By the way, a few months ago it seemed like the Sneer Club was dead. (They pretended that it was some principled objection against Reddit, but the fact was that their numbers were low because no one cared anymore.) Now they seem to have revived again, basically the discussion about Zizians making most of their traffic.
A talk by Matt Arnold. This isn't a complete summary, but I think it covers the major points. I've left out the names of specific cults. I think one of the basic themes is that ordinary life is worthy of respect.
Cults amplify traits that healthy groups need. Groups need some money to keep going, but they shouldn't extract as much as possible from their members. Groups need friendships and connections among their members, but they shouldn't be the only source of relationships.
What does nihilism mean? I think it means the belief that there's no truth and no values, but I'm not sure.
Feelings are emphasized over thinking in bad groups.
There is no cult-proof ideology
David Chapman-- Cults offer "the illusion of complete certainty, understanding, and control"
Bad sign: A system where no one is good enough at achieving the goals of the group.
Don't let not being a good enough polyamorist make you miserable.
Coming alive should be the first priority.
Wow factor-- an impressive idea isn't necessarily true.
Have some people in your life with low openness to new ideas. People who can say, "That's fuckin' weird". [This doesn't address the possibility that in some societies, the mainstream is a cult.]
People should not feel an obligation to save the world. And sometimes it's combined with hopelessness.
In general, not feeling permitted to take care of yourself is a bad sign.
Don't let too many people who need the group for a sense of purpose into the group. They will make the group into a toxic perfection spiral.
Eternalism-- "it's this or nothing".
It's important for a group to permit challenges to ideas-- don't be supportive to everyone about every idea they have. Epistemic hygiene is needed.
Don't just say "It's complicated". Say "it's complicated in this way".
Is it safe to have the concept of infohazard? Perhaps the concept of infofragility is more useful.
Don't be extremely pro-woo or anti-woo. Aim for being able to use all the mental tools.
You will find what you look for. If you believe there's a pattern in history, you will find it, and if you believe your mind has certain elements, your mind will obligingly create them for you.
Ada Palmer as a good historian who looks for what's ambiguous in history rather than simple lessons.
Ideas from whatever source are more like spores-- starters for new ideas rather than things which are reliably transmitted.
As I see it, the "minimum viable product" of a cult is an abusive relationship. It has three components:
* a desire to have human relationships (healthy in general, but...)
* something that makes this specific relationship bad (maybe the partner is aggressive, or controlling, or crazy in some other way)
* something that prevents you from realizing that the relationship is bad and leaving (e.g. the partner has convinced you that no one else would want you, or just isolated you from your friends and keeps you busy with bullshit drama)
The same thing, on a group level: a desire to belong; something that makes this specific group bad; something that prevents you from realizing this and leaving the group (isolation, keeping you busy, the group pretending to be exceptional in some way).
Which suggests that a good advice on avoiding cults would be similar to a good advice on avoiding abusive relationships. (Keep contacts outside the relationship/group, learn to say "no", take care of your mental health in general, always get another perspective.)
*
I do not consider David Chapman a reliable source on this topic. He is a leader of a specific group, so his explanations are heavily motivated by "why my group is good and other groups are bad". Generally, any advice on cults that comes from group leaders is suspicious.
> I think one of the basic themes is that ordinary life is worthy of respect.
Feels close but not exactly right. Taken literally, it would suggest that being a boring normie is the most noble way to live. I think we should be allowed to have higher aspirations than that.
The problem I see is that many groups that claim to give you more, actually give you less. Instead of empowering you in your existing lifestyle, they give you an artificial one which is very narrow. (You had friends and hobbies, now you just have a small group that keeps reading the same holy books over and over again. You had an education and a career, now you just keep selling the same stuff and trying to build a pyramid. You were able to debate various topics, now you just repeat the same dogma with an angry voice. You had a social life, now you spend all your free time with your controlling partner.) Instead of an addition, the new thing is a replacement.
So I would rephrase it as: do not let anyone take your ordinary life away. It should be a baseline you can anytime safely return to.
> Feelings are emphasized over thinking in bad groups.
Kinda yes, but it does not necessarily feel so from inside. You can have thousands of pages of holy texts (which will seem like a lot of deep thought), or you can have a leader explain to you why X is the most rational thing to do. Ultimately, it is the feelings that keep you in the group and that control your thoughts but... realizing this is precisely the difficult part.
(I mean, imagine Zizians. I think they believe themselves to be perfectly thought-oriented.)
> Have some people in your life with low openness to new ideas. People who can say, "That's fuckin' weird".
Even better to have more people like that, each coming from a different position. So they will generate different kinds of the "weird" reaction. Like, one may comment that the group beliefs contradict the science, another may comment that the group behaviors are highly unusual, etc.
> In general, not feeling permitted to take care of yourself is a bad sign.
Does anyone know how to look up which movies had which previews attached to their home releases? I recently watched a movie I'd seen previews of in childhood and now it's bothering me that I don't know which movie had the preview.
Question: In the 90s I had a movie on VHS, and that movie had a trailer for In einem fernen Land. Which movie could that have been? It was a German release of the movie.
Answer: Based on the information provided, it's difficult to pinpoint the exact movie that contained the trailer for "In einem fernen Land" (Far and Away) on your VHS tape. However, we can make some educated guesses:
The movie on your VHS was likely released around or after 1992, as "In einem fernen Land" was released in that year.
It was probably another major Hollywood production, possibly from Universal Pictures (the studio that produced "In einem fernen Land").
Given that it was a German release, the trailer would have been in German, as evidenced by the German trailer available on YouTube.
The movie could have been another Tom Cruise or Nicole Kidman film from the early 1990s, as studios often promote their stars' upcoming projects.
It might have been another Ron Howard-directed film, as studios sometimes group trailers by director.
Without more specific information about the main feature on your VHS, it's not possible to definitively identify which movie contained the trailer. However, these points might help narrow down the possibilities and jog your memory about the main feature you had on that VHS tape.
====
So although it didn't give a concrete answer, the "Universal Pictures" and "Ron Howard" hints would be good starting points for the next search. Btw., it was Apollo 13, directed by Ron Howard and distributed by Universal Pictures.
Eh, I'd already thought of those. It didn't particularly help, partly because the movie being previewed is kind of all over the place, who knows what counts as "close". Best guess is, like, Beetlejuice. Or maybe Nightmare Before Christmas. Or maybe Hook. Or maybe Home Alone 2. I can't just watch the tapes again, I don't have them anymore.
I can't believe the Internet is failing to fill this incredibly useful and prevalent market.
...okay, going through the list of New Line Cinema movies, The Mask is a very strong contender, so strong I think I'm willing to just assume it was The Mask.
Still. This kind of stuff should be in an archive somewhere.
I'm making a tabletop roleplaying game about living in a Rationalist community during the last year before the Singularity, called THE SINGULARITY WILL HAPPEN IN LESS THAN A YEAR. It's meant to be a dramatic, darkly comic way for people like me to work through their emotions about all this. If that sounds like the kind of thing that would appeal to you, you can support it here:
(this is the last open thread before the kickstarter ends so this will be the last time I promote this before the game is actually available, I promise)
Blinked in what way? I saw this and popped a quick google expecting some big headline like "Zelenskyy resigns," or "Zelenskyy signs mineral deal," but the only headlines are vague things like "Zelenskyy calls Trump spat 'regrettable,' expresses commitment to peace."
Sounds to me like capitulation - he's ready to sign the minerals deal and start a ceasefire. Unless my diplomacy-speak is weak and this doesn't mean what it says?
>My team and I stand ready to work under President Trump’s strong leadership to get a peace that lasts.
"President Trump's strong leadership" is harmless ass-kissing. A "peace that lasts" is precisely what Ukraine has been wanting all along. Not any peace, but one that involves security guarantees.
> truce in the sky — ban on missiles, long-ranged drones, bombs on energy and other civilian infrastructure — and truce in the sea immediately, if Russia will do the same
Stop bombing our civilians, and we'll stop sinking your ships and lighting up your refineries.
> Our meeting in Washington, at the White House on Friday, did not go the way it was supposed to be. It is regrettable that it happened this way.
No apology there. He left it ambiguous who was responsible.
>We would like future cooperation and communication to be constructive.
Because right now it's anything but constructive.
>Regarding the agreement on minerals and security, Ukraine is ready to sign it in any time and in any convenient format. We see this agreement as a step toward greater security and solid security guarantees, and I truly hope it will work effectively.
Again with the offer: Minerals for a "peace that lasts", not just any peace like the Minsk agreements that Russia can break at will.
I don't see anything that he wouldn't have said before last Friday, except "Our meeting in Washington did not go the way it was supposed to be. It is regrettable that it happened this way", which is not even an apology, let alone a groveling one, so it will not placate Trump.
I think he has shown that he wouldn't sign a deal that just hands stuff to the US without anything in return, and Trump has shown that he's not interested in a deal where the US doesn't get everything and promises nothing. So, I read this as "look, everyone, we're not the problem here" with very little chance that anything meaningful will actually be signed.
Could be, but I'd hold out until the ink is dried. I'm by no means an expert on diplomacy-speak either, but I see that final line of "we see this agreement as a step toward greater security and *solid* *security* *guarantees*, and I truly hope it will work effectively" (emphasis added), and it doesn't quite look like Zelenskyy has fully aligned himself with Trump's perspective.
Also the most recent tweets where he suggests that he now wants Europe at the negotiating table, too, appear more to be looking for a counterweight to Trump rather than falling in line with Trump.
"I had a productive conversation with the Prime Minister of the Netherlands, following our meeting in London. We discussed coordination with our partners and the preparation of a joint plan. The first steps on the path to a just and lasting peace are incredibly important. We want to move forward speedily, in cooperation with the United States and all of Europe."
"Europe has a shared vision how the war should end and what security guarantees must be. Europe should be be the negotiating table in future talks alongside Ukraine and the United States."
There seems to be an increasing amount of microplastic in human brains. If this turns out to be representative, we need to reduce our exposure right now. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-024-03453-1
2. Shop and cook real food - frozen and prepared food is invariably wrapped in plastic two different ways, you usually heat it in plastic, you don't know how "plasticky" the preparing process was, etc.
3. Glass containers for tupperware - leftovers, lunches, etc
4. Metal water bottles vs plastic disposable water bottles - the plastic ones can be particularly bad when exposed to strong sunlight with your water in it
5. I run HEPA air filters throughout the house, because air pollution is generally bad, although I'm not sure how much plastic this actually mitigates, I've seen some sources suggest it can help a little. But I'd do it anyways, plastics or no.
6. Reverse osmosis water filter with carbon filter layers - gets basically everything out that you can get out.
Some other potential steps I *don't* do:
* minimize seafood - probably a good idea, especially for tuna or other upper-funnel carnivores and oysters, that concentrate several layers of accumulation. But I still eat tuna, although I try to focus on squid and Lapu Lapu and Red Snapper and stuff like that
* buy organic - I'm not convinced it does anything, some people argue (pretty weakly, IMO) that it matters
* worry too much about clothes - washing and drying plastic-containing clothes theoretically creates a bunch of microplastics, and basically all "fast fashion" uses plastic heavily. Most of my clothes are silk or wool or cotton, but it doesn't stop me from rayon workout clothes or swimsuits or anything. I'm also not sure how those microplastics from washing / drying are supposed to bio-accumulate in you - it's not like you're licking them.
* donate blood - this is one of the only reliable ways to *reduce* microplastics versus just preventing further accumulation, but I can't do this due to failing various screening questions / reasons.
> I'm also not sure how those microplastics from washing / drying are supposed to bio-accumulate in you - it's not like you're licking them.
Do you hold your breath or wear a respirator when you clean the lint filter on your dryer? Our clothes are constantly shedding little fibers just through friction.
> Do you hold your breath or wear a respirator when you clean the lint filter on your dryer? Our clothes are constantly shedding little fibers just through friction.
Huh, good point. I actually do hold my breath when cleaning the lint trap, but that's because I'm paranoid about air quality. I also hold it every time anyone sneezes or coughs.
I guess that paranoia pays off, at least in this department?
Looking at air filters, I wonder whether these gigantic surfaces of plastic fibers introduce particles themselves, just smaller ones that escape the certification process, for example.
My gut feeling says that the harmful particles are in the nanometer scale, but who knows, the world of small particles is not intuitive.
The heating effect, if biologically relevant, would also point towards water boilers and pipes.
And I wonder about the contribution of cleaning sponges and foam sealing of HVAC, these things fall apart after some time.
Maybe all of this doesn't matter, and the plastic needs to be ground up further in nature to become small enough to be dangerous, which would mean that location decides.
How does one even measure this effectively? Weighted per material for sure. And then? Particle count, mass, geometry-weighted area per food serving size? There seem to be highly contaminated and almost not affected individuals, researching them would be crucial to isolate and quantify the pathways. Until these are not clearly identified, mitigation measures will be highly expensive and ineffective. And then, the methods themselves are not easy to understand: For example, food rinsing, does this even work? For which particle sizes and geometries, on which food? Is it even on the food, and not in it mostly? I once talked to a hygiene expert, the practical results for cleaning against bacteria and viruses are staggering and not intuitive.
Five zeros? That's orders of magnitude from other studies.
This needs to be comparable to get any meaningful picture of what to do.
But I can't stop my life and try to mitigate plastics that are everywhere, based on a mountain of probably wrong assumptions. I could well increase my exposure with my mitigation measures. But 0.5% per brain, rising rapidly, if that's representative, that's an extinction event, happening right now.
Considering that plastics have been ubiquitous in our environment for 50 years, but the rates of heart attacks and strokes have fallen during that period, and age-adjusted rates of dementia haven't increased in that time AFAIK, and the fact the plastics are generally chemically inert, I question whether there's any evidence the microplastics are a threat to human health. Period.
Of course, there was this study that linked the presence of microplastics in carotid artery plaques had a higher risk of heart attacks or strokes: "patients with carotid artery plaque in which MNPs were detected had a higher risk of a composite of myocardial infarction, stroke, or death from any cause at 34 months of follow-up than those in whom MNPs were not detected."
The most serious objections to this study were that there were questions about whether they were accurately quantifying the levels of microplastics in plaques and controlling for contamination. Considering that 42% of the people in the study had no evidence of microplastics in their plaques, 58% had high levels, and there wasn't a distribution of contamination levels, raises questions for me.
As for the study that claims 5 to 7 grams of microplastics reside in our brains, I'll wait until somebody else reproduces this study. I very much doubt that this is true.
And you are correct, it boils down to the real amount of plastics in the brain and its course over time. I hope someone finds budget for more measurements right now.
Thanks for linking to the original brain plastics paper. The news story I read didn't link to it, and I was too lazy to dig for it.
In Table S1, it's interesting that the NM patients listed with dementia as a cause of death averaged roughly 6-7x more MNPs in their frontal cortex than the NM patients listed as non-dementia deaths. But it's also interesting that the NM non-dementia-deaths had 2-3x more MNPs in their brains than the selected East Coast samples.
Right off the bat, I noticed that they don't have entries for the total MNPs found in the livers of NM dementia deaths to compare to the NM non-dementia deaths. So, we don't know if MNP accumulations were similar in other parts of the dementia death bodies. But what's going on with blood-brain barrier of dementia patients that allowed higher levels of MNPs into their brain tissues? Rather than causing dementia, I wonder if the higher MNPs are a side-effect of the dementia process?
Also, why do NM peeps who died of other causes have higher levels of MNPs in their bodies than the East Coast samples?
The authors seem to have adhered to strict controls for their measurements. I'm impressed. I have little to criticize about their paper — but I admit I find it kind of annoying not to be able to find anything to criticize. :-)
Increased blood brain barrier permeability is a feature of dementia, it seems. Interestingly, the age doesn't seem to matter much for the amount of microplastic. So it's either a statistical problem here, or the plastic gets into the brain mostly before puberty.
I believe its mostly food prep; coatings, and containers are ussally plastic; then they are heated and all heat sources are uneven. If you want to really go hard cast iron pans, real glass, ceramics you trust the source to use real glass finishes
The NM brain study that JJ800 linked to above doesn't show any PTFE plastics in the brains of patients who died from dementia. PTFE is the non-stick substance in non-stick pans. But non-plastics like Rayon show up. Lots of polyethylene plastics, which would be used in bags and bottles, show up in the brains of the dementia dead. Also, lots of N66 plastics, which would be used in things like toothbrushes, zippers, buttons, sporting goods, and automotive parts (I had to look up N66 plastics).
The Economist recently did a long-ish article headlined, "Why so many children in America have ADHD". I don't think there is a way to do a gift link so non-subscribers can read it, so here is the cliff-notes version of the article.
-- one in nine children aged 3-17 years has been diagnosed with ADHD, two to three times the rate in other Western countries.
-- The actual reason why America is an outlier is widespread over-diagnosis.
-- A typical ADHD diagnosis in America is done by a paediatrician or a family doctor in an office visit as brief as 15 minutes. The norm in Europe is an hours-long assessment by a psychiatrist. The difference has to do with America’s scant health-insurance coverage for mental health care and lax rules about who can diagnose ADHD.
-- Fresh evidence of specious diagnoses landed in December, in a study published by the National Bureau of Economic Research. It found that ADHD diagnoses in America spike by 14% on Halloween compared to the ten weekdays before or after that. It is easy to guess why—the children were examined on the one very exciting day when you get to wear a fun costume and collect bucketloads of candy.
-- In a study in 2020, 10% of Americans rated their children high on a scale of ADHD symptoms, compared with 3-4% of Swedish and Norwegian parents. Cognitive tests showed that the American parents over-reported ADHD symptoms by a wide margin; the Swedish and Norwegian parents were generally accurate.
-- It does not help that Americans are bombarded with advertisements for ADHD drugs. Only America and New Zealand allow direct prescription-drug advertising to consumers.
-- School-accountability rules can incentivise them to get ADHD diagnoses for poor-performing students: they can place children with ADHD into special-education classes and exclude their test results from reporting. Dr Hinshaw [medical researcher at U of CA-Berkeley] and others have found that ADHD rates are higher in states with more stringent accountability rules, especially for poor children. In Louisiana and Mississippi, poor states and early adopters of school accountability, one in six children has been diagnosed with ADHD.
-- Rich American parents and the competitive schools where they enroll their children have been tempted to exploit school accommodations for ADHD, such as extra time on exams. This shows up in the data for the so-called “504 designation”, a disability category for students who are expected to learn as much as other students, with certain accommodations (their test scores are included in the school average). An analysis by The Economist found that 7% of secondary-school students in the most affluent areas have a 504 designation, compared to 3% of students in the poorest areas.
-- What would the ADHD rate in America be if children were diagnosed properly? According to a study of 12,000 American children published in 2022 by Dr Nigg [psychiatrist at Oregon Health and Science University] and his colleagues, 9% of children would be categorised as having ADHD based solely on parents’ answers about symptoms. If both parents’ and teachers’ ratings were required, only about 5% of the children would have ADHD. When the researchers went further, taking into account standardised scales that show how far behaviour is from that typical for a child’s age, the ADHD rate dropped to 3.5%—falling in line with that in other Western countries.
>A typical ADHD diagnosis in America is done by a paediatrician or a family doctor in an office visit as brief as 15 minutes.
Sample size of two, one recent and one 30+ years ago, but this is not my experience. For both my childhood diagnosis and my daughter's, we were screened by a pediatrician and then referred to psychiatrists for diagnosis and treatment. For myself as an adult, I've had primary care doctors who have been willing to write prescriptions to continue or resume a previously-established course of treatment or make minor adjustments to dosage, but when I asked about changing to a different medication I got referred back to a psychiatrist.
I also have several friends and family members who have been diagnosed with ADHD as adults semi-recently. In every case where I know the details, the diagnosis was made by a psychiatrist, usually at a clinic or subdepartment that specializes in ADHD.
>It does not help that Americans are bombarded with advertisements for ADHD drugs.
This is something that may genuinely be my bubble skewing my perspective, since it's been a decade or so since I last had cable and so I'm out of the loop on what TV ads are like these days, but I don't recall ever having seen an ad for ADHD medication except when I'm doing a google search on obviously relevant keywords. I've seen a ton of ads for other medications, especially stuff like antihistamines, but not for ADHD meds.
1) Ukraine is insisting on security guarantees in a negotiated settlement
2) US is willing to sell weapons, Europe is willing to buy and gift them to Ukraine, Ukraine is willing to defend itself
3) Security guarantees are basically impossible, that's equivalent to being added to NATO
4) Therefore, we can conclude that everyone agrees that a red like for Russia is a militarized Ukraine to the point it might be able to resist future invasions; they wouldn't settle for just territory
At that point we feel really stuck, I don't see how peace is possible because no one will offer security guarantees, Russia won't accept a militarized Ukraine, and Ukraine will keep fighting for a long time if the alternative is demilitarization without security guarantees
----
Alternatives I can think of is US would not sell Ukraine weapons because Russia has more to offer; or Ukraine actually wants to reclaim territory and isn't solely concerned with not losing more of it/avoiding future invasions.
I don't think so, although I could be wrong. I think your point #2 is/was wrong and currently being debated.
If the Europeans were willing/able to either provide or credibly pay the US for modern munitions for Ukraine, I think the Americans would be overjoyed. That's not what's going on. The Americans are dumping a ton of money into what they see as an unwinnable war during a period of intense domestic disturbance and ~$1.5+ trillion annual deficits while they would also really like to pivot to China...as they have consistently expressed for a decade+ at this point.
If the Europeans were genuinely willing to shoulder the financial and military cost of arming Ukraine and pursuing this war until Russia breaks, delightful. But that's not what's available. Partly because, well, it's genuinely hard. The remilitarization of Europe, especially given all the internal divisions of the EU is a legitimately difficult thing. Partly because the Europeans have intentionally coasted on US security guarantees for generations (1).
So, rephrased.
#1 Ukraine demands explicit security guarantees (a la NATO) for a peace deal
#2 Russia will never accept explicit security guarantees (a la NATO)
#3 Neither the Americans nor Europeans like Ukraine enough to risk nuclear conflict with Russia
#4 Therefore, the war will continue
#5 Neither the Europeans or the Americans are willing or able to fund and arm the Ukranian war the level it requires.
#6 Therefore, Ukraine will lose and Russia will win
#7 If #6 is true, then you cut a deal as soon as possible, a la Trump
#8 No one likes this, everyone complains, but it's not clear what anyone will actually do. Democrats think Ukraine should be a higher priority but, if so, there's a recent election they should have won. Europeans don't like this but they also don't want to spend the money or face the prospect of rearmament. So...
4) Therefore, we can conclude that everyone agrees that a red like for Russia is a militarized Ukraine to the point it might be able to resist future invasions; they wouldn't settle for just territory
Why conclude that? Territorial gains + no Ukraine in NATO allows Russia to exit the war and claim victory, "no Ukrainian rearmament allowed" seems like an unrealistic demand and a step way too far.
If I could paraphrase, your premise is something like: "war is bad. wars should be ended as soon as possible. this is a war. therefore, it should be ended as soon as possible"
There are many wars where this line of reasoning is really cogent -- civil wars, wars with multiple aggressors, etc.
This is not one of those fights. "Peace" is not the most important goal here. The most important goal is for the aggressor to stop waging an unust war. Ukraine could roll over and die tomorrow, and that would bring peace, but it would not fix the fundamental injustice being done.
Your framing shouldn't be "peace at all costs", it should be "peace where Russia is out of Ukraine".
---
Separately, I think a 'forever war' favors Ukraine, in the same way forever wars favored the Viet Cong and the Taliban. Russia actually can't do this forever. Ukraine actually has to in order to survive. The importance of winning is dramatically different on both sides, which is a critical advantage for Ukraine.
This is the sort of reply that is very easy to write safe behind a keyboard half a globe away. In the trenches, on the front lines, surrounded by the most hideous conditions imaginable, it is a very different story.
Frankly, I have been appalled my tax dollars have been spent to continue this madness, and anyone opposing a peace deal at this point (US leftoids, Eurocrats of various flavors) should be castiagted as the morally reprehensible deviants they are and never taken seriously again.
Until you are willing to put yourself in death's reach on the front lines, your opinion about the morality of the conflict is irrelevant.
Surely you have some sort of evidence for that assertion. My search-fu is coming up short for any sort of polling in English of front-line Ukrainian soldiers, but perhaps you know of a source.
The same link says 69% of Ukranians believe they can repel Russian attack.
Given that you and I both are not Ukranian, it seems we should listen to what Ukranians have to say through the voice of their elected representative, who has and continues to have a broad mandate -- certainly has higher approval ratings than most US presidents. And that elected representative has repeatedly and forcefully called for aid in fighting. It would be paternalistic to argue that we should a) ignore that Zelenskyy is the voice of his people; b) ignore the polling that shows his people support him and want to fight.
Maybe a 'forever war' favors Ukraine, but it does not favor Ukrainians, who will be dying in it. On the other hand, even if it's bad for Russia, it's not actually bad for Putin and those close to him.
I agree that if your expectation is that peace will be followed by genocide, then peace is really bad: even worse than war. I don't think peace will be followed by genocide.
The videos of Ukrainian men being dragged off the street to die on the front lines suggest otherwise. As do the polls showing Zelensky would get annihilated at the ballot box if he actually allowed elections.
If a hypothetical presidential election were held in Ukraine in February 2025 with Kyrylo Budanov, Head of Defence Intelligence of Ukraine, and Valerii Zaluzhnyi, former Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces and now Ambassador to the UK, as candidates, current President Volodymyr Zelenskyy would take second place.
And yet, what do these Ukrainians gain through this blind pursuit of "justice"? Nothing but pain and suffering and death, all to only delay the inevitable. The order has shifted, and the game has changed. They no longer have a path to independence. Ukraine can save a lot of lives by putting an end to this senseless struggle.
It's not "inevitable". Ukraine has make Russia burn through its cold war stockpile of tanks and BMPs with support that the US and Europe pretty much paid out of petty cash. If they got actual support getting backstabbed, it would be a completey different picture.
If you know that your country will be genocided if you lose it changes the calculus of what you will be willing to sacrifice in a fight.
Look up the Holdomor if you aren’t familiar.
For the military in particular, they also know what happened last time when the Soviets took over. They had bayonets put in their back and were on the front lines of the meat grinder in WW2.
If I were Ukrainian, I would much rather fight to the last man against Moscow rule than suffer the fate they have planned.
Even assuming it was intentional, the USSR never would have had a motive to kill them if they didn't resist integration. So stop doing that.
> They had bayonets put in their back and were on the front lines of the meat grinder in WW2.
Well thankfully, we still have some time before WW3 happens. Not that it would be any worse than what Ukraine is going through right now, mind you. And of course, if it does come to pass, they were never going to be safe anyways...
“Even assuming it was intentional, the USSR never would have had a motive to kill them if they didn't resist integration.”
Oh, so you don’t know the sordid history. It had nothing to do with “resisting integration” (what integration)? The authorities simply took away the grain to sell abroad for gold. Yes, all the grain. From everybody. And then blockaded the area.
I was not under the impression that the British forced them to increase their population. If they exceeded their carrying capacity of their own volition, they have no one to blame for that but themselves.
> "the USSR never would have had a motive to kill them if they didn't resist integration"
"The hutus wouldn't have had a motive to kill the tutsis if the tutsis would just let the hutus do whatever they wanted!"
I'm shocked at how many people in this thread don't seem to know what 'appeasement' is and why its a hilariously bad policy. An elementary school kid knows that you don't tell the victim of the schoolyard bully to just quietly take punches to make the beatings end faster, but that's what you're arguing here.
Also, you don't speak for the Ukranian people, who clearly want to keep fighting. Pretending like you're speaking up for the poor ukranian is ridiculous when ukranians are constantly, vocally, asking for help in fighting more.
> An elementary school kid knows that you don't tell the victim of the schoolyard bully to just quietly take punches to make the beatings end faster, but that's what you're arguing here.
How is that remotely applicable here? Supplication would not prevent the beatings in that situation, because the beatings are the point. In this situation the beatings aren't the point. What Russia wants is the elimination of an independent Ukraine, and it's perfectly possible for the Ukrainian populace to fulfill that demand.
Of course, if they really want to die that badly, they are absolutely free to do so. It is the right of every man to fight for what they believe in, after all. Just a shame that all of these lives will go to waste for no good reason.
"Security" and "guarantee" are definitely words that can be put together, but they don't need to mean anything in particular. The resolution would seem to be to have something vague enough that it can maybe sorta be called a "security guarantee" while still leaving everyone plenty of wiggle room.
If it were possible to terraform Mars, financially or technologically, wouldn’t it still be impossible to survive for more than a short while on the surface because of radiation. If that is so, why isn’t the moon a better choice for a colony?
In either location, Moon or Mars, the radiation levels at the surface are high enough to severely shorten human lifespan. So at either one, humans will remain huddled underground. Construction and resource extraction jobs will be done by robots, probably AI controlled, but perhaps also some teleoperated - otherwise why should humans even leave earth?
In either location, the lower gravity is likely to increase the risks of pregnancy - certainly to the fetus, and possibly to the mother. Whether this means that we will never see native born Martians and Loonies remains to be seen. Don't expect NASA to find out any time soon. To the best of my knowledge there have been no mammal pregnancies carried to term on the space station, let alone primates or humans.
Both problems disappear if we colonize Venus. Of course, we can't build our colonies on the surface there. Instead we need to build them floating high in the clouds - at the altitude where the atmospheric pressure is about the same as here at the surface on earth. As it happens, the temperature at that altitude is comfortable as well, solar panels work well, the gravity is about the same as here on earth, and a breathable atmosphere of O2 and either N2 or Ne provides flotation. Check out the speculation online.
The real question is why would humans want to live there when Earth is so much nicer?
In addition to what John said, last I heard, the standard answer to radiation concerns (cosmic or solar) for long-term colonization of the Moon or Mars was to build the colony's main living areas underground or at least pile a meter or two of loose dirt on top of them. Regolith is free. Between low gravity and lack of both water and native life, it's a lot easier to shovel around than soil is on Earth. The lower gravity also means having a bunch of dirt piled atop a structure is a fraction of the load it would be on Earth.
A: No. There are some unknowns about the specific effects of galactic cosmic radiation, but the radiation environment on the exposed Martian surface is currently about 0.2 Sieverts per (Earth) year. The minimum acutely lethal dose is generally accepted as 2 Sv, so you'd be good for a decade at least, but really the "acute" part is doing a lot of heavy lifting there - the body does mostly repair radiation damage over time, and 2 Sv over a decade (or 0.2 Sv/year forever) will never cause symptoms of radiation sickness.
A more serious issue would be long-term cancer risk. A conservative estimate is that 1 Sievert of radiation exposure has a 5% chance of *eventually* causing a fatal cancer. So 0.2 Sv/year means a 1% chance per year of starting the clock ticking on something that will kill you in twenty or thirty years if you don't do anything about it. We should probably do something about that, and there are things we can do. Just putting everyone's bedrooms and living areas underground will cut that risk in half even if all of their work and play time is exposed on the surface. But in any event, it's not sudden death, and it's not a short-term hazard.
B: Not sure why you think the Moon would be any better. Radiation exposure on the surface of the Earth's moon is slightly higher than radiation exposure on Mars.
C: If we're talking about a *terraformed* Mars, then the problem is greatly reduced because the atmosphere will absorb most of the radiation. Note that, on Earth, the polar regions receive little protection from the Earth's magnetic field, it's mostly just the atmosphere, and nobody worries about radiation hazards for Arctic or Antarctic operations. It's measurable with the right instruments, but it's not a big deal. A Terraformed Mars might have a less dense atmosphere than Earth, but necessarily a deeper one due to the reduced gravity, so you should get about the same protection.
On the point B, the radiation exposure may be slightly higher on the Moon, but we are also able to do shorter stays there, so the overall exposure can be lower. One of the problems with Mars exploration is the limited windows for flight between Earth and Mars, and these tend to dictate long duration stays on the planet. This is not a problem for the Moon.
Of course, if we are talking about long term inhabitation on either body, then this difference is irrelevant.
Yeah, the original question was about sites for a colony.
Even for less ambitions projects, like a mining operation, the cost of transportation to the moon is likely to remain very high for quite some time, which argues against e.g. biweekly crew rotation flights like we see for offshore oil rigs. For anything much beyond quick flags-and-footprints "exploration" missions, most of the people going to the Moon will probably be staying there for many months at least, and I'd expect years to be common.
There may soon be a lot of newly unemployed Canadian men who spend a lot of time hunting and camping, have wilderness survival skills, can survive three or four days in the woods, no problem, who can walk past the unfenced United States-Canada border. These guys have worked a lot with heavy machinery, big rig trucks, excavators, and the like, so when they see an unguarded North Dakota fracking rig, they think "I bet I could sabotage that..."
I'm not sure what's worse, your understanding of exactly who in Canada you are describing (ie Albertans in the resource extraction industries) and their typical political leanings (not the Laurentian leftoids who have been booing US sports teams, but more the kind of people that made up the trucker convoy and hate Trudeau's guts), or your impression that fracking rigs (many-million dollar chunks of sophisticated machinery that are run as close to possible 24/7/365 by staffs of dozens or hundreds) are just left around "unguarded" for environmental protestors or fictional Canadians to sabotage. To put it mildly, this is some Mary-Sue tier fan fic.
"their typical political leanings (not the Laurentian leftoids who have been booing US sports teams, but more the kind of people that made up the trucker convoy and hate Trudeau's guts)"
Most of them do not in fact want to lose their jobs. You strike me as another rightoid who doesn't realize nationalism exists outside the United States.
It is really quite difficult for outsiders to realize just how big and empty it is up here in the northern plains, and how incredibly time-consuming it is to get anywhere without a motorized vehicle. What you're describing is likely a week-long excursion minimum, camping rough and avoiding roads and habitation, followed by another week-long trek back (when folk are gonna be looking for you). The terrain is tough enough that you'd pretty much have to do it on horseback with spare horses. It pencils out as doable, but ain't no-how easy.
While the mood in Canada is definitely both more nationalistic and more angry at the U.S. than at any time in the recent past, I think we're still a pretty long ways away from anything like you describe becomes common.
I think a large part of the reason that non-organized[1] of political violence like terrorism, assassination and sabotage are not especially common is that the mental state necessary to carry them out is just not that common. There's a fine line to be walked between "still has good enough judgement not to try something like that in the first place" and "so mentally and emotionally compromised that they have no chance of success."
Now, the worse the economic situation gets in Canada, the more people are likely to be pushed into that space. But I suspect it would take Great Depression levels of economic misery before you'd get very many people ending up there, and I think (and hope) that even if the trade war escalates, that's pretty unlikely. TBH, I'd be more worried about disaffected U.S. citizens doing similar things: there are (after all) many more of them, they don't have to cross the border, and I expect the next four years to supply anger, frustration and resentment in plenty among them.
[1] i.e. Not perpetrated by an organized group acting towards some specific goals
Why not think "I bet I could get a job on that"? If they're experienced with manual labour and big machinery, and willing to work cash in hand jobs, sabotage is for a day but a pay cheque is for a few weeks, at least.
I expect your drastically over estimating the raw hate the right wing Canadian has for the idea, Im a little fuzzy as I dont actually pay attention (french canada is very far away from me) but its generally accepted that its astroturfed leftwing and "orange man bad" thought, not people who were called nazis and debanked for supporting farmers. If trump attempts violence we'll see, but if its "hey we want the french part of canada and to give the middle finger to the environmental and tribal bullshit thats preventing you building a god damn thing" I think you'd see support.
Id have to ask but I do know people to the right of me who are cannadian in a parasocail way; the two that come to mind have both openly talked about violence towards Indians, and complete disgust of the commie government; I as a exmormon in utah am not being replaced, but I can imagine that other situations feel differently.
And there are forms of nationals that "love the land, hate the state"
If sucking up to Trump gets you a job in the Trump administration, I won't hold it against you. It's the people doing it for free that I have a problem with.
As a political scientist, I feel like most people miss the point by a huge margin when discussing geopolitics and the economics of war.
Does it matter who "wins" the Russia/Ukraine conflict? No. The Military Industrial Complex already made lots of money; the US managed to make most EU nations raise defense budgets; Big banks and the like already secured their wins with the Ukraine Reconstruction Fund and such; US traded old arsenal with newly made toys, "donated"/sold the old stuff to Ukraine as "aid"; Did I say the US made LOTS of money with the "war"? Yeah.
But what really matters, regarding Russia, and nobody talks about it are two things:
1. Who gets Russia's nukes after Putin falls? The guy won't live forever and who's gonna dictate how to slice the second largest nuke arsenal of the planet? What really happens if Russia "loses" this "war" as so many people want? This will literally decide the future of the world but sure, lets talk about Elon Crusk latest meme;
2. How can the US avoid at all costs its greatest fear ever: An United States of Europe with Russia in it? Shhhh. Did I said that out loud? No I did not. Divide and conquer is just a fantasy. [Deletes comment]
>>Does it matter who "wins" the Russia/Ukraine conflict? No.
>>What really happens if Russia "loses" this "war" as so many people want? This will literally decide the future of the world but sure, lets talk about Elon Crusk latest meme.
These two rhetorical question-call-and-response statements are extremely inconsistent, to say the least.
Don't get me wrong, I'm all onboard for more consideration on the part of pro-Ukraine advocates of how bad a runaway success case could unexpectedly become. If the dog catches the car and Russia is resoundingly and utterly defeated and humiliated to the point that the Putin regime collapses and Russia itself fractures or devolves into a scrum of internal knife-fighting for power, that is (a) a lot of instability for the hand (or hands) hovering over some very big nuclear buttons, and (b) it's entirely possible that whatever new regime you get is *more* bellicose, not less; something analogous to a Post-WW1 Germany "we were stabbed in the back but if we double-down on autocracy and militarism we can rise again from shame to glory, and recover the lands and international power that were stolen from us" could easily emerge, and we all saw how well that went for us in the 1930s and 40s when nuclear weapons *weren't* in the mix.
But it cannot, simultaneously, be the case (a) that it doesn't matter who wins the Russia/Ukraine conflict, and (b) that Russia losing the war could "literally decide the future of the world" based on how it would affect control/disposition of the worlds second largest nuclear arsenal.
(A) does not matter because as of today it seems escalation is controlled and president T wants a sit down. (B) MI6, DGSE, BND, etc all have literal books covering a regime change in Russia, FVEY says its theirs, and zero trust is these guys business, so yeah, whoever gets the stash will decide a lot of things. So I'm not sure why you think it can't be both
And those are the right questions to ask, that no one does because these options are never on the menu, by design, thanks to things like the agenda setting theory.
>Aren't they Russia's nukes? Don't they stay with Russia when Putin dies?
Are they Russia nukes? Who gets Putin's chair when he's gone? Is this person a CIA puppet (e.g., Juan Guaido in Venezuela, who was "recognized" leader by US presidents with no election, maybe because of eh, oil).
The fact is nobody even thinks what happens to Russia's nukes if Putin is out of the equation, but I assure you there are great designs for that. And needless to say that whoever get their claws on these will get a chair at a very exclusive table.
>A) How's that remotely plausible? They can barely make the EU work. B) Why would it be bad for the US even if it could work?
That is exactly the point isn't it? After generations of kids grew up shooting Russians and Nazees in games, it is in the collective unconsciousness that "Russia is bad", bad guys, aggressors. The propaganda machine worked as expected to the point people never even consider to answer this question: "What does a peaceful world, a peaceful EU looks like?". Let alone dare to entertain HOW to get there, it is forbidden to discuss this in US media, literally.
Of course, a successful EU that "works", a peaceful EU, does harm US unipolar agenda. America "hates" the idea of a multipolar world, absolutely loathes it. A United States of EU (with Russia in it, or USE) would far surpass US economy, natural resources, nuke digits, military power, and of course, would absolutely challenge US unipolar prominence. And god forbid the USE proceeds to make China their BFF, unthinkable to American officials, you will literally get fired from any federal job for even saying this out loud.
So of course it isn't "plausible" because the powers at be would lose grip around European necks and the aftermath is terrible for US hegemon state in the medium/long terms.
But this is NOT about Russia, or America, or the EU.
This is about peace, this is about no wars. The brain of the average Joe/Jane out there has never entertained the idea of peace to know that Russians, Chinese and Americans would need to become pen pals for this to happen, and this is more scary than an actual war if you ask me, because it is literally 1984 newspeak/doublespeak.
>> And god forbid the USE proceeds to make China their BFF, unthinkable to American officials, you will literally get fired from any federal job for even saying this out loud.
Surely you are being dramatic here. Contingency planning for even extreme and unlikely scenarios is fairly normal. Pre WW2 the US wrote up war plans for "just in case" it had to fight France and its colonies, for christ's sake. If you suggest the possibility of an unlikely but bad potential scenario for your government employer, they may or may not decide it's worth gaming out from a contingency planning perspective, but they don't fire you on the spot for speaking thoughtcrime.
I understand the appeal of this kind of this kind of rhetoric; it feels like you'll get more eyeballs if you make your ideas sound sexy. But it really strains credibility. Comes off sounding less like a thoughtful geopolitics analysis and more like some kind of policy-themed MLM sale - "click here for this one weird trick that's so *unthinkable* that America's head *literally explodes* if they try to think about it! Oops! Did I write it down? Join my mailing list to find out!!"
>That is exactly the point isn't it? After generations of kids grew up shooting Russians and Nazees in games, it is in the collective unconsciousness that "Russia is bad", bad guys, aggressors. The propaganda machine worked as expected to the point people never even consider to answer this question: "What does a peaceful world, a peaceful EU looks like?". Let alone dare to entertain HOW to get there, it is forbidden to discuss this in US media, literally.
I used to think we could have real peace with Russia in this generation, but that turned out to be naive. They couldn't maintain a stable democracy and they couldn't keep FSB activities in a scope that's consistent with them becoming real allies with anyone in the West. Now they're using the Russian-speaking populations they themselves planted throughout the former USSR and Warsaw Pact as an excuse for territorial aggression, basically "we conquered you once so we have a duty to conquer you again". Russia today will not accept being absorbed as one state among many into Europe, or even being an equal partner with the rest of Europe, they will only accept European countries as satellites and satrapies.
I do not subscribe to this "expansionist" narrative. I think that is exactly the kind of evil planted in people's imaginary. When Putin asked Clinton "we do not have to be friends, but we don't need to be enemies, can we join NATO?", Clinton laughed and told Putin to take a walk. It is that simple. Russians (the people) want to belong as much as Mexicans want to belong, but for economic rationales, both are treated like 3rd class citizenry, and this is by design of those who control the narrative, period.
This lore that Russia wants to invade Europe lives in the realm of fantasies, not on reality. Ask ChatGPT how many federal subjects (akin to US states) they have. They already have all they need, and will have even more in 8~13 years with the arctic permafrost melting, which is why Trump is already unpacking the Greenland initiative right at the borders of the Overton window, it's all strategy and posturing: you float a ridicule, unthinkable idea, and when you lay the actual plan it all sounds business as usual. Politics.
On Ukraine, I tend to agree with professor Mearsheimer thoughts that Ukraine is supposed to be a buffer state, since Russia don't want any US patriot missiles in Ukraine the same as US would not want Xi Jinping shein missiles in Canada. Americans delivered Afghanistan to the literal taleban after 20 years there, I don't think any Ukrainian have delusions of ending up a vibrant "democracy" however this situation ends to them.
>The original plan (before USA decided to side with Russia) was for the Ukraine to join EU when the was is over.
LOL. Ukraine is at least 5000 laws behind ever being fit to join the EU. Now if its members decide to throw the (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copenhagen_criteria) in the garbage, yeah, it could happen, but that is a huge/galactic sized stretch because Ukraine is nowhere near checking the most basic boxes of these conditional requirements.
>You just wrote lots of nonsense.
Nice way to try to get my attention, I'll never reply to you ever again :)
"When Putin asked Clinton "we do not have to be friends, but we don't need to be enemies, can we join NATO?", Clinton laughed and told Putin to take a walk. "
>I do not subscribe to this "expansionist" narrative. I think that is exactly the kind of evil planted in people's imaginary. When Putin asked Clinton "we do not have to be friends, but we don't need to be enemies, can we join NATO?", Clinton laughed and told Putin to take a walk. It is that simple. Russians (the people) want to belong as much as Mexicans want to belong, but for economic rationales, both are treated like 3rd class citizenry, and this is by design of those who control the narrative, period.
This is Putin we are talking about, he was an unknown quantity to most of the world back then but if Russia under Putin joined NATO ahead of the former USSR republics and Warsaw Pact countries, they would have just used that status to abuse those countries without NATO interference.
>The Labour peer recalled an early meeting with Putin, who became Russian president in 2000. “Putin said: ‘When are you going to invite us to join Nato?’ And [Robertson] said: ‘Well, we don’t invite people to join Nato, they apply to join Nato.’ And he said: ‘Well, we’re not standing in line with a lot of countries that don’t matter.’”
I'm not claiming the US is much better foreign policy wise, what with the Monroe Doctrine, but NATO doesn't need yet another country as arrogant and abusive as the US and in their own backyard to boot. And the US at least encourages democracy as a general principle and only backs dictators and unelected regimes in specific cases, whereas Russia's foreign policy is anti-democracy on a broad basis.
In the discussion around whether another national election will be held, people assume if the 2028 Presidential election isn't held, it'll be because the constitutional order has been overthrown. But actually, the constitution does not require an election to be held. The text is clear as day:
"Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States, shall be appointed an Elector."
After today, some may be thinking "I'm not sure this election thing is working out for me."
The legislatures in all fifty states are directly elected by the citizens of that state, and I'm pretty sure that *is* mandated by the US Constitution as well as the constitutions of each of those states. And the legislature which says "sorry, we're not going to let you all vote for president this year", will very predictably be voted out of office themselves in that same election. So they're not going to do that,
It's remotely possible that some massive disruption *during* the election would result in a state legislature saying "OK, that mysterious cruise missile attack on all the vote-counting centers made it impossible for us to properly count the votes, and there's no time for a do-over, so we're going to appoint the electors based on how we think you all meant to vote", but if so they'll be doing their very, and very transparent, best to match the sentiment of the voters. And, again, this occurs only after the election has been held and/or disrupted,
"The legislatures in all fifty states are directly elected by the citizens of that state, and I'm pretty sure that *is* mandated by the US Constitution"
The closest thing is the Guarantee Clause, but it's generally interpreted as a nonjusticiable political question:
Well that actually would be unconstitutional then.
This Trump-as-dictator meme is just a liberal fever-dream. Settle down. He couldn't pull that off even if he wanted to. There are few things more reliable than liberal hysteria and it just goes to illustrate how feminized the party has become.
The White House has just reversed itself on the indiscriminate firings of all new-ish ["probationary" which simply means in the job for less than 1 to 2 years depending on the job] federal staffers. This is presumably due to a federal judge last week pointing out that the directive for those mass dismissals was contrary to federal law.
They had the Office of Personnel Management amend its previous memo to no longer tell agencies fire them all but rather, "by this [amended] memorandum, OPM is not directing agencies to take any action regarding probationary employees. Agencies have ultimate decision-making authority over personnel actions." Pretty sure Musk and his hit squad weren't consulted on that last sentence.
So various agencies are now today scrambling to re-hire people. I learned of this, and got a copy of the amended memo, from an acquaintance who'd been in a fairly high-level technical position at the National Science Foundation and was shitcanned a week ago. Now they are begging him to come back, and he'd found the NSF to be a good place to work, but after all this insanity he's not sure.
See, this is the kind of thing that seems to me like pretty good evidence that Trump & Musk are disorganized and incompetent, ruled by impulse rather than insight. This development seems like good evidence no matter what your view is of whether all the agencies needed a radical reboot. And it seems like good evidence independent of whether sudden harsh firings were pure vengeance, justifiable as a means of convincing the recalcitrant to obey. If you do a bunch of dramatic stuff you claim is well-justified and crucial and then you have to undo it because the authorities force you to, it makes you look impulsive and weak. Also, you and everyone else are forced to see that you have wasted a bunch of time, and caused suffering, financial loss and confusion to others to no good end. It’s a basic principle of maintaining respect: Don’t make threats you can’t carry through on, don’t issue orders in situations where somebody’s going to countermand them. It’s better to issue milder threats and really carry through on them if the situation calls for it, better to order less radical things you’re confident won’t be countermanded. I give this advice to parents all the time.
It's also good evidence for "No, Trump is not going to declare himself Dictator for Life" and the rest of the hyperventilating about "no more elections ever!" seeing as how he accepted a court ruling to change his order.
>See, this is the kind of thing that seems to me like pretty good evidence that Trump & Musk are disorganized and incompetent, ruled by impulse rather than insight.
It has been obvious to me, but others have said that (1) there isn't time to dismantle the bureaucracy in a way that involves more thinking ahead and planning or (2) if they approach the task in a way that involves thinking and planning a bunch of bureaucrats will get involved in developing a dismantlement plan and will take a couple years to develop one (3) radical shocking action in needed to yank the government agencies out of complacency and slo-mo. (4) some of what they're doing is taking vengeance and that is legit, and also serves the purpose of alerting libtards and bureaucrats that if they continue their bullshit they will pay a painful price (5) we should give the guys a break, don't judge yet. (6) prob some other stuff I've forgotten.
As I understand it, PEPFAR is currently in an internal dispute - Marco Rubio has said to send out the money and Elon Musk's minions have said not to. So there's no risk of getting in trouble with the courts on that one.
Having an actual court order makes it a lot riskier - at some point the judge will lose patience with you dragging your feet and start holding people in contempt, and if you ignore those you're starting a pretty big constitutional crisis.
(A federal judge has ordered USAID to start paying for some things, but the Supreme Court has stayed that ruling and seems to be in no hurry to move the case forward.)
The required payments for already completed work are reinstated, though the district court will need to provide new deadlines, since the initial deadlines passed during the administrative stay at SCOTUS.
What are good businesses to start right now to take advantage of the new tariffs? I'm guessing: meth lab... That's all I've got so far. Was going to add "avocado farm" but the labor would be costly. I'd start an aluminum factory but what if I invest all that money and then a democrat wins in 2028 and removes the tariffs?
I'm trying to think of industries where the tariffs on Canada in particular would have substantial impacts.
One category that leaps to mind is oil, gas, and other raw materials, but this is a hard business to jump into on short notice. And to the extent it improves the prospects of domestic production, it's probably going to get baked into prices for mineral rights if it isn't already. Oil and gas exploration might be a good business to get into, unless the tariffs lead to existing firms shifting operations from Canada to the US.
Next category off the top of my head is maple syrup. Here, the tariffs are probably great news for existing American producers (I believe there's a ton of production in Vermont), but I expect it takes a few years to get a new grove of sugar maples mature enough to tap. Raising prices would shift some demand to substitutes, but the main cheap substitute (corn syrup) is already such a huge business that the effect is probably going to be very diluted.
Actually looking up statistics, I can spot a few that look like potential business opportunities if you have the capital, expertise, and connections to act on them:
- "Machinery, nuclear reactors, boilers". Looks like the big sub-category here for US imports from Canada are aircraft engines (both jet and piston), pulleys and cranes, industrial machinery, centrifuges, air conditioners, and pumps.
- Cars and car parts.
- "Aircraft, spacecraft". By far the biggest subcategory here is "Other Aircraft (Helicopters); Spacecraft"
- "Electrical, electronic equipment", mostly lines, transformers, and other stuff related to power distribution.
As I'm compiling the list, it occurs to me that someone who happened to already own tons of stock of, say, Tesla and SpaceX would be well-positioned to benefit from tariffs on Canada.
Avocado farms take a few years to get up and running, I wouldn't rely on it. Instead I'd probably just set up a firm to export avocados from the Bahamas to Florida. Then I'd set up a second firm to exports avocados from Mexico to the Bahamas.
More generally, if you can set up flexible supply lines to the US from places where there aren't (currently) tariffs then you might do well.
Is anyone aware of any "post-neo-darwin" "biomining" attempts?
neo-darwin: "we xrays dna we solved biology"
post-neo-darwin: theres more to biology then dna and you cant just autisticly assert mechanistic answers to how evolutions play things work
biomining: using bacteria in any processing step; apparently the alchemists used to flood iron mines with acid and later they found a bacteria that survives in acid
dirty earth metals: theres an idea that rare earth metals are misnamed, they are everywhere, you just need massive vats of acid to pull it out, and only china is currently doing that
Theres nothing in the laws of physics that asserts that the first process we find is near efficient; I think biology has a good grasp of modifying chemicals and its not unheard of a bacteria being used in this way, but its been blind using a bacteria that already existed as far as I can tell.
Many Thanks! Well, xkcd _is_ a humor cartoon... ( I tend to think that the mechanistic view captures the low level processes quite well. Yeah, there are levels of abstraction built on top, the variation/selection/inheritance of evolution is a more compact description than describing the same thing at the molecular biology level. )
No, Richard Dawkins has stated "we know 95% of biology" or something. This is the mainstream opinion,"evolution real because we xrayed dna; lets show the mechanized duck picture to children and shame them about having questions; lets not think hard about the implications and not find every mechanism of growth possible."
I think we have overwhelming evidence that biology hasnt even started yet and that most people, even educated people, barely have come to grips with evolution. People believe in scientism and a core tenet of obeying experts is saying "evolution is real" but all people have seen is a cardboard cutout.
Well, I think it’s pretty clear from what’s going on that this is a big power carve up into spheres of influence..
we nail down Mexico, Canada, and maybe Greenland. You get Taiwan, and turn the south China Sea into an airport, kind of, but could you give us a chance to pack our bags a bit so it isn’t so ugly?
Ukraine we’re going to sort out together as kind of a buffer zone where we both get to make some money. Western Europe can figure out what it’s going to do in light of the circumstances.
This is how business men settle things. Ideology is so last century.
Don't forget Israel! They get to have the Middle East. Obviously they're kinda getting the short end of the stick, but they're not exactly in a position to ask for more.
If the U.S. were playing *just* against Canada, I'd say it might be plausible that the U.S. could get whatever it wanted[1]. But the U.S. in its enormous wisdom has decided to try to play on a bunch of different fronts at once.
I don't think this particular brand of folly will continue indefinitely. But if it does the predictable result is the rest of the world just saying "fuck this," trading with each other and freezing the U.S. out as much as possible. The U.S. is a large, valuable trading partner so that's currently hard to do. But every time it tries to weaponize its trade, it gets a little less valuable.
The idea that Canadians, in particular, would decide to put itself completely in the power of the bully that (in this scenario) had just spent years pushing us around instead of just *finding different places to buy and sell stuff* seems like the most bizarre wishful thinking ever. You're important, but you're not *that* important.
[1] Though it is *extremely* unclear what the U.S. could want that is actually more valuable than the previous status quo. The demands behind the tariffs are, as you noted, bullshit.
We punish Canada until they vote to become a U.S. state.
We punish Mexico until they bring illegal entry and illegal drug trafficking across the border to zero.
We will suffer too, but it is worth it. The moral equivalent of war is a trade war. It's like Al Gore said, we are going to have to learn to make do with less.
The first preposition is a total fantasy. The second will never be zero but I hope they work on it with us in favor of reducing tarifs, that is best care scenario.
Worst case scenario is nothing of good comes of it and we all pay the price. Only time will tell.
They will not vote to become the 51st state or be invaded but that’s not necessary. All that’s necessary is to put them in their place.
The reasons to impose tariffs are essentially fictional ones, meaning no matter what Canada or Mexico do, it will still be a problem. It will essentially be, join up with us or die.
Does anyone think Trump or his biggest supporters are actually trying to cause a recession? I'm not being conspiratorial, its just that the stock market is currently tanking, and its dropped basically every time Trump has said the word tariff but he keeps doing it. I'm not generally in the "Trump is playing four-dimensional chess" camp, I'm in the "Trump doesn't know what he's doing and just goes with whatever gets a big reaction" camp, but presumably an economic crash would hurt his interests as much as anyone else's, but he doesn't seem to be panicking and trying to dial it back. Is there any kind of investment or scheme that Trump could have that would allow him to make more money by making the economy contract?
If it is truly his position to bring manufacturing back inside the United States, then this strategy can make sense. It’s not painless that’s for sure. Is he over reaching? Quite possibly.
The default hypothesis on Trump has got to be that he's just a bull in a china shop. He's confident, impulsive, and uninformed. I expect him to do essentially random things until the economy implodes. We're long-overdue for a recession anyway. I expect the next one to be nasty.
For perspective, the DJIA is currently about 5.5% down from the all time highs of December. It's up about 2% from where it was on election day. It's the same as it was on January 17, and it's higher than any point ever reached prior to October 2024. We're not really in "tanking" territory.
Admittedly I shouldn't get all my news from tiktok. I guess I sort of assumed this was just the prelude to bigger things since the tariffs hadn't even gone into effect yet.
