of the populace got to enjoy free money and authoritarianism, and it turns out they're not as opposed to that as someone like you (us?) might like to think.
If you going to print money Id prefer most of that money to go to the poor; the question "should we print money" is rarely answered no, 2008 was a vile evil compared to the corona stimulus.
This is far more likely. There is a very small group of liberal-libertarians (bleeding-heart libertarians) that happens to congregate around this blog which are going to be uniquely outraged by government overreach, while the average person doesn't care at all. Especially when you throw in a few thousand dollars of free money and you don't have to work during the lockdowns.
>29: You don't live in a conservative bubble, you live in a "cares about good policy" and "cares about Justice (variously defined)" bubble.
This is how all ideological bubbles describe themselves.
No one is in a bubble that self-describes as 'we want bad policies and injustice because we are chaotic evil idiots'. Every bubble thinks they're just being reasonable and applying common sense.
From the outside: Yes, this is a conservative bubble. My own bubble is also a bubble and is surely doing its own biased and stupid things, but from over here it is easy to see the shape of this site's bubble.
I don't think you can count a view of one bubble from another bubble as objective. How do you know you're not in a bubble so progressive that even Scott's bubble looks conservative?
"Every bubble thinks they're just being reasonable and applying common sense" is probably a good instinct; but it's going to be hard to go from there. We can probably agree that "Bubble A sees Bubble B as conservative/progressive/very round/very cubic/whatever" as pretty objective, but that doesn't mean Bubble B is actually those things, or that the objective center is between A and B. We might get Bubbles A-Z and chart all the pairwise observations and get a heuristic for where center is, but then the argument will just be over whether A-Z were selected fairly.
It's a perfectly valid assertion. If you disagree, that's your right, but you can't weasel your way out of people tagging your community with some form of political valence with facts and logic.
He asked about where he lives. Even extending that to include his social spaces does not mean it includes these comment sections, nor does it make it useful to describe as "conservative." For all the Scott does respond to his fans, this is not where he lives, and reasonably often he's deliberately combative to many if not most of his readers. He forced a forum schism because he disliked so many of his readers and wanted to distance them from his brand!
Calling where Scott lives a conservative bubble is akin to trolls on Twitter calling Kelsey Piper a conservative because she wants schools to be decent and cities to not be hostile to families. Defining whatever he's talking about as a "conservative bubble" renders the term completely uninformative.
I doubt classic conservative bubbles (Trump/MAGA crowds, or even trad repuplican people) would tag Scott's blog as conservative. So if an outside bubble think this blog is oldcon or even neocon, I guess it's more indicative where the outside bubble is....Probably moved far more wokeward than you think :-)
Conservative for San Fran, maybe. But most people here seem to be in favor of gay marriage, gender transitions, abortion, and talking with people on the internet, which makes it progressive compared to where I grew up. (Due to the internet being new and talking on it being a progressive thing, most online conversation leans progressive - though this is gradually becoming less so.) On the whole of things it's probably somewhere near moderate, or out along some totally different axis.
On the other hand I don't want them to grow up around much richer folk either. I don't want my kid being "the poor kid" at school, or getting teased for not having a horse or something.
People want to live around people who are in the same socio-economic category as them, but within that category they want to be the richest. A middle-class family might not want to live in a working-class neighbourhood, but they still want a nicer car than the middle-class family next door.
33) I can think of a way of maintaining the taboo against immigrants speaking freely. But I hope you're not going to like it. It's to apply the taboo to people who look like immigrants.
Trump would probably like that. He's already applying the taboo against gang members to anybody who has a tattoo that looks like it might be a gang tattoo.
Re 7: Following on Seneca Plutarchus and Hannes Jandi, I think we can salvage this idea at least in part. To begin with only people who are at least middle class have a realistic opportunity to move to a new place solely according to what would make them happier. They don't want to move to places that would deprive them of creature comforts or that would expose them to increased danger, so you don't see someone in Chicago's Gold Coast moving to the South Side, but that's far from the only model for moving to a poorer area. Even just in the US, there are plenty of places that are both lower-income and still quite safe, particularly out in rural locales, though this is partly to taste. I recall some years ago an increase in migration to expanding cities like Greenville SC on the premise of lower living costs combined with good facilities and growth.
If we approach it like this, then it's less about the psychological feeling of being relatively higher-status/wealthier than the people around you, and more about the ability to command more value for less money. This absolutely squares with my impression of expats, especially to the poorer but less dangerous areas of South America or Southern Europe.
If you can swing the immigration process, have good money saved up, and don't have obligations keeping you in the states, going to live in e.g. Spain gets you a massive boost to quality of life for equivalent dollar cost (now slightly offset by the recent shift in dollar-euro rates, but still substantial). It's not dangerous and you're not being deprived of high-class comforts, there's Michelin Star restaurants and great museums all around (schools are pretty crap though), but cost of living is lower, quality of certain things like groceries is higher, and people are just plain friendlier, granting that you respect them and take some time to learn the language.
I moved north from Chicago's Silver Coast at 2700 North as a bachelor to its Bronze Coast at 3700 North as an engaged man to its Copper Coast at 4900 North as a married man.
The final move was explicit gentrification, which took a long time, but eventually paid off fairly well.
We looked at moving to South Shore, but that was a bigger physical risk of crime than we were willing to take for the potential payoff.
I lived in Pilsen from 1991 to early 1999. The neighborhood is 95% Mexican and I felt out of place at first, but quickly realized it was fine. I didn't have kids though.
I think the more relevant quote from the Psmiths review is this:
Cargo cults may not be a great metaphor for “copying what someone successful seems to be doing without really knowing why and hoping you get the same result,” but they’re a wonderful metaphor for “assuming the novel thing you’ve just encountered fits a paradigm with which you’re already familiar.” That’s a devilishly difficult trap to escape, and the worst part is that you don’t know you have to: if it were easy to step outside your fundamental epistemological assumptions, they wouldn’t be your fundamental epistemological assumptions. And yet sometimes that’s the only road along which cargo will come.
" I keep hearing how we need a “reckoning” over the government’s disastrous anti-COVID policies, but the latest YouGov polling suggests that large majorities of Americans continue to support those policies:"
People like Work From Home.
I can recall we were promised that back during the Information Superhighway boom of 1993, but then that didn't happen for 27 years. Then in 2020 it turned out that, while not perfect, Work From Home actually worked fairly well.
#7 - Wouldn't we have to know who people are comparing themselves to, in order to understand whether the effect is in place? If my relative income to Alabama is high, but all my friends live in CA and we talk regularly online, then I probably feel little to no improvement from moving to Alabama.
There's also the question of income, where moving to a low CoL area often means having a lower income in terms of dollars. I probably make about half of what I could make doing the exact same job in a city, but I'm living in a much lower CoL area, so I feel pretty good about it. I make more than most of the people I interact with on a regular basis, so I feel like a big fish. If all of my friends were living in NYC and making 2-3X my income, despite spending vastly more on housing and food, then I may feel relatively poorer and be less happy about that.
It tends to depend upon what you talk to your friends about online. If you boast about how to mow your huge lawn, you'd probably prefer to be in Alabama. If you talk about about huge celebrities you've seen, you'd probably prefer to be in L.A.
Yes, but there's also a lot of things that tend to follow a higher cash income, regardless of CoL. You can generally buy more "toys" with a higher income, because the cost of say, an XBox, is essentially the same in Montana, Chicago, and Atlanta. Also true for most consumer electronics, clothing, etc. So making $50,000 in a very low CoL area may let you live with a relatively large house and yard, you are going to have fewer things than the person making $100,000 living in a shoebox in a big city. They can also afford renovations on their expensive property and other class signifiers easier than you can, so there's an appearance of wealth even if they live in a tiny place.
#29 - I notice it says "start" of the pandemic. I think those numbers make sense for March 2020, maybe through April or part of May. If that's what people mean when they respond, I don't find that too surprising.
If the question was asking about the totality of the lockdowns, or was clear that it also included something like 2021-2022 lockdowns and masks, then that would be much more surprising. I would also be interested in seeing numbers for mandatory vaccinations (which being absent from this list may be an indication that they really do mean early 2020 and not later).
Yeah, I don’t expect most survey respondents to make the distinction, but the right actions to take changed dramatically over time. Uncertainty about fatality rate, means of transmission, knowledge of effective care (remember the rise and fall of ventilators?), and access to vaccines reshaped the tradeoff landscape over the first 12 months of the virus.
Very much so. With the benefit of hindsight I don't think my fairly rural town should have responded at all - no lockdowns, no work changes. But without hindsight, it actually feels like a fairly prudent precaution. Then at least by the summer we were mostly back to normal, which also felt pretty good. But then that fall we were once again facing state mandates and school closures which were decidedly unnecessary and extremely disruptive.
Depending on when you asked me about it, I would have had very different answers to that survey.
Agreed. I also make a very clear distinction between first wave (where one can discuss if the measures taken were the best possible, but anyway given how high the uncertainty was non optimality is completely excusable and I have 0 grudge against the authorities) and subsequent waves (especially policies after the vaccine was available). There I'd like a very serious reckoning indeed (and will likely hope for one for a very long time - at least until it freeze in hell)
Agree with this. Closing schools from somewhere between a few weeks to the end of the spring term wouldn't be unreasonable. The U.S. kept them closed for far too long, though.
There was no "U.S." policy though, it was state by state. And presumably the majority of people in most states agreed with the policy or it would've been different. In my state schools were only closed in spring 2020, they were open in fall.
In solidly red or solidly blue states this may be true (while also overruling the minorities within those states once again - maybe why so many people left blue states for Texas and Florida...). For purple states, this was far less true, and may have been the opposite.
> But now suppose that you wake up tomorrow in the actual, real, genuine world (yes, fr), and find out that this sadistic maniac of a scientist is not just a mere figment of my twisted imagination, but is in fact flesh-and-blood-real. To make matters worse, he has cursed 𝘺𝘰𝘶, my valued reader, with the horrible burden Yana had to carry before. The fact that the mechanism is now actual, rather than imaginary, shouldn’t change the moral character of the situation. That means that even though, prior to learning these contingent empirical facts, scratching your butt seemed totally fine, it actually turns out to be incredibly wrong. The lesson here is that whether or not some action is wrong, or state of affairs bad, in a given possible world doesn’t depend on whether that world is the actual world.
(19, "Surely we're not moral monsters")
This argument fails for bad, annoying reasons.
By way of introduction, I disapprove of the part of American culture that says American culture is evil. One of Richard Hanania's essays pointed out that this is a criticism that you can't logically level against American culture. That is true, but since self-hatred really can be good or bad, I maintain that it is bad and I just have to take the hit of needing to say that my criticism is good despite not being different in form from the bad criticism.
And for a second example, there is a discussion of philosophical induction (using the past as a guide to the future) that points out that the heuristic is entirely unjustified. You can't even fall back on the usual claim that justifies "we don't know why it should work, but it does", because that claim is "this has worked in the past", and using that as evidence that the past is informative about the future is the logical sin of assuming your conclusion.
This essay is making the same "mistake". If you tell me to imagine something happening in the real world, the conclusion can't be that some principle has crossed from being valid in imaginary worlds to being valid in reality, because all of the evidence and/or support has always been restricted to imaginary worlds. When I imagine the real world, everything I imagine is taking place in an imaginary world.
20) I'm not sure who is more interesting: The 9% who have a very or somewhat favorable opinion of The Black Plague (at least they take a stand!), or the 17% who are on the fence… "I mean, did they die *of* the black plague or *with* the black plague?"
Hmm … the failure of imagination necessary to think that the black plague was a good way to beat overpopulation is really something. There aren’t many good paths out of something like that, but having half the population essentially rot to death in agony over a few short years seems like a particularly bad way out.
Sure, if we were the Foundation trying to kickstart the Enlightenment, genetically engineering the plague would be spectacularly evil. But if you read "The Black Death" as referring to the historical event rather than the disease, you might decide that the historical event, on the whole, was good. (I don't know if that's true, because I'm neither a historian nor an economist.)
Good as compared to…? For something (especially a plague) to be "good", we need more than outcomes IMO, we need counterfactuals to compare with.
I read the black plague as "historical event that ended ‘Malthusianism’", i.e. population-limiting event. The question then, is whether history could have achieved the same or better outcomes with less suffering. Fewer people dying? The same amount of people dying, but from famine, wars, "nicer" pandemic? Technological breakthroughs of the kind that later broke Malthusian math?
I can sort of understand how some historian who doesn’t have to see their child die of the plague can look at it and say that it all turned out for the best, but I don’t have much respect for it. I believe basically that the journey is the destination, so have a hard time accepting that any part of the journey that is as brutal as that can be justified by the economics of the future.
I remember that being mainstream historiography for some time, at least in terms of what's taught in intro/survey courses and makes it into popular histories, and I expect you're right that that's what most of the people who responded in favor of it were thinking of.
That said, I've been persuaded that that narrative is largely false. The recovery period following the Black Death did show increased material standard of living and improved social stature for serfs and peasants relative to the immediate pre-Plague period, but that was a temporary effect that mostly returned to baseline when the population once again approached Malthusian carrying capacity.
The timing is all wrong for the Black Death being the cause of breaking loose from the Malthusian trap, as the former happened in the mid-14th century and the latter didn't happen until the Industrial Revolution in the early 19th century. The causes of the Industrial Revolution are the subject of considerable debate, but the most plausible-seeming theories I'm familiar with link it to varying combinations and sequences of the Commercial Revolution of the Late Middle Ages, the institutional changes of the Renaissance and Reformation era, and the cultural and economic changes of the late pre-industrial "Industrious Revolution". The Black Death happened relatively late in the Commercial Revolution, serving as a major setback to it rather than a trigger or facilitator, and the other two eras didn't get going until decades or centuries respectively after the Black Death.
> The timing is all wrong for the Black Death being the cause of breaking loose from the Malthusian trap, as the former happened in the mid-14th century and the latter didn't happen until the Industrial Revolution in the early 19th century.
Haven't you heard about long and variable lags? ;D
Laying the cause of the Industrial Revolution on the Black Death would be far too narrow and therefore clearly wrong. That is was a contributing factor seems quite strong, though it's hard (likely impossible) to say that it was a necessary factor. We just don't have access to the counterfactual to compare.
To understand how it could affect Europe centuries later, you have to understand the cultural perspective in place around the time of the Black Death. Peasants were essentially nothing to the elites. They could be thrown away as shock troops in battle or starve to death on the sides of the street. Because there were a lot (read: too many in a Malthusian sense) of such people, the losses were actually positive from a purely material perspective. It was a society in which Thanos was right.
When 50% of the people were dead, each individual became necessarily more important. The elites couldn't treat people as if they were disposable, and had to concede some rights, power, and money, in order to keep society and their lofty places within it intact. This, above all else, created a *cultural* shift. The mentality that said peasants were nothing was untenable, so peasants had to be something. If peasants are something, then they can and should have rights and so on. I think this further took on religious significance through the church that helped maintain this cultural shift even when population levels revived. And by then there was a fledgling middle class, rich merchants (with no royal and lordly claims), and a different way of looking at humanity.
This was by no means required - most plagues in history, including in Europe or when wiping out huge numbers of people, did not result in anything like this. It's also entirely possible that the Industrial Revolution would have come through eventually anyway (in fact, it's not possible to determine if the IR would have even happened earlier through a mechanism we could only guess at). But in the actual history that happened, I think the cultural shift was real and important. That Europe, pre-IR, was much stronger for it and was able to advance significantly in the following centuries.
I've also heard interpretations that center on the cultural shift you're describing, but I'm skeptical of those, too. The idea of peasants having rights and dignity long predated the Black Death, and the problem of those rights being more honored in the breach than in the observance persisted long after it.
When elites started paying serious attention to commoners was partly a product of the Commercial Revolution, which produced a class of urban merchants and artisans who needed to be taken seriously by the aristocracy. It was also a result of military technology, as people figured out how to form and use an effective combat force from commoners who drilled on weekends that could stand up to (or at least stand alongside) a professional or aristocratic force in the field. It started out with longbows, crossbows, pikes, and bills, and the bows later got replaced with gunpowder weapons.
Using levies, militia, or conscripts as disposable shock troops was more of an Early Modern thing than a High Medieval one, and it's a practice that continued well into the 20th century. Similarly, letting the poors starve in the streets was also very much a thing in the Early Modern era, and the term "surplus population" that shows up in e.g. Charles Dickens's works for the phenomenon is a 18th/19th concept.
The benefit to Western Europe seems completely credible to me, but context matters. In Eastern Europe (east of the Elbe, essentially), the nobility was strong enough that they could crush and enslave the commoners rather than be forced to grant them increased rights and wages. The same factor - labor shortage - resulted in two dramatically different outcomes.
The aftermath of the black death was an unusually upwards mobile time. If I had lived all my life as a small cottage farmer barely making end meets and a small personal misfortune away from being a landless laborer (or worse) and little chance to improve my lot in life, I would appreciate the empty farmland I can move to as a survivor.
This still, still doesn't address the question. The point is that it's nonsensical to be excited that the plague killed off your family so you can have a "bigger" family. This whole thread is just a "bad things are bad, actually" type argument.
The Black Death, while obviously horrific, was long-term socially beneficial for Western (but not Eastern) Europe. Following it, wages and standards of living increased with the labor shortage and peasants and laborers got a stronger negotiating position. Soon enough, this led into the Early Modern era.
You can track the rise of Western Europe (and the decline of Eastern Europe) from the Black Death.
While I'm sympathetic the general point about due process (because the whole point of due process is that you always follow it even when it's inconvenient), I have to object to this:
> "it’s hard to maintain social outrage against people who are doing the same thing as lots of other people but except for checking labels."
I think this way of thinking misleadingly conflates laws with social norms. Ideally it's best to have both these things roughly in alignment, but what's really important is to decide what things are against the law and what things aren't. If an illegal things happens to be very similar to a legal thing, that may create some confusion on the level of social norms, but the law itself remains clear and can be enforced. It ultimately doesn't matter whether you fail to maximise social outrage: what matters is whether the law is (1) just and (2) enforced.
I think maybe you may be assuming that it's inherently unjust for someone to go to prison for the equivalent of not checking a label. I strongly disagree with this: sending people to prison for failing to verify things that they are obligated to verify is necessary for the maintenance of civilization.
"I strongly disagree with this: sending people to prison for failing to verify things that they are obligated to verify is necessary for the maintenance of civilization." That seems like a super narrow application.
The problem is that the people were rounded up and shipped out within days with no opportunity given for them to verify themselves.
Yes. The fun thing about that crime is that you go to an American court and you are cited by an American cop and, if you have reason to believe the cop acted arbitrarily, you can seek an appeal from that same American justice system.
It's the lack of due process that's the issue, not the criminality of the immigration status.
Okay, so you DON'T think persecuting "people who are doing the same thing as lots of other people" except that the labels you have to check for are different is bad. That's the principle I was arguing against.
(Well, I don't actually agree with the example I used, since I believe the state requiring one to obtain a driver's license in order to engage in the natural rights of free men is a gross infringement of individual liberty, but that's a separate point.)
The dmv and passports/green cards are pure paper work and universally considered shit.
Driving is regulated because a mere statistical chance to cause harm; this is pre-crime. Your merely assuming that all car accidents are caused by drivers, #notalldrivers
No pre-crime is due process as the founders understood it.
---
We do not live near this libertarian utopia, we should do things in an approximate order of their distance from ideals; e.g. if you only legalized fent you will kill allot of people, legalization of all drugs should roughly be in order of safest to least.
If licenses could be revoked at any time without telling you, I think I would be skeptical that the people caught driving without a license did anything wrong.
Okay, that's fair. I guess I distinguish law and morality so thoroughly that even on a thread assuming the distinction at the top, my view is extreme enough to warrant clarification. (I do have a disclaimer elsewhere in the thread that I don't believe in this example I posed, and use it only for argument's sake.)
I intended my comment to be questioning the consistency of the application of the stated legal principle rather than on moral grounds in isolation, and in context I think it was clear.
I think you've misunderstood my point -- this isn't specifically about the issue of deportation, and my final paragraph was not referring to the process of proving citizenship or legal residency. My point was that in general, 'making it easy to coordinate social outrage' shouldn't be one of the main aims of a justice system.
This may have been a relevant distinction before teh Federalist Society was formed, but I doubt it.
Right now, the Federalist Society court very clearly just does whatever the conservative social consensus thinks they should do. If progressives ever get the court back in a few decades, I would expect much teh same to happen there.
So I don't think there's much meaningful distinction between the social norms and the law at this point... One will become the other as soon as it happens in the Eight Circuit one time.
>I think this way of thinking misleadingly conflates laws with social norms.
Laws should reflect social norms, and should be changed when they don't. Otherwise they're arbitrary and capricious. If there's no discernible difference between one side of the line and the other, then you should move the line.
For many people, that one side is illegal and the other isn't is the only thing they CAN discern, their moral faculties having atrophied to rely exclusively on laws, arbitrary and capricious as they may be.
On the contrary -- I think that forcing laws to be in sync with social norms would make them more capricious, not less. Social norms are based partly on people's moral instincts, and people's moral instincts are self-serving and susceptible to manipulation.
For example, it's relatively easy for people to convince themselves that members of a particular religion/race/other outgroup are inherently evil and deserve to be murdered, but the law still includes blanket prohibitions on murder. I shouldn't be able to get away with murder by truthfully saying to the judge, "Actually, committing murder in this situation is in accordance with social norms." If I can get away with murder by saying this, then that's evidence of a problem with the law.
Also, the problem with demanding a discernible difference between one side of the line and another is that the law sometimes needs to create a bright-line rule even when there is not an intuitively obvious cut-off point. Consider the age of consent: there is no particular age above which everyone is clearly mature enough to give meaningful consent, and below which everyone is clearly not mature enough to give meaningful consent. But there still needs to be a legal age of consent, even if this does not always agree with moral instincts or social norms in a particular case.
>If I can get away with murder by saying this, then that's evidence of a problem with the law.
Your social norms against murder are telling you that.
>Consider the age of consent: there is no particular age above which everyone is clearly mature enough to give meaningful consent,
There's no particular age for the laws either; some places put it at 16, others 18, others 14 if the partner is within the same age group, etc. The local social norms decide the cutoff for the law.
I think we're talking past each other. What I'm trying to say is that sometimes it is necessary for the law to ban things that don't provoke social outrage, and sometimes it is necessary for the law to allow things that do provoke social outrage. Trying to create a one-to-one correspondence between 'things that the average person finds outrageous' and 'things that are illegal' would have catastrophic consequences.
Why? Laws exist to serve society, not the other way around. If everyone agrees that the lynching of heretics is morally correct, it makes no sense to have a law prohibiting that. And it wouldn't stay a law for long anyways, because it would quickly be changed.
Every law was created for a reason, at some point. If those laws no longer reflect social reality, then they need to be changed.
Why wouldn't it stay a law for long anyways? Everyone believes it so what is the incentive to change it? Heretics will just continue to get lynched for at the very minimum of one more generation, and almost certainly longer than that.
I think that for the law being enforced, it matters that the law is practical to enforce. The law says no toy guns on airplanes, because it’s much easier to enforce a law that says no toy guns or real guns on airplanes than it is to enforce a law that says no real guns on air planes but toy guns are fine. Similarly for the child sexual abuse material, and also for the speech restrictions - a law saying it’s fine to have child sexual abuse material made with no actual children involved makes it very hard to enforce a law against real child sexual abuse material; a law saying that citizens can say what they want about Hamas but non-citizens can’t is much harder to enforce than a law that says no one can say nice things about Hamas or a law that says everyone is allowed to say what they want about Hamas. The big issue isn’t whether the person themself is checking the label - it’s about whether the amount of law enforcement time that goes into checking labels is so much that it detracts from actual enforcement of the important parts of laws.
I strongly agree with everything you're saying: the law should be designed to be practical to enforce, and sometimes the most practical law is one which bans things that merely resemble the things you're actually trying to prevent.
But this is completely different from Scott's argument that laws should be designed to make it easy to coordinate social outrage against lawbreakers.
For example, I agree that it is practical in some situations to say that toy guns are just as forbidden as real guns. However, it would be bizarre and counterproductive to create a social norm in which shooting someone with a toy guy provokes just as much social outrage as shooting someone with a real gun.
Yeah, in retrospect, I probably tried a bit too hard to reinterpret some of the puzzling things he said, and probably misinterpreted him as saying the thing I'm saying, which he might not have actually been saying.
"A common sociological claim is that relative income (compared to your social circle) matters more for happiness than absolute income. Bryan Caplan thinks this can’t be true: after all, practically nobody moves to poorer areas to enjoy the higher relative income this would confer. I don’t know if you can really use revealed preferences this way..."
The issue is different here and I think Caplan's argument is wrong. A high relative income is probably important because it gives you a greater sense of importance and/or makes you feel like you have luxuries compared to what is "normal". Or insert something similar along these lines.
But if you already are intimate with a social circle of higher wealth, moving to a lower wealth circle gives you much less or none of these payoffs. You have an ingrained higher baseline of what constitutes status and luxury.
For what it's worth, I've noticed this effect a lot in my own life, grew up in South Africa, moved to the US for college and although I am pretty upper-middle class in NY, when I travel to back to Johannesburg to visit friends and family I am suddenly wealthy. But it doesn't feel so great because somewhere in the back of my mind, I have this thought, like I'm not all that in reality.
> California’s experiment to see how high they could raise the minimum wage before getting visible employment effects has finally produced unambiguous results:
That’s a pretty zoomed in graph and doesn’t account for other stuff going on in California.
I notice too that there’s a discrepancy in how economists react to reductions and employment with regard to “natural” economic trends and state mandates. If the adoption of A.I. were to reduce employment by 4% in an industry but increase wage growth per remaining employee by a significant percentage it would be a Good Thing. This is a Bad Thing
I'm not Peter, but I have a feeling that even a zoomed-out graph would not help. Minimum wage effects on the economy are AIUI notorious for being easily confounded. It's innate to the fact that only around 3% of the workforce works for minimum wage*, so if you raised it high enough to unemploy them all, that's only 3%, and often lost in the noise of other factors like aging off, coming of age, reentry due to life events (like Covid), relocation, tech advances, outsources, and other regulatory pressures (both positive and negative).
*OTOH, some non-minimum wage jobs are still pegged to it. If you raise MW from $8 to $20/hr, that also affects everyone who was making $10, $12, $15... they don't just go up to $20; they probably go up to $25, $28, $30... and so on up the line, so MW raises can affect more than 3%, but most employers faced with a mandatory wage raise can be expected to let go of their least-skilled, lowest earners first.
The idea that people making 15 would make 25 after a minimum wage hike is nice to dream about, but really since their labor value is 15 and 15 is less than 20, they'd just be fired along with the $8 employees.
It’s nice to dream that people are paid precisely the amount of value that their work produces, but in fact a lot of wage setting involves social negotiations, and it’s very easy for employers to pay workers less than the value their work produces, if the workers can’t negotiate collectively about what wage they will accept, while minimum wage laws help solve the negotiation problem that atomized workers often have when facing a few concentrated employers.
It's indeed very common for workers to be paid less than the value produced by their work, and it's also very common for workers to be paid more than the value they assign their labor. This sort of positive sum exchange is what makes market economies the best.
Very much so! But these kinds of positive sum exchanges are the ones where the net results of increased minimum wage are hardest to predict, because these ones change the terms of negotiations rather than just pricing workers out of the market. (And I believe a lot of the research on minimum wage is based on trying to figure out whether the improved bargaining position for the lowest earners actually ends up meaning broad-based economic stimulus, because more money is getting into the hands of the people most willing to spend it.)
Minimum wage laws solve that problem, but at the expense of creating workers who cannot make any legal wage at all. Which means they don't really solve that problem.
Wait, what? Are you saying that if a law mitigates one problem while making another problem worse, then it automatically is net negative?
It seems to me that you need to understand whether the amount it does on one problem is more or less than the amount it does on another in order to say whether it is overall good or bad.
You're right that economics is complicated, but the simplest case of change in regulation --> change in employment is the some of the best evidence we can have.
Once you start accounting for confounding factors, you might end up with "cleaner" data, but you're just as likely to introduce bias as get rid of it. Considering what many economists predicted would happen, did happen, this is strong, albeit not conclusive evidence that raising the minimum wage reduced employment (albeit not much, this is a swing of a few percent).
we need to factor in the times when economists predicted a (significant) change and there was no (significant) change ...
of course there is some casual effect of regulation, we know from anecdotes that in many sectors (like law enforcement) increasing overtime is the norm instead of hiring more people.
and even in higher paid positions expensive "temp staffing" is very common, because hiring is seen as very cumbersome, or accounting/budget constraints incentivize buying services instead of hiring people. (so for example a restaurant fires the janitor but contracts a company to provide janitorial services a few times a week. again, of course, like you said, confounding factors are endless, and properly weighing them is the challenge.)
"If the adoption of A.I. were to reduce employment by 4% in an industry but increase wage growth per remaining employee by a significant percentage it would be a Good Thing"
Difference is that one occurred through increasingly productivity and the other didn't.
7. When I was young I lived in... well, I'm not sure if it's was a slum, though I distinctly remember Finland's newspaper of note once writing a bombastic editorial calling it the only area filling the conditions for slum in the whole of Europe, but at least a very poor area in the midst of Finland's Great Recession, even though our family had a middle-class income that would have allowed for a different neighborhood. This apparently was in part because my lefty mom really took the avoidance of income segregation between neighborhoods seriously. I didn't like the experience, though I also suspect that when one's a teenager of a certain type they'd dislike anything.
Still, Caplan's argument is kind of odd; I've always taken the relative income thing to refer to one's friend group / peer group moreso than neighborhood, considering people these days don't necessarily really mentally "live" in their neighborhood and just crash there for the night.
29. You (and a huge amount of Covid contrarians/skeptics/independent thinkers generally) probably live in a youth bubble; Covid measures always polled humongously well among the elderly, no matter the party identification, and it's unsurprising that they still do. I mean, it was a popular contrarian talking point - "the olds are ruining the lives of the youth for just a few extra months of life!" - and they still seem to get surprised by polls like this showing that, yes, the olds really did like those few months of life!
Polling contradicts my anecdotal experience- especially when things first started to reopen, old people were *least* likely to be wearing masks in my area (mid-sized Southern metro). Don't know if the polling is regionally limited (maybe it was more popular in the northwest than in the south?) or if this area is the outlier instead.
My experience was the opposite, older people were much more likely to wear masks. That was in Germany and Switzerland.
As for Tahu, nowadays mask-wearing has dropped close to zero, but not literally zero. I see perhaps 1-2 people per day on my commute to work. And still elderly are over-represented, though it's not exclusively elderly.
> "the olds are ruining the lives of the youth for just a few extra months of life!"
Also, let's not forget that "ruining the lives" referred to wearing a face mask. How incredibly selfish of those olds to wish to live a few years longer at a cost of a minor inconvenience to *me*!
If you were single and lived alone during the pandemic then you might have gone many months at a stretch with very minimal human contact. It's unreasonable to handwave away the cost to these people.
> practically nobody moves to poorer areas to enjoy the higher relative income this would confer
I've done that, moved to Paraguay, confirm it works for me. I've also reduced my consumption cyclically (e.g., living like a monk and slowly adding comforts back in, and cycling through that process), because slowly getting consumption back up feels better than the occasionally downward shocks.
... sounds crazy and I didn't theorize it and then do it but rather do it and then thought it was pretty neat re: hedonic adaptation. I'm a pretty weird guy, so I'm not sure this generalizes though.
To be clear, there are two effects when going to somewhere like Paraguay : a) your income goes further, and b) you are surrounded by poorer people. It would normally be hard to differentiate these effects, but my sense is that I somewhat can due to my spending pattern.
I'm curious how long you have lived in Paraguay. I also moved to a poorer country, but have found the opposite to be true.
I feel guilty for living an upper middle class lifestyle in my current home, even though it's significantly lower standard of living than I would have had in the USA, my home country. I also earn significantly less here (in nominal terms) than I could be earning in the USA. If anything, I've become jaded and disgusted at the fact that wages are 1/10th of what they are in the USA for doing the same job.
Regardless I don't think my happiness has increased as a result of being surrounded by poorer people. I'm guessing that effect only holds true in "first world" countries.
I've always thought that rapid downward shocks in quality of life, followed by a gradual increase, is the key to happiness. How often do you reset your hedonic treadmill by going full-monk?
I second the reset and slowly adding comforts back strategy. Each "new" treat/comfort feels great. I believe it works even better when moving to a different country because the "new" comforts sometimes look different than a similar "old" one you gave up during the reset, so it doesn't feel like you just regained the old one.
>I've also reduced my consumption cyclically (e.g., living like a monk and slowly adding comforts back in, and cycling through that process), because slowly getting consumption back up feels better than the occasionally downward shocks.
Interesting, what kind of consumption do you cut back on?
Access to civilization, hipster food, conspicuous signalling stuff like real state in the most expensive cities in the world, the comforts of capitalism, etc.
31 > Remember, asking where someone is from ‘originally’ is a microaggression, but inferring it yourself based on their “mildly platyrrhine, high-rooted nose” is A-OK!
The sarcasm makes little sense, because probably nobody is both on their high horses about "microaggressions", and OK about Ethnoguessr. This website is based on early 20th century racist litterature including some frome Nazi Germany. This is not politically correct at all.
> I hope they move on to real pictures of real people in naturalistic situations.
In part because it is politically toxic, I do not expect many people would consent to have their picture there. Well, I don't know about you guys but I certainly would be incomfortable with my face on the Internet, captioned "hey, check out this low-skull West Alpinid! [Zeitschrift für Rassenforschung, Berlin 1942]".
Maybe they could AI-generate a new person every time, though.
> This website is based on early 20th century racist litterature including some frome Nazi Germany.
There's a Russian anthropologist and popularizer of science Stanislav Drobyshevskiy who claims that raciology is a real science that continued to be developed in the USSR after WW2. He has several lengthy lectures on Youtube about individual races. He acknowledges the existence of the parallel people who work on non-scientific Nazi-flavored racial "theories" but says the Western academia was wrong to throw out all of racial science for reasons of political correctness.
(It does seem interesting to at least know things like "Which of the modern Eurasian populations might be the closest relatives to the "owners" of these 30000-year-old bones we just found in Kostyonki?".)
If I understand correctly, that question nowadays would be mostly or entirely answered with genetics while the early 20th-century races and subraces were based on anatomical measurements. Which correlate with genetics of course, but carry much less information.
But you don't always have enough genetic information especially when going further back. And sure, even incomplete DNA can contain more information, but I don't think we're at the point where it's so precise and complete any lesser tools are worthless, even just to verify the conclusions independently.
I understand the idea of a "fruit of a poisoned tree", but I'm not sure it should apply to science, and anyway we're not talking about the results of concentration camp experiments. I hope. Not for the most part, anyway, you don't need to do anything unethical to gather a lot of useful anthropological data.
My personal experience is that it's great and fun to be asked where I'm originally from if someone is genuinely curious about my ancestry and personal history.
It's not great and fun to be asked where I'm originally from if someone is seeking to use the information as proof that I don't belong in the country and am lesser than people that do.
I have a friend that can guess what region of Ukraine you're from based on when your ancestors emigrated. He also likes to guess where people are from based on how they look, and has a deep interest in phenotypes and human migration patterns. This kind of guessing is delightful because it relies on deep insight and knowledge of your history and culture, not on crass stereotypes. And it's never used to imply anything about where the guesee deserves to be American, or whatever
7. "Slums" is not the same as "poor areas". It also implies a certain level of social disfunction that can be quite undesirable, especially for an outsider. There are millions of people retired to pleasant communities in poorer but relatively functional countries, e.g. the European/American population of Thailand coast, British and Germans in Spain and Portugal, Americans and Canadians in Chalisco, etc.
