Dienervent

From most perspectives, freedom is power. And one person’s freedom is another person’s slavery.

If you bring it back to the roots of life’s purpose: to procreate exponentially. It always comes down to doing better than your neighbor.

You can come up with all the moral rules of thumbs you like, like “your rights stops where my nose begin”. At the end of the day, if what John is doing enables him to procreate exponentially faster than Jack. Then Jack (on an evolutionary level) will perceive John as evil.

But “on an evolutionary level” isn’t really a real thing. It manifests itself in our dreams and feelings. Like how we get envious of people who do better than us or how we feel pride when we do better than others.

It gets complicated because of the effectiveness of cooperation. Which is where things like altruism, compassion and empathy come from.

But even here, evolution tries to pierce through it with things like hypocrisy, subconscious bias and tribal allegiance.

From this context, I believe that for most people freedom is a feeling they get when they do better than the people around them, when they are more powerful than them. It makes for a good slogan, because everyone wants to feel free, the theory says that everyone can be free, but the practice is that not everyone can feel free.

When you use freedom as your theoretical basis of government, it sounds good. But in practice, people will have slightly different interpretation of what freedom means to them, one where they’ll feel free but others won’t.

You might think now, that we should simply work on a clear and objective definition for freedom, but that definition you’re looking for is one where you’ll feel free, but many others will feel oppressed.

The best way to resolve the the corruption issue is to not allow any individual to hold power […[.

That’s part of it, probably the biggest part of it. You also want a system that can come to a consensus through compromise when resolving social issues. You also want a system that is efficient and powerful (to compete against other societies).

But going back to the corruption thing. It’s not enough, people can organise around an ideal to oppress entire groups. You can have a system where not individual or small group of individual hold power, but one where the whites can oppress the blacks, or the Christians can oppress the Atheists, etc…

Creating a system that substantially reduces corruption is insanely difficult. Corruption is the lynchpin of all the alternate systems being proposed, none are as good as the current system of capitalism + regulation + democracy.

What that system does, is it pretty much gives up on trying to eliminate corruption. Instead it tries to redirect its energies and minimize the damage it causes.

Basically, someone trying to become powerful in a capitalist system, is sort of cajoled into working hard to improve society.

The democracy + regulation aspect is what minimizes the damages caused.

Eventually, the “democracy + regulation” does get captured, and while it’s pretty bad compared to how these systems should work, they still tend to perform their function to some extent.

If you contrast this with something like communism or socialism. Those seeking power immediately start by dismantling the systems that prevent corruption. The pressure is so strong, the system will collapse almost instantly, and I think history shows this to be the case.

As for Libertarian, I don’t know. You always got someone who will show up telling you that you don’t know what “True” libertarian is. When there’s actually 200 different true libertarian and each requires 10,000 hours of study to fully understand.

But the few discussions I’ve had has been enough to convince me that the vast majority are either some kind of survivalist or people who see themselves as effective local business leaders. They just think that’s a system that will shift the balance of power in their favor and many of them won’t even deny it if you straight up ask them. They’re sick of feeling oppressed and they want to become the oppressor.

But generally, it seems to me that most Libertarian systems fail to account for bad state actors. These libertarian systems tends to favor a system that shifts the balance of power to local groups. But has no system in place to keep that power local. There’s no way this won’t immediately lead to civil war, with the winner setting up a dictatorship.

From most perspectives, freedom is power. And one person’s freedom is another person’s slavery.

If you bring it back to the roots of life’s purpose: to procreate exponentially. It always comes down to doing better than your neighbor.

You can come up with all the moral rules of thumbs you like, like “your rights stops where my nose begin”. At the end of the day, if what John is doing enables him to procreate exponentially faster than Jack. Then Jack (on an evolutionary level) will perceive John as evil.

But “on an evolutionary level” isn’t really a real thing. It manifests itself in our dreams and feelings. Like how we get envious of people who do better than us or how we feel pride when we do better than others.

It gets complicated because of the effectiveness of cooperation. Which is where things like altruism, compassion and empathy come from.

But even here, evolution tries to pierce through it with things like hypocrisy, subconscious bias and tribal allegiance.