Also, did the economic projections for this quarter show contraction for the first time since Covid, or did I misunderstand that news?
the obvious ways to profit are put options and/or waiting to buy up more real estate. but, hear me out, maybe it's not just about making more money? it could be he thinks this is actually the right thing to do, neo-liberal economics be damned. the line-go-up crowd have really destroyed what it means to be american, and the irony would be that an uber-capitalist would be the one to undo the damage.
i'm not saying he's doing this altruistically of course, but if he actually pulls off an american revival as planned he would certainly go down as one of the most consequential presidents.
Maybe so. I'll be honest though, I find that line of thinking so bizarre.
It would be so easy, relatively, to pivot from the current neoliberal system to one where we have much higher taxes on the ultra-rich and use that to subsidize the lives of Americans across the country in ways ranging from infrastructure to healthcare to education to straight-up welfare. But many of the people who oppose that most virulently, on the basis that such an economy wouldn't function at maximal efficiency, are suddenly practically chipper about an extended period of widespread economic devastation on the basis that maybe poor people will get a chance to be exploited factory workers again.
I think a more interesting question is how bad do things get before Trump reverses on the tariffs? Trump is all about being perceived as a winner. Presiding over a stock market crash or recession is about the worst thing a President can do for popularity. The stock market is already tumbling and the Fed predicts a 2.8% contraction this quarter.
Also, I think the perception that Trump is in it for money is plain wrong. He could have retired and just played golf and raked in money instead of running for President. By all accounts, doing so has lost him money rather than the opposite.
Well the first time he ran it was a scam that turned out to be too successful, a la "the Producers." Then we fucked up (by we I mean Democrats) and put him in a position where it looked pretty obvious he was going to go to jail if he didn't win again. At the time, I supported the prosecutions, I still think most of the charges were worth pursuing, but pragmatically I now wonder if maybe the best thing would have been to pardon him and just hope he holed up in Trump tower working with a ghost-writer on another book.
But now he's president, and yes, it looks like things are going to get truly bad and its going to be hard to shift the blame, although I'm sure he will try. It will be interesting to watch the talking points rolling out that this is all Joe Biden's fault for leaving us in a position where Trump had no choice but to shoot global trade in the face in order to save the US, but I imagine that's the argument we will be hearing. But its true that he's never faced a recession before that was linked directly to his actions, and we will see if that's the first thing ever to really damage his image as an omniscient businessman with his base.
As far as I recall Trump and Musk have both said there will be a period of economic pain.
The part that confuses me is why. It seems clear the US should reduce the deficit, but I don't see any urgent crisis that requires such drastic measures as to cause a recession. It would seem far more sensible to cut back in a more careful and coordinated way. On the other hand, I don't think either Trump or Musk were really secretive about their plans, so maybe the American people saw something I didn't.
the crisis is/was the the speed and scale of the demographic transformation enabled by biden's border and asylum policies. dumping half as many haitians as there are residents of a small town is a crisis to those residents. sorry not sorry if that makes me a racist.
the connection to tariffs is, obviously, that those small towns were dying before because american manufacturing was exported.
The Biden administration did not invent Temporary Protected Status (that was done under notorious open borders advocate George HW Bush), and did not decide to "dump" the Haitians anywhere in particular. (People under TPS can live wherever they choose, just like anyone else who's legally allowed to be in this country.)
"the speed and scale of the demographic transformation enabled by biden's border and asylum policies"
Did you just pull this horseshit out of your ass? "We need to crash the economy NOW because there were 55,000 asylum seekers in 2023." Can you divide 55000 by 340,000,000?
Yeah, I'm as confused as you are. My guess is that the majority of people who voted for Trump don't really understand economics or the role the president plays in it.
(That's not a slight at Trump voters, I think the majority of voters period are confused about these things, I also find them confusing and I didn't understand how little the President could control macroeconomic trends until my late 20s).
They blamed Biden for the economic anxiety they were feeling and Trump promised to make it all go away and they believed him, the same way people who don't understand the weather might believe a charismatic witch-doctor dancing in a field.
Among the cadre of intelligentsia and business people who, AFAICT *do* understand how the economy works, the rhetoric I heard from them was that Trump was threatening tariffs as a negotiating position to force economic and other concessions from countries but would never impose any restrictions that would obviously destroy the current status-quo of the economy. This seemed plausible to me! But now it does not appear to be the case. The most plausible explanation now is just that he really thinks this is going fix things, despite, many economists saying otherwise. Where other politicians might balk at doing something like this, even for the greater good, he doesn't seem worried about his approval either, probably because nothing else he's ever done has damaged his approval (but he never tanked the economy before in a way that couldn't be blamed on a plague, so we'll see).
He's destroying domestic manufacturing, not protecting it. Make American Manufacturing Expensive Again, MAMEA, put that onto a red hat. This is so fucking tiresome.
A lot of apparently intelligent people seem to have fooled themselves into thinking he didn't mean what he said and he would actually enact moderate and sensible policies. At least, that is what I saw from various online commentators before the election. Most of them are now baffled he is doing what he said he would do or just deluding themselves that there's some kind of strategy behind the chaos.
In my view there are real problems that need to be solved, and Trump's policies could be construed as solving them. But the way they are executing these policies is woefully incompetent. I'm very doubtful there's any long term strategy or anyone really thinking in the interests of the United States.
"when they say dangerous to 'our democracy', they mean their democracy, the elites own it"
I haven't been convinced that there is only 1 economy in america for a while, it seems to be *your* economy, if there was record deaths of despair in white males in fly over states while yall were claiming "the economy has never been better", Id like to see the roll of the dice.
If the 500 loses 1000 points but gas prices drop a cent, im not sure id oppose this.
Also, I wish people would stop talking about "elites," it was useful in its original, technical sent (as seen in the "revolt of the elites") but its basically become an intentional cofounder people use to equate credentials or education with actual wealth and power, which is how you end up with people arguing that a senatorial aide who went to Harvard or a mid-level bureaucrat with a PhD at the dept of Transporation is somehow obviously less aligned with the average person's interests and concerns than a billionaire like Elon Musk.
Those senatorial aides who went to Harvard were pretty happy to be flattered that they were in the party of the educated and enlightened, unlike all those dumb never-went-to-college hicks and rubes in the other party.
I'm not sure I agree. There does seem to be some use for a term that points to all the people who, when they make a decision, bignum other people have their lives significantly reordered. Whether because they ordered them to do something different, or because they paid them to do something different, or because they shifted the policy debate at the bureaucracy that determines what they're allowed to do at all.
Some people can't do any of those things at any level. Some people can. And that's going to change them and possibly define them.
You can call those people politicians or bureaucrats, something defined by the actual public role they play. Again, I never see elites used anymore outside of a derogatory term for people we want to define as a separate cultural circle from "real" Americans, presumably the ones impacted more viscerally by all those things you described. See specifically the term "coastal elites" which doesn't seem to mean anything other than liberals with college degrees. I'm not concerned with whether the term hurts people's feelings,, just again how it doesn't seem to signify anything particular except an outgroup. Because again, Donald Trump and Elon Musk are also billionaires exempt from the consequences of their own actions, but despite numerous people pointing this out, no one thinks of them as elites, and in fact they are generally held in opposition to elites. In fact, I would wager most people think of billionaires as a separate class from elites, and that shows you how the connotation is obviously broken, because what pragmatically could be more elite than that level of wealth?
Many of the people I am talking about are neither politicians nor bureaucrats, Jeff Bezos is not a politician nor a bureaucrat, but he is a absolutely member of the elite. So is e.g. Anderson Cooper.
> See specifically the term "coastal elites" which doesn't seem to mean anything other than liberals with college degrees.
If everyone understands what the word means, I don't see what the problem is. The meanings of words are context sensitive. What do you want people to call them instead? Communists?
Liberals with college degrees is fine. Coastal elites, like a lot of derogatory euphemisms creates a rhetorical distortion. People target liberals because they disagree with their ideology or their culture? Fine. But they don't want to admit that culture is grounded in any real world shared experience so they make it implicitly about privilege. If we are two sides arguing from two different bubbles (which we mostly are) then that's fair if close to insurmountable. But they don't want it to be fair, they want it to be a battle of authenticity vs phoniness and privilege. Despite the fact that their leaders are mostly rich college educated jerks too.
It has become that, but it’s not really what the word means. As you pointed out a word mean whatever a consensus decides it means. Then the question becomes is it a useful conversion or is it not? You can coin a good term to fling at the outgroup but it’s not terribly useful. Turning a word that has lots of positive connotations into an insult is a form of doublespeak don’t you think?intelligencia for instance.
Redneck is up there as well. Apparatchik? That sounds bad no matter who is in charge but isn’t that just a bureaucrat?
I'd argue it is a useful conversion, because not only is it obvious what it means, it also makes it incredibly obvious what political leanings the user has. Also, I reject the notion that "elite" had a lot of positive connotations, seeing as the very concept had been held in contempt by much of the population even before all of this.
It’s funny when you think about it because the original meaning of elite still survives. You could say of a ballet dancer that she is elite; you can be an elite hockey player; you just can’t be one of the elite.
How about we start referring to a group of people as “the 10th percentiles?“
I'm pretty sympathetic to all those things, but I don't think tariffs are going to fix them. The only thing that was ever going to re-invigorate those places was large-scale entitlements of the sort that are derided by the representatives those same dying people keep electing. I can get being mad at everyone in both wings of the establishment, but that doesn't change the fact they seem to have picked the wrong guy. People needed left-wing populist reforms, and they voted in a right-wing populist. As far as I can tell, they've screwed themselves.
Even if I agreed(I very very much dont), bernie was pushed out, then the next election was so forced I think even the "always blue" crowd noticed; the democrats reaped what they sowed
Well, technically, we are *all* in the process of reaping what we sowed. The one good thing about having an absolute egotist in power pushing every button he can without any checks and balances is that politics is finally working in a highly legible way. In every other administration the party in power has been able to say "well we would like to do things differently, but our hands are tied by the size of the opposition and their dedication to blocking our initiatives." But finally enough people decided they wanted to flip the table that the power seems to be resting in one place. So we will see, after a year or two of this, if you are right and these are the policies that can fix things. Regardless, they are unequivocally the policies of the Republican party, lock stock and barrel, with no compromises and no way to blame the Democrats if people start starving and have no access to food stamps, or dying because medication is too expensive. I don't want to fear-monger, I hope none of this comes to pass, but it seems like the logical conclusion, and the only good that would come of it is that maybe a few people who gleefully said this was the America they wanted will now have to live in it and see how they like it.
" and no way to blame the Democrats if people start starving"
Oi, you have never been motivationally reasoned to? Of course Republicans will blame Democrats, who else are they going to blame, themselves?
True story: I'm standing on a Metro platform waiting for the train in Copenhagen with a Republican colleague (we worked together enough to know each other's political leanings). I mention how nice the metro is and wouldn't it be good to have this kind of public transport in large US cities. His response, I'm not kidding you, is "we can't afford this with all the money we spend on welfare".
I... didn't know what to say. We are literally in Denmark, one of the most generous welfare countries in the world, and it has a great metro. But his Republican mind couldn't see this.
I wish you were right. But I would hesitate to bet on it.
I remember, over a decade ago, when Robert Fico won his first elections in Slovakia, I was having similar thoughts: Previously, he was just a loud voice in the opposition, blamed everyone for everything... yeah, blaming others is easy, but now it's his turn, he has no more excuses if during the next 4 years none of those things he complained about will improve. He will definitely have to change his speech, or his voters will wake up.
LOL, that was so naive! After ruling the country for 13 years (with some short breaks), still whatever bad thing happens, he blames the opposition, journalists, non-profits, America, Ukraine, anyone. Nothing is ever his fault. And his voters, they totally keep buying it.
I predict that if economy and medicine goes to hell, Trump will blame uncooperative people in civil service, and will use that to excuse more purges; and if there are any protests against him, then of course those protesters will be responsible for disrupting the economy. He will also blame Biden and Zelensky for having wasted the money that is now so desperately needed, Canada and Mexico for not doing whatever he told them to do, etc. And the redcaps will totally buy it. Their smartphones will tell them that it is true!
The question then is, are these tariffs going to do anything about that second economy? I find it hard to see how they're going to help, unless you really believe manufacturing is going to flow back into the US in droves, which doesn't seem realistic. At best, you're going to get a moderate amount of reinvestment that is unlikely to be worth the cost of the tariffs.
Some people have been left behind, but I don't think this is going to help them.
To be effective at their stated goal, tariffs would have to be in place for a while and cause actual economic harm to the current arrangement. That's obvious to people both in favor and against tariffs. If this occurs, then it may also create the incentives for people within the US to produce more the tariffed goods, which would increase this second economy.
Lots of ifs there, and pain first, but it's not exactly a secret what he's trying to do.
Yes, this is the plan. But I haven't seen anything that makes me think it's going to work, on net. Some more production will happen in the US, I'm sure, but will they be worth the cost of the tariffs? It's hard to see how, at least in anything like the short term. It's takes quite a while to repatriate your factories just by the time it takes to get them permitted and built. Any real benefits will take years to accrue, while the pain is immediate.
Yes, this is also an issue. If a Democratic Party administration were to follow in 2028 they would certainly undo the majority of the tariffs Trump has in place. Easier to wait it out for some companies than to make big changes to their development plans.
Well, Trump, obviously. If you define "work" the way he does, then probably a lot of people agree.
He's willing to permanently damage the overall economy in terms of total dollars (which benefits big city white collar jobs) in order to provide a meaningful but smaller benefit to blue collar workers. It's entirely possible that he succeeds in his stated goals, while the economy overall doesn't grow or even shrinks. Whether that's a "success" is very much in the eye of the beholder.
A secondary concern, that seems to be much more supported than his core plan, is to have American manufacturing for national security purposes. The US city of Pittsburgh had more steel production than all of the Axis powers combined in WWII. Now China has 50% of worldwide steel. If you think that's a problem, you may prioritize building local steel (and other core production) even if it's a bad economic decision.
US blue collar workers will disproportionately suffer from the tariffs in two ways: their manufacturing jobs will be gone, and the prices for things they need will go up.
Us big city white collar workers can pay extra. We'll grumble, but fine, whatever. Our jobs will be safe. What are you going to do, not buy another phone and cancel Netflix?
> The question then is, are these tariffs going to do anything about that second economy?
My estimation depends on details that are very speculative of what trump actually does; I would hope for a *cough cough* slavery free economic zone namely without china to start. We will see what happens.
What matters is perception. He can’t cause too much inflation of course, but building factories for the workers is probably more attractive to the American working class than exporting jobs to China, tolerating opioid epidemics and calling the victims deplorable.
But is it preferable to higher prices? How much inflation are we willing to take?
The factories that may come of this will take years to build, while the pain is immediate. I question whether we are able to stomach the amount of pain that's coming for a possible long term gain, and that gain might not even be close to the cost in the end.
Higher prices but now I got a job at the new car plant so my wages can cover them versus al the jobs are outsourced but the economy has never been doing better so I am told by my 'betters'? What do you think the average voter will think is better?
"Honda will reportedly manufacture the next-generation Civic in Indiana. That’s a change of plans for the company, which had been planning to manufacture the vehicle in Mexico. The move comes following Donald Trump’s levying of 25% tariffs on goods from Mexico and Canada.
At least one automaker is betting President Trump’s tariffs won’t be a short-term event—and is increasing its manufacturing capacity in the U.S. in hopes of sustaining or increasing sales.
Honda has reportedly decided to manufacture the next-generation Honda Civic in Indiana, rather than Guanajuato, Mexico. Production will begin in May 2028, a six-month delay from the original plans. The move comes as 25% tariffs on products from Mexico and Canada went into effect Tuesday, a decision that is expected to raise the price consumers pay for vehicles made in Mexico by $4,000 or more."
Jobs in construction building the plant, jobs in the plant when it comes onstream, the downstream jobs supporting the plant - if that happens, the voters will think Trump did a good job for them.
I acknowledge that some amount of factory repatriation is going to happen because of this. I just doubt that the amount of new factories/jobs created will be worth the tariffs, on net.
The benefits will be specific to certain areas/people in certain towns. The costs will be universal, affecting everyone. People usually don't like that equation. The share of US citizens that work in factories is very small compared to what it was 50 years ago, and unless the tariffs are wildly successful beyond most economists expectations, that will still be the case 10 years from now.
Also, if by "deplorables" you are talking about the famous Clinton trope, that's an obvious misreading. She wasn't saying that a percentage of people voting for Trump were deplorable for being addicted to opioids, she was saying there was a vocal minority of people who supported Trump primarily because he championed a worldview that was deliberately nasty and racist. You can disagree about whether that's a fair assessment, but personally I don't think its a reach and even if its wrong, its the sort of characterization that would be fair if it were true.
She was making a joke out of a proportion of the voters for her rich, gay, donors to laugh at, which they did. It wasn't supposed to go public, but it did, and then people could see what the Compassionate Inclusive people thought of them: deplorables.
Her full remark wasn't much better - the other half of possible Trump voters were just ignorant people who needed to be enlightened as to how they should think and vote, because they just don't get what is in their best interests.
"I know there are only 60 days left to make our case — and don’t get complacent, don’t see the latest outrageous, offensive, inappropriate comment and think well he’s done this time. We are living in a volatile political environment. You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right?
[Laughter/applause]
The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic — you name it. And unfortunately there are people like that. And he has lifted them up. He has given voice to their websites that used to only have 11,000 people — now how 11 million. He tweets and retweets their offensive hateful mean-spirited rhetoric. Now, some of those folks — they are irredeemable, but thankfully they are not America. But the other basket — and I know this because I see friends from all over America here — I see friends from Florida and Georgia and South Carolina and Texas — as well as, you know, New York and California — but that other basket of people are people who feel that the government has let them down, the economy has let them down, nobody cares about them, nobody worries about what happens to their lives and their futures, and they’re just desperate for change. It doesn’t really even matter where it comes from. They don’t buy everything he says, but he seems to hold out some hope that their lives will be different. They won’t wake up and see their jobs disappear, lose a kid to heroin, feel like they’re in a dead-end. Those are people we have to understand and empathize with as well."
Helpful. In retrospect, Hillary was a terrible candidate and democrats (including myself) should not have supported her so full-throatedly, but this is probably the single best example of the uneven standard to which the candidates were held. Thousands of apologies and clarifications were written regarding Trump's "rapists and murderers" comments (which, to be fair, were also taken out of context originally), but to this day many of those same people who defended his rhetoric will tell you that Hillary Clinton called Trump's base awful for being poor.
Except, I don't see how these factories are going to be paying the workers the 1950s wages adjusted for inflation with pensions and benefits that they think is their birthright. More likely they are going to be the sort of minimum wage hellholes you would expect to get after you've dismantled OSHA and collective bargaining, and STILL have to compete with China on international trade. I mean, to be fair, I'm not an economist, but thinking these factories are going to be preferable even to working at the local dollar store or wal-mart seems like a pipe dream to me.
If such conditions are good enough for immigrants who grow the economy, are they not good enough for native Americans? Won't the economy grow when the jobs are low-paid and bad conditions worked by American citizens instead of guys from South America who just landed in the country last week?
That's part of the hypocrisy going on here: on the one hand, it's better for immigrants to come and the US needs their labour, but on the other hand let's not admit we need them to be exploited or else the industries that employ them couldn't make it work.
I think tariffs are one of Trumps few actually deeply held beliefs. He has been consistent for a long time that tariffs are a good thing for industry. I suspect this comes out of his experience coming of age in the 70s/80s when Japan was supplanting US industries, and then watching more of it drift to China. I think he really believes tariffs can bring manufacturing back into America. Which, of course, it can, to a limited extent. There probably will be more factories built in the US as a result of the tariffs. They just don't even close to balance out the costs for US consumers.
I'm more interested in whether the business community is finally going to have a fit over this. They are republican aligned community, and they HATE the tariffs. They know it's going to wreak absolute havoc on their profits. I suspect they didn't really believe he was going to implement the tariffs in any meaningful way until today. Maybe they thought he would just do some kind of push and pull tactics, or very limited tariffs on certain industries, but now it's real. They are here, and they can't be sidelined as a joke any longer. I wonder if they will rise up against him now, through back channels of course, and we'll see if the administration responds.
The ACX Tweaks Chrome extension stopped working, probably because it doesn't use the new manifest format for extensions (I didn't dig into why, but that's why a lot of things are breaking these days). I rarely even used this, but was wondering, regardless, whether there is a replacement that someone can recommend?
Thanks for the links! I've got access to Hidden threads, but I'm not sure how to search through them to find your comments. 🙃 But I already appreciate what you've linked here. Thanks again.
From "Why I am not a conflict theorist" (the quote that inspired the Identity Alignment simulator found at https://biasnet.streamlit.app/
""Someone should demonstrate this more mathematically, but it seems to me that if you start with a random assortment of identities, small fluctuations plus reactions should force polarization..." Because if the members of a group that is organized around a set of values starts insulting members of another group, the two will polarize against all the values of the rival group, not just the ones that were the target of the original insult.
The "Group Polarization" phenomenon is even broader than what Scott suggests--no insults required, just a calm exchange of differing views on a scenario or issue on which people have a range of varying positions.
It's worth noting that there is an opposing force in group dynamics: people who belong to both groups, and therefore act as "bridging capital" between them. Segregation specifically along partisan lines is a relatively new trend (It's only a few decades old), so something else must account for why the one phenomenon appears to be expanding at the expense of the other.
This whole Zelensky Trump mash up, makes me feel like I'm not wanted here anymore. I've got a very different view than most of you. And it seems like it would be good to discuss it. But we can't, you can only tell me how wrong I am. Emily Jashinsky of undercurrents hit's most of the right notes for how I feel. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZ_Sco5XhIw
I'm not wanted here either, and in fact I'm pretty sure my other account got banned from here either by Scott or a rogue Substack employee. But that ain't gonna stop me! And it shouldn't stop you either. Life's so much better when you stop caring about what others think of you.
Ah stop this. More than one commenter had mentioned actually liking engaging with you, yours truly included. Yes I often disagree with you and your overt misanthropy can be annoying, but you do have interesting things to say and never descend into rudeness and name-calling. Nobody's perfect.
Word. The more feathers you ruffle the more fun you have anyway. You can't change minds without someone getting upset. There aren't many places on the internet that allow you to make strong counter-narrative arguments. God bless Scott for both tolerating it and attracting a heterogenous audience. Without the apparatchiks to gore this place wouldn't be any fun at all.
No horse for me in the Ukraine-Russia discussion, slightly more horses in the Trump-vs-the-world discussion, but only for amusement and as a dark reminder of how utterly low the depths that human IQ can sink to, but just as a general advice: Cultivate The Subtle Art Of Not Giving A Fuck That People Think You're Wrong.
My opinions are right because I spent a lot of time thinking about them, and because I would have changed them if I knew they're wrong. People telling me I'm wrong are no more (or less) convincing than any of the sources and arguments that I already read or saw when I was forming my opinions. People telling me I'm wrong means nothing because the vast majority of people are wrong the vast majority of the time, this means that (A) They're most probably wrong themselves (B) I could be wrong, but being wrong is as normal as and as widespread as eating and going to bathroom, the very people taunting me with being wrong are doing it even as they speak, so what?
I think this attitude plus that of Eremolalos is good wisdom. Being wrong is a flex.
I have not read your posts and try to stay away from political discussions, so this is general advice, not advice given in reaction to your views:
You say you don’t feel wanted here. That gives me the sense that you are sort of over-identified with your opinions, and view rejections of them as rejections of you. Listen, it’s always a mistake to think of your opinions are part of you, because then you will be as unwilling to change them as you are to have a leg amputated. Think of them as possessions of yours. That will
make you more willing to trade them in for better ones if somebody gives solid evidence that others are better. Sort of like with cars, you know?
Seriously try on the possibility that those disagreeing are right. If they don’t name sources, ask them for the best well informed sources of their views, and read them, then decide whether your views might need revising. If they don’t, come back and argue.
Don’t worry George, everyone here has been telling me how wrong I am for the best part of a year :)
I 100% think Trump is right for trying to end the war in Ukraine. It’s fascinating to me how the left is now pro foreign wars and American imperialism. A complete shift from 20 years ago.
Zelenskyy is not a good guy. Ukrainians want peace. He doesn’t, because he and his buddies profit massively from the current state of affairs. So he has jailed journalists, banned opposition parties, and cancelled elections. The left conveniently forgets that before the war Ukraine was widely recognised as one of the most corrupt countries in Europe.
“An evil man will burn his country to the ground to rule over the ashes.”
Responding to the simplest form of your claim, that "War is bad and we should negotiate for peace".
If NATO supports Ukraine, doesn't that signal to future warlords that the cost of a war will be high, therefore decreasing wars of conquest in the long term?
This is my main reason for being pro-Ukraine, so I'd like to hear opposing thoughts on it.
Just because someone opposed the 2003 invasion of Iraq doesn’t mean that they are logically required to support the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, or vice versa. You may not be able to imagine why anyone would *want* to live in an world where powerful countries don’t go around invading weaker countries on flimsy pretexts, but there’s nothing logically inconsistent about such a desire. So you haven’t identified a “shift from 20 years ago.”
You have made an interesting leap from my position of “war is bad, we should try to negotiate for peace” to “I support Russia invading Ukraine in 2022”
Yes, and a 5-year-old will also understand "Russia can immediately end the war by stopping their attacks, and everybody can live in peace and freedom. But if Ukraine stops defending itself, Russia will conquer all of Ukraine and the Ukrainians will lose their freedom."
This is a gross misrepresentation both of what I wrote and of the situation in Ukraine.
Earlier you said:
> Don’t worry George, everyone here has been telling me how wrong I am for the best part of a year :)
You should take this as a strong hint that you might actually be wrong. And not "wrong" in the sense of "has different values from all others", but "wrong" as in "has an objectively incorrect understanding of some aspect of reality".
Are you buying the Trump's statement about "only 4%" of Ukrainians supporting the "dictator"? That is utter bullshit, one of those things he says because he knows that his supporters never bother to check facts.
> So he has jailed journalists, banned opposition parties, and cancelled elections.
Check the Wikipedia list of the banned parties. Some of their names are literally like "Russian Bloc" and "Russian Unity". These were openly pro-Russia, pro-invasion parties.
To compare, during WW2 in UK, the British Union of Fascists was also banned.
And no, he hasn't "cancelled" elections, that is another redcap bullshit. By Ukrainian constitution that was signed long before Zelensky got elected, there are no elections during war.
If you just think about it for 5 minutes, how exactly would you even organize the elections, when 20% of your country is in occupant's hands, and in the rest of the country there would obviously be bombs falling on the lines before the voting stations.
other banned parties were ordinary left-wing parties with names like "socialist" or "communist" (being left-wing now gets you arrested) or the leading opposition party in parliament
I’m sure Zelenskyy is very worried about the voice of the eastern 20% of his country who are largely ethnic Russians, who view the Maidan 2014 uprising as an illegitimate coup. “These people deserve fair representation too!” says Zelenskyy.
The issue is really that if your constitution bars elections when your country is at war, corrupt Presidents will prolong wars so that they stay in power.
As for the 4% figure, Trump got that from his intel agencies. Maybe it’s not completely accurate, but neither do I trust the supposed scientific surveys funded by globalist NGOs and parroted by the mainstream media/Western propaganda machine. 57% approval?? Zelenskyy’s goons have spent years literally abducting military aged men from public parks and sending them to die on the front line. He’s destroying his own country and taking in billions from Western governments, padding his own pockets with it and getting treated by Western media like the second coming of Winston Churchill.
If you believe this war is only about liberating the Donbas, I have a bridge to sell you.
Putin's first move in the war was to drive straight for Kiev, and even after his offensive stalled he passed a law declaring that Zaporzhizhia and Kherson, territories that are not in the Donbas and Russia never even occupied, were officially part of Russia. He wants the whole country, and he hasn't been subtle about saying that.
Outside of the parts that Russia has occupied since 2014, the Donbass is less than 40% ethnic Russians, and a lot of those have had the shine taken off their Russophilia by a decade of Russians shooting up the place and not being all that careful who they're shooting at.
There's no place outside Crimea where Zelenskyy wouldn't have been favored to win an election in 2021, and I'm pretty sure that holds true today. And you may not trust "globalist NGOs and the Western propaganda machine", but nobody with an ounce of sense is going to trust someone who can't get the basic ethnic composition of the Donbass correct. So why are you trusting people who told you that the Donbass was mostly ethnic Russians?
Please look at this collection of various charts of Russian and Ukrainian language circa 2010 (be careful, and note that the years vary, and some of the charts are election charts instead). These paint a fairly clear picture of significant ethnic Russian population in a swath along the east and south, and a *major* demographic and political divide across the Dniper.
Quite a lot of such maps may be sourced from the west, BBC, et cetera, pre-Maidan. It did not used to be controversial knowledge that the eastern part of Ukraine had significant minority or even majority ethnic Russian population.
I invite you to find some *old* maps or *old* fact books which show ethnic Russians in the east to be 40% or less.
Personally, I'm not concerned about Zelensky not having an election. That's fine. But I'm very concerned about the west memory-holing its own demographic and political information about Ukraine. I *personally remember* when mainstream western publications painted a picture of Ukraine as a dangerous, corrupt state full of anti-semites, not sufficiently different from Russia for us to invest in it.
I'm also not saying Putin had a legitimate excuse in terms of nazis, or corruption, or even persecution of Russians. I'm just saying those things existed, they were reported on, people no longer admit it, and that's dishonest or historically ignorant.
From what I can see Zelenskyy seems perfectly willing to negotiate an end to the war as long as it includes security guarantees, and of course, Russia is willing to accept it. Both of those things are not yet on the table. He has even hinted he is willing to sacrifice some territory if it seems like a lasting peace deal.
And I do think the left has shifted on this, but the reason is fairly obvious. One country attacked another essentially unprovoked. It appeals perfectly to the left's sense of fairness/rightness in the world. Most wars are not so easily divisible into good/bad on those terms.
Over 50% want a negotiated peace, but of those, 38% don't want any territorial concessions, which Russia obviously will not agree to. So, only about a third of Ukrainians want a settlement with territorial concessions, which is not an overwhelming number. I think they need to do it, if Russia will agree, but it must come with some security guarantees from the EU/US or it won't be worth the paper it's written on.
As John Mearsheimer said - if you start history on Feb 2022, it is clear that Russia is the bad guy. If you start in 2014, it becomes less clear, and if you start 1991 even less so.
For context, in 1991 Bush’s Secretary of State promised his Russian counterpart that if they allowed the reunification of Germany and its incorporation into NATO, NATO would never expand further - “not an inch to the East.” NATO, of course, proceeded to ignore that agreement (Putin is not the only one who likes to violate international treaties.)
Russia did explore if they would ever be allowed to join NATO - Clinton told them no. Failing that, they made it clear that Ukraine being offered a path to membership was a red line for them. It’s not so unreasonable - imagine how the US would feel if China started stationing troops and missiles in Mexico.
In 2014, the Maidan revolution, sponsored by the CIA and the State Department, toppled Yanukovych in Ukraine, who was deemed by the masters of the universe in Washington DC to be excessively pro-Russian. The Ukrainian government that took its place was staunchly nationalist. Ukraine has historically had a large ethnic Russian minority, concentrated in Crimea and the Donbas. Following the revolution, which was viewed as an illegitimate coup by a large segment of the Ukrainian people, there were incidents of ethnic violence against that population and Russian language was banned on national TV.
That’s the context in which Putin invaded Crimea. When he says he intervenes in Ukraine in Crimea and the Donbass to keep Ukrainian separatists safe from persecution, there is actually an element of truth to these claims. Actually the Ukrainian population in both of these regions has voted overwhelmingly in referendums to secede from Ukraine (in excess of 95%.)
So tell me again how sending billions to Ukraine is defending democracy? Remember, whether you live in Russia or the West, your government/media is deeply invested in trying to tell you that they are the good guys.
> For context, in 1991 Bush’s Secretary of State promised his Russian counterpart that if they allowed the reunification of Germany and its incorporation into NATO, NATO would never expand further - “not an inch to the East.” NATO, of course, proceeded to ignore that agreement (Putin is not the only one who likes to violate international treaties.)
You seem to equivocate "someone allegedly said something, of which there is no written record" with "international treaties".
No, it's actually pretty clear if you go back to 2014 that the Russians were the bad guys. They may not have been the *only* bad guys. But if they weren't among the bad guys, if they didn't know full well they were the bad guys, they'd have had their soldiers keep their uniforms on when they invaded parts of Ukraine and said "this is why we, Russia, are invading parts of Ukraine".
And if you go back to 1991, it's pretty clear that the Russians were the good guys (again, not the only ones) until they later became the bad guys.
Not all stories have clear-cut good guys and bad guys, There are stories in the history of Russo-Ukrainian relations that don't have clear-cut good guys and bad guys. But the one we've been watching since 2014, yeah, that really is one of the stories with straight-up black-hatted bad guys.
The point he's making is that this was a long standing ethnic and linguistic neighbor conflict, and rather than help resolve it, we helped substantially to exacerbate it.
Russia are bad guys, who meddled in at least two if not three elections, backed one side of a neighbor's civil war, went back on treaties, and invaded that neighbor.
But Ukrainians are also bad guys, who cancelled the Russian language, marched *in favor of* anti-semitism, performed a coup against a democratically elected president, and shelled separatist regions.
And Americans are also bad guys, who meddled in at least two if not three elections, went back on treaties, backed a coup, and tried to install missiles in the hostile neighbor of a regional power.
The conflict didn't start in 2014 with the annexation of Crimea or in 2022 with the invasion. It started in the early 1990s, when, against the forceful advice of a minority in the diplomatic community, the west decided to continue an alliance to isolate Russia, rather than spin down that alliance, and integrate Russia fully into the western community. It then escalated in fits and starts for 30 years, with *all three of America, Russia and Ukraine acting in bad faith at various points*, until the invasion.
You should read about JCS-1067 (the policy to starve the Germans after WW2) and the Marshall Plan (you already know this one; the policy to rebuild the Germans after WW2). We tried starving them. It was a very bad idea. We changed course and rebuilt them.
This is a similar case. We could have Marshall Planned Russia. Instead we pushed them away, but expected to be able to take their equivalent of Canada in the divorce. That was foolish in the extreme, and we are reaping the rewards. Everyone is the bad guy here.
So, is Donald Trump now the bad guy because he cancelled the Spanish language?
And no, I'm not otherwise going to dive into your gish-gallop of godawful nonsense; you've got people who can generate that crap faster than anyone can responsibly address it,
Giving a weakling a weapon so that a tough guy can't beat him to a pulp doesn't seem like exacerbating the situation to me. But even if it is, so what? It's not wrong to give weapons to a country to allow them to not be invaded and annexed. It's in our interest, it's not immoral, it's not risking nuclear war, it's not unduly burdening us finanially, so what's the problem?
The alternative has tons of political consequences. Many would say moral consequences, too, but we can just ignore that argument and realpolitik our way to support for Ukraine.
I'm aware of (most) of this history, and don't dispute much of what you've said. But none of that gives them the right to invade. And the Ukrainian people seem to agree, based on their overwhelming support for the war until very recently, and their opinion is the one I value the most. I understand there are more Russian areas of Ukraine that might feel differently, but they are a small minority of the whole country, especially after they already gave up Crimea without a fight, the most pro russian area of the country.
Yeah, I agree. Putin is not a good guy either, and the circumstances surrounding the war are complicated. Ukrainians certainly have a right to defend their country against a foreign invader. Nonetheless, the concrete reality is that a lot of Ukrainians and Russians are dying and families are being destroyed and billions of dollars are being wasted. Peace is better than war, and all parties have an interest in coming to peace. Let’s hope negotiations can be fruitful.
I'm not convinced that Vladimir Putin has an interest in coming to peace while Ukraine is still a country occupied by people who call themselves Ukrainians.
*Other* Russians may have such an interest, some of them, but so what? The ones who are dying, whose families are being destroyed, are not the ones whose good will Putin needs for his dream of renewed Russian glory. And they don't have a vote.
The reason people tell you how wrong you are is because what you're arguing has no basis in reality.
Ukraine had nukes. We and Russia told them to give them up and they would have security guarantees. They gave them up, and Russia invaded.
Western powers told them after Crimea to agree to a ceasefire with Russia and accept the lost territory for now, even if it's not internationally recognized. They agreed, wanting peace, and Russia invaded less than a decade later.
Now we're going back to them again, one decade after they agreed to a ceasefire that was violated, telling them to sign another ceasefire.
How can you not agree with them when they say that they can't trust Putin's word on a ceasefire again? How can you say that Zelenskyy doesn't want peace when he has offered to step down and trade his position for NATO membership, which is the only true security assurance he can get? And how can you say Zelenskyy has banned elections when their constitution and parliament say that elections are not held during wartime? Zelenskyy had nothing to do with that decision.
You can argue we shouldn't be involved in the war, and that's fine. I think isolationism is dumb and Russian aggression needs to be opposed (not militarily, but financially. I'm not dumb enough to risk nuclear strikes), but it's an understandable position. But most of the arguments you and people like you espouse seem shortsighted at best and totally divorced from reality at worst.
I don't even care much about Ukraine. Oppose Russia without direct confrontation whenever possible as long as Putin is in charge. It's in our interest.
“After more than ten years of war inflicted upon them by Russia, Ukrainians—understandably—question the decision to give up nuclear arms. However, certain myths have arisen around that decision. One is that the United States and Britain violated their Budapest commitments by not going to war against Russia on Ukraine’s behalf. A second is that Ukraine could have maintained an independent nuclear arsenal.”
Also, you've compressed a lot of time between the budapest memorandum and the Russian invasion. In that time, America and Russia both meddled significantly in Ukrainian elections, with Russia almost certainly giving pro-western candidate Yuschenko dioxin poisoning, and America almost certainly instigating the coup against pro-Russian Yanukovich.
But it's important to realize that Ukraine wasn't remotely innocent. You can easily find old articles from mainstream western publications like the BBC and the Guardian which state, as fact, that Ukraine was (1) the most corrupt country in Europe, (2) undertaking a forceful policy of de-Russification against the Russian speaking areas, (3) tolerant of a significant and long standing neo-nazi problem, and (4) guilty of poor military behavior in the separatist Donetsk after the Maidan revolution.
There's also the Monroe Doctrine, which you perhaps unknowingly support (but whether you know it or not, you *certainly* support it, if you are an American voter who has ever voted for an American Democrat or Republican candidate in your entire life). It states that we do not tolerate foreign intervention by Europe in the New World. It has been enforced, violently, with invasions, at least five times. Putin essentially stated a Monroe doctrine over Russic peoples, and we, the Americans, fucked around with it by trying to make a military alliance and trying to install weapons, and we found out.
But all of that shrinks to almost nothing in the face of your last line.
"""I don't even care much about Ukraine. Oppose Russia without direct confrontation whenever possible as long as Putin is in charge."""
The indirect confrontation you support has killed hundreds of thousands of human beings. Go look at the miserable video of innumerable Ukrainian graves. Look at those graves. This war could have ended in 2022 on similar terms to how it will end in 2025. You wanted it to continue, "without direct confrontation whenever possible", because those lives were meaningless to you. Those people died because you wanted to spend them on an effort to drain Putin's resources. Would he have dominated them? Yes. Persecuted some of them? Yes. Put all these people in graves if the war ended in 2022? No. That's on America just as much as on Putin. It's on the attitude of people who say "I don't even care much about Ukraine. Oppose Russia without direct confrontation whenever possible as long as Putin is in charge."
Your points either don't address what I said or seem irrelevant. It's not relevant whether America was obligated to defend Ukraine from Russian aggression. What's relevant is that Russia attacked twice against their word. That makes any ceasefire between the two countries worthless for Ukraine, and makes asserting that Ukraine should accept one now completely ridiculous.
I already said that Ukraine was a corrupt country and that I don't consider them to be some bastion of democracy. I said this has nothing to do with who Ukraine is as a nation or people. It has to do with curbing Russian aggression and opposing a terrible country that has been against us for decades.
"Look at those graves. This war could have ended in 2022 on similar terms to how it will end in 2025."
No, this war could have been paused temporarily with a useless ceasefire until Russia decided to take the rest of the country. A ceasefire that was only possible because we supported them in the first place and enabled them to resist the attack and not lose the capital.
This whole situation is Russia's fault. You can't trust them to maintain ceasefires. Land grabs by hostile nations should be fought. It's in our interest to financially support Ukraine, and it will not burden us significantly to do so.
Ukraine did not have "nukes" in the sense of actual nuclear weapons systems that they could actually use. They did have pointy metal things with plutonium inside that their engineers could have turned into a working nuclear weapons systems in six months or so, but they'd probably have been bombed into oblivion in three months if they'd tried. And everybody who is currently supporting Ukraine, would have been saying "Damn fool Ukrainians, what were they thinking?"
The point isn't "Ukraine bad Russia good, support Russia".
It's "Ukraine bad, Russia bad, don't pay for one group of corrupt slavs to kill another group of corrupt slavs. Just say no. Walk away."
If you walk away, there's no money for killing, and one group of corrupt slavs simply annex the other group of corrupt slavs, and that's not great, but very few people actually die, and there are no mass graves, and the world keeps turning.
If you reply with Neville Chamberlain, congratulations, your history knowledge is way overtuned on World War 2, and you need to go read everything you can about the history of the western world from about 1600 to 1939.
Is that actually true? Russia has put significant effort into trying to displace the people in conquered areas and ensure the Ukrainian identity doesn't stick around. I don't know if the people getting sent to "filtration camps" are ending up in graves, but they certainly aren't receiving free cake and gift baskets.
The problem with this framing is that the US doesn’t gain anything by just walking away.
Ultimately, you can take the tack that there are good guys and bad guys and Ukraine is the “good, or at least less bad” victim of unjust aggression and should be supported for as long as it’s willing to continue to fight for its sovereignty.
Or you can dismiss that take as naive and adopt a bigger-brain stance that all geopolitical actors in the room here are “bad” and we live in a cold world where everyone advances his own interests and “help the victim” is just a propaganda play.
But if you go the latter route you then have to reckon with the fact that, from the cold amoral “just walk away” dog eat dog geopolitical game of thrones perspective you are asking we adopt, the USA has just come home to find Putin bent over and shouting “help help America nii-chan my head is stuck in this Ukrainian washing machine! But if you help me out of it or at least just walk away and let me get myself out, I promise not to use my improved position against you later in the cold amoral game of international power in which we are major rivals!”
Which is to say that under either mental model the arrows ultimately end up pointing in the same direction. Under the moral framing you should do as much you can to help Ukraine fight for as long as it wants to, balanced against not risking your own people’s well being and security too much, because helping the victim is the right thing to do, but you also have obligations to your own citizens to honor. Under the amoral framing you should do as much as you can get away with to grind your geopolitical rival to powder and let him bleed the flower of his youth white, balanced against not risking your own people’s well being and security too much because ultimately you live in a “me first” world.
And either way, we are quite a ways off from Ukraine wanting to give up, or the war risking American security or prosperity very much.
You can go to datasecretslox or the motte but you'll run into the same kinda issue, just from the other side. This is just kinda the way internet discourse goes, unfortunately. I'd estimate I only see about 40-60% of posts on the open threads, since the quality posts are increasingly rare.
Alternatively, if you're a paid subscriber, the quality of discourse on the hidden open threads is substantially higher. Just post stuff there.
Being able to discuss things often ends in being told you're wrong when you have the minority view. Discussions often include the phrase, 'you're wrong'. Doesn't mean you're not discussing it. It sounds like you just want more support for your opinion, which a discussion does not guarantee.
Israel was never a plucky underdog surviving against long odds except in the fevered colonial dreams of Israel's state-funded K12 education and foreign-targeted Hasbara.
Something I'm confused about, culturally, is when I spend time in pro Palestinian spaces they act reasonably sure Israel can be destroyed, by international pressure, violence, poor economy, etc. and then when I look at historical speeches it feels like the Arab world multiple times felt confident in trying to unite and get rid of it, and then just....didn't reflect on what must have been a surprise when they repeatedly failed.
Do you know what is up with that?
It feels like the Jews, Palestinians, and Arabs I know, or observe in public spaces, all think Israel can be destroyed and it's a weird consensus.
It's a sign that they have given up on negotiating with Israel because of what they perceive as bad faith on the part of Israel in previous rounds of negotiations.
I think it's just taking time for people to internalize the new strategic picture. The War of Independence and the Yom Kippur War were both plausibly winnable for the Arabs, and 1973 is still in living memory. (And not, like, in a few really old people's memories, in the memories of the people who are currently running these countries.)
The picture has changed significantly now, but when you fight three battles for survival it takes you a while to unlearn the "us against the world" framing.
They basically have two factions: a conservative/libertarian-ish "deregulate, go back to fossil fuel, climate change is BS, lower taxes" wing and a nationalist "throw out all the foreigners (preferably those with a German passport too), and all will be well" wing. The latter is rabidly xenophobic and spends way too much time whitewashing Hitler.
AFAICT, both wings would weaken Germany's ties to the EU and NATO and gladly align the country with Russia. Seeing how, in a multipolar world, close European collaboration is the only chance to not get gobbled up piece by piece by imperialist powers, I essentially see them as traitors (in addition to all the science denialism and Nazi shit), and if they come into power, we'd have war in Europe in 10 years max.
She seems comfortable with having bona fide nazis in her party. Probably her heart isn't in the Nazi shit personally, but if they are her ticket to power, she doesn't care, she'll do "remigration". Edit: likewise, the Nazis probably probably aren't thrilled with her personal life, but as long as she's their ticket to power, they don't care. There'll be plenty of time to put her against the wall when they've won.
Do you really believe that a radical protest party needs a coherent program consistent with all of the positions held by its member to be considered harmful and evil? I mean, a few years ago, "do you really think Republicans are going to go along with aligning the US with Russia?" would have sounded like a reasonable objection...
> She seems comfortable with having bona fide nazis in her party.
Such as?, note I will have very high standards, they would have to be worse then me
> Do you really believe that a radical protest party needs a coherent program consistent with all of the positions held by its member to be considered harmful and evil?
If its your claim is that bad people are gaining power; what you believe is the most plausible outcome should be bad; or I dont really care.
Vague accusations of nazism is predictions of nazi policies; as a non-moderate it doesn't benefit me in anyway to let everyone maintain play pretend civility.
> I mean, a few years ago, "do you really think Republicans are going to go along with aligning the US with Russia?" would have sounded like a reasonable objection...
I don't think I would've made that argument; ending forever wars means being called a coward by the profiteers. While trump and bidens moves to end iraq got flak for different reasons that fundamentally happens Im not sure when I thought it was in the cards but trying to make a peace deal, being called a traitor is to be expected.
"Such as?" - most notably Björn Höcke, who loves to use rhetoric straight from the Nazis to invoke the German Volk being threatened by other races, including allusions to the 1000-year Reich and other NS slogans. He was convicted for using a forbidded NS slogan, and a court decided that he can be called a far-right extremist.
"Vague accusations of nazism is predictions of nazi policies" - there are Nazi-like policies that I think would likely be implemented, in particular the forceful expulsion of foreigners, and prosecution and harrassment of any group that can be construed as leftist. But, seeing what is going on in the US, I am totally not in a mood to FAFO and witness the full extent of what happens when a party that despises the liberal democracy that has served us so well for 80 years comes into power.
"trying to make a peace deal" - that's the spin you're trying to put on this? A "deal" would involve an outcome that both sides can live with, and that would involve supporting the weaker side so they have some leverage. Withdrawing support from Ukraine without any assurance from Russia is "trying to force a capitulation", not "trying to make a peace deal".
BTW, I will not continue this discussion, my patience for people like you is gone.
The claim that this was the first measles death in a decade becomes more tenuous when we look at the data. It depends on how you interpret the mortality data. And if we include deaths from subacute sclerosing panencephalitis (SSPE), there've been quite a few measles deaths in the past two decades. According to Vaxopedia, children who've had measles can develop SSPE between 6 to 8 years after having measles, and "children with SSPE develop progressive neurological symptoms, including memory loss, behavior changes, uncontrollable movements, and even seizures. As symptoms progress, they may become blind, develop stiff muscles, become unable to walk, and eventually deteriorate to a persistent vegetative state."
Your future self will thank you if you think twice about it. I feel like I've "made it" in many ways as a lawyer. After about twenty years in the profession I now own my own business, make a very decent living and I am no longer dealing with rat race-level stress every day. However, if I had my life to do it over again, I would definitely do something different than become a lawyer. It really sucks. Law school is okay, but being a new lawyer really, really sucks. Over the years, I've had many other young people ask me if I think they should go to law school, and I consistently tell them that it's a bad idea. Some of them don't listen to me, and the ones that I've kept in touch with regret their decision.
While I definitely made suoptimal career choices of my own, I have trouble really seeing how past-me could have reasonably done better. Which is to say, if I could reach back in time and give my 15, 18, 22 or 25 year-old self even a small amount of advice or information[1] he could plausibly use it to make much better choices. But none of the big mistakes were one re-think from turning out different. They stem from either things I didn't know about myself or things I didn't know about the world that would have required a non-trivial amount of work to discover, work which I wouldn't have just spontaneously gone out and done without having some hint that it would be valuable.
Side note: "go to law school and become a lawyer" is a common enough career path that it was certainly on my radar. I never seriously considered it because (for whatever reason) I already had the impression that it would be a stressful, miserable career.
[1] Even just stuff that was in-principle knowable at the time, not, like lottery numbers or stock picks.
Is the regret a function of work as a lawyer or of work as a lawyer in a setting that is miserable (e.g. big law firm 80h/week grind)?
I am asking because I know lawyers who are quite happy with their choices, but none of them took the big law route. They compromised on salary but worked on things that felt meaningful to them, and did so with a good work-life balance.
Hot take: looking from Europe’s perspective it’s weird to find that soon the EU may be more aligned with China then the US, at least basic research and some forms of international cooperation are supported by the Chinese.
Maybe they can get in on the illegal wildlife trade too. EU birth rates are maybe a sign that there are too many tigers in the world, holding on to their potent vital essences. And wet markets - the world needs more of those.
Maybe a Three Gorges type dam, what should be flooded?
And maybe a campaign to empty the countryside of pointless people. Put ‘em in high rises with internet connections and suicide PSAs. Farewell the shire!
It seems like European kids might be better material for cram schools than American kids.
That, we can safely say, was never going to be America’s strong suit.
Honestly I agree, the internment camps and trading harvested organs are even worse, much worse than school shootings, and value-wise there is little common ground. But it may turn out a more reliable ally because of a common interest in economic growth through cooperation and balance in international power. Definitely not advocating for this, just testing a thought.
>But it may turn out a more reliable ally because of a common interest in economic growth through cooperation and balance in international power.
China does not seem to have a common interest in economic growth through cooperation. They put massive barriers on other countries doing business in China. Foreigners are barred from investing or owning business in China in the following sectors: breeding of animals or plants, fishing, mining for rare earths, mining for uranium, mining for tungsten, traditional medicine, tobacco, package delivery, news services, social science research, mapping, geological surveying, education, publishing, radio, film production or distribution, and artistic performance groups. Foreigners have strong restrictions on ownership of companies in the following sectors: nuclear power plant construction, air transportation, airport construction, water transportation, telecommunication, and medicine. They've also put significant tariffs on just about everybody, and have spent the last few decades deliberately overproducing in their manufacturing sector in order to cripple manufacturing sectors in other countries. This state sponsored overproduction is bad for economic growth (the manufacturing companies are on a knifes edge when it comes to profitability) but they do it anyway to maintain industrial power.
China also has a bad habit of reneging on agreements, particularly those involving trade. I don't see how its feasible to evaluate China as being a more reliable ally than the US when it comes to economic growth and cooperation.
That reminds me of the Acoup blog post on the “status quo” coalition – if I remember correctly, the historical norm is that the weaker powers will tend to back the second strongest power against the strongest to create some form of balance… the steadfast alliance of European powers with the US since the 1990s is then an anomaly.
I think the naïve explanation is the best one – that nations genuinely believed that there were shared interests and values.
The Trump clique has made it clear that this time was over, so I suppose it’s balancing time again.
I am quite a fan of that particular post, and one thing that I'll note about it is that it is actually quite explicit in saying that the Status Quo Coalition does not *require* the U.S. The U.S. was instrumental in establishing it and nurturing it, but it's stability depends on geopolitical and economic truths that don't *stop* being true even if the leadership of the U.S. rejects them.
So I don't think this unfortunate shift in U.S. geopolitics is by itself going to herald a sudden and inevitable return to interstate anarchy. Rather, I think the remaining coalition members will try to draw closer to each other and continue to maintain the coalition. The basis of their relationship with China will stay largely the same: neither a coalition member or a reliable ally, but sometimes a useful partner in areas where interests happen to align (like trade). I think that's the category the U.S. is likely to end up in as well, unless the current shift actually turns it expansionist instead of merely isolationist (which I consider possible, but unlikely).
Now, how that ultimately plays out in the longer terms is less certain. As a citizen of a non-U.S. coalition member my hope is that "being in the coalition" and "maintaining egalitarian liberal-democratic norms" are big enough economic and political advantages that the U.S. just wanes in power and we end up with either a genuinely multipolar world or one with its economic and political center of gravity somewhere in Western Europe. And I think that's certainly a plausible way things could go. But a more troubling possibility is that there are enough other strong, geopolitical shocks in the next few years to just shake the remainder of the coalition apart. If that does happen, then yes, I think there's a decent chance of China emerging as a hegemon, simply because it's large enough and powerful enough and (seemingly, at least) internally united enough to try to step into the resulting power vacuum and assert its interests.
It does not, in principle, require US leadership. In practice, there is no one but the United States that *can* lead it, and that's unlikely to change in less than a generation. Europe will try to put something together, but it won't be the Status Quo Coalition, it will be the Please Don't Let The New World Order *Completely* Suck coalition. China may also try to put something together; if so it will be the Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere 2.0
It's not entirely clear to me that it needs single-country leadership, at least not most of the time. In cases of abnormal crisis--such as Russia attacking Ukraine[1]--having a leader helps coordinate decisive, (relatively) unified "off-script" action. But most of the time all the coalition requires of its members is to play reasonably nice with each other and to support each other against clear acts of external aggression. The coalition works in the first place because all that turns out to be fairly plainly in everyone's best interests. It turns out that a Western Europe where some combination of France, Germany and Britain *aren't* going to war with one another (and often drawing their neighbors in) every few decades is a much nicer place to live than a Western Europe where they are. Who knew?
"China may also try to put something together; if so it will be the Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere 2.0"
This is a real concern. If the U.S. does start to go full-isolationist, I think the biggest potential point of disruption is the collection of relatively prosperous, democratic countries that are located right near China: Taiwan, South Korea and Japan. All of them currently rely significantly on the U.S. for defense, and none of them have the same geographic importance to Western Europe that Ukraine does, so it's more likely that China would be able to push them around absent U.S. protection. But it's hard to guess what that would mean in real terms (other than the real possibility of China invading Taiwan).
[1] Not a coalition member, but a state that might aspire to be, and plainly closer and friendlier to the coalition than Russia.
From an American's perspective, it seems like a case of "Be careful what you wish for." Europe may end up better off in the long run, but an autonomous EU that pursues it's own agenda without regard to what the US thinks isn't going to be good for the US.
Any lawyers in the ACX comments? I'm considering leaving my blue collar job to go to law school in my state and wondering about people's experiences practicing law
You're getting a lot of answers here from folks (reasonably) assuming you want to earn a JD and be a lawyer, however, keep in mind you can can earn a grad degree in law (MJur or MLS) that might be a better fit for your interests and career plans. You won't be able to take the bar or practice law but if you're regularly supporting the legal team or working in a law adjacent role it could be worth your while.
You mention you're in a blue collar job today. If you were, say, in the energy industry and spending a lot of time in your day job working with regulatory compliance a legal grad degree might be really valuable to you.
It's less expensive than a JD (fewer credit hours) and typically tailored to a specific industry or subject. You'll take less civil or criminal procedure and more contracts and corporate law and you'll typically have a lot of courses specific to the law of your focus area.
Do know though that it's still law school. It's a lot of work and you'd better be ready for a lot, and I mean a lot, of very challenging reading. (Challenging in the sense of watching paint dry would be more interesting.) I put in at least 15-20 hours per week per 3 hour course (less on the subjects where I already had professional experience, but not much less).
Hey, if "Ace Ventura: Pet Detective" can be a cult classic movie that launches an A-list star's career, there's room for a story about Thomas Hvizdos, Arboreal Attorney.
To add some flavor from my personal experience: I opted for law school because I didn't really have a career goal in mind after college. I went to a "T14" law school with some scholarship money. I learned a ton there and met lots of brilliant and wonderful people, but it was stressful and bad for my mental health, even as someone without dependents and with a pretty niche career goal in mind, and thus less investment than others in the hyper-competitive prestige-chasing aspects of the experience that can add lots of extra pressure for people. (I did attend during the COVID pandemic period, to be fair, which may have contributed to the misery.)