38. Is the message less clear if one does not believe that the Scripture is the Word of God? Are they implying that any measure reducing redistribution of wealth guarantees a place in hell?
The Catholic church has multiple times condemned the National Catholic Register for falsely calling themselves "Catholic" despite being unaffiliated with the church and preaching explicit heresy.
The Black Death is underrated, if you ask me. As capital-D Deaths go, name me a better one. You can't do it. Best Death ever!
On the other hand, the Vikings are vastly overrated. Couldn't even conquer Mercia, and we're all supposed to marvel at how badass they were 1200 years later? Weak sauce.
"....the decline of animal life is concentrated in a period approximately 10,000 to 60,000 years long, with plants taking an additional several hundred thousand years to show the full impact of the event."
Well, points for consistency, I guess, but a 50,000 year timeline reduces the overall impressiveness. I like my mass deaths like my allergy medication: fast-acting and strong.
Among the populations in question, that should be negligible on relevant timescales. But I'd say you should add them: the Great Dying is a broader phenomenon caused by the Columbian exchange, not a specific disease.
The Plague of Justinian was another contender, being similar in scope to the Black Death albeit with much wider confidence intervals (15-100 million vs 25-50 million) for want of reliable detailed sources.
AIDS (~44 million) and the Spanish Flu (17-50 million) are in the same range as the Black Death and the Plague of Justinian in absolute numbers of deaths, albeit much less in terms of percentage of the population of exposed areas.
The Columbian Plagues in the Americas, already mentioned, were definitely larger than the Black Death and the Plague of Justinian in terms of percentage of the population of the affected areas killed and may have been larger in absolute terms as well. I've seen estimates ranging from low tens of millions to something like 150 million, with the central estimates seeming to be around 50 million.
The Second World War's death toll (including the Holocaust and other wartime atrocities as well as direct deaths from military operations) was towards the upper end of the confidence interval for the Plague of Justinian and the Columbian Plagues.
Or, if you're willing to accept a broader scope and somewhat larger time scale, you could combine both World Wars, the Spanish Flu, and Soviet and Maoist democides into a single mega-event and get something like 200-250 million deaths.
The Columbian Plagues were pretty great. I rate them about a seven out of ten. Not quite in the same league as the Black Death, though. People have speculated native Americans probably had fairly weak immune systems since they were bottlenecked up around Alaska until the glaciers melted at the end of the last ice age, and not many pathogens are hardy enough to spread in Alaska. Throw a bunch of dirty pre-industrial era Europeans into the mix--people who grew up where open sewers were just what you had to hop over when you crossed the street--and the results were predictable.
The Black Death, on the other hand, had to attack these very same dirty sewer-hoppin' people who were already quite well used to being vectors for smallpox transmission, scarlet fever, etc., and yet it still wiped them out. This was industrial strength plaguin'. If the Columbian plagues were like shootin' fish in a barrel, the Bubonic Plague was like Ed Harris in Enemy At The Gates.
"Have you not reason then to bee ashamed, and to forbear this filthy novelty, so basely grounded, so foolishly received and so grossly mistaken in the right use thereof? In your abuse thereof sinning against God, harming your selves both in persons and goods, and raking also thereby the marks and notes of vanity upon you: by the custom thereof making your selves to be wondered at by all foreign civil Nations, and by all strangers that come among you, to be scorned and contemned. A custom loathsome to the eye, hateful to the Nose, harmful to the brain, dangerous to the Lungs, and in the black stinking fume thereof, nearest resembling the horrible Stygian smoke of the pit that is bottomless."
-- King James VI and I of Scotland and England, "A Counterblaste to Tobacco", 1604
I took the liberty of modernizing the spelling for readability.
> Or, if you're willing to accept a broader scope and somewhat larger time scale, you could combine both World Wars, the Spanish Flu, and Soviet and Maoist democides into a single mega-event and get something like 200-250 million deaths.
I can't find numbers for worldwide all-cause mortality over the course of the entire 20th century, but off the top of my head I'd guess a bit over two billion.
I got the two billion figure based on looking up estimates of world population c. 1920 and rounding up, on the assumption that the large majority of people who were alive in 1920 died before 2001. "All cause mortality" includes old age, misadventure, and non-epidemic diseases.
Modern life expectancy at birth is about 70 years, and was quite a bit lower for most of the 20th century, so a large majority of babies born in 1920 would be dead well before 2001. And most people alive in 1920 weren't babies, so they're even less likely to survive to the end of the century. Add in people who died between 1901 and 1920 and people born after 1920 who died before 2001 for whatever reason, and you'll get at least 2 billion. Probably quite a bit more, since infant mortality means there's going to be a lot of people born post-1920 who don't make it very long.
>33 ... including such bleeding-heart liberals as Antonin Scalia.
Fun fact: Scalia was a generally rather ardent and consistent defender of the rights of criminal defendants (eg: he considered the “frisk” part of “stop and frisk” to be unconstitutional, putting him to the “left” of the Warren Court). And, more generally, there is this, from Hamdi v. Rumsfield:
>Many think it not only inevitable but entirely proper that liberty give way to security in times of national crisis—that, at the extremes of military exigency, inter arma silent leges. Whatever the general merits of the view that war silences law or modulates its voice, that view has no place in the interpretation and application of a Constitution designed precisely to confront war and, in a manner that accords with democratic principles, to accommodate it.
But his originalism did lead him in the opposite direction sometimes eg Boumediene v. Bush
>33. ... it’s hard to maintain social outrage against people who are doing the same thing as lots of other people but except for checking labels.
Why should there be any social outrage about people viewing AI kiddie porn, if no one is being harmed (unlike what is the case with actual kiddie porn [at least with the production. Arguably, (and this was the Supreme Court’s rationale for permitting the criminalization of possession of child porn [in contrast to possession of obscenity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanley_v._Georgia]) purchase/possession increases demand which increases child porn production and hence harm to actual children).
>40: California’s experiment to see how high they could raise the minimum wage before getting visible employment effects has finally produced (X) unambiguous results:
This is a bit of a red herring. 1) What we care about is overall unemployment, not just unemployment in the fast food industry. We need to know about total compensation and subsequent effects on employment. Imagine a town where almost everyone is employed in fast food restaurants one town over. If wages increase and employment in the fast food restaurants increase, it is nevertheless possible that total employment will not decrease, if the remaining workers spend their additional income at the local bowling alley, increasing the demand for pinsetters (did I mention that this hypothetical takes place in 1925?). 2) As I understand it, fast food employees are a mixture of a) high school kids earning extra money; and b) breadwinners. If the employers responded to the increase in min wage by retaining the breadwinners at higher wages, then the policy is at least arguably a success.
> Why should there be any social outrage about people viewing AI kiddie porn, if no one is being harmed
If we allow AI kiddie porn, people can spread real kiddie porn claiming it's AI. If we ban it, then we can stop the spread of real kiddie porn, and people who want to see it can still just download the AI models and run them locally.
But, if the AI kiddie porn is that indistinguishable from the real thing, why would anyone buy the real thing? And why would anyone produce the real thing? Why not produce AI and pass it off as the real thing?
But, again, why wouldn't producers simply pass off AI as authentic? And, it is easy to value authenticity when purchasing a legal good.
And, btw, so far all I have heard is a (thin) rationale for making hyperrealistic AI kiddie porn illegal; I have not heard a rationale for maintaining social outrage over its consumption.
Sure, with all kinds of pornography, AI-generated content is surely already being passed off as authentic, just as professional adult pornography has long been passed of as amateur pornography, and I would expect AI-generated content to come to dominate the market and to reduce demand for authentic content, but I still expect there to be significant demand for authentic amateur content.
I don't see how it would be possible not to maintain social outrage (in Western societies) against adults who fantasize about having sex with young children, so that discussion seems moot to me.
>I still expect there to be significant demand for authentic amateur content.
Why, given the risks? You are conflating desire with demand. Demand = the willingness and ability to buy at different prices. Here, the risk of prosecution = higher cost.
And, again, if there is demand, why wouldn't producers simply lie to consumers?
>I don't see how it would be possible not to maintain social outrage (in Western societies) against adults who fantasize about having sex with young children, so that discussion seems moot to me.
1. Not too long ago, the same was said re men who fantasize about sex with men.
2. I asked a normative question, not an empirical one.
"If the employers responded to the increase in min wage by retaining the breadwinners at higher wages, then the policy is at least arguably a success."
If anything I'd expect them to prefer the high school students who probably make better workers.
Why would you think that an adolescent would be a better worker than an adult? Which would be more reliable? Not to mention, a breadwinner needs his job. Most hs students don't. Plus, high school students would me more likely to move on after a short tenure.
People who work low-paying restaurant jobs as adults tend to have some kind of flaw that prevents them from getting better work, whether that's low intelligence, inability to show up on time, substance abuse problem, criminal record, can't speak English, etc. I find it funny you call them "breadwinners," which calls to mind a rather different demographic.
"Zaid Jilani points out that if immigrants don’t get a right to due process, citizens also don’t get a right to due process, because the government can kidnap citizens, claim they’re immigrants, and the citizens can’t prove otherwise since they don’t get due process."
I hugely support due process in all its forms. The idea of deportation without due process would and does fill me with dread. But due process also has a non-zero error rate. Any anecdotes or dramatic renditions such as 'Twelve Years a Slave' could happen with due process also, though presumably at a lower level (citation needed).
So: how do we deport 5,000,000 illegal immigrants in a timely manner in exigent circumstances, as the current leader of the country was elected to do? I am personally open to any and all ideas that maximize individual liberties and freedoms, and accomplish the goal.
There is a genuine problem with holding due process as a sacred value, where it gets increasingly long and unmanageable every time you add something (because you can only add componens to the process, never remove them; that would be a violation of someone's civil rights). Which gets us to the current position where it's basically impossible to actually enforce the law against anyone who's willing to go through an indefinitely stretched out legal process.
It's noteworthy in the Garcia case that while his lawyers don't dispute he entered the country illegally, and he was originally picked up by the police on gang membership suspicion all the way back in 2019, he still wasn't deported by 2025 (and probably never would have been if not for the current drama - 2019 was under the Trump administration). Most of the immigration cases under controversy seem to be like this, where reading the details makes you go "okay they didn't follow exact procedure but the actual outcome was correct".
(This is the case on immigration but is also increasingly the case on other issues like shoplifting, as Scott pointed out in a recent post).
More generally, the embracing of the narrative of "due process" as a sacred value by rationalists has been frustrating to me. We can all easily see how destructive too much process can be when it's used to block housing construction on environmental grounds, but forget that instantly on other issues?
(Which isn't to say the Trump admin's "no process whatsoever we just do what we feel like lol" is an improvement. It both harms legal immigration and doesn't actually achieve its stated goals, since you can't run large scale deportations without a standard procedure for doing them. Trump admin likes it because it generates maximum noise with minimum required actual action).
But the Democrats' refusal to admit their process has actually become unworkable and needs massive reform is frustrating.
Re the court order: yes, that part seems true, but it matches the general case I mentioned that people can delay deportation indefinitely (in this case, using asylum claims which are hard to verify; this seems like a pretty standard abuse of the immigration system).
Re 1 v 2: iiuc (not confident), Garcia's imprisonment in El Salvador is based on Salvadorian rather than American policy. While I'm sure there are many people unfairly jailed in El Salvador and you can reasonably oppose Salvadorian prison policy, this is not obviously unusual by that baseline.
Okay now I'm confused. I knew he was granted temporary withholding of removal (which in practice seems to not have been temporary), but if his asylum case was denied and not just deferred why was he given withholding of removal status?
> Re 1 v 2: iiuc (not confident), Garcia's imprisonment in El Salvador is based on Salvadorian rather than American policy.
The US government is reportedly paying El Salvador $6 million to imprison deportees. They are complicit in the plan to deport people directly to a foreign prison.
Yeah, that part seems bad (and also confusing. If you've already got them deported, why bother imprisoning them?)
(Okay I get that the actual answer is mostly "because Trump likes doing bad things that make him look tough while diverting the conversation away from the economy").
What exactly has become unworkable about it? The idea that there’s an urgent need to deport millions of people that justifies ‘corner cutting’ isn’t self evident to me.
And maybe I’m just excessively libertarian, but I don’t see due process as just an arbitrary barrier put up to prevent people from doing things, but a means of protecting important rights. I don’t feel like a hypocrite for believing on the one hand I should be able to do an addition to my house without permission from everyone in my zip code, while also believing a government agent shouldn’t be allowed to send an immigrant to indefinite incarceration in a foreign country without so much as a hearing. I’m not abstractly ‘pro-due process’ for every conceivable thing there could be a process for. I guess if you think immigration is worse than murder then you might think discarding the process isn’t that big of a deal.
My view isn't that housing (or immigration) is an acute emergency worth suspending due process over. It's that process should not in general be a meaningful inhibitor of policy. If you disagree with deportations on substantive grounds that's one thing. But if something *is* explicit government policy (and in this case it's hard to argue against that; both the presidency and Congress support more deportations, and that's the one issue where Trump is genuinely popular on), it shouldn't be forced unworkable purely on process grounds. If that happens it implies we need to reform process (ideally while balancing competing considerations).
The pro-process side should come up with a workable version of the process to champion (e.g. "okay the current system is unworkable but people should at least get a chance to present documents showing their status before arrest and talk to a neutral judge before deportation, but this shouldn't typically result in indefinite deferment of deportation for illegal immigrants) rather than doubling down on "we should keep the current level of excessive process that ensures no one is ever deportable". Similarly, on housing my view is "we should have a simple general housing code with by right approval for reasonable density that law abiding developers can easily adhere to and get quick permissions for", not "housing is an emergency so we should just stop enforcing building codes".
(The Trump admin's total anti-process approach is the equivalent of Mumbai housing policy. It's also quite bad, but the opposition needs to improve their alternative).
Those are mostly expired removal cases of people caught right by the border shortly after crossing, which are allowed to bypass the courts. Actual deportations of people who aren't caught on crossing and who challenge their cases in court (or who claim asylum and are released) are much fewer, and currently face a 3 million case backlog.
> process should not in general be a meaningful inhibitor of policy. [...] if something *is* explicit government policy (and in this case it's hard to argue against that; both the presidency and Congress support more deportations, and that's the one issue where Trump is genuinely popular on), it shouldn't be forced unworkable purely on process grounds. If that happens it implies we need to reform process (ideally while balancing competing considerations).
If the government finds that existing process makes their policy goals unworkable, then it is their legal prerogative to change that process in accordance with the established legal rules for doing so. It is also their legal burden to continue following said process as long as it remains the law of the land.
If the president and his allies in congress cannot abide by constitutionally mandated due process, they are entitled to try to amend the constitution to get rid of this obstruction to the policy goals, or at least appeal cases to the SCOTUS in the hope of changing the standing interpretation of the relevant constitutional clauses. But if they instead exercise executive power in extralegal ways to further policy in defiance of constitutional restrictions, they are engaging in misuse of power, fragrant violation of the law, and betrayal of their oath of office.
Where is this so-called emergency? We had a roaring hot economy with ultra-low unemployment from 2021-2024, and whenever they were actually allowed to work all the immigrants and refugees got absorbed into it pretty effectively. For my home state of Utah, it meant we had plenty of labor and a bunch of new Venezuelan restaurants.
<sarc>well, since you are happy, obviously the system works, who cares about the slave labor?</sarc>
You do realize that illegal immigration has...some issues at least? An underclass is more easily exploitable, is often trafficked, traffickers are usually drug cartels, drug cartels use immigrants (knowingly or unknowingly) as mules, hold their families hostage, exploit them in other ways, they are paid often below minimum wage or off the books, and so on?
You seem to think that just because they came here, that it was all wine and roses and everything is working fine just because you can't or don't want to see the exogenous costs.
I don't think having a system where you can illegally immigrate so long as you're willing to fight it in court indefinitely at great cost to both you and the public legal system, and meanwhile the illegal immigrants exist in a constant state of second-class citizenship uncertainty, is a good outcome. I agree that an ideal solution would be to reform the immigration system to make legal immigration easier and faster to file (it should not take multiple years to get a visa or green card if you're eligible!), not just make enforcement of illegal immigration possible.
>I agree that an ideal solution would be to reform the immigration system to make legal immigration easier and faster to file (_it should not take multiple years to get a visa or green card if you're eligible!_), not just make enforcement of illegal immigration possible.
[emphasis added] Agreed.
The current immigration system seems to me like it is something like two orders of magnitude too slow. The point of comparison that I'm considering is job interviews for skilled positions (I was a programmer before I retired).
Typically, this took one day (albeit a long and grueling one) for all of the interviews followed by approximately a day for the decision. Now, admitting someone to a nation is a more serious decision than hiring an employee. Still - is it more than an order of magnitude more serious? I find it hard to believe that the government couldn't find out everything about a potential immigrant that they now find out (at least from the person) in say two weeks of solid interviews. Can't we do better???
I want to highlight one part to those that are “supporters” of illegal immigrants. The current “process” makes them 2nd class citizens living in constant fear of being deported. I prefer a better process where immigrants do not need to live that way.
Congress could easily change the law on asylum; it’s just that the administration can’t do so unilaterally. We have separation of powers in our system of representative democracy.
Indeed, there was a bipartisan attempt to pass legislation that would reform asylum law including by making it easier to deport, but it was shot down after candidate Trump decided the law would be bad for his campaign.
I don't think due process and like, nimbyism are functionally analogous. The trade-offs on where you build a housing complex or a railroad don't necessarily rise to the level of life and liberty, whereas proceedings around deportation and criminal justice do.
On the other hand, the amount of process around criminal justice is much higher per person affected. It's reasonable to have a lower threshold for error there, but it still is a tradeoff (and one which, if you've reached a point where you functionally can't enforce laws, you'rw managing badly. Sometimes that's because you've written unworkably strict laws, but sometimes because your process is badly designed).
I think plenty of people would be open to revising the process, although I think its another one of those things, like FDA regulation, where the reason we don't have a different process isn't because the process is obviously corrupt, but because there's a lot of legitimately competing incentives. Its hard to have a conversation around process however when the consequences of the process being ignored are as dire as they are right now. Trump would be facing a lot less resistance if he hadn't contracted with a dictator to throw people in a gulag.
I don't think "just hire more lawyers to solve the extra complexity caused by having a complicated legal process" is a good solution, it's a form of tulip subsidy
I think the discussion on requiring e-verify seems productive, instead of everyone throwing food at each other.
I'm sure there are additional problems to be sorted out there, and many oxen to be gored, but at least it's a starting point.
(EDIT) this doesn't address the current asylum seekers exactly, and especially how to deport the subset who are violent, abusive, or criminal, with sufficient due process, but it takes a holistic approach from many angles to solve big problems.
Obligate e-verify so that they all self-deport because they can't work.
It won't happen because Trump doesn't want to do mass deportations, he wants to try to break the American legal system and he's discovered anti-immigrants are very happy to break the American legal system as long as they're told it's happening to illegal immigrants.
I largely or even entirely agree that mandating e-verify is the correct solution. The rest of your rant tends to reduce the impact of your response and I suggest you avoid such histrionics in the future if you want to make good points.
That said we wouldn't ideally just flip it on day one if we want to avoid mass disruption. It would be good to couple this with an improved legal migration system, temporary work visas, or the like. This unfortunately requires an extremely divided congress to take action, and in particular the divides don't fall along traditional party lines but more around predominantly farm states vs urban states and so on.
See? There can be agreement without assuming everyone is acting in bad faith.
"This unfortunately requires an extremely divided congress to take action, and in particular the divides don't fall along traditional party lines but more around predominantly farm states vs urban states and so on."
Both houses of Congress are controlled by the GOP. It's not "extremely divided" at all. If they continue, Trump's tariffs are going to cause a global recession and his behavior is already shaking investor confidence in the USA; tariffing is an authority vested in Congress and delegated to the President only under specific circumstances defined by law; and rather than trying to reassert their authority, the House GOP has actively abandoned it (https://www.businessinsider.com/gop-leaders-mike-johnson-block-congress-action-trump-tariffs-2025-4?op=1). If he can get them to go along with that, he could absolutely get e-verify passed.
"See? There can be agreement without assuming everyone is acting in bad faith."
I don't assume everyone is acting in bad faith, I infer that the Trump administration is acting in bad faith based on a careful analysis of their actions.
>Both houses of Congress are controlled by the GOP.
Are you not aware the filibuster exists?
The House GOP already passed an immigration bill that would mandate e-verify. It has no chance in the Senate because Republicans don't have a supermajority.
While obligating e-verify would help many cases, there's a lot of people who work under the table or in illegal endeavors (and some who just live on the street, or mooch off friends or relatives, etc), for whom it wouldn't really work. These are also disproportionately the less-contributing immigrants that immigration opponents most want to remove.
(with regards to the second part of your comment, I agree that the Trump admin is not in general acting in good faith. It would help the opposition quite a lot to propose actual solutions to the problems Trump is just pretending to solve and not actually doing anything meaningful about, instead of arguing against the premise that they're even problems at all, or arguing that they can't be solved without violating sacred values).
Isn't illegal immigration now down to much more manageable levels?
Problem largely solved except for what to do with the enormous numbers allowed entry under the Biden administration? This seems like at least one campaign promise that was kept, not a pretend solution.
"So: how do we deport 5,000,000 illegal immigrants in a timely manner in exigent circumstances, as the current leader of the country was elected to do? "
If a candidate runs and gets elected on a platform of, let's say, throwing every left-handed person into the ocean, that doesn't mean that any other part of the nation or the government has any mandate to help or even step aside. It the responsibility of the candidate to keep their promises within the realm of constitutionality and legal feasibility. It is not the responsibility of everyone else in the country to surrender their rights because 1/4 of their neighbors are angry and impatient.
Actually everyone does in fact call this a mandate. Every candidate in modern times and probably prior has said that the numbers trump got constitute a mandate.
You don't personally have to help of course, it's a free country. If you aren't interested in solutions, does that mean you support illegal immigration, or don't care? If you don't care, why are you posting here?
By this, I presume you support illegal immigration. Why?
It's a fair cop. I can't say with any certainty. It seems very common to me and I heard it in the press a lot during e.g. Biden and Obama's administrations.
Quick lesson in law that you seem to desperately need: stuff candidates say aren't the same as laws. They especially aren't the same as the constitution. They are certainly *not* legally binding on *anyone.*
Perhaps you found the word "mandate" confusing there, so for your benefit, let me rephrase that to obligation. Nobody else has any legal or moral obligation to help Donald Trump keep his campaign promises. And when keeping his campaign promises conflict with the constitution--which is what *you* seem to be suggesting--there are millions of people who, in actual fact, have a legal obligation to *hinder* him. The president is not above the law. No matter how whiny he or his supporters get about illegal immigration, that still doesn't put him or his administration above the law.
"By this, I presume you support illegal immigration. "
I originally wrote a longer, more detailed response. But I think I'd rather pay this particular strain of bullshit back in kind.
By this, I presume you support fascism. You're talking, acting, and arguing like a fascist. I'm sure you don't *think* you are. But that dime-store authoritarian "with us or against us" crap you're spouting would be a dead giveway even if you hadn't spent multiple comments arguing that other peoples' constitutional rights were an inconvenience to be swept aside when it interferes with hurting the people you so *desperately* want to see hurt.
"If you aren't interested in solutions, does that mean you support illegal immigration, or don't care? If you don't care, why are you posting here?"
This seems a misconception worth addressing, assuming this question is in good faith (which to be honest, I find dubious).
To be perfectly clear and candid: I mostly DON'T care about illegal immigration. Even when I lived in the U.S. I never found it a very compelling issue: there were lots of real problems to be worried about. I think this attitude was pretty common among people not on the far-right: a variety of opinions on the issue, but little force behind them.
But me not caring about your pet issue is NOT that same as me not caring about what the government *does* regarding that issue. This seems so bloody obvious in context that I have trouble believing you're making an honest mistake here. You are taking an unimportant non-issue and using it as an excuse to strip civil rights from *everyone in the goddamn nation.* OF COURSE I'd bloody well care about that. Any sane person would.
Which is bad news for you, to be honest. The best possible outcome from where we are now is that the U.S. as a nation hangs on by the skin of its teeth, and the appalling stench of the policies your pushing render this issue toxic for decades to come: nobody dares take a hard line on immigration lest they be compared to Trump. The more likely outcome is that you wake up one morning and discover that in your haste to solve this utterly banal problem, you handed power to a blatantly and nakedly untrustworthy charlatan, and now you no longer have a country. I doubt he'll even "solve" the issue; I mean why would he? Keeping it around as a boogeyman has worked wonders: there seem to be no limits on the absurdities you're willing to support as long as the specter of an "invasion" of immigrants can be waved in front of your face. Any robust solution would necessarily give up that power. The fantasy that if you just cross one more line, just break one more boundary, just throw one more sacred principle into the fire, you'll finally buy freedom from this supposed menace is just that: a fantasy.
Serious question: FDR interned American Japanese citizens, stripping them of civil rights during wartime by declaring it an emergency. Granted, WW2 and all that implied, but I see this as one of the nation's largest infringements on civil liberties in its history, post-slavery. We as a nation survived. There is a lot of ruin in a nation. I don't love this, and I don't love any erosions in civil rights, and I further don't love cutting corners on them by calling 'emergency' as a trump card, by any president, and think this power should be heavily hemmed-in.
However, 5-10,000,000 non-citizens crossing our borders with incompetent screening and due process and all that implies in their effect on our country definitely gets into my 'emergency' category. If it doesn't in yours, so be it. It's obviously not nothing, and the constitution at least nods in the direction of a presidential duty being to secure the country.
AND I don't love that the prior administration put us in this position any more than that the current one isn't handling it perfectly, though I am personally delighted that at least a hundred or so gangbangers are no longer here. Garcia doesn't trouble me, insofar as the evidence I've read makes it pretty clear he received a lot of due process and the one reason for keeping him out of El Salvador has dried up.
I don't love that Trump said some things that could be interpreted as jailing American citizens overseas. Beyond that, show me any law whatsoever that has been changed during his administration that affects my civil liberties negatively and I'll reassess my response. 'A phone and a pen' executive orders affect the executive branch in accordance with laws duly passed by congress, though of course SCOTUS may choose to disagree with their interpretations.
"FDR interned American Japanese citizens, stripping them of civil rights during wartime by declaring it an emergency. "
First, FDR was absolutely in the wrong for doing what he did. I have never encountered *anyone* who seriously grappled with the actual history of Japanese internment who ended up concluding that what he did was reasonable or justified by the events on the ground at the time. Further, there are some pretty chilling ulterior motives that appear to be behind the political push towards Japanese internment that have absolutely nothing to do with national security.
But even given all that, yes, World War II was an *actual emergency*. The U.S. suddenly being at war with two large, aggressive, hostile world powers (and Italy) is a genuinely dangerous situation. Claiming that some groups of mostly unarmed civilians illegally crossing a land border in peacetime--something that has been going on for *decades* without causing much in the way of clearly-identifiable harm--is somehow equivalent if a FARCE. If you're willing to call that an emergency or support a president that does so, then whether you like it or not you're supporting the dictatorial expansion of presidential power. *Anything* can be an emergency under than definition. And indeed it already is: Trump's justification for circumventing the trade deal *he negotiated* to put tariffs on Canada was a laughably tiny (as in, a two-digit number of kilograms) flow of fentanyl, a drug that's manufactured in the U.S. in far greater quantities.
"Garcia doesn't trouble me, insofar as the evidence I've read makes it pretty clear he received a lot of due process "
Everything up to and including the Supreme Court says you're wrong here. His deportation to El Salvador was *illegal.* The Trump administration has *admitted it*. Saying "he received plenty of due process" is about as sensible as saying "look, I know Alice shot Bot *this* time, but look at all those previous occasions that she *failed* to shoot him." He. Was. Deported. Without. Due. Process. It's clear cut. Black and white. If you keep maintaining otherwise you are wrong plain and simple.
So honestly, here's how it looks to me. On the one hand, you claim to be concerned about the expansion and misuse of presidential power, but on the other hand you keep uncritically repeating all the standard excuses and justifications for it and trying to shift the blame elsewhere. I'd honestly think more highly if you honestly committed in *either* direction: take an actual stand for the rule of law or just be open and honest about authoritarian control being a price you're perfectly willing to pay if it means getting rid of the people you don't like.
"So: how do we deport 5,000,000 illegal immigrants in a timely manner in exigent circumstances, as the current leader of the country was elected to do?"
Given that Republicans have control of Congress as well as the Presidency, why not go to Congress and ask for the budget to hire more immigration judges and agents? The problem is that the Trump Administration is trying to have it both ways - they want to do mass deportations on the cheap while ripping out as much federal spending as possible to pass a big tax cut.
Pretty sure a big part of that answer is "invest in a lot of bureaucrats and lawyers to help move the process along as efficiently as possible." But that's the exact opposite of what the DOGE crowd believes in.
Does this actually scale? Or does it just mean the next president who feels similarly to Biden lets in 15,000,000 and then you say 'invest in even more bureaucrats and lawyers to help move the process along as efficiently as possible'?
Seems like a never-ending ratchet, moving goalposts all the way down. At some point, hopefully now, it stops and we say this is enough.
I mean, liberals have to deal with rachets all the time, we don't get to suddenly toss aside the constitution because the prior Republican administration fucked everything up, and something tells me you would be upset if that were the precedent we took away from this situation.
My argument is that everyone has their own issue where everything seems broken and they would love to play dictator to cut through all the bullshit. But the bullshit exists because there is not a consensus on how to deal with the problem, and saying "we don't have to worry about consensus, we'll just unilaterally enforce our side of this issue and fuck the consequences" gives the other party permission structure to fight a war of all against all. I'm astonished by the number of people who seem to think being dictators on this issue won't open up giant cans of worms down the line.
"Or does it just mean the next president who feels similarly to Biden lets in 15,000,000 and then you say 'invest in even more bureaucrats and lawyers to help move the process along as efficiently as possible"
Of course it means that; there is obviously no solution to illegal immigration that precludes the possibility of future presidents taking steps to let higher numbers of illegal immigrants in. Even mass deportations with literally no due process at all can't stop Zombie Joe Biden from letting everyone right back in again in his 2nd term.
The point of mentioning other ratchets isn't a whatabout, it's to show that this dynamic is just an unavoidable feature of politics. If your opponents win, they may have the chance to undo what you've done, that's just the nature of the game.
Fine, but that just means that one way ratchet effects are unavoidable in politics. I don't see a way around that.
I mean, as I say, even if Trump deports every immigrant with no due process, it presumably will remain easier for a future president to let them all back in than it was to deport them...I don't think "due process", or "spend more money on the process" are what lead to the ratchet effect, it's just the nature of the fact that it's always easier let people in than to kick them out.
the only countries shock therapy "worked" in are the ones which got EU membership and a flood of Western Euro dollars, and even there it's not without problems.
Who's the rich Argentine neighbor willing to flood the country with investment and offer them open borders, provided it screws over its own poor enough and sells enough public assets?
Estonian GDP/capita increased by about 200% in the decade before Estonia joined the EU and by about 130% in the following decade, so ascribing its success to EU membership does not to me seem like a self-evident conclusion.
The Baltic countries had a large population exodus to Western Europe starting in mid-90s, so GDP/capita is inflated by both lower population numbers and remittances. Of course, EU transfers also helped.
"it screws over its own poor enough"
How were "its own poor" screwed over?
I think this is essentially false. Most people in the developed world have no clue how rich they are by global standards, will often deny it when pointed out, and have no idea how poor the global poor really are.
"Bryan Caplan thinks this can’t be true: after all, practically nobody moves to poorer areas, automatically giving themselves higher relative income than their neighbors?"
Isn't there a recognizable type of migrant (whether an immigrant or from, like, Alabama or Iowa) who moves back home not because they actually miss the place, but because they prefer being a big fish in a small pond to being a small fish in a big pond?
EDIT: of course many people move to nominally poorer areas because a dollar goes much further there. The reason why I went for psychological reasons was to avoid a retort from imaginary steel-manned Bryan Caplan. Still, the fact that people move to poorer areas for the sake of purchasing power is already a very good retort to those (economists and otherwise) who imply that relative income does not matter, and even that those who states it matters must be motivated by envy, the evil eye or some such thing.
We are all just demonstrating the obvious: it is the case that, if others become wealthier and you do not, then you will have effectively become poorer, even if the price of a standard basket of consumption goods does not change. There are also positive externalities to other people's wealth, but all the good examples I can think of (other than "well, now you can be their servant") depend on their willingness to spend on public goods or have their money taxed and spent on public goods: better public schools, better roads, better public transport or public libraries (ok, neither of those last two is going to happen in the US in our days), etc.
I've moved abroad as an international school teacher for kind of this reason. We were barely getting by in the US, now I earn nominally less salary but now our lifestyle includes taking
vacations and we are putting away a hugely increased chunk of savings every year.
However, I'd say our increased happiness comes mostly from increased purchasing power, not from the pure fact of being richer than the people around us. I do take some satisfaction out of being comfortable enough with our budget to give generously to people around me, but it's not the main effect. Also the happiness gains are offset somewhat by the difficulty of being far from family in a foreign culture.
I could second every sentence of this post. I tried to move back to the US once, and my savings began to evaporate. I honestly have no idea where. It was terrifying. Being free of the stress of seeing your money dry up before your eyes is definitely a major plus.
> Isn't there a recognizable type of migrant (whether an immigrant or from, like, Alabama or Iowa) who moves back home not because they actually miss the place, but because they prefer being a big fish in a small pond to being a small fish in a big pond?
I suppose he’s talking about local relativity, staying where you are and comparing to the locals. Anybody who has been to New York isn’t going to feel rich just because he absconded to Idaho. He may well have a better standard of living but if he’s driven by status, he won’t feel higher status in his head because status seekers would try to make it in New York.
Caplan is also wrong because the relative income that matters for status is the pre tax, pre non discretionary income. And obviously housing matters.
I think people like "passport bros" would also fit into this category, where people are moving from HCOL countries to LCOL countries.
At a more local level is plausible the benefits of moving from say California to Mississippi are far worse than just moving from the USA to Thailand so people who are inclined to move to a poorer area just move to another country rather than moving around within their country.
>At a more local level is plausible the benefits of moving from say California to Mississippi are far worse than just moving from the USA to Thailand so people who are inclined to move to a poorer area just move to another country rather than moving around within their country.
I don't think this is true, because there are much greater barriers to such emigration than there are moving states, both legal and practical. Not everyone who wants permission to emigrate is granted it, whereas there are no restrictions on interstate travel, there are no language barriers between US states, people are far more likely to be able to remain in the same line of business when traveling between states, and to build social circles with people they relate to.
For certain people, the advantages of moving countries can be much greater. But the barriers and disadvantages are also correspondingly greater.
Lots of people move from California to nominally poorer states. It's hardly unreasonable to sell your million dollar house in Van Nuys, CA, where you are paying private school tuition, to buy a half million house in the Dallas exurbs where your kids will go to public school.
I think it's actually quite common for people to move to poorer areas when they don't have professional or social obligations keeping them in one place. Think of all the digital nomads in Mexico City or Peru. Or retirees moving to Florida.
Digital nomads in Peru? Let me take a guess - are they all in Cusco? Broadband not great there, though, at least not the last time I checked.
Yeah, I know 3 people who live down there. It's in the same time zone as Chicago so zoom is easy.
