WoodScientist @ WoodScientist @lemmy.world

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11 mo. ago

I have a better idea. How about for every one $7,500 EV credits we could give, we instead give out 10 $750 tax credits for e-bikes. That will cover the entire cost of a basic entry level e-bike nowadays.

https://timecube.online/

To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentations of their women.

TL:DR: If you immediately know the candle is fire, the meal was cooked a long time ago.

And what if he just ignores the Senate? Who is going to stop him?

I have a modest proposal. It is a way, at very little cost, to solve global warming and save countless human lives from violent deaths. It is the logical option, on purely utilitarian grounds.

I propose that we gather up a list of every ethnic group on Earth. And I'm talking pretty specific here. I'm not talking "European," or even "German." No I mean like "Bavarian." That level of specificity. We'll have a list thousands of ethnicities long.

I will then cut the list apart. Each ethnicity will be on a paper slip. I will put these slips in a hat, give a few good shakes, and select one ethnicity at random. And I mean truly random. It will be a fair drawing. We select an ethnicity from the hat. Individuals of that ethnicity are left alone.

Everyone else goes to the camps.

In this process, we will, depending on the size of the ethnicity randomly selected, wipe out between 90-99.9% of the entire human population. So, on the downside, we will have to lose...approximately 8 billion lives. That is the downside cost.

But think of the upside! We have randomly selected a single ethnic group and wiped everyone else out. That single ethnic group, while still having numbers large enough for viability, now inhabit an empty world. Global warming is now solved. They'll have no problem with CO2 emissions, as there's a planet's worth of solar panels and batteries waiting for them. Over time, their numbers will doubtlessly grow, and they will eventually repopulate the planet.

But think of what will now happen. At the, admittedly steep cost of 8 billion lives, we've now eliminated racism forever! In the long run, they might need to engage in some minor genetic engineering to prevent genetic drift, but that should be quite doable. There will now be only a single ethnicity that all humans will share. Think of how many racial pogroms, expulsions, moral panics, race riots, and outright genocides and race wars have happened through history. We've been doing that since the dawn of time. Does anyone today think that we'll ever be immune from that kind of hatred and violence?

So yes, we lose 8 billion lives today, but in turn, we avoid racial prejudice and violence from now UNTIL THE END OF TIME. And we have no idea the scale of conflicts in the future. In a far space faring future, human population might be in the quintillions. In that kind of society, trillions of deaths by racial violence a year would be the equivalent of the hate crime rate experienced in the US today. And we can prevent all of that by simply ethnically downsizing the human population today!

We pay the cost of 8 billion lives now. But in return, we are going to save trillions, perhaps quadrillions. Project forward billions of years, maybe even quintillions.

From a purely utilitarian point of view, the choice is obvious. We must take the path that will save the most lives. We must commence the omnicide.

/Obviously this is not a serious policy proposal, but an illustration of the flaws of utilitarian ethics. Yes, Kamala getting elected would have been objectively better for the Palestinians. It would have likely net saved lives. But the omnicide would also, on net, save lives. And utilitarian value cannot be the only way we make decisions. Justice and the respect for human life are not some trivial thing to be ignored. Let's not mince words. Biden abetted a genocide; there can be no excuse for this. If there is a Hell beyond this place, then he has assuredly secured himself a fine residence there. What he did was, in fact, a profoundly wicked act. Evil in any meaning of the word. And Kamala promised to continue that evil. Trump would have objectively done even more evil. But again, utilitarian ethics is not the totality of things.

For millions of voters, their moral compasses simply wouldn't let them have any part of it. The reason we don't do the omnicide is that we do not have the right to sacrifice countless innocent people based on our best guesses of how the future will turn out. And it's completely incompatible with any moral system that places innate value on human life. The moral calculus of the pro-Palestine voters that stayed home works on similar logic.

Yes, per our best estimate on election day, Trump would likely be worse for the Palestinians than Kamala would have been. But that is still in the unknown future. We don't know what tomorrow will hold. But we do know that Kamala was the VP of a president that abetted a genocide. And we know that Kamala herself says she will continue these policies. She was part of that administration. She has culpability in this. Should she not be held accountable? Does she not objectively deserve punishment? Denying her a victory would be an act of justice for those she helped kill. But in turn, it would cause the election of someone likely to be much worse. But there are people who have already died. There are people today in unbearable suffering because of this. By electing her, you are denying them justice. In exchange for what may come to be in the future.