I was an average student and ended up at my current job at a large firm as a regulatory lawyer, which seems to be less intense than life as a litigator. Still, I've also found the large firm life stressful and soul-sucking and don't much enjoy the work I'm doing, and I intend to leave soon for other legal work outside of the large law firm world. That said, after 3 years on the job, I've paid off all my undergrad and law school loans with healthy savings to spare, with a good resume to rely on as I apply for a (hopefully) more personally rewarding legal job.
So my experience practicing law has been objectively good for my financial wellbeing and bad for my personal wellbeing, and that's with the benefits of the T14 school degree, relatively less stressful school experience, and relatively less stressful work experience. If you have the LSAT score and GPA to get into a great school, no strong attachment to a particular geographic location, and a few years to spare afterward to eat shit in return for lots of money, it's a pretty good ROI; if not, I'd think twice unless you really passionately want to practice law. As a caveat, this is all from a pretty narrow perspective, and I'm still quite new to the field and could still fall in love with some job I'd never have had a prayer of landing if not for my experience to date.
Thanks Sam. I hear over and over again that working in law can be tedious, "soul-sucking" and stressful. What makes it that way? I am far more interested in doing PI or government than working for a large law firm, and I'm hoping I might dodge some of the worst aspects of the job that way.
Elsewhere in this thread someone shared that "Don't Be a Lawyer" song, which mentions working "on a pharmaceutical company's merger with another pharmaceutical company" as the exemplar of boring legal work. I'm a health law specialist and in fact spend a lot of time working on pharma M&A. In practice, this means determining what licenses, policies, quality controls, etc. the other company should have, sending requests for that documentation, and reviewing hundreds of files looking for red flags. In the end, if the deal closes (not a given), a few rich people end up a little more rich. Best case, a cool medical product that might otherwise have died in the crib makes it to market because the acquiring/post-merger company could afford to take on more risk. If I could convince myself that my review of some files years earlier was crucial to that outcome and thus feel some sense of accomplishment, that'd be great, but I've never gotten there; I'm just doing it for money, like every other lawyer involved.
Other sexy projects I've worked on include reviewing promotional or distribution contracts to make sure my client's ass is covered, reviewing drug promo strategies for legal risk, and fighting over how big a discount healthcare providers are entitled to under various federal programs. Always with the end goal of saving or making more money for the client, and with my own productivity judged primarily by the sheer number of hours I billed for it all, which can be up to 60 hours in a bad week. My sense from friends in other practice areas is that it's pretty much the same game all around, just with different subject matter (antitrust, product liability, securities, etc.), and that I've actually been very lucky in how few bad weeks I've experienced and in how easy-going the partners I work with are, since they're mostly pleasant health law nerds rather than strung-out litigators or transaction managers.
Again, that's all BigLaw, and just the price you have to pay for a $215k starting salary. My friends in government and public interest generally seem happier with their day-to-days, and their work seems much more rewarding to me; the few pro bono projects I've worked on alongside legal nonprofits are the main reason I want to leave and do such work full-time. In government, the money is much worse but the hours are much better, unless you're a public defender, in which case the money is much worse and the hours are just as bad. In PI the money is worse but I'm not sure about the hours, I suspect it varies based on the org's mission and individual projects.
If you're sure you want to do PI and expect to have debt if you do opt for law school, I'd suggest looking into loan forgiveness programs. I'm not sure about the status of federal programs these days, but many states offer significant debt relief if you commit to work in PI for a certain period of time after graduating.
Again to caveat, this is just my experience and I'm pretty new to the field still, but I hope this is helpful. And feel free to reach out if you have other questions.
Thanks for the insight, it's much appreciated. $215k is an eye-popping amount to me at present--the idea of doing a few years in the mines to build up savings sounds somewhat appealing. Even looking at graduates from the U of M who go into government work, their starting is about 10k higher than my current pay, which seems appealing (yes, debt, but also probably a higher ceiling on pay). Thanks for responding, that was helpful.
Your future self will thank you if you think twice about it. I feel like I've "made it" in many ways as a lawyer. After about twenty years in the profession I now own my own business, make a very decent living and I am no longer dealing with rat race-level stress every day. However, if I had my life to do it over again, I would definitely do something different than become a lawyer. It really sucks. Law school is okay, but being a new lawyer really, really sucks. Over the years, I've had many other young people ask me if I think they should go to law school, and I consistently tell them that it's a bad idea. Some of them don't listen to me, and the ones that I've kept in touch with regret their decision.
There was another very helpful comment on this post talking about the bi-modal distribution of salaries for new attorneys, with the higher earning cluster of new attorneys getting jobs at Biglaw and the lower earning cluster who end up either with public-sector jobs or similar paying jobs at smaller law firms; both of these tracks suck although for different reasons. The Biglaw jobs pay well, but they will require you to work long hours and be available on nights and weekends working on mind-numbing projects at an office with no work/life balance at all. People in this track tend to burn out very quickly. I've known many people who went through that track - most of them leave in less than five years. I, personally, did not seek out Biglaw jobs and was therefore stuck in the lower earning cluster of new attorneys. It was a rat race, the jobs were generally very stressful, and while I did not have to work as much as a Biglaw attorney my salary starting out was roughly the same as a schoolteacher and my public sector job required me to work probably 60 to 80 hours per week. Private attorneys and prosecutors that I was friends with, had roughly the same experience. Entry-level prosecutors would have lower salaries than the police officers who would testify in their cases, while having to pay off $150,000 in student loans and still work longer hours without any overtime credit, et cetera. It is possible to hang your own shingle and make better money, but most newer attorneys don't have the gumption for that and it is very hard to develop your own book of business. It's hard to break into a higher salary. It takes years of hard work, luck and developing a name for yourself which takes time. Many new attorneys find out the hard way that they hate the profession, and nothing is worse than taking out a $150,000 school loan for three years to only come to that realization.
I was told not to go to law school. We're all told not to go to law school. Yet we go. And then we warn others, and yet they go. Law school is a Cassandra machine.
Make sure you really really want to do it before you put yourself through law school and enter the profession. I am currently a lawyer and probably would have made a different decision if I had known more going into it. There is a reason why lawyers have substance abuse rates at roughly twice that of the population as a whole. In addition, law school itself can be very challenging on people's mental health. If you do decide to go through with it, make sure you've got a good support system.
Thanks for the response, Andrew. Why would you have made a different decision in hindsight? What about your job do you dislike? I'm trying to get a better sense of what it's like to actually practice so I don't get through law school and realize I don't actually like practicing law.
This is an area of personal interest for me. Apologies for the novel.
Jon J. has good advice.
I'd supplement with (a) a little data, and (b) the caveat that a lot of this data is very much law school propaganda, and should be viewed and interpreted as such. The biggest guidance I'd offer is to be very, *very* careful about how much money you are willing to borrow. Law school is a big-ticket item, and I know of a couple people who have wound up trying to figure out how to pay six figure student loan debts with sub-$75k salaries. That's very much not where you want to be.
Specific things to be aware of:
(1) Law school salary distribution curve is *bimodal*, not a normal distribution (https://www.nalp.org/salarydistrib). Don't take "median" or "average" graduate salaries at face value. Law school graduate salaries aren't a normal bell curve clustered around the median - it's a double-humped camel, with one cluster of salaries at the high end (people getting "big law" 500-lawyer firm jobs), and a second hump of salaries (people in clerkships, government work, nonprofits, etc) at the low-end. This means that if you take out student loans on the assumption that you'll make around the median salary, you could have a very bad time if you end up in the lower hump.
(2) Also be aware that big jobs in that right-hand hump are not evenly spread out across all schools. Big law firms pull from top programs, so outcomes vary a lot from school to school. I don't have the full bimodal 2-hump camel for, say, Stanford (top school) vs William & Mary (mid-ranked school) vs New England School of Law (low ranked school), but LawHub's Law School Transparency tool lets you quick-compare a couple of things even without an account (https://app.lawhub.org/compare/stanford-vs-newengland-vs-wm).
Stanford Median Reported Salary - $153,149
W&M Median Reported Salary - $70,191
NE SoL Reported Salary - $55,545
Since we know from #1 that the actual salary distribution for the field is bimodal, this means that Stanford is putting a lot more of its graduates into the big money jobs on the right hand side of the graph in #1. Relatively few people from W&M (and vanishingly few, if any NE SoL) are landing those jobs. If you go to W&M, you likely need to be in the top 5% of your class to actually land one of those jobs. Keep those odds in mind when deciding how much you're willing to borrow.
(3) Also keep in mind that the numbers you'll see in the curve above, as well as the numbers you'll see from all the schools, are the *reported* salaries. These statistics are compiled each year by surveying last year's class on whether they are employed, whether they had to pass the bar for their current job (i.e. "are you actually practicing law"), how much money they are making, etc. I'm sure you will be unsurprised to learn that people who have succeeded are disproportionately more likely to answer such a survey, so downgrade your assumptions about the real figures accordingly. If possible, try to find what % of the students for your school reported (I think that data may be available with a lawhub account https://app.lawhub.org/law-school-transparency, but not sure), and if you see a "median reported salary" of $80,000 for a school you are looking at, but 25% of last year's class did not report their salary, assume the figure is actually lower than advertised. Likely much lower.
(4) Lastly, be aware that the schools also know that they are competing on these numbers, and just because they are part of a university does not by any means make them scrupulous or honest actors. They are constantly making all kinds of efforts to game the system. Outdated, but interesting reads on some of the old tricks from the early 2010s can be found at the now-defunct https://insidethelawschoolscam.blogspot.com/. For example it used to be common practice, and may still be for all I know, for a law school to make "post-graduation research fellowships" available to recent grads - paid positions with the school that lasted for a year after graduation (i.e. right up until just *after* the employment statistics snapshot). This bolstered the school's "% of students reporting legal employment 1 year after graduation" figures, because the students in question were, technically, employed at the time the data are gathered. But it's ultimately a shell game - those aren't true success cases, they're people who otherwise hadn't found work, which the school effectively hired itself in order to pad its own employment outcome statistics.
Bottom line strong recommendation - study like you want a job in the top hump of the bimodal curve, but *borrow* like you know you're going to to land in the lower hump, especially if you aren't going to one of Jon J's T14 schools. And don't overlook part-time programs as an option; it doesn't change the name on your degree, and it enables you to have *earned income* during school, which can make the difference between $50k of manageable debt and a $150k albatross.
Thanks for the comment. I was definitely assuming the median salary would be what I could expect, so that's useful. If I went I'd be taking around $60k in debt, which feels like a lot, and potentially over the line.
I'm a lawyer. I practiced law for a few years, in a large law firm in DC. While I learned a lot of interesting things (about, e.g., antitrust law and administrative law), I also reacted poorly to the pressure and generally hated my life for those years.
I left that world 10 years ago to become a law clerk to a few different judges and now I'm at a state treasury department. For many years, I also taught legal writing as an adjunct at a local law college.
It's useful to understand how your career options are constrained by your credentials (primarily LSAT score and undergraduate GPA), your law school, and where you wish to live, as well as how you actually perform in law school, which can be hard to anticipate.
* If your LSAT+GPA are great, then you can get into a T14 (top 14) school, and if you do well there, you can get a coveted job in "biglaw" (where you will learn a lot of things and possibly react poorly to the pressure and generally hate your life).
* If your LSAT+GPA are good, you can go to a top regional school (maybe with generous financial incentives) and then work for a top regional firm or state/local government.
* If your LSAT+GPA are mediocre, you should come up with another plan; but if you're committed to law, some regional school will accept you and cash your checks, and hopefully you are a strong enough student to graduate and then a diligent enough test-taker to pass the bar exam and then a good enough interviewer to get a job.
* If your LSAT+GPA are poor, then don't go. You will waste a lot of money and time and feel really terrible about yourself. That said, if your rich lawyer uncle is paying for it and plans to give you a job at his successful local firm, then the only risk is that you hate being a lawyer (which isn't a small risk).
Feel free to reach out if you have other questions.
The only happy lawyer I've ever met worked in inheritance/estate planning law. It seems like a great niche -- your clients are people who have far too much money and are just looking for a tax-effective way to dispose of it, and they're not particularly sensitive to how much of that money might disappear into the lawyer's pocket during the process.
I do like the way the 'pharmaceutical company working on a merger with another pharmaceutical company' breaks the rhythm of the song to show how boring it is.
From what I understand you have to go to a top 14 law school AND go work for a big law firm doing things idealistic people don't like, or get stuck with a huge amount of debt. And most of them hate their lives. But given how hard it is to make a living these days, unhappy and rich may be better than unhappy and poor.
If he's in a skilled trade, he actually has a good chance of making more than a lawyer would, I think. No money going into law school, far less vulnerability to AI taking his job, super high demand. If he doesn't totally loathe the particular job and can make it more intellectually engaging with additional training or certifications, or starting his own business, that's the route to go in 2025, methinks.
Unfortunately I'd probably make more as a lawyer. I'm in arboriculture, which pays middle class money if you're experienced, but probably realistically tops out at 70-75k a year. I tried starting a business this past summer and found out I don't have the stomach for it, which is part of the reason I'm now reconsidering law school
Got it. In that case, do read over the comments by lawyers here. As was mentioned in a couple of places, a lot of applications of a law degree don't pay even as well as $70k a year. Plunging tens of thousands of dollars of education into schooling before potentially never making much more than you are now isn't a great idea.
Not to mention the general consensus that a lot of law jobs are going to be gobbled up by AI. Research and legal writing are exactly the kind of knowledge work LLMs are going to eventually be suited for.
And it's not like government work is stable these days.
What was it about starting a business that you didn't like?
Yeah. The school I'm going to has good outcomes financially. Even if I went into government I'd have a good chance of starting at 10k more than I'm making now.
Do you have a source for the AI comment? I'm skeptical that AI is going to be good enough to take over most jobs, and law especially is going to need a human in the loop.
I recommend considering cost when applying. You can come out with a lot less debt if you go to a school that costs less money. T14 actually doesn't mean much. If you're good enough to get into T14 but not good enough to do well at a lower school then it makes sense but that's a small niche.
Why is the National Debt a problem? I see various people talking about different courses of action the sitting Presidential administration could take, and much of the discussion includes reducing the National Debt. I understand why lots of debt would be bad for me, but why is it bad for the US? I also see some people saying that it's a critical problem, and that it might destroy the country in ~5 years, but other people seem to not worry about it. If it's a problem, how bad is the problem?
It’s not a problem if it’s sustainable in the long term, so if GDP grows together with it and the ratio stays in check. At any rate it’s denominated in the US’s own currency, so if needed it can be eroded via inflation.
Eroding via inflation or a monetised default is not just something you can simply do. Not will only will inflation harm domestic consumers, any kind of monetised default would rattle bond markets. The Directory tried this pre Napoleon I believe and it did not end well...
Keeping inflation at 4% rather than say 2% for a decade or so may harm consumers to a point but it does not seem to be outright terrible, while it can affect the long term dynamics of debt/gdp ratio.
Maybe. But that would be a 48% increase in prices over 10 years versus 22%. I think recent experience tells us that democratic societies punish incumbents during inflationary periods like this.
You are also going to raise the cost of issuing new debt, as bond markets will want a higher yield.
Supposedly, the deficits can cause inflation. But Kevin Drum put up a post that shows that there's almost no correlation between the deficit and inflation.
Or, if you're really worried about the deficit, increase the top marginal federal income tax rate to 91%—which it was in 1960. This rate applied to the highest income earners and was equivalent to about $2 million today, adjusted for inflation. Of course, few taxpayers actually paid the full 91% due to the deductions and exemptions available under the tax code of the time. But the US economy was booming, inflation was low, and interest rates were lower than they were today.
Eventually all people work for something, while its easy to promise an amazing retirement for government workers in a 4 year election cycle, or the bond market for a bridge or war; either you feed them or you dont when they actually retire.
The bullshit is to much to actually untangle but either resources young people make go to old people "playing the long game" or the great pillowing happens; or more likely something inbetween.
A lot of people talk about hyperinflation in 5 years and they should be ignored, but debt does need to be paid or bad things happen.
I’m older and people have been talking about the unsustainable nature of Social Security and the National Debt since I was a child, literally. Nobody does anything about it and I don’t expect anyone will until there’s no other choice.
Note that the top priority for Congress is preserving and possibly expanding the Trump tax cuts.
My understanding is that mostly, it is not. "The national debt is a problem" is a rhetorical bludgeon politicians use to push for various unpopular policies, and just as quickly abandoned when it becomes inconvenient[1]. See, for example, the current proposed U.S. federal budget.
My understanding is that poor management of the entire system--U.S. debt, federal budget, taxation rates and borrowing--can have various bad effects on the U.S. economy like high inflation (bad), deflation (very bad), poor allocation of resources and reduced incentives to invest. But that the individual debt and deficit numbers (which is what a lot of the hawks fixate on) don't mean all that much without context. But I'm not an economist, so take all of the above with a few grains of salt.
[1] Which like all such positions of convenience does still end up with its share of True Believers. They just don't ever seem to be the ones calling the shots.
Passing a federal budget is a considerably more extended, drawn-out and complicated procedure than having a cookie. I genuinely don't think that the "revealed preference" theory is a great way to model impulsive humans moment-to-moment. But when you're talking about a political agenda that needs extensive coordination from a large number of people over an extended period of time, "they totally abandon 'fiscal responsibility' whenever they get into power" seems like a pretty undeniable revealed preference at the group level.
To be clear, I'm not resisting the conclusion that lawmakers don't really think the debt is a problem-- only the further conslusion that it really isn't a problem.
Fair. I think the reductio ad absurdum of "there is no set of policies around the national debt that will cause problems" is plainly false. But usually when people say things like "the debt is a problem" they seem to be holding some view rather stronger than believing the above reductio is false.
The issue I have is that what the underlying stronger view *is*, it usually goes unstated: IMO it's very uncommon to see debt hawks making specific predictions about what particular level (or rate of increase) of national debt will lead to which particular bad effects. So in practice, even the sincere belief that "the debt is a problem" usually just serves as the same rhetorical bludgeon: it's used to generically argue against programs and policies the holder doesn't like, while not offering up a framework to navigate the tradeoffs.
What context would give concrete meaning to the national debt number as it is today? I don't have any way to evaluate whether or not a dollar cut from a program and used to pay down the national debt is a rational allocation.
I’m no expert but the debt isn’t really the problem, it’s the interest on the debt. Debt is a store of value. GDP - despite being called the wealth of the nation -isn’t a store but it is an income flow. The payment on the debt is financed by the tax take. So that’s what you need to compare.r
The obvious problem is the US is now paying about a trillion dollars a year in interest payments on the debt. That's more than it spends on the military.
Maybe the question could be phrased in an alternative way: If debt is not a problem, then why should the US collect taxes at all? Why not just run the entire government by borrowing?
I'd be interested to see other people's views on that. You'd end up with a spiral of interest payments, but maybe that's not a problem - you can just borrow more. The real problem is the country would become beholden to the bond holders. If they refuse to lend any more money because they stop believing the government can pay them back, then suddenly the US government would be unable to fund itself. At some point, then, the government might be forced to raise taxes in order to pay back all the money it has borrowed.
"The obvious problem is the US is now paying about a trillion dollars a year in interest payments on the debt."
You have no idea how depressing it is to be old enough that figures like a "trillion" were mainly encountered in SF stories talking about how ginormous the universe was, with galaxies being a trillion miles away. But you'd never expect to see it used in real life in any context affecting society or the economy.
And now it's just another figure on a balance sheet.
In the movie Austin Powers (1997), Dr. Evil is frozen in 1967 and reanimated 30 years later. He subsequently devises an evil plan to blackmail the world for 1 million dollars. When he's informed that 1 million dollars is not a lot of money in 1997, he changes the amount to 100 billion, which was a lot back then.
You can probably play the same joke in 2027, but with 100B as the initial, ludicrously small amount.
The real problem is that lenders face opportunity costs when lending to the US government. Instead of buying treasury bonds, they could buy bonds from other governments, or corporate bonds, or stocks, or real estate, or a new yacht, or bitcoin, or rare pokemon cards. The more you need to borrow, the harder it is to find enough potential lenders who want to buy more bonds, which drives up interest rates even before bondholders start worrying about your ability to pay them back.
The real interest rate on 10-year treasury bonds (nominal interest rate minus inflation) is currently around 2%, which is still pretty low compared to pre-2008 levels but trending upwards from the 2008-2022 norm of 0-1%. Which seems to point to running low on potential bondholders being either "not a problem (yet)" or "only just starting to be a little bit of a problem". Still, there's a limit out there somewhere.
The opportunity costs also have social impact, even if the government is able to find willing lenders. Or unwilling lenders, for that matter: "forced loans" are a thing historically, and even at present banking regulations nudge financial institutions strongly towards government bonds. From a money perspective, investors buying treasuries instead of stocks or corporate bonds means less private sector capital investment. And from a goods-and-services perspective, production bought by the government is production that isn't available to be bought by private buyers, regardless of whether the government gets the money by borrowing, taxing, or printing.
These two aspects of opportunity costs are what people mean when they talk about deficits causing inflation. I prefer the monetarist framing, where the direct cause of inflation is the central bank (or whoever controls monetary policy) printing more money or otherwise increasing the effective money supply too quickly. This can happen as intentional policy to support a government that is having trouble borrowing otherwise, or because they're trying to keep interest rates lower than they should be in a monetarily neutral environment.
The Keynesian framing is that government spending stimulates the economy by consuming production capacity, which leads to inflation once production capacity is saturated unless the stimulus is counteracted by contractionary effects of taxes or higher interest rates. The MMT framing is that it's spending that "prints" money while taxation takes money back out of circulation. Deficits thus represent an increase in the money supply which causes inflation unless the central bank raises interest rates to counteract the increase and/or pull money out of circulation through a different channel.
Thank you for the thoughtful response; I understand what you're saying about opportunity costs. Could you tell me: if I live and invest in the US, should I be scared of the national debt or ignore it? Will it ever cause problems if no one does anything to shrink it or stop it from growing? My inference based on what you said is that it must necessarily lead to either higher taxes or to bond yields so high no one invests in anything else, both of which sound quite bad.
I'd say be concerned but not scared. At current levels, it's probably a bit of a drag on long-term economic growth, but not cripplingly so. At some point, it is likely to get worse unless it's dealt with through some combination of tax increase and spending cuts, but this is much more likely to be a gradual escalation than a sudden crisis. And as the pain of doing nothing increases, politicians become more likely to bite the bullet and make fiscal changes.
I can imagine that the "bite the bullet" pain gets worse as the debt goes up. Is there any reason why it's not better to do something (not necessarily what's being done now, just anything consequential) now as opposed to later?
A lot of it is political. The hard part is getting a majority for a specific set of policy changes to reduce the deficit, as voters and politicians generally tend to have things that they consider a higher priority than deficit reduction and these are different things for different political actors.
But leaving political difficulties aside, there are two plausible arguments I know of for delay. One is situational, when there's a temporary set of circumstances (war, plague, economic crisis, etc) that makes the short term opportunity cost of tax increase or spending cuts unusually high, and it can make sense to delay action until the circumstances have passed.
The other is gradualism, that fiscal changes (especially spending cuts) tend to be much less painful if phased in gradually. Give programs time to reach orderly stopping points so there's less half-finished work to abandon, give people dependent on a program time to find other options, and in many cases (particularly for big-ticket programs like Social Security and Medicare) you can "cut" them in fiscally meaningful terms by slowing the rate of spending growth. But phased-in changes are still more effective for a given pain level if you start the process sooner rather than later.
I think I follow mostly. I see the other commenter's point too. But aren't bonds definitionally an obligation to the bond holder? So being beholden to bond holders doesn't sound different from how things are now. Plus, there are lots of bond holders so it's not like they can all team up at a certain point, they should just lose confidence over time and so the bonds would have to pay more, right?
What type of timeline does this look like? Is there some threshold where the debt gets too big and everyone everywhere just says "nope, it's over"?
There is a doom loop that happens to other, lesser countries where the yield on bonds goes up, the government has trouble making payments and so defaults or inflates the currency to get out of the jam, which pushes bond yields up further until they’re basically junk.
The United States has the world’s reserve currency so unless we fumble the ball really extremely badly, we don’t have to worry so much about that.
The general view is that you're entering dangerous ground once your debt is larger than GDP. This is not a hard-and-fast rule though: Japan is very far past this threshold and no one is very worried about them (perhaps on account of their very high level of private saving).
That view has no basis in reality. It came about from an infamous Rogoff et.al. paper that made this very argument, seemingly supported by solid data.
Only it came out that they messed up their spreadsheet. Oppsie, happens to the best of us, I've done my share. Once the calculations were corrected, the supposed danger zone disappeared.
I don't think there's a specific "danger zone" that is a certain percentage of the GDP. It depends really on what the debt is used for, how fast the economy is growing, etc. etc.
US bonds are "money", in a slightly less way than "bills" and "notes" are. Fundamentally there's little difference between "USD" and "US Treasury note". They all contribute to the overall quantity of money in the economy, and dwarfed by the money created by banks.
The reason to collect taxes is to control inflation. One of the stupidest things MMT proponents did was, having a fundamentally correct view of how a fiat currency-based monetary sovereign state works, making a correct prediction that excessive government spending unsupported by production will cause inflation, and the way to combat such inflation is to increase taxes - and then disavow their own predictions because Biden was good, or something.
OK, so the real, obvious problem I have with this frame is that it seems to take it as given that the post-COVID inflation was primarily a result of monetary policy failures. Which seems straight-up wrong to me. Many different countries experienced similar inflation at similar times, and there was a fairly obvious explanation for why that ought to be true. I've never really dug into the weeds of the issue, but "bad monetary policy caused the post-COVID inflation" seems pretty clearly false and "better monetary policy could have prevented it" seems highly dubious.
None of that means that the Biden administration's policies were optimal, but it means it's pretty hard to gauge how far from optimal they were judging by this one anomalous inflation event alone. This line particularly stands out:
"They didn’t predict the current high inflation, consistently said it would be transitory and have had no countercyclical response to combat it now that it’s here (despite claiming tax hikes are the right way to beat down inflation). "
The piece was written in 2022. Google tells me the U.S. experienced 2.6% inflation in 2024. Which is to say that the high inflation WAS transitory. Either the policies purported to combat it worked, or (at worst) they were insufficiently bad to prolong it very much.
You're engaged in a good discussion with Rothwed; I'll just reiterate two quick points:
- US exports its inflation worldwide due to the reserve currency advantage (Trump is working hard to erode this advantage, how many fucking ways is he going to find to stress-test this country!)
It was not monetary policy but fiscal policy that contributed to post-Covid inflation; anther key factor was productivity disruption. You rarely get inflation without productivity disruption.
Transitory inflation means the price increases are temporary and not caused by an increase in the money supply. The covid inflation fails this metric on both counts. The stimulus flooded the economy with a lot of new money. And the price increases were baked in even though the rate of inflation eventually went back down. Though I have to point out that when the target rate for something is 2%, hitting 2.6% isn't exactly low either.
I thought the MMT prediction was "funding government by borrowing won't cause inflation, and even if it does you can just start collecting taxes again." To which the mainstream's rejoinder was "it will, and you'll have to."
Related to that, I think I've heard that MMT is being misunderstood and misapplied by people who support continued deficit spending on policy grounds. Like the Laffer Curve, it's a useful theoretical construct that if oversimplified and viewed through a lens of motivated reasoning can sound like it says that your preferred policies are effectively free.
If Trump stays to this tariff course and it destroys U.S. wealth and you are pro-Trump, how much U.S. wealth-destruction will you tolerate before you become anti-Trump? How many points of real GDP are you willing to lose over the next 4 years?
If you don't believe tariffs will destroy U.S. wealth irrevocably, fair enough. I'm only asking those who believe it could or are willing to acknowledge it did should it happen.
I wouldn't fancy trying to put a specific number on it, but the point where I become anti-Trump is somewhere near where his economic policies become as bad as those favored by the people who are already anti-Trump. The tariffs are a sizable step in that direction but I don't think they get us all the way there.
GDP grew 2.7% under Biden last year, and it's currently forecast to *decrease* under Trump's tariffs, so it sounds like we're all the way there and then some. Is there some other metric you're using?
Trying to tie every wiggle in the growth rate to a specific policy change is a mug's game. I can't call to mind anything Obama was doing wrong in 2009 that he wasn't also doing in 2015; the people I've seen predicting a contraction this year were already predicting it before the tariffs were announced.
I thought anti-Trumpers were a coalition of economic left-wingers, right-wingers and centrists who loathe Trump because of his character. Pro-Trumpers are mostly those who "just want to barbecue" but don't tend to have strong economic policy preferences other than "not far left".
Very well, change "favored by the people who are already anti-Trump" to "favored by the people who'd be setting policy if the anti-Trumpers had their way". I'd love to believe that everyone's gotten a new appreciation of the deadweight loss from taxation but I suspect that, for most, this battlefield conversion will last only as long as they need a stick to beat Trump with.
Probably about a 1% fall in real S&P 500 returns. Which is usually snowballed at 7%, so down to 6% before I would panic. This (1) is about as close as I can find to accurate inflation-adjusted returns (big gains since 2023 but also inflation so weird). It's slightly more than doubled since 2015, which indicates like a 7-7.5% real return. Markets tank at every little thing though but after 4 years, ie next election, we should have enough data to make an informed decision.
Economic growth is really important but the domestic turmoil and wealth inequality are...pretty serious and probably justify slightly slower, fairer growth. And jobs>welfare. But a bigger fall than that indicates a serious problem in the economy, not just a rebalancing.
I don't consider GDP to be a legitimate decision node. Making GDP your basis for decision making is like looking only at a stock's historical returns to decide if it's a good investment. If the consequence of the various efforts to rehome manufacturing defragilizes the economy, that's a win. What would the GDP be if there had never been mass offshoring of critical-in-a-crisis capabilities? If such a number could be determined, then I'd say reverting (probably regressing, though potentially ascending) to that is the expected outcome modulo sequence of returns. If GDP pukes for a few quarters but supply chains are made more resilient, that seems fine.
It would be nice if Trump was working to re-shore manufacturing. If you think tariffs, which are directly impacting manufacturing costs, are going to do this, there's a bridge in Brooklyn for sale, too.
Trump is killing CHIPS act, too. I can't tell you how fucking idiotic this is. Unless the goal is to make Xi happy. Is it?
No, it's not economically efficient, that's the whole bloody point! The economically efficient thing to do is to go to TSMC and buy wafers from them, until there's an earthquake or a Chinese invasion. Then we're left holding our collective di... never mind.
This is a national security and resilience concern. Economic efficiency caused this to happen in the 90's, we lost our fabs because it was cheaper to offshore them. Free markets are great but not when non-monetary considerations have to be taken into account.
I don't follow. If it's more expensive to ship goods in from across the border than it is to make them inside the border, why wouldn't manufacturers try and make them inside the borders? Maybe not all manufacturers could afford to do that but it seems like most would just have to eat the cost.
I'll give you an example: say I'm running a metal fabrication shop in Ohio. I import some steel and aluminum, both because the US just doesn't make enough, and because sometimes it doesn't make a specific grade (do you know the difference, for example, between 6061, 6063, 7075, etc. aluminum alloys? - manufacturing is full of this kind of arcane stuff).
Well, now starting tomorrow your inputs are 25% more expensive. You can try passing the cost to your customers, which directly contributes to inflation and pisses the customer off. Or you can try to eat the cost, hoping Trump will relent and go out of business if he doesn't.
Bu wait, it gets better - some of you customers were outside of the US - shocking, I know, turns out we make stuff others want. Well, now your foreign competitors suddenly got a big leg up - they are not facing tariffs and can sell their products to your customer cheaper. Plus your foreign customers are just fucking mad at the US and rather not buy your stuff now.
I don't understand how this is different from the expected outcome. If the US doesn't make enough steel, there is now an incentive to make more steel. The only import to which this logic doesn't apply is raw materials totally unavailable in the US. Short time horizon price increases can be expected and are a price being paid to make the US domestic manufacturing base more robust.
Tariffs are sort of like unionized labor in that they benefit the targeted industry at the expense of everyone else. Steel producers in the US are outnumbered by steel consumers 80:1. So while a steel tariff is great for people in a steel factory, the other 79/80th of the economy ends up worse off. And in the long run the tariffs act to insulate the steel producers from foreign competition, which curtails the benefits gained from free market dynamics.
The problem is you just can't start "making enough steel" tomorrow. It takes years and huge investment. Then, once this steel is available, the manufacturers need time to qualify the new supplier. This is a big deal, and can take months.
I can't emphasize enough how insane this is, and clearly is promoted by people who have no idea about how actual modern manufacturing is run. This is not a jab at you personally, if your job doesn't involve manufacturing - how would you know? But the fucking morons in this government who promote this shit - they are the ones who supposed to know, or find people who know.
Tariffs can be constructed to help domestic manufacturing. The current clown car of an administration has no clue how to do this, and no interest in learning.
We will be left with a smaller, high-price, bespoke manufacturing industry. It will be "more resilient" in the sense that it has already experienced the catastrophe we are worried about- loss of access to markets outside the U.S. But it will be much smaller because demand will be much lower, with loss of foreign markets and higher prices
But he's putting tariffs also on *inputs* of American manufacturing, both raw materials (we can get a lot more of those within our borders than most countries, but not everything) and intermediates, meaning we have to re-shore the entire supply chain before a real price benefit appears. And retaliatory tariffs will cripple the few finished exports we have. Developing industries with tariffs alone is not something that has often worked either, historically.
I don't know of any historical correlate to the modern US/Global economy, do you have a specific example? I don't know much about what different things are and aren't subject to tariff, but I remember seeing one time that something was marked "made in japan" but was 99% manufactured in china and merely shipped to japan for a single irrelevant finishing step. I don't see how you could have both an accurate and precise tariff arrangement that excludes those things that are destined to be manufacturing inputs. Moreover, I think reshoring the entire supply chain is the idea, at least that's what I would consider to be necessary to accomplish the goal of making the US more "supply chain disruption resistant."
You don't want to have to re-shore the entire supply chain *at once* before cost savings to the consumer show up, this causes coordination problems that can be resolved, if at all, only by vertical trusts which are a problem in themselves.
As for how you actually do it, you identify the industries that are strategic in that they're single-sourced from "unreliable" countries, you encourage investment with tax preferences, R&D grants and/or matching funds and *maybe* you add tariffs on *that particular thing* if you're not going to be able to compete on cost otherwise. Rinse and repeat with the money you free up weaning the most strategic industries off the teat, until your supply chains are sufficiently robust. (Historically, it was better to also have patent exemptions for your key strategic industries, but *as if* weakening IP will ever fly in the States, even with a wild card like Trump.)
Joe Biden was merely ineffective, unpopular, too old, mind going foggy etc but he respected the foundations of our democracy and I suspect for the most part he was in it to see the USA succeed. Certainly he had bad enablers and lost the plot towards the end.
My point is, Trump (and his incomprehensible popularity) is just a thing of a different nature. I think it's something we have never dealt with before as a nation, though many others have and it's pretty clear how it might go in a dire direction. Grading it on how the GDP goes is, IMSHO as I said, a category error. Apples and oarnges. Not even wrong.
Ok, for the record I think the comment is appropriate if he means Donald Trump is responsible for destroying democracy, but I was confused bc the original question was asking Trump supporters about their opinion
Tariffs are basically a stupidly implemented tax. I don't like tax raises and I don't like tariffs either, both destroy wealth. I get using them as an art of the deal thing, but we already have a trade agreement with Mexico and Canada. That was negotiated by the Trump admin last time around. I rate the tariff policy as big stupid.
Im nervous about “out of distribution” risks to US state capacity under Trump so I’d probably reconsider at something similarly out out of distribution on the GDP side - maybe 15% off the top of my head? To be fair that’s conditional on him not also doing out of distribution stuff when it comes to cruelty, so the true number is likely higher.
All else equal, better than average for the 21st Century growth would cause me to seriously reconsider him. I've probably underrated him if that happens.
A missing category of youtube video: bracelet scam baiting.
Most people will be familiar with the "bracelet scam" as practiced by Africans all over Europe, where they attempt to give tourists a "free" bracelet and then guilt them into paying for it. I've found loads of videos about "how to avoid the bracelet scam" (just ignore them, duh) but haven't found any videos where the intended victim simply gratefully accepts the bracelet and then wanders off.
If you're a bored youtuber in Europe, maybe with a couple of intimidating friends who can lurk nearby in case of escalation, I think this would make a great form of content. How many bracelets can you collect in one day?
I would imagine it works like any other scam after that point; once you ignore them for long enough they cut their losses and move onto the next victim. No use in pursuing you if you can't be shamed into buying it
Anyone interested in a resource coordinator/ops type position? Remote/hybrid options but preferably based near Chicago or Milwaukee. Supports an AI/MLE team of 30 in healthcare tech. Looking for high agency - mix of ops/PjM style work (approvals, reporting, org process improvement type stuff) with highly energetic team of mostly recent grads. Feel free to DM with questions.
Living in a democracy is what got us an elected President who likes Russia. If that outcome is so beyond the pale, well, as Chigurh says, "If the path you walked brought you to this, what good was the path"? Using democratic means seems like at best a bit of a double-edged sword.
Just a reminder that democracy doesn't end at the voting booth but also extends to freedom of mass gathering and public protest, when your elected government does something beyond the pale.
Whether or not he's actually an "asset" in a strict sense, all the support he's thrown Trump's way is easily the best foreign investment Putin ever made.
Is Trump doing the right thing the wrong way? Because I'm seeing suddenly "oh all the new jobs in Belfast making missiles for Ukraine" and great, but why wasn't the UK doing this all along?
Because how does the war end? I don't see a way to come to an agreement under the current conditions:
(1) USA and EU stand up directly to Russia, we get into a shooting war, risk of nuclear exchange (very small but not zero). I don't think anyone wants that, which is why
(2) Continue drip-feed of funding and materiel to Ukraine supporting them as proxy, with the USA doing the bulk of the supplying. Matters can continue on as they are indefinitely, whether we date the start of the war to 2014 (as per Wikipedia) or 2022.
Maybe the EU *should* be taking up more of the slack as they seem to be doing now, given Trump's fall-out with Zelensky. Don't get me wrong, I think this very public blow-up was bad and unprofessional and every other criticism that can be made, but on the other hand... how long will Ukraine be coming (forced to come) with the begging bowl for dribs and drabs of aid? How long will the US be the life-support for them? How sustainable is this - do we want "Gaza in Eastern Europe"?
Maybe this *will* break the stalemate some way, at least it does seem to be motivating European leaders to do more and do it directly. I don't know how Putin will react. Maybe the only way to get him to the negotiating table is the perception that Trump will be more congenial to him. I don't know. I hope.
This might not be acting fully applicable analogy, but if one parent works hard to support a child while the other slacks off, i don't think it's responsible for the industrious parent to stop putting in the effort to force their partner's hand.
EDIT: Basically this entire paragraph is incorrect, see replies. I do still think we should, but there is no treaty compelling the US:
I do think the United States has a moral obligation to help Ukraine. We swore to defend their sovereignty in the 90s. Europe is paying less, but most of Europe made no such promises.
If this does end up having good consequences, I'll breathe a sigh of relief. But I'm not going to thank Trump because other people stepped in to carry the burden he shrugged away.
>I do think the United States has a moral obligation to help Ukraine. We swore to defend their sovereignty in the 90s.
We did not. We swore that we would not invade Ukraine, but we did not promise to protect them if someone else invaded. When the Budapest Memoranda were signed the US State Department made clear that they were promising a "security assurance", meaning that the US would not violate Ukraine's territorial integrity, and specifically stated that the US was not agreeing to a "security guarantee" which would mean militarily allying with Ukraine against a foreign aggressor.
The only action we committed to taking, in the case where Ukraine was invaded, was to "seek immediate United Nations Security Council action to provide assistance to Ukraine". Not direct aid or assistance from the US, mind you, just asking the UN to provide assistance.
Actually, I think Europe has been giving Ukraine more money, and that the US’s large advantage is in weapons production (or stocks – many of the weapons given were scheduled for destruction, at not-insignificant taxpayer cost).
The Ukraine war is not a stalemate in any sense. Russia is gaining territory, even though it may look small on a map of Ukraine because Ukraine is just so damn big; this slow advance can suddenly accelerate if and when they break through defensible geography. Weapon systems and tactics are rapidly evolving on both sides. Russia is slowly but noticably running out of Soviet military stock (see golf cart assaults, donkey logistics); when those stocks are depleted, Russia can only spend what their factories produce each month plus whatever her allies are willing to give up, which would put her in basically the same position as Ukraine is in already. The Russian economy is on full war footing and in a heavy stagflation; that cannot continue indefinitely (even in a loose sense of the word) without adverse outcomes on their war effort.
The war in Ukraine is winnable for both sides. Russia is winning the information war. But Ukraine has the will, and her allies the means, to win the physical war, the one that counts in the end.
A rate of advances that looks small on a map of the territory being fought over, is pretty much the definition of a stalemate. You're merely pointing out that stalemates don't last forever, and if they don't end with a negotiated settlement they tend to end with the collapse of one side's warfighting capability and subsequently rapid changes.
In which case, duh. But if you think it's obvious which side is going to collapse or when, you're probably overconfident.
The problem is that not all territory is created equal. An advance of 20km over 2000km depth does not sound like much, but if that allows you to capture a central logistics hubs or access to a wide open, indefensible plain, then those 20km are suddenly much more significant.
If you can spare the time, you could for example watch 10 minutes (minute 5-15) of this interview with an Austrian army colonel that regularly covers the Ukraine war on their official youtube channel. (auto-generated subtitles work well)
I don't think it's obvious who's going to collapse. I'm just pointing out that Russia could be the one collapsing, contrary to people who fell for that bit of Russian propaganda. But it would take the will of Ukraine's allies to do it. On their own, Ukraine would probably fall.
The territory that has been changing hands in the past year or so, does not in fact allow the capture of any central logistics hub or access to a wide open indefensible plain. Also, it's not at all clear that wide-open plains are indefensible in this war.
I can read a map, and I've followed this war pretty closely. And no, I can't space the time to watch someone's youtube video even if it's someone I trust. Is there a written version of the argument somewhere?
Today: 3 million+ workers in Russian's military industry work three-shifts each day producing masses of new ammunition (with top-modern Western machinery, of course). And 1.3 million drones a day. Can`t find the quote, but Churchill supposedly said: In the first year of war, you have near nothing. In the second year: too little. In the third: some. From the 4th year: :D EU countries may never catch up. - Otoh: Ukraine is doing a million drones a year now, too. "They now cause about 70 percent of deaths and injuries, commanders say." https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/03/03/world/europe/ukraine-russia-war-drones-deaths.html?bezuggrd=NWL&utm_referrer=newsletter&utm_source=sondermailing
So far it's been tootling along for anywhere between three to ten years, depending when you want to put the start date, and no sign of any end reasonably soon. Russia slowly advances, Ukraine pushes back, gain here and loss there. I honestly don't see any reason why this can't grind on for another three to five years.
Relying on allies to win the physical war - and what kind of alliance, and what kind of allies? It really does seem like the US is bearing most of the burden, and I think that there wouldn't be the will in Europe to pay an increased share of military and financial aid - see the article about money now being spent to build missiles in Belfast for Ukraine, and the response by one politician (at least) that this money should be spent at home. I think in general European public opinion would swing towards "hold on, why is this X million/billion going to Ukraine when we have a housing crisis etc.?"
So if Russia can just grind it out long enough and hope that the soft Western European states lose their stomach for paying the bill, they may win. Which I don't think anyone wants, even in the US. But the problem remains - how to end this war? how to broker a peace deal? Has Trump broken deadlock by overturning the tables and forcing Zelensky and the EU to face the propect of the money tap being turned off?
I don't think this is the way to go about it, but it would be all kinds of ironic (and crazy) if this exact kind of foot-stamping tantrum was what it took to make an advance.
> It really does seem like the US is bearing most of the burden,
The US has been the single biggest donor of aid for sure, and it has provided capabilities that can't easily be replaced by Europe. But in terms of dollars they are not, compared to the rest of the world, meaning Europe in particular.
By attrition, as brutal as that would be. Keep Russia from winning and keep Russia's costs for trying unsustainably high, until its economy or some other decisive factor such as popular/international support can no longer sustain the Russian war to the degree necessary for winning. Then, and only then, will Russia be ready for negotiations that are worth the name.
> Has Trump broken deadlock by overturning the tables and forcing Zelensky and the EU to face the propect of the money tap being turned off?
The "money tap"... are you really saying that Ukraine is trying to enrich itself through this war? Because I can think of few other measures that would do the opposite faster than large-scale, industrial warfare.
For the US, actually helping Ukraine win the war would have been the best investment since joining WW2. Reducing Russia to an appendage of China, a larger North Korea if you will, without losing a single US soldier and by getting rid of Cold War era equipment that was on the way to the scrap dealers anyway. Gaining battlefield intelligence on Russian, Chinese weapons and tactics, and on the effectiveness of their own. Strengthening the rules-based order that has benefited the US in particular very well the past 80 years. These are all benefits you can't easily measure in dollars but are very real.
>Which I don't think anyone wants, even in the US.
That remains to be seen. Trump is, if not a direct Russian asset, acting indistinguishably from one, and the end result is the same. If anything, he is so brazen about his support for Russia that you could argue that it would be TOO obvious for him to be her asset, so he probably isn't. And yet, everything he has said and done in regards to Ukraine the past few weeks has been to Russia's favour and to Ukraine's detriment. He has long been planning to cut off Ukraine and orchestrated last Friday's diplomatic disaster to get a minimally reasonable pretext for doing so. He has ordered to cease cyber operations against Russia, is "negotiating" with Russia over the heads of Ukraine and Europe, is looking to lift Russia sanctions, is at the same time pondering withdrawal from NATO and also denying Ukraine accession to same, talks about nuclear disarmament because "Russia is not a threat", and so on.
He has overturned the tables, that's for sure, but I don't see him picking up even a little bit of the mess he's creating. And he has picked a pivotal moment in history, the first time since WW2 that the free nations of the world really needed to stand together, if only for naked self-interest.
I can see attrition, but how long does that drag on, and how much money can the USA keep pumping in? It's a mess any way I look at it, and even if Russia eventually goes "okay, we stop fighting", Putin will still be there. And now licking his wounds and even more motivated to punch somebody in the face over bruised national pride.
Give that the US has a massive deficit, how do people still support foreign aid?
Wouldn't it be far better long term, for the US to first reduce its deficit *and then* give foreign aid?
The whole narrative around the current government cuts, seems insanely focused on short term gain... (E.g., don't cut out spending now, don't your realize how important that money is)
Same thing with the science funding, don't you dare audit or pause science funding for any length of time, "don't you realize how many people are going to be affected, etc..." when the whole point is that if a multi month pause leads to a 5% efficiency gain from the next few years that is still a net gain...
There's absolutely no guarantee we fix the deficit. That's my main issue. This is like the arguments people use where they say "I'll accept sending out foreign aid when every single homeless US veteran has a home!". Well, that's never going to happen. So you're really saying you'll never support giving foreign aid.
I don't think we're ever going to solve the deficit, at most reduce it a bit. So we might as well do good things at the same time, if they're worth doing.
I can think of two possible arguments you're making:
1. The deficit is simply more important right now than foreign aid.
2. Somehow, reducing the deficit will make foreign aid better in the future.
I just don't agree with the first one (do you really think it's more important for us to save the couple hundred billion it took to fund PEPFAR than save 25 million lives) , and I see little reason to believe the second. More importantly, foreign aid is less than 2% of the national budget, so cutting it has very little benefit compared to cutting DoD, Medicaid and Medicaid, Social Security, and other big players.
This is, I think, the crux between a lot of pro-DOGE and anti-DOGE sentiment. The pro-DOGE perspective seems to go “first fund critical domestic spending, then less critical, then marginal, then critical foreign aid”. This would suggest as long as we have a deficit, canceling USAID and NSF spending seems pretty reasonable.
The anti-DOG perspective seems to go “first fund high ROI domestic spending, then medium ROI domestic /high ROI foreign, then low domestic/medium foreign, etc”. This would seem to match Scott’s view that canceling Pepfar (very high ROI foreign) likely causes money to flow to lower value causes.
Both these perspectives include a degree of todo amoris, but differ fundamentally on whether to apply it to categories or specific programs.
As someone who’s broadly pro US AID and NSF I’d have been massively more comfortable with targeted cuts, even if they cut some programs I liked. And there’s a counter argument that “the deficit is high enough that targets cuts won’t do it”, but the truth is that these programs are way to small to fix the deficit anyway, which is going to require (targeted) cuts to key spending & tax raises. So I’d love to see the Trump & Musk admin demonstrate the capability to do targeted cuts on the little stuff *before* they start restructuring social security, Medicare & the tax code
To put it a bit more starkly though, I think many of the pro-DOGE people feel like America is hemorrhaging social capital, institutional capacity, and the core skills of its people (e.g., the crisis in education). In that light, they see pretty much all of the cutting and chaos as "critical domestic spending" / "critical painful readjustments." with no room for any medium ROI domestic investment let alone foreign anything.
Its a bit like how when you board a plane, they tell you to in an emergency put the mask over your own face first before anyone else. If America can't save itself, how will it save anyone else? Or maybe it will save one someone else, but who will then save America? If America isn't strong how an earth will Western values be defended (values like support for freedom of sexual orientation - not found in much of Asia, equality between the sexes - not found in much of the Middle East, values like Democracy, values like Free Speech - basically not found anywhere but the US, etc...).
> This is, I think, the crux between a lot of pro-DOGE and anti-DOGE sentiment.
Agree in broad strokes, but I also think a lot more people would be inclined to support DOGE, or the idea of increasing government efficiency and reducing waste, if Elon Musk wasn't responsible for the undertaking.
In this way, a Trump presidency is uniquely bad, bc it's unlikely other Republicans would put someone so high on his own supply (both literally and figuratively) in charge of a government efficiency program. The gap between his confidence in his ability to effectively cut government spending and his ability to actually do it is just too wide.
This doesn't even get to the point that Republicans revealed preference is that they don't really care about deficit at all, or they wouldn't be trying to cut taxes for the super rich now. Or the obvious conflicts of interests from Musk that far exceed any that Hunter Biden supposedly engaged in.
> This doesn't even get to the point that Republicans revealed preference is that they don't really care about deficit at all, or they wouldn't be trying to cut taxes for the super rich now.
The Republican's logic is that cutting taxes on the super rich is in service of cutting the deficit because "they're wealth creators". Revealed preferences here tell you only that they want to cut taxes on the super-rich. You are smuggling in assumptions (that said tax cuts won't have positive budgetary side-effects) by going from that to "therefore, they don't care about the deficit".
Dropping investment is not saving money. Shutting down development is not saving money. Short termism makes money situations worse. Asset stripping is the opposite of saving money. Destroying infrastructure is the opposite of saving money. Killing the goose results in fewer golden eggs. ...yet calls to kill the geese so we can "save money" on their feed never bloody end.
Stopping R&D is a death knell for your system. Stopping maintenance is a death knell for your system. Resilience is not waste. If you see no failures you are not trying enough new things. If you destroy your R&D structures your system will stagnate and die before they can be rebuilt. Over and over I see businesses fail to comprehend these things and sacrifice themselves on the altar of the false gods they call "cost-cutting" and "efficiency", that only go by their true names after the fact. Never thought I'd see a whole country do it in my lifetime.
A system perfectly optimised for today is one that is obsolete tomorrow. Working complex systems are very hard to build. The best time to invest in tomorrow's system is yesterday. Killing investment in your future means killing your future.
If you stop scientific research, you will be outcompeted by those who didn't. Don't stop moving forward. Moloch will not wait for you.
"If you stop scientific research, you will be outcompeted by those who didn't. Don't stop moving forward. Moloch will not wait for you."
The problem is, everything is then classified as "this is vital research and if you defund it, the sky will fall!" I do support pure research, but on the other hand there does seem to be a lot of bloat (weren't we talking about the problem of famous studies in sociology/social sciences not holding up?)
We're being asked to treat "this research could unlock the secrets of the universe", "this research will advance our understanding of cancer" and "feminist glaciology" as all the same and all equally important and vital.
Maybe 2-3% of NSF funded research is "woke science" even by a broad definition, but they're talking about cutting the *overall funding* by something like 2/3 iirc. There isn't any evidence of that amount of waste, and if anything instead of cutting we should plow any savings back into replication attempts to clear out any invalid results and higher-powered studies so we can get results that do hold up in the future.
I used to look down on social science research until the Trump campaign / Facebook / Cambridge Analytica exposes demonstrated just what applied social science was capable of. I treat these subjects with more respect now.
I wish it had been a joke, but it was one of those "different ways of knowing" papers. What was most annoying was that there was the kernel of a reasonable point (scientists should solicit traditions from local people about phenomena in their area to help understand what has been going on) but it got dressed up in "feminist glaciology" terms (and the whole 'natives be wise, white science lacking, magic works' crappiness)
The deficit is primarily due to low taxes for millionaires and billionares. I really fail to understand how anyone can talk about the debt without facing the obvious solution which is to collect more revenue.
I get that many believe the govt is inefficient, and there is some pretty rank corruption with respect to govt spending, but continuing to "starve the beast" is what put us at whatever trillions of debt we owe.
Foreign aid is less than 2% of the budget, so it's hard to understand why it's the target.
Science spending is even worse because basic science pays economic dividends. I haven't done a robust survey of the economic literature but I've seen serious estimates that the economic growth from science funding is high enough that it has a positive effect on the federal deficit.
The US budget is overwhelmingly spent on Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and Defense. If you want to cut your way to solvency, you'd have to cut those. And/or raise taxes.
People complain about the NSF overheads, which can be as high as 60%. This money goes into university coffers and props up private universities (in particular) so that they don't have to pass on all of their costs as tuition. This is not to defend the outrageous tuition that they charge. But shutting down NSF funding will push many smaller universities over the edge - often they're the biggest prestige employer in a mid-sized town - there are run-on economic effects.
I expect it's the target for a mix of political and legal reasons. Politically, foreign aid tends to be relatively unpopular, especially among Trump's base, and science funding contains a lot of line items from which it's easy to cherry-pick things that sound absurd out of context (and some of which may genuinely be absurd even in context).
Legally, Trump and Musk are trying to direct fiscal policy by executive fiat instead of going through the budget process. Unless the end game is to ignore the Constitution completely and disregard the Courts as well as Congress, they need to win some of the inevitable court challenges. They're most likely to win in areas where the laws are written to give the executive branch discretion that can be stretched and abused (I think NSF grants may be in this category) or where Courts in recent decades have been sympathetic to claims of inherent Article II authority (foreign aid falls here, being an aspect of foreign policy).
Can you explain your point? For instance, can you expand on the federal budget and tax policy and explain what you think we should and shouldn't spend money on and put money spent on foreign policy in perspective with other expenditures and taxes?
Your post actually makes me kind of angry because you haven't even tried, but I guess that's becoming more common these days, here, there and everywhere.
For one, the scale of the national debt and humanitarian foreign aid are so different that eliminating humanitarian aid completely won't make any noticeable dent in the debt. It won't even make a dent in the yearly interest payments on that debt. Meanwhile, a lot of people will die without aid for no noticeable improvement in American's well-being.
Do we really need to worry about the deficit? Supposedly, deficits cause inflation, but Kevin Drum has a good chart showing there's actually little correlation between the two — except in certain circumstances.
And think of foreign aid as a carrot we offer other countries instead of a stick. True, we could build three aircraft carriers with the yearly dollars we spent on USAID, but aircraft carriers mostly cruise around the oceans, doing not much of anything except acting as a threat deterrent.
Also, the USAID program was a great source of HUMINT, and it was heavily used by the CIA to put boots on the ground with cover stories in the countries we were aiding. Remember, Osama bin Laden was found because of a USAID Hep B vaccination program in Abbottabad, Pakistan. Although news reports said it was a fake program, people were actually getting vaccinated (thousands received beneficial vaccinations) — meanwhile, the CIA was collecting DNA to see if any children or other relatives of bin Laden popped up. And they did!
"The CIA is using USAID as a front to run vaccination programs in order to collect your DNA" is the kind of thing that sounds like an insane conspiracy theory, except not only is it true, the CIA and USAID both brag about it.
Two or three of us may inadvertently recall the astonishing amount of aid, more like Danegeld, paid to a country that certainly knew his whereabouts, playing the US for a fool.
If we’re fools, we’re fools, but I don’t know that it’s something to pay for.
It was one of our best operations in recent memory — or at least one of the best that was made public.