From this context, I believe that for most people freedom is a feeling they get when they do better than the people around them, when they are more powerful than them. It makes for a good slogan, because everyone wants to feel free, the theory says that everyone can be free, but the practice is that not everyone can feel free.

When you use freedom as your theoretical basis of government, it sounds good. But in practice, people will have slightly different interpretation of what freedom means to them, one where they’ll feel free but others won’t.

You might think now, that we should simply work on a clear and objective definition for freedom, but that definition you’re looking for is one where you’ll feel free, but many others will feel oppressed.

The best way to resolve the the corruption issue is to not allow any individual to hold power […[.

That’s part of it, probably the biggest part of it. You also want a system that can come to a consensus through compromise when resolving social issues. You also want a system that is efficient and powerful (to compete against other societies).

But going back to the corruption thing. It’s not enough, people can organise around an ideal to oppress entire groups. You can have a system where not individual or small group of individual hold power, but one where the whites can oppress the blacks, or the Christians can oppress the Atheists, etc…

Creating a system that substantially reduces corruption is insanely difficult. Corruption is the lynchpin of all the alternate systems being proposed, none are as good as the current system of capitalism + regulation + democracy.

What that system does, is it pretty much gives up on trying to eliminate corruption. Instead it tries to redirect its energies and minimize the damage it causes.

Basically, someone trying to become powerful in a capitalist system, is sort of cajoled into working hard to improve society.

The democracy + regulation aspect is what minimizes the damages caused.

Eventually, the “democracy + regulation” does get captured, and while it’s pretty bad compared to how these systems should work, they still tend to perform their function to some extent.

If you contrast this with something like communism or socialism. Those seeking power immediately start by dismantling the systems that prevent corruption. The pressure is so strong, the system will collapse almost instantly, and I think history shows this to be the case.

As for Libertarian, I don’t know. You always got someone who will show up telling you that you don’t know what “True” libertarian is. When there’s actually 200 different true libertarian and each requires 10,000 hours of study to fully understand.

But the few discussions I’ve had has been enough to convince me that the vast majority are either some kind of survivalist or people who see themselves as effective local business leaders. They just think that’s a system that will shift the balance of power in their favor and many of them won’t even deny it if you straight up ask them. They’re sick of feeling oppressed and they want to become the oppressor.

But generally, it seems to me that most Libertarian systems fail to account for bad state actors. These libertarian systems tends to favor a system that shifts the balance of power to local groups. But has no system in place to keep that power local. There’s no way this won’t immediately lead to civil war, with the winner setting up a dictatorship.

I just don’t understand the logic here. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all in favor of abolishing the Duluth Model and the requirement to incarcerate someone on a domestic violence call.

But neither this situation, nor the story you linked to seems to have much to do with that policy.

In both situations, the police acted completely out of bounds. It is a completely different problem.

The story on the website was written in 2014 about an incident that happened in 1999, that’s almost 25 years ago. It can’t be considered relevant today. If there’s a real systemic problem of this kind, you should have at least a dozen cases like this every single year.

Hopefully, in this most recent case we’ll get some body cam footage released so we find out what really happened.

And also hopefully, the body cams is what will put this guy off the force forever. It’s the second time he seems to have done something like this, but I’d bet that the first time, body cams were not standard practice yet.

Seems to me that the solution to stop this kind of thing from being a common problem is body cams, and that’s what we have.

If executive unions could enforced a max amount of hours worked for executives and other similar quality of life requirements. Maybe there would be fewer sociopaths and more humans in executive positions.

Isn’t the Gaza hospital at the very least confirmed to have been a relatively minor explosion in the parking lot?

Wth are you talking about. The argument is on whether or not it is ok (aka, we should tolerate) to belittle / argue against religion as a whole. You’re taking the position that it is not ok to do so. The supporting argument you gave is that it is functionally equivalent to racism. I explained that it was not functionally equivalent to racism.

Now you have no supporting argument but you tell me it doesn’t matter because your position hasn’t changed.

Also, I keep seing this paradox of tolerance bullshit on the fediverse. People need to understand: you must tolerate people, but you doesn’t have to tolerate their ideas or their actions. It’s not that complicated.