If you could tell me their Internet access provider, I'd be thankful. I organised a conference there in 2015, and Internet access (speedy enough for videos) was a bit of an issue.
"Know" might have been a strong word. It's a friend's sister, a very former coworker and someone in an alumni group that I exchanged emails with.
Starlink is available in Peru.
It wasn't in 2015 :-)
Cuzco seems awfully high altitude for actual concentration on your laptop.
Cuzco: elevation 11,152 feet.
You might thrive at this altitude, but can your wife carry a child to term there? Can your baby then thrive?
I visited Cuzco when I was 19 in 1978 with a tour group and did okay, but the middle-aged African-American couple in our group both had to be evacuated to Lima at sea level.
Children born there thrive, unless of course they carry a recessive sickle-cell gene, which one of the African-American visitors might have. Did SS want me to say that to score some sort of weird point?
At any rate, no problem with doing mathematics at that height - people are just advised to arrive on Saturday if activities start on Monday. It’s not even high enough for hard drives to have problems (try 4000m for that) - and that is of course less relevant now.
Evidently, you aren't familiar with the research on evolutionary adaptations to high altitude done by Prof. Cynthia Beall of Case Western and others. From Wikipedia:
"Cynthia Beall is the leading scientist in the study of high-altitude adaptation in humans, particularly in places where there is little air to breathe. Among the Tibetans the first thing that she discovered was that they could live at high levels without having high hemoglobin concentrations or large chests, they had high birth-weighted babies, and no complications of mountain sickness. Unlike most humans who migrate to high altitude, the Tibetans do not exhibit the elevated haemoglobin concentrations to cope up with oxygen deficiency, but they inhale more air with each breath and breathe more rapidly, and retain this unusual breathing and elevated lung-capacity throughout their lifetime.[4][5] Their high levels (mostly double) of nitric oxide in the blood increase their blood vessels to dilate for enhanced blood circulation.[6] An astonishing discovery of Beall is the convergent evolution in humans from her studies on other highlanders such as the Amhara in the high-plateau regions of northwest Ethiopia, the Omro people in the southwest Ethiopia, and the Aymara of the American Andes. She found that these groups had adapted to low oxygen environment very differently from the Tibetans.[1][7] Physiological conditions such as resting ventilation, hypoxic ventilatory response, oxygen saturation, and haemoglobin concentration are significantly different between the Tibetans and the Aymaras.[8] The Amharans exhibit elevated haemoglobin levels, like Andeans and lowlander peoples at high altitudes, while the Andeans have increased haemoglobin level like normal people in the highlands.[9] All these observations show that different people adapted to high altitude in different genetic and physiological responses.[10]"
It's a standard observation that in high altitude South American cities like La Paz, the white people tend to live at the bottom of the canyon at the lowest elevation, while the indigenous Indians live at the higher elevations. Leftwing governments in countries like Bolivia have been installing ski lift-like gondolas as mass transit to make commuting from the high Indian suburbs to the low-lying business district easier for their constituents.
People who are indigenous to the Altiplano thrive at Cuzco's 11,000 foot elevation, but other people indigenous to lower elevations can vary considerably in their response to high elevations. (Sickle cell is hardly the only reason some people might be daunted by Cuzco's altitude).
My father, for example, was a rugged outdoorsman up to about 10,000 feet, but fell off dramatically above that. For example, at age 25 he tried to climb 14,500 foot Mt. Whitney, but only got to Trail Crest at 13,777 and then had something of a physical crisis there.
Being sensitive to the fact that humans vary in how well they do at high altitudes seems prudent and considerate.
No, it actually is harder for women to give birth and for infants to thrive at high altitude (unless they have evolutionary adaptations to altitude). This is one reason that places like Cuzco, and more generally highland South America, had fewer Spanish settlers (and consequently, a much higher proportion of indigenous population today) than the lowlands.
There's a half million people that live in the city. People are able to give birth there...
I think people are able to get acclimated over a few days so your visit might not be representative. There's people working in Cuzco hospitals doing heart surgery or at the Cuzco airport directing planes. I'm sure that it's possible to build out Tableau dashboards or take zoom calls under the same conditions.
Exactly. I was amazed at the question.
Sure, it's obviously possible, but is moving to 11,000 feet of elevation an optimal choice to do the kind of Work From Home jobs that ACT readers tend to do?
And even if you are at 100% capacity at 3,400 meters, what about people who are or might become important to you?
For instance, my uncle built his retirement dream house in the Sierras at 9,000 feet, but then it turned out his wife could no longer handle the altitude. That was a very unfortunate situation.
There are a lot of advantages to living at higher altitudes, especially at lower latitudes. E.g., Cuzco, near the equator has average high temperatures around 70 F year round. That's pretty pleasant.
But when thinking about places to move to, you need to take into consideration a lot of factors, many of which don't seem to be obvious, as suggested by these angry responses.
...what are you even talking about?
I studied a for semester in Cuzco in uni. And yeah, we were able to learn just fine. Myself and a few American-born classmates did 5+ mile hikes that went as high as 16,000 feet without any issues. None of us were anything more than hobby hikers.
10 years later I visited again with my pregnant wife and 1 year old son. And they both were fine with the altitude too.
This. Some people will have altitude issues, and retirees should be careful (that includes some people who were born there, moved elsewhere and haven't been there for a long time). The limitations are physical - never heard of any mental effects at that altitude.
Chronic altitude sickness is a thing, but it generally happens far further up. The difference between life at 4300 (say) and at 3500 meters above the sea level is in some ways more significant than that between 3500 meters and 0 meters.
Many years ago, I remember coming across an online piece written by an American, praising the choice to live in a Brazilian favela (though not necessarily permanently).
It's dirt cheap, located within a city, fun and colorful, and just as safe as anywhere else in Brazil! What's not to like?
Some Brazilian commented, saying this was the funniest thing he had ever read, and that he hoped the author enjoy his favela; as for him, he was moving to Denmark.
That exchange really made me think. From the perspective of the Brazilian guy praising the favela was ridiculous. How come you have to be a foreigner to see it differently?
One thing that might be not to like is how much income you can earn when living there.
For the American in that anecdote, we assume a location independent source of income. For the Brazilian, income in a favela would be no worse than in the rest of the same city.
I clearly did something fuckin' wrong, because I can see approx. 0% chance I might ever acquire a location-independent source of income.
A location independent source of income is the premise of this entire thread. It typically means one of two things:
(1) You work remotely, often as a programmer or similar.
(2) You're living off interest.
Here's how you can get to (2): pretend your income is 1/3 of what it is now. In other words, pretend you are poor. You must live on that budget. Unless you're already very poor, it's possible. Some people live like that. So now you have 2/3 of your income to invest. In about 10 years, your investments will have reached the point that they generate an income equal to what you're spending each year (which, remember, is 1/3 of what you spend now). Now you can live off interest forever.
If you replace 1/3 with 1/2 it takes 20 years instead of 10.
No, I'm not doing that myself.
Yeah I feel like retiring to a LCOL area / developing economy fits the bill and it happens frequently enough to be a trope
There's also the phenomenon of so-called gentrification, where intrepid trendy types move to a dodgy area of a city, because property there is cheaper and maybe they like "vibrancy" (menacing looking characters sitting around on front steps, strange people directing traffic, etc). Then over time more and more of these yuppies move in until the original locals are priced out. There are several examples of this in London, and it's probably the same in any large city.
There is also range compression to consider. Some people might prefer living in, say, Mountain View rather than Los Altos but would not be okay living in Gilroy. The fact that extreme versions of "big fish, small pond" don't seem to happen a lot doesn't mean that there isn't some form of the effect.
Isn't retiring abroad as an expat kind of a thing also? Once when my wife and I were traveling in Ecuador we stayed at a lodge run by a guy who had retired into a life of Ecuadorian luxury on an NYC school teacher pension (he didn't do the work at the lodge, it basically just gave him a constant stream of gringos to go birding with).
I know people that moved to "poorer" countries, on retirement or close to it, and while I can not definitely know their motives, lower cost of life seems to be one of the factors. In fact, I myself moved from California ("rich" state, very high cost of living) to another, relatively "poorer" stare with lower cost of living. And while it's not related directly to my neighbors income, having a better house for 1/3 the price sure seems like a good benefit. Of course, I wouldn't move to Rwanda or Albania some place like that just because people are poorer there, but generally I think Caplan is wrong if he claims nobody moves to places that are "poorer". Within some conditions, a lot of people do.
Retirement is a drop in income though so it’s not quite what caplan is arguing here.
Well, yes, but also freedom to move. A lot of people can't just move wherever they like while keeping the same job. For a retiree it's much easier.
The small rustbelt city I grew up in on the shore of lake Erie has a steady stream of boomer retirees who made their money on the coasts or in Florida then retired to Ohio. I've spoken with a few of them when I'm home visiting family about why. The low CoL is a big factor; they can build a spawling estate on the lakeshore for less than a medium sized condo in NYC/SF etc. Several also mentioned, whithout prompting, that there are no jews and very few blacks and immigrants.
Yeah, it was also a common topic of discussion in the Russian-speaking software community prior to 2022: those who moved to the US make more and have better standard of living in absolute terms, but those in Russia (or other post-soviet countries) have a significantly wider gap between them and the rest of the population. People would have different opinions on it naturally, but it was explicitly acknowledged as one of the pros of staying home vs moving to the States by both sides of the argument.
I moved to a lower cost of living area in the same country and am much happier having done so
I knew a guy in college who explicitly planned to get hired by the Malaysian branch of an American company on the American MBA pay scale, move back home to Malaysia, and live like a king.
I also think you can't just change your reference class by moving. Sure, you're richer than your neighbours, but to all of your family & old friends & classmates you've now moved to the ghetto.
I think this is the big thing, yeah. Also, it might have worked better in the past, but now you can't really prevent constant information inflow re: all the people who live elsewhere & make more than you anyway.
The operative words are is "moving back". You need some cultural claim of legitimacy to be integrated in the poorer society. "I went to the city, got rich, and now I am back home" is a story people can stomach. "I was born in a rich country/state, worked there, and now I retire here on a pension ten times as big as what I would get for the same work here, now please give me the respect that is due" will not work.
There's also a whole "down-shifting" movement where people move to SEA and live cheaply. Big chunk of the satisfaction is actually a feeling of relief of you being "on top of the game".
Source: lived in Bali for 5 years. The downside of being "on top" is no longer having motivation to grow
Regarding 10, the actual latest news is that inflation has again risen to almost 4% in march, though some of it is explained by seasonal factors.
On the other hand, the government has pretty succesfully reduced capital controls via an agreement with the IMF, leading to a strong revaluation of the currency (in the "real" exchange rate, the official one went up briefly and then came back down), meaning they shouldn't be spending reserves propping it up.
Next up, the looming maturity wall.
The Economist in writing about that IMF deal this week called it a bold but risky move on Melei's part. They think it has as much chance of backfiring as working, for reasons that TBH I don't entirely grok. But the Economist retains its organizational roots and covers macro-level financial stuff both regularly and thoroughly so I tend to have some respect for their judgement on such topics.
On #7:
Thousands of people moved from San Francisco to poorer areas (Texas and Idaho) when they could do so and keep thier high incomes. Many people retire to Mexico (or from NYC to Florida) where their retirement goes further. Clearly there is a wealth effect, where having more money than is "expected for the area" lets you live a happier life.
Was that to get higher relative income, or just for normal absolute reasons like SF having high crime, or being able to afford a bigger house in Idaho?
Is "higher relative income" some technical term that i don't know? In plain English "afford a bigger house" is one result of having a "higher relative income"
Well, there are two reasons you might be able to afford a bigger house (in one location relative to another):
1. People there might have less money than you.
2. Houses there might be more abundant.
Only the first one is a question of relative income. If you move from China to the United States, your relative income will drop fairly dramatically, but you'll be able to afford more Pop Tarts than you could before.
Well, even the first might not be an issue of relative income. You might just want a bigger house than you have now, without caring a whit about how well off your new neighbors are.
That would be a question of adjusting your budget to spend more on your home, not of a bigger home being more affordable.
I’m talking about the people who got the bigger home by moving to such a place.
It has a plain meaning: having a high income relative to the people around you. Caplan appears to be talking specifically about the phenomenon of being happier *because everyone around you is poorer than you*. This isn't the same as having greater purchasing power, although of course the two things do correlate.
(But they don't necessarily correlate all that much: If you move from a middle-class neighborhood in Los Angeles to a poor neighborhood in Los Angeles, you'll get some more purchasing power with respect to housing, and of course most of your neighbors will have a lower yearly income, but food and cars and clothes and utilities and vacations and such will still cost the same, and your car insurance will likely go up! So you'll have to really really get an ego boost from that price per square foot advantage plus the fact that your neighbors' annual salaries are lower than yours.)
I've always liked being around people richer than me. They're better looking, smarter, friendlier, better educated, and so forth.
> or being able to afford a bigger house in Idaho?
Since land is limited, over the short term housing is a "relative terms" item.
Inside of a currency union, this is also pretty much what we'd expect to see. Poorer areas should have lower prices for non-tradable goods like housing and personal services.
This also makes the pure form of the relative income hypothesis difficult to test. A big fish in a small pond will probably have better access to local resources (land) and personal services (haircuts, lawn mowing), and those provide meaningful, measurable increases in material standard of living beyond a simple feeling of status or financial superiority.
I'd go so far as to suggest that very few people can realistically conduct that experiment and choose to live in a poorer area in a way that makes their material situation worse in every single aspect except for status.
"Bigger house" and "higher/lower relative income" is the same thing said in two different ways. In SF, you compete for the house with unicorn millionaires and VC-funded crypto bros, in Idaho, you'd compete with regular people with regular incomes. There's no way a market can sustain a level of pricing if there are no people with enough income to pay it. So, it areas where incomes are lower, the prices would be lower too. Plus, of course, less people itching to live in high-cost area and overbidding for the privilege, which is also a contributing thing of the same origin.
No. "Bigger house" can mean "same relative income, but houses are cheaper here because they're in less demand".
The median household income in Lancaster, CA (where I live) is about the same as in Hawthorne, CA (where I sort of work), but houses in Hawthorne are about twice as expensive in Hawthorne. Same relative income, but lots of people are willing to pay a larger fraction of their income to live Hawthorne because it's convenient to the beach, many good jobs, cultural amenities, other cool people, etc whereas Lancaster is in a literal and cultural desert with maybe three good employers.
This is true for two cities that are next door to each other. However, if they are at any distance, then the setup that you have now - whether essentially the same set of people, obviously having the same common income profile, can live either in Lancaster or Hawthorne - can not occur. If you take Idaho/Texas and SF, then the incomes aren't the same, because there's not a lot of people that commute there and back for work from Idaho to SF and back, and thus the situation of "maybe three good employers" (which of course not true for Idaho but I take it as a rhetorical exaggeration of the real income differential) leads to relatively lower incomes in one place and higher incomes in another.
Hawthorne and Lancaster are not "next door". They are separated by about a hundred kilometers, a mountain range, and 2-3 hours of rush-hour traffic. It is not practical to commute between the two, unless you happen to own an airplane. Both cities do have convenient airports, but unless everyone else is flying stealth planes I'm the only one who actually does that.
People who live in Lancaster, generally work in Lancaster or one of the neighboring communities, with some commuters but not into the heart of the LA basin. Many of whom could get jobs in either city if they liked (they both have e.g. a substantial aerospace-industry presence), and at similar pay. Some people want to live in an apartment in a cosmopolitan city, others prefer a house in a suburban or rural town. And some want a nice house in a big cosmopolitan city, which they'll bid up to a stratospheric price even though their classmates who took the job in the high desert are making the same money and paying half as much for housing.
I think the phenomenon in 7 has to be split to be precise:
Areas with lower income and lower costs of living are not necessarily the same (although usually highly correlated). The fact that people move to areas with lower costs of living seems obvious. If I have a remote job and move from SF to Lisbon where everything costs half, that makes a lot of sense. In Lisbon both average income and average costs of living are lower.
But the claim seems to be: people would also move from SF to London, where costs of living are similar, but everyone else makes less money. Hence any gain in happiness/utility would not come from affording more things than before, but from affording more things than peers.
I like that you clarified a distinction that most here seem to have missed, but there is an even further distinction in the original claim (as written) that you have also missed. It's not about making more money than your peers but more money than your "social circle". These days, it's not uncommon for much of one's social circle to exist outside the physical neighborhood where they reside. Now if you move to London and spend all our time in a neighborhood pub and the other regulars become your new social circle then you might have moved up in relative wealth, but if you mostly keep the same friends as before, moving to a poorer city or neighborhood doesn't test the claim.
There is a significant wealth effect in being "the Joneses" that everyone else is keeping up with. The psychic freedom to spend on what you want to, and not feeling like you are missing out, certainly contribute to overall happiness.
I think that is also why rural life appeals to the semi-rich: when you go down to the diner or country club, it doesn't matter if you have 10 acres of unusable rocks or 100 acres of corn and $100K in farm equipment - you can still max out the local available conspicuous consumption.
> section from Walter Isaacson’s Musk biography claiming that his father Errol, previously a successful engineer, suddenly became a crackpot in his forties:
The 40s are a bit early for age-related cognitive decline, but they're also late for schizophrenia. Is there any commonly-accepted psychological or medical condition that would cause someone to become a crackpot in their forties?
> Where are the people who coincidentally ended up living in the slums and love it?
It's not common, but I regularly hear about people who retire to low COL areas, up to and including poorer countries like Mexico where 'their dollar goes a lot further'. It's not a pure example of relative income mattering because of purchasing power parity effects, but I think it nudges in that direction.
Besides this, however, why should relative income be measured with respect to one's neighbourhood? To me, the intuitive description brings to mind one's peer group, but that's flexible and itself income-dependent. Rich people get invitations to parties where even richer people circulate.
To intentionally exploit the relative income effect by 'moving to a slum', you'd have to intentionally cut yourself off from family and former friends and consciously avoid social climbing, Seems a bit of a tough call, and also a move more likely to be made by someone already unhappy.
Lots of middle class black civil servants in the Northeast have retired to the Atlanta suburbs to stretch their pensions further.
Seems pretty reasonable to me.
In re Mexico: I mainly hear about people moving to San Miguel de Allende, and I don't think it's because their dollar goes further than in Florida.
> Is there any commonly-accepted psychological or medical condition that would cause someone to become a crackpot in their forties?
Untreated bipolar can worsen over a lifetime. Science fiction fans may remember the infamous _Last Dangerous Visions_ anthology that Harlan Ellison somehow failed to publish for something like 50 years - it nominally came out last year posthumously, with its main point of interest being J. Michael Straczynski's long memoir of his association with Harlan Ellison, in which he describes how he knew Ellison had bipolar disorder within hours of meeting him, but it took decades for it to slowly grind down Ellison, taking away his ability to write novels and then stories (because the manic cycles increasingly failed to last long enough to finish anything substantial), leading to grossly inappropriate behavior like groping Connie Willis or compulsive shopping of nerd trinkets, and finally, in old age, to a suicide attempt with a gun, after which Straczynski was able to use a psychiatric hold to force him into going to a psychiatrist for diagnosis. The most tragic part is that the drug treatments were apparently starting to work and Ellison was finally able to write again... when he got hit by an unrelated stroke, declined, and died of another.
Anyway, I don't know about the stories, but the Ellison memoir is well worth reading.
Thank you for this.
I grew up reading Harlan, thought he was quite talented, wondered why he rarely wrote long pieces and then became sad when I learned what a jerk he could be. Bipolar at least *explains* a bunch of this...
This is the intro to _Last Dangerous Visions_?
Yes.
> I grew up reading Harlan, thought he was quite talented, wondered why he rarely wrote long pieces and then became sad when I learned what a jerk he could be.
I too sometimes wondered what was up with Ellison and why he never wrote any novels after his initial batch of juvenilia... but to the extent that I thought about it, I wrote it off as a mix of a perfectionist personality, performing a role as the Brooklyn infant terrible of SF, and too much Hollywood money & fun times. After all, Ellison would not be the first writer to have been ruined by easy screenwriting money, the lure of seeing your fiction *truly* immortalized and influential on the silver screen (no SF short story would ever have the impact of a really successful Star Trek episode or movie), and the tempting lifestyle of being a Famous Writer in LA, as opposed to the hard work and risk of grinding out another novel. Somewhat like Douglas Adams, who apparently deeply enjoyed being Douglas Adams and hosting dinners to wax eloquent at, rather than sitting down to actually *write*, and so had a busy active life that involved a lot less writing than it could have if he had more of a work ethic like, say, Terry Pratchett.
So bipolar never came to mind for me as a possible explanation until he announced the diagnosis publicly some time before his death. (Although now that I write that, maybe I should cast a more skeptical eye over biographical accounts of Douglas Adams...)
This makes Harlan Ellison a good example of how bipolar is the dark matter of highly successful writers: we know it's there in large quantities from the surveys and statistics, but we can be staring right at a case for half a century, in retrospect looking obvious, and never even think of it, assuming that the long stretches of depression are just the writer gestating new pieces or enjoying the lifestyle or busy with other things or the symptoms are being 'a jerk', while insiders do their best to hide it from the rest of us (like how Straczynski continually covered for & bailed out Ellison, and never said a word publicly about what he'd seen until the end).
Now that I read this, imagine if George R. R. Martin is actually bipolar and struggling with long depression bouts and that's why we don't have Winds of Winter yet but we're all complaining. Huh.
I don't think it is simply just that writers get seduced by the lifestyle of being a famous writer.
I think that people differ by how many good novels they have in themselves. Tolkien wrote the Lord of the Rings over a decade, and while he lived for quite a while after publication, he did not use that time to churn out more epic fantasy trilogies. And that is totally okay, human genius is not a production line.
My feeling is that Douglas Adams is kind of similar. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy was tremendously successful, but over the next four sequels there was some decline, IMHO.
Terry Pratchett published a tremendous amount of Discworld novels which were pretty solid -- I think that his best later ones often worked by introducing new characters and settings (Small Gods is novel #13, for example).
But there is a certain trap of a writer writing a great novel and the publishing endless sequels, and I like to think that both Tolkien and Adams knew when to stop instead of milking their franchise dry.
How many letters did he write after? It seems to me that he spent most of that time imagining more stuff about his world and put those into letters, or into his drawer. That's how we got The Silmarillion (and other posthumous publications).
Tolkien was I think in it for the worldbuilding more than the storytelling. He buckled down and wrote one good children's novel and one amazingly good adult meganovel because he knew that worldbuilding unadorned by storytelling was only a private fancy, but after that mostly just did story-fragments to flesh out the worldbuilding.
Which was enough because those novels were good enough to bring a lot of people around to the view that, hey, I kind of want to see more of that world even if it isn't packaged into shiny perfect stories.
If he'd been born a generation later, he might have been a first-rate writer of RPG settings, a la M.A.R. Barker.
> My feeling is that Douglas Adams is kind of similar. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy was tremendously successful, but over the next four sequels there was some decline, IMHO.
I don't think that's a good example because what I said was that it was bad that he didn't write more. I didn't say what he didn't write was just more Hhgttg. You are correct that the later Hitchhikers were definite dropoffs and we probably aren't missing much compared to if Adams had milked another Hhgttg or two out of himself. Blood from a stone, etc. However, he could, and did, write more than just Hitchhikers stuff. I liked the Dirk Gentlys, for example, and his contributions to various games were interesting, and _Last Chance To See_ was pretty interesting (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_Chance_to_See). _The Meaning of Liff_ still gets brought up occasionally.
And, of course, that's just what we know of; we cannot know what he would have done if he had been more industrious. When he dropped dead of a heart attack at age 49 in 2001, he hardly looked like he was an exhausted creatively-dead burnout case. Plenty of writers do a lot of good work, sometimes their best work, after 49. (For comparison, Terry Pratchett died at 66 in 2015, so had he died at 49 like Adams, then he would've died in 1998; that means we would've lost: fully half of the Discworld novels and almost all of the award-winning/nominated ones, a lot of ancillary Discworld material like all of the _Science of Discworlds_, Baxter's _Long Earth_ series, several award-winning documentaries, his Alzheimers & assisted-suicide activism... And this is despite 66 being quite young, well below his life expectancy and at an age where plenty of fiction writers are still producing noted works!)
>no SF short story would ever have the impact of a really successful Star Trek episode or movie
This seems a bit too strong. I'd guess that Flowers for Algernon was more impactful than any single Star Trek episode.
> I'd guess that Flowers for Algernon was more impactful than any single Star Trek episode.
...But only because Flowers for Algernon got adapted again and again and again into shows and movies: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flowers_for_Algernon#Adaptations (For example, 'Flowers for Algernon' is alluded to prominently in _End of Evangelion_ - but only to the Japanese title for the *movie adaptation*, _Charly_.)
The melancholy fate of many really successful SF/F works is, even when the original story is still technically read rather than plunged into complete obscurity, to see the book version overwritten and erased by the successful film version. Even the readers of the books can no longer read them as written. (And I don't mean things like Lucas retconning Darth Vader into Luke's father so _A New Hope_ comes off as entirely different when you as a later viewer 'know' that Darth Vader is Luke's father and this is supposed to be a whole cycle of 'the tragedy of Anakin Skywalker'.) For example, in Ted Chiang's "Story of Your Life", was it time-travel precognition, as it was in the movie adaptation _Arrival_? Most people will tell you that it is, even though it makes no sense when you read the story closely: https://gwern.net/story-of-your-life And
Or, was it ruby slippers... or silver, in _The Wonderful Wizard of Oz_? I know people who have read the book - one of the most successful children's books ever - who will tell you that they were, of course, ruby. And if you allude to 'silver slippers', no one will have any idea what you're talking about (despite showing up again and again in the later novels).
Speaking of children's books, probably the most successful ones were the Harry Potter books, and no one these days can keep straight what is from the books, the films, and the fanfiction: http://members.madasafish.com/~cj_whitehound/Fanfic/fanonvscanon.htm And I'm sure someone has written an equivalent version of how many Tolkien fans now believe things about the LotR which are due solely to the Jackson movie versions, no matter how many times they read the novels... You just approach things with certain assumptions and can't notice that it's not actually there in the text.
>But only because Flowers for Algernon got adapted again and again and again into shows and movies
Hmm, seems unlikely. None of those were big enough hits to eclipse the written story, certainly nothing close to the level of Arrival. If anything, the novelization by Keyes himself is probably the single best known variant... which I guess is still sort of in line with your point.
I can recall as a kid in the early 1970s, Harlan Ellison was in the Los Angeles newspapers constantly: writing, being written about, getting into arguments with people, etc. He was a real ball of fire.
Not to mention his run-in with the main character in Studs Terkel’s iconic profile article “Frank Sinatra Has a Cold.”
Oops Gay Talese not Terkel😊
Tom Wolfe was always jealous of Gay Talese's sense of clothing style.
Thanks, I'd forgotten that.
Here's the scene
https://www.jasonsanford.com/jason/2012/09/09/harlan-ellison-stands-up-to-frank-sinatra
Interestingly, when Frank Sinatra harasses Harlan Ellison over his informal footwear, Ellison is playing pool with baseball manager Leo Durocher, who was perhaps the most similar personality in sports to Sinatra. Durocher would have gotten the credit for managing Jackie Robinson's historic 1947 season breaking the color line (Durocher did an excellent job during spring training of putting down any racist reluctance on the part of the other Brooklyn Dodgers to playing with Robinson), but at the last moment before the historic game, the commissioner of baseball suspended Durocher for the year for spending his off-season gambling with mobbed-up movie star George Raft (which sounds like a Sinatra scandal).
Of course, when being harassed, even by Frank Sinatra and his goons, holding a pool cue increases a man's courage.
Yes a reversed pool cue can be deadly. But Talese, who was apparently there, has Ellison *watching* the pool game. He didn't need no stinkin' cue.
Ok but then it's always clear that higher relative incomes are a mean not an end. To argue otherwise is to posit some dark and very conveniently falsifiable subconscious motive, so that when a Swiss retirees talks about how cheap is to dine out and rent a beautiful seaside house in Malaga, what he actually means it that he satisfied some Jungian urge to best his fellow man. Seems a bit superluous when the stated motive so clearly suffices honestly.
"Is there any commonly-accepted psychological or medical condition that would cause someone to become a crackpot in their forties?"
Possible contributing factors, off the top of my head–
- Worsening bipolar (already mentioned) or cyclothymia progressing to bipolar
- Psychotic depression
- Huntington's disease (if Errol had this it would be obvious by now)
- Tumors or autoimmune disorders impacting the central nervous system or the endocrine system
- Sleep disorders such as obstructive sleep apnea
- chronic or acute drug abuse (do we know for sure that Errol didn't also use drugs?)
- some combination of the above
> 7: A common sociological claim is that relative income (compared to your social circle) matters more for happiness than absolute income. Bryan Caplan thinks this can’t be true: after all, practically nobody moves to poorer areas to enjoy the higher relative income this would confer.
That's because high income areas generally have better culture, restaurants and opportunities. In addition, the perceived risk of low income areas.
Why would a high income person move to an area without Michelin star restaurants, Whole Foods, and Montessori schools? In addition, why risk being a victim of crime?
When I moved to Chicago, I moved to a glamorous high rise apartment overlooking the lake in Lincoln Park so I could get a girlfriend. When I got a fiancee, I moved north to the grungier Lakeview neighborhood. When I got a wife, I moved north to highly diverse Uptown (diverse meaning lots of cheap Vietnamese restaurants).
Outlining this, I wrote to the U. of Chicago scholars who had authored "The Social Construction of Sexuality" and suggested they write a sequel entitled: "The Sexual Construction of Society." Remarkably, they more or less followed my suggestion by eventually writing a tome entitled "The Sexual Organization of The City."
https://www.unz.com/isteve/the-social-construction-of-sexuality-vs-the-sexual-construction-of-society/
I have long maintained that sexuality in humans is largely a social matter, unless you think that, for example, there was some mysterious gene in Afghan tribesmen and ancient Spartans that made them attracted to young boys.
There's another theory that homosexuality is caused by some kind of communicable disease, which is why it's much more common in cities than in rural areas, and why it appears to have mostly vanished from history between 300 AD and 1900 AD.
A further theory is that Greek homosexuality wasn't all that common, it just got written about a lot.
>and why it appears to have mostly vanished from history between 300 AD and 1900 AD.
Only in those countries which had and enforced a strong religious taboo against it.
But the thing that makes me suspicious is that there's no actual record of anyone enforcing that strong religious taboo.
For instance the Spanish Inquisition in all its investigatory zeal managed to prosecute one thousand people for sodomy... but only half of these were sodomy between persons (the others presumably being with animals) and only a handful of cases involved two consenting adults https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Catholic_Church_and_homosexuality ... suggesting that homosexuality was a hundred times less popular than bestiality in Inquisition-era Spain.
Yet, even sticking to Spanish territory and the 300-1900 period, many of the Andalusian caliphs kept male harems.
I don't disagree that it's a puzzle, although I suppose widespread religious belief that X is a horrible sin can discourage something to a degree without the church needing too many actual prosecutions.
Turing's and Wilde's case became such cause celebre because the laws against homosexuality were never actually enforced, despite it being so common in boarding schools and ships to be a running joke. I doubt this denotes anything except a certain tendency of traditional societies to tolerate a lot as long as it happened in an adequately surrespicious matter.
Add to this that the post-Roman, pre-westphalian legal system was weird and convoluted, with personal rather than territorial jurisdiction and very blurry lines between secular, religious, professional, regal and familial legal spheres, and I'm not really sure you proved much.
These days The Gays™ feel safe enough to even occasionally vaguely hint that they weren't actually "born this way", it was just a useful bit of rhetoric.
Young men will routinely fuck each other in any environment where women are not available and (for societies condemning it) prying eyes turn the other way. Prisoners, soldiers, sailors, young aristocrats in boarding schools and Moldovan bricklayers living on site all do that.
I find much more plausible the Kinsey view of a flexible sexuality, with heterosexuality being a strong preference rather than an absolute costraint for most, than any sociological theory trying to encompass all the groups above.
If a human female is stuck on a desert island with nothing but a monkey, she'd try to make a pet out of it.
If a human male were on that same island, he'd try to fuck it.
This piece should be in the next "Noticing" anthology. I now know the right way to hunt for apartments...
Calling Lakeview "grungier" than Lincoln Park, while I guess technically true, is a wild claim. All three of those neighborhoods are very safe, have great amenities, and are effectively next door, given that they're all two train stops away from each other. It mostly sounds like you had a relatively stable income and decided to move to very similar neighborhoods with very slightly lower costs of housing as you got older.
I had a fairly rapidly rising income in the 1980s, but chose to move to less fashionable neighborhoods once I had acquired a fiancee and then a wife.
The differences between living at 2700 North, 3600 North, and 4900 North have probably diminished since the 1980s as more people have come around to my point of view.
I would recommend to young single people that you bite the bullet on housing costs and live where the kind of people you'd like to marry live.
My own experience is that exposure to people significantly richer or significantly poorer than you is distressing. The distribution of distress is asymmetric, meaning that your best bet is to be surrounded by a fairly narrow band of wealth where you're towards the top.
I used to live in a proper rich area where the range was upper middle class professionals like me at the bottom and proper rich people at the top. I found that when I walked around I spent an uncomfortable amount of time thinking about money -- every time I saw a really nice house or car that I couldn't possibly afford it set off a pattern of musing about money.
Nowadays I live a few suburbs away in a slightly less rich area that's full of people at roughly my wealth level. When I walk around I rarely see anyone that I envy, nor anyone that I pity, and my brain gets to focus on more interesting things.
I grew up about 8 miles north of Beverly Hills. I've always found walking around Beverly Hills to be pleasant. I find crazy rich people entertaining. But I am terribly unambitious, so it doesn't bother me I'll never live there.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HL_WvOly7mY
Same here. Sometimes I'll see something and think "Oh, that would be nice to have" but in general I don't go "Damn it, why don't I have that! Why am I a loser by comparison!"
If someone likes Michelin restaurants and Porsches, good luck to them and I sincerely hope they enjoy them, but I've never felt "Oh I am missing out" by not having them.
This is no comment on you, Justin, but I can't wrap my head around "oh my goodness, I cannot eat at a Michelin starred restaurant here? Life is not worth living!"
My problem is I like plain food (and plenty of it) so while I can appreciate the aesthetics (and incredible skill and effort involved) of one carefully trimmed miniature eel's brain with three streaks of jus on the plate, it would not fill my stomach.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XxQiY1qKv9Y
> From @msamalam: 1932 Japanese map of world features/stereotypes
Interesting that India comes pre-partitioned (what do colors denote?). Also, llamas and alpacas are way too far south (you'll see a stray guanaco vaguely there, but not on the plains I'd think) and there should definitely be a cow where llamas and alpacas are.
India was partitioned based on pre-existing religious divisions, so maybe that's why it appears split on the map.
They also have a player for the New York Yankees in the middle of the U.S.
The weird thing to me is the sacks with dollar signs on them, on a map drawn in a country that doesn't use dollars.
Is the guy in Ireland a Gaelic Football player or someone lifting stones?
> 20: Americans are likely to have favorable views of castles
and chivalry, but not the Crusades or the Inquisition
Meanwhile the Vikings are ok. Converting to Christianity doomed their descendants to ignominy.
The rehabilitation of the Vikings is odd. If ever a people contributed little but violence, it’s them.
The Spanish are criticised a lot for their actions in the new world, and probably wouldn’t do well in this survey. Also they probably weren’t as bad as us Anglos, truth be told.