I have a friend in USAID whose vaccination program was canceled (and she's been laid off). She says she'd frequently run into USAID workers who seemed to have the training they needed to do their job, but they were vague about their educational and personal background, and they didn't socialize with the other USAID employees. They'd cycle in and out of projects. She and her regular co-workers just assumed they were intelligence agents.
I think USAID has done a lot of good. Whether we should let our tax dollars to be used for doing good, especially in foreign countries, is a legitimate question. But USAID also overtly and covertly served our national interests. Discontinuing it without discussion of the implications seems shortsighted at best.
However, "USAID is great cover for our spies" is not the argument being made. Make up one's mind as to whether "It is our duty to help the poor, sick and suffering and thus USAID" is the story, or "To hell with them foreigners, they're so dumb they fall for our fake medical programmes thus we need USAID" is the driving interest.
Yet people like Raz toss off the simplistic idea that canceling USAID will lower the deficit and save the US taxpayer money (yay!). Maybe it will lower the deficit a little bit in the short term, but the downstream effects may be very serious. How much money would we need to spend to suppress a disease we haven't seen before, which could have at least been detected in the wild? That's never happened in my memory. #snarkasm
I think that the CIA has historically been bad at discerning the long term best interests of the US.
This isn't necessarily any particular incompetence on the part of the CIA, it's just ordinary Rule of Unintended Consequences multiplied by mysterious powers and limited oversight. I'm sure that if I were capable of supporting coups or funding civil wars then I'd probably make a lot of wrong calls too, but I can't so my bad ideas are relatively harmless.
I don’t see this as a productive line of argument. The cuts are being made to save money, which is an important thing to do.
I agree the cuts are wasteful (they will scare people out of useful industries/the US or will damage the US’ ability to generate goodwill and influence cost-effectively abroad, in ways that I think outweigh the permanent net income stream from reducing the deficit) and immoral (the cuts will hurt people in great need more than they help the beneficiaries of the lower deficit, all to boost the popularity of the current government). But if I didn’t think something like this, I would want to save the money, because spending money at all is hard in US politics and a decent proportion of the savings would go to reducing the deficit anyway, plus I’d probably expect some of the money to go towards things I’d think were good.
Uh... Why did my account get blocked from commenting? I just tried to comment, and it just says "You are blocked from commenting on this". Tested it on other posts too, and still blocked. There was zero notification for it as well. I don't even remember saying anything particularly objectionable for the last few weeks...
Edit: So attempting to edit a comment tells me "You are banned from commenting until 1000 years from now." Sorry guys, see you in 3025!
Hang on, where are you blocked from? I can see this recent comment about the 1000 year ban. Scott generally does warn "the ban hammer has descended upon your head" and doesn't do it without giving notice.
The only thing I can think of is that I somehow pissed off either Scott or some Substack worker so much that they randomly decided to stealth ban me. ...I mean, obviously it's not a big deal, as you can see.
Edit: It seems I'm only blocked on this blog. So it probably is Scott... but why now of all times? Now that I think of it, when's the last time he posted a list of bans? Did he just stop doing those?
Normally, if Scott bans you — and I've been banned by Scott — you're either banned for a month (like I was) or you're banned forever. And you can't comment for the duration of the ban. And your comments would be hidden behind a banned notice. Yours aren't. So, I don't think Scott banned you.
I never got a reason from Scott, but I think it was because I resorted to vicious sarcasm against someone who, IIRC, was banned permanently a few months later. ;-)
How would you cult-proof your children and/or yourself? And could cult-proofing discourage healthy exploration?
One suggestion I've seen is encouraging a sense of the absurd. If someone is making wild claims, make jokes about how ridiculous they are.
Another suggestion was encouraging kindness. Is the group seeking advantages for a small group of insiders? Unfortunately, this has its limits. Some cults claim to be helping everyone. Also, mockery of inflated claims has the advantage of being fun in the short run.
Make sure the help is for actual living people. Or possibly including animals, but put the focus on good lives for actual animals.
I've seen two very different lines of thought which protect from MLMs and investment education (guru) scams. One is to realize that there's no way a system which depends on recruiting more people can grow forever, or even very long. This takes an intuitive grasp of math.
The other is to realize that if this is a path to easy wealth, the person promoting it wouldn't be working so hard to pull you in. This takes an understanding of the world.
I think part of the challenge is that there are good reasons to teach children to be cooperative, but it's important to teach them to be thoughtfully cooperative.
The current theory about cults is that they recruit people who are desperate or unmoored. Poor people, people who've lost a partner, people who have just moved to somewhere where they don't know people. This means being able to to the sensible thing or not do the stupid thing when you're under pressure.
Education in the ordinary sense-- degrees-- doesn't protect people against cults.
Any thoughts about resistance to love bombing?
Any stories you might want to tell about resisting getting recruited?
I see you say that 'education in the ordinary sense doesn't protect people against cults' - why?
I'd argue that anyone with a thorough understanding of how the world works, an enquiring mind and a healthy dose of skepticism is safe from cults. Of course there will be outliers, but is the average cult member more or less likely to have an advanced degree than the general population? (Of course, it's possible to get a degree without learning anything - the parchment itself isn't going to keep the cults away.)
There are confounding factors - the people with degrees likely have jobs and status in society, they're not the typical recruits for a cult who are marginalised in multiple ways. So maybe the response is follow the standard advice to ensure children land decent careers.
> Of course there will be outliers, but is the average cult member more or less likely to have an advanced degree than the general population?
From what I've seen, it's more likely. A particularly infamous example is the Tokyo subway sarin attack that was organized by Aum Shinrikyo. Literally all of the main perpetrators had STEM degress from prestigious universities. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokyo_subway_sarin_attack#Main_perpetrators
Other than the obvious "make sure they're emotionally healthy" I would advise raising them to be contrarian and anti-authoritarian. Be generally cynical with them. Make fun of pomposity. Teach them that just because someone is in a position of authority doesn't mean that they know everything (or anything). Oh and get them to read good satirical literature. Voltaire, Machiavelli, Swift, Orwell, etc. Good humor like Twain is probably good too. It's hard to be manipulated when you're laughing and Twain teaches you to laugh at a lot of pompous stuff.
Another good move might be to encourage them to join the debate team in high school. That trains your mind to think about both sides of every issue which makes it hard for someone to sell you ideological snake oil. Debaters develop a natural ability to find the fault lines in any story.
The problem with cults is that their beliefs are a red herring. The important part is the behavior; all those written and unwritten rules.
There are different deities, different lines of cosmetics, different political causes... you can't list them all, and there will be new ones tomorrow anyway. But the rules are suspiciously similar; starting with: "Don't talk to outsiders unsupervised. Especially, don't talk to people or read sources critical of our group." There are other rules, but this red flag is probably the easiest one to explain: if you ever notice that someone is trying to convince you to never talk to your parents and your former friends (or just to feel bad if you do), run, don't walk.
It might help to read a book or two written by former cult members, those are cool stories anyway.
Actual love at home, and a network of friends, probably increase the resistance to love bombing. Especially if you explain how some people's love is strictly conditional on your obedience, and that if you meet such people, it is not actual love, just a manipulation technique.
I think I disagree with most of your suggestions:
> If someone is making wild claims, make jokes about how ridiculous they are.
This may make you more resistant against groups whose beliefs differ from yours, but *less* resistant against groups who start from a seemingly similar position. Remember, there are both woke cults and right-wing cults, so many people already start in a position kinda sympathetic to some of these. Also, "if you sell a lot of this, you can get rich" is not obviously a wild claim. (Only if you understand the efficient market hypothesis.)
> Make sure the help is for actual living people.
How much can you verify this? "Yes, there are actual living people, living in a country far far away. Are you a racist?"
> The current theory about cults is that they recruit people who are desperate or unmoored.
Unfortunately, it is more subtle. A group can make you depend on them, by gradually replacing your contacts outside the group by the contacts inside the group. At first sight, the fact that your new friends want to spend more time with you doesn't feel suspicious.
"> If someone is making wild claims, make jokes about how ridiculous they are."
I don't know if I made it ideally clear, but those were suggestions I saw in a discussion rather than suggestions I would necessarily make. A sense of the absurd could help protect a person from wild claims, but that doesn't mean it's a good idea to tell someone who's already in a cult that the cult ideas are absurd.
"> Make sure the help is for actual living people.
How much can you verify this? "Yes, there are actual living people, living in a country far far away. Are you a racist?""
That was actually about protection from a Pascal's Mugging. Be very careful about claims about trillions of people in the far future.
Still wouldn't recommend ridiculing the cult: could backfire, the person could take it as ridiculing his ideas (if he already feels like a member of the cult). Better to just listen, and maybe let him come with his own doubts.
One way to see how it could backfire is to consider the cargo cult angle. Imagine someone who wants everyone to believe that This Thing Right Here is a cult. He finds that people who successfully pointed out a cult in the past did so by ridiculing it. So, he proceeds to ridicule This Thing Right Here.
It *might* work. Maybe TTRH really is a cult. Which is to say, it promotes ideas that most people would consider cult-y. But "most people" isn't going to include members of TTRH beyond maybe some wavering individuals on the margin. The members of TTRH will by contrast believe that its ideas are *not* cult-y. What will ridicule look like to them?
What would happen if we tried to ridicule people who believed that they'll starve if they don't eat?
I read through the suggestions you outlined with alarm.
Educating a young person about cults / MLMs/ scammy-woo (/arguably gambling?) is 100% about developing their ability to say, "Not today, fucker," with genuine venom. It requires fostering a healthy, unapologetic contempt for both the predators who engage in manipulative behavior, and a pitying contempt for those who fall prey to it.
To wit, it requires developing a sense of pride in having a *personal* superiority over a predator's recognizable tricks.
The best way to do this is with humor. Show them the relevant episodes of Penn & Teller's Bullshit!, and particularly show them South Park's The Biggest Douche in the Universe. Go over this clip of Stan explaining cold reading line-by-line until you're certain your kid understands it enough to *laugh at it*: (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bptjghTNUkE)
Once your kid is able to laugh *at* the audience in that South Park episode for being silly, you're well on the path to protecting them from ever being that silly themselves. Make them proud of being "too smart" to be tricked by cold-reading, and they'll want to expand that skill into other areas.
Then it's just about helping them develop pattern-recognition, and ideally a sense of discomfort and indignation whenever someone imposes on them, be it someone in religious garb interrupting their travel down the street or a coworker wanting to sell them too many vitamins.
I was raised in Christian Science, a faith-healing religion that's often described as a "cult" due to the extremity of disbelief in the effectiveness of medical science. Sometimes I even describe it as a "cult" myself, although that's not accurate. Christian Science does not encourage proselytizing. If anything, it's a little snobby about not trying too hard to convince the people who aren't smart enough to "study" it.
I was deeply, thoroughly indoctrinated as a child, including being deliberately kept away from information which might have made me question the religion (I wasn't allowed to attend health class in school, etc). I started doubting as a young adult after having some health issues it didn't fix even though I prayed really, really hard, and then in 2003, the first season of Penn & Teller's Bullshit! kicked off the complete implosion of my framework for faith. I even remember the exact scene that detonated the implosion.
I don't blame myself for believing what my family taught me - you can't know what you don't know - but once you have the information, there's no excuse for not using it. The first step *must* be, "You are both empowered and capable of *judging* the behavior of others. Do so."
Obviously there's even more disdain for people who are so arrogant that it doesn't ever occur to them that they've been taken in by a particularly sophisticated or novel scheme.
Someone is really dumb if they fall for a psychic cold reading after having the mechanisms of it throughly explained to them. Ditto Three Card Monte.
But if a layperson is taken in by a Bernie Madoff type, or an auto mechanic is using refurbished parts instead of new, or a scammer deepfakes a loved one's voice over the phone pleading for help…well, there are some things the average person just can't know about ahead of time.
But cold reading and pig butchering and MLMs are examples of scams adults have absolutely no excuse not to avoid.
Koken's right though. Quite apart from putting your own self image to work justifying why your weird surroundings certainly can't be a cult really, this also sets up a barrier where even after getting cold feet you can't go back to the people who warned you because - by the typical mind fallacy - they'll all sneer in disdain if you do.
Yeah...so the kind of person who's too afraid to go back to the people who warned them because they're more afraid of being sneered at than they are of being in a cult is *the kind of person who is most vulnerable to cults in the first place.*
So, don't be that kind of person, and especially don't allow your child to become that kind of person.
Like, I'm genuinely amazed that's not incredibly obvious to you?
The way to avoid cults (and scams) is to first not be a person who is targeted and easily influenced by others.
Once you're that kind of person, all you need is information about how to recognize when you're being targeted and manipulated, as well as the knowledge that you may not immediately recognize a sophisticated or novel manipulation.
While I definitely think society lost out when we taboo'd the masculine urge to say "just don't be a pussy," in difficult situations, in the context of preparing someone against subtle manipulation that sounds like a ludicrously wrongheaded attitude to me.
But listen I've been thinking about starting a fertility cult recently so if you can get a good line in attractive, submissive women maybe we can do an adversarial collaboration.
Gotta be information control. Make sure they have awareness of where their information is coming from, and teach them to notice and react defensively when someone is closing off sources.
Disconnecting from people is a subcategory of the same thing - this should be a strong boundary: no one tells you who you can and can't talk to, and if they force it to a choice, they're the ones who go. And from the other side - no matter how angry you are at someone, always leave the door open, avoid breaking off contact yourself, it's a pawn's move.
Awareness of information control alone is enough to neuter a lot of cult power. It also protects you from the arguably much more likely case of controlling girlfriends/boyfriends.
After that you might want to expose/inure them to various tricks - guilt trips, sales tactics, etc. My primary school headmistress liked to put us through the Asch conformity experiments from time to time.
That just moves the decision one step backwards to who you allow to define the word "toxic" for you.
"Toxic" has no real meaning, and I've seen it used far more often by cult-follower type people than not - pretty much always as an exhortation to cut (groups of) people they disagree with out of your life.
If you can trust someone to know who is and isn't trustworthy in that regard, you can already trust them to spot the cult leaders as well, making this a circular thing.
There are plenty of people who aren't worth talking to, but your child should be the one determining who they are. Once they've left the small cult of your nuclear family of course.
The easy way would be to describe several of the most common types of cults, and the reasons it would be bad to join them. This would probably be easier for MLMs than for literal cults, but you could explain first one and then the other. It’s probably easier to see similarities to something you recognise than to understand maths well enough to spot such scams instinctively. For your own protection, you can research as many common and obscure cults and scams as you can, and hopefully learn to recognise enough patterns that when someone develops a new scam, they’re building it out of elements you recognise.
Did anyone know about usaid a year ago? Im still surprised by the amount of money in *1* account, I would think this should fail money laundering 101, but I cant remember a single mention of it.
In the sense that even minute earth was a fed money( I called philosophy tube being a fed tho); and for some reason firefox, rumors about south america cocaine production, all one account.
I dont get it, in theory some % of government workers should be good actors so you need to hide the money laundering, cia bullshit, raw corruption everywhere in the budget and you get new people who should have new schemes every 2 years maybe by pure ignorance over decades someone forgets to coordinate having the money in one account.
Was there a new congressman class that the cia runs thats say "if you need to do money laundering run it thru usaid so we can kept track of a corruption to gdp easier" most of the time people listen AND ron pual didn't think to take a picture?
In theory coordination has knowledge tradeoffs; I cant quite articulate what; but something
But note, the expectation wasn't that it would be cancelled, but rather that the anti-abortion restrictions on foreign health funding (the Mexico City Rule) might interfere with it.
And I think you're wrong about the plan to push it out, that was to get it out of electoral politics, so that after the election, depending on who won, it would get re-upped, either with or without the abortion restrictions, not that if the republicans won, they would cancel it. No one ran on cancelling Pepfar, both because it is relatively obscure, and because, as you can tell by the fact that Rubio, et al keep saying that it's fine and they're not blocking the funding, even as the funds don't distribute, it's not good politics.
Im not quite seeing the "knowing" just a random acynom that will be associated with it and some abortion debate.
Im not sure its possible to express the thought in that dialect of speech. Even now my eyes glaze over. I need "theres chemicals in the water that turn the frogs gay" to understand, you couldnt have a page long abstract with the scientific name of the frogs in question, the chemicals in question, and 1 *cough* dog whistle about a sexual behavoir hidden inside.
Maybe this is all clear to insiders and it was well known you apply for funding to usaid for your firefox africain educational retreat, or your eastern european homosexual magazine or youtube video talking about climate change. But Ive cant find anything in my tougue thats older then the current audit.
It always annoys me that the chemical that harms frogs and maybe people is well known to be atrazine, but people keep talking about this as if it’s some cover up.
The question is not what is best for USA, but what is best for those who *rule* USA.
After a successful regime change in USA, the best thing for the new rulers will be to destroy successful examples of the previous type of regime in other countries.
I'm not really part of that "scene", but from what I gather a lot of "NRx" types seem to see (Western) Europe and the EU as an extension of the liberal-left post-war American "elite", and thus are very negatively polarised against it. And apparently the new VP and others close to the president are "plugged-in" to Yarvin and others in the "NRx" community, and thus kind of see Russia as their ally against a "post-materialist and self-hating" EU (or at least its elites).
I do not suggest it's a plausible outcome. But in this funny hypothetical, military alliance for territorial expansion by conquest, American steel and Russian blood, like in the old days. Maybe Russia takes the Ukraine, the Caucuses, and, say, the Baltics, while America takes Canada and Greenland.
Oh, I love some Russians. But I would give my life glady if I could take out a certain V.V.P.. Lots of German voters nowadays are some sort of Russian. Most Germans claim they would not defend their country. "Only 17 percent of German citizens said that they would "definitely" be prepared to defend their country in case of an attack" https://www.newsweek.com/majority-germans-unprepared-military-attack-country-poll-1854738
Didnt some german try to sound important this week by calling trump weak on russia?
Anyway, russias point of view will not be neutral on nato if america leaves; they may in fact have some prospective on ww2 and cold war as being not great for them and knowing their role in it without "end of history" delusions; where the true barrier of democracy made evil disappear with purity and light.
I remember putin ranting for 3 hours about history, he may have centuries of europian wars in mind when seeing a massive european allienence and prep the winter meat grinder as is russian tradition.
Have you forgotten the content of that rant? In a sentence, it was basically "Ukraine is Russia's hat, you will not have our hat". It wasn't a speech about an infinite empire or an infinite war. It was a speech about a sphere of influence, much as you might see in the 19th century multipolar order.
People are crazy when they think he has the desire (much less the means) to invade ten more states. He is Monroe, not Napoleon.
He probably doesn't have the means or desire to physically invade, but he's trying to install Russian puppet governments in all kinds of places through information warfare, assassinations, and various other means, and not even just in Europe.
Another monthly long forum wrap up of all my most interesting long form content links.
This batch includes a recent(ish) origin for Australian Aboriginal languages, a couple landmark papers on recent European evolution of intelligence, a deep dive into the creeping issue of infrastructure decay, links from the gut microbiome metabolites and major depression and aging. and an argument that the bigger danger in LLMs is their persuasiveness rather than their intelligence.
Oh and my own podcast interview with Dr Eugene McCarthy about the importance for hybridisation in evolution (leading to a future episode diving into his hair raising pig-chimp hybrid theory).
As a point of feedback from a biologist, I've read some of Eugene McCarthy's writing, and as far as I could tell it relied mostly on misinterpreted birth defects and sensationalist newspaper articles. I very much do not think it's to be taken seriously. It's possible reading or hearing more will change my mind, but I'm doubtful.
Lyn Margulis was utterly convinced that the flagella was descended from an endosymbiotic spirochaete. She was wrong on that point, but right about mitochondria and chloroplasts. I think McCarthy is correct about the overlooked centrality of hybridisation in speciation, am convinced his chimp-pig theory is worth serious analysis, but also suspect at least some of the thousands of historic cases of possible hybrids documented in Telenothians are in fact birth defects, but without tissue samples for genetic analysis it is a moot point. McCarthy admits as much if you read his work closely. He is merely a meticulous cataloguer of historic evidence of potential wide hybridisations. Short of setting up a research institute to reproduce all these crosses under controlled conditions there isn't. much else a lone researcher can do. His recent genomic analysis of bonobo/human/pig is quite compelling as well, but could be followed up with analysis by other genetics labs. Unfortunately the concept seems to shock modern sensibilities so much that the topic is radioactive, not that different to how religious folks first reacted to being told that humans were descended from chimps. It's weird how instinctively people push back on the idea of ~1% of our genome coming from a pig. Accepting hybridisation is driving much of evolution would also mean our tidy branching phylogenetic trees from the last 20 years of analysis would need to be reassessed.
See, the thing is I think that McCarthy is doing a motte-and-bailey game in which the motte is already known and accepted in evolutionary biology. That hybridization, symbiogenesis, and horizontal gene transfer are important drivers of evolutionary change is well known. The purely dichotomously branching image of the Tree of Life is now firmly lies-to-children territory. As an example, here's [1] a recentish paper candidly describing "superorganisms" created by the permanent association of multiple species.
As for parts of the human genome being of "foreign" origin, why, it has been uncontroversial for a quarter of a century now that many human genes have been absorbed from bacteria [2] and that 5-8% of our genome is made out of dead viruses [3]! Even the placenta, as deep as it gets into the source of human life, is known to be lagely of viral origin [4]. By comparison, pigs are practically our siblings. If the argument was a bacteria-mediated horizontal gene transfer between mammals living in the same environment, that would be quite plausible. But that's not McCarthy's argument -- on his website, we see assertions of cats and chicken mating and giving birth to viable offspring [5]. You say he's a "meticulous cataloguer" of potential hybridizations; I'd say "credulous", at best, as every instance I could find on the website is a misinterpretation of a birth defect, or an overly literal reading of a second- or third-hand description.
The actual argument on human origin [6] seems to be an unevidenced assertion that such hybridizations are possible (no mechanism seems to be provided on how the thoroughly mismatched genes manage crossing-over in the next generation) and a list of morphological traits that are allegedly shared between humans and pigs, with no consideration given to convergence and necessity (in fact, a very similar list to the one that the "Aquatic Ape" factions claims we share with marine mammals). Many of them are already explained by the peculiarities of human evolution (e.g. subcutaneous fat and reduction of cutaneous muscle are related to the loss of fur coat), others are not great discrepancies with other apes (which do have an eye sclera and nasal cartilage, and whose os penis is already vestigial).
I presume this is the paper in question [7]. The fact that McCarthy seems to have invented his own algorithm doesn't fill me with confidence, but most importantly he makes a startling claim "essentially all the autosomal nucleotides differentiating humans from bonobos are pig-matching" is *not* actually supported.
What he actually shows is this: the amount of 35-40 bp-long strings shared between pigs and humans is about 1.3% higher than the amount shared between pigs and bonobos, and that the human and bonobo genome differ by 1.3% of nucleotides. Then he asserts that these numbers must refer to the same thing, even though they measure completely different things!
Of course if you compare apples to apples, you'd see that the nucleotide-level similarity between humans and pigs is very high, because they're both mammals, and you can reduce it arbitrarily by picking the length of the sequences you want to exactly match. The great majority of those matches are shared with the bonobo too, despite it presumably not being descended by pigs, and the 1% that isn't could as well be explained by later mutations on the bonobo line.
As far as I can tell, there is no mention of a negative control (what if you use a dog or a mouse instead of a pig?), nor any attempt to show that the supposed human-pig genetic matches have any relation with the supposed shared morphological traits (I would bet most of them are in non-coding DNA, because most DNA is non-coding). The paper also keeps describing bonobos as if they were ancestral to humans, which is no more true than the reverse.
I'll show the paper to colleagues more expert of bioinformatics than I am, but I'm not hopeful.
I appreciate your position, and think it deserves consideration. Acknowledgement of the importance of hybridisation in evolution is growing, yet most phylogenetic analysis is still built of those simple branching trees that you agree are a children's fairytale. There is some work on developing new algorithms that search for evidence of hybridisation but the more ancient crosses may well be beyond detection. The purpose of phylogenetic trees is also worth reflecting on, regardless of the model. Are they just the latest form of biological stamp collecting?
The motte and Bailey comparison is apt, except I don't think there is a clear division between these two structures in his argument, and McCarthy's whole position is that mainstream biology doesn't have a clear idea about the limits to hybridisation and that this topic deserves further serious study.
Reading McCarthy's work, I have never detected any outright assertions that the wide hybrids he catalogs are proven, just that history is stuffed with reports of them which deserves some consideration. Having spoken with McCarthy at length I think he would gladly accept genetic analysis of any of the cases he reported on showing they were simple birth defects. There is a fuzzy edge between obvious and abundant hybrids (often between rather distant species, which nevertheless often overcome considerable genetic incompatibilities such as varying chromosome number to back cross to either parent species). I understand McCarthy to be advocating for a closer study of where those barriers to hybridisation lie. Given the complex nature of biology, the possibility for extremely wide crosses giving rise to fertile offspring once in a million years has to be considered. Extensive back crossing to the parent species could make detection of these events difficult in evolutionary history, but small genetic changes can have large functional impacts on the resulting introgressed populations.
I am keen to hear a deeper analysis of the latest genomic analysis paper claiming short sequences from pigs showing up at higher than expected rates in humans. This isn't my area of expertise, and the reliance on algorithms to shovel the. mountain of data always leaves me unconvinced (as a non-expert you are left relying on the researchers description of what the analysis is supposed to be showing). I agree an obvious test would be a negative control, applying the method to other mammals which are not supposed to be involved in human evolution.
Maybe we can agree that the existence of hybridisation is not at all in question, just that the limits are not well defined with our current body of knowledge?
I appreciate your response -- and I apologize if mine were a bit heated and late to come. But this is kind of what I meant by "motte and bailey". That hybridization may play a wider role in animal evolution than previously thought is a perfectly reasonable hypothesis. Claiming that a chimpanzee and a pig mated and gave birth to human offspring isn't. Investigating exactly how far hybridization can reach is also an interesting line of inquiry. McCarthy's methodology is absolutely inadequate for it. The best one can possibly say in favor of McCarthy is that he's deliberately making the most extreme and absurd version of his proposal in order to draw public attention to more serious work done by others, but I can't honestly say I care much for this sort of thing.
(As for the supposed hybrids from the newspaper clippings, the burden is very much on him to show that they are in fact hybrids, not on others to disprove it with genetic analysis, which is obviously impossible since most if not all those specimens are unavailable; though many clearly show marks of e.g. cyclopism or microcephaly.)
I was interested in the Australian Aboriginal languages thing.
One of my pet peeves is the pretence that the Aboriginal group who happened to be in a particular area at the time of European settlement are the "original" occupants of that land. To pick on a town at random, "The earliest human settlers in the area around Broken Hill are thought to have been the Wiljakali Indigenous Australians" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_Hill
This is, of course, stupid. Aboriginal groups merged, split, died out, and wandered nomadically over the course of forty thousand years. Whoever the first people to live in the Broken Hill area, they're not the Wiljakali, not even in a ship-of-Theseus sense.
Is anyone else still depressed by the USAID cuts? Ik it's old news by now but fuck, I'm planning to focus on global health and it's extremely frustrating to know that I'll probably never have enough positive impact to outweigh the bad done by a single document signed by Trump.
We pay $1 Trillion/year in just interest alone on the debt. We need to cut a lot, even things that are "good" to get out of this massive hole. Once that is fixed, I think more people would be open to USAID-type programs, just not putting them on the countries "credit card". A program being "good" or doing "good" is not a sound enough argument to keep it.
"a program being 'good or doing 'good' is not a sound enough argument to keep it"
What is a sound argument then? If I can't appeal to whether a program does good, what am I supposed to appeal to? Should we just cut all spending the US government does no matter how good they are since being good isn't enough? What framework would you apply to judge whether a program should be kept or cut?
Think about what you are saying for a minute. If all it takes for us to decide to pay for a program is that it does "good" then there is no limit to our spending. We could spend an additional trillion, heck, why not 5 trillion more? There is objectively plenty of good things we could do with that. Clearly, spending needs to be in the context of ones available funds.
If you have just $100 and someone tells you about a really really good program you can donate to and it would only cost you $50,000 dollars, would you donate because it does good? Of course not. You simply cannot afford that spend no matter how "good" it is.
Nobody wants to admit it but just like everywhere else you have to be born into the right class to be powerful. If you really want to save the world you can probably find a way.
I work on global health in an EA-adjacent org that I think does a lot of good, and the cuts hit us hard enough to force laying off staff. It is pretty depressing to realize how much potential good was averted (I think a better lens than 'bad done') by the signing of a single document.
I've tried keeping my spirits up by still aiming to do the best I can, to mixed success.
Uh yes. It hasn't even been a month. I'm a John Green fan so I'm pretty mad about the divestment from tuberculosis control programs. Do you want more medication resistant TB? Because this is how you get medication resistant TB.
I'm already trying to pivot to customer-facing roles in tech, but in part I was willing to admit before that I am less wedded to coding or even working in tech than a lot of CS graduates, so in an down market I'd be one of the first to quit. However, the data seems quite clear here: LLMs have already broken through in SWE to a surprising extent, and just as surprising to me is that what would seem to be ideal professions for it, like copywriting, are barely affected.
At the same time, it's hard to draw conclusions here. In theory, SWE is a small field, so making up 37% of all queries seems very significant, but coding might also require more tokens than other tasks. Then there's the null cases, devs who still aren't using LLMs. Regardless, I figure someone here has probably thought about this way more than I have. Appreciate anyone's thoughts.
I'm not convinced LLMs can meaningfully diminish the job prospects or break into any programming job market. (Unless, of course, the market is dumb and it fires some programmers anyway that it will beg them later to return, I'm assuming well-calibrated decision making here.)
My views shifted considerably on LLMs, I started as an irrational hater, probably driven more than anything by the "Cultural Appropriation" move of using terms like "Code Gen" and "Dev Tools" - previously terms that had to do with very deterministic and computer-sciencey topics and research - to describe the Natural Language beasts. The insufferable investor-bro ecosystem around LLMs and their whole.... schtick, also didn't help.
Little by little, starting by the Sparks of AGI paper in 2023, I came around to the conclusion that LLMs are perhaps the singular most amazing technology of the 21st century since the Internet or the smartphone, and probably more philosophically challenging and civilizationally invigorating than both. (Economical-Impact-wise, though, it doesn't hold a candle to either. Yet.)
The other day I was reading a binary protocol spec and there was a huge table mapping raw memory addresses to names. I wanted this table as a C++ switch statement. Pre-LLMs, my options were either to (A) copy-paste from the PDF and endure the drudgery and the formatting errors (B) write a python script to open the PDF and endure the (most unfun) kind of BDSM that is trying to programmatically process PDF. Post-LLMs, my options are taking a screenshot and politely asking the alien beast to spit out anything I want, including C++ switch statements or some sort of address->string hash tables or whatever.
This article is perhaps the best thing I have read on the topic of using LLM in programming: How I think about LLM prompt engineering (https://fchollet.substack.com/p/how-i-think-about-llm-prompt-engineering). The tldr is that you can think of LLMs as effectively program database (in short, NPM/Github), plus a massively multi-modal and natural-language-proficient interface that can guide your query to the best matching program in the database.
With all that said, LLMs are still not (good, professional) programmers. Why?
(1) They have no agency. Agency means that you tell a programmer to do something, and if he/she doesn't, you can (A) Schedule a meeting with them and tell them you're sad/angry/disappointed (B) Fire him/her. LLMs have no agency, they can't be blamed, you can't have a modern work environment built on the back of people who literally can't be blamed, **someone** have to take the blame, and that someone who happens to take the blame for bad/missing/undesirable/buggy code is a programmer, even if he or she didn't write the code by themself (directly).
An often-overused metaphor is the "Intern" analogy. Hang out on an AI HackerNews thread long enough and you will inevitably see the "LLMs are just an eager intern" or "an LLM is an infinite army of infinitely patient interns" cliche analogies. I think this is actually an understatement against interns (smart and motivated ones are better than LLMs), but even assuming the truth of the metaphor, interns have been an element of work environments since forever and they have not contributed meaningfully to any job displacement or market downsizing.
(2) They have no memory. The fundamental paradigm they're built on is learn-once live-forever. The various corrections and experiences they experience don't contribute to their long-term connections, they're just mushy context for the long-term wights to digest and output as activations. Even if you record every single interaction, you ever had with your LLM and start your every prompt with it as a huge context stream (obviously ridiculous, both from a UI/UX standpoint and in light of the context length limit inherent in LLM architecture), that's fundamentally still not the same as joining a Teams meeting with a team member and saying "Right so like we agreed yesterday, we will implement this ticket as follows...".
(3) They're fickle and unreliable. And I don't mean the "Hallucination" problem, which is bad enough, I mean that even after you correct a hallucination, you're still not guaranteed to get the right answer even in the same exact session you corrected it in, or after you close the session and start a fresh one. Something about the combination of floating-point calculations + output sampling over a probability distribution + Natural Language input + Autoregression on previous output to generate more output... just wrecks pure havoc with repeatability and deterministic-ness.
I have seen attempts to address this by imposing various rules and limitations on the input prompts, or enforcing some elaborate system of bullet-pointing and reference-keeping (e.g. as per requirement 1.a.I.A.0.a.1, you have to...). Not only is this still fickle and unreliable, it's essentially reinventing programming language syntax again, the point that programming language theory was at in the mid 1950s.
(4) They don't push back. A common cliche in interviewing wisdom is that the candidate who doesn't push back or ask any clarifying questions is worse than the one who does. Sometimes you just know better than the one who asks the question, sometimes it's your buddy who knows better and pushes back on your bad suggestions. In all cases, a programmer's lexicon with humans must contain "No", "I don't think this is a good idea", "are we sure this is the best approach", and others of their kind. LLMs universally don't.
Many of those limitations aren't independent of each other, some are inherent to the LLM architecture and others are mere implementation details, but addressing them **all** seems like a substantial post-LLM jump-in-kind-not-degree leap, which contradicts the opinions that **LLMs** (they exist today, or with minor modification and development) will replace programmers.
Some LLM-Replacing-Programmers advocates then retreat into a more favorable position of "LLMs are going to make programmers more productive, and thus make 1 programmer do the job of 2, and thus cut programmer jobs in half". I hate this position and think it's a mark of poor thinking, here's why
(1-) First, different tasks take different amounts of a programmer's day. To take a trivial example, booting the damn computer up is part of a programmer job after all, but making the boot process of Linux or Windows 10x faster won't give you a 10x programmer, because booting a computer up takes at most 5 minutes == 1/12 hour == 1% of a programmer's day. This is called Amdahl's Law (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amdahl%27s_law), speeding up a task can only ever gain you (some portion of) the time that this task originally took, so if the task takes very little of your overall work then even making it take 0 time will gain you very little.
LLMs don't magically speed up all tasks that developers face. As a trivial example, they don't speed up debugging the buggy code that they often produce. They don't speed up ticket planning and work-combining, they don't speed up customer/sales meetings. They may speed up code investigation or debugging, but by how much? Given a very high level bug report like "Application crashes when a .png image converted from a .jpeg is uploaded"), how many LLMs can just go through the repo, whip up their printf and debugger breakpoints, and produce a chain of events that a developer would have produced but faster? How much faster?
Producing new code is not all what developers do.
(2-) Different programmers, markets, companies, products, and lifecycle phases of the same product do fundamentally different tasks altogether. A startup is fundamentally different than a FAANG and both might as well be different entities compared to a CRUD bank. A mobile programmer is doing a radically different thing compared to their peer in an embedded C or a desktop C++ project. Most importantly, maintenance mode is radically and fundamentally different than greenfield mode. (and it's a huge continuous spectrum not 2 poles.)
LLMs are extensively and almost exclusively marketed with the "I made an X application from scratch despite not being a programmer" and "I built my startup on AI and 2 of my programmer bros, programmer bros optional !!!". This **is** impressive and a testament to the usefulness of LLMs, but how much of the programming job market is just startups or hobby apps? Hobby apps are not even part of the job market at all, or perhaps a tiny part if you count the freelancing make-me-an-app-for-tracking-X kind of jobs. Startups seem to be a peculiarly American - nay, Californian - obsession, and professional programming is hardly limited to America or California.
So LLMs are good, amazing actually. They're just not professional programmers, and they can't be without so much more work and development that they're effectively no longer the LLMs we know.
Largely agree on all of this. My point which you admittedly addressed at the beginning is that the oversized impact that LLMs are already having in swe vs other industries is going to discourage hiring new devs.
Yes, the thesis that “llms make our devs 20% more efficient so were going to fire the bottom 20%” has a lot of holes. I don’t know how badly execs who try it will be punished, but honestly if llm use is already this pervasive, it wouldn’t surprise me if they can skate by with less programmers, even if the end product is buggier. This would be really bad for the job market, which for junior devs especially is quite poor.
The difference between FAANG and other large companies that have tons of internal tools is well-taken. As an anecdote, I interviewed at a company recently that ended up being acquired by a bigtech co. They have a nosql dbaas, and had completely pivoted to the use case of storing embeddings in their db, the idea being that you take an llm prompt, find the most similar embedding in your db, and then feed that with the prompt to the llm (this is called RAG, you may have heard of it). So a company with a lot of docs could already prompt the llm with a coding problem and all the relevant docs. In that way, non-coding skills that devs need to have like “knowing the docs” are also being chipped away by llms.
I agree that it will never be 1:1 with devs, but I think it won’t be too long where it will be viable, and cutting headcounts by even a relatively small percentage will screw up the industry.
Ehh, I think the percentages have to be significant (> 10%) in order to show up among all the other non-LLM reasons the programming job market regularly gets fucked up over. I can accept a "Death by a thousand cuts" thesis where LLMs are just 20 or 50 cuts among the thousand, others being layoffs from big tech, increasing de-globalization (thus less international SWE and market denial), $TECHNOLOGY_OF_MONTH has changed and now all the people from there are migrating to other niches and competing, etc...
Like I said, if LLMs are simulating an infinite supply of interns, we **always** had an infinite supply of interns before them, where are all the job apocalypses that happened since companies first discovered the magical trick of underpaying an intern and treating them as an employee? (modulo an optional mentor, sometimes). LLMs *may* be superhuman in many aspects interns (or any other humans) are not, but they're also subhuman (e.g. in long-term learning and learning from experience, in agentic discussion and disagreement) in many other ways that most reasonably good interns are not.
Now the point about LLMs **competing** with interns is very valid, but at this point I think you're sort of on the outskirts of the "Job Market" discussion and slightly into the "Education" discussion. LLMs as a new technology (like Wikipedia, like the internet, like the smartphone and the smartwatch, like the television and the radio, like reading and writing) fuck up with Education and Pedagogy in all sorts of interesting and new ways. 1 way is by pricing out apprentices/interns/trainees to new jobs and professions, denying them the opportunity to ever escape the very predicament of their inexperience, but isn't this what most companies pre-LLMs already did by the infuriating "Minimum 3 years experience" cliche job postings? I agree that 2 bad things are obviously worse than 1, but if interns/trainees/juniors were already coping/resisting 1 bad thing before LLMs, is it too big of a jump to expect they (or *some* of them) can figure out new additional ways of coping with the 2nd?
(Another way of fucking up Education is by competing with human-curated sources of knowledge like Q/A sites and textbooks, devaluing the very source the LLMs are trained on and undermining both future LLM training and knowledge production itself. Yet another is by tempting students and beginners to not do the tedious boring tasks that are nonetheless necessary to build mastery, such as doing multiple routine physics problems for a physics freshman or summarizing readings for a philosophy freshman. Those are not easy challenges, but they're also not new.)
LLMs *are* huge, I compared them to the Internet and the smartphone, those are not light comparisons. Uber wreaked havoc on the Taxi industries and Facebook is a tool of Revolution and Genocide Incitement as it is of cringey memes. I'm not sure LLMs measure up to those impacts yet but they are not apriori disqualified, I just don't think """10%+ replacement of the current workforce by LLMs in their current or near future state""" to be a reasonable prediction for the vast majority of respectable office work I can think of.
> I don’t know how badly execs who try it will be punished, but honestly if llm use is already this pervasive, it wouldn’t surprise me if they can skate by with less programmers, even if the end product is buggier.
Exactly, and that's what should be feared the most, the "AI doesn't exist but it will ruin everything anyways" thesis. The market can stay far dumber for far longer than you can pay your bills, and the dumbasses who take dumb decisions are punished by - at worst - a golden parachute out of the companies they ruin. I don't have an answer here, that's literally just Market Irrationality problem, the vague cliche answer is government regulation, plus developers revenge-negotiating the companies that abandoned them when the market finally self-corrects in their favor.
It's funny, because I think we mostly agree. When you say "some juniors can" still make the cut, like LLMs will at worst just exacerbate a shitty market, I agree, and I'm pretty sure I'm not one of those devs haha. That's actually why I'm interested in both the extent to which LLMs are being used by SWEs, but also the fact that *no other field* has incorporated LLMs nearly as much (at least that's how I interpret the data).
I think I'd rather start my career somewhere else in tech, even if it keeps me from doing dev work in the future. Part of this is because, weirdly enough, it really seems like other fields aren't as concerned about being automated away. It kind of makes sense: my thought experiment is that someone in the market for some SaaS product for their company won't know or care if the company has LLM code in production, but they would quickly lose interest if they reached out to sales or customer success and got a chatbot.
Yeah, I think these stats show more that Claude 2.5 has been used unusually much for coding (which it's unusually good at) and unusually little for copywriting (because it has a stronger "voice" than most models which is harder to wash out by prompting).
I would be just as surprised if people were this precise about their llm usage. Like as a dev I generally used chatgpt, and I would expect even more devs use copilot or
cursor.
The workflow for claude (ie not in your ide afaik) disincentivizes asking a lot of coding questions. The upside there in my experience is you can sanity check the code and put it in the ide once you’re satisfied. Even then, the friction of moving to claude kept me with chatgpt (now I use claude a lot for writing / bouncing off ideas, deepseek for more frequent queries)
So a web-based llm should be getting less coding queries than the median.
It could be less in quantity but higher in percentage. If someone goes to the trouble of using Claude instead of something from OpenAI they probably have a specific reason.
Something I'm wondering about: did LLMs just replace stack overflow in terms of volume? Tha would mean no or little productivity gain because it just changes where devs copy pasta code from.
From talking with other devs, the closer one is to the customer, the more helpful LLMs seem to be. Eg. Web devs seem to be getting the most out of it, while platform and infra just a little. But web dev is also conceptually the easiest to get into. One pattern I'm also seeing is that the better the developer, the more they can do with an LLM, ie. the better they can drive it to achieve some goal.
It's different. For Stack Overflow, if you can find a similar question to what you have you will often find a snippet of code you can pull, modify, and graft in to your own codebase. If you have a "new" question, or are just unable to find one that matches well, you ask a question that has a good chance to be closed or not answered, and if it is answered it may take half a day or longer.
A good coding LLM like Claude 3.7 can instantly answer your question, give you options, ask questions to clarify things you left out, and tailor code to your particular use case and coding conventions, and it does it instantaneously.
It's a far superior experience and much more productive.
I agree that that's possible, but I would estimate that a minority of users use it that way and a majority use it closer to a simple question-answer flow like with SO. Otherwise we'd be seeing a group of developers making big waves in visible ways.
The point about stack overflow is a good one. And yeah that makes sense, web dev feels kind of like pattern-matching to me and I never got the hang of any framework. I think for example knowing react doesn't generalize as much to other front-end stuff as C++ to Java etc.
I think we are still in the early adopter / enthusiast phase so it makes sense the programmers are using it the most even if copy editors should actually get the most use out of it. I think, even if LLMs didn't get any more capable, they would slowly spread in use to become a lot more economically important. My girlfriend works at a museum and they subscribe to chatgpt and slowly everyone is learning to use it more and more - currently, mostly as a kind of supercharged thesaurus that just helps them phrase things but over time doing more like turning bullet pointed lists into documents etc.
I mean whether it's because we're early adopters or LLMs are just better suited to coding for some reason, this kind of data is going to bolster the execs who think they won't have to hire engineers anymore. But yeah it's really hard to tease out what the cause is. A lot of queries doesn't imply a lot of impact nor does it mean it's doing X% of a dev's job. But I wouldn't be surprised if people took it that way.
It's more than that. There's this very funny article psychoanalyzing Vance based on his favorite MTG card, Yawgmoth’s Bargain. While it is ultimately just armchair psychology, I feel like it is accurately identifying an important personality trait of his. Namely, that he is unwilling to tolerate losing no matter what. He really might be a kindred spirit...
He's smart and cynical and wants to be president one day. The rationalist sphere touches on many ideas he's interested in like pronatalism and critical views of early-21-st-century elite leftism. Having read rationalist writers or even being influenced by them doesn't make him a rationalist. I mean, I've read Scott and Eliezer and even been to meetups, and I still believe in conflict theory and don't really care about people a thousand years in the future or shrimp welfare, and I'm sure as heck not giving anyone my kidney.
I do think Vance probably does care about certain things like helping the Midwestern working class and making it easier to form families. If he has to be Trump's attack dog for a while, that's just the price of power. It's rare to be able to climb the ladder of power without moral compromises.
By the way, a few months ago it seemed like the Sneer Club was dead. (They pretended that it was some principled objection against Reddit, but the fact was that their numbers were low because no one cared anymore.) Now they seem to have revived again, basically the discussion about Zizians making most of their traffic.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HRwfgskxGto&t=2s
A talk by Matt Arnold. This isn't a complete summary, but I think it covers the major points. I've left out the names of specific cults. I think one of the basic themes is that ordinary life is worthy of respect.
Cults amplify traits that healthy groups need. Groups need some money to keep going, but they shouldn't extract as much as possible from their members. Groups need friendships and connections among their members, but they shouldn't be the only source of relationships.
What does nihilism mean? I think it means the belief that there's no truth and no values, but I'm not sure.
Feelings are emphasized over thinking in bad groups.
There is no cult-proof ideology
David Chapman-- Cults offer "the illusion of complete certainty, understanding, and control"
Bad sign: A system where no one is good enough at achieving the goals of the group.
Don't let not being a good enough polyamorist make you miserable.
Coming alive should be the first priority.
Wow factor-- an impressive idea isn't necessarily true.
Have some people in your life with low openness to new ideas. People who can say, "That's fuckin' weird". [This doesn't address the possibility that in some societies, the mainstream is a cult.]
People should not feel an obligation to save the world. And sometimes it's combined with hopelessness.
In general, not feeling permitted to take care of yourself is a bad sign.
Don't let too many people who need the group for a sense of purpose into the group. They will make the group into a toxic perfection spiral.
Eternalism-- "it's this or nothing".
It's important for a group to permit challenges to ideas-- don't be supportive to everyone about every idea they have. Epistemic hygiene is needed.
Don't just say "It's complicated". Say "it's complicated in this way".
Is it safe to have the concept of infohazard? Perhaps the concept of infofragility is more useful.
Don't be extremely pro-woo or anti-woo. Aim for being able to use all the mental tools.
You will find what you look for. If you believe there's a pattern in history, you will find it, and if you believe your mind has certain elements, your mind will obligingly create them for you.
Ada Palmer as a good historian who looks for what's ambiguous in history rather than simple lessons.
Ideas from whatever source are more like spores-- starters for new ideas rather than things which are reliably transmitted.
As I see it, the "minimum viable product" of a cult is an abusive relationship. It has three components:
* a desire to have human relationships (healthy in general, but...)
* something that makes this specific relationship bad (maybe the partner is aggressive, or controlling, or crazy in some other way)
* something that prevents you from realizing that the relationship is bad and leaving (e.g. the partner has convinced you that no one else would want you, or just isolated you from your friends and keeps you busy with bullshit drama)
The same thing, on a group level: a desire to belong; something that makes this specific group bad; something that prevents you from realizing this and leaving the group (isolation, keeping you busy, the group pretending to be exceptional in some way).
Which suggests that a good advice on avoiding cults would be similar to a good advice on avoiding abusive relationships. (Keep contacts outside the relationship/group, learn to say "no", take care of your mental health in general, always get another perspective.)
*
I do not consider David Chapman a reliable source on this topic. He is a leader of a specific group, so his explanations are heavily motivated by "why my group is good and other groups are bad". Generally, any advice on cults that comes from group leaders is suspicious.
> I think one of the basic themes is that ordinary life is worthy of respect.
Feels close but not exactly right. Taken literally, it would suggest that being a boring normie is the most noble way to live. I think we should be allowed to have higher aspirations than that.
The problem I see is that many groups that claim to give you more, actually give you less. Instead of empowering you in your existing lifestyle, they give you an artificial one which is very narrow. (You had friends and hobbies, now you just have a small group that keeps reading the same holy books over and over again. You had an education and a career, now you just keep selling the same stuff and trying to build a pyramid. You were able to debate various topics, now you just repeat the same dogma with an angry voice. You had a social life, now you spend all your free time with your controlling partner.) Instead of an addition, the new thing is a replacement.
So I would rephrase it as: do not let anyone take your ordinary life away. It should be a baseline you can anytime safely return to.
> Feelings are emphasized over thinking in bad groups.
Kinda yes, but it does not necessarily feel so from inside. You can have thousands of pages of holy texts (which will seem like a lot of deep thought), or you can have a leader explain to you why X is the most rational thing to do. Ultimately, it is the feelings that keep you in the group and that control your thoughts but... realizing this is precisely the difficult part.
(I mean, imagine Zizians. I think they believe themselves to be perfectly thought-oriented.)
> Have some people in your life with low openness to new ideas. People who can say, "That's fuckin' weird".
Even better to have more people like that, each coming from a different position. So they will generate different kinds of the "weird" reaction. Like, one may comment that the group beliefs contradict the science, another may comment that the group behaviors are highly unusual, etc.
> In general, not feeling permitted to take care of yourself is a bad sign.
Yes, 100% this.
> , it would suggest that being a boring normie is the most noble way to live. I think we should be allowed to have higher aspirations than that.
You have swapped out “respect” for “noble“….sneaky.
Respecting another person doesn’t really prevent anyone from having higher aspirations.
As my Italian grandmother said, “No one is better than you, but you’re not better than anyone else.”
Does anyone know how to look up which movies had which previews attached to their home releases? I recently watched a movie I'd seen previews of in childhood and now it's bothering me that I don't know which movie had the preview.
You could try asking Perplexity. I just tried it:
====
Question: In the 90s I had a movie on VHS, and that movie had a trailer for In einem fernen Land. Which movie could that have been? It was a German release of the movie.
Answer: Based on the information provided, it's difficult to pinpoint the exact movie that contained the trailer for "In einem fernen Land" (Far and Away) on your VHS tape. However, we can make some educated guesses:
The movie on your VHS was likely released around or after 1992, as "In einem fernen Land" was released in that year.
It was probably another major Hollywood production, possibly from Universal Pictures (the studio that produced "In einem fernen Land").
Given that it was a German release, the trailer would have been in German, as evidenced by the German trailer available on YouTube.
The movie could have been another Tom Cruise or Nicole Kidman film from the early 1990s, as studios often promote their stars' upcoming projects.
It might have been another Ron Howard-directed film, as studios sometimes group trailers by director.
Without more specific information about the main feature on your VHS, it's not possible to definitively identify which movie contained the trailer. However, these points might help narrow down the possibilities and jog your memory about the main feature you had on that VHS tape.
====
So although it didn't give a concrete answer, the "Universal Pictures" and "Ron Howard" hints would be good starting points for the next search. Btw., it was Apollo 13, directed by Ron Howard and distributed by Universal Pictures.
Eh, I'd already thought of those. It didn't particularly help, partly because the movie being previewed is kind of all over the place, who knows what counts as "close". Best guess is, like, Beetlejuice. Or maybe Nightmare Before Christmas. Or maybe Hook. Or maybe Home Alone 2. I can't just watch the tapes again, I don't have them anymore.
I can't believe the Internet is failing to fill this incredibly useful and prevalent market.
...okay, going through the list of New Line Cinema movies, The Mask is a very strong contender, so strong I think I'm willing to just assume it was The Mask.
Still. This kind of stuff should be in an archive somewhere.
I'm making a tabletop roleplaying game about living in a Rationalist community during the last year before the Singularity, called THE SINGULARITY WILL HAPPEN IN LESS THAN A YEAR. It's meant to be a dramatic, darkly comic way for people like me to work through their emotions about all this. If that sounds like the kind of thing that would appeal to you, you can support it here:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/sixpencegames/the-singularity-will-happen-in-less-than-a-year-zinequest
(this is the last open thread before the kickstarter ends so this will be the last time I promote this before the game is actually available, I promise)
...welp, it's over. All discussions below are now moot; Trump pulled the rug, and Zelensky blinked.
Prediction time: how long do we give Putin until he decides he's ready to carve another piece off some country in his neighbourhood?
I'll open the bidding at 18 months.
An acquaintance of mine is in Ukraine, and reports that the Russian aerial bombardments have increased a lot since that meeting in the White House
Blinked in what way? I saw this and popped a quick google expecting some big headline like "Zelenskyy resigns," or "Zelenskyy signs mineral deal," but the only headlines are vague things like "Zelenskyy calls Trump spat 'regrettable,' expresses commitment to peace."
Maybe the coverage is still catching up?
https://x.com/ZelenskyyUa/status/1896948147085049916
Sounds to me like capitulation - he's ready to sign the minerals deal and start a ceasefire. Unless my diplomacy-speak is weak and this doesn't mean what it says?
>My team and I stand ready to work under President Trump’s strong leadership to get a peace that lasts.
"President Trump's strong leadership" is harmless ass-kissing. A "peace that lasts" is precisely what Ukraine has been wanting all along. Not any peace, but one that involves security guarantees.
> truce in the sky — ban on missiles, long-ranged drones, bombs on energy and other civilian infrastructure — and truce in the sea immediately, if Russia will do the same
Stop bombing our civilians, and we'll stop sinking your ships and lighting up your refineries.
> Our meeting in Washington, at the White House on Friday, did not go the way it was supposed to be. It is regrettable that it happened this way.
No apology there. He left it ambiguous who was responsible.
>We would like future cooperation and communication to be constructive.
Because right now it's anything but constructive.
>Regarding the agreement on minerals and security, Ukraine is ready to sign it in any time and in any convenient format. We see this agreement as a step toward greater security and solid security guarantees, and I truly hope it will work effectively.
Again with the offer: Minerals for a "peace that lasts", not just any peace like the Minsk agreements that Russia can break at will.
I don't see anything that he wouldn't have said before last Friday, except "Our meeting in Washington did not go the way it was supposed to be. It is regrettable that it happened this way", which is not even an apology, let alone a groveling one, so it will not placate Trump.
I think he has shown that he wouldn't sign a deal that just hands stuff to the US without anything in return, and Trump has shown that he's not interested in a deal where the US doesn't get everything and promises nothing. So, I read this as "look, everyone, we're not the problem here" with very little chance that anything meaningful will actually be signed.
Could be, but I'd hold out until the ink is dried. I'm by no means an expert on diplomacy-speak either, but I see that final line of "we see this agreement as a step toward greater security and *solid* *security* *guarantees*, and I truly hope it will work effectively" (emphasis added), and it doesn't quite look like Zelenskyy has fully aligned himself with Trump's perspective.
Also the most recent tweets where he suggests that he now wants Europe at the negotiating table, too, appear more to be looking for a counterweight to Trump rather than falling in line with Trump.
https://x.com/ZelenskyyUa/status/1897318692817437155
"I had a productive conversation with the Prime Minister of the Netherlands, following our meeting in London. We discussed coordination with our partners and the preparation of a joint plan. The first steps on the path to a just and lasting peace are incredibly important. We want to move forward speedily, in cooperation with the United States and all of Europe."
https://x.com/ZelenskyyUa/status/1897313594578002163
"Europe has a shared vision how the war should end and what security guarantees must be. Europe should be be the negotiating table in future talks alongside Ukraine and the United States."
There seems to be an increasing amount of microplastic in human brains. If this turns out to be representative, we need to reduce our exposure right now. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-024-03453-1
What are the main sources of contamination? How can one personally reduce contamination? Is it air filters, plastic sofas and clothing, household mixers, tea bags? https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0045653524026377?via%3Dihub
> How can one personally reduce contamination?
The practices I've personally adopted, that are based on researching stuff, are:
1. Don't heat plastic touching food - heat food in glass plates, bowls, baking dishes, etc
2. Shop and cook real food - frozen and prepared food is invariably wrapped in plastic two different ways, you usually heat it in plastic, you don't know how "plasticky" the preparing process was, etc.
3. Glass containers for tupperware - leftovers, lunches, etc
4. Metal water bottles vs plastic disposable water bottles - the plastic ones can be particularly bad when exposed to strong sunlight with your water in it
5. I run HEPA air filters throughout the house, because air pollution is generally bad, although I'm not sure how much plastic this actually mitigates, I've seen some sources suggest it can help a little. But I'd do it anyways, plastics or no.