Or think of it another way. Imagine you had a terrorist leader on trial, someone on the order of Osama Bin Laden. He's convicted and sentenced to hang. As he's taken to the gallows, he says, "I have a dozen sleeper cells planted through the US. If I die, expect dozens of suicide bombings across the country within the next few days." Do you stay his sentence, or put it on hold? Or do you just carry forward, and let these future terrorists be responsible for their own actions?

This is the core problem the Palestine abstainers faced. Are elections more about future policy, or are they about accountability? In truth, they're both. And different people have different ratios of accountability to future policy that they vote on. I personally voted for Kamala, but I can absolutely get the ethical case for not participating at all in this race. If you care far more for future policy than accountability, you vote for Kamala. If you care far more for accountability than future policy, you stay home. A lot of people picked accountability, and as a consequence, Kamala lost.

But perhaps I, and others who did vote for Kamala, have the worst outcome of any voter. I sold my soul and voted for Kamala. I gave up my one chance to apply the only bit of power I have as a voter to hold her accountable. I did it all because I hoped for a better future. But in the end, it didn't matter. I lost my chance to hold her accountable, and the greater evil still won.

Bullshit. It comes from a simple disgust reflex. Everything else is post-hoc justification.

Eh, I'm not too worried about it. Ultimately, it's just the same pattern that has happened since the dawn of civilization. In any city, there are places where people like to hang out and congregate. And they wax and wane in popularity with time. Even some place like a local pub has a lot of the same lock-in/network effect you get with the social media companies. What do you do if you live in a small town where the pub is the default meeting place, but the pub owner turns into an asshole? Well, there's different options, but ultimately it is the same problem as social media lock in.

And I'm not sure the federating really solves it. Let's say everyone moves to fediverse. In theory, it would be good if no instance had a lion's share, but that's not how these things actually develop; people tend to join whatever instance is currently the largest. And if lemmy.world becomes run by assholes, and if they in turn stop federating with other instances, isn't that now just reddit all over again?

At some point, I just don't think technical fixes are the real solution. The real solution is that people need to come to realize that these platforms are ephemeral, and that they need to always be ready to jump ship if a platform goes down the road of enshittification. This Twitter->Bluesky migration may represent ultimately a solution far more sustainable than the technical fixes embodied by the fediverse.

The problem is that "you do you" is an ineffective counter when the other side has decided to actively exterminate a minority group. "You do you" is fine in normal times, when there isn't an actively malevolent political movement bent on the destruction of a minority group.

This conflict is entirely at the feet of right wingers. Trans people have never been well understood or popular. But up until 2016 or so, we were mostly an afterthought. And honestly, that's fine. What the trans community really wants more than anything is to just be left the hell alone. But Republicans lost the fight on gay rights, and they needed another out group to target. So they moved on to trans people.

The conversation mostly works like this;

Conservatives: trans people are demons and we should exterminate them like animals

Liberals: umm, maybe that's not a good idea. How about we just let everyone live the way they want and not bother them?

Conservatives: why do liberals care so much about trans people??? Why do they never stop talking about trans people?!

Conservatives like to say liberals are obsessed with gender politics, but that focus is ENTIRELY THE FAULT OF CONSERVATIVES. And liberals don't have some general like of trans people. It's simply part of core liberal philosophy that you don't sit idly by while minority groups are attacked.

But again, if you actually want to stand up for someone's rights, you need to actually be able to rhetorically defend them. Consider this:

Conservative: TRANS PEOPLE ARE MUTILATING CHILDREN'S GENITALS

Liberal: I think everyone should live and let live. Let's just have tolerance.

Do you see how weak, ineffective, and utterly useless that is? When someone spouts a bigoted or racist line against a minority group, you can't just sit back, say "I accept all viewpoints," and do nothing. If you actually care about protect people's rights, you need to be able to actually defend them.

The problem with milquetoast centrist "live and let live" is that it's very, very easy to paint extremely damaging revocations of civil rights as simple "common sense" policies. For example, I described why it's a really, really bad idea to force trans people to use the restroom that corresponds to their birth sex. But a Republicans will say, "I don't oppose trans people, I just think we need some common sense rules to protect everyone." And if Democrat isn't actually willing to protect the rights of trans people, they'll end up going along with it as it seems neutral on its face.

Or, for another example. Consider "separate but equal." If you didn't know anything about Jim Crow and how utterly laughable the idea of separate but equal was, it seems fine on its face. And if opponents to segregation just took a "you do you" philosophy, they never would have stood up against Jim Crow. They would have just said, "ok, black people. You go do your thing, separate but equal, but I don't want to have to listen to all this identity politics. I'm sick of this woke shit."