That argument is a deflection and a false dilemma. The survey wasn’t either or. You can assign bad to any of the questions.
The Spanish court of the 16th Century felt a surprising amount of guilt over what the Conquistadors were doing to the Indians, more than Anglos did a century later.
"what they did in the New World"? That's as relevant as pointing to the leading Nazis all being devoted fans and promoters of classical art.
The Vikings' violence in the Old World, which was 99 percent of their interest and activity, was a notably brutal and effective deployment of the military technology of their era. They were _good_ at what they were doing, which was a big part of why they became so widely feared.
Funny in that chart is that the black plague is positive to 9% of the responders. Maybe those people know their history, and how the reduction in workers led to higher wages and better working conditions for those that survived - likely leading to the creation of the middle class and possibly the advancement of Europe towards the Industrial Revolution.
> Maybe those people know their history, and how the reduction in workers led to higher wages and better working conditions for those that survived
We can hope not. Anyone who thinks that was a worthwhile trade isn't someone we want in our current societies.
A much better reason to have a positive view is, for example, "what an awesome name!".
Or, to invoke the Lizardman's Constant once more, the real answer might also be "leave me alone with your stupid survey at family dinner".
That's what came to mind for me, yea.
People throwing each other under a bus for a leg-up *is* society, unless you're living with Buddhist monks or something.
People having found a way to work together for the benefit of all is society.
People throwing each other under the bus are inevitable but are more the ones hacking the rules of society than the core of society.
Yeah, but they are generally self-deceived about that.
Horrible at the time and worse to try to recreate it, but I think there's a value in recognizing the positive as well as negative outcomes to things happening in life. I would be more than skeptical of anyone advocating something like that now, even if it worked out well in some respects back then. Not to mention there have been a whole lot more plagues and the most common results were pretty much all misery and no noticeable benefits.
I ended up wondering if this is (lizardman constant and) the one or other person thinking the survivors raising the immune system baseline to something "better" was worth it. If so, allergies would like a word with these people, though.
When I saw those results, I figured the non-lizardman component was the economic argument that the Black Death cut population density in western Europe and thereby led to wage increase, mechanization of labor, and eventually the basis of the industrial revolution. I suppose the galactic supercluster-ascended Buddha-brain take would be that on the long term, by leading to industrialization and modern medicine, the Black Death eventually *decreased* the risk of death by disease on net. At quite the high cost, though!
While I think that it is mostly Lizardmen's constant, the steel-man for the Black Plague would be the following.
Medieval populations had a total fertility ratio far above replacement, and were thus in the Malthusian trap.
Counteracting population growth are the three horsemen Famine, Pestilence and War. All three are horrible. Disease can not only kill, but maim. Starvation is a long and terrible process which will leave even those who survive diminished. And war brings out the very worst in humans, it is not simply people gutting or crippling each other with swords, but also the rape and the destruction of resources.
I am happy that we have our methods of population control called Pension Plan, Condom and OnlyFans, but if they are not an option, and the population has outgrown what their fields can produce, and I have to decide if 10% of them should die by starvation, war, or infection, I would probably pick infection.
They think it's about the metal band.
The average person, born and raised in their home country and having lived there basically their entire life, has little idea of what full impact any historical matter has had on the people living then and there, or of the deep cultural memories those events formed. The farther the remove in space and time, the more the gaps in that image will necessarily be filled by popular culture, often by projecting modern sensibilities back in time.
Sure, you have some unambigously bad stuff like the Black Death where everyone everywhere can agree it was bad, even without knowing specifics. But the Hundred Years War? Hundred years of war sounds bad. But what was it even about? Maybe it was kinda justified?
Then the Vikings. Will most people even know it's a job description, not an ethnicity, and what that job entailed? Also, Vikings are kinda cool, aren't they? There are comics about them, video games, movies; much like pirates, their historical package gets sanitized the further you are removed from them. I bet if you'd ask the average English, especially on the East coast, they'd have a more nuanced perspective.
Castles and Chivalry? Barely anyone will think of the feudal system, the massive inequality and repression they represent, of the almost perpetual war that necessitated them. They think of countless fantasy novels and other pop culture products, or at most their once-in-a-lifetime Europe roundtrip out of school.
Another example, not on the list: The widespread adoration of Adolf Hitler in parts of India. Notwithstanding the fact that Hitler hated Indians as a race (ignored) or that he killed millions in Europe (irrelevant) he is seen positively at least in nationalist circles because they credit him with bringing down British rule over India.
So the point is: for any given historical topic, every society in space and time has their own image of it, which can be very different from each other, even contradictory. Finding out what these views are like is certainly useful and interesting, but one should probably not overly blame people for not knowing the full historical reality.
Actually, Vikings were quite active as traders all around European coasts, from Baltic to Mediterranean. Also, they created/modernised governance for at least two major European nations (Russia and England).
I don’t think the understanding for the Vikings runs that deep. Most people see the Vikings as the marauders not the settlers or colonialists, which is something that modern historians agree with. A farmer isn’t a Viking.
Best to say danish law, not viking law. Therefore people are happy with the pillaging and raping and slaving, in a way they aren’t for other historical groups.
>Actually, Vikings were quite active as traders all around European coasts
Yes, they were quite good at acquiring and trading slaves in multiple markets.
That too, but far from only slaves https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trade_during_the_Viking_Age
*Rus', not Russia. There's an argument that Ukraine is closer to being the Kievan Rus' descendant while Muscovy was heavily influenced by/basically a creation of Mongols. Like Manchukuo surviving into modern times and claiming to be the rightful descendant of the Imperial China. I don't know if you'd agree, but anyway Rus' seems more accurate. Not to mention that the name most likely means the Vikings as an exonym derived from Finnish ruotsi, or directly from the same origin.
You are right that the English name of the country did not become Russia until well after the Viking age.
Not sure in which sense Ukraine is a more direct "descendant" of Rus' though, given that it did not exist as a state before 1918. The last relatively independent Rus' principalities on modern Ukrainian territory were annexed by Poland and Lithuania in XIV century. The elder Rurikid branch ruled continuously over Rus principalities in the North-East and then Muskovy and then Russia until the XVII century and it is hard to dispute state continuity from Rurikids to Romanoffs. Actually, Lithuania has arguably a better claim to a continuous state and cultural descent from Rus', at least until the polonisation in XVI-XVII centuries.
As to the Mongols, there were several Rus' principalities that never subjugated to Mongols (like Polotsk and Pskov), but none of them were located in modern Ukraine.
Not sure, perhaps I distorted the idea or it was more political, along the lines of "With the way Russia acts they would be better described as the political descendants of the Golden Horde".
Anyway, with Kyiv being the capital of Ukraine I don't think it's fair to mention only Russia as a modern Eastern European state owing some of its history to the Vikings.
Though I'm not really sure it was a positive thing. Reminds me of the Soviet joke about time travelers who went to Ancient Rome to find a rally with the signs "Forward to feudalism, the bright future of humanity!". If the default state was "Vikings robbing and capturing slaves regularly" then sure, a Viking state that went about robbing in a more organized manner while protecting the Slavs from other threats and maybe doing something useful in the meantime was an improvement. But compared to "no Vikings at all"? If having more centralized/modernized governance is an improvement, I'm still not sure the Vikings were well-suited for the job, so perhaps having some Central European conquerors or Byzantine missionaries inducing the native leaders to start the modernization a few decades later would've played out better.
It is quite a stretch to describe Russia as "political descendant of the Golden Horde" as opposed to a descendant of the Rus' principalities. One would need to ignore obvious linguistic, religious, dynastic, architectural, and legal continuities with the Rus'. Perhaps, one could argue that tax collection mechanisms and establishment of the absolute monarchy can be traced to the Horde. But these are pretty standard elements of late feudalism and they happened in many European countries, from England to Hungary, at roughly the same time without any Horde influence.
It is quite weird to ignore this continuity from Rus' while claiming the continuity for Ukraine which literally did not exist before 1918 and has a 500 years gap between the last independent Rus' principalities on its territory and 1918. This sounds like modern Ukrainian political propaganda and is honestly puzzling for me. Today, it is quite clear that Ukraine has a much stronger claim to be a "proper" "real" state than most countries. This claim is backed by well documented events of the last 35 years (and especially last 3 years.) What is the point in backing this claim also by made up interpretations of events that happened 800+ years ago?
Probably claims that Russia is the successor of the Kievan Rus' feel more than just academic on the 12th year of Russia claiming its "historical" territories.
In what way did they modernise Anglo-Saxon government? Even if you count the Normans as quasi-Viking, my understanding is that they inherited a much more sophisticated state structure than the one they had previously (and that this was one of the major prizes of conquering England).
Yes, I counted Normans as Vikings here. Not sure what "sophisticated" means in this sense. A proper census (the Domesday Book), a proper Exchequer, a system of centralised royal power with feudal landholding, and a system of garrisoned castles to enforce this control were all created by the Normans in the immediate aftermath of the conquest.
I don't think it's obviously right to call William's Normans Vikings. One might argue they were more French than Viking at that point. And you can't make the same claims about Svein Forkbeard and Cnut the Great modernising England.
Yes to Domesday Book (although it was only the administrative heft of the existing English state that made it possible — nothing like it could have been attempted in Normandy) and castles (although these were a French innovation, not a Norse one), both of which were new — but what do you mean by a proper exchequer? Afaik the English (pre-1066) were the only regime in Northern Europe with a standardised coinage, and their state apparatus for collecting taxes and mobilising royal income far exceeded anything in Scandinavia or Normandy (and enabled Aethelred the Unready, and later William I himself, to raise the immense sums needed to buy off Viking raiders). Feudal landholding, again, reflected the Frenchification of the Normans rather than their Viking roots. I’d add, to a list of Norman modernisation projects, a huge reduction in slavery in England after the Conquest, but this is maybe the most obvious case of the Normans having already adopted the new, Christian norms of the Gregorian Revolution that was sweeping France at the time. Cutting edge, yes; Viking, very much not.
A Domesday Book equivalent was indeed not compiled in Normandy (or anywhere in France) at the time. It is not clear why one would think it was impossible - neither Normandy not France were going through such a wholesale state reorganisation at the time, so there was no dire need to take stock of all assets. The only roughly contemporaneous census of similar scale was undertaken by (surprise!) Normans in their Southern Italy lands in mid XII century (the first compilation of Catalogus Baronum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catalogus_Baronum)
The Exchequer was the agency established by Henry I to collect, audit, and disburse government revenue. It also arbitrated on tax and financial matters and both the judicial system and the modern Treasury grew out of it.
Ok, but Henry is two kings later and any claim of Vikingness is getting a bit tenuous by that stage! And surely one would say he formalised and named an existing system there, rather than introducing it wholesale. I think the main reason why Domesday Book couldn’t have been compiled in Normandy/anywhere in France is administrative capacity. I mean, maybe you could have done it as Duke of Normandy, but then it would have been a much smaller job. If you were the King of France, you’d have the additional problem of uppity vassals (not least the Duke of Normandy!) refusing to let your auditors do their work. As conqueror of the only (?) effective unitary state in Northern Europe at the time, William was in a unique position, having both the motive and the means to audit everything. Same applies to “feudalism”: the idea that the king owns everything and everyone else holds their lands on his behalf works very well *and is very necessary* when the king has just led a military takeover of said land, and in fact the system found its purest expression in England.
The Vikings were absolutely not the Normans. Christianity alone, ignoring Normandy being in France, would mark them as a culturally different people.
In fact that’s why I was referencing the difference between attitudes to the crusades and the Viking plunder to begin with. “Converting to Christianity doomed their descendants to ignominy”. This isn’t new of course, the crusades have been in bad odour since the reformation.
Vikings were not Normans - agreed. However, it is less obvious that Normans were not Vikings :)
Normandy being in France is not very relevant here, as it tells us very little about the culture of XI century Norman rulers.
It is true that Normans in XI century were Christians, spoke French, intermarried with French, and adopted many other elements of French culture, including mounted warfare. However, they were still quite distinct from French and kept a few elements of their Viking culture in areas such as inheritance and governance. However, the key aspect here is the ability to launch large scale amphibious assaults. Vikings were able to perform them. There is no reason to believe that a random French duke with a tenuous dynastic claim was capable of such a feat. Indeed, no French or European force over the next 900 (!) years was capable of such an assault on British Isles.
When the Normans landed, most of the English army was on the other end of the country, fighting the Danes. The big battle happened on land, two weeks later, when the English arrived.
Wikipedia says that William "had to assemble a fleet from nothing", hardly a sign of a culture with a strong naval tradition.
That's the old joke :
Q: how do you tell the difference between a Viking raider and a Viking trader?
A: if you're armed, he's a trader.
I mean, the Normans - nada?
Do you put zero weight on the theory that vikings contributed to common law?
Which link was this?
> Thinking medieval: The large shares of Americans with no opinion about prominent medieval figures reflects the reality that most Americans don't think about the Middle Ages very often. 11% of Americans say they think about the European Middle Ages weekly or more, and another 12% say they think about it monthly. But 42% of Americans say they never think about the Middle Ages, and another 24% think about it only occasionally.
>
> These figures are similar to how often Americans say they think about the Roman Empire. Americans are slightly more likely to say they think regularly about the Middle Ages than to say they think about Rome.
Roman Empire bros... It's all over.
Disappointed with the Roman Empire. Thought it was every day.
Monasteries and vikings are both over 50%, meaning someone out there approves of both.
It is consistent: vikings actually expressed a preference for monasteries, in a way.
My favourite part is that 50% approve of Vikings and another 50% approve of monasteries. I like to think that these are entirely disjoint sets.
I like how the Vikings are right next to the monasteries in popularity.
I think that which cultures get idolized is weird. Take the Ninja -- murderers for hire morphed into noble elite martial arts fighters in the Gaijin mind. Of course, I am with acoup that the worst popularization is actually the Spartans -- a culture which excelled solely at inflicting human misery to their non-free classes, no redeeming qualities like producing great works of art -- but in the public perception their martial valor is greatly exaggerated, so they are the fearless hardcore warriors, not the freaks who initiate their youths by having them murder unarmed serfs.
The Spartans did produce a lot of cool action movie-style one-liners. The other Greeks called it their Laconic wit.
…but so many good stories! I for one want to watch the 9-season HBO biopic/drama on the life of Harold Hardrada…
Poul Anderson wrote a series of novels about him.
Any good?
I liked them. They are straight historical fiction, no fantasy element, but they still have Anderson's voice. Hardrada had an interesting life, and I gather the books are a true to what's known, though of course the details are Anderson's.
Probably not as much detail as a nine-season biopic, but what HBO would add would probably be pretty annoying. :-)
The Vikings contributed violence, maritime navigation, and about 30% of the cultural fusion that is the English. The latter two are things that are really important to who we are today, so it's understandable that we'll romanticize the violence a bit.
And I think you're confusing "the descendants of the Vikings" with "Scandinavians". "Viking" isn't an ethnicity, it's a job description, and the job was getting on a boat and sailing hell and gone from Scandinavia in pursuit of fortune and glory. Modern Scandinavians are descended from the ones who *weren't* Vikings; actual Viking descendants are, well, pretty much everywhere else you might find blondes. And yes, having more fun.
I think they became more sympathetic because of their inability to win a Super Bowl.
All that's really left for them now is to refer to it as "Sports Bowl" and maybe start a rationalist blog.
They were traders and left a fragmentary but noble literature behind. I wouldn’t want Egil Skalligrimson for a neighbor but his saga is fun to read.
What’s really “odd” is approving of both Vikings and monasteries, as Vikings were fond of looting monasteries. It would be more consistent to approve of both Vikings and saints, as the Vikings gave people opportunities to die defending the faith.
Sounds like the Vikings approved of monasteries. Lots of good loot all gathered into one spot.
7. Look at diplomats moving to poorer/richer countries.
Even there, the most prestigious ambassadorships are places like France, not Bangladesh
Can you get an ambassadorship to France without being rich?
My understanding was that being named ambassador to France is just a reward for generous political donors, and that the job has no particular responsibilities. Ambassadors used to represent their countries' interests, but we have direct communication now.
There's a lot of people at an embassy, not just the ambassador.
The people at an embassy don't have a choice about where they go.
(Not quite true, they have an extremely limited amount of choice.)
For example, France would be considered a "good" assignment, and you're not allowed to have two of those in a row.
That's exactly what yo want for a randomized experiment, no?
Well, I thought the thrust of your comment was to look at where people choose to go when they have the choice. I guess you can still make the argument that we can see that France is where they want to go regardless of whether they have the choice. But you can't see that by looking at diplomats moving to places.
I was thinking of asking people about how they feel when they get assigned to different places.
7 (relative income): Within the same social class, higher relative income is great. If the low income people aren't in your same class, there are a bunch of negatives that show up. Discrimination, targeted crime, guilt, etc. Also, it's low-class to admit to your higher-class friends that you're enjoying your newfound slum king status.
29 (COVID reckoning): The people who still support the enacted covid policies also still falsely belief that they were effective. A combination of self-deception and lies by government and media keeps it this way. No-one wants to contemplate that the massive suffering we endured for years, and the massive economic damage we caused, was all for nothing.
I realize I sound like a crank saying this. I'm not trying to convince anyone about the object level here. Just pointing out that the informational environment was very bad and continues to be bad.
Furthermore, you should compare these numbers to the % of the population that supports stuff like executing terrorists without trial and other anti-freedom positions, which are consistently very popular.
Among people who are intellectually capable of understanding the trade-offs, there does need to be a reckoning.
Re: 7, well-put. Relative income hypothesis is likely true but there's a definite lower bound; as the colloquial wisdom goes, the worst thing about being poor is living around poor people.
Class is a good way to put that factor, among other cultural traits, and Big Bang Theory had a pretty good model of a certain interaction- specifically the fundraising episode, directly stating that the very rich *do* enjoy a certain "academic king status."
Whether continued support for covid policy is justified or not, it is. Which makes a reckoning unlikely. The actual merit and the popularity of covid policy are completely seperate questions.
You are doing a pretty good job of perpetuating the bad information environment by pontificating like a crank. Even 9th graders learn to at least cite their sources when making claims, and I think this whole discussion would be far more fruitful if we could all agree to meet even that standard.
Stating a belief without citing sources is epistemically neutral.
You are free to read my entire post with a big "if" appended to the front: "IF covid policy was disastrous, then many people would have a hard time admitting it." That's a straightforwardly true claim.
> cite their sources when making claims, and I think this whole discussion would be far more fruitful if we could all agree to meet even that standard.
I am not the guy you replied to but…
You haven’t even met the standard of rebuttal either, by your own standards, nor the standards of courtesy.
The productively non-hypocritical way to respond to that would be to say "actually I disagree and think our Covid policies were beneficial and here are a few links that support my position" instead of just being an equally-crankish naysayer.
This is the conservative bubble Scott was asking about.
Sample size of 1, but if tomorrow I suddenly became thoroughly convinced that those COVID policies were ineffective, I expect that belief wouldn't make me angry in the slightest. It was a novel situation, the stakes were very high and all of the policies that get brought up were things that were plausible at the time as being helpful[1]. I'm not going to get angry at either scientists or government officials who needed to act fast with incomplete information for making an honest try to save lives.
Of course, your belief system around this mentions "lies by the government and media," but this very much *does* seem to stray into crackpot territory. I mean, governments around the world adopted similar policies for similar reasons. And there's nothing resembling a plausible motive for them *all* to be deliberately deceptive about it. The amount of evidence that would be necessary to promote this to even minimal plausibility is not small.
[1] And still plausible now, AFAIK. I haven't actually seen any evidence that they were ineffective.
I cut governments a lot of slack for picking reasonable but suboptimal policies in march 2020. That's not the problem.
The problem is when those policies were not updated and improved in light of new information. Or when policies were bonkers insane even for a day 1 response.
w.r.t. lies, Anthony Fauci lied to the public "for their own good" (he later testified to this under oath in front of congress IIRC). Zvi extensively documented the whole saga at the time, check his substack.
Several governments chose nonsensical policies without any physical basis for working (e.g. shutting down outside social places such as parks, while allowing indoor gatherings to continue, or even more extreme, prohibiting people from leaving their houses as happened in the UK and Spain, which doesn't pass any sane cost/benefit analysis).
Similarly, when the Floyd protests happened, suddenly the media was completely on board with these massive gatherings, when they had been shrieking about irresponsible protesters spreading the virus the week before. It was a complete reversal of stance, purely due to the political valence of the protests in question.
In my own country, the health minister nonstop beat the drum that "the vaccine is the only way out of the crisis". he said this every week at press conferences. He continued saying this until long after the vaccination rate stalled (at about 70% IIRC), and continued using it as an excuse to not lift restrictions, even though the situation got better and better. In reality, herd immunity was the way out of the crisis, which was going to happen with or without vaccines. That slogan was a moral imperative, completely unrelated to scientific facts.
Then there was this whole situation with "anti-racist" vaccine allocation policies. You remember that, right? Where perfectly good vaccines were thrown in the trash en masse, even while entire countries remained in lockdown. Because god forbid we give out doses in a way that covers the whole population as fast as possible. Again, Zvi wrote about one trillion words about this as it was happening.
That's just off the top of my head.
I think that there were two sensible covid policies:
1. Shut down until eradication and then live as normal (with closed borders) until a vaccine is developed
2. Keep life going as normal, issue warnings and advice
The problem is that most countries tried to pick a middle course between these two. Usually a middle course is sensible, but when it comes to this particular situation it was dumb. Locking down but stopping before eradication gives you most of the costs of locking down to eradication with none of the benefits.
OK, so those don't appear (to me) to be the same goalposts we started with. Your reply would be a great answer to the question "were there some bad decisions/policies made as part of various governmental COVID responses." But I doubt very many people would answer "no" to that question in the first place. Everybody's going to have policies they disagree with (though likely different policies for everyone).
But the original question was about whether there should be "a reckoning over the government's disastrous anti-COVID policies." Your own post said "The people who still support the enacted covid policies also still falsely belief that they were effective." Both of those to me rather strongly suggest a belief in a policy regime that was *broadly* ineffective and likely *deliberately malicious.* That's a whole different order of problem.
Like, if the responses were overall in the right direction, but some people told some lies, and some people pushed some nonsense policies and you're upset about those, the utterly banal democratic response to that is simply to *vote the offenders out*[1]. By the year 2025, that's almost certainly happened to whatever extent it's going to happen. Government is not perfect, citizens vent dissatisfaction with blunders through elections, news at 11. THAT need not be a crankish reaction, when the criticisms are reality based. But that's a *far cry* from saying " the massive suffering we endured for years, and the massive economic damage we caused, was all for nothing." Talking about lockdowns being left a little too long, or scientists losing their head a bit in supporting an unrelated protest movement *will not* get you from Point A to Point B.
[1] Or vote in people who promise to replace them in the case of appointed positions.
The disastrous policy, and the one there still has to be a reckoning for, was not the initial educated guess of "OK, let's lock down, mask up, and socially distance the COVID away". Those policies were wrong in hindsight in that they were a suboptimal and generally ineffective counter to COVID, but they were the sincere best guesses of the experts at the time.
The disastrous policy, and one that some of us at least recognized as disastrous at the time, was the one where those educated guesses were elevated to the status of a civic religion, such that it would be essentially heretical to say "It looks like we didn't get that part right; based on new information we should probably e.g. reopen the elementary schools but close the meat-packing plants". The only allowable response to the continued pandemic was to lock down, mask up, and socially distance *even harder*. But not smarter.
And, yes, the lies were also disastrous and they were policy. To which the answer can't just be "vote the offenders out", because most of the liars weren't elected officials or direct subordinates of elected officials. This was a massive blow to public trust, a commodity which is scarce, valuable, and extremely hard to replace when it is lost.
For all his faults, I'd rather have Anthony Fauci than Robert Kennedy calling the shots on vaccine policy. But for that to happen, we really need the reckoning where Team Fauci says "we were wrong, please forgive us, we promise to do better next time".
"The disastrous policy, and one that some of us at least recognized as disastrous at the time, was the one where those educated guesses were elevated to the status of a civic religion, such that it would be essentially heretical to say "It looks like we didn't get that part right; based on new information we should probably e.g. reopen the elementary schools but close the meat-packing plants"."
OK, but this wasn't a "policy." Like obviously, plainly this was not a policy. It honestly boggles my mind a little bit that a reasonably intelligent person could look at what happened in 2020 and say "yes, that was the way that the people who set policies intended things to happen."
The effect your describing is simply an especially striking manifestation of the decades-long trend of the political polarization of *everything* in the U.S.. It's clearly visible at least as far back as the 90s, but I think social media turbocharged it, and Trump's first term probably added a decent amount of fuel to the flames. In the past, a crisis of that magnitude would have drawn people together, but the U.S. was already so far gone that it simply pushed people farther apart (and made the crazy ones even crazier). The stronger the effect gets, the less the U.S. as a country is able to function: that's not anybody's policy goal.
The way I would describe it playing out is as follows: early warnings of COVID start to filter in, the experts who are taking it seriously (few at first) start to sound alarm bells and suggest action. This sounds premature to almost everyone at first, but starts to look more and more sensible as the scale of the crisis starts becoming apparent. Three major factors determine the political valence of the response in the U.S. First and foremost, the U.S. right already has a longstanding distrust of academia and experts. Second, Trump finds idea of a pandemic to be a very inconvenient one and would rather it not be true; having spend four years surrounding himself with yes-men allows him to live in this preferred reality for longer than otherwise possible, which sets the initial tone for any other government official taking their cues from Trump. Finally, the urban-rural split means that left-leaning folks are closer to the epicenters of COVID in the U.S. and more vulnerable to unchecked community spread: simply put they have more skin in the game, especially early on.
Together this means that by March of 2020 at the latest, the battle lines were already drawn. The blue tribe cultural sphere had been treating COVID seriously for several weeks already, a portion (though certainly far from all) of the red tribe sphere had been treating it as a nothingburger, a hoax or a conspiracy, and once the blue tribe belief started translating into action, the red tribe reaction was basically inevitable. "If they're doing A, we're doing not-A!" Tribal polarization hit hard and fast and robbed policymakers on both sides of options. Millions of red tribe voters believed that all COVID measures were solely about government control: any red tribe official acting on better information was seen as being in on it. Millions of blue tribe voters believed that the red tribe was being dangerous, ignorant and irresponsible in ways that would harm *everyone*, not only themselves: any blue tribe official suggesting laxer safety measures (even if supported by evidence) was seen as recklessly caving to pressure. A few very high-stress months pretty much locked these attitudes in and elevated them to the level of stuck priors. Any suggestion regarding altering COVID safety measures was evaluated in terms of political valence first and foremost, and scientific soundness last (if at all). I think there were lots of people whose main priority through all of this was saving lives and effectively controlling the pandemic, but they still had to live with the reality of the situation, which meant (for example) considering how their words would be heard in this kind of toxic information environment.
Incidentally, watching this play out was what finally convinced me that the U.S. is effectively finished as a nation. Broken beyond possibility of repair. When millions of people implicitly regard truth as downstream from politics (rather than the other way around), there's really no way to re-ground them in reality. At the time, my estimate was between 5 and 30 years before the U.S. undergoes some sort of collapse and ceases to exist as a unified nation under its current form of government: 5 years later, I still think that estimate was sound.
>Among people who are intellectually capable of understanding the trade-offs, there does need to be a reckoning.
Normally, I would agree. But the Dem/GOP splits in those figures look frightening. Is the clarification of the actual pluses and minuses of the options worth pouring more fuel on the fire of the nation's polarization? There is something of a meta tradeoff here (though I agree that keeping the discussion "Among people who are intellectually capable of understanding the trade-offs" would help).
I never supported the shut-downs, but you're making a huge assumption regarding "massive suffering". Lots of people didn't suffer at all, or their lives actually improved because of the shut downs. Mine sure did, even though I didn't think it was good policy. The people who suffered were lonely single people who couldn't go out, people with kids at home, and people living in cramped apartments. The people for whom it was neutral or actively positive were suburban people, people with office jobs, and retired people. There are just as many people in the second category as the first, if not more.
Re: 6: isnt making "a couple of good strategic choices" and then "excuting better" the reason why any company beats any competitor?
Yeah it's a real "dog bites man" story
Yeah, I think the article itself is good. That was the summary which was meant to explain that it wasn't just one thing.
Sorry, I know realize this came off as quite snippy! I just thought it was a bit funny and I'm sure the article is enlightening.
7. Part of the attraction for me of living in Europe is that I am relatively richer than my peers given an American salary while still enjoying all the amenities I would have living in Boston. I think that is an important element of why so many upper middle class Americans work remotely in Europe or retire here. Moving to the „slums“ creates other problems- crime, lack of entertainment options, dining choice, etc. that might make you feel poorer relative to the lifestyle you used to enjoy even if you’re relatively richer than your neighbors.
Don't you get double taxed as an American living in Europe? I would think that cancels out the higher income in many cases, although I guess if you make enough money it doesn't really matter.
There are treaties to avoid that. The price to pay is really that Americans aend up having to use the services of a specialized tax-preparation person for the first few years.
U.S. accountant here. This is outside my specialization, but I remember the basics of how it works.
First you pay however much the country you're in says you have to pay. If that's higher than your taxes in the U.S. would be, then you don't owe U.S. tax. If your U.S. taxes would be higher, you pay the difference to the U.S. So your total tax ends up being the higher of the two countries, rather than both put together.
Americans have all sorts of options to shield income from Europe, if the income is generated in the U.S.
On my modified oat-fiber supplement for plasticizers: first of all, thanks for linking! It's still being prototyped and tested, but if you're interested in becoming a beta tester when it comes out (and getting updates on progress), you can sign up on the website: neutraoat.com .
With regards to the difference between microplastics and plasticizers: microplastics are the little bits of plastics themselves, plasticizers are the chemicals that make plastics soft and malleable. When you hear about the negative health effects of microplastics, like hormonal disruption and cancer, that usually has to do with plasticizers. There are dozens of plasticizers, each of which interact with the body differently, but many of them, like BPA, have been convincingly linked to endocrine disruption and other negative effects in humans and animals. I've summarized evidence here: https://trevorklee.substack.com/p/the-evidence-on-plasticizer-health .
On a side note, I'm very interested in talking to people who are involved in the supplement world and the D2C world more broadly. I feel confident on the scientific side, although there's a lot of work ahead, but D2C is a new world for me. If that's you, or if you know someone who's involved in that world, please contact me at trevor [at] neutraoat.com .
What causes the buildup in plasticity in the body then? How does it seep into the water supply.
33. If you wanted to maintain the taboo against a President invoking Art II authority against a SCOTUS decision, then it should have been enforced against Pres Biden when he ignored a SCOTUS decision to do student loan forgiveness - and bragged about it.
Nobody on the right is going to listen to complaints about "due process" when millions of illegal aliens were let in with zero vetting or process. The "process" that is "due" to an illegal alien is deportation. This applies to roughly every single procedural complaint against Pres Trump; there is a Pres. Biden analogue ready at hand. Remember when Barack Obama drone striked an American citizen? Where were the calls for vigilante justice and armed insurrection then?
I remember a lot of tsking, i.e. quietly negative remarks, about that Obama example, and the big difference is that Obama didn't loudly defend it and seek to replicate it.
Yes, if you're quite about it and have most of the media apparatus biased in your favor, you can get away with a lot more.
There's no "get away with it" about this. Did you miss the part where I wrote "didn't ... seek to replicate it"? Trump does.
This is some variant of 'isolated demand for rigor'. Obama killed an American Citizen, went quiet, and didn't ever say anything that I've heard about, about not doing it ever again. I think he considered that a valid tool in his toolbox and haven't heard anything strong statements to the contrary.
Trump and Co. have said quite a lot about the need to deport at scale to fix what they see as an emergency caused by, and the responsibility of, the prior administration. Side effects of that would likewise be the responsibility of the prior administration due to the impossibility of providing due process at the scale needed to remedy the problem.
"Due process" , let's just discard because it's difficult.
Remember the bipartisan bill that Trump told the Republicans to withdraw their support from? That was going to add a whole ton more enforcement and judges so that we could deal with the immigration issue while providing "due process." But Trump the candidate wanted the issue and his solution the 10+ million illegal immigrants is deporting 200 people who may or may not be illegally in the US to a foreign prison.
The prior administration DDOSed the current adminstration with at least 5,000,000 illegal immigrants imported into the country. There are ~700 immigration judges in specific locations scattered around the country and each trial . What is the reasonable remedy you propose to the current administration who were elected with broad support to undo this, which would scale feasibly? What specific error rate is acceptable, recognizing that courts and due process all have non-zero error rates as well?
Obama didn't have to say anything about not doing it again, to differentiate himself from Trump. All he needed to do was refrain from boasting about it and seeking to replicate it. Big difference.
The defense you postulate for Trump would be slightly more believable if he were taking any care at all to limit his deportations to those he says he's trying to deport. It would also be slightly more believable if he weren't pretending to make obeisance to the need for due process while actually evading it. In other words, he knows he's doing wrong, he knows he's lying.
Also this entire argument is dumb because Trump ordered a raid that killed his 8yo American half-sister almost immediately after taking office. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Nawar_al-Awlaki
>I think he considered that a valid tool in his toolbox and haven't heard anything strong statements to the contrary.
I think he realized it was a tool that would generate too much blowback to be worth the bother, and I haven't heard any strong statements to the contrary.
Since AFIK he *didn't do it ever again*, does it matter which is true?
People will tolerate a single injustice where they won't tolerate an ongoing pattern of injustice. They will forget what isn't being talked about and focus on what is. And they are right to do so. If you're concerned about maintaining a taboo or setting a precedent, it's the things that happen repeatedly and openly and to cries of "we meant to do that!" that are *most* important. Since nobody has the bandwidth to fight and win every battle, those are the ones to prioritize.
Also, it is entirely possible to provide due process at the scale necessary to remedy the immigration policy. It isn't even all that expensive. It does require *some* effort, and it does require acknowledging that yes, due process is a requirement, and that's apparently too much for the Donald.
Did he not seek to replicate it because of the relatively small amount of quiet complaining, or because it was an unusual and rare situation that didn't necessarily need replication on a regular basis?
If a "relatively small amount of quiet complaining" was enough to keep him from replicating it, that itself vastly differentiates himself from Trump, who isn't stopped by very loud protests. I'm not trying to defend Obama's action here, just inoculating against "whataboutism".
Per above, Trump was elected on a platform to specifically undo the immigration behavior of his predecessor. This differs from Obama being elected on a platform of drone striking American citizens abroad. What remedy should Trump pursue to remove ~5,000,000 illegal immigrants that scales and has acceptably low error rates?
That's half the question. Was that enough, or were there simply no other American citizens in positions to be drone-struck? That's the distinction. Doing it once and stopping because you recognize the error of your ways is importantly distinct from doing it once because there was only one situation where it was needed.
Was Obama punished for illegally killing a US citizen? If no, then he did get away with it.
I don't think anybody said he didn't "get away with it" (which implies he did it deliberately). The discussion was over comparing his attitude towards it with Trump's.
You said "there's no 'get away with it' about this", which implies he didn't get away with it, surely?
>which implies he did it deliberately
I'm not sure it's possible to accidentally order a drone strike on someone, is it?
When you say 'most of the media apparatus', what are you talking about? The top most watched programs, podcasts, youtubers, etc. are all distinctly right leaning. More generally, the GOP has control of the presidency, house, senate, and SCOTUS, so why are you still acting like the GOP is the underdog?
I'm not acting like they're the underdog, I'm acting like they've had minimal cultural influence for about 40 years and that there's an incredible level of traditional media bias against them. "New media" is a weird, amorphous, heavily siloed set of phenomena still early in development and reach.