6. Reverse osmosis water filter with carbon filter layers - gets basically everything out that you can get out.
Some other potential steps I *don't* do:
* minimize seafood - probably a good idea, especially for tuna or other upper-funnel carnivores and oysters, that concentrate several layers of accumulation. But I still eat tuna, although I try to focus on squid and Lapu Lapu and Red Snapper and stuff like that
* buy organic - I'm not convinced it does anything, some people argue (pretty weakly, IMO) that it matters
* worry too much about clothes - washing and drying plastic-containing clothes theoretically creates a bunch of microplastics, and basically all "fast fashion" uses plastic heavily. Most of my clothes are silk or wool or cotton, but it doesn't stop me from rayon workout clothes or swimsuits or anything. I'm also not sure how those microplastics from washing / drying are supposed to bio-accumulate in you - it's not like you're licking them.
* donate blood - this is one of the only reliable ways to *reduce* microplastics versus just preventing further accumulation, but I can't do this due to failing various screening questions / reasons.
> I'm also not sure how those microplastics from washing / drying are supposed to bio-accumulate in you - it's not like you're licking them.
Do you hold your breath or wear a respirator when you clean the lint filter on your dryer? Our clothes are constantly shedding little fibers just through friction.
> Do you hold your breath or wear a respirator when you clean the lint filter on your dryer? Our clothes are constantly shedding little fibers just through friction.
Huh, good point. I actually do hold my breath when cleaning the lint trap, but that's because I'm paranoid about air quality. I also hold it every time anyone sneezes or coughs.
I guess that paranoia pays off, at least in this department?
> silk
Nice style. Anyways, maybe the clothing creates a dust cloud, some speculation about its way to the brain: https://doi.org/10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2024.40018
Looking at air filters, I wonder whether these gigantic surfaces of plastic fibers introduce particles themselves, just smaller ones that escape the certification process, for example.
Luckily, there are some researchers who try to improve the measurement cutoffs for particle size: https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2300582121
My gut feeling says that the harmful particles are in the nanometer scale, but who knows, the world of small particles is not intuitive.
The heating effect, if biologically relevant, would also point towards water boilers and pipes.
And I wonder about the contribution of cleaning sponges and foam sealing of HVAC, these things fall apart after some time.
Maybe all of this doesn't matter, and the plastic needs to be ground up further in nature to become small enough to be dangerous, which would mean that location decides.
How does one even measure this effectively? Weighted per material for sure. And then? Particle count, mass, geometry-weighted area per food serving size? There seem to be highly contaminated and almost not affected individuals, researching them would be crucial to isolate and quantify the pathways. Until these are not clearly identified, mitigation measures will be highly expensive and ineffective. And then, the methods themselves are not easy to understand: For example, food rinsing, does this even work? For which particle sizes and geometries, on which food? Is it even on the food, and not in it mostly? I once talked to a hygiene expert, the practical results for cleaning against bacteria and viruses are staggering and not intuitive.
This study, for example:
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envres.2020.109677
Five zeros? That's orders of magnitude from other studies.
This needs to be comparable to get any meaningful picture of what to do.
But I can't stop my life and try to mitigate plastics that are everywhere, based on a mountain of probably wrong assumptions. I could well increase my exposure with my mitigation measures. But 0.5% per brain, rising rapidly, if that's representative, that's an extinction event, happening right now.
Considering that plastics have been ubiquitous in our environment for 50 years, but the rates of heart attacks and strokes have fallen during that period, and age-adjusted rates of dementia haven't increased in that time AFAIK, and the fact the plastics are generally chemically inert, I question whether there's any evidence the microplastics are a threat to human health. Period.
Of course, there was this study that linked the presence of microplastics in carotid artery plaques had a higher risk of heart attacks or strokes: "patients with carotid artery plaque in which MNPs were detected had a higher risk of a composite of myocardial infarction, stroke, or death from any cause at 34 months of follow-up than those in whom MNPs were not detected."
https://www.nejm.org/doi/10.1056/NEJMoa2309822
The most serious objections to this study were that there were questions about whether they were accurately quantifying the levels of microplastics in plaques and controlling for contamination. Considering that 42% of the people in the study had no evidence of microplastics in their plaques, 58% had high levels, and there wasn't a distribution of contamination levels, raises questions for me.
As for the study that claims 5 to 7 grams of microplastics reside in our brains, I'll wait until somebody else reproduces this study. I very much doubt that this is true.
In the original paper's attachments, https://static-content.springer.com/esm/art%3A10.1038%2Fs41591-024-03453-1/MediaObjects/41591_2024_3453_MOESM1_ESM.pdf, Table S1, I found the subgroup measurements. This looks a bit inconsistent.
And you are correct, it boils down to the real amount of plastics in the brain and its course over time. I hope someone finds budget for more measurements right now.
Thanks for linking to the original brain plastics paper. The news story I read didn't link to it, and I was too lazy to dig for it.
In Table S1, it's interesting that the NM patients listed with dementia as a cause of death averaged roughly 6-7x more MNPs in their frontal cortex than the NM patients listed as non-dementia deaths. But it's also interesting that the NM non-dementia-deaths had 2-3x more MNPs in their brains than the selected East Coast samples.
Right off the bat, I noticed that they don't have entries for the total MNPs found in the livers of NM dementia deaths to compare to the NM non-dementia deaths. So, we don't know if MNP accumulations were similar in other parts of the dementia death bodies. But what's going on with blood-brain barrier of dementia patients that allowed higher levels of MNPs into their brain tissues? Rather than causing dementia, I wonder if the higher MNPs are a side-effect of the dementia process?
Also, why do NM peeps who died of other causes have higher levels of MNPs in their bodies than the East Coast samples?
The authors seem to have adhered to strict controls for their measurements. I'm impressed. I have little to criticize about their paper — but I admit I find it kind of annoying not to be able to find anything to criticize. :-)
Increased blood brain barrier permeability is a feature of dementia, it seems. Interestingly, the age doesn't seem to matter much for the amount of microplastic. So it's either a statistical problem here, or the plastic gets into the brain mostly before puberty.
I believe its mostly food prep; coatings, and containers are ussally plastic; then they are heated and all heat sources are uneven. If you want to really go hard cast iron pans, real glass, ceramics you trust the source to use real glass finishes
The NM brain study that JJ800 linked to above doesn't show any PTFE plastics in the brains of patients who died from dementia. PTFE is the non-stick substance in non-stick pans. But non-plastics like Rayon show up. Lots of polyethylene plastics, which would be used in bags and bottles, show up in the brains of the dementia dead. Also, lots of N66 plastics, which would be used in things like toothbrushes, zippers, buttons, sporting goods, and automotive parts (I had to look up N66 plastics).
Is ADHD becoming more prevalent over time because attentiveness and organization skills are increasingly necessary in modern life?
The Economist recently did a long-ish article headlined, "Why so many children in America have ADHD". I don't think there is a way to do a gift link so non-subscribers can read it, so here is the cliff-notes version of the article.
-- one in nine children aged 3-17 years has been diagnosed with ADHD, two to three times the rate in other Western countries.
-- The actual reason why America is an outlier is widespread over-diagnosis.
-- A typical ADHD diagnosis in America is done by a paediatrician or a family doctor in an office visit as brief as 15 minutes. The norm in Europe is an hours-long assessment by a psychiatrist. The difference has to do with America’s scant health-insurance coverage for mental health care and lax rules about who can diagnose ADHD.
-- Fresh evidence of specious diagnoses landed in December, in a study published by the National Bureau of Economic Research. It found that ADHD diagnoses in America spike by 14% on Halloween compared to the ten weekdays before or after that. It is easy to guess why—the children were examined on the one very exciting day when you get to wear a fun costume and collect bucketloads of candy.
-- In a study in 2020, 10% of Americans rated their children high on a scale of ADHD symptoms, compared with 3-4% of Swedish and Norwegian parents. Cognitive tests showed that the American parents over-reported ADHD symptoms by a wide margin; the Swedish and Norwegian parents were generally accurate.
-- It does not help that Americans are bombarded with advertisements for ADHD drugs. Only America and New Zealand allow direct prescription-drug advertising to consumers.
-- School-accountability rules can incentivise them to get ADHD diagnoses for poor-performing students: they can place children with ADHD into special-education classes and exclude their test results from reporting. Dr Hinshaw [medical researcher at U of CA-Berkeley] and others have found that ADHD rates are higher in states with more stringent accountability rules, especially for poor children. In Louisiana and Mississippi, poor states and early adopters of school accountability, one in six children has been diagnosed with ADHD.
-- Rich American parents and the competitive schools where they enroll their children have been tempted to exploit school accommodations for ADHD, such as extra time on exams. This shows up in the data for the so-called “504 designation”, a disability category for students who are expected to learn as much as other students, with certain accommodations (their test scores are included in the school average). An analysis by The Economist found that 7% of secondary-school students in the most affluent areas have a 504 designation, compared to 3% of students in the poorest areas.
-- What would the ADHD rate in America be if children were diagnosed properly? According to a study of 12,000 American children published in 2022 by Dr Nigg [psychiatrist at Oregon Health and Science University] and his colleagues, 9% of children would be categorised as having ADHD based solely on parents’ answers about symptoms. If both parents’ and teachers’ ratings were required, only about 5% of the children would have ADHD. When the researchers went further, taking into account standardised scales that show how far behaviour is from that typical for a child’s age, the ADHD rate dropped to 3.5%—falling in line with that in other Western countries.
>A typical ADHD diagnosis in America is done by a paediatrician or a family doctor in an office visit as brief as 15 minutes.
Sample size of two, one recent and one 30+ years ago, but this is not my experience. For both my childhood diagnosis and my daughter's, we were screened by a pediatrician and then referred to psychiatrists for diagnosis and treatment. For myself as an adult, I've had primary care doctors who have been willing to write prescriptions to continue or resume a previously-established course of treatment or make minor adjustments to dosage, but when I asked about changing to a different medication I got referred back to a psychiatrist.
I also have several friends and family members who have been diagnosed with ADHD as adults semi-recently. In every case where I know the details, the diagnosis was made by a psychiatrist, usually at a clinic or subdepartment that specializes in ADHD.
>It does not help that Americans are bombarded with advertisements for ADHD drugs.
This is something that may genuinely be my bubble skewing my perspective, since it's been a decade or so since I last had cable and so I'm out of the loop on what TV ads are like these days, but I don't recall ever having seen an ad for ADHD medication except when I'm doing a google search on obviously relevant keywords. I've seen a ton of ads for other medications, especially stuff like antihistamines, but not for ADHD meds.
Here's a link to the copy at the Wayback Machine: https://archive.is/TEYiI
Psychologist here. Wholeheartedly agree. This matches my experience.
Is the following correct reasoning?
1) Ukraine is insisting on security guarantees in a negotiated settlement
2) US is willing to sell weapons, Europe is willing to buy and gift them to Ukraine, Ukraine is willing to defend itself
3) Security guarantees are basically impossible, that's equivalent to being added to NATO
4) Therefore, we can conclude that everyone agrees that a red like for Russia is a militarized Ukraine to the point it might be able to resist future invasions; they wouldn't settle for just territory
At that point we feel really stuck, I don't see how peace is possible because no one will offer security guarantees, Russia won't accept a militarized Ukraine, and Ukraine will keep fighting for a long time if the alternative is demilitarization without security guarantees
----
Alternatives I can think of is US would not sell Ukraine weapons because Russia has more to offer; or Ukraine actually wants to reclaim territory and isn't solely concerned with not losing more of it/avoiding future invasions.
I don't think so, although I could be wrong. I think your point #2 is/was wrong and currently being debated.
If the Europeans were willing/able to either provide or credibly pay the US for modern munitions for Ukraine, I think the Americans would be overjoyed. That's not what's going on. The Americans are dumping a ton of money into what they see as an unwinnable war during a period of intense domestic disturbance and ~$1.5+ trillion annual deficits while they would also really like to pivot to China...as they have consistently expressed for a decade+ at this point.
If the Europeans were genuinely willing to shoulder the financial and military cost of arming Ukraine and pursuing this war until Russia breaks, delightful. But that's not what's available. Partly because, well, it's genuinely hard. The remilitarization of Europe, especially given all the internal divisions of the EU is a legitimately difficult thing. Partly because the Europeans have intentionally coasted on US security guarantees for generations (1).
So, rephrased.
#1 Ukraine demands explicit security guarantees (a la NATO) for a peace deal
#2 Russia will never accept explicit security guarantees (a la NATO)
#3 Neither the Americans nor Europeans like Ukraine enough to risk nuclear conflict with Russia
#4 Therefore, the war will continue
#5 Neither the Europeans or the Americans are willing or able to fund and arm the Ukranian war the level it requires.
#6 Therefore, Ukraine will lose and Russia will win
#7 If #6 is true, then you cut a deal as soon as possible, a la Trump
#8 No one likes this, everyone complains, but it's not clear what anyone will actually do. Democrats think Ukraine should be a higher priority but, if so, there's a recent election they should have won. Europeans don't like this but they also don't want to spend the money or face the prospect of rearmament. So...
(1) https://hwfo.substack.com/p/nato-is-a-trillion-dollars-in-the
4) Therefore, we can conclude that everyone agrees that a red like for Russia is a militarized Ukraine to the point it might be able to resist future invasions; they wouldn't settle for just territory
Why conclude that? Territorial gains + no Ukraine in NATO allows Russia to exit the war and claim victory, "no Ukrainian rearmament allowed" seems like an unrealistic demand and a step way too far.
I think you're making a category error.
If I could paraphrase, your premise is something like: "war is bad. wars should be ended as soon as possible. this is a war. therefore, it should be ended as soon as possible"
There are many wars where this line of reasoning is really cogent -- civil wars, wars with multiple aggressors, etc.
This is not one of those fights. "Peace" is not the most important goal here. The most important goal is for the aggressor to stop waging an unust war. Ukraine could roll over and die tomorrow, and that would bring peace, but it would not fix the fundamental injustice being done.
Your framing shouldn't be "peace at all costs", it should be "peace where Russia is out of Ukraine".
---
Separately, I think a 'forever war' favors Ukraine, in the same way forever wars favored the Viet Cong and the Taliban. Russia actually can't do this forever. Ukraine actually has to in order to survive. The importance of winning is dramatically different on both sides, which is a critical advantage for Ukraine.
This is the sort of reply that is very easy to write safe behind a keyboard half a globe away. In the trenches, on the front lines, surrounded by the most hideous conditions imaginable, it is a very different story.
Frankly, I have been appalled my tax dollars have been spent to continue this madness, and anyone opposing a peace deal at this point (US leftoids, Eurocrats of various flavors) should be castiagted as the morally reprehensible deviants they are and never taken seriously again.
Until you are willing to put yourself in death's reach on the front lines, your opinion about the morality of the conflict is irrelevant.
Ukrainians -- who are on the front lines and have the most at stake -- are asking for support to fight!
Surely you have some sort of evidence for that assertion. My search-fu is coming up short for any sort of polling in English of front-line Ukrainian soldiers, but perhaps you know of a source.
Here's polling from kyiv suggesting support for Zelenskyy is above 60% (https://carnegieendowment.org/europe/strategic-europe/2025/02/how-ukraine-remains-resilient-three-years-on?lang=en)
Here's polling showing over 60% of Ukranians don't want to hold elections until after the war ends (https://carnegieendowment.org/europe/strategic-europe/2025/02/how-ukraine-remains-resilient-three-years-on?lang=en)
The same link says 69% of Ukranians believe they can repel Russian attack.
Given that you and I both are not Ukranian, it seems we should listen to what Ukranians have to say through the voice of their elected representative, who has and continues to have a broad mandate -- certainly has higher approval ratings than most US presidents. And that elected representative has repeatedly and forcefully called for aid in fighting. It would be paternalistic to argue that we should a) ignore that Zelenskyy is the voice of his people; b) ignore the polling that shows his people support him and want to fight.
Maybe a 'forever war' favors Ukraine, but it does not favor Ukrainians, who will be dying in it. On the other hand, even if it's bad for Russia, it's not actually bad for Putin and those close to him.
I agree that if your expectation is that peace will be followed by genocide, then peace is really bad: even worse than war. I don't think peace will be followed by genocide.
This is paternalistic to Ukrainians, who seem very willing to keep fighting and in fact keep asking for help in fighting more.
The videos of Ukrainian men being dragged off the street to die on the front lines suggest otherwise. As do the polls showing Zelensky would get annihilated at the ballot box if he actually allowed elections.
Citation needed.
https://www.reuters.com/fact-check/zelenskiys-latest-approval-rating-is-63-not-4-contrary-trumps-claim-2025-02-21/
If a hypothetical presidential election were held in Ukraine in February 2025 with Kyrylo Budanov, Head of Defence Intelligence of Ukraine, and Valerii Zaluzhnyi, former Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces and now Ambassador to the UK, as candidates, current President Volodymyr Zelenskyy would take second place.
https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2025/02/20/7499275/
And yet, what do these Ukrainians gain through this blind pursuit of "justice"? Nothing but pain and suffering and death, all to only delay the inevitable. The order has shifted, and the game has changed. They no longer have a path to independence. Ukraine can save a lot of lives by putting an end to this senseless struggle.
It's not "inevitable". Ukraine has make Russia burn through its cold war stockpile of tanks and BMPs with support that the US and Europe pretty much paid out of petty cash. If they got actual support getting backstabbed, it would be a completey different picture.
If you know that your country will be genocided if you lose it changes the calculus of what you will be willing to sacrifice in a fight.
Look up the Holdomor if you aren’t familiar.
For the military in particular, they also know what happened last time when the Soviets took over. They had bayonets put in their back and were on the front lines of the meat grinder in WW2.
If I were Ukrainian, I would much rather fight to the last man against Moscow rule than suffer the fate they have planned.
> Look up the Holdomor if you aren’t familiar.
Even assuming it was intentional, the USSR never would have had a motive to kill them if they didn't resist integration. So stop doing that.
> They had bayonets put in their back and were on the front lines of the meat grinder in WW2.
Well thankfully, we still have some time before WW3 happens. Not that it would be any worse than what Ukraine is going through right now, mind you. And of course, if it does come to pass, they were never going to be safe anyways...
“Even assuming it was intentional, the USSR never would have had a motive to kill them if they didn't resist integration.”
Oh, so you don’t know the sordid history. It had nothing to do with “resisting integration” (what integration)? The authorities simply took away the grain to sell abroad for gold. Yes, all the grain. From everybody. And then blockaded the area.
Nothing personal.
> Even assuming it was intentional, the USSR never would have had a motive to kill them if they didn't resist integration. So stop doing that.
...oh, what an incredible take! And I suppose the Irish potato famine would never have happened if the feckless poor hadn't had way too many kids...?
I was not under the impression that the British forced them to increase their population. If they exceeded their carrying capacity of their own volition, they have no one to blame for that but themselves.
> "the USSR never would have had a motive to kill them if they didn't resist integration"
"The hutus wouldn't have had a motive to kill the tutsis if the tutsis would just let the hutus do whatever they wanted!"
I'm shocked at how many people in this thread don't seem to know what 'appeasement' is and why its a hilariously bad policy. An elementary school kid knows that you don't tell the victim of the schoolyard bully to just quietly take punches to make the beatings end faster, but that's what you're arguing here.
Also, you don't speak for the Ukranian people, who clearly want to keep fighting. Pretending like you're speaking up for the poor ukranian is ridiculous when ukranians are constantly, vocally, asking for help in fighting more.
> An elementary school kid knows that you don't tell the victim of the schoolyard bully to just quietly take punches to make the beatings end faster, but that's what you're arguing here.
How is that remotely applicable here? Supplication would not prevent the beatings in that situation, because the beatings are the point. In this situation the beatings aren't the point. What Russia wants is the elimination of an independent Ukraine, and it's perfectly possible for the Ukrainian populace to fulfill that demand.
Of course, if they really want to die that badly, they are absolutely free to do so. It is the right of every man to fight for what they believe in, after all. Just a shame that all of these lives will go to waste for no good reason.
War on this scale is inherently unpredictable, even today there is nothing inevitable in the Ukraine war.
"Security" and "guarantee" are definitely words that can be put together, but they don't need to mean anything in particular. The resolution would seem to be to have something vague enough that it can maybe sorta be called a "security guarantee" while still leaving everyone plenty of wiggle room.
If it were possible to terraform Mars, financially or technologically, wouldn’t it still be impossible to survive for more than a short while on the surface because of radiation. If that is so, why isn’t the moon a better choice for a colony?
In either location, Moon or Mars, the radiation levels at the surface are high enough to severely shorten human lifespan. So at either one, humans will remain huddled underground. Construction and resource extraction jobs will be done by robots, probably AI controlled, but perhaps also some teleoperated - otherwise why should humans even leave earth?
In either location, the lower gravity is likely to increase the risks of pregnancy - certainly to the fetus, and possibly to the mother. Whether this means that we will never see native born Martians and Loonies remains to be seen. Don't expect NASA to find out any time soon. To the best of my knowledge there have been no mammal pregnancies carried to term on the space station, let alone primates or humans.
Both problems disappear if we colonize Venus. Of course, we can't build our colonies on the surface there. Instead we need to build them floating high in the clouds - at the altitude where the atmospheric pressure is about the same as here at the surface on earth. As it happens, the temperature at that altitude is comfortable as well, solar panels work well, the gravity is about the same as here on earth, and a breathable atmosphere of O2 and either N2 or Ne provides flotation. Check out the speculation online.
The real question is why would humans want to live there when Earth is so much nicer?
In addition to what John said, last I heard, the standard answer to radiation concerns (cosmic or solar) for long-term colonization of the Moon or Mars was to build the colony's main living areas underground or at least pile a meter or two of loose dirt on top of them. Regolith is free. Between low gravity and lack of both water and native life, it's a lot easier to shovel around than soil is on Earth. The lower gravity also means having a bunch of dirt piled atop a structure is a fraction of the load it would be on Earth.
A: No. There are some unknowns about the specific effects of galactic cosmic radiation, but the radiation environment on the exposed Martian surface is currently about 0.2 Sieverts per (Earth) year. The minimum acutely lethal dose is generally accepted as 2 Sv, so you'd be good for a decade at least, but really the "acute" part is doing a lot of heavy lifting there - the body does mostly repair radiation damage over time, and 2 Sv over a decade (or 0.2 Sv/year forever) will never cause symptoms of radiation sickness.
A more serious issue would be long-term cancer risk. A conservative estimate is that 1 Sievert of radiation exposure has a 5% chance of *eventually* causing a fatal cancer. So 0.2 Sv/year means a 1% chance per year of starting the clock ticking on something that will kill you in twenty or thirty years if you don't do anything about it. We should probably do something about that, and there are things we can do. Just putting everyone's bedrooms and living areas underground will cut that risk in half even if all of their work and play time is exposed on the surface. But in any event, it's not sudden death, and it's not a short-term hazard.
B: Not sure why you think the Moon would be any better. Radiation exposure on the surface of the Earth's moon is slightly higher than radiation exposure on Mars.
C: If we're talking about a *terraformed* Mars, then the problem is greatly reduced because the atmosphere will absorb most of the radiation. Note that, on Earth, the polar regions receive little protection from the Earth's magnetic field, it's mostly just the atmosphere, and nobody worries about radiation hazards for Arctic or Antarctic operations. It's measurable with the right instruments, but it's not a big deal. A Terraformed Mars might have a less dense atmosphere than Earth, but necessarily a deeper one due to the reduced gravity, so you should get about the same protection.
On the point B, the radiation exposure may be slightly higher on the Moon, but we are also able to do shorter stays there, so the overall exposure can be lower. One of the problems with Mars exploration is the limited windows for flight between Earth and Mars, and these tend to dictate long duration stays on the planet. This is not a problem for the Moon.
Of course, if we are talking about long term inhabitation on either body, then this difference is irrelevant.
Yeah, the original question was about sites for a colony.
Even for less ambitions projects, like a mining operation, the cost of transportation to the moon is likely to remain very high for quite some time, which argues against e.g. biweekly crew rotation flights like we see for offshore oil rigs. For anything much beyond quick flags-and-footprints "exploration" missions, most of the people going to the Moon will probably be staying there for many months at least, and I'd expect years to be common.
There may soon be a lot of newly unemployed Canadian men who spend a lot of time hunting and camping, have wilderness survival skills, can survive three or four days in the woods, no problem, who can walk past the unfenced United States-Canada border. These guys have worked a lot with heavy machinery, big rig trucks, excavators, and the like, so when they see an unguarded North Dakota fracking rig, they think "I bet I could sabotage that..."
I'm not sure what's worse, your understanding of exactly who in Canada you are describing (ie Albertans in the resource extraction industries) and their typical political leanings (not the Laurentian leftoids who have been booing US sports teams, but more the kind of people that made up the trucker convoy and hate Trudeau's guts), or your impression that fracking rigs (many-million dollar chunks of sophisticated machinery that are run as close to possible 24/7/365 by staffs of dozens or hundreds) are just left around "unguarded" for environmental protestors or fictional Canadians to sabotage. To put it mildly, this is some Mary-Sue tier fan fic.
"their typical political leanings (not the Laurentian leftoids who have been booing US sports teams, but more the kind of people that made up the trucker convoy and hate Trudeau's guts)"
Most of them do not in fact want to lose their jobs. You strike me as another rightoid who doesn't realize nationalism exists outside the United States.
It is really quite difficult for outsiders to realize just how big and empty it is up here in the northern plains, and how incredibly time-consuming it is to get anywhere without a motorized vehicle. What you're describing is likely a week-long excursion minimum, camping rough and avoiding roads and habitation, followed by another week-long trek back (when folk are gonna be looking for you). The terrain is tough enough that you'd pretty much have to do it on horseback with spare horses. It pencils out as doable, but ain't no-how easy.
While the mood in Canada is definitely both more nationalistic and more angry at the U.S. than at any time in the recent past, I think we're still a pretty long ways away from anything like you describe becomes common.
I think a large part of the reason that non-organized[1] of political violence like terrorism, assassination and sabotage are not especially common is that the mental state necessary to carry them out is just not that common. There's a fine line to be walked between "still has good enough judgement not to try something like that in the first place" and "so mentally and emotionally compromised that they have no chance of success."
Now, the worse the economic situation gets in Canada, the more people are likely to be pushed into that space. But I suspect it would take Great Depression levels of economic misery before you'd get very many people ending up there, and I think (and hope) that even if the trade war escalates, that's pretty unlikely. TBH, I'd be more worried about disaffected U.S. citizens doing similar things: there are (after all) many more of them, they don't have to cross the border, and I expect the next four years to supply anger, frustration and resentment in plenty among them.
[1] i.e. Not perpetrated by an organized group acting towards some specific goals
It's fine: Trump will build a wall and make Canada pay for it.
Why not think "I bet I could get a job on that"? If they're experienced with manual labour and big machinery, and willing to work cash in hand jobs, sabotage is for a day but a pay cheque is for a few weeks, at least.
Do you mean become illegal immigrants? I don’t think that will allow that.
I expect your drastically over estimating the raw hate the right wing Canadian has for the idea, Im a little fuzzy as I dont actually pay attention (french canada is very far away from me) but its generally accepted that its astroturfed leftwing and "orange man bad" thought, not people who were called nazis and debanked for supporting farmers. If trump attempts violence we'll see, but if its "hey we want the french part of canada and to give the middle finger to the environmental and tribal bullshit thats preventing you building a god damn thing" I think you'd see support.
Banned for three months for this comment.
It may seem that way, but is it true?
Id have to ask but I do know people to the right of me who are cannadian in a parasocail way; the two that come to mind have both openly talked about violence towards Indians, and complete disgust of the commie government; I as a exmormon in utah am not being replaced, but I can imagine that other situations feel differently.
And there are forms of nationals that "love the land, hate the state"
"brainwormed rightoid" yes very much optimizing for light instead of heat, here.
The self-description of Monkyyy's newsletter is "Conspiracy thoerys and d."
Its good to meet a fan
Brainwormed rightoid gets me a good job in the Trump administration, can I put this reference in with my cover letter applying, Alexander? 😁
If sucking up to Trump gets you a job in the Trump administration, I won't hold it against you. It's the people doing it for free that I have a problem with.
Have we already abandoned the dream of bringing the world under one flag?
As a political scientist, I feel like most people miss the point by a huge margin when discussing geopolitics and the economics of war.
Does it matter who "wins" the Russia/Ukraine conflict? No. The Military Industrial Complex already made lots of money; the US managed to make most EU nations raise defense budgets; Big banks and the like already secured their wins with the Ukraine Reconstruction Fund and such; US traded old arsenal with newly made toys, "donated"/sold the old stuff to Ukraine as "aid"; Did I say the US made LOTS of money with the "war"? Yeah.
But what really matters, regarding Russia, and nobody talks about it are two things:
1. Who gets Russia's nukes after Putin falls? The guy won't live forever and who's gonna dictate how to slice the second largest nuke arsenal of the planet? What really happens if Russia "loses" this "war" as so many people want? This will literally decide the future of the world but sure, lets talk about Elon Crusk latest meme;
2. How can the US avoid at all costs its greatest fear ever: An United States of Europe with Russia in it? Shhhh. Did I said that out loud? No I did not. Divide and conquer is just a fantasy. [Deletes comment]
>>Does it matter who "wins" the Russia/Ukraine conflict? No.
>>What really happens if Russia "loses" this "war" as so many people want? This will literally decide the future of the world but sure, lets talk about Elon Crusk latest meme.
These two rhetorical question-call-and-response statements are extremely inconsistent, to say the least.
Don't get me wrong, I'm all onboard for more consideration on the part of pro-Ukraine advocates of how bad a runaway success case could unexpectedly become. If the dog catches the car and Russia is resoundingly and utterly defeated and humiliated to the point that the Putin regime collapses and Russia itself fractures or devolves into a scrum of internal knife-fighting for power, that is (a) a lot of instability for the hand (or hands) hovering over some very big nuclear buttons, and (b) it's entirely possible that whatever new regime you get is *more* bellicose, not less; something analogous to a Post-WW1 Germany "we were stabbed in the back but if we double-down on autocracy and militarism we can rise again from shame to glory, and recover the lands and international power that were stolen from us" could easily emerge, and we all saw how well that went for us in the 1930s and 40s when nuclear weapons *weren't* in the mix.
But it cannot, simultaneously, be the case (a) that it doesn't matter who wins the Russia/Ukraine conflict, and (b) that Russia losing the war could "literally decide the future of the world" based on how it would affect control/disposition of the worlds second largest nuclear arsenal.
(A) does not matter because as of today it seems escalation is controlled and president T wants a sit down. (B) MI6, DGSE, BND, etc all have literal books covering a regime change in Russia, FVEY says its theirs, and zero trust is these guys business, so yeah, whoever gets the stash will decide a lot of things. So I'm not sure why you think it can't be both
>Who gets Russia's nukes after Putin falls?
The same people who got them after the USSR fell.
>Does it matter who "wins" the Russia/Ukraine conflict?
I expect it matters at least a little bit to people in Russia and in Ukraine.
>Who gets Russia's nukes after Putin falls?
Totally naive about geopolitics, but what's the issue here exactly? Aren't they Russia's nukes? Don't they stay with Russia when Putin dies?
>An United States of Europe with Russia in it?
What? A) How's that remotely plausible? They can barely make the EU work. B) Why would it be bad for the US even if it could work?
And those are the right questions to ask, that no one does because these options are never on the menu, by design, thanks to things like the agenda setting theory.
>Aren't they Russia's nukes? Don't they stay with Russia when Putin dies?
Are they Russia nukes? Who gets Putin's chair when he's gone? Is this person a CIA puppet (e.g., Juan Guaido in Venezuela, who was "recognized" leader by US presidents with no election, maybe because of eh, oil).
The fact is nobody even thinks what happens to Russia's nukes if Putin is out of the equation, but I assure you there are great designs for that. And needless to say that whoever get their claws on these will get a chair at a very exclusive table.
>A) How's that remotely plausible? They can barely make the EU work. B) Why would it be bad for the US even if it could work?
That is exactly the point isn't it? After generations of kids grew up shooting Russians and Nazees in games, it is in the collective unconsciousness that "Russia is bad", bad guys, aggressors. The propaganda machine worked as expected to the point people never even consider to answer this question: "What does a peaceful world, a peaceful EU looks like?". Let alone dare to entertain HOW to get there, it is forbidden to discuss this in US media, literally.
Of course, a successful EU that "works", a peaceful EU, does harm US unipolar agenda. America "hates" the idea of a multipolar world, absolutely loathes it. A United States of EU (with Russia in it, or USE) would far surpass US economy, natural resources, nuke digits, military power, and of course, would absolutely challenge US unipolar prominence. And god forbid the USE proceeds to make China their BFF, unthinkable to American officials, you will literally get fired from any federal job for even saying this out loud.
So of course it isn't "plausible" because the powers at be would lose grip around European necks and the aftermath is terrible for US hegemon state in the medium/long terms.
But this is NOT about Russia, or America, or the EU.
This is about peace, this is about no wars. The brain of the average Joe/Jane out there has never entertained the idea of peace to know that Russians, Chinese and Americans would need to become pen pals for this to happen, and this is more scary than an actual war if you ask me, because it is literally 1984 newspeak/doublespeak.
>> And god forbid the USE proceeds to make China their BFF, unthinkable to American officials, you will literally get fired from any federal job for even saying this out loud.
Surely you are being dramatic here. Contingency planning for even extreme and unlikely scenarios is fairly normal. Pre WW2 the US wrote up war plans for "just in case" it had to fight France and its colonies, for christ's sake. If you suggest the possibility of an unlikely but bad potential scenario for your government employer, they may or may not decide it's worth gaming out from a contingency planning perspective, but they don't fire you on the spot for speaking thoughtcrime.
I understand the appeal of this kind of this kind of rhetoric; it feels like you'll get more eyeballs if you make your ideas sound sexy. But it really strains credibility. Comes off sounding less like a thoughtful geopolitics analysis and more like some kind of policy-themed MLM sale - "click here for this one weird trick that's so *unthinkable* that America's head *literally explodes* if they try to think about it! Oops! Did I write it down? Join my mailing list to find out!!"
You got me, buy my mugs and hit that subscribe button
>That is exactly the point isn't it? After generations of kids grew up shooting Russians and Nazees in games, it is in the collective unconsciousness that "Russia is bad", bad guys, aggressors. The propaganda machine worked as expected to the point people never even consider to answer this question: "What does a peaceful world, a peaceful EU looks like?". Let alone dare to entertain HOW to get there, it is forbidden to discuss this in US media, literally.
I used to think we could have real peace with Russia in this generation, but that turned out to be naive. They couldn't maintain a stable democracy and they couldn't keep FSB activities in a scope that's consistent with them becoming real allies with anyone in the West. Now they're using the Russian-speaking populations they themselves planted throughout the former USSR and Warsaw Pact as an excuse for territorial aggression, basically "we conquered you once so we have a duty to conquer you again". Russia today will not accept being absorbed as one state among many into Europe, or even being an equal partner with the rest of Europe, they will only accept European countries as satellites and satrapies.
I do not subscribe to this "expansionist" narrative. I think that is exactly the kind of evil planted in people's imaginary. When Putin asked Clinton "we do not have to be friends, but we don't need to be enemies, can we join NATO?", Clinton laughed and told Putin to take a walk. It is that simple. Russians (the people) want to belong as much as Mexicans want to belong, but for economic rationales, both are treated like 3rd class citizenry, and this is by design of those who control the narrative, period.
This lore that Russia wants to invade Europe lives in the realm of fantasies, not on reality. Ask ChatGPT how many federal subjects (akin to US states) they have. They already have all they need, and will have even more in 8~13 years with the arctic permafrost melting, which is why Trump is already unpacking the Greenland initiative right at the borders of the Overton window, it's all strategy and posturing: you float a ridicule, unthinkable idea, and when you lay the actual plan it all sounds business as usual. Politics.
On Ukraine, I tend to agree with professor Mearsheimer thoughts that Ukraine is supposed to be a buffer state, since Russia don't want any US patriot missiles in Ukraine the same as US would not want Xi Jinping shein missiles in Canada. Americans delivered Afghanistan to the literal taleban after 20 years there, I don't think any Ukrainian have delusions of ending up a vibrant "democracy" however this situation ends to them.
You just wrote lots of nonsense. Ever heard about this? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partnership_for_Peace
> This lore that Russia wants to invade Europe lives in the realm of fantasies, not on reality.
Which continent is Ukraine on, in your opinion? What about Moldova (Transnistria)?
> I don't think any Ukrainian have delusions of ending up a vibrant "democracy" however this situation ends to them.
The original plan (before USA decided to side with Russia) was for the Ukraine to join EU when the was is over.
>The original plan (before USA decided to side with Russia) was for the Ukraine to join EU when the was is over.
LOL. Ukraine is at least 5000 laws behind ever being fit to join the EU. Now if its members decide to throw the (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copenhagen_criteria) in the garbage, yeah, it could happen, but that is a huge/galactic sized stretch because Ukraine is nowhere near checking the most basic boxes of these conditional requirements.
>You just wrote lots of nonsense.
Nice way to try to get my attention, I'll never reply to you ever again :)
"When Putin asked Clinton "we do not have to be friends, but we don't need to be enemies, can we join NATO?", Clinton laughed and told Putin to take a walk. "
No he did not. You invented the whole thing.
>I do not subscribe to this "expansionist" narrative. I think that is exactly the kind of evil planted in people's imaginary. When Putin asked Clinton "we do not have to be friends, but we don't need to be enemies, can we join NATO?", Clinton laughed and told Putin to take a walk. It is that simple. Russians (the people) want to belong as much as Mexicans want to belong, but for economic rationales, both are treated like 3rd class citizenry, and this is by design of those who control the narrative, period.
This is Putin we are talking about, he was an unknown quantity to most of the world back then but if Russia under Putin joined NATO ahead of the former USSR republics and Warsaw Pact countries, they would have just used that status to abuse those countries without NATO interference.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/nov/04/ex-nato-head-says-putin-wanted-to-join-alliance-early-on-in-his-rule
>The Labour peer recalled an early meeting with Putin, who became Russian president in 2000. “Putin said: ‘When are you going to invite us to join Nato?’ And [Robertson] said: ‘Well, we don’t invite people to join Nato, they apply to join Nato.’ And he said: ‘Well, we’re not standing in line with a lot of countries that don’t matter.’”
I'm not claiming the US is much better foreign policy wise, what with the Monroe Doctrine, but NATO doesn't need yet another country as arrogant and abusive as the US and in their own backyard to boot. And the US at least encourages democracy as a general principle and only backs dictators and unelected regimes in specific cases, whereas Russia's foreign policy is anti-democracy on a broad basis.
In the discussion around whether another national election will be held, people assume if the 2028 Presidential election isn't held, it'll be because the constitutional order has been overthrown. But actually, the constitution does not require an election to be held. The text is clear as day:
"Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States, shall be appointed an Elector."
After today, some may be thinking "I'm not sure this election thing is working out for me."
The legislatures in all fifty states are directly elected by the citizens of that state, and I'm pretty sure that *is* mandated by the US Constitution as well as the constitutions of each of those states. And the legislature which says "sorry, we're not going to let you all vote for president this year", will very predictably be voted out of office themselves in that same election. So they're not going to do that,
It's remotely possible that some massive disruption *during* the election would result in a state legislature saying "OK, that mysterious cruise missile attack on all the vote-counting centers made it impossible for us to properly count the votes, and there's no time for a do-over, so we're going to appoint the electors based on how we think you all meant to vote", but if so they'll be doing their very, and very transparent, best to match the sentiment of the voters. And, again, this occurs only after the election has been held and/or disrupted,
"The legislatures in all fifty states are directly elected by the citizens of that state, and I'm pretty sure that *is* mandated by the US Constitution"
The closest thing is the Guarantee Clause, but it's generally interpreted as a nonjusticiable political question:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guarantee_Clause
Meaning Congress would have to act, which means the President gets to veto any such action unless they have a veto-proof majority.
Yeah but the Electors vote for the President. Doesn't that definitionally make it an election?
Well then, why stop at as many as 535 votes cast, total? One man, one vote, and that one man's name is Donald Trump.
Well that actually would be unconstitutional then.
This Trump-as-dictator meme is just a liberal fever-dream. Settle down. He couldn't pull that off even if he wanted to. There are few things more reliable than liberal hysteria and it just goes to illustrate how feminized the party has become.
The White House has just reversed itself on the indiscriminate firings of all new-ish ["probationary" which simply means in the job for less than 1 to 2 years depending on the job] federal staffers. This is presumably due to a federal judge last week pointing out that the directive for those mass dismissals was contrary to federal law.
They had the Office of Personnel Management amend its previous memo to no longer tell agencies fire them all but rather, "by this [amended] memorandum, OPM is not directing agencies to take any action regarding probationary employees. Agencies have ultimate decision-making authority over personnel actions." Pretty sure Musk and his hit squad weren't consulted on that last sentence.
So various agencies are now today scrambling to re-hire people. I learned of this, and got a copy of the amended memo, from an acquaintance who'd been in a fairly high-level technical position at the National Science Foundation and was shitcanned a week ago. Now they are begging him to come back, and he'd found the NSF to be a good place to work, but after all this insanity he's not sure.
See, this is the kind of thing that seems to me like pretty good evidence that Trump & Musk are disorganized and incompetent, ruled by impulse rather than insight. This development seems like good evidence no matter what your view is of whether all the agencies needed a radical reboot. And it seems like good evidence independent of whether sudden harsh firings were pure vengeance, justifiable as a means of convincing the recalcitrant to obey. If you do a bunch of dramatic stuff you claim is well-justified and crucial and then you have to undo it because the authorities force you to, it makes you look impulsive and weak. Also, you and everyone else are forced to see that you have wasted a bunch of time, and caused suffering, financial loss and confusion to others to no good end. It’s a basic principle of maintaining respect: Don’t make threats you can’t carry through on, don’t issue orders in situations where somebody’s going to countermand them. It’s better to issue milder threats and really carry through on them if the situation calls for it, better to order less radical things you’re confident won’t be countermanded. I give this advice to parents all the time.
Am I missing something here?
It's also good evidence for "No, Trump is not going to declare himself Dictator for Life" and the rest of the hyperventilating about "no more elections ever!" seeing as how he accepted a court ruling to change his order.
>See, this is the kind of thing that seems to me like pretty good evidence that Trump & Musk are disorganized and incompetent, ruled by impulse rather than insight.
That wasn't already pretty obvious?
It has been obvious to me, but others have said that (1) there isn't time to dismantle the bureaucracy in a way that involves more thinking ahead and planning or (2) if they approach the task in a way that involves thinking and planning a bunch of bureaucrats will get involved in developing a dismantlement plan and will take a couple years to develop one (3) radical shocking action in needed to yank the government agencies out of complacency and slo-mo. (4) some of what they're doing is taking vengeance and that is legit, and also serves the purpose of alerting libtards and bureaucrats that if they continue their bullshit they will pay a painful price (5) we should give the guys a break, don't judge yet. (6) prob some other stuff I've forgotten.
> and then you have to undo it
...Do they have to? Can't they just pull a PEPFAR again and just... not do it?
As I understand it, PEPFAR is currently in an internal dispute - Marco Rubio has said to send out the money and Elon Musk's minions have said not to. So there's no risk of getting in trouble with the courts on that one.
Having an actual court order makes it a lot riskier - at some point the judge will lose patience with you dragging your feet and start holding people in contempt, and if you ignore those you're starting a pretty big constitutional crisis.
(A federal judge has ordered USAID to start paying for some things, but the Supreme Court has stayed that ruling and seems to be in no hurry to move the case forward.)
Your timing is inauspicious! SCOTUS just ruled on this a couple hours ago: https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/25551544/24a831-order-2.pdf
The required payments for already completed work are reinstated, though the district court will need to provide new deadlines, since the initial deadlines passed during the administrative stay at SCOTUS.
Well, we'll see how they deal with that. They only need one more justice.
What are good businesses to start right now to take advantage of the new tariffs? I'm guessing: meth lab... That's all I've got so far. Was going to add "avocado farm" but the labor would be costly. I'd start an aluminum factory but what if I invest all that money and then a democrat wins in 2028 and removes the tariffs?
I'm trying to think of industries where the tariffs on Canada in particular would have substantial impacts.
One category that leaps to mind is oil, gas, and other raw materials, but this is a hard business to jump into on short notice. And to the extent it improves the prospects of domestic production, it's probably going to get baked into prices for mineral rights if it isn't already. Oil and gas exploration might be a good business to get into, unless the tariffs lead to existing firms shifting operations from Canada to the US.
Next category off the top of my head is maple syrup. Here, the tariffs are probably great news for existing American producers (I believe there's a ton of production in Vermont), but I expect it takes a few years to get a new grove of sugar maples mature enough to tap. Raising prices would shift some demand to substitutes, but the main cheap substitute (corn syrup) is already such a huge business that the effect is probably going to be very diluted.
Actually looking up statistics, I can spot a few that look like potential business opportunities if you have the capital, expertise, and connections to act on them:
- "Machinery, nuclear reactors, boilers". Looks like the big sub-category here for US imports from Canada are aircraft engines (both jet and piston), pulleys and cranes, industrial machinery, centrifuges, air conditioners, and pumps.
- Cars and car parts.
- "Aircraft, spacecraft". By far the biggest subcategory here is "Other Aircraft (Helicopters); Spacecraft"
- "Electrical, electronic equipment", mostly lines, transformers, and other stuff related to power distribution.
Source:
https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/imports/canada
As I'm compiling the list, it occurs to me that someone who happened to already own tons of stock of, say, Tesla and SpaceX would be well-positioned to benefit from tariffs on Canada.
bankruptcy lawyer?
Avocado farms take a few years to get up and running, I wouldn't rely on it. Instead I'd probably just set up a firm to export avocados from the Bahamas to Florida. Then I'd set up a second firm to exports avocados from Mexico to the Bahamas.
More generally, if you can set up flexible supply lines to the US from places where there aren't (currently) tariffs then you might do well.
Is anyone aware of any "post-neo-darwin" "biomining" attempts?
neo-darwin: "we xrays dna we solved biology"
post-neo-darwin: theres more to biology then dna and you cant just autisticly assert mechanistic answers to how evolutions play things work
biomining: using bacteria in any processing step; apparently the alchemists used to flood iron mines with acid and later they found a bacteria that survives in acid
dirty earth metals: theres an idea that rare earth metals are misnamed, they are everywhere, you just need massive vats of acid to pull it out, and only china is currently doing that
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iQi5-gIvmbM
It seems to me, we should have evolution aware gene editing+ bacteria breeding projects to chase down the worse refinement processes
"Massive vats of acid" yeah there's a tiny problem there and that's why *only* China is currently doing that.
Theres nothing in the laws of physics that asserts that the first process we find is near efficient; I think biology has a good grasp of modifying chemicals and its not unheard of a bacteria being used in this way, but its been blind using a bacteria that already existed as far as I can tell.
>post-neo-darwin: theres more to biology then dna
obligatory xkcd: https://xkcd.com/3056
thinking rna is all of biology seems like a tiny step that hasnt learned the lesson; still fundamentally mechanistic
Many Thanks! Well, xkcd _is_ a humor cartoon... ( I tend to think that the mechanistic view captures the low level processes quite well. Yeah, there are levels of abstraction built on top, the variation/selection/inheritance of evolution is a more compact description than describing the same thing at the molecular biology level. )
The humorous tone improves the position; Id consider Dawkins to still be a neo-darwinist.
Many Thanks! Dawkins? Do you mean Munroe?
No, Richard Dawkins has stated "we know 95% of biology" or something. This is the mainstream opinion,"evolution real because we xrayed dna; lets show the mechanized duck picture to children and shame them about having questions; lets not think hard about the implications and not find every mechanism of growth possible."
I think we have overwhelming evidence that biology hasnt even started yet and that most people, even educated people, barely have come to grips with evolution. People believe in scientism and a core tenet of obeying experts is saying "evolution is real" but all people have seen is a cardboard cutout.
Well, I think it’s pretty clear from what’s going on that this is a big power carve up into spheres of influence..
we nail down Mexico, Canada, and maybe Greenland. You get Taiwan, and turn the south China Sea into an airport, kind of, but could you give us a chance to pack our bags a bit so it isn’t so ugly?
Ukraine we’re going to sort out together as kind of a buffer zone where we both get to make some money. Western Europe can figure out what it’s going to do in light of the circumstances.
This is how business men settle things. Ideology is so last century.
Don't forget Israel! They get to have the Middle East. Obviously they're kinda getting the short end of the stick, but they're not exactly in a position to ask for more.
Israel still has strong blood ties to the USA. That will persist for the foreseeable future imo.
Oh, I meant that they would ally with US and Russia.
Yes
The massive tariffs on Mexico and Canada seem counter to this strategy.
How so? Who do you think is going to bend to whose will in this, if the United States plays beggar-thy-neighbor with Canada?
If the U.S. were playing *just* against Canada, I'd say it might be plausible that the U.S. could get whatever it wanted[1]. But the U.S. in its enormous wisdom has decided to try to play on a bunch of different fronts at once.
I don't think this particular brand of folly will continue indefinitely. But if it does the predictable result is the rest of the world just saying "fuck this," trading with each other and freezing the U.S. out as much as possible. The U.S. is a large, valuable trading partner so that's currently hard to do. But every time it tries to weaponize its trade, it gets a little less valuable.
The idea that Canadians, in particular, would decide to put itself completely in the power of the bully that (in this scenario) had just spent years pushing us around instead of just *finding different places to buy and sell stuff* seems like the most bizarre wishful thinking ever. You're important, but you're not *that* important.
[1] Though it is *extremely* unclear what the U.S. could want that is actually more valuable than the previous status quo. The demands behind the tariffs are, as you noted, bullshit.
We punish Canada until they vote to become a U.S. state.
We punish Mexico until they bring illegal entry and illegal drug trafficking across the border to zero.
We will suffer too, but it is worth it. The moral equivalent of war is a trade war. It's like Al Gore said, we are going to have to learn to make do with less.
The first preposition is a total fantasy. The second will never be zero but I hope they work on it with us in favor of reducing tarifs, that is best care scenario.
Worst case scenario is nothing of good comes of it and we all pay the price. Only time will tell.
They will not vote to become the 51st state or be invaded but that’s not necessary. All that’s necessary is to put them in their place.
The reasons to impose tariffs are essentially fictional ones, meaning no matter what Canada or Mexico do, it will still be a problem. It will essentially be, join up with us or die.
What does the end goal of 'putting them in their place' mean to you? They have been a consistent ally to us for a long time.
Fair question. Something less than an ally and more of a satellite, to put it in broad terms.
P
Does anyone think Trump or his biggest supporters are actually trying to cause a recession? I'm not being conspiratorial, its just that the stock market is currently tanking, and its dropped basically every time Trump has said the word tariff but he keeps doing it. I'm not generally in the "Trump is playing four-dimensional chess" camp, I'm in the "Trump doesn't know what he's doing and just goes with whatever gets a big reaction" camp, but presumably an economic crash would hurt his interests as much as anyone else's, but he doesn't seem to be panicking and trying to dial it back. Is there any kind of investment or scheme that Trump could have that would allow him to make more money by making the economy contract?
If it is truly his position to bring manufacturing back inside the United States, then this strategy can make sense. It’s not painless that’s for sure. Is he over reaching? Quite possibly.
The default hypothesis on Trump has got to be that he's just a bull in a china shop. He's confident, impulsive, and uninformed. I expect him to do essentially random things until the economy implodes. We're long-overdue for a recession anyway. I expect the next one to be nasty.
For perspective, the DJIA is currently about 5.5% down from the all time highs of December. It's up about 2% from where it was on election day. It's the same as it was on January 17, and it's higher than any point ever reached prior to October 2024. We're not really in "tanking" territory.
Admittedly I shouldn't get all my news from tiktok. I guess I sort of assumed this was just the prelude to bigger things since the tariffs hadn't even gone into effect yet.
Also, did the economic projections for this quarter show contraction for the first time since Covid, or did I misunderstand that news?
the obvious ways to profit are put options and/or waiting to buy up more real estate. but, hear me out, maybe it's not just about making more money? it could be he thinks this is actually the right thing to do, neo-liberal economics be damned. the line-go-up crowd have really destroyed what it means to be american, and the irony would be that an uber-capitalist would be the one to undo the damage.
i'm not saying he's doing this altruistically of course, but if he actually pulls off an american revival as planned he would certainly go down as one of the most consequential presidents.
Maybe so. I'll be honest though, I find that line of thinking so bizarre.
It would be so easy, relatively, to pivot from the current neoliberal system to one where we have much higher taxes on the ultra-rich and use that to subsidize the lives of Americans across the country in ways ranging from infrastructure to healthcare to education to straight-up welfare. But many of the people who oppose that most virulently, on the basis that such an economy wouldn't function at maximal efficiency, are suddenly practically chipper about an extended period of widespread economic devastation on the basis that maybe poor people will get a chance to be exploited factory workers again.
I think a more interesting question is how bad do things get before Trump reverses on the tariffs? Trump is all about being perceived as a winner. Presiding over a stock market crash or recession is about the worst thing a President can do for popularity. The stock market is already tumbling and the Fed predicts a 2.8% contraction this quarter.
Also, I think the perception that Trump is in it for money is plain wrong. He could have retired and just played golf and raked in money instead of running for President. By all accounts, doing so has lost him money rather than the opposite.
Well the first time he ran it was a scam that turned out to be too successful, a la "the Producers." Then we fucked up (by we I mean Democrats) and put him in a position where it looked pretty obvious he was going to go to jail if he didn't win again. At the time, I supported the prosecutions, I still think most of the charges were worth pursuing, but pragmatically I now wonder if maybe the best thing would have been to pardon him and just hope he holed up in Trump tower working with a ghost-writer on another book.
But now he's president, and yes, it looks like things are going to get truly bad and its going to be hard to shift the blame, although I'm sure he will try. It will be interesting to watch the talking points rolling out that this is all Joe Biden's fault for leaving us in a position where Trump had no choice but to shoot global trade in the face in order to save the US, but I imagine that's the argument we will be hearing. But its true that he's never faced a recession before that was linked directly to his actions, and we will see if that's the first thing ever to really damage his image as an omniscient businessman with his base.
As far as I recall Trump and Musk have both said there will be a period of economic pain.
The part that confuses me is why. It seems clear the US should reduce the deficit, but I don't see any urgent crisis that requires such drastic measures as to cause a recession. It would seem far more sensible to cut back in a more careful and coordinated way. On the other hand, I don't think either Trump or Musk were really secretive about their plans, so maybe the American people saw something I didn't.
the crisis is/was the the speed and scale of the demographic transformation enabled by biden's border and asylum policies. dumping half as many haitians as there are residents of a small town is a crisis to those residents. sorry not sorry if that makes me a racist.
the connection to tariffs is, obviously, that those small towns were dying before because american manufacturing was exported.
The Biden administration did not invent Temporary Protected Status (that was done under notorious open borders advocate George HW Bush), and did not decide to "dump" the Haitians anywhere in particular. (People under TPS can live wherever they choose, just like anyone else who's legally allowed to be in this country.)
"the speed and scale of the demographic transformation enabled by biden's border and asylum policies"
Did you just pull this horseshit out of your ass? "We need to crash the economy NOW because there were 55,000 asylum seekers in 2023." Can you divide 55000 by 340,000,000?
Try more like 10 million illegal immigrants, with real numbers probably closer to 15 million.
This is a huge problem. https://budget.house.gov/download/ogr-icymi
There are 10-15 million total. Which is what it has been since 2005. Again, not an emergency and Biden was not causing massive demographic change.
Interesting! I may have misread the numbers
Yeah, I'm as confused as you are. My guess is that the majority of people who voted for Trump don't really understand economics or the role the president plays in it.
(That's not a slight at Trump voters, I think the majority of voters period are confused about these things, I also find them confusing and I didn't understand how little the President could control macroeconomic trends until my late 20s).
They blamed Biden for the economic anxiety they were feeling and Trump promised to make it all go away and they believed him, the same way people who don't understand the weather might believe a charismatic witch-doctor dancing in a field.
Among the cadre of intelligentsia and business people who, AFAICT *do* understand how the economy works, the rhetoric I heard from them was that Trump was threatening tariffs as a negotiating position to force economic and other concessions from countries but would never impose any restrictions that would obviously destroy the current status-quo of the economy. This seemed plausible to me! But now it does not appear to be the case. The most plausible explanation now is just that he really thinks this is going fix things, despite, many economists saying otherwise. Where other politicians might balk at doing something like this, even for the greater good, he doesn't seem worried about his approval either, probably because nothing else he's ever done has damaged his approval (but he never tanked the economy before in a way that couldn't be blamed on a plague, so we'll see).
What about raising funds to pay off the deficit and protecting domestic manufacturing?
He's destroying domestic manufacturing, not protecting it. Make American Manufacturing Expensive Again, MAMEA, put that onto a red hat. This is so fucking tiresome.