And remaining silent about issues of race, gender, and origin that Republicans keep introducing does not make them go away. It guarantees that all voters hear is the hate peddling of the opposition.

There should be a hundred Democratic House members on the House floor defending McBride. There should be female Democratic House members complaining left and right about how they find it weird that Republicans are requiring them to share bathrooms with men.

The problem Democrats have on trans issues is that most Democratic leaders don't really seem to believe in the validity of trans people. They'll make vague platitudes about supporting rights. But it's all very much a "you do you" type of thing. They don't actually support or affirm trans identities. You don't see many Democratic lawmakers out there saying, "trans men are men. Trans women are women" and actually meaning it.

These things are quite explainable, and quite defendable, if you're actually willing to do it. For example, trans women don't "force" themselves into women's bathrooms. Do you know how most trans women decide it's time to switch from the men's to women's restrooms? They don't just one day announce they're trans and start using the opposite facilities. Almost all trans women start their transition. Once they're far enough along on their HRT and change in presentation, they inevitably start getting weird looks and harassment in the men's restroom. Cis men start reading us as women, and we start getting harassment for being in the men's room. That is when most of us switch over to the women's room. And it works the opposite for trans guys. 99% of trans people work on the rule of, "use whatever restroom causes the least disruption."

That's how you can fight bathroom bans in a way anyone can understand. Trans people don't form their beliefs and practices out of nowhere. It's all quite logical and reasonable. But you have to actually be willing to defend people.

But that is not what Democrats do. They don't defend trans people, they tolerate them. Democrats can't give good, well-reasons responses to defend trans people, as they prefer to live forever on the fence. Yes, when it is politically popular, they're willing to speak up for us in terms of vague discussions of universal rights. But when the other side starts demonizing trans people, because Democrats have never taken trans issues truly seriously, they don't know how to properly respond.

And they're fools for doing so. This kind of obsession and policing of gender ends only one place - with everyone forced back in the closet. And for cis women, that ultimately means being forced back into your traditional gender role, where the gender police think you belong - pregnant, barefoot, and in the kitchen.

You missed the point. My point is that even if you buy stock on 100% equity, 0 margin trading, you still are investing on margin. You are investing on margin because those company stocks you are buying themselves used these leverage techniques in their own operations.

Maybe he'll just speedrun it and drops all pretense. Maybe the January 20th schedule goes like this:

12 PM: swearing in

2 PM: signing of first executive orders

4 PM: coronation. He's literally declared himself, by executive order, absolute monarch "King Trump." He has a gaudy royal coronation, crown, golden scepter, gilded throne and all. Some Catholic bishop performs the ceremony.

8 PM: First Royal Address. The Oval Office has been reconfigured to be a gilded and bejeweled throne room.

I imagine something like this.

Watch Trump forgive 10x the student loans Biden did, and SCOTUS ok it because "reasons."

At least then we would know where we are, and we can start acting accordingly. One cannot play well without seeing the true state of the board.

Oz co-wrote a Forbes piece in June 2020 with former Kaiser Permanente CEO George Halvorson endorsing a “Medicare Advantage for All” system that called for eliminating employer-provided insurance and Affordable Care Act coverage and putting “every American who is not on Medicaid” into Medicare Advantage, which uses private plans to cover enrollees. They proposed to fund it with a 20% payroll tax split between employers and workers.

I mean, if they actually did this, this would be great. Which is actually why I'm skeptical of it ever happening.

Still, our political system is really weird right now. We're fundamentally in an era of political realignment. The old coalitions have failed, and new ones are sorting themselves out. The Republican Party of today isn't the Republican Party of 30 years ago. Who would have predicted Republicans becoming the champions of ending free trade? Free trade helps corporate profits; Republicans were the original proponents of post-Reagan free trade agreements like NAFTA. And Republicans won on the issue so thoroughly that Democrats as well fully embraced it. After a few decades, Republicans now realized that neither side was opposing free trade, and thus there was a huge political opening. Despite corporate interests, Trump was able to lead the party to be against free trade.

Political parties ultimately seek power above all else. And Democrats have largely ceded the ground on transformational Social policy. If Democrats aren't going to produce serious medical reform plans, there is now a huge pool of voters out there who want bold change, but currently have no one to vote for. It's a huge political opportunity that Republicans could seize.