Also the GOP does not have "control" of SCOTUS. You think a GOP-controlled SCOTUS would've written Bostock? Or would've written the loopholes into Harvard v SFFA like Roberts did to ensure they can keep discriminating?
Joe Rogan is very popular, yes. Until *literally this election*, nobody in the government (or any other government) took him or his supporters seriously. The NYT gets taken seriously, and for some psychotic reason they're pushing violent morons like Piker now. There's a whole ecosystem of established traditional media that gets taken seriously and keeps out newcomers (like, again until quite recently, who gets access to the White House media room was decided in large part by the Associated Press).
Podcasts and youtubes may have lots of subscribers, but most of them are wildly siloed. They don't, as the kids say, *build*. They have no organized goals. They grift to enrich themselves and their sponsors.
> If you wanted to maintain the taboo against a President invoking Art II authority against a SCOTUS decision, then it should have been enforced against Pres Biden when he ignored a SCOTUS decision to do student loan forgiveness - and bragged about it.
Accepting this framing for the sake of argument, there is a profound difference in subject. Biden's decision was concerned with how the government managed its money, whereas the Trump decision affects the basic right of people to liberty and freedom from imprisonment.
Both the common law and US constitution independently protect the right of habeas corpus, independently of statute law.
> Nobody on the right is going to listen to complaints about "due process" when millions of illegal aliens were let in with zero vetting or process. The "process" that is "due" to an illegal alien is deportation.
You're begging the question here and also ignoring inconvenient law.
First, it takes a proper hearing to determine whether a human person in custody is in fact an illegal alien. People don't come with their immigration status stamped on their foreheads.
Second, US law provides far greater ground to remain in the country than a bare 'illegal aliens are bad' statement would suggest. The law permits applications for asylum, and once filed 'due process' requires a fair and impartial hearing of that claim. The law also independently prevents removals in some circumstances, which again trigger 'due process' rights. It's fair to disagree with the benefit of these legal entitlements, but such changes *must* go through Congress.
Third, the US appears to be playing fast and loose with legal residents as well, including revocation of study permits for speech-based reasons followed by prompt deportation with no or only cursory hearings.
> Remember when Barack Obama drone striked an American citizen? Where were the calls for vigilante justice and armed insurrection then?
There were plenty of right-wing militias who vehemently disagreed with a variety of Obama-era actions.
More profoundly, there's also a difference between a one-off bad action from a government and systematically bad actions from government. Doing a bad thing is bad, but a bad thing done once can often be handled through ordinary channels.
Doing a bad thing repeatedly is a sign that the system is broken and that normal feedback mechanisms aren't working, so extraordinary correction might be necessary.
Remember, vigilante justice and armed insurrection are generally bad things. We shouldn't call for them lightly, but it's easier to exercise restraint when we can also be confident that the other branches of government are still functioning.
"Changing a bunch of numbers in digital bank accounts that the government owns is equal to snatching people off the street and sending them to a foreign gulag." Is that the argument you are going with?
Also, the drone strikes didn't stop after Obama left. Trump increased them in his first term but removed the public reporting that the Obama defense department did.
Drone striking American citizens? Citation please. Drone strikes in general are for better or worse an element of war going forward.
Not sure what you're asking. The Obama administration argued fairly successfully that American citizenship was no barrier to the strike that killed Al-Awlaki per standard war powers of the Executive. That was certainly a major escalation in terms of black-letter policy, but IMO a correct one; the only real novel part was specifying an individual ahead of time. Unless I missed something, no following president has repudiated that power.
If we are saying this can happen and due process in this case is different than due process for 'normal' American citizens then where does this sit relative to claims of necessary due process over Garcia, who was not an American citizen and saw 17 judges during his various treks through the court system while here?
What makes Trump uniquely bad in this regard vs Obama, and what are the limiting principles that define bad behavior and good behavior? Is it just 'they got re-elected so it was good'? Might makes right?
If this is purely a political discussion then this group should not wrap themselves in the cloak of due process and the law. If it is a legal discussion, which of these, if either, was legally based?
No if. American citizens have specifically been targeted for death via military action, and died as a result - matter of public record under Obama, less sure about the details under Trump but that's the "removed the public reporting" element in play. Drone strikes *did* markedly decrease under Biden but that's another topic entirely.
What constitutes due process is a contextual thing, to perhaps a surprising extent. What an executive can order the military to do to a specific individual in the context of a military campaign is *very* different from what the executive can order law enforcement to do domestically. (No, nobody serious is buying the "invasion" rhetoric.)
"Contextual" does not mean "whatever I feel like".
>Changing a bunch of numbers in digital bank accounts that the government owns
You took out the loan you pay back the loan.
Of course. But "forgiving a loan" and "shipping people off to be tortured in foreign prison" are two different things and one is word than the other.
This argument is falling into the one case is a tragedy, a million cases is a statistics.
A number I saw for Biden’s loan forgiveness program is $188 billion with a B. PEPFAR, the program that many of the left decried when its budget was temporarily suspended in the USAID kerfuffle has an annual budget of $6.5 billion. How many PEPFARs can be funded with $188 billion?
0
PEPFAR was started by a Republican president and has been lauded for more than a decade for saving millions of lives at comparatively low cost.
Trump/Musk killed it anyway. It only survives because the courts stepped in.
If Biden had funneled another 20 billion into PEPFAR or made a similar program.... Trump still would have tried to kill it.
As you said, PEPFAR is a rounding error in a the federal budget.
I am pointing out PEPFAR as a program that does good and I support. I would support efforts to get the valuable parts re-instated on a more permanent basis. Trump only reinstated it on a temporary basis, which might have lapsed.
I was making the argument that $188 billion is alot of money and there are always trade-offs. $188 billion for student loan relief vs $188 billion for PEPFAR like programs.
Biden could have renewed it for the usual 5-year period instead of only one year. Perhaps that wouldn't be enough to save it, but I think it would have helped.
You must not be a fan of Trump and all his bankruptcies, then!
Yeah, I'm not a fan of Trump.
not how it works for any other category of loan
you charge interest, you accept risk
The second order effect of "changing a bunch of numbers in digital bank accounts" is pretty significant inflation, which has all kinds of negative effects on its own.
Foreign gulag is still worse, but "student loan forgiveness" is effectively printing massive amounts of money, not merely changing a few unimportant numbers.
I'm fascinated by the theory of mind of people who legitimately believe that Biden's 4 years in office means we no longer live in civilized society and that we've returned to a hobbesian state of nature where anything is fair game.
Can you explain your position more? Also, where do you get your news / information?
I can't speak for OP, but I think it's more like the right wing has a laundry list of specific violations the left wing committed during the Biden years, and if Democrats didn't hold Biden accountable for those violations, they're not willing to hold Trump accountable for them. It's just tit-for-tat.
(That's why OP says, "This applies to roughly every single procedural complaint against Pres Trump; there is a Pres. Biden analogue ready at hand.")
The easiest way, I think, to understand this sentiment on the right is to look into the Trump 34 felonies case. A lot of the right-wing arguments about left-wing norm violations are pretty weak, but this one is understandable.
Did you know that the specific crimes he was charged with in that case can't conceptually exist unless he's guilty of some initial crime? They're all "add-ons". Look into it. And, if you can, try and find out when he was charged, tried and convicted of that initial crime.
You won't be able to, because he wasn't. The New York court assumed, without anybody having tried or convicted him, that he was guilty of the initial campaign finance violation, and then convicted him of 34 additional felonies that depended on it. Now, apparently, there are complicated legal reasons why this wasn't technically a violation of Trump's constitutional right to due process.
But, also, they did this during the 2024 Presidential campaign, like 8 years after the events being litigated took place; and nobody else has ever been charged with that combination of statutes. Unique legal theory; convenient politicized timing; dependence on being considered guilty of an untried crime...
It's super fishy. I mean, common sense says Trump is obviously guilty; but the whole idea of due process is that common sense shouldn't come into it.
So anyway, from the Republican perspective, if they can do it to Trump, and get away with it (which, so far, they have) then they'll do it to any Republican they want. Which means that, de facto, Republicans don't have the right to a trial. They watched their chosen avatar punished for a crime he never got to defend himself against in court. And there are tons of other (less convincing) examples of right-wing people being denied due process, enough for them to make a long, systematic-looking list.
So why shouldn't ICE do to some random member of MS-13 what the State of New York did to Trump? Same-same, one set of rules. When Democrats object to ICE violating due process, it sounds to Republicans like they're advocating a two-tier system of justice: non-citizen human traffickers are first-class citizens who deserve full due process rights, while native-born Republican presidential candidates are second-class citizens who don't.
In my opinion, their primary motivation is not wanting to be second-class citizens. They have these long lists in their minds of stuff that they've been complaining about for years; and everybody laughed at them and treated them like idiots, and the Democrats got away with it. So now, when Trump does that same stuff, and Democrats complain about it? They laugh.
(I myself don't agree with this, I have a more complex view; the Republicans often are idiots who deserve to be laughed at. Many of their complaints are stupid. I'm not trying to defend the Republicans here; just explain them. ICE obviously ought to respect due process; and the 34 felonies verdict will probably eventually be overturned by a higher court -- so it's not actually the example of systematic due process denial they want it to be.)
As a final note, I would guess that the way to appeal to these people is to address the past. They feel like victims, and liberals who want to convince them of stuff would get really far just by acknowledging their feeling of pain. They have a lot of pride, and many of them would be offended to see me framing it this way. But, I think if you were to start your appeal to them with "Trump shouldn't have been convicted of those 34 felonies; it was a due process violation, and it should be overturned", or "it was a miscarriage of justice for the FBI to lie to the FISA court in 2016", then they would probably listen to you advocate for due process for undocumented immigrants. But their basic assumption is that all liberals agree with denying due process to Trump, and so if you go straight into advocating for it for undocumented immigrants, they'll ignore you because they think you're a hypocrite.
The shorter answer is that Republicans are delusional and consistently lie about reality. When Trump runs for a 3rd term their response will be "Democrats shouldn't have tried to steal the 2020 election." The moron original commenter thinks Biden defied a Supreme Court order that was as general as "All student loan debt forgiveness is unconstitutional" and there were 0 contempt inquiries into it. There is no reaching these people because they don't live in reality.
>The New York court assumed, without anybody having tried or convicted him, that he was guilty of the initial campaign finance violation, and then convicted him of 34 additional felonies that depended on it.
This is a pathetic misinterpretation. Cohen pled guilty in 2018. The Trump trial was about proving Trump aided him by falsifying business records, which elevated the misdemeanor counts to felonies, because he was falsifying business records while aiding someone in committing another crime. https://codes.findlaw.com/ny/penal-law/pen-sect-175-10/ There's no complicated legal reasoning here, you are just not living in reality and are ruining this country with your willful ignorance/lying.
I'd encourage anybody who's interested in the details to look at:
https://www.nycourts.gov/LegacyPDFS/press/PDFs/People%20v.%20DJT%20Jury%20Instructions%20and%20Charges%20FINAL%205-23-24.pdf
and make up your mind for yourself! I don't think TheKoopaKing's reading of the case is accurate, but who cares what we think? You're able to settle for yourself whether the predicate crime was supposed to have been committed by Trump or by Cohen.
And, more importantly, you should decide for yourself whether the legal reasoning involved matches your idea of due process; and whether you'd like ICE to apply similar reasoning. This is the particular "whatabout" connection that's happening in right-wing minds, which I'm trying to illuminate.
Since I'm trying to build bridges and foster mutual understanding here, I'm not going to get mad at TheKoopaKing's insults. Particularly since his or her ire seems to be directed at Republicans, who I'm not particularly interested in defending or identifying with. Besides, I feel like he or she has made a few of my points for me; so I'll be content to sign off here.
>I don't think TheKoopaKing's reading of the case is accurate
It's not just my reading; it's the judge's, the entire jury's, all of news media's that isn't just Republican outrage slop. Anybody who is a moderately normal person is capable of reaching the conclusion that Trump is guilty and that there was no malfeasance in the trial besides Trump violating gag orders by attacking family members of the involved attorneys on social media. It's only Republicans who willingly and carelessly lie that each trial brought against Trump was corrupt and illegitimate and become kindergarteners with respect to their ability to read and interpret laws. Like I said in my initial response - there is no respectable contention provided here that the legal authority Trump was indicted and convicted on - directing Cohen to pay off a pornstar by falsifying business records - was illegitimate. Here is a list of numerous other cases where convictions were secured according to the same statute: https://www.justsecurity.org/85605/survey-of-past-new-york-felony-prosecutions-for-falsifying-business-records/ Saying the court trial was questionable is just a blatant lie that no reasonable person would ever reach or seriously try to pass off as a reasonable question after this has already been litigated in excruciating public detail.
Koopa is out of line imo, and I appreciate you for playing devils advocate.
That said, even if I thought this particular case was total baloney and was just the left trying to get at Trump, Trump was also dead to rights doing obviously bad things in 3 other cases of increasing severity. Those were:
- storing classified documents at mar-a-lago (and bragging about it?!)
- election interference in Georgia
- attempting to stay in power and overturn the results of an election (!!!)
No one ever seems to mention these, and it is WILD that the last one isn't disqualifying! The latter three cases didn't progress fast enough, and they all got dropped because it was the DOJ that was prosecuting them (which obviously was not going to continue the prosecution of their new boss), but he was obviously, brazenly guilty!
I agree that the NY state case has way less meat on it than what I would like to see for prosecuting a presidential candidate, and if that was the only thing that Trump was being prosecuted for of I'd be marching in the streets with the Grand Ol' Party for the obvious political lawfare. But I get the feeling that most people are either forgetting the other three cases out of convenience OR they never knew about them because their epistemological systems didn't have any way for that information to get through.
In the wider context of the other cases Trump was indicted for, I cannot take seriously anyone who is like "well I voted for Trump specifically because I thought the Dems were breaking norms". That was wayyyyyyy gone after J6 / the eastman plot. It's like getting Al Capone on tax charges -- no one thinks that was a violation of norms because it was obvious to everyone who was paying attention what Capone was up to.
Okay, so, you're pretty much at the same place as a right-wing person is at, with the polarity flipped. Liberals are like, "well I voted for Harris specifically because I thought the Republicans were breaking norms" and conservatives don't take them seriously. The conservative list will be something like Russiagate / Covid restriction disparities / 2020 election / Biden dementia coverup. To them, it's laughable to think the Democrats would uphold democratic norms.
Here's a thread outlining that perspective from 2021:
https://x.com/martyrmade/status/1413165168956088321
I don't condone this poster, I think he's insane about a bunch of stuff (although he has put out some darn good history podcasts). But that was the mega-viral thread that pretty much the whole right wing agreed with. And, say what you will, that final sentence is chilling, given the context of the 2024 election.
I guess what I'm trying to communicate is that, the place you're at, where you think Trump is a danger to democracy? Conservatives were mostly in that place already, well before January 6. They lived through a period of severe disillusionment during which they found out that they were naive idiots for thinking that Democrats would obey the norms they learned in civics class. And now that Trump is in power, Democrats are trying to shame them over those same norms.
My hope is that the next President will, explicitly and transparently, give up some power and advantage in order to re-establish the norms that have been exploded; and then that the next President of the other party will uphold that deal.
I remember that thread, and I remember what I thought at the time too after I looked into some of the claims: "lol it's all bullshit". I don't mean that to denigrate on people who got confused, because the noise looks convincing, but _it was and is still noise_. I'm reminded of Scott talking about degrees of freedom (https://open.substack.com/pub/astralcodexten/p/contra-kavanaugh-on-fideism?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=5sutf). People will point to things like "it can't be a coincidence that these underwater rocks look like chiseled brick, it must be Atlantis!" And, no, it's actually just a coincidence.
The same is true here. You don't need any crazy coordination to understand why Trump -- who even in 2016 was way past the norm of every politician who came before him -- would create an environment that *looks* conspiratorial in the normal interactions everyone has with him. Hanhania said something similar recently: that Trump behaves so far outside the norm that our existing systems bend and break. Even the worst of the Russia stuff was because Trump's team was doing legitimately shady stuff with Russia! (And frankly given how the Ukraine stuff has turned out, even I find myself wondering whether there was more truth to those conspiracies than I'd given credit for in the past).
I think epistemology is hard in the modern world, and I'm sympathetic to people who get caught following their empirical institutions down incorrect rabbit holes. But just because the Chinese Robber Fallacy happens a lot doesn't mean it's not a fallacy.
Look, I'm historically a centrist. I never thought our left wing was any more pure than the GOP. But the GOP is dead, it had its face eaten by MAGA. And even though I'm a centrist, I'm first and foremost an engineer and scientist. MAGA isn't a political party, it's a death cult. It is deeply uninterested in truth seeking or scientific process or even doing what's best for the country. There are a million things maga could be doing to actually be strategic about its goals. It could isolate China with hard tariffs while increasing exports from Vietnam. It could massively increase funding for immigration judges and use technology to streamline asylum applications. It could create manufacturing jobs through local defense spending initiatives. And instead of doing anything like that, it's just destroying things in the dumbest way possible.
Based on my conversations with dozens of MAGAs, the only goal is vengeance, at any cost. And the problem I have with that opinion is that it's based on something that is at best a misunderstanding and at worst a malicious attempt by cynical counter elites to grab power (Andreessen, Thiel, Musk, and Murdoch have much to answer for). I voted for Harris because it was obvious after J6 just what kind of person Trump was. The problem is, for a certain class of person, that was exactly why they voted for him. "He's a bastard but he's our bastard"
To be clear, though, I think the average trump supporter is just misinformed. Most Trump supporters I end up talking to are very online and politically engaged. The average trump supporter is like my friends mom in Ohio, who voted for Trump entirely because he said "he would make the economy better". I don't blame her either -- you have one candidate being (more or less) honest and one candidate lying through is teeth. The voter isn't informed enough to know the difference. That's why I spend time arguing here -- in the hopes of piercing some part of the epistemological bubble people seem to be in.
Just want to note that it's not *all* BS, lots of the specific factual claims he makes in the thread are true. The TIME magazine article he refers to is real, the election-related clause of the Constitution he refers to is real, the FBI did lie to the FISA court; that was litigated in court and they lost. I saw the Hunter Biden laptop story censorship happen myself; friends' Facebook posts about it were just blipping out of existence.
The narrative he puts those facts into is another thing entirely. Caveat emptor. But I wouldn't like somebody in the future reading this to think it was all a matter of invented facts.
Are you entirely sure and certain that 'Nobody on the right is going to listen to complaints about "due process' is the argument you want to lead with? There's a lot of other things that are infantile and foolish about your post, and we can get into the specifics of it, sure.
Just: to be clear on this point, are you entirely sure you know what you are suggesting here? Have you actually thought about what that means? I get that it can be fun and charming to boldly declare that you are not interested in petty concerns of the law, because [big important thing] must be done [now] otherwise [bad nogood thing] occurs and so we shall ignore due process!
Just keep in mind: An illegal immigrant, by definition, as in, the meaning of language itself, cannot be illegal if there is no process by which to determine this. You lose the ability to declare them illegal at all if you abandon the conceit of laws. There is no legality in that world.
Giving up on the concept of rules and a law abiding society does not lead to the place you think it does, and the (seeming) rampaging hordes of millions you are so concerned with would appear to have a sizable advantage in deciding the outcome of any dispute if you abandon the conceit of dispute resoluton via legal abitration and due process.
That invokes, by its shape, what we might call 'alternative means of dispute resolution'.
You probably do not wish to leave in that world.
I agree with everything you say. I just wish these principles were applied equally to all.
Does the point that due process is meant to protect YOU not resonate with you at all? Due process exists to protect the rights of everyone, not just the people currently being subject to it. Once it starts to erode, your chances of being denied due process go up, because we have already conceded that in some circumstances it is permissible to do without it, and now we are just arguing about what those are.
I much prefer the world in which we don't argue about that at all.
I think there is an unstated racial element — it’s okay to forego due process, when it comes to people whose skin color is different from mine.
"Does the point that due process is meant to protect YOU not resonate with you at all?"
No, no it doesn't. At least not for a substantial portion of the right. This isn't even trying to argue with you; you can just google "Anarcho Tyranny" and find a lot of conservative writing that boils down to "laws will be maliciously enforced against conservatives and not enforced against liberals". Right or wrong, you're appealing to defense of common rights that a lot of conservatives no longer believe they have.
As whether those are valid...
At the personal level, kinda. Most college kids and corporate workers in the 2010s were very familiar with unjust enforcement of corporate policies and rules against certain groups. More generally though, I think a lot of it and almost all of the more serious stuff involving cops is more people reading malicious intent into deeply dysfunctional bureaucratic systems. Like, even if you're a good person, if you talk to the cops, you should have a lawyer. Not because they're out to get you or they're bad people, more because they're kinda out to get everyone because the system is deeply misaligned.
At the more general level...it was not terribly subtle when Covid lockdowns were an urgent requirement that overruled all other considerations until BLM came along. Some things trump quarantine and some don't. More generally, the ATF seems to be an absolute mess and might be, literally, inventing felonies.
And finally, at the top level, as I will never cease to remind people, that the FBI lied to the FISA courts in 2016 and 2017 in order to wiretap Carter Page and, by extension, the Trump campaign. (1) This is not controversial, the FBI has admitted it, no relevant party doubts it or disputes it. If you're Trump or a Trump staffer, do you believe the FBI and other federal law enforcement will provide you proper due process when they have a proven history of not doing it. And if you're a Trump voter, how are you supposed to interpret this?
(1) https://apnews.com/secretive-fisa-court-rebukes-fbi-over-errors-in-russia-probe-bf5b3cfee4930501ca86242f446f353e
I'm a bit confused about what right you think has been taken away from conservatives. Are they not getting due process anymore? If so, in what circumstances?
I'm not exactly rebuffing your examples. They aren't false. But I'm not sure they're an example of "due process" not being afforded to conservatives in some systemic manner. It's some selective weaponization of law enforcement, and that's bad, but that's not the same as due process.
What difference do you think there is between selective enforcement and due process? Not like an own, I googled the difference and the 3rd thing that came up is this from the American Bar (1):
" A recognized defense in non-tax prosecutions, both federal and state, is that the Government discriminatorily and invidiously targeted the defendant....The defense is constitutional in nature, implicating the Equal Protection and Due Process guarantees"
There absolutely might be some technical distinction you're drawing there but it's a pretty fine line.
More generally, I suspect you'd get more benefit from reading around a bit for the general conservative vibe than my own weird opinions. I see a lot of stuff like this:
https://chrisbray.substack.com/p/when-government-is-endlessly-intrusive
with quotes like this:
"This is Blue Zone governance, full stop, the thing people describe as anarcho-tyranny. Common San Francisco business owner experience: Police don’t intervene in the constant vandalism and tagging that degrades business property, but the highly alert army of code enforcement officers fine business owners for failing to clean up the damage that the city hasn’t prevented."
Because you're asking why due process doesn't resonate with people and, well, I see a lot of people, some quite important, treating due process and equitable treatment as dead letter. (2)
(1) https://www.americanbar.org/content/dam/aba/publishing/aba_tax_times/08win/07-ptr.pdf
(2) https://x.com/pmarca/status/1821448118917033989?lang=en
“Here’s some unrelated examples of bad policing/policy enforcement that I don’t like… so basically habeas corpus is dead to me and the executive can summarily banish anyone they want to a third party county”
Where am I reading your argument wrong?
Basically that you're confusing my personal argument with the general public's argument and the general public's argument is usually...kinda dumb. So I'm trying not to motte-and-bailey you.
A safe example is probably Russiagate.
There's a strict case that Russia made moves to interfere with the election with the intent of helping Trump, mostly through various fairly marginal online activities. Which is probably true but was not what motivated most people.
There's also a very loose case that Trump and Putin literally and directly conspired against Hillary Clinton. Which was what genuinely motivated tens of millions of people and is also almost certainly not true.
But it wouldn't be fair to pretend that tens of millions of people were deeply concerned about marginal election interference, even though that charge is overwhelmingly more likely to be true.
Likewise, I think I laid out the more strictly true case in my first post but I also included the second because it's indicative of, no shade to Chris Bray, the more popular and less defensible case that really motivates dramatically more people.
Don't confuse the weird autistic strict arguments you see here with the general epistemic horror show that actually influences real people is all I'm saying.
>Pres Biden when he ignored a SCOTUS decision to do student loan forgiveness
Except that didn't happen. Biden did exactly what Trump did re the "Muslim ban" -- when his initial version was struck down, he enacted a narrower version, and then a narrower one, until one finally passed muster. There is nothing wrong with that.
>when millions of illegal aliens were let in with zero vetting or process.
Not what happened. "Under Biden, DHS made over 5 million arrests in its first 26.3 months, and it removed nearly 2.6 million—51 percent—while releasing only 49 percent." https://www.cato.org/blog/new-data-show-migrants-were-more-likely-be-released-trump-biden The ones who were "let in" were those who were given notices to appear in immigration court.
>The "process" that is "due" to an illegal alien is deportation.
No, the process due to an illegal alien is deportation PROCEEDINGS. Because the law is very clear that not all persons in the country illegally are subject to deportation. They might, for example, be eligible for asylum, or for withholding of removal.
The crazy thing is, Trump is deporting people every single day. Many thousands. But he screwed up in a few instances and rather than fix that problem he's doubling down.
He did not screw up, him or his Cabinet members are directing ICE and DoD to deport people without due process. The AEA proclamation was handed to ICE before it was made public - when the AEA requires the President to make the proclamation publicly to avoid these sorts of secret arrests. Further, the apprehended subjects were removed without the possibility for judicial review - the direct intention of secretly alerting ICE before the public. These were all intentional illegal removals. Since then ICE has testified in court that DoD removed other subjects because the DoD was not formally enjoined in the court proceeding. These aren't mistakes, the Trump admin is criminally directing ICE topdown to break the law.
"complaints about "due process" when millions of illegal aliens were let in with zero vetting or process"
I think ... it *might* even be more than just the right, which has noticed this - which I guess is why we must all be made to swallow, very forcibly, the most extreme and ludicrous example, of a tatted-up Salvadoran wife-beater as the reason the brief experiment with deportations must come to a stop, and never be revived.
Nobody is saying you can't deport people. You just have to follow the process. This is a matter of what is legal for the government to do. We all should have a vested interest in making sure the government is operating without total impunity, it is what safeguards everyone from the impossible power of the federal government, which could be used to enforce anything at any time if not for the constraints that are meant to hold it.
Plenty of people are saying you can't deport people. In fact, in much the same way that the same folks who would have once been in solidarity with Occupying Wall Street are complaining about the stock market tanking (immediate increase in societal equity!) and grousing that it is only so because MAGA are too stupid and poor to have portfolios - are in fact reddit-commenting that they need to deport themselves the sooner to another country because of the deportations!
Of course the judiciary is trying to shut it down. What have we been arguing about the last eight or 10 years? Don't toy with us. I'm not toying with you when I say that my side on the issue feels precisely the same, that years, indeed decades, of cumulative actions have been taken with utter impunity, that led us to this pass.
Who is saying you can't deport people? I don't mean some random reddit comment that reflects the views of a tiny slice of the population. I mean public figures, party playforms, media outlets, anything public. You can find any view you want on the internet in some tiny community, but the view that you can't deport people at all is essentially so minor that it's not worth discussing. Biden even deported millions, he just let millions of others in.
The debate is about the process, and Trump is using a novel, and potentiality abusive, process that deprives immigrants of a hearing they are entitled to have by law, as confirmed by the Supreme Court of the United States.
There's an easy counterargument to this:
https://babylonbee.com/news/people-who-bypassed-legal-process-in-migrating-to-usa-demand-due-process-before-being-kicked-out
Of course, your argument also implies that innocent people will get scooped up; "those who got in without due process shall be sent out without it" presumes that set of people is universally known with certainty.
OTOH, innocent people were getting victimized by open borders policy. So there's also this sense of a bleeding wound requiring first aid, and that aid might hurt more cells. So you'd also need to demonstrate that that due process is worth letting US society bleed out further, and if it turns out you believe the US isn't in that kind of danger (common among people who believe the US can be a haven to the poor, the tired, the yearning to be free), you'll have a very hard time making that case.
Due process exists for the protection of all of us. It is not given based on anything you want or demand or who you are in any way. It exists specifically to bypass any of those concerns. It doesn't matter what they did. Does a murderer not get due process because they killed someone? Surely that's a bigger issue than hopping the border? Of course they do. Because due process prevents mistakes. It creates gaps in the enactment of law where you can plead a case, and those are the only things that protect the innocent. We have trials for the guilty even when it is obvious, because sometimes it seems obvious when it is later proven not to be.
See my reply to Chris.
>Due process exists for the protection of all of us.
Mostly, but this isn't just a binary choice.
Personally, I want ICE to be _very_ careful to distinguish between citizens, green card holders (permanent resident aliens?), valid visa holders, and all-other-aliens. Say at the 0.1% level of accuracy (who am I kidding, can the Trump administration do _anything_ at the 0.1% level?...).
But then distinguishing which of the all-other-aliens have e.g. fully valid asylum claims, and which of them do not might be at a different, perhaps sloppier level. Maybe 20%?
I don't know what is actually feasible here. Anyone have real information?
But there surely are tradeoffs between time spent per person and accuracy, and the tradeoffs can be set differently at different stages in determining someone's status.
Be careful with your numbers. 0.1% failure rate in distinguishing citizens frm others means 300,000 Americans getting deported.
The tradeoffs are currently a big part of the debate. If there were no tradeoffs - for example, ICE could reduce its error rate by 90% with no additional expenditure or impact on anyone's rights - then doing so would of course be a non-issue. They'd just do it as soon as they learned it was an option.
In reality, anything ICE changes policy-wise carries a cost in retooling and maintenance, just like any other organization. That part is eclipsed in the debate by the rights impact, since that's what draws all the clicks. In this case, the impact is not just to people being considered for deportation, but also the rights of people who aren't at risk of deportation, but are at risk of predation by people who happen to be here illegally. One side says that risk is high, and borne completely by actual citizens in order to spare the rights of a smaller number of non-citizens, who shouldn't get priority over actual citizens. The other side says that risk is small or nonexistent; rights of deportation targets are the dominant factor.
That's a terrible counterargument. It boils down to an argument against all due process and a return to pre-modern justice systems. "Murderer who bypassed laws demands due process before being executed," "Thief who bypassed laws demands due process before having hand chopped off". Haha, silly criminals.
Yes. The murder rate in the 90s was off the charts compared to now. Easy to make the same "bleeding out" argument then and just throw the suspects in prison without trial. But we didn't, and we're better off for it.
Shaked Koplewitz makes the argument below (search for "there is a genuine problem"). You're using "due process is valuable" as if it means due process is infinitely valuable. It should be easy to see how leaning on it can deprive you of everything else (or save you, at everyone else's expense).
To those continuing to argue "due process", I'm curious: how long do you think that due process would take? This is not a rhetorical question. Maybe it's minutes; maybe it's years. I suspect that in one or two cases, it was a day, or would have been, and the administration was moving faster than it should have.
But the way I see it, "due process" is a term we can taboo. If it would have taken only a day or less, then the argument to make isn't "follow due process"; it's "it would have taken only a day to check; why didn't you?". And if it would have taken longer, then it becomes clearer why they didn't do that - people were using "due process" to exploit the system. (Someone earlier referred to it as DDoSing the US.)
The timeframe is not what is at issue. It is that only during a hearing could you present evidence to contradict what the government is claiming. Without a hearing there is no way to plead your case.
I in fact believe the whole immigration system needs a big overhaul, a higher budget, more judges to hear more cases, etc. etc. The system takes too long as is. But that doesn't mean you get to bypass it just because you think it's inefficient. It is the only mechanism that allows you to fight back against the federal government's decisions, decisions that can be, and sometimes are, very wrong and harmful.
"The timeframe is not what is at issue."
Suppose the timeframe is a year. We have P people able to do due process to a maybe-US-citizen, and I immigrants. Total immigrants processable per year is P, and if P < I, then the system grinds shut. Every time you claim the timeframe doesn't matter, you pretty quickly lose anyone who understands how slow the government works.
As you say, it probably needs an overhaul. What if that overhaul requires a reduction in the amount of due process done? Possibly to the level currently performed in some of these cases you're talking about now? You mention increasing the judge count; how are you going to pay for their training? And their salaries afterward?
I'll say the same thing I said to Chris: you're treating "due process" like some talisman with infinite weight. You can claim it's what we should do, until the cows come home. But reality gets final say, and what you're probably going to see is immigration services being paid small fortunes to still not keep up with demand, or compromises that will look pretty close to what we're seeing now, or the whole system just comes apart and no one gets due-anything.
This is legally incorrect, and for obvious reasons.
Let's say one has immigrated illegally to the U.S. ICE picks him up. There is a prescribed process and hearing, that is true. But now let's say the determination is made that, yes, he is not entitled to be in the U.S. and can be deported at will, but he is released temporarily pending later deportation.
Then ICE picks him up again. He has a deportation order. But he says ",Wait, actually, I'm here legally." Is another hearing required?
Let's say we give him that hearing too. The deportation order is upheld. Then he says "Wait, I claim asylum." Another hearing?
Let's say he gets that too. His deportation order is upheld again and ICE lays hands on him again to transport him. Now he says "You've got the wrong guy. Mistaken identity." Is another hearing required?
You see the issue. What process is "due" depends on statute, and as one would imagine, the amount "due" gets smaller and smaller as the process continues. At some point, it is simply not true that "a hearing [] to plead your case" is required. And yes, sometimes that endpoint will lead to errors. It doesn't mean that due process has been violated.
I think one of the interesting issues is that this framing misses more or less the whole point? Though I grant that's obviously my opinion, so I could be wrong.
If you take it in terms, it becomes easier to see.
" How long do you do you think the process should take " -- > As long as is legally mandated. Caveat: If unworkable, propose broad-scale large adjustments to the rules. Do not break and violate the rules.
" But the way I see it, "due process" is a term we can taboo. " --> Sure.
"If it would have taken only a day or less, then the argument to make isn't "follow due process"; it's "it would have taken only a day to check; why didn't you?" " --> This is the same question and statement, though. They didn't, because they did not want to, and them not wanting to and making trivial mistakes is avoided by taking a day / week / month to check. Which, again, they do not want to do. And so do not.
"And if it would have taken longer, then it becomes clearer why they didn't do that - people were using "due process" to exploit the system. " --> Were they? What makes you so certain of this? What evidence do you have to reach this conclusion? You didn't check! You *cannot make this claim*!
There's a trick here, and the trick is performing the basic fundamental attribution mistake that you have *pre-emptively declared someone as worthy of criminal/legal/judical/executive proceedings* but you have not *performed the neccessary process by which you check whether this is due*.
It is patently obvious that *if* someone was *explicitly exploiting the system* then dragging out any procedure is an *act of malfeasance*. But the law has capacity to handle these cases too. There are many, many options available for courts and systems that explicitly allow this. We can discuss whether this is optimal or intended (no, yes), but it is factual. This *also* means that if someone is exploiting the system and "ddosing the united states", the united states is not a completely monolithic, passive participant without access to legal council, lawyers, directives, systems, monitoring, oversight, processes and so on designed to handle these things.
However. If one does take the day / week / month to check these things, they do not happen. Then mistakes happen.