This whole not tolerating people who are intolerant is just another way of being intolerant. Pick any person in the world and I’ll find a reason to claim that they’re intolerant. At the end of the day, it’s just an excuse to otherize people who aren’t on your team.

You’re comparing someone talking about some ideas or ways of thinking being harmful versus someone talking about how certain people are harmful based on innate characteristic. It’s not a reasonable comparison.

This is just completely wrong. If you read past the misleading headline here:

https://nypost.com/2021/09/07/facebook-reads-and-shares-whatsapp-private-messages-report/

You’ll see that Facebook cannot, in fact, give logs to law enforcement. If you choose to report a message you’ve received and send it to Facebook, then obviously then they can read it.

Also, your claim in another comment that Facebook does not have private keys to decrypt your encrypted messages is just fantasy.

You’re describing profit, not money supply.

Bank profits don’t cause inflation in the way you seem to say and bank profits are no different than any other company’s profits in terms of how they affect inflation.

Honestly, 2024 seems more like an attempt to return to sanity while the elites are trying to learn how to use their new toys. 2026 midterms will be the beta test and 2028 is going to be the real shit show.

There a ton of different ways to get laid. And depending on what your looking for, there are different requirements.

Most commonly people who don’t get laid are looking for some level of intimacy with someone that actually finds them attractive. Which means that hookers are not an option.

Commonly people in this category have two issues (I’m probably projecting :P, but I don’t have much to work on):

1. Standards too high. Just like poor people try to become billionaires. Sexless people wish for a harem of super models. Practice flirting with less attractive women until you learn to connect with women on a deeper level which will make lowering your standards to reasonable levels easier.

2. You’re unattractive. A bit similarly to #1, influencers and your own expectations for a partner are warping your perception of how attractive you need to be. Seeing as the level of attractiveness you wish you had is completely unattainable, you give up or you look for ineffective shortcuts.
   Don’t worry so much, work on the basics: good hygiene, not terrible clothes, some level of social competence, a minimal amount of confidence. The minimum requirements are far lower than what you’d expect or what most people would think.

(Note being financially stable also helps in terms of minimum requirements for attractiveness, but it’s not like you need the incentive of getting laid to want to be financially stable).

Keep working on both #1 and #2 and eventually they meet and you get laid and have a good time!

1. I’ll sneak in a third point here. If you’re a man, your relative attractiveness automatically goes up until your 40s vs women of the same age. But the change is most noticeable when you hit your early 30s. So, worst case scenario, after a few years, the odds shift in your favor.

Make it do they have to have it, to be able to loan it

The banks do have to have it to be able to loan it.

Fractional reserve says that they’re not allowed to loan all of it.

So if you deposit 100k at the bank and there’s a 10% fractional reserve. Then they’re only allowed to loan 90k.

Now you might ask, so if the bank can only loan 90% of the money they have where does the money multiplier come from?

If person A comes and deposits 100k, and the bank loans 90k to person B. Then there’s still only 100k in cash, but now there’s 190k in bank accounts.

So every time someone comes in to deposit 100k, they loan out 90k. Once they’ve got 1,000k, they’ve loaned out 900k and keep 100k cash in reserve.

The important difference here is that loan only happen when there’s a borrow. And there are strict regulations about how reliable those loans can be. Which is why they tend to require collateral.

So, really when a bank has 1,000k in people’s account, it only has 100k in cash. But it also has 900k in houses, cars and furniture.

The whole system ends up stabilizing the value of money because it is backed by real tangible things through the loaning and collateral system.

I also think it helps to keep money at a stable but small rate of inflation (1-2%). Otherwise people will just hoard the cash instead of growing the economy in the form of investments. But I don’t know what the literature says on that topic, or how reliable that literature is, in practice.

My point is, getting rid of the whole system just because it looks complicated to you seems like a terrible idea.

Like our focus should be on breaking up monopolies, progressive taxation and a solid well funded social support system. I think it’s safe to leave the management of the money supply to the bean counters for now. It’s clearly not perfect but it’s not bad either.

If banks hold 100% of the money and lend it all out x10 (fractional reserve) and earn 1% interest, the money supply is growing by 10% per year.

You’ve got it backwards.