Of course, the big objection people would have to this is, but what about corporate influence? True, I don't see Trump becoming a trust-busting Theodore Roosevelt any time soon. But this kind of reform is actually the kind of thing that corporations might welcome. But imagine a plan like this passes. Now businesses don't have to worry about healthcare. They simply pay a flat tax, and that covers everyone's healthcare costs. They don't have to worry about costs rising unpredictably every year. They don't have to fight insurers over coverage. They don't have to hire more HR employees to manage enrollment. Nope, just pay a flat payroll tax, and you're done. The number you deduct from your employees' pay stub jumps up, but that's about it. They have to pay their share of the payroll tax. But the amount they will pay in tax is likely far less than what they are currently paying for insurance. Companies stand to profit from this.

Employers who don't offer healthcare to their employees would stand to lose, but every other company would benefit immensely from a federal health insurance program. Hell, Trump himself has probably personally battled with the inanity of dealing with health insurance plans as business owner. As long as the corporations or wealthy aren't being taxed to pay for it, there may not actually be much corporate opposition to this plan. The healthcare industry gave more money to Kamala than to Trump. There are different kinds of corporate interests, and they do not always align. And for many corporate sectors, offloading the burden of healthcare to the government, in exchange for a flat payroll tax, could be quite tempting.

I don't know if something like this will really happen, I'm probably just being optimistic. But perhaps, if we're lucky, the sheer strangeness of the moment might allow for political options that would previously be unthinkable. If Trump actually wanted to have as his legacy some serious change to the healthcare system...this would be the way to do it. It's something that would genuinely improve the system, but done in a way that doesn't fall hard on the wealthy, and would be at least neutral in its overall affect on corporations. It's the kind of thing that might actually get through Congress, pushed through on a strange coalition of ride-or-die MAGA Congress people and progressive Democrats. Sanders hand-in-hand with MTG, somehow finding a way to work for the betterment of all.

Back in reality, however, my more pessimistic side thinks they would insist on adding bullshit to it that would make it an abomination. This plan would effectively kill the private insurance market. Private insurers would still exist, but they would all operate through Medicare Advantage. The entire population, outside of those already on Medicare or Medicaid, would be enrolled in a Medicare Advantage Plan. The only plans that existed outside of this would be boutique luxury supplement plans (plans that offer services on top of what Medicare provides.) But it would effectively kill the market for purely private basic insurance.

They would probably start adding culture war requirements to these new Medicare Advantage plans. Expect plans to be prohibited from covering abortion, contraception, gender-affirming care, etc. Which would mean that no insurance plan would be able to cover these things. Hopefully that kind of crap would have to be left on the cutting room floor as the bill worked its way through. But it's the kind of thing I would be wary of.

The machine totals and physical counts do not match. In this case, you are also admitting that our elections are not safe and secure.

If our elections aren't safe and secure, if they have been hacked, we are already IN a civil war. Sticking our heads in the sand and denying reality doesn't do anyone any good.

Or more precisely, we're not actually in a civil war. But what you are saying then is that we simply must surrender to dictatorship. Because if a group is willing to use election fraud to gain power, they'll be willing to use election fraud to stay in power. And if you're worried about protest/dissent/violence/civil war now, just imagine what level of disorder and violence will be required to eventually dislodge an autocratic government once they're fully established in power.

Exactly. The nice thing about this is that recounting is actually a lot easier in this case than a regular recount. You don't need to recount the whole state. You're just trying to determine if there was some massive swing. A few randomly selected precincts would be more than sufficient.

Yeah, its seems we should be doing verification checks regardless. Kamala ran a billion dollar campaign. And they can't scrape up the cash to pay for hand recounts in a few precincts? You don't have to recount a whole state. Just randomly select precincts and see if the vote totals between the hand counts and the computer tabulators are wildly different. With a recount on a close election, it's expensive, as you literally need to recount every single ballot. Here all you're trying to do is to make sure the vote tabulators aren't rigged in some way. So you just need to compare the paper ballots to the tabulator counts.

Even then though, it's not as amazing as it seems. Real estate is not the only sector that can make profits on leverage. In fact, pretty much any publicly traded company relies on leverage and debt. If you buy a share of an index fund, you're buying shared of companies, most of them taking advantage of the same leverage you would when buying a rental property.

Meanwhile, we're a third through a 15 year mortgage locked in at 2.5% for the life of the loan. If we had been willing to pay a bit higher in interest, we could have locked in a 30 year mortgage rate, probably around 3%.