You are subtly suggesting, and this is the trick that leads to seriously bad shit, so I am pointing it out plain:
That if the *inconvenience* of a process *outweighs* someones judgement of what they stand to gain from it, they get to not participate in that process. That may work in normal social interaction, but it cannot work in matters of law. The government is not granting us the nicity of not stuffing someone into a van and flying them off to a foreign country where there is no recourse. This is not a polite thing they're doing *until they stop feeling polite*. We can discuss and talk about whether that is the case in some "real" sense of the word, and I'm sure one can leverage arguments for and against, but that is a different conversation. The point of the fact is they must take time to check these things because these are the processes the system is bound by. If there is an issue with how long it takes:
Eg:
"And if it would have taken longer, then it becomes clearer why they didn't do that "
Then their job is to *change the rules* in the legal fashion, as is done and has been done for centuries, and is the foundational point of how lawmaking and civic society works. They do not get put the rules aside on the presumption that someone else is exploiting them, with no proof that is so, because they did not take the day to check.
The timeframe is not an issue.
Asking about it is irrelevant, and it leads to a magic trick, where you're going "Oh, at some point, the implied cost of it becomes so high that the government is allowed to just ignore it".
Not so. The government, as an entity, does not get to perform special pleading of exemption because it does not like the rules and feels it would be inconvenient to obey them. The government is full of big people in big suits who are grown, mature adults. They can handle their issues without blackbagging people. Meanwhile, you cannot in good faith pre-emptively declare that other people are exploiting the concepts the government are violating and that is reason for violating their legal rights. That doesn't work.
There are metrics and systems in place for altering onerous requirements. They exist to prevent people from being shipped off to foreign prisons with no possibility of redress. Once they stopped being applied, people are shipped off to foreign prisons with no possibility of redress.
" (Someone earlier referred to it as DDoSing the US.) " -->
The US is not a single overloaded server at danger of blowing out because it gets a lot of requests. And if it was, an IT professional can resolve a DDOS attack. They are remarkably easy to handle, and require, fundamentally, simply taking the steps to do so. If one does not take those steps, one does not get to use it as an excuse to be upset when malign actors ddos your server infrastructure. When malign actors then do ddos your server infrastructure, one certainly does not get to snatch random, unaligned civilians off of the street on the vague suspecion that they have a laptop in their backpack, bundle them off to a foreign prison, and never, in that ordeal, check if they actually have the laptop, know what a ddos attack is, or have any relation to the on-going situation of your own flawed server architecture.
It is an analogy so stupid it makes me sigh, which, I don't to imply that anyone believing is stupid for thinking. But just, like, c'mon.
Think about it for a second. The Government doesn't work like a server. And if it did, the government has IT professionals. In a very real sense, if we're being sincere, the people flooding the legal architecture with endless spam to overload it and get the stuff they want through the loopholes the systems are too slow to catch seems to be the people doing the grab-and-ship-them-off-to-foreign-countries-which-we-can-do-so-long-as-we-get-to-do-it-before-a-judge-tells-us-we-can't trick.
The people doing the malicious hacking of legal codes in this scenario doesn't seem to be the people that analogy is meant to imply it is!
F> " How long do you do you think the process should take " -- > As long as is legally mandated. Caveat: If unworkable, propose broad-scale large adjustments to the rules. Do not break and violate the rules.
The other side has had a response to this general argument for a long time. The mandates have long been unworkable. Adjustments were proposed long ago. They were denied by footdragging from officials not affected by the downside - in other words, the current due process side got this process because it wanted to and could deadweight it into place, rather than because it was fair.
F> "If it would have taken only a day or less, then the argument to make isn't "follow due process"; it's "it would have taken only a day to check; why didn't you?" " --> This is the same question and statement, though.
It is not the same argument as "you didn't use due process". The question I quoted above assumes the administration wants due process but made a minor mistake it believes will make no difference in said process. The latter statement assumes the administration is generally opposed to due process. If these look like the same picture to you, check again.
F> "And if it would have taken longer, then it becomes clearer why they didn't do that - people were using "due process" to exploit the system. " --> Were they? What makes you so certain of this? What evidence do you have to reach this conclusion? You didn't check! You *cannot make this claim*!
I am not certain of it, but I am also not certain it isn't happening. This is based on decades of experience working in the government, plus decades of accounts from other people I've seen working in government and interacting with it. The capacity of the state to demand process beyond what is "due" has been well known by a lot of people, for generations. It is why "you can't fight city hall" is an aphorism.
In light of the fact that it might be happening, and might not be, my default is to look for better evidence, or for a tiebreaker. So far, most of the evidence is motivated, and not preponderant on either side; and the most evident tiebreaker is people who appear to be here illegally, vs. people who much more certainly aren't.
F> There's a trick here, and the trick is performing the basic fundamental attribution mistake that you have *pre-emptively declared someone as worthy of criminal/legal/judicial/executive proceedings* but you have not *performed the necessary process by which you check whether this is due*.
I've already discussed why people are waving "due process" around like a talisman; this argument just attempts to reassert what I already addressed. The side arguing for deportation is already past fundamental attribution, and into "okay, there seems to be a clerical error in the process, but it looks like correcting this error isn't going to change the ultimate outcome, so this demand for 'due process' isn't actually on principle; it's demanding endless procedure, at expense of other US citizens, and particularly in order to retaliate against an administration you already don't like". That's at least one argument I'm seeing; I recently posted a comment above with more. For more detail, you might want to go to the DSL thread. (At times, there, I've made the same argument you just did.)
In case it matters, it seems pretty clear that Trump is also going after people who are legal migrants. Students on all sorts of visas, obviously (https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/4/18/us-revokes-nearly-1500-student-visas-who-are-the-targets), but also just mass cancellations of visas from specific countries (https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/05/us/politics/rubio-south-sudan-visas-us-trump.html) and all of the people who went through the legal process set up for expedited review by the Biden admin (https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2025/03/22/us-trump-administration-revokes-legal-migrant-status-for-500-000-people_6739417_4.html)
> innocent people were getting victimized by open borders policy
> due process is worth letting US society bleed out further
I'm so intrigued by this language! What were the harms of immigration that you were feeling, out of curiosity? Like, what specifically do you think was hurting you / your family / your community? Was it primarily economic? Feelings of an increase of crime? Something else?
ETA: Well, let's see. First link: "students who participated in pro-Palestine protests that erupted on campuses across the country in 2024 during Israel’s war on Gaza" (in response to Gaza's unprovoked attack on Israelis). Second link: paywalled. Third link: doesn't go into detail about the terms of Biden's "scheme" (their word), but I know it came when Biden was retaliating against Trump's first attempt at border control, and the counterargument there is the rise in crime from such immigrants. So it's not for no reason at all; it's far from being all student here on visas, and seems to be based on some sort of analysis of where violent criminals are coming from.
I'm not feeling any personal harms from immigration so far, but neither is the side arguing for better enforcement against *illegal* immigration. In other venues, I argue the other side, and try my best to internalize what each side is saying.
I've been pretty clear that *this is the argument*, and if you're going to impugn the people making it, just for making it, and making it fair for them to level the same attacks at you, I don't see the resulting Condescensionbowl 2025 going anywhere productive. Which is to say, next time I have to argue that illegal immigration enforcements are maybe going too far, the best I'll have to offer on this front are ad hominems phrased as innocent questions, and I'll probably just exercise discretion and let their arguments stand.
I'm sorry that you thought I was being condescending, I legitimately wasn't and you can see other examples in other open threads where I am trying to legitimately understand the mindset of people who openly admit to experiencing no harms from this issue and yet are willing to stake quite a bit on it. To that end, I appreciate you for being honest on this
> I'm not feeling any personal harms from immigration so far
but I have to ask in a follow up: even if I take the utilitarian framing, if you are experiencing no harms from this, and to a first approximation _no one I have asked_ is experiencing any harms from this, why is this the thing that is worth destroying due process over?
Like, elsewhere you argue
> In this case, the argument is that there are cases in which due process ought to dominate, in order to protect civil rights, and there are cases in which due process is itself smothering civil rights because it is being suborned by scoundrels. Ergo, we need to re-examine the justifications behind due process and border control and see if they're still applicable, and to what extent.
surely this is not a case where "due process is smothering civil rights" if no one is feeling any harms?
Replying to your edit:
- to be clear, re students you aren't denying they were here legally? Doesn't that go against the 'those who enter without due process shouldnt expect it on the way out'?
- Here's an unpaywalled link: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/4/7/why-has-trump-revoked-all-south-sudanese-visas
though I'm not sure youre really arguing in good faith, since the headline of the article is not paywalled and gives more than enough information about what I'm talking about. If your only answer is 'paywalled' I don't think youre actually interested in learning.
- https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/research/cbp-one-overview is what you're looking for, which afaict is a straightforward application of technology to streamline things (you know, like what doge claims to want?) Trump shut it down, of course
If you're an environmentalist, this is not the gotcha you think.
Of course, if you want something more, I might suggest the feeling that your country no longer has a shared culture, and that urban sprawl in the guise of Bazaar of Global Cheap Stuff is not really the consolation prize you might imagine.
And a vague feeling that the boring permanent conversation about school, and the failures of school, and money for school, and where are the people who will teach the school/we told them they were the Wrong People but nonetheless it was their responsibility, and where are they? - will now go on forever and ever, and the same fake platitudes uttered.
And ditto the familiar conversation about where people sleep, and whether we've enough of these people in these beds and so on.
And all the multicult shattered into a thousand pieces. And not even an emperor to unite.
I'll be honest, I read this a few times and I am not really sure what you are saying.
To try and break down what I think you are saying:
- more people coming to a first world country results in a bigger environmental footprint, better to let them stay in their second/third world countries. They may suffer but they won't impact the environment as much.
- something about 'shared culture' -- maybe immigrants create less 'shared culture' than we had before.
- something about cheap commodity goods. For some reason these are bad?
The stuff about school, beds, and 'multi cult' you really lost me on. No idea what you're trying to say.
---
To try and answer this:
- I'm not a degrowth environmentalist who would rather people suffer than just like, develop or industrialize. This is an extremely fringe population, and you may be in a bubble if you think that there are a lot of people advocating for this.
- I love immigrant culture. I'll copy paste my answer above:
> As far as the immigration population generally goes, I live in NYC, and my favorite part of the city is Queens (I lived there for two years) which is basically just a series of ethnic enclaves. It's amazing, these are people who are so excited to be in America! Their neighborhoods are brimming with optimism and they are some of the most patriotic people you will ever meet. And the food is fantastic to boot. Spend a day in Queens and it is immediately obvious to me that the economic game is not zero sum, the way it is portrayed
The country I grew up in cared about immigrants and saw them as the driver of so much American growth and progress. "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore." This is our national advantage -- we take the brilliant people and the best parts of the cultures of the entire world and incorporate the best parts into our society. What is the 'shared culture' that you are referring to that you miss so much? Have you personally experienced some sort of a degradation of that culture as a result of immigration specifically? I'll be totally up front: every time I have ever interacted with someone who cares a lot about our 'shared culture', it has always been a dogwhistle for outright racism -- as in, "i want the country to be more christian and more white, and I am uncomfortable with the idea that that may not always be the case". I'm open to hearing your take, assuming its not that.
- cheap commodity goods are good. Sorry, I believe this unabashedly, and every time a cuban immigrant comes to a costco my faith in this is reaffirmed.
"OTOH, innocent people were getting victimized by open borders policy."
WHAT "open borders" policy? When in living memory has the U.S. EVER had an "open borders policy?"
Thanks for the link. If you squint, you can picture the Onion having the nerve to write something like that back in the day.
“Person accused of doing illegal thing demands due process to determine if they actually did it” haha, so funny. How can those dumb liberals not see how ridiculous their position is when we frame it this way?
The bee is shlop
We don't post like this on this forum.
The Bee is not a serious source, it’s providing an obviously bad faith argument to try and be humorous and yet you are trying to pass it off as something deserving of consideration.
I have considered it. It is slop. If you are interested in high minded and fair discussion maybe don’t lead with a poorly done sneering conservative satire piece and get upset when it is respond to in kind.
"Due process" is not a monolith. Different process is due in different circumstances with different people. There was an error with one of the Salvadorians - he was 100% permitted to be deported summarily, and had a standing order to that effect. He just wasn't supposed to go to El Salvador due to his gang affiliation.
Yes, there are different processes for different people. But if they wanted to deport him to El Salvador they would have needed to follow the process of reopening his case and giving him a hearing. They didn't do that.
They could have deported him somewhere else, but they didn't. So they didn't follow his due process. That's the problem.
He wasn't entitled to more due process. He had a removal order. The due process was completed years before. The government screwed up by sending him the one place he wasn't supposed to go - but there wasn't any question of his being allowed to stay.
He absolutely was. If they wanted to deport him to El Salvador they needed to reopen his case and have a hearing to contest the current stay. They didn't do that, so they didn't follow due process.
If they had deported him somewhere else, there was no more due process required. But they didn't, so there was.
He was entitled, before being deported to El Salvador, to stand before a judge and say "this is why I shouldn't be deported to El Salvador". That's due process. Independent of what happened the last time he stood before a judge, which was also due process but a different instance of such.
*Everyone* who is hauled in off the streets and scheduled for deportation to El Salvador, is entitled to that. Which, in most cases, will be a brief discussion of "yeah you've got nothing backing up that sob story and it doesn't match what you said on your tourist visa or whatever, off to El Salvador with you", But sometimes it's a slam-dunk "I guess we can't deport you to El Salvador", and that can be cleared up quickly, and the case for both "Meh, it was a mistake but no harm no foul" and "Oh noes! Due Process is too Hard!" goes away.
If this "tatted-up Salvadoran wife-beater" is so dangerous, why hasn't he been convicted of any crime?
(Also, I shouldn't have to point this out, but "having tattoos" is not a crime.)
You might as well ask why the guy terrorizing the college campus and threatening to blow up little indie shops in my college town, has been arrested dozens of times while convicted or even trialed - never? And never will be?
Americans would go with some other talking point.
But you’re right, maybe these incidents are purely situational - she provoked him and had it coming to her. Like when he got stopped for coyote-ing the illegals that time, she probably bitched at him and said you were probably speeding and that’s why they stopped you. You’re supposed to drive slow.
For the wife-beating? She didn't show up for the final trial, and they reconciled. For other crimes? Well, that's what we're discussing right now: "innocent guy just carpooling to work" versus "caught travelling with a bunch of other migrants, possibly might be doing coyote work".
Especially when that Salvadoran *did* receive due process. A judge declared him an illegal, and a judge declared him a gang member. He was eminently deportable. The only thing he had going for him was an order not to deport him specifically to El Salvador, because his gang and other Salvadoran gangs didn’t get along. I don’t know, and have no way of knowing, whether his deportation to El Salvador was malice or an honest error. But you know, while I am a big believer in due process, I’m not going to lose much sleep over this one. It baffles me that Democrats chose this hill to die on. Are all the rest of the deported even more unsavory than this one?
Well, there’s the guy who was fishing and threw a rock at the endangered heron. He could be a backup. He was deported right quick.
And then there’s the guy the NYT anointed this week, who was ordered deported upon release, when he was convicted of kidnapping in his first year here as an illegal.
I didn’t read the story so it may have been one of those nuanced kidnappings - but Steve Sailer did a funny write-up of the “hell” that awaits him in … Jamaica.
When did Biden have a student loan program struck down and then continue with that very same program anyway? Isn’t the issue that he kept coming back with narrower and narrower programs so that no one could tell whether they were covered by this round or not?
And no, due process does not *begin* with deportation, any more than a trial begins with a declaration of guilt. There is a process involved of proving, or at least providing a preponderance of evidence, that the punishment is due.
Biden's vote-buying scheme was never expected to succeed at the courts. By trying and failing repeatedly and by sending mail to each person individually with his signature stamped on it he got exactly the results he wanted. And he also got the bonus that if not checked at the courts exactly correctly each time, he might even succeed.
I don’t see what any of that has to do with defying court orders. The point of the thread was about defying court orders.
Biden did not ignore any SCOTUS orders or injunctions.
What SCOTUS actually ordered was a lot more moderate than what the headline-grabbing 'SCOTUS STRIKES DOWN STUDENT LOAN FORGIVENESS" headlines would lead you to believe. Their actual order was a limited injunction against a specific program of debt relief for specific types of loans.
The smaller number of loans Biden did forgive were different things that didn't violate that order.
>The "process" that is "due" to an illegal alien is deportation.
Cool, you are an illegal alien, we're going to deport you now.
What, you say you're a citizen? Sorry, there's no process by which you could officially offer evidence to that effect and force us to consider it. Goodbye alien scum!
"Pres Biden when he ignored a SCOTUS decision to do student loan forgiveness" -- people need to stop repeating Jim Jordan's facts-free sound bite.
Biden's plan that the SCOTUS rejected 6-3 was to forgive $10,000 to $20,000 of federal student loan debt per borrower, which would have benefited more than 40 million borrowers and cost around $400 billion. The SCOTUS found that the plan stretched a key phrase of a specific federal law beyond Congress' intent in passing that law. The Supreme Court did not rule that the Biden administration could not cancel student loan debt; it ruled that the specific statute was being stretched too far.
Biden acknowledged that finding and dropped the proposal. He then proposed three much-smaller pieces of student loan forgiveness under a different statute. Federal district judges in two states put holds on two of those proposals and an appeals court agreed, under similar logic as the SCOTUS case (a statute being stretched too far). So the administration dropped those. They ended up doing only one further student-loan forgiveness which benefitted around 1/8th as many students, for much-smaller individual amounts, compared to the original plan that had been rejected by the SCOTUS.
To sum up: the courts told the administration it could not do something under a particular law. So the administration dropped that plan. Then the administration tried to achieve a smaller version of the same goal by using a different law, to see if that law would allow it. The courts said no to most of that as well, and so the administration didn’t do those parts of it. They did end up doing one much-smaller thing that the courts had no problem with.
Biden then bragged about having found a way to cancel student loan debt despite the courts which was just routine politician face-saving. In reality he did not defy or evade any court rulings about student loan debt, and did not cancel anywhere near as much student loan debt as he would have if the courts hadn't said no.
There's another side of Biden's border record though which unfortunately got ignored, see Figure 1 here:
https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/biden-deportation-record
I find these arguments from hypocrisy completely uncompelling. Yes, hypocrites exist, and yes, the two major parties have almost universally engaged in similar types of bad behavior (although often not to the same degree in any particular case), but when defending a particular instance of bad behavior from the current group in power: what do you say to the people who _weren't_ hypocrites? Many such people exist. Lots of people criticizied, at the time, exactly the things you are describing. So what do you say to the people who are also now criticizing Trump?
Hypocrisy is a reason to not take a particular person seriously. It is not a reason to dismiss an entire class of complaint.
Previous bad behavior does not justify current bad behavior.
Also in this (and many other cases), the only way to make the accusation of hypocrisy is to brazenly lie about the facts. The Biden admin complied with the court orders and enancted only the parts of the programs sanctioned by the courts, at least one order of magnitude smaller than the original proposal. It's a textbook case of the executive deferring to the judicial!
re: Drone strikes:
But so what? In a war, there's no rule against killing your own citizens who have joined the enemy. Happened in WW2, for instance.
See https://www.wakeuptopolitics.com/p/no-biden-didnt-defy-the-supreme-court
Two points: Re 7
I think it works best if you think of it as people's incomes relative to their expectations. To use a hypothetical example. If you grew up three meals a day and can now only afford two, you're going to feel really hungry. But if you grew up on one meal a day but can now afford two you're going to feel good. Especially if everyone you know is still on one meal.
One example of people who "moved to slums" would be digital nomads. Though if you're earning an American software engineers salary and paying Manila prices for rent you're probably living a quality of life better than a software engineer in San Francisco.
Per your paragraph 33 due process note, it might also be worth mentioning that the Trump administration itself has conceded this point. The recent SCOTUS JGG order observed this: "The detainees’ rights against summary removal, however, are not currently in dispute. The Government expressly agrees that 'TdA members subject to removal under the Alien Enemies Act get judicial review'....'It is well established that the Fifth Amendment entitles aliens to due process of law' in the context of removal proceedings.' Reno v. Flores, 507 U. S. 292, 306 (1993)."
so, someone advancing this point I think has to acknowledge they are going so far out on a legal limb that:
1: Scalia disagrees
2: The Supreme Court as recently as 2 weeks ago disagrees
3: The Trump administration disagrees
What exactly does this mean? The Trump administration has admitted that their actions are illegal, but continue to do them?
A federal judge might open investigations into the US government being in contempt of court. Deadline ends in less than a day from now, not sure what news if any on this development.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cg72d3zpj9xo
This is a more recent article which seems to have significant updates but I can't read it fully because of paywall:
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/18/us/politics/court-contempt-trump-deportations.html
Also remember the dog and pony show with Bukele a few days ago, where an autocrat, practically dictator, regrettably had to admit he "does not have the power" to send back the prisoners.
The Per Curiam opinion in the JGG case came out the way it did because the government "expressly agree[d] that TdA members subject to removal under the Alien Enemies Act get judicial review." The government also agreed that “It is well established that the Fifth Amendment entitles aliens to due process of law” citing Reno v. Flores (a 1990s-era case that held the same thing).
JGG Decision here:
(https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24pdf/24a931_2c83.pdf)
I can't emphasize this enough, and I've talked a bit about it on the discord as well: Trump has, in court anyway, conceded that the detainees he seeks to deport under the Alien Enemies Act are entitled to a due process determination of their basis for removal (In habeas) and that the Alien Enemies Act itself is subject to judicial review (that is, courts can examine whether "invasion" under this act pertains to TdA, it's not just "up to the president."
Trump's attorneys have also conceded he messed up in Garcia's case. Simply put, in COURT, the administration is flat-out saying those subject to deportation get due process and the basis for deportation is subject to judicial review.
People usually refer to bit flips in memory as due to cosmic rays but they aren't any more common in high altitude places like Denver than low altitude places, making it unlikely that cosmic rays have anything to do with it in most cases. Mostly they're due to radioactive decay of something inside the chip.
See here for a discussion:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soft_error#Cosmic_rays_creating_energetic_neutrons_and_protons
re AI kiddie porn: no victims? The IA has to base it's imagery on real kiddie porn.
No, it doesn't: it can combine two separate concepts.
It still needs to know what children look like and how they differ from adults. This is just like that case last year where kids were uploading photos of female classmates to generate porn.
You could draw some without ever having seen any. Or have you? Tell us the truth, Malcolm.
Not since I was that age. (I had a kid sister)
> The IA has to base it's imagery on real kiddie porn.
No, style transfers and generalization are things.
For example, AI image generators are already reasonably good at generating photorealistic versions of hand-drawn sketches. If I give Dall-E a crude stick-figure drawing of a house, the model is capable of turning it into something that looks like a real-estate photo. If you give a model a hand-drawn pornographic comic, it's equally capable of generating something reasonably photorealistic.
Similarly, image generation models can generalize from their training sets. If it knows what a man wearing rabbit ears looks like and it knows what women look like, it has a reasonable chance of generating a pseudo-photo of a woman wearing rabbit ears.
But if it doesn't know what naked children look like it can't generalise. And if it does, it's abusing the models.
It has never seen a koala riding a motorcycle. But it has seen a koala and has seen a motorcycle, and can generalize.
Yes but if koalas had rights and portraying one riding a motorcycle was abusing those rights...
Am I abusing the rights of every woman I've ever seen when I imagine a naked lady using a mental model that was trained on them?
Legally, at least in some jurisdictions, you are breaking the law if you get AI to do this, as this is taken as infringing their rights.
If you do it in your mind it's just morally wrong :)
If you think it's OK, why don't you ask them....?
There's a similar argument about art. The arts world got up in arms a few months back cos they were worried that AI was going to be trained on all their output and then put them out of a job. But how did they learn their art? By training on the output of their predecessors!
Given enough pictures of naked eighteen-year-olds, a human can make a reasonable guess at what a naked seventeen-year-old looks like.
Only cos he's seen fully dressed 17 year olds. As soon as the AI incorporates that info it's abusing the 17 year old. Anyway, kiddie porn isn't about 17 year olds. Younger kids look very different.
Yeah, while some/many/lots may want "hot sixteen year olds" or "barely legal" type photos, some will want younger. A few will want *way* younger.
I can't believe I have to say this here, but I were much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much much rather abused as a child by someone doing stuff with pictures of me, than ... me.
I really don't like lessening "abuse" this way.
Obviously so, but there's a whole army with a vested interest in monetising victimhood who would be onto this.
Anyway, no politician would be reckless enuf to advance the idea.
I suppose an argument could be made that yes, AI-generated photos are indeed *way* better than real photos.
But then our old friend the slippery slope comes along. After all, if it's okay for you to masturbate to AI generated photos of toddlers in diapers, why not AI generated photos of toddlers naked? After all, it's not real kids.
If it's okay for AI generated photos of naked toddlers, why not AI generated photos of naked toddlers touching an adult's penis? After all, it's not real kids.
If AI generated photos of toddlers touching an adult's penis are okay, why not the toddler sucking on the penis? After all... and we get all the way up to "getting off to AI generated photos of crying six year olds being raped violently because it's not real kids".
And then maybe the guys getting off to those photos get bored after a while with the AI stuff and start looking for the real stuff. Are there any good studies on escalation of porn watching (that is, after you get over the forbidden fruit thrill of vanilla porn, you start needing something a little spicier to pique your interest and that escalates over time?)
I think this is what makes people uncomfortable with the idea; fake cartoon/AI generated kiddie porn is definitely better than the real thing, but how extreme do we let it go? And how safe is it, is there a genuine risk of graduating to the 'harder' (i.e. real children) stuff after you get used to the AI stuff?
https://hmicfrs.justiceinspectorates.gov.uk/glossary/child-sexual-abuse-image-grading/
https://www.olliers.com/news/a-guide-to-how-indecent-images-are-defined-and-categorised/
https://www.unh.edu/ccrc/sites/default/files/media/2022-03/the-varieties-of-child-pornography-production.pdf
I suspect your comment isn't supposed to be a direct reply to me.
Otherwise:
I didn't intend to argue for any okayishness of AI generated pictures like this.
I just wanted to highlight the difference between doing stuff to a photo of a naked person that has not agreed to someone doing that stuff to that photo on the one hand and doing it to the person on the other hand. Because "if it does [know what naked children look like], it's abusing the models" blurres this, and it shouldn't get blurred.
Not directly replying, no. More musing on it. I think most people will have a feeling of revulsion about even AI generated child sexual abuse material, and not be able to articulate exactly why in the face of arguments about "but it's not *real* children".
The MAPs reformulation is the nice part of all this. But human nature is sticky, and very often not-nice, and the nice, moderate, 'will appeal to the normies' cases are often used as Trojan horses by the not-nice types.
"I'm attracted to 16 year olds, is that really paedophilia?" may fly for "so why is it bad to provide me with AI images of fake hot 16 year olds". But it damn well will also be used as cover for the ones who want violent and sadistic imagery, or imagery of 6 year olds and not 16 year olds.
And then there are the types that maybe can't even be called paedophiles proper, but who should not be accommodated in any degree, not even with AI generation of CSA, because they are too dangerous and too depraved.
https://www.wdbj7.com/2025/03/10/lynchburg-man-charged-with-rape-newborns-death/
https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/southafrican-man-confesses-to-raping-killing-his-8-day-old-daughter-8047346
https://www.nationalcrimeagency.gov.uk/news/life-sentence-for-man-who-raped-a-baby-and-shared-images-of-his-abuse
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-32538905
The case about the guy who uploaded images of raping a baby is particularly bad, and I don't think arguing "well if he and others like him were just able to get their fill of AI generated baby rape imagery, it wouldn't happen in real life" is going to win over anyone. People who perpetrate that kind of crime plainly aren't concerned with minimising harm, and probably would not be happy with the 'fake' alternative "no, you cannot fuck a real baby in real life, just use this AI picture to masturbate to".
Aella argues AI kiddie porn consume results in less real kids getting hurt: https://aella.substack.com/p/ai-child-porn-will-probably-save
I remember someone once trying to describe Aella as "someone who defends child porn", and now I see what they were probably referring to, and it's not a defense of child porn (let alone abuse). Her argument seems similar to the one in favor of brothels and porn theaters because they correlated with a drop in sexual assaults (pretty promptly, in at least one case - a town closed the local brothel, rates went up, they reopened, rates dropped again). And this has been known for decades.
Short term probably, but long term? Would it not both deepen the addiction and make it more acceptable?
Anyone who is very confident about whether the long term effect is positive, negative, or neutral, is deluding themselves about their ability to read the future. This seems like a very hard sort of question to figure out the net answer to.
Yes, we can't know for sure so err on the side of caution.
Does erring on the side of caution mean that if we have no idea which one of two options is better or worse in long term, we should choose the one that is worse in short term?
Logic never comes into it when legislating on sex!
Science can't help cos it's not something any ethics committee would allow research on. Maybe a way could be found to carry out an investigation with locked-up sex offenders, but it'd take a brave politician to even raise the question.
Which way is caution when both sides claim their policy lowers rapes and sexual assaults?
caution is status quo.
So she thought that tweet would be *uncontroversial*? How autistic *is* Aella, exactly? This is James Damore-level stuff.
"Autistic": she is kinda. Hard to measure "exactly" quantitatively as long as "what IS autism" very much lacks an "exact" answer. - James Damore? Oh, the former google guy who wrote: "Damore said that gender-differences include women generally having a stronger interest in people rather than things, and tending to be more social ... . Damore's memorandum also suggests ways to adapt the tech workplace to those differences to increase women's representation and comfort, without resorting to discrimination." (wikipedia) Wow, if that counts as highly controversial in your bubble ... ;)
> Aella argues AI kiddie porn consume results in less real kids getting hurt:
I think the weakness in this argument is that the taboo against kiddie porn and against child sexual abuse in general is socially constructed. Looking back historically, we see societies that tolerated various forms of child sexual abuse, even considering it a right of passage. As recently as the 70s or so, a strain of European philosophy was arguing for sexual liberation in a way that sounds awfully child-porny to modern ears; NAMBLA was founded in the late 70s.
Intuitively speaking, it seems hard to maintain a selective social taboo. Even if the instant effect is towards less child sexual abuse, normalization of the practice might easily lead to more practitioners, so we should probably consider the precautionary principle and act very carefully.
It's not wholly a social construct, if I understand it correctly. If it were, there probably wouldn't be such a revulsion to it in most people. I acknowledge there are societies where sex acts involving children are permitted, but I suspect there are rules in those societies (it's not a subject I'm deeply familiar with, for understandable reasons) that cut down on actual biological trouble, like trying to perform intercourse with someone who's too small and/or prepubescent.
Puberty is the primary factor, given its role in reproduction. There's much less evolutionary justification for wanting to have sex with pre-pubescents than for post-, and this is supposed to manifest in mental revulsion at the former that's probably present across societies.
Ergo, there's an argument that someone who's pedophilic in the technical sense is *broken*, and needs to be physically isolated; they can't socialize their way out of that urge. People who are just ephebophilic - they're attracted to ages 15-17 (while being full adults themselves) - probably socialized their way into it, and can be socialized out (with negative incentives like the mere threat of prison).
Good points. Otoh, the law could and imho should treat AI-done or drawn "kid-porn" (making, publishing, owning) max. as an offence resp. a lesser victim-less crime with less harsh fines. Also - see Paul B. - treat all sorts of porn with minors older than 14 / 16 / whatever age-of-consent less harsh than below 14 / 12 / 10 / 8 ... Michael Jackson met Wade Robson when Wade was seven, right? ...
In real life, I am sure judges do consider all those and more; but I am sure glad, in all games/comics made in Japan I ever had on a hard disc: all the girls drawn are explicitly described as "18" (no matter how much younger they looked). Yes, owning a graphic novel depicting 17 year olds making out: might put you in prison in my country. Owning the novel "Josephine Mutzenbacher" is legal for adults. (Same author as "Bambi" - in German, it is porn, illegal to sell to minors - but well-done literature and funny, too; the English translation is abhorrent child-porn, do not read.)
If someone claimed this sfw-pic of an Ä https://freebiesupply.com/logos/a-logo/ showed two minors having sex: the police may break into my home and confiscate all computers. I SWEAR: it is a married couple, both older than 30 and only ever having vaginal IC. And just a company-logo anyways.
No extra victims over what would happen without the AI. I'm assuming the government uses confiscated porn and doesn't compensate the producers, so it's not making more porn nor retroactively incentivizing past porn to be made.
But it's further perpetrating the abuse of the original models. How would you like to think that it was trained on images of your naked body taken during a period of intense suffering?
Anyway, by your argument the government could just release all the confiscated porn for free...
I think the other commenters have made it clear that AI does _NOT_ need photos of children while being abused to create JPGs that look like photos of children being abused.
But you have a point, that fake abuse photos resulting from training with real abuse photos should be prohibited. The training itself with those is already prohibited because the possession of those is prohibited.
"14: Did you know that China has mostly solved the problem of smog in Beijing? (X)"
Similarly, Los Angeles beat smog between roughly 1975 and 1995. Environmentalists should celebrate their successes more often to remind people that they've often been pragmatically right.
Yes, I was about to post this. Los Angeles reduced the number of Very Unhealthy or Hazardous Air Days from 145 in 1988 to 24 in 1998. https://www.laalmanac.com/environment/ev01b.php
Nah, whether or not they celebrate their once-uncontroversial successes, some wire trips in people's brains because Rush Limbaugh used the radio waves every day to condition them to hate environmentalists and owls, on account of needing a substitute for Commies after the USSR broke up.
I don't think it's hugely analogous, as the USA cut pollution via the clean air act and related measures. While China has made some progress in having stricter environmental standards the enforcement is variable at best. For Beijing specifically it was mostly moving dirty coal power plants and other industries to neighbouring less politically influential cities
Agreed, acid rain is almost never talked about these days and I’m not convinced most people of my generation (Gen Z) are even aware of what it was or why it was an environmental accomplishment.
29: You don't live in a conservative bubble, you live in a "cares about good policy" and "cares about Justice (variously defined)" bubble. Most of those policies were ~useless, various tradeoffs were never (and have never been) addressed, and perhaps we should consider non-COVID reasons that Democrats specifically remember COVID policy as particularly favorable.
Another possibility is that you live in a particularly *liberal-libertarian* bubble, in ways that do not actually appeal to most people. Most of the populace got to enjoy free money and authoritarianism, and it turns out they're not as opposed to that as someone like you (us?) might like to think.
> the populace got to enjoy free money
If you going to print money Id prefer most of that money to go to the poor; the question "should we print money" is rarely answered no, 2008 was a vile evil compared to the corona stimulus.
Really? If we're going to print money I'd prefer that it mostly went to me.
Im poor, thats what I said
This is far more likely. There is a very small group of liberal-libertarians (bleeding-heart libertarians) that happens to congregate around this blog which are going to be uniquely outraged by government overreach, while the average person doesn't care at all. Especially when you throw in a few thousand dollars of free money and you don't have to work during the lockdowns.
>29: You don't live in a conservative bubble, you live in a "cares about good policy" and "cares about Justice (variously defined)" bubble.
This is how all ideological bubbles describe themselves.
No one is in a bubble that self-describes as 'we want bad policies and injustice because we are chaotic evil idiots'. Every bubble thinks they're just being reasonable and applying common sense.
From the outside: Yes, this is a conservative bubble. My own bubble is also a bubble and is surely doing its own biased and stupid things, but from over here it is easy to see the shape of this site's bubble.
I don't think you can count a view of one bubble from another bubble as objective. How do you know you're not in a bubble so progressive that even Scott's bubble looks conservative?