A lot of apparently intelligent people seem to have fooled themselves into thinking he didn't mean what he said and he would actually enact moderate and sensible policies. At least, that is what I saw from various online commentators before the election. Most of them are now baffled he is doing what he said he would do or just deluding themselves that there's some kind of strategy behind the chaos.
In my view there are real problems that need to be solved, and Trump's policies could be construed as solving them. But the way they are executing these policies is woefully incompetent. I'm very doubtful there's any long term strategy or anyone really thinking in the interests of the United States.
"when they say dangerous to 'our democracy', they mean their democracy, the elites own it"
I haven't been convinced that there is only 1 economy in america for a while, it seems to be *your* economy, if there was record deaths of despair in white males in fly over states while yall were claiming "the economy has never been better", Id like to see the roll of the dice.
If the 500 loses 1000 points but gas prices drop a cent, im not sure id oppose this.
Also, I wish people would stop talking about "elites," it was useful in its original, technical sent (as seen in the "revolt of the elites") but its basically become an intentional cofounder people use to equate credentials or education with actual wealth and power, which is how you end up with people arguing that a senatorial aide who went to Harvard or a mid-level bureaucrat with a PhD at the dept of Transporation is somehow obviously less aligned with the average person's interests and concerns than a billionaire like Elon Musk.
I agree with you that the word “elite” should be retired from common use for a while for exactly the reasons that you outline
Those senatorial aides who went to Harvard were pretty happy to be flattered that they were in the party of the educated and enlightened, unlike all those dumb never-went-to-college hicks and rubes in the other party.
Turn about is fair play.
There has been no shortage of elites, in your use of the term, in either party for quite a while. I mean, is Elon Musk not an elite?
I'm not sure I agree. There does seem to be some use for a term that points to all the people who, when they make a decision, bignum other people have their lives significantly reordered. Whether because they ordered them to do something different, or because they paid them to do something different, or because they shifted the policy debate at the bureaucracy that determines what they're allowed to do at all.
Some people can't do any of those things at any level. Some people can. And that's going to change them and possibly define them.
You can call those people politicians or bureaucrats, something defined by the actual public role they play. Again, I never see elites used anymore outside of a derogatory term for people we want to define as a separate cultural circle from "real" Americans, presumably the ones impacted more viscerally by all those things you described. See specifically the term "coastal elites" which doesn't seem to mean anything other than liberals with college degrees. I'm not concerned with whether the term hurts people's feelings,, just again how it doesn't seem to signify anything particular except an outgroup. Because again, Donald Trump and Elon Musk are also billionaires exempt from the consequences of their own actions, but despite numerous people pointing this out, no one thinks of them as elites, and in fact they are generally held in opposition to elites. In fact, I would wager most people think of billionaires as a separate class from elites, and that shows you how the connotation is obviously broken, because what pragmatically could be more elite than that level of wealth?
Many of the people I am talking about are neither politicians nor bureaucrats, Jeff Bezos is not a politician nor a bureaucrat, but he is a absolutely member of the elite. So is e.g. Anderson Cooper.
And so is Miriam Adelson for that matter
> See specifically the term "coastal elites" which doesn't seem to mean anything other than liberals with college degrees.
If everyone understands what the word means, I don't see what the problem is. The meanings of words are context sensitive. What do you want people to call them instead? Communists?
As with the "don't say woke" crowd, they don't want us to call them something else; they want us to stop talking about them, because John 3:20.
Liberals with college degrees is fine. Coastal elites, like a lot of derogatory euphemisms creates a rhetorical distortion. People target liberals because they disagree with their ideology or their culture? Fine. But they don't want to admit that culture is grounded in any real world shared experience so they make it implicitly about privilege. If we are two sides arguing from two different bubbles (which we mostly are) then that's fair if close to insurmountable. But they don't want it to be fair, they want it to be a battle of authenticity vs phoniness and privilege. Despite the fact that their leaders are mostly rich college educated jerks too.
It's just a synonym for "leftist".
It has become that, but it’s not really what the word means. As you pointed out a word mean whatever a consensus decides it means. Then the question becomes is it a useful conversion or is it not? You can coin a good term to fling at the outgroup but it’s not terribly useful. Turning a word that has lots of positive connotations into an insult is a form of doublespeak don’t you think?intelligencia for instance.
Redneck is up there as well. Apparatchik? That sounds bad no matter who is in charge but isn’t that just a bureaucrat?
I'd argue it is a useful conversion, because not only is it obvious what it means, it also makes it incredibly obvious what political leanings the user has. Also, I reject the notion that "elite" had a lot of positive connotations, seeing as the very concept had been held in contempt by much of the population even before all of this.
It’s funny when you think about it because the original meaning of elite still survives. You could say of a ballet dancer that she is elite; you can be an elite hockey player; you just can’t be one of the elite.
How about we start referring to a group of people as “the 10th percentiles?“
I'm pretty sympathetic to all those things, but I don't think tariffs are going to fix them. The only thing that was ever going to re-invigorate those places was large-scale entitlements of the sort that are derided by the representatives those same dying people keep electing. I can get being mad at everyone in both wings of the establishment, but that doesn't change the fact they seem to have picked the wrong guy. People needed left-wing populist reforms, and they voted in a right-wing populist. As far as I can tell, they've screwed themselves.
> People needed left-wing populist reforms,
Even if I agreed(I very very much dont), bernie was pushed out, then the next election was so forced I think even the "always blue" crowd noticed; the democrats reaped what they sowed
Well, technically, we are *all* in the process of reaping what we sowed. The one good thing about having an absolute egotist in power pushing every button he can without any checks and balances is that politics is finally working in a highly legible way. In every other administration the party in power has been able to say "well we would like to do things differently, but our hands are tied by the size of the opposition and their dedication to blocking our initiatives." But finally enough people decided they wanted to flip the table that the power seems to be resting in one place. So we will see, after a year or two of this, if you are right and these are the policies that can fix things. Regardless, they are unequivocally the policies of the Republican party, lock stock and barrel, with no compromises and no way to blame the Democrats if people start starving and have no access to food stamps, or dying because medication is too expensive. I don't want to fear-monger, I hope none of this comes to pass, but it seems like the logical conclusion, and the only good that would come of it is that maybe a few people who gleefully said this was the America they wanted will now have to live in it and see how they like it.
" and no way to blame the Democrats if people start starving"
Oi, you have never been motivationally reasoned to? Of course Republicans will blame Democrats, who else are they going to blame, themselves?
True story: I'm standing on a Metro platform waiting for the train in Copenhagen with a Republican colleague (we worked together enough to know each other's political leanings). I mention how nice the metro is and wouldn't it be good to have this kind of public transport in large US cities. His response, I'm not kidding you, is "we can't afford this with all the money we spend on welfare".
I... didn't know what to say. We are literally in Denmark, one of the most generous welfare countries in the world, and it has a great metro. But his Republican mind couldn't see this.
> no way to blame the Democrats if...
I wish you were right. But I would hesitate to bet on it.
I remember, over a decade ago, when Robert Fico won his first elections in Slovakia, I was having similar thoughts: Previously, he was just a loud voice in the opposition, blamed everyone for everything... yeah, blaming others is easy, but now it's his turn, he has no more excuses if during the next 4 years none of those things he complained about will improve. He will definitely have to change his speech, or his voters will wake up.
LOL, that was so naive! After ruling the country for 13 years (with some short breaks), still whatever bad thing happens, he blames the opposition, journalists, non-profits, America, Ukraine, anyone. Nothing is ever his fault. And his voters, they totally keep buying it.
I predict that if economy and medicine goes to hell, Trump will blame uncooperative people in civil service, and will use that to excuse more purges; and if there are any protests against him, then of course those protesters will be responsible for disrupting the economy. He will also blame Biden and Zelensky for having wasted the money that is now so desperately needed, Canada and Mexico for not doing whatever he told them to do, etc. And the redcaps will totally buy it. Their smartphones will tell them that it is true!
The question then is, are these tariffs going to do anything about that second economy? I find it hard to see how they're going to help, unless you really believe manufacturing is going to flow back into the US in droves, which doesn't seem realistic. At best, you're going to get a moderate amount of reinvestment that is unlikely to be worth the cost of the tariffs.
Some people have been left behind, but I don't think this is going to help them.
To be effective at their stated goal, tariffs would have to be in place for a while and cause actual economic harm to the current arrangement. That's obvious to people both in favor and against tariffs. If this occurs, then it may also create the incentives for people within the US to produce more the tariffed goods, which would increase this second economy.
Lots of ifs there, and pain first, but it's not exactly a secret what he's trying to do.
Yes, this is the plan. But I haven't seen anything that makes me think it's going to work, on net. Some more production will happen in the US, I'm sure, but will they be worth the cost of the tariffs? It's hard to see how, at least in anything like the short term. It's takes quite a while to repatriate your factories just by the time it takes to get them permitted and built. Any real benefits will take years to accrue, while the pain is immediate.
The big reason not to repatriate a factory is tariff policy could change after the next election. Policy uncertainty does not encourage investment.
Yes, this is also an issue. If a Democratic Party administration were to follow in 2028 they would certainly undo the majority of the tariffs Trump has in place. Easier to wait it out for some companies than to make big changes to their development plans.
Yes, but can you show me anyone who thinks it will work?
Well, Trump, obviously. If you define "work" the way he does, then probably a lot of people agree.
He's willing to permanently damage the overall economy in terms of total dollars (which benefits big city white collar jobs) in order to provide a meaningful but smaller benefit to blue collar workers. It's entirely possible that he succeeds in his stated goals, while the economy overall doesn't grow or even shrinks. Whether that's a "success" is very much in the eye of the beholder.
A secondary concern, that seems to be much more supported than his core plan, is to have American manufacturing for national security purposes. The US city of Pittsburgh had more steel production than all of the Axis powers combined in WWII. Now China has 50% of worldwide steel. If you think that's a problem, you may prioritize building local steel (and other core production) even if it's a bad economic decision.
US blue collar workers will disproportionately suffer from the tariffs in two ways: their manufacturing jobs will be gone, and the prices for things they need will go up.
Us big city white collar workers can pay extra. We'll grumble, but fine, whatever. Our jobs will be safe. What are you going to do, not buy another phone and cancel Netflix?
> The question then is, are these tariffs going to do anything about that second economy?
My estimation depends on details that are very speculative of what trump actually does; I would hope for a *cough cough* slavery free economic zone namely without china to start. We will see what happens.
What matters is perception. He can’t cause too much inflation of course, but building factories for the workers is probably more attractive to the American working class than exporting jobs to China, tolerating opioid epidemics and calling the victims deplorable.
But is it preferable to higher prices? How much inflation are we willing to take?
The factories that may come of this will take years to build, while the pain is immediate. I question whether we are able to stomach the amount of pain that's coming for a possible long term gain, and that gain might not even be close to the cost in the end.
Higher prices but now I got a job at the new car plant so my wages can cover them versus al the jobs are outsourced but the economy has never been doing better so I am told by my 'betters'? What do you think the average voter will think is better?
https://fortune.com/2025/03/04/honda-civic-production-us-tariffs-mexico/
"Honda will reportedly manufacture the next-generation Civic in Indiana. That’s a change of plans for the company, which had been planning to manufacture the vehicle in Mexico. The move comes following Donald Trump’s levying of 25% tariffs on goods from Mexico and Canada.
At least one automaker is betting President Trump’s tariffs won’t be a short-term event—and is increasing its manufacturing capacity in the U.S. in hopes of sustaining or increasing sales.
Honda has reportedly decided to manufacture the next-generation Honda Civic in Indiana, rather than Guanajuato, Mexico. Production will begin in May 2028, a six-month delay from the original plans. The move comes as 25% tariffs on products from Mexico and Canada went into effect Tuesday, a decision that is expected to raise the price consumers pay for vehicles made in Mexico by $4,000 or more."
Jobs in construction building the plant, jobs in the plant when it comes onstream, the downstream jobs supporting the plant - if that happens, the voters will think Trump did a good job for them.
I acknowledge that some amount of factory repatriation is going to happen because of this. I just doubt that the amount of new factories/jobs created will be worth the tariffs, on net.
The benefits will be specific to certain areas/people in certain towns. The costs will be universal, affecting everyone. People usually don't like that equation. The share of US citizens that work in factories is very small compared to what it was 50 years ago, and unless the tariffs are wildly successful beyond most economists expectations, that will still be the case 10 years from now.
But I guess we'll all see.
Also, if by "deplorables" you are talking about the famous Clinton trope, that's an obvious misreading. She wasn't saying that a percentage of people voting for Trump were deplorable for being addicted to opioids, she was saying there was a vocal minority of people who supported Trump primarily because he championed a worldview that was deliberately nasty and racist. You can disagree about whether that's a fair assessment, but personally I don't think its a reach and even if its wrong, its the sort of characterization that would be fair if it were true.
She was making a joke out of a proportion of the voters for her rich, gay, donors to laugh at, which they did. It wasn't supposed to go public, but it did, and then people could see what the Compassionate Inclusive people thought of them: deplorables.
Her full remark wasn't much better - the other half of possible Trump voters were just ignorant people who needed to be enlightened as to how they should think and vote, because they just don't get what is in their best interests.
https://time.com/4486502/hillary-clinton-basket-of-deplorables-transcript/
Link to transcript of her speech:
"I know there are only 60 days left to make our case — and don’t get complacent, don’t see the latest outrageous, offensive, inappropriate comment and think well he’s done this time. We are living in a volatile political environment. You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right?
[Laughter/applause]
The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic — you name it. And unfortunately there are people like that. And he has lifted them up. He has given voice to their websites that used to only have 11,000 people — now how 11 million. He tweets and retweets their offensive hateful mean-spirited rhetoric. Now, some of those folks — they are irredeemable, but thankfully they are not America. But the other basket — and I know this because I see friends from all over America here — I see friends from Florida and Georgia and South Carolina and Texas — as well as, you know, New York and California — but that other basket of people are people who feel that the government has let them down, the economy has let them down, nobody cares about them, nobody worries about what happens to their lives and their futures, and they’re just desperate for change. It doesn’t really even matter where it comes from. They don’t buy everything he says, but he seems to hold out some hope that their lives will be different. They won’t wake up and see their jobs disappear, lose a kid to heroin, feel like they’re in a dead-end. Those are people we have to understand and empathize with as well."
Time article with the full transcript of the remarks in question.
Not trying to take sides, just figure it's helpful for people making their own judgments.
https://time.com/4486502/hillary-clinton-basket-of-deplorables-transcript/
Helpful. In retrospect, Hillary was a terrible candidate and democrats (including myself) should not have supported her so full-throatedly, but this is probably the single best example of the uneven standard to which the candidates were held. Thousands of apologies and clarifications were written regarding Trump's "rapists and murderers" comments (which, to be fair, were also taken out of context originally), but to this day many of those same people who defended his rhetoric will tell you that Hillary Clinton called Trump's base awful for being poor.
Except, I don't see how these factories are going to be paying the workers the 1950s wages adjusted for inflation with pensions and benefits that they think is their birthright. More likely they are going to be the sort of minimum wage hellholes you would expect to get after you've dismantled OSHA and collective bargaining, and STILL have to compete with China on international trade. I mean, to be fair, I'm not an economist, but thinking these factories are going to be preferable even to working at the local dollar store or wal-mart seems like a pipe dream to me.
If such conditions are good enough for immigrants who grow the economy, are they not good enough for native Americans? Won't the economy grow when the jobs are low-paid and bad conditions worked by American citizens instead of guys from South America who just landed in the country last week?
That's part of the hypocrisy going on here: on the one hand, it's better for immigrants to come and the US needs their labour, but on the other hand let's not admit we need them to be exploited or else the industries that employ them couldn't make it work.
I think tariffs are one of Trumps few actually deeply held beliefs. He has been consistent for a long time that tariffs are a good thing for industry. I suspect this comes out of his experience coming of age in the 70s/80s when Japan was supplanting US industries, and then watching more of it drift to China. I think he really believes tariffs can bring manufacturing back into America. Which, of course, it can, to a limited extent. There probably will be more factories built in the US as a result of the tariffs. They just don't even close to balance out the costs for US consumers.
I'm more interested in whether the business community is finally going to have a fit over this. They are republican aligned community, and they HATE the tariffs. They know it's going to wreak absolute havoc on their profits. I suspect they didn't really believe he was going to implement the tariffs in any meaningful way until today. Maybe they thought he would just do some kind of push and pull tactics, or very limited tariffs on certain industries, but now it's real. They are here, and they can't be sidelined as a joke any longer. I wonder if they will rise up against him now, through back channels of course, and we'll see if the administration responds.
The ACX Tweaks Chrome extension stopped working, probably because it doesn't use the new manifest format for extensions (I didn't dig into why, but that's why a lot of things are breaking these days). I rarely even used this, but was wondering, regardless, whether there is a replacement that someone can recommend?
https://acxreader.github.io/ was nice but looks dead
https://github.com/maksverver/astral-codex-eleven might work.
I wrote a replacement UI a few years ago, and it was working. But I literally cannot find it now. Not the source or the plugins I made.
*EDIT* wait I was doing announcements on hidden threads and I don't have access to them any more. lol.
Thanks for the links! I've got access to Hidden threads, but I'm not sure how to search through them to find your comments. 🙃 But I already appreciate what you've linked here. Thanks again.
From "Why I am not a conflict theorist" (the quote that inspired the Identity Alignment simulator found at https://biasnet.streamlit.app/
""Someone should demonstrate this more mathematically, but it seems to me that if you start with a random assortment of identities, small fluctuations plus reactions should force polarization..." Because if the members of a group that is organized around a set of values starts insulting members of another group, the two will polarize against all the values of the rival group, not just the ones that were the target of the original insult.
There is research to support something like this: https://dash.harvard.edu/entities/publication/73120378-d01f-6bd4-e053-0100007fdf3b
The "Group Polarization" phenomenon is even broader than what Scott suggests--no insults required, just a calm exchange of differing views on a scenario or issue on which people have a range of varying positions.
It's worth noting that there is an opposing force in group dynamics: people who belong to both groups, and therefore act as "bridging capital" between them. Segregation specifically along partisan lines is a relatively new trend (It's only a few decades old), so something else must account for why the one phenomenon appears to be expanding at the expense of the other.
This whole Zelensky Trump mash up, makes me feel like I'm not wanted here anymore. I've got a very different view than most of you. And it seems like it would be good to discuss it. But we can't, you can only tell me how wrong I am. Emily Jashinsky of undercurrents hit's most of the right notes for how I feel. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZ_Sco5XhIw
Oh just let it all hang out. Who cares. This is a heterodox community and you're not gonna get banned as long as you operate in good faith.
I'm not wanted here either, and in fact I'm pretty sure my other account got banned from here either by Scott or a rogue Substack employee. But that ain't gonna stop me! And it shouldn't stop you either. Life's so much better when you stop caring about what others think of you.
Ah stop this. More than one commenter had mentioned actually liking engaging with you, yours truly included. Yes I often disagree with you and your overt misanthropy can be annoying, but you do have interesting things to say and never descend into rudeness and name-calling. Nobody's perfect.
Word. The more feathers you ruffle the more fun you have anyway. You can't change minds without someone getting upset. There aren't many places on the internet that allow you to make strong counter-narrative arguments. God bless Scott for both tolerating it and attracting a heterogenous audience. Without the apparatchiks to gore this place wouldn't be any fun at all.
No horse for me in the Ukraine-Russia discussion, slightly more horses in the Trump-vs-the-world discussion, but only for amusement and as a dark reminder of how utterly low the depths that human IQ can sink to, but just as a general advice: Cultivate The Subtle Art Of Not Giving A Fuck That People Think You're Wrong.
My opinions are right because I spent a lot of time thinking about them, and because I would have changed them if I knew they're wrong. People telling me I'm wrong are no more (or less) convincing than any of the sources and arguments that I already read or saw when I was forming my opinions. People telling me I'm wrong means nothing because the vast majority of people are wrong the vast majority of the time, this means that (A) They're most probably wrong themselves (B) I could be wrong, but being wrong is as normal as and as widespread as eating and going to bathroom, the very people taunting me with being wrong are doing it even as they speak, so what?
I think this attitude plus that of Eremolalos is good wisdom. Being wrong is a flex.
I have not read your posts and try to stay away from political discussions, so this is general advice, not advice given in reaction to your views:
You say you don’t feel wanted here. That gives me the sense that you are sort of over-identified with your opinions, and view rejections of them as rejections of you. Listen, it’s always a mistake to think of your opinions are part of you, because then you will be as unwilling to change them as you are to have a leg amputated. Think of them as possessions of yours. That will
make you more willing to trade them in for better ones if somebody gives solid evidence that others are better. Sort of like with cars, you know?
Seriously try on the possibility that those disagreeing are right. If they don’t name sources, ask them for the best well informed sources of their views, and read them, then decide whether your views might need revising. If they don’t, come back and argue.
Don’t worry George, everyone here has been telling me how wrong I am for the best part of a year :)
I 100% think Trump is right for trying to end the war in Ukraine. It’s fascinating to me how the left is now pro foreign wars and American imperialism. A complete shift from 20 years ago.
Zelenskyy is not a good guy. Ukrainians want peace. He doesn’t, because he and his buddies profit massively from the current state of affairs. So he has jailed journalists, banned opposition parties, and cancelled elections. The left conveniently forgets that before the war Ukraine was widely recognised as one of the most corrupt countries in Europe.
“An evil man will burn his country to the ground to rule over the ashes.”
-Sun Tzu
Responding to the simplest form of your claim, that "War is bad and we should negotiate for peace".
If NATO supports Ukraine, doesn't that signal to future warlords that the cost of a war will be high, therefore decreasing wars of conquest in the long term?
This is my main reason for being pro-Ukraine, so I'd like to hear opposing thoughts on it.
Did the left ever get their reset button back?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_reset
Just because someone opposed the 2003 invasion of Iraq doesn’t mean that they are logically required to support the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, or vice versa. You may not be able to imagine why anyone would *want* to live in an world where powerful countries don’t go around invading weaker countries on flimsy pretexts, but there’s nothing logically inconsistent about such a desire. So you haven’t identified a “shift from 20 years ago.”
You have made an interesting leap from my position of “war is bad, we should try to negotiate for peace” to “I support Russia invading Ukraine in 2022”
Hey @Turtle I actually wrote this before I read your comment here, but it's directed at people like you and I'd love if you could give it a read
https://theahura.substack.com/p/the-five-year-old-test
Does "war is bad, peace is good" count as a statement a 5-year-old could understand?
Yes, and a 5-year-old will also understand "Russia can immediately end the war by stopping their attacks, and everybody can live in peace and freedom. But if Ukraine stops defending itself, Russia will conquer all of Ukraine and the Ukrainians will lose their freedom."
“War is bad, but our side is completely righteous and justified, and so the killing will continue until the other side realises this”
Where have I heard this before?
This is a gross misrepresentation both of what I wrote and of the situation in Ukraine.
Earlier you said:
> Don’t worry George, everyone here has been telling me how wrong I am for the best part of a year :)
You should take this as a strong hint that you might actually be wrong. And not "wrong" in the sense of "has different values from all others", but "wrong" as in "has an objectively incorrect understanding of some aspect of reality".
Spot on - this should be pinned at the top of most discussion boards.
> “An evil man will burn his country to the ground to rule over the ashes.”
That is... certainly a quote that is very relevant to the current situation, but not in the way you think.
> Ukrainians want peace. He doesn’t
Are you buying the Trump's statement about "only 4%" of Ukrainians supporting the "dictator"? That is utter bullshit, one of those things he says because he knows that his supporters never bother to check facts.
> So he has jailed journalists, banned opposition parties, and cancelled elections.
Check the Wikipedia list of the banned parties. Some of their names are literally like "Russian Bloc" and "Russian Unity". These were openly pro-Russia, pro-invasion parties.
To compare, during WW2 in UK, the British Union of Fascists was also banned.
And no, he hasn't "cancelled" elections, that is another redcap bullshit. By Ukrainian constitution that was signed long before Zelensky got elected, there are no elections during war.
If you just think about it for 5 minutes, how exactly would you even organize the elections, when 20% of your country is in occupant's hands, and in the rest of the country there would obviously be bombs falling on the lines before the voting stations.
other banned parties were ordinary left-wing parties with names like "socialist" or "communist" (being left-wing now gets you arrested) or the leading opposition party in parliament
I’m sure Zelenskyy is very worried about the voice of the eastern 20% of his country who are largely ethnic Russians, who view the Maidan 2014 uprising as an illegitimate coup. “These people deserve fair representation too!” says Zelenskyy.
The issue is really that if your constitution bars elections when your country is at war, corrupt Presidents will prolong wars so that they stay in power.
As for the 4% figure, Trump got that from his intel agencies. Maybe it’s not completely accurate, but neither do I trust the supposed scientific surveys funded by globalist NGOs and parroted by the mainstream media/Western propaganda machine. 57% approval?? Zelenskyy’s goons have spent years literally abducting military aged men from public parks and sending them to die on the front line. He’s destroying his own country and taking in billions from Western governments, padding his own pockets with it and getting treated by Western media like the second coming of Winston Churchill.
If you believe this war is only about liberating the Donbas, I have a bridge to sell you.
Putin's first move in the war was to drive straight for Kiev, and even after his offensive stalled he passed a law declaring that Zaporzhizhia and Kherson, territories that are not in the Donbas and Russia never even occupied, were officially part of Russia. He wants the whole country, and he hasn't been subtle about saying that.
This is correct
Then you saying "But the minority in the Donbas!" is a red herring. At a minimum, a solid 80% of the country doesn't want to be conquered.
Outside of the parts that Russia has occupied since 2014, the Donbass is less than 40% ethnic Russians, and a lot of those have had the shine taken off their Russophilia by a decade of Russians shooting up the place and not being all that careful who they're shooting at.
There's no place outside Crimea where Zelenskyy wouldn't have been favored to win an election in 2021, and I'm pretty sure that holds true today. And you may not trust "globalist NGOs and the Western propaganda machine", but nobody with an ounce of sense is going to trust someone who can't get the basic ethnic composition of the Donbass correct. So why are you trusting people who told you that the Donbass was mostly ethnic Russians?
Zelensky, a native Russian speaker, won the 2019 election on a platform that included moderate rapprochement with Russia.
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=russian+speakers+in+ukraine+map+2010&iax=images&ia=images&iai=https%3A%2F%2Fi.pinimg.com%2Foriginals%2F42%2F74%2Fa9%2F4274a9ac490b29532bba3436b61778f0.png
Please look at this collection of various charts of Russian and Ukrainian language circa 2010 (be careful, and note that the years vary, and some of the charts are election charts instead). These paint a fairly clear picture of significant ethnic Russian population in a swath along the east and south, and a *major* demographic and political divide across the Dniper.
Quite a lot of such maps may be sourced from the west, BBC, et cetera, pre-Maidan. It did not used to be controversial knowledge that the eastern part of Ukraine had significant minority or even majority ethnic Russian population.
I invite you to find some *old* maps or *old* fact books which show ethnic Russians in the east to be 40% or less.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_language_in_Ukraine#/media/File:Ukraine_census_2001_Russian.svg
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_language_in_Ukraine#/media/File:Russianlang2001ua.PNG
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_language_in_Ukraine#/media/File:RussianUseEn.PNG
Personally, I'm not concerned about Zelensky not having an election. That's fine. But I'm very concerned about the west memory-holing its own demographic and political information about Ukraine. I *personally remember* when mainstream western publications painted a picture of Ukraine as a dangerous, corrupt state full of anti-semites, not sufficiently different from Russia for us to invest in it.
For instance:
- Haaretz article, 2014, during Maidan, "Ukrainian Rabbi Tells Kiev's Jews to Flee City - Fearing violence against Ukraine's Jews, the Jewish community asks Israel for assistance with the security of the community", https://www.haaretz.com/jewish/2014-02-22/ty-article/ukrainian-rabbi-to-jews-flee/0000017f-f8db-d318-afff-fbfb63420000
- BBC, 2014, "Ukraine Underplays Role of Far Right in Conflict", https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-30414955
- Guardian, 2004, "US Campaign Behind Turmoil in Kiev", https://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/nov/26/ukraine.usa
- The Nation, 2021, "Secretary Blinken Faces a Big Test in Ukraine, Where Nazis and Their Sympathizers Are Glorified -
One week after hundreds marched in Kyiv to honor a Nazi SS division, the US secretary of state has a chance to stand up for Holocaust survivors.", https://www.thenation.com/article/world/blinken-holocaust-ukraine
I'm also not saying Putin had a legitimate excuse in terms of nazis, or corruption, or even persecution of Russians. I'm just saying those things existed, they were reported on, people no longer admit it, and that's dishonest or historically ignorant.
From what I can see Zelenskyy seems perfectly willing to negotiate an end to the war as long as it includes security guarantees, and of course, Russia is willing to accept it. Both of those things are not yet on the table. He has even hinted he is willing to sacrifice some territory if it seems like a lasting peace deal.
And I do think the left has shifted on this, but the reason is fairly obvious. One country attacked another essentially unprovoked. It appeals perfectly to the left's sense of fairness/rightness in the world. Most wars are not so easily divisible into good/bad on those terms.
As to whether the Ukrainians want peace, here's some data: https://news.gallup.com/poll/653495/half-ukrainians-quick-negotiated-end-war.aspx
Over 50% want a negotiated peace, but of those, 38% don't want any territorial concessions, which Russia obviously will not agree to. So, only about a third of Ukrainians want a settlement with territorial concessions, which is not an overwhelming number. I think they need to do it, if Russia will agree, but it must come with some security guarantees from the EU/US or it won't be worth the paper it's written on.
“Essentially unprovoked”
This is the crux of the issue.
As John Mearsheimer said - if you start history on Feb 2022, it is clear that Russia is the bad guy. If you start in 2014, it becomes less clear, and if you start 1991 even less so.
For context, in 1991 Bush’s Secretary of State promised his Russian counterpart that if they allowed the reunification of Germany and its incorporation into NATO, NATO would never expand further - “not an inch to the East.” NATO, of course, proceeded to ignore that agreement (Putin is not the only one who likes to violate international treaties.)
Russia did explore if they would ever be allowed to join NATO - Clinton told them no. Failing that, they made it clear that Ukraine being offered a path to membership was a red line for them. It’s not so unreasonable - imagine how the US would feel if China started stationing troops and missiles in Mexico.
In 2014, the Maidan revolution, sponsored by the CIA and the State Department, toppled Yanukovych in Ukraine, who was deemed by the masters of the universe in Washington DC to be excessively pro-Russian. The Ukrainian government that took its place was staunchly nationalist. Ukraine has historically had a large ethnic Russian minority, concentrated in Crimea and the Donbas. Following the revolution, which was viewed as an illegitimate coup by a large segment of the Ukrainian people, there were incidents of ethnic violence against that population and Russian language was banned on national TV.
That’s the context in which Putin invaded Crimea. When he says he intervenes in Ukraine in Crimea and the Donbass to keep Ukrainian separatists safe from persecution, there is actually an element of truth to these claims. Actually the Ukrainian population in both of these regions has voted overwhelmingly in referendums to secede from Ukraine (in excess of 95%.)
So tell me again how sending billions to Ukraine is defending democracy? Remember, whether you live in Russia or the West, your government/media is deeply invested in trying to tell you that they are the good guys.
> For context, in 1991 Bush’s Secretary of State promised his Russian counterpart that if they allowed the reunification of Germany and its incorporation into NATO, NATO would never expand further - “not an inch to the East.” NATO, of course, proceeded to ignore that agreement (Putin is not the only one who likes to violate international treaties.)
You seem to equivocate "someone allegedly said something, of which there is no written record" with "international treaties".
No, it's actually pretty clear if you go back to 2014 that the Russians were the bad guys. They may not have been the *only* bad guys. But if they weren't among the bad guys, if they didn't know full well they were the bad guys, they'd have had their soldiers keep their uniforms on when they invaded parts of Ukraine and said "this is why we, Russia, are invading parts of Ukraine".
And if you go back to 1991, it's pretty clear that the Russians were the good guys (again, not the only ones) until they later became the bad guys.
Not all stories have clear-cut good guys and bad guys, There are stories in the history of Russo-Ukrainian relations that don't have clear-cut good guys and bad guys. But the one we've been watching since 2014, yeah, that really is one of the stories with straight-up black-hatted bad guys.
The point he's making is that this was a long standing ethnic and linguistic neighbor conflict, and rather than help resolve it, we helped substantially to exacerbate it.
Russia are bad guys, who meddled in at least two if not three elections, backed one side of a neighbor's civil war, went back on treaties, and invaded that neighbor.
But Ukrainians are also bad guys, who cancelled the Russian language, marched *in favor of* anti-semitism, performed a coup against a democratically elected president, and shelled separatist regions.
And Americans are also bad guys, who meddled in at least two if not three elections, went back on treaties, backed a coup, and tried to install missiles in the hostile neighbor of a regional power.
The conflict didn't start in 2014 with the annexation of Crimea or in 2022 with the invasion. It started in the early 1990s, when, against the forceful advice of a minority in the diplomatic community, the west decided to continue an alliance to isolate Russia, rather than spin down that alliance, and integrate Russia fully into the western community. It then escalated in fits and starts for 30 years, with *all three of America, Russia and Ukraine acting in bad faith at various points*, until the invasion.
You should read about JCS-1067 (the policy to starve the Germans after WW2) and the Marshall Plan (you already know this one; the policy to rebuild the Germans after WW2). We tried starving them. It was a very bad idea. We changed course and rebuilt them.
This is a similar case. We could have Marshall Planned Russia. Instead we pushed them away, but expected to be able to take their equivalent of Canada in the divorce. That was foolish in the extreme, and we are reaping the rewards. Everyone is the bad guy here.
So, is Donald Trump now the bad guy because he cancelled the Spanish language?
And no, I'm not otherwise going to dive into your gish-gallop of godawful nonsense; you've got people who can generate that crap faster than anyone can responsibly address it,
Giving a weakling a weapon so that a tough guy can't beat him to a pulp doesn't seem like exacerbating the situation to me. But even if it is, so what? It's not wrong to give weapons to a country to allow them to not be invaded and annexed. It's in our interest, it's not immoral, it's not risking nuclear war, it's not unduly burdening us finanially, so what's the problem?
The alternative has tons of political consequences. Many would say moral consequences, too, but we can just ignore that argument and realpolitik our way to support for Ukraine.
You said it better than I could
I'm aware of (most) of this history, and don't dispute much of what you've said. But none of that gives them the right to invade. And the Ukrainian people seem to agree, based on their overwhelming support for the war until very recently, and their opinion is the one I value the most. I understand there are more Russian areas of Ukraine that might feel differently, but they are a small minority of the whole country, especially after they already gave up Crimea without a fight, the most pro russian area of the country.
Yeah, I agree. Putin is not a good guy either, and the circumstances surrounding the war are complicated. Ukrainians certainly have a right to defend their country against a foreign invader. Nonetheless, the concrete reality is that a lot of Ukrainians and Russians are dying and families are being destroyed and billions of dollars are being wasted. Peace is better than war, and all parties have an interest in coming to peace. Let’s hope negotiations can be fruitful.
I'm not convinced that Vladimir Putin has an interest in coming to peace while Ukraine is still a country occupied by people who call themselves Ukrainians.
*Other* Russians may have such an interest, some of them, but so what? The ones who are dying, whose families are being destroyed, are not the ones whose good will Putin needs for his dream of renewed Russian glory. And they don't have a vote.
The reason people tell you how wrong you are is because what you're arguing has no basis in reality.
Ukraine had nukes. We and Russia told them to give them up and they would have security guarantees. They gave them up, and Russia invaded.
Western powers told them after Crimea to agree to a ceasefire with Russia and accept the lost territory for now, even if it's not internationally recognized. They agreed, wanting peace, and Russia invaded less than a decade later.
Now we're going back to them again, one decade after they agreed to a ceasefire that was violated, telling them to sign another ceasefire.
How can you not agree with them when they say that they can't trust Putin's word on a ceasefire again? How can you say that Zelenskyy doesn't want peace when he has offered to step down and trade his position for NATO membership, which is the only true security assurance he can get? And how can you say Zelenskyy has banned elections when their constitution and parliament say that elections are not held during wartime? Zelenskyy had nothing to do with that decision.
You can argue we shouldn't be involved in the war, and that's fine. I think isolationism is dumb and Russian aggression needs to be opposed (not militarily, but financially. I'm not dumb enough to risk nuclear strikes), but it's an understandable position. But most of the arguments you and people like you espouse seem shortsighted at best and totally divorced from reality at worst.
I don't even care much about Ukraine. Oppose Russia without direct confrontation whenever possible as long as Putin is in charge. It's in our interest.
This is a historically somewhat uninformed take.
https://cisac.fsi.stanford.edu/news/budapest-memorandum-myths
“After more than ten years of war inflicted upon them by Russia, Ukrainians—understandably—question the decision to give up nuclear arms. However, certain myths have arisen around that decision. One is that the United States and Britain violated their Budapest commitments by not going to war against Russia on Ukraine’s behalf. A second is that Ukraine could have maintained an independent nuclear arsenal.”
Also, you've compressed a lot of time between the budapest memorandum and the Russian invasion. In that time, America and Russia both meddled significantly in Ukrainian elections, with Russia almost certainly giving pro-western candidate Yuschenko dioxin poisoning, and America almost certainly instigating the coup against pro-Russian Yanukovich.
But it's important to realize that Ukraine wasn't remotely innocent. You can easily find old articles from mainstream western publications like the BBC and the Guardian which state, as fact, that Ukraine was (1) the most corrupt country in Europe, (2) undertaking a forceful policy of de-Russification against the Russian speaking areas, (3) tolerant of a significant and long standing neo-nazi problem, and (4) guilty of poor military behavior in the separatist Donetsk after the Maidan revolution.
There's also the Monroe Doctrine, which you perhaps unknowingly support (but whether you know it or not, you *certainly* support it, if you are an American voter who has ever voted for an American Democrat or Republican candidate in your entire life). It states that we do not tolerate foreign intervention by Europe in the New World. It has been enforced, violently, with invasions, at least five times. Putin essentially stated a Monroe doctrine over Russic peoples, and we, the Americans, fucked around with it by trying to make a military alliance and trying to install weapons, and we found out.
But all of that shrinks to almost nothing in the face of your last line.
"""I don't even care much about Ukraine. Oppose Russia without direct confrontation whenever possible as long as Putin is in charge."""
The indirect confrontation you support has killed hundreds of thousands of human beings. Go look at the miserable video of innumerable Ukrainian graves. Look at those graves. This war could have ended in 2022 on similar terms to how it will end in 2025. You wanted it to continue, "without direct confrontation whenever possible", because those lives were meaningless to you. Those people died because you wanted to spend them on an effort to drain Putin's resources. Would he have dominated them? Yes. Persecuted some of them? Yes. Put all these people in graves if the war ended in 2022? No. That's on America just as much as on Putin. It's on the attitude of people who say "I don't even care much about Ukraine. Oppose Russia without direct confrontation whenever possible as long as Putin is in charge."
Your points either don't address what I said or seem irrelevant. It's not relevant whether America was obligated to defend Ukraine from Russian aggression. What's relevant is that Russia attacked twice against their word. That makes any ceasefire between the two countries worthless for Ukraine, and makes asserting that Ukraine should accept one now completely ridiculous.
I already said that Ukraine was a corrupt country and that I don't consider them to be some bastion of democracy. I said this has nothing to do with who Ukraine is as a nation or people. It has to do with curbing Russian aggression and opposing a terrible country that has been against us for decades.
"Look at those graves. This war could have ended in 2022 on similar terms to how it will end in 2025."
No, this war could have been paused temporarily with a useless ceasefire until Russia decided to take the rest of the country. A ceasefire that was only possible because we supported them in the first place and enabled them to resist the attack and not lose the capital.
This whole situation is Russia's fault. You can't trust them to maintain ceasefires. Land grabs by hostile nations should be fought. It's in our interest to financially support Ukraine, and it will not burden us significantly to do so.
Ukraine did not have "nukes" in the sense of actual nuclear weapons systems that they could actually use. They did have pointy metal things with plutonium inside that their engineers could have turned into a working nuclear weapons systems in six months or so, but they'd probably have been bombed into oblivion in three months if they'd tried. And everybody who is currently supporting Ukraine, would have been saying "Damn fool Ukrainians, what were they thinking?"
>The left conveniently forgets that before the war Ukraine was widely recognised as one of the most corrupt countries in Europe.
And Russia was what exactly?
The point isn't "Ukraine bad Russia good, support Russia".
It's "Ukraine bad, Russia bad, don't pay for one group of corrupt slavs to kill another group of corrupt slavs. Just say no. Walk away."
If you walk away, there's no money for killing, and one group of corrupt slavs simply annex the other group of corrupt slavs, and that's not great, but very few people actually die, and there are no mass graves, and the world keeps turning.
If you reply with Neville Chamberlain, congratulations, your history knowledge is way overtuned on World War 2, and you need to go read everything you can about the history of the western world from about 1600 to 1939.
>there are no mass graves,
One of the reasons Ukraine is fighting so tenaciously is that there are *already* mass graves: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bucha_massacre
And it wouldn't have happened of Ukraine immediately surrendered. Capiche?
Is that actually true? Russia has put significant effort into trying to displace the people in conquered areas and ensure the Ukrainian identity doesn't stick around. I don't know if the people getting sent to "filtration camps" are ending up in graves, but they certainly aren't receiving free cake and gift baskets.
An abuser is perfectly capable of blaming their victim themselves, they don't need stans to do it for them.
The problem with this framing is that the US doesn’t gain anything by just walking away.
Ultimately, you can take the tack that there are good guys and bad guys and Ukraine is the “good, or at least less bad” victim of unjust aggression and should be supported for as long as it’s willing to continue to fight for its sovereignty.
Or you can dismiss that take as naive and adopt a bigger-brain stance that all geopolitical actors in the room here are “bad” and we live in a cold world where everyone advances his own interests and “help the victim” is just a propaganda play.
But if you go the latter route you then have to reckon with the fact that, from the cold amoral “just walk away” dog eat dog geopolitical game of thrones perspective you are asking we adopt, the USA has just come home to find Putin bent over and shouting “help help America nii-chan my head is stuck in this Ukrainian washing machine! But if you help me out of it or at least just walk away and let me get myself out, I promise not to use my improved position against you later in the cold amoral game of international power in which we are major rivals!”
Which is to say that under either mental model the arrows ultimately end up pointing in the same direction. Under the moral framing you should do as much you can to help Ukraine fight for as long as it wants to, balanced against not risking your own people’s well being and security too much, because helping the victim is the right thing to do, but you also have obligations to your own citizens to honor. Under the amoral framing you should do as much as you can get away with to grind your geopolitical rival to powder and let him bleed the flower of his youth white, balanced against not risking your own people’s well being and security too much because ultimately you live in a “me first” world.
And either way, we are quite a ways off from Ukraine wanting to give up, or the war risking American security or prosperity very much.
Also very corrupt! Doesn’t negate my point
Don't feed the trolls, just block and move on.
You can go to datasecretslox or the motte but you'll run into the same kinda issue, just from the other side. This is just kinda the way internet discourse goes, unfortunately. I'd estimate I only see about 40-60% of posts on the open threads, since the quality posts are increasingly rare.
Alternatively, if you're a paid subscriber, the quality of discourse on the hidden open threads is substantially higher. Just post stuff there.
Being able to discuss things often ends in being told you're wrong when you have the minority view. Discussions often include the phrase, 'you're wrong'. Doesn't mean you're not discussing it. It sounds like you just want more support for your opinion, which a discussion does not guarantee.
I'm an American, and I'm not furious with Zelensky, I rather admire him. Ukraine is the new Israel (plucky underdog surviving against long odds).
I find it interesting that my throwaway line about Israel produced all these comments, but my admiration for Zelensky hasn't generated anything. Hmm.
Israel was never a plucky underdog surviving against long odds except in the fevered colonial dreams of Israel's state-funded K12 education and foreign-targeted Hasbara.
What do you imagine the odds were in 1948? Put a number on it, and explain.
Something I'm confused about, culturally, is when I spend time in pro Palestinian spaces they act reasonably sure Israel can be destroyed, by international pressure, violence, poor economy, etc. and then when I look at historical speeches it feels like the Arab world multiple times felt confident in trying to unite and get rid of it, and then just....didn't reflect on what must have been a surprise when they repeatedly failed.
Do you know what is up with that?
It feels like the Jews, Palestinians, and Arabs I know, or observe in public spaces, all think Israel can be destroyed and it's a weird consensus.
It's a sign that they have given up on negotiating with Israel because of what they perceive as bad faith on the part of Israel in previous rounds of negotiations.
I think it's just taking time for people to internalize the new strategic picture. The War of Independence and the Yom Kippur War were both plausibly winnable for the Arabs, and 1973 is still in living memory. (And not, like, in a few really old people's memories, in the memories of the people who are currently running these countries.)
The picture has changed significantly now, but when you fight three battles for survival it takes you a while to unlearn the "us against the world" framing.
Whats everyones thoughts on the evil far right party of germany?
They're evil?
They basically have two factions: a conservative/libertarian-ish "deregulate, go back to fossil fuel, climate change is BS, lower taxes" wing and a nationalist "throw out all the foreigners (preferably those with a German passport too), and all will be well" wing. The latter is rabidly xenophobic and spends way too much time whitewashing Hitler.
AFAICT, both wings would weaken Germany's ties to the EU and NATO and gladly align the country with Russia. Seeing how, in a multipolar world, close European collaboration is the only chance to not get gobbled up piece by piece by imperialist powers, I essentially see them as traitors (in addition to all the science denialism and Nazi shit), and if they come into power, we'd have war in Europe in 10 years max.
You believe the inter-racial lesbian will institute nazism?
She seems comfortable with having bona fide nazis in her party. Probably her heart isn't in the Nazi shit personally, but if they are her ticket to power, she doesn't care, she'll do "remigration". Edit: likewise, the Nazis probably probably aren't thrilled with her personal life, but as long as she's their ticket to power, they don't care. There'll be plenty of time to put her against the wall when they've won.
Do you really believe that a radical protest party needs a coherent program consistent with all of the positions held by its member to be considered harmful and evil? I mean, a few years ago, "do you really think Republicans are going to go along with aligning the US with Russia?" would have sounded like a reasonable objection...
> She seems comfortable with having bona fide nazis in her party.
Such as?, note I will have very high standards, they would have to be worse then me
> Do you really believe that a radical protest party needs a coherent program consistent with all of the positions held by its member to be considered harmful and evil?
If its your claim is that bad people are gaining power; what you believe is the most plausible outcome should be bad; or I dont really care.
Vague accusations of nazism is predictions of nazi policies; as a non-moderate it doesn't benefit me in anyway to let everyone maintain play pretend civility.
> I mean, a few years ago, "do you really think Republicans are going to go along with aligning the US with Russia?" would have sounded like a reasonable objection...
I don't think I would've made that argument; ending forever wars means being called a coward by the profiteers. While trump and bidens moves to end iraq got flak for different reasons that fundamentally happens Im not sure when I thought it was in the cards but trying to make a peace deal, being called a traitor is to be expected.
"Such as?" - most notably Björn Höcke, who loves to use rhetoric straight from the Nazis to invoke the German Volk being threatened by other races, including allusions to the 1000-year Reich and other NS slogans. He was convicted for using a forbidded NS slogan, and a court decided that he can be called a far-right extremist.
"Vague accusations of nazism is predictions of nazi policies" - there are Nazi-like policies that I think would likely be implemented, in particular the forceful expulsion of foreigners, and prosecution and harrassment of any group that can be construed as leftist. But, seeing what is going on in the US, I am totally not in a mood to FAFO and witness the full extent of what happens when a party that despises the liberal democracy that has served us so well for 80 years comes into power.
"trying to make a peace deal" - that's the spin you're trying to put on this? A "deal" would involve an outcome that both sides can live with, and that would involve supporting the weaker side so they have some leverage. Withdrawing support from Ukraine without any assurance from Russia is "trying to force a capitulation", not "trying to make a peace deal".
BTW, I will not continue this discussion, my patience for people like you is gone.
FWIW thank you for taking the time for the writeup. I don't follow German politics closely so it was useful to learn a few things about AFD.
shhh, youll scare off the people I want to hear how out of touch they are
Oh sorry. I missed the sarcasm. Comment deleted.
The claim that this was the first measles death in a decade becomes more tenuous when we look at the data. It depends on how you interpret the mortality data. And if we include deaths from subacute sclerosing panencephalitis (SSPE), there've been quite a few measles deaths in the past two decades. According to Vaxopedia, children who've had measles can develop SSPE between 6 to 8 years after having measles, and "children with SSPE develop progressive neurological symptoms, including memory loss, behavior changes, uncontrollable movements, and even seizures. As symptoms progress, they may become blind, develop stiff muscles, become unable to walk, and eventually deteriorate to a persistent vegetative state."
https://vaxopedia.org/2018/04/15/when-was-the-last-measles-death-in-the-united-states/?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
So what you're saying is, allowing measles to spread is so much worse than it looks at first glance?
Heck, yeah!
Your future self will thank you if you think twice about it. I feel like I've "made it" in many ways as a lawyer. After about twenty years in the profession I now own my own business, make a very decent living and I am no longer dealing with rat race-level stress every day. However, if I had my life to do it over again, I would definitely do something different than become a lawyer. It really sucks. Law school is okay, but being a new lawyer really, really sucks. Over the years, I've had many other young people ask me if I think they should go to law school, and I consistently tell them that it's a bad idea. Some of them don't listen to me, and the ones that I've kept in touch with regret their decision.
While I definitely made suoptimal career choices of my own, I have trouble really seeing how past-me could have reasonably done better. Which is to say, if I could reach back in time and give my 15, 18, 22 or 25 year-old self even a small amount of advice or information[1] he could plausibly use it to make much better choices. But none of the big mistakes were one re-think from turning out different. They stem from either things I didn't know about myself or things I didn't know about the world that would have required a non-trivial amount of work to discover, work which I wouldn't have just spontaneously gone out and done without having some hint that it would be valuable.
Side note: "go to law school and become a lawyer" is a common enough career path that it was certainly on my radar. I never seriously considered it because (for whatever reason) I already had the impression that it would be a stressful, miserable career.
[1] Even just stuff that was in-principle knowable at the time, not, like lottery numbers or stock picks.
Is the regret a function of work as a lawyer or of work as a lawyer in a setting that is miserable (e.g. big law firm 80h/week grind)?
I am asking because I know lawyers who are quite happy with their choices, but none of them took the big law route. They compromised on salary but worked on things that felt meaningful to them, and did so with a good work-life balance.
Hot take: looking from Europe’s perspective it’s weird to find that soon the EU may be more aligned with China then the US, at least basic research and some forms of international cooperation are supported by the Chinese.
Has Trump found a new way out of the Thucydides trap?
*taps forehead* Can't have an arms race between a hegemon and a rising power if you deliberately destroy your hegemony.
Maybe they can get in on the illegal wildlife trade too. EU birth rates are maybe a sign that there are too many tigers in the world, holding on to their potent vital essences. And wet markets - the world needs more of those.
Maybe a Three Gorges type dam, what should be flooded?
And maybe a campaign to empty the countryside of pointless people. Put ‘em in high rises with internet connections and suicide PSAs. Farewell the shire!
It seems like European kids might be better material for cram schools than American kids.
That, we can safely say, was never going to be America’s strong suit.
Honestly I agree, the internment camps and trading harvested organs are even worse, much worse than school shootings, and value-wise there is little common ground. But it may turn out a more reliable ally because of a common interest in economic growth through cooperation and balance in international power. Definitely not advocating for this, just testing a thought.
>But it may turn out a more reliable ally because of a common interest in economic growth through cooperation and balance in international power.
China does not seem to have a common interest in economic growth through cooperation. They put massive barriers on other countries doing business in China. Foreigners are barred from investing or owning business in China in the following sectors: breeding of animals or plants, fishing, mining for rare earths, mining for uranium, mining for tungsten, traditional medicine, tobacco, package delivery, news services, social science research, mapping, geological surveying, education, publishing, radio, film production or distribution, and artistic performance groups. Foreigners have strong restrictions on ownership of companies in the following sectors: nuclear power plant construction, air transportation, airport construction, water transportation, telecommunication, and medicine. They've also put significant tariffs on just about everybody, and have spent the last few decades deliberately overproducing in their manufacturing sector in order to cripple manufacturing sectors in other countries. This state sponsored overproduction is bad for economic growth (the manufacturing companies are on a knifes edge when it comes to profitability) but they do it anyway to maintain industrial power.
China also has a bad habit of reneging on agreements, particularly those involving trade. I don't see how its feasible to evaluate China as being a more reliable ally than the US when it comes to economic growth and cooperation.
Thanks, I now believe you’re right and this was my hopeful thinking
Probably better than shooting kids in school tbh
That would be cool if a relative disinterest in guns qua guns, were to flow this direction from China.
We’ll need Hollywood and hip-hop and bubba Wild West LARPers to fall in with that.
What will we binge watch?! Maybe China will give us those substitutes.
And if I thought we might all become Confucians, I’d probably sign up. Not sure that will be exported though. That’s their own secret sauce.
That reminds me of the Acoup blog post on the “status quo” coalition – if I remember correctly, the historical norm is that the weaker powers will tend to back the second strongest power against the strongest to create some form of balance… the steadfast alliance of European powers with the US since the 1990s is then an anomaly.
I think the naïve explanation is the best one – that nations genuinely believed that there were shared interests and values.
The Trump clique has made it clear that this time was over, so I suppose it’s balancing time again.
I am quite a fan of that particular post, and one thing that I'll note about it is that it is actually quite explicit in saying that the Status Quo Coalition does not *require* the U.S. The U.S. was instrumental in establishing it and nurturing it, but it's stability depends on geopolitical and economic truths that don't *stop* being true even if the leadership of the U.S. rejects them.
So I don't think this unfortunate shift in U.S. geopolitics is by itself going to herald a sudden and inevitable return to interstate anarchy. Rather, I think the remaining coalition members will try to draw closer to each other and continue to maintain the coalition. The basis of their relationship with China will stay largely the same: neither a coalition member or a reliable ally, but sometimes a useful partner in areas where interests happen to align (like trade). I think that's the category the U.S. is likely to end up in as well, unless the current shift actually turns it expansionist instead of merely isolationist (which I consider possible, but unlikely).
Now, how that ultimately plays out in the longer terms is less certain. As a citizen of a non-U.S. coalition member my hope is that "being in the coalition" and "maintaining egalitarian liberal-democratic norms" are big enough economic and political advantages that the U.S. just wanes in power and we end up with either a genuinely multipolar world or one with its economic and political center of gravity somewhere in Western Europe. And I think that's certainly a plausible way things could go. But a more troubling possibility is that there are enough other strong, geopolitical shocks in the next few years to just shake the remainder of the coalition apart. If that does happen, then yes, I think there's a decent chance of China emerging as a hegemon, simply because it's large enough and powerful enough and (seemingly, at least) internally united enough to try to step into the resulting power vacuum and assert its interests.
It does not, in principle, require US leadership. In practice, there is no one but the United States that *can* lead it, and that's unlikely to change in less than a generation. Europe will try to put something together, but it won't be the Status Quo Coalition, it will be the Please Don't Let The New World Order *Completely* Suck coalition. China may also try to put something together; if so it will be the Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere 2.0
It's not entirely clear to me that it needs single-country leadership, at least not most of the time. In cases of abnormal crisis--such as Russia attacking Ukraine[1]--having a leader helps coordinate decisive, (relatively) unified "off-script" action. But most of the time all the coalition requires of its members is to play reasonably nice with each other and to support each other against clear acts of external aggression. The coalition works in the first place because all that turns out to be fairly plainly in everyone's best interests. It turns out that a Western Europe where some combination of France, Germany and Britain *aren't* going to war with one another (and often drawing their neighbors in) every few decades is a much nicer place to live than a Western Europe where they are. Who knew?
"China may also try to put something together; if so it will be the Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere 2.0"
This is a real concern. If the U.S. does start to go full-isolationist, I think the biggest potential point of disruption is the collection of relatively prosperous, democratic countries that are located right near China: Taiwan, South Korea and Japan. All of them currently rely significantly on the U.S. for defense, and none of them have the same geographic importance to Western Europe that Ukraine does, so it's more likely that China would be able to push them around absent U.S. protection. But it's hard to guess what that would mean in real terms (other than the real possibility of China invading Taiwan).
[1] Not a coalition member, but a state that might aspire to be, and plainly closer and friendlier to the coalition than Russia.
From an American's perspective, it seems like a case of "Be careful what you wish for." Europe may end up better off in the long run, but an autonomous EU that pursues it's own agenda without regard to what the US thinks isn't going to be good for the US.