Banks hold other people’s money and use it to issue loan. It’s the issuance of loans that creates money. The fractional reserve doesn’t magically multiply the money. It just (in a roundabout way) allows banks to loan up to that multiplier of money to people. But that only works if there’s people who want to borrow that money.

If a bank earns 1% interest, that doesn’t grow the money supply. It transfers money from the people that borrowed the money to the bank which then uses it to pay executives, shareholders and employees (in that order of priority).

The higher the interest rates, the less money people can afford the borrow, the more the money supply shrinks.

Banks HATE high federal reserve rates, because that means people don’t borrow as much which means they don’t make as much money.

When business and the wealthy class get richer, they want to get even RICHER. Prices rise. Which drives record profit, which makes rich people wealthier, which causes the cycle to repeat.

This can only happen in a poorly regulated environment where the rich setup monopolies or oligopolies. Otherwise they’d lose all their customers if they raise prices.

We just need proper incentive structures and regulation. But seeing as nobody has the guts to start figuring that out, the only lever we have is interest rates.

I think you’re just speaking for yourself here. Before you start spreading misinformation on the internet, maybe you should find the guts to actually figure out what you’re talking about.

High federal reserve rates can make things difficult for banks and that might be why the CEO of JP Morgan is butt hurt right now.

Want to deal with inflation? Raise interest rates.

Want to really improve the population’s purchasing power? Break up the monopolies and oligopolies.

I’m not well connected to law culture to know for sure. But it does seem like there is a fair amount of politics involved as well as guilt related.

If you’re a man accused of raping a woman, whether you’re guilty or not. You’re not going to pick a lawyer with a track record of ending her tweets with hashtag KAM.

If you’ve looked at the Johny Depp trial. Even expert witnesses will differ along an ideological divide (typically gender oriented ideological divide).

So if you’re representing a man, you’ll want to use one set of expert witnesses. Whereas a if you’re representing a woman you’ll want to use a completely different set of expert witnesses. It might stand to reason that a lawyer will just pick one side of the ideological aisle and become an expert at it (and likely acquire the corresponding professional deformation and echo chamber ideology of that particular side of the ideological debate).

So there’s plenty of reason to pick a lawyer based on their ideological association in this kind of case. Regardless of your own level of guilt.

But at the same time, maybe there are lawyers who specialize in defending guilty people whereas others specialize in defending innocent people.

I wouldn’t read to much into the choice of lawyers, but it can certainly be a red-ish flag.

I’m not claiming this is right or wrong. But here’s the justification.

The criminal justice system is there to prove beyond reasonable doubt that a crime occurred. When it comes to distinguishing consensual sex from rape, it’s nearly impossible to prove beyond reasonable doubt, because it ends up being just she said, he said. One tactic is to show a pattern of multiple victims. So if multiple victims independently come forward with a similar story of sexually predatory behavior, then you have compelling evidence that might be enough for “beyond reasonable doubt”.

What this means is that, in principle, rapists can just start raping left and right and keep getting away with it. At least for a while. I don’t claim here anything about how frequent or rare these rapists may be.

This can make life untenable for rape victims on university campus, in that they will not be able to keep going to class in the same room as the person that raped them. This creates even more injustice beyond just that of being victim of a crime that you can’t prove, because they’ll be forced to forego their studies.

So that’s the justification given for why, morally, we need something that’s a bit easier than “prove beyond reasonable doubt” that will make it possible for the victim to continue their studies. Legally, Title IX, along with a lot of acrobatics, provides the legal framework to force universities to do something about it.

In practice, it seems that at least in some universities you end up with a complete joke of a system. Universities are completely ill equipped to adjudicate such a complex situations. The whole thing is extremely politicized. The outcome of the investigation seems to be heavily based on the gender of the accuser and accused as well as political connections to the people involved in the process.

Regardless of if the previous is true or not. Not being allowed to cross-examine the accuser in a she-said he-said situation seems completely insane.

Personally, I think one party consent for legal recordings (recordings that can only be used for legal purposes in criminal proceedings) should become the norm world-wide. Then catching these rapists is going to be so easy that there won’t be any need to even think about these kinds of kangaroo courts.