"Every bubble thinks they're just being reasonable and applying common sense" is probably a good instinct; but it's going to be hard to go from there. We can probably agree that "Bubble A sees Bubble B as conservative/progressive/very round/very cubic/whatever" as pretty objective, but that doesn't mean Bubble B is actually those things, or that the objective center is between A and B. We might get Bubbles A-Z and chart all the pairwise observations and get a heuristic for where center is, but then the argument will just be over whether A-Z were selected fairly.
This place is a conservative bubble.
I just explained how that can't be an acceptable assertion.
It's a perfectly valid assertion. If you disagree, that's your right, but you can't weasel your way out of people tagging your community with some form of political valence with facts and logic.
It's an assertion. But not supported.
He asked about where he lives. Even extending that to include his social spaces does not mean it includes these comment sections, nor does it make it useful to describe as "conservative." For all the Scott does respond to his fans, this is not where he lives, and reasonably often he's deliberately combative to many if not most of his readers. He forced a forum schism because he disliked so many of his readers and wanted to distance them from his brand!
Calling where Scott lives a conservative bubble is akin to trolls on Twitter calling Kelsey Piper a conservative because she wants schools to be decent and cities to not be hostile to families. Defining whatever he's talking about as a "conservative bubble" renders the term completely uninformative.
> Every bubble thinks they're just being reasonable and applying common sense.
No, two very common points of view are "someone I trust said so" and "what does that have to do with me?".
I doubt classic conservative bubbles (Trump/MAGA crowds, or even trad repuplican people) would tag Scott's blog as conservative. So if an outside bubble think this blog is oldcon or even neocon, I guess it's more indicative where the outside bubble is....Probably moved far more wokeward than you think :-)
Conservative for San Fran, maybe. But most people here seem to be in favor of gay marriage, gender transitions, abortion, and talking with people on the internet, which makes it progressive compared to where I grew up. (Due to the internet being new and talking on it being a progressive thing, most online conversation leans progressive - though this is gradually becoming less so.) On the whole of things it's probably somewhere near moderate, or out along some totally different axis.
"7: A common sociological claim is that relative income (compared to your social circle) matters more for happiness than absolute income."
Nah. People don't care much about being richer than their neighbors, they want to live around people who aren't poorer than them.
You don't want your kids to grow up around poorer folk.
On the other hand I don't want them to grow up around much richer folk either. I don't want my kid being "the poor kid" at school, or getting teased for not having a horse or something.
Back in my day we made fun of the rich kids
And I'm sure they cried themselves to sleep at night on their solid gold pillows as a result.
People want to live around people who are in the same socio-economic category as them, but within that category they want to be the richest. A middle-class family might not want to live in a working-class neighbourhood, but they still want a nicer car than the middle-class family next door.
33) I can think of a way of maintaining the taboo against immigrants speaking freely. But I hope you're not going to like it. It's to apply the taboo to people who look like immigrants.
Trump would probably like that. He's already applying the taboo against gang members to anybody who has a tattoo that looks like it might be a gang tattoo.
Re 7: Following on Seneca Plutarchus and Hannes Jandi, I think we can salvage this idea at least in part. To begin with only people who are at least middle class have a realistic opportunity to move to a new place solely according to what would make them happier. They don't want to move to places that would deprive them of creature comforts or that would expose them to increased danger, so you don't see someone in Chicago's Gold Coast moving to the South Side, but that's far from the only model for moving to a poorer area. Even just in the US, there are plenty of places that are both lower-income and still quite safe, particularly out in rural locales, though this is partly to taste. I recall some years ago an increase in migration to expanding cities like Greenville SC on the premise of lower living costs combined with good facilities and growth.
If we approach it like this, then it's less about the psychological feeling of being relatively higher-status/wealthier than the people around you, and more about the ability to command more value for less money. This absolutely squares with my impression of expats, especially to the poorer but less dangerous areas of South America or Southern Europe.
If you can swing the immigration process, have good money saved up, and don't have obligations keeping you in the states, going to live in e.g. Spain gets you a massive boost to quality of life for equivalent dollar cost (now slightly offset by the recent shift in dollar-euro rates, but still substantial). It's not dangerous and you're not being deprived of high-class comforts, there's Michelin Star restaurants and great museums all around (schools are pretty crap though), but cost of living is lower, quality of certain things like groceries is higher, and people are just plain friendlier, granting that you respect them and take some time to learn the language.
I moved north from Chicago's Silver Coast at 2700 North as a bachelor to its Bronze Coast at 3700 North as an engaged man to its Copper Coast at 4900 North as a married man.
The final move was explicit gentrification, which took a long time, but eventually paid off fairly well.
We looked at moving to South Shore, but that was a bigger physical risk of crime than we were willing to take for the potential payoff.
I lived in Pilsen from 1991 to early 1999. The neighborhood is 95% Mexican and I felt out of place at first, but quickly realized it was fine. I didn't have kids though.
I think the more relevant quote from the Psmiths review is this:
Cargo cults may not be a great metaphor for “copying what someone successful seems to be doing without really knowing why and hoping you get the same result,” but they’re a wonderful metaphor for “assuming the novel thing you’ve just encountered fits a paradigm with which you’re already familiar.” That’s a devilishly difficult trap to escape, and the worst part is that you don’t know you have to: if it were easy to step outside your fundamental epistemological assumptions, they wouldn’t be your fundamental epistemological assumptions. And yet sometimes that’s the only road along which cargo will come.
" I keep hearing how we need a “reckoning” over the government’s disastrous anti-COVID policies, but the latest YouGov polling suggests that large majorities of Americans continue to support those policies:"
People like Work From Home.
I can recall we were promised that back during the Information Superhighway boom of 1993, but then that didn't happen for 27 years. Then in 2020 it turned out that, while not perfect, Work From Home actually worked fairly well.
#7 - Wouldn't we have to know who people are comparing themselves to, in order to understand whether the effect is in place? If my relative income to Alabama is high, but all my friends live in CA and we talk regularly online, then I probably feel little to no improvement from moving to Alabama.
There's also the question of income, where moving to a low CoL area often means having a lower income in terms of dollars. I probably make about half of what I could make doing the exact same job in a city, but I'm living in a much lower CoL area, so I feel pretty good about it. I make more than most of the people I interact with on a regular basis, so I feel like a big fish. If all of my friends were living in NYC and making 2-3X my income, despite spending vastly more on housing and food, then I may feel relatively poorer and be less happy about that.
It tends to depend upon what you talk to your friends about online. If you boast about how to mow your huge lawn, you'd probably prefer to be in Alabama. If you talk about about huge celebrities you've seen, you'd probably prefer to be in L.A.
Yes, but there's also a lot of things that tend to follow a higher cash income, regardless of CoL. You can generally buy more "toys" with a higher income, because the cost of say, an XBox, is essentially the same in Montana, Chicago, and Atlanta. Also true for most consumer electronics, clothing, etc. So making $50,000 in a very low CoL area may let you live with a relatively large house and yard, you are going to have fewer things than the person making $100,000 living in a shoebox in a big city. They can also afford renovations on their expensive property and other class signifiers easier than you can, so there's an appearance of wealth even if they live in a tiny place.
#29 - I notice it says "start" of the pandemic. I think those numbers make sense for March 2020, maybe through April or part of May. If that's what people mean when they respond, I don't find that too surprising.
If the question was asking about the totality of the lockdowns, or was clear that it also included something like 2021-2022 lockdowns and masks, then that would be much more surprising. I would also be interested in seeing numbers for mandatory vaccinations (which being absent from this list may be an indication that they really do mean early 2020 and not later).
Yeah, I don’t expect most survey respondents to make the distinction, but the right actions to take changed dramatically over time. Uncertainty about fatality rate, means of transmission, knowledge of effective care (remember the rise and fall of ventilators?), and access to vaccines reshaped the tradeoff landscape over the first 12 months of the virus.
Very much so. With the benefit of hindsight I don't think my fairly rural town should have responded at all - no lockdowns, no work changes. But without hindsight, it actually feels like a fairly prudent precaution. Then at least by the summer we were mostly back to normal, which also felt pretty good. But then that fall we were once again facing state mandates and school closures which were decidedly unnecessary and extremely disruptive.
Depending on when you asked me about it, I would have had very different answers to that survey.
Agreed. I also make a very clear distinction between first wave (where one can discuss if the measures taken were the best possible, but anyway given how high the uncertainty was non optimality is completely excusable and I have 0 grudge against the authorities) and subsequent waves (especially policies after the vaccine was available). There I'd like a very serious reckoning indeed (and will likely hope for one for a very long time - at least until it freeze in hell)
Agree with this. Closing schools from somewhere between a few weeks to the end of the spring term wouldn't be unreasonable. The U.S. kept them closed for far too long, though.
There was no "U.S." policy though, it was state by state. And presumably the majority of people in most states agreed with the policy or it would've been different. In my state schools were only closed in spring 2020, they were open in fall.
In solidly red or solidly blue states this may be true (while also overruling the minorities within those states once again - maybe why so many people left blue states for Texas and Florida...). For purple states, this was far less true, and may have been the opposite.
> But now suppose that you wake up tomorrow in the actual, real, genuine world (yes, fr), and find out that this sadistic maniac of a scientist is not just a mere figment of my twisted imagination, but is in fact flesh-and-blood-real. To make matters worse, he has cursed 𝘺𝘰𝘶, my valued reader, with the horrible burden Yana had to carry before. The fact that the mechanism is now actual, rather than imaginary, shouldn’t change the moral character of the situation. That means that even though, prior to learning these contingent empirical facts, scratching your butt seemed totally fine, it actually turns out to be incredibly wrong. The lesson here is that whether or not some action is wrong, or state of affairs bad, in a given possible world doesn’t depend on whether that world is the actual world.
(19, "Surely we're not moral monsters")
This argument fails for bad, annoying reasons.
By way of introduction, I disapprove of the part of American culture that says American culture is evil. One of Richard Hanania's essays pointed out that this is a criticism that you can't logically level against American culture. That is true, but since self-hatred really can be good or bad, I maintain that it is bad and I just have to take the hit of needing to say that my criticism is good despite not being different in form from the bad criticism.
And for a second example, there is a discussion of philosophical induction (using the past as a guide to the future) that points out that the heuristic is entirely unjustified. You can't even fall back on the usual claim that justifies "we don't know why it should work, but it does", because that claim is "this has worked in the past", and using that as evidence that the past is informative about the future is the logical sin of assuming your conclusion.
This essay is making the same "mistake". If you tell me to imagine something happening in the real world, the conclusion can't be that some principle has crossed from being valid in imaginary worlds to being valid in reality, because all of the evidence and/or support has always been restricted to imaginary worlds. When I imagine the real world, everything I imagine is taking place in an imaginary world.
20) I'm not sure who is more interesting: The 9% who have a very or somewhat favorable opinion of The Black Plague (at least they take a stand!), or the 17% who are on the fence… "I mean, did they die *of* the black plague or *with* the black plague?"
Hmm … the failure of imagination necessary to think that the black plague was a good way to beat overpopulation is really something. There aren’t many good paths out of something like that, but having half the population essentially rot to death in agony over a few short years seems like a particularly bad way out.
Sure, if we were the Foundation trying to kickstart the Enlightenment, genetically engineering the plague would be spectacularly evil. But if you read "The Black Death" as referring to the historical event rather than the disease, you might decide that the historical event, on the whole, was good. (I don't know if that's true, because I'm neither a historian nor an economist.)
Good as compared to…? For something (especially a plague) to be "good", we need more than outcomes IMO, we need counterfactuals to compare with.
I read the black plague as "historical event that ended ‘Malthusianism’", i.e. population-limiting event. The question then, is whether history could have achieved the same or better outcomes with less suffering. Fewer people dying? The same amount of people dying, but from famine, wars, "nicer" pandemic? Technological breakthroughs of the kind that later broke Malthusian math?
I can sort of understand how some historian who doesn’t have to see their child die of the plague can look at it and say that it all turned out for the best, but I don’t have much respect for it. I believe basically that the journey is the destination, so have a hard time accepting that any part of the journey that is as brutal as that can be justified by the economics of the future.
I remember that being mainstream historiography for some time, at least in terms of what's taught in intro/survey courses and makes it into popular histories, and I expect you're right that that's what most of the people who responded in favor of it were thinking of.
That said, I've been persuaded that that narrative is largely false. The recovery period following the Black Death did show increased material standard of living and improved social stature for serfs and peasants relative to the immediate pre-Plague period, but that was a temporary effect that mostly returned to baseline when the population once again approached Malthusian carrying capacity.
The timing is all wrong for the Black Death being the cause of breaking loose from the Malthusian trap, as the former happened in the mid-14th century and the latter didn't happen until the Industrial Revolution in the early 19th century. The causes of the Industrial Revolution are the subject of considerable debate, but the most plausible-seeming theories I'm familiar with link it to varying combinations and sequences of the Commercial Revolution of the Late Middle Ages, the institutional changes of the Renaissance and Reformation era, and the cultural and economic changes of the late pre-industrial "Industrious Revolution". The Black Death happened relatively late in the Commercial Revolution, serving as a major setback to it rather than a trigger or facilitator, and the other two eras didn't get going until decades or centuries respectively after the Black Death.
> The timing is all wrong for the Black Death being the cause of breaking loose from the Malthusian trap, as the former happened in the mid-14th century and the latter didn't happen until the Industrial Revolution in the early 19th century.
Haven't you heard about long and variable lags? ;D
I thought not. It's a Sith legend, not something the Jedi would tell you.
Laying the cause of the Industrial Revolution on the Black Death would be far too narrow and therefore clearly wrong. That is was a contributing factor seems quite strong, though it's hard (likely impossible) to say that it was a necessary factor. We just don't have access to the counterfactual to compare.
To understand how it could affect Europe centuries later, you have to understand the cultural perspective in place around the time of the Black Death. Peasants were essentially nothing to the elites. They could be thrown away as shock troops in battle or starve to death on the sides of the street. Because there were a lot (read: too many in a Malthusian sense) of such people, the losses were actually positive from a purely material perspective. It was a society in which Thanos was right.
When 50% of the people were dead, each individual became necessarily more important. The elites couldn't treat people as if they were disposable, and had to concede some rights, power, and money, in order to keep society and their lofty places within it intact. This, above all else, created a *cultural* shift. The mentality that said peasants were nothing was untenable, so peasants had to be something. If peasants are something, then they can and should have rights and so on. I think this further took on religious significance through the church that helped maintain this cultural shift even when population levels revived. And by then there was a fledgling middle class, rich merchants (with no royal and lordly claims), and a different way of looking at humanity.
This was by no means required - most plagues in history, including in Europe or when wiping out huge numbers of people, did not result in anything like this. It's also entirely possible that the Industrial Revolution would have come through eventually anyway (in fact, it's not possible to determine if the IR would have even happened earlier through a mechanism we could only guess at). But in the actual history that happened, I think the cultural shift was real and important. That Europe, pre-IR, was much stronger for it and was able to advance significantly in the following centuries.
I've also heard interpretations that center on the cultural shift you're describing, but I'm skeptical of those, too. The idea of peasants having rights and dignity long predated the Black Death, and the problem of those rights being more honored in the breach than in the observance persisted long after it.
When elites started paying serious attention to commoners was partly a product of the Commercial Revolution, which produced a class of urban merchants and artisans who needed to be taken seriously by the aristocracy. It was also a result of military technology, as people figured out how to form and use an effective combat force from commoners who drilled on weekends that could stand up to (or at least stand alongside) a professional or aristocratic force in the field. It started out with longbows, crossbows, pikes, and bills, and the bows later got replaced with gunpowder weapons.
Using levies, militia, or conscripts as disposable shock troops was more of an Early Modern thing than a High Medieval one, and it's a practice that continued well into the 20th century. Similarly, letting the poors starve in the streets was also very much a thing in the Early Modern era, and the term "surplus population" that shows up in e.g. Charles Dickens's works for the phenomenon is a 18th/19th concept.
The benefit to Western Europe seems completely credible to me, but context matters. In Eastern Europe (east of the Elbe, essentially), the nobility was strong enough that they could crush and enslave the commoners rather than be forced to grant them increased rights and wages. The same factor - labor shortage - resulted in two dramatically different outcomes.
The aftermath of the black death was an unusually upwards mobile time. If I had lived all my life as a small cottage farmer barely making end meets and a small personal misfortune away from being a landless laborer (or worse) and little chance to improve my lot in life, I would appreciate the empty farmland I can move to as a survivor.
Ok. So how many of your friends and family would you be willing to sacrifice for a significantly better job?
Black death also lead to a baby boom, so if you only care about a prosperous, large, family you'd be cheering for it.
This doesn't address the question you were asked, unless you mean "I'd gladly sacrifice my loved ones to make room for me to have a larger family".
It's not like you've killed them. If your parents die, would you reject their inheritance?
This still, still doesn't address the question. The point is that it's nonsensical to be excited that the plague killed off your family so you can have a "bigger" family. This whole thread is just a "bad things are bad, actually" type argument.
LOL to "with the black plague". Funny how I'd forgotten that framing.
The Black Death, while obviously horrific, was long-term socially beneficial for Western (but not Eastern) Europe. Following it, wages and standards of living increased with the labor shortage and peasants and laborers got a stronger negotiating position. Soon enough, this led into the Early Modern era.
You can track the rise of Western Europe (and the decline of Eastern Europe) from the Black Death.
While I'm sympathetic the general point about due process (because the whole point of due process is that you always follow it even when it's inconvenient), I have to object to this:
> "it’s hard to maintain social outrage against people who are doing the same thing as lots of other people but except for checking labels."
I think this way of thinking misleadingly conflates laws with social norms. Ideally it's best to have both these things roughly in alignment, but what's really important is to decide what things are against the law and what things aren't. If an illegal things happens to be very similar to a legal thing, that may create some confusion on the level of social norms, but the law itself remains clear and can be enforced. It ultimately doesn't matter whether you fail to maximise social outrage: what matters is whether the law is (1) just and (2) enforced.
I think maybe you may be assuming that it's inherently unjust for someone to go to prison for the equivalent of not checking a label. I strongly disagree with this: sending people to prison for failing to verify things that they are obligated to verify is necessary for the maintenance of civilization.
"I strongly disagree with this: sending people to prison for failing to verify things that they are obligated to verify is necessary for the maintenance of civilization." That seems like a super narrow application.
The problem is that the people were rounded up and shipped out within days with no opportunity given for them to verify themselves.
Do you think driving without a license should be a crime?
Yes. The fun thing about that crime is that you go to an American court and you are cited by an American cop and, if you have reason to believe the cop acted arbitrarily, you can seek an appeal from that same American justice system.
It's the lack of due process that's the issue, not the criminality of the immigration status.
Okay, so you DON'T think persecuting "people who are doing the same thing as lots of other people" except that the labels you have to check for are different is bad. That's the principle I was arguing against.
(Well, I don't actually agree with the example I used, since I believe the state requiring one to obtain a driver's license in order to engage in the natural rights of free men is a gross infringement of individual liberty, but that's a separate point.)
I think your missing the argument here
The dmv and passports/green cards are pure paper work and universally considered shit.
Driving is regulated because a mere statistical chance to cause harm; this is pre-crime. Your merely assuming that all car accidents are caused by drivers, #notalldrivers
No pre-crime is due process as the founders understood it.
---
We do not live near this libertarian utopia, we should do things in an approximate order of their distance from ideals; e.g. if you only legalized fent you will kill allot of people, legalization of all drugs should roughly be in order of safest to least.
If licenses could be revoked at any time without telling you, I think I would be skeptical that the people caught driving without a license did anything wrong.
> did anything wrong.
To clarify, I said it was a crime, not "wrong" in any moral sense.
No, you asked if it "should be" a crime. That very much implies that you're asking for a moral judgement.
Okay, that's fair. I guess I distinguish law and morality so thoroughly that even on a thread assuming the distinction at the top, my view is extreme enough to warrant clarification. (I do have a disclaimer elsewhere in the thread that I don't believe in this example I posed, and use it only for argument's sake.)
I intended my comment to be questioning the consistency of the application of the stated legal principle rather than on moral grounds in isolation, and in context I think it was clear.
I don't think people accused of driving without a license should be denied due process and get shipped off to torture prisons.
I think you've misunderstood my point -- this isn't specifically about the issue of deportation, and my final paragraph was not referring to the process of proving citizenship or legal residency. My point was that in general, 'making it easy to coordinate social outrage' shouldn't be one of the main aims of a justice system.
This may have been a relevant distinction before teh Federalist Society was formed, but I doubt it.
Right now, the Federalist Society court very clearly just does whatever the conservative social consensus thinks they should do. If progressives ever get the court back in a few decades, I would expect much teh same to happen there.
So I don't think there's much meaningful distinction between the social norms and the law at this point... One will become the other as soon as it happens in the Eight Circuit one time.
>I think this way of thinking misleadingly conflates laws with social norms.
Laws should reflect social norms, and should be changed when they don't. Otherwise they're arbitrary and capricious. If there's no discernible difference between one side of the line and the other, then you should move the line.
For many people, that one side is illegal and the other isn't is the only thing they CAN discern, their moral faculties having atrophied to rely exclusively on laws, arbitrary and capricious as they may be.
Perhaps they'll learn discernment after being arrested for tapping their feet in time to music. https://noelleneff.com/5-strange-new-hampshire-laws-you-didnt-know-existed/
On the contrary -- I think that forcing laws to be in sync with social norms would make them more capricious, not less. Social norms are based partly on people's moral instincts, and people's moral instincts are self-serving and susceptible to manipulation.
For example, it's relatively easy for people to convince themselves that members of a particular religion/race/other outgroup are inherently evil and deserve to be murdered, but the law still includes blanket prohibitions on murder. I shouldn't be able to get away with murder by truthfully saying to the judge, "Actually, committing murder in this situation is in accordance with social norms." If I can get away with murder by saying this, then that's evidence of a problem with the law.
Also, the problem with demanding a discernible difference between one side of the line and another is that the law sometimes needs to create a bright-line rule even when there is not an intuitively obvious cut-off point. Consider the age of consent: there is no particular age above which everyone is clearly mature enough to give meaningful consent, and below which everyone is clearly not mature enough to give meaningful consent. But there still needs to be a legal age of consent, even if this does not always agree with moral instincts or social norms in a particular case.
(I think this line of thought is drifting into the territory of what Scott discussed in his old essay 'Axiology, Morality, Law': https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/28/contra-askell-on-moral-offsets/)
>If I can get away with murder by saying this, then that's evidence of a problem with the law.
Your social norms against murder are telling you that.
>Consider the age of consent: there is no particular age above which everyone is clearly mature enough to give meaningful consent,
There's no particular age for the laws either; some places put it at 16, others 18, others 14 if the partner is within the same age group, etc. The local social norms decide the cutoff for the law.
I think we're talking past each other. What I'm trying to say is that sometimes it is necessary for the law to ban things that don't provoke social outrage, and sometimes it is necessary for the law to allow things that do provoke social outrage. Trying to create a one-to-one correspondence between 'things that the average person finds outrageous' and 'things that are illegal' would have catastrophic consequences.
Why? Laws exist to serve society, not the other way around. If everyone agrees that the lynching of heretics is morally correct, it makes no sense to have a law prohibiting that. And it wouldn't stay a law for long anyways, because it would quickly be changed.
Every law was created for a reason, at some point. If those laws no longer reflect social reality, then they need to be changed.
Why wouldn't it stay a law for long anyways? Everyone believes it so what is the incentive to change it? Heretics will just continue to get lynched for at the very minimum of one more generation, and almost certainly longer than that.
I think that for the law being enforced, it matters that the law is practical to enforce. The law says no toy guns on airplanes, because it’s much easier to enforce a law that says no toy guns or real guns on airplanes than it is to enforce a law that says no real guns on air planes but toy guns are fine. Similarly for the child sexual abuse material, and also for the speech restrictions - a law saying it’s fine to have child sexual abuse material made with no actual children involved makes it very hard to enforce a law against real child sexual abuse material; a law saying that citizens can say what they want about Hamas but non-citizens can’t is much harder to enforce than a law that says no one can say nice things about Hamas or a law that says everyone is allowed to say what they want about Hamas. The big issue isn’t whether the person themself is checking the label - it’s about whether the amount of law enforcement time that goes into checking labels is so much that it detracts from actual enforcement of the important parts of laws.
I strongly agree with everything you're saying: the law should be designed to be practical to enforce, and sometimes the most practical law is one which bans things that merely resemble the things you're actually trying to prevent.
But this is completely different from Scott's argument that laws should be designed to make it easy to coordinate social outrage against lawbreakers.
For example, I agree that it is practical in some situations to say that toy guns are just as forbidden as real guns. However, it would be bizarre and counterproductive to create a social norm in which shooting someone with a toy guy provokes just as much social outrage as shooting someone with a real gun.
Yeah, in retrospect, I probably tried a bit too hard to reinterpret some of the puzzling things he said, and probably misinterpreted him as saying the thing I'm saying, which he might not have actually been saying.
"A common sociological claim is that relative income (compared to your social circle) matters more for happiness than absolute income. Bryan Caplan thinks this can’t be true: after all, practically nobody moves to poorer areas to enjoy the higher relative income this would confer. I don’t know if you can really use revealed preferences this way..."
The issue is different here and I think Caplan's argument is wrong. A high relative income is probably important because it gives you a greater sense of importance and/or makes you feel like you have luxuries compared to what is "normal". Or insert something similar along these lines.
But if you already are intimate with a social circle of higher wealth, moving to a lower wealth circle gives you much less or none of these payoffs. You have an ingrained higher baseline of what constitutes status and luxury.
For what it's worth, I've noticed this effect a lot in my own life, grew up in South Africa, moved to the US for college and although I am pretty upper-middle class in NY, when I travel to back to Johannesburg to visit friends and family I am suddenly wealthy. But it doesn't feel so great because somewhere in the back of my mind, I have this thought, like I'm not all that in reality.
> California’s experiment to see how high they could raise the minimum wage before getting visible employment effects has finally produced unambiguous results:
That’s a pretty zoomed in graph and doesn’t account for other stuff going on in California.
I notice too that there’s a discrepancy in how economists react to reductions and employment with regard to “natural” economic trends and state mandates. If the adoption of A.I. were to reduce employment by 4% in an industry but increase wage growth per remaining employee by a significant percentage it would be a Good Thing. This is a Bad Thing
What would I learn from a more zoomed-out graph, and what other stuff should be accounted for?
I'm not Peter, but I have a feeling that even a zoomed-out graph would not help. Minimum wage effects on the economy are AIUI notorious for being easily confounded. It's innate to the fact that only around 3% of the workforce works for minimum wage*, so if you raised it high enough to unemploy them all, that's only 3%, and often lost in the noise of other factors like aging off, coming of age, reentry due to life events (like Covid), relocation, tech advances, outsources, and other regulatory pressures (both positive and negative).
*OTOH, some non-minimum wage jobs are still pegged to it. If you raise MW from $8 to $20/hr, that also affects everyone who was making $10, $12, $15... they don't just go up to $20; they probably go up to $25, $28, $30... and so on up the line, so MW raises can affect more than 3%, but most employers faced with a mandatory wage raise can be expected to let go of their least-skilled, lowest earners first.
The idea that people making 15 would make 25 after a minimum wage hike is nice to dream about, but really since their labor value is 15 and 15 is less than 20, they'd just be fired along with the $8 employees.
It’s nice to dream that people are paid precisely the amount of value that their work produces, but in fact a lot of wage setting involves social negotiations, and it’s very easy for employers to pay workers less than the value their work produces, if the workers can’t negotiate collectively about what wage they will accept, while minimum wage laws help solve the negotiation problem that atomized workers often have when facing a few concentrated employers.
It's indeed very common for workers to be paid less than the value produced by their work, and it's also very common for workers to be paid more than the value they assign their labor. This sort of positive sum exchange is what makes market economies the best.
Very much so! But these kinds of positive sum exchanges are the ones where the net results of increased minimum wage are hardest to predict, because these ones change the terms of negotiations rather than just pricing workers out of the market. (And I believe a lot of the research on minimum wage is based on trying to figure out whether the improved bargaining position for the lowest earners actually ends up meaning broad-based economic stimulus, because more money is getting into the hands of the people most willing to spend it.)
Minimum wage laws solve that problem, but at the expense of creating workers who cannot make any legal wage at all. Which means they don't really solve that problem.
Wait, what? Are you saying that if a law mitigates one problem while making another problem worse, then it automatically is net negative?
It seems to me that you need to understand whether the amount it does on one problem is more or less than the amount it does on another in order to say whether it is overall good or bad.
Well all zoomed in graphs hide the magnitude of the actual change. Sometimes they are necessary. Here I think it’s relatively too zoomed in.
Other factors would be whatever is going on in California that might affect wages in restaurants other than this.
You're right that economics is complicated, but the simplest case of change in regulation --> change in employment is the some of the best evidence we can have.
Once you start accounting for confounding factors, you might end up with "cleaner" data, but you're just as likely to introduce bias as get rid of it. Considering what many economists predicted would happen, did happen, this is strong, albeit not conclusive evidence that raising the minimum wage reduced employment (albeit not much, this is a swing of a few percent).
we need to factor in the times when economists predicted a (significant) change and there was no (significant) change ...
of course there is some casual effect of regulation, we know from anecdotes that in many sectors (like law enforcement) increasing overtime is the norm instead of hiring more people.
and even in higher paid positions expensive "temp staffing" is very common, because hiring is seen as very cumbersome, or accounting/budget constraints incentivize buying services instead of hiring people. (so for example a restaurant fires the janitor but contracts a company to provide janitorial services a few times a week. again, of course, like you said, confounding factors are endless, and properly weighing them is the challenge.)
More importantly, the graph doesn't even say what it is measuring!
"If the adoption of A.I. were to reduce employment by 4% in an industry but increase wage growth per remaining employee by a significant percentage it would be a Good Thing"
Difference is that one occurred through increasingly productivity and the other didn't.
living in the slums isnt really properly controlled... there are other differences, not just relative income
7. When I was young I lived in... well, I'm not sure if it's was a slum, though I distinctly remember Finland's newspaper of note once writing a bombastic editorial calling it the only area filling the conditions for slum in the whole of Europe, but at least a very poor area in the midst of Finland's Great Recession, even though our family had a middle-class income that would have allowed for a different neighborhood. This apparently was in part because my lefty mom really took the avoidance of income segregation between neighborhoods seriously. I didn't like the experience, though I also suspect that when one's a teenager of a certain type they'd dislike anything.
Still, Caplan's argument is kind of odd; I've always taken the relative income thing to refer to one's friend group / peer group moreso than neighborhood, considering people these days don't necessarily really mentally "live" in their neighborhood and just crash there for the night.
29. You (and a huge amount of Covid contrarians/skeptics/independent thinkers generally) probably live in a youth bubble; Covid measures always polled humongously well among the elderly, no matter the party identification, and it's unsurprising that they still do. I mean, it was a popular contrarian talking point - "the olds are ruining the lives of the youth for just a few extra months of life!" - and they still seem to get surprised by polls like this showing that, yes, the olds really did like those few months of life!
Polling contradicts my anecdotal experience- especially when things first started to reopen, old people were *least* likely to be wearing masks in my area (mid-sized Southern metro). Don't know if the polling is regionally limited (maybe it was more popular in the northwest than in the south?) or if this area is the outlier instead.
The extremely few people I see wearing masks here tend to mostly be old and/or sickly-looking.
Yeah, these days it's mostly elderly, especially elderly black women, but a low rate overall.
In the early days as things loosened up I'd say the cutoff was roughly around age 50, with people over being much less likely to wear masks.
My experience was the opposite, older people were much more likely to wear masks. That was in Germany and Switzerland.
As for Tahu, nowadays mask-wearing has dropped close to zero, but not literally zero. I see perhaps 1-2 people per day on my commute to work. And still elderly are over-represented, though it's not exclusively elderly.
> "the olds are ruining the lives of the youth for just a few extra months of life!"
Also, let's not forget that "ruining the lives" referred to wearing a face mask. How incredibly selfish of those olds to wish to live a few years longer at a cost of a minor inconvenience to *me*!
If you were single and lived alone during the pandemic then you might have gone many months at a stretch with very minimal human contact. It's unreasonable to handwave away the cost to these people.
Why are you diminishing covid policy all the way down to its most benign requirement and pretending that's the best argument those people had?
It's the argument people around me made most frequently.
> practically nobody moves to poorer areas to enjoy the higher relative income this would confer
I've done that, moved to Paraguay, confirm it works for me. I've also reduced my consumption cyclically (e.g., living like a monk and slowly adding comforts back in, and cycling through that process), because slowly getting consumption back up feels better than the occasionally downward shocks.
... sounds crazy and I didn't theorize it and then do it but rather do it and then thought it was pretty neat re: hedonic adaptation. I'm a pretty weird guy, so I'm not sure this generalizes though.
To be clear, there are two effects when going to somewhere like Paraguay : a) your income goes further, and b) you are surrounded by poorer people. It would normally be hard to differentiate these effects, but my sense is that I somewhat can due to my spending pattern.
On second thought I'm not so sure, maybe I'm just happier because my income goes further, there is more sun, etc.
I'm curious how long you have lived in Paraguay. I also moved to a poorer country, but have found the opposite to be true.
I feel guilty for living an upper middle class lifestyle in my current home, even though it's significantly lower standard of living than I would have had in the USA, my home country. I also earn significantly less here (in nominal terms) than I could be earning in the USA. If anything, I've become jaded and disgusted at the fact that wages are 1/10th of what they are in the USA for doing the same job.
Regardless I don't think my happiness has increased as a result of being surrounded by poorer people. I'm guessing that effect only holds true in "first world" countries.
I've always thought that rapid downward shocks in quality of life, followed by a gradual increase, is the key to happiness. How often do you reset your hedonic treadmill by going full-monk?
Every couple of months
I second the reset and slowly adding comforts back strategy. Each "new" treat/comfort feels great. I believe it works even better when moving to a different country because the "new" comforts sometimes look different than a similar "old" one you gave up during the reset, so it doesn't feel like you just regained the old one.
Also, out of curiosity, where in Paraguay?
+ 1 on better when moving to a different country
>I've also reduced my consumption cyclically (e.g., living like a monk and slowly adding comforts back in, and cycling through that process), because slowly getting consumption back up feels better than the occasionally downward shocks.
Interesting, what kind of consumption do you cut back on?
Access to civilization, hipster food, conspicuous signalling stuff like real state in the most expensive cities in the world, the comforts of capitalism, etc.
31 > Remember, asking where someone is from ‘originally’ is a microaggression, but inferring it yourself based on their “mildly platyrrhine, high-rooted nose” is A-OK!
The sarcasm makes little sense, because probably nobody is both on their high horses about "microaggressions", and OK about Ethnoguessr. This website is based on early 20th century racist litterature including some frome Nazi Germany. This is not politically correct at all.
> I hope they move on to real pictures of real people in naturalistic situations.
In part because it is politically toxic, I do not expect many people would consent to have their picture there. Well, I don't know about you guys but I certainly would be incomfortable with my face on the Internet, captioned "hey, check out this low-skull West Alpinid! [Zeitschrift für Rassenforschung, Berlin 1942]".
Maybe they could AI-generate a new person every time, though.
> This website is based on early 20th century racist litterature including some frome Nazi Germany. This is not politically correct at all.
Well yes, the point is that if leftists won't let him ask people where they're from, he'll just use their skull shape to identify their race instead.
> This website is based on early 20th century racist litterature including some frome Nazi Germany.