Link to Scott's post?
It's not one of Scott's, it's from the ACOUP blog by Brett Devereaux. Link is here:
https://acoup.blog/2023/07/07/collections-the-status-quo-coalition/
Doh! "ACOUP", of course.
Any lawyers in the ACX comments? I'm considering leaving my blue collar job to go to law school in my state and wondering about people's experiences practicing law
You're getting a lot of answers here from folks (reasonably) assuming you want to earn a JD and be a lawyer, however, keep in mind you can can earn a grad degree in law (MJur or MLS) that might be a better fit for your interests and career plans. You won't be able to take the bar or practice law but if you're regularly supporting the legal team or working in a law adjacent role it could be worth your while.
You mention you're in a blue collar job today. If you were, say, in the energy industry and spending a lot of time in your day job working with regulatory compliance a legal grad degree might be really valuable to you.
It's less expensive than a JD (fewer credit hours) and typically tailored to a specific industry or subject. You'll take less civil or criminal procedure and more contracts and corporate law and you'll typically have a lot of courses specific to the law of your focus area.
Do know though that it's still law school. It's a lot of work and you'd better be ready for a lot, and I mean a lot, of very challenging reading. (Challenging in the sense of watching paint dry would be more interesting.) I put in at least 15-20 hours per week per 3 hour course (less on the subjects where I already had professional experience, but not much less).
Thanks for the response. I work in treecare right now, so there's not much overlap between my work and the law.
You'd be surprised.
https://www.reddit.com/r/treelaw/
https://imgur.com/tree-law-png-TJbs0x2
Hey, if "Ace Ventura: Pet Detective" can be a cult classic movie that launches an A-list star's career, there's room for a story about Thomas Hvizdos, Arboreal Attorney.
Jon J's summary below is basically spot-on.
To add some flavor from my personal experience: I opted for law school because I didn't really have a career goal in mind after college. I went to a "T14" law school with some scholarship money. I learned a ton there and met lots of brilliant and wonderful people, but it was stressful and bad for my mental health, even as someone without dependents and with a pretty niche career goal in mind, and thus less investment than others in the hyper-competitive prestige-chasing aspects of the experience that can add lots of extra pressure for people. (I did attend during the COVID pandemic period, to be fair, which may have contributed to the misery.)
I was an average student and ended up at my current job at a large firm as a regulatory lawyer, which seems to be less intense than life as a litigator. Still, I've also found the large firm life stressful and soul-sucking and don't much enjoy the work I'm doing, and I intend to leave soon for other legal work outside of the large law firm world. That said, after 3 years on the job, I've paid off all my undergrad and law school loans with healthy savings to spare, with a good resume to rely on as I apply for a (hopefully) more personally rewarding legal job.
So my experience practicing law has been objectively good for my financial wellbeing and bad for my personal wellbeing, and that's with the benefits of the T14 school degree, relatively less stressful school experience, and relatively less stressful work experience. If you have the LSAT score and GPA to get into a great school, no strong attachment to a particular geographic location, and a few years to spare afterward to eat shit in return for lots of money, it's a pretty good ROI; if not, I'd think twice unless you really passionately want to practice law. As a caveat, this is all from a pretty narrow perspective, and I'm still quite new to the field and could still fall in love with some job I'd never have had a prayer of landing if not for my experience to date.
Thanks Sam. I hear over and over again that working in law can be tedious, "soul-sucking" and stressful. What makes it that way? I am far more interested in doing PI or government than working for a large law firm, and I'm hoping I might dodge some of the worst aspects of the job that way.
Elsewhere in this thread someone shared that "Don't Be a Lawyer" song, which mentions working "on a pharmaceutical company's merger with another pharmaceutical company" as the exemplar of boring legal work. I'm a health law specialist and in fact spend a lot of time working on pharma M&A. In practice, this means determining what licenses, policies, quality controls, etc. the other company should have, sending requests for that documentation, and reviewing hundreds of files looking for red flags. In the end, if the deal closes (not a given), a few rich people end up a little more rich. Best case, a cool medical product that might otherwise have died in the crib makes it to market because the acquiring/post-merger company could afford to take on more risk. If I could convince myself that my review of some files years earlier was crucial to that outcome and thus feel some sense of accomplishment, that'd be great, but I've never gotten there; I'm just doing it for money, like every other lawyer involved.
Other sexy projects I've worked on include reviewing promotional or distribution contracts to make sure my client's ass is covered, reviewing drug promo strategies for legal risk, and fighting over how big a discount healthcare providers are entitled to under various federal programs. Always with the end goal of saving or making more money for the client, and with my own productivity judged primarily by the sheer number of hours I billed for it all, which can be up to 60 hours in a bad week. My sense from friends in other practice areas is that it's pretty much the same game all around, just with different subject matter (antitrust, product liability, securities, etc.), and that I've actually been very lucky in how few bad weeks I've experienced and in how easy-going the partners I work with are, since they're mostly pleasant health law nerds rather than strung-out litigators or transaction managers.
Again, that's all BigLaw, and just the price you have to pay for a $215k starting salary. My friends in government and public interest generally seem happier with their day-to-days, and their work seems much more rewarding to me; the few pro bono projects I've worked on alongside legal nonprofits are the main reason I want to leave and do such work full-time. In government, the money is much worse but the hours are much better, unless you're a public defender, in which case the money is much worse and the hours are just as bad. In PI the money is worse but I'm not sure about the hours, I suspect it varies based on the org's mission and individual projects.
If you're sure you want to do PI and expect to have debt if you do opt for law school, I'd suggest looking into loan forgiveness programs. I'm not sure about the status of federal programs these days, but many states offer significant debt relief if you commit to work in PI for a certain period of time after graduating.
Again to caveat, this is just my experience and I'm pretty new to the field still, but I hope this is helpful. And feel free to reach out if you have other questions.
Thanks for the insight, it's much appreciated. $215k is an eye-popping amount to me at present--the idea of doing a few years in the mines to build up savings sounds somewhat appealing. Even looking at graduates from the U of M who go into government work, their starting is about 10k higher than my current pay, which seems appealing (yes, debt, but also probably a higher ceiling on pay). Thanks for responding, that was helpful.
Your future self will thank you if you think twice about it. I feel like I've "made it" in many ways as a lawyer. After about twenty years in the profession I now own my own business, make a very decent living and I am no longer dealing with rat race-level stress every day. However, if I had my life to do it over again, I would definitely do something different than become a lawyer. It really sucks. Law school is okay, but being a new lawyer really, really sucks. Over the years, I've had many other young people ask me if I think they should go to law school, and I consistently tell them that it's a bad idea. Some of them don't listen to me, and the ones that I've kept in touch with regret their decision.
Thanks Jeff. What sucks about being a new lawyer? I'm hoping to get a sense in advance if it's something I could handle or if I'm likely to wash out.
There was another very helpful comment on this post talking about the bi-modal distribution of salaries for new attorneys, with the higher earning cluster of new attorneys getting jobs at Biglaw and the lower earning cluster who end up either with public-sector jobs or similar paying jobs at smaller law firms; both of these tracks suck although for different reasons. The Biglaw jobs pay well, but they will require you to work long hours and be available on nights and weekends working on mind-numbing projects at an office with no work/life balance at all. People in this track tend to burn out very quickly. I've known many people who went through that track - most of them leave in less than five years. I, personally, did not seek out Biglaw jobs and was therefore stuck in the lower earning cluster of new attorneys. It was a rat race, the jobs were generally very stressful, and while I did not have to work as much as a Biglaw attorney my salary starting out was roughly the same as a schoolteacher and my public sector job required me to work probably 60 to 80 hours per week. Private attorneys and prosecutors that I was friends with, had roughly the same experience. Entry-level prosecutors would have lower salaries than the police officers who would testify in their cases, while having to pay off $150,000 in student loans and still work longer hours without any overtime credit, et cetera. It is possible to hang your own shingle and make better money, but most newer attorneys don't have the gumption for that and it is very hard to develop your own book of business. It's hard to break into a higher salary. It takes years of hard work, luck and developing a name for yourself which takes time. Many new attorneys find out the hard way that they hate the profession, and nothing is worse than taking out a $150,000 school loan for three years to only come to that realization.
Thanks Jeff. Appreciate the insight, that was helpful.
I was told not to go to law school. We're all told not to go to law school. Yet we go. And then we warn others, and yet they go. Law school is a Cassandra machine.
Make sure you really really want to do it before you put yourself through law school and enter the profession. I am currently a lawyer and probably would have made a different decision if I had known more going into it. There is a reason why lawyers have substance abuse rates at roughly twice that of the population as a whole. In addition, law school itself can be very challenging on people's mental health. If you do decide to go through with it, make sure you've got a good support system.
Thanks for the response, Andrew. Why would you have made a different decision in hindsight? What about your job do you dislike? I'm trying to get a better sense of what it's like to actually practice so I don't get through law school and realize I don't actually like practicing law.
This is an area of personal interest for me. Apologies for the novel.
Jon J. has good advice.
I'd supplement with (a) a little data, and (b) the caveat that a lot of this data is very much law school propaganda, and should be viewed and interpreted as such. The biggest guidance I'd offer is to be very, *very* careful about how much money you are willing to borrow. Law school is a big-ticket item, and I know of a couple people who have wound up trying to figure out how to pay six figure student loan debts with sub-$75k salaries. That's very much not where you want to be.
Specific things to be aware of:
(1) Law school salary distribution curve is *bimodal*, not a normal distribution (https://www.nalp.org/salarydistrib). Don't take "median" or "average" graduate salaries at face value. Law school graduate salaries aren't a normal bell curve clustered around the median - it's a double-humped camel, with one cluster of salaries at the high end (people getting "big law" 500-lawyer firm jobs), and a second hump of salaries (people in clerkships, government work, nonprofits, etc) at the low-end. This means that if you take out student loans on the assumption that you'll make around the median salary, you could have a very bad time if you end up in the lower hump.
(2) Also be aware that big jobs in that right-hand hump are not evenly spread out across all schools. Big law firms pull from top programs, so outcomes vary a lot from school to school. I don't have the full bimodal 2-hump camel for, say, Stanford (top school) vs William & Mary (mid-ranked school) vs New England School of Law (low ranked school), but LawHub's Law School Transparency tool lets you quick-compare a couple of things even without an account (https://app.lawhub.org/compare/stanford-vs-newengland-vs-wm).
Stanford Median Reported Salary - $153,149
W&M Median Reported Salary - $70,191
NE SoL Reported Salary - $55,545
Since we know from #1 that the actual salary distribution for the field is bimodal, this means that Stanford is putting a lot more of its graduates into the big money jobs on the right hand side of the graph in #1. Relatively few people from W&M (and vanishingly few, if any NE SoL) are landing those jobs. If you go to W&M, you likely need to be in the top 5% of your class to actually land one of those jobs. Keep those odds in mind when deciding how much you're willing to borrow.
(3) Also keep in mind that the numbers you'll see in the curve above, as well as the numbers you'll see from all the schools, are the *reported* salaries. These statistics are compiled each year by surveying last year's class on whether they are employed, whether they had to pass the bar for their current job (i.e. "are you actually practicing law"), how much money they are making, etc. I'm sure you will be unsurprised to learn that people who have succeeded are disproportionately more likely to answer such a survey, so downgrade your assumptions about the real figures accordingly. If possible, try to find what % of the students for your school reported (I think that data may be available with a lawhub account https://app.lawhub.org/law-school-transparency, but not sure), and if you see a "median reported salary" of $80,000 for a school you are looking at, but 25% of last year's class did not report their salary, assume the figure is actually lower than advertised. Likely much lower.
(4) Lastly, be aware that the schools also know that they are competing on these numbers, and just because they are part of a university does not by any means make them scrupulous or honest actors. They are constantly making all kinds of efforts to game the system. Outdated, but interesting reads on some of the old tricks from the early 2010s can be found at the now-defunct https://insidethelawschoolscam.blogspot.com/. For example it used to be common practice, and may still be for all I know, for a law school to make "post-graduation research fellowships" available to recent grads - paid positions with the school that lasted for a year after graduation (i.e. right up until just *after* the employment statistics snapshot). This bolstered the school's "% of students reporting legal employment 1 year after graduation" figures, because the students in question were, technically, employed at the time the data are gathered. But it's ultimately a shell game - those aren't true success cases, they're people who otherwise hadn't found work, which the school effectively hired itself in order to pad its own employment outcome statistics.
Bottom line strong recommendation - study like you want a job in the top hump of the bimodal curve, but *borrow* like you know you're going to to land in the lower hump, especially if you aren't going to one of Jon J's T14 schools. And don't overlook part-time programs as an option; it doesn't change the name on your degree, and it enables you to have *earned income* during school, which can make the difference between $50k of manageable debt and a $150k albatross.
Thanks for the comment. I was definitely assuming the median salary would be what I could expect, so that's useful. If I went I'd be taking around $60k in debt, which feels like a lot, and potentially over the line.
I'm a lawyer. I practiced law for a few years, in a large law firm in DC. While I learned a lot of interesting things (about, e.g., antitrust law and administrative law), I also reacted poorly to the pressure and generally hated my life for those years.
I left that world 10 years ago to become a law clerk to a few different judges and now I'm at a state treasury department. For many years, I also taught legal writing as an adjunct at a local law college.
It's useful to understand how your career options are constrained by your credentials (primarily LSAT score and undergraduate GPA), your law school, and where you wish to live, as well as how you actually perform in law school, which can be hard to anticipate.
* If your LSAT+GPA are great, then you can get into a T14 (top 14) school, and if you do well there, you can get a coveted job in "biglaw" (where you will learn a lot of things and possibly react poorly to the pressure and generally hate your life).
* If your LSAT+GPA are good, you can go to a top regional school (maybe with generous financial incentives) and then work for a top regional firm or state/local government.
* If your LSAT+GPA are mediocre, you should come up with another plan; but if you're committed to law, some regional school will accept you and cash your checks, and hopefully you are a strong enough student to graduate and then a diligent enough test-taker to pass the bar exam and then a good enough interviewer to get a job.
* If your LSAT+GPA are poor, then don't go. You will waste a lot of money and time and feel really terrible about yourself. That said, if your rich lawyer uncle is paying for it and plans to give you a job at his successful local firm, then the only risk is that you hate being a lawyer (which isn't a small risk).
Feel free to reach out if you have other questions.
Sent you a PM. Thanks!
That’s an excellent synopsis
Not a lawyer, but my understanding from actual lawyers is that this song is HIGHLY accurate:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xs-UEqJ85KE
(It's funny all the way through, but the "actual lawyers begin laughing in desperate recognition" details begin at 1:14)
The only happy lawyer I've ever met worked in inheritance/estate planning law. It seems like a great niche -- your clients are people who have far too much money and are just looking for a tax-effective way to dispose of it, and they're not particularly sensitive to how much of that money might disappear into the lawyer's pocket during the process.
I do like the way the 'pharmaceutical company working on a merger with another pharmaceutical company' breaks the rhythm of the song to show how boring it is.
From what I understand you have to go to a top 14 law school AND go work for a big law firm doing things idealistic people don't like, or get stuck with a huge amount of debt. And most of them hate their lives. But given how hard it is to make a living these days, unhappy and rich may be better than unhappy and poor.
If he's in a skilled trade, he actually has a good chance of making more than a lawyer would, I think. No money going into law school, far less vulnerability to AI taking his job, super high demand. If he doesn't totally loathe the particular job and can make it more intellectually engaging with additional training or certifications, or starting his own business, that's the route to go in 2025, methinks.
The times are changing.
Unfortunately I'd probably make more as a lawyer. I'm in arboriculture, which pays middle class money if you're experienced, but probably realistically tops out at 70-75k a year. I tried starting a business this past summer and found out I don't have the stomach for it, which is part of the reason I'm now reconsidering law school
Got it. In that case, do read over the comments by lawyers here. As was mentioned in a couple of places, a lot of applications of a law degree don't pay even as well as $70k a year. Plunging tens of thousands of dollars of education into schooling before potentially never making much more than you are now isn't a great idea.
Not to mention the general consensus that a lot of law jobs are going to be gobbled up by AI. Research and legal writing are exactly the kind of knowledge work LLMs are going to eventually be suited for.
And it's not like government work is stable these days.
What was it about starting a business that you didn't like?
Yeah. The school I'm going to has good outcomes financially. Even if I went into government I'd have a good chance of starting at 10k more than I'm making now.
Do you have a source for the AI comment? I'm skeptical that AI is going to be good enough to take over most jobs, and law especially is going to need a human in the loop.
That's a good point.
Good to hear. I always thought the PMC's monopoly on the good jobs was a bit unfair.
I recommend considering cost when applying. You can come out with a lot less debt if you go to a school that costs less money. T14 actually doesn't mean much. If you're good enough to get into T14 but not good enough to do well at a lower school then it makes sense but that's a small niche.
Why is the National Debt a problem? I see various people talking about different courses of action the sitting Presidential administration could take, and much of the discussion includes reducing the National Debt. I understand why lots of debt would be bad for me, but why is it bad for the US? I also see some people saying that it's a critical problem, and that it might destroy the country in ~5 years, but other people seem to not worry about it. If it's a problem, how bad is the problem?
It’s not a problem if it’s sustainable in the long term, so if GDP grows together with it and the ratio stays in check. At any rate it’s denominated in the US’s own currency, so if needed it can be eroded via inflation.
Eroding via inflation or a monetised default is not just something you can simply do. Not will only will inflation harm domestic consumers, any kind of monetised default would rattle bond markets. The Directory tried this pre Napoleon I believe and it did not end well...
Keeping inflation at 4% rather than say 2% for a decade or so may harm consumers to a point but it does not seem to be outright terrible, while it can affect the long term dynamics of debt/gdp ratio.
Maybe. But that would be a 48% increase in prices over 10 years versus 22%. I think recent experience tells us that democratic societies punish incumbents during inflationary periods like this.
You are also going to raise the cost of issuing new debt, as bond markets will want a higher yield.
Sure, but my point is that the whole thing is more nuanced than “debt bad”. It’s how you manage debt and what you do with it long term that matters.
Supposedly, the deficits can cause inflation. But Kevin Drum put up a post that shows that there's almost no correlation between the deficit and inflation.
https://jabberwocking.com/do-budget-deficits-cause-inflation/
Why not cut taxes to zero then?
Or, if you're really worried about the deficit, increase the top marginal federal income tax rate to 91%—which it was in 1960. This rate applied to the highest income earners and was equivalent to about $2 million today, adjusted for inflation. Of course, few taxpayers actually paid the full 91% due to the deductions and exemptions available under the tax code of the time. But the US economy was booming, inflation was low, and interest rates were lower than they were today.
Eventually all people work for something, while its easy to promise an amazing retirement for government workers in a 4 year election cycle, or the bond market for a bridge or war; either you feed them or you dont when they actually retire.
The bullshit is to much to actually untangle but either resources young people make go to old people "playing the long game" or the great pillowing happens; or more likely something inbetween.
A lot of people talk about hyperinflation in 5 years and they should be ignored, but debt does need to be paid or bad things happen.
I’m older and people have been talking about the unsustainable nature of Social Security and the National Debt since I was a child, literally. Nobody does anything about it and I don’t expect anyone will until there’s no other choice.
Note that the top priority for Congress is preserving and possibly expanding the Trump tax cuts.
My understanding is that mostly, it is not. "The national debt is a problem" is a rhetorical bludgeon politicians use to push for various unpopular policies, and just as quickly abandoned when it becomes inconvenient[1]. See, for example, the current proposed U.S. federal budget.
My understanding is that poor management of the entire system--U.S. debt, federal budget, taxation rates and borrowing--can have various bad effects on the U.S. economy like high inflation (bad), deflation (very bad), poor allocation of resources and reduced incentives to invest. But that the individual debt and deficit numbers (which is what a lot of the hawks fixate on) don't mean all that much without context. But I'm not an economist, so take all of the above with a few grains of salt.
[1] Which like all such positions of convenience does still end up with its share of True Believers. They just don't ever seem to be the ones calling the shots.
I may abandon the view that my weight is a problem whenever I see a cookie, but it doesn't follow that my weight isn't a problem.
Passing a federal budget is a considerably more extended, drawn-out and complicated procedure than having a cookie. I genuinely don't think that the "revealed preference" theory is a great way to model impulsive humans moment-to-moment. But when you're talking about a political agenda that needs extensive coordination from a large number of people over an extended period of time, "they totally abandon 'fiscal responsibility' whenever they get into power" seems like a pretty undeniable revealed preference at the group level.
To be clear, I'm not resisting the conclusion that lawmakers don't really think the debt is a problem-- only the further conslusion that it really isn't a problem.
Fair. I think the reductio ad absurdum of "there is no set of policies around the national debt that will cause problems" is plainly false. But usually when people say things like "the debt is a problem" they seem to be holding some view rather stronger than believing the above reductio is false.
The issue I have is that what the underlying stronger view *is*, it usually goes unstated: IMO it's very uncommon to see debt hawks making specific predictions about what particular level (or rate of increase) of national debt will lead to which particular bad effects. So in practice, even the sincere belief that "the debt is a problem" usually just serves as the same rhetorical bludgeon: it's used to generically argue against programs and policies the holder doesn't like, while not offering up a framework to navigate the tradeoffs.
What context would give concrete meaning to the national debt number as it is today? I don't have any way to evaluate whether or not a dollar cut from a program and used to pay down the national debt is a rational allocation.
I’m no expert but the debt isn’t really the problem, it’s the interest on the debt. Debt is a store of value. GDP - despite being called the wealth of the nation -isn’t a store but it is an income flow. The payment on the debt is financed by the tax take. So that’s what you need to compare.r
The obvious problem is the US is now paying about a trillion dollars a year in interest payments on the debt. That's more than it spends on the military.
Maybe the question could be phrased in an alternative way: If debt is not a problem, then why should the US collect taxes at all? Why not just run the entire government by borrowing?
I'd be interested to see other people's views on that. You'd end up with a spiral of interest payments, but maybe that's not a problem - you can just borrow more. The real problem is the country would become beholden to the bond holders. If they refuse to lend any more money because they stop believing the government can pay them back, then suddenly the US government would be unable to fund itself. At some point, then, the government might be forced to raise taxes in order to pay back all the money it has borrowed.
"The obvious problem is the US is now paying about a trillion dollars a year in interest payments on the debt."
You have no idea how depressing it is to be old enough that figures like a "trillion" were mainly encountered in SF stories talking about how ginormous the universe was, with galaxies being a trillion miles away. But you'd never expect to see it used in real life in any context affecting society or the economy.
And now it's just another figure on a balance sheet.
In the movie Austin Powers (1997), Dr. Evil is frozen in 1967 and reanimated 30 years later. He subsequently devises an evil plan to blackmail the world for 1 million dollars. When he's informed that 1 million dollars is not a lot of money in 1997, he changes the amount to 100 billion, which was a lot back then.
You can probably play the same joke in 2027, but with 100B as the initial, ludicrously small amount.
The real problem is that lenders face opportunity costs when lending to the US government. Instead of buying treasury bonds, they could buy bonds from other governments, or corporate bonds, or stocks, or real estate, or a new yacht, or bitcoin, or rare pokemon cards. The more you need to borrow, the harder it is to find enough potential lenders who want to buy more bonds, which drives up interest rates even before bondholders start worrying about your ability to pay them back.
The real interest rate on 10-year treasury bonds (nominal interest rate minus inflation) is currently around 2%, which is still pretty low compared to pre-2008 levels but trending upwards from the 2008-2022 norm of 0-1%. Which seems to point to running low on potential bondholders being either "not a problem (yet)" or "only just starting to be a little bit of a problem". Still, there's a limit out there somewhere.
The opportunity costs also have social impact, even if the government is able to find willing lenders. Or unwilling lenders, for that matter: "forced loans" are a thing historically, and even at present banking regulations nudge financial institutions strongly towards government bonds. From a money perspective, investors buying treasuries instead of stocks or corporate bonds means less private sector capital investment. And from a goods-and-services perspective, production bought by the government is production that isn't available to be bought by private buyers, regardless of whether the government gets the money by borrowing, taxing, or printing.
These two aspects of opportunity costs are what people mean when they talk about deficits causing inflation. I prefer the monetarist framing, where the direct cause of inflation is the central bank (or whoever controls monetary policy) printing more money or otherwise increasing the effective money supply too quickly. This can happen as intentional policy to support a government that is having trouble borrowing otherwise, or because they're trying to keep interest rates lower than they should be in a monetarily neutral environment.
The Keynesian framing is that government spending stimulates the economy by consuming production capacity, which leads to inflation once production capacity is saturated unless the stimulus is counteracted by contractionary effects of taxes or higher interest rates. The MMT framing is that it's spending that "prints" money while taxation takes money back out of circulation. Deficits thus represent an increase in the money supply which causes inflation unless the central bank raises interest rates to counteract the increase and/or pull money out of circulation through a different channel.
Thank you for the thoughtful response; I understand what you're saying about opportunity costs. Could you tell me: if I live and invest in the US, should I be scared of the national debt or ignore it? Will it ever cause problems if no one does anything to shrink it or stop it from growing? My inference based on what you said is that it must necessarily lead to either higher taxes or to bond yields so high no one invests in anything else, both of which sound quite bad.
I'd say be concerned but not scared. At current levels, it's probably a bit of a drag on long-term economic growth, but not cripplingly so. At some point, it is likely to get worse unless it's dealt with through some combination of tax increase and spending cuts, but this is much more likely to be a gradual escalation than a sudden crisis. And as the pain of doing nothing increases, politicians become more likely to bite the bullet and make fiscal changes.
I can imagine that the "bite the bullet" pain gets worse as the debt goes up. Is there any reason why it's not better to do something (not necessarily what's being done now, just anything consequential) now as opposed to later?
A lot of it is political. The hard part is getting a majority for a specific set of policy changes to reduce the deficit, as voters and politicians generally tend to have things that they consider a higher priority than deficit reduction and these are different things for different political actors.
But leaving political difficulties aside, there are two plausible arguments I know of for delay. One is situational, when there's a temporary set of circumstances (war, plague, economic crisis, etc) that makes the short term opportunity cost of tax increase or spending cuts unusually high, and it can make sense to delay action until the circumstances have passed.
The other is gradualism, that fiscal changes (especially spending cuts) tend to be much less painful if phased in gradually. Give programs time to reach orderly stopping points so there's less half-finished work to abandon, give people dependent on a program time to find other options, and in many cases (particularly for big-ticket programs like Social Security and Medicare) you can "cut" them in fiscally meaningful terms by slowing the rate of spending growth. But phased-in changes are still more effective for a given pain level if you start the process sooner rather than later.
I think I follow mostly. I see the other commenter's point too. But aren't bonds definitionally an obligation to the bond holder? So being beholden to bond holders doesn't sound different from how things are now. Plus, there are lots of bond holders so it's not like they can all team up at a certain point, they should just lose confidence over time and so the bonds would have to pay more, right?
What type of timeline does this look like? Is there some threshold where the debt gets too big and everyone everywhere just says "nope, it's over"?
There is a doom loop that happens to other, lesser countries where the yield on bonds goes up, the government has trouble making payments and so defaults or inflates the currency to get out of the jam, which pushes bond yields up further until they’re basically junk.
The United States has the world’s reserve currency so unless we fumble the ball really extremely badly, we don’t have to worry so much about that.
The general view is that you're entering dangerous ground once your debt is larger than GDP. This is not a hard-and-fast rule though: Japan is very far past this threshold and no one is very worried about them (perhaps on account of their very high level of private saving).
That view has no basis in reality. It came about from an infamous Rogoff et.al. paper that made this very argument, seemingly supported by solid data.
Only it came out that they messed up their spreadsheet. Oppsie, happens to the best of us, I've done my share. Once the calculations were corrected, the supposed danger zone disappeared.
Identifying the boundary of the danger zone would be an easy thing to get wrong. But denying there's a danger zone at all is the province of cranks.
I don't think there's a specific "danger zone" that is a certain percentage of the GDP. It depends really on what the debt is used for, how fast the economy is growing, etc. etc.
US bonds are "money", in a slightly less way than "bills" and "notes" are. Fundamentally there's little difference between "USD" and "US Treasury note". They all contribute to the overall quantity of money in the economy, and dwarfed by the money created by banks.
The reason to collect taxes is to control inflation. One of the stupidest things MMT proponents did was, having a fundamentally correct view of how a fiat currency-based monetary sovereign state works, making a correct prediction that excessive government spending unsupported by production will cause inflation, and the way to combat such inflation is to increase taxes - and then disavow their own predictions because Biden was good, or something.
"and then disavow their own predictions because Biden was good, or something. "
Could you provide some context for this part? I seem to have missed it.
This is a good summary: https://www.pragcap.com/mmt-failed-its-first-big-inflation-test/
OK, so the real, obvious problem I have with this frame is that it seems to take it as given that the post-COVID inflation was primarily a result of monetary policy failures. Which seems straight-up wrong to me. Many different countries experienced similar inflation at similar times, and there was a fairly obvious explanation for why that ought to be true. I've never really dug into the weeds of the issue, but "bad monetary policy caused the post-COVID inflation" seems pretty clearly false and "better monetary policy could have prevented it" seems highly dubious.
None of that means that the Biden administration's policies were optimal, but it means it's pretty hard to gauge how far from optimal they were judging by this one anomalous inflation event alone. This line particularly stands out:
"They didn’t predict the current high inflation, consistently said it would be transitory and have had no countercyclical response to combat it now that it’s here (despite claiming tax hikes are the right way to beat down inflation). "
The piece was written in 2022. Google tells me the U.S. experienced 2.6% inflation in 2024. Which is to say that the high inflation WAS transitory. Either the policies purported to combat it worked, or (at worst) they were insufficiently bad to prolong it very much.
You're engaged in a good discussion with Rothwed; I'll just reiterate two quick points:
- US exports its inflation worldwide due to the reserve currency advantage (Trump is working hard to erode this advantage, how many fucking ways is he going to find to stress-test this country!)
It was not monetary policy but fiscal policy that contributed to post-Covid inflation; anther key factor was productivity disruption. You rarely get inflation without productivity disruption.
Transitory inflation means the price increases are temporary and not caused by an increase in the money supply. The covid inflation fails this metric on both counts. The stimulus flooded the economy with a lot of new money. And the price increases were baked in even though the rate of inflation eventually went back down. Though I have to point out that when the target rate for something is 2%, hitting 2.6% isn't exactly low either.
I thought the MMT prediction was "funding government by borrowing won't cause inflation, and even if it does you can just start collecting taxes again." To which the mainstream's rejoinder was "it will, and you'll have to."
Yeah I think it's a good summary.
Related to that, I think I've heard that MMT is being misunderstood and misapplied by people who support continued deficit spending on policy grounds. Like the Laffer Curve, it's a useful theoretical construct that if oversimplified and viewed through a lens of motivated reasoning can sound like it says that your preferred policies are effectively free.
The nailing-jello-to-a-wall factor does seem to be pretty high for MMT. https://www.themoneyillusion.com/mmt-explained/
If Trump stays to this tariff course and it destroys U.S. wealth and you are pro-Trump, how much U.S. wealth-destruction will you tolerate before you become anti-Trump? How many points of real GDP are you willing to lose over the next 4 years?
If you don't believe tariffs will destroy U.S. wealth irrevocably, fair enough. I'm only asking those who believe it could or are willing to acknowledge it did should it happen.
I wouldn't fancy trying to put a specific number on it, but the point where I become anti-Trump is somewhere near where his economic policies become as bad as those favored by the people who are already anti-Trump. The tariffs are a sizable step in that direction but I don't think they get us all the way there.
GDP grew 2.7% under Biden last year, and it's currently forecast to *decrease* under Trump's tariffs, so it sounds like we're all the way there and then some. Is there some other metric you're using?
Trying to tie every wiggle in the growth rate to a specific policy change is a mug's game. I can't call to mind anything Obama was doing wrong in 2009 that he wasn't also doing in 2015; the people I've seen predicting a contraction this year were already predicting it before the tariffs were announced.
I thought anti-Trumpers were a coalition of economic left-wingers, right-wingers and centrists who loathe Trump because of his character. Pro-Trumpers are mostly those who "just want to barbecue" but don't tend to have strong economic policy preferences other than "not far left".
Very well, change "favored by the people who are already anti-Trump" to "favored by the people who'd be setting policy if the anti-Trumpers had their way". I'd love to believe that everyone's gotten a new appreciation of the deadweight loss from taxation but I suspect that, for most, this battlefield conversion will last only as long as they need a stick to beat Trump with.
Probably about a 1% fall in real S&P 500 returns. Which is usually snowballed at 7%, so down to 6% before I would panic. This (1) is about as close as I can find to accurate inflation-adjusted returns (big gains since 2023 but also inflation so weird). It's slightly more than doubled since 2015, which indicates like a 7-7.5% real return. Markets tank at every little thing though but after 4 years, ie next election, we should have enough data to make an informed decision.
Economic growth is really important but the domestic turmoil and wealth inequality are...pretty serious and probably justify slightly slower, fairer growth. And jobs>welfare. But a bigger fall than that indicates a serious problem in the economy, not just a rebalancing.
(1) https://www.gurufocus.com/economic_indicators/5860/inflation-adjusted-sp-500-index-price
I don't consider GDP to be a legitimate decision node. Making GDP your basis for decision making is like looking only at a stock's historical returns to decide if it's a good investment. If the consequence of the various efforts to rehome manufacturing defragilizes the economy, that's a win. What would the GDP be if there had never been mass offshoring of critical-in-a-crisis capabilities? If such a number could be determined, then I'd say reverting (probably regressing, though potentially ascending) to that is the expected outcome modulo sequence of returns. If GDP pukes for a few quarters but supply chains are made more resilient, that seems fine.
It would be nice if Trump was working to re-shore manufacturing. If you think tariffs, which are directly impacting manufacturing costs, are going to do this, there's a bridge in Brooklyn for sale, too.
Trump is killing CHIPS act, too. I can't tell you how fucking idiotic this is. Unless the goal is to make Xi happy. Is it?
Tariffs are bad but killing CHIPS is good, and for the same reason.
Why killing the CHIPS act is good? It was helping to finance new semi fabs, which take years and billions of USD to get going.
They should have gotten it from private banks.
If you say "private banks would not have lent them the money," that tells you it's not economically efficient.
No, it's not economically efficient, that's the whole bloody point! The economically efficient thing to do is to go to TSMC and buy wafers from them, until there's an earthquake or a Chinese invasion. Then we're left holding our collective di... never mind.
This is a national security and resilience concern. Economic efficiency caused this to happen in the 90's, we lost our fabs because it was cheaper to offshore them. Free markets are great but not when non-monetary considerations have to be taken into account.
I don't follow. If it's more expensive to ship goods in from across the border than it is to make them inside the border, why wouldn't manufacturers try and make them inside the borders? Maybe not all manufacturers could afford to do that but it seems like most would just have to eat the cost.
I'll give you an example: say I'm running a metal fabrication shop in Ohio. I import some steel and aluminum, both because the US just doesn't make enough, and because sometimes it doesn't make a specific grade (do you know the difference, for example, between 6061, 6063, 7075, etc. aluminum alloys? - manufacturing is full of this kind of arcane stuff).
Well, now starting tomorrow your inputs are 25% more expensive. You can try passing the cost to your customers, which directly contributes to inflation and pisses the customer off. Or you can try to eat the cost, hoping Trump will relent and go out of business if he doesn't.
Bu wait, it gets better - some of you customers were outside of the US - shocking, I know, turns out we make stuff others want. Well, now your foreign competitors suddenly got a big leg up - they are not facing tariffs and can sell their products to your customer cheaper. Plus your foreign customers are just fucking mad at the US and rather not buy your stuff now.
So much winning!
I don't understand how this is different from the expected outcome. If the US doesn't make enough steel, there is now an incentive to make more steel. The only import to which this logic doesn't apply is raw materials totally unavailable in the US. Short time horizon price increases can be expected and are a price being paid to make the US domestic manufacturing base more robust.
Tariffs are sort of like unionized labor in that they benefit the targeted industry at the expense of everyone else. Steel producers in the US are outnumbered by steel consumers 80:1. So while a steel tariff is great for people in a steel factory, the other 79/80th of the economy ends up worse off. And in the long run the tariffs act to insulate the steel producers from foreign competition, which curtails the benefits gained from free market dynamics.
The problem is you just can't start "making enough steel" tomorrow. It takes years and huge investment. Then, once this steel is available, the manufacturers need time to qualify the new supplier. This is a big deal, and can take months.
I can't emphasize enough how insane this is, and clearly is promoted by people who have no idea about how actual modern manufacturing is run. This is not a jab at you personally, if your job doesn't involve manufacturing - how would you know? But the fucking morons in this government who promote this shit - they are the ones who supposed to know, or find people who know.
Tariffs can be constructed to help domestic manufacturing. The current clown car of an administration has no clue how to do this, and no interest in learning.
We will be left with a smaller, high-price, bespoke manufacturing industry. It will be "more resilient" in the sense that it has already experienced the catastrophe we are worried about- loss of access to markets outside the U.S. But it will be much smaller because demand will be much lower, with loss of foreign markets and higher prices
But he's putting tariffs also on *inputs* of American manufacturing, both raw materials (we can get a lot more of those within our borders than most countries, but not everything) and intermediates, meaning we have to re-shore the entire supply chain before a real price benefit appears. And retaliatory tariffs will cripple the few finished exports we have. Developing industries with tariffs alone is not something that has often worked either, historically.
I don't know of any historical correlate to the modern US/Global economy, do you have a specific example? I don't know much about what different things are and aren't subject to tariff, but I remember seeing one time that something was marked "made in japan" but was 99% manufactured in china and merely shipped to japan for a single irrelevant finishing step. I don't see how you could have both an accurate and precise tariff arrangement that excludes those things that are destined to be manufacturing inputs. Moreover, I think reshoring the entire supply chain is the idea, at least that's what I would consider to be necessary to accomplish the goal of making the US more "supply chain disruption resistant."
You don't want to have to re-shore the entire supply chain *at once* before cost savings to the consumer show up, this causes coordination problems that can be resolved, if at all, only by vertical trusts which are a problem in themselves.
As for how you actually do it, you identify the industries that are strategic in that they're single-sourced from "unreliable" countries, you encourage investment with tax preferences, R&D grants and/or matching funds and *maybe* you add tariffs on *that particular thing* if you're not going to be able to compete on cost otherwise. Rinse and repeat with the money you free up weaning the most strategic industries off the teat, until your supply chains are sufficiently robust. (Historically, it was better to also have patent exemptions for your key strategic industries, but *as if* weakening IP will ever fly in the States, even with a wild card like Trump.)
It's a category error. No amount of GDP growth is commensurate with the destruction of our democracy by an insane despot and his army of enablers.
I can't tell if you are talking about Joe Biden or Donald Trump
Joe Biden was merely ineffective, unpopular, too old, mind going foggy etc but he respected the foundations of our democracy and I suspect for the most part he was in it to see the USA succeed. Certainly he had bad enablers and lost the plot towards the end.
My point is, Trump (and his incomprehensible popularity) is just a thing of a different nature. I think it's something we have never dealt with before as a nation, though many others have and it's pretty clear how it might go in a dire direction. Grading it on how the GDP goes is, IMSHO as I said, a category error. Apples and oarnges. Not even wrong.
I can't tell if you know who the President is now.
Ok, for the record I think the comment is appropriate if he means Donald Trump is responsible for destroying democracy, but I was confused bc the original question was asking Trump supporters about their opinion
Oh, I see, it was confusing. Sorry about the misunderstanding.
Tariffs are basically a stupidly implemented tax. I don't like tax raises and I don't like tariffs either, both destroy wealth. I get using them as an art of the deal thing, but we already have a trade agreement with Mexico and Canada. That was negotiated by the Trump admin last time around. I rate the tariff policy as big stupid.
Should we also ask the opposite question? If you are anti-Trump then how much economic growth would it take for you to become pro-Trump?
As long as the trains run on time...
Im nervous about “out of distribution” risks to US state capacity under Trump so I’d probably reconsider at something similarly out out of distribution on the GDP side - maybe 15% off the top of my head? To be fair that’s conditional on him not also doing out of distribution stuff when it comes to cruelty, so the true number is likely higher.
All else equal, better than average for the 21st Century growth would cause me to seriously reconsider him. I've probably underrated him if that happens.
I'll bite. If the US had, like, 5% GDP growth for his entire term, I would be forced to admit that I was way wrong about a lot of things.
It doesn't look very good so far... https://www.atlantafed.org/cqer/research/gdpnow
Yeah, I don't expect this at all. (Although, also, it's been two months.)
*And it was actually partially attributable him and not incidental to AI boosting growth.
Another thing I'd be intensely surprised by.
A missing category of youtube video: bracelet scam baiting.
Most people will be familiar with the "bracelet scam" as practiced by Africans all over Europe, where they attempt to give tourists a "free" bracelet and then guilt them into paying for it. I've found loads of videos about "how to avoid the bracelet scam" (just ignore them, duh) but haven't found any videos where the intended victim simply gratefully accepts the bracelet and then wanders off.
If you're a bored youtuber in Europe, maybe with a couple of intimidating friends who can lurk nearby in case of escalation, I think this would make a great form of content. How many bracelets can you collect in one day?
I would imagine it works like any other scam after that point; once you ignore them for long enough they cut their losses and move onto the next victim. No use in pursuing you if you can't be shamed into buying it
I’ve run into it in the southern US and on the ferry to Victoria BC. The same grift. It was run by whites though. Maybe South Africans?
You ran into a white Southerner in the United States doing a bracelet scam?
Oklahoma City. It was another bauble,a prayer on a piece of paper, the same grift. Yes they were white.
Anyone interested in a resource coordinator/ops type position? Remote/hybrid options but preferably based near Chicago or Milwaukee. Supports an AI/MLE team of 30 in healthcare tech. Looking for high agency - mix of ops/PjM style work (approvals, reporting, org process improvement type stuff) with highly energetic team of mostly recent grads. Feel free to DM with questions.
Trump stopped military aid to ukraine / working to lift sanctions on russia
Wait until he starts military aid to Russia.
Or rather don't wait for it and take advantage of still living in a democracy and do something about it before it's too late.
Living in a democracy is what got us an elected President who likes Russia. If that outcome is so beyond the pale, well, as Chigurh says, "If the path you walked brought you to this, what good was the path"? Using democratic means seems like at best a bit of a double-edged sword.
Just a reminder that democracy doesn't end at the voting booth but also extends to freedom of mass gathering and public protest, when your elected government does something beyond the pale.
Whether or not he's actually an "asset" in a strict sense, all the support he's thrown Trump's way is easily the best foreign investment Putin ever made.
Well, I don't know about the great man theory of history, but we're certainly chalking up evidence for the great man-baby theory of history.
Always the plan
Yeah, that sounds like the man child would do after failure to kowtow. It’s true to form though.
After a disgraceful performance the only thing to do is double down. He was in danger of being eclipsed by Europe rallying around Ukraine.
Can’t lose that white hot spotlight.
Is Trump doing the right thing the wrong way? Because I'm seeing suddenly "oh all the new jobs in Belfast making missiles for Ukraine" and great, but why wasn't the UK doing this all along?
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c74knzk9x8zo
And of course already there is "why pay out this money for war when public services need it?" questions:
https://www.rte.ie/news/ulster/2025/0303/1499876-ukraine-missiles-belfast/
Because how does the war end? I don't see a way to come to an agreement under the current conditions:
(1) USA and EU stand up directly to Russia, we get into a shooting war, risk of nuclear exchange (very small but not zero). I don't think anyone wants that, which is why
(2) Continue drip-feed of funding and materiel to Ukraine supporting them as proxy, with the USA doing the bulk of the supplying. Matters can continue on as they are indefinitely, whether we date the start of the war to 2014 (as per Wikipedia) or 2022.
Maybe the EU *should* be taking up more of the slack as they seem to be doing now, given Trump's fall-out with Zelensky. Don't get me wrong, I think this very public blow-up was bad and unprofessional and every other criticism that can be made, but on the other hand... how long will Ukraine be coming (forced to come) with the begging bowl for dribs and drabs of aid? How long will the US be the life-support for them? How sustainable is this - do we want "Gaza in Eastern Europe"?
Maybe this *will* break the stalemate some way, at least it does seem to be motivating European leaders to do more and do it directly. I don't know how Putin will react. Maybe the only way to get him to the negotiating table is the perception that Trump will be more congenial to him. I don't know. I hope.
This might not be acting fully applicable analogy, but if one parent works hard to support a child while the other slacks off, i don't think it's responsible for the industrious parent to stop putting in the effort to force their partner's hand.
EDIT: Basically this entire paragraph is incorrect, see replies. I do still think we should, but there is no treaty compelling the US:
I do think the United States has a moral obligation to help Ukraine. We swore to defend their sovereignty in the 90s. Europe is paying less, but most of Europe made no such promises.
If this does end up having good consequences, I'll breathe a sigh of relief. But I'm not going to thank Trump because other people stepped in to carry the burden he shrugged away.
>I do think the United States has a moral obligation to help Ukraine. We swore to defend their sovereignty in the 90s.
We did not. We swore that we would not invade Ukraine, but we did not promise to protect them if someone else invaded. When the Budapest Memoranda were signed the US State Department made clear that they were promising a "security assurance", meaning that the US would not violate Ukraine's territorial integrity, and specifically stated that the US was not agreeing to a "security guarantee" which would mean militarily allying with Ukraine against a foreign aggressor.
The only action we committed to taking, in the case where Ukraine was invaded, was to "seek immediate United Nations Security Council action to provide assistance to Ukraine". Not direct aid or assistance from the US, mind you, just asking the UN to provide assistance.
You can find the full security agreement in Appendix II of this document: https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/05_trilateral_process_pifer.pdf
Looking at that, you are correct.
I'm gonna edit my post now, most of it has been rebutted.
Actually, I think Europe has been giving Ukraine more money, and that the US’s large advantage is in weapons production (or stocks – many of the weapons given were scheduled for destruction, at not-insignificant taxpayer cost).
It looks like you are right, thanks for the correction
The Ukraine war is not a stalemate in any sense. Russia is gaining territory, even though it may look small on a map of Ukraine because Ukraine is just so damn big; this slow advance can suddenly accelerate if and when they break through defensible geography. Weapon systems and tactics are rapidly evolving on both sides. Russia is slowly but noticably running out of Soviet military stock (see golf cart assaults, donkey logistics); when those stocks are depleted, Russia can only spend what their factories produce each month plus whatever her allies are willing to give up, which would put her in basically the same position as Ukraine is in already. The Russian economy is on full war footing and in a heavy stagflation; that cannot continue indefinitely (even in a loose sense of the word) without adverse outcomes on their war effort.
The war in Ukraine is winnable for both sides. Russia is winning the information war. But Ukraine has the will, and her allies the means, to win the physical war, the one that counts in the end.
A rate of advances that looks small on a map of the territory being fought over, is pretty much the definition of a stalemate. You're merely pointing out that stalemates don't last forever, and if they don't end with a negotiated settlement they tend to end with the collapse of one side's warfighting capability and subsequently rapid changes.
In which case, duh. But if you think it's obvious which side is going to collapse or when, you're probably overconfident.
The problem is that not all territory is created equal. An advance of 20km over 2000km depth does not sound like much, but if that allows you to capture a central logistics hubs or access to a wide open, indefensible plain, then those 20km are suddenly much more significant.
If you can spare the time, you could for example watch 10 minutes (minute 5-15) of this interview with an Austrian army colonel that regularly covers the Ukraine war on their official youtube channel. (auto-generated subtitles work well)
https://youtu.be/B45lD6ufEKI?si=xanPlI4NsSwWtxM8&t=340
I don't think it's obvious who's going to collapse. I'm just pointing out that Russia could be the one collapsing, contrary to people who fell for that bit of Russian propaganda. But it would take the will of Ukraine's allies to do it. On their own, Ukraine would probably fall.
The territory that has been changing hands in the past year or so, does not in fact allow the capture of any central logistics hub or access to a wide open indefensible plain. Also, it's not at all clear that wide-open plains are indefensible in this war.
I can read a map, and I've followed this war pretty closely. And no, I can't space the time to watch someone's youtube video even if it's someone I trust. Is there a written version of the argument somewhere?
Today: 3 million+ workers in Russian's military industry work three-shifts each day producing masses of new ammunition (with top-modern Western machinery, of course). And 1.3 million drones a day. Can`t find the quote, but Churchill supposedly said: In the first year of war, you have near nothing. In the second year: too little. In the third: some. From the 4th year: :D EU countries may never catch up. - Otoh: Ukraine is doing a million drones a year now, too. "They now cause about 70 percent of deaths and injuries, commanders say." https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/03/03/world/europe/ukraine-russia-war-drones-deaths.html?bezuggrd=NWL&utm_referrer=newsletter&utm_source=sondermailing
1.3 million a day? It says in that article they're making 4,000 a day.
I'm guessing that should be "per year": 4000 * 365 = 1.46 million, less some holidays and such gets you 1.3 million per year.
So far it's been tootling along for anywhere between three to ten years, depending when you want to put the start date, and no sign of any end reasonably soon. Russia slowly advances, Ukraine pushes back, gain here and loss there. I honestly don't see any reason why this can't grind on for another three to five years.
Relying on allies to win the physical war - and what kind of alliance, and what kind of allies? It really does seem like the US is bearing most of the burden, and I think that there wouldn't be the will in Europe to pay an increased share of military and financial aid - see the article about money now being spent to build missiles in Belfast for Ukraine, and the response by one politician (at least) that this money should be spent at home. I think in general European public opinion would swing towards "hold on, why is this X million/billion going to Ukraine when we have a housing crisis etc.?"
So if Russia can just grind it out long enough and hope that the soft Western European states lose their stomach for paying the bill, they may win. Which I don't think anyone wants, even in the US. But the problem remains - how to end this war? how to broker a peace deal? Has Trump broken deadlock by overturning the tables and forcing Zelensky and the EU to face the propect of the money tap being turned off?
I don't think this is the way to go about it, but it would be all kinds of ironic (and crazy) if this exact kind of foot-stamping tantrum was what it took to make an advance.
> It really does seem like the US is bearing most of the burden,
The US has been the single biggest donor of aid for sure, and it has provided capabilities that can't easily be replaced by Europe. But in terms of dollars they are not, compared to the rest of the world, meaning Europe in particular.
https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/articles/these-countries-have-committed-the-most-aid-to-ukraine
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1303432/total-bilateral-aid-to-ukraine/
>how to end this war?
By attrition, as brutal as that would be. Keep Russia from winning and keep Russia's costs for trying unsustainably high, until its economy or some other decisive factor such as popular/international support can no longer sustain the Russian war to the degree necessary for winning. Then, and only then, will Russia be ready for negotiations that are worth the name.
> Has Trump broken deadlock by overturning the tables and forcing Zelensky and the EU to face the propect of the money tap being turned off?
The "money tap"... are you really saying that Ukraine is trying to enrich itself through this war? Because I can think of few other measures that would do the opposite faster than large-scale, industrial warfare.
For the US, actually helping Ukraine win the war would have been the best investment since joining WW2. Reducing Russia to an appendage of China, a larger North Korea if you will, without losing a single US soldier and by getting rid of Cold War era equipment that was on the way to the scrap dealers anyway. Gaining battlefield intelligence on Russian, Chinese weapons and tactics, and on the effectiveness of their own. Strengthening the rules-based order that has benefited the US in particular very well the past 80 years. These are all benefits you can't easily measure in dollars but are very real.
>Which I don't think anyone wants, even in the US.
That remains to be seen. Trump is, if not a direct Russian asset, acting indistinguishably from one, and the end result is the same. If anything, he is so brazen about his support for Russia that you could argue that it would be TOO obvious for him to be her asset, so he probably isn't. And yet, everything he has said and done in regards to Ukraine the past few weeks has been to Russia's favour and to Ukraine's detriment. He has long been planning to cut off Ukraine and orchestrated last Friday's diplomatic disaster to get a minimally reasonable pretext for doing so. He has ordered to cease cyber operations against Russia, is "negotiating" with Russia over the heads of Ukraine and Europe, is looking to lift Russia sanctions, is at the same time pondering withdrawal from NATO and also denying Ukraine accession to same, talks about nuclear disarmament because "Russia is not a threat", and so on.
He has overturned the tables, that's for sure, but I don't see him picking up even a little bit of the mess he's creating. And he has picked a pivotal moment in history, the first time since WW2 that the free nations of the world really needed to stand together, if only for naked self-interest.
I can see attrition, but how long does that drag on, and how much money can the USA keep pumping in? It's a mess any way I look at it, and even if Russia eventually goes "okay, we stop fighting", Putin will still be there. And now licking his wounds and even more motivated to punch somebody in the face over bruised national pride.
Must everything be sandblasted with sarcasm? Wanda?
Give that the US has a massive deficit, how do people still support foreign aid?
Wouldn't it be far better long term, for the US to first reduce its deficit *and then* give foreign aid?
The whole narrative around the current government cuts, seems insanely focused on short term gain... (E.g., don't cut out spending now, don't your realize how important that money is)
Same thing with the science funding, don't you dare audit or pause science funding for any length of time, "don't you realize how many people are going to be affected, etc..." when the whole point is that if a multi month pause leads to a 5% efficiency gain from the next few years that is still a net gain...
There's absolutely no guarantee we fix the deficit. That's my main issue. This is like the arguments people use where they say "I'll accept sending out foreign aid when every single homeless US veteran has a home!". Well, that's never going to happen. So you're really saying you'll never support giving foreign aid.
I don't think we're ever going to solve the deficit, at most reduce it a bit. So we might as well do good things at the same time, if they're worth doing.
I can think of two possible arguments you're making:
1. The deficit is simply more important right now than foreign aid.
2. Somehow, reducing the deficit will make foreign aid better in the future.
I just don't agree with the first one (do you really think it's more important for us to save the couple hundred billion it took to fund PEPFAR than save 25 million lives) , and I see little reason to believe the second. More importantly, foreign aid is less than 2% of the national budget, so cutting it has very little benefit compared to cutting DoD, Medicaid and Medicaid, Social Security, and other big players.
This is, I think, the crux between a lot of pro-DOGE and anti-DOGE sentiment. The pro-DOGE perspective seems to go “first fund critical domestic spending, then less critical, then marginal, then critical foreign aid”. This would suggest as long as we have a deficit, canceling USAID and NSF spending seems pretty reasonable.
The anti-DOG perspective seems to go “first fund high ROI domestic spending, then medium ROI domestic /high ROI foreign, then low domestic/medium foreign, etc”. This would seem to match Scott’s view that canceling Pepfar (very high ROI foreign) likely causes money to flow to lower value causes.
Both these perspectives include a degree of todo amoris, but differ fundamentally on whether to apply it to categories or specific programs.
As someone who’s broadly pro US AID and NSF I’d have been massively more comfortable with targeted cuts, even if they cut some programs I liked. And there’s a counter argument that “the deficit is high enough that targets cuts won’t do it”, but the truth is that these programs are way to small to fix the deficit anyway, which is going to require (targeted) cuts to key spending & tax raises. So I’d love to see the Trump & Musk admin demonstrate the capability to do targeted cuts on the little stuff *before* they start restructuring social security, Medicare & the tax code
A nice breakdown!
To put it a bit more starkly though, I think many of the pro-DOGE people feel like America is hemorrhaging social capital, institutional capacity, and the core skills of its people (e.g., the crisis in education). In that light, they see pretty much all of the cutting and chaos as "critical domestic spending" / "critical painful readjustments." with no room for any medium ROI domestic investment let alone foreign anything.
Its a bit like how when you board a plane, they tell you to in an emergency put the mask over your own face first before anyone else. If America can't save itself, how will it save anyone else? Or maybe it will save one someone else, but who will then save America? If America isn't strong how an earth will Western values be defended (values like support for freedom of sexual orientation - not found in much of Asia, equality between the sexes - not found in much of the Middle East, values like Democracy, values like Free Speech - basically not found anywhere but the US, etc...).
> This is, I think, the crux between a lot of pro-DOGE and anti-DOGE sentiment.
Agree in broad strokes, but I also think a lot more people would be inclined to support DOGE, or the idea of increasing government efficiency and reducing waste, if Elon Musk wasn't responsible for the undertaking.
In this way, a Trump presidency is uniquely bad, bc it's unlikely other Republicans would put someone so high on his own supply (both literally and figuratively) in charge of a government efficiency program. The gap between his confidence in his ability to effectively cut government spending and his ability to actually do it is just too wide.
This doesn't even get to the point that Republicans revealed preference is that they don't really care about deficit at all, or they wouldn't be trying to cut taxes for the super rich now. Or the obvious conflicts of interests from Musk that far exceed any that Hunter Biden supposedly engaged in.
> This doesn't even get to the point that Republicans revealed preference is that they don't really care about deficit at all, or they wouldn't be trying to cut taxes for the super rich now.
The Republican's logic is that cutting taxes on the super rich is in service of cutting the deficit because "they're wealth creators". Revealed preferences here tell you only that they want to cut taxes on the super-rich. You are smuggling in assumptions (that said tax cuts won't have positive budgetary side-effects) by going from that to "therefore, they don't care about the deficit".
> Same thing with the science funding
Dropping investment is not saving money. Shutting down development is not saving money. Short termism makes money situations worse. Asset stripping is the opposite of saving money. Destroying infrastructure is the opposite of saving money. Killing the goose results in fewer golden eggs. ...yet calls to kill the geese so we can "save money" on their feed never bloody end.
Stopping R&D is a death knell for your system. Stopping maintenance is a death knell for your system. Resilience is not waste. If you see no failures you are not trying enough new things. If you destroy your R&D structures your system will stagnate and die before they can be rebuilt. Over and over I see businesses fail to comprehend these things and sacrifice themselves on the altar of the false gods they call "cost-cutting" and "efficiency", that only go by their true names after the fact. Never thought I'd see a whole country do it in my lifetime.
A system perfectly optimised for today is one that is obsolete tomorrow. Working complex systems are very hard to build. The best time to invest in tomorrow's system is yesterday. Killing investment in your future means killing your future.
If you stop scientific research, you will be outcompeted by those who didn't. Don't stop moving forward. Moloch will not wait for you.
> If you stop scientific research, you will be outcompeted by those who didn't.
Not if you destroy the competition first.
And.someone is actually doing that?
You think Trump's imperialist sympathies are just for show? The next decade is going to be a real fun one indeed...
China and Russia are also competition.
"If you stop scientific research, you will be outcompeted by those who didn't. Don't stop moving forward. Moloch will not wait for you."
The problem is, everything is then classified as "this is vital research and if you defund it, the sky will fall!" I do support pure research, but on the other hand there does seem to be a lot of bloat (weren't we talking about the problem of famous studies in sociology/social sciences not holding up?)
We're being asked to treat "this research could unlock the secrets of the universe", "this research will advance our understanding of cancer" and "feminist glaciology" as all the same and all equally important and vital.
Maybe 2-3% of NSF funded research is "woke science" even by a broad definition, but they're talking about cutting the *overall funding* by something like 2/3 iirc. There isn't any evidence of that amount of waste, and if anything instead of cutting we should plow any savings back into replication attempts to clear out any invalid results and higher-powered studies so we can get results that do hold up in the future.
"Feminist glaciology" was a satire paper, IIRC?
I used to look down on social science research until the Trump campaign / Facebook / Cambridge Analytica exposes demonstrated just what applied social science was capable of. I treat these subjects with more respect now.
I wish it had been a joke, but it was one of those "different ways of knowing" papers. What was most annoying was that there was the kernel of a reasonable point (scientists should solicit traditions from local people about phenomena in their area to help understand what has been going on) but it got dressed up in "feminist glaciology" terms (and the whole 'natives be wise, white science lacking, magic works' crappiness)
I believe you recall incorrectly.
https://www.science.org/content/article/qa-author-feminist-glaciology-study-reflects-sudden-appearance-culture-wars
The deficit is primarily due to low taxes for millionaires and billionares. I really fail to understand how anyone can talk about the debt without facing the obvious solution which is to collect more revenue.
I get that many believe the govt is inefficient, and there is some pretty rank corruption with respect to govt spending, but continuing to "starve the beast" is what put us at whatever trillions of debt we owe.
Foreign aid is less than 2% of the budget, so it's hard to understand why it's the target.
Science spending is even worse because basic science pays economic dividends. I haven't done a robust survey of the economic literature but I've seen serious estimates that the economic growth from science funding is high enough that it has a positive effect on the federal deficit.
The US budget is overwhelmingly spent on Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and Defense. If you want to cut your way to solvency, you'd have to cut those. And/or raise taxes.
People complain about the NSF overheads, which can be as high as 60%. This money goes into university coffers and props up private universities (in particular) so that they don't have to pass on all of their costs as tuition. This is not to defend the outrageous tuition that they charge. But shutting down NSF funding will push many smaller universities over the edge - often they're the biggest prestige employer in a mid-sized town - there are run-on economic effects.
I expect it's the target for a mix of political and legal reasons. Politically, foreign aid tends to be relatively unpopular, especially among Trump's base, and science funding contains a lot of line items from which it's easy to cherry-pick things that sound absurd out of context (and some of which may genuinely be absurd even in context).
Legally, Trump and Musk are trying to direct fiscal policy by executive fiat instead of going through the budget process. Unless the end game is to ignore the Constitution completely and disregard the Courts as well as Congress, they need to win some of the inevitable court challenges. They're most likely to win in areas where the laws are written to give the executive branch discretion that can be stretched and abused (I think NSF grants may be in this category) or where Courts in recent decades have been sympathetic to claims of inherent Article II authority (foreign aid falls here, being an aspect of foreign policy).
Can you explain your point? For instance, can you expand on the federal budget and tax policy and explain what you think we should and shouldn't spend money on and put money spent on foreign policy in perspective with other expenditures and taxes?
Your post actually makes me kind of angry because you haven't even tried, but I guess that's becoming more common these days, here, there and everywhere.
For one, the scale of the national debt and humanitarian foreign aid are so different that eliminating humanitarian aid completely won't make any noticeable dent in the debt. It won't even make a dent in the yearly interest payments on that debt. Meanwhile, a lot of people will die without aid for no noticeable improvement in American's well-being.
Do we really need to worry about the deficit? Supposedly, deficits cause inflation, but Kevin Drum has a good chart showing there's actually little correlation between the two — except in certain circumstances.
https://jabberwocking.com/do-budget-deficits-cause-inflation/
And think of foreign aid as a carrot we offer other countries instead of a stick. True, we could build three aircraft carriers with the yearly dollars we spent on USAID, but aircraft carriers mostly cruise around the oceans, doing not much of anything except acting as a threat deterrent.
Also, the USAID program was a great source of HUMINT, and it was heavily used by the CIA to put boots on the ground with cover stories in the countries we were aiding. Remember, Osama bin Laden was found because of a USAID Hep B vaccination program in Abbottabad, Pakistan. Although news reports said it was a fake program, people were actually getting vaccinated (thousands received beneficial vaccinations) — meanwhile, the CIA was collecting DNA to see if any children or other relatives of bin Laden popped up. And they did!
"The CIA is using USAID as a front to run vaccination programs in order to collect your DNA" is the kind of thing that sounds like an insane conspiracy theory, except not only is it true, the CIA and USAID both brag about it.
It’s maybe not the best example, though.
Two or three of us may inadvertently recall the astonishing amount of aid, more like Danegeld, paid to a country that certainly knew his whereabouts, playing the US for a fool.
If we’re fools, we’re fools, but I don’t know that it’s something to pay for.
It was one of our best operations in recent memory — or at least one of the best that was made public.
I have a friend in USAID whose vaccination program was canceled (and she's been laid off). She says she'd frequently run into USAID workers who seemed to have the training they needed to do their job, but they were vague about their educational and personal background, and they didn't socialize with the other USAID employees. They'd cycle in and out of projects. She and her regular co-workers just assumed they were intelligence agents.
And, uh, are these the arguments being made by people who are pro-USAID?
I think USAID has done a lot of good. Whether we should let our tax dollars to be used for doing good, especially in foreign countries, is a legitimate question. But USAID also overtly and covertly served our national interests. Discontinuing it without discussion of the implications seems shortsighted at best.
However, "USAID is great cover for our spies" is not the argument being made. Make up one's mind as to whether "It is our duty to help the poor, sick and suffering and thus USAID" is the story, or "To hell with them foreigners, they're so dumb they fall for our fake medical programmes thus we need USAID" is the driving interest.
I mean, if your complaint is that USAID wasn't serving US interests, this is an obvious argument against that.
Yet people like Raz toss off the simplistic idea that canceling USAID will lower the deficit and save the US taxpayer money (yay!). Maybe it will lower the deficit a little bit in the short term, but the downstream effects may be very serious. How much money would we need to spend to suppress a disease we haven't seen before, which could have at least been detected in the wild? That's never happened in my memory. #snarkasm
I think that the CIA has historically been bad at discerning the long term best interests of the US.
This isn't necessarily any particular incompetence on the part of the CIA, it's just ordinary Rule of Unintended Consequences multiplied by mysterious powers and limited oversight. I'm sure that if I were capable of supporting coups or funding civil wars then I'd probably make a lot of wrong calls too, but I can't so my bad ideas are relatively harmless.
Nobody's suggesting reducing the deficit though.
I don’t see this as a productive line of argument. The cuts are being made to save money, which is an important thing to do.
I agree the cuts are wasteful (they will scare people out of useful industries/the US or will damage the US’ ability to generate goodwill and influence cost-effectively abroad, in ways that I think outweigh the permanent net income stream from reducing the deficit) and immoral (the cuts will hurt people in great need more than they help the beneficiaries of the lower deficit, all to boost the popularity of the current government). But if I didn’t think something like this, I would want to save the money, because spending money at all is hard in US politics and a decent proportion of the savings would go to reducing the deficit anyway, plus I’d probably expect some of the money to go towards things I’d think were good.
This is a really good demo of AI conversational speech generation I saw a few days ago: https://www.sesame.com/research/crossing_the_uncanny_valley_of_voice#demo
Uh... Why did my account get blocked from commenting? I just tried to comment, and it just says "You are blocked from commenting on this". Tested it on other posts too, and still blocked. There was zero notification for it as well. I don't even remember saying anything particularly objectionable for the last few weeks...
Edit: So attempting to edit a comment tells me "You are banned from commenting until 1000 years from now." Sorry guys, see you in 3025!
Hang on, where are you blocked from? I can see this recent comment about the 1000 year ban. Scott generally does warn "the ban hammer has descended upon your head" and doesn't do it without giving notice.
This blog, and only this blog. I just made a new account to bypass it.
I wouldnt be surprized if youve been targeted by a report campaign by ex-government employees who may be taking nonproductive actions in a panic.
> I don't even remember saying anything particularly objectionable for the last few weeks
I can read your posts as dispondant; can everyone?
I don't think problem can be a ban by Scott. He always announces them at the time.
The only thing I can think of is that I somehow pissed off either Scott or some Substack worker so much that they randomly decided to stealth ban me. ...I mean, obviously it's not a big deal, as you can see.
Edit: It seems I'm only blocked on this blog. So it probably is Scott... but why now of all times? Now that I think of it, when's the last time he posted a list of bans? Did he just stop doing those?
I seriously doubt you have been banned. All these posts are appearing; you haven’t said anything that would warrant a ban.
It may just be Substack screwing up, that's always a possibility.
Normally, if Scott bans you — and I've been banned by Scott — you're either banned for a month (like I was) or you're banned forever. And you can't comment for the duration of the ban. And your comments would be hidden behind a banned notice. Yours aren't. So, I don't think Scott banned you.
Out of curiosity, why were you banned?
I never got a reason from Scott, but I think it was because I resorted to vicious sarcasm against someone who, IIRC, was banned permanently a few months later. ;-)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-fNvi6xG-5Y&pp=ygUdbW9udHkgcHl0aG9uIGRpbXNkYWxlIHNhcmNhc20%3D
How would you cult-proof your children and/or yourself? And could cult-proofing discourage healthy exploration?
One suggestion I've seen is encouraging a sense of the absurd. If someone is making wild claims, make jokes about how ridiculous they are.
Another suggestion was encouraging kindness. Is the group seeking advantages for a small group of insiders? Unfortunately, this has its limits. Some cults claim to be helping everyone. Also, mockery of inflated claims has the advantage of being fun in the short run.
Make sure the help is for actual living people. Or possibly including animals, but put the focus on good lives for actual animals.
I've seen two very different lines of thought which protect from MLMs and investment education (guru) scams. One is to realize that there's no way a system which depends on recruiting more people can grow forever, or even very long. This takes an intuitive grasp of math.
The other is to realize that if this is a path to easy wealth, the person promoting it wouldn't be working so hard to pull you in. This takes an understanding of the world.
I think part of the challenge is that there are good reasons to teach children to be cooperative, but it's important to teach them to be thoughtfully cooperative.
The current theory about cults is that they recruit people who are desperate or unmoored. Poor people, people who've lost a partner, people who have just moved to somewhere where they don't know people. This means being able to to the sensible thing or not do the stupid thing when you're under pressure.
Education in the ordinary sense-- degrees-- doesn't protect people against cults.
Any thoughts about resistance to love bombing?
Any stories you might want to tell about resisting getting recruited?
I see you say that 'education in the ordinary sense doesn't protect people against cults' - why?
I'd argue that anyone with a thorough understanding of how the world works, an enquiring mind and a healthy dose of skepticism is safe from cults. Of course there will be outliers, but is the average cult member more or less likely to have an advanced degree than the general population? (Of course, it's possible to get a degree without learning anything - the parchment itself isn't going to keep the cults away.)
There are confounding factors - the people with degrees likely have jobs and status in society, they're not the typical recruits for a cult who are marginalised in multiple ways. So maybe the response is follow the standard advice to ensure children land decent careers.
> Of course there will be outliers, but is the average cult member more or less likely to have an advanced degree than the general population?
From what I've seen, it's more likely. A particularly infamous example is the Tokyo subway sarin attack that was organized by Aum Shinrikyo. Literally all of the main perpetrators had STEM degress from prestigious universities. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokyo_subway_sarin_attack#Main_perpetrators
"It's easier to train a smart dog than a stupid dog". I've been thinking about this.
Other than the obvious "make sure they're emotionally healthy" I would advise raising them to be contrarian and anti-authoritarian. Be generally cynical with them. Make fun of pomposity. Teach them that just because someone is in a position of authority doesn't mean that they know everything (or anything). Oh and get them to read good satirical literature. Voltaire, Machiavelli, Swift, Orwell, etc. Good humor like Twain is probably good too. It's hard to be manipulated when you're laughing and Twain teaches you to laugh at a lot of pompous stuff.
Another good move might be to encourage them to join the debate team in high school. That trains your mind to think about both sides of every issue which makes it hard for someone to sell you ideological snake oil. Debaters develop a natural ability to find the fault lines in any story.
The problem with cults is that their beliefs are a red herring. The important part is the behavior; all those written and unwritten rules.
There are different deities, different lines of cosmetics, different political causes... you can't list them all, and there will be new ones tomorrow anyway. But the rules are suspiciously similar; starting with: "Don't talk to outsiders unsupervised. Especially, don't talk to people or read sources critical of our group." There are other rules, but this red flag is probably the easiest one to explain: if you ever notice that someone is trying to convince you to never talk to your parents and your former friends (or just to feel bad if you do), run, don't walk.
Longer version: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/tFo8maKd6Tp7MyXHF/how-to-talk-rationally-about-cults
It might help to read a book or two written by former cult members, those are cool stories anyway.
Actual love at home, and a network of friends, probably increase the resistance to love bombing. Especially if you explain how some people's love is strictly conditional on your obedience, and that if you meet such people, it is not actual love, just a manipulation technique.
I think I disagree with most of your suggestions:
> If someone is making wild claims, make jokes about how ridiculous they are.
This may make you more resistant against groups whose beliefs differ from yours, but *less* resistant against groups who start from a seemingly similar position. Remember, there are both woke cults and right-wing cults, so many people already start in a position kinda sympathetic to some of these. Also, "if you sell a lot of this, you can get rich" is not obviously a wild claim. (Only if you understand the efficient market hypothesis.)
> Make sure the help is for actual living people.
How much can you verify this? "Yes, there are actual living people, living in a country far far away. Are you a racist?"
> The current theory about cults is that they recruit people who are desperate or unmoored.
Unfortunately, it is more subtle. A group can make you depend on them, by gradually replacing your contacts outside the group by the contacts inside the group. At first sight, the fact that your new friends want to spend more time with you doesn't feel suspicious.
"> If someone is making wild claims, make jokes about how ridiculous they are."
I don't know if I made it ideally clear, but those were suggestions I saw in a discussion rather than suggestions I would necessarily make. A sense of the absurd could help protect a person from wild claims, but that doesn't mean it's a good idea to tell someone who's already in a cult that the cult ideas are absurd.
"> Make sure the help is for actual living people.
How much can you verify this? "Yes, there are actual living people, living in a country far far away. Are you a racist?""
That was actually about protection from a Pascal's Mugging. Be very careful about claims about trillions of people in the far future.
Ah, makes more sense in this context.
Still wouldn't recommend ridiculing the cult: could backfire, the person could take it as ridiculing his ideas (if he already feels like a member of the cult). Better to just listen, and maybe let him come with his own doubts.
One way to see how it could backfire is to consider the cargo cult angle. Imagine someone who wants everyone to believe that This Thing Right Here is a cult. He finds that people who successfully pointed out a cult in the past did so by ridiculing it. So, he proceeds to ridicule This Thing Right Here.
It *might* work. Maybe TTRH really is a cult. Which is to say, it promotes ideas that most people would consider cult-y. But "most people" isn't going to include members of TTRH beyond maybe some wavering individuals on the margin. The members of TTRH will by contrast believe that its ideas are *not* cult-y. What will ridicule look like to them?
What would happen if we tried to ridicule people who believed that they'll starve if they don't eat?
Have your kids read Terry Pratchett.
I read through the suggestions you outlined with alarm.
Educating a young person about cults / MLMs/ scammy-woo (/arguably gambling?) is 100% about developing their ability to say, "Not today, fucker," with genuine venom. It requires fostering a healthy, unapologetic contempt for both the predators who engage in manipulative behavior, and a pitying contempt for those who fall prey to it.
To wit, it requires developing a sense of pride in having a *personal* superiority over a predator's recognizable tricks.
The best way to do this is with humor. Show them the relevant episodes of Penn & Teller's Bullshit!, and particularly show them South Park's The Biggest Douche in the Universe. Go over this clip of Stan explaining cold reading line-by-line until you're certain your kid understands it enough to *laugh at it*: (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bptjghTNUkE)
Once your kid is able to laugh *at* the audience in that South Park episode for being silly, you're well on the path to protecting them from ever being that silly themselves. Make them proud of being "too smart" to be tricked by cold-reading, and they'll want to expand that skill into other areas.
Then it's just about helping them develop pattern-recognition, and ideally a sense of discomfort and indignation whenever someone imposes on them, be it someone in religious garb interrupting their travel down the street or a coworker wanting to sell them too many vitamins.
I was raised in Christian Science, a faith-healing religion that's often described as a "cult" due to the extremity of disbelief in the effectiveness of medical science. Sometimes I even describe it as a "cult" myself, although that's not accurate. Christian Science does not encourage proselytizing. If anything, it's a little snobby about not trying too hard to convince the people who aren't smart enough to "study" it.
I was deeply, thoroughly indoctrinated as a child, including being deliberately kept away from information which might have made me question the religion (I wasn't allowed to attend health class in school, etc). I started doubting as a young adult after having some health issues it didn't fix even though I prayed really, really hard, and then in 2003, the first season of Penn & Teller's Bullshit! kicked off the complete implosion of my framework for faith. I even remember the exact scene that detonated the implosion.
I don't blame myself for believing what my family taught me - you can't know what you don't know - but once you have the information, there's no excuse for not using it. The first step *must* be, "You are both empowered and capable of *judging* the behavior of others. Do so."
My instinctive reaction is that disdain for those who get suckered could lead to an inability to entertain the thought that you are being taken in.
Um. What?
Obviously there's even more disdain for people who are so arrogant that it doesn't ever occur to them that they've been taken in by a particularly sophisticated or novel scheme.
Someone is really dumb if they fall for a psychic cold reading after having the mechanisms of it throughly explained to them. Ditto Three Card Monte.
But if a layperson is taken in by a Bernie Madoff type, or an auto mechanic is using refurbished parts instead of new, or a scammer deepfakes a loved one's voice over the phone pleading for help…well, there are some things the average person just can't know about ahead of time.
But cold reading and pig butchering and MLMs are examples of scams adults have absolutely no excuse not to avoid.
Koken's right though. Quite apart from putting your own self image to work justifying why your weird surroundings certainly can't be a cult really, this also sets up a barrier where even after getting cold feet you can't go back to the people who warned you because - by the typical mind fallacy - they'll all sneer in disdain if you do.
Yeah...so the kind of person who's too afraid to go back to the people who warned them because they're more afraid of being sneered at than they are of being in a cult is *the kind of person who is most vulnerable to cults in the first place.*
So, don't be that kind of person, and especially don't allow your child to become that kind of person.
Like, I'm genuinely amazed that's not incredibly obvious to you?
The way to avoid cults (and scams) is to first not be a person who is targeted and easily influenced by others.
Once you're that kind of person, all you need is information about how to recognize when you're being targeted and manipulated, as well as the knowledge that you may not immediately recognize a sophisticated or novel manipulation.
While I definitely think society lost out when we taboo'd the masculine urge to say "just don't be a pussy," in difficult situations, in the context of preparing someone against subtle manipulation that sounds like a ludicrously wrongheaded attitude to me.
But listen I've been thinking about starting a fertility cult recently so if you can get a good line in attractive, submissive women maybe we can do an adversarial collaboration.
Gotta be information control. Make sure they have awareness of where their information is coming from, and teach them to notice and react defensively when someone is closing off sources.
Disconnecting from people is a subcategory of the same thing - this should be a strong boundary: no one tells you who you can and can't talk to, and if they force it to a choice, they're the ones who go. And from the other side - no matter how angry you are at someone, always leave the door open, avoid breaking off contact yourself, it's a pawn's move.
Awareness of information control alone is enough to neuter a lot of cult power. It also protects you from the arguably much more likely case of controlling girlfriends/boyfriends.
After that you might want to expose/inure them to various tricks - guilt trips, sales tactics, etc. My primary school headmistress liked to put us through the Asch conformity experiments from time to time.
There may be people who really aren't worth talking with.
One boundary might be that it's alright to stay away from toxic people, but don't trust anyone who's telling you to break all your old connections.
That just moves the decision one step backwards to who you allow to define the word "toxic" for you.
"Toxic" has no real meaning, and I've seen it used far more often by cult-follower type people than not - pretty much always as an exhortation to cut (groups of) people they disagree with out of your life.
If you can trust someone to know who is and isn't trustworthy in that regard, you can already trust them to spot the cult leaders as well, making this a circular thing.
There are plenty of people who aren't worth talking to, but your child should be the one determining who they are. Once they've left the small cult of your nuclear family of course.
OTOH, "basically break all your old connections" is often good advice for people trying to recover from drug addiction.
So is, "join a cult," in fact.
The easy way would be to describe several of the most common types of cults, and the reasons it would be bad to join them. This would probably be easier for MLMs than for literal cults, but you could explain first one and then the other. It’s probably easier to see similarities to something you recognise than to understand maths well enough to spot such scams instinctively. For your own protection, you can research as many common and obscure cults and scams as you can, and hopefully learn to recognise enough patterns that when someone develops a new scam, they’re building it out of elements you recognise.
I think the easiest solution is to preemptively form your own cult :-/
You don't have to form your own, that's what religions are for.
Did anyone know about usaid a year ago? Im still surprised by the amount of money in *1* account, I would think this should fail money laundering 101, but I cant remember a single mention of it.
In what sense? Trump’s been advocating for cutting off US international aid for years.
In the sense that even minute earth was a fed money( I called philosophy tube being a fed tho); and for some reason firefox, rumors about south america cocaine production, all one account.
I dont get it, in theory some % of government workers should be good actors so you need to hide the money laundering, cia bullshit, raw corruption everywhere in the budget and you get new people who should have new schemes every 2 years maybe by pure ignorance over decades someone forgets to coordinate having the money in one account.
Was there a new congressman class that the cia runs thats say "if you need to do money laundering run it thru usaid so we can kept track of a corruption to gdp easier" most of the time people listen AND ron pual didn't think to take a picture?
In theory coordination has knowledge tradeoffs; I cant quite articulate what; but something
Fortunately, someone happened to already answer this question in the Links thread a few days ago so I can just copy paste the answers here for you:
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https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/links-for-february-2025/comment/96763614
I don't think people didn't know/care about PEPFAR until DOGE. Asterisk published an article on it a year ago: https://asteriskmag.com/issues/05/pepfar-and-the-costs-of-cost-benefit-analysis (I don't endorse the conclusion and got into a fight with the person who wrote it, but it does exist)
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https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/links-for-february-2025/comment/96779885
https://www.kff.org/policy-watch/pepfars-short-term-reauthorization-sets-an-uncertain-course-for-its-long-term-future/
https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/4547308-us-aids-relief-program-pepfar-extension-spending-bill/
https://www.foreign.senate.gov/press/dem/release/chair-cardin-one-year-without-pepfar-reauthorization-continues-to-put-millions-at-risk
https://www.brookings.edu/articles/pepfar-delivers-outsized-returns-it-deserves-more-funding/
Pieces on the fight over it:
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/09/05/president-emergency-global-aids-program-00113796
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/12/07/stalemate-on-pepfar-to-drag-into-2024-00130483
But note, the expectation wasn't that it would be cancelled, but rather that the anti-abortion restrictions on foreign health funding (the Mexico City Rule) might interfere with it.
And I think you're wrong about the plan to push it out, that was to get it out of electoral politics, so that after the election, depending on who won, it would get re-upped, either with or without the abortion restrictions, not that if the republicans won, they would cancel it. No one ran on cancelling Pepfar, both because it is relatively obscure, and because, as you can tell by the fact that Rubio, et al keep saying that it's fine and they're not blocking the funding, even as the funds don't distribute, it's not good politics.
Im not quite seeing the "knowing" just a random acynom that will be associated with it and some abortion debate.
Im not sure its possible to express the thought in that dialect of speech. Even now my eyes glaze over. I need "theres chemicals in the water that turn the frogs gay" to understand, you couldnt have a page long abstract with the scientific name of the frogs in question, the chemicals in question, and 1 *cough* dog whistle about a sexual behavoir hidden inside.
Maybe this is all clear to insiders and it was well known you apply for funding to usaid for your firefox africain educational retreat, or your eastern european homosexual magazine or youtube video talking about climate change. But Ive cant find anything in my tougue thats older then the current audit.
It always annoys me that the chemical that harms frogs and maybe people is well known to be atrazine, but people keep talking about this as if it’s some cover up.
Im for the break down of scientism, Im wildly in favor of my ideological enemies making themselves foolish
Embrace it; get alchemy-meme shaped glassware labeled "gay frog juice" and offer them to drink it
The funniest result would be if the US leaves NATO and that makes Russia stop caring if Ukraine joins
No, funnier would be if the US and Russia ally against Europe.
There is precedent for this, depending on how you define “Europe”…
Yes, as I mentioned in another comment a little further down, "American steel and Russian blood, like in the old days."
They would be on the opposite side this time. Though, I guess the Allies can always be painted as the aggressors...
that would be bloody and sad :-(
As the last days were. As the war since 2022 is.
What common interests would the US and Russia pursue against Europe?
The question is not what is best for USA, but what is best for those who *rule* USA.
After a successful regime change in USA, the best thing for the new rulers will be to destroy successful examples of the previous type of regime in other countries.
I'm not really part of that "scene", but from what I gather a lot of "NRx" types seem to see (Western) Europe and the EU as an extension of the liberal-left post-war American "elite", and thus are very negatively polarised against it. And apparently the new VP and others close to the president are "plugged-in" to Yarvin and others in the "NRx" community, and thus kind of see Russia as their ally against a "post-materialist and self-hating" EU (or at least its elites).
I do not suggest it's a plausible outcome. But in this funny hypothetical, military alliance for territorial expansion by conquest, American steel and Russian blood, like in the old days. Maybe Russia takes the Ukraine, the Caucuses, and, say, the Baltics, while America takes Canada and Greenland.
france still has nukes and germany still is willing to kill russians
The latter seems doubtful.
Oh, I love some Russians. But I would give my life glady if I could take out a certain V.V.P.. Lots of German voters nowadays are some sort of Russian. Most Germans claim they would not defend their country. "Only 17 percent of German citizens said that they would "definitely" be prepared to defend their country in case of an attack" https://www.newsweek.com/majority-germans-unprepared-military-attack-country-poll-1854738
Didnt some german try to sound important this week by calling trump weak on russia?
Anyway, russias point of view will not be neutral on nato if america leaves; they may in fact have some prospective on ww2 and cold war as being not great for them and knowing their role in it without "end of history" delusions; where the true barrier of democracy made evil disappear with purity and light.
I remember putin ranting for 3 hours about history, he may have centuries of europian wars in mind when seeing a massive european allienence and prep the winter meat grinder as is russian tradition.
Have you forgotten the content of that rant? In a sentence, it was basically "Ukraine is Russia's hat, you will not have our hat". It wasn't a speech about an infinite empire or an infinite war. It was a speech about a sphere of influence, much as you might see in the 19th century multipolar order.
People are crazy when they think he has the desire (much less the means) to invade ten more states. He is Monroe, not Napoleon.
He probably doesn't have the means or desire to physically invade, but he's trying to install Russian puppet governments in all kinds of places through information warfare, assassinations, and various other means, and not even just in Europe.
Another monthly long forum wrap up of all my most interesting long form content links.
This batch includes a recent(ish) origin for Australian Aboriginal languages, a couple landmark papers on recent European evolution of intelligence, a deep dive into the creeping issue of infrastructure decay, links from the gut microbiome metabolites and major depression and aging. and an argument that the bigger danger in LLMs is their persuasiveness rather than their intelligence.
Oh and my own podcast interview with Dr Eugene McCarthy about the importance for hybridisation in evolution (leading to a future episode diving into his hair raising pig-chimp hybrid theory).
https://open.substack.com/pub/zeroinputagriculture/p/the-long-forum-march-2025?r=f45kp&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false
As a point of feedback from a biologist, I've read some of Eugene McCarthy's writing, and as far as I could tell it relied mostly on misinterpreted birth defects and sensationalist newspaper articles. I very much do not think it's to be taken seriously. It's possible reading or hearing more will change my mind, but I'm doubtful.
Lyn Margulis was utterly convinced that the flagella was descended from an endosymbiotic spirochaete. She was wrong on that point, but right about mitochondria and chloroplasts. I think McCarthy is correct about the overlooked centrality of hybridisation in speciation, am convinced his chimp-pig theory is worth serious analysis, but also suspect at least some of the thousands of historic cases of possible hybrids documented in Telenothians are in fact birth defects, but without tissue samples for genetic analysis it is a moot point. McCarthy admits as much if you read his work closely. He is merely a meticulous cataloguer of historic evidence of potential wide hybridisations. Short of setting up a research institute to reproduce all these crosses under controlled conditions there isn't. much else a lone researcher can do. His recent genomic analysis of bonobo/human/pig is quite compelling as well, but could be followed up with analysis by other genetics labs. Unfortunately the concept seems to shock modern sensibilities so much that the topic is radioactive, not that different to how religious folks first reacted to being told that humans were descended from chimps. It's weird how instinctively people push back on the idea of ~1% of our genome coming from a pig. Accepting hybridisation is driving much of evolution would also mean our tidy branching phylogenetic trees from the last 20 years of analysis would need to be reassessed.
See, the thing is I think that McCarthy is doing a motte-and-bailey game in which the motte is already known and accepted in evolutionary biology. That hybridization, symbiogenesis, and horizontal gene transfer are important drivers of evolutionary change is well known. The purely dichotomously branching image of the Tree of Life is now firmly lies-to-children territory. As an example, here's [1] a recentish paper candidly describing "superorganisms" created by the permanent association of multiple species.
As for parts of the human genome being of "foreign" origin, why, it has been uncontroversial for a quarter of a century now that many human genes have been absorbed from bacteria [2] and that 5-8% of our genome is made out of dead viruses [3]! Even the placenta, as deep as it gets into the source of human life, is known to be lagely of viral origin [4]. By comparison, pigs are practically our siblings. If the argument was a bacteria-mediated horizontal gene transfer between mammals living in the same environment, that would be quite plausible. But that's not McCarthy's argument -- on his website, we see assertions of cats and chicken mating and giving birth to viable offspring [5]. You say he's a "meticulous cataloguer" of potential hybridizations; I'd say "credulous", at best, as every instance I could find on the website is a misinterpretation of a birth defect, or an overly literal reading of a second- or third-hand description.
The actual argument on human origin [6] seems to be an unevidenced assertion that such hybridizations are possible (no mechanism seems to be provided on how the thoroughly mismatched genes manage crossing-over in the next generation) and a list of morphological traits that are allegedly shared between humans and pigs, with no consideration given to convergence and necessity (in fact, a very similar list to the one that the "Aquatic Ape" factions claims we share with marine mammals). Many of them are already explained by the peculiarities of human evolution (e.g. subcutaneous fat and reduction of cutaneous muscle are related to the loss of fur coat), others are not great discrepancies with other apes (which do have an eye sclera and nasal cartilage, and whose os penis is already vestigial).
I presume this is the paper in question [7]. The fact that McCarthy seems to have invented his own algorithm doesn't fill me with confidence, but most importantly he makes a startling claim "essentially all the autosomal nucleotides differentiating humans from bonobos are pig-matching" is *not* actually supported.
What he actually shows is this: the amount of 35-40 bp-long strings shared between pigs and humans is about 1.3% higher than the amount shared between pigs and bonobos, and that the human and bonobo genome differ by 1.3% of nucleotides. Then he asserts that these numbers must refer to the same thing, even though they measure completely different things!
Of course if you compare apples to apples, you'd see that the nucleotide-level similarity between humans and pigs is very high, because they're both mammals, and you can reduce it arbitrarily by picking the length of the sequences you want to exactly match. The great majority of those matches are shared with the bonobo too, despite it presumably not being descended by pigs, and the 1% that isn't could as well be explained by later mutations on the bonobo line.
As far as I can tell, there is no mention of a negative control (what if you use a dog or a mouse instead of a pig?), nor any attempt to show that the supposed human-pig genetic matches have any relation with the supposed shared morphological traits (I would bet most of them are in non-coding DNA, because most DNA is non-coding). The paper also keeps describing bonobos as if they were ancestral to humans, which is no more true than the reverse.
I'll show the paper to colleagues more expert of bioinformatics than I am, but I'm not hopeful.
[1] https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s10699-020-09688-8.pdf
[2] https://sci-hub.st/https://www.cell.com/trends/genetics/abstract/S0168-9525(01)02282-X
[3] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC387345/
[4] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/apm.12474
[5] http://www.macroevolution.net/cat-chicken-hybrids.html
[6] http://www.macroevolution.net/human-origins-2.html
[7] https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.08.14.607926v1.full.pdf
I appreciate your position, and think it deserves consideration. Acknowledgement of the importance of hybridisation in evolution is growing, yet most phylogenetic analysis is still built of those simple branching trees that you agree are a children's fairytale. There is some work on developing new algorithms that search for evidence of hybridisation but the more ancient crosses may well be beyond detection. The purpose of phylogenetic trees is also worth reflecting on, regardless of the model. Are they just the latest form of biological stamp collecting?
The motte and Bailey comparison is apt, except I don't think there is a clear division between these two structures in his argument, and McCarthy's whole position is that mainstream biology doesn't have a clear idea about the limits to hybridisation and that this topic deserves further serious study.
Reading McCarthy's work, I have never detected any outright assertions that the wide hybrids he catalogs are proven, just that history is stuffed with reports of them which deserves some consideration. Having spoken with McCarthy at length I think he would gladly accept genetic analysis of any of the cases he reported on showing they were simple birth defects. There is a fuzzy edge between obvious and abundant hybrids (often between rather distant species, which nevertheless often overcome considerable genetic incompatibilities such as varying chromosome number to back cross to either parent species). I understand McCarthy to be advocating for a closer study of where those barriers to hybridisation lie. Given the complex nature of biology, the possibility for extremely wide crosses giving rise to fertile offspring once in a million years has to be considered. Extensive back crossing to the parent species could make detection of these events difficult in evolutionary history, but small genetic changes can have large functional impacts on the resulting introgressed populations.
I am keen to hear a deeper analysis of the latest genomic analysis paper claiming short sequences from pigs showing up at higher than expected rates in humans. This isn't my area of expertise, and the reliance on algorithms to shovel the. mountain of data always leaves me unconvinced (as a non-expert you are left relying on the researchers description of what the analysis is supposed to be showing). I agree an obvious test would be a negative control, applying the method to other mammals which are not supposed to be involved in human evolution.
Maybe we can agree that the existence of hybridisation is not at all in question, just that the limits are not well defined with our current body of knowledge?
I appreciate your response -- and I apologize if mine were a bit heated and late to come. But this is kind of what I meant by "motte and bailey". That hybridization may play a wider role in animal evolution than previously thought is a perfectly reasonable hypothesis. Claiming that a chimpanzee and a pig mated and gave birth to human offspring isn't. Investigating exactly how far hybridization can reach is also an interesting line of inquiry. McCarthy's methodology is absolutely inadequate for it. The best one can possibly say in favor of McCarthy is that he's deliberately making the most extreme and absurd version of his proposal in order to draw public attention to more serious work done by others, but I can't honestly say I care much for this sort of thing.
(As for the supposed hybrids from the newspaper clippings, the burden is very much on him to show that they are in fact hybrids, not on others to disprove it with genetic analysis, which is obviously impossible since most if not all those specimens are unavailable; though many clearly show marks of e.g. cyclopism or microcephaly.)
I was interested in the Australian Aboriginal languages thing.
One of my pet peeves is the pretence that the Aboriginal group who happened to be in a particular area at the time of European settlement are the "original" occupants of that land. To pick on a town at random, "The earliest human settlers in the area around Broken Hill are thought to have been the Wiljakali Indigenous Australians" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_Hill
This is, of course, stupid. Aboriginal groups merged, split, died out, and wandered nomadically over the course of forty thousand years. Whoever the first people to live in the Broken Hill area, they're not the Wiljakali, not even in a ship-of-Theseus sense.
Is anyone else still depressed by the USAID cuts? Ik it's old news by now but fuck, I'm planning to focus on global health and it's extremely frustrating to know that I'll probably never have enough positive impact to outweigh the bad done by a single document signed by Trump.
We pay $1 Trillion/year in just interest alone on the debt. We need to cut a lot, even things that are "good" to get out of this massive hole. Once that is fixed, I think more people would be open to USAID-type programs, just not putting them on the countries "credit card". A program being "good" or doing "good" is not a sound enough argument to keep it.
"a program being 'good or doing 'good' is not a sound enough argument to keep it"
What is a sound argument then? If I can't appeal to whether a program does good, what am I supposed to appeal to? Should we just cut all spending the US government does no matter how good they are since being good isn't enough? What framework would you apply to judge whether a program should be kept or cut?
Think about what you are saying for a minute. If all it takes for us to decide to pay for a program is that it does "good" then there is no limit to our spending. We could spend an additional trillion, heck, why not 5 trillion more? There is objectively plenty of good things we could do with that. Clearly, spending needs to be in the context of ones available funds.
If you have just $100 and someone tells you about a really really good program you can donate to and it would only cost you $50,000 dollars, would you donate because it does good? Of course not. You simply cannot afford that spend no matter how "good" it is.
Nobody wants to admit it but just like everywhere else you have to be born into the right class to be powerful. If you really want to save the world you can probably find a way.
Yes.
I work on global health in an EA-adjacent org that I think does a lot of good, and the cuts hit us hard enough to force laying off staff. It is pretty depressing to realize how much potential good was averted (I think a better lens than 'bad done') by the signing of a single document.
I've tried keeping my spirits up by still aiming to do the best I can, to mixed success.
Uh yes. It hasn't even been a month. I'm a John Green fan so I'm pretty mad about the divestment from tuberculosis control programs. Do you want more medication resistant TB? Because this is how you get medication resistant TB.
Curious about people's thoughts on Anthropic's analysis of how Claude has been used in the workforce: https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2025/02/which-economic-tasks-are-performed-with-ai.html.
I'm already trying to pivot to customer-facing roles in tech, but in part I was willing to admit before that I am less wedded to coding or even working in tech than a lot of CS graduates, so in an down market I'd be one of the first to quit. However, the data seems quite clear here: LLMs have already broken through in SWE to a surprising extent, and just as surprising to me is that what would seem to be ideal professions for it, like copywriting, are barely affected.
At the same time, it's hard to draw conclusions here. In theory, SWE is a small field, so making up 37% of all queries seems very significant, but coding might also require more tokens than other tasks. Then there's the null cases, devs who still aren't using LLMs. Regardless, I figure someone here has probably thought about this way more than I have. Appreciate anyone's thoughts.
I'm not convinced LLMs can meaningfully diminish the job prospects or break into any programming job market. (Unless, of course, the market is dumb and it fires some programmers anyway that it will beg them later to return, I'm assuming well-calibrated decision making here.)
My views shifted considerably on LLMs, I started as an irrational hater, probably driven more than anything by the "Cultural Appropriation" move of using terms like "Code Gen" and "Dev Tools" - previously terms that had to do with very deterministic and computer-sciencey topics and research - to describe the Natural Language beasts. The insufferable investor-bro ecosystem around LLMs and their whole.... schtick, also didn't help.
Little by little, starting by the Sparks of AGI paper in 2023, I came around to the conclusion that LLMs are perhaps the singular most amazing technology of the 21st century since the Internet or the smartphone, and probably more philosophically challenging and civilizationally invigorating than both. (Economical-Impact-wise, though, it doesn't hold a candle to either. Yet.)
The other day I was reading a binary protocol spec and there was a huge table mapping raw memory addresses to names. I wanted this table as a C++ switch statement. Pre-LLMs, my options were either to (A) copy-paste from the PDF and endure the drudgery and the formatting errors (B) write a python script to open the PDF and endure the (most unfun) kind of BDSM that is trying to programmatically process PDF. Post-LLMs, my options are taking a screenshot and politely asking the alien beast to spit out anything I want, including C++ switch statements or some sort of address->string hash tables or whatever.
This article is perhaps the best thing I have read on the topic of using LLM in programming: How I think about LLM prompt engineering (https://fchollet.substack.com/p/how-i-think-about-llm-prompt-engineering). The tldr is that you can think of LLMs as effectively program database (in short, NPM/Github), plus a massively multi-modal and natural-language-proficient interface that can guide your query to the best matching program in the database.
With all that said, LLMs are still not (good, professional) programmers. Why?
(1) They have no agency. Agency means that you tell a programmer to do something, and if he/she doesn't, you can (A) Schedule a meeting with them and tell them you're sad/angry/disappointed (B) Fire him/her. LLMs have no agency, they can't be blamed, you can't have a modern work environment built on the back of people who literally can't be blamed, **someone** have to take the blame, and that someone who happens to take the blame for bad/missing/undesirable/buggy code is a programmer, even if he or she didn't write the code by themself (directly).
An often-overused metaphor is the "Intern" analogy. Hang out on an AI HackerNews thread long enough and you will inevitably see the "LLMs are just an eager intern" or "an LLM is an infinite army of infinitely patient interns" cliche analogies. I think this is actually an understatement against interns (smart and motivated ones are better than LLMs), but even assuming the truth of the metaphor, interns have been an element of work environments since forever and they have not contributed meaningfully to any job displacement or market downsizing.
(2) They have no memory. The fundamental paradigm they're built on is learn-once live-forever. The various corrections and experiences they experience don't contribute to their long-term connections, they're just mushy context for the long-term wights to digest and output as activations. Even if you record every single interaction, you ever had with your LLM and start your every prompt with it as a huge context stream (obviously ridiculous, both from a UI/UX standpoint and in light of the context length limit inherent in LLM architecture), that's fundamentally still not the same as joining a Teams meeting with a team member and saying "Right so like we agreed yesterday, we will implement this ticket as follows...".
(3) They're fickle and unreliable. And I don't mean the "Hallucination" problem, which is bad enough, I mean that even after you correct a hallucination, you're still not guaranteed to get the right answer even in the same exact session you corrected it in, or after you close the session and start a fresh one. Something about the combination of floating-point calculations + output sampling over a probability distribution + Natural Language input + Autoregression on previous output to generate more output... just wrecks pure havoc with repeatability and deterministic-ness.
I have seen attempts to address this by imposing various rules and limitations on the input prompts, or enforcing some elaborate system of bullet-pointing and reference-keeping (e.g. as per requirement 1.a.I.A.0.a.1, you have to...). Not only is this still fickle and unreliable, it's essentially reinventing programming language syntax again, the point that programming language theory was at in the mid 1950s.
(4) They don't push back. A common cliche in interviewing wisdom is that the candidate who doesn't push back or ask any clarifying questions is worse than the one who does. Sometimes you just know better than the one who asks the question, sometimes it's your buddy who knows better and pushes back on your bad suggestions. In all cases, a programmer's lexicon with humans must contain "No", "I don't think this is a good idea", "are we sure this is the best approach", and others of their kind. LLMs universally don't.
Many of those limitations aren't independent of each other, some are inherent to the LLM architecture and others are mere implementation details, but addressing them **all** seems like a substantial post-LLM jump-in-kind-not-degree leap, which contradicts the opinions that **LLMs** (they exist today, or with minor modification and development) will replace programmers.
Some LLM-Replacing-Programmers advocates then retreat into a more favorable position of "LLMs are going to make programmers more productive, and thus make 1 programmer do the job of 2, and thus cut programmer jobs in half". I hate this position and think it's a mark of poor thinking, here's why
(1-) First, different tasks take different amounts of a programmer's day. To take a trivial example, booting the damn computer up is part of a programmer job after all, but making the boot process of Linux or Windows 10x faster won't give you a 10x programmer, because booting a computer up takes at most 5 minutes == 1/12 hour == 1% of a programmer's day. This is called Amdahl's Law (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amdahl%27s_law), speeding up a task can only ever gain you (some portion of) the time that this task originally took, so if the task takes very little of your overall work then even making it take 0 time will gain you very little.
LLMs don't magically speed up all tasks that developers face. As a trivial example, they don't speed up debugging the buggy code that they often produce. They don't speed up ticket planning and work-combining, they don't speed up customer/sales meetings. They may speed up code investigation or debugging, but by how much? Given a very high level bug report like "Application crashes when a .png image converted from a .jpeg is uploaded"), how many LLMs can just go through the repo, whip up their printf and debugger breakpoints, and produce a chain of events that a developer would have produced but faster? How much faster?
Producing new code is not all what developers do.
(2-) Different programmers, markets, companies, products, and lifecycle phases of the same product do fundamentally different tasks altogether. A startup is fundamentally different than a FAANG and both might as well be different entities compared to a CRUD bank. A mobile programmer is doing a radically different thing compared to their peer in an embedded C or a desktop C++ project. Most importantly, maintenance mode is radically and fundamentally different than greenfield mode. (and it's a huge continuous spectrum not 2 poles.)
LLMs are extensively and almost exclusively marketed with the "I made an X application from scratch despite not being a programmer" and "I built my startup on AI and 2 of my programmer bros, programmer bros optional !!!". This **is** impressive and a testament to the usefulness of LLMs, but how much of the programming job market is just startups or hobby apps? Hobby apps are not even part of the job market at all, or perhaps a tiny part if you count the freelancing make-me-an-app-for-tracking-X kind of jobs. Startups seem to be a peculiarly American - nay, Californian - obsession, and professional programming is hardly limited to America or California.
So LLMs are good, amazing actually. They're just not professional programmers, and they can't be without so much more work and development that they're effectively no longer the LLMs we know.
Largely agree on all of this. My point which you admittedly addressed at the beginning is that the oversized impact that LLMs are already having in swe vs other industries is going to discourage hiring new devs.
Yes, the thesis that “llms make our devs 20% more efficient so were going to fire the bottom 20%” has a lot of holes. I don’t know how badly execs who try it will be punished, but honestly if llm use is already this pervasive, it wouldn’t surprise me if they can skate by with less programmers, even if the end product is buggier. This would be really bad for the job market, which for junior devs especially is quite poor.
The difference between FAANG and other large companies that have tons of internal tools is well-taken. As an anecdote, I interviewed at a company recently that ended up being acquired by a bigtech co. They have a nosql dbaas, and had completely pivoted to the use case of storing embeddings in their db, the idea being that you take an llm prompt, find the most similar embedding in your db, and then feed that with the prompt to the llm (this is called RAG, you may have heard of it). So a company with a lot of docs could already prompt the llm with a coding problem and all the relevant docs. In that way, non-coding skills that devs need to have like “knowing the docs” are also being chipped away by llms.
I agree that it will never be 1:1 with devs, but I think it won’t be too long where it will be viable, and cutting headcounts by even a relatively small percentage will screw up the industry.
Ehh, I think the percentages have to be significant (> 10%) in order to show up among all the other non-LLM reasons the programming job market regularly gets fucked up over. I can accept a "Death by a thousand cuts" thesis where LLMs are just 20 or 50 cuts among the thousand, others being layoffs from big tech, increasing de-globalization (thus less international SWE and market denial), $TECHNOLOGY_OF_MONTH has changed and now all the people from there are migrating to other niches and competing, etc...
Like I said, if LLMs are simulating an infinite supply of interns, we **always** had an infinite supply of interns before them, where are all the job apocalypses that happened since companies first discovered the magical trick of underpaying an intern and treating them as an employee? (modulo an optional mentor, sometimes). LLMs *may* be superhuman in many aspects interns (or any other humans) are not, but they're also subhuman (e.g. in long-term learning and learning from experience, in agentic discussion and disagreement) in many other ways that most reasonably good interns are not.
Now the point about LLMs **competing** with interns is very valid, but at this point I think you're sort of on the outskirts of the "Job Market" discussion and slightly into the "Education" discussion. LLMs as a new technology (like Wikipedia, like the internet, like the smartphone and the smartwatch, like the television and the radio, like reading and writing) fuck up with Education and Pedagogy in all sorts of interesting and new ways. 1 way is by pricing out apprentices/interns/trainees to new jobs and professions, denying them the opportunity to ever escape the very predicament of their inexperience, but isn't this what most companies pre-LLMs already did by the infuriating "Minimum 3 years experience" cliche job postings? I agree that 2 bad things are obviously worse than 1, but if interns/trainees/juniors were already coping/resisting 1 bad thing before LLMs, is it too big of a jump to expect they (or *some* of them) can figure out new additional ways of coping with the 2nd?
(Another way of fucking up Education is by competing with human-curated sources of knowledge like Q/A sites and textbooks, devaluing the very source the LLMs are trained on and undermining both future LLM training and knowledge production itself. Yet another is by tempting students and beginners to not do the tedious boring tasks that are nonetheless necessary to build mastery, such as doing multiple routine physics problems for a physics freshman or summarizing readings for a philosophy freshman. Those are not easy challenges, but they're also not new.)
LLMs *are* huge, I compared them to the Internet and the smartphone, those are not light comparisons. Uber wreaked havoc on the Taxi industries and Facebook is a tool of Revolution and Genocide Incitement as it is of cringey memes. I'm not sure LLMs measure up to those impacts yet but they are not apriori disqualified, I just don't think """10%+ replacement of the current workforce by LLMs in their current or near future state""" to be a reasonable prediction for the vast majority of respectable office work I can think of.
> I don’t know how badly execs who try it will be punished, but honestly if llm use is already this pervasive, it wouldn’t surprise me if they can skate by with less programmers, even if the end product is buggier.
Exactly, and that's what should be feared the most, the "AI doesn't exist but it will ruin everything anyways" thesis. The market can stay far dumber for far longer than you can pay your bills, and the dumbasses who take dumb decisions are punished by - at worst - a golden parachute out of the companies they ruin. I don't have an answer here, that's literally just Market Irrationality problem, the vague cliche answer is government regulation, plus developers revenge-negotiating the companies that abandoned them when the market finally self-corrects in their favor.
It's funny, because I think we mostly agree. When you say "some juniors can" still make the cut, like LLMs will at worst just exacerbate a shitty market, I agree, and I'm pretty sure I'm not one of those devs haha. That's actually why I'm interested in both the extent to which LLMs are being used by SWEs, but also the fact that *no other field* has incorporated LLMs nearly as much (at least that's how I interpret the data).
I think I'd rather start my career somewhere else in tech, even if it keeps me from doing dev work in the future. Part of this is because, weirdly enough, it really seems like other fields aren't as concerned about being automated away. It kind of makes sense: my thought experiment is that someone in the market for some SaaS product for their company won't know or care if the company has LLM code in production, but they would quickly lose interest if they reached out to sales or customer success and got a chatbot.
I thought copywriters were already getting unemployed by ChatGPT?
Yeah, I think these stats show more that Claude 2.5 has been used unusually much for coding (which it's unusually good at) and unusually little for copywriting (because it has a stronger "voice" than most models which is harder to wash out by prompting).
I would be just as surprised if people were this precise about their llm usage. Like as a dev I generally used chatgpt, and I would expect even more devs use copilot or
cursor.
The workflow for claude (ie not in your ide afaik) disincentivizes asking a lot of coding questions. The upside there in my experience is you can sanity check the code and put it in the ide once you’re satisfied. Even then, the friction of moving to claude kept me with chatgpt (now I use claude a lot for writing / bouncing off ideas, deepseek for more frequent queries)
So a web-based llm should be getting less coding queries than the median.
It could be less in quantity but higher in percentage. If someone goes to the trouble of using Claude instead of something from OpenAI they probably have a specific reason.
Something I'm wondering about: did LLMs just replace stack overflow in terms of volume? Tha would mean no or little productivity gain because it just changes where devs copy pasta code from.
From talking with other devs, the closer one is to the customer, the more helpful LLMs seem to be. Eg. Web devs seem to be getting the most out of it, while platform and infra just a little. But web dev is also conceptually the easiest to get into. One pattern I'm also seeing is that the better the developer, the more they can do with an LLM, ie. the better they can drive it to achieve some goal.
It's different. For Stack Overflow, if you can find a similar question to what you have you will often find a snippet of code you can pull, modify, and graft in to your own codebase. If you have a "new" question, or are just unable to find one that matches well, you ask a question that has a good chance to be closed or not answered, and if it is answered it may take half a day or longer.
A good coding LLM like Claude 3.7 can instantly answer your question, give you options, ask questions to clarify things you left out, and tailor code to your particular use case and coding conventions, and it does it instantaneously.
It's a far superior experience and much more productive.
I agree that that's possible, but I would estimate that a minority of users use it that way and a majority use it closer to a simple question-answer flow like with SO. Otherwise we'd be seeing a group of developers making big waves in visible ways.
The point about stack overflow is a good one. And yeah that makes sense, web dev feels kind of like pattern-matching to me and I never got the hang of any framework. I think for example knowing react doesn't generalize as much to other front-end stuff as C++ to Java etc.
I think we are still in the early adopter / enthusiast phase so it makes sense the programmers are using it the most even if copy editors should actually get the most use out of it. I think, even if LLMs didn't get any more capable, they would slowly spread in use to become a lot more economically important. My girlfriend works at a museum and they subscribe to chatgpt and slowly everyone is learning to use it more and more - currently, mostly as a kind of supercharged thesaurus that just helps them phrase things but over time doing more like turning bullet pointed lists into documents etc.
I mean whether it's because we're early adopters or LLMs are just better suited to coding for some reason, this kind of data is going to bolster the execs who think they won't have to hire engineers anymore. But yeah it's really hard to tease out what the cause is. A lot of queries doesn't imply a lot of impact nor does it mean it's doing X% of a dev's job. But I wouldn't be surprised if people took it that way.
JD Vance seems fairly close to rationalist space. I'd seen earlier that he had referred to one of Scott's posts https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/1ggl0mh/jd_vance_references_an_ssc_post_in_his_joe_rogan/ . I learned that he also referred to (what was likely) one of Zvi's posts as well https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2024/09/26/jd-vance-car-seats/75390401007/ https://thezvi.substack.com/p/on-car-seats-as-contraception
Smart, disagreeable, likes to cite things, I think it’s debate club behavior.
It's more than that. There's this very funny article psychoanalyzing Vance based on his favorite MTG card, Yawgmoth’s Bargain. While it is ultimately just armchair psychology, I feel like it is accurately identifying an important personality trait of his. Namely, that he is unwilling to tolerate losing no matter what. He really might be a kindred spirit...
https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/us-politics/magic-the-gathering-jd-vance-deck-b2637652.html
He's smart and cynical and wants to be president one day. The rationalist sphere touches on many ideas he's interested in like pronatalism and critical views of early-21-st-century elite leftism. Having read rationalist writers or even being influenced by them doesn't make him a rationalist. I mean, I've read Scott and Eliezer and even been to meetups, and I still believe in conflict theory and don't really care about people a thousand years in the future or shrimp welfare, and I'm sure as heck not giving anyone my kidney.
I do think Vance probably does care about certain things like helping the Midwestern working class and making it easier to form families. If he has to be Trump's attack dog for a while, that's just the price of power. It's rare to be able to climb the ladder of power without moral compromises.