There's a Russian anthropologist and popularizer of science Stanislav Drobyshevskiy who claims that raciology is a real science that continued to be developed in the USSR after WW2. He has several lengthy lectures on Youtube about individual races. He acknowledges the existence of the parallel people who work on non-scientific Nazi-flavored racial "theories" but says the Western academia was wrong to throw out all of racial science for reasons of political correctness.
(It does seem interesting to at least know things like "Which of the modern Eurasian populations might be the closest relatives to the "owners" of these 30000-year-old bones we just found in Kostyonki?".)
If I understand correctly, that question nowadays would be mostly or entirely answered with genetics while the early 20th-century races and subraces were based on anatomical measurements. Which correlate with genetics of course, but carry much less information.
But you don't always have enough genetic information especially when going further back. And sure, even incomplete DNA can contain more information, but I don't think we're at the point where it's so precise and complete any lesser tools are worthless, even just to verify the conclusions independently.
I understand the idea of a "fruit of a poisoned tree", but I'm not sure it should apply to science, and anyway we're not talking about the results of concentration camp experiments. I hope. Not for the most part, anyway, you don't need to do anything unethical to gather a lot of useful anthropological data.
My personal experience is that it's great and fun to be asked where I'm originally from if someone is genuinely curious about my ancestry and personal history.
It's not great and fun to be asked where I'm originally from if someone is seeking to use the information as proof that I don't belong in the country and am lesser than people that do.
I have a friend that can guess what region of Ukraine you're from based on when your ancestors emigrated. He also likes to guess where people are from based on how they look, and has a deep interest in phenotypes and human migration patterns. This kind of guessing is delightful because it relies on deep insight and knowledge of your history and culture, not on crass stereotypes. And it's never used to imply anything about where the guesee deserves to be American, or whatever
I totally missed Ozy’s piece on me! I’m honored anti-Lyman content got a whole link section!
7. "Slums" is not the same as "poor areas". It also implies a certain level of social disfunction that can be quite undesirable, especially for an outsider. There are millions of people retired to pleasant communities in poorer but relatively functional countries, e.g. the European/American population of Thailand coast, British and Germans in Spain and Portugal, Americans and Canadians in Chalisco, etc.
38. Is the message less clear if one does not believe that the Scripture is the Word of God? Are they implying that any measure reducing redistribution of wealth guarantees a place in hell?
The Catholic church has multiple times condemned the National Catholic Register for falsely calling themselves "Catholic" despite being unaffiliated with the church and preaching explicit heresy.
38. There are people.going much further in that direction: /r/DonaldTrump666
The Black Death is underrated, if you ask me. As capital-D Deaths go, name me a better one. You can't do it. Best Death ever!
On the other hand, the Vikings are vastly overrated. Couldn't even conquer Mercia, and we're all supposed to marvel at how badass they were 1200 years later? Weak sauce.
Wyrd bið ful aræd!
The Great Dying.
"....the decline of animal life is concentrated in a period approximately 10,000 to 60,000 years long, with plants taking an additional several hundred thousand years to show the full impact of the event."
Well, points for consistency, I guess, but a 50,000 year timeline reduces the overall impressiveness. I like my mass deaths like my allergy medication: fast-acting and strong.
Ah, shit. No, I meant the other one: the Native Americans after the arrival of the Europeans.
"The regions least affected lost 80 percent of their populations; those most affected
lost their full populations; and a typical society lost 90 percent of its population."
Should we add or subtract syphilis deaths in these reckonings?
I’m not sure about the way I spelled that.
Among the populations in question, that should be negligible on relevant timescales. But I'd say you should add them: the Great Dying is a broader phenomenon caused by the Columbian exchange, not a specific disease.
The Plague of Justinian was another contender, being similar in scope to the Black Death albeit with much wider confidence intervals (15-100 million vs 25-50 million) for want of reliable detailed sources.
AIDS (~44 million) and the Spanish Flu (17-50 million) are in the same range as the Black Death and the Plague of Justinian in absolute numbers of deaths, albeit much less in terms of percentage of the population of exposed areas.
The Columbian Plagues in the Americas, already mentioned, were definitely larger than the Black Death and the Plague of Justinian in terms of percentage of the population of the affected areas killed and may have been larger in absolute terms as well. I've seen estimates ranging from low tens of millions to something like 150 million, with the central estimates seeming to be around 50 million.
The Second World War's death toll (including the Holocaust and other wartime atrocities as well as direct deaths from military operations) was towards the upper end of the confidence interval for the Plague of Justinian and the Columbian Plagues.
Or, if you're willing to accept a broader scope and somewhat larger time scale, you could combine both World Wars, the Spanish Flu, and Soviet and Maoist democides into a single mega-event and get something like 200-250 million deaths.
The Columbian Plagues were pretty great. I rate them about a seven out of ten. Not quite in the same league as the Black Death, though. People have speculated native Americans probably had fairly weak immune systems since they were bottlenecked up around Alaska until the glaciers melted at the end of the last ice age, and not many pathogens are hardy enough to spread in Alaska. Throw a bunch of dirty pre-industrial era Europeans into the mix--people who grew up where open sewers were just what you had to hop over when you crossed the street--and the results were predictable.
The Black Death, on the other hand, had to attack these very same dirty sewer-hoppin' people who were already quite well used to being vectors for smallpox transmission, scarlet fever, etc., and yet it still wiped them out. This was industrial strength plaguin'. If the Columbian plagues were like shootin' fish in a barrel, the Bubonic Plague was like Ed Harris in Enemy At The Gates.
In exchange for the various Columbian plagues, the Native Americans gave the old world tobacco. I wonder which has cost more QALYs.
"Have you not reason then to bee ashamed, and to forbear this filthy novelty, so basely grounded, so foolishly received and so grossly mistaken in the right use thereof? In your abuse thereof sinning against God, harming your selves both in persons and goods, and raking also thereby the marks and notes of vanity upon you: by the custom thereof making your selves to be wondered at by all foreign civil Nations, and by all strangers that come among you, to be scorned and contemned. A custom loathsome to the eye, hateful to the Nose, harmful to the brain, dangerous to the Lungs, and in the black stinking fume thereof, nearest resembling the horrible Stygian smoke of the pit that is bottomless."
-- King James VI and I of Scotland and England, "A Counterblaste to Tobacco", 1604
I took the liberty of modernizing the spelling for readability.
Also syphilis, so the exchange of disease was not all one way:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syphilis#History
> Or, if you're willing to accept a broader scope and somewhat larger time scale, you could combine both World Wars, the Spanish Flu, and Soviet and Maoist democides into a single mega-event and get something like 200-250 million deaths.
Cause of death: the 20th Century
I can't find numbers for worldwide all-cause mortality over the course of the entire 20th century, but off the top of my head I'd guess a bit over two billion.
Industrialization was cool and all, but let's just do it once.
I got the two billion figure based on looking up estimates of world population c. 1920 and rounding up, on the assumption that the large majority of people who were alive in 1920 died before 2001. "All cause mortality" includes old age, misadventure, and non-epidemic diseases.
Modern life expectancy at birth is about 70 years, and was quite a bit lower for most of the 20th century, so a large majority of babies born in 1920 would be dead well before 2001. And most people alive in 1920 weren't babies, so they're even less likely to survive to the end of the century. Add in people who died between 1901 and 1920 and people born after 1920 who died before 2001 for whatever reason, and you'll get at least 2 billion. Probably quite a bit more, since infant mortality means there's going to be a lot of people born post-1920 who don't make it very long.
Red Death!
>33 ... including such bleeding-heart liberals as Antonin Scalia.
Fun fact: Scalia was a generally rather ardent and consistent defender of the rights of criminal defendants (eg: he considered the “frisk” part of “stop and frisk” to be unconstitutional, putting him to the “left” of the Warren Court). And, more generally, there is this, from Hamdi v. Rumsfield:
>Many think it not only inevitable but entirely proper that liberty give way to security in times of national crisis—that, at the extremes of military exigency, inter arma silent leges. Whatever the general merits of the view that war silences law or modulates its voice, that view has no place in the interpretation and application of a Constitution designed precisely to confront war and, in a manner that accords with democratic principles, to accommodate it.
But his originalism did lead him in the opposite direction sometimes eg Boumediene v. Bush
>33. ... it’s hard to maintain social outrage against people who are doing the same thing as lots of other people but except for checking labels.
Why should there be any social outrage about people viewing AI kiddie porn, if no one is being harmed (unlike what is the case with actual kiddie porn [at least with the production. Arguably, (and this was the Supreme Court’s rationale for permitting the criminalization of possession of child porn [in contrast to possession of obscenity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanley_v._Georgia]) purchase/possession increases demand which increases child porn production and hence harm to actual children).
>40: California’s experiment to see how high they could raise the minimum wage before getting visible employment effects has finally produced (X) unambiguous results:
This is a bit of a red herring. 1) What we care about is overall unemployment, not just unemployment in the fast food industry. We need to know about total compensation and subsequent effects on employment. Imagine a town where almost everyone is employed in fast food restaurants one town over. If wages increase and employment in the fast food restaurants increase, it is nevertheless possible that total employment will not decrease, if the remaining workers spend their additional income at the local bowling alley, increasing the demand for pinsetters (did I mention that this hypothetical takes place in 1925?). 2) As I understand it, fast food employees are a mixture of a) high school kids earning extra money; and b) breadwinners. If the employers responded to the increase in min wage by retaining the breadwinners at higher wages, then the policy is at least arguably a success.
> Why should there be any social outrage about people viewing AI kiddie porn, if no one is being harmed
If we allow AI kiddie porn, people can spread real kiddie porn claiming it's AI. If we ban it, then we can stop the spread of real kiddie porn, and people who want to see it can still just download the AI models and run them locally.
But, if the AI kiddie porn is that indistinguishable from the real thing, why would anyone buy the real thing? And why would anyone produce the real thing? Why not produce AI and pass it off as the real thing?
People value authenticity. See e.g. natural diamonds, artisanal goods, outrage over AI art and so on.
But, again, why wouldn't producers simply pass off AI as authentic? And, it is easy to value authenticity when purchasing a legal good.
And, btw, so far all I have heard is a (thin) rationale for making hyperrealistic AI kiddie porn illegal; I have not heard a rationale for maintaining social outrage over its consumption.
Sure, with all kinds of pornography, AI-generated content is surely already being passed off as authentic, just as professional adult pornography has long been passed of as amateur pornography, and I would expect AI-generated content to come to dominate the market and to reduce demand for authentic content, but I still expect there to be significant demand for authentic amateur content.
I don't see how it would be possible not to maintain social outrage (in Western societies) against adults who fantasize about having sex with young children, so that discussion seems moot to me.
>I still expect there to be significant demand for authentic amateur content.
Why, given the risks? You are conflating desire with demand. Demand = the willingness and ability to buy at different prices. Here, the risk of prosecution = higher cost.
And, again, if there is demand, why wouldn't producers simply lie to consumers?
>I don't see how it would be possible not to maintain social outrage (in Western societies) against adults who fantasize about having sex with young children, so that discussion seems moot to me.
1. Not too long ago, the same was said re men who fantasize about sex with men.
2. I asked a normative question, not an empirical one.
"If the employers responded to the increase in min wage by retaining the breadwinners at higher wages, then the policy is at least arguably a success."
If anything I'd expect them to prefer the high school students who probably make better workers.
Why would you think that an adolescent would be a better worker than an adult? Which would be more reliable? Not to mention, a breadwinner needs his job. Most hs students don't. Plus, high school students would me more likely to move on after a short tenure.
People who work low-paying restaurant jobs as adults tend to have some kind of flaw that prevents them from getting better work, whether that's low intelligence, inability to show up on time, substance abuse problem, criminal record, can't speak English, etc. I find it funny you call them "breadwinners," which calls to mind a rather different demographic.
>I find it funny you call them "breadwinners," which calls to mind a rather different demographic.
Have you seriously never heard of single mothers? They are not exactly rare: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/OPFWCUMO
When I think of "breadwinner" I usually think of men.
Well, I guess you need to think again.
"Zaid Jilani points out that if immigrants don’t get a right to due process, citizens also don’t get a right to due process, because the government can kidnap citizens, claim they’re immigrants, and the citizens can’t prove otherwise since they don’t get due process."
The plot of "Twelve Years a Slave" in a nutshell.
I hugely support due process in all its forms. The idea of deportation without due process would and does fill me with dread. But due process also has a non-zero error rate. Any anecdotes or dramatic renditions such as 'Twelve Years a Slave' could happen with due process also, though presumably at a lower level (citation needed).
So: how do we deport 5,000,000 illegal immigrants in a timely manner in exigent circumstances, as the current leader of the country was elected to do? I am personally open to any and all ideas that maximize individual liberties and freedoms, and accomplish the goal.
There is a genuine problem with holding due process as a sacred value, where it gets increasingly long and unmanageable every time you add something (because you can only add componens to the process, never remove them; that would be a violation of someone's civil rights). Which gets us to the current position where it's basically impossible to actually enforce the law against anyone who's willing to go through an indefinitely stretched out legal process.
It's noteworthy in the Garcia case that while his lawyers don't dispute he entered the country illegally, and he was originally picked up by the police on gang membership suspicion all the way back in 2019, he still wasn't deported by 2025 (and probably never would have been if not for the current drama - 2019 was under the Trump administration). Most of the immigration cases under controversy seem to be like this, where reading the details makes you go "okay they didn't follow exact procedure but the actual outcome was correct".
(This is the case on immigration but is also increasingly the case on other issues like shoplifting, as Scott pointed out in a recent post).
More generally, the embracing of the narrative of "due process" as a sacred value by rationalists has been frustrating to me. We can all easily see how destructive too much process can be when it's used to block housing construction on environmental grounds, but forget that instantly on other issues?
(Which isn't to say the Trump admin's "no process whatsoever we just do what we feel like lol" is an improvement. It both harms legal immigration and doesn't actually achieve its stated goals, since you can't run large scale deportations without a standard procedure for doing them. Trump admin likes it because it generates maximum noise with minimum required actual action).
But the Democrats' refusal to admit their process has actually become unworkable and needs massive reform is frustrating.
Garcia had a court order to *not be deported to El Salvadore*.
Also we need some terminology that distinguishes these two cases and doesn't call them both just "deport":
1. Being put on a plane and sent out of the country, where you leave the airport and then wonder what to do
2. Being put on a plane where you're put in a supermax when you land
Re the court order: yes, that part seems true, but it matches the general case I mentioned that people can delay deportation indefinitely (in this case, using asylum claims which are hard to verify; this seems like a pretty standard abuse of the immigration system).
Re 1 v 2: iiuc (not confident), Garcia's imprisonment in El Salvador is based on Salvadorian rather than American policy. While I'm sure there are many people unfairly jailed in El Salvador and you can reasonably oppose Salvadorian prison policy, this is not obviously unusual by that baseline.
>(in this case, using asylum claims which are hard to verify;
No, Garcia's asylum claim was denied, but he was granted withholding of removal.
Okay now I'm confused. I knew he was granted temporary withholding of removal (which in practice seems to not have been temporary), but if his asylum case was denied and not just deferred why was he given withholding of removal status?
> Re 1 v 2: iiuc (not confident), Garcia's imprisonment in El Salvador is based on Salvadorian rather than American policy.
The US government is reportedly paying El Salvador $6 million to imprison deportees. They are complicit in the plan to deport people directly to a foreign prison.
Yeah, that part seems bad (and also confusing. If you've already got them deported, why bother imprisoning them?)
(Okay I get that the actual answer is mostly "because Trump likes doing bad things that make him look tough while diverting the conversation away from the economy").
What exactly has become unworkable about it? The idea that there’s an urgent need to deport millions of people that justifies ‘corner cutting’ isn’t self evident to me.
And maybe I’m just excessively libertarian, but I don’t see due process as just an arbitrary barrier put up to prevent people from doing things, but a means of protecting important rights. I don’t feel like a hypocrite for believing on the one hand I should be able to do an addition to my house without permission from everyone in my zip code, while also believing a government agent shouldn’t be allowed to send an immigrant to indefinite incarceration in a foreign country without so much as a hearing. I’m not abstractly ‘pro-due process’ for every conceivable thing there could be a process for. I guess if you think immigration is worse than murder then you might think discarding the process isn’t that big of a deal.
My view isn't that housing (or immigration) is an acute emergency worth suspending due process over. It's that process should not in general be a meaningful inhibitor of policy. If you disagree with deportations on substantive grounds that's one thing. But if something *is* explicit government policy (and in this case it's hard to argue against that; both the presidency and Congress support more deportations, and that's the one issue where Trump is genuinely popular on), it shouldn't be forced unworkable purely on process grounds. If that happens it implies we need to reform process (ideally while balancing competing considerations).
The pro-process side should come up with a workable version of the process to champion (e.g. "okay the current system is unworkable but people should at least get a chance to present documents showing their status before arrest and talk to a neutral judge before deportation, but this shouldn't typically result in indefinite deferment of deportation for illegal immigrants) rather than doubling down on "we should keep the current level of excessive process that ensures no one is ever deportable". Similarly, on housing my view is "we should have a simple general housing code with by right approval for reasonable density that law abiding developers can easily adhere to and get quick permissions for", not "housing is an emergency so we should just stop enforcing building codes".
(The Trump admin's total anti-process approach is the equivalent of Mumbai housing policy. It's also quite bad, but the opposition needs to improve their alternative).
> "we should keep the current level of excessive process that ensures no one is ever deportable".
Well this state doesn't exist, hundreds of thousands of people get deported every year, so problem solved.
Those are mostly expired removal cases of people caught right by the border shortly after crossing, which are allowed to bypass the courts. Actual deportations of people who aren't caught on crossing and who challenge their cases in court (or who claim asylum and are released) are much fewer, and currently face a 3 million case backlog.
> process should not in general be a meaningful inhibitor of policy. [...] if something *is* explicit government policy (and in this case it's hard to argue against that; both the presidency and Congress support more deportations, and that's the one issue where Trump is genuinely popular on), it shouldn't be forced unworkable purely on process grounds. If that happens it implies we need to reform process (ideally while balancing competing considerations).
If the government finds that existing process makes their policy goals unworkable, then it is their legal prerogative to change that process in accordance with the established legal rules for doing so. It is also their legal burden to continue following said process as long as it remains the law of the land.
If the president and his allies in congress cannot abide by constitutionally mandated due process, they are entitled to try to amend the constitution to get rid of this obstruction to the policy goals, or at least appeal cases to the SCOTUS in the hope of changing the standing interpretation of the relevant constitutional clauses. But if they instead exercise executive power in extralegal ways to further policy in defiance of constitutional restrictions, they are engaging in misuse of power, fragrant violation of the law, and betrayal of their oath of office.
This.
Where is this so-called emergency? We had a roaring hot economy with ultra-low unemployment from 2021-2024, and whenever they were actually allowed to work all the immigrants and refugees got absorbed into it pretty effectively. For my home state of Utah, it meant we had plenty of labor and a bunch of new Venezuelan restaurants.
<sarc>well, since you are happy, obviously the system works, who cares about the slave labor?</sarc>
You do realize that illegal immigration has...some issues at least? An underclass is more easily exploitable, is often trafficked, traffickers are usually drug cartels, drug cartels use immigrants (knowingly or unknowingly) as mules, hold their families hostage, exploit them in other ways, they are paid often below minimum wage or off the books, and so on?
You seem to think that just because they came here, that it was all wine and roses and everything is working fine just because you can't or don't want to see the exogenous costs.
I don't think having a system where you can illegally immigrate so long as you're willing to fight it in court indefinitely at great cost to both you and the public legal system, and meanwhile the illegal immigrants exist in a constant state of second-class citizenship uncertainty, is a good outcome. I agree that an ideal solution would be to reform the immigration system to make legal immigration easier and faster to file (it should not take multiple years to get a visa or green card if you're eligible!), not just make enforcement of illegal immigration possible.
>I agree that an ideal solution would be to reform the immigration system to make legal immigration easier and faster to file (_it should not take multiple years to get a visa or green card if you're eligible!_), not just make enforcement of illegal immigration possible.
[emphasis added] Agreed.
The current immigration system seems to me like it is something like two orders of magnitude too slow. The point of comparison that I'm considering is job interviews for skilled positions (I was a programmer before I retired).
Typically, this took one day (albeit a long and grueling one) for all of the interviews followed by approximately a day for the decision. Now, admitting someone to a nation is a more serious decision than hiring an employee. Still - is it more than an order of magnitude more serious? I find it hard to believe that the government couldn't find out everything about a potential immigrant that they now find out (at least from the person) in say two weeks of solid interviews. Can't we do better???
You have said it better than I can.
I want to highlight one part to those that are “supporters” of illegal immigrants. The current “process” makes them 2nd class citizens living in constant fear of being deported. I prefer a better process where immigrants do not need to live that way.
Congress could easily change the law on asylum; it’s just that the administration can’t do so unilaterally. We have separation of powers in our system of representative democracy.
Indeed, there was a bipartisan attempt to pass legislation that would reform asylum law including by making it easier to deport, but it was shot down after candidate Trump decided the law would be bad for his campaign.
I don't think due process and like, nimbyism are functionally analogous. The trade-offs on where you build a housing complex or a railroad don't necessarily rise to the level of life and liberty, whereas proceedings around deportation and criminal justice do.
On the other hand, the amount of process around criminal justice is much higher per person affected. It's reasonable to have a lower threshold for error there, but it still is a tradeoff (and one which, if you've reached a point where you functionally can't enforce laws, you'rw managing badly. Sometimes that's because you've written unworkably strict laws, but sometimes because your process is badly designed).
I think plenty of people would be open to revising the process, although I think its another one of those things, like FDA regulation, where the reason we don't have a different process isn't because the process is obviously corrupt, but because there's a lot of legitimately competing incentives. Its hard to have a conversation around process however when the consequences of the process being ignored are as dire as they are right now. Trump would be facing a lot less resistance if he hadn't contracted with a dictator to throw people in a gulag.
Just hire more immigration judges, and more IRS enforcers, and more traffic police.
I don't think "just hire more lawyers to solve the extra complexity caused by having a complicated legal process" is a good solution, it's a form of tulip subsidy
https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/06/06/against-tulip-subsidies
Yes, but "just abolish due process" is a demonstrably bad solution. So what is yours?
I think the discussion on requiring e-verify seems productive, instead of everyone throwing food at each other.
I'm sure there are additional problems to be sorted out there, and many oxen to be gored, but at least it's a starting point.
(EDIT) this doesn't address the current asylum seekers exactly, and especially how to deport the subset who are violent, abusive, or criminal, with sufficient due process, but it takes a holistic approach from many angles to solve big problems.
Obligate e-verify so that they all self-deport because they can't work.
It won't happen because Trump doesn't want to do mass deportations, he wants to try to break the American legal system and he's discovered anti-immigrants are very happy to break the American legal system as long as they're told it's happening to illegal immigrants.
Asking members of the Trump White House to demand e-verify in all their associated endeavours would be a good wedge issue.
Seconded!
I largely or even entirely agree that mandating e-verify is the correct solution. The rest of your rant tends to reduce the impact of your response and I suggest you avoid such histrionics in the future if you want to make good points.
That said we wouldn't ideally just flip it on day one if we want to avoid mass disruption. It would be good to couple this with an improved legal migration system, temporary work visas, or the like. This unfortunately requires an extremely divided congress to take action, and in particular the divides don't fall along traditional party lines but more around predominantly farm states vs urban states and so on.
See? There can be agreement without assuming everyone is acting in bad faith.
"This unfortunately requires an extremely divided congress to take action, and in particular the divides don't fall along traditional party lines but more around predominantly farm states vs urban states and so on."
Both houses of Congress are controlled by the GOP. It's not "extremely divided" at all. If they continue, Trump's tariffs are going to cause a global recession and his behavior is already shaking investor confidence in the USA; tariffing is an authority vested in Congress and delegated to the President only under specific circumstances defined by law; and rather than trying to reassert their authority, the House GOP has actively abandoned it (https://www.businessinsider.com/gop-leaders-mike-johnson-block-congress-action-trump-tariffs-2025-4?op=1). If he can get them to go along with that, he could absolutely get e-verify passed.
"See? There can be agreement without assuming everyone is acting in bad faith."
I don't assume everyone is acting in bad faith, I infer that the Trump administration is acting in bad faith based on a careful analysis of their actions.
>Both houses of Congress are controlled by the GOP.
Are you not aware the filibuster exists?
The House GOP already passed an immigration bill that would mandate e-verify. It has no chance in the Senate because Republicans don't have a supermajority.
Does it do things democrats would be opposed to, as well? I bet if it just mandated e-verify, they could get it past a filibuster. If they cared.
While obligating e-verify would help many cases, there's a lot of people who work under the table or in illegal endeavors (and some who just live on the street, or mooch off friends or relatives, etc), for whom it wouldn't really work. These are also disproportionately the less-contributing immigrants that immigration opponents most want to remove.
(with regards to the second part of your comment, I agree that the Trump admin is not in general acting in good faith. It would help the opposition quite a lot to propose actual solutions to the problems Trump is just pretending to solve and not actually doing anything meaningful about, instead of arguing against the premise that they're even problems at all, or arguing that they can't be solved without violating sacred values).
Isn't illegal immigration now down to much more manageable levels?
Problem largely solved except for what to do with the enormous numbers allowed entry under the Biden administration? This seems like at least one campaign promise that was kept, not a pretend solution.
That's a pretty big "except" though.
An excellent comment that did not emanate from cloud cuckoo land.
"So: how do we deport 5,000,000 illegal immigrants in a timely manner in exigent circumstances, as the current leader of the country was elected to do? "
If a candidate runs and gets elected on a platform of, let's say, throwing every left-handed person into the ocean, that doesn't mean that any other part of the nation or the government has any mandate to help or even step aside. It the responsibility of the candidate to keep their promises within the realm of constitutionality and legal feasibility. It is not the responsibility of everyone else in the country to surrender their rights because 1/4 of their neighbors are angry and impatient.
Actually everyone does in fact call this a mandate. Every candidate in modern times and probably prior has said that the numbers trump got constitute a mandate.
You don't personally have to help of course, it's a free country. If you aren't interested in solutions, does that mean you support illegal immigration, or don't care? If you don't care, why are you posting here?
By this, I presume you support illegal immigration. Why?
Has anyone ever claimed a mandate with less than a majority? I don’t believe Bill Clinton claimed a mandate for things.
It's a fair cop. I can't say with any certainty. It seems very common to me and I heard it in the press a lot during e.g. Biden and Obama's administrations.
Trump may not have a mandate based on his election, but he is on the side of the majority.
Polls shows 55% of Americans want a decreased in immigration and 61% think illegal immigration is a serious problem.
https://news.gallup.com/poll/1660/immigration.aspx
https://www.monmouth.edu/polling-institute/reports/monmouthpoll_us_022624/
Quick lesson in law that you seem to desperately need: stuff candidates say aren't the same as laws. They especially aren't the same as the constitution. They are certainly *not* legally binding on *anyone.*
Perhaps you found the word "mandate" confusing there, so for your benefit, let me rephrase that to obligation. Nobody else has any legal or moral obligation to help Donald Trump keep his campaign promises. And when keeping his campaign promises conflict with the constitution--which is what *you* seem to be suggesting--there are millions of people who, in actual fact, have a legal obligation to *hinder* him. The president is not above the law. No matter how whiny he or his supporters get about illegal immigration, that still doesn't put him or his administration above the law.
"By this, I presume you support illegal immigration. "
I originally wrote a longer, more detailed response. But I think I'd rather pay this particular strain of bullshit back in kind.
By this, I presume you support fascism. You're talking, acting, and arguing like a fascist. I'm sure you don't *think* you are. But that dime-store authoritarian "with us or against us" crap you're spouting would be a dead giveway even if you hadn't spent multiple comments arguing that other peoples' constitutional rights were an inconvenience to be swept aside when it interferes with hurting the people you so *desperately* want to see hurt.
Good day.
"If you aren't interested in solutions, does that mean you support illegal immigration, or don't care? If you don't care, why are you posting here?"
This seems a misconception worth addressing, assuming this question is in good faith (which to be honest, I find dubious).
To be perfectly clear and candid: I mostly DON'T care about illegal immigration. Even when I lived in the U.S. I never found it a very compelling issue: there were lots of real problems to be worried about. I think this attitude was pretty common among people not on the far-right: a variety of opinions on the issue, but little force behind them.
But me not caring about your pet issue is NOT that same as me not caring about what the government *does* regarding that issue. This seems so bloody obvious in context that I have trouble believing you're making an honest mistake here. You are taking an unimportant non-issue and using it as an excuse to strip civil rights from *everyone in the goddamn nation.* OF COURSE I'd bloody well care about that. Any sane person would.
Which is bad news for you, to be honest. The best possible outcome from where we are now is that the U.S. as a nation hangs on by the skin of its teeth, and the appalling stench of the policies your pushing render this issue toxic for decades to come: nobody dares take a hard line on immigration lest they be compared to Trump. The more likely outcome is that you wake up one morning and discover that in your haste to solve this utterly banal problem, you handed power to a blatantly and nakedly untrustworthy charlatan, and now you no longer have a country. I doubt he'll even "solve" the issue; I mean why would he? Keeping it around as a boogeyman has worked wonders: there seem to be no limits on the absurdities you're willing to support as long as the specter of an "invasion" of immigrants can be waved in front of your face. Any robust solution would necessarily give up that power. The fantasy that if you just cross one more line, just break one more boundary, just throw one more sacred principle into the fire, you'll finally buy freedom from this supposed menace is just that: a fantasy.
Serious question: FDR interned American Japanese citizens, stripping them of civil rights during wartime by declaring it an emergency. Granted, WW2 and all that implied, but I see this as one of the nation's largest infringements on civil liberties in its history, post-slavery. We as a nation survived. There is a lot of ruin in a nation. I don't love this, and I don't love any erosions in civil rights, and I further don't love cutting corners on them by calling 'emergency' as a trump card, by any president, and think this power should be heavily hemmed-in.
However, 5-10,000,000 non-citizens crossing our borders with incompetent screening and due process and all that implies in their effect on our country definitely gets into my 'emergency' category. If it doesn't in yours, so be it. It's obviously not nothing, and the constitution at least nods in the direction of a presidential duty being to secure the country.
AND I don't love that the prior administration put us in this position any more than that the current one isn't handling it perfectly, though I am personally delighted that at least a hundred or so gangbangers are no longer here. Garcia doesn't trouble me, insofar as the evidence I've read makes it pretty clear he received a lot of due process and the one reason for keeping him out of El Salvador has dried up.
I don't love that Trump said some things that could be interpreted as jailing American citizens overseas. Beyond that, show me any law whatsoever that has been changed during his administration that affects my civil liberties negatively and I'll reassess my response. 'A phone and a pen' executive orders affect the executive branch in accordance with laws duly passed by congress, though of course SCOTUS may choose to disagree with their interpretations.
"FDR interned American Japanese citizens, stripping them of civil rights during wartime by declaring it an emergency. "
First, FDR was absolutely in the wrong for doing what he did. I have never encountered *anyone* who seriously grappled with the actual history of Japanese internment who ended up concluding that what he did was reasonable or justified by the events on the ground at the time. Further, there are some pretty chilling ulterior motives that appear to be behind the political push towards Japanese internment that have absolutely nothing to do with national security.
But even given all that, yes, World War II was an *actual emergency*. The U.S. suddenly being at war with two large, aggressive, hostile world powers (and Italy) is a genuinely dangerous situation. Claiming that some groups of mostly unarmed civilians illegally crossing a land border in peacetime--something that has been going on for *decades* without causing much in the way of clearly-identifiable harm--is somehow equivalent if a FARCE. If you're willing to call that an emergency or support a president that does so, then whether you like it or not you're supporting the dictatorial expansion of presidential power. *Anything* can be an emergency under than definition. And indeed it already is: Trump's justification for circumventing the trade deal *he negotiated* to put tariffs on Canada was a laughably tiny (as in, a two-digit number of kilograms) flow of fentanyl, a drug that's manufactured in the U.S. in far greater quantities.
"Garcia doesn't trouble me, insofar as the evidence I've read makes it pretty clear he received a lot of due process "
Everything up to and including the Supreme Court says you're wrong here. His deportation to El Salvador was *illegal.* The Trump administration has *admitted it*. Saying "he received plenty of due process" is about as sensible as saying "look, I know Alice shot Bot *this* time, but look at all those previous occasions that she *failed* to shoot him." He. Was. Deported. Without. Due. Process. It's clear cut. Black and white. If you keep maintaining otherwise you are wrong plain and simple.
So honestly, here's how it looks to me. On the one hand, you claim to be concerned about the expansion and misuse of presidential power, but on the other hand you keep uncritically repeating all the standard excuses and justifications for it and trying to shift the blame elsewhere. I'd honestly think more highly if you honestly committed in *either* direction: take an actual stand for the rule of law or just be open and honest about authoritarian control being a price you're perfectly willing to pay if it means getting rid of the people you don't like.
"So: how do we deport 5,000,000 illegal immigrants in a timely manner in exigent circumstances, as the current leader of the country was elected to do?"
Given that Republicans have control of Congress as well as the Presidency, why not go to Congress and ask for the budget to hire more immigration judges and agents? The problem is that the Trump Administration is trying to have it both ways - they want to do mass deportations on the cheap while ripping out as much federal spending as possible to pass a big tax cut.
Addressed in discussion elsewhere in this thread. Short answer, where does that end next time 15,000,000 come in? Why not stop it now?
Pretty sure a big part of that answer is "invest in a lot of bureaucrats and lawyers to help move the process along as efficiently as possible." But that's the exact opposite of what the DOGE crowd believes in.
Does this actually scale? Or does it just mean the next president who feels similarly to Biden lets in 15,000,000 and then you say 'invest in even more bureaucrats and lawyers to help move the process along as efficiently as possible'?
Seems like a never-ending ratchet, moving goalposts all the way down. At some point, hopefully now, it stops and we say this is enough.
I mean, liberals have to deal with rachets all the time, we don't get to suddenly toss aside the constitution because the prior Republican administration fucked everything up, and something tells me you would be upset if that were the precedent we took away from this situation.
It seems to me, though, that this discussion is about this particular ratchet.
Your argument that there are others, unspoken of, but looming menacingly, seems to concede my point.
My argument is that everyone has their own issue where everything seems broken and they would love to play dictator to cut through all the bullshit. But the bullshit exists because there is not a consensus on how to deal with the problem, and saying "we don't have to worry about consensus, we'll just unilaterally enforce our side of this issue and fuck the consequences" gives the other party permission structure to fight a war of all against all. I'm astonished by the number of people who seem to think being dictators on this issue won't open up giant cans of worms down the line.
"Or does it just mean the next president who feels similarly to Biden lets in 15,000,000 and then you say 'invest in even more bureaucrats and lawyers to help move the process along as efficiently as possible"
Of course it means that; there is obviously no solution to illegal immigration that precludes the possibility of future presidents taking steps to let higher numbers of illegal immigrants in. Even mass deportations with literally no due process at all can't stop Zombie Joe Biden from letting everyone right back in again in his 2nd term.
The point of mentioning other ratchets isn't a whatabout, it's to show that this dynamic is just an unavoidable feature of politics. If your opponents win, they may have the chance to undo what you've done, that's just the nature of the game.
When 'undoing' is much harder and more expensive than 'doing', that's a one-way ratchet.
Fine, but that just means that one way ratchet effects are unavoidable in politics. I don't see a way around that.
I mean, as I say, even if Trump deports every immigrant with no due process, it presumably will remain easier for a future president to let them all back in than it was to deport them...I don't think "due process", or "spend more money on the process" are what lead to the ratchet effect, it's just the nature of the fact that it's always easier let people in than to kick